Rebellion Ebook Full

by B. V. Larson

  Probably, this was because they didn’t have an individual in command of the rest. I’d yet to figure out if they had a specialized ‘leader’ class of Macro unit, but I suspected they didn’t. As best I could tell the Macros wirelessly linked together and formed a single mind for their control system. When I talked with ‘Macro Command’ I was talking to all of the individuals in the local networked group.

  They seemed to share their command choices automatically the way one of our computers might share the job of running a single program by spreading the work among many processors. Part of each Macro mind must include software dedicated to group decision-making. I suspected this introduced a delay in the case of complex choices and that was why they tended to hesitate when asked something unexpected. They all ran their software, made a choice, and they all went with the group decision as a single entity. There was no arguing, bickering or jockeying for rank or favor. In this way, they were like giant versions of the Nanos.

  At times, they did operate as individuals, however. When you fought one, you didn’t get the feeling it was conferring with the rest about every move it made. They definitely were able to function quickly and independently when they needed to.

  Once the control lines were linked up to all the laser turrets, we configured the turrets to focus on the incoming shuttles as their highest priority targets. With any luck, the Macro marines would never make it aboard our ship. Thinking that was the likely result of this attack, I ordered Gorski to produce only drones. We had to knock out the ship-killing missiles. Two were still incoming, and more would likely follow if this invasion attempt was halted. The ship-killers were the bigger danger as they moved so much faster. My little turrets were made to burn down something big and slow like the invasion missiles.

  “Kwon,” I said, pulling him away from where he was berating a corporal for a dead turret.

  “Sorry sir,” he said, coming closer. He gave the corporal his middle finger. The tech sergeant walked away, shaking his head.

  “That guy won’t admit it,” Kwon said angrily, “but he set it up wrong.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” I said, thinking that mentally, Kwon was still a master sergeant, and not a conventional one at that. “I want you to prepare for a possible invasion by Macro marines.”

  “Invasion?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Our intel says those big missiles are carrying armed Macros, not warheads.”

  Kwon nodded. “That’s why they keep slowing down. This is good news.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I would rather fight Macros than just get blown up.”

  “Right. They probably won’t make it through, but I would expect them to come through the breach first if they do. But we can’t be sure. There are hatches all over the outer hull of the ship. They might be able to unlock them and slip aboard.”

  Kwon looked excited. This was the kind of fight he understood. “I’m on it. We’ll weld every hatch shut and put down a squad to repel any invaders. I’ll put a company right here, one outside the bridge and set the rest as a reserve guard force in case they do get in.”

  I nodded and blessed his ideas. They were sound. He stomped away, arranging his forces. Another twenty minutes passed, and I was surprised no firing had begun. I returned to the bridge.

  “We’ve fired two drones at the last two incoming ship-killer missiles,” said Gorski. He was back in his chair nearby. His eyes never left his computer and his fingers never stopped tapping at it as he spoke. “We’ll have another six drones ready in less than an hour.”

  “The shuttles are still slowing down, sir,” Sarin told me. “They are clearly planning to match our course and speed so they can land on our hull.”

  “Range?” I asked.

  “We can almost reach them,” Gorski said.

  “Let’s turn around then,” I said.

  “Sir, something—” Sarin said, her voice rising.

  She didn’t have to tell me. I felt the shock. It was small, but unmistakable. “What hit us?” I asked.

  “I don’t know sir. Some kind of beam—the shuttles are firing on us!”

  “Hull integrity?”

  “No breach, sir,” Sarin said.

  “Bring us around now,” I ordered.

  The two of them worked the controls. It seemed to take a long time. I clenched my teeth as I felt the ship tremor with three more impacts.

  “Are they in range yet?” I asked. “Put up a range plot and a timer based on current velocity.”

  Sarin worked hard on the screen settings. It seemed to take too long. The ship shuddered five more times. I heard a beeping in my helmet. It was Kwon.

  “Hold on, Kwon,” I said on the command channel.

  “I’ve got it, sir,” Sarin said. I saw an orange, fan-shaped region appear in front of the cruiser’s nose. This was our ships firing cone. The color was brighter near the ship, which I immediately interpreted as our strongest firepower. Further out, it quickly faded to nothing. I could tell right away we didn’t have much range. The enemy ships were a good distance away from that cone, but we were already getting hit.

  “They out range us,” I said, watching in panic as they slowed further. “They can sit outside our reach and snipe us to death.”

  I heard another beeping in my helmet. “Go ahead, Kwon,” I said.

  “Sir, my turrets are falling off the ship when you made that turn,” he said.

  “What?” I asked frowning.

  “I’ve lost contact with eleven of them.”

  I suddenly got the message. “The Macros are knocking out our turrets. They’ll take them all out, then invade. Damn.”

  “We could turn around again until they get in range,” Gorski suggested.

  I shook my head. “They can see them or sense them somehow. They will just snipe at our engines if we let them. They are in no hurry. We don’t have anything to hit them with.”

  “We’ll have another drone in time to fire at them,” Gorski said. “Or we could throw mines.”

