“Ceasefire!” I shouted, and hopped into the hole.
Kwon dropped Carlson and jumped after me.
I turned to him. “Kwon, help me get this hatch open. It’s stuck.”
“Are Marvin and Sloan alive, sir?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted. “No response from them yet. I’ll go back up and arrange our men around the crater.”
I flew back up to the top of the hole and sent three marines into the hole to watch Kwon’s back. The rest of them I set up in a perimeter around the edge of the crater the Macros had created when they undermined the tank. They’d unintentionally provided us with some good cover. It wasn’t anything like the bunker, but it worked.
The enemy had reorganized their assault to focus on our new position by this time. The air over the crater sizzled with laser bolts. Within a single minute, two of my marines had been hit and taken out of the fight. One of them slid flopping and spinning down into the dark hole behind us. He crashed down on the piles of loose dirt, stones and dead Macros. He screamed as one of the upright Macro pincher blades punched through his leg at the hip. I looked down and winced. Kwon’s men struggled to free him, but he was impaled.
“Get our corpsman down there,” I said, gesturing with my rifle toward the impaled Marine.
“Carlson was our corpsman, sir,” someone answered.
“That’s great,” I said, then snaked out an arm and grabbed hold of the nearest rifleman. “You, grab Carlson’s kit and use it. It’s mostly extra nanite injections anyway.”
Star Force Marines included our own medical personnel, unlike some other national forces. We called our medics Corpsmen, and they had basic medical training and a specialized kit for emergencies. But even these men were trained, armed, combat troops. Since we generally didn’t fight other humans, this didn’t represent a conflict for a man who was dedicated to saving lives. They destroyed machines by day, patched up fellow marines by night, and slept like babies whenever we gave them the chance.
“Any luck with that hatch, Kwon?”
“I almost have it, sir,” Kwon grunted.
He was so big, the other marines standing around couldn’t really get in underneath him and help. He simply strained and heaved solo. I watched his shoulders shift, the wheel must be turning.
“There we go,” he said, and pried it open a fraction.
To everyone’s surprise, it was yanked shut again.
“Dammit,” I said, pointing at the others. “Quit fooling around. Get a pry bar into that opening next time.”
Kwon stooped again. He heaved and roared. A few seconds later, another Marine pushed the broken length of a Macro’s leg into the breach and forced it upward.
A flash of light illuminated the dusty scene. The marine with the Macro leg in his hand cried out, clutching his arm and staggering back.
“Sloan, dammit sir,” Kwon said. “It’s us.”
The hatch was ripped all the way open. I looked down into the dim lit interior. There were Marvin and Sloan. They’d been hanging onto the hatch from the inside, trying to keep Kwon and the others out. All of Marvin’s thin, black nanite arms were entangled in the wheel of the hatch. I was surprised Kwon had been able to open it at all, even with the added power of his battle suit.
“Sorry sir,” Sloan said. “I-we thought-our radio is dead, Colonel.”
“All right, honest mistake,” I said in irritation. “We shouldn’t have shoved a Macro leg in there to pry it open. But I’ve got one less man on the line now. Get up here and take his place.”
Captain Sloan glided up to me on his repellers, but he kept his head low. “What’s our tactical situation, Colonel?”
“Suppressive fire. Keep it up as you talk.”
Sloan poked his head up and spat a series of laser bolts toward the enemy lines. I joined him. We nailed a sniper machine, but then were forced to duck down again as incoming fire melted the dust around our helmets into smoking glass. The laser strikes looked like wet splashes of hot wax.
“See the enemy? They are climbing to the top of the factory now, so they can get a good downward angle on us. We’ll be screwed if we allow them to get a firing position up there.”
Sloan’s eyes were wide. He joined me as we popped up and showered the machines that were trying to scale the factory structure.
“They’ve got to be digging to this spot again,” Sloan said. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“I’m hoping we don’t have to. Miklos should be coming down and invading this dome with reinforcements any time now.”
“With all due respect, Colonel,” he began.
I turned to him, annoyed. I hated hearing those words. They always preceded a short speech, the sort of speech which inevitably informed me I was an entirely new flavor of moron.
“Sir, we have to get the hell out of here,” Sloan continued. “We can’t hold on. We have no idea how long Miklos will take to get here. We have to assume we are on our own.”
Sloan had a point, but I didn’t see much else we could do. We were pinned down, and our only means of mobility was now twenty feet underground. I glanced toward the bunker, and I noticed it shook and shivered with the Macros that invaded it. They poked their pinchers through the loopholes, seeking something, anything to tear apart. Soon, they would figure out we’d completely abandoned that position and they would come tunneling toward us.
My eyes flicked up to the factory itself. We could fly up there and play king-of-the-hill with the enemy, but it seemed like losing proposition. It wasn’t designed as a defensive position. In retrospect, I wished I had built my bunker up there instead. I gave my head a shake inside my helmet. Sweat dribbled down into my eyes and burned. I tasted the droplets a moment later in my mouth. With one eye half-open and bleary, I gazed at the factory. I had to think of something.
“Marvin,” I snapped a moment later.
“Yes, Colonel Riggs,” came the reply. Marvin sounded as calm and crisp as always.
“Can you communicate with the factory still? Will it take your orders?”
“Yes. Now that I’m above ground, I’m linked with the local production facility. The enemy has not yet regained control of it.”
“How long would it take to build a new tank, like the one you are standing on?”
“Just under an hour. There isn’t enough palladium dust, however. We’d have to reduce the-”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Forget it. We’ll all be dead in an hour. Can it make a-ah-how about a Macro worker? One that obeys us instead of Macro Command?”
Marvin hesitated. “Yes, I believe so. But each unit would require several minutes of production time.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, thinking fast. I was hunkered down in the crater, and programming under these conditions was unreasonable. Overhead, the storm of fire seemed to be on the increase.
“They’ve got a new team up on top of the factory, sir,” Sloan told me. “They have a good firing position on the far side of the crater, our men are exposed.”
“Great,” I said. “Kwon, get a squad to concentrate on taking them out, sharpshooter style. Or at least keep them ducking.”
“On it, sir!”
“Marvin,” I said, switching channels. “I want you to program the factory to make small Macros. Little spider-sized guys.”
“The facility is inefficient in that regard. Something that is under a gram in size-”
“No, no, not that small,” I said. “Let me explain more carefully, I want a climbing robot that is dumb and simple, about as big as a dog-five percent of the mass of a single Macro worker. Can you produce those quickly?”
“I believe so. The designs are available, and already loaded. Very few specialized materials would be-”
“Okay, great,” I said. “Now, I’ve got one more modification to these little robots that I want you to add. Then I want you to stamp out as many as you can. Batches of them all at once.”
Marvin listened closely, and he assured me what I proposed was possible. After the program was engaged
