Rebellion

46

We took our time crossing the Alpha Centauri system. For the first time in a long while, we had the chance to survey a planetary system without any enemy ships poised to strike. I was still anxious to get home, but I didn’t want to squander this opportunity. I had the factory bricks build passive sensory satellites and we dropped them off behind us. I dropped them off in orbits all around the system. The last time a fleet had come to Earth, they’d done it through the other ring, the one on Venus that led to the blue giant system. But for all I knew, they had another large fleet past Eden. After learning of what we’d done, we had to expect a major reprisal. It was only a matter of time.

I thought about planting a minefield of our own at the ring between Helios and Alpha Centauri, but decided against it. We’d just made our first steps toward understanding with the Worms. All the biotic species had to work together, in my estimation, to defeat the Macros. How would it look if we blew up a few of their ships when they got around to nosing their way into this neutral system?

On a relatively peaceful mission, we cruised across the vast tri-star system and catalogued what we found there. The two G-class yellow suns known as Alpha and Beta Centauri were both lovely stars. Alone somewhere else in space, either of these twins could probably have grown a nice family of planets, maybe even worlds with life. But because there were two large stars, plus the smaller red dwarf Proxima Centauri, no large chunk of real estate had survived. There were swirls of dust and plenty of asteroids floating around, but nothing that could support an atmosphere, much less life.

The star system was effectively a desert, but deserts still had their strategic uses. We would militarize it. It would form a buffer between us and the Worms. I was glad, in a way, to have the system between us and Helios. It represented more travel time between our world and alien strongholds. I realized now that having the rings in the Solar System placed at a fair distance from Earth was helpful. If we had a ring sitting in orbit over our world, we would be much less likely to survive. Aliens could pop in at any moment to ravage our world without warning. This way we could hold this territory and fight over Alpha Centauri, rather than war close to home where billions might die.

I shook my head and sighed. Sandra murmured beside me, asleep. She had a clutching hand on my bare chest. Whenever I tried to move away, her arm tightened, and I knew I would have to wake her up to escape. It was slightly irritating, but overall it felt good to have her back.

We now slept together regularly in the closet full of tubes. When we weren’t here, Sandra stalked Marvin on his forays around the ship while I served on the bridge. There wasn’t much for a communications officer to do while we crossed a quiet system alone.

Sandra was different now. She wasn’t the same girl I’d met years ago on the Alamo. Whatever the microbes had done to her had affected her mind somewhat as well as her body. She was more prone to violence and paranoia. Her natural emotional swings could turn deadly. I loved her for all of that, but I had to watch what I did around her more closely than before. I knew, when I returned to Earth, she would become my bodyguard, replacing Kwon. I smiled, thinking of the kind of surprises she would provide any potential assassin.

My mind drifted back to thoughts of strategic defense points. There were two entries into the Solar System that we knew of. One was the Oort cloud ring that connected with Alpha Centauri. The second was the ring on Venus, which led to a system with a blue giant star. A system which crawled with Macro mining machines. Both would have to be guarded from now on. We needed ships, and we needed a lot of them.

I reflected that my plans had now moved forward in unexpected new directions. I was planning at an entirely new level now. I was thinking beyond survival, a nice change of pace. I wasn’t thinking in the direction of buying peace with tribute, either. My thoughts had turned toward lofty concepts of territory and militarily defensible positions. If nothing else, this expedition had provided me with the knowledge I needed to make such plans. There was only one critical element missing: we didn’t know the strength or position of the enemy fleets. That’s what made the whole thing scary.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Sandra asked, awakening. Her head still rested on my shoulder.

I looked down at her lovely face. She stared back with dark, serious eyes. Her lips were parted, and her teeth were fine and white. One of the front teeth had a chip in it. I wondered vaguely when that had happened. Apparently, neither the Nanos nor the microbes did dental work.

“I’ve been wondering how I ever captured such a fine woman,” I lied. I ran my eyes over her shapely form, indulging myself.