  “We’re going to need those mines. There’s no evidence the ones we threw at them hit anything, is there?”

  “No sir.”

  I turned back to the board. Another tiny shock rattled the ship. I realized I didn’t have any choices left. I was out-ranged, and they were stripping away the small armament that I had. I could tell, without Sarin spoon-feeding the data to me, the enemy shuttles had slowed down to a crawl now in relative speeds. I would have done the same. When you outranged an enemy, you sat back and pounded him.

  I had no interest in being softened up any further. “Full ahead,” I ordered. “Charge them. Let’s get into range before they destroy every turret we set up.”

  I felt the ship move under my feet and had to grip the computer table with my hands. The acceleration had to be tremendous to feel it so strongly while the inertial dampeners were functioning.

  “Kwon!” I shouted over the engines, which were thrumming loudly now. “Get your men inside the hull and tell them invaders are likely.”

  “Right sir!” Kwon shouted back excitedly.

  If I hadn’t been facing sixty-four angry robots I would have laughed. He sounded like a kid let loose in a video game store.

  -29-

  We’d lost about eighty percent of our laser turrets by the time we got into range a few minutes later. The ship rocked and shuddered with the impact of the enemy beams. At that point, the four Macro assault shuttles blossomed. It looked like they’d come apart into a mass of red dots.

  “Did we knock them all out at once?” I asked in amazement.

  Major Sarin shook her head and frowned. “We are close enough for a visual, Colonel.”

  She dialed up a close-up of the Macro formation. I watched and immediately felt a sinking sensation. The assault ships were not at all what I’d expected. Rather than being single, sleek vessels with solid hulls, they looked like networks of struts covered with systems and filled with Macros. We could actually s
ee the Macros they carried, exposed inside the cage-like ships.

  The Macro marines were self-mobile. As I watched in shock, they began lifting off from the framework shuttles they were riding. They flew under individual propulsion away from the skeletal assault ships, resembling a swarm of wasps. They came at us with their blue-white engine trails glaring behind them.

  “The shuttles look like one of those trucks that carry cars,” Gorski said.

  I nodded in agreement. The enemy ships did resemble truck trailers. They were little more than thick rails with specialized Macros clamping onto them.

  “Zoom in on one of the marines if you can,” I said.

  Major Sarin fiddled with the controls. I marveled at her precision. She was much better with these touch systems than I was. Soon our visual was tracking a single Macro. It came in jinking and slewing about from side to side. The head rotated with insectile movements and obvious intelligence. The large nozzle in the face was probably some kind of boring laser.

  I watched our beams slide past it, drawing lines flickering lines in space. These should have been invisible in the void, but the beams were hitting something... Then I saw the Macro marine had stopped firing its engines. Now it was squirting material around itself. Whatever the stuff was, it looked gaseous. The image of the Macro marine became obscured behind this growing cloud.

  “What the heck is that?” I asked.

  “Unknown,” Gorski said. “I would guess it’s some kind of aerosol or gel. Its purpose appears to be defensive.”

  “Are you telling me it’s squirting out particles to form a shield against laser strikes?” I demanded. “They are making shields against our beams?”

  “It would appear so.”

  “Why doesn’t it just fly through it?”

  “Well—”

  “Never mind,” I said, having already thought it through. The enemy Macro wasn’t accelerating anymore. Anything it threw out in front of itself would move away from it in space, as there was no air resistance to push it back. If you were to hang out your driver’s side window and squirt paint forward on Earth, it would naturally fire back and splatter you. But in space there was no air to push back. Anything thrown forward moved forward forever, unless you accelerated into it. These Marcos were braking for their final landing on the Jolly Rodger’s hull, not increasing their speed, so they were able to stay behind their growing, semi-opaque shields of particles.

  “Did we get any of them before they sprayed these shields?”

  “I’m not sure…” Sarin said, frowning at her interface.

  “Gorski? Do a query, get a count.”

  I saw a growing cloud of dots moving away from their assault ships, which I now thought of as assault racks. It was about then that I got the first knot in my stomach. They’d surprised us several times already. How many more tricks did they have in store? I’d thought this was going to be easy. They were coming in slowly, and should have been fat targets. I planned to simply let our automatic systems destroy them all. Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  “Colonel, I’m still counting sixty-four bogeys,” Gorski said. “We might have gotten one, but….”

  “But we didn’t,” I said.

  “At least they can’t shoot us through their own shields,” Gorski sai.

  I noticed he was right: I hadn’t felt any impacts for a couple of minutes. Suddenly, I had an idea. It was about time I had one, and I hoped it wasn’t too late. “Come about, bring the helm ninety degrees starboard and apply full thrust!”

  Startled, my bridge crew worked to do as I asked. The helmsman brainbox extended an extra two arms to accomplish the task. We were grabbing the edge of the table again, and leaning a bit.

  “What’s the plan, sir?” Sarin asked.

  “If we swing wide, we’ll be able to fire around those sprayed out shields of theirs.”

  “What if they have more spray to make a new shield?” Gorski asked.

