Battle Station

— 23

In the end, I decided to split the factories and try to do both. I would build a fleet and save the Centaur civilians. Half-measures weren’t my usual style, but it had worked out for King Solomon, so why not me?

Taking one of the Centaur factories down to the planet surface, I had it tucked under the dome for protection. Then I had the second factory in our possession moved from the guts of Socorro to sit next to the donation from the Centaurs. Within hours, two Nano factories and one big Macro unit were squatting together under the captured dome. When all three systems were installed and functional I entered the protective, shimmering walls of force to work with them.

Captain Miklos was there, and he didn’t understand my decisions.

“Why didn’t you take both units from the Centaurs? They offered them.”

“I’m not even sure I’ll need them.”

He laughed at that. “When have you ever suffered from an overabundance of production?”

“Never,” I admitted. “Well, I couldn’t decide which use of these units was better. I know we need a fleet, but the herds would have no hope of escape down to their world without keeping at least one of the units on their satellite.”

Miklos shook his head and tugged at his beard. He’d been growing it a bit longer lately. I supposed none of us had a lot of time for niceties like a weekly trimming.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “If the Macro fleet defeats us, they will kill all the civilians anyway.”

“We don’t know that. They’ve made deals in the past. I’m happy with double my previous nanite production, in combination with this monster.”

“There’s another thing, Colonel. You asked me to find any trace of the strange cloud-like creature you found here in this pit.”

“Right. The Blue named ‘Introspection’. What did you find?”

“I carefully looked over all our surveillance of the region, both before and after the battle. I found very little evidence on the sensor logs. There was a spectrographic registration of helium and deuterium. We thought at the time it was a byproduct of the mining here, or possibly related to the force-dome itself.”

“That’s it? Where did it go?”

“Well sir, we don’t know. It dissipated over time, but that could mean anything. During the battle, I did not have sensory systems tracking each cloud of water vapor in the sky, nor did I follow this gaseous ghost.”

I nodded and sighed. “All right. The short answer is it’s gone, and we don’t know where it went because we weren’t looking for it. I want you to reprogram the sensory boxes to recognize a signature set of readings. Put together a profile, and have them watch for it. Maybe it will come back.”

“Right sir.”

Then I checked the time, and waved for Miklos to exit. “I’m going into programming mode now,” I told him. “That takes careful thought. Please go keep an eye on the rest of the star system for me.”’

“Will do sir,” he said, and left.

I watched his form glimmer and flare white as he entered the field. When he had gone, I turned my attention back to the three machines and the scarred earth they sat upon. The ground under the dome still showed massive wounds from the battle we’d fought. It was strange, walking over the same loose earth men had died upon just days earlier. Bits of jagged metal still thrust up here and there.

The bunker I’d hastily built was still there, half-sunken in the ground near the central unit. It seemed hard to believe, looking at it now, that we’d withstood the attack of swarms of Macros inside its relatively thin walls. The bunker walls were blackened and pitted with a hundred laser strikes. I shook my head, it was a wonder any of us had lived through those long hours. If they’d had real ground troops, even just Macro marine units, they would have slaughtered us. We’d survived because most of the enemy had been equipped with the Macro equivalent of hedge-trimmers.

Another one element of the scene I remembered well was missing: the destroyed Macro workers. They’d been hauled away and fed back into the factories as raw materials. We’d converted the mass into a more useful form: tanks and ground troop kits.

Now, I had a new challenge to face. I needed to build a fleet-fast. It had to be better than anything we’d put up yet. It couldn’t simply be a set of Nano ships. Such vessels functioned well, but were built primarily of nanites, which our newly captured factory could not produce. I needed a drastically new design to make use of the bigger production system the Macros had provided for us.

I took off my helmet and gauntlets. I demanded coffee, and got it. Then I walked around the machine, kicking at the slagged dirt and scowling. I hated programming under pressure-but I’d always done my best work that way. I told myself to halt the self-pity. What programmer didn’t live with a deadline over his head?

I gave myself a shake and tried to clear my mind of extraneous thought. The first thing I needed was Marvin. I was still dependent on him to translate my instructions into the binary this Macro production facility understood. In the future, I was sure I could replace that function with a nanite brainbox, but I simply didn’t have any time to fancy it up now.

“Marvin, are you here inside the dome?” I called on the general channel. The dome interrupted all signals, even if you tried to send a wire from the outside world to the inside world. Inside, a single channel worked well, and everyone listened to it.

My headset hummed quietly, as did the big machine. No one answered me. I frowned in annoyance and repeated the call. Still, no answer. Marvin knew I wanted to meet with him on the hour, but he was late.

I wandered around the grounds for a minute or two, thinking I was going to have to exit the dome and hail him outside. In practice, the force-dome was a pain to deal with. It was like being buried in a tomb. We were all used to instant communications, and being disconnected to the point of sending couriers through the shimmering walls was a constant irritant. Still, I figured it was well worth keeping the dome turned on. At least this way, our most valuable assets couldn’t be taken out in a surprise attack.