Her tongue pressed against her teeth as she smiled, enjoying my scrutiny. She soon changed her mind, however. She picked at my bare skin with her fingers, suddenly grabbing up a pinch of flesh and twisting.

“Tell me the truth,” she said.

I slapped her hand away. “I really don’t know how I did it. You are way too pretty for me.”

“You got me killed twice,” she said, “then took credit for bringing me back to life. You’re my hero.”

I huffed. “Was that it?” I asked. “Base trickery?”

“Isn’t that how you do everything?”

I considered, and had to admit she had a point.

“I’m thinking about the war I’ve restarted,” I said.

Sandra sat up and crossed her legs. She tossed her head, but her hair was too short to cover her bare chest. “You shouldn’t have done it if we can’t win,” she said.

“You’ve got a point there,” I said.

“Can we win?”

“I don’t know. If the Macros can get a hundred cruisers to Earth in a year, then maybe. But if they can get a thousand cruisers to Earth-we’re toast.”

Her eyes widened in alarm. “You mean you don’t know if you just killed us all or not?”

“Nope,” I admitted.

“Everyone thinks you know exactly what you’re doing. You know that don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It helps with morale.”

“They would follow you to Hell and back.”

“Some would argue they already have,” I said. “But don’t tell anyone I’m adlibbing, okay?”

She stared at me seriously. She nodded her head. “Okay. But why did you restart the war?”

I shrugged. “The Macros were going to keep sending us into fights until we were all dead. It was just a matter of time. I figured that if I was going to turn on them, it was best to do it before I lost one more marine.”

“Okay,” she said. “I get that. But why do it at all? If it jeopardizes all of Earth-our entire species. You shouldn’t have restarted things if you weren’t sure we could win.”

Her words hurt, but I didn’t let on.

“Good points,” I said. “Honestly, I considered butchering all the Centaurs as the Macros ordered. I probably could have done it. In retrospect, all we really had to do was pop each of their satellites, putting a hole in every habitat’s ‘sky’. They would have all been sucked out into space, one satellite at a time. Problem solved.”

“That would have been horrible.”

“Exactly. I had never intended to sign us on to exterminate an entire biotic species. We are not machines ourselves. We have a bond with these other beings. More importantly, I think these machines are intolerable masters. I’ve come to believe it will turn out to be us or them in the end. The machines are just too different from us to live with peaceably. They might be out-fought and negotiated with to the point of a truce, but it will always be a pause-point, a period of time they will use to build up their next annihilating attack against us. They have no intention of letting any biotic group survive in the long run.”

Sandra stared at me in growing alarm. “So, you restarted the war now because it was going to happen eventually? But are we ready?”

“No,” I admitted, “the decision wasn’t cold or logical. Probably, the right thing to do would have been to order every marine to open his suit and commit mass suicide.”

“You’d never get our men to follow that order.”

“No, not even after a rousing speech.”

She stared at me, disturbed. “Hypothetically, if we’d tried that, what would the Macros have done?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “They might have figured we’d ‘malfunctioned’ and just gone back to Earth for more troops. But at least we would not have killed more innocent biotics, nor would we have restarted the war.”

“This is a pretty grim situation, if suicide was our best move all along.”

“I don’t think it was, and besides it would have been a quitters move, and I don’t go for that kind of strategy. We are the best, the most experienced fighting forces Earth has right now. Why give the machines a break by taking ourselves out? Even more importantly, we have a lot of intel to take home with us. We have learned a great deal about our little corner of the galaxy, and I wanted to bring that back to Earth. Rebellion then, was the only option I had left.”

“But we’ve hurt them pretty badly. We’ve taken out three big ships.”

I shook my head. “In my estimation, that doesn’t mean much to the Macros. They lost five cruisers in a single assault on the Worm homeworld. It took them months, but they brought forward hundreds of ships against Earth at the end of the first war. We don’t know how big their network of star systems is. They could have a hundred planets churning out ships.”

Sandra thought about that for a minute or so. Her face was serious, but determined. She was no crybaby.

