Swarm sf-1

by B. V. Larson

“This is bad, Commodore.”

  “I can see that. What do you think we should do?”

  I began working on the ceiling, pointing toward spots where I wanted groups of ships. The Alamo had been trained to respond to this sort of thing by now, and obligingly placed groups of golden beetles in each spot I indicated.

  “Let’s just group up into three teams of twenty ships, form a ball of them and hit them all at once.”

  “No, too risky,” said Crow.

  “What do you mean ‘no’? What do you want to do?”

  “Form a mass on one ship, beat it, then form a mass on the next and beat it down second.”

  “If we do that, the ships will get to Earth.”

  “Yes, two will, until we can deal with them. I don’t want to divide my forces when I’m not sure how many ships it will take to kill one of the enemy.”

  “Look, Jack,” I said, alarmed. Were we deciding which cities of Earth were about to get nuked? “We can’t decide this on our own.”

  “There’s nobody else up here, Kyle.”

  I took a deep breath and looked at Sandra. She looked back with wide, frightened eyes. I don’t think, up until that moment, I’d ever really seen fear in her eyes. Suspicion, worry, anger, yes. But not open fear. She knew the stakes.

  “Riggs, I’m going to try to recall the sentry ships that are about to suicide on the enemy. Call me back when you have a better idea. Crow out.”

  I turned myself back to the big board, seeking that magical, better idea. Our sentries had bought us some time. They were way out there, and this time they’d seen the enemy and we had maybe half an hour before they would reach Earth. The bad part was trying to convince any of the ships that pulling back wasn’t running from the enemy but rather was repositioning so we could win the battle. Thinking about that gave me my first idea.

  I contacted Crow.

  “What?” he roared at me.

  I could see by the action on the board he’d not been able to stop the ships. The single closest ones had slowed their hell-bent drive to meet the enemy, but had not turned away, had not pulled back to regroup. Now the incoming enemy were closing on these ships. I was glad they’d not come for the North Pole this time. If they had, the Alamo doubtlessly would have rushed eagerly toward the nearest enemy alone.

  “Jack, tell the sentries to order their ships to attack the enemy on the opposite side of the planet. That way they are still attacking, but they can escape the one that’s-”

  “Got it! Crow out.”

  I could see why he had disconnected so quickly. The ship out over Africa had almost made it to the big red bastard that swam toward it. I took a step, then two steps, closer to that side of the battle. It was on the right wall, just over my easy chair. Yes, there it was. As I watched, a tiny sliver bubbled out of the attacker and became a red contact.

  “Crap, they fired,” said Sandra.

  “Dammit!” I said. I walked to the wall and hammered my fist on it. I could feel the tiny hard surface of raised metal under my fist. My hammering, unsurprisingly, had no effect. Within thirty seconds, we lost the first ship of the battle.

  I walked to the other side. Crow had gotten through to the other sentries in time. They had turned and were moving away. It did seem as if our ships were slightly faster than the enemy.

  I called Crow again. “You saved two of them.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’ll be right, mate. Don’t worry. What else have you thought of, besides killing my entire force by splitting it into thirds?”

  “That would put twenty on each ship,” I said, thinking hard. “We might win all three.”

  “Or we might lose all three battles and the war.”

  “We have sixty ships. How many are you willing to lose to figure something important out?”

  Crow chewed that over for a few seconds. “Depends. Talk to me.”

  “We know forty or so can win, we did that before. In fact, with more organized fleet command, we should barely lose anyone with forty. We can afford to put the rest on a second ship.”

  “And the third one?”

  “We’ll let the enemy coming in down low over the South Pole get close. Let it through. There’s not much in Antarctic for them to destroy. By the time they make it up to Argentina or South Africa or Australia, assuming that’s what they are going to do, our main force will be done fighting and we can turn on the third ship en masse.”

  “What do you want to learn by pitting twenty ships against one?”

