Rebellion Ebook Full (21 page)

I sat in the first factory unit I came to and tried to think clearly. There were many options for production. Right now, they were churning mines, which was a safe play. We’d gone through all the Macro corpses as materials by now and were feeding them deck plates and damaged portions of the ship we didn’t need. It was odd, cannibalizing one’s own ship for weapons materials—but that was how warfare worked when using nanotech.

I was nearly done building mines, I’d decided. I had about half as many as I did last time, and that would be enough to lay a trap at the next ring…if I got that far. I needed something else now, however.  A defensive weapon to stop those missiles. They were going to catch us before we made the next ring. We were crossing the Helios system to the second ring on more or less a straight path. We’d come out fairly near the gigantic red sun, but had to move out a good distance to get to the second ring which was closer to the orbit of Helios itself. I had to wonder again what the Worms thought of this battle going on in their own star system. I hoped if they got involved and took a shot at one of us they chose the right one.

I considered attempting to contact the Worms. We’d made a few attempts before, of course, but we’d never gotten through. I wasn’t surprised. I could barely manage a conversation with the Centaurs, and they were much closer in nature to humans than giant, invertebrate, dirt-eating Worms. If you don’t believe me, try feeding a goat, then try feeding an earthworm from your backyard. I bet I can predict which one will follow you home that night.

My mind whirled with stimulants and possibilities. Strangely, I still felt sleepy. I wondered if too many stims could knock a man out. Either that, or cause his heart to explode.

I came to another conclusion soon. I sensed the nanites were objecting already, filtering the drug out of my blood. My sweat smelled like evaporating hospital chemicals as they flushed my system. I decided not to take another stim dose. Maybe the nanites knew something I didn’t.

The airlock started pumping then. I looked up expectantly. For a horrible second, I expected Sandra to walk in. She often did when she knew I was overworking myself alone in a spot like this. I had to remind myself she was still a turnip in a steel box.

I grabbed up my com-link angrily. At least I could fix one problem. I got Kwon on the link. I instructed him to widen the breach and bring down all the bricks into the chambers below decks, being careful not to disrupt the inertial dampeners. We could build a nice hold right under the breach we’d dug into the cruiser like whale’s blowhole. Living on the exterior hull was dangerous and now we finally had enough time to do something about it. Even if the missiles were going to come and knock us out, it would be a day or two before the caught up.

When I looked up the next time, the person who’d come through the airlock was up against the wall beside me. It was Gorski. He’d never been able to keep away from me when I was programming the machines. He reminded me of some graduate student nerd-groupies I’d known back at the University.

Right now however, I was more interested in what he had in his hand. I saw two squeeze bottles of amber liquid.

“Is that…?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone. I found them in one of the salvaged bricks. As far as I know, these are the last two beers in the expedition.”

I seriously considered commandeering them both, but decided that would be too greedy. We popped open one each and fired suds into our mouths. The beer was cool, rather than cold, and drinking it in squirts from a plastic bottle took some of the fun out of it. But it was still wonderful. By the time I’d finished mine, I felt much better than I had after the stims.

“I’ve got an idea, Colonel,” Gorski said. “Want to hear it?”

“Does it involve more beer?”

“Only if it lets us make it home.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Been thinking about the missiles. We have to stop them, obviously. But I don’t think gun systems are the way to go. They are too iffy. I would suggest we fire drones at them instead.”

“Counter missiles?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But smart ones. Think about them as tiny little spaceships. Complete systems, with one purpose.”

I sat up, getting into the idea now.

“Right,” I said. “Mini-Nano ships. That should be easy, as nanites are good at doing things on a small scale. With the combined kinetic energy of two moving bodies, it should be easy to destroy the missiles with any hit.”

“Yes, the faster they are moving relative to the bodies we throw at them the greater the energy they would release upon contact.”

I nodded, liking the idea more and more. In space, you essentially have infinite visibility. With no atmosphere to obscure a jet flare, and with a cold, dark backdrop, you could see an engine firing from across a star system. The missiles had to show us where they were when they maneuvered. They could not hide.

“What about catching up to them?” I asked.

“We don’t have to. They are coming to us. The mini-drones would only need enough propulsion to get into the path of the missiles and make sure the two collide.”

“We’ll have to aim extremely well,” I said, thinking of anti-ballistic missile problems. It was like trying to hit a bullet with another bullet.

“Not as well as all that,” Gorski argued. “The systems could have their own sensor arrays and propulsion systems. They can adjust their course up to the last few miles.”

I stared at him, liking his idea. “How many of these do you think we would need?”

Gorski shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, “but I would start out with sixteen of them.”

I had to agree with his logic. Sixteen mini-drones and only two factories…I didn’t have any time to waste. Together, we ordered the factories to shut down the production of magnetic mines and began reprogramming them.

-25-

The enemy cruiser had lost velocity in its efforts to avoid our minefield, and had veered onto a less direct course. It now shadowed us on a parallel line. It was still overtaking us, but at a much slower rate. They were cautious now, as I’d given them good cause to be. I knew I wouldn’t be able to walk them into such a simple trap again. As they kept slowly gaining, their plan seemed clear: get in close, but not directly behind us where we could leave mines in our wake for them to run into. All they had to do was wait to see if the missiles destroyed us. If they didn’t, they could come abreast of us and fire. We would be at a severe disadvantage with no main gun turret. My mines would be useless if we were side by side going fast, and my invasion troops could not cross the void to board a target that was moving faster than they were. We didn’t have assault ships on hand to do an invasion assault in any case, and I needed my last two factories to produce drones to stop the missiles from knocking us out.

