Battle Station

— 22

The worst part of the aftermath was the Centaur dead. It was hard not to feel for them. I knew they were all volunteers. Like all their herd-mates, they were more than happy to lay down their lives for the cause of planetary liberation. But as I watched them fall like dominoes, burned and flattened by the power of the fireball, I didn’t feel like they’d made a useful sacrifice.

We would have lost all the ground troops, but for the fact the air burst occurred at about two miles up. Still, we lost over three thousand in five seconds. Another four thousand were mortally burned or irradiated. They would linger, but wouldn’t survive. The surviving Centaurs had each gotten their life-time dose of radiation and there were burns, but at least their goggles prevented blindness. Out of sixteen thousand, less than half were able to continue advancing.

Inside our tanks, my marines fared better. Only three of the big vehicles had been knocked out, those that had been directly below the blast. The one I shared with Captain Sloan swayed and rocked as if it was being kicked by giants, but survived intact. I studied the carnage around the tank and ground my teeth at the scene. I ordered what was left of my force to regroup and quickly press the attack against the dome.

The three enemy ships had escaped us entirely, covered by their barrage of missiles. The ships flew off and out of orbit quickly, heading for the nearest Macro-held planet. Miklos called me as they fled.

“Sir, request permission to pursue the enemy ships.”

“Denied,” I said.

“But sir-”

“Still denied. I need your ships for air cover. I don’t want to lose them, or any more of my troops.”

I could have ordered my ships to charge after the Macro vessels, but to do so would have left my ground force without air cover. I figured my little army had suffered enough. Miklos gave up and we proceeded to advance with grim determination. When my land army finally limped to the spot where the dome had been, the truth became clear: the Macros had pulled up stakes and fled the planet entirely. The factory was gone-even the Macro workers were gone. They’d obviously loaded it aboard the cylindrical transport ship and lifted off with it in the hold.

I understood now where the enemy production had been spent all this time. Instead of building ground forces, they’d built ships. Space-going vessels were more expensive in terms of time and resources to produce, but they’d saved their factory that way and dealt us a hard blow on their way out.

Captain Sloan clapped me on the back suddenly as I stared at the scopes and screens. I glared at him.

“It’s not so bad, sir,” he said.

We were both sitting inside our tank. At least we’d survived unharmed. It was more than I could say for most of the Centaurs I’d brought on this campaign.

“It’s worse than bad,” I said. “It was a charley-foxtrot, and you know it.”

He shook his head. “No, Colonel. I don’t accept that. Let’s consider the situation strategically. You’ve driven them off an entire world-the very world the Centaur civilization was born upon. They have got to be happy with you for that. They’d gladly have given a million lives to resecure their home planet.”

I nodded glumly. We’d won, but we could have done better. “I could have captured two of their factories, doubling our output. Now, we’re still sorely out-produced.”

Sloan shook his head. “No. No, I don’t see it that way at all. Yes, they have more industrial capacity than we do. They always did. But now we have so much more than we ever did before. We are in better shape than before, comparatively. But frankly, what I don’t get is why we’ve done so well up until now.”

“What do you mean, Captain?”

“Why haven’t they just wiped us out? They can field so many more ships than we can. If they still have ten times our production capacity, how can we compete?”

“I can answer that,” I said. I proceeded to explain my theories about the nanotech, and how it was actually superior to Macro tech in many ways. After a while, he began to catch on. His mood brightened further.

“That’s fantastic,” he said. “I can see the possibilities. We can mix these two technologies and build things they can’t compete with.”

I still looked glum. It was time to tell him why I wasn’t cheering up. “Technological and production gaps are not my current worry. The real issue is strategic: they’ve been building fleets while I’ve been building ground forces. That was a huge error on my part.”

“But we drove them off the planet!”

“Sure,” I said, “but they have five more. And I now think they are all building fleets. They can afford to give up a world or two. If in the end they loft an overwhelming fleet, we’ll be cut off. The Centaur habitats will be destroyed. They will divide us, holding the high ground.”

“High ground?”

I pointed upward, at the roof of our tank. “Space,” I said. “Notice how in each battle, they’d managed to knock out a few of my destroyers? If we lose our last ships, we can’t beat them. We’ll lose this campaign. And after that, Earth’s next.”

Finally, Captain Sloan was frowning. He’d run out of glib reasons to celebrate. A minute or so later he cracked open a flask and offered it to me. I took it and swigged. It was blood-warm and nasty-tasting. I took another, larger swig and handed it back. He did the same.

Neither of us a talked for a while. Outside the tank, the wind sighed and the sun sank down, turning the sky blood red. We opened the top hatches to cool down the interior. We listened to the ticking metal as some part of the tank contracted. The grasses outside were all dead and black, so they rattled rather than rustled as the winds hit them.

