The Catalyst

-Chapter 20-


We didn’t have a navigational interface working for another two hours. The command brick had been lost, so we didn’t really have a good way to display and analyze the data feeds we were getting from sensor arrays planted on the cruiser’s hull. I was certain the Macro warship had excellent data systems—but we had no way of getting to any of them. The computer systems were built by aliens for their own purposes. Our brainbox could only operate basic engine and attitude controls, enough to fly the ship toward the ring. Enough to flee, nothing else.
I decided to build my own bridge inside the ship to fly this thing. We rigged up the biggest screen I could find—which was about the size of a kitchen table—and set it up in the engine room. I had marines with welding guns and nanite repair buckets roaming all around the area fixing the damage we’d done. We sealed and pressurized that region of the ship first. The cruiser was humming with activity. Owning a real warship was exhilarating for the men. I was in too sour of a mood to enjoy anything, and kept thinking of Sandra in her steel coffin. The Macro carcasses were getting in the way of my new bridge setup. Realizing they were made of tough alloys, I had them fed into my factories as raw materials. I felt it was a fitting end for them.
When we finally did manage to connect a sensor module on the outer hull to our new screen, I was glad we’d been blind up until now. Doom followed us in the form of four cruisers. They weren’t coming in as fast as they could, fortunately. They were going to make sure we were dead this time. The four ships had timed their rendezvous. In six hours they would form the classic diamond formation and pour on the speed. They were already moving faster than we were, proving we didn’t have full control of our cruiser. Maybe we’d damaged it in the boarding battle. Maybe my brainbox was still learning the ropes. I didn’t know which it was, and I didn’t much care. What mattered was we were barely going to make it to the ring before they caught us. Once we entered the Helios system—assuming those bastard Worms hadn’t set up new defenses somehow in our absence—the Macros would follow us through and fire at us in unison. I’d decided to name my first big ship Jolly Rodger. Unfortunately, Jolly Rodger had about ten hours left to run, by my best estimates, before we all died in space.
Major Sarin worked the big screen with me. It was just like old times, but with a lot more people in a lot bigger room. I’d sent Gorski up to configure the factories that were still clamped to the outer hull. I had him make raw constructive nanites. Barrels of them. He didn’t ask why, he just did it. I liked that about him.
Major Welter had taken to hanging around with me near the big screen and our multi-armed brainbox pilot. I welcomed the company, as the brainbox wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and Sarin was too sick with worry to talk much.
“Do you see a way out of this, Colonel?” Major Welter asked me.
“Of course,” I said.
His sharp eyes flicked to me. We’d managed by now to pressurize and heat the engine room. It was heaven to take my helmet off and scratch my head. Sometimes in war the simplest comforts were the best.
“You’re not bullshitting, are you sir?” he asked, lowering his voice. “I’ve got to know.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve always got a move, Major,” I said. “Always.”
Major Welter smiled. The hope-monkey had gotten him, right there and then. He believed. It was rare when I got the chance to see it as it happened. He shook his head and walked away, greatly relieved. I noticed he didn’t ask me what my move was. Truly desperate men rarely did. They didn’t want to take the chance their new found hope would burst in their faces like a giant soap bubble.
The funny thing was I did have a move. I went up onto the hull of the cruiser to check on it. Moving around out there wasn’t easy. We were under about six Gs of acceleration, and even while crawling with three nanite arms clinging to your belt hooks, it was hard going.
Gorski was gritting his teeth and trying to think while he talked to one of our last two factories. He was trying to program the system to digest a Macro worker and produce constructive nanites from the remains.
The job wasn’t that difficult for a programmer, but the environment wasn’t the best. The acceleration forces out here on the surface were rough. Inside the cruiser we had inertial dampeners operating and only felt a fraction of the Gs we were really pulling. Out on the hull in the bricks, it was a different matter.
Gorski was pasted up against the back wall of the brick. His teeth were gritted not out of frustration, but as a reaction to the intense forces pressing him onto a flat wall. I made it through the airlock and dragged myself, hand-over-hand, to flop next to him on the wall. We both lay there, breathing and listening to the machine while it ate a Macro carcass a giant cargo arm fed into its maw up on top of the brick. Only the thickest black nanite arms had the strength to feed the Macro into the factory’s maw while under acceleration. I didn’t think my men could have done it at all with just muscle-power.
“How’s it going?” I asked after removing my helmet.
“I’ve got it chewing,” he said. “But the nanites are coming out slowly.”
