any time to fancy it up now.
“Marvin, are you here inside the dome?” I called on the general channel. The dome interrupted all signals, even if you tried to send a wire from the outside world to the inside world. Inside, a single channel worked well, and everyone listened to it.
My headset hummed quietly, as did the big machine. No one answered me. I frowned in annoyance and repeated the call. Still, no answer. Marvin knew I wanted to meet with him on the hour, but he was late.
I wandered around the grounds for a minute or two, thinking I was going to have to exit the dome and hail him outside. In practice, the force-dome was a pain to deal with. It was like being buried in a tomb. We were all used to instant communications, and being disconnected to the point of sending couriers through the shimmering walls was a constant irritant. Still, I figured it was well worth keeping the dome turned on. At least this way, our most valuable assets couldn’t be taken out in a surprise attack.
Marvin finally showed up, nine minutes late.
“What kept you?” I asked.
“Certain duties.”
“Duties? What, were they life-threatening?”
“Possibly.”
Talking with Marvin was often an ordeal. He was reflexively evasive. Usually, this was for a good reason. He liked to do things I’d never ordered him to do, and he knew I might not approve of his behavior. Therefore, he found it easier to just stay quiet and dodge questions. I grunted unhappily. As usual, he had given me a choice: pursue the matter doggedly, or drop it. I was busy today, so I chose the latter option. The galling part came from knowing this choice played into Marvin’s plans. He had won again, and the behavior pattern was thereby reinforced. I’d once had teenage children, and they’d been easier to deal with than this robot.
“All right,” I said, “let’s get down to business. Open a connection with the production unit, please.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’ve been doing?”
I stared at him in surprise. “I thought you were taking great pains to hide your activities.”
“I’ve reached a different-stage,” he said. “Input would be welcome at this point.”
I opened my mouth to ask: “a different stage of what?” but I held back, because that’s what he wanted me to do. “I don’t have time for it now, Marvin-whatever it is you’re hinting about. Open a connection to the production unit, please. Directly translate my input and the unit’s responses.”
“Channel open.”
“I need a standardized hull form,” I said. “Something I can make a lot of. How much steel do I have available?”
“Question rejected. Question improperly formatted. Input variables reset.”
I heaved a sigh. Underneath it all, every computer had certain similarities to the rest. They were the ultimate obsessives. If you made a mistake, they loved to throw your work right back into your face. Humans were all about the gray areas, while machines were all about the black and the white.
“Let’s try that again. If you start building a cruiser right now, how long would it take to complete the process?”
There was a brief hesitation. “Hypothesized goal unattainable. Query rejected.”
I thought about that, frowning. “You can’t build an entire cruiser?”
“No.”
I rubbed my chin in thought. “Are you missing any of the key elements?”
“No.”
“Why then can’t you build a cruiser?”
“Elements too complex. Hull size too large. Overall unit can’t be generated in a single output dump.”
“Ah,” I said, catching on at last. “You can only build a cruiser in parts, because it’s too big, am I correct?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “Okay. We will take of assembling the pieces. How long would it take you to build all the standard components of a cruiser, given that you are provided with all the input materials required?”
“Six days,” the system said.
I nodded. That sounded about right. The last dome on this planet had been given several weeks, and had completed three ships in that time. Part of the reason I’d started with this line of questioning was for the purposes of intel. I now had a better metric to calculate how many enemy ships the Macros might have produced in this system. The conclusions were frightening. Depending on when the production units had started building and how well-supplied they were, I had to figure they had somewhere between fifteen and fifty working ships out there.
Normal logic would dictate that the Macros should have attacked us by now if they had such an overwhelming numerical advantage. But the Macros liked overkill. They would come, but only when some preplanned production goal had been reached. I had no way of knowing what that goal was, but I was confident that when they launched their fleet, it would be impressive.
“Now tell me how long it takes to build a single Macro belly turret, with a full magazine of ammunition.”
“Six hours.”
“Good, now we are getting somewhere.”
The Macro belly turrets were interesting weapons. I’d learned more about them from carefully researched science reports provided to me by General Kerr recently. They weren’t beam weapons, nor did they fire missiles. They were in fact, railguns. They drove a mass of matter to very high velocities using a magnetic barrel and some tricks of physics I didn’t entirely understand. The main point was they were able to translate energy from one of their massive fusion generators into mass in high-velocity motion. Using kinetic force alone, these high-speed salvos were devastating, but the rate of fire was relatively low.
“How long to build a generator capable of lifting a ship with a thousand ton displacement, and firing the gun at the same time?”
“Nonsensical query. Undefined references. Query ignored.”
I kicked the machine’s output bay and chuckled. It took time, but after a bit of careful questioning, I had the information I wanted. The factory could produce a hull with an engine, generator and belly turret in about half a day. The ship as a whole would only be a tenth the size of a full cruiser, and wouldn’t possess many of the subsystems. But it was a platform to work from, and the big gun would give it a lot of firepower for its size. Using my nanite factories to produce lighter point-defense weapons, sensors, life-support subsystems and the like, I could crank out small gunboats with weapons that were equivalent to the enemy cruisers in firepower-if not in armor. They would be far larger and tougher than nanotech ships.
I ordered the machine to begin production immediately. For the most part, I stuck with components the big machine already knew how to build. I didn’t want to teach it anything new right now. The hull was the only tricky part. To simplify things, I went with a rectangular design, not all that different from an earthly barge. I designed the hull as a single piece, with slots to plug in weaponry, sensors and exhaust ports. I made it as big as the factory’s largest output bay. That way, it could be produced in a single effort.
When the first empty hull slid from the output bay, I had to admit it was ugly, but I had hopes for its functionality. Even after plugging in the necessary components, I left many holes in the hull, which could be patched with smart metal, or just pure nanites. I wanted to allow for improvements to the design later. We could add components produced separately by the smaller Nano factories later on.
We’d yet to test the configuration of the systems as a whole. I didn’t know if it would flip over from recoil when it fired its big gun, or if the single primary engine in back was too light for strong acceleration. To solve these problems in advance, I placed repeller plates all around the hull. If there was a problem with maneuverability, the brainbox that flew it would learn to compensate automatically. I missed having all the Pentagon nerds to back me up on this one. I wasn’t an aerospace engineer, so I had to make do.
While the big machine thrummed, Marvin and I stayed inside the dome in case it ran into a problem. We’d set the two Nano factories to work as well, of course. They were building all the smaller components. They did so somewhat faster than the big machine, and I used the extra time producing constructive nanites. They were always useful.
“Do you have enough time now, Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked after we’d completed the programming
