by B. V. Larson
“Sixty frigging thousand!” Leeson marveled when we were done with the boring parts. He gave a long, low whistle that made me clench my teeth. Sometimes, when a whistle comes in through sensitive headphones, it’s pretty annoying.
“They say they had seventy thousand when they first dropped,” I pointed out.
“That’s right,” Leeson said pointing a gauntleted finger at me. “You boys did well. Altogether, our anti-air fire combined with our quick counterattack cost them dearly. Their initial assault was meant to catch us by surprise, but it was an utter failure. They lost the equivalent of a full legion. Just think of it!”
“A lot of those were splats, sir,” Sargon pointed out.
Leeson shot him an unhappy look. I caught that, and I think Sargon did too. He shut up in a hurry.
“Sure, sure,” Leeson said, “half those deaths were due to splats, I’ll admit that. The lizards are new to this game. I bet not one of their troops had ever crawled out of a pod into a firefight before. But we gunned down five thousand, we estimate. That’s astounding!”
Leeson sounded excited, bloodthirsty even, but I had to feel a small pang for the lizards that’d died yesterday. They’d fought well and fearlessly. The question in my mind—and everyone else’s—was why they’d come here to fight us at all?
Leeson thought he had an answer for that. “The best part is these clowns will all be permed for this. They’ve over-reached this time. They’re obviously trying to stop Earth from grabbing a competing source of metals. Hell, their entire sweat-box of a planet might not survive once the Nairbs pass their judgment.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I didn’t want to go up against my commander in an argument that was pointless. If this had been a matter of tactics and survival, sure, I’d speak my piece. But not when we were talking about whether something was true or not. Truth had a way of sorting itself out in time, and yapping about it never changed the answer.
“We whooped them,” Leeson continued. “That’s what it comes down to. And when they come into these tunnels to dig us out, we’ll smash them down again. They don’t have a chance!”
A few ragged cheers went up from the group. Suddenly, it dawned on me what Adjunct Leeson was doing. He was trying to build up morale. Seen in that light, his rhetoric suddenly made good sense.
These people needed a pep-talk. Anyone with half a brain could see we were all totally screwed, that we were going die in this hole like it was the biggest warren full of rats in history—but it was equally undeniable that troops with hope fought harder.
Accordingly, I stood up and banged my gauntlets together. Harris joined in immediately. Sargon looked startled, but then he stood up with us. He was still walking funny after yesterday’s encounter with Carlos, but he was game.
I’d noticed that Sargon was doing everything Harris and I did lately, trying to support us. As a man bucking for rank, that made good sense. In contrast, my methods to achieve promotions were unconventional and even accidental.
Graves joined the group, and the applause grew louder. He stared around the team flatly, then nodded when we’d quieted.
“That was well done yesterday,” he said. “Our defensive rearguard action helped get as much equipment off those slopes and into the mountain as possible. As far as I’m concerned, we accomplished that mission.”
That was vintage Graves. Lives? Deaths? Those meant nothing. Hardware was what he cared about. In his calculus of war, our blood meant about as much as our spit—and probably a lot less. We had more blood in us than we did spit, after all.
He went on to talk about deployments, defensive preparations and supply rationing. After the meeting, we broke up and were assigned specific duties. As my team had taken losses in battle yesterday, so we were spared guard duty. I told everyone to go on break and relax but to keep their dragons ready to roll. We could get called back to the front lines any minute.
“Hey, McGill,” said a gravelly voice.
I turned to see Carlos. He was in pretty bad shape. His right eye was swollen shut, and his lips were split and as red as raw meat.
“Ouch,” I said. “You fit to fight, soldier?”
“You challenging me again, Vet?”
“No,” I chuckled. “What’s up? And why haven’t you gone to the infirmary to get some skin sprayed over that?”
“It’s no big deal. I’ve been too busy.”
“Doing what?”
He smiled, and the blood that outlined his teeth made me squinch up my eyes.
“Kivi, for one thing. She thought it was cool that I stood up for my rights with Sargon.”
“Did she hear what you said to him to get your ass whooped?”
“No—and don’t tell her about that part, okay? She thinks I was a total victim.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I think you’ve paid enough for that mistake already.”
“Okay, cool. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“I’ve got something to show you, Vet. I guarantee you’re going to like it.”
Figuring I didn’t have much to lose, I followed him as he walked painfully down into the guts of the mountain. I was expecting more vids of squids on their home worlds, or possibly another giant squid in a tank. What I got was something entirely different.
The mines themselves were largely unexplored. We’d checked out the upper levels, where there were smelters and transportation systems for ore and titanium bricks, but we hadn’t spent much time in the lower tunnels where the actual mining had been done. Carlos led me deep into the uncharted depths.
“Here is the limit,” Carlos said, pointing down into dark shaft that led downward at a thirty degree angle. “This is about as far as anyone has ever been in Mount Titan.”
“That’s because the rest of the mine is empty,” I pointed out.
“No, not entirely. Kivi and I found some equipment down there. More stuff that belonged to the squids.”
“Why mess with that?”
“What are you? Stu—?” he began, but stopped himself, taking a breath.