I nodded. I immediately regretted the nod. It strained my neck muscles and caused my head to bump the wall. Besides which, Gorski couldn’t really turn his head to face me, and thus missed the nod entirely, making it a wasted effort. We were laying on the wall, moving minimally. I was reminded of my misspent youth. I’d often gone to lie like this on the hood of a car to watch planes take off at night from Castle Air Force Base in California. That was back before they’d closed down most of the bases. I wondered vaguely if they were rebuilding bases back in the states now. I suspected they were.
I took a deep breath. I knew the next thing my mind would drift to would be various good times with Sandra. I’d crawled up here to check on her as much as Gorski. I tried to focus.
Gorski got the wrong idea from my thoughtfulness. He seemed to think I was displeased with his answer. “I think the gravitational forces are messing with the factory’s internal processes,” he said, sounding apologetic.
“Makes sense,” I said. “We’ve never tried to make the factories eat anything so big and tough while accelerating laterally. What do you think the yield will be in say…four hours?”
“At least a metric ton of fresh constructives, sir.”
I wanted to nod again, but stopped myself. “That should be enough.”
“Can I ask what they will be used for, sir?”
“To make a whole lot of little black arms,” I said.
He strained his eyeballs to look at me. “What will these arms do, sir?”
“Deploy ordinance. I’ll fill you in soon. Keep the factories churning.”
I left him then. Gorski seemed happier now with his sad lot in this war, which had been part of my purpose in visiting him. Crazy Colonel Riggs had a plan, and all would be well. Anything was better than thinking you were just a bug-splat on the outside of a fleeing cruiser. Gorski now knew he wasn’t a casualty waiting to happen. He was part of a big plan to fix everything. Who wouldn’t like that promotion?
I knew I really should head down into the cruiser, but I went to the medical brick next where we stored our turnips. What I found there enraged me.
The coffins had been left aligned lengthwise. Normally, this would not have been a big deal. But due to the centrifugal forces of acceleration, the boxes should have been aligned with their backs flat against the angle of motion. I rushed to Sandra’s box and looked inside. There she was, crumpled up at the bottom of the pod, in a folded position. She looked like a corpse stuffed into a garbage can.
I stomped on the call button for the med-tech, Carlson. He wasn’t in the brick. Probably, he’d grown tired of the G-forces himself. He showed up in a hurry when the realized Riggs himself was calling him.
When Carson came through the airlock, he was all artificial sweetener. “Sorry sir, just stepped out for a moment. Let me get over there, it’s a little hard to maneuver—”
That was as far as he got with his bullshit before I had a handful of his suit in my hand. I had leapt, defying the intense gravity to get to him. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. He wasn’t wearing a battle suit, and the old ones had a fair amount of give in that area. My other hand clamped onto a ring in the ceiling for support. I yanked him out of the airlock and sent him flying.
Carlson almost landed on his helmet. That might have been bad, as I wanted him conscious. I let myself go and dropped like a stone on top of him. I made sure my boots missed his belly, but it was a close thing.
“I don’t—I don’t understand, sir!” he shouted.
Carlson didn’t go for his beamer, which was a good thing for him. At that moment I wanted an excuse to burn or punch a hole through him. He didn’t give it to me, so I hauled him up and shoved his nose into the nearest tiny window to see the state of his charges.
“There’s something wrong with your turnips, corpsman!” I shouted.
He made a strangled sound of shock. It wasn’t just me squeezing the back of his neck, either. “I didn’t realize. It must have just happened. I’m sure—”
I popped off his helmet and squeezed his neck hard. It might have killed a normal man, but I knew he had nanites in there to repair the tissue damage. “I don’t want excuses. Fix them.”
I released him. Carlson crawled to the controls and worked them feverishly. I watched as the units rotated, putting the bottom floor of every unit toward the back wall of the brick.
“Now, help me get them into a comfortable position.”
We worked for the next half hour. I discovered two of them hadn’t survived. Sandra—fortunately or not—was one of the five survivors.
“You almost killed my girlfriend from neglect,” I told him.
He looked at me with frightened eyes. “I didn’t think the G-forces would be this bad, sir. When I went below, into the cruiser, it didn’t feel so strong.”
“I told you to take care of them. It’s been hours. You’ve been hiding below. You’ve killed two good men.”
“Sir,” said the corpsman, regaining some of his composure. “You have to realize, these people are already dead.”
I stared at him. “I refuse to accept that. For dereliction of duty, I’m busting you to private. Fortunately for you, I can’t afford an execution right now. I need every corpsman I have, even you.”
I left him in the medical brick, sputtering. When I was back inside the cruiser, I tried to calm down. Maybe I had been too hard on him. How might I have reacted if Sandra hadn’t been one of the ‘turnips’? What if it had been anonymous marines I had never met?
I wasn’t sure if I’d made a mistake or not, but I was sure Private Carlson was going to take his job more seriously from now on.