by Wil McCarthy
There was almost no sound.
The Waister exploded pink-blue against the wall, a paint-balloon, a twitching bundle of rods and hoses that disintegrated as the superfast wire fragments ripped through it.
Ken blasted the remains for longer than he needed to, but finally he got control of himself and switched off the gun. Oh God. Oh God. He was actually fighting with Waisters, actually standing in the same room with Waisters. Looking up at the painted carrion which moments ago had been a living thing, he thought maybe he was going to be sick. The indigo slime that was the creature's blood was fading to a dull off-white, oily and translucent like semen or mucus. The spectacle was as nauseating as a swarm of maggots crawling through the offal.
“Mihhh,” he coughed. “Uh! Mirez!”
No answer. Had the private escaped through the Spider already?
“Mirez! Anyone!”
His speakers gave out a faint buzzing that might have been voices, might only have been static. Contact, he wanted to say. First contact. The Eagle has landed. They spray sticky blue stuff all over the place when you shoot them, folks, so do watch where you step.
He felt his arms beginning to quiver. What did the Waister think it was doing? If it wanted to shoot him, why had it moved its hand so slowly? Why had it raced in so quickly, and then stopped, an easy target for Ken's weapons? And why was Ken here shooting at it? Why was Albuquerque a glazed depression in the floor of the North American desert?
Another monster swarmed down through the hexagonal doorway, heedless of the gore it splashed through. A third Waister followed behind it, and a fourth, and a fifth. They carried brass wands with them also. Their naked bodies were ludicrous, holie-props from a twisted children's fantasy.
Ken screamed anyway. He raised both arms, spraying the doorway, hosing it down with flechettes. The Waisters died, burst, splattered in the deadly wiregun shower. But still they poured through the opening.
One managed to break away from the carnage, dashing sidewise across the floor to a nearby cluster of boxes. Ken swung his arms toward it, but too late; the boxes came apart like gray confetti, but the Waister was past them, its apelike arms swooping and swinging as it ran. He tried to track it, but could not. Too fast, too fast...
“MIREZ! GET IN HEEERE!”
“Behind you, Corporal! Oh no!”
Ken swung around, insanely turning his back on the swarming Waisters. The laquer-black oblong of the Spider's inner door sat right at the junction between two walls, and a gray-armored marine was falling, staggering across the corner. The man fought for balance, lost, and fell sprawling. Behind him, a second man popped out of the Spider, repeated the stumble, and fell atop the first.
“Get up!” Ken screamed. “Catch the men as they come through!”
The Spider disgorged another marine onto the heap. Resolutely not-looking-up, Ken took a step toward the men, determined to help, determined to fix this mess which he had somehow failed to prevent. But his left gumboot adhered too well to the purple-gray Waister varnish; he tripped, and fell to his knees.
Something happened to the men. They seemed, for an instant, to be very sharply focused in Ken's vision. Then they seemed not quite so vivid, and their shapes began to slump, and they fell into piles of gray and pink and blood-red powder.
A fourth man flew out of the airlock, and hit the ground as a heap of swirling dust.
“NOOOO!” Ken shrieked. Throwing himself over onto his back, he triggered both wireguns, spraying the room indiscriminately. “You fuckers! Cut it! Stop it!”
He spotted movement, adjusted his aim. Something erupted pink and blue. He found another target, and another, and another. His wireguns chattered busily.
BLAM!
He spasmed at the noise. That was a shotgun! He snapped his wrists back up again, cutting off the deadly flow of tungsten fiber. Where...
Marines were tumbling out of the Spider, landing on all fours, scrambling off in different directions. One stood nearby, sweeping his raised arms back and forth like searchlights. Another crouched with shotgun drawn, smoke oozing out the business end of it.
“Cover my nines!” Somebody shouted.
Movement on the wall, a pale purple blur. Ken raised an arm to track it, but the Waister stopped suddenly, slamming its bulk into a group of boxes. It lifted its wand, aimed down at the marines...
The man with the shotgun collapsed into dust. Ken was reminded of his parents' charcoal grill, and the way it looked when somebody kicked it over and let the ashes spill out. The Waister twisted its hand a little, and another marine turned to powder and slid apart. Shouts of alarm rose up as the men noticed what was happening.
Ken's arm seemed to be moving through thick honey.
PftPftPft! Finally, the wiregun split the creature diagonally, splashing the gray, hexagonal boxes with indigo fluid.
But there were more enemies, more marines pouring in through the Spider. The walls seethed and twitched with movement.
“Get that one! Aaa!” A voice shrieked, the sound breaking up into coarse rustling as its owner came apart.
Fuck this, Ken thought. He peeled his gumboots off, letting them shrivel up into useless balls of resin, and staggered to his feet.
“Gumboots off, everybody!” He cried over shouting voices. “We have to take the exit!”
He resumed firing for several seconds, and when he looked around again he saw that several of the men had complied with his instructions.
Run away! He wanted to say. But when he opened his mouth, the words that came out were, “This way! This way! EVERYBODY CHARGE!”
