Swarm sf-1

by B. V. Larson

  We’d been watching them for a couple of days. Using internet broadcasts on portable computers, we’d watched several battles. The Macros were the very opposite of the Nanos. They were huge. The big ones, built for battle, were over a hundred feet tall. But they weren’t uniform in size, shape or even function. Many were smaller and performed other tasks which we did not fully understand yet. Most of them walked on six legs like giant, headless insects. But these were metal insects as big as buildings. They had good air defenses, unfortunately for our Star Force ships. We could destroy them, but it cost us too much. Just by flying close, our ships automatically fired every weapon they had. But the Macros carried SAMs on their backs, and after the first few engagements we had realized we were losing ships as fast as they were losing giant, crab-like robots.

  We had withdrawn, giving up on the idea of fighting them directly. Crow and I had decided that it was the job of Star Force to destroy the Macros before they landed. If we failed, it was up to Earth’s troops, ships and planes to do the rest.

  So far, the Macros were doing most of the destroying. Argentina’s military had put up a big ring of defenses around a southern coastal city named Trelew. The fighting there had raged for a full day. Looking at the video, I had to figure our side had lost badly. They just didn’t have enough heavy equipment down there. They needed armor divisions, modern ones.

  In the air, we did better. One carrier group sent by the US had reached the region. A few British ships stood in support. Argentina had never had much of a navy of its own, but their ships had shelled the Macros until they’d been sunk.

  Internationally, the defense effort was ongoing. The Earth militaries didn’t trust us at all, I could tell that from the news broadcasts. They called us things like ‘the initial invasion forces’. Or the ‘space raiders’. Trust had grown between the various panicked governments of Earth, however. Pierre was right about that. Everyone had air-lifted in what they could. Chinese, NATO and even a few Russian planes had joined the fight. Squadrons of fighter bombers and helicopters were dying hard, led primarily by US forces. But it would be weeks before Earth had a significant ground army in place. By then, the enemy would have marched north to the ruined cities of Santiago and Buenos Aries.

  For me, the scariest things were the mysterious domes. There were precious few reports about them. But I could tell they were special. The Macros left them behind as they advanced. Nobody knew why. White things, they were. Huge white domes each as big as a football stadium. Parabolic in shape, the domes were like dinner plates, flipped over and left lying in flat areas of open land. Under them, we knew something was happening, but no one knew what.

  Pierre communicated one more time that night. A call came in as I watched massive spiked legs knock down the last, burning buildings of Trelew. It was like watching a Godzilla movie, except we were up against about a hundred metal Godzillas-and we didn’t have any cool monsters of our own to stop them.

  I’d stopped thinking about Pierre and the diplomacy he was doing nearby until he tried to contact me. The Alamo asked me if I would take a private call from the Versailles, and of course I said yes. But there was no one there. Just a strange, crashing sound. More noises followed. I heard what sounded like a scrabbling, and a heavy thud.

  “Pierre? What’s going on?”

  No answer.

  My eyes flicked to the big board. Pierre’s ship was still there. His was a golden beetle very close to the cool, metallic-jade bump that represented my own ship.

  A whispering voice came over the channel then. It was a stranger’s voice. “Computer, turn off all communications.”

  “Command unclear,” said Pierre’s ship.

  Sandra and I looked at each other. Whoever it was at the other end of that radio channel, they didn’t know how to address the ship.

  “We can hear you. You killed our ambassador, didn’t you?” asked Sandra. She glared at the walls around us, as if the owner of the voice might be hiding behind them.

  “Shit,” whispered the assassin.

  “I hear you,” I said. “What have you done with Pierre?”

  “Ship, I’m renaming you Delta. Respond,” said the stranger. We could barely make out the words. The assassin wasn’t speaking up. I was hardly surprised.

  “Ship renamed,” said Pierre’s ship-which was no longer Pierre’s.

  “You will not survive our next battle,” I said, “let me assure you of that, whoever you are.”

  “Delta, turn off all communications,” hissed the stranger’s voice. That was the last transmission we heard.

  Sandra spent the next few minutes fuming and pacing in a rage. I didn’t blame her. I sat silently, brooding. The problem was we couldn’t do much about it. We couldn’t really have saved Pierre, even if we wanted to. Our ship wouldn’t let me get out to help. It wouldn’t fire on one of its own kind, either. So, now we had a traitor in our midst. We had someone who did not belong. A usurper. A murderer.

  It was one thing, I told myself, to be pulled up into one of these ships against one’s will and forced to undergo the tests blindly. It was quite another to sneak aboard under false pretenses with cheating knowledge of how to beat the tests. Then, as a final crime, this person had killed the original owner, fully knowing they were stealing the ship.

  “Alamo, take us close to the Versailles. Follow it whereever it goes.”

  On the big board, I watched as our two contacts merged. The ship, now renamed Delta, had not moved. It wasn’t so easy to figure out how to talk to one of these machines. We had a little time, I figured, but not much.

  “Kyle,” said Sandra, eyeing me, “you should report this to Crow.”