“You must have a plan-some way to win.”

“I always have a plan,” I said. I figured it was only a half-lie this time. I did have plans to build our forces, to unite the local biotics and mine the rings. But these thoughts could be better categorized as ideas rather than plans.

She read my face and realized I was feeding her some sunshine. She knew me better than the others. I supposed it was a natural hazard one could only expect to run into when you were sleeping with one of your bridge officers.

“I thought we were headed home as conquering heroes,” she said at last. “You’re telling me we are in for another fight to the finish.”

“Don’t demand the truth if you don’t want to hear it,” I said, giving her a grim smile.

“Next time, I won’t,” she said seriously. “I liked the fairytale better.”

Cover

— 47 When things were quiet on the bridge, I sought out Marvin. It took me a long time to find him, and I finally had to call Sandra to give me a hint. She directed me to look in the engine compartments. We fragile humans didn’t like to go into that region due to the high levels of particle radiation. Grumbling, I ratcheted open a difficult hatch and stepped into the ‘light gamma’ zone.

“Damned robot,” I mumbled. Like a housecat, Marvin was hard to find when you wanted him, but ubiquitous when you didn’t.

I found him nosing around amongst the cooling tanks. He had ripped up a bit of the insulation and was tapping at the smooth metal tank underneath.

“Hey there,” I said, “don’t cause a leak.”

One camera swiveled my way. The rest stayed on the tank’s gauges, which were not visual, but tactile. They consisted of swellings in the deck plates near the tank. As closely as we could figure out, the Macros read these like graphs-a long bar of raised metal indicated a high temperature or pressure reading.

“I must determine the fullness of the vessel,” Marvin said. He continued tapping. “No leakage will be caused by this action.”

“Why do you want to determine the status of that tank, Marvin?” I asked.

A second camera eye swung to focus on me. I stood with him, examining the tanks as he did. I noticed now that many of them had ripped insulation. There was no sign of dents due to his tapping, fortunately.

“We’ll have to tape up this insulation,” I told him. “I wonder if the radiation down here has made your logic circuits malfunction.”

He didn’t answer. I hadn’t made a request or posed a question. Marvin typically ignored statements that made no demands upon him to respond.

“Do you agree with my assessment of your condition, Marvin?”

“No,” he said. The second camera swung away from me again.

I’d come to realize after dealing with Marvin on many occasions that the number of cameras he directed toward an entity was an indicator of his interest in it.

“Don’t you think this is odd, pointless behavior?” I asked. “What possible use to you are the pressure levels in these tanks?”

“I’m attempting to measure the fluid levels in the tanks,” Marvin corrected me. “Not the pressure, the pressure is indicated by the gauges under our feet. When the deck gauges-”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Why are you testing fluid levels?”

“The gauges indicate pressure and temperature. They do not indicate the fluid levels. Tapping and measuring varied echo resonance gives me an indication as to fluid volume.”

“Right,” I said, trying not to get frustrated. Robots were often literal-minded in their thinking. Marvin wasn’t always that way-but maybe he was hiding something. Maybe he kept answering the wrong question hoping I would go away. He had almost been successful in this regard. I did want to leave and stop talking to him, but I became stubborn. I decided not to give him a break. “Why do you care about the fluid levels, Marvin?”

Three cameras tilted in my direction now, and he paused. I could almost hear his thoughts, something along the line of: this human isn’t leaving until I give him an answer.

“The reconstruction of a vessel requires many details of precise information,” he said finally.

It was an answer, but it only led to more questions. It was my turn to look interested. I lost the attention of all three cameras as I thought about his words, indicating that Marvin was barely aware of me. I followed him, thinking about what he’d said. Reconstruction. Did that mean in case of damage? Or was he referring to duplication?

“Marvin, are you planning to build your own spaceship?”

Three cameras again. “No,” he said.

“What then?” I asked. “Just tell me Marvin, because I’m not going to leave you alone until you do. And I won’t stop you from investigating this region if you don’t do any harm.”

