by B. V. Larson
When I later regained consciousness, I estimated we went through the ring at about Mach 1. That’s a very slow speed in astronomical terms, but when hitting a thick, soupy atmosphere it was much too fast. What passed for air on Venus was similar to water on Earth. Hitting it at speed was like plunging a jetliner into the ocean. We didn’t even slide along the surface, we dove smack into it.
I think what saved us was the thickening of the hull around the bridge. Other areas of the ship were wrecked. When I woke up, drifting over Venus in my crash seat, the forward wall was dented in and blank.
“Socorro?” I asked.
“Responding.”
I felt a moment of relief. At least the brainbox had survived.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Unknown.”
“Why is the forward wall blank?” I asked. As I looked at it, I became increasingly alarmed. It wasn’t only blank, it had big creases in it, lines that poked in toward us menacingly.
“Emergency procedures have reprioritized nanite formation settings. Resetting to standard settings.”
“No,” I said hurriedly. I didn’t know what the emergency priorities were, but I figured they were a good idea right now. “Maintain all emergency priorities.”
“Acknowledged.”
I tried to unbuckle myself with my right arm, but my hand didn’t work properly. I felt bones grind. I figured out my right thumb must be broken. I sweated as I pulled it straight and set it with a click. The nanites in my body would have to work on that one. I used my left hand to unbuckle and levered myself painfully out of my chair. I checked on Sandra next. She was hurt worse than I was, and I felt more guilt than at any point on the trip. She came around at my touch, moaning.
“Are we home?” she asked me.
“Almost. Just relax, you’ve got a few injuries.”
“I don’t care,” she said, keeping her eyes squinched closed. “Just tell me what year it is.”
“Everything’s fine. It’s the same day we left,” I said. I had no idea if I was lying or not.
Sandra smiled with the half of her mouth that still worked properly. Blood ran from her left eye down her neck. Her eyes stayed shut. “Good,” she said, and passed out again.
I gently eased her back into her seat and made her as comfortable as I could. Rivers of nanites flowed over the walls around me in veins that grew, pulsed, and then shrank away to nothing. I knew the ship was reconfiguring and repairing itself as best it could. I questioned Socorro about the status of the ship. We had no communications, no sensors, and only one engine. Worst of all, my flatscreen had a big crack in it.
I checked every camera in turn, and eventually found one that still worked. I managed to get it to feed images to the cracked screen. I had my ship limp back to the ring. The Macro ships were gone. Had they escorted us here and left? Were they up in Venus orbit now, or heading to Earth to check up on things? I had no idea and no way of finding out.
I ordered my last camera covered with a protective nanite dome again. I might need it. I ordered the ship to ease us up out of the atmosphere. The worst part was the high-velocity winds in the acid-clouds. I flew the Socorro through them, then dared to uncover my last camera again. Fortunately, it still worked. Without sensors and with no replicating mini-factory aboard to build new equipment, we might have been unable to navigate home.
We spent the next week limping home, taking sightings on Earth with the camera and realigning our course to glide after her. Like all planets, our world was a moving target, and we didn’t have as much power as before. But we made it home before our food supplies ran out. By that time, Sandra and I had healed up completely and were bored out of our minds. Even acrobatic freefall-sex had worn thin.
It was with great relief that we drifted down out of the sky over Andros Island. I headed for the main base, figuring I had a lot of debriefing to do. We still didn’t have any working communications, so they didn’t know I was coming. Using my lone working camera, I guided us in, giving verbal commands to the Socorro, as the ship was flying blind. The beam turrets homed in on us and followed us down ominously. They didn’t fire, which at least indicated they recognized us.
We landed and a dozen marines rushed out to circle the ship. They were wearing their full kit, with hoods down, reactors on their back and beam projectors held across their chests. I swiveled the camera and began to frown.
“What’s wrong?” asked Sandra. “Why is everyone running around like that? Don’t they know us?”
“Something has them worked up, that’s for sure.”
I knew I should go out there and talk to them, but I hesitated. I licked my lips, and felt Sandra staring at me.
“Something is horribly wrong,” she said. “It’s time-dilation, isn’t it?”
“Nah,” I said. “It looks like our time. The beam turrets have just been built. The camp looks the same as the day I left.”
“Don’t go out there, Kyle. Something’s wrong, don’t you sense it? Let’s just fly up and away, gently.”
I looked at her. “Why?”
“This might not even be our world. What if we came back to the right time, but not quite the right place?”
I blinked. That was a new and frightening idea. “A parallel universe? I don’t buy that.”
“What else would make them act so differently if we’ve only been gone ten days?”
“Maybe it’s been a year. Maybe there has been a coup of some kind, and I’m not as welcome as I once was.”
“Two more reasons to back off. If we don’t make any surprising moves maybe they won’t fire on us.”
I nodded. “Socorro, follow Sandra’s orders if I’m out of contact.”
“Sandra is command personnel?”
“Yes.”
I kissed her. I had to pry her fingers away from my neck, then I went outside.
