Swarm (30 page)

Once past the barrier, we stood in a gloomy world. A machine hulked in front of us, dimly lit by internal sources. I flipped on my suit lights and stood unaided. I coughed, and that hurt worst of all.

“Colonel?” asked the man next to me in concern. I looked at him in surprise. It was Wilson, not Radovich. I wondered briefly if Radovich was dead.

“Should we fire on that thing, sir?” he asked me.

I tried to get my thoughts together. It wasn’t easy. I’d gone through too many shocks too quickly, and I think that close missile blast, exploding almost in my face, had addled my brains. I realized I was lucky I could still hear anything.

“How many do we have?” I asked, and right away I could see relief on Lieutenant Wilson’s face. He hadn’t wanted to command this final leg of the assault. I didn’t blame him.

“Twenty sir, but more are streaming in.”

Twenty?
I thought in shock. Was that all that had made it inside?

“Let’s advance then,” I said, “and see what that thing is.”

I staggered forward. One leg didn’t seem to be operating properly. Wilson gave me a shoulder and I took it. We moved toward the thing that crouched in the center of the dome.

It took me a few dozen steps to recognize it. I had seen it before, or something like it. It resembled one of my own factories—the ones I’d built and left on Andros Island—but it was much larger. A hundred times larger. I could hear it now. It sort of
thrummed
. It was a deep, steady, ominous sound.

“Men,” I said, struggling not to cough. My lungs burned and itched abominably and it was all I could do to speak clearly. “This thing is a factory. It builds new Macros and whatever else they need, just as I built these guns we are carrying. I’ve never thought about how to destroy one, but I think it’s time we figured it out.”

More men came in, a lot of them. We had maybe a hundred and fifty marines inside the dome. Less than two companies out of ten. The new group reported that most of the big machines outside were destroyed, but most of us had died as well.

“Well, there’s nothing like the direct approach. Everyone button up as best they can. On my mark, everyone fire at that thing. Shoot for the center point of the mass, about ten feet from the base. Everyone now,
fire!

We blazed at it. Light like that of a thousand suns bloomed, filling the inside of the dome with brilliance. Despite our darkened shades, I could see the light. It was blinding, painful.

I kept the beam going for five seconds. Everyone followed my lead, and as each second passed, the beams came closer together, focused on a single target area.

“Keep firing. Let’s go another five,” I said, trying to sound calm.

My eyes were squinting lines. My retinas were exploding. The heat coming off my weapon burned my hands right through my gloves. We fired for five more seconds, then another two or three, but I could tell the light was dimming. Either I’d burnt out my retinas, or men and lasers were failing around me. Probably, it was the latter. The heat was tremendous.

“Cease fire!” I shouted. The beams cut out and died down. My vision came back slowly, but with many burnt purple splotches that floated and flared annoyingly. “We don’t want to melt our lasers down, or our hands and eyes.”

We checked out the damage when we were able. There wasn’t much to show for all the effort. A pocked area, blackened and burnt, showed in a ten foot radius on the wall of the machine’s heavy base.

Only a few more men had joined us, the flow of new troops was lighter now. Only two companies or so had survived, out of a thousand men. I figured the troops back on the crater’s rim might have lived as well. There might be wounded outside too, if we had taken out all the big machines. I thought perhaps we had, as none of them had tried to get inside here with us. Maybe they were too big. I had no idea actually. But I was sure I wanted to destroy this factory before it could build a new Macro.

I led the men around to the far side of the machine. Wilson still helped me walk. There it was, on the same spot as the machine back inside my own ship. The intake vent. It was up a ways, perhaps twenty feet off the ground. I was sure the worker Macros would lift up their burdens of raw materials and slide them down that hole into something like the nanite digesters my own factories had.

The marines gathered around. “What are we going to do now, sir?” asked Wilson.

“Well, Lieutenant, we’re going to get inside that intake somehow and destroy this thing.”

“You first, sir,” he said.

I looked at him.

“No offense, sir. But are you serious? What if that thing turns on?”

“I need your help, Wilson. I need your command codes for my suit.”

“What, sir?”

“The safeguards. It takes two officers to release them. I need your secret code for self-destruction. Then I need you to lead these men out of here after we build up a ladder to get me up to the rim of that intake vent.”

“What? I didn’t really mean what I said about you going first.”

I nodded. “I know, Wilson. But we haven’t got any other heavy explosives with us.”

Wilson stared at me. “I’ve got a better idea, sir. We’ll rig up the ignition switch to a command signal. Then we’ll drop a reactor inside there. The rest of the men can evac and the last man out can set it off.”

“He’ll have to stay inside the dome,” I said. “No signals will go through it. We haven’t got the equipment to set up an autodestruct or a time-bomb.”

“Yes sir. I would like to volunteer for that mission, sir.”

I shook my head. He put a hand on my arm.

“Sir,” he said, “Kyle Riggs—I told you I would join up and follow you. I did that sir. And I’m still a man of my word. I’ll do it.”

“I trust you, Lieutenant, but—” I said, but he cut me off.

“We can’t order anyone else to do it. We can’t ask that. But we are playing for keeps here. Difficult situations require difficult choices. I’m willing to take the chance.”

“This is my command,” I said.

“Yes sir, it is.”

I hesitated. Then the machine rumbled. I don’t know what it sounded like—maybe like a locomotive starting up when you had your hands on it and leaned against it. I could feel the deep vibration in my bones. All the men backed away from it instinctively.

“It’s building a new machine, sir,” said Wilson, eyeing me, “you know it is.”

I sighed and coughed. “Okay. Do it.”