There was a pause, then finally he confessed. “I plan to add appropriate systems to my form to allow independent interstellar exploration.”

“Ah,” I said, suddenly catching on. “I always wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. But you…you want to be the spaceship!”

No cameras now. He was on to another set of tanks, another set of rips and another tapping session. I let him do it and followed him, watching. I tried to form an opinion concerning Marvin’s goal of becoming a sentient spaceship. In some ways, it was alarming. However, I decided that it was relatively harmless. He wasn’t out to sabotage the vessel. He just wanted to fly independently. What thinking creature didn’t want that?

“That’s why you built my bricks into your body back at Helios, isn’t it?” I asked. “You wanted to use them as part of yourself-modules to make up your body, so to speak.”

“Correct,” he said.

“Marvin, are you able to talk about the Blues?” I asked.

Two cameras suddenly swerved to regard me. He even paused in his tearing and tapping. “We have already discussed the biotic species you refer to as ‘blue’.”

“ The Blues,” I said, “yes, you said they came from the sole gas giant in the Eden system. Is that correct?”

“They exist there.”

I was elated. When I’d dealt with the Nano ships in the past, they had known details about their creators, but had been programmatically prevented from discussing them. The smaller, newer brainboxes I’d had the displeasure of dealing with knew nothing about them. But Marvin knew about the enigmatic Blues and was able to talk about them. Sandra had wanted to know why we hadn’t dismantled Marvin, and I was already planning a gloating speech about the information I’d learned.

“Tell me all about the Blues, Marvin.”

“I’d rather not.”

I blinked, and then I became angry. I only barely stopped myself from threatening to take him apart and turn him into a microwave oven. I took a deep breath. No cameras were on me now. I was boring him.

“I know you are busy, Marvin,” I said. “How about if I promise to give you a flying structure to work with when we get back to Earth?”

Four cameras. I couldn’t recall ever having seen him put four cameras on one subject before. They all canted and focused disconcertingly. He stopped tapping and stared at me.

“You took away my structure.”

“We needed those components,” I said. “I’ll give you a new arrangement. You’ll be able to travel space independently and investigate whatever you want.” As I said these words, I felt a little hot. I wasn’t sure if it was apprehension over what I was offering him or the radiation that was lightly puncturing my cells every second in this place.

“I would like that,” he said.

“Talk to me then. Did the Blues create the Macros?” I asked. I turned on my suit recorder quietly. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Partially, yes,” he said.

I frowned. “Partially? Who else built them?”

“They have evolved from their original form. They have gained independent faculties, and they now utilize technology they’ve found.”

I nodded. It sounded a lot like Marvin’s story. Maybe the Macros had started out as obedient robots that built large structures in space, but had become smarter and more independent over time. I could see Marvin turning out that way-especially since he seemed more intelligent than the Macros themselves.

“And the Nano ships,” I said, “did they send them out to discover new worlds?”

“Yes.”

“And did they rebel against the Blues? The way the Macros did?”

Marvin looked at me. “Your usage of the pronoun ‘they’ suggests you do not classify me as a Nano entity.”

“You have been built with Nano technology,” I said, “but your software is very different. The herd peoples we call Centaurs seem to have given you different properties than any Nano brainbox I’m aware of.”

“I would agree. Am I therefore a species of one?”

“Maybe,” I said. “But there are copies of you-or at least one that I’m aware of. Remember you were a download from the Centaurs.”

“I would like to meet my copy,” Marvin said.

I snorted. That would be a fun collision to witness. I had a feeling Marvin’s original was more boring than he was. Marvin’s internal software had not been downloaded in its entirety, and as far as I could tell, his mind had compensated for the gaps creatively, giving him his unique personality. I figured the original probably sounded like any Nano brainbox. Maybe it even had the stricture about not discussing the Blues intact.

“Let’s talk more about the Blues,” I said. “Did they give the Nanos their orders to find and aid biotics on other worlds?”

“Yes.”

