by B. V. Larson
“An excellent idea.”
“Can you tell me why so many fine men had to die here on this island? Why their blood is on your hands—and mine?”
I think that statement got to him, if only for a second. He nodded. “All right. I think you’ve earned a bit of truth from me.”
Kerr looked around for a place to dump his ashes. Not finding anything reasonable, he tapped them out on the stainless steel arm of the electric chair. A gray little pile of smoldering dust formed among the bloodstains and ripped leather straps.
“I think you understand most of the score by now,” he said. “This took us all by surprise. I had to move down here with whatever assets I could, within a few hours. The military just doesn’t move that fast. There never was a full taskforce down here. We had a group of subs to send tomahawks at you. Choppers brought in a team of commandos and snipers from Florida to harass your camp. The carrier group just got into range this morning, and you managed to send them packing. The few companies of regular troops which I put up north you took apart easily.”
I blinked and absorbed this information quietly. I’d been bluffed. There had been no full scale invasion. They had bullied and herded my men without a tenth of our strength. Without our Nano ships and our communications systems, we’d been thrown into confusion. This was what people liked to call a teachable moment.
“The administration has undergone a change of heart,” Kerr continued. “The takeover was supposed to be quick and quiet. No one was to know the details, but things became messy and drawn out. You managed to do us enough damage and resist long enough for the press to get involved.”
“How did the public take the news?” I asked. “What did they think when they learned you were invading the island and taking apart Star Force?”
“You haven’t seen any broadcasts or web feeds?”
I gave him a wintry smile. “I’ve been busy fighting for my life.”
Kerr nodded. “The public reaction has been—extreme. They see us as the invaders, backstabbers, the killers of heroes. Within twenty-four hours the story had leaked worldwide and public opinion was all in your favor. We’d blundered and created our own Bay of Pigs. America is still something of a democracy, you know, and elections are coming in fall. All congressional support for the action evaporated as soon as they heard you were holding out in your secret base. It was a worst case scenario, your little Alamo. We knew sooner or later some reporterette would make it down here to interview you.”
“So, what’s your new role?”
“I’m—an advisor. A permanent one, stationed here with you.”
“In other words, you are my hostage.”
“A rude, archaic term.”
“But strangely descriptive of the situation,” I said. “Tell me General, what was it that set you off so badly as to try this stunt? I thought we had a good relationship until all this.”
He shrugged. “The administration is feeling their way, Kyle. Like everyone else. Your fleet flew away. We saw the opportunity. We began to get paranoid, thinking that others would also see the opportunity. It started off as a discussion concerning the factories. So much alien tech could not be allowed into the hands of another nation. If you couldn’t keep it secure—then we had to step in, we had to secure it.”
I nodded, for the most part buying his statements. “What about the talk of EMPs and neutron bombs?” I asked.
“That was mostly bullshit,” Kerr said. “Less than a division of fast-responders and a carrier group, that’s all we could get down here quickly. Anything else was going to take weeks to assemble. I feared that if we gave you that long, you would have sealed this island off tightly.”
I stared at him. I realized that I had been bluffed. I’d bought all his talk of nukes and advanced weaponry. I laughed aloud. “You slippery bastard,” I said. “The man who never bluffs. I thought you had the fancy stuff. You snowed me.”
A smile played over Kerr’s lips. “You didn’t do too badly yourself. But I must say, your surprises were far more deadly than mine.”
I thought about it. In real military terms, we’d creamed them. They had sent down troops, and they’d all been taken out almost without loss on our side. I frowned, thinking about our little meeting at the edge of the forest at midnight.
“Why didn’t you have a sniper take me out then? That night amongst the Bradleys?”
“Because you blinded them all the night before, you prick.”
I nodded and frowned. “About the pilots and snipers. Those are good men we’ve seriously injured. We might be able to work something out. They were only following orders.”
“The nanites?” he asked.
I nodded.
“What would your terms be?” Kerr asked.
“No terms. If they want to join Star Force, they can. We’ll shoot them with nanites, no charge. They will be able to see again.”
Kerr snorted. “So, blinding my men was all part of your recruitment efforts, eh? Rude, but I’m sure they will be grateful. The administration will love it too, as it would be good PR all around.” Kerr relit his pipe and puffed it. His calm exterior had reasserted itself.
“I would naturally hope my generosity would be reciprocated.”
“Here it comes,” Kerr said.
“We need raw materials to keep—producing things. To allow us to meet the needs of the Macros. So we can continue to build Earth’s armies and rebuild her fleet.”
Kerr narrowed his eyes. “Would you be willing to give us a single machine? Just to study. We’re very curious about them.”
“So I’ve noticed,” I said. “We can’t do that right now. I need them all to repair the damage done to my organization. After the Macros come and go—if we have a planet left—I’ll consider it then.”
Kerr looked disappointed. “Selfish of you. What are you going to do with all those machines?”
