Conquest

-29-

The Macros finally marched upon Andros Island on Saturday, at about eleven in the morning. I don’t know what they had against Saturdays. I supposed they probably didn’t even know it was Saturday, nor did they understand our uniquely human concept of naming days in cycles. But even if they had understood the tradition, I was sure they wouldn’t care in the slightest. It felt wrong somehow to be killed by any enemy that didn’t even know what day it was. Whatever the case, the battle was forever afterward called the Saturday Assault, and it was destined to be one of the worst days of my life.

Saturday started off well enough. I wasn’t living in a tent anymore, and the island defenses looked stronger. The forest around the base was still a mess, however. Every third tree looked like it had been struck by lightning. But due to the miracles of Nano technology, we were able to rebuild our fortifications with startling speed. One of the keys had been my stockpiling of constructive nanites. Many of the laser turrets didn’t need to be rebuilt from scratch. The nanites, when properly applied, were like duct tape. You could fix just about anything with them. We broke out barrel after barrel, and every second turret on the beach was repairable without the delivery of a new projector unit from the factories.

We went farther than that, of course. We built new systems. A key element of my reinforced defense of Andros took shape in the form of three central forts located along the spine of the island. These were placed atop low hills that were no more than a hundred feet above sea level, but which in comparison to the rest of the island stood out as landmarks. With a little earth-moving and some nanite-alloy walls poured over the top of them, I soon had three strong-points bristling with new weaponry. The bright metal hemispheres resembled observatories with multiple telescopes poking out of their domes.

I’d realized I needed heavier guns immediately after our first engagement with the Macro fleet. No lesson had been drilled into my head more clearly that day. We had to outrange the enemy to keep them at bay. The new guns weren’t difficult to produce. The design couldn’t have been simpler. All I had to do was tell my factories to produce new ship guns at triple the normal size. The standard sensory systems and brainboxes served well enough. Then by hooking up a stack of several standard fusion generators big enough to power a ship, we were able to produce enough power to fire the weapons. We had some cooling problems at first, due to the greater size and power of the units, but some creative work-arounds took care of these details. The only real difficulty was producing mounts large enough to aim the huge guns and hold them on a precise target. In the end, I went for expediency here, too. I used standard ship’s arms, the same systems our tugs and ships used to put the weapons in place. I reasoned that if the black, cable-like arms could lift and position the projectors during construction, they could continue to do so, like a man using two hands to hold and aim a rifle. The result was less than perfect, as the aiming had some bounce and secondary retargeting was required. Not being built for such precision, the big construction arms tended to move slowly and after shifting targets, they would waver for a moment before locking into place. Still, given the time constraints, it was the best I could do.

On Saturday morning I stood at the bottom of the hill of Fort Two, the central fort and the largest of the three. Barrera stood near me, and Sandra was even closer.

“That is the weirdest-looking thing you’ve ever built, Kyle,” Sandra told me. “Except maybe for Marvin.”

“Marvin designed himself, really,” I replied.

Together we gazed up at the big projectors. The crews were testing them out, targeting and retargeting the Macro cruisers hanging over the eastern horizon. The black arms, the bright metal domes and the faintly golden projectors all functioned together smoothly enough, but they did appear bizarre to an observer.

“They look like a man with thin black arms,” Barrera said, “aiming a golden pen or something.”

I turned to Barrera with upraised eyebrows. “Such poetry!” I said. “Out of character, but well said, Lieutenant Colonel. Let’s hope they can hit what they aim at.”

“We should test fire them,” Barrera said. “The brainboxes need to learn their new tasks.”

I shook my head. “I’m not going to give the Macros a break. They seem to be on hold out there. I’m hoping they are waiting for a reinforcement fleet from the Venus ring. I hope they are going to wait out there for years. But I’m going to wait until all of these weird-looking forts are ready to fire. The moment they are, the brainboxes are going to get some on-the-job training.”

The brainboxes were all taken out of knocked-out laser turrets, so they weren’t going to start the battle as green systems. They were, however, unfamiliar with these ungainly guns. Hopefully the task of hitting large, nearly stationary ships wasn’t too much for them. On a theoretical spreadsheet, these new weapons could punch through cloud-cover and atmosphere to a range of nearly fifty miles. They could reach all the way out into low orbit if they fired straight upward, as there was less atmosphere to get in the way the higher you went up. All that was based on computer simulations, of course. We didn’t really know what they could do yet. But I wasn’t going to test fire them in front of the Macros. I wanted to surprise the bastards.

My forts had started off as a plan to drive the Macro fleet back. By positioning themselves over the oceanic trench, they were preventing us from destroying their undersea bases. If we could outrange them, we could push them out of position. If we put them under heavy fire at a distance too great for them to return fire, they would be forced to either engage us, retreat, or be destroyed. I figured they would choose to engage, so I waited. I wanted all three forts functional first, then I would allow the brainbox gunners to begin taking potshots at the distant enemy fleet.

