by Isaac Hooke
Rade had his re-implantation scheduled for later that same morning. In retrospect, getting an Implant installed while hungover probably wasn’t the best idea. And he thought the headache and grogginess he felt earlier in the day was bad...
After eight long weeks of space travel, they arrived at an out-of-the-way Franco-Italian resort planet, whose dome colony was seductively titled Boudoir.
“Enjoy your leave,” Facehopper told them. “News on the vine is we’re going to redeploy shortly.”
“But it feels like we’ve only just finished our last operation,” Fret said. “Aren’t we supposed to have at least half a year between deployments?”
“Usually, yes,” Facehopper said. “We just happen to be in the right place at the right time.”
Fret crossed his arms. “Or the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Screw the half year wait,” Bender said. “I’m much happier to redeploy immediately.”
“There you go,” Facehopper told them. “Now as I said, enjoy your leave.”
The platoon members got into the usual trouble while on liberty. Kicked out of strip clubs, banned from the local gym, a few bar brawls with some rowdy Marines, and a mountain bike down the most technically challenging hill in the dome that left Manic and Grappler with broken bones.
It ended all too soon. In precisely one week they were back aboard the Goliath. They transferred to another vessel a few days later, the cruiser Patriarch. It left orbit, heading toward a Gate that would take them once more to the outskirts of UC territory.
So far, they had been kept in the dark regarding the specifics of their new deployment. Rade guessed it involved the alien threat in some way. Had another colony fallen on the fringes of known space? And were the invaders truly alien, or were the Sino-Koreans at last implicated?
The platoon members kept pestering Rade for information, and he always told them honestly that he didn’t have any. He asked the chief to enlighten him a few times, but Facehopper remained tight-lipped about the mission, and always responded with: “The LC will tell us in good time.”
It took a week to reach the Gate. Then another week to cross that system toward another Gate, only recently constructed. According to his Implant, it led to uncharted space. Eight destroyers and twelve defense platforms guarded the entrance; their turrets were all pointed inward, toward the Slipstream, as if fearful that some terrible enemy might emerge at any moment. Behind them, a long queue of warships had taken up holding orbits, with new vessels arriving by the day. There were more ships out there than Rade had ever seen gathered in one place in his entire lifetime. He saw not only UC vessels, but also many ships of Franco-Italian make. The models ran the gamut from warships and cruisers to Builders and Harvesters. Whatever was going down, it was something big.
When the Patriarch assumed its own holding orbit, the Lieutenant Commander finally summoned Alpha Platoon to the briefing room.
“Many prisoners were captured at Radiance colony,” Lieutenant Commander Braggs said. “Both robot, bioengineered, and human. Many subsequent interrogations have taken place. The Special Collection Service and other intelligence services believe they have extracted the location of the enemy homeworld from these prisoners. And it lies beyond this Gate.”
“Holy shit,” Fret said. “We’re invading the alien homeworld?”
Braggs nodded. “We are.”
Rade considered the ramifications. If their homeworld was anything like Earth, that meant there were billions of inhabitants. Likely an extensive defense system, both orbital and planet-side. Not to mention an opposing fleet.
No wonder the UC had gathered so many ships.
“Is that even legal?” Lui said. “I don’t think it’s something the League of Systems would ratify.”
The lieutenant commander shrugged. “Forget the League of Systems. It’s legal if our government says it is. But think about it. Do we really have a choice? It’s either invade them now while they’re weak, or we let them recover enough to conquer more of our colonies, until they finally attack Earth itself. Best to cut down this enemy now while it’s still a sapling, then allow it to grow into a massive tree spreading seeds of war across the galaxy.”
“After all those interrogations you mentioned,” Tahoe said. “Do we know anything more about the enemy we face?”
“Not particularly,” Braggs said. “Though the SCS believes the SKs are involved in some way.”
“I knew it!” Lui said triumphantly.
