The Catalyst

-Chapter 22-


I thought deeply about the fact that I’d been in the presence of the Blues all this time without knowing it, without trying to contact them or get a slice of revenge. What I would have liked most was information. If they would have engaged in a conversation, which I doubted, they might have been able to tell us how to switch off their crazy machines, big and small. Their technology must be amazing, too. If they had created these rings, or these factories we depended on, they were technologically far ahead of the other species we’d come into contact with thus far.
The Blues, right here! I could scarcely believe it.
We shot through the ring at an incredible velocity. I didn’t have a lot of time after that to ponder the Blues or the Centaurs. As we exited the system, I made myself a mental note to name it Eden. Those six unbelievably gorgeous worlds, each exploding with life, wouldn’t be served by any other name. I found the name Eden pleasing to the ear and the mind in any case—it just sounded right. I was sure some astronomer had already christened the star with a boring name, like HR 6998, which was Gorski’s best guess as to which one it was. Sarin disagreed with him after studying the same data, pointing out the star’s metallic content was higher than HR 6998 was reported to be from the point of view of Earth—which immediately got her into a nerdy argument with Gorski. To me, it was all moot. Eden could be in another galaxy for all it mattered. The rings changed everything strategically. All that mattered was that with a ring in the system, it was linked to Earth. It didn’t matter whether it was 42 lightyears away as HR 6998 was supposed to be, or not. Effectively, it was three ring-hops from Earth, which made the systems close neighbors.
“Sir?” Major Sarin asked. I had the impression she’d tried to get through to me several times.
It wasn’t her words that got through to me in the end. It was the screen, which swam and refocused, showing the giant red sun and Helios, the arid planet of the Worms.
I looked up slowly to Sarin. “Did we get all of it?” I asked.
“What sir?”
“The transmission from the Centaurs.”
She shook her head. “No sir,” she said. “Not all of it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That and the fact that we’re moving too fast.”
I stared at the star system. We had been accelerating at maximum for hours. Apparently, the Worms hadn’t had time to set up more defenses, because we didn’t get blown away immediately.
My mind came back together then. I had a plan, and I had to get it going now.
“Emergency braking!” I shouted. “All hands strap in, secure the cargo. We’ve got to slow down.”
Sarin relayed the instructions, and even with inertial dampeners, I could feel the cruiser deck shift underneath me. I hoped no one was too injured among the poor marines who were in the bricks on the cruiser’s hull. I vaguely thought I was going to have to try to get the bricks inside the cruiser the moment we got a breather, even if I had to burn a hole in the hull to do it. But we hadn’t been given a break yet.
I slapped Gorski’s chest. “You wanted to know what the nanites I had you make were for?” I asked. “Now’s the time.”
I set off at a bouncing jog through the ship. Gorski was right behind me.
“You put the barrels of fresh constructive nanites near the breach like I told you, right?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
I called over my com-link to Kwon. I ordered him to get a squad of marines to the breach. We would be working at the limits of the inertial fields, so we wouldn’t have to fight the G-forces rippling through the decelerating ship.
The area under the breach had become something of a staging area for operations. Much of our equipment was there, as the wound in the ship formed a large open area that was close to the bricks above. We’d stockpiled equipment there and battened it down with skinny black arms made of nanites. Part of that stockpile was a large number of items that looked like old-fashioned caltrops.
Using a brainbox to communicate with the newly-hatched constructives, I had them form up into chains and then shape themselves into fresh, wobbly arms. They flowed out of the barrels in a river that resembled a living spill of mercury.
“Get up there, that’s right. One arm about every yard or so. The last arm, just over the engines—that one has to be bigger, stronger.” The nanites worked with astounding speed.
The marines Kwon had brought with him jogged into sight and I shouted orders at them next. “Get the boxes out. Break out every one of those weird spiky things. That’s right. But whatever you do, don’t switch them on, dammit!”
I gave more instructions to the arms, and soon I had the chain formed. It ran from our breach all the way back to the aft edge of the hull. It was a bucket-brigade of skinny black arms.
“Give me one of those,” I barked. A marine handed me a mine—because that’s what they were, magnetic mines. I didn’t switch it on, but I handed it to the nearest nanite arm. The arm was a baby, and it trembled a bit when I put the weighty object into its three-fingered, tripod-like hand.
“All right,” I said, talking to the brainbox that instructed the new arms. “Now, what we need you to do is hand this thing back, all the way to the end of the ship, all the way to the last, big arm.”
The nanite arm snatched the mine from me and handed it up to the next arm. In less than a second, it was whisked away and out of sight.
“Ah, good,” I said, trying not to appear startled. I hadn’t intended it to take immediate action, but I didn’t want the watching marines to realize I’d screwed up. “Now, the last arm will throw that mine directly behind the ship.”
“Done,” responded the brainbox without hesitation.
I grunted. I hadn’t activated the mine yet. “I’m going to give you another one. When I do, the last big arm will activate it before it throws it. You will not throw it in such a way that it touches the hull of this ship. You will throw each mine at a random trajectory, forming a cone of dispersal, no more than thirty degrees in breadth. You will not allow the spines to touch metal, especially after you activate it. If you do so, the mission will be a failure. Do you understand the program?”
“Ready.”
I had to admit, I was sweating. I reached for another mine, and I handed it to the tiny arm. It grabbed it with wrenching force and whisked it away and out of the breach, handing it up to its brothers in a blur of motion. I could only hope the last arm wasn’t a screw-up. Everything depended on that one, because it would handle the mine when it went live.
I waited about three seconds. No trembling vibration came through the cruiser hull, fortunately. No urgent call came from the bridge, wondering why I had blown the tail off my stolen ship either. So far, so good.
“Major Sarin?” I called over my com-link. “Do you sense any small contacts nearby?”
“Ah…yes sir,” she said. “Two of them. Metallic, very small, falling away to the stern. Should I fire on them?”
“Yes,” I said. “Blow them both away with point defense turrets before they are out of range. We are going to be releasing a lot more of those soon. Do not keep firing.”
There was no more time to waste. I turned to the marines. “Each of you is to grab mines as fast as you can out of these crates. You will carry them here and hand them over to this skinny little arm. You will shout: ‘Repeat program!’ Then give it the mine, and don’t let it rip your arm out of the socket along with the mine.”
They looked at each other. The instructions were unexpected.
“GO!” I shouted. They hopped into motion, stumbling over one another.
All in all, after my thousands of mines had been deployed, I had to account my marines as the losers. No matter how fast my men scrambled and tore at the crates, racing to the first nanite hand and slapping a mine into it, the hand was always left waiting for the next one.
When they were done, I smiled grimly. I’d created my first minefield in space. Afterward, I went up to the factories and gave them new instructions. They needed to make more mines. Lots more of them.