By Blood Alone

by William C. Dietz

  Tyspin spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel. “All right ... let’s bring this thing to a speedy conclusion. Seal every compartment in the ship. That includes the corridors.

  “Chief Gryco, take the Marines. Clear the corridors first. Announce your presence, order everybody out, and take all of them prisoner. If they resist, shoot to kill.”

  “Rawlings, sort the prisoners into three groups: those we know to be loyal, those we can’t be sure of, and those who took part. Lock the last two groups into different compartments and post guards outside. Questions?”

  Rawlings nodded. “Yes, ma’am. What if some of the crew refuse to leave their compartments?”

  Tyspin’s face grew hard. “Then pump the air out, send a burial detail, and blow them through a lock.”

  Rawlings paled. “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

  It took the better part of three hours to regain complete control of the Gladiator. Twelve mutineers refused to surrender and were killed. Their bodies entered the same orbit as the ship. Tyspin watched one of them tumble through the main viewscreen and searched for feelings of regret. There were none to be found.

  The normally blue sky was obscured by a thick layer of yellow-gray smoke. It covered the city like a shroud. Aircraft, some of which dropped bombs, were visible one moment and gone the next. A double row of explosions marched down Colima Road. Columns of smoke shot into the air and carried palm trees, ground cars, and chunks of masonry with them.

  Closer in, not more than two miles away, there were even more explosions as well-sited howitzers fired from Hacienda Heights, and sent 155mm shells into the homes below. Homes that might otherwise provide cover for the enemy. They came apart with frightening ease. Black craters marked where they had stood.

  The Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, consisted of little more than a half-leveled house, some crew-served machine guns, and a robot-transportable holo tank—a device designed to display how friendly forces were deployed but which was more useful as a stool.

  The deadly thug, thug, thug of the mortars could be heard to the rear as Legion Cadet Leader Melissa Voytan peered over the battlefield and struggled to marshal her thoughts.

  She was nervous, very nervous, because in spite of all the books she had read, the lectures she had heard, and the sometimes diabolical virtual reality scenarios she had survived, the student had never fired a shot in anger, much less ordered others to do so.

  Now, as the mutineers advanced toward the center of the city, she would not only enter into combat for the first time but lead her fellow cadets as well.

  As if reading her mind, or sharing her angst, Staff Sergeant Rudy Rycker touched her arm. “There ain’t nothin’ to it, ma’am. Shoot, move, and communicate. That’s all you gotta do.”

  The words provided some much-needed comfort and helped push the fear toward the back of her mind. Rycker should have been in command, but that wasn’t how things were done in the Legion, not if an officer was available. Even one who wanted to go home. Her family lived not more than sixty miles to the east. What were her parents doing, as she prepared to die?

  A voice spoke in Voytan’s ear. She recognized it as belonging to Kenny Suto, a sixteen-year-old who actually liked the stuff they served in the mess hall and couldn’t get enough of it. “Alpha Three to Alpha One... I have smoke on my forward positions. Over.”

  Voytan knew what that meant. The smoke was intended to blind her troops. Infantry would follow, and not just any infantry, but infantry supported by cyborgs. They would hit the front lines together, attempt to flank her, and attack Loy’s rear.

  Voytan commanded what amounted to a light battalion, including three rifle companies of approximately one hundred thirty cadets each, plus a headquarters company that consisted of herself, some com techs, the medium armor weapons (MAWs) and two 60mm mortars. The same ones firing from her rear.

  Her mission, as laid down by General Loy, was to delay the enemy forces long enough for the regulars to secure the inner city and turn toward the south. That was a task the general had assigned to himself.

  The cadets had no cyborgs of their own, the loyal borgs having been employed elsewhere, which meant that shoulder-launched missiles (SLAMs) would have to do.

  Designed for use against Hudathan cyborgs, the SLAMs were the only effective weapons the cadets could use on sentient armor. Voytan forced confidence into her voice. “Alpha One to Three... Hold them as long as you can and fall back. Four will cover your withdrawal. Over.”

