destination button virtually with my armored finger in space. I couldn’t even see my hand in the blackness, but feedback in the suit allowed me to feel as if I was tapping at the virtual screen displayed on my HUD.
I was lurched around sickeningly as my suit’s autopilot engaged. We had been heading in what was decidedly the wrong direction. In fact, as I swung around and began to accelerate in our direction of travel, I realized we’d been braking too long. The enemy was still ahead of us. I wasn’t sure how far.
We flew on into the night, squinting ahead. Then I saw it, a pitch-black Macro cruiser. There were no running lights, as the machines didn’t believe in safety. The ship looked bigger up close, something like a medium-sized office building in space. I knew we were coming toward the front of it, as we’d have been able to see the blue glow of the engines if we’d come up from behind.
“There,” I said to Kwon, pointing. “How many grenades do we have?”
“An even dozen, sir.”
Normally, it took as many as ten hits to ensure a cruiser was destroyed. They were very tough vessels.
“Throw all of them and break off,” I ordered.
The operation went almost perfectly. We only lost a single man who had some kind of control malfunction at the last moment. I was never sure why, but he drifted too close to the final explosion and was vaporized with the Macro ship.
I didn’t dare communicate with my fleet, but I could read the situation fairly well. The three fleets seemed to be locked in combat, neither side retreating. They’d matched speeds and now sat in space, taking one another out one at a time. The Worm ships seemed particularly effective, flying in erratic, swooping patterns around the enemy ships and slashing them with their particle beams. I hoped they wouldn’t notice us and take a potshot.
A few minutes, we followed Marvin’s second set of coordinates. We let our suits do the maneuvering and approached a second cruiser, which was locked in a fight with two Worm ships that swung around it like moths circling a lantern. The problem was, we were out of grenades and our arm-mounted beamers were never going to cut through that thick hull.
“The missile ports are opening up,” I shouted. “Let’s go for it.”
Kwon relayed the order. A dozen shadows joined us as we tightened our formation, all intent on a single goal. A Macro missile flared brightly as we reached the port. I realized in an instant the cruiser was firing, probably at the Worms that circled the ship. It launched with a gush of hot vapor, and I could see the Macro technician driving the missile as it left its rack.
Macro missiles were not configured the same way ours were. They did not have to be as aerodynamic, as they were normally used in space. They were really small, suicidal spaceships. The pilot was just another machine, a crewmember bent on his own self-destruction.
I’d seen a missile like this up-close in the ground at Andros, where we’d tried to defuse it. Then it had been half-buried in the earth, however, and badly damaged. The nose section of the missile was the warhead, in the form of a metal cone. The midsection held the Macro pilot, enclosed in a framework of metal tubing. Behind him was the engine with its flaring plume of hot exhaust. The entire thing was a strange sight.
I thought, for just an instant, that the machine saw me as well. Then it was gone in the vastness of space, on a one-way journey to strike down one of our ships.
“Get inside the port, full throttle!” I ordered.
I saw men all around me surge forward in response to my order. I joined them.
The missile port closed as we slipped inside. Not all of us made it. One man had lost a leg, two more were trapped outside, thumping on the hull.
“What now, sir?” Kwon said, breathing hard.
We were cramped in the missile magazine. All around us was machinery and two more missiles. Fortunately, no other Macro technicians had loaded themselves into the last two spots.
Moments after we entered the port, we were rocked and tossed about by an explosion outside-very close. I imagined the missile had found one of the Worm ships or gotten close enough and detonated itself. The men we’d left outside stopped sending us signals, and I figured we would never find any remains.
“Disable these missiles,” I ordered. “I don’t want them taking out any more friendly ships.”
“And after that?”
I sucked in a lungful of stale, suit air. “After that, we take this ship.”
— 47
The fighting went hard, and we almost lost. We never made it to the engine room, the key to taking over any Macro ship. Kwon and I were down to five effectives, having left our wounded and dying in a quiet corner of the ship on the lower decks. Honestly, I thought we were dead. Any moment, I expected the Macro marines to find us and finish us off, or for our own fleet to blast the ship into fragments, unaware they’d killed their own commander.
In the end, help came from an unexpected source. Reflecting back on the situation, it was the only help that could have come.
A monstrous entity of shambling metal slithered down the passages, showering sparks as it came. I knew from experience most of the sparks were from the bare metal wires it touched as it passed by. Macro crews tended not to bother insulating their power wires. The monster itself was constructed of seemingly random articles of metal. The hind legs that pushed it forward had the grasshopper-like, spring-loaded anatomy of a Macro worker. But the head section and the torso was an open framework of steel tubing. What identified the creature to me, were the three whipping black arms that sprouted from the thorax region and which the thing used to drag its body forward along the passage.
“What the nine hells is that, sir?” Kwon asked me in a whisper.
I stared at it for a second, then turned to Kwon, grinning inside my helmet. “That’s Marvin. Hold your fire, everyone!”
The marines did as they were told, but they weren’t happy about it. They kept their weapons trained upon the approaching abomination, ready to blast it the moment it made a false move.
“Hello, Colonel Riggs,” it said. The voice seemed very strange, being so civilized while emanating from such a frightening source.
“Where’s the rest of you, Marvin?” I asked.
“Outside on the hull. I found a long burn-through scar on the dorsal side of the ship. The Worms must have done it.”
“Yeah,” I said, leaning back against the wall of the ship. “I assume Star Force has taken the rest of the ship?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Uh, why are you here then?”
“To warn you that this ship is scheduled for demolition. It’s still active, and your replacement commander is systematically destroying all the vessels that didn’t escape.”
There were a string of things I didn’t like about Marvin’s statement. I fixated on the main point, however, which involved our survival.
“Why didn’t you tell them I was aboard this ship?”
“Because the Macros are listening in to our communications. I didn’t want the enemy to target you, sir.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. I had to agree with his logic. During our conflicts with the Macros since our rebellion, they’d taken pains to pinpoint my position and they seemed to be gunning for me. I heaved myself upright and my marines did the same. There were a number of groans.
“All right,” I said. “How do we get out of here?”
“Follow me, sir.”
We did so, picking up our survivors on the way. Fortunately, we were able to clamp them onto the back of Marvin’s strange body. As he humped and sparked his way through the ship, our wounded flopped about on his back. Those that were able to do so, complained bitterly.