Gorski and I worked hard on some mathematical trajectories and timing. We decided to try using the mines anyway. The Macro ship was off to our side, but not
that
far off. We built a bigger whip-arm, a huge thing as big as the one the Alamo had carried. We set it up outside the breach and fed it mines. We threw the mines out in predicted paths that might get in the way of the cruiser. The mines would be very hard to see out there, floating through space with no propulsion systems active until they sensed the cruiser’s approach and homed in. The problem was that space was big and the enemy ship wasn’t on a perfectly smooth course. They made frequent adjustments. We put out about a thousand mines, but putting them in the right spot was a matter of pure guesswork. The mines were a long shot, but it was the only shot I had.

If Sandra had been around, I knew she would have scolded me for polluting this region of space with deadly mines. Who knew how many lives I’d just ended in the distant future? I had to admit, it was
somewhat
irresponsible, but this was a matter of survival. The environment of the Helios star system could get cleaned up in peacetime—if there was any peace out here.

While I worked to defeat the Macros who stalked us, my team kept busy as well. First, they moved the medical brick, gently lowering it down into the widened breach and into newly built hold. The area around the breach had once been a storage facility for Macro troops, as far as we could determine. It had hundreds of berths that were about the right size for a dormant Macro marine to crouch.

Looking at the power outlets that were at every station, I thought our first guess might have been wrong. Perhaps this was what passed for a mess hall for the Macros. In any case, we took it over, ripped out the walls, widened the breach in the hull and used the big new nanite arm on the hull to move our bricks into the cruiser one at a time down. 

I had to admit, when I finally did stretch out in the first sleeping brick the big arm brought down into the cruiser’s interior, it felt a lot safer and more comfortable to be inside the ship. Out on the open hull the G-forces lifted my lips into a permanent snarl when I tried to rest. Here, inside the range of the inertial dampeners, I felt blissfully normal when I laid down.

When other marines came in to get some shuteye in shifts, they were universally startled to see their commander resting on one of the bunks. I didn’t care enough to open my eyes when they huffed and whispered. I had reached that special point of fatigue where one just doesn’t worry anymore about their surroundings. I could have slept on train tracks if I had to.

I had strange dreams. That’s not unusual for me. My dreams had been haunted back on Earth before any of this alien invasion funny-business even got started. But now that my family had all been exchanged for ghosts, my dreams were positively wild. I dreamt that the Blues, Sandra and the Macros were all in a conspiracy to give me a surprise party back at my old farm. I tried to talk them out of it, to tell them they needn’t bother. I knew all about the party and didn’t like surprises in any case. They just smiled knowingly and assured me they had a
real
surprise for me. One I’d never expect.

I never got to the surprise, but I caught a glimpse of it. In a pit I saw a threshing machine that devoured innocent folk, including Worms, Centaurs and humans. The threshing machine was like a giant Macro with a head that resembled whirling lawnmower blades. Bodies kept being drawn into it and churned to bloody pulp.

I awoke with a gasp—at least it wasn’t a girlish scream. I thought about the dream briefly, and wondered if the threshing machine was supposed to represent the Macros, my own bad choices, or the cold universe itself. I wondered what some psychobabbler would have thought. I supposed it didn’t matter.

A dozen marines snored all around me in the dimly-lit brick. I crept out through the airlock and staggered around, cursing and searching for coffee. I’d been out for nine and a half hours. Under normal circumstances, I rarely slept for more than six. I felt lazy and sore, as if I’d lain in bed all weekend.

When I had my act together I went to check on Sandra. Carlson avoided me, and I couldn’t blame him for that. Sandra was still breathing. The combination of the nanites in her system and the automatic support systems in her tiny chamber had kept her alive through everything. Her brain wasn’t showing anything other than the lowest level of activity, however. As far as we could tell, she wasn’t even dreaming.

My eyes stung as I looked into the chamber at her nearly perfect form. The nanites had been busy, repairing cell damage as best they could. But her mind could not even dream—was she really alive?

I almost gave up on her and ordered that the proverbial plug be pulled. I couldn’t quite do it, however. My decision—or lack of one—wasn’t entirely emotionally-driven. We were under new circumstances. We discovered new technologies every day, and no one really knew what the nanites were capable of given enough time. I didn’t think she would have given up on me, so I couldn’t give up on her…not yet.

The corpsman watched me go, but said nothing. I exited through the airlock and felt all the weight of command on my shoulders again. I checked our stocks of weapons, including the new drones and the magnetic mines I’d had built. I’d deployed about half my mines, keeping the rest in reserve for a trap when we next went through a ring. Neither the supply of drones or mines was adequate, but we only had two factories left. I’d have to use ordinance sparingly.

The missiles were not catching up too quickly, that was the good news from my combination bridge/engine room. Our best computer model suggested the missiles had avoided the minefield and then changed course to pursue us, setting a pace that would slowly overtake us. Then they’d shut off their tiny engines and dropped off our boards. They were too small and too far away for our limited sensors to detect with radar scans. We knew they were still out there, and could predict their paths with precision. They were undoubtedly saving fuel to reorient and aim with more accuracy when they got closer. We expected they would perform a last minute burn when they were in range, making themselves harder to hit.

In any case, I had a couple of days to prepare while the missiles silently chased us. As long as they didn’t reappear on our screens, firing their jets again, we had a little time. After walking all over the cruiser and seeing most of my marines were engaged in useful projects involving welding guns and nanite repair tubes, I decided I could spare a moment to work with the knowledgebase the Centaurs has seen fit to send me.

We had put the massive download into a fresh brainbox, as it was basically an image of the neural chain structure of a similar box in the hands of the Centaurs. These brainboxes were like old hard drives lying around in household computers—they tended to be clogged with ‘stuff’. In this case, however, the stuff was actually useful.