Finally, I spoke up. By this time, the flask Captain Sloan and I had been passing back and forth between us was bone dry. “We’re going to have to change the factory production. No more tanks. No more infantry packs. No more landing pods. We have enough of that stuff. We’re switching to ships-tonight.”

Captain Sloan didn’t argue. Instead, he climbed out on the tank and sat on the turrets. It was night now, and the wind had shifted, taking the stink of burnt Centaur fur in the opposite direction. We opened our visors and smelled the cold wind and the burnt grasses. I wondered how long it would take this world to heal all the wounds it had suffered from the Macro occupation. I hoped it wouldn’t be too many years, it was a lovely place.

A day and a half passed by quickly. We rested very little during that time. I used the hours to return my ground forces to the pit with the factory in it. I ordered them to disperse and be ready in case the enemy counterattacked. I wasn’t about to let the Macros retake this prize without a fight.

After my weary, damaged army had reorganized into something that resembled a fighting force again, and I’d replaced my losses with fresh Centaur volunteers, I decided it was time to talk to the herds.

“Colonel Riggs!” came the voice through Marvin’s translation box. “The sun has crossed your brow!”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re right about that,” I said, echoing their joyous tone. I always pretended to understand what they were talking about, especially if it was some kind of idiomatic greeting. It saved a lot of time when dealing with the long-winded Centaurs.

“We return to green the fields with our droppings! Death no longer stalks the sacred lands, nor the reviled places between stones. We thank you for this bounty.”

“Okay,” I said. “You are indeed welcome, and I assure you the Centaurs that fell in my service died honorably. Every one of them.”

“Your words ring true.”

“Now, I have a favor to ask-” I said.

“Do not bother to ask! You must command us! We will march onto the next world in our thousands. We will wash the grasses clean with our blood! The machines are without honor. No wind will ever ruffle their fur, for they have none. The sky-”

At that point, I kind of blanked out. The sky — their longest speeches always began with the sky. Their streams of words could be as endless and mysterious as the heavens themselves. They proceeded to praise me, the planet, the lakes, the mountains and every blade of liberated grass. I didn’t interrupt. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and I sensed it would be quite rude to break into the gushing words. I figured they’d earned the right to make a windy speech after I’d gotten thousands of their finest slaughtered playing cannon fodder.

Eventually, they seemed to be running out of gas. I could tell, because they began asking me prompting questions. “Is this not so? Has honor not been served with zeal?”

“It has, it has,” I assured them. “Let me ask you something, if I may.”

“Ask not! Demand! Make your needs known without hesitation! Be not concerned-”

“Thank you,” I said gently. “I will do so. I need one of your factories. Maybe two. I apologize, but I need to move a Nano production system to the planet to work together with the captured Macro factory.”

There was a hesitation. It was slight, but I think I’d surprised them with this request. It was a big move. I knew they only had a few of these factories on each of their satellites. They produced all of their serious technological equipment. Without them, they’d be unable to do much independently to supply the war effort.

“As we have promised, we shall honor your request. You shall have both our duplication systems. Ghosts of the fallen ripple with the grasses.”

“Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. Let’s talk about getting the bulk of your population down to the planet. I think they will be safer on the surface of this world than they are inside an orbital habitat. I think we should move them as quickly as possible.”

“Your wisdom is like the stone under flowing water. Can you carry our people home on the wings of your machines?”

I frowned. “That is not the best approach. I can carry them, but it will take too long to transport millions of individuals-possibly years. I thought you were going to extrude some kind of shaft down to the surface for this purpose?”

Originally, the Centaurs had left their world by climbing up shafts into space. These tubes of metal connected the surface of the world with the satellites far above. Using the shaft had made transportation of their vast numbers much more feasible. I’d hoped they would employ the same strategy to exit the space stations.

“Our plans have changed,” they said.

“Why?”

“Because you require the use of our duplicators.”

Suddenly, I caught on. They had been using the duplicators to create constructive nanites and had planned to use them to build the shaft down to their planet. I nodded and frowned at the same time. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. The more I thought of it, the more I realized the perfect substance for creating a structure like a shaft into space was a nanite-chain. They could form into anything, meaning you could just order them to build their way down to the surface. Incredibly light and strong, they would be perfect for the task.

Now, I had a decision to make. The Centaurs were leaving it up to me. Should I commandeer the only two factories the Centaurs had for the war effort? Or should I allow them to continue churning out nanites to build their own escape path down to the surface? If that satellite was destroyed by the Macros, I knew I’d feel terrible. I’d have allowed millions of innocents to die. On the other hand, if I didn’t have enough military hardware to face the Macros during the next stage of the war, I’d feel even worse.

Because all of us would be dead.