  “What’s he going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I was in a dark mood. I’d become more of a brooder since my kids had died. I didn’t take well to bullshit like this-if I ever had. What was the government thinking? Here we were, offering them aid in an interstellar war. They had no other allies. Sure, we had robbed a few malls and a few people had died by attacking our ships. But that was nothing compared to the Macros. They were engaged in extermination. They would kill millions-maybe more.

  So what had happened? Had Kim Bager ordered it? I doubted that. Had some independent spook-group gotten a wild hair? Maybe. Or maybe a single agent had decided they wanted one of our ships. I didn’t know how it had happened, but it ate at me the more I thought about it. This killing meant we couldn’t trust Earth anymore. I could never go home, no matter how this played out.

  I decided something then, as I brooded about it. I decided I was going to find out what the hell was going on.

  “Alamo,” I said loudly. “I wish to undergo the injections.”

  “What?” Sandra asked, almost shouting. “What are you doing, Kyle?”

  Immediately, five black snake-arms lashed out. Three rippled into being from the ceiling and two more came up from the floor. They wrapped around each of my limbs. The third one to drop down from the ceiling circled my neck, but not so tightly that it choked me.

  “It’s the only way, Sandra,” I said quietly.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Look, I can’t even touch you. I can’t exit this ship. I don’t want to live like this. I’ll take the injections and if they are really horrible, maybe I’ll drown myself or something.”

  She looked at me strangely. “You aren’t doing this for me, are you?”

  “Aren’t you tired of wearing a leash?” I asked, smiling slightly.

  The five arms tightened and stiffened. I looked around, straining my neck to see what they were doing. I had expected, for some reason, to see a dripping needle with a plunger descend out of the ceiling of the ship. That wasn’t how it happened. Instead, the same cable-like arms that held me grew silvery tips. I realized, looking at them, that they were the needles. Why not? The arms were made up of nanites and the point was to inject them into my body, so why not simply form a point, liquefy a number of them and punc
ture the skin?

  I began hoping this wouldn’t hurt too much. My hopes were faint. Five injections? The needles looked as thick as screwdriver tips. I wanted to squirm, but couldn’t.

  “This process will temporarily shut down the ship’s command personnel. Confirmation required.”

  I hesitated.

  “I don’t trust the Nanos, Kyle,” said Sandra. She came close, and the ship restrained her. I was tired of that.

  “We’ll figure a way, Kyle,” she told me, getting her face as close to mine as the ship would allow. “We’ll make love if that’s what you want, some day.”

  I took a breath and looked at her. I did want her. But that wasn’t the only reason I was doing this. “A government killer took Pierre’s ship. If Earth thinks they can do that, they might try to assassinate each of us in turn and replace us with loyal people. If they get away with it, they’ll do it. I can’t let them have an easy win. We have to move against them now.”

  Her eyes widened. I could see that she had begun to grasp the magnitude of my plan.

  “You-you are going to board Pierre’s ship? You are going to go after that assassin? You don’t even have a gun!”

  “Wish me luck,” I said. I tore my eyes away from her face. The look in her eyes, the horrified stare, wasn’t doing anything for my self-confidence.

  “Alamo, command confirmed. Proceed with the injections.”

  Driving, hot pain. White hot. Blurring.

  I could see, and I could still scream, until the arm that wrapped around my neck looped itself around my chin and skull. The neck needle was the worst, I think. It dug into my flesh. It drove in-worming. It wasn’t the burning stuff it pumped into me that was the most painful. It was those five worming needles. I felt each of them squirming inside my body at five different points, like a team of steel tentacles they rooted around for a thick artery upon which to implant themselves.

  I felt blood and sweat run everywhere from my lanced open skin. The Alamo was a machine. It knew no bedside manner, no gentleness. No mercy.

  I could not open my mouth to scream, but my lips were fluttering with blasts of heaving breath. I snorted through my nostrils and made long nasally screeching sounds using those twin, tiny outlets. I tasted metal in my mouth and smelled it in my sinuses. The pain went on and on, spreading in a dark burn throughout my body.

  I felt them when they reached my spine. They felt like a thousand ants with electric spikes for feet. I felt them when they reached my guts, too. I was filled with gallons of boiling blood.

  And at last, I felt them reach my skull. As my eyes filled with glinting flecks and my vision dimmed to nothing, I lost consciousness.

  17

  I awakened a new man. This might sound like a good thing, but it wasn’t. I felt different, as if parts of my body had been sawn off and sewn back on again. My skin was different. It felt stiff-and when I shifted and groaned in discomfort, my skin resisted my movements. It felt like-like I was wearing a wetsuit, perhaps. A wetsuit made of stiff, unyielding fabric.

  I lifted my hands to my face. On each forearm I saw a white circle. I nodded to myself, grimly. The nanites had repaired the hole they made. But they left their odd, tell-tale scars, just as they had on Sandra’s severed fingers.

  I looked around for Sandra. I was still lying stretched out on my easy chair, where I’d been spending too much time lately. Sandra wasn’t in the room. I frowned. How long had I been out? I opened my mouth to ask the Alamo.

  Two hours, twenty-six minutes.

  I jumped. I looked around, my eyes rolling in my head. It had been the Alamo, and her voice had spoken in my head. Was my hearing different now?