The men were indeed nervous. When the hatch melted open and I stepped out, they didn’t point their projectors at me, but I felt them twitch as if they wanted to. I stepped up to the duty Sergeant. I thought I knew him.
“Santos?” I asked.
Santos opened his mouth, closed it again, then opened it again. He heaved a huge sigh. “Yes, sir. Good to see you, sir.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve got orders to escort you to the command center, sir. On the double.”
I looked around at them, they looked serious—and nervous. I nodded.
Mentally, I contacted the Socorro. The ship still sat grounded behind me. Her bulk blocked out the sky. Socorro, seal all entrances.
Acknowledged.
I’d figured it out. I was pretty sure this was a coup of some kind. Crow or one of the other officers had made a move and grabbed power. I thought about trying to dodge back aboard my ship, but I didn’t figure I’d make it past a dozen armed men. The best move was to bluff it through, as I’d done with the Macros.
I turned and walked toward the command center. The men followed me. Sergeant Santos hurried to keep up.
“Uh, sir?” he said in a hushed voice.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“Do you know what the hell is going on?”
I gave him a half-smile. “I was about to ask you the same question. Don’t worry Sergeant, just back me up and I’ll straighten it all out.”
The man looked relieved. I felt relief myself. Maybe I could turn this firing squad into an honor guard. Whoever had organized this coup didn’t have full control yet if these men didn’t know what was up. If they hadn’t decided whose side they were on—well, I’d make sure they were on my side.
“Give me your sidearm, will you, Sergeant?” I asked.
“Uh, of course, sir,” he said, handing it over.
I walked up to the command center. We’d long ago fixed the window the Alamo had broken by plucking out the irritating General Sokolov. I threw open the door, ushered Santos and two of his nearest men into the building, then slammed the door behind us. It shook th
e glass in the window.
There was Crow, standing over the big, pool table-sized planning computer. I walked up to him. I was big on the direct approach.
Crow turned and saw me, and his brows knit into a fierce frown of determination. His lips curled back into a snarl. I nodded to him. If that’s how this was going to go down, I was ready. He stepped up to me and reached out his big arms, teeth bared.
“What the hell did you do up there, Kyle?” he asked.
Both of us registered surprise. I’d been expecting something along the lines of, You’re finished here, Riggs.
Crow’s surprise was of an entirely different nature. He looked down and found a pistol probing his belly.
“What the hell is this? Put that away, man. We have an emergency,” Crow said. He batted away the pistol, and I let him. He pointed toward the big computer table. I followed his finger warily. I was confused.
“They came down three days ago. At first, they were just wandering around, scanning everything I suspect. We tried to talk to them, but they mostly ignored us. Then the Chinese made a bad move.”
“The Chinese?” I asked.
I looked at the computer table. It glowed with a sweeping map of Eastern Asia. It was dotted with icons representing bases, population concentrations and military units.
“What the hell is going on, Jack?” I asked. “Pretend I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s the Macros, Kyle. They came back and the Chinese shot some missiles at them from their silos in Tibet—the ones around Delingha. Apparently, they had some new ground-to-space weaponry they wanted to try out. Now, the Macros are bombing them. They are killing millions.”
-32-
I almost puked. The guilt welled up in me, the horror of knowing I’d screwed up monumentally—even if unintentionally. As I raced back to my ship I wondered if drivers felt this way when they plowed into a group of school kids in a crosswalk.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. The Macros had followed me back through the ring. They’d wanted to come scout our system, even as we’d done to theirs. It was a response that was almost human, and I was sure that I’d awakened that response. What was the old adage about letting sleeping dogs lie?
They’d followed me back through, decided to check out their new ally Earth, and things had gone badly. The Chinese had made the next mistake—I couldn’t shoulder all the blame for that one. They’d panicked. They’d seen four Macros cruising over their nation in orbit, and had taken a poke at them.
Obviously, they’d developed new weapons. Of course they had. Every nation on Earth with half a military was madly developing space-warfare capabilities. They didn’t have fusion technology or nanites, but they had old-fashioned electronic computers, ballistic know-how and nuclear warheads. They’d become paranoid when the Macros came into orbit over them, not wanting to become the next South American wasteland. They’d fired—and to their credit, they had managed to take out one of the four Macro ships.
But at tremendous cost. The three remaining Macro ships now sat over their patch of land and had by all reports unloaded nearly a hundred nuclear strikes. They had not targeted population centers, but had wreaked their cold revenge solely upon military installations. Still, it was China. There were people everywhere, and fallout traveled. The casualties were already in the millions and millions more would die in the weeks ahead due to radiation and general chaos. Those predictions only held if the bombardment stopped now, however.
I raced into the ship in a nanite-charged blur of motion. Sandra followed me and climbed into her seat, strapping in. I ordered Socorro to lift off before either one of us had finished fooling with our buckles.
Sandra looked at me, eyes dark with worry. “What happened?” she asked, her voice small.
I told her about China in a few short, clipped sentences.
“It’s not your fault, Kyle,” she told me.
I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t look at her. My entire face hurt as my muscles twitched and bulged.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“We go to the factories first. We need a few things.”