  “If they can win. Think about it, Jack, they lost the last fight, right? So, they tripled their numbers. Next time, if they lose this fight, they will send nine ships.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I can’t. But they are machines. They will tend to loop and follow similar patterns.”

  He was quiet for a second. “I’ll send ten. Ten tightly clustered ships. If they kill it, we know something.”

  “Why ten?”

  “Because that’s about how many we will have left to face each enemy if they send nine next time.”

  I rubbed my neck and lounged in my easy chair. The gee-forces were getting to me. I agreed to his plan. We might lose ten ships, but if we couldn’t take out one of theirs with ten of ours, we were probably dead anyway.

  15

  At first, the battle went as planned. Crow and I worked out the details up on the ceiling of our ships, and then broadcast it to everyone else in the fleet. We sent the main body of ships toward the enemy that approached Europe. Crow and I both went with that group. A group of ten headed for the second ship, which was over Hawaii, or thereabouts. The enemy were obviously splitting their forces, hoping to slip by our defenses. They were about to succeed, too, in the far South. That was the ship I worried about most, the one that crawled over the floor like a cockroach toward the South Pole and after that, points unknown. I didn’t know what these ships would do when they reached my world, but I figured they hadn’t come all this way to give us a cure for cancer.

  Our fifty hit the single ship headed for Europe and mowed the missiles it shot at us. I’d heard from Crow they were indeed missiles. Some of us were monitoring Earth’s news stations and earthbound observers had confirmed it. I was glad it wasn’t some freaky thing our own human technology could never hope to deal with. I was also glad to hear Earth was openly watching these battles. Maybe, just maybe, they would come to appreciate us one day.

  With fifty ships swarming on one, it wasn’t much of a contest. We destroyed it quickly, even though it tried to turn and run. We were way out of position by the time it blew up, however, and it would be about an hour until we could get back to help the other ships.

  It was one of the longest hours of my life. The second ship over Hawaii didn’t die so easily. When they were at long range our squad managed to shoot down each incoming missile, but as they drew closer, our ships had less time to fire at the missiles before they hit something. Each shot, we could see, came closer to the tight knot of ten ships.

  Then disaster struck from an unexpected direction. The South Pole ship, which had been barreling in at full speed this entire time, had made it close to Earth. It had deviated course somewhat. Quickly, its new goal became apparent.

  “Isn’t that South America?” asked Sandra.

  I nodded. At least Jack didn’t have to worry about his relatives. It seemed logical when I thought about it. Why not go for the closest land mass with the greatest population?

  “Kyle?” said Sandra, “I think its shooting something.”

  I watched, unable to speak, unable to swallow. For the first time, I saw an alien ship firing on our planet-if you didn’t count the Nanos, that was. Somehow, I felt responsible. I couldn’t believe my conversations and command decisions had led to this result. I felt hot and sick.

  “What are they firing at?” asked Sandra. She was up now, squatting in front of the big dark circle of Earth. “The missiles are vanishing over Antarctica.”

  “There are b
ases there. Scientific installations run by various nations. The aliens are certainly thorough, aren’t they? If only-”

  “Kyle!” shouted Sandra, “look at the ten you sent at the other ship.”

  I did and I almost choked. I had expected to see them being destroyed, but that hadn’t happened, not yet anyway. What I saw, in some ways, was almost worse. Three of the ships had broken off. They were no longer attacking the target we’d given them. They’d turned away and were now heading downward on our wall toward the ship that approached the southern tip of South America.

  Crow’s voice scratched onto the public channel. “Mutiny! Get back on target, everyone! You are screwing up the plan!”

  It wasn’t very professional sounding, but it was to the point. The three ships ignored him and kept flying away from their designated battle.

  I opened a line to Crow. “Commodore. Break off all of them. Send all ten at the South American ship.”

  “What the hell are they doing?”

  “They are disobeying orders.”

  “I should let them burn.”

  “They might very well do so, I think they are going to beat your team to the South American ship.”

  Unpleasant laughter. “Serves them right. Deserters.”

  “They might have relatives there, on that continent.”