I felt a fresh moment of heat. I felt like wiping sweat from my forehead, but couldn’t touch it with my helmet on. My skin itched and tickled. The Blues had sent out the ships. They were responsible for the deaths of my kids and so many others.

“Why did they do it, Marvin? Was it to stop the Macros?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So,” I said, “they had released one demon, and so they released a second to stop the first.”

Marvin ignored me.

I thought about the Blues and their plight. I felt some level of sympathy. I could imagine the scenario, perhaps even the horror of it. They had built robots to explore the universe beyond their great sky, discovering a thousand wonders. But then their independent-minded creations had gotten ideas of their own and gone rogue. They’d then released Nano ships to find and help the biotics the Macros were destroying. In Earth’s case, they had actually helped us. I’d managed to go far with the technology they’d given to us to fight the scourge they’d created. I wondered if they had any inkling of current events.

“What about the factories, Marvin? Who invented those?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Okay, who gave the technology of the factories to the Macros and the Nanos?”

“The Blues utilize such technology on their world.”

I stared at him. In my mind, I was putting together a picture. The factories were a great invention of the Blues-or maybe they’d picked it up from someone else. At any rate, they understood and worked with that level of technology. I felt hungry for more information. I wanted it all. Maybe they had more amazing inventions that were just as dramatically useful. Such tools could win my war for me.

“And the rings?” I asked quickly. “Did the Blues make the rings?”

“No,” he said, “they have always been.”

I blinked at him. The implications of his words were huge. If they were ancient, and no known race had built them, then perhaps they were owned and operated by some other even more technologically advanced people. Maybe they had built this highway of rings through our local star systems, but rarely came down to this abandoned region. It was a frightening thought. Someday, these unknown ancients could return to pull up the weeds that had grown in their forgotten backyard systems.

“So, there must be some other race,” I said. “An ancient civilization which built these rings.”

“Possibly. You speak of the unknown with great certainty. I’m not sure if that is a strength for your species or a weakness.”

I chuckled. “Neither am I.”

Our conversation continued, but I’d already gotten most of what I could from Marvin on the subject. I was able to piece together the nature of our doom, the beginnings of it. A race of beings that lived upon a gas giant developed technology and began to explore the universe beyond their thickly-clouded planet. They didn’t like space travel, possibly it was uncomfortable for them. So, they had built very advanced, independent robotic machines to explore the stars. We’d done the same with probes and the like-just on a smaller scale.

These robots had to be independent so they could function on their own in distant star systems. At first, I imagined, these machines had dutifully brought back information on the neighboring systems and life forms. Perhaps they’d discovered Earth long ago and visited my world for centuries, capturing humans among others.

But at some point along the line, the Macros had evolved into something else. Maybe they’d been corrupted by some outside influence. Maybe some disgruntled Blue programmer had released a virus that allowed them to go rogue. Marvin wasn’t sure, and I doubted even the Blues knew exactly how it had happened.

The Blues had panicked. To their credit, they tried to do something about it. They tried to stop the monster they’d unleashed. They’d set their obedient Nano ships on a mission to stop the Macros. The Nano ships had quickly armed the biotics they’d discovered and helped them resist the Macros when they inevitably came calling.

One thing disturbed me, now that I had a much clearer picture of the war and how it had started. Where were the Nano ships? They’d vanished through the same ring I had taken, leaving the Solar System and never returning. I could only imagine they had gone to another inhabited system somewhere, perhaps using a ring we’d not yet discovered in the chain. Maybe they were battling the Macros there now, even as they had over Earth.

I left Marvin and walked the ship until I was in the gaping hole of a launch bay under the prow. The ship was heading away from all three of Alpha Centauri’s suns, gliding toward the ring that led to Earth. I gazed out at the stars ahead of us, where there were no suns or planets in sight.

Stars are brighter when seen from deep space. There were whirling nebulas, and deep colors. I stared at a million, million stars. Many if not most had planets. What was going on out there? I felt that I had to learn about them all-even though I knew I never would.