That was possibly the first time I’d ever seen him edit himself. Carlos always insulted people who were bigger than he was—hell, that behavior was practically stamped in his DNA.
He shook his finger at me and his split lips parted into a ghastly grin. “No, no way. Not this time. I’m not giving you another excuse. Not so soon.”
“Just tell me why you brought me down here.”
“Look, the squids had the native machines working for them, right?” he asked.
“Yes, seems like they did.”
“And therefore, they had to have a way to tell the machines what to do, didn’t they?”
I thought about it. After a few seconds, I nodded. “That stands to reason.”
“Exactly. And let me tell you one of the prime rules of tech development: if it’s already invented, copy someone else’s work. Don’t invent your own. It’s much easier that way.”
I chuckled. “All right then. Did you find a translation device?”
“We did. We found something that appears to be a communication system. Unfortunately, we can’t get it to work yet.”
Frowning, I turned that statement over in my mind. He led me into a large, dark chamber. There, deep in the guts of the mountain, was a strange workshop. Something was down there—something that moved.
That’s when the light went on in my head. “You aren’t telling me you’ve got one of the native machine-creatures down here, are you?”
“Yep. How else could we be testing the translation system?”
That was what I’d been thinking about. “When you said you hadn’t got it to work yet, I was wondering how you would know if it was working at all.”
“This little guy. He’s the answer. Only, he’s not talking.”
Carlos approached a small native machine-creature. It was one of the young that I’d met up with back along the river and had a drawing contest with. He was a few
meters long and about half a meter thick. Like a metal caterpillar, he wormed his way over the stony floor, making scrabbling sounds.
There was a chain welded to his carapace and burn-marks all around the chain.
“We had a hell of a time getting him under control,” Carlos said. “We’ve spent all last night trying to get this moron to talk, but no dice. He might be a dud.”
He gave the machine a kick, and it humped and scrambled away to the limits of its chain—which wasn’t very far.
“Have you been abusing this thing?” I asked, frowning.
“Abusing it? Sure. Whatever works—but nothing does. We’ve tried to tell it to eat, to turn around, to play dead. We’ve worked this translation box sixteen different ways, and this dipshit—”
He moved to give the machine another kick, but I grabbed him and gave him a shaking instead. I wanted to do more, but he was pretty well beat up already.
“Carlos,” I said, controlling myself, “I think someone with a gentler hand might do better.”
“That’s what Kivi said. That’s why I brought you down here. But James, please, if you do get him to talk, you’ve got to let us have some of the glory. Don’t hog it all, okay? I didn’t even tell Kivi I was going to show you. She doesn’t trust you at all.”
“Don’t worry.”
To start with, I drew pictures. The machine looked at them, but didn’t dare draw its own. It had been traumatized. It shook and squirmed, but wouldn’t draw a damned thing in response.
“How much did you beat on him?” I demanded.
“Hardly any,” Carlos said. “Okay, maybe a little. But I don’t think it was us. I think it was the squids who really did a number on him. See his tail-section and his undercarriage? There are burn-marks and dents everywhere. Maybe he wouldn’t work, so they tortured him.”
“I’m glad that wasn’t all you,” I said.
I spent several hours with the little machine that day. I even took out titanium shavings and fed them to him. That got him interested. After a while, I came up with a plan.
“He’s not going to communicate out of curiosity,” I said. “We’ve got to get him to cooperate with rewards.”
“And punishments?”
“No. Just the withholding of rewards.”
Carlos heaved a sigh. “Sounds slow.”
“Go get me a bag of titanium shavings. I’m going to run out.”
He left, and I tried my best. I drew simple shapes then fed a shaving to the machine when I showed him a circle, for instance. The machine studied it, ate the shaving—but that was about it. I began to think maybe we did have a dud like Carlos had said.
But I kept at it. After drawing the same circle, feeding it a shaving, then erasing the circle and drawing it again about four times, I stopped feeding the machine and began to pretend to feed myself.
Each time I pretended to eat a shaving, I drew a square instead of a circle on the ground. The machine watched raptly as I did this. I slowly drew the square and fed myself another, then another.
The machine watched me move chip after chip up to my faceplate. I secretly dropped them into a fold of my suit, then took another out of the bag.
Finally, the machine lost it. The poor thing was starved. He scuttled forward and erased the square I’d drawn, and scratched out a circle with his feet. As with the first machine I’d managed to contact, his circle was perfectly round. I promptly fed him a shaving. We had made a breakthrough. Circles meant the machine was fed, squares meant I was fed. We had a language of our own.
By the time Carlos returned with a fresh bag of shavings for the machine, we were drawing things back and forth. I would draw a shape then it would draw the same thing—only better than my version. Then I would feed him a shaving.
The machine backed away when Carlos came near, and I pushed Carlos back.
“He doesn’t trust you,” I said. “Stay over there.”
Eventually, Kivi showed up. She was pissed off immediately.
“You brought McGill down here?” she demanded. “We’ve been working on making a breakthrough ever since we were first posted on the planet, and you’re going to let him show it to the brass and take all the credit again, aren’t you?”
“I’m just drawing things,” I said. “Relax, Kivi.”
