“Zap? How fast?”
“Well,” I said, “I estimate it would take a group of ten factories—perfectly supplied with everything they needed and all the power they wanted—about a month to build a new ship.”
He snorted.
“Think big, Jack. What if we had fifty factories? That would be more than a ship a week.”
He fell silent for several seconds. “Okay, mate. Do it. But put guardian ships up. Don’t lose any of those factories. And make sure the dirtsiders know they are not to come within fifty miles of that base of yours.”
After we had working bases, my biggest effort turned to cranking out small arms. With a whole lot of help from the guys at the Pentagon and various industrial contractors, we put together a laser system that a trooper could carry. The laser units themselves weren’t the only pieces my factories had to produce. In fact, the biggest piece was the power supply, which fit into a backpack each man would have to carry. It amounted to a small fusion reactor, with a specially-built black cable running from it to a trigger mechanism and polymer grip. The laser unit was placed inside this grip and the weapon was complete. Earth factories produced the harness and pack to carry the reactor, along with the polymer rifle-grip that provided the trigger mechanism. My machines built the laser tubes, the reactors, and the black cables. The cables had to be able to carry an incredible amount of power, and they looked suspiciously like the small, black snake-arms my ship produced whenever they were needed.
It took weeks to put our first division of U. S. Marines into the field armed with the new weapons. Elite forces all over the world were training with them, but we hadn’t produced enough yet to arm everyone. I had dedicated all my land factories to building more factories, which would grow our production exponentially over time. Our ships that weren’t on some other mission dedicated themselves to floating around Andros Island producing laser rifles by the hundreds.
In spite of how fast we’d worked, the enemy seemed to move faster. Their troops never got tired. They fought night and day until destroyed. By the time we were ready to take the field, the enemy had reached the Amazon River Basin and nearly half the continent had been lost to the enemy. Fortunately, the terrain had slowed them somewhat. They had taken Sau Paulo, Rio and much of the rest of the eastern coast of Brazil, but the jungles, rivers and especially the mountains had slowed them down.
Sandra didn’t like it, and neither did Crow, but I insisted on going down there to the front lines with our newly-armed troops. If the Airborne guys all shot me in the back, well, I figured I was dead. And the universe would have proof, once and for all, that our race was too stupid to survive anyway. I went because I wanted to see what we were up against. I wanted to see how the weapons worked, and what adjustments I could make to the design to make them more effective. No one else in the fleet had yet gotten the hang of programming the fabricators to create new things, and we had not allowed earthers to experiment with the machines. To make good design changes, I had to see firsthand how these units performed.
We put the men, a company of them at a time, into large steel containers for transport. Nothing on Earth could move troops better than one of our ships carrying them with that giant arm. Like some kind of insane helicopter raid, we brought thousands of men down to a staging area. We flew very low and landed about twenty miles north of the fighting, so we wouldn’t get shot down by enemy AA. Each dome had a missile launcher that could rise up and nail aircraft with precision. Every large Macro carried a similar AA system on its back.
The plan was to deploy our first large groups of laser-armed troops just after the Macros hit a buried line of tactical nuclear mines. Every man in the unit had protective gear: full body-suits of lead-lined Kevlar with oxygen and a power pack on their backs. They had special headgear too, with darkened goggles. I’d heard the first volunteers to fire my system had been blinded and given instant sunburns, due to the intense infrared emissions. Their retinas had been burned out of their heads in the first second. Now, we had the whole kit working, but it was still crude. Altogether, the system weighed over a hundred pounds. Because of the weight of their kits, the troops couldn’t carry much else. I could tell right away I needed to get the weight of these units down. I didn’t have much trouble with the backpack and hazard suit myself due to the strengthening effects of the nanites in my body. But the heavy protective suits also redoubled the steamy heat of the jungle, making each mile a suffocating experience.
The troops had a strange reaction to me, knowing I was from the enigmatic fleet. Some thought of us as the enemy, but most had to admit we’d just air-lifted them thousands of miles southward to a field deployment position in hours, something no chopper could have done. They were impressed that I was down there with them, ground-pounding. They considered me a real officer, which was refreshing. A navy commander translated to a major in the Army, and they treated me like one. Or maybe, they treated me respectfully because I scared them. Sometimes I felt like a large, dangerous snake they were required to salute.
“Commander Riggs, sir?” asked Corporal Jensen, who’d been assigned to me as my aide. He was a lanky kid with wide shoulders and red sideburns that looked like they were at little past regulation length. I figured he was here primarily to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble, but I was glad to have him.
“Yes, Corporal?”
“It’s time to get into the bunkers, sir. The enemy should be hitting our firewall any time now.”
The ‘firewall’ was what the troops called our string of nuclear mines that had been laid in the rainforest to the south. We were stationed along the mouth of a wide slow river that connected to the Amazon River somewhere upstream. The muddy brown shorelines on both sides of the river were dotted with bunkers and foxholes. The vibrantly green jungle growth crowded up against the encampment and seemed ominously thick and dank. Any moment, one was left expecting something huge and terrifying to come out of those trees.
I nodded and followed the corporal. He stopped me however, and directed me in the opposite direction. “No sir, you need to go to the command bunker. They’ll be waiting for you in there. You’re part of the briefing.”
“Thanks Corporal,” I said, turning in the indicated direction.
“Commander?” asked the Corporal.
“Yes?”
“Did you really make these guns?” he asked, hefting his.
I nodded. “I designed them, with some help from the Pentagon.”
“They’re really cool, sir.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you think they will stop a Macro, sir?”
“I hope so, Corporal,” I said.
I continued in the direction of the command bunker. I tried to act coolly, but in reality I was out of my element. I wasn’t used to military encampments. Everyone seemed to know what was going on and where they were supposed to be except me. They’d all been on maneuvers like this, if not in actual combat. The only serious combat I’d seen had been from a reclining position inside a tin can I called the Alamo.
I found the command bunker and paused outside it. I looked around at the Brazilian jungle. Rainforests are hard to describe. They are gorgeous and unpleasant all at once. When you are caught up in one as a trooper with a hundred pound kit on your back, a lead-lined hazard suit wrapped around your face and a nervous tickle of sweat under your arms, it’s not inviting. But to the eye, standing there in the camp as everyone tucked themselves into bunkers underground, it was inarguably beautiful. White sands, glowing blue water, sun-drenched skies. Birds trilled and whooped. A thousand tiny living things waved and crawled over every yard of soil under my boots.