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“Macro marines,” I said, “their shipboard fighters. There can’t be too many of them, but they are effective.”

I ordered the mass of my men into the ship now. I didn’t want them outside, exposed to incoming fire. I had reports of other Macro ships moving in the system. Only a few recon squads stayed up top on the surface of the hull, watching the skies and the invasion ship.

I decided to change tactics. This was taking too long, and I could not afford attritional losses. If more Macro ships got here before we captured this one, we would be helpless. I ordered the men to head off in company-sized forces in every direction. Someone was bound to discover the bridge or the engine room, and I felt sure the Macro crew wasn’t big enough to contain us all. We would overrun them with our superior numbers.

I took command of the company headed toward the engines. In the invasion ship, that had been the critical region I’d discovered when I was traveling through their tubes and chambers. If they liked to design their ships consistently, we might gain control over it by taking that area.

We saw some fantastic sights along the way. I traveled through chambers that resembled laboratories of some kind. One was filled with bulbous tanks that dripped solvents. Vapors filled these chambers, and I had no doubt the environment was highly toxic. Something like electrolysis was going on inside those bubbling tanks. Was it a power source or a weapons system? I had no idea.

When we reached the engine compartments in the aft part of the ship, I met up with real resistance. There were only four of their marines, crouching on the ceiling with their beam-weapon heads directed toward the entrance. They waited like patient cockroaches, and we didn’t disappoint them. We burned our way in from two sides of the chamber at once, and I sent a few marines in through the open hatch as well just to keep them honest.

It was a slaughter. Caught in a crossfire, the enemy marines fought to the death, but hardly managed to score a hit before they were beamed to smoking ruin. I took note of the fact they didn’t bother to retreat, not even in the face of hopeless odds. We must be getting close to the ship’s vitals.

“Keep moving,” I told my men, broadcasting to every helmet in the invasion force. “Don’t stop for anything. Not even if you are hit. When it becomes clear we are going to take the ship, they will not hesitate to blow up the whole cruiser.”

In the end, it was a close thing. The huge engines rumbled, vibrating the floor in the final room as we fought the dozen or so technicians who held it. We had to be careful here, I didn’t want our weapons to disable the very ship we’d fought so hard to take. It came down to pistols and knives against snapping pinchers in the end. They flicked out their snapping metal mandibles, ripping holes in suits, severing air tanks and flesh. Due to the almost non-existent gravity, blood floated and pooled in odd configurations on the walls and mixed with a dozen stranger liquids that flowed from the struggling Macros.

I saw a man in front of me go down. He had a knife in one hand, having lost his other weapons. The power cable to his generator was severed and floating. I lunged forward, pulling away from Kwon’s watchful grip. He cursed and followed me into hand-to-hand.

Fighting one of the machines this close up was terrifying. They were much worse than the Worms. They were not soft flesh, and they were bigger than your average Worm. A good fifteen feet long, the Macro worker had its back to us as it worked over the marine, who roared hoarsely as the thing diced his suit and flesh. It looked as if he were being attacked by a lawnmower. Shreds of material, nanite-impregnated or not, flew everywhere in an alarming spray. The marine still slashed with his knife, the monofilament edge removing flashing metal mouth parts from the Macro.

I tackled the thing, and it felt as if I had tackled an angry bulldozer. The metal surface didn’t give way a micron. It was not staggered by my weight or the impact of my flying assault. I was an insect hurling myself upon a careless being of gray metal.

I put my pistol onto a jointed section on its back where two sliding plates met. I pulled the trigger and held it down. A thin beam lanced into the metal, melting its way into the things guts. I didn’t have much hope of taking it out this way, however. It would take too long to bring it down.

Kwon came in behind me. His approach was more effective, and got a response from the monster. He put his monofilament blade up into a set of cables that controlled a rear leg. The leg lost tension and went sprawling and flailing. That entire end of the monster sagged.

The Macro left the shredded marine and turned, dragging the bad leg. When it realized we were holding onto its back and not letting go, it did something unexpected. It loaded up its legs underneath itself and sprang into the air.

I felt a huge surge of power. My first instinct was to grab and hold on, but I realized that was the wrong move. I let go.

The Macro surged upward like a grasshopper launching itself into flight. In this case, however, the ceiling was very close, and like a grasshopper in a box, it smashed into the roof.

Kwon, unfortunately, had held on. His bulldog instincts failed him, and he crashed into the roof of the chamber, crushed between the Macro’s metal body and the equally unforgiving ceiling. He went limp and tumbled away, falling in slow-motion.

Not knowing if he was dead or not, I broke my own rules of engagement and unlimbered my beam projector. I fried the Macro point-blank as it came down again.

-18-

The marine the Macro worker had been chewing on didn’t make it. He did live long enough to see us clear the room. But his guts were spread over a five yard area, and not even the nanites could patch him up again.

Kwon was out for a while, but came-to after some help from a corpsman. He had six cracked ribs and a fractured skull, but it was nothing one of my marines couldn’t recover from. I decided my next battle suit would have to be better designed with internal form-fitting foam to prevent injuries to marines who were tossed around in their armor. My current design stopped most penetration, but didn’t give enough padded protection from concussive damage.

Kwon dragged himself to where I was working on a bizarre control panel. I lifted my hand to clap him on the back, but thought the better of it.

“Congratulations on surviving,” I told him.

“Just don’t give me any more promotions,” he said, groaning.

“Don’t worry. Are those nanites itching?”

“Yeah,” he said, running his gloved hands over his chest and helmet. “This is worse than the time I got my foot chopped off. What are you doing, Colonel?”

“Exercising the first useful skill I ever learned: problem-solving.”

Kwon grunted.

“Identification, analysis, design, implementation,” I said. “The engineer’s basic steps. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to figure out this interface and make it work for me. It might take weeks or even years of study.”

