Battle Station

— 19

The Macros kept up a steady rain of fire, and right before they made their next move, I suspected a trick. There were just too many with lasers, not enough of the models with cutlery. This didn’t match with the crowd I’d seen outside. Either they’d elected to only send in laser-armed workers, or they’d found a way to retool them all, or “Sir, look at the tank!”

Moving in a crouch, I duck-walked to the opposite side of the bunker and looked. Up until now, this side of the bunker had been the quietest flank throughout the battle, as the tank was covering this sector. I hadn’t really been worried about trouble from this direction. The Macros themselves had quickly learned to avoid the tank. It was the least populated region of our domed-in little world. My biggest worry had been the possibility Sloan would screw up and nail our bunker with one of those big, swiveling cannons.

I was stunned at what I saw. When I peered through the loophole, I’d expected to see a dozen macros swarming over the hull of the tank-but what I did see surprised me much more than that. “What in the living-” I began, then broke off. “Where did it go?”

“It sank, sir,” said the man who panted beside me. He leaned against the outer wall with his shoulder and pointed to where the tank had been.

There was indeed a big hole out there, and a billowing cloud of dust. I opened a general channel. “Sloan? Marvin? Can you hear me?”

I heard something in response, but nothing I would call words. More like a squawk or two.

“If you can hear me, sit tight. Do not attempt to exit your vehicle. Do not fire your cannons. We’ll come dig you out when we can.”

I caught a final chirrup of radio, then a sizzling sound. After that, nothing. Still, I had hope. After all, Marvin and Sloan were both pretty close to unkillable. I hoped that neither of them had finally run out of luck.

I felt something odd a moment later. It was a shifting sensation, under my boots. It was slight, but it was undeniable. I put together two things at once in my head. The sunken tank, and the wobbling under my feet.

“They are digging under us!” I roared. “Kwon, get everyone braced for a fall!”

“A fall, sir?” he asked, confused.

That was all the time they gave us. Fortunately, our bunker didn’t just sink into a vast hole and vanish. Instead, the northern corner sagged into the dust by itself. It groaned and creaked, but the steel welds and rods held. I knew this bunker wasn’t real: it was a house of steel planks, like glued-together playing cards. There was no concrete, rebar or solid construction of any kind to keep it together. We’d thrown the shelter together in about an hour, and it showed. Still, it had held together so far.

“They are going to suck us underground,” Kwon said, suddenly figuring it out. “Just like the tank. What are your orders, Colonel?”

I chewed my lip for about a second. The right call in these tactical situations made all the difference. I ran through the possibilities. My marines had kept the enemy at bay so far, despite their overwhelming numbers, by maintaining a field of ranged fire. They didn’t have enough cover to outgun us, and their blade-armed troops hadn’t been able to get in close enough to be effective without being shot down. I could see the Macro strategy clearly now: they’d elected to bring us down to their level. If they couldn’t get past our guns, they’d sink the entire bunker into the ground, then cut their way inside and gut us one by one. I’d been in a number of tunnel-fights over the years, and I didn’t want to let them force us into that situation again.

“Marines, listen up,” I said over the general channel. “We’re going to have to abandon this bunker for now. They want us to sit here until they sink us, but we’re not going to do what they want. We’re going to take the fight to them.”

“Very good, sir,” Kwon said. “What’s our target?”

“The tank, for now. We’ll try to pick up Marvin and Sloan.”

“What about Carlson? He’s too wounded to walk.”

“You’ve got two arms. Carry him.”

We all gathered on top of the bunker. It was shivering now, as the Macro workers dug feverishly to undermine the structure. “On my mark, we all fly over the wall and rush for the tank. Spread out, fire as you go. Keep advancing. Go! Go! Go!”

We all launched over the side and rushed, half-flying, half-running. Everyone was firing their weapons. I think the Macros were shocked, if they were capable of such a reaction. For a few seconds, the incoming fire stopped. We blazed out at them without a moment’s hesitation, however. Flanked by our changing position, a number of the machines were knocked out of the fight. Most of these were Macros that had taken up sniping positions on the big factory.

