by B. V. Larson
Miklos shrugged. “We rebuild, and they rebuild.”
“No, I don’t want it to go down that way, not unless we have no other option. I only see a few possibilities here, people. One: we could stand and fight, losing at least half our strength and probably the battle station. After the last fight they’ll want to take it out at all costs, I agree with Miklos on that point. Two: we could run out of here and surrender to Earth, joining forces against this new threat. Three: we could bomb the Blues until they honor our deal and get the Macros to stop.”
“You plan to drop the jamming on the ring to allow them to talk to the Macros, then?”
“Yes, after they know we mean business.”
I looked around the table. It was a sea of frowns and resigned, disgusted expressions. Only Marvin seemed to be unperturbed. He gazed at us in turn, reading our emotions and no doubt cataloguing them. I’d yet to hear an opinion from him on the situation.
“I want to hear what our science officer thinks,” I said, gesturing toward him.
It took a second for one of Marvin’s cameras to drift in my direction and realize I was talking about him. “You’re asking for my opinion, Colonel Riggs?”
“Yes, if you would be so kind.”
“I think you’ve made up your mind. I think this meeting is an exercise in futility. I have, however, enjoyed experiencing the reactions of your staff members. Even now, my comments seem to be intensifying the facial displays—”
“Thank you, Marvin,” I said loudly, cutting him off. “Does anyone else have another statement to make before we go into orbit over Eden-12?”
Most of them shook their heads glumly. Kwon was the only major player who wasn’t there. I wondered what he would have said. If I had to guess, I’d say he wouldn’t have cared much one way or the other. He enjoyed fighting the machines up close, and anything else bored him. Fleet actions in general didn’t interest him much, not unless they involved ship-boarding assaults.
My gunships parked themselves in low orbit over the hazy atmosphere of Eden-12. The gas giant looked like stirred coffee from up here, coffee with plenty of cream on top that had gently been mixed in, but not blended.
“Where do we even start, sir?” Miklos asked. “The volume of this world is unbelievable. Hundreds of Earths could fit within that atmosphere.”
“I’ve done a little exploring. I’ve found the Blues at a depth of nine thousand miles. If we shoot for that layer and below, I’m sure we’re bound to hit something. Commence bombardment.”
This last order gained me a series of astounded gasps. “But sir,” Jasmine said, “I don’t understand. You haven’t even transmitted your demands yet.”
I shrugged my heavily armored shoulders. After the Microbial treatments, I found I was strong enough to make the armor move and clack back into place when I let it down. If nothing else, it intimidated normal marines who knew they couldn’t do it.
“They know the deal,” I said, “and they broke it. They slowed the Macros down, but didn’t stop them. It’s my belief they decided to come in late to clean up after the Earth ships had done their worst. Well, they miscalculated. Now, they’ll pay the price.”
Miklos spoke up after a brief, stunned silence. “Adjusting guns to target depth, sir. Might I add something?”
“Go ahead.”
“What if the Blues told the Macros to stop, but the Macros decided just to slow down, to become more cautious? Perhaps they’re not in control of the Macros, but only feeding them intelligence data. In that case, they might have fabricated a situation to get them to stop. They might have told them they were walking into a trap with thousands of ships. That could explain the increasingly cautious approach of the Macros.”
I frowned fiercely. “That’s an excellent point, Miklos,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that one. Stand down the guns for now. Sandra, open a communications channel, all frequencies. Let’s try to talk to the Blues.”
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They went back to their consoles, shaking their heads and blinking their eyes. A few looked as if they were praying.
-31-
We spent the next hour broadcasting a message down into those brown, stirring clouds. We never heard so much as a ping back. Soon, I grew annoyed.
“Maybe they can’t hear us sir,” Sandra said.
“I don’t buy that. The Macros could hear our transmissions, so could the Nanos. The Blues created both of them. I believe the Blues like to maintain an aloof exterior, but I don’t believe they’re unaware of our position in orbit over their world. How could a species build the Nanos and the Macros, and learn how to use the rings to communicate, and still not notice their homeworld is being bombarded by radio signals? I just don’t buy it. I’ve dealt with these people in person, remember. They like to think of themselves as superior beings. We’re only vaguely interesting to them, like squawking parrots in a tree, or barking dogs across the street. They normally ignore us, as if we’re noisy animals. Well, it’s time they learned to respect this backward race.”
I again ordered the bombardment to begin, and this time no one could talk me out of it. I stood in the observatory, looking down at the strange, gigantic planet. It filled the entire glass bottom of the chamber I stood within, and I turned my helmet this way and that, picking out details of the upper atmosphere. When my boots got in the way, I stumped around to a new vantage point. I found it hard to believe I’d gone down there on two occasions and allowed the Blues to ‘experience’ my body.
The gunships fired in unison. I couldn’t feel the recoil on Actium, as the destroyer was equipped only with lasers. We didn’t bother to fire beam weapons. The atmosphere was too thick and deep. Radiation-based weapons couldn’t hope to effectively penetrate it. But the accelerated mass hurled down by the big belly turrets on my gunships did the job nicely. A shower of blue spheres flashed downward. The distant ones resembled falling stars. They fell quickly and were swallowed up by the atmosphere. I couldn’t even see the impacts—if there were any.