We threw Wilson’s armed reactor pack up into its maw, and light flared out to consume it. I hoped it would still operate. I ordered everyone out of the dome. I was one of the last to wave to Wilson, who urgently made pushing motions at me. The machine was indeed giving birth to something… something large. It had to be one of the big fighting machines.  I wondered how long it took to generate such a monster, given all the required materials.

I didn’t even make it all the way through the shield bubble before it popped and vanished forever. I never even heard the explosion itself. It was completely dampened by the shield, held inside there and contained. Then the force field collapsed to nothing, revealing only smoking wreckage inside.

Outside, we were met by the cruise missile boys and the company that had covered them. They had pulled through. The two companies I’d led into the dome were the only other survivors. But the dome and the factory inside had been destroyed. It was a blackened hulk of twisted metal.

I had my people search, but we couldn’t find Wilson. There was no sign of him. Nothing at all.

-32-

Communications were reestablished an hour after the dome fell. The Pentagon people had landed repeating stations on the continent. It wasn’t as good as satellite coverage because we were still blind to enemy movements, but it was better than nothing. We could at least coordinate our actions.

I relayed our bloody success story to the other commanders. They took the news with grim determination. Each assured me they would reach their target domes and destroy them, just as my unit had. I told each of them in turn that I had faith in them—which I did. And that I knew they would succeed—which I didn’t.

My battlegroup had taken too many casualties to be an effective force now. About twenty percent of our survivors were too badly injured to move at all. But I didn’t want to leave anyone behind. I was one of the ones on the incapacitated list, but that wasn’t important. I figured my unit was out of the fight now.

Major Radovich had different ideas.

“Sir,” he said, crouching next to me where I leaned against the broken strut of a dead Macro. “I know with normal men in normal battle, marines don’t leave their own behind. But this is different.”

“And how exactly is it different?” I asked Radovich. I looked at him with bleary stubbornness. My nanites were working hard on the dose of shrapnel I’d gotten during my close encounter with a Macro missile, but they weren’t finished yet. I was still bleeding, inside my suit. I could feel blood oozing down my legs and pooling at the bottom of my suit when I sat down or leaned against something. I was surprised the nanites hadn’t completely contained the bleeding. All the hurrying around must have reopened the tears in my skin. I’d never been so seriously wounded. Not even when my arm had been burnt were things as bad as this. The metal slivers had pierced me in a dozen spots like bullets. I would have never survived this long if it hadn’t been for the nanites in my body. They were working overtime. They itched like a thousand hot grains of sand, each one determinedly rubbing its own personal nerve.

 “This situation is different,” he repeated, “because if we leave these wounded, they won’t sicken and die. They will grow stronger with each hour, until they are mobile again.”

“If it comes down to it,” I told Radovich, “I’ll put you in charge and stay behind with the wounded men. I’m one of them, after all. But I don’t think it will come down to that.”

“We have nearly two full companies left,” said Radovich. “I could lead them to the next dome and support Anderson. Two companies might make the difference between success and failure, sir.”

I blinked at him, thinking about it. Negative thoughts loomed in my mind. Was he just looking for glory? Did he want his own command to participate in another successful assault? I didn’t think so. Besides, what difference did it make if that was in his mind? He could have his glory, if he earned it. The point was to decide if he was right or not. We had to kill these domes. They were building new machines, one every day maybe. They had to be stopped. Once we took out the domes, we had won. We could then hunt down every last Macro, driving them off our world. We might not win the war, but we would have won another battle.

“Sir, please think,” said Radovich. “What use was all this? Why did all those good men die if we don’t succeed?”

I decided, looking at him, that he meant what he said. I nodded. “You’re right. We’ll take up a spot with good cover, and wait for our bodies to heal ourselves. We have plenty of weapons systems.”

Radovich looked surprised. Maybe he wasn’t used to commanders who changed their minds in the face of logic. “Very good sir. Very good. I….” he said, then trailed off.

“I wish you well too, Major. I want you to take the com-unit, you will need it more than I will. Now get all your effectives together and destroy another dome for me.”

“I will, sir!” he said, and saluted me.

I felt I should get up, but my body really didn’t want to listen. I got up anyway. He reached out a hand to help, but I ignored it and stood and saluted him. I saw his eyes, as he looked me over. I think he realized I was in bad shape, in no condition to fight or travel, or do much of anything else.

“We’ll be back for you, Colonel,” he said as he walked off, screaming at our last two uninjured sergeants. He gave confident orders and soon they pulled out, bounding up the crater rim to the north like fleeing jackrabbits. It was odd, watching them head over the ridge and vanish. It gave me a lonely, abandoned feeling I hadn’t expected.

I sagged back down into a seated position. Around me, thirty-odd coughing, stricken men pulled their weapons close to their hands and watched the horizons. There would be no movement to a better position for us. We wouldn’t be digging in or setting up defensive strongpoints. We would be struggling, each of us, to keep breathing. We would sit here until the nanites healed us or failed to do so.

I knew as we sat for the next hour, that if a single machine came to investigate, it could probably have taken us all out. But I didn’t think it would come. The Macros had plenty to worry about. They had taken drastic steps to keep us out of their domes. Logically, they would mass whatever forces they had to defend the remaining domes. What would they care about a group of stationary humans at a destroyed dome?

But as the sky darkened and a light, warm rain began, I realized that there were other possibilities. The enemy liked stationary targets for their missiles. They might fire a few at us to take us out. Just to be sure.

I ordered the men to dig in if they were physically capable of it. I think about five of them did so. Most of those were burn victims, men who’d lost an arm or leg to a Macro laser. The men who were riddled with shrapnel had less energy. I was one of these, alive when I should be dead. We were zombies, all of us. Living dead men.