The LC nodded. “We’re not sure in what capacity, however. The nano-machine technology is beyond them, just as it is beyond the UC and all other human governments. But the evidence pointing to the SKs comes from the bioengineering technology—there are certain genetic markers present in the DNA of the creatures we captured, markers that are a hallmark of Sino-Korean work. We don’t currently know whether the SKs willingly shared their bioengineering tech, or if the invaders took it by force. The SK government is not being overly cooperative with us, as you might have guessed.”
“Wait a second,” Keelhaul said. “With all the ships we’ve dispatched out here, who’s guarding Earth?”
“That isn’t all of our fleet out there,” the Lieutenant Commander said. “Not by far. You’re seeing maybe a quarter of our starships, all pulled from duty stations at nearby colonies. Many of the vessels are Franco-Italian as well.”
“So we’re leaving nearby colony worlds minimally defended,” Tahoe said.
“This is true,” Braggs said. “But which would you prefer? A minimally defended Earth, or minimally defended colony worlds? And I use the words ‘minimally defended’ loosely: there are still orbital platforms and the usual planetary defenses taking care of the involved colonies.”
“Those didn’t seem to work so well when the invasion force came to Radiance,” Bomb said.
“Whatever the case, while an entertaining digression, we’re not here to discuss fleet strategy,” the LC said. “I’m sure you’re all eager to hear your mission.” He paused, solely to draw out the platoon’s suspense, Rade thought. Then he sighed, and said, softly: “We’re going to kill them all.”
“Sir?” Facehopper asked.
“Once we penetrate the orbital defenses, we’re going to nuke the planet from orbit,” the lieutenant commander said. “When the nuclear bombardment ceases, our air ships will follow that up with several bombing runs to soften up any survivors. Your mission will be one of clean-up. You’ll search for survivors, and when you find them, you’ll either terminate them directly, or you’ll tag the location for the bombers. Yours will be one of many such extermination teams dispatched to the resultant radiation zones. You’ll wear jumpsuits fitted with specialized auto-drip antirads. You’ll pilot Titan mechs modified with extra layers of radiation armor. You’ll be killing machines, sent to kill.”
Rade stared at the lieutenant commander numbly.
“Does anyone else have a sour taste in their mouths?” Manic said. “Suddenly I’m not so eager to go on this mission.”
“You call this a mission?” Bender said. “Sounds more like a slaughter. This is a homeworld. We’re nuking a homeworld. Whatever they’ve done, no species deserves this. Total annihilation. We didn’t sign up for this.”
“This is precisely what you signed up for,” Braggs argued. “Protecting humankind from threats by eradicating those threats. As soldiers, it’s your job to deal with the ugly parts of life so that those back home can continue to live their happy, peaceful lives in blissful ignorance. Think of it this way. There’s a hornet nest in a crack on the outer wall of your house. You seal that crack up with cement, trap the queen inside. You eliminate her and her colony for the safety of your family.”
“But at least there are still other hornet nests out there,” Bender said. “What we’re talking about here is the complete elimination of a species. We signed up to be MOTHs. An elite team of warriors. Not exterminators.”
“What about civilian lives?” Lui said. “What ab
out the planet’s ecosystem?”
“Civilian lives...” Lieutenant Commander Braggs echoed. “As far as we’re concerned, the enemy has no civilians. And we’re only going to bomb key sites. About eighty percent of the planet will remain untouched. Not that there’s anything there to worry about losing... according to what we know, it’s a barren, cold wasteland similar to Mars. Calling it a homeworld might be a bit of a misnomer, too. It’s more a colony world. Though the last colony the enemy has. According to the subjects interrogated by the SCS, there are only a hundred thousand inhabitants in total on the planet, distributed between two separate dome cities. Apparently, their species only recently bounced back from a major depopulation event. The scientists believe they can only exist through a host species.”
“Such as us,” TJ said.
