“May I suggest something, Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked.
“Talk to me. You’ve been way too quiet lately.”
“The actions you are suggesting will make our plans transparent. The mission might be jeopardized by-”
“No, no, no,” I said, shaking my head and chuckling. It wasn’t the kind of chuckle I used when I thought something was actually funny. “You wanted this attack, but now that I’m committing to it you are growing apprehensive? You can’t have this both ways.”
“They will know we are coming.”
“Fine,” I said. “I think they’ve known all along. We made a move on one factory and we blew it up when we realized we couldn’t capture it. If they are brighter than usual, they should realize what we are after.”
I had to count cameras. I thought it was about nine now. I must have freaked him out.
“You believe they’ve analyzed our intentions?” he asked. “If so, my plan is not going to function as designed.”
I thought about that. “I’m saying I think they know we are going for their production facilities. But that doesn’t mean they will know about you and your hijacking attempt. We’ll just have to be tricky, that’s all. It’s still worth a try.”
Marvin looked worried, and for some reason this pleased me. I turned to Miklos.
“Gather the fleet here. We’ll take down the landing pods, but only load one of them-the one we’ll be in. And I want Sloan in there with me. I want his luck aboard my ship. That way, I know we’ll at least make it down to the surface alive. Besides, it’s about time that unkillable bastard got into this war.”
Miklos spread the word and the response was impressive. Marines and Fleet pilots were rushing around everywhere. The ships gathered by the hour and I sensed that the Macros were down there, watching us closely with their artificial eyes.
When I was about to board Barbarossa for the trip down, Captain Miklos stopped me.
“Oh, by the way Colonel…”
“What is it?”
“There have been more vibrations detected-out at the ring that connects us to the binary star system.”
“Why wasn’t I informed earlier?”
“We’ve been busy avoiding missiles and mounting a ground invasion, sir.”
“Priorities, Captain. My orders were clear: I want to know what those Crustaceans are up to.”
“Sorry sir. The ship we had posted on the remote side has returned to our side to transmit a report-this was many hours ago, due to the distance. He says a swarm of Nano ships are approaching the ring and refusing to communicate.”
I swore. “The lobsters are getting ideas, eh? Why now? Maybe they know we are tied up with the Macros and want to make their move while we are distracted. Do you think that’s it?”
“I’m not really sure, sir.”
I paced, my heavy boots ringing on the deck. “Have them lay down some more mines on our side. Then have our sentry ship relay a politely-worded informational communique about the weapons. If they still come through-well, they can’t say we didn’t warn them.”
I left it at that and boarded the landing pod. We were finally going back to the Centaur homeworld. It felt good, in a way. I hadn’t liked being driven back from this planet the first time. After all, I’d promised the original owners their world would be liberated.
The trip down was relatively uneventful. I’d half-expected a fresh barrage of missiles, either aimed at our ships or the habitat above. Neither came. The enemy sat quietly, waiting.
Looking down through a rigged-up video system, I eyed the LZ intently when we broke through the cloud layer. It was going to be a gray, drizzling day down there when we landed. Through silvery sheets of falling rain, I made out a charcoal-black surface. The region around the great pit was graded and channeled by the passage of countless machines as they destroyed the region, leaching every ounce of minerals out of the land.
The ship fell like a rock at the end, and I soon saw why. A missile had finally come at us, but it was a small one, of a familiar AA design. I glimpsed it as the cameras tracked it. A sliver of dull, unfinished metal with a flaring red exhaust. A contrail ran behind it, pluming out as billowing white vapors.
“Evasive action,” Sloan ordered.
I would have answered with a few curses, but I could barely breathe. Sloan was piloting this ship, and he clearly didn’t intend to get hit by that missile. He swung and whipped the ship from side to side. I felt the guns stuttering as they tracked and tried to shoot down the incoming weapon.
I looked at the screens, but it must have been too close for the cameras to track it now. I flicked my gaze to the front wall, which showed a rust-red finger moving very rapidly to intersect with our ship, which was represented by the nanites in the wall as a golden bead of metal. I gritted my teeth and tightened my shoulders, bracing for impact. With luck, even if the ship was knocked out, some of us would survive to continue the mission.
Then a second later, it was over. The missile was gone.
“We must have shot it down,” Sloan said. He asked the ship what had occurred, and Barbarossa confirmed the missile had been taken out.
“Ha!” I shouted. “That’s just the sort of flying I expected to see out of you, Sloan. That’s why I brought you along. The Macros don’t have a chance of shooting us down with you aboard.”
Sloan tossed me a grin, then went back to studying his boards intently. When off-duty, he was quick to slam down a beer and seemed half-asleep at meetings. But when he was under fire, the man was all business.
“That was an AA shot,” I said. “The kind the big Macros put on their backs. I bet there’s at least one of those machines down there.”
“We have not seen any of that type of unit in the vicinity,” Marvin said.
I glanced at him. “Believe me, they’ve been building like mad down there.”
“Trouble, sir,” Sloan said.
I snapped my helmeted head around and examined the big screen again. “Seven more incoming? Is someone transmitting my name from this ship? I briefed you about that.”
“No sir, not to my knowledge,” Sloan said. He was making the ship buck and weave again. If I’d been a person who got seasick, I’d have filled my helmet by now.
“We can’t get away from three-what the hell are you doing, Marvin?” I broke off and stood up, but was tossed back into my crash seat.
Marvin was sprawled on the floor, using his numerous tentacles to cling to anything solid. He had a hand-held laser out, a short-ranged type we used for welding. He was intent on what he was doing, and only a single camera swung my way when I spoke to him.
“I’ve calculated a ninety-seven percent probability this ship will sustain a hit.”
“So, you’re cutting your way out?” I asked. “I give you an ‘A’ for effort. Sloan, we are in the atmosphere now. Order everyone to abandon ship.”
Sloan did so, and as part of the ship’s programming, the floor of the bridge vanished.
We all fell, not out of the ship entirely, but down into another subchamber under the one we’d been in. This was the empty landing pod. I looked up and saw Kwon and the rest of our team were coming down into the pod with us. A few were already there. We bumped heads and helmets. Fortunately, all of us were too armored to get injured.
“Can we pilot this down?” I asked.
“No time,” Sloan said. “Barbarossa, release landing pod!”
There was a sickening lurch. I looked over at the situational diagram on the wall. Three missiles, still incoming. Our ships were around, firing at it. None of them had any missiles targeting them. Dammit. As I watched one of the AA shots vanished, but there were two more, and that was going to be more than enough.
Macro AA missiles weren’t like Earth equivalents, especially now that they’d become accustomed to our defensive fire. These missiles were painted with textured, reflective matter. They also spun on their central axis. It was like shooting at a disco ball, and our lasers tended to bounce off. Worse, they pumped out mists and chaff to put a diffusive shield around the tiny vehicle. It wasn’t hard to lock onto one of them, but it was extremely hard to beat their countermeasures and bring it down.