Like so many times in the past, the Macros dashed my dreams with their true plans. I had to give it to them. This time, they’d really let me get my hopes up.
“Open fire!” I shouted, but I needn’t have bothered. Kwon and Sloan were targeting nearby machines and melting them. The power of the beams was impressive. Even when the flashing beams reached me indirectly through tiny slits, they made my visor flash and darken.
“Turn around, Marvin!” I ordered. “Head back for the dome.”
Marvin slewed us around in a wild one-eighty that left me with my right leg hanging over Kwon’s shoulder. I could only imagine how my marines were doing down below us in the belly of the tank. Probably, they were cursing my name and the day they’d broken their mammas’ hearts and signed with Star Force.
Kwon brushed my foot off his shoulder and kept firing. Most of the machines were armed with long pinchers, saw-blades or scoops. These were the Macro equivalent of farm implements in the hands of angry peasants. Some had lasers, however. They fired storms of bolts down on my tank and the sound inside the vehicle was like that of a hard rain mixed with that of sizzling bacon. I knew the sizzling sound was formed by melted steel, which no doubt had formed hot runnels on the outer hull.
The front of the vehicle had the thickest armor, like any tank. Unfortunately, now that we were running, they were hitting my tank in the butt. Still, I’d made sure to put plenty of steel in every direction. Even the flank armor was thick and solid, but it would only take so much. Eventually, they would burn through if they kept pounding us-and Macros were never likely to vary a tactic that had even the slightest hope of success.
I gauged our chances when we hit the open floor of the pit with a bucking heave. Already, Marvin was struggling with the controls. I wished fervently that I’d put that armor skirt over the treads. The treads had taken hits along the way, and the right side seemed to be dragging. Soon, we might be immobilized. At that point, we’d be toast.
Outside, thousands of machines rushed us eagerly. They made a rustling sound I could hear through the walls of the tank. Like scuttling insects, they charged forward, anxious to stop us or die.
“Keep firing on the ones that are burning us. I think this tank can handle the pinchers and the like.”
“The ones with the guns are hard to see, sir,” Kwon said.
“What? Why?”
“The worker Macros are all over the barrel of my cannon.”
I took a look outside, and saw he was right. They had mounded over us now. It was like a swarm of ants on top of a big beetle. They were riding the tank in a mass. We were still crawling forward, but slowing down.
The road became bumpier, and I quickly realized why. We were overrunning the smaller machines. I wondered how long my tank could keep plowing them over, crushing down their thrashing metal bodies before it ground to a halt. At that point, I knew we were dead men.
“Marvin, get us back under that dome! And connect me with Miklos!”
“Miklos here, sir,” came the Captain’s calm, familiar voice.
I had a hard time hearing him over the din of the scrabbling, clacking Macro workers that now blotted out our view of the sky with their bodies.
“Miklos, listen to me. I need a low-powered laser burn from a single destroyer.”
“Where sir?”
“Right here. Follow my signal down, and burn me at this location.”
“I don’t-I don’t understand, sir.”
“Just do it man, or we’re dead! Keep the power low, and unfocus the guns, I want an area about fifty feet in diameter to be hit. Give it a five second burn, immediately!”
“Yes sir,” Miklos said after another brief pause.
I could hear a familiar tone in his voice. He thought I was crazy. But I also heard something else: resignation. All my officers had learned to do crazy things after spending enough time under my command. If you lived long enough on my team, you were sure to be given insane orders at some point.
The first sign I had that the beams were hitting us was the dimming of my visor. I didn’t detect the laser itself, as most of the power was not in the visible spectrum. But it did come down unerringly to burn my tank. It was almost impossible for them to miss as I was providing them with a radio signal to sight on.
The scrabbling noises on the hull intensified.
“Increase power!” I shouted. “Miklos, double down on that burn, same duration and area, but more power.”
My visor blackened out entirely. I wasn’t sure for a moment if the Macros had covered us entirely, blotting out the light, or if the lasers from the destroyer had done it. I reasoned it had to be the destroyer, as I would have been able to see the suit lights of my fellow marines otherwise.
“Colonel Riggs, we are close to the edge of the dome,” Marvin said.
This entire time, he’d been piloting the tank without wavering from his post. That was one good thing about having a robot for a pilot: they didn’t panic on you.
The scrabbling on the roof of the tank subsided. I figured the Macros were melting to slag out there. We were still bumping and heaving as we slowly traveled over their countless bodies, however.
“Miklos!” I shouted. “Can you still hear me?”
There was a quiet second or two. I was worried, as I knew once we entered the dome all communications would be cut out. Another possible disaster included the high probability that our com system had been damaged by the bombardment.
“…Riggs…contact…”
“Miklos, listen to me: I want you to send down everything we have. I need ground, air and space support. Kill these machines and meet me inside the dome. This is our new base. Bring the Centaurs. Bring everyone.”
There was only some buzzing in response. “Marvin, send my last message again and again. Keep sending it until we are inside the dome.”
“Transmission sent.”
“Good. Now send it again.”
I was rewarded with a single, curious camera eye. “Transmission sent,” he said.
I snorted. Even the robot thought I was crazy. But didn’t care. It was beginning to look like we were going to live to a see another day.
— 18
We hit the dome going too fast. It was an easy mistake to make, but Marvin almost killed us. I was gripping the wheel of the upper hatch with only one gauntlet at that moment, having let go with the other hand to tap Kwon’s shoulder. I shouldn’t have bothered, as he couldn’t feel me through the armor even if I slapped him hard.
In any case, when we hit the Macro dome, some law of physics was violated. We were moving too fast, and it was like hitting a concrete wall instead of a soap bubble. Everyone was thrown forward. For the four of us in the upper compartment, with no straps, nano-arms or other restraints, it was a worst case scenario. Marvin was at the bottom of the heap, crushed down on the control bars. I was second, entangled with Sloan who ended up with his helmet shoved under my armpit. Last came Kwon, crashing into the stack like a sledgehammer. He had held on a fraction of a second longer than the rest of us, which only served to put him on top of the sandwich.
My neck and right arm were twisted and my visor was starred again. My suit nanites had barely affected repairs since the lashing of the Blue’s dust storm, and now they had new hairline cracks to deal with. Fortunately, I’d designed the suits for absorbing impact. As bad as this pile-up was, it was nothing compared to a collision in space. We simply weren’t moving fast enough to cause serious damage.
I heard a whuffing sound. Kwon was laughing his ass off. “This is pretty comfy,” he said. “You guys are like a pile of cushions.”
“Get your fat butt off my neck,” Sloan complained.
“We are proceeding into the Macro dome,” Marvin said. “It would be advisable to return to your stations, sirs.”