“Keep firing,” I said, “lay down a pattern, and put us into a drifting orbit. I want to carpet-bomb the interior. We’re bound to hit something eventually. In the meantime, keep repeating our hailing signal.”
The bombardment continued. After ten minutes, the gunships were no longer firing in volleys. They were firing as soon as their guns were cool enough to allow another round to chamber. We’d drifted by this time all the way around the planet.
I heard the door dissolve behind me. Sandra stepped into the observatory, her shoes clicking on the cold glass. The room itself was kept extremely cold and dry to prevent condensation from forming on the inside and obscuring the glass.
“I thought I’d find you hiding in here.”
“Far from it,” I said, “I’m witnessing firsthand what I’ve ordered. It’s lovely and terrible at the same time.”
“But is it working?”
I glanced at her. “You know it isn’t. They haven’t even responded to our channel requests.”
“They’re clouds, Kyle. Maybe they don’t even feel your projectiles. Maybe they just fall through their bodies like raindrops.”
“You could be right. I’d hoped this would work.”
She looked at me fixedly. “What’s your next move? Are you going to back off or double down?”
“What do you think?” I asked, staring down at the murky world. I didn’t meet her eye.
“Lord help us if you’re wrong on this one, Kyle,” she said quietly, and left the room.
I stared down at the falling blue-white stars for another ten minutes. The Blues never answered, they ignored us completely. Finally, I opened the command channel.
“Cease bombardment,” I said loudly, “reload your cannons with fusion warheads. Commence bombardment, starting at the nine thousand mile depth and proceeding deeper. I want a better spread this time—ten miles apart, with a slower rate of fire. Let’s not have our shells going off too close and destroying one another.�
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No one said anything, but the sparks stopped falling on Eden-12 for a few minutes. Then, finally, I saw a new kind of activity. Flashing projectiles fired downward, leaving trails of orange plasma behind them until they vanished into the atmosphere. We’d built these from our own mines. Each was a small nuclear device loaded on a short range platform. They were slow and inaccurate, but they didn’t have to hit the target squarely. They were designed for saturation bombing on the cheap.
Jasmine came to visit me next. She stood behind me, without saying anything for a moment. Then the flashes began. Deep down, inside the cloud layers, the planet brightened suddenly. Then more bright, circular spots began to appear in rapid succession. The top layer of the atmosphere stirred and bubbled slightly in response.
“If you’re here to talk me out of this, you’re going to be disappointed,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “But we’re killing them, Kyle. You know that don’t you? We must be hitting something—someone. They’re biotics, not machines. They should be our allies.”
“I agree, they should be. But they’ve never cooperated with us. They’re a proud people, proud to the point of arrogance. But I can’t believe they care so little about their own existence that they’re willing to—”
At that moment, my helmet squawked. “Kyle? They’re answering our call.”
“Ceasefire, I repeat, all ships, ceasefire! Sandra, open the channel.”
“Open.”
The orange streaks and flashes continued for another ten seconds. It was hard to turn off the engines of war with perfect precision. Now that they were talking, I found each falling bomb painful to watch. I winced as they streaked, glimmered, then flashed.
“I’m known as Empathy,” said the Blue who had hailed us. “I’ve been chosen to speak to the barbarians.”
“Empathy?” I asked. “Are you in charge of diplomacy for the Blues?”
“You’re concepts lack meaning.”
“Do you speak for your planet?”
“I feel my world. I feel the sea around me and sense its unease.”
I rolled my eyes and decided to try another approach. “All right,” I said. “Do you wish the bombardment to stop?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We agree on something. We have the same goal. Now, let me tell you how we can achieve that goal. You must stop the approaching Macro fleet. You must stop it from traveling through the ring from the neighboring system to this one. Do you understand me?”
“No.”
“What part do you not get?”
“I find it disorienting to interact with a being I can’t touch.”
“Yeah, well I find it annoying to be probed by your wind-fingers, too. We all have to adapt in order to survive. Do you understand what you must do to stop the bombardment?”
There was a silence. After ten seconds or so, I was worried we’d lost the connection. I had a horrible thought: what if one of the shockwaves from my bombs had finally reached this thoughtful cloud and blow it to mist?
But then Empathy came back on the line. “Why must we adapt in order to survive? We have made very few changes to our physical structure for millions of years.”
I grimaced. “It was an idiom. What I mean is that you must change your behavior in order to survive this attack. We will stop bombing if you get the Macros to reverse course.”
“We can’t sense the approaching machines you speak of. Something is wrong with our sensory systems.”
I thought about that, and turned to Jasmine, who was still standing there beside me in the dimly lit observatory. “Go get Marvin to shut down the jamming of the Thor ring. I think they’re saying they can use sensors through it.”
Her eyes were big, brown and glittered as she turned and ran out of the room. She was talking into her com link in an urgent, hushed voice.
