partially digested materials to pick them up. They were monstrous, buzzing systems that apparently used massive versions of the repellers in our battle suits to fly. Once we figured out where the repellers were located, they were easy to bring crashing to the ground.
I gathered my thousands on the cliffs over the valley we knew must contain the enemy dome. I wasn’t happy with what I saw, however. Instead of finding caves that led down to the enemy production facilities, I found only a deep lake of still water that was barely above freezing. From this water, machines crawled in and out all along the shore line.
I compressed my lips and called Miklos. “Captain. Do you know what I’m seeing down here?”
“Yes Colonel, we are monitoring your suit video.”
“Maybe the stream isn’t clear up there, but what I’m seeing is a failure. The enemy dome must be at the bottom of this lake.”
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Yes, I’m freaking sure!” I shouted. “How am I supposed to take thirty thousand Centaurs into a frozen lake? They don’t even have vacc suits. They’d drown even before the Macros could murder them all.”
“It does look like an intelligence failure, Colonel.”
I took a deep breath. We’d come so far, all for the possibility of capturing a Macro production facility. We’d lost a lot of troops, time and given the enemy details as to our strength and tactics. But the mission was a failure despite all those lost assets on our side of the ledger.
“We spent too much time building up and not enough time doing proper recon. I have to take responsibility for that.”
“Excuse me, Colonel,” Miklos said. “I have Marvin here. He wishes to speak with you.”
“Put him on.”
“Colonel Riggs?”
“Yes, Marvin. Go ahead.”
“You have about three hundred marines in full battle suits. I’ll come down with you, if you like. If you can get me into that dome somehow, I’m fairly certain I can transfer full control of the unit to Star Force.”
Fairly certain. It sounded like my epitaph. Here lies Colonel Kyle Riggs, who was fairly certain he would survive his last campaign.
I thought about it while Marvin prattled on about Macro security protocols and transmission spoofing codes. I believed that he believed it could be done. But I wasn’t sure the Macros were going to cooperate. We had no way of knowing what they had down there. Maybe they’d held back their military hardware to protect the dome itself. Maybe they’d analyzed our intent and prepared a trap for us.
The real trouble was that the three hundred marines were the majority of the five hundred-odd human troops I had in the entire Eden system. If I lost them, I lost an asset I couldn’t replace. I would have to return to Earth and endure Crow’s sneering displeasure with no victories to speak of. For all I knew, Crow was on his way out here with a retrieval fleet. Doubtlessly, he’d been building new ships non-stop since I’d left him. I frowned fiercely and tried to push all thoughts of Crow and Earth out of my mind for now. I had a job right here that needed doing.
“No, I don’t think I want to take my men underwater again,” I said. “The risk is just too great. I went on a sea campaign once with thousands of troops-and we still pretty much failed. I’m pulling out.”
“But sir, what about the enemy dome?” Marvin asked.
“We’ll nuke it from orbit,” I said. “We’ll burn this lake until there isn’t a drop of water to hide under.”
“Our original plan was to take control of a Macro production facility.”
I thought I heard a hint of a whine entering his voice, but it could have been my imagination. I knew it was Marvin’s dream to poke and prod at a real Macro production facility. No one had ever done so for long and lived. It was just the sort of thing that got his imagination boiling.
“There are two more domes on this planet. This one was the easiest to find, but we’ll find another.”
“But sir,” Marvin persisted. “I must point out that-”
“Forget it Marvin,” I said. “Miklos, pull us out of here and drop your bombs.”
“Yes, sir.”
— 11
A day later, I was crouched over a battle computer on Barbarossa. I was in a bad mood. We’d failed to take the first Macro factory we’d assaulted, and we’d blown our element of surprise in the bargain. On the plus side, I told myself repeatedly, we’d learned a lot and dealt the Macros a hard blow.
It wasn’t enough, however. The enemy knew we were coming now, and every Macro production system on all six of these planets had to be churning out combat systems at this point. I wanted to attack again immediately, but it wasn’t that simple. Getting Centaur troops back onto landing pods had proven very difficult. They simply didn’t want to be trapped again after experiencing the freedom of running wild on their own planet. I couldn’t blame them for that, but they represented a critical resource that I didn’t want to lose.
When I reconvened the morning debate squad-my command staff-no one looked any happier than I did. Kwon rested his cheek on one massive fist. Miklos hunched over a tablet computer and tapped at it. Marvin looked positively dejected. He barely turned a camera in my direction when I spoke to him.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s review our options. When can we hit them again, and where?”
“Sir,” Miklos said, “shouldn’t we wait for Captain Sloan?”
I grunted, and drummed my fingers on the table for a full minute. I’d never been good at waiting on people. I finally keyed open my com-link and called him.
“Where are you, Sloan?”
“In transit sir-sorry about the delay. There’s something odd showing up on our sensors.”
I frowned. “Where? I don’t see anything on our planetary surveillance app.”
“No, not here, sir. Something is going on with the ring-and in the next system. The one with the lobsters, sir.”
We hadn’t even named that system yet. I figured I should get around to that, but hadn’t been overly interested in the place since I’d discovered it. Now, however, Sloan had my full attention. He was excellent at spotting danger early-and avoiding it.
“Brief me when you get here.”
Sloan arrived a few minutes later and took his seat. He had a worried look on his face. I tossed my scribbled agenda aside and turned to him. “All right, let’s hear it.”
“It might be nothing, sir.”
I made an urgent gesture.
He nodded. “There was some kind of vibration-a signal maybe-which went through the ring. We detected it only because we have ships sitting at both sides. It was recorded on the logs, and when I compared data hours later, I noticed both ships had detected the same thing at about the same moment.”
I squinted at Sloan. How could something vibrate these huge rings? Marvin’s reaction was much more dramatic. At least six cameras on extending stalks rose up and stared at him from every possible angle.
“I don’t get what you are trying to say,” I said. “Something vibrated the rings? The entire thing vibrated? As in making a small motion?”
“Exactly, sir. Both ends did it, at the same time.”
I shook my head. We really didn’t know much about the rings. We didn’t know much about the factories, either. In truth, we were primates playing with technology developed by our mysterious betters. I’d often wondered if one of these days we’d look down the barrel of one of these devices and pull the trigger with our tails. There would be monkey brains on the walls that day.
I began to speak, but I saw Marvin wanted to say something, so I turned to him. “Ask your questions, Marvin. I can see you are dying to.”
“Captain Sloan, was there any form of emission detected?”
“No, none that we could pick up. No light, no radio, no magnetic impulse-nothing.”
