“Try different versions.”
Up until now, all ten cameras had been locked onto various parts of the huge machine in front of us. Now, one of them swung to me. The lens refocused with a tiny whirring sound. “Why would this unit not be upgraded to the latest version of the communications software?”
My armor prevented me from shrugging. “Just try it.”
“It will require a complete reinitialization.”
“What will that take? A second or two? Come on, Marvin.”
He turned all his cameras back to the Macro factory. “Done,” he said.
“You got a response?”
“Yes. But it may have been a delayed acceptance of my earlier requests.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. Marvin was like a lot of touchy engineering types. He hated to be wrong, especially about something technical. I could understand that, as he was a mass of technological wizardry himself. It probably hurt his pride.
“Should I attempt to make it bring down the dome?” he asked.
“No!” Sloan said quickly. He was standing at our side.
Marvin and I looked at him.
“Uh, if we brought down the shield, the Macros and that crazy cloud out there could get in. We need this defensive position, sir.”
“Agreed,” I said. “Let’s try something simple, Marvin. Have it produce a mass of constructive nanites.”
Marvin was quiet for a time. “Program rejected,” he said. “Symbol table limit exceeded. Unknown identifier. Errors too numerous-”
“I get it, Marvin,” I said. “Hmm. I should have thought of this. It is similar to our nanite factories, but not identical. It doesn’t seem to know much about nanite technology. I suppose that makes sense. If the Macros had been able to produce nanites, they would have sent different weapons systems against us. Let’s go easy on it. Tell it to build me a block of ferrous alloy. A cube.”
“What is the volume of this cube to be?”
“Let it decide. But I want to see what it can do in two minutes time.”
We waited then, as Marvin formed the program and transmitted the source code.
“Program accepted. Engaged.”
“That was easy,” Kwon said, stumping up close.
I politely kept quiet. Computers always looked easy to operate when they worked. We waited the two minutes. It seemed like a very long time. My marines had just begun to wander the place, when a massive clang sounded in the enclosed space.
“Could that be my cube?” I asked, heading to the output tray.
When I saw it, I gaped in amazement. A dozen marines joined me. There, in the tray, was a perfectly-formed gunmetal-gray cube. It had to be six feet in every dimension-maybe more.
“Is that thing solid, sir?” Sloan asked.
“Yes Captain,” I said. “I do believe it is.”
“It must weigh more than a ton,” Kwon said.
Marvin drifted near and tapped at the block with his tentacles. The action made an odd, tinging sound. “I’d estimate the weight at fifty-four tons,” he said. “That would be at one G of course, and an assumed steel density factor of point-two-eight.”
“Sounds good, Marvin,” I said. “What I want to know, is if it can make something useful.”
I thought hard for a few minutes, shooing the others away. Not having nanites to work with was a serious problem. With nanites, you could shape and mold what you wanted. This system produced less malleable output, and you had to know exactly what you wanted from the start. I wondered how much this technological advantage had helped us in our many battles with the Macros-I suspected the effect was a large one. I also wondered why the Macros had larger factories that produced less sophisticated output. It was like they were one step back on some technological tree.
I shook my head and paced in my armor. I had to get my mind focused on the problem. We were at the bottom of a Macro mining pit, inside a dome and apparently inside the bowels of a Blue. We’d captured the factory, but had yet to secure it, or get anything useful out of it. I had to capitalize on this win and keep the enemy from recapturing it. But how?
My initial plan had been to get the factory up into space, where we could add it to the rest. Maybe I could even relocate it on Hel, and use it to start building my battle station. Such fantasies were evaporating quickly, now that I was face to face with this monstrous machine. It was as big as a good-sized office building. A hundred feet tall, and nearly twice as much in diameter. Every engine I had couldn’t lift it off the surface of this world. No wonder, I thought, the Macros built everything big.
Turning back to the machine, I decided to experiment. It couldn’t build something that included smart metal, or a brainbox. Such elements required nanotech. But it could build something like a laser projector for me.
“Marvin, I’m going to disconnect and remove my laser projector. I want this machine to make two new ones of similar design, but I want them to be about ten times the size and power. Make sure it increases the cooling system portion to about double what my suit projector comes equipped with. I’ll also need a generator unit that is powerful enough to operate the projector. Make sure the generator comes with insulated connection cables-I know the Macros tend to build bare-wire systems. Can you do all that?”
“Of course, but I cannot guarantee the quality of the results. It will depend on the available supplies of certain materials.”
“Right. The machine can recycle this steel block, if that helps.”
“That will not be helpful. The available quantity of holmium and erbium is the controlling factor.”
“Just give it a try, will you?”
Marvin was quiet for a moment. “Done.”
The big machine began to groan and thrum again. I looked up at it in surprise.
“I didn’t give this thing my unit to examine yet,” I said. The Nano machines generally worked on a duplication principle. To start a new design, you put some finished component into the input box, and it tried to build the same object.
“Unnecessary. This unit is equipped with external sensory systems. It has already scanned your technological devices and is capable of duplicating most of them.”
I nodded, impressed. Maybe Macro tech wasn’t entirely inferior to Nano tech.
“In that case, we can start working on the next elements of the system.”
Marvin and I spent nearly an hour developing the program and arguing about our supplies of various elements. We have plenty of the rare earths required for laser construction, but we were low on palladium, promethium and neodymium. These materials were needed in the construction of fusion generators. I pondered the problem. I could build a stack of guns, but not enough generators to power them. I decided in the end to build in the Macro tradition: big and impressive.
Kwon and Sloan became bored with patrolling the perimeter and came to watch. Kwon asked the first question.
“How long until you finish, sir? I would like to get out of here.”
“Understood, Sergeant. But it will be a while. Another hour at least.”
Sloan asked the next question. “Sir…what in the heck are you building?”
I flipped my visor up, wiped sweat from my face and smiled at him. Then it flipped it back down. The unit was still in a combat stance, and I didn’t want to lose my vision due to a weapons discharge.
“I’m building a tank, Captain. A very big one. We are going to ride it out of here. It will have cannons to destroy any Macros that try to stop us and a steel hide thick enough to keep our windy friend Mr. Blue from pushing us around.”
— 17
In the end, I managed to build something big and ugly. It did look vaguely like a tank-or maybe a horned Viking helmet. The tank had two separate turrets that rotated independently of one another. Sitting side by side in the midsection of the tank, the cannons swiveled independently and required a human gunner to man each of them. Both guns covered a wide arc of fire, but if the tank was attacked from either flank, we would only be able to get one weapon into play. Still, it was pretty impressive-looking.