  Suto clicked the hand-held mike two times by way of a reply. Voytan looked at Rycker. He grinned. “You’re doin’ good, ma’am. Keep it up.”

  Voytan didn’t feel as if she was doing very well but smiled nonetheless. An enormous quad emerged from the smoke more than a mile in front of her. She chinned her visor to full mag and leapfrogged to video supplied by one of her squad leaders. Range, windage, and other information scrolled over the shot. The borg stood twenty-five feet tall, weighed fifty tons, and walked on four legs. It mounted multiple energy cannons, an extendable gatling gun, missile racks, grenade launchers, and a whole lot of machine guns.

  Twin streams of .50 caliber machine gun fire reached out to embrace the cyborg. Explosions winked and sparkled all across its hull as the monster fired in response.

  There was a brilliant, eye-searing flash as a weapons emplacement ceased to exist.

  That’s when the motor-driven gatling gun opened fire. It was capable of putting out more than six thousand rounds a minute. A curtain of brown soil flew into the air as the 20mm shells found a slit trench and followed it from west to east. An entire squad of second-year students was ripped to shreds. Voytan’s video went to black and jumped to the perspective of a fire team leader.

  Other lesser forms could be seen to either side of the gargantuan machine. There were Trooper IIs, Trooper IIIs, and a company of battle-armored legionnaires closing fast.

  But nothing comes for free, and while they were severely outgunned, the youngsters had a dozen SLAMs plus three reloads each. Hidden until now, the gunners stood, showed their missiles the target, and pressed their triggers. Two of the SLAMs fell victim to electronic countermeasures, and one exploded in midair, but the rest found the quad.

  Explosions rocked the enormous body, tunneled their way in, and blew the machine apart. A voice yelled “Camerone!” Voytan nodded grimly. School was over. Graduation was hell.

  The TOC was located in a heavily armored crawler that smelled as new as it was. A kind of pleasant mixture of plastic, sealants, and ozone. Stationary for the moment, it was located a half mile south of the line of contact (LC). Video feeds provided by the steadily advancing cyborgs, helmet cams, and airborne surveillance units flickered across the monitors racked above Matthew Pardo’s head.

  He felt conflicting emotions. In spite of the fact that Pardo didn’t care for Harco, he had a good deal of respect for the officer and wanted the older man’s approval.

  That’s why Pardo had pushed his troops so hard—to show what he could do. He turned to his XO. She was, or had been, a captain in the 1st REC, and still wore the oval-shaped unit badge on her green beret. The words “Honneur” and “Fidelite” were inscribed at its center. “What’s the holdup? We should be three miles further in by now.”

  The TOC jerked into motion as a fountain of debris leapt into the air. Shrapnel rattled against the crawler’s sides. The female officer grabbed a handhold. “Yes, sir. They threw what looks like a battalion into the gap. It’s slowing us down.”

  “A battalion?” Pardo asked incredulously. “You’ve seen the intel summaries. They have no reserves. None at all.”

  The captain shrugged. “Cadets, sir. From the academy.”

  Pardo frowned. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, sir,” she replied. “General Loy ordered them in. We could bypass them—and cut their casualties.”

  “No damned way,” Pardo said thickly. “That’s what the old bastard is hoping for. He figures some softhearted
idiot like you will waste half a day going around the little shits. Well, we’ll show the old goat a thing or two! We’ll cut his play pretend battalion into mincemeat! Call my driver—I’m going forward.”

  The captain did as she was told, waited for Pardo to clear the TOC, and slipped into the lavatory. She turned both faucets on. The water made a lot of noise. It was then and only then that she allowed herself to cry. The sobs lasted for five minutes, great racking things that caused her chest to heave.

  Finally, when there was nothing left to give, Captain Laura Voytan washed her face, straightened the green beret, and returned to duty. Why? Because she had promised that she would.

