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“Wow,” Welter breathed, staring at the destruction. “We’re smashing them. They keep
coming, pouring into our line of fire. They must have thought we were helpless.”

“It’s not over yet,” I muttered.

They released a new wave of missiles, a massive barrage.

“The enemy has changed their minds,” Marvin said. “I don’t think they plan to capture
this station any longer.”

I chuckled grimly. “I agree, Captain Obvious. They plan to smash us now. Welter, it
is now time for you to work your magic.”

He looked at me blankly. “Sir?”

“Fire up the jets and turn this barrel around.”

Welter smiled for the first time all day. “An excellent idea, sir.”

The missiles crept toward us. The enemy ships were more than half-way here, and even
though they were slowing down, it was clear they were going to blow right by us. They
had come in so fast, they couldn’t brake enough to stop their forward momentum. In
response, Welter set the entire station to spinning on its axis. The big backside
of the station was all dark armor. We hadn’t bothered to activate the weapons there.

“We’ll take a beating,” I said, “But with luck, we’ll still have power and all our
active guns. When they pass, they’ll be back in range again.”

Sandra grinned at me. “If we live another hour, I’m going kiss you and call you a
genius all over again.”

“So noted.”

We didn’t have long to wait. Like a massive boulder, our station spun around slowly,
but steadily. By the time the first hard missile strikes overwhelmed our defensive
lasers and went off, they struck against a wall of rock layered with metals and shock-resistant
struts. The station rolled and creaked. It felt and sounded like someone was beating
on the walls with sledge hammers.

“The outer rock layer is down to eighty-one percent,” Welter told me. “That was just
the first flock of missiles. We don’t have much other than defensive lasers on the
backside, sir. They can pound down our armor with impunity.”

“Not really,” I said. “They’re moving too fast, and can’t slow down fast enough. They
have to slip past us or crash right into us.”

“Second barrage is closing in now, Colonel.”

I bared my teeth inside my helmet. “Tell anyone in the aft section we’re likely to
spring a leak back there.”

“I think they already know that, Kyle,” Sandra said. “Why aren’t the missiles swinging
around and getting our weapons on the far side?”

“They can’t,” I said. “They’re moving too fast. The best they can do is smash into
our armor and hope to blast their way through.”

“It feels like they just might manage it,” Welter said, holding onto the edge of the
holotank for support. “The exterior rock layer is down to forty-four percent.”

The deck swayed under all of us. I couldn’t help but look around at the walls as the
bombardment continued. They looked solid enough, but I knew that wasn’t fooling anyone.
One direct hit in this sector and we would all be history, despite collapsed armor,
battlesuits—everything.

Most of the missiles were shot down, but the few that made it past our defenses made
up for the rest. They kept slamming into the station, blasting glowing craters in
our armor. I was glad they weren’t armed with EMP warheads, as the Crustacean suicide
ship had been. Maybe that weapon wasn’t in the Macro arsenal for a good reason: it
could accidentally kill Macros just as easily as nanites.

All our cameras on the side facing the ring were quickly destroyed, but we had remote
probes in far orbit over Hel and could still see the mounting damage. I frowned at
the destruction, wondering if they would get through after all. My concerns grew when
a new target appeared in the holotank. It was big, bulbous and depicted by the nanite
cloud in glowing red. Welter didn’t have to tell me what it was, but he identified
them anyway.

“The enemy dreadnaught is now in-system, Colonel.”

-7-

Once our station had turned its armored backside to the ring, we could no longer fire
at the incoming enemy, but they couldn’t easily hit anything vital, either. Soon,
the outlying ships that had survived our railguns and beams slid past us. These were
classic Macro cruisers, shaped like arrowheads with one heavy gun turret in the belly
of each ship. These guns had been pounding us as they flew by, and swiveled to hammer
us at point-blank range as they slid around to our front section again.

“Range is under one thousand miles, sir,” Welter said. “We could fire now, and interpolate
their positions.”

I shook my head. “Wait until they are right on our flanks and fire then. I don’t want
to fire early. Wait until they can’t evade. They’ll zero our weapons mounts, but they’ll
take some hard hits doing so.”

Remote passive sensors reported in blips that the enemy had taken a serious beating
coming through the ring into our concentrated railgun fire. The trick of this entire
station was based on the simple fact that any vessel entering the Eden system from
the Thor system had to fly through a relatively narrow doughnut hole, about ten kilometers
wide. This meant that if we saturated that zone with flying shrapnel, everything that
came through it for an extended period would be destroyed.

The plan had worked, but not perfectly. The Macros had accelerated their attack, meaning
that we hadn’t fire early enough to catch their first ships. More importantly, we
had only a fraction of our guns operating. About thirty cruisers and the enemy dreadnaught
had pushed into the ring and survived. Still, the enemy losses were staggering.

“Now, as they swing around us,” I said, almost whispering, “we’ll catch them again
at close range with everything we’ve got.”

I called to every weapons mount directly, and spoke to the human gunners. I was most
interested in the three heavy beamers. I’d let the enemy get in farther by not using
them much until now, but at this point, at close range, they should be devastating.

“I want you to call a new target every ten seconds,” I told Sandra, who had a determined
look on her face. “Target an intact cruiser, and relay it to the three beam gunners.”

“But Kyle, they can’t fire and retarget that fast.”

I shook my head. The station trembled under my feet as guns hammered us in a steady
drumbeat. There was only about a minute and a half left before the enemy swept past
us.

“Sandra, are you up for this?”

“Yes.”

