18

Goldberg could tell the three gray-skinned guys thought these ships were the same as the last one. He couldn’t wait to tell them how wrong they were.

“The Chinese salvaged some of the mrill ship that crashed over there, and we’ve actually been able to reverse-engineer some of it to upgrade your ship,” Goldberg said as he strolled around the craft, wiping the mustard off his hands from the two hot dogs he’d just devoured. “We’ve increased the power output of the MPD thrusters 74 percent by expanding the capacity of the reactor to 200 megawatts, which should give you much better acceleration and three-dimensional thrust vectoring. We’ve also added an auxiliary power unit should the main generator be knocked offline, and made a few minor tweaks to the external fuselage, such as adding rear-facing cannons and fiddling with the targeting algorithms.”

Ben stopped walking after hearing that last claim.

“Oh, I know,” Goldberg said with a flap of his hand. “I gave them holy hell about even thinking about that. The hardware here is complex and advanced, but not light years ahead of us. I mean, the brin knew we’d have to be able to manufacture this stuff ourselves and wouldn’t have time to cram four hundred years of advances in optical lithography, metallurgy, and propulsion systems into a couple months. But to compensate for the primitive hardware, they obviously sent us some pretty fantastic software. I mean, this is just hardcore, kick-ass stuff. Not my specialty, but guys I trust made it clear how insane it was. So when the software guys told me they had some modifications in mind, my first reaction was to tell them to cram it up their ass.”

Goldberg laughed at his own wit. Ben smiled politely and waited.

“Anyway,” he continued, “there was a team from Stanford, these computer science and applied mathematics nerds, and they showed me some demos and hell, you’ll be impressed. So anyway, continuing our tour . . .”

Goldberg dragged the three men along in his wake. They probably couldn’t understand most of what he said, but he was still enjoying the audience. He liked to talk, and being unemployed for three months had mostly left him with no one to talk to but his dog. Berta didn’t care for shop talk.

He wasn’t sure what to make of these three, though. The gray skin didn’t freak him out like it did most folks. The inside was what mattered; true with radios, true with people. They were hard to read, though. Quiet. Barely spoke. Occasionally Bert would look over and they’d all seem to be nodding at each other or grinning at some private joke, which was weird. Bert had heard a little about their supposed mental connection or something. He guessed that’s what they were doing, chatting with their brains.

It was hard to get to know people who almost never talked. He’d never really thought about it before, but Bert realized now that the way you mostly got to know people was by talking to them. How people talked was supposed to show how people thought. Maybe that’s why politicians talked all the time. These guys, though, were like three walking rocks. Good luck rallying the planet with that attitude. On the other hand, they did have more immediate concerns.

Ben, Nick, and Eddie, for their part, were almost completely oblivious of their garrulous tour guide.

Part of it was that the engineering jargon was mostly incomprehensible. More importantly, though, was that they didn’t need it. Their onboard computers had begun communicating with the ships about five miles before they’d even reached the disguised hangar, the electronic link providing in an instant a full technical readout to each man. It was a two-way connection, with each man’s nanomachines providing a readout to the ships so each craft could tailor itself to the particular neural pathways of the different pilots. The walkaround was superfluous.

Well, superfluous to them. Rickert had impressed on Ben the importance of the moment. Goldberg was a gifted engineer, a savant, really, but his promotion had made many of his more accomplished peers considerably envious. President Lockerman had gathered some of the most brilliant technical minds in academia and industry; men and women who commanded thousands of employees, ran prestigious departments, and had patents, awards, and accolades piled on their résumés. “Ambitious” was an understatement. Watching the crass, flabby Bert Goldberg saunter in from the unemployment line to lead the whole operation had generated enough resentment that Rickert only half-jokingly suggested to him that he hire someone to check his meals for poison. Even at the world’s end, you still had to worry about who got lead credit in the scientific journals.

Ben had shaken his head at this nonsense. What a waste of time. But if he needed to do a photo op with Goldberg to make sure everyone knew their place, so be it.

“. . . and that’s pretty much it,” Goldberg said. “Any questions?”

Nick and Eddie had been unable to contain their boredom and drifted off a bit to check out the ships themselves. If the technobabble left them cold, the beauty of the war machines they would soon be piloting did not. It was a professional interest, but also something personal. They were about to become space fighter pilots. Even though their first mission was probably a suicide run, it was still thrilling, and Ben could sense their concealed excitement.

Been there, done that, Ben thought, and turned back to Goldberg.

“What do you think?” Ben said.

“About what?”

“Can we win? With these?”

Goldberg frowned and scratched his head, leaving a small smear of mustard on his temple.

“Win? I don’t know. They’ll do what we built them to do. They’re as close to magic as I think I’ll ever see. You boys are in good hands.”

“That’s not what I meant. You mentioned that the brin had to dumb down their tech so that we could build it. We’re driving last year’s model. What do you think the mrill are going to come with?”

Goldberg sighed.

“It’s a problem, and we’re working on it. We’ve got guys cranking on stuff you wouldn’t believe. Hell, they don’t believe what they’re doing. For now, though, the truth is, you’re gonna be outgunned. That first wave of unmanned drones was amateur hour. They were hoping to catch us with our pants down and our wangs in the wind, and they sent their most basic stuff our way. They probably weren’t ready for a full invasion at that point. The mrill did us a real favor. I’d guess they’re assembling one hell of an armada now, their best. Can you win? I honestly don’t know.”

Ben nodded, reflective. Goldberg was silent, too, for a change.

“Invasions follow a pattern, you know,” Ben said as he ran his hand over the surface of one of the ships. To him, it felt alive, a glistening race horse with a thumping heart, eager to run.

“The invader almost always has the advantage of surprise, of technology, of organization and momentum. That’s why you invade. The defender has advantages, too. Shorter supply lines, knowledge of the terrain, reinforcements arrive faster. And desperation. That counts for a lot.”

Ben turned to Goldberg, who was obviously flummoxed. Ben suppressed a laugh as he realized his speech to Goldberg had been as pointless as Goldberg’s to him.

“Stay busy, Bert. Build as fast as you can. We’re gonna take a beating. The world doesn’t know what’s coming. Saint Petersburg was just the start. And we’re going to lose a lot more than we win, at least for a while. We won’t quit. My men and me, and whoever comes after us, we’ll fight until we’re dead.”

“I’d rather you fight until you win.”

“Me too. To do that, we must be able to take the battle to them, and we can only do that if we’re properly armed. Keep your assembly lines running.”

“Rosie the Riveter. That’s us. Don’t worry, we got this.”

Ben opened his mouth to speak. At that moment, an alarm went off, a red klaxon. The early warning sensor.

The armada was on its way.