Marvin finally showed up, nine minutes late.

“What kept you?” I asked.

“Certain duties.”

“Duties? What, were they life-threatening?”

“Possibly.”

Talking with Marvin was often an ordeal. He was reflexively evasive. Usually, this was for a good reason. He liked to do things I’d never ordered him to do, and he knew I might not approve of his behavior. Therefore, he found it easier to just stay quiet and dodge questions. I grunted unhappily. As usual, he had given me a choice: pursue the matter doggedly, or drop it. I was busy today, so I chose the latter option. The galling part came from knowing this choice played into Marvin’s plans. He had won again, and the behavior pattern was thereby reinforced. I’d once had teenage children, and they’d been easier to deal with than this robot.

“All right,” I said, “let’s get down to business. Open a connection with the production unit, please.”

“Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing?”

I stared at him in surprise. “I thought you were taking great pains to hide your activities.”

“I’ve reached a different-stage,” he said. “Input would be welcome at this point.”

I opened my mouth to ask: “a different stage of what?” but I held back, because that’s what he wanted me to do. “I don’t have time for it now, Marvin-whatever it is you’re hinting about. Open a connection to the production unit, please. Directly translate my input and the unit’s responses.”

“Channel open.”

“I need a standardized hull form,” I said. “Something I can make a lot of. How much steel do I have available?”

“Question rejected. Question improperly formatted. Input variables reset.”

I heaved a sigh. Underneath it all, every computer had certain similarities to the rest. They were the ultimate obsessives. If you made a mistake, they loved to throw your work right back into your face. Humans were all about the gray areas, while machines were all about the black and the white.

“Let’s try that again. If you start building a cruiser right now, how long would it take to complete the process?”

There was a brief hesitation. “Hypothesized goal unattainable. Query rejected.”

I thought about that, frowning. “You can’t build an entire cruiser?”

“No.”

I rubbed my chin in thought. “Are you missing any of the key elements?”

“No.”

“Why then can’t you build a cruiser?”

“Elements too complex. Hull size too large. Overall unit can’t be generated in a single output dump.”

“Ah,” I said, catching on at last. “You can only build a cruiser in parts, because it’s too big, am I correct?”

“Yes.”

I laughed. “Okay. We will take of assembling the pieces. How long would it take you to build all the standard components of a cruiser, given that you are provided with all the input materials required?”

“Six days,” the system said.

I nodded. That sounded about right. The last dome on this planet had been given several weeks, and had completed three ships in that time. Part of the reason I’d started with this line of questioning was for the purposes of intel. I now had a better metric to calculate how many enemy ships the Macros might have produced in this system. The conclusions were frightening. Depending on when the production units had started building and how well-supplied they were, I had to figure they had somewhere between fifteen and fifty working ships out there.

Normal logic would dictate that the Macros should have attacked us by now if they had such an overwhelming numerical advantage. But the Macros liked overkill. They would come, but only when some preplanned production goal had been reached. I had no way of knowing what that goal was, but I was confident that when they launched their fleet, it would be impressive.

“Now tell me how long it takes to build a single Macro belly turret, with a full magazine of ammunition.”

“Six hours.”

“Good, now we are getting somewhere.”

The Macro belly turrets were interesting weapons. I’d learned more about them from carefully researched science reports provided to me by General Kerr recently. They weren’t beam weapons, nor did they fire missiles. They were in fact, railguns. They drove a mass of matter to very high velocities using a magnetic barrel and some tricks of physics I didn’t entirely understand. The main point was they were able to translate energy from one of their massive fusion generators into mass in high-velocity motion. Using kinetic force alone, these high-speed salvos were devastating, but the rate of fire was relatively low.

“How long to build a generator capable of lifting a ship with a thousand ton displacement, and firing the gun at the same time?”

“Nonsensical query. Undefined references. Query ignored.”

I kicked the machine’s output bay and chuckled. It took time, but after a bit of careful questioning, I had the information I wanted. The factory could produce a hull with an engine, generator and belly turret in about half a day. The ship as a whole would only be a tenth the size of a full cruiser, and wouldn’t possess many of the subsystems. But it was a platform to work from, and the big gun would give it a lot of firepower for its size. Using my nanite factories to produce lighter point-defense weapons, sensors, life-support subsystems and the like, I could crank out small gunboats with weapons that were equivalent to the enemy cruisers in firepower-if not in armor. They would be far larger and tougher than nanotech ships.

I ordered the machine to begin production immediately. For the most part, I stuck with components the big machine already knew how to build. I didn’t want to teach it anything new right now. The hull was the only tricky part. To simplify things, I went with a rectangular design, not all that different from an earthly barge. I designed the hull as a single piece, with slots to plug in weaponry, sensors and exhaust ports. I made it as big as the factory’s largest output bay. That way, it could be produced in a single effort.

