Battle Station

— 36

At first, the trick I’d played on the Nanos worked perfectly. It was hardly surprising. I’d pulled off similar deceptions in the past. These ships tended to be highly predictable. They had certain imperatives built into their software, and one of them was to attack threats immediately. This strategy worked well enough when the ships were in a single group, but when they were far apart and a threat was recognized, they would charge the enemy and arrive at different times. They were much easier to defeat that way, as it is always easier to fight three groups of ten ships at a time, rather than all thirty at once. We’d gotten around such problems back in the early days of Star Force by ordering the ships to attack distant targets, rather than the nearest ones. They accepted the order, as we were still attacking something. By switching targets, we were able to delay engaging with our ships until we were ready to mass up all our ships on a single target.

Their simplistic approach to tactics was a known weakness in the Nano ships. To fix the problem, the Blues had programmed them to pick up local command personnel to give them better ideas. That was how the whole business of kidnapping and testing people had started.

Right now, only one of the Nano ships had a commander-mine. For an experienced robot-baiter such as myself, it was a relatively easy matter to trick the ships into chasing Socorro. But I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out in the end. I wasn’t in direct command of this fleet, and I was forced to fly with them. When the moment of truth came, I hoped they would fight the Macros when they closed to within range. I wasn’t certain they would engage, however. One complication involved my own Star Force ships. We had to head toward the Macros now, and hit them soon after the Nano ships did in order to be most effective. If we waded into the battle too soon, the Nano ships might well start shooting at us instead of our joint enemy, the Macros. If we waited too long, the battle might be over before we arrived.

I sipped water in my ship and tried to relax while the final hours slid past. I wasn’t sure if I would live to see another day, but at least I was going to have a front row seat for all the action. A message came in over the command channel from Star Force when I was about an hour from the Macro line. Up until this point, the enemy had not moved their cruisers. They sat parked in orbit over Eden-9. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t stay there much longer.

“Colonel Riggs?” Miklos asked over a private channel. Our two fleets were close enough to talk with only a few seconds delay between transmissions.

“Miklos? What’s up over there? I see your ships moving toward the enemy. Tell me everything is all right.”

“Maybe sir, maybe. I’m calling about the local command structure. Rear Admiral Sarin has informed all the Fleet units she is in operational control of this action. Should I ignore her orders-or seek to remove her from command?”

I sat up straighter. “Negative, Miklos. That’s not how I wish you to proceed. You will obey her tactical orders in the coming action. I’m too far out, and I might not survive in any case. Sarin is in a better position to run the battle than I am.”

“But sir, please examine our formation. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”

I ordered Alamo to bring up a detailed positional diagram of our fleet. I pursed my lips as I regarded it. Instead of leading with the new gunships, she had the destroyers and her own cruiser on the front line. Behind this group came a widely-spread formation of gunships.

“I’ll talk to her,” I told Miklos, and broke the connection.

I cursed for a while in private, getting it out of my system. When I thought I could stay calm and polite, I requested a private channel with Sarin. After a long minute or two, she answered me.

“What is it Colonel? I’m very busy right now.”

“I’m sure you are. I wanted to go over the tactical formations with you, if you don’t mind.”

She hesitated. “Go over them? Are you suggesting you should take operational command again? I-”

“No,” I said. “Not until you’re dead or proven incompetent. But it always makes sense to discuss these things.”

“All right, here’s my plan. I’ve placed the laser armed ships on the front line, that way-”

“You do realize that the gunships have a much shorter effective range, right?”

“Of course,” she said, sounding miffed. “As I was saying, if they fire missiles at us during our approach, I want to have our laser ships forward to shoot them down. Before we engage, the laser-armed ships will brake and fall back. The gunships will accelerate into the front line and we’ll meet them with all our firepower maximized.”

I thought about it, and I liked it. “That sounds pretty good, Sarin. Thanks for the update. Carry on.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” she said, sounding pleased and prideful.

As the last minutes rolled slowly by, I was squirming in my chair. I thought of a thousand reasons to contact Sarin and tell her to make adjustments. I resisted these urges with difficulty. The problem was, the enemy had not yet released the expected barrage of missiles. This variation from expected behavior didn’t improve my mood. They had a plan, some kind of plan. They always did.

