The orbit took less than ten minutes. I let the missiles get closer this time, to keep them interested.
“Sir…” said the helmsman, “the missiles are changing course.”
“Where…?” Miklos began.
I cut him off, shouting for a com-link to Crow. “Barbarossa, relay to Star Force control, move your ships. Repeat, scatter all vessels.”
“Colonel Riggs is not command personnel.”
“Send the message, Barbarossa!” Captain Miklos shouted. He had figured out what was happening.
We were too late. The missiles, moving at tremendous speed toward unsuspecting stationary targets, were nearly impossible to stop. The formation of the Star Force ships was thoughtless. They were in a flat formation over Earth, spread out at approximately the same altitude. The problem was they didn’t have a free field of fire laterally toward something approaching at the same altitude they were. When the missiles swerved up to their altitude during the last seconds, half the ships could not fire on them without risking hitting their sisters.
Confusion caused the fleet to shift slightly as the last five missiles zoomed up toward them. It wasn’t a scatter order, or an organized retreat. It was just confusion.
“They knocked out one missile—no, two,” said the helmsman.
We were all glued to our screens. I’m not sure anyone was even breathing. Three clouds puffed into existence less than a second later. The clouds were a brilliant white release of energy. They expanded into bumpy spheres, then dissipated rapidly, turning into tiny pin pricks of light and finally nothing.
I wanted to put a hand to my face, but the big armored glove loomed close and I stopped myself before I pulled skin off.
“Losses?” I asked.
“Three hits, three ships. Two frigates and a destroyer—the Valiant, sir. It was her maiden voyage.”
I nodded. No one said anything for a while as we decelerated and made our approach over Andros on our next orbit. Crow had played it badly, putting his ships too close to the kill zone and lining them all up at the same altitude. But I’d underestimated the intelligence of the enemy and hadn’t warned him about the possibility. I was supposed to be the resident expert on Macro behavior. It was my guess Crow would blame me for the losses.
I reflected on the trick they’d played upon us. In my experience, Macros tended to choose a path and follow it doggedly, even if it was disastrous, like a line of mindless ants marching into a flame. But twice now they’d varied their behavior and shifted tactics when something didn’t work the first time. Could it be the new dreadnaught had altered their behavioral patterns? Could it be a command ship of sorts? Maybe it made them more intelligent, more adaptable. It was a chilling thought, but the evidence was there.
“Admiral Crow is attempting to connect to you on a private channel, sir,” said the helmsman.
I nodded slowly. I knew my helmet was beeping at me. Without looking, I knew who was making that little green light blink. But didn’t answer the call.
“Ignore it,” I said.
I didn’t feel like listening to a tirade right now. I was doing a good enough job yelling at myself inside my own head. I should have just used all of Andros’ guns and knocked out the missiles on the first pass. It didn’t pay to be cagey when facing a swarm of nukes.
-17-
Sandra had greeted me with subdued enthusiasm when I clanked out of the landing pit. I’d come back to her, as promised. She took me home and promptly removed my armor. It needed a good spraying out. I’d sweated a lot over the last dozen hours.
She joined me in the shower without a word. I really wasn’t in the mood. My mind was whirling with tactics and should-have scenarios. But she was insistent and impossible to deny. We ended up on the bed, wet and dripping. There was still soap in my hair, one eye was closed from burning shampoo. I didn’t care, and neither did she. Our homecoming celebration lasted for quite a while.
The Macro battle fleet arrived the next day. Somehow, I managed to get a solid night’s sleep. At five a. m. we dressed and headed for headquarters. We reached the top floor, but no one called out a greeting. There was worry, if not outright fear, in every eye that met mine. I paused before opening the big doors at the end of the line of cubicles.
“I’m giving a new order,” I said. “All non-combatant personnel are to evacuate the island. That doesn’t include essential services like medical staff and repair people. But all you keyboard jockeys are to head down to the docks and float your butts north to the mainland.”
You would have thought I had announced a Christmas bonus. They were grabbing their stuff and packing their purses as fast as they could.
I was still calling it my office, but since Crow had had no time to build himself a new one, we were really sharing it. He was there when I walked in and he was in a predictably sour mood.
I stepped up to the desk without a word. The Macro fleet was at the north the edge of the screen, looking like a short-tailed comet. The Earth was on the south end of the table, with Andros island represented at a mass of green contacts. Crow had withdrawn everything to one central point—Fort Pierre.
“Tell me how you do these things, Kyle?” he asked.
I didn’t bother to look at him.
“Tell me how you take one ship on a suicide mission, but somehow end up surviving while killing three perfectly good crews.”
“Next time, don’t tell me we shouldn’t use the laser turrets.”
“Oh, so that’s it, eh?” Crow asked, crossing his arms and glaring at me. “I’m the asshole here again, right? Somehow, I’m always the one cleaning up your messes and doing it wrong. Terribly wrong. So wrong, in fact, that millions of innocents are liable to be—”
“Shut up, Jack,” Sandra said.
Crow heaved a sigh. But he did shut up. It was a blessing.
“On the upside,” I said, “we’ve bought something with the blood of those three crews. We’ve got a surprise in our pockets.”
“All right,” Crow said. “How are we going to capitalize on it?”
“How long have we got?” I asked.
“About seven hours, sir,” Major Sarin said.
“Long enough,” I said. “First, let’s move to our emergency facilities.”
“Underground?” Crow asked. “Already?”
I looked at him. “You can stay up here if you like. I don’t want to learn about any more enemy surprises the hard way.”
Crow nodded and when we packed up to move eight stories down, he was the first one poking at the coffee and doughnuts. Normally the last man to show up for work, he was always first in line when food or personal safety was involved.
The headquarters building, like most of the major building at Fort Pierre, had a deep bunker underneath it. We’d built bunkers under Andros long ago. It wasn’t easy. Underground facilities on this island tended to fill up with water. Even with pumps going night and day to draw air down and pump water out, the bunkers were always dank. The older bunkers were built of concrete, and in those upper chambers the walls sweated and smelled faintly of mildew. Digging down deeper still we’d gotten smarter and used a nanite bubble inside the concrete. They were like a liner in a bucket. We shaped them the way we wanted and kept the bilge water and rot out.
The operational computer table down here wasn’t as big and luxurious as the one up in my office, but it was a lot less exposed and fully functional. Standing around it were Crow, Major Sarin and Sandra. I’d put everyone else upstairs into the effort of organizing the resistance on the ground. Kwon was a few floors above in this same command bunker with a platoon of marines in full battle suits. Major Barrera was at a remote location on the island, with orders to direct tactical fire. If this command post was knocked out, he was to take over operational command of the defense.