He stared at me for a second. “The ships all left, sir. They didn’t come back. Kwon put the base on high alert.”
“Good. The ships won’t be back. Let’s keep a sharp eye out for aircraft.”
“Aircraft?”
“If they are going to hit us right away, they will do it with choppers coming in from ships offshore, I would figure.”
“Hit us, sir? Who?”
“Maybe nobody,” I said, deciding I’d just started a rumor by talking too much. “Things are little odd right now, Corporal.”
“Yes sir.”
“Contact me if there are any sightings. I’ll be working inside with the—the units.”
“Yes sir.”
We drove away, and Robinson smirked at me. “Nervous?”
“About what?”
“You didn’t want to tell him what might be coming. You don’t want him to think about what side he’s on too closely, do you?”
I stared at him as we came to a halt in front of a steel building. It splashed silver light into our eyes.
“Just remember, Robinson,” I said, “my body can take a bullet much better than yours can. When the fireworks start… I suggest you duck.”
-5-
I walked into the steel building, leaving Robinson in the Hummer. He could follow me, or not. I was through trying to convince him, it was time he convinced himself—one way or the other.
There was an operator inside the shed, a marine who slouched in his chair and tapped at a tablet computer.
“Those are forbidden now, marine,” I barked at him.
“Sir?”
“The tablet. What are you doing with that thing?”
He looked baffled and guilty all at once. “Um, I’m reading a book, sir.”
I snatched it away from him. There were cartoon plants on the screen. A little farmer icon plowed a virtual field. I snorted. “I can see you are an avid reader.”
He reached for the tablet and I slapped his hand away. I didn’t want anyone emailing the outside world, or phoning in. I needed time.
“This computer is contraband now, until further notice. Now, go report to Sergeant Kwon for patrol duty.”
He stared at me, eyeing his tablet in dismay.
“Well?” I roared. “That was an order, marine! Move out! I’ll watch the duplication machine. I have work to do.”
He exited in a hurry. I turned back to the tablet, rubbing at the screen. These things always needed a cleaning. It looked like I’d cracked the screen when I snatched it away from him. Too bad.
I looked around the room. There were pallets of supplies. Fortunately, I’d insisted we maintain a stockpile of raw materials to keep the machines busy. Without the Nano ships as transports, I’d have to make do with what I had on hand.
The factory was a bit bigger than the ones the Nano ships had aboard for system repairs. There was a central spheroid about twelve feet in diameter that sat in the middle of the shed. To me, it had always resembled an old-fashioned steel kettle, but with humps and curves to it that hinted the machine was full of unimaginable components. The strangely twisting internals made me think of a man’s guts pressing out against a thin, metal skin. Tubes ran upward from the top of the spheroid to the roof of the shed where the materials intakes were. An output port was on the side, which could yawn open or squeeze closed like a metal orifice.
Currently, the machine was making more reactor packs for infantry use. We had enough of those, so I stopped the machine. Before I started reprogramming it, I took stock of the supplies. I sighed, figuring out how to get the most out of the materials I had was going to take a while.
The door creaked and slammed behind me. I listened to the tread, and it didn’t sound like the marine who I’d chased out. The footsteps weren’t heavy enough. Nanotized troops weighed more and carried a very heavy set of gear. You could actually hear the flooring groan beneath their feet.
“Robinson?” I asked without turning around, “what do you want?”
He stopped and stood there for a few seconds. I turned and looked at him. His mouth opened, closed, then opened again. I lost interest and went back to counting titanium ingots. We had less than six hundred of them. I sighed. It would have to do.
“Colonel?” said Robinson, clearly distraught.
I didn’t even bother to look at him. His voice changed suddenly. There was new steel in it. Sometimes, getting ignored stiffened a man’s spine.
“Sir, please look at me.”
“Sir, is it?” I asked, turning to face him.
“Yes. I’ve thought about what you said. I’ve been working here for months, and I know you might be right. I—I want to rejoin Star Force, sir. I’ll take the nanite injections. I’ll sign on as a Major.”
I smiled. It was a small thing, just a tweak of the lips, but it was there. I walked to him and looked him in the eye. I held out my hand and we shook. I was careful not to crush his hand.
“I knew you would make the right choice, Robinson,” I lied. “Now, walk two doors down. They have a chair in there. I’ll send a man to—to help you strap in.”
He went pale, but he nodded and left with a confident stride. I hoped he wasn’t a screamer, that would be distracting and I needed to think in order to reprogram these machines. I also hoped he wasn’t the kind who would dig at his face. That would be worse. I needed him fully functional and every hour counted.
“Robinson?” I called after him.
“Sir?”
“It’s like a bad trip to the dentist. Just keep thinking that it will all be over in a few minutes.”
“Yes sir,” he said.
As he left I thought he looked a little green. Maybe he didn’t like dentists.
I went back to my inventory. I wasn’t sure, but I figured I had enough rare metals and trace elements to do what I wanted. The common, easy stuff like nickel, boron, silicon lubricants and the like I wasn’t worried about. We had warehouses of that junk. It was the rare earths like strontium, palladium, samarium and thallium that worried me. Even our plutonium stocks, although adequate, were smaller than I had hoped.
I brought up a spreadsheet on the tablet and did some quick numbers, tapping on the screen. This was going to take some thinking. I needed a new kind of ship, and I had to have it on the cheap. It had to be effective, impressive and easy to build. I rubbed my face and nodded to myself. I thought I had it.
“Duplication unit,” I said, addressing the machine that sat silently before me. “Respond.”
“Unit Fourteen responding.”
I’d taught them to do that. It was too hard to give them all names, so they had numbers. I’d set them up with standing orders to respond to a general name, and their specific number. “Okay Fourteen. Engage group-link.”
“Group-link engaged.”
“Halt all production and preprocessing steps. If possible, recycle base materials.”
“Transmitting. Units responding. Units Six, Seventeen and Thirty-Five are unable to comply with the shutdown order.”
“That’s okay. Any unit that can’t complete the orders I’m giving yet should queue them up until such a time as they can be followed.”
Right now, as I watched, the thrumming stopped on Unit Fourteen. Across the camp, all these little factories were shutting down and switching into idle mode. Those that were in the midst of processing a subcomponent would break it down and eject the raw materials. It was wasteful, but I didn’t need any more heavy beamers right now. What I needed were ships, and fast.
“New program workspace,” I said, telling it to prepare for a new program. “Initiate.”
“Initiated,” said Fourteen. “Units responding. Units Six, Thirty-Five—”
“I know, I know, they are unable to comply. Halt report,” I said. I rubbed my temples. Dealing with the factories was considerably less fun than dealing with the Alamo had been. They had less capacity for cognition, and they didn’t know much beyond how to perform innate operations. You couldn’t get an answer out of them about the Nanos, or their creators, or anything off-topic like that. I supposed they had fewer nanites chaining-up to form their neural nets. They knew what they knew, and that was it.