Rebellion Ebook Full (3 page)

“Are you awake now?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“What the hell’s going on? Are we at battle stations or not?”

“No,” I said. I turned to Captain Sarin and instructed her to relay the order to stand down.

“Where’s the rest of the command brick crew?” Sandra asked, looking around. “What about Raphim?”

The bridge crew looked glum. There was only myself, Captain Sarin and three other staffers there, two warrant officers and a non-com staff sergeant named Gorski. He had taken over navigation from the deceased Lieutenant Raphim Shrestha because he’d been an engineering major in college before he signed up.

Gorski lifted a gloved hand and waved at Sandra. He wore a weak smile. “I’m new,” he said. Gorski always appeared to need a shave and his watery blue eyes gave him a permanent expression of surprise.

 “Raphim and the others were lost on Helios,” Captain Sarin told Sandra quietly.

“Oh—of course,” Sandra said quickly, with an uncharacteristic hint of embarrassment. She appeared flustered. “I’m sorry. Looks like you need to get some new people in here.”

I nodded. “I thought we were heading for Earth. I figured we could reassign people when we returned to base. But you are right…as this mission isn’t over yet, I need to have a full complement here in the command brick. We’ve lost eighty percent of our officers. An occupational hazard of leading from the front.”

Sandra frowned at the big board and looked sorry she had brought the matter up. Everyone was in a state of shock, thinking about a new campaign.

I sucked in a breath of air and shook my head. I needed to stop daydreaming and get people moving. Dwelling about the fact most of us were dead and we were about to face another unknown enemy wasn’t helping anything. It was time to take command again.

“All right,” I said, looking around the room. Dim-lit faces looked back at me, reflecting the bluish glow of a dozen screens. “You are all second lieutenants now, except for Captain Jasmine Sarin, who I hereby promote to Major. Congratulations Jasmine, you will be my new exec, replacing Robinson.”

“What about me?” Sandra asked, smiling.

I could tell she was half-joking, but I looked at her seriously. “Didn’t you hear me? You are a second lieutenant now. You know your way around the command brick as well as anyone else I’ve got left. You were working my office communications, but I’m expanding your job description. Now you will run the com board for the entire unit.”

The crew looked surprised, but no one objected to any of the changes. I could see in their eyes they all felt they’d earned their promotions. I agreed. Under these conditions, knowing how to survive was a trait I wanted in all my officers. Even Sandra had fought hand-to-hand back on Helios. How many humans back on Earth had killed an alien barehanded? Not many. She had never finished her college degree due to the war, but she was as qualified as anyone. I ordered a staff meeting, and summoned Major Sarin, Lieutenant Gorski and Staff Sergeant Kwon to my office. The second I saw him, I promoted Kwon to Captain, over his objections.

“I have no education, sir,” he complained. “I won’t know what fork to put on the table at the officer’s mess!”

“You are under a mistaken impression, Captain,” I said. “Star Force officers don’t use forks.”

“Oh,” Kwon said, looking honestly surprised. “I will have no trouble then.”

“Excellent. I need an experienced field officer to give me input on the ground forces. If we have to invade these artificial satellites—which I take to be space stations of some kind—it will be all infantry work. We won’t be able to use armored hovertanks aboard an enemy structure.”

Everyone eyed me in alarm. I think it was the first time they’d seriously considered what the Macros wanted us to do. Running around with a rifle on a planet was one thing…invading an enemy orbital base while it was presumably shooting at you was a different matter entirely.

“Sir,” Major Sarin said, speaking up for the first time. “I don’t understand how we are supposed to gain access to the enemy base—whatever it is.”

“That’s on the list of reasons we are having this meeting. I want ideas, people.”

Everyone looked at Kwon, as he was the infantry man present. Kwon stuck up a set of his thick fingers. “We’ve got suits. Worst case, we float over and burn a way inside.”

“Worst case,” I agreed.

“Better idea,” Kwon continued, “we build some kind of invasion craft.”

I thought about it, and nodded. “How big?”

Kwon shrugged. “One-man, or tank-sized. Whatever is easiest.”

I thought about it further. “We’ve got a few drill-tanks left,” I said. “They would do nicely as a platform. But they can’t carry everyone. They can only carry about twenty marines each. But if we alter the propulsion and guidance systems, they can fly to the targets and use their big drilling lasers to burn breaches through the enemy hulls.”

“Good idea, sir,” Kwon said, nodding.

Sarin and Gorski watched this interchange with shocked expressions. They stared at us as if Kwon and I were the aliens at the table.

“What are you two thinking?” I demanded.

“Honestly, Colonel?” Sarin asked.

I nodded.

“I can’t believe we are actually planning to do this. We have no idea what the hell the enemy look like, or what their space stations will look like—not even what kind of defensive fire they will be throwing back at us.”

“Right,” I said, nodding. “Keep going.”

“So, how can we plan an attack with so little intel?”

“Because we have no choice. The Macros don’t like questions. They aren’t going to give us an infinite allotment of time to prepare, either. We will prepare for this mission, as full of unknowns as it is, as quickly as possible. We will then use every additional second we are allotted to gather more intel and improve upon our plans.”

Gorski cleared his throat. Up until this point, he had been quiet. I nodded to him.

“Sir,” Gorski said, “I think there is another option we aren’t considering.”

We all stared at him. Major Sarin fidgeted uncomfortably. Kwon grinned with broad teeth. We all knew what Gorski was going to say.

“Tell us about it, Lieutenant,” I said.

“We could take this ship instead. If we are going to build a force to fight in null-gravity and vacuum anyway, why not turn it on the Macros?”