To my left side, a hulking shadow approached, then passed me. I glanced over and saw it was Kwon. This didn’t surprise me. It also didn’t surprise me that he was outrunning me. What did make my eyebrows raise high was the flopping form on his back. He was sprinting along on those thick legs of his, with Carlson’s limp form draped over his generator pack. This burden didn’t prevent him from laying down a continuous pattern of fire with his free hand, either. I took a fraction of a second to look down, and saw his feet were sinking several inches into the soft earth with every pumping stride.

That was all the time I had to eyeball Kwon. We reached the tank-or at least the spot where it had fallen into a giant sinkhole. Our suit lights washed into the dusty, gaping wound in the dirt. I saw metallic gleaming reflections here and there. How far down was the charred tank? Almost twenty feet, it looked like. There were shapes down there, moving to and fro.

“Stay in the tank, Sloan!” I shouted. “Commence firing men!”

That was all the go-ahead my troops needed. We poured fire down into the Macro machines. It was a slaughter. They melted to slag under our circle of blazing guns. A few tried to hop and scrabble out to get to us. Their foreclaws grabbed a boot here and there, a few slashing pinchers gouged armor. But no one was injured. We shot them until they stopped coming.

“Ceasefire!” I shouted, and hopped into the hole.

Kwon dropped Carlson and jumped after me.

I turned to him. “Kwon, help me get this hatch open. It’s stuck.”

“Are Marvin and Sloan alive, sir?”

“I don’t know,” I shouted. “No response from them yet. I’ll go back up and arrange our men around the crater.”

I flew back up to the top of the hole and sent three marines into the hole to watch Kwon’s back. The rest of them I set up in a perimeter around the edge of the crater the Macros had created when they undermined the tank. They’d unintentionally provided us with some good cover. It wasn’t anything like the bunker, but it worked.

The enemy had reorganized their assault to focus on our new position by this time. The air over the crater sizzled with laser bolts. Within a single minute, two of my marines had been hit and taken out of the fight. One of them slid flopping and spinning down into the dark hole behind us. He crashed down on the piles of loose dirt, stones and dead Macros. He screamed as one of the upright Macro pincher blades punched through his leg at the hip. I looked down and winced. Kwon’s men struggled to free him, but he was impaled.

“Get our corpsman down there,” I said, gesturing with my rifle toward the impaled Marine.

“Carlson was our corpsman, sir,” someone answered.

“That’s great,” I said, then snaked out an arm and grabbed hold of the nearest rifleman. “You, grab Carlson’s kit and use it. It’s mostly extra nanite injections anyway.”

Star Force Marines included our own medical personnel, unlike some other national forces. We called our medics Corpsmen, and they had basic medical training and a specialized kit for emergencies. But even these men were trained, armed, combat troops. Since we generally didn’t fight other humans, this didn’t represent a conflict for a man who was dedicated to saving lives. They destroyed machines by day, patched up fellow marines by night, and slept like babies whenever we gave them the chance.

“Any luck with that hatch, Kwon?”

“I almost have it, sir,” Kwon grunted.

He was so big, the other marines standing around couldn’t really get in underneath him and help. He simply strained and heaved solo. I watched his shoulders shift, the wheel must be turning.

“There we go,” he said, and pried it open a fraction.

To everyone’s surprise, it was yanked shut again.

“Dammit,” I said, pointing at the others. “Quit fooling around. Get a pry bar into that opening next time.”

Kwon stooped again. He heaved and roared. A few seconds later, another Marine pushed the broken length of a Macro’s leg into the breach and forced it upward.

A flash of light illuminated the dusty scene. The marine with the Macro leg in his hand cried out, clutching his arm and staggering back.

“Sloan, dammit sir,” Kwon said. “It’s us.”

The hatch was ripped all the way open. I looked down into the dim lit interior. There were Marvin and Sloan. They’d been hanging onto the hatch from the inside, trying to keep Kwon and the others out. All of Marvin’s thin, black nanite arms were entangled in the wheel of the hatch. I was surprised Kwon had been able to open it at all, even with the added power of his battle suit.

“Sorry sir,” Sloan said. “I-we thought-our radio is dead, Colonel.”

