I chuckled. “Some think so.”
“We need our commander at the command brick, on the boards, coordinating all this.”
I shook my head. “There isn’t anything to coordinate. There is no firepower to back up the assault, no more ships. There won’t be a second wave. How can I second-guess the ground commander on a mission like this? Whoever stays in this hold will be watching and providing some sensor data-that’s it.”
“I still think you’re crazy.”
“You’re still right. You want to come with me on my ship?”
“No,” Kwon said. “But I’ll do it anyway. That way, when they blow you out of space I can take command.”
I grinned. “For the good of the Force?”
“Right, sir. Can I ask more questions?”
“Talk to me, Captain.”
“How do we get back?” he asked.
I stared at him. I opened my mouth to say: the Macros will come pick us up. But I stopped myself. I had no indication from Macro Command they would do anything to retrieve us. They had only shown concerns for such issues when we left the Worm planet. We had our mission parameters. We were to take the enemy satellite. But that was all we knew about the Macro plans.
I frowned at him. “Hopefully,” I said, “the Macro ships will park in orbit around this world and we will be allowed to fly back to them.”
“I hope so too, sir. About the enemy, do we kill them all or what?”
I nodded, I’d thought of this one. “We’ll kill as many as we have to, then get them to surrender.”
“What if they won’t? Could get bloody.”
“I know, but any beaten force eventually-”
Kwon interrupted me, which was uncharacteristic for him. “They have nowhere to retreat. Would you surrender to aliens or fight to the last? Maybe they don’t know about surrender and mercy.”
I didn’t like where he was going. He wanted to know if he had permission to slaughter an entire population. We hadn’t even met these people, and we were planning their massacre. The entire conversation had a surreal feel to it. We were the first humans to come to this star system, and we would be remembered as vicious invaders. What did that mean for the future? Would we be reviled millennia from now due to an incident I presided over today? I would have rubbed at my neck, but with my armor on, I couldn’t barely feel the squeeze of my hand.
“We will have to play it by ear. If I don’t make it, you will take command. You will do as you think best.”
Kwon didn’t look happy with those orders. I understood. Big decisions were painful ones. There was no clear policy we could follow right now. We might be forced to destroy the creatures on the space station to survive. We might all die in space just getting there. Or, they might all bow down and beg for mercy. We really didn’t know, and the unknown was hard to take.
“I heard about your plan for the Macros,” Kwon said, grinning at me.
I looked at him sharply. For a second, I thought maybe he was making a joke. He knew me too well, and maybe he knew I had nothing.
“You always have a plan, Riggs,” he said, honking with laughter. “They might not always work, but you always have a trick!”
I smiled tightly and nodded. I always had something, you could ask anyone and they would confirm it. I only wished it was true this time. I left him to his preparations and walked up the curving deck of the hold. My boots didn’t clank upon the deck, because we were in vacuum and there was no air to carry the sound waves to my ears. I heard only a muffled click that came up through my suit to my helmet as I took each step.
I thought about the Macro ships. Most of them were staying away from us, and away from the satellites. It seemed clear they had some kind of deal with the aliens in their orbital structures. They probably had agreed not to come within weapons range of the stations. That would explain the wide berth they gave them. Through Macro logic, however, they’d decided we weren’t part of the equation. We weren’t exactly Macro forces, so if they threw us at a space station and we took it out, they hadn’t violated their deal.
What that meant tactically was the Macro ships would not be too close to the station while we fought. They would not lend us fire support. We were on our own. I had no idea if we would survive this assault, but if we did, they would most likely keep using us on other missions. Until we were all dead.
It was impossible not to think of turning on our masters in this situation. I had done some planning, of course. These boarding systems I’d put together would serve equally well to attack Macros. I thought we could do it-at least that we had enough firepower to take the invasion ship and the cruiser, if need be. But there would be losses, especially against the cruiser.
Hypothetically, I considered the situation we’d be in if I did take control of the ships and somehow figured out how to fly them. Big ‘ifs’. In such a case, we would have to run. We couldn’t fight all the ships in the system. There were four cruisers in this system that we’d spotted in addition to our escort, and more could be quietly orbiting somewhere or sitting on a moon, repairing or mining. They would certainly come at us and take us down.
I found myself standing in front of the row of dark bricks that held our factory units. Each one contained one of the strange, programmable duplicating machines. We had only lost one factory brick since the start of the campaign. This was largely due to my prioritization of defense. The factories were the most critical assets we had.
I tapped out an entry code and stepped into the nearest of the factories. It had been churning out a guidance system for a new assault ship. If we had been given another week, I could have doubled the number of assault ships in our arsenal. I doubted we would be given more than another hour before we were called upon to attack, however. The Macros were fanatically punctual.
I stared at the strange machine. We still didn’t understand it, nor did we even know who had built the original. We knew what it took to create one, but only the machines themselves could reproduce more factories. It was as if I were a primitive biologist from the early renaissance period, examining the human body and wondering how it worked. Figuring these things out completely would probably take Earth’s scientists centuries.
I decided to change the program. They’d finished the battle suits now, and we had all the assault ships we could use. What I did need was a way of stopping Macro cruisers from destroying my forces-if we were to turn on them. I had by no means made that decision yet, but if nothing else, if we were down to our last handful of troops we could at least die well. We could blow up this ship, if nothing else.
Explosives? I recalled the mines the Worms had used so effectively, destroying several cruisers. Maybe if we could trail a few out behind us we could get rid of a Macro cruiser.
I set to work, and soon had a new design that I hoped would do the trick. We didn’t have enough radioactives for big charges. The mines could hardly deliver more than a kiloton yield each. But with a tiny brainbox, some magnetic sensors and a mini propulsion system that was only enough to push a magnetic boot through space. I ordered one factory to produce as many as it could.
What seemed like moments later, a hammering came at the door. Kwon appeared in the airlock. I told the factory unit to end our programming session and continue the manufacturing.
“Sir?” said Kwon, poking his blocky helmet into the room.
“Yes, what is it, Kwon?”
“Time to launch, sir. The Macros-they are ordering us to jump out the big doors.”
“Oh, uh-” I said, stunned to hear so much time had passed. “Why didn’t someone call me?”
Kwon pointed to my helmet. I’d taken it off, and switched off my suit radio. The chatter made it hard to think.
“Right,” I said. “Get to your assault ship. I’ll be right there. We launch in five.”
He vanished, and I turned back to the factory. I ordered it to group-link all the factories. They were to make more mines and battle suits in my absence. I didn’t even know how many they could make in the amount of time we had, but I figured it should be enough. I didn’t even know if I was going to use the new equipment or not.