We flew to our not-so-secret base and I took a quick stock of things. There was a spare engine ready. I also cannabilized a new sensor system and a communications module. With a human vehicle, the repairs would have taken days to complete. Since each Nano ship was essentially made up of billions of workers, I was able to load the systems into a hold and immediately take off. The ship would do the rest, placing the systems, molding itself around them, and getting them operational. We were headed for China within fifteen minutes.
I spent the time getting briefed by Kerr on the China situation and talking to Crow about our fleet strength. I also uploaded all my data files and vid clips to Kerr’s spook outfit. He had plenty of brains at his end who could analyze it all better than I could.
“I decided against flying our fledgling fleet up against the Macros when they first arrived,” said Crow, sounding apologetic on the channel. Even he could feel shame when millions of people he’d sworn to protect died.
“Did you fly up there at all?” I asked.
He hesitated. “No. I kept the fleet grounded.”
“You probably did the right thing,” I said. “Maybe for the wrong reasons, but the right thing, none the less.”
“Talk to me,” he said.
“We have a new protocol worked out with the Macros. Anything that fires on either side is immediately reclassified as a rogue.”
“So, the Chinese forces are rogue now?”
“Yes. And had you been there, you would have been required to fire upon them with the Macros, defending their ships.”
“I would never have ordered that!”
“Of course not. But then, you would be in violation of our treaty with them. That might have broken the deal and the war would have restarted.”
“What’s the difference?” interjected Sandra. “If they are killing millions of us anyway, we might as well be at war.”
“We are in a very delicate situation,” said Crow, answering her before I could. “The Macros have the strength to crush us at will. We can’t let this alliance crumble, even if it is a sham.”
“So why are we flying up there Kyle? What are you going to do?”
I didn’t respond for a while. “Whatever we have to,” I said at last.
Crow and the others gathered behind my ship. There were exactly twenty-nine of us altogether. “Give me operational control Crow,” I said over our private channel.
“You know what the bloody hell you are doing this time, Riggs?”
“I don’t have time to talk you into anything. Every minute we wait, people are dying. Do you have a plan?” I asked him. “Tell me how to save China.”
“I have no damned idea, you know that.”
“Then give me operational command and shut up.”
It took him a few more seconds, then he grumbled and ordered everyone to follow my orders for the duration of the engagement over China.
We reached orbit in minutes and glided up over the Atlantic, then Africa and the Mideast. We became weightless for a time, drifting in freefall. I hadn’t had time to replace our cameras, but the one we’d used to guide us home still worked. I had it zoom in on the Far East.
“Look,” I said to Sandra.
She sucked in her breath. Night had just fallen over Eastern Asia. The normal lighting in the cities was missing. The nation was dark, except for dozens of hot spots. Trailing with the winds, long plumes of smoke and ash drifted across the continent into the sunlit world of Siberia, Mongolia and Nepal.
“It looks like volcanoes have risen up,” she said. “We can’t live with these machines slaughtering us whenever they feel like it, Kyle. You have to stop them.”
“I’m going to do what I can,” I said. I thought to myself I should have left her home, but I hadn’t thought of it until now. She’d been onboard the ship so long now, it seemed
natural to have her along.
“Socorro, is our main battery operational?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the ship.
“Group-link all ships’ batteries. I want them to fire in concert at my order.”
“Group-link established,” Socorro said after a few seconds.
“Activate main batteries.”
We heard a humming sound. Something shifted overhead, where the ship’s sole turret was located.
“We can’t destroy three Macros with twenty-nine ships,” Sandra said.
I didn’t look at her. I didn’t think she was going to like my plan. I thought about asking her to go into our bedroom and wait there, but I knew she wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t bother.
On the forward wall, the three red contacts had appeared. They were set in up in a perfect formation. You could have drawn a flawless right triangle between them. Each ship was big—huge. They were thirty times the size of my tiny vessel. As we approached, I knew their weapons systems would be tracking us.
“Socorro, light up military targets on Earth under the Macro ships. Show them as yellow contacts.”
A hundred moving beetles appeared like freckles on the wall.
“Turn them red, Socorro,” I said. “Now, remove moving targets. I only want to see stationary vehicles and buildings.”
The screen shifted. Fully two-thirds of the contacts vanished. Those that remained were mostly tiny squares representing radar installations, barracks, communications centers and the like.
“What are you doing, Kyle?” asked Sandra in a harsh stage-whisper.
I kept my eyes on the big board in front of me. “Socorro, have all ships accepted the group-link?”
“Yes.”
“Disable their resets,” I said. “I want the group-link locked until I countermand it.”
“Permissions set.”
I eyed the targets below us. We were over China now, decelerating. So far, the Macros had not changed their formation. They remained on course, drifting over Asia. They weren’t firing missiles at the moment. Perhaps they were determining a new, juicy target. Or maybe they were manufacturing fresh missiles as fast as they could. The fact they had not yet withdrawn or moved to a new part of the globe was ominous in any case. It indicated their mission here was not yet finished.