“Listen closely then, the gunners are all going to target different ships. At this
range, each heavy laser should take out a target in a few seconds, all by itself.
If you call out a target every ten seconds, they’ll have thirty seconds to reload,
retarget and fire.”

She nodded. “Okay. No computers to do this?”

I shook my head. “Not this time. And Welter is busy with general ops. I’m undermanned,
and I need an experienced gunnery officer.”

Sandra smiled wanly. In the past, right down to the beginning of our long journey
into space, she’d been a gunner for me. In some ways, she was one of the most senior
veterans I had, but she hadn’t done this type of work for a long time.

“You can count on me,” she said.

I smiled, but slid my eyes to the clock. We had less than a minute before the fireworks
began. Now that her duties were clear, Sandra was talking to the gunners manning each
of the heavy beams directly. I felt sure she could do it—almost sure.

I turned to Marvin with special orders. “Marvin, I need you to get into full battlegear
right now.”

An odd number of cameras turned toward me—a sure sign I’d surprised him. “Why Colonel?”

I tried not to feel exasperated. Somehow, this robot was worse than my human troops
when it came to questioning orders and bad timing. My natural gut reaction was to
bellow at him to
move
, but I decided to waste ten of my precious remaining seconds giving him an answer.
I knew that if I didn’t he would be curious about it and distracted throughout the
battle.

“I think they may still try to land troops. Their opening moves indicated that was
their intention, and since they haven’t destroyed us, I think they may still try.”

“Oh,” Marvin said, considering. “That’s a very thoughtful insight. Somehow, it slipped
by my mind in the excitement. I’ll prepare myself immediately.”

Marvin slithered away toward the armory. Over the preceding months, we’d done some
experimental work with his structure, and come up with a modular design for combat.
Marvin was different than a normal trooper, in that he was capable not just of changing
suits and gear—he could reconfigure his own physical body to meet the demands of the
moment. He and I had built some very nasty anti-personnel equipment in our spare time
while working on the battle station itself.

I could tell, looking after him for a few long seconds, he was overjoyed to get out
his battlegear. I knew his source of excitement wasn’t due to bloodlust, or the natural
exhilaration of battle. He was more like a kid who finally gets to try out a new toy
he’d gotten for Christmas and put away in the closet until spring.

Now that everyone was on task, I turned back to the holotank. Twenty-one seconds remained
until the first of the enemy ships had circled the station to our weapons-encrusted
side.

“Rear armor is down to twenty-nine percent,” Welter said.

I took in several slow deep breaths, and the clock ticked away to zero. In an instant,
all hell broke loose.

Sandra had already called out her first three targets, and directed each of the heavy
beams toward one of them. I realized right off that was a smart move I hadn’t told
her to take. She’d primed the queue so everyone had something to shoot at and no one
was left out. As soon as the beams leapt out, drawing three perfect, bright lines
of destruction between the station and an enemy ship, she’d already selected and began
calling out the next target for each gunner. She would keep them as busy as any computerized
targeting system could possibly do.

The results of the heavy beams were spectacular. The cruisers were caught in brilliant
flashes of radiation, which lanced through their hulls and out the far side in less
than a second. Each burst of fire was a kill-shot, but there were so many of the enemy
still to come.

The railguns began pounding out projectiles moments later. They were much harder to
aim and control now. Best used against a concentrated enemy, the pellets took time
to reach their targets, which were moving laterally away at high speeds. It was like
firing bullets at bullets—not an easy thing to do. The vast majority of them missed
as the cruisers raced by.

The enemy fired in return. Their cannons were at their best at this close range. The
cruiser belly-cannons were firing high-speed projectiles similar to our own railgun
batteries, but on a much smaller scale. Hitting with these weapons was dramatically
easier than it was for us to hit them, because we weren’t moving. The strikes began
raining down.

The enemy didn’t fire more missiles now that they were passing by so close. Missiles
we could shoot down, and if they dared to explode early, they were as likely to take
out one another as they were to damage us.

“Sir,” shouted Welter over the growing din of battle, “we’ve lost heavy beamer one,
and the gunner in railgun battery five is not responding.”

“I think he’d dead, Kyle,” Sandra said. “That’s Lamond. You want me to go down there
and see if he’s alive or needs help? If only the gunner is lost, I could take over
the system and keep firing.”

“No, stay at your station. Keep calling out targets. The beamers are doing all the
damage now, anyway.”

She nodded and gave her remaining two beamers new targets. After another minute, something
hit near the bridge section. We were all left crouching, our hands welded to our consoles.
The lights flickered and went dim. They didn’t come back on again. Only the holotank
still glowed, as it was on a separate circuit.

“I can’t see my screen, Kyle, it’s out.”

“Use the holotank,” I said. “The com system is still working. Call out new targets.”

For the first time, I considered the possibility that we were going to lose this battle.
It was galling, as we’d come so close. The problem was this very bridge I was serving
on. It was our weak point. If the bridge was knocked out or even disconnected, the
Macros should win. In most of my prior battles with the machines, human input on the
command side hadn’t been so critical. After all, every unit had smart weapons that
kept firing at any handy enemy target. This battle was different, due to the loss
of so many experienced brainboxes. Human commanders were required to make even the
most minor decisions. Without us, nothing would get done.

The lights stayed off, but the holotank stayed on. We all stared at it, not able to
help ourselves. Then it died as well. Welter climbed under it, working on the guts
of the machine. I figured it was hopeless, but worth the effort. When the last of
the heavy beamers stopped firing, Sandra looked at me in the bluish light. The only
illumination we had left came from our suit lights. I nodded to her.