by B. V. Larson
Take us back to base at Andros Island, I told the Alamo.
ETA: seven minutes.
“She just ignored my questions, everything,” complained Sandra. “I should get a ship of my own. One that will listen to me.”
I glanced at her. “You’re enough of a killer. Go for it.”
“You’re not smiling.”
“Fighting toe-to-toe with these machines and surviving the experience leaves a man appreciating the small joys in life. But we just got our asses kicked. These guns I put on the backs of two thousand fine soldiers just got them all slaughtered.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Kyle. You tried.”
“That’s right sir,” said Sergeant Wilson behind me. The Alamo had dropped him off and he stepped onto the bridge.
I turned and shook the hand he offered me. But I did not feel that I fully deserved it.
“Commander Riggs?” he said to me, eyeing me closely. “You think this mess was all your fault, sir? Is that why you risked your life back there? Repeatedly? Despite orders?”
I looked at him. “Partly.”
“Well, it wasn’t, sir. Believe it or not, that was the best we’ve done in an open-combat situation with the machines. Everyone else has been slaughtered, but without so much as damaging the enemy. The only thing that’s ever worked has been nukes. Direct hits kill them. But we’re trying to figure out how to do it without destroying an entire continent.”
I nodded. “So am I, Sergeant.”
The man took off his pack and sighed. He threw back the hood on his suit. He leaned against one of the walls and slid down it until his butt hit the floor. I did the same, sitting next to him. We were both too dirty to sit on furniture. And suddenly, we were too tired to even walk as far as the couch.
I spent a few minutes sending messages to Crow and the rest of them. They promised to head in and pick up every survivor they could without endangering their ships.
“Nice place you’ve got here, Commander,” Wilson said. “Weird, all this furniture and stuff inside one of these ships. Looks almost homey.”
We were still leaning against the wall. I felt dazed and drained after fighting for my life, and Wilson apparently felt the same way. Sandra brought us drinks. We drained them immediately. She refilled them and we drained them again. I realized I had no urge to urinate, none at all. We were dehydrated.
After another minute or so, Sandra caught sight of my wrecked arm and freaked out a little. I’d been hiding it under the folds and flaps of my suit. She began tending the wounds with grim attention. For the most part, I suspected her efforts were wasted. The Nanos would fix me given time, or they wouldn’t and I would be minus one arm. First aid wasn’t going to do much for that mess. But I let her do it, as I knew it would make her feel better if she thought she was helping.
“Wilson,” I said to the man who sat next to me. He was still staring at nothing. He looked exhausted and haunted. “What would have helped back there? To win that battle? What improvement would have done it?”
He thought about it. He hefted the laser rifle I’d designed. He’d carried the damned thing all the way up into the belly of my ship. Like a good soldier, he hadn’t abandoned his rifle. It made my face burn, thinking of all the men who had trusted these guns, guns that hadn’t done the job in the end.
“I don’t know sir,” he said, shaking his head. “These are fantastic weapons, but they just don’t pack enough punch. We would need larger ones, I suppose. But then they would be heavier, with bigger packs. I don’t think a man could move under another hundred pounds of kit.”
I nodded, thinking. Wilson was right. The reactors had to be bigger. And the men, therefore, had to be stronger.
I shed my filthy, soot-stained suit and sat on my couch. I got out a satellite communications unit. It folded open and was about the size of a briefcase. The Pentagon boys had assured me I could reach them with it from anywhere, as long as I wasn’t out in space past the orbit of the Moon. Even then, it might work.
In less than a minute, I was in contact with the Pentagon. I gave them what I could in the way of a report. I didn’t have the entire picture of the battle outcome of course, only my own small part of it.
“Sir?” asked Wilson.
I looked up from the surface computer, where I’d been eyeing some design schematics. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“Sir, I would serve with you again any time. I thought you might want to know that. You did your best, sir. And I’ve never seen a man with an injury like that keep on fighting.”
I looked at him seriously for several seconds. “Would you consider joining us, Sergeant? If it was the only way to destroy these Macros?”
The man blinked in surprise. “I wouldn’t want to do anything against America, sir.”
“Of course not. We are a force dedicated to saving this entire world.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’m cut out to be some kind of alien ship captain.”
“No, not as a pilot. We would need you as a Marine. A different kind of Marine. A man who jumps out of ships like airborne, but from higher up, if you get my meaning. The kind of man who is the ground-pounder of Star Force.”
He stared at me, thinking hard. “I’m not sure exactly what you are asking, sir.”
“If you believed joining us was the best way to save this world—and all of humanity, would you be interested?”
Slowly, Wilson nodded. “Yes sir, if I believed that, I think I would.”
“Good. That’s all I needed to know. If the opportunity arises, and we manage to convince you someday, come look me up.”
“I’ll do that, Commander,” he said, and I knew that he would.