“You mean we can’t fly this ship?”

“
We
can’t, no,” I said. “But we don’t have to. We have little friends to do it for us. I brought along some extra brainboxes and connective materials.”

As I spoke, I showed him what looked like a simple box of nanites, the sort we used for control components on a dozen other devices. From it sprouted seven thick cables that terminated in metal hands. The nanite arms lifted themselves to touch the complex Macro control board, which looked like the cockpit of a jet fighter of the future.

“Can they do it?” he asked, sitting on the floor of the ship. He put his back against a dead Macro worker, as if it were a brick wall.

I shrugged. “They became symbiotic with our bodies very quickly. I suspect the ship controls are a lot simpler than that. I’ve instructed them to go for navigational controls first. We have to get underway.”

Kwon scratched at a gash in his right forearm. The suit had been ripped open, but had now repaired itself. I knew the flesh underneath probably looked worse than the suit. The nanites had their work cut out for them with Kwon.

“But they were studying us for years, I thought you said. They can fix us because they dissected thousands of humans.”

I nodded. “That’s the worrisome part. The Macro and Nano technologies are related, but how much do the Nanos really know about their bigger cousins? It is a mystery we’ll learn more about today.”

Kwon frowned. “You mean, if they can’t figure it out and we are blasted by enemy cruisers, we will know they are not close family, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“So, this is your plan?” he asked. He gestured toward the brainbox and the skinny arms snaking out of it.

“This was all I had.”

Kwon looked around the room. I followed his eyes. The conquest of the cruiser had been costly. Marines were resting or flat on their backs, trying to keep breathing while their nanites repaired their bodies. A few of them were dead and lying in a twisted configurations.

“That’s great, Colonel,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t tell us before we assaulted this ship.”

“You’re welcome,” I said brightly. Internally, I was as worried as Kwon—maybe more so. This had always been the sticking point. Sure, I figured with a thousand marines I could take a few ships. But could we
fly
these alien ships? That was the real question.

A few long minutes passed. The brainbox shivered now and then, sending out a new arm to fiddle with a control point. Sometimes, one of the ones it had in play was sucked back into the box where it disappeared. I had no idea if this meant we were one step closer to flying this monster or if we’d failed yet again.

Major Welter contacted me from where he was still camped out on the cruiser’s hull.

“Colonel Riggs?” he called, sounding excited.

I thumbed him up on a private channel. “Tell me this is good news, Major,” I said.

“I don’t think I can do that, sir. I’ve finally gotten through to our people on the invasion ship.”

I shifted nervously and leaned my ear against the padded earpiece. “Talk to me.”

“They blew out the hold doors about two minutes ago, sir. I was able to get a signal to them then. The bricks are floating out now. They must have released the magnetic clamps.”

“What?” I said. My mind raced. It sounded to me as if they’d lost their battle. They had a lot fewer troops than we had here on the cruiser. I cursed myself. I should have split my forces more evenly. If we’d lost one ship out of two, and couldn’t fly the one we held….

“Yeah, more of them are flowing out now. Our bricks, our equipment, men in suits. Sir—it looks like they are abandoning the ship.”

“Give me a video feed,” I ordered. “Link our visors.”

A moment later a scene swam into view. I stared, my heart pounding. Somewhere in that mess of metal and humanity flushing out into space was Sandra. Not only that, but the bricks were the key to our long term survival. Without them, we would run out of food, air, water and be unable to adapt by building new equipment in the factories.

“What is it?” Kwon asked, finally catching on that something was terribly wrong.

I shushed him, making a chopping motion in the air. “Keep the signal going, Welter,” I said.

Things went from bad to worse about ten seconds later.

“Sir?” Major Welter said, “things have gone badly, I’m getting a transmission from Major Sarin…the Macros have engaged some kind of device.”

At least Sarin was alive.
But what about Sandra?
my mind asked. “Keep feeding me data,” I told him.

About then, the invasion ship blew up. The engines exploded, popping like a fireworks display. The hold area lurched forward, swallowing a few of the escaping bricks and marines that floated away from it. Some were riding dishes, and they flew with desperate surges of speed.

Fortunately, explosions in space are not as far-reaching as they are in a planetary atmosphere. Without air to carry the shockwave, even an atomic explosion has to be very close to kill. There was no air to burn or carry the concussive force to my people. The invasion ship itself came apart in a blossoming ball of radiation and molten metal, killing a number of them.

I watched the silent, expanding sphere of destruction with a sinking heart. I’d watched many friends die, but usually not in a single, helpless instant like this.

Numbly, I switched off the video input from Major Welter’s helmet. I had to do something. What was it?

“Alpha and Delta companies,” I said, my voice sounding faint even to my ears. “Get onto your skateboards. Get out there and drag any and all survivors and equipment you can find back to the cruiser. This ship is our home now.”

-19-

I put everyone I could on rescue duty, but it wasn’t enough. Some marines and bricks fell tumbling, out of control, toward the atmosphere of the icy planet below us. They would burn up in a few hours, but I couldn’t get to them. I tried not to think about it.

A full twenty minutes later I got the first word about Sandra. She was identified floating with a brick. We later realized she’d tethered herself to it and when they were jettisoning all the equipment in waves, she’d been flushed out of the hold. Unfortunately, she’d been badly banged-up.

I dared let hope take hold. Letting my exoskeletal suit take huge strides for me, I ran up to the outer decks to the spot we’d drilled into on the cruiser’s hull. On the way, I berated myself for not putting Sandra into a battle suit. I’d built less than two hundred of them, and had used them all on the invasion forces. This had been a sound military decision, but I was still upset I hadn’t used my rank to protect Sandra. It was hard as a commander to have the power to do things that could help your loved ones—even if they weren’t ethical.