  Alamo, can you hear me? I thought.

  Yes.

  Very startling. I wasn’t sure if I liked this. Was I part of some nanite nation now? Could I hear what they were thinking? Obviously, they could hear me.

  “Is this telepathy or something?” I asked aloud.

  No. We have installed mental interpretation circuits in your brain. The electrical behavior of your brain is then converted into a radio signal for unit-to-unit transmission.

  “Thanks for telling me about that part in advance.”

  No attempt was made to inform you.

  I sighed. I figured that sarcasm would forever be lost upon the machines. They just didn’t have a sense of humor.

  I heard something fall to the floor, and before I knew it I was up and standing.

  “You’re awake!” said Sandra from behind me. “And moving very fast. I was worried. I figured you’d die on me and leave me alone on this damned ship. Did you ever even think of that?”

  I looked at her. She had come out of the kitchen chamber. She had been carrying a beer, but must have dropped it when she saw me. The beer had made the noise that had made me jump, I realized. The can rolled on the deck, glugging out its foamy contents. Each glug didn’t stain the floor, however. Days ago I’d built a program into the Alamo to go porous and let liquid waste dribble out of the ship when we dropped it. As a messy person, I found this very convenient.

  But I was still puzzled over my speedy jump to my feet. I barely had the thought of getting up, and I’d vaulted to my feet. It felt strange, almost as if my muscles hadn’t done the work. Almost as if some other force had propelled me, as if a kid’s hand worked my legs and I was some kind of doll.

  “You spilled your beer,” I told Sandra. I tried a smile. It didn’t come easily, but I figured she’d earned one out of me by now.

  She snatched it up and handed it to me, half-empty. “This one’s yours.”

  I drained it. “That was exactly what I needed,” I said. I looked at her and she smiled, almost shyly. She took a step backward. Something was different.

  Then I had it. She didn’t have any snake-like arms wrapped around her. For the first time since the ship had revived her, she was free to move about and do as she pleased. No wonder she was smiling.

  I had another impulse then. The impulse to grab her up in my arms and kiss her. It’s funny, the way humans behave when trapped together and stressed. We tend to bond. It’s only natural, I suppose. We’d fought and survived together. We’d seen plenty of each other’s skin and been intimate in a dozen ways, living close together for days.

  She smiled at me with half her mouth. I took it as an invitation.

  Then my body launched itself at her.

  I almost killed her, I think. It was a close thing. The second I realized I was airborne, traveling the short distance between us in a single bound, I gave the mental order to halt, to desist, to avoid crashing into her.

  I jerked away as if swatted by a giant’s hand. I flew into the far wall, the one that crawled with golden beetle ships. I hit the wall, and it hurt-but only a little. Something had cushioned my landing. I turned my head to see what I’d landed on. There was nothing there but the metal of the ship’s hull.

  “Are you okay?” asked Sandra, coming after me. She laid her hands on my arm. “What the hell was that?”

  “What did it look like?” I asked, gingerly touching the back of my skull where I’d crashed into the wall. There was a small bleeding spot in my hair. I touched the wall with probing fingers. It didn’t feel soft at all.

  “You just suddenly leapt at me,” said Sandra. “It was amazing. Then you changed directions somehow and twisted in mid-air. Then you crashed into the wall as if someone had fired you out of a cannon.”

  Alamo, I thought, when I’m not in a combat situation, please tone down these improved reflexes I seem to have. I don’t want to hurt my own people.

  Settings can only be adjusted by the operator.

  Great. I had to use self-control. I got to my feet experimentally, half-expecting to launch into the ceiling. Things progressed much more smoothly this time, however. I noticed that Sandra stood well back when I got up. She watched me with big eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I told her. “I think something the injections did to me caused this. I think they made me s
tronger.”

  She nodded, pursing her lips. I walked toward her, slowly, stiffly.

  She watched me.

  “I’m controlling it now. I’m new to this. I’m going to try to touch you as gently as I can, okay?”

  She blinked. She extended a hand toward me.

  Oh great, I thought, now she’s scared of me. A perfect romantic moment had been ruined.

  I took her hand and kissed it gently. “See?” I said. I studied her face, looking for signs of pain. Was I holding her fingers too firmly? Was I grinding her bones together? I almost couldn’t feel her hand in mine.

  She smiled back. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got an idea. Just stand there. Close your eyes. Try not to react.”

  I did as she asked and she kissed me. It felt good. She followed the first with more of them. Her kisses were gentle, more faint and tickling than I remembered kisses were supposed to be. Her skin felt papery, thin, and delicate against mine. I told myself I was going to have to go very slowly with Sandra. I had to keep control of myself.

  We only kissed for about two minutes. I wanted to do it for two hours. But finally, very gently but inexorably, I pushed her away.

  Alamo, I thought, are we still following the ship-the one now called the Delta?

  Yes.

  “I have to go,” I told Sandra.

  “Don’t go.”

  “Is that why you’re kissing me? To distract me?”

  She gave a tiny shrug. “Maybe. I don’t want you to leave me here and get yourself killed.”

  “I don’t think I can die easily, now,” I told her.