Battle Station

— 20

The first batch of spider-bots that rolled off the line was a surprise to everyone, even me. I never even saw the first one reach its target, but I did see the explosion.

“What the heck was that?” Sloan demanded, pointing toward a knot of Macros that now were scattering.

In their midst, one of their number appeared to have malfunctioned. It was lying on its side and a small plume of dust hung near. Another group of them popped a moment later. This time, I was certain of what I was seeing. It was as if a grenade had gone off in the middle of them.

I laughed. “That, Captain Sloan, is my latest joke on the Macros. They are being blown up by their own kind.”

I quickly explained my small spider-bots with their explosive charge payloads. They had very simple programming. They were to find the nearest, largest group of Macros, run into the middle of them, and blow themselves up.

“Diabolical, sir,” Sloan said, smiling.

I noticed he was hugging the crater edge, not bothering to fire at the enemy. We were down to ten effectives now, and I needed every gun on the line. But I held back from ordering him to keep up the defensive fire. The Macros were now in a confused state. They were scuttling around, being chased by tiny replicas of themselves. Some tried to turn and slash their pursuers. This gambit inevitably resulted in a flash and a loud bang. With their front sections blown off, the back legs spazzed for a while then finally ground to a halt.

Others tried to get away by climbing the big machine. This was a big mistake. We were able to pick them off up there, or at least wound them and slow them down enough for one of our scuttling little demons to catch up and take them out.

“Marvin, send a squad of spiders up to sit on top of the factory and wait for any new snipers who get the bright idea of shooting us from up there.”

“Done, sir. We’ve almost run out of bots, however.”

“How long until the next batch is done?”

“Just under four minutes, sir.”

In a firefight, four minutes was an eternity. But the Macro assault had already been broken. They were still sniping at us, and I could tell by the occasional underground explosion they were still tunneling. The last of my spider-bots found these tunnelers and detonated, collapsing the earth down upon their maimed bodies.

I ordered my men to stay low. We traded power with one another, rationing out what we had left. The generators never seemed to produce enough for a prolonged firefight. Carlson’s suit was a boon, as he had a nearly full charge. As a group, our power reserves averaged twenty-four percent when we’d finished. Our generators would charge every suit up to full eventually, but that would take time-time we didn’t have.

We stopped firing, and there was a lull that both sides needed. The spider-bots were all dead before the next batch was due to arrive. I knew Macro Command was out there, coming up with a new plan of action against us. I wished I still had a sensor-box that functioned. It was unnerving not to know if the enemy was tunneling under our position.

We made plans to coordinate our next effort with the arrival of a fresh load of spider-bots. With luck, we could take the attack to them. It was my guess they were running out of Macros. I was proud of my marines and impressed with what one of these production facilities could do to defend itself. Clearly, the Macros lacked an active imagination. They could have created a thousand varied weapons systems with which to hit us over the years. Instead, they’d stuck with their basic designs. These were good, but adapting to battlefield conditions required more thinking than that. In short, I didn’t think biotics were necessarily more intelligent than the Macros-but were definitely more inventive.

It was not until the next batch of spider-bots were produced that I was given a reason to stop congratulating myself. By that time, the Macros had all but halted their assault. When the batch came into play, however, the situation changed dramatically.

Macros might not be good at creating their own designs, but they were good at analyzing weaknesses in an enemy variation. This became abundantly clear when Marvin gave me the fateful message: “New spider-bots being deployed now, Colonel.”

“Good,” I said. I was all smiles and ignorance. “Start another batch. Men, get ready to fire into any Macro that runs. Take out the legs so our little guys can catch up.”

Marines chuckled in my headset. Everyone was enjoying this. We all wanted to watch Macros run and die from their own kind-we couldn’t get enough of the spectacle. I’d even taken to making vids of the action with my suit. It would play over and over in the officer’s canteen, I figured, when we got back to base.

“Sir! Incoming!”

I cranked my helmet around, frowning. Laser fire began spitting from every rifle around me. Then I saw it. A Macro worker, running full tilt away from one of my little spider-bots.

There was nothing unpleasant about that, but the destination of the worker-that was the problem. He wasn’t trying to climb the factory, or dig into a hole, or heading for the glimmering walls of the dome itself. He was running right at us, where we crouched in our crater. Worst of all, he didn’t have just one spider bot on his tale, there were three of them, and their tiny churning silver legs were a blur of motion.

“Shoot that thing down!” I roared. “Take out the legs!”

Lasers blazed and spat. At the same moment, a group of Macros nosed up from the roof of the factory itself. They’d taken their time to sneak up there, no doubt climbing the back of the factory while we were congratulating ourselves on how smart we were. Now, they crawled forward on their metal bellies and directed their nose-guns down into the pit of scrambling marines.

