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.“Do not touch it, or cause it to shift.When you get close, we’ll go in and do the rest of the job by hand.”“Script written,” said the master crawler.“Executing.”The second crawler followed the first and aped its actions.They were linked together in what was known as a master-slave relationship, meaning the brainbox of the first unit controlled the actions of both crawlers.It took less coordination that way.It was similar to the manner in which a nanite swarm operated.Somebody had to have a plan and be in charge.The two crawlers worked their blades, scoops and arms impressively.They pushed back the circle of concrete walls in spots to get more room to work.Apparently, the Macro missile had sunk into the soil quite deeply.I wondered if we would find much more down there than a mass of twisted metal.They bladed away a widening oval shape around the spot.The missile had partly disintegrated and left an area of debris that was, well…missile-shaped.Within twenty minutes, the crawlers had the landing pit torn apart and a race-track shaped hole around the object a dozen feet deep.“This would make quite a swimming pool if we filled it in with gunite,” I joked with Kwon.The First Sergeant turned his suit laboriously to look at me.“A swimming pool, sir?”His English had never improved much and he tended to take things literally.I waved away my words.“Never mind, First Sergeant.I think the crawlers are done.”The two machines had made themselves a pathway that led out of the hole like an earthen ramp.They raced out of it now, arms whipping around overhead carrying their final loads of earth in their scoops.Wet clumps of sand dribbled from the swaying scoops as they passed me.“Mission accomplished,” the master unit said as it whizzed past.It had many other missions to attend to today, given the state of the base, so I didn’t ask any questions.The Crawler probably would have given unsatisfactory answers anyway.“Break out the spades, men,” I called to the waiting platoon.“This is the marines, so I know you guys know how to dig.”Indeed, they did know about digging.We headed down into that hole and circled the central mass that the crawlers had revealed.I almost regretted letting them get away.Perhaps they would have been more delicate with this next stage of the operation than my marines.Spades flashed in the sun, biting deeply into sandy soil.I helped until I grew tired of it, then joined Kwon in walking around supervising the men.Here and there, they found a smoking piece of black metal.I ordered them to switch to another spot immediately, not to keep poking at it.We were here to reveal this wreck, not to stab it with shovel blades.“The men want to know if they can open their suits, sir,” Kwon asked me.“No way,” I said, I’m not having any acute radiation sickness today.”“How about just their helmets? They are sweating in their suits.”I pointed out toward the sea.Strange clouds were still visible on the horizon.“The wind is going the right way, but I’m not taking a chance.No one breathes outside a suit on Andros until I say so.”“Very good, sir,” Kwon said.He didn’t sound like he thought it was very good, but he’d stopped complaining.It took us much longer than the crawlers took to dig out the rest of the wreckage.It would have taken us even longer if the mass hadn’t become unstable and resulted in a minor avalanche of sand.“Okay, pick yourselves up,” I said.Many of the men were standing waist or even helmet deep in wet sand.“Use your repellers if you need to.Help each other.”All around me men were climbing out of holes and servos whined while nanite-impregnated materials flexed to lift marines back into the afternoon sunlight.I think I was the one who saw it first, even though it didn’t grab me.None of these men had seen a Macro up-close except for Kwon himself.He was bent over double, pulling a private out of a mound of sand at the time.A familiar flash of bright metal.That was it, just bright metal and a sense of movement.It was more than enough to set off alarm bells in my head.“There’s something moving in there, men! Shoot long, steady beams.We have to disable it before it can set off the warhead.”Dirt flew.Flashing metal instruments—steel mandibles at the head of the Macro.They looked like a whirling mass of concentric lawnmower blades.I aimed my laser at the thorax and held down the firing button.A green glare filled the pit with brilliance.Everyone’s autoshades engaged to keep them from being instantly blinded.Men shouted, one screamed.The Macro had him and was tearing at his suit.He couldn’t get his guns into line with it.The other men fired further back along the monster’s metal body.Kwon joined me and we took the chance, firing deep into its guts, figuring if we didn’t the marine would be dead anyway.Some of those flashing tools were drills that could dig through armor and bore into the meat of a marine very quickly.Four concentrated beams did the job.The Macro crashed down, twitching and whining with straining servos.I stepped up, calling for a ceasefire.“All right, that’s it boys.Just make sure there aren’t two of them inside this thing.”The marines dug much more gingerly after that.No one talked about removing their helmets anymore.I checked out the marine who’d been grabbed by the Macro.His armor was scratched and dented in spots, but the plates had held.The Macro hadn’t been able to get to my man’s flesh.Almost as significant, I found the private had managed to wrestle with and twist away two of those numerous flailing limbs.Employing his exoskeletal strength, he’d managed to damage the Macro as much as he was being damaged, even in hand-to-hand combat.I was impressed.The single enemy Macro was the only one in the missile.I nodded to myself.It made a strange sort of sense.What better way to make a missile intelligent than to put one of your technicians aboard? Macro missiles were really kamikaze spaceships.They reminded me somewhat of my own men in battle suits.They just took it to the logical extreme, using their own troops like suicide bombers.The warhead, when we found it, was inoperable.I wasn’t surprised.If it had been repairable, the technician Macro would have set it off.There wasn’t much to learn other than that.The missile had a single large warhead, an engine not unlike a small ship engine and a Macro technician as a pilot.A human pilot would never have survived the impact, but steel alloys were much tougher than flesh.“There it is, Kwon,” I said, kicking the smoking ruin of metal.The Macro was pitted with laser strikes.“Take a good, long look.”“Here’s what, sir?”“The first Macro to invade Andros Island.I have a feeling it won’t be the last.”-20-We’d survived their opening salvo, but the battle was far from over.We had about thirteen hours of breathing time before the next stage began.When I say ‘breathing time’ I mean a sweating, scrambling time during which we repaired our facilities and dug in as best we could.I released about ten percent of our constructive nanite reserves to build more underground bunkers.I’d originally assumed our non-combatant personnel would be safe in villages located in more remote locations around the island, but I no longer believed that.Andros was about 2300 square miles of tropical paradise, mostly uninhabited even now that Star Force had taken it over
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