When the first empty hull slid from the output bay, I had to admit it was ugly, but I had hopes for its functionality. Even after plugging in the necessary components, I left many holes in the hull, which could be patched with smart metal, or just pure nanites. I wanted to allow for improvements to the design later. We could add components produced separately by the smaller Nano factories later on.

We’d yet to test the configuration of the systems as a whole. I didn’t know if it would flip over from recoil when it fired its big gun, or if the single primary engine in back was too light for strong acceleration. To solve these problems in advance, I placed repeller plates all around the hull. If there was a problem with maneuverability, the brainbox that flew it would learn to compensate automatically. I missed having all the Pentagon nerds to back me up on this one. I wasn’t an aerospace engineer, so I had to make do.

While the big machine thrummed, Marvin and I stayed inside the dome in case it ran into a problem. We’d set the two Nano factories to work as well, of course. They were building all the smaller components. They did so somewhat faster than the big machine, and I used the extra time producing constructive nanites. They were always useful.

“Do you have enough time now, Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked after we’d completed the programming session.

I considered his question, which again came as a surprise. He really wanted to show me something. All three of the machines had something to do. So did a team of forty-odd marines, who I’d instructed to assemble the ships as the parts came out of the three factories. With the help of some tame worker Macros to do the heaviest lifting, the men were doing fine. The first gunboat took form with dramatic speed.

I almost asked what he was talking about, but stopped myself. Unlike humans, Marvin never forgot a topic during a conversation.

“Yes,” I said, turning my attention to Marvin. “Tell me about your preoccupation. Why were you late?”

“I’ve been trying to help humanity,” he said.

“Ah, a noble goal. Could you explain what form this help has taken?”

“I’ve grown a…colony.”

“A colony of what?”

“Microbes.”

I stared at him, then nodded slowly. His cameras whirred and zoomed. I knew they were evaluating my expression from a half-dozen angles, trying to calculate my response. Was I angry or elated? Was I going to approve or forbid his experiments? He clearly wanted to know.

“We are talking about the same type of Microbes we found on the Macro ship last year, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“The ones which are intelligent, when massed together?”

“Yes.”

“What have you done with them, Marvin?”

“I have collected samples, purified their environment and placed them in a suitable containment facility.”

I nodded, maintaining a poker face. I recalled he’d been messing about with mud puddles since we first landed on this world. Clearly, he’d had a good reason of his own to come here, and it wasn’t only to help me claim the Macro production facility.

“Show me,” I said.

He rose up on his writhing tentacles and led me to a pool of mud near the dome’s edge. I stared at it. The pool was about six feet wide and less than a foot deep. Really, it was easy to ignore. Not being placed too close to any of the major pathways, the Macro workers seemed to never come near the place. There were few footprints of any kind around the pool-except for the odd, swirling prints that Marvin made when he squirmed and wriggled overland like a bundle of snakes.

“They are in there? How many of them?”

“It’s difficult to achieve a precise population count. That’s one of the reasons I’m sharing my achievement with you. I need more equipment to work with them.”

“Hmm,” I said, frowning at the pool. “How many, in round numbers?”

“Between two and three trillion.”

“ Trillion? ” I asked incredulously.

“Admittedly, the culture is small, but I’ve only just started.”

My mouth sagged open, and I took a step back from the pool. I didn’t want the earthen sides to slip down into the water-it would be like an avalanche to them.

“I’m not accustomed to thinking a trillion of anything,” I said.

Marvin only had one camera on me now. Almost all of the rest studied his pool.

“The average human adult supports approximately two hundred trillion microflora. These beings are larger in size, however. They are closer to the size of a human cell. Still, for this volume of medium, three trillion is a very thin population. The environment here is too cold for them, you see. That’s one of the things I need, a proper warming system. It must be built to create a diffused heat. No single area of the pool should be hot or cold, and the circulatory action must be very gentle to create a minimum of accidental deaths. I think the best system would be an under-carpet of bubble-producing polymers. That way-”

“Marvin,” I said, interrupting. This gained me two extra cameras of attention. “I don’t understand what you are doing with these creatures. You found them here, on the planet surface?”

“Yes,” he said. “They are not quite the same variety we discovered on the Macro cruiser in their experimentation tanks. But they are quite similar. I believe they are a wild strain. They’ve adjusted somewhat to the colder climate, but not entirely. They don’t thrive on an icy world like this one.”

I nodded slowly, trying to absorb everything he was inferring. “You are saying they aren’t native to this world? They are from somewhere else?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The sixth planet from the local star.”

“The tropical world, eh? I see. What are they doing here?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I believed they were used to exterminate the original indigenous population of Centaurs.”