by B. V. Larson
She hesitated. “I know. What are your orders, sir?”
Instantly, I knew what she was thinking. It was time to pull out. That made me angry. I didn’t want to give up this island. Why had we fought all the way to the highest peak and lost so many good marines if we were going to run away back into space a few hours later? I didn’t want those earlier sacrifices to have been made in vain.
At the same time, I wasn’t sure that I had any choice. The machines weren’t going to just wait around until I made my decision. They weren’t charging up the beaches yet, but when they had their entire force positioned, they would.
“Prepare for evacuation, Captain Sarin.”
“I took the liberty of drawing up a plan for our withdrawal, Colonel. Do you want to see it?”
I compressed my lips tightly. Had she predicted this? Maybe up there, safe in space with Fleet, she would pass her hat around to collect on her bets.
But no, I knew that wasn’t how we’d gotten to this point. Sarin was a good officer. It was her job to anticipate contingencies. There was always a chance we would fail, and she was the type who thought of everything.
“How long ago did you draw up these plans?” I asked her.
“Before you dropped, sir. I’ve been updating them steadily as the campaign has progressed.”
“Of course you have,” I said with a hint of bitterness.
“I didn’t develop the plans because I had no faith in you, Colonel,” she said. “I felt it was my duty.”
“I know, I know. I’m just sorry things turned out this way. We don’t seem to have the strength to battle the machines this time. We didn’t have time to build armor or enough specialized equipment.”
I’d forgotten just what kind of a sidekick Captain Sarin was. She wasn’t a masterful strategist who looked for enemy weaknesses, but she was a logistical wizard. As was the case with most wizardry, she achieved her results through hard work and discipline.
“I’m glad you drew up plans,” I told her, “but I’m changing them. We aren’t withdrawing from Yale. We’re withdrawing from Tango. We’ll shift our force over to the Big Island and set up heavy defenses there. With all our troops in one place—”
“Sir, Sandra is requesting to join the channel.”
I sighed.
“She’s insisting, sir.”
“I bet she is. Okay, switch me over and get to work on prepping the escape. We don’t have much time.”
“Kyle?” Sandra asked a moment later.
“What is it, hon?”
“I hear you’re coming back up here. I want to see you the moment you arrive.”
I hesitated for a second, wondering if I should tell her about the change of plans. I had no intention of withdrawing from Yale just yet. At the end of my one second’s pause, I decided not to tell her. Now was not the time to start a domestic argument.
“Yes,” I said enthusiastically, “we’re wrapping this up. It’ll be good to see you again. Anything else? I’ve got to—”
“There is something else,” she said. “There are a couple of things, in fact. One is Alexa.”
My voice grew cautious. “Is she still alive?”
“Of course she is, Kyle! What a terrible thing to say. We’re getting along quite well now. She seems sweet, in a military way. She’s told me a lot about life under the Empire.”
I smiled. That was just like Sandra, to be jealous of another woman, then make friends with her later on. She got along well with other women, but she had trouble when they paid too much attention to me.
“That’s good,” I said, making my second play to disconnect, “but I’ve got to—”
“There’s something else. It’s about Marvin. He’s been acting weird—even for Marvin. I think you should have a talk with him.”
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s roaming around outside the ship. He’s been out there crawling on the hull all day. It sounds like we have giant metal rats. I’m sure he’s scarred up the ship. The nanites are worked up about it, and the ceiling in our quarters never stops shimmering now.”
I frowned. “What’s he doing crawling on the hull of the ship?”
“He says he can get a better signal out there, whatever that means.”
“A better signal?” I asked, my frown deepening.
When Marvin began behaving oddly and went off on his own, that sometimes signaled a dramatic shift in the tactical situation. The robot was often sneaky, especially when he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to.
“Connect me over to Marvin, immediately,” I said, my irritation growing. First it looked like we were going to be kicked off this island, and now Marvin was up to something nefarious. I couldn’t believe my misfortune.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Sandra asked.
“What? Oh yeah—I love you.”
“Good. I do too. Here’s that crazy robot.”
There were a few odd sounds, then Marvin’s voice came in. He sounded distracted.
“Hello…Colonel Riggs.”
“What are you up to, Marvin?” I demanded. “Have you been talking to the Macros? I’m seeing a lot of evidence down here that they’re building equipment that reminds me of your designs.”
I’d finally said it. I’d been thinking about it for a long time, but I’d finally gotten around to telling Marvin about my suspicions. I reminded myself that they weren’t just my suspicions, several people had noticed the similarities between new Macro equipment designs and Marvin himself.
“I’m taken aback, Colonel,” Marvin said. “If I did contact the Macros directly and independently, I’m sure they wouldn’t trust me enough to take my advice on self-design.”
It was a pretty good argument, but I pressed ahead. “You haven’t directly answered the question. Have you been engaging in independent communications with the Macros?”
“Not lately, sir.”
I ground my molars together. “Not lately? That’s another dodge, Marvin.”