  “Yeah, or they might have figured out they can only run away by switching targets over and over again.”

  I thought about that. I didn’t like the sound of it. Our fellow fleet members were not a disciplined force. They were a bunch of survivalists. If they heard about a new way to avoid combat-well, they might let a city burn to save their own skins.

  “Let’s hope I’m right on this one,” I said.

  “I think you are right about our response. I’m pulling our ships off the secondary target. We’ll all hit the third and then deal with the second afterward. I don’t like them shooting at Earth.”

  I had a little predictive session with the Alamo. We worked out that the ship coming up from the South Pole would get to Santiago Chile or Buenos Aires Argentina before we could get there. As soon as the enemy ship reached land, we watched as it paused over the rocky, cold region of the far south. When it moved away, it looked as if it had laid an egg. A small mass sat there.

  “What the hell is that?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Sandra.

  “Alamo, what did the ship drop off?”

  “Warning, the following is a predictive analysis, not based on factual data.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “The probabilities indicate it is an invasion force.”

  “An invasion force? Of what? Giant robots?”

  “Reference unclear.”

  “The Macros, they just put troops down, is that what you are saying?”

  “Yes. Troops and processing systems.”

  They came for raw materials, my brain said, supplying an unwanted answer. I stared at the wall with bits of shivering, rippling metal all over it. The seas weren’t blue, they were silver. The land was the color of graphite. But it was my home, just the same. I felt fear and panic-and horror.

  When they got closer to a belt of major cities, they laid another ‘egg’ of troops, machines, whatever it was. Then the ship fired about five times. I knew, vaguely, where the big cities were. The missiles moved and finally vanished over several of Earth’s greatest cities. I had no doubt there were mass casualties.

  I swallowed hard as we swept in over the big ship now. I was proud to see that the three who had broken off and come to fight here were not deserters. They were the first to arrive. Two of them died before we got there to help, but at least one guy lived. I thought that perhaps, they had done the right thing. They had lost us two ships, but had distracted the Macros and kept them from taking out more of our cities.

  We swarmed the last ship and brought it down without losing another vessel.

  “What next?” Sandra asked.

  I knew what she meant. Did we fly to kill the ship over Hawaii or stay and work on the troops or whatever they were? I could see now, they were moving too, very slowly. They were about as fast as a minute hand on an old analog clock, but they were moving. On the planet, I realized, they must be moving very fast indeed. The speed of a car on the highway, at least.

  “Fleet, I want everyone to hit the ship over Hawaii. We can come back here and attack these ground forces later. It will take them hours according to the Snapper for them to reach any major population centers.”

  No one argued. We all raced low over the Earth, crossing her oceans to the northwest. We flew upward, too. I wanted a beer, I wanted it badly, but I held off. I told myself I would have a six-pack when the last Macro on my world died.

  The last ship never reached Hawaii. It was close, and it did get off one missile, which took out the city of Hilo, I learned later. The missiles, unsurprisingly, were nuclear. Each carried a single warhead, about a dozen megatons worth of death and destruction. They never got close enough to land to drop any invasion forces, thankfully.

  When we raced back to South America, the two red contacts representing the invasion forces had spread out like spills of paint. Our ships flew in and parked over them. I felt my ship fire again and again. I grinned at Sandra fiercely. We were slaughtering them, I could tell.

  But then there were squawking voices on the public channel. Reports came in of something hitting us. It was hard to tell, with all our golden, beetle-like ships zooming around and over one another, seeking and destroying.

  Then I saw one get hit, not too far from our own contact. I tried to open a channel to Commodore Crow. We had to get out of there. But he ignored my connection and shouted over the public channel.

  “Pull out! Everyone move to orbit. The ships will let us, they don’t have an compulsion about leaving a ground fight. I repeat, order your ship to lift off to orbital altitude.”

  In a shifting mass we followed his orders. Star Force’s second battle against the Macros was over. But the ground war for Earth had just begun.

