“You’re going to ask me to fly out there, aren’t you, sir?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “This ship is too critical. We have too much firepower to remove it from the main front now. The Macros might take the opportunity to attack while we appear out of position. We are going to stay in orbit, and send Socorro. She’s our smallest, fastest, most lightly-armed ship.”
I’d specially designed Socorro for scouting trips. It bothered me to send her out on a dangerous mission without being at the helm myself, but I wasn’t about to leave my post. There were too many unknowns in the Eden system for my liking today.
“Colonel?” the command channel asked. Miklos’ East European accent was unmistakable. “This might be premature. The ship is less than an hour overdue.”
“No,” I said. “Something went wrong. I know that pilot. Jameson is always timely. He’s not going to sit on the far side without a good reason, especially with no orders to do so. The Crustaceans have been gathering on the far side for days, and they haven’t been responding to the queries I’ve relayed to them.”
“Very good, sir. I will dispatch another scout.”
“Just one man aboard Socorro. We can’t afford anything more.”
I rode out the next half-hour of tests without enjoyment. I was tense, and finally ordered the shakedown cruise cut short. “Take me down, Commander. I’ve had enough.”
He looked at me and misinterpreted my expression. He grinned and lowered us into the clouds again. The ship shivered and heated up forty degrees. I closed my helmet and let the air conditioners dry the sweat from my face.
I wasn’t sick from his twists and turns, but I didn’t tell Welter that. I was worried. There was new activity from two new directions. I’d been expecting the Macros to make a move, but now it seemed that Star Force and the Crustaceans were in motion instead.
We went straight down to the dome. Together, Welter and I had come up with a score of improvements to the design. They were all minor, however. The craft functioned as is. Even the prototype was viable.
“Marvin?” I demanded over the general channel once inside the dome. I walked around on the crunching moonscape that was the region under the dome. It was all chunks of ground-down rock, dust and bits of shiny metal.
“I’m engaged at the moment, Colonel.”
“Well, unengage yourself,” I said. “I need translations done. I’m reprogramming this facility.”
“Just speak to it directly.”
“I don’t speak binary.”
“There is no need. I’ve affixed a brainbox and taught it appropriate translation engrams. It should do the job as well as I could.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, that’s excellent.”
I ordered the changes through the new brainbox, which I found near the output tray. While I did so, I scanned the bleak landscape for the robot. I knew he had to be under the dome with me somewhere.
The first thing I saw was the wrecked bunker of steel planks. Many of the planks were missing. Smiling, I then knew where he had to be. I circled to the far side of the production unit and squinted toward the wall of the dome. A structure of scarred metal had appeared there. Marvin had been very busy. He’d built an encircling pen around his pets, and now enclosed them completely. I didn’t even see a door, but I suspected he was inside his little fort, tending to the Microbes.
I frowned with a new thought. Could he be shocking them in there? Out of sight? Or maybe applying some other form of discipline? I didn’t like the idea, but I didn’t have time to walk out there and check up on him. Right now, he was busy and out of trouble. I wanted him to stay that way.
I finished my programming edits and witnessed the birth of a new gunship. The fresh hull rolled out into the output tray with a tremendous clang. My construction-duty marines set to work on it immediately, pouring in nanites, adding major systems and cementing fittings into place with caulk-guns full of nanites.
As it took shape, the second vessel looked about the same as the first, but there had been many adjustments. The central turret and the generator unit had been edged a few feet forward. This squeezed the bridge crew, but provided a more balanced arrangement of mass. The stabilizers wouldn’t have to work so hard when the ship was firing or accelerating to provide a stable platform.
The big machine began working on the next ship, filling the dome with odd hot smells and a deep, thrumming sound that made my feet tingle in my boots. I wondered how these little ships would hold up in battle. As I exited the dome, I calculated I would learn the truth soon enough.
— 26
No one was more surprised than I was when the Crustaceans broke through the Hel ring in an attack formation. I’d talked to them, and they’d seemed reasonable-if a little stuffy. Now, they weren’t talking at all.
I shook my head. Standing next to me, Miklos clucked his tongue. We were both aboard a destroyer called Actium which hovered in the high atmosphere over the Centaur homeworld. We’d made this ship our new command vessel, after the destruction of Barbarossa.
I’d reached Actium as quickly as possible after receiving the news from Fleet. Due to the significant distance out to the ring orbiting Hel, we hadn’t been given any time to react to the Crustacean attack. Instead, we could only watch vids of the aftermath and analyze them. In this case, the analysis was simple: the Crustaceans had gotten their collective shell-covered tails kicked.
They’d sent through a flock of nineteen ships, each of which was identical in appearance. They were all a familiar design of Nano ship. It was strange, seeing these vessels coming at us aggressively. I recognized them so intimately. I’d spent months inside Alamo, a twin to every one of them. I even paused to wonder if Alamo was among these attackers, and if the ship would recognize my voice if I attempted contact. It was a strange thought.
I didn’t have time to try to talk to them, however. Sixteen of the nineteen ships were destroyed by our mines. They tried to shoot them down, but it was hopeless. I’d laid thousands there, on the off chance the Macros would send a fresh fleet of cruisers at us from that direction. The mines didn’t work as well on the smaller more maneuverable Nano ships as they had on ponderous Macro cruisers-but they did the job. Each contained a tiny nuclear charge at the center of a dark, star-shaped metal object. Any contact, even close proximity to a vessel that didn’t broadcast the correct friend-or-foe code, caused detonation. As we watched the incoming vids we counted ninety-three detonations.
It was overkill, really. The surviving ships reversed themselves and exited back through the ring. Dozens of my mines followed them, attracted by magnetics and tiny brainboxes.
“I hate seeing fellow biotics killed,” I said. “Recall Socorro. There’s little point to sending a scout ship out there alone now.”
“Why are the lobsters attacking us, sir?” Miklos asked me.
“I don’t know. Have you sent every message you could asking for peace and a meeting?”
“Of course. But they never got the transmissions. The incursion was brief, and the mines pushed them back before they could have possibly received the messages.”
I nodded. Battle at great distances had logistic difficulties. On Earth, you could at least talk to someone on the other side of the world with a few seconds of delay tagging onto the end of each sentence. That was annoying, but it could be dealt with. Without much trouble you could have a comprehensive conversation. At greater distances, it was more like texting each other. There might be hours between transmissions and responses. In this case, the delay was something like four hours. That meant this video was old. Everything could have changed by now. The Lobsters could have broken through, or they might have given up and retreated for good. It was frustrating being fed old information. I wanted to see the battle in real time.
“This is all we need,” I said. “It’s not enough that the Macros are building up a fleet to push us out of this system, the Crustaceans seem to have the same goal. No one wants us here in the Eden system, do they Captain?”