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It took me a second before I figured it out. Sometimes I’m slow. “Hook me up to a general broadcast channel,” I snapped.

“You are connected,” Sandra said. She was back on as my com officer and more business-like than before. I supposed being in a near-death coma for a few days will do that to a person.

The attack began before I could start talking. A hundred tiny contacts lit up and began converging on our position.

“They are attacking, sir,” Major Sarin said with her eyes wide.

I put my hand up and she fell quiet.

“This is Colonel Riggs of Star Force. We are on a rescue mission. The Macro cruiser you see now is under my command.”

The tiny ships kept coming. There were more of them all the time. I knew what they were, of course. For several seconds, they kept coming without any contact.

I waved to Gorski urgently. “Disconnect the laser turrets on the nose. They are on automatic.”

“They shouldn’t shoot down our own people,” he said.

“Just move, those brainboxes are young and inexperienced.”

Silvery nanite control lines ran from sparse bridge in the engine room all the way up to the outer hull where the sensor arrays and rigged up laser turrets had been setup. The cable of chained nanite was over two miles long. Gorski plugged into the line and talked to the laser turrets, telling them to stand down.

“Colonel Riggs?” a voice came from the void.

I frowned. “Welter? Major Welter, is that you, man?”

Major Welter laughed. “We were so going to invade your ship. You know that, don’t you?”

I smiled. “You gave us a scare. Nice ambush. And you’re going to have to tell me how you survived out here so long without me. This was supposed to be a rescue, and it’s turning into a meet-and-greet. I’m feeling unappreciated.”

“Don’t worry about that, Colonel. We need you! Permission to land on the hull of our new cruiser.”

“Permission granted,” I said. “Try flying toward the prow. There’s a big hole on the left side, underneath.” I found myself grinning for the first time since we’d taken the ship. A few hundred more marines were still breathing. I reminded myself to never discount the capacity of my men to survive.

I picked up a tablet and watched them all fly into the open maw at the front of my cruiser. Something odd seemed to be following them, however.

“Uh, Major Welter?” I called. “What is that thing on your six?”

Welter came back with a crackling radio communication. “That’s a surprise, sir. Someone else survived that you had probably counted out. And he’s rebuilt himself. He must be a hundred feet long now.”

The words,
what the hell?
ran through my mind. I used my fingers to zoom in on the formation. “Are those some of our bricks in that mass?” I asked. “What do you make of that, Major Sarin?”

“It appears to be a chain of linked bricks, with several of our flying dishes attached for propulsion,” she said. “I’m at a loss to explain it.”

I stared, frowning in concern for several seconds until I knew what it had to be. When I had it, I wasn’t happy with what I was thinking.

“Patch me through to the broadcast channel again. Short-range.”

Major Sarin signaled me when she had it set up.

“Marvin, give me your position, please.”

“That is an imprecise statement. Please give me a relative point for frame of reference.”

I chuckled despite myself. “Just tell me what you are flying aboard my ship.”

“I’ve subsumed a large number of items from salvaged debris. That which is approaching your vessel is known as
Marvin
.”

 “Sir, two of those bricks are factories,” Gorski whispered. His voice gave away his excitement.

“Marvin,” I said. “I thank you for retrieving these articles of equipment. They will be very useful to us. I’m not quite sure how you did it, but you’ve done us a great service.”

There was a momentary pause. “I am familiar with your salvage laws, Colonel Riggs. My new sub-system components were lost in unowned space, and are therefore the property of the finder.”

I stared at the conglomeration. I knew that I had built this intelligent machine—or at least allowed it to build itself. Was this how the Blues must have felt, at some critical moment in the past? Had they turned around one day and seen a Macro looming close to them? At this moment, I had a taste of what it must have felt like to be in their shoes. It wasn’t good.

 “Yeah…” I said. “Okay Marvin. I’m coming down there. I think we’re going to have to have a little chat.”

-41-

Overall, the marines I’d left behind were in better shape than I had any right to expect them to be. Major Welter had not only survived by jettisoning himself from the conflict at the critical moment, he had organized the survivors. I had an interesting talk with him as he came aboard. I could tell right away Welter was proud of his accomplishments. He held his chin high and although he was tired, he was beaming at me.

“Survival often depends on quick reasoning,” he told me as I helped him through the airlocks.

“In your case luck didn’t hurt, either,” I said. I helped him hook his suit to the ship’s power lines and he began to quickly recharge.

“Luck?” he asked, scandalized. “Not so! We reasoned that your group may or may not win against the cruiser. We had to plan for the worst, namely that you would lose and not return. In that case, our only option was to assault the next ship that came through the ring and take it for our own.”

I nodded. “Mini-pirates, eh? Marvin helped gather the bricks I take it, to keep you going.”

“Yes. He got a hold of a flying dish, then a brick, and connected the together with nanite cables. Then he kept going, knitting up that train thing you saw out there. The weird thing was he insisted on building them into a nanite-conglomerate, all connected to himself. I had an idea of building a base—not making them all part of Marvin’s body.”

“He’s got a mind of his own,” I said. “Was he cooperative?”

“Sort of. He let us use the power and oxygen, but he started running the factories to produce more nanite arms and stuff on his own.”

I grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me he’s been programming our factories on his own initiative?”

“Oh yeah. It’s kind of weird. He definitely has his own plans. He’s not an
enemy
, in my estimation. He’s more like a guest in our group. He helps and shares. But he doesn’t accept our authority over him. Anything I told him to do, he took as advice. It’s like he considered my orders to be suggestions, and then mulled over whether he felt like following them or not.”

