“Good job, Major,” I said. “You are a big part of this. If we can make our flight path look natural, they are more likely to be convinced.”
“We’re being scanned, sir,” Major Sarin said suddenly. “Radar and laser-targeting.”
“By whom?” I asked.
“The Macro squadron. They are definitely looking us over.”
“Any incoming messages yet?”
“Not that I can determine.”
“Good, we’ll let it ride. If we approach at this pace, how long will we have until we are in range, Gorski?
“In range sir?”
“To fire upon the Macros.”
Gorski swallowed hard. “About ten hours, sir. If they hold still.”
Marvin’s cameras drifted from one face to the next. “Should I contact them now?” he asked.
“Not yet. We’ll let them call us first. We will only respond, not initiate communications. You are important now, Marvin. You need to imitate a Macro Command responding to another Macro Command that is calling.”
All of Marvin’s cameras were on me now, except for one that was keeping an eye on Sandra. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why not?” I snapped. I suddenly felt like beating on him myself.
“I’m only one unit. I do not possess the appropriate protocols or multitasking capacities to simulate an entire Macro crew.”
I thought about it and exposed my teeth in a grimace. He had a point, knowing what I did of Macro group-think. They were really a single mass-mind for command purposes. If we were really Macros, we would connect up to the rest of them as would a distributed computer system connected via a network. Back on Earth, I’d studied such projects, which involved the use of thousands of computers linked by the internet that would normally sit quietly at night. These machines were signed up by their owners to share their small amount of cpu power with all the others to form a vast computer system to solve large problems. Researchers working on things like the cure for cancer could avail themselves of this ready computer power when they needed it.
I’d suspected for some time the Macros operated on a similar principal. When it came to command decisions, there was no commander. Every Macro in the region offered up part of its brain to the rest and everyone shared in the effort to come to a single decision. At that point, they were effectively one computer. When they communicated, Macro Command was really all of them talking to me at once.
The problem facing me now was grim. We were in a Macro ship and knew how to send Macro signals. But we couldn’t pretend to be dozens of Macros machines. I only had Marvin. I supposed he might be able to pretend he was one Macro, but not a crowd of them.
I banged my fist on the metal table. That was another thing I liked about metal beads for screens. They didn’t break on you when you expressed your frustration.
“Okay,” I said, “we can’t bullshit them all the way. But we’ll still give it a try. Marvin, when they talk to us, tell me what they say. Listen in. We will transmit nothing back. We have a big hole in our snout. Most of the sensory systems were up there. They might just believe our ship’s transmitters are out. If we act appropriately, we can receive their instructions and appear to follow them.”
“That can’t work forever,” Gorski said suddenly. “Um, sorry sir, but once we get close, any normal Macro would be able to transmit ship-to-ship directly.”
I nodded. “You’re right about that. Marvin, what is the typical range of a Macro unit’s built-in transmitter?”
“Under normal electromagnetic conditions, it should be one to one hundred miles.”
I huffed. “That’s quite a variable range.”
He began to explain, but I shushed him. “Okay, I don’t care. In space, a thousand miles is short range. We’ll have to make our move before we get that close, or we will sound like a ship full of ghosts to them.”
“When you say ‘make our move’, do you mean what I think you mean, Colonel?” Gorski asked.
“Hell yeah,” I said. “You didn’t think we were up here to cooperate with the enemy, did you Gorski?”
49
We were less than a hundred thousand miles out from the Macros when they all turned in unison and fired up their engines. I braced myself, gritting my teeth and expecting an attack, but it didn’t happen. Instead, they formed a familiar triangular formation and began accelerating away from us.
“Binary instructions incoming,” Marvin said. “Macro Command instructs the damaged ship to join their formation at the fourth position.”
“What is the target, Marvin?” I asked.
“Earth Command,” Marvin said. “That appears to be their classification for the human base on Andros Island.” He seemed unconcerned, unlike everyone else onboard. We were all sweating hard.
“It looks like they’ve decided they now have the strength to take on Crow’s fleet,” Major Gorski said. “As the fourth cruiser to arrive, we’ve tipped some kind of balance.”
I stared, knowing he was right. I considered turning around and exiting. That would stop the enemy from making their move, but if I did that, they would know we were not a normal Macro cruiser. They might come after us and turn hostile. Worse, they could simply wait for more of their ships to enter the system and make their move then. We’d be forced to fight at that point against a strengthened, wiser enemy.
“Keep flying,” I ordered. “We’ll do as they say. Try to look like a Macro, everyone.”
The entire crew had their battle suits on by this time. In a way, we did look like small, bipedal Macros. We were all bulky armor and indicator lights. We looked as much like robots as we did humans in these suits. I wondered briefly if being full of nanites and covered in exoskeletal armor made us hybrids, rather than pure biotics. I tried to push these thoughts away. There would be time for philosophical meanderings later.
“Major Welter, slow us down a bit so we won’t join them until we reach lunar orbit. At that point, I want to ease into their formation. We’ll be the rear point of the diamond. Take your time about it, however. Make it look natural”
“I’m already working on it, sir,” he said. “It’s hard to get precision out of these controls.”
“I know it is, I tried it myself,” I said. “If anyone can do it, you can. Weapons check, Gorski?”
“We have all our missiles loaded into the tubes now,” Gorski responded. “The Macro controls are simple for me, all I have to do is push these three contacts and swirl my finger here-and the tubes will open.”
I nodded. At least he was on top of things. I knew how hard it was to gain command of a Macro system, so I appreciated everyone’s efforts. Even better, he had managed to gain fire control of the big belly turret on the bottom of the cruiser while we crossed the Alpha Centauri system.
“At least we won’t be flying into this battle unarmed,” I said. “Give me an external screen. Let’s see how the nanites are doing with reshaping our cruiser’s damaged section.”
Major Sarin carefully manipulated her computer. My tablet was chained to her screen, and I watched as the external cameras swiveled downward. The hull still looked damaged, just as it was supposed to. I was impressed. The blown out area below the nose of the ship was still there, but it was not as deep now. The crater on the underside of the ship now had a false bottom. The surface of this crater was really a millimeter-thick shell of nanites, but to a casual observer from a distance, they reflected radar or optical imagery with the correct signature. We still looked damaged, but our launch bay behind the nanite shell was pressurized and disguised.
An even better surprise awaited the enemy behind that shell of nanites: several hundred marines all outfitted with our new exoskeletal armor and riding independent invasion dishes. I could order the false hull of nanites to dissolve and send them roaring out to battle in seconds. I didn’t relish taking on three ships, however. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that-but somehow I thought that it might.