“Let’s do a little projecting,” I said. “Show me where they should be in another three hours.”
The Navigator created a cone of probable outcomes. The top of the cone struck several of the existing, shallow tunnels that we’d mapped, the ones the Worms had used to attack us the first time.
“Here,” I said, tapping at an area on the upper edge of the cone. “They’ll come out here.”
“That leads dead center toward the camp,” Major Robinson said. “They don’t really have to be so direct.”
“I’m not seeing a lot of subtlety so far with these Worm folks. We’ll meet them at this tunnel junction.”
Everyone blinked at me. “Meet them, sir?” Major Robinson asked.
“What did you think this was all about, Major? We’re going to have to go down there and stop them from lighting off this nuke and destroying our new base and all our shiny steel bricks.”
“Is that really necessary, sir?”
“What else do you suggest?” I asked.
“We could collapse the tunnel on them with our own explosives from above.”
“That’s like trying to drown a catfish. They are Worms, man. They will dig their way out.”
“We could at least try….”
“No. I’m not fooling around with a thermonuclear mine.”
“What if they set if off in our faces?”
“Then we won’t need a funeral, because we’ll already be buried,” I snapped. I was getting edgy, and all these petty worries didn’t help things. Certainly, we might fail. I knew that. We all did. But that was all the more reason for fast, aggressive action. We didn’t have anywhere on this world to fall back to. We didn’t have a country of our own. We had to hit them, and keep hitting them, until we won or they did.
I realized, staring at the screen, that the Macros were the smart ones in all this. Here we were, two biotic species fighting to the death while they waited quietly above the fray in orbit. What did they care if we won or lost? They could come back next year with another of our legions, or with someone else’s.
The more I thought about it, the more my hate for the Macros grew—which was saying something, because I’d never liked them to begin with.
Over the next hour, I decided to lead the expedition myself into the tunnels. When I told Major Robinson, he looked miffed. I knew he wanted to lead the expedition. We’d often talked about his need for field experience with Star Force troops and equipment. Not sending him was tantamount to a slap in the face. It suggested I didn’t trust him to do the job. And I didn’t. The stakes on this one were just too high. The Worms had to lose this fight, quickly and decisively. I didn’t want them to think about sending in forces from different directions at us the next time—if there was going to be a next time. I shuddered to think what we would have to do if we had multiple angles of attack incoming right now. There would be no defensive action possible other than trying to lift our five hundred bricks and run, and we couldn’t outrun them in that case, not even on the surface.
“I want you right here, running this big board. You are good at the big picture, Major,” I said, blowing praise at him in hopes it would stick.
“Better than you, sir?” he asked.
“Don’t push, Major.”
“Sorry sir. How many of our troops do you plan on taking on this safari?”
I glanced at him sharply. “Do we have a problem, Major?”
“I just want to set up the duty roster, Colonel.”
“I’ll take three companies. There are three spots the Worms can breach into, allowing them the use of their existing tunnels to speed up their approach. I’ll lead the middle group, where I think these unsubtle invertebrates are most likely to come up.”
Major Robinson studied his portion of the big table, tapping at it and making swirling motions with his fingers to alter the orders for three companies of marines. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. We’ll go in silent and dark. We’ll have suit lights and receivers on, but I want the transmitters switched off. I don’t want the Worms to know what they are digging into.”
Robinson continued to slap at the table. I could tell he was irritated.
“Major, come to my office for a chat, will you?” I asked.
“Certainly, sir,” he said, straightening and walking past me. He never met my eyes as he did it. He didn’t look surprised.
I followed him to my office. Sandra greeted us like a girl exploding out of a cake. Fortunately, she was fully dressed. She popped up out of her seat, lips formed into a wild greeting. She stopped short, seeing Robinson was with me.
“Sandra, could you excuse us for a second?” I asked.
Sandra nodded and slid by me, running her fingers across my chest as she did it. I marveled, watching her slink by. She could turn me on with the slightest touch. She had a gift for it.
I turned back to Robinson, who watched me smugly.
“Shouldn’t you be heading out, sir?” he said.
“What’s your problem, Robinson?”
“No problem, sir. Sorry if I—stepped on your cape, so to speak.”
I stiffened. “Superman wears a cape, Major, not me.”
“Exactly, sir.”
I glared at him for several seconds. “You really want to do this, Robinson? This will be your first field combat assignment.”
“Not so, sir. I fought in North Africa—”
“Cut the crap, man!” I barked. “We aren’t talking about a bunch of half-starved militia with Kalashnikovs, here. We are talking about fifteen to twenty foot long Worms in a dark tunnel. Worms with bad attitudes.”
Robinson shrugged and headed for the door.
“You aren’t dismissed yet, Major.”
“Request permission to return to duty, sir,” he said, standing there, still not looking at me.
I frowned, sucked in a huge breath, then let it out. “You take the men down. But don’t screw the pooch, Major.”
He looked at me in honest surprise. “I didn’t think you’d give it to me.”
“So, the spoiled brat routine was all a show?”
“No sir. I’ll take the mission.”
“Get out of here. And make sure you come back.”
I watched him trot to the airlock, a changed man. He hadn’t fought the Macros. He hadn’t fought the Worms—not up close and personally. He was excited and happy. I stared after him like a worried father. I felt like I’d just given a teenager the keys to my Ferrari.
-46-
I went back to the command post and leaned on the screens. I told myself there were plenty of good reasons to send Major Robinson. For one, I needed the time to work on new programming for our factories. We’d just set them up and they were churning out fresh nanites to make thicker, wider pads underneath our base to keep the Worms at bay. I knew there were a dozen other, better uses for the factories, which were in many ways our most powerful asset. One plan was to keep producing nanites, enough to weave a tough net of soil deep beneath the baked surface of Helios. I didn’t have much hope for that one. The Worms could break through any such net, given time. Besides, the underground net would have to be huge. If they began using nuclear mines, they didn’t have to get very close to wipe us out.
I had a better idea. I needed a new type of vehicle. One designed to tunnel into the heart of an eighty thousand foot high mountain. The trouble was, I couldn’t be sure the enemy was going to give me the time I needed to design and build these new machines. The Worms clearly had an agenda of their own, and they weren’t out of ideas yet.
I watched via base cameras as Robinson gathered his three companies and equipped them sparsely for light, fast maneuvers. When dawn broke with alarming suddenness, sending the surface temperatures upward ten degrees in ten minutes, he led his troops out of our base of steel bricks and marched them toward the black, hulking mountains. His three companies didn’t have to go far to enter the Worm tunnels. The nearest mouth was only fifty feet from the camp perimeter.