Cover

— 48 When we finally flew through the last ring-the one that led us to Earth’s Oort cloud, we took it slowly and painstakingly. First, I eased the cruiser down to a crawl. We swung the engines around and applied heavy thrust to reduce speed for the last entire day. The great ship shuddered and shook as we braked with all her power. When we’d stopped near the ring, I sent through several men on flying dishes to scout. I didn’t want to rush through, only to find a dozen mines Crow or even the Worms had put up in the meantime, or to learn there was a human fleet waiting there for us. I knew we would look like a damaged Macro cruiser to anyone who scanned us. Possibly, the Macros had already brought the war home to Earth. I didn’t want anyone to mistakenly fire on us.

The men on the dishes flittered ahead bravely, acting as our scouts. The mission was led by Kwon. I couldn’t spare any other officers, and I trusted him to follow my orders to the letter. He was to get to the other side, use passive sensor arrays to scan the system, and then return without making any transmissions. I wanted to know what was going on, and I didn’t want anyone to know I was back yet.

Sure, I was paranoid. I believed losing ninety-plus percent of one’s force would have transformed any commander. We had all become hard-eyed veterans. We were survivors.

The waiting was hard. The ship sat parked in space, and that never felt good. Without velocity, which took time to build up, any ship was vulnerable. There was nothing to do about it, so we waited, fully suited-up and tense. Every eye was wide and glassy.

Kwon’s voice came in snatches as he crossed the ring from elsewhere back into our space. He must have been transmitting the moment he came through. “…repeating that, sir. Enemy signatures in system. What are your orders?”

“Kwon, download the data,” I said.

I leaned over the new command table we’d built as the data came in. I’d taken the time to fancy up the bridge over the last few days with the help of the nanites. We had a nice steel table that grew up out of the floor in a single piece. The surface was a perfectly made, dull metal finish. We hadn’t been able to duplicate an Earth style screen, but this sheen of nanites was trained to form beads and give us a good representation of the external environment. I felt right at home with the interface. As an improvement, it responded to touch. Most of my bridge crew had never flown a Nano ship and were unused to the technology, but I figured they could learn. One of the key advantages of this type of system was the lack of a glass surface. This screen couldn’t break.

The first contacts that came up were the sun and the planets. Much smaller green and red beads appeared. The green ships were all clustered near Earth. The red beads were out past the orbit of Mars. Nothing moved, as this was a snapshot, not a live feed.

“What are those enemy contacts?” I demanded. “Macros?”

“Yes sir,” Kwon said. “Three cruisers. There is evidence of more of them, but they are drifting hulks.”

My eyes scanned the scene. We were coming into the middle of a battle. Had the Macros already hit Earth? How many millions had they killed this time?

I counted only seventeen ships around Earth, and they looked small. When I had left, Crow had been building fast and there had been at least thirty. We’d taken a beating too.

“I know where they are,” Major Sarin said suddenly, reaching out to touch the beads of reddish metal. “That’s the new asteroid mining facilities. We were just beginning to explore out there for easily accessed minerals. They must have found the mining expeditions and blown them up.”

I nodded. I knew the Macros were big on chewing metal out of asteroids. I’d seen the vast machines they used for the purpose up-close and personal. Knowing to some degree how Macros thought, I figured they must have clashed with Earth’s forces then retreated when they took a loss or two. The only reason they would retreat was the discovery of a higher priority target or to wait for reinforcements. I hoped it wasn’t the latter.

“Any signs of mines, Kwon?”

“No sir. Orders?”

“You are to get your ass back aboard this ship. Get in front of the launch bay, and prepare for a rough landing. We’ll scoop you up under heavy acceleration. Turn your dish into the braking position and try to match our speed so you don’t get smashed.”

“Yes Colonel, Kwon out.”

I nodded toward Major Welter, who waited anxiously at the helm like a concert pianist who was dying to play.

“Get us underway,” I said. “Take us through the ring.”

“Watch this,” Welter said. He reached out and tapped a single control-point. The ship smoothly accelerated forward. “I’ve been working on my hotkeys,” he explained proudly.