  I shot him a dark look. “Let’s hope they don’t, Captain. Have you got any ideas?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But there is one more positive factor: these Macros might not have the fuel or the engine power to keep up with us.”

  “We’ll call that ‘prayer number two’,” I said, only half-joking.

  On the screen, my fan of fire turned as the helm turned and we accelerated in a new direction. We were still sliding sideways toward the Macro swarm, but moving angularly out to the side as well. They turned with us, following us on an intercept course. I didn’t do the math, but it looked like they were going to catch up with us.

  My gambit managed to nail a few of them. Three confirmed kills, in fact. The rest of them turned and squirted more shields between us. They were closing in fast.

  “It was worth a try,” Gorski said.

  I called Kwon. “They are almost on top of us,” I told him. “Looks like the hull will be crawling with tin spiders soon.”

  “Yes sir!” Kwon responded happily.

  I recalled the stories he’d told me about his sister and how he’d joined up to fight machines. Today he was going to get his chance.

  The first one landed about thirty seconds afterward. I heard it clank down upon the hull. It sounded like a brick docking with a steel deck, turning on its metal clamps. It was a solid, ringing sound. Everyone in the engine room looked at the ceiling.

  “Turn back into the mass of them. Maybe the turrets will take a few out as they land.”

  The ship heeled back into the storming enemy. A dozen more clanking sounds came—growing slowly in number at first then turning into a clattering shower. I was reminded of the slow build of popping sounds popcorn made in the microwave. It built and built then finally slowed to nothing as the last of the roving machines landed on my ship and began crawling around, looking for an entrance. Soon, they decided to make their own.

  “We’ve got a breach, sir!” a voice squawked. “Deck four is depressurizing!”

  “Fall back to the bulkheads,” ordered Kwon in my headset. “Keep firing as they come. If you can stand your ground for two minutes I’ll have a full company at your position.”

  I stepped from foot-to-foot and waved impatiently at Sarin, indicating the external view on our screen. It was still depicting the Helios system. “Switch this off. Give me internal schematics.”

  The ship showed up in outline. It was fuzzy in spots, as it wasn’t a perfect mapping. We hadn’t had time to do more than plant a dozen sensors around the vessel. I stared at the numerous red dots crawling over the cruiser. Our ship looked like a dog with a disease. This was the hardest part of command for me, listening to a fight nearby and waiting it out.

  “They are in the breach sir! They are pushing us back!”

  I didn’t recognize the marine’s voice, but he sounded young. It was probably one of the lieutenants. I jerked my head toward the exit. I didn’t even have a pack on. “Everyone except for the core bridge crew will suit up. Arm yourselves with a generator and projector.”

  Startled, a half-dozen staffers hustled to put on generator packs and cradling projectors. I joined them, sealing myself into my battle suit. There was a row of packs against the aft wall. I took a heavy pack as the gravity was light and I wanted killing power when I pressed the firing stud. I soon had a rifle in my hand and it felt good.

  “We have four breaches now, Colonel,” Kwon buzzed in my helmet. “Most of them are hitting the big hole we used to board the ship.”

  Naturally, I thought. That would be the easiest point of access. The hole was big and there weren’t any welded-shut doors to drill through. He didn’t have to tell me where the other four points of entry were. They were attacking in their classic diamond-formation. They would penetrate at four compass points and converge. I had to wonder what ROM circuit in their heads made them do that.

  Then I remembered Sandra. Her comatose body was in the medical brick very close to the breached area. I heard Kwon’s breathing; he’d left his transmitter keyed open. He so
unded stressed. The distinctive sound of sizzling laser bolts went off in my helmet.

  “Sarin, take the bridge,” I said, heading for the door. “I’m taking a reserve company to the main breach. We can’t let them take our bricks.”

  I hit the exit at a run. Assisted by my suit’s exoskeleton, my nanite-injections, low-gravity and good old-fashioned adrenalin, each stride took me several yards across the deck plates. I left my surprised bridge crew behind. I could feel their staring eyes on my back, but I didn’t care.

  -30-

  Kwon had a full company in the breach, but it wasn’t enough. He’d had the foresight to set up firing positions inside the ship, but for the most part it was men, machines and blazing lasers.

  The enemy marines were tough. They weren’t like the units we’d met up with before. I’d thought of those Macros as marines, but I’d been wrong. I realized now they had only been ship security troops. They might even have been worker Macros with different heads clamped on. These Macros were a different animal entirely. They were longer, taller and had an extra set of legs. Their guns were bigger, and they had three of them. One was a central heavy beam unit in their head section that they used to drill with. They could blow a hole in a deck or a wall as big as their own bodies in ten seconds with that thing. The other two beams were smaller but individually aimed. I quickly dubbed these ‘anti-personnel’ because they were chewing up my men with high rate of pulsing fire. The bolts spat something purplish—I suspected it edged into the ultraviolet and that I could only see the beams due to the properties of my helmet. These anti-personnel weapons were mounted on their sides, about where wings might have sprouted on a flying insect. They swiveled a full three-sixty from there and stitched my men with burning holes.