Braggs nodded. He shook his head and took a drink of water before continuing. “I’ve watched the interrogations. The aliens are all so philanthropic about what they’re doing, like it’s such a great gift they’re granting us. Expanding our minds, and bestowing immortality, they say. ‘But you destroy our physical minds in the process,’ the interrogators say. ‘The consciousness of the host is always transferred to the new machine brain,’ the subjects answer. They truly believe they’re helping us. Enlightening us. There’s nothing worse than an enemy like that. Nothing. And by the way, the bodies of the bioengineered creatures we collected? The kraken, hammerheads, and others? All of their brains are composed of nano-machines, too. Hosts.”
“What about the robots?” Skullcracker asked.
“They’re just ordinary machines, far as we can tell,” Braggs said. “They have no nano-machines in their cores, and seem to utilize the standard neural nets found in most AIs. Their robos are based on our technology, and specifically designed to kill our soldiers and disable our war machines. If you think about it, it’s the best way to attack another species—get inside their skin, learn how they think, and develop your war machines based on variants of their own.”
“So what, we’re dealing with some kind of cybernetic brain parasites here?” Lui said.
“We don’t really know precisely what they are. All we’re certain of for sure is that they want to destroy us all. They attacked us first, and will continue to attack, adapting each time until they’ve infiltrated our species to the highest levels of government. What we’re doing here is simply preemptive.” The lieutenant commander left the podium to pace the compartment. “You’re right. All of you. It’s cold-hearted slaughter we’ll be dishing out. I wish we didn’t have to be involved. Not for this. In bootcamp, we were all taught about honor, courage, and commitment. There is no honor in this. But the truth is, from what we know about the enemy, they have even less honor, and they won’t stop, not until every last one of us becomes them. They want to use us to repopulate their species. The billions of lives on Earth? That’s their ultimate target. The colony worlds are only stepping stones. As I said before, we have to cut them down now, while they’re still weak. We can’t let a single nano-machine survive. Eradicating them is the only way to truly protect humanity.”
“Frankly, I don’t know what’s wrong with you all.” Bomb glanced about the room. “I’m all for kicking alien butt. Let’s eradicate the cunts.”
“Question,” Trace said. “Forgetting about the ethics issue for the moment, what happens when a host body dies? Do the nano-machines replacing the brain tissue die, too?”
“They do,” Braggs said. “According to the scientists, mind and body are inextricably linked. It’s a fascinating, if parasitic, relationship. In living hosts, the machines make use of the pulmonary system to dispose of those machines that have malfunctioned or expired, and they require the digestive tract to extract materials for the construction of replacements. Hosts eat the strangest meals. They like to sprinkle iron on their food, instead of salt.”
“Are we so sure that no treaty can be signed with them?” Tahoe said.
“We tried,” Braggs said. “Every converted human being is essentially one of their diplomats. While they each have the unique personalities of their previous hosts, their neural nets are all linked, galaxy-wide, forming not so much a hive mind, but an information network. It’s similar to the adhoc networks our Implants create, though the range is much greater. Except their communication is done via very subtle gravity waves.”
“Gravity waves still take time to propagate,” Tahoe said. “Which makes me doubt the effectiveness of this ‘galaxy-wide’ network.”
“True,” Lieutenant Commander Braggs replied. “The best guess the scientists have come up with is that the nano-machines utilize some form of evaporating wormholes to reduce that communication delay. The scientists claim they’ve detected evidence of Hawking Radiation emitted from several subjects.”
Tahoe sent a text message directly to Rade’s Implant.
Sounds like a lot of bullshit, to me.
“Okay, wait a second,” Rade said. “One thing that bothers me about this whole operation is that we’re basing everything we know about the enemy, and our entire attack, on information gleaned from interrogations. But what if they lied about the defensive capabilities of the planet? And the size of the population? Their intentions? Or maybe they were simply coerced into a false confession. We all know that subjects under duress will admit to anything.”
