muddy pond water to me.
“What’s this?” I said, gesturing to a stream of water that led to the force dome. The pool itself was very close to the shimmering wall. I could feel a hint of static from it at this close range. It hummed and sizzled at times.
“Careful,” Marvin said. “Do not allow the water to make contact with the force field.”
I frowned and squatted. It was a line of water, about three inches wide, that led from the dome to the main pool. But as I examined it more closely, I could see a dam of earth had been built up at the far end, insulating the water from the wall of the dome.
“What the hell did you use this for, Marvin?”
“A safe way to add fluid to the pool,” he said. “I did not want to stir up the liquid too much.”
“Hmm. I don’t believe you.”
At least seven cameras were on me now. Marvin didn’t say anything.
“You use this canal to shock the pool, don’t you?”
Marvin stared.
“Why have you been mistreating these tiny creatures, Marvin?”
“Training of any kind requires two essential elements: reward and punishment.”
I made a growling sound. “Marvin, I don’t want you playing god with these poor beings.”
“I’ve made critical advancements,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“They can repair human flesh-or Centaur flesh. Do you recall the injuries sustained by Sandra?”
“Yes, I do, but I fail to see how-”
“Let me finish, Colonel. I know that you feel an emotional bond with these beings, but really, they are no different than the nanites you’ve enslaved to do your bidding in a thousand ways.”
“They are intelligent, Marvin.”
“After a fashion, yes. But so are the nanites, if you configure them that way.”
I had to concede his point. I knew we were on the edge of human morality. What were the rules, here? Marvin had pointed out in the past my prejudice in favor of biotics. He had a point. Thinking machines could die- billions of them-and I had no trouble with that. But as soon as the species was closer to my own chemical configuration, I became squeamish.
Were these aliens special, just because they were intelligent as a collective whole? Or were they just bacteria, to be used or abused as we might treat a fish caught in a net? Was their sentience enough to put them in an entirely new category? I felt overwhelmed with the magnitude of these questions.
“I’ve always preferred stand-up fights to moral dilemmas,” I told Marvin. “I’ve always been willing to choose humanity over any other species, when it comes down to a fight. If it is them or us, I’ll kill anyone, or anything.”
“Your path is clear then. Let me expand my cultures. I need a much larger facility. We can set up baths for healing, and experimental improvements.”
“Hold on a minute!” I said, cutting him off. “I said I would run through an enemy to survive, but this is different. We were enslaving these creatures, abusing them for our own purposes. If I use them to make better troops, how am I better than the Macros? They used them to sicken the Centaur herds, furthering their aims. They were not allies, they were forced to comply. If they improve my soldiers, they will die in the process. In both cases, the Microbes have been unfairly coerced.”
There were a lot of cameras on me now. I couldn’t even count them all. I think he’d added a few since the last time I’d met up with him.
“Colonel Riggs,” he said. “Perhaps you’d allow me to demonstrate what they can do for-us.”
“No,” I said, raising a hand. “I’m sure I would be impressed, Marvin. And I thank you for your work here. I’m sure when we have a chance to bring some eggheads out from Earth, they will be more than happy to go over the discoveries you’ve made. But I don’t even want to know what they can do. I don’t want to be tempted.”
Marvin was quiet for a moment. His tentacles seemed to move more slowly. This meant he was either unhappy, contemplative, or both. I waited for his next statement.
He didn’t say anything, but instead headed toward the dome. It took me a second to realize what he was doing. When his longest whip-like arm reached toward the canal he’d dug to the dome’s edge, I protested.
“Hold on!” I said. “You don’t have to kill them all.”
“They’ve been altered. They can’t survive in the wild on this world now. I’ve got a moral obligation to shut down this experiment.”
“No,” I said. “Don’t. They’ve suffered enough. Can’t we just leave them here in peace?”
“Not really,” Marvin said. “They need care. I’ve kept them warmed artificially, and fed nutrients into the pond. Without care, most will die. They will consume one another due to lack of input within-forty minutes.”
I blew out a puff of air. How did I get myself into these situations? “All right,” I said, knowing very well what Marvin wanted. “You can keep this pond, but not for cruel experimentation. We’ll build a small shelter around this spot. You can use the steel planks from the bunker to keep people from walking into the middle of the pond. Later, I’ll figure out what we should do with them. If nothing else, we can communicate and attempt to establish a dialog, if all of us live that long.”
Marvin seemed very pleased. “A wall,” he said. “An excellent suggestion. I would have put up a barrier long ago, but felt constrained.”
“Constrained? Meaning, you realized that if I saw you building a wall out here around a mud puddle, I would have known something strange was going on?”
“Perhaps.”
“Right. Well, you can keep pets for now. After we finish assembling this ship and test it, I might need you to help me talk to the big factory about programming improvements.”
“Of course, Colonel.”
I left him then, and he scuttled off to gather spare planks of steel. I shook my head as I walked away.
Within a few hours, we had our first complete gunship. I climbed inside to pilot it. When I did so, I immediately found the internal design was less than perfect. The essential problem was the size of the components. We had a huge railgun turret, a massive generator, and a solid steel hull that could not be reshaped wrapped around it. I decided to put the gun in the belly of the ship, just as it was placed on Macro cruisers. It poked out of the lower section and rotated smoothly enough. The generator was on top of the turret and used up space behind it until it ran into the single, large engine. The ship would not be anything like a Nano ship, nor like our destroyers. With multiple smaller engines and laser projectors, those ships were more balanced and maneuverable.
“This thing is going to steer like a shopping cart,” Commander Welter said, pronouncing a verdict that didn’t really surprise me.
I’d called him down from his destroyer for the express purpose of providing design refinements for the gunship prototype. I’d taken a look, and felt they were serviceable. But I wanted an expert opinion from a pilot’s point of view. As Major Welter, he’d distinguished himself while flying enemy craft in the Helios Campaign-and afterward against the Macros. He’d become a master pilot, and I’d reluctantly moved him into the Fleet category and changed his rank to that of Commander.
“It looks that way,” I admitted, walking him through the ship. “But give it a chance. Most of the mass is centralized or underneath the ship. We have an unusual number of stabilizers positioned all around the hull.”
Commander Welter followed me from the forward compartment where the crew would sit to the back of the ship. This required a little squeezing. The central turret and generator were so big, they took up all but three feet of space on either side. The three feet came in the form of a metal tube with unevenly contoured walls.
“Seriously?” he asked. “We have to use a crawlspace to get back to the engine room?”
“There’s one of these-ah-passages on each side of the ship. They are only about thirty feet long, and in space these zones will maintain a zero-G environment for rapid movement.”
“I wouldn’t want to be caught in here when the ship takes a hit,” he muttered.
I ignored him until we got to the engine room. Partly, this was because I couldn’t even see him behind me without contorting my heavy battle suit.
“I’d put one-way signs on these tubes,” he said. “If everyone takes the starboard tube to exit either