I found his attitude annoying. “We’re going to build hundreds of automated laser turrets. We’ll ring this island with them. No plane or ship will ever be allowed within ten miles of the coast again without express permission.”
Kerr shrugged. “A reasonable precaution.”
“We’ll never fully trust you again,” I told him.
“You should never have fully trusted us in the first place.”
-20-
I left the General in the care of two angry marines. The sandy ground crunched beneath my boots as I headed back toward the command bunker.
The thing that galled me the most—even more than having been fooled into walking out of a base I could have held onto—was knowing I would have to go along with their charade. I would have to pretend to accept the president’s heartfelt apologies. There wasn’t any choice, really. What good would it do to reveal the truth? How would Earth’s defenses be strengthened by my angry public rebuttals of the administration’s story? Star Force would look weak and foolish. The Pentagon would look dishonorable. The facts would only sow future discord.
Cooperating now was going to be difficult at best, but it had to be done. If we publicly declared we were angry, abused and distrustful, it would only magnify the problem. We would have to be careful, of course. In the future, we would have to follow the old Reagan doctrine: trust, but verify. In other words, we would smile and say we trusted everything they did or said. But once the cameras were off, we would check out everything with paranoid attention to detail.
Eventually, slowly, pretending often turned into actual cooperation. Just look at the treaty ending any war. Years later, nations that were at each other’s throats frequently turned into tight allies. I felt like General George Washington, leading my ragtag army to a surprise victory over the British. I only hoped we could grow to work together in the future. I couldn’t help but be nagged by the reminder that it took the Americans and the British a very long time to become allies. The War of 1812, for example, stuck out in my mind.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was going to be a diffic
ult year. Pulling everything together in time for the return of the Macros was going to be the work of a magician. And my hat was all out of rabbits.
Sandra beat me back to the command bunker. She threw open the door of a Humvee, driven by the hulking shape of Staff Sergeant Kwon. He hadn’t quite stopped rolling, and he slammed on the brakes. She bounced out and intercepted me. The marines guarding the entrance smiled with half their mouths, bemused.
The kiss would have lasted a long time, but I gently pushed her away. Marines all around the camp were glancing and chuckling.
“You lived,” she said.
I squinted, fully expecting her to slap me for something. She didn’t though. She must have felt the fifty pair of eyes that watched us.
“We both did,” I said. I pointed out to the beach. She followed my gaze to the ocean, where one breaker after another rolled in over the cream-white sand. “That’s where I want to take you. I want to spend a week with you on a beach.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“I can’t today, however. I have to set things up. I have to shore up our defenses.”
“Didn’t we win? I’ve been listening to the radio—it works again. They say it was all a big mistake.”
“They are right about that,” I said. “Kerr tells me we won. Should I take his word for that?”
She tore her eyes from the rolling seas and looked at me seriously. “Hell no.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So the first thing I’m going to do is build and set up more laser turrets. A lot more of them.”
She nodded. “You’re right. And after that?”
“After that, I’ll reset the machines to build new forces.”
“What kind of forces?”
“The kind that will keep the Macros from destroying us when they come back.”
She smiled. “It’s hard to argue with those goals. Can we vacation after that?”
“Yes. I think so.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. The touch was so light, it felt as if a butterfly hand landed there. I thought about that, how light her touches were now that I’d been nanotized. They were maddening, teasing.
“I can wait that long,” she said.
“I didn’t say I would never take breaks.”
She smiled up at me and nodded. I knew, if the guys hadn’t been staring, she would have jumped on me. Her hair was long these days, and the wind coming in from the sea made it dance and stream in dark lines around her face. I managed to get her to the mess hall, where men were already at work cleaning up. Our regular staff had fled, so we would have to make do with slop made by our fellow marines for now. I left her there, promising to return when I could, and went back to check on the situation in the command center.
Barrera was awake now, but he didn’t look happy. His face was a rictus of pain. We’d given him a shot of nanites—not the full treatment, just an emergency injection. I felt for him, the nanites were sewing up flesh in a thousand spots at once. I’d felt those ant-like, prickling sensations on many occasions.
“This is what the nanites feel like?” he managed to hiss out between his teeth.
“Yeah. Sort of burns, doesn’t it?”
“You could say that. How long does it last?”
“A few hours. Better than three weeks of healing up. You’ll be combat ready very soon.”
“Better for whom?”
I regarded him. “Barrera, have I told you my new policy.”
His eyes, squinting almost shut, slid to regard me. I saw a gash in his cheek gleam with a single flash of light. It seemed like it was full of mercury, or hot solder. The liquid metal rippled inside the wound.
“What policy?” he grunted out.
“About officers being required to undergo the full nanite treatment.”
“More of this joy, eh?”
I nodded. “Exactly. But not so itchy-burny. More like they are tearing your guts out, rebuilding them, and stuffing them back in.”
He nodded. “Do I have to do it now?”
“Why not get it over with? What are you saving yourself for, man?”