When we reached Andros Island, I had the ship unload Sergeant Wilson directly on the doorstep of our medical installation. He was one survivor I could be sure had made it home. More arrived soon after, I was glad to see. The ships had been busy. But still, I had to figure our losses had been grim. I made sure our dirtsider staff took down each survivor’s name and had them all report in.
I shook my head. In my own thoughts, I’d just referred to everyone whose feet were on the ground as a dirtsider. I sighed. There wasn’t much hope of halting the term’s usage if I couldn’t even stop myself.
The next person to call me was General Kerr. I was happy to learn he’d survived the battle, but I wasn’t surprised. He seemed to me like the kind of man who didn’t die easily. I soon learned he had the same opinion about me.
“Lived through it, eh Riggs? Glad to hear it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“That was a charley-foxtrot, Riggs.”
“Yes sir.”
“But it wasn’t entirely useless. We learned a lot. Maybe we could build bigger units and put them in buried nests. Maybe we could surprise the enemy with a set of heavy gunners and take them out quickly.”
I pursed my lips and thought about it. “That might work.”
“Might, huh? What else do you suggest? Should we burn a division of elite troops to take down each machine?”
“What were our losses, General?”
“No one told you? Fifty-six percent KIA—that’s if all the criticals pull through tonight, and all the missing make it out of the jungle somehow.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed at them. They burned as if they were full of grit. “We need mobile forces, General. To get in close, under their shields, we need our men to be able to move.”
“What’s your idea then, Riggs?”
“You might not like it, sir.”
“I know I won’t like it. I didn’t like the first one. I don’t even like you much. But you fought hard out there. I was impressed.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Now, give me your damned idea.”
I kept rubbing my eyes. How would I tell him about the monstrous thought I had in my head? I hadn’t even cleared it with Crow yet. Who knew what he would think of it?
“Let me ask you something fi
rst, sir. How far are you willing to let the Macros advance?”
“What do you mean?”
“Before you really unleash on them. Before you run out of options and take the choice of last resort.”
The General was silent for several long seconds. “I think you proved today you are on our side, Riggs. You people in Star Force, or whatever you call yourselves, you might not be pros, but you are willing to die like soldiers. In my book, that makes you a soldier. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Riggs?”
“That you aren’t supposed to answer my question, but you are going to do it anyway.”
“Exactly. We won’t let them get past the Panama Canal. At that point, with any luck, their forces will be concentrated on that narrow strip of land. When they reach that point, Russia, China and the US will each use about half our ICBMs. The entire continent will be taken out.”
I took a deep breath. A block of ice had grown in my belly. Just talking about this stuff was difficult for me. There was no way they would be able to evacuate most of the population. How many millions would die? How many had already died? A hundred million? Two hundred million? What about the fallout? How much of the Earth would be poisoned afterward? I decided not to ask these questions. There was no purpose.
“General, what if they take to the seas?”
“They have not done so yet. We are watching closely for that. We will have to release sooner if they can’t be contained on the land.”
“I see, and I thank you for being honest, General. Now I’ll be honest with you. I think we can make a soldier that can stop the Macros on the ground. But that soldier will have to join the fleet first. They will have to become an international force of marines.”
“Join the fleet? You mean your fleet?”
“Yes sir. Star Force. We need trained volunteers from every nation. Elite veterans preferred. We’ll provide them with new weaponry, train them on how to use it, and transform them into a ground force that can face the Macros.”
“Are we talking about some kind of suicide squad here, Riggs?”
“Not exactly, sir. But the process we will put the men through might make it impossible to return to normal civilian life.”
“I see. And can I observe an example of one of these—super soldiers?”
“You already have, sir,” I said. “I am one of them.”
-26-
After I’d gotten off the satellite link with General Kerr, leaving him skeptical but interested, I went down to the base to have the medical center people check me out. Really, I did it at the insistence of Sandra. I felt pretty good, physically. Sure, my arm was a sick mess. We’d wrapped it up so we wouldn’t have to watch the Nanos do their work. But the first thing they did, apparently, was turn off the pain sensors in my damaged limb. Very civil of them, I thought.
When the medical staff saw the state of my arm, there was considerable gasping. A doctor waved to a nurse who prepped a hypodermic. I put my good hand up to halt them when they came near.
“What’s that, doc?”
“For the pain,” he said.
“No. Don’t need it. I don’t feel a thing.”
He looked confused, wary. “I appreciate you are a tough man, Commander. But I can assure you, you will feel something if we perform this procedure without medication.”
“What procedure?”
He blinked at me. He exchanged glances with the nurse. They had the air of people who were about to go through something unfortunate and unpleasant. Something they’d gone through before.
“If you will just relax, sir, and let us do our jobs.”
He manufactured a smile and stepped closer.
I reached out, faster than his eyes could follow, and snapped the tip of his needle off. His face fell. He looked at his dribbling, snubbed hypo, dumbfounded.
“What did you do? Really, this isn’t helping, Commander.”
“Just give me some answers.”