“Duress only played a minor role, as far as I know,” the lieutenant commander said. “And while it’s true that none of the usual interrogation drugs worked, due to the nature of the minds we were dealing with, we discovered a backdoor, as it were. You see, there is something called a Half Host—a recently infected human being, whose brain is only fifty percent nano-machine. These Half Hosts can detect the flow of information passing between the enemy, and with so much of their brain tissue replaced by nano-machines they can actually understand that information, while still being cognizant of who they are, and their loyalty to us.
“We put these Half Hosts in the observation rooms during the interrogations. They monitored the gravity waves transmitted between the full hosts and the rest of their kin, and sieved the truths from the lies. They were able to monitor the information flow taking place between hosts outside of the interrogations as well, and they slowly put together the picture we have of the enemy.
“I should add that the Half Hosts were all volunteers. Their conversions were planned from the start: we allowed them to be captured, and sent overwatch platoons to follow their movements from the shadows and retrieve them when the time was right. These volunteers all knew they would be terminated when their brains reached a certain conversion percentage. They gave their lives to get us this information.”
Rade nodded slowly. “I would still prefer if we could get independent confirmation about the homeworld and its defenses, say from telemetry drones. Because now it boils down to how much we trust these Half Hosts. Were they brave soldiers of the UC, or pawns of the enemy?”
“We sent telemetry drones through the Gate,” the LC said. “None returned. Which means either the enemy destroyed them, or currently no return Gate exists in that system. But don’t worry, once we pass inside, you’ll get your independent confirmation. We’re not going to begin the operation until we’ve established that the information we have is accurate. If the planet contains billions of lives rather than a hundred thousand, of course we’re not going to nuke it. And if it’s defenses prove far greater than we anticipated, then we’ll remain in orbit around the return Slipstream, and defend our position and stall for time until the Builders can construct us a Gate home. Either way you’ll probably see action: if not on the surface of the alien homeworld, then in repelling boarding parties on the Patriarch.”
Braggs paused to survey the men. “Any more questions or concerns?”
There were none.
“Good. We’re passing through the Gate in three days. Once there, it will be at least a week until we reach their homeworld. So. Ten days, men. Do whatever it is you do to prepare yourselv
es for a mission. Remain strong, and true. And remember what you’re fighting for: the carefree summer days; the sky at dawn and dusk; the gentle kiss of a woman. But most of all, remember who you are. You are more than men. You are MOTHs.”
thirty-seven
As usual, Rade had no idea what was happening immediately after the Patriarch passed through the Gate. He heard the usual signs of combat—the deck vibrations and the distance moaning of bulkheads as the hull was subjected to the stresses of high speed turns and hull breaches.
After about five hours of that, the ship became eerily calm. Condition Zebra remained active, with hatches and scuttles sealed ship-wide. Rade quickly adopted those creative methods for emulating the gym that were pioneered by his brothers, and he worked out utilizing what was at hand in the berthing area. He needed something to distract his mind.
Chief Facehopper tapped in to update him shortly thereafter. The biggest problem the fleet had faced out there were mines: the first three ships sent through were completely obliterated by some kind of nuke minefield waiting on the other side. One of those ships was a minesweeper, coincidentally. The doomed vessels had triggered enough of the mines to allow the following ships time to launch countermeasures, and most of the remaining explosives were prematurely detonated.
But then the waiting dodecahedrons attacked.
Luckily, the enemy had left only a token force guarding the Slipstream, and the UC lost only another two ships in the ensuing battle. The fleet left behind the Builders and Harvesters, along with a guard unit composed of several warships, and proceeded toward the inner planets.
The seven day journey to the homeworld was filled with tension; minor skirmishes occurred daily with defense platforms launched from nearby asteroids along the way.
At the homeworld, the enemy fleet waited patiently. There were at least a hundred ships out there, twice as many as the UC possessed. The enemy forces were divided into three waves. The first formed a wide semicircle one million kilometers out from their world. The second formed a similar defensive pattern five hundred thousand kilometers out, and the final wave was two hundred thousand kilometers from the world, or roughly half the distance from Earth to the moon.