I let go of him, and decided it was time to talk to Marvin directly. “Good insights, Major,” I said. “I’m going to go see what he’s up to. Please head up to the bridge and take over the helm as soon as you can, Gorski and I have been having a hell of a time with the Macro control system.”

“That system is quite a piece of work, isn’t it?” Gorski asked with a twisted smile. “I get cramps in my limbs just thinking about pressing everything at once. Did you know I had to tap with my head sometimes to get the sequence right?”

“I believe it,” I said, then left him. As soon as I was out of sight, I broke into a bouncing, low-gravity trot. By the time I’d reached the area I’d decided I needed to set up a squad of marines to help Marvin see things my way—if he wouldn’t listen to reason. I had to have those factories under my control. Next to the cruiser itself, they were the most valuable asset we had. They produced our weapons, supplies and repaired everything. Our survival depended on them. Marvin simply could not keep possession of them, not even for another hour.

The hole in the upper left quadrant of the cruiser had become our launch-bay. The cruiser had big missile ports, but we didn’t really know how to control them, so we used the yawning hole to do the job. The area was big: over a hundred feet wide and three times that in depth. We’d taken out partial walls, twisted tubing and the like to give us more space. As best we could tell, the Macros had kept their sensor arrays and their missile magazines here. Now, it was a twisted mass of slag. The hole in the nose functioned like a big window, affording a view of orangey-brown Helios itself and occasionally the glaring rim of that giant, red sun.

The launch bay swarmed with marines, most of them survivors of Welter’s short-lived pirate campaign. The rest were my people, helping organize the mass of equipment and manpower that streamed in. At the center of things was the junkpile known as Marvin. He didn’t look anything like his old self. He’d started off as a brainbox with legs, and now he was something like a scrap metal dragon—or maybe a flying freight train built in a junkyard. The core of his body consisted of three of my bricks. Two of those were my factories, I knew. They were chained together with nanite cables, as had been all of Marvin’s incarnations. The flying dishes my men had used as individual assault vehicles had been cunningly placed at every corner and angle of the three brick train to provide propulsion. There were at least a dozen of the dishes canted at various angles. Nanite arms controlled each of them individually. I could see how they would all point at one time to provide a lot of power. Despite myself, I was intrigued by the design. It was ingenious.

I signaled Warrant Officer Sloan. He was always hanging around the launch bay, even though we didn’t have any tanks left for him to pilot. He’d recovered from exposure in space at the ring, and I knew he wouldn’t mind having something to do. I had him gather a squad, told him to arm themselves heavily and to stand by in the corridors outside the launch bay.

When Sloan had his crew set up, I approached Marvin slowly, warily. I noted most of my men were keeping their distance from him. He hovered a few feet above the deck. No one tried to take away any of the pieces he’d purloined.

I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to order him to land and have my marines begin stripping him down. But I forced myself into a welcoming frame of mind. Sometimes, a kind word could make difficult events glide by.

“Welcome home, Marvin!” I said, walking up to the front section. I didn’t see his brainbox or his camera.

I didn’t get any response, so I walked calmly along the length of the structure. Nanite-controlled propulsion dishes twitched as I came near. I gazed up and down, then along the length of him. Then I saw it. A small camera, lifted up over the rest. It was between the second and third bricks in the structure. I snorted and walked toward it at an even pace.

“There you are,” I said. “It’s good to see you, and we owe you our thanks for helping out.”

The camera lowered until it was barely peeping out from between the bricks. As I continued approaching, Marvin must have realized I’d spotted his single eye and the camera rose higher. It tilted and focused, tracking me.

“This visual input device is damaged,” Marvin complained.

I snorted. His personality hadn’t changed, just his structure. Thinking back, I realized that none of my statements of friendly greeting had really required a response. I had given no commands, made no requests and asked no questions. So Marvin hadn’t said anything. Now apparently, he identified me with serving a need of his, so he was talking.

“Let’s talk about that, Marvin,” I said. “I can provide you with a brand new, undamaged visual unit. In fact, I’d like to give you two of them so you can see in stereo and get a better perception of depth.”

The camera twitched, sliding to one side, perhaps to get a different perspective on me. “My sensor array includes scanners with multiple inputs. My regional spatial projections are more accurate—”

“Yes, yes,” I said, putting up a gloved hand. “I know you can perceive a three dimensional environment. But those are active systems. The cameras are passive systems. Wouldn’t it be nice to observe without having to send out any telltale emissions?”

Marvin thought this one over for awhile. I was working on his paranoia. If Marvin had one weakness, it was his slightly fearful nature. He wasn’t like the Macros or the herds of Centauri that way—he always looked out for number one. A passive system of sensory input was very important in any hostile environment. Space warfare was comparable to submarine warfare, and while active sonar was effective, passive systems were always preferable if you were trying to hide. Active detection systems such as radar or sonar operated by transmitting signals out and analyzing the signal that bounced back. The problem with such systems came when someone else was listening to your active pinging. They could then pinpoint your location with precision. Passive systems were more like human senses such as hearing. They did not give away the listener.

“I would like to have multiple cameras,” Marvin said at last, taking the bait.

“Great. Let’s make a deal then, Marvin. I’ll provide you with two—no, make that four new cameras. That way you can look in every direction at once. I know they have a limited field of vision, you’ve complained about that before. No more worrying about what is approaching from behind. I think it is an ample reward for the retrieval and return of our equipment.”

“I have not returned your equipment,” Marvin pointed out.

“The cameras will be provided the moment you do,” I said. “And I think you should be able to keep a piece of that junk you assembled. How about one of those dishes to provide you with mobility and flight? You can sit your brainbox in the dish and keep a few nanite arms for manipulation of objects and cameras.”