There were a lot of cameras on me now. I couldn’t even count them all. I think he’d added a few since the last time I’d met up with him.
“Colonel Riggs,” he said. “Perhaps you’d allow me to demonstrate what they can do for-us.”
“No,” I said, raising a hand. “I’m sure I would be impressed, Marvin. And I thank you for your work here. I’m sure when we have a chance to bring some eggheads out from Earth, they will be more than happy to go over the discoveries you’ve made. But I don’t even want to know what they can do. I don’t want to be tempted.”
Marvin was quiet for a moment. His tentacles seemed to move more slowly. This meant he was either unhappy, contemplative, or both. I waited for his next statement.
He didn’t say anything, but instead headed toward the dome. It took me a second to realize what he was doing. When his longest whip-like arm reached toward the canal he’d dug to the dome’s edge, I protested.
“Hold on!” I said. “You don’t have to kill them all.”
“They’ve been altered. They can’t survive in the wild on this world now. I’ve got a moral obligation to shut down this experiment.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t. They’ve suffered enough. Can’t we just leave them here in peace?”
“Not really,” Marvin said. “They need care. I’ve kept them warmed artificially, and fed nutrients into the pond. Without care, most will die. They will consume one another due to lack of input within-forty minutes.”
I blew out a puff of air. How did I get myself into these situations? “All right,” I said, knowing very well what Marvin wanted. “You can keep this pond, but not for cruel experimentation. We’ll build a small shelter around this spot. You can use the steel planks from the bunker to keep people from walking into the middle of the pond. Later, I’ll figure out what we should do with them. If nothing else, we can communicate and attempt to establish a dialog, if all of us live that long.”
Marvin seemed very pleased. “A wall,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. I would have put up a barrier long ago, but felt constrained.”
“Constrained? Meaning, you realized that if I saw you building a wall out here around a mud puddle, I would have known something strange was going on?”
“Perhaps.”
“Right. Well, you can keep pets for now. After we finish assembling this ship and test it, I might need you to help me talk to the big factory about programming improvements.”
“Of course, Colonel.”
I left him then, and he scuttled off to gather spare planks of steel. I shook my head as I walked away.
Within a few hours, we had our first complete gunship. I climbed inside to pilot it. When I did so, I immediately found the internal design was less than perfect. The essential problem was the size of the components. We had a huge railgun turret, a massive generator, and a solid steel hull that could not be reshaped wrapped around it. I decided to put the gun in the belly of the ship, just as it was placed on Macro cruisers. It poked out of the lower section and rotated smoothly enough. The generator was on top of the turret and used up space behind it until it ran into the single, large engine. The ship would not be anything like a Nano ship, nor like our destroyers. With multiple smaller engines and laser projectors, those ships were more balanced and maneuverable.
“This thing is going to steer like a shopping cart,” Commander Welter said, pronouncing a verdict that didn’t really surprise me.
I’d called him down from his destroyer for the express purpose of providing design refinements for the gunship prototype. I’d taken a look, and felt they were serviceable. But I wanted an expert opinion from a pilot’s point of view. As Major Welter, he’d distinguished himself while flying enemy craft in the Helios Campaign-and afterward against the Macros. He’d become a master pilot, and I’d reluctantly moved him into the Fleet category and changed his rank to that of Commander.
“It looks that way,” I admitted, walking him through the ship. “But give it a chance. Most of the mass is centralized or underneath the ship. We have an unusual number of stabilizers positioned all around the hull.”
Commander Welter followed me from the forward compartment where the crew would sit to the back of the ship. This required a little squeezing. The central turret and generator were so big, they took up all but three feet of space on either side. The three feet came in the form of a metal tube with unevenly contoured walls.
“Seriously?” he asked. “We have to use a crawlspace to get back to the engine room?”
“There’s one of these-ah-passages on each side of the ship. They are only about thirty feet long, and in space these zones will maintain a zero-G environment for rapid movement.”
“I wouldn’t want to be caught in here when the ship takes a hit,” he muttered.
I ignored him until we got to the engine room. Partly, this was because I couldn’t even see him behind me without contorting my heavy battle suit.
“I’d put one-way signs on these tubes,” he said. “If everyone takes the starboard tube to exit either chamber, they should never run into each other.”
I thought about that for a second, then nodded in my helmet. “Excellent idea, Commander. That’s why I brought you along. You’ve made your first design improvement.”
He muttered something about redesigning a turd, but I didn’t listen. I didn’t want to get mad at him. I had a big favor to ask.
The engine room made the forward compartment look roomy by comparison. Instead of seating for four, sensory equipment and the ship’s only bathroom, the rear space was squashed between the generator, the top of the turret and the single, massive engine. It was hot back here and stuffy. The air was thick with ozone.
“Will there be a crewman back here?” he asked.
I gestured toward two jump seats. They were folded up against the bulkhead between the two tubes that led in and out of the compartment. Nanite arms held them against the steel wall tightly. When touched, the arms lowered the seats and grabbed the occupant.
“See?” I said, flopping down in one. I grunted as the arms clamped onto me. “These seats are only for emergency flight safety, of course.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s great.”
He walked around the big engine, almost bumping his armored butt into my face as he scooted between me and the metal housing.
“Looks like you haven’t spared anything in the power department.”
“You’ve grasped the essential beauty of this design,” I said. “These ships provide the most bang for the buck of any design I could come up with. Raw power in a compact form.”
Welter nodded, but kept sneering and squinting as he ran his hands over the systems. He jerked his hand away from a hot spot and cursed.
“What I want to know is who’s going to pilot them?” he asked. “All your best pilots are commanding destroyers, including me.”
I cleared my throat. He shot me an alarmed glance. Seeing my expression, his face fell.
“Uh-oh, come on, sir!” he said. “You can’t-”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “I very much can. I have to. Every destroyer commander will man one of these new ships. Every destroyer pilot will man another, if we build enough before they hit us.”
“What? Then who will run the destroyers?”
“The gunners,” I said firmly. “And the marine sergeants after that. The Centaurs can’t do it, so we have to. Everyone is going on a crash pilot-training course.”
Welter eyed me in shock. “You mean I have to trade in my destroyer for one of these things? It looks like a flying bathtub.”
“Exactly.”
“But why have your best pilots fly your worst ships?”
“Because they aren’t my worst ships. They have triple the firepower of your destroyer. More importantly, the destroyers practically fly themselves. They have experienced nanite brainboxes to do most of the work. I don’t expect these ships will be so smooth to operate in battle.”