Suddenly, seeing the General’s dark, troubled eyes, I knew the truth. Washington wanted the factories secured now. They wanted them all. They were going to move even faster than I had anticipated. They were going to move preemptively, before any other power on Earth got smart and had time to think about it and make their own move. Probably, there were assets out there in the ocean around my island paradise, sliding quietly into position. Hadn’t the General just said something about subs? Had that been a hint I’d been too dumb to pick up on? Maybe they’d been out there for months, waiting patiently for the right moment to move in.
I thought of the assassin, Esmeralda. I no longer believed she’d been a rogue, or a mistake. She’d been a probe, a feint. She had managed to maintain—what did the politicians call it? Plausible deniability... but now I knew the truth.
I nodded to Kerr. “I understand fully, General. Well, do what you can to help me out, if you think that’s in the world’s best interest.”
Kerr took another deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke again, it was in a lower tone of voice. “Why don’t you come in with me, Kyle?” he asked.
“Sir?”
“There’s no need for you to get caught up in all this. You are a hero back home, you know. Come on home with me. No one here will think less of you. Let me take you back to Washington to plead your case. Let me work you back into the program, in a new, official capacity. The entire planet owes you that much. More importantly, we could really use your help.”
“But not independently. Not on my terms,” I said.
He shook his head slowly.
“Thanks for the offer—and I mean that. I’ll think about it, sir. I’ll be in touch.”
The General took a few steps toward the west, where the sun was beginning to set out over the sea. “Okay. I’m not going to argue with you. But don’t think too long, Kyle.”
I followed his eyes toward the orange ball of the sun. Tonight then, I thought suddenly. They’ll come tonight.
My heart accelerated in my chest. I had no time to lose. I had no time at all.
“I’ve got to get back to work, General. Thanks for the visit,” I said, and I walked back toward Shed Fourteen. It was time for a change of orders.
I could feel Kerr’s eyes on my back as I left him there on the sand. “Don’t do anything stupid, Riggs!” he shouted after me. “Don’t get yourself killed for nothing!”
“I don’t die easily, sir!” I shouted back over my shoulder.
I slammed the shed door and leaned back against it. In front of me was Unit Fourteen and the marine I’d chewed out earlier. He was working his tablet again, flicking at it. He startled as I came in and he put it down. I wondered briefly what game he’d been playing this time.
“Out,” I said.
“Sir?”
“Hit the lines. Full gear. Get the entire platoon buttoned up and on alert. I want half the garrison patrolling the forest a hundred meters out. Have Kwon contact me for details.”
He stood up, looking stunned. “Um, what’s going on, sir?”
“We’re about to be attacked, soldier. Do you want a memo, or are you going to get your butt into your hazard suit and charge your beamer?”
“Yes sir!” he shouted, and rushed out. He straight-armed the door on the way. It popped open so hard it wouldn’t quite close right after that. I ignored him and the rest of the camp, which quickly became noisy as my orders were relayed.
“Unit Fourteen, activate group-link.”
“Group-link active,” Fourteen responded.
I stood there for a few seconds, thinking hard. I had to assume I had only a few hours left. They wouldn’t nuke us. They wouldn’t even dare use conventional bombs. The whole point was to steal the factories intact, not to blow them up. How would they do it? Commandos, most likely. Perhaps the subs were surfacing and they were unloading into the jungle right now. Maybe choppers were carrying them in from the sea. Maybe they were already out there in the trees, forming up at prearranged gathering points.
Snipers, I thought suddenly. High-velocity rounds. A few dozen of them could do it. I wasn’t sure if a sniper round would go through a nanite-coated skull, but nanites or not, my men couldn’t fight with their brains dented in.
I stared at Fourteen and licked my lips. What the hell could I build in a few hours that would stop them?
-7-
Problem-solving. Mini-maxing. I put my fists to my temples and pressed there, and it felt good. I had been trained for this sort of thing—programming under pressure. I had to do the most with what I had.
I thought about it. I couldn’t produce a full ship, but maybe I could produce something that would do the job. Ideas began populating my mind.
I had a wide open slate. With Nanites building the ‘hull’ of any structure in any shape I wanted, I could use them like clay to construct anything, up to at least the size of the shed I was standing in. Probably, I could make something a lot bigger than that. I had plenty of nanites, after all. For nearly half an hour, the factories had been churning out bucket-loads of them. We also kept a reservoir of them in drums in the injection-room next door. That set me to wondering how Major Robinson was doing. I shrugged, not having time to coddle him right now. Hopefully, even if he was a bleeder, he’d passed out by now and the nanites were busily doing the repair work. If so, the worst was over for him. Tonight, he would learn about his new capabilities in action.
I decided to eliminate all non-essential systems first. The engines, scratch them. The arm? Forget it. No extra factories, either. I paused at that thought, however. Why not just make Fourteen here part of the system? Having a factory aboard the Nano ships had always been useful.
Next question, mobility. Did I need it? Was I building a tank, or a gun turret? There wasn’t enough time, I figured. Mobility was fantastic, making any force vastly more useful, but this was an emergency. If I produced a really cool tank one hour after they hit us, I had completely wasted the effort.
“A gun turret, then,” I said aloud. Fourteen didn’t respond.
“Fourteen, is the group-link still up?”
“Yes.”
“How many factory units will it take to build a single ship’s laser in one hour.”
“Insufficient data provided for estimate.”
I took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. I reminded myself that the freaking machines were all churning out more nanites as I tried to rewrite the script, so they weren’t completely wasting their time. “Fourteen, assume when I ask for timing estimates, that precision does not need to be closer than one tenth of an hour. Also assume that all components will be supplied.”
“Parameters assigned,” said Fourteen. Its voice was different than the Alamo’s had been. The ship had had a voice I thought of as feminine, but this machine spoke with a high-pitched male voice. As if I was talking to a jockey.
“Now, how many factory units will it take to complete a single ship’s laser in one hour.”
“Insufficient data provided for estimate.”
“Okay, you mental giant. What data are you missing?”
“Assembly time of individual components incalculable.”
I thought about that. There were three pieces to each hand-held beamer: the reactor unit, the cable and the projector itself. If a thousand machines made a thousand pieces, they could probably do it in minutes, but we couldn’t assemble them all and the effort would be wasted. It was best to use the three component system, and not try to break that down further. I’d built so many backpack beam units, I had been planning purely in those terms. My question had been unfair. These machines didn’t deal well with open-ended hypotheticals.