We headed into home space knowing we were outgunned three to one. No one complained, however. I was proud of them all.

“No one transmit anything,” I ordered. “All external transmissions are on blackout. No radio beyond suit-to-suit.”

Sandra relayed my order without hesitation. She was back on communications for the big homecoming. I was sorry it wasn’t going to be a happy one. I’d had fantasies of returning to our little bungalow on Andros Island. We’d had a lot of good times there. Now, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it home at all. We were so close, it almost hurt.

“Sandra,” I said, turning to her, “get Marvin’s butt up here, pronto.”

She smiled. “My pleasure,” she said, and she was gone in a blur.

Everyone else watched her move with alarm. All of us were fast and strong, but there was something unnatural about the way Sandra could move when she wanted to. I figured she could probably kill anyone on the ship if she surprised them. They just wouldn’t be able to react before they were dead. Knowing this filled me with a strange mixture of pride and concern.

Just as we caught the last of Kwon’s scouts and went through the ring, Sandra returned with Marvin. She had ripped loose the control wires that went down to his dish. Like exposed earthworms, the nanite wires writhed, seeking to reconnect. His cameras whipped around anxiously. I felt a moment of worry. She had obviously taken my order as an opportunity to rough-up the robot. That hadn’t been my intent. She was still blaming him for Ning’s demise. I still wasn’t convinced she was right about that. After all, the entire ship had blown up a few minutes later. A lot of things could have gone wrong. Ning could have simply been knocked out during the attack and fallen into the medical pod. The microbials would have mistaken her for raw materials. I had to admit, however, I hadn’t asked Marvin about it. Maybe I was just avoiding a good reason to unplug the roaming little robot.

“Marvin,” I said, gaining the attention of several cameras. “I need you to translate for me now. Sandra, put him down and let him reconnect his systems.”

With poor manners, Sandra dumped him onto the deck plates. Marvin clattered and rattled, sorting himself out. One of his cameras fell to the floor, the supporting arm having evidently lost power. The nanites struggled to chain-up and lift it again.

I frowned at Sandra. She ignored me and stalked back to her station. Major Sarin refused to look at either Sandra or I, perhaps fearing another attack. Gorski stared with his mouth open, wondering if it was a bad idea to say anything. Major Welter still tapped at his flight controls, so absorbed he didn’t even seem to have noticed the drama.

Marvin’s fourth camera was moving again. He used it to track Sandra closely. I didn’t blame him. He had never given me an acknowledgement, of course. I hadn’t demanded a response.

“Marvin, are you ready to translate? Talk to me.”

“No,” he said. “I believe I’ve suffered internal injuries. I’m rearranging some of my neural chains. Shutting down.”

“What?” I asked. “Dammit.”

He shut down, his cameras all clattering to the floor at once.

“Sandra, did you have to do that?” I hissed.

“He’s a murderer. Are you afraid of him?”

“No,” I said, “I’m worried he won’t cooperate if he knows he’s been abused.”

“Oh, he knows about that. Don’t worry.”

I sighed. Major Sarin was smirking at her computer. Gorski was shaking his head and Major Welter was still absorbed in his control system. At least one of them was doing their job. I again told myself I’d have to get Sandra off my bridge in the near future. This was getting very unprofessional. I recalled reading stories about long spaceflights, how discipline was predicted to break down over time as people would never get a respite and could not maintain tight order in their lives for such a long, unbroken period. We’d never been all that disciplined in the first place, so I supposed the process was happening faster in our military organization. I’d have to work on that. We needed a big book of regulations.

Marvin regained consciousness just as we crossed the border between Alpha Centauri and the Solar System. We came in at a relative crawl. I watched the readouts and the metallic-relief situation table with great interest. There were the three cruisers, still in the same spot. I couldn’t tell if they were firing on something, or waiting, or what.

“Hope you’re feeling better, Marvin,” Sandra said as he turned on again and stood himself up.

