bud up in the center and push it away automatically. You’re not the only one who can program a mass of nanites, Kyle.”
I nodded. I had to admit, Crow had me beat in the area of deception. “When did you build this place?”
“Quite a while back,” he said. “Remember when you first announced war on the mainland?”
“As I recall, they announced war on Star Force.”
“Well, in any case, I was worried they would get all our factories. I’d already stashed one by then. Since that time, I’ve built more with the first one.”
I craned my neck around to look at the sneaky bastard appreciatively. “How did I lose count of a factory?”
Crow shrugged. “Remember all those ships we lost fighting the Macros? Our original ships? They all had factories of their own you know, every one of them. Now, what if the Macros knocked out a few of those craft without destroying them utterly. Without ruining the factory component…”
“You found one of our downed ships and recovered the factory without telling me about it?”
“Salvage-rights mate. One of the oldest laws of sea, you should look into it.”
“Okay,” I said, shedding complaints and arguments as quickly as they popped into my mind. They didn’t matter now, I kept reminding myself. “What the hell have you been doing with these factories all this time-what’s it been, two years?”
“Nearly that long,” Crow said. “Well, for the most part, I’ve been building more factories.”
I got up out of my seat and put my hands on my hips. I smiled at him, and he slowly grinned back.
“You magnificent bastard,” I said. “I’ve never felt like hugging you before.”
“I’m hoping you never do again,” Sandra said. “What are you two so happy about?”
“I’ll show you,” Crow said. “Open up your ship, Kyle.”
I touched a section of Socorro’s inner hull. The wall and part of the floor melted away. A moment later, a dulling gleaming metal ramp formed leading down to the concrete floor.
“This is where the budget and materials have been going, isn’t it?” I asked. I thought about the extra materials Star Force had been swallowing. All the double-accounting and extravagant prices were suddenly making sense to me. Crow had been hiding massive shipments of materials for his pet project. Building factories didn’t take a lot of bulk, but they took more precious metals and time than anything else we could produce.
“Exactly,” Crow said. “I didn’t hire a hundred extra purchasing clerks to feather my nest with trinkets.”
“Just factories?” I asked. “Is that all you’ve been building?”
“At first, yes,” Crow said, “but-well, let me show you.”
We all stood on a dark section of stained concrete. A single factory was in evidence. The maw at the top of it was aimed upward, clearly waiting to be fed materials through the opening that mimicked a pond overhead. Like every one of these strange systems we called ‘factories’, it was a spheroid about twelve feet in diameter that sat in the center of the structure. It resembled an old-fashioned steel kettle, but the surface was uneven, full of ripples and bulges that hinted the machine was loaded with unimaginable components. The strangely twisting internals made me think of a man’s guts pressing out against a thin, metal skin.
In every direction around us shadows hung. The pool of bright light we stood within made the darker regions impossibly dense. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the single factory in the lit region.
Sandra gasped, however. “Kyle? Do you see them all? They are fantastic!”
Crow looked at her and smiled. He made a slow waving motion with his left arm. The lights came up then, revealing a vast area. I turned around, taking it all in. The area resembled a parking garage with a triply-high ceiling. Round metallic columns of what looked like construction nanites stood, holding up the roof. The columns undulated in shape, reminding me of three-foot thick termite mounds. The floor was concrete, but roof was all metal-all dully gleaming masses of constructive nanites.
What I saw between those columns wasn’t more factories, as I had expected. Instead, my eyes feasted upon ships. Nine sleek, beautiful ships. They looked like birds of prey nesting here in the dark.
“They are my design,” I said. “My destroyers.”
“Indeed they are, mate,” Crow said. “Fully-armed, this lot. Not like the ragtag force we threw together to face the Macros the last time they came into orbit. Every ship in the squadron has three heavy guns. I’d say any three of them can take down an enemy cruiser easily.”
Getting over my wonderment, I whirled on him and grabbed up a wad of his shirt. “You could have deployed them,” I yelled in his face. “You could have put them into the sky when the four cruisers came down and went on their bombardment run over Earth. Instead, you sat back and put up a token force for show. You let my men die up there fighting ship-to-ship!”
Sandra moved in a blur. It was as if she had waited for this instant all her life-perhaps she had. She moved behind Crow, grabbed up his arms with her small, steel-like hands. Crow reacted violently. He twisted away and whirled to face her. He was strong and fast, but not fast enough.
Crow froze when he realized Sandra had placed one of her incredibly sharp blades at his throat.
“Nanites can’t save you if your head is on the floor, Jack,” she whispered into his face.
They were both panting. I decided it was time to intervene. “Let’s stand down, you two.”
“Let me do it, Kyle,” Sandra said. The two had locked stares. “He let Gorski die up there on the Jolly Rodger. Gorski, and a hundred others like him. I want to cut the good admiral.”
I knew Sandra was firmly in the grip of one of her blood-lusting moods. I’d seen it before while fighting Macros. I had to move carefully to talk her down.
“You are by no means the first who’s had that wish, Sandra,” I said, keeping my voice calm in the hopes it would calm them both.
“You’ll have to take a number for the privilege,” Crow said.
I eyed him. He didn’t sound as if he were as worried as he should be. Then I saw it.
“Sandra, behind you,” I said.
She bound forward, spinning around in the air before she came down. Something long and dark snaked forward from the nearest of the destroyers. In the excitement of the combat, it had reached for her. Three thick fingers clicked together where her body had been a moment before. The arm itself was as thick as a tree trunk while the fingers were like black metal fire hoses with minds of their own. The arm rose up like a rearing cobra and darted forward to catch Sandra. She slashed at it and sprang out of the way. A spray of white sparks lit up our faces. One of the fingers was now about a foot shorter than it had been.
“All right, all right,” I said. “That’s enough you two. Stand down! We’ve got billions of people to worry about. Get your heads on straight, that’s an order.”
Crow waved back the arm. Sandra stood behind me with both of her knives in her hands. Crow and Sandra were breathing hard. Their eyes were wide and possessed by a wild light. I reflected that I’d been foolish to bring these two into close proximity. Neither was the best at self-control.
“I’m an Admiral,” Crow reminded me. He rubbed at his throat, where he was indeed bleeding from a thread-like cut. “A Colonel doesn’t command an Admiral.”
“I told you I would cut you,” Sandra said over my shoulder to Crow. She dipped her head close to my ear then and whispered: “You don’t order me around, either, Kyle. You know that.”
I sighed. Normally, I would tell them to shake hands, but I figured someone would be minus some fingers afterward.
“Okay,” I said to Crow. “Tell us how long you’ve been hiding these ships. And how many do you have?”
“He’s got nine,” Sandra said. “Can’t you see them all?”
I shook my head. “I only see one factory. You said you built more. I have to know what assets I have if I’m going to win this fight, Crow.”
Admiral Jack Crow looked irritable, but resigned. “Yeah. That’s why I brought you and you’re delicate flower of a girlfriend out here. So much for gratitude.”
I felt Sandra bristle behind me. I held up a hand again to prevent another outburst. “Just give me the numbers.”
“You have to understand, Kyle. When you came down in those Macro ships I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have these ships manned. I had no trained crews for the destroyers yet. I didn’t know if we could take them down, especially with green crews. Just getting pilots out here would have taken longer than the battle did in the end. I-”