The doctor heaved a sigh. He eyed me with new respect. “Frankly, I don’t even see how you’re standing. I can see metal in there, Commander. Bright metal! Your arm is full of shrapnel of some kind. I might be able to save the arm—just maybe, mind you, no promises. But you have to let me operate immediately.”
I smiled then. It was a grim smile, and their faces didn’t respond in kind. “Nobody is cutting my arm off,” I said. I turned to go.
“But, Commander… isn’t it better than dying?” asked the nurse, speaking up for the first time. She was young and had a high voice, almost child-like. I’d always found that endearing in a woman.
I sighed and gave her a real smile. “Sorry. Let me apologize for my bad attitude. I’ve just watched hundreds—maybe thousands of men die trying to prove a theory of mine. They managed to disprove it, unfortunately. In fact, more of the real casualties should be coming in soon.”
“Real casualties?” asked the nurse. The doctor was no longer speaking, he was just staring at me.
“I’m fleet. I can get my ship to repair me.”
“Why didn’t you do that in the first place?”
I thought about that. Why not indeed? Habit, I suppose, was part of it. But it was more than that.
“Because,” I told them truthfully, “I’m scared to go into their medical facility. They can work miracles, but they are machines.”
“They’re scary?”
I snorted. “Terrifying. And they don’t know much about pain. I don’t think they’ve ever even heard of anesthetic. Now that I think about it, I think the only reason this arm isn’t hurting is because the nerves are burned away.”
“Well,” said the doctor, chastened. “If you ever do need me, Commander. Come back.”
I nodded and left. I had the ship lift me back up into its belly. I walked into the chamber of horrors that had worked upon my children until it dumped them into the cold of space. The same chamber full of thin, dangling, black arms that had brought Sandra back to life.
In an hour, I couldn’t scream anymore. My voice no longer worked. It had turned into an endless series of hoarse sobs. Sometime after that, I lost consciousness. In two hours, I awoke with my arm mostly regrown, but I was blind. I had the Alamo carry me to my couch where I fell asleep. Sandra came and quietly touched my brow.
In another hour, I was functional again, but I still felt drained. My arm was pink-white. New skin had grown with unnatural, accelerated speed. Just like the rings of new cells that had glued on Sandra’s fingers. I saw that the rings around her fingers had faded. That was good. I could hope my arm would look normal again someday.
I flexed my repaired hand, and it tingled. But it worked. I nodded blearily, looking around the bridge.
“How bad was it?” Sandra asked.
“Bad. It was bad. But yes, it was worth it.”
“The satellite phone has been beeping for you,” said Sandra. “I answered and told them to give you a break.”
“You did?”
“I told them you were injured and recovering. But they keep calling back. Once every hour or so.”
“Okay,” I said, reaching for the unit. A few minutes later I was back on the phone with General Kerr.
“All right, Riggs. We need to talk,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve been checking out your story and reviewing the battle video.”
“Video?”
“Every one of those fancy suits was equipped with a camera or two. Not all of them worked. Not all of them survived, either. But yours did.”
“How did I do, sir?”
“I’m impressed…. I’m not a man who is easily impressed, Riggs.”
I believed him. “What do you think about my offer now, General?”
“I think you’re crazy. Did these drugs or whatever they are do that to you? Make you into some kind of berserk? You shot that thing in the butt and nearly ate a biscuit, boy.”
I chuckled. “No sir, I was born crazy, I guess. I can’t blame the Nanos for that.”<
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“Overcompensation. That’s what a psych would call it. You saw good men die over your idea and you lost it.”
“I got that machine to retreat sir. I damaged it enough to turn it around. Then I chased it into the jungle. If I’d had a full platoon as capable as I was, with heavier weapons….”
“Yeah. Yeah, you did. We did some calculations. You were running over sand in full gear, doing about thirty miles an hour. That’s about how fast a dog runs. Did you know that?”
“You believe me then.”
“I think you’ve been altered somehow. But I’m not sure I want to put all my boys through that. Whatever alien bullshit you have in mind for them.”
“I don’t want it to be that way, sir. I want them to be volunteers. I want them to be from every elite service in the world.”
“A Foreign Legion of freaks, huh?”
“Not the terms I would use.”
“No, I suppose not. But okay. The higher-ups saw the whole thing. I briefed them, ran the vid files for them raw. They are convinced to give it another go. With you leading the charge, if you will do it.”
Sandra caught my attention, flapping her hands at me. I looked up at her. She mouthed a single word: No.
“Yes sir,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
I eyed Sandra. She had her hands on her hips. Her lips were curled in disgust and worry.
“I know a fellow crazy bastard when I see one, Riggs,” laughed the General, sounding like he’d just won a bet. “Welcome to the special forces club. Start building super-sized reactor packs and brewing up some of those injections, pronto.”
“Will do, sir,” I said.
“Oh, and Riggs? The Congress is planning to give you a medal of some kind. You aren’t officially in any of the armed services, so they had to make it something any citizen can get. You are still a U. S. citizen, right Riggs?”