He managed a grin, but it was little more than a slit revealing his teeth. “Yes sir. Could someone help me to the chair?”
I waved a marine forward. It was a corporal, and he looked sympathetic.
“If you feel the urge to rip at something, try your clothes or your thighs,” I told him. “People tell me you can satisfy the need and do much less damage that way.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind, sir,” said Barrera as the corporal half-walked, half-carried him out the door.
Barrera and Crow passed each other at the entrance to the command center. Crow swaggered as he came in, hands on his hips. “We kicked their asses, as you Yanks love to say.”
“We certainly did, sir. Too bad it took us so long to figure out we’d won. We could have killed fewer men in the process.”
Crow waved away my negative words as if they stunk up the air. “Never mind that. She’ll be right, mate. Now, what did you get out of that smug prick Kerr?”
I told him about the arrangements, and was able to convince him we needed to play along with the fictional cover-story.
“Such a devilish web of lies we weave, eh, Kyle?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”
Crow grinned suddenly, expectantly. He clapped his hands together. “Okay, so we are back in business. Now, how soon can you crank out a fleet for me?”
-21-
Nearly two months later I finally had Andros Island ringed with automated beam turrets. We still had no ships in the sky, but we felt secure.
Sandra complained bitterly about the turrets, saying they were ‘creepy’. They never stopped moving, it seemed, and she found this disturbing.
“Have you watched those damned things?” she asked me. “They are always tracking someone or something. It’s as if they examine everyone, thinking about us. Every seabird that hops along in the surf, every fluttering palm frond. If no one is around, they scan the skies and look at the waves or the clouds as if studying the movements.”
“They are building their neural nets,” I told her.
“They are freaky.”
“Yes, but only because they are machines. If a bird in a tree watched you that way, you wouldn’t feel disturbed.”
“I would if the bird could kill me at any moment.”
I had to give her that one. I shrugged. “They are still young. They are like kids, trying to figure the world out around them. They do learn, but in a more limited way. They are classifying everything around them as normal and safe.”
“Why are they always checking me out then?”
I grinned. “Obviously, they are good judges of character.”
“Maybe they are better at it than I am.”
I thought I might have been insulted, but I went on unconcernedly. “When they see something new, they are very curious about it. They want to know if you are a good, safe thing, or a bad dangerous thing. They have already figured out the trees and the birds. You are something new.”
“When I walk near, they aim their big guns at me and I know what they are thinking.”
“What’s that?” I asked, bemused.
“They are thinking about killing me every second. I can feel them.”
I shrugged. “I guess we will have to get used to them.”
“What if they get smarter, Kyle? Did you ever think about that? What if they talk to each other somehow, and get ideas? What if one of them, just one of them, decides to go crazy and starts burning down everyone in sight? What will you do then?”
I tried to let the air out of my lungs without sighing. “I know they are disturbing, Sandra. What do you want me to do about it? We have to keep the governments of the world at bay. They won’t try to invade again as long as we have them outgunned.”
She pouted and walked around my office, messing with things. She picked up all my pens, including the stylus for
my tablet computer, and put them all into a cup.
“Look,” I said, “let’s make plans for later. I’ll finish up what I’m working on and we’ll go to the beach, okay?”
Sandra didn’t answer. She cruised by my desk and looked over my shoulder at my tablet. I reached up and retrieved my stylus from the cup she had deposited it into and tapped at the screen.
Her face suddenly slid close to mine, making my neck tingle. I could feel her warmth there. She whispered into my ear. “Not okay.”
I swiveled my chair around to face her, half-smiling. “What’s plan B?”
“Plan B? You come with me to the beach, right the hell now, or I’m going alone.”
“The turrets will keep you company.”
Sandra huffed out. My eyes followed her, admiring her shapely rear end. She paused in the doorway. She slipped off her pants and top. Underneath, she wore a bikini. It wasn’t much of a bikini. Technically, I’d classify it as a network of pink straps. She left the rest of her clothes in a heap in the doorway and walked away.
I got up out of my chair. A man has to recognize when he’s been beaten. I trotted after her and together we headed out to the beach. We walked until we were as far from the nearest beam turret as we could get, which was nearly a mile. We could see two of them at that point, one to the north and one to the south. I gazed at them, and they were indeed creepy. While I watched, they targeted and scanned everything. Once every few minutes, one or the other of them seemed to notice us on the beach and tracked us for several seconds before moving on to a new target.
“What if we have kids, Kyle?” Sandra asked suddenly.
“Uh…” I said.
Sandra reached up and pushed my chin upward, closing my mouth with a snap. My teeth clacked together and I must have looked confused. She frowned up at me.
“Don’t pass out or puke or anything,” she said, suddenly angry.
Inside I wondered how I’d stepped into this. Was it even possible I could have avoided it? I decided to keep up the dumb act. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Noooo,” she said, “I’m not pregnant.”
“That’s good,” I said. “Right?”