By the time we were closing in to tactical range, I had the nanites working overtime on the forward bulkhead. They depicted all three forces now as clusters of bumpy metal. The circle representing Eden-9 hung between us, under the watchful eye of the Macros, who had yet to move. Projected arcs showed the path the two attacking fleets were taking, and we were bearing down on the enemy fast. Two other groups of cruisers were coming this way too-but they would arrive after the battle had begun.

When the Macros finally made a move, we were all taken by surprise.

“Missile launch detected,” Alamo said.

I stood up and eyed the front wall. A series of tiny slivers of metal appeared among the Macros.

“Target?” I asked.

“Insufficient data to project destination.”

I paced, but never took my eyes off the forward screen. They could be firing at either of our fleets, or both of them. Less than a minute later, I had my answer. By that time, I had a transmission waiting from Jasmine.

“What are they shooting at, sir?” she asked, forgetting to call me Colonel and lapsing back to the familiar “sir”. It was the only bright spot in the conversation.

I didn’t answer right away, as I didn’t like what I thought I was seeing. In fact, I didn’t want to witness it at all.

“I don’t get it,” Jasmine said. “They aren’t firing toward either fleet, those missiles-oh, no…”

The projections were coming up on everyone’s display now. The computers had calculated the course and destination unerringly.

On the big forward screen, the line was drawn between the missiles and their target. It was a very short line indeed. They had targeted the Centaur habitat. When faced with two incoming fleets, they’d chosen the third option-to engage in genocide.

“Why are they doing it, sir?”

“Watch the ships themselves. They’re underway now.”

The big cruisers had all fired up their engines in unison. They ponderously turned their pointed noses around and away from both oncoming fleets. They were leaving Eden-9.

Soon, the missiles struck. We’d put a lot of effort into building up laser turrets on each of the Centaur habitats, but the armament was insufficient to stop them all. The real problem was the habitats couldn’t really take any hits. A ninety-percent defense wasn’t good enough when the target was essentially a big balloon in space. Two missiles made it through, or at least got close enough to detonate themselves with devastating effect.

I was glad the sensory system was only a crude one built by nanites. The beads on my forward wall didn’t show the graphic details. I didn’t want to see the floating bodies freezing in space by the thousands. In this sort of situation, high-def video was overrated.

All the same, it was hard to watch millions of innocents die. Every time I’d gone through it, I felt nauseated slightly. This time was no different. I was numbed by the magnitude of the loss of life I was witnessing. I didn’t feel any psychic scream or ripple of lost life force. What I felt was disgusted and angry. My hatred for the machines tripled on the instant. When I had the opportunity, I would root them out and dismantle them all. I’d said and thought these things before, of course. But I still felt the horror and rage as if it were fresh.

“They’re gone, sir,” Jasmine said.

“Yes.”

“Was it our fault?”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “But we can’t do anything about that now. What we can do is win the coming battle.”

“Battle? They’re running, Colonel. Are we going to chase them?”

“Most definitely. We have a lot of built up velocity going for us. Even at maximum acceleration, I doubt the enemy can escape our two fleets now. But I don’t think they plan to run from us for long.”

“Why did they choose this option?”

“See the merging arcs? They are going to meet up with the rest of the cruisers coming from the inner planets.”

Jasmine was quiet for a time. Finally, she sent another transmission. “I see it now, Colonel. They will turn and fight when they have their fleet amassed.”

“Probably. Now, may I make a suggestion?”

“Certainly, Colonel.”

“Don’t keep flying straight at them. Take a detour. Maybe slingshot around behind Eden-9.”

“Why would-oh, I see. You don’t want our two fleets to come too close to one another.”

“Exactly.”

When we finally ran into the massed Macro cruisers, the Nano ships were still leading the charge. Actually, the first ship into the fight was none other than Socorro. I felt bad for the little ship. I’d had a lot of fun times aboard her, not the least of which was the scouting trip to the blue giant star system Sandra and I had taken long ago. I remembered the ship fondly right up until the moment the cruisers fired in unison. They used their big turrets, rather than their missiles. There was no need to waste ordnance on such an insignificant target.