  16

  I seriously needed a shave by my fifth day aboard the Alamo. Maybe, I thought, the pirates of the old days were depicted with wild frothing beards because they were sitting on ships without any easy way to shave, just as I was.

  Pierre had been-interesting to talk to. He was entertaining. He was the life of the party. He presented everything in the best light, even the growing ground war in southern Argentina and Chile. He called it a learning exercise, and said it was good for humanity.

  “This war will end all other wars, I tell you,” he said on my private channel to his ship, the Versailles. “Why? Because man will not fight man when there are much scarier things out there that want to kill us all.”

  Pierre often talked like that, he would first ask a question, then answer it himself. I had to admit, it worked. Everyone found him persuasive.

  “All right Pierre, don’t give me that theory again.”

  “Theory? You call it a theory? No, you cannot use that term. It is demonstrable fact, not theory. Even now, forces that a week ago refused to accept one another’s existence are sending troops to fight this new menace as allies. Ancient enemies will stand shoulder-to-shoulder and fight these machines to the death.”

  “I’m sold, man,” I told him, not wanting to argue any further. “Let’s talk about the big meeting.”

  “It is tonight, at six PM Eastern Time. I will meet alone with the US government official.”

  “Only one man, right?”

  “Exactly as we discussed. The Senator-Kim Bager-she has agreed. She will send only one man. We must be recognized as a new sovereign nation. We must have formal relations with the governments of Earth.”

  Sandra spoke up. “You should not meet him alone, Pierre.”

  “Don’t worry about me, lovely Sandra.”

  I glanced at her. I wasn’t sure how Pierre knew, but she did look even better than usual today. Fresh clothes and a wash h
ad done wonders. Her hair was clean and shiny. Up until now, I’d only seen her in a bedraggled state. I’d managed to put together that shower setup I’d promised her. A few nights of real sleep hadn’t hurt her, either.

  “We will back you up, Pierre,” I said. “We’ll only be a few miles away.”

  “Don’t frighten them! I don’t know how high level this person will be, but he is supposed to be empowered to speak for the government. He will be coming in alone and unarmed. He must be brave to dare to face the ship’s tests.”

  “How brave? He’s been briefed on what to do. When he fails, the ship will just dump him out onto the grass of a park in Alexandria. Then you can pick him up again.”

  “You and I know that, Commander,” said Pierre. “But this new brave soul doesn’t. To him, he enters the very cave of the lion. Don’t you recall the great fear in your heart when the ship lifted you up in its alien embrace for the first time? I know you can’t have forgotten that moment of terror.”

  “I was feeling pissed off at the time, actually.”

  Pierre laughed easily. It was another of his habits. When a conversation went in a direction that he didn’t want it to, he would laugh it off, and then switch topics.

  “Commander, I ask that you stay well back. Give diplomacy room to breathe.”

  “It’s your show, Pierre. I’m just riding shotgun, here.”

  Pierre laughed nervously. “Such a quaint turn of phrase you have. I must go now and prepare for my guest.”

  We broke the connection.

  “He trusts his quick talk too much,” said Sandra. “He thinks he can talk his way out of anything.”

  “Maybe he can,” I said. “He talked Crow into making him an ambassador, didn’t he?”

  I went back to watching the news with Sandra. The news had never, in my memory, been so interesting. In space, everything was eerily quiet. No new attacking Macro ships had come. Some of us had begun to speculate that the space invasion was over, that the Macros would watch and see if their ground troops could take us out alone before they risked more ships attacking Earth. Personally, I didn’t buy that line. Maybe they had run out of invasion ships, maybe not. But I was sure that as long as they could, these robots would keep coming at us. Computers are tenacious. I used to tell my students they could drop something as small as a pencil in the open doorway of an elevator. Those doors will ding and try to close, but detect the pencil and stop themselves. Come back an hour later, and if no one has picked up the pencil, they will still be dinging and sliding those doors almost shut. They will never give up. That’s how I expected the Macros to behave. They would be relentless.