“I did have contact with them some months ago. It is possible they misconstrued my efforts to transmit data through the rings as a communications exchange.”
I frowned. “What?”
“Recall that I pioneered the technology we all now use for instant, interstellar communications—”
“Not exactly,” I said, “you pioneered the effort to steal the technology from the Blues.”
“A minor, but noteworthy detail. In any case, when I transmitted data to test the system, I did so at that time using an unprotected data format.”
“Ah,” I said, catching on. “So the Macros were listening to you? Is that it? What did you tell them by accident? Did you happen to send along a roster of our ships, or our personnel records?”
“Nothing like that. I transmitted design documents I’d been working on. Random data, I thought at the time.”
I nodded. “And these design documents were of equipment you thought we might want to build? Something the Macros might pick up and find useful?”
“No. The design documents were all optional configurations for my own body. Ideas I’d worked on while my backup-brainboxes were relatively under-utilized.”
I chuckled. “You’re telling me you sent them imaginary configurations of yourself?”
“Is that amusing, Colonel?”
I thought about the mining robot I’d met up with that had a thousand twenty-foot long tentacles for legs. That had essentially been one of Marvin’s doodles. The Macros must have believed they were getting classified information and had attempted to build some of the things Marvin had designed.
“Yeah,” I said, “it is funny. All right. Just don’t do it anymore. What are you up to now? Why are you out on the hull, sending messages again?”
“I’m following your orders, sir. In fact, this is excellent timing. I wanted your permission.”
“Permission for what?”
“Permission to transmit the final sequence.”
I rolled
my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Marvin.”
“Have you sustained an injury, sir?”
“Several of them. But I haven’t lost my memory, if that’s what you’re implying. Just tell me what you think you’re supposed to be doing.”
“I’m breaking the Yale ring’s code, sir. You told me to turn it on again and flush the Macros back out into the system they came from.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I did tell you that. How’s that coming along?”
“I’m ready, sir.”
“When?”
“Right now.”
I froze for perhaps two heartbeats. I looked over my shoulder, and then turned around fully to see the ocean. North of Tango the ring lay at the bottom of a thousand foot deep bowl of seawater. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that the Macros had placed their factories under domes down there.
“Do it Marvin,” I said in a hushed, excited voice. “Flush them all to Hell.”
“Transmitting, sir. Message sent. Is there anything else?”
“Yeah,” I said, frowning with an immediate afterthought. “Can you turn it back off again? I mean, after the Macros are sucked down?”
“My orders did not include an imperative to research a third reversal of the ring’s state. The enemy is jamming my transmissions in any case. Just getting this command to the receiver—”
“Marvin,” I said, interrupting him. “I need you to turn off the effect again. You did it before!”
I’d been watching the ocean to the north while we spoke. As I stood there on the mountaintop, witnessing the event, the water miles out to sea suddenly blackened. A white ring grew around the dark region. I knew a vast whirlpool had formed, like a giant drain sucking the ocean down an endlessly deep throat.
“You have to turn it off again, Marvin. You’ve got five minutes.”
“It took me several days to figure out how to reverse the flow on each occasion. The ring does not have a simplistic interface, I’m afraid. It’s not ‘user-friendly’. Let me explain: the encoding system seems to alter itself on the basis of the last command successfully executed. When an operation is performed, part of the artifact’s system rewrites the code. I suspect this is some kind of internal security precaution against tampering—”
“For God’s sake, Marvin!” I shouted.
Everyone had stopped what they were doing and was now staring out to sea. It was impossible not to. The sky had even shifted, and the winds were picking up. The mass being transported off -planet must have been tremendous. A singing, roaring sound rose up and up in volume as I listened to Marvin. I realized a hurricane was forming out there, a few miles from shore.
“Can you stop it? I’m sure the flood you’ve created so far is enough. The machines must have been sucked down by now.”
“We’re having trouble with confirmation on that point,” Marvin said. “Are you sure you want to stop the procedure without confirmation?”
“YES! Dammit, Marvin! Turn it off!”
I felt sick inside. All around me, the men were moving again, getting over their initial shock. Major Sloan came close, shouting at me. I couldn’t hear him and I didn’t care what he was saying anyway. I pushed him aside with a single shove and stepped to the edge of the cliff. The wind was so strong now, I could feel it through my bulky suit. It was like having a hand pushing on my back, pushing me toward the drain in front of me.
Marvin was talking to me about dry technical details while he attempted code sequences to turn off the growing whirlpool. He was hacking, and talking, and I was barely listening. My men stopped asking me what was happening, as it was becoming painfully clear by now.
I staggered away when the water level all the way to the coastline of Tango was affected. Even this far out, the water turned white, like one endless series of breakers going down into nothingness. I knew the entire planet was draining away, the way it had been before we’d come out here and interfered.
I knew the Crustaceans were watching this turn of events with horror. I wondered if they knew that we had been the ones to turn the ring on again. I wondered, too, if they’d ever figure out I’d failed to ask if it could be turned off a second time before I’d ordered Marvin to pull the plug.