“No girl can relax around you,” she said.
I gave her a glance then shrugged. She was glaring at me. She might have heard about my recent dating activity with Anne. That was typical for Kivi. She’d carry on with other men, but when I dated a new girl she may or may not display a fit of jealousy. If she was in the mood, she’d get mad at everything I did without bringing up what was really bothering her. I guess that came with the territory when you had an on-again, off-again relationship with a girl.
Eventually, I had the machine performing a wide range of tricks. I even managed to have a primitive conversation with it. We’d established that the squids and the machines were interacting, but when this little guy drew the squids, it was with a chain connected to the machines. He didn’t seem to be under any illusions. The machines were slaves to the squids, not friends or allies.
“It makes sense,” I said. “The squids consider themselves conquerors. They enslave creatures and alter them. Back on Dust World, they did it with humans. Here, they’ve been doing it with these machines. I wonder if these machines have been altered in design to better meet the squid requirements.”
“That would be easier than doing it with selective breeding, you would think,” Kivi said.
“Yeah, maybe. But we don’t even know how these creatures reproduce yet.”
“Why don’t you draw two machines screwing?” Carlos asked. “Maybe that will jog this little pervert’s mind.”
“You’re the pervert,” Kivi said.
“You should know.”
I had to step in before Carlos got himself punched again—by Kivi this time. “Okay, okay, that’s enough. Let’s stay on task. How does this translation box you stole from the squids work?”
They showed me an odd device. It wasn’t entirely made of metal. Parts of it were slimy, like gelatin or thick, pasty oil. When you rubbed it in various ways, the thing produced odd, rasping sounds. The machine took note when we worked the interface, but didn’t respond in any sensible way.
“How the hell are we supposed to figure out what this device is saying?” I asked.
“Now you know why we’re still working on this,” Kivi said.
“Hmm. We should probably bring Natasha in at this point. You guys probably should have as soon as you found this thing. She’s better at this stuff than I am.”
“No!” Kivi shouted. “You promised, James! Natasha will hog everything.”
“Look,” I said, “we might be able to get help from the machines if we figure this out. Isn’t that more important than a promotion?”
“Not really,” Kivi said stubbornly. “You’ve already got rank, James. This is our best shot.”
“But we might all die down here,” I said. “The saurians are going to attack, and they outnumber us six to one.”
“Leeson said they’ll get trashed if they try to come in here,” Carlos said.
“And you believed him?”
“No, not really,” he admitted. He turned to Kivi, looking disappointed. “He might be right, Kivi. We’ve failed.”
“I know what this is about,” Kivi said with sudden anger. “You’re just trying to make Natasha happy again. She found out about Della and Anne, didn’t she?”
I heaved a sigh and walked out of the tunnel. “I’ll be back in about an hour,” I said. “If you can make it talk by then, you’ll get full credit. Have at it.”
I left them behind, cursing my name.
When I returned with Natasha, it was a full ninety minutes later. Kivi was there, but Carlos had gone.
So had the machine.
“What happened?” I asked, shaking my head.
“We tried everything,” Kivi said. “We wer
e desperate. Carlos thought this was the last chance we had to get credit for the discovery.”
“You guys are crazy,” Natasha said. “Kivi, you just have to go through the training and show aptitude. When a slot opens up and your skill level is high, you’ll get it. Advancement isn’t always about showing off for brass.”
“Oh yeah? Is that why McGill, the biggest screw-up in the legion, is two ranks above us? And what about Winslade? Are you telling me he’s not a royal kiss-up?”
She had us there, so Natasha stopped arguing. She examined the squid translation box. I’d honestly assumed that when she checked it out, she’d pronounce it to be a squid masturbation aid, or something like that. But she didn’t.
“I think this is a translation system. It produces sounds like a machine. The interface is strange, but not unlike those that I’ve seen before. Now, why did you let the machine go, Kivi?”
“Like I said, we were getting desperate. The machine wasn’t reacting much other than to draw a few shapes on the ground. We finally realized that it was drawing things that matched the noises the translator was making.”
“Ah,” I said, catching on. “Did you feed it titanium shavings?”
“Yes, once we figured it out.”
Together, Natasha and I examined the drawings. There were dozens of them.
“Did you record this?” Natasha asked. “Do we have data to analyze?”
“Yes,” Kivi said. “I’m not an idiot.”
“But what happened to Carlos?” I demanded.
Kivi looked down, shamed. “We ran out of room on the floor. It was at the limits of its chain. We decided to cut the chain, to let it have more space. We figured it would stay because we were feeding it titanium.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The second you cut the chain, it took off.”
“Not exactly. It waited until we ran out of chips.”
I rolled my eyes. “So Carlos is chasing after it?”
“I made him go. It was his stupid idea to cut the chain in the first place.”
“All right, I’d better go find him,” I said.
I left the two women going over the remaining data. Kivi had meticulously recorded the interactions, matching sounds and drawings. She also had many vids of past efforts to communicate, which she grudgingly passed over to Natasha’s tapper. I was happy to see them working together. Natasha was wisely heaping Kivi with praise, and Kivi’s mistrust seemed to be melting.
