We only had a few hovertanks left. More than half my marines were dead. Most were probably inside some Worm’s belly by now back on Helios. I thought about how things would have gone if we had to do the Helios campaign over again today, with my current forces. As closely as I could figure, we would have been overwhelmed and wiped out in the first counter-assault the Worms launched. My troops could never have completed the mission now, not in our current state. But here we were with fresh, suicidal orders.
In short…we were screwed.
2
After a bit of hand-waving to quiet my excited staff, I opened the link to Macro Command again. Now wasn’t the time to argue with them. Now was the time to figure out what they had in store for us-or at least as much as the Macros felt like telling me.
“Macro Command,” I said in an officious voice. “In order to achieve maximum effectiveness, my ground forces require intel on our target enemy.”
“Enemy species is biotic. Enemy species is space-faring. Enemy species must be eradicated from target system.”
I sighed. It all sounded familiar. They were taking us to smash another planet full of organic life forms like ourselves. My people were too shocked to make intelligible sounds. Some shook their heads and covered their faces with their hands. Most stared into nothingness.
“We need to know more about the nature of the target,” I said. “In order to achieve maximum effectiveness. Tell us about the target planet.”
“No planet in the system is to be targeted. Enemy biotics reside in stationary artificial structures in space.”
I nodded, thinking hard. A null-gravity fight. It sounded like there were several of these structures. Space stations? Artificial habitats?
A light hand touched my elbow. I looked down and saw Captain Sarin’s pretty, frightened eyes looking back up at me. “Sir, you can’t be considering going through with this, can you?” she asked in a whisper. “We aren’t ready to fight again.”
“I’m learning all I can, while I can. Get back to your post, Captain.”
Her hand jerked away from my arm and she turned her face back to the big screen. Her mouth was a small, tight line. I figured she would have plenty of time to get over it later-or we’d be dead, and it wouldn’t matter anyway.
“Macro Command, confirm my assumption: the target enemy species is the Worms, the same species we faced on our first mission.”
“Assertion incorrect.”
Great, I thought. Where did that leave us? We would be fighting somebody else, somebody who lived in space habitats of some kind rather than on planets. In order to live in space, the species had to have good tech. And they would be of a race we hadn’t seen. It did not leave us much to go on.
We spent a few days madly getting organized. Before, I’d had the men working, but not with the urgency of an expected mission on the horizon. Now we were moving like we meant business. Suits and kits were repaired by the factories first. Once I had every marine’s basic needs covered, I set the factories to rebuilding a new set of brainboxes and laser turrets. The men themselves were urged to heal up quickly. The moment they were out of bed, I had them exercising and working in the hold. The bricks were finally reorganized and stacked properly. They no longer resembled a pile of sticks. They now looked like an official Star Force base-but smaller than it used to be.
“New contact sir,” Captain Sarin said, calling me from the bridge.
“On my way,” I said. I raced up there, dropping everything I was working on and leaving it up to Kwon to finish the work in the hold.
“What’s happening?” I asked Sarin as I came up to the console.
Captain Sarin had her long dark hair out of the usual tight bun she kept it in. Her hair was too long for a marine, but I wasn’t complaining. She looked much more womanly today, but I tried not to notice her too much. She worked our new command console with quick, deft motions. She pointed at the big screen. I looked down and immediately saw why she had brought me in. We were approaching another ring in space. A new contact had appeared on the big table. It appeared as a tiny, flickering oval shape on our projection of the star system. I opened a channel to the Macros immediately.
“Macro Command,” I said. “We are approaching a ring. Will it take us directly to the enemy system?”
“Yes.”
I began to feel a little of the panic the rest of my people were feeling. I keyed off the connection to the Macros. “Get everyone to their battle stations. For all we know, we are going in hot. There might be mines waiting for us-like the last time we jumped.”
My staff was jolted into activity. Captain Sarin dialed up the flashers and gave the order for every marine to head for their assigned combat station. I heard clanking magnetic boots running over the roof of the brick we were in. I eyed the ring. It was coming up fast. I doubted we had more than a minute left before we jumped into God knew what.
“Macro Command,” I said. “We request a delay.”
“Request denied,” said the Macro synthesized voice with utterly maddening calm.
“We require time to prepare for null-gravity combat,” I said. “We are not prepared for that type of mission. We must reconfigure.”
“Request denied. Biotic Rigs has assured Macro Command the ground forces are functional.”
“We are functional, but in the absence of intel we had assumed we would be fighting in a similar environment. We require time to reconfigure our weaponry.”
“Request denied,” said the voice, sounding positively cheery.
We all eyed the looming ring with fear. Like most of the rings we’d met in space it was about three miles in diameter. I wondered if the ancient race that had built this mysterious transportation system had ever flown anything through one of these rings that was big enough to fill it. A spacecraft three miles across? The thought was daunting.
When we’d first jumped into the Helios system, we’d hit a long row of mines. The Macros had lost five out of six cruisers just getting to the target world. Now, we were down to one cruiser, and I figured that if the enemy had any kind of an effective defense we might well be destroyed before we could get out of the transport ship.
“We will be less than one hundred percent effective,” I said.
“Effectiveness rating estimate required.”
I thought hard. I could say one percent, but I didn’t want to blow it and make them think we were bullshitting them. I recalled something I’d learned from a software project leader: never give a nice, even number. Odd-sounding estimates were far more believable.
“Uh…” I said. Official-sounding bullshit took time to come up with. “We are at twenty-nine percent effectiveness against a null-gravity target. We need time to reconfigure to achieve maximum effectiveness.”
There was one of those several-second delays during which the ring loomed closer. We couldn’t see the edges of the ring all at once now with our visual sensors. Without being told, my staff switched over to wireframe and the entire scene was laid out. We were even closer than I had thought. I could only hope the artificial neurons of the Macros were firing in our direction.
“Schedule reset. Priority reset.”
What the hell did that mean? We all turned our eyes to the screen for a clue. We felt a shudder and a slight crosswise sensation of movement. The ring, which had been dead ahead, slid slowly to one side.
“We are braking and turning away, sir,” said Captain Sarin.
I could hear the elation in her voice. I smiled at her, and she smiled back. We were standing at death’s door, but we hadn’t knocked and barged inside yet. That was all I had to do to make my staff happy again: keep them alive for a few more hours.