And so the Macro ships sat drifting in the sky to the east—sitting directly over the island of New Providence, in fact. I knew the Macro fleet was terrifying the inhabitants of the Bahaman capital, but I couldn’t do anything about it. At least, not yet. Every day the islanders waited, holding their breath. The enemy could decide at any moment to annihilate them. Each day passed uneventfully, but the dark ships clouded the skies and left doom in the heart of anyone who gazed up at them.

The Saturday Assault did not begin with any action by the enemy fleet, however. The Macro ships floated up there, silent and nearly motionless. They resembled great, dark islands of metal, hanging in the skies.

The first report came to Barrera. His face turned more serious even than his usual norm, and his hand flew up to his ear piece. Sandra noticed first and touched my shoulder. I was still marveling at my big guns and the black metal arms that held them on target.

“Where are they?” Barrera said. His lips drew into a tight line. He turned around toward the east coast. He looked eastward, away from Fort Two. He took two steps and listened closely. “All three at once? ETA?”

I almost interrupted him, but held back. I could see Sandra wanted to do the same. It was a bad habit everyone had picked up. If any sort of news came in, everyone was tense and demanded to know what was said immediately. Underneath our calm exteriors, we were all edgy.

I thought of getting on the command channel and requesting the data they were feeding Barrera, but that would only slow things down by making them repeat themselves. Barrera was on duty as the commander of the daily ops. It was his shift, and I had to let him do his job.

Barrera finished his conversation and turned back to me soon enough. “Three groups sir. Hitting Fort Pierre, our production base and a barracks area in the northern sector of the island.”

“Hitting us?” I stared out at the Macro ships, they were still motionless. The beaches were quiet. None of the laser turrets were targeting or firing at anything. No sirens were going off yet, at least not that I could hear.

“Where are they?” I demanded. “I don’t see any enemy.”

“They are below us, sir. They have been detected tunneling upward from channels they’ve dug under the island.”

I looked at him for a second. “We don’t have much in the way of cover down there. Only woven Nano-alloys.”

“Exactly sir. Apparently, they surmised the same thing.”

I stared out at the sea. They weren’t going to come in, I could see that now. I’d been a fool. They were going to drill up under us from the sea itself, never giving all my turrets anything to fire upon. I understood the beauty of their plan in an instant, and understood that I’d fallen in the classic trap of mostly earthly generals. I’d planned to win the last fight, when the next fight was going to be fought differently.

I turned then and looked up at the big cannons.

“Do it Kyle,” Sandra said, “don’t let them guide us.”

I wasn’t sure if she was right or not. The guns weren’t ready, and they weren’t tested. “If we start this now,” I said, “we’ll be tipping our hand before we’re ready.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sandra said. “They’ve already started it.”

“I would have to agree with you,” Barrera said to Sandra. He turned his dark, intense eyes to me. “They probably already know what these guns can do. They aren’t exactly hidden up here, Colonel.”

I nodded, and ran back to our flitter. It was a small, unarmed hovercraft. I grabbed up my headset and put it onto my head. I opened the command channel and ordered the three Forts to commence fire upon the enemy fleet. They might have forced our hands, but at least we would fire the first shot in this fight.

Barrera walked up behind me. “Where do you want me to make my stand, sir?” he asked.

“Take another flitter and go down to headquarters in Fort Pierre. Man the big board.”

“Where are we going, Kyle?” Sandra asked.

“We’re going to our production facilities. Their defenses are relatively weak there. We can’t afford to lose our factories.”

Sandra climbed into the small vehicle with me and moments later we were skimming over the treetops at two hundred knots. I held the throttle down and kept it pinned there. The wind screamed by, and Sandra’s hair fluttered wildly. I waved at her until she reluctantly put on a helmet. At this speed, a stray insect could take out your eye, nanites or no.

Internally, my mind and stomach were in turmoil. It had all been an illusion. Historically, preparations for war on a quiet front often went like this. One only saw your own improving defenses, not the growing strength and dark plans of the enemy. When the attack finally did come, the defenders were often dismayed by what they faced.

In this case, I’d put all my defensive efforts into countering their fleet and stopping them on the beaches. I hadn’t considered a deep assault, one in which the enemy tunneled under the soft sandy soil ten or more miles beyond the eastern shores. They had outmaneuvered me and were striking at the very heart of my territory. They were trying to take out my factories.

My mind was racing. I already considered two of the attacks to be feints. Even if they weren’t, the only attack that really mattered was the deep thrust at my Nano factories. If they took out my production capability, they could keep mining and building under the sea, while every asset I lost was permanently gone. There would be no more fresh barrels of nanites to repair things. Only Crow’s factories would remain, which I wasn’t in direct control of, and which they might locate as well at any time. Once we were deprived of steady production, they could slowly siege my island. I would not be able to replace my losses, while they could produce an endless stream of Macro ground troops. They would win through attrition, and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.