I turned back to the planet under my boots again. It looked quiet down there now. I wondered for a few seconds how many of them I’d killed. I hoped the number wasn’t too horrible. I told myself I’d done what I had to do. I told myself billions of Centaurs and thousands of humans would have been lost, at the very least, if I hadn’t forced them to talk.
But I couldn’t quite buy my own bullshit. Not yet. They hadn’t shown me they could stop the Macros. For all I knew, I was abusing a helpless people who had collaborated with the enemy, but who could not do what I was demanding of them. It was a grim situation in that case. I hoped I wasn’t using enhanced interrogation techniques on a subject who truly didn’t have the information I was demanding.
“Try to use your sensors now,” I said. “The rings should work and allow you to operate them normally.”
There was another delay—a long one. At last, Empathy came back on the line. “You have surprised us.”
“The Macros have surprised us as well.”
“We did not think your technology was sufficient to manipulate the rings.”
“Right, well, we’re full of surprises. I said I would bomb you if the Macros didn’t halt their attack. You should be able to see now that they’re still approaching and in fact are about to come through the ring into this system. We aren’t sure we can defeat their fleet this time.”
“We doubt that you can prevail. We’re transmitting all your tactics, force positions, levels of readiness and—”
“Let me get this straight,” I shouted, “you’re sending all that intel to the Macros right now? Don’t you understand we will retaliate? We will let our bombs fall deeper, and annihilate your planet? Stop those transmissions immediately!”
“You are a demanding being.”
“Have you stopped the transmissions or not?”
“Yes.”
I smiled. I felt this might just work. They’d finally responded to a threat and done what I’d asked them to do. It was like training a housecat. I now wondered even more seriously if they’d ever told the Macros to stop. From my perspective, their message to the machines appeared to have been something like: “take it slow, danger ahead.”
I checked with Marvin, who was monitoring ring traffic. He confirmed that there had been a burst of activity, and now nothing. I nodded to myself. Better and better. I’d have these tabby-cats leaping through hoops before I was done.
“Now,” I said, “in order to keep the ceasefire, in order to save yourselves, you must tell the Macros to turn around.”
“What, exactly, do you propose that we tell them?”
I squinted down at the soupy world below my boots. “Tell them to retreat.”
“They do not follow our commands.”
“I know you’ve been talking to them. I know you have an active conspiracy with them, and they have been responding to your transmissions.”
“Yes, this is true.”
“Then tell me, if they don’t take your orders, what is the nature of your relationship with the Macros?”
“Capitulation. Obedience. Subjugation.”
My mouth sagged open. I stared down at Eden-12, at a loss. Everything instantly made sense—in a horrible, twisted way. When I’d threatened them, I’d been under the impression they were calling for help, that they were in an alliance with the machines. Apparently, I’d misinterpreted the situation. Ask any of my staff, it was far from the first time. But on this occasion, I’d been way, way off.
“I’m asking for confirmation,” I said. “You are taking orders from the Macros, not giving them?”
“Yes.”
“They are your allies, your overlords? When did this arrangement begin?”
“When you destroyed our defensive fleet.”
“The Nano ships?” I asked, thinking about it. “Let me see if I have this straight, you called the Nano ships back to cover your home planet. But we lured them away and they were destroyed by the Macros. After that, you swore obedience to the Macros. But why?”
“Because an alien species had invaded our system, and we were helpless against these unknown barbarians.”
I squinted my eyes and tightened my mouth into a line. I felt like a true barbarian at that moment. A Vandal, or a Visigoth, perhaps. Maybe even a Hun. I’d scared the Blues into an alliance with the Macros. Then, just as they’d feared, I threatened them and bombed them. What had been their reaction? To call for help, of course, from the only other regional power: the Macros.
All of this wouldn’t be so bad, except that I’d counted on the Blues being able to stop the Macros for me. I’d bet the farm on it—all the farms. But they weren’t in control of the machines. Instead, they were just another race of terrified servants. All I’d managed to do was pushed them further into the arms of my enemy.
“How the hell do I get out of this one?” I asked the universe.
The stars and the chocolate-swirl planet beneath me made no response. I was on my own.
-32-
The bombardment had long since halted. I’d been floating in orbit over Eden-12, the homeworld of the mysterious Blues, uncertain about what to do next. I’d talked to them at length, trying to understand their point of view, their capabilities, and most importantly, their leverage with the Macros.
The results weren’t positive. They didn’t have much in the way of a military. The Macros and Nanos were their military forces. It seemed they were a cerebral lot, and didn’t like to get their aerogel hands dirty. Direct conflict was a turn-off for them. They didn’t even enjoy talking to other species, much less fighting with them. They’d built their terrible machines to do that sort of thing for them. But that hands-off, send-in-the-drones approach hadn’t worked out as well as they’d hoped, obviously.
“What kind of deal have they cut with the Macros?” Jasmine asked me. She’d come to stand in the observatory again, where I was pacing on frosty glass and thinking hard.
“A trade of sorts. They’ve been providing intel to the Macros in return for neutrality.”
“We have to get leverage.”