The Macro charging us went down, and a second later, all the bots detonated. A fountain of dirt clods showered my troops. It had been close.

Laser fire peppered my men. The next thirty seconds were grim. We went from an easy victory deep into the jaws of defeat. Two of my men were out of the fight, putting us at eight effectives. Marvin was our medic now, as the corpsman had been killed. He sat in the dusty hole in the midst of us, doing what he could for the wounded.

“Marvin!” I shouted. “Send five spider-bots to the roof. Take out those snipers, now!”

“Message sent.”

“Sir, we are being charged from all sides!” Kwon shouted.

I swiveled my head this way and that. The Macros were veering in from every direction. “Where did they all come from?”

“I saw them pop out of tunnels out there, trenches in the dirt.”

I watched as more came up and did the same.

“Marvin, reprogram the spider-bots,” I said. “Tell them not to come within ten yards of any marine.”

“Unable to comply,” Marvin said with maddening calm.

“Why not?”

“They are almost on us,” Sloan said. He was crouched on the line with the rest of us, firing for all he was worth. Each Macro that we disabled was quickly caught and blown up, but there were too many and they were seconds from overrunning us. If just one of those spider-bots…

“The spider-bots have limited sensory equipment, sir,” Marvin explained. “I made several design edits to provide much needed space for-”

“I don’t care,” I shouted. “Just tell them all to blow themselves up! Right now!”

“Message sent.”

Explosions blossomed and thundered from every direction. A fresh shower of metal parts, dirt and slag came down on us. Even as we ducked and wiped at our visors, the surviving Macro workers hit our lines.

It was the first hand-to-hand combat I’d been in for a while. If it hadn’t been for our powerful battle suits and our training, we might have been annihilated. As it was, we struggled with the mass of thrashing Macros, slamming our laser projectors against their joints and thoraxes, even as they sought to chew through our suits. Only one marine was torn apart, screeching. The rest of us lived. We used the smoking hulks of Macro corpses to form a barrier encircling our crater.

Everyone was tired-almost exhausted. We quietly took up firing positions and waited for the next onslaught. I worked on programming the next batch of spider-bots. The rest of the men were doubtful about the wisdom of producing any more of them.

But I kept at it. The Macros had turned the bots against us, but we’d survived. If I tweaked the design, I was sure they could still be useful.

The Macros had stopped coming, but we all felt sure they were out there, coming up with another sly move. We watched every inch of ground with intense, unblinking stares.

When something finally did happen, it was two minutes before the next spider-bot batch was ready.

“I see movement at the edge of dome, Colonel,” Sloan said. “We have new entries-lots of them coming through now.”

I cursed. “Reinforcements? How many?”

“I–I can’t even count them. They are coming through from every direction at once.”

“What kind of Macros? Do they have lasers?”

“I can’t tell. They are still blurred as they come through the field. Should we fire?”

I had reached the top of the crater now, and crouched beside Sloan. I knew a sick feeling as I saw what he saw. There were hundreds of shimmering images, coming through the field. They flared white as they pressed against the bubble of force. A few more steps, and they’d be through.

“Hold on, don’t waste power,” I told Sloan. “You can’t hurt them until they are through the field entirely.”

Then I heard a voice in my helmet. “Colonel Riggs?” the voice asked. “This is Captain Miklos. Are you here, sir?”

“Stand down, marines!” I shouted. “They’re ours!”

A ragged cheer went up from the survivors. As the marines kept coming, we stood up and watched. Men in battle suits led the way, then Centaurs followed. There had to be at least a thousand of them.

I’d expected a brief firefight as my men arrived, but there was very little action. Captain Miklos soon found me, and we stood around the crater we’d called home for so long. By that time, it was obvious we’d wiped out the last of the Macros when they’d made their final charge to destroy us with our own spider-bots.

“Looks like you had quite a party here, Colonel,” Miklos said.

“We did indeed.”

“I’m sorry to have taken so long. A back-up invasion was not part of the original plan.”

“I know,” I told him. “I’m not blaming you. This entire operation didn’t go as planned. But we did capture the production unit.”

“Does it still work?” he asked doubtfully.

Together we surveyed the machine. It was the prize for which so many had sacrificed so much. “Yes, it appears to be sound.”

I explained about the spider-bots, and the tank, and the steel-planks we’d built with this amazing machine.

Miklos flipped up his visor and stared at it. “A wondrous machine. So much power. What are you going to do with this monster, Colonel? This has to be more production output than Earth has ever had.”

I nodded. “I have plans, Captain. I have lots of plans.”

Miklos laughed. “I should be happy to hear that sir-but somehow, I’m not.”