If they did figure it out, they’d know the truth: that I had killed them all.
-25-
For the next seven long hours, the oceans continued to drain. Marvin had made no progress at all.
I hooked up my maps to Fleet’s sensors and watched as the Macros were indeed swept away into the hole at the bottom of the ocean. The power of moving water could carve rock, and even with their shields and vast weight, the machines couldn’t hold onto the seabed.
The armies they had offshore sat quietly at first, but when they realized they were being exposed and many had been dragged away into the unquenchable maw behind them, they charged the beach. It was a vicious battle, but one where we had the upper hand. Most of their forces were swept away to sea and down the hole in its black depths before they managed to struggle up onto the rocky beaches. When the last of them did reach the beach and make their ragged assault, there were less than a hundred of them left.
As any accountant can tell you, numbers matter. We met them as they rushed out of the water and destroyed them before they could press up to the heights. Even the Crustaceans joined in. I gathered from some of their messages they were under the impression the machines had opened the great drain in the sea again with the intention of killing all life on Yale. I didn’t enlighten them on this point.
Three races of biotics fought side by side, and when the last machine was brought down and the last Star Force marine raised his fist with a shout of victory, the beach was wider than it once had been.
No low tide in the history of Yale could compare. The water was leaving this world, and I knew the rest of it would soon heat up and begin killing those who’d survived the first great bleeding. I imagined in the Crustacean archives, this would go down as a bittersweet day. At a terrific cost, we’d swept the machines from the planet with a single hard push. We’d cut out the cancer, but killed the patient in the process.
Marvin kept working at his hacking effort. I checked in with him twice an hour, but his answer was always the same: he was working on it.
I knew there was no speeding up something like this. I’d worked with software myself. Technical projects tended to get done when they got done. Beating on the workers didn’t always yield the results anticipated.
But I beat on him anyway. I complained, raved, and almost frothed at the mouth in our discussions. Seeing the ocean drain away and knowing it was all our fault was just too much to take. I paced atop Tango’s highest peak and growled at anyone who came near.
First Night came and lasted a long, long time. When we were in our thirtieth straight hour of unrelenting darkness, the miracle came at last.
“It’s stopped, sir!” Kwon said, shaking me awake.
I’d been dreaming of running water, faucets left on and flooding bathrooms. I came awake with a lurch, and grabbed his hand. He was one of the few people in the world that didn’t flinch when my hand closed on his. He pulled me to my feet.
“What are you talking about, Kwon?”
“The water—I think that crazy robot has done it.”
I walked out onto the cliffs and stared down. It was storming lightly outside. It was hard to see through the night rains, but using my visor with the light enhancers and zooming optics engaged, I determined that the waters had indeed settled. They were still sloshing and disturbed. Tidal waves would race around the planet for months. But the draining had stopped.
I contacted Marvin immediately. “Well done!” I told him.
“It wasn’t me, Colonel. As much as I’d like to have solved the problem, I didn’t do so.”
After a few more questions, I realized he didn’t have a clue who had closed the ring or how. I disconnected and stood in the wind and rain, wondering what to make of it. If the Ma
cros had done it, could they reverse the ring yet again? Could this entire thing start over again? Or was it a trap, baiting my Marines to go down to the seabed and investigate?
A few hours later, I contacted the Crustaceans. I knew almost right away what was going on. They were insufferably proud of themselves.
“We have stopped the machines,” they said. “We’ve been studying your primitive algorithms, watching as the ring is vibrated day and night. Is this truly all the sophistication Earth creatures have when dealing with a quantitative problem? To simply install a random answer into the equation and check to see if it works? Such wasteful iteration.”
“Congratulations!” I said, so relieved they weren’t all going to die and blame me that I didn’t care if they made a speech about it or not.
And speech they did. I was forced to politely listen to every technical detail of their achievement. Like all nerds with wounded pride, when they finally got one right, they crowed about it for hours.
I gave them ten minutes, then five more, before giving them something to get off the subject.
“High Command?” I asked. “I’m sorry, but I must get back to my duties. The crisis here seems to have come to an end. Perhaps we can discuss the matter further at the next Council meeting.”
I waited one second, then two. I knew their translators were generating question marks. It made me smile just to think about it.
At last, they spoke up again. “What is this ‘Council meeting’?”
“Haven’t you been informed? Now that you’ve joined Star Force officially, we can proceed to place your representatives on the council.”
“Joined Star Force? I’m afraid you’re under a series of misconceptions. Possibly, the translation equipment has failed us. It is highly inadequate. We’ve been working on designing our own superior model.”
“I’m sure you have been,” I said. I’d given them brainboxes that knew English and their language to ease our conversations. But they’d never quite accepted any of the technology. It wasn’t good enough for them.
“Perhaps I’m presuming too much,” I said. “But after you ended your state of neutrality and declared open war on the machines, I thought it was clear that you would have to become part of the local alliance of biotic species. The Macros are our shared enemy now, and that simple fact keeps us together.”