Socorro dodged and weaved as she closed with them, just as I had told her to do. She couldn’t shoot down the big chunks of flak coming her way, but she could get out of the way. The railguns were electromagnetic accelerators which used intense magnetic fields to push a ferrous mass to extreme velocities. The projectiles traveled only a fraction of the speed of a laser beam, but they struck with much greater kinetic force. Each pellet that struck home delivered a force like a high-yield bomb.

Socorro fired as she closed in with the cruisers-but not at the cruisers themselves. Instead, she fired behind her at the following Nano ships. I’d given her those orders. I wanted to make sure none of the Nanos got any bright ideas about reversing course at the last moment.

Eventually, the tiny ship’s luck ran out. A hit was scored, and she went into a spin. A moment later, the ship came apart and turned into a hail of fragments. I tensed, watching the reactions of both the Macros and the Nanos. Would they fire upon one another?

The first change was in my own ship. Alamo hit the brakes-hard. I stumbled forward and had to reach out with a gauntleted hand to keep from slamming into the forward wall. The stabilizers worked overtime, but it wasn’t enough. The ship was trying to do a U-turn. The Nanos had destroyed their target, and now planned to return to their defensive station over the Blues’ homeworld.

The Macros, bless their iron hearts, had different ideas. From their point of view, I could hardly blame them. What they saw was an odd charge by a mass of Nano ships. The fact that the charge had been led by a single one of their number, which was inexplicably firing at its fellows, didn’t matter. What caused them to act was the proximity of the threat.

The Nano ships were also screwed by their relative velocity. They were too close to the Macros and going too fast. They braked hard, but it wasn’t enough. We slid closer and closer to the Macro fleet. Warning chimes and statements rang through the ship.

“Incoming projectiles,” said the ship calmly. “Command personnel must be returned to their designated stations.”

I surmised the ship meant I was supposed to get my butt back into the crash seat. I took a step toward it, but found a half-dozen skinny metal arms were grabbing me. They attempted to manhandle me back to my seat and restrain me from falling as the G-forces grew more powerful.

I became instantly annoyed and struggled with the nanite arms. I’d done so in the past on a number of occasions. But the relationship between flesh and metal had always been reestablished in their favor.

This time was different. I was wearing an exoskeletal battle suit which magnified my strength-but more than that, I’d changed. I was no longer a simple nanotized marine having a temper tantrum. I’d taken seven baths in Marvin’s strange pools of Microbes. They’d rebuilt me, and altered my body on a cellular level.

I ripped loose one nanite arm, then two more. It was being caught by vines. I snapped them, uprooted them, and kept walking. With three ripped-loose arms writhing and whipping around my ankles, I stomped to my chair and sat in it under my own power. The arms eventually reattached themselves to the ship’s deck and were reabsorbed when they realized I’d returned to my station.

The battle was underway by this time. Thirty-one cruisers were firing masses of high-velocity projectiles into the Nano ship line. This could not be ignored. I didn’t know yet if any of the Nanos had been hit.

“Alamo,” I said, “Give me an announcement whenever one of our ships is hit by the enemy.”

“Which enemy are you referring to, Colonel Riggs?”

“Any enemy!”

“Nineteen ships have been hit in the last seven minutes.”

I frowned. That sounded like a lot of hits. “By missiles or projectiles?” I asked. “Give me a breakdown.”

“Three ships were hit by missiles and sixteen by projectiles.”

I nodded, and was about to ask Alamo what it was going to do about this aggression, but there was no need. The forward screen displayed the answer clearly. The Nano ships had stopped braking. They were heading right into the enemy lines now, and they were all firing.

I felt the deck shudder and shiver under my armored butt. The ship was firing its guns, both the top and bottom turrets. I took this moment to allow myself a grim smile. The machines were destroying each other all around me. The only bad part was my own position, which was right at the center of it all.

I shrugged and drew in a deep breath. It was a small sacrifice to make if all these metal bastards destroyed one another.