  Kenny had been living in his grandmother’s garage for more than three years. Ever since he’d dropped out of school. There was a makeshift sleeping loft up in the rafters. It was just large enough for a mattress, reading lamp, and holo tank. But the main action was down on the oil-stained concrete floor. That’s where the teenager kept all the electronic equipment that he had built, bought, and stolen over the last three years.

  Monitors, receivers, transmitters, routers, switchers, amplifiers, junction boxes, and more hung from ceiling-mounted racks, filled his homemade shelves, and covered eight work-tables. Hundreds of cables squirmed this way and that, tying his kingdom together and connecting Kenny with the world.

  The teenager sat in his favorite chair, an executive model he had rescued from a dumpster and equipped with wheels. Large wheels that enabled him to roll over cables, empty meal paks, and cast-off clothing.

  A spot threw light down across Kenny’s shoulder-length hair, badly scarred face, and filthy T-shirt. The youngster felt jubilant, frightened, and defiant all at the same time. He and his fellow netheads had created Radio Free Earth, what? Twenty-four hours ago? Thirty-six? He couldn’t remember.

  The whole thing had happened so quickly. Most of the infrastructure already existed, resident not only in his garage, but in hundreds of similar facilities all over the world. The revolt, Governor Pardo’s speech, and the street fighting simply provided Kenny and his friends with a purpose, a reason to do what they had always wanted to do: prove how smart they were ... and earn some respect.

  That’s the way it started. However, once Noam Inc. and its media subsidiaries seized control of the mainstream news networks, that created a hunger for real coverage.

  One of Kenny’s associates, a computer programmer with ties to Noam Inc., estimated that their last program had attracted 3.1 billion viewers worldwide. An audience of almost unimaginable size in an age when carefully focused narrow casting had whittled viewership down to well-defined groups of one or two hundred thousand.

  That, the teenager thought to himself, is the good and the bad news. The powers that be, or want to be, will do anything to shut us down. A supposition supported by the fact that the average life expectancy of a Radio Free Earth fly cam was down to a matter of minutes.

  Still, the little units were relatively easy to manufacture. They were mass-produced by a somewhat eccentric netizen known only as J. J. and, for reasons known only to him, placed under Kenny’s control.

  Kenny had absolutely no idea who his ally was, or where he or she might be located, except that J. J. had to have access to some sort of high-tech manufacturing facility.

  Each fly cam was a work of art. Though small, about the size of the insect after which they had been named, a camera still managed to deliver high-quality holo images via some sort of relay system that Kenny had yet to figure out.

  But none of that mattered, not now, as both sides struggled to take control of the city.

  Rather than expend his assets in dribs and drabs as he had in the recent past, Kenny had decided to amass an entire fleet of the miniature cameras and launch them all at once. Then, by picking and choosing between hundreds of shots at his disposal, the teenager hoped to create a real-time mosaic of events as they transpired.

  It wouldn’t last long, the bad guys would see to that, but for ten, maybe fifteen minutes the world would see the truth. Whatever that was.

  Most people liked to talk to their computers—but Kenny preferred an old-fashioned keyboard. Keys clicked as the sent instructions went out over the airwaves.

  Approximately half a minute passed before anything happened. The fly cams had been parked inside a garbage bin near the comer of Roscoe and Van Nuys. No one noticed as they swarmed out of the dumpster, departed along preassigned vectors, and went to work.

  Kenny smiled as video blossomed within his jury-rigged holo tanks. If properly selected, the pictures, along with the natural sound that accompanied them, would tell the story all by themselves. He went to work.

  What billions of human beings saw over the next twenty minutes was some of the most moving footage ever shot. The citizens of Earth watched as the tiny cameras introduced them to heavily cratered neighborhoods, buildings that continued to burn, and a battalion of teenage legionnaires.

  Viewers watched in stunned fascination as the youngsters fired their SLAMs, fell back to prepared positions, and fired again. They bit their lips as the cyborgs continued to advance, as the defenders died in clusters of two, four, six and ten. Many broke into tears as the line eventually broke, the cadets were flanked, and the battle was lost.