I nodded slowly. Everyone had thought of this before. “There is something inherently frightening and foul-feeling about turning upon your allies,” I began, “no matter how unpleasant those allies might be. But don’t think for a minute I have never considered the idea. If it were only us involved in the equation, I would have done it long ago. But I’m not thinking of just
us
here. I’m thinking about everyone else back home on Earth.”

I ran my eyes over everyone. They stared back, troubled.

“If we screw up out here,” I said, “then the Macros will attack Earth. We can’t doubt that for a second. We will have restarted a war that cost hundreds of millions of lives during the last round.”

“But,” Gorski said, speaking up again. “If we are successful, I doubt the rest of the Macro Empire would even know about it, sir.”

I looked at him.

“This is like piracy on the high seas, Colonel,” Gorski said. “Space is big. There are no witnesses out here that we know of. If we took this ship and ran it back home or blew it up, why wouldn’t they blame the Worms?”

“I like the way you think, Gorski,” I said, smiling at him. “I did the right thing, making you into a lieutenant. In fact, I’m going to promote you again if you survive another few days.”

“Um…thank you, Colonel,” Gorski said with a flicker of a smile.

“There is a big problem with your plan, however,” I said.

“Sir?”

“The cruiser,” I said. “If we take the invasion ship, the cruiser will turn around and blow us out of the sky. They will not negotiate, nor try to take the ship back. They will fire, and keep firing, until one of us is hot vapor and dust. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Gorski nodded. “Yes. But we should realize something else. They aren’t going to stop taking us on missions. I think that’s clear.”

I frowned and gestured for him to go on.

“They are going to keep grinding us down, sir. Just as they would with their own robotic troops. They don’t care if we all die. They don’t even understand concepts like morale and despair. They would fight to the last unit without a concern. They assume we will do the same. They will keep invading new worlds until the last one of us is dead, or the year of service is up.”

I eyed him, thinking he was probably right, but not wanting to say so. “We aren’t certain of that, Gorski.”

“But it seems like a logical conclusion, doesn’t it sir?”

“It does. The primary problem still stands, however: Earth isn’t ready for round two with the Macros. We are buying them time to get ready. In short, we are expendable.”

I swept the room with my eyes. No one looked happy, but they weren’t arguing anymore, either.

“You’ve given me a lot to consider, I thank you all,” I said. “We’ll proceed to regroup into ship-assault teams—no matter what, it seems like we are going to be doing some hostile boarding missions. Kwon, get onto reconfiguring the drill-tanks. And start running null-gee combat drills in the hold. Everyone is dismissed.”

My new staff stood up and left. When they were gone, I sat there in my office staring at the metal walls. They had the same look nanite-built walls always did. Dimly lit, flat metallic surfaces. They weren’t shiny like chrome, but had more of a brushed-aluminum look to them. I realized I’d spent years now staring at walls like these, ever since the night the Nanos had shown up at my farm. I wondered vaguely where the Nanos and their creators were. Were we anywhere close, or were we a thousand lightyears away from them? I had no way of knowing.

My office door dissolved open, interrupting my thoughts. I blinked. It was Sandra. She had a funny look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

She tapped at the hatch behind her and made sure it was closed before she answered. “Gorski was right,” she said. “You have to take this ship. And the cruiser too, if necessary.”

I stared at her. “You weren’t at the meeting. How did you hear about that?”

“I listened in,” she said, as if I were slow-witted. “I’m your new com officer, remember?”

-3-

We designed and built eight effective assault ships over the next two days. Essentially, we ordered the Nanos in the skin of each of my hovertanks to reconfigure themselves yet again. All of my surviving hovertanks were set up as drill-tanks—which was a good thing, as I expected they would have to have the ability to drill into enemy hulls and breach them. I realigned the propulsion systems to exert force primarily from the rear of each craft, but with smaller repellers directed forward and to the sides. These smaller propulsion units would serve as brakes and attitude jets for navigation.

Gorski quickly became my sidekick in the reconfiguration effort. He had taken a fair number of programming courses while studying engineering in college, and had worked as a software developer for a few years. It was always good when coding something brand new to have another mind to bounce ideas against, so I welcomed the help.

“What I find so interesting,” Gorski told me in the hold of the ship, leaning with both hands against our prototype’s skin. “Is this hull isn’t a solid surface at all. It’s really a teeming mass of nanos.”

I shrugged and smiled. He had the fever. I’d seen it before in my better programming students. He was inventing new realities with his mind, and that freedom and creative power could be intoxicating. Software had been described as ‘building castles in the air’. There was a feeling of elation that came to programmers when things were working and really coming together. Programming was very different from mathematics, as it was far more creative. In math, there was one right answer, and you worked at a problem until you got to that answer. In programming, there were an infinite number of answers that could be considered correct, just as there might be when writing a book. But the results of programming, unlike a written story, were tangible. Your program had to actually
do
something. If you wanted your program to make an image of a spaceship fly across the screen, but instead the spaceship just sat there, you had clearly failed. There was no partial credit.

The measurable outcomes made things more difficult, but the positive side was that there might be a million ways to get that spaceship off the ground, and if you could figure out just one of those ways, you were a winner. When your code worked the way you
planned
for it to work, you felt like a god in your own tiny universe.

This feeling of creative power and fulfillment was magnified when something you designed became physical, as it did with the building of nano-systems. These assault-ships were engrossing problems. Gorski and I reshaped them with our hands to make the front of the craft thicker, more heavily armored. The metal remembered the shapes we pressed it into and stayed there. We angled the material in the nose so it could deflect incoming fire. We could have built the ships with a grossly bloated shape to hold more marines, but that would have made them more vulnerable to enemy weapons. Instead, we went with a sleeker design. The craft would be small, fast and maneuverable.