“All right, honest mistake,” I said in irritation. “We shouldn’t have shoved a Macro leg in there to pry it open. But I’ve got one less man on the line now. Get up here and take his place.”

Captain Sloan glided up to me on his repellers, but he kept his head low. “What’s our tactical situation, Colonel?”

“Suppressive fire. Keep it up as you talk.”

Sloan poked his head up and spat a series of laser bolts toward the enemy lines. I joined him. We nailed a sniper machine, but then were forced to duck down again as incoming fire melted the dust around our helmets into smoking glass. The laser strikes looked like wet splashes of hot wax.

“See the enemy? They are climbing to the top of the factory now, so they can get a good downward angle on us. We’ll be screwed if we allow them to get a firing position up there.”

Sloan’s eyes were wide. He joined me as we popped up and showered the machines that were trying to scale the factory structure.

“They’ve got to be digging to this spot again,” Sloan said. “We can’t stay here forever.”

“I’m hoping we don’t have to. Miklos should be coming down and invading this dome with reinforcements any time now.”

“With all due respect, Colonel,” he began.

I turned to him, annoyed. I hated hearing those words. They always preceded a short speech, the sort of speech which inevitably informed me I was an entirely new flavor of moron.

“Sir, we have to get the hell out of here,” Sloan continued. “We can’t hold on. We have no idea how long Miklos will take to get here. We have to assume we are on our own.”

Sloan had a point, but I didn’t see much else we could do. We were pinned down, and our only means of mobility was now twenty feet underground. I glanced toward the bunker, and I noticed it shook and shivered with the Macros that invaded it. They poked their pinchers through the loopholes, seeking something, anything to tear apart. Soon, they would figure out we’d completely abandoned that position and they would come tunneling toward us.

My eyes flicked up to the factory itself. We could fly up there and play king-of-the-hill with the enemy, but it seemed like losing proposition. It wasn’t designed as a defensive position. In retrospect, I wished I had built my bunker up there instead. I gave my head a shake inside my helmet. Sweat dribbled down into my eyes and burned. I tasted the droplets a moment later in my mouth. With one eye half-open and bleary, I gazed at the factory. I had to think of something.

“Marvin,” I snapped a moment later.

“Yes, Colonel Riggs,” came the reply. Marvin sounded as calm and crisp as always.

“Can you communicate with the factory still? Will it take your orders?”

“Yes. Now that I’m above ground, I’m linked with the local production facility. The enemy has not yet regained control of it.”

“How long would it take to build a new tank, like the one you are standing on?”

“Just under an hour. There isn’t enough palladium dust, however. We’d have to reduce the-”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Forget it. We’ll all be dead in an hour. Can it make a-ah-how about a Macro worker? One that obeys us instead of Macro Command?”

Marvin hesitated. “Yes, I believe so. But each unit would require several minutes of production time.”

“Yeah, right,” I said, thinking fast. I was hunkered down in the crater, and programming under these conditions was unreasonable. Overhead, the storm of fire seemed to be on the increase.

“They’ve got a new team up on top of the factory, sir,” Sloan told me. “They have a good firing position on the far side of the crater, our men are exposed.”

“Great,” I said. “Kwon, get a squad to concentrate on taking them out, sharpshooter style. Or at least keep them ducking.”

“On it, sir!”

“Marvin,” I said, switching channels. “I want you to program the factory to make small Macros. Little spider-sized guys.”

“The facility is inefficient in that regard. Something that is under a gram in size-”

“No, no, not that small,” I said. “Let me explain more carefully, I want a climbing robot that is dumb and simple, about as big as a dog-five percent of the mass of a single Macro worker. Can you produce those quickly?”

“I believe so. The designs are available, and already loaded. Very few specialized materials would be-”

“Okay, great,” I said. “Now, I’ve got one more modification to these little robots that I want you to add. Then I want you to stamp out as many as you can. Batches of them all at once.”

Marvin listened closely, and he assured me what I proposed was possible. After the program was engaged and the big machine began humming, I went back to firing my laser at anything metallic that moved. I hoped Marvin had done his programming right, because we were going to be overrun and wiped out soon.