  John and Mary Voytan uttered exclamations of surprise as their daughter Melissa appeared in the tank before them. She looked over her right shoulder, shouted an order, and reached for her sidearm.

  That’s when more than half the people on the planet watched the camera pull out, saw the cadet surrender, and saw Major Matthew Pardo fire a bullet into her head.

  Melissa collapsed like a rag doll, her mother screamed, and Pardo pointed to the camera. It ceased to exist.

  Melissa Voytan’s summary execution would have set the rebellion back no matter who pulled the trigger, but the fact that it was the governor’s son served to polarize the population. Most of those who already believed in the revolt continued to do so. But those who were unsure, and that included millions upon millions of people, were shocked. The civilian resistance movement, which had been weak up until then, gained instant legitimacy. Ad hoc demonstrations were held all over the world. Brute force was used to put them down. Radio Free Earth covered as many as they could. A battle had been wori-but the war was far from over.

  A burial detail entered the loyalist TOC half an hour later, saw the manner in which Laura Voytan’s green beret had been positioned on the carefully arranged corpse, and added it to their loot. They were the victors—and to the victors go the spoils.

  7

  The Earth is a beehive; we all enter by the same door but live in different cells.

  Author unknown

  Bantu proverb

  Date unknown

  Planet Earth, the Confederacy of Sentient Beings

  The Cynthia Harmon Center for Undersea Research was located one hundred fifty feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. A sprawling complex, built piece by piece as funding became available, it consisted of twenty-three cylinders, all of various sizes connected by semiflexible tubing.

  Lights twinkled through the murk as a minisub nudged a neon numbered lock and a school of French grunts wheeled and darted away.

  Maylo Chien-Chu saw those things, but didn’t see them, as she hung facedown in the water. She was naked except for a gill mask, a weight belt, and a pair of flippers. Billions of phytoplankton, all linked by miles of translucent fiber, embraced both her body and her mind.

  The Say’lynt, one of four in existence, came from ocean world IH-4762-ASX41. Like her “parents,” Sola was highly telepathic. Even more amazing was the fact that the alien could control other sentients from a distance. Her voice echoed through Maylo’s mind. “So, the work goes well?”

  “Work?” Maylo asked dreamily. “What work?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” the alien teased, “just the interstellar corporation for which you have ultimate responsibility and the Center for Undersea Research.”


  “Oh, those,” Maylo responded easily. “Chien-Chu Enterprises had another profitable quarter. As for the research—you tell me. How’s it going?”

  Sola felt the pull of a distant current and allowed part of her body to float toward the surface where it could absorb energy from the sun. “Nonsentient plankton absorb roughly half the carbon dioxide produced by your civilization. That, as you might say, is the good news. The bad news is that carbon dioxide levels are on the rise—and contribute to global warming.”

  The human frowned. The citizens of Earth had made some progress over the last few hundred years, but not enough. “So there’s nothing we can do?”

  “No,” the Say’lynt replied. “I didn’t say that. The southern oceans are relatively barren in spite of the fact that they contain enough nitrogen and phosphorous to support a large population of phytoplankton. More plankton would reduce the levels of carbon dioxide.”

  The dreamy feeling disappeared. Excitement flooded in to replace it. “Really? How would that work?”

  “The problem is iron,” the group intelligence responded patiently. “Or the lack of it. Bodies such as mine use iron to make chlorophyll. The indigenous plankton obtain most of their iron from windblown dust. But there isn’t enough. Not in the southern oceans.”

  “We could seed the area with iron!” Maylo thought excitedly. “The plankton would bloom, carbon dioxide levels would drop, and global warming would slow!”

  “Possibly,” the Say’lynt agreed cautiously. “Remembering the law of unintended consequences ... and the need to proceed with extreme caution.”

  “Yes,” Maylo agreed. “Of course! Experiments are in order.”

  “Who will fund the additional research?” Sola inquired. “The government?”