“This fleet unit will perform a strategic withdrawal in two local days.”
“Clarification of your statement is required: You will pick us up and retreat from the system in two days.”
“Negative. Failed experimental ground forces will be left in place.”
I felt cold inside. Helios forever? “Tell me when you will return to pick us up.”
“Target worlds are placed upon a priority-queue. When this target returns to the head of the queue, Macro fleet units will return.”
“Specify the time span.”
“Unknown.”
I was breathing faster. I couldn’t help it. ‘Unknown’ sounded like it could be a very long time indeed. “We will attack within two local days.”
“Accepted,” said the sexless Macro voice.
“How will you know we have achieved our objective?”
“Macro Command must be linked to the goal point.”
I frowned, not quite sure what to make of their requirement. “You want us to contact you when we reach the center of the mountain?”
“Macro Command must be linked to the goal point.”
I grunted, somehow I’d missed their point. They wanted to be connected to the goal point. Well, the only way I could think of would be to drag a nanite strand down there with me. Radio wasn’t going to penetrate miles of rock. “We’ll take a nanite strand with us into the mountain. When we reach the goal point, we will make contact.”
“Accepted. Session terminated.”
The channel closed and I was left staring at my computer slate. I tapped at it quickly, pausing to think now and then.
Another incoming channel request beeped. It was Major Robinson—he and the entire command post staff had been listening in. I tapped at a screen and the channel opened.
“Sir,” Robinson said, sounding jittery. “We can’t possibly be ready in eighteen hours.”
“We’ll be ready, Major,” I said.
“How, sir?”
“We’ll use the existing hovertanks. We’ll refocus the existing heavy lasers, turning them into new, nosecone drilling-units. Underneath, these planned drilling-sleds use the same components as the hovertanks.”
“Underground hovertanks, sir?” asked Robinson, sounding incredulous.
“You’re right. It is a weak-sounding name. Let’s call them drill-tanks. I like the way that rings.”
“Let’s suppose for a second we can build these things—and that they work,” he said. “How can so few of them carry enough men down into the tunnels?” he asked.
“We’ll puff the nanite skins up to carry every man we can. When we get to the mountain, we’ll dump the men out and let them follow the drill-tanks into the tunnels on foot.”
Robinson was silent for a few seconds. “That will pretty much leave the base defenseless, sir.”
“Hopefully,” I said, “the Worms will try to stop our attack, rather than counterpunch against our base.”
“Do you really think the Macros would pull out and leave us here? Is that their style, to just give up and run? Maybe it’s all a bluff, sir.”
“In my experience Major, computers rarely bluff,” I told him. “Besides, there is more at stake here in any case.”
“How so?”
“What if that priority-queue includes Earth as a target? Our failure may well constitute a breach of our arrangement with the Macros, in their eyes. Perhaps we will have outlived our usefulness in such a case. Earth might be reclassified as a target again.”
“May I state for the record that I’m less than satisfied with your plan, sir?” he asked.
“Your objection is logged and filed, Major Robinson,” I told him in my most officious voice. “Riggs out.”
The next eighteen hours went by quickly. In the end, we had eleven ungainly-looking drill-tanks ready to roll when the deadline arrived. We’d unshipped with twenty hovertanks, but seven had been lost in the first Worm attack.
The last two hovertanks I’d left unaltered. They still carried their long range weaponry. They had the mission of escorting my redesigned taskforce to the mountain. I was worried about getting hit on the way to the target. The two hovertanks, still carrying their long-range heavy beam turrets, could protect us as we skimmed over the surface of Helios, exposed. Afterward, they would return to base-defense duty.
I had bloated each machine to hold as many troops as possible, but we could only take six hundred troops with us. When we reached the mountain and folded the tanks down to fit into the tunnels, the marines would have to jog after the tanks. The balance of our infantry forces would stay behind and garrison the base. I set their factories to spilling out new, stationary beam turrets of the sort we had on Andros. Given enough time, they could build themselves an impregnable defense.
With so many men aboard the drill-tanks, the machines whined and growled, straining to lift the weight. Occasionally, they touched down and scraped over the surface. The high gravity caused the tail section of each vehicle to drag and bang over spots in the landscape that thrust up. Rocky outcroppings and bulbous growths were scarred and pitted as we passed over them.
We approached the Worm stronghold with sensor arrays fully active and pinging. I half-expected to see the ground beneath us churn and collapse, a thousand white-skinned Worms revealed and seething. It didn’t happen. They watched and waited, biding their time. I could feel their alien senses tracking us.
As we approached their stronghold, I studied the mountain. The blackened craters that had scarred the rocky walls where the Macros had bombarded them seemed faded. I wondered about that. There hadn’t been any noticeable precipitation. No snow, rain or sleet. What had cleansed the black marks off these mountains? The damaged areas had been huge. I zoomed in with my goggles, but the mystery wasn’t solved. I didn’t see any worms up there, smoothing over the surface. And yet the surface had changed. I thought about what the Macros had called the mountain’s surface: mound-shell? What did that mean, exactly? I could have asked them, but I had been too busy trying to negotiate a way for my marines and my entire species to survive. When I talked to the Macros, I always felt it was best to keep the conversations as brief as possible. That way, the odds I would screw up horribly were reduced.
I felt the heavy atmosphere hitting me as I rode in the open back of an altered hovertank. In order to maximize seating, my drill-tanks had been opened up like yawning clamshells. We’d spread the nanite skins to their limits to fill them with troops. This left everyone open to the thick gusts of Helios. The planet’s high-pressure atmosphere resisted our passage more than it naturally would have on Earth, just as slogging through water was harder than walking through air. Driving at fifty miles an hour, the wind resistance was harsh and buffeting. It roared and tore at my suit with clawing, invisible fingers.
I’d ordered the pilots to take a curved route to our destination. In case the Worms had dug massive tank-traps beneath the surface, the indirect approach should circumvent them. I was wary of taking expected paths after my experience with enemy tactics underground.
As we drove on toward the mountain and it loomed ever larger, until it dwarfed the land like an endless wall of dark stone, I began to doubt the wisdom of my attack. We had superior technology. We had just taken the initiative by launching this assault. But once we entered their domain I thought the advantages shifted to their side.
I tried to think of an alternative, but could not. And so we kept going, heading for the looming wall of rock on a wide, curving path. The mountain fortress had more than one cavernous entrance. We did not head toward the largest entrance in sight, but rather one that seemed out of the way. Tactically, this might mean the entrance didn’t lead to a tunnel that would take us all the way into the heart of the stronghold. I figured if we hit a dead-end, we would employ our drill-tanks and continue that way.