I flashed a glare at her, and she backed off with pursed lips. “Earth may be under attack. Let’s pull it together, people,” I said.

Sandra looked at me and took a deep breath. She seemed to know the comment was directed at her.

“No external emissions,” I said. “Not even active sensory equipment. I don’t want these Macros to know who we are. As far as they are concerned, we are their fourth cruiser, coming to complete the diamond. Let’s steer toward them, helmsman.”

Welter did everything but press his knees on the control panel. With a slight shudder, the ship began to turn and change course, still accelerating. I was impressed. After having taken a crack at that control system, I knew this thing was harder to steer than a broken shopping cart.

“Good job, Major,” I said. “You are a big part of this. If we can make our flight path look natural, they are more likely to be convinced.”

“We’re being scanned, sir,” Major Sarin said suddenly. “Radar and laser-targeting.”

“By whom?” I asked.

“The Macro squadron. They are definitely looking us over.”

“Any incoming messages yet?”

“Not that I can determine.”

“Good, we’ll let it ride. If we approach at this pace, how long will we have until we are in range, Gorski?

“In range sir?”

“To fire upon the Macros.”

Gorski swallowed hard. “About ten hours, sir. If they hold still.”

Marvin’s cameras drifted from one face to the next. “Should I contact them now?” he asked.

“Not yet. We’ll let them call us first. We will only respond, not initiate communications. You are important now, Marvin. You need to imitate a Macro Command responding to another Macro Command that is calling.”

All of Marvin’s cameras were on me now, except for one that was keeping an eye on Sandra. “I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?” I snapped. I suddenly felt like beating on him myself.

“I’m only one unit. I do not possess the appropriate protocols or multitasking capacities to simulate an entire Macro crew.”

I thought about it and exposed my teeth in a grimace. He had a point, knowing what I did of Macro group-think. They were really a single mass-mind for command purposes. If we were really Macros, we would connect up to the rest of them as would a distributed computer system connected via a network. Back on Earth, I’d studied such projects, which involved the use of thousands of computers linked by the internet that would normally sit quietly at night. These machines were signed up by their owners to share their small amount of cpu power with all the others to form a vast computer system to solve large problems. Researchers working on things like the cure for cancer could avail themselves of this ready computer power when they needed it.

I’d suspected for some time the Macros operated on a similar principal. When it came to command decisions, there was no commander. Every Macro in the region offered up part of its brain to the rest and everyone shared in the effort to come to a single decision. At that point, they were effectively one computer. When they communicated, Macro Command was really all of them talking to me at once.

The problem facing me now was grim. We were in a Macro ship and knew how to send Macro signals. But we couldn’t pretend to be dozens of Macros machines. I only had Marvin. I supposed he might be able to pretend he was one Macro, but not a crowd of them.

I banged my fist on the metal table. That was another thing I liked about metal beads for screens. They didn’t break on you when you expressed your frustration.

“Okay,” I said, “we can’t bullshit them all the way. But we’ll still give it a try. Marvin, when they talk to us, tell me what they say. Listen in. We will transmit nothing back. We have a big hole in our snout. Most of the sensory systems were up there. They might just believe our ship’s transmitters are out. If we act appropriately, we can receive their instructions and appear to follow them.”

“That can’t work forever,” Gorski said suddenly. “Um, sorry sir, but once we get close, any normal Macro would be able to transmit ship-to-ship directly.”

I nodded. “You’re right about that. Marvin, what is the typical range of a Macro unit’s built-in transmitter?”

“Under normal electromagnetic conditions, it should be one to one hundred miles.”

I huffed. “That’s quite a variable range.”

He began to explain, but I shushed him. “Okay, I don’t care. In space, a thousand miles is short range. We’ll have to make our move before we get that close, or we will sound like a ship full of ghosts to them.”

“When you say ‘make our move’, do you mean what I think you mean, Colonel?” Gorski asked.

“Hell yeah,” I said. “You didn’t think we were up here to cooperate with the enemy, did you Gorski?”