It took several hours, but we managed to follow the silver trail of nanites up to the surface. We met with various rescue troopers along the way. We never found anyone from the company Robinson had sent down here ahead of my group. I hoped they weren’t captured or lost and screaming down underneath us somewhere in the dark.
It was day outside, and the huge, red sun was glaring down on everything. My porthole-like goggles were blacked out due to the autoshading effect. As soon as I came out of the tunnel and walked to the perimeter of the camp, I was greeted by a smaller marine in a suit. As I got closer, I saw the feminine form through the bulky shape of the suit.
“Captain Sarin?” I said.
She walked up to me and took a swing at me. Her fist came up with shocking speed. I was surprised, but not enough to let her land the punch. I caught her wrist. Her other hand came up next, and I caught that one too.
“You bastard!” she breathed.
“I didn’t know you cared so much, Captain Sarin,” I said, grunting as I struggled with her. I watched her boots closely. She looked as if she might kick me, and I was all out of hands.
“It’s me, Sandra, you idiot,” she said. She wrenched her hands away from me, breaking the grip I had on her wrists.
“I know,” I said. I sensed this was a bad time to laugh.
Sandra took two steps away, turned her back on me and hugged herself with her arms. I stood behind her, wondering if I should keep walking into the base. I needed a shower. Men tramped by us out of the tunnels in a steady stream, tired but amused. They stared and slapped one another, pointing out the scene to anyone who might have missed the action. There wasn’t much privacy on an extra-solar expedition like this.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“You snuck out on me, that’s what.”
“I’ve got responsibilities. You have to understand you can’t come first. Not out here,” I said. I started walking then, right past her. I entered the camp, squeezing between two bricks. There was a pool of shade there and the cool gloom of the spot felt momentarily good.
“Where are you going?” asked Sandra from behind me. I realized she had followed me.
“I need a shower,” I said.
“What are you going to do after that?”
“Count our dead. Plan our next battle.”
“Do you need any company in that shower?”
I thought about it. I didn’t look at her. “I don’t know. It’s a pretty small shower.”
Sandra kicked me then, in the rear. I laughed finally, reached back and grabbed her boot. Sandra was good with a gun and okay with a knife, but she wasn’t so good at hand-to-hand. I levered her up and over. She did a flip and landed hard on her face in the dirt. I knew that fall had to hurt, nanites or not. A falling body sped up much more rapidly on Helios. The planet’s gravity had a way of grabbing you and slamming you down when you fell. Tripping and falling on your face felt like you’d jumped off a roof. I helped her up, still laughing.
“Get your hands off me,” she growled.
I thought about letting her fall on her face again, but didn’t want to push things too far. I probably already had.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“You mean, why did I let you kick me in the ass?”
“No, I mean—” she broke off. “I was just so worried, Kyle. I hate the feeling—you know that. You snuck out on me. You should have told me you were going to go fight Worms at the bottom of some hole. For hours, I thought you were dead. Did you know that? For hours.”
“I thought I was dead, too,” I said.
Sandra trudged beside me, brooding. I was relieved when she stopped talking and didn’t give me a longer lecture. That was one thing about her I appreciated. She was a very physical girl. If you pissed her off, she didn’t make a speech—but you might have to duck.
“If you ever flip me again, you’ll wake up without any hair,” she said.
“Better count your fingers first. I bite.”
When we got back to the command brick and to our shared quarters, I stripped down and climbed into the shower cubicle. It was one of the few units in the entire base that wasn’t publicly shared. Rank had its privileges.
About half-way through, when the cubicle was nicely steamed-up, Sandra joined me. She didn’t talk at all. Her body was firm and insistent. The cubicle was really too small for that sort of thing—but we made do.
-49-
I spent the next two of Helios’ day-night cycles working with the factories. They were fully set up now in the midst of the base. I scripted them to produce new, large-system components. Starting with the base design of a hovertank, I made many alterations. My plan was to mimic the drilling-sled structure of the Worm-machines. These new drilling tanks would be long and cylindrical. They would have their lasers at the nose, with a very short range, high-powered beam unit.
The required systems list was kept to a minimum. They needed grav units and reactors, of course, just to be able to move. Normally, all of my Nano machines had a rigid external shell. These machines would be different. In order to scoot through rock and soft earth freely, they would have a more flesh-like exterior. They would be able squeeze through tight spots of hard rock—much like a native Worm. The body contours and flexibility were provided by balloon-like masses of nanites. I worked with chains of nanites, forming a bubble-like skin that was flexible and gave to the touch. If you pressed too deeply or suddenly, however, the skin would snap taut, becoming rigid. In the case of a cave-in, they would not pop like soap bubbles. They would turn hard like turtle shells, protecting my marines.
Captain Sarin interrupted my scripting and testing as dawn rose on the third ‘day’.
“Sir? The Macros are calling. I think they want to talk to you.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “Patch them through.”
“Can we listen in?” she asked.
“Be my guest.”
“Patching.”
I waited for a dozen seconds. “Identify yourself.”
“This is Kyle Riggs, commander of allied Earth forces,” I said.
“You have exceeded your allotted mission time.”
I raised my eyebrows. This was news to me. “We were not given a specific mission time-constraint.”
“That is irrelevant. You have exceeded your allotted mission time.”
I sighed. Snide comments churned in my head. I pushed them aside. Getting snotty with the Macros never helped anything. “We request aid,” I said, “to help us get on schedule.”
“Specify.”
“Use your ground-bombardment cannons to reduce the enemy stronghold to a crater.”
“Salvo reserves are at minimal levels. Enemy mound-shell is prohibitively resistant. Request denied.”
My mind echoed the words: enemy mound-shell. Interesting. Equally interesting, the Macros must have limits to their firepower and supplies, just like everyone else. The only bad news was they had apparently grown tired of watching us sit in our base and defend against Worm assaults.
“We will attack in sixteen local days,” I said.
“Unacceptable. You have exceeded your allotted mission time.”
“Yeah, I got that. We request a time-extension.”
“Granted. You must attack within two local days.”
I thought about that. Eighteen hours? I tapped at my computer slate. I wasn’t sure I’d have a single drilling machine ready by then. “I’m not sure we can do it so soon. Explain the consequences of a failure to comply.”