Free Battle Station by B. V. Larson Page B

goggles. After that, they’d pretty much all gone berserk.
    We spent a few desperate minutes cleaning up the mess. Seven of the Centaurs out of the twenty we’d brought down survived. There were arguably eight survivors, if you counted the one that had run off onto the ice. But we never found him again.
    We buried the dead in the ice and had to lift off with the rest of them in an anesthetized state. According to sat-com, we only had a few minutes left before the missiles reached us, and we didn’t have enough covering fire to assure we could shoot them all down. I ordered the lift-off with a heavy heart.
    I told myself as we retreated into space that every training death saved ten lives in combat. I knew as well that the dead troops had at least ended their lives on their own homeworld. These thoughts helped a little, but not much.

 
    -8-
     
    I spent a full day dreaming up solutions to the Centaur transportation problem. My staff brought me their own ideas, which I listened to politely. For the most part, they were terrible.
    “Drug all the Centaurs and land them in a base camp a hundred miles from their objective,” Sloan suggested.
    I nodded and said something like “uh-huh”. That’s just what I wanted, a million or so semi-conscious mountain goats to care for. What would happen when a Macro missile barrage landed in their midst unexpectedly? Were my marines supposed to run away carrying a drugged goat tucked under each arm?
    Miklos came up with a Fleet-centered idea: “Just bombard the domes from space with nuclear weapons, Colonel.”
     I had to admit, that idea had more merit than the first. But we would have to manufacture thousands of missiles, and the enemy was well-defended against any space-borne assault. That’s why I had equipped these troops. I had planned to drop dirtside fast and deploy a beachhead, then press in against a dome before they could mass and stop us.
    “It’s occurred to me, but I don’t think we have enough firepower. Even if we did, I don’t think I would want to unload it all on the Centaur planets. We are supposed to be freeing these worlds, not destroying them.”
    Marvin had the most interesting idea of all. He suggested we go in with a small force, secretly operating as commandos. If we could get Marvin himself under one of those domes, he felt he could reprogram the machine to operate under our control.
    I rejected everyone’s plan, but thanked them for their valuable input. I then headed back to my own ship to think. After about twenty hours of mulling it over, I became tired and frustrated. I did what I usually did under such circumstances: I drank a six-pack of beer. This move improved my mood dramatically.
    Soon, I found myself in Socorro’s observatory. I hummed and admired the view. I spilled a few golden droplets on the ballistic glass surface. The chamber had always been icy cold, and the beer froze into hard amber beads on the glass.
    I studied the planet below, so near yet so inaccessible. The chilly ice-cap on every crag was so white, and so bright it almost hurt to look at it. I tapped at the glass with my foot, and it clacked back at me. I frowned. What if…?
    Bursting with a new idea, I rushed out of the observatory and called in my staff. It took them long minutes to assemble. They yawned and squinted at me, as it was the middle of a sleeping shift for most of them.
    “How much ballistic glass do we have in the system?” I demanded. “I want a full accounting. I want to know about all of it.”
    “I don’t know, sir,” Miklos admitted. “Not much. We don’t generally put windows into our ships, except to cover cameras. Most of it is probably in use as visors for our helmets. What do we need it for?”
    “We’ll have to manufacture it, then,” I said, beginning to pace. “That will slow down our infantry kit production, but we don’t have any choice. I mean, what good are Centaur infantry kits if the troops all end up insane when we drop