~~~
Twenty minutes later, the marines actually did manage to secure the doorway and the brief length of hexagonal corridor outside it. Ken counted eighteen men remaining, barely a quarter of his original force.
“Forward, men,” he said tiredly, waving a too-heavy arm ahead of him. “Those are our orders. Forward.”
“Corporal,” groaned an anonymous voice. “Five minutes rest. Please.”
Ken felt the aching of his body, pressing down against the rings and straps and webbing that were designed for zero gravity, designed to keep his skin from touching the material of the suit. He sampled the rasping of his lungs, the urgent hammering of his heart, the hypoxic tingling of fingers and toes. How could he not rest?
“God,” he said. “Five minutes. Yes, okay.”
As one, the men let out a sigh of exhaustion. Ken echoed the sound, dropping inelegantly to his knees. Rest.
Five minutes sounded like a hopelessly tiny interval, too short for him even to catch his breath. But when the next surge of Waisters came crashing through the corridor like the sea through a crumbling dyke, he found that three minutes were somehow enough. Weary and breathless, he summoned strength from hidden places, and raised his arms to meet the wave.
Desperation would keep him going, at least for now.
Chapter Five
“Ten minutes is not the same thing as thirty minutes, Drone Two,” Marshe said with what she hoped was stern reproach.
Ken took his seat.
“Well?” She said.
“I lost track,” Ken replied calmly. “It won't happen again.”
Marshe started to say something, then caught herself. There was something odd in the corporal's posture, in the slack expression he was wearing. His hands dangled from the chair's armrests in an almost casual way. What was this? In half an hour, Jonson seemed to have become a different person.
“Uh,” she said, “Aren't you going to apologize?”
“No. I don't think we have a word for that.”
“We?” Josev Ranes inquired, his voice curious and skeptical.
“Yes,” Ken said. “We. The Waisters.” He glanced at Marshe, then back at Josev again. “Don't give me that look. This stuff wasn't my idea.”
Josev was about to reply, but Marshe cut him off. No time to get sidetracked. “That's fine, Kenneth. I want you to look at something.” She gestured at one of the holie screens. “The attac
k on Glacia seems to have been two-phased. First, a wide path was melted along the equator, drowning these two small communities. Are you watching? Okay, there's the pause. Twenty minutes long. Twenty minutes! Then... here it is. They hit the planet with fourteen beams simultaneously. The entire surface is liquefied in about five seconds.”
Ken watched the display, cocking his head as if he didn't quite understand what he was seeing.
“Are you getting this?” Marshe asked him.
The corporal shook his head. “Just a white circle with stuff all over it. I'll take your word for it.”
Marshe felt herself becoming exasperated. “Corporal,” she said, “I'm asking for your opinion. Don't start this game.”
Jonson looked at her, mildly surprised. “What's wrong? I'm sorry, okay?” He looked back at the screen, which had begun to repeat its display. “That sounds just like them. In person, they do the same kind of thing. Jump out and scare you, then wait a minute, then slam you with everything they have.”
“The scouting raids,” said Josev. “Same thing. Before the armada comes, y' take six ships and roar through the system with guns hot, raising all sorts of rumpus but not doing much real damage.”
Marshe watched Ken twitch, almost imperceptibly, at that remark.
“Clearly,” Sipho Yeng cut in, “This is a form of communication. They're demonstrating their strength, warning us when they're about to exercise it.”
“Trying to force a surrender,” Josev agreed.
Marshe slapped her leg with the knife-edge of one hand. “Hold it. The Wolf colony broadcast surrender messages in every human language, and it had no effect.”
“They don't know our languages,” Josev said. “Never bothered to learn. Why should they?”
“Don't jump to conclusions,” Marshe told him. “We don't know that. Right now we don't know anything about that.”
“Possibly they don't monitor radio frequencies,” Yeng suggested, then shook his head. “No, forget I said that. They always destroy broadcasting sites. Still, let's note that an object with the mass of a Waister scoutship, moving at point-nine-cee, could tear the sun apart if it hit correctly. With their gravity generators, it's even possible that they could destabilize a star from several light years away. No matter what conventional wisdom says, the Waisters are fighting what must seem to them like a very limited war.”
“Maybe they just want us to suffer,” Marshe said coolly, though she ached to scream at the man. Limited war. Sipho Yeng could say the God-damndest things without feeling what they meant to other people.
Ken Jonson was shaking his head. “No, that's not it. It has to be something else.”
Josev glared angrily. “Sure of that, chum?”
“Absolutely. Don't get upset, I didn't say I liked them. On Earth, some insects lay their eggs inside live animals, so the larvae have something to eat when they hatch. That's not cruel, it's just totally merciless. In some ways I think that's more horrible.”
“You're awfully calm about it all of a sudden,” Josev said.
“Does that bother you?”
“Stop it,” Marshe said. Josev was disturbed by the change in the corporal's manner, as she was, but she couldn't allow an argument to develop. Not now. “This is important. We need to explore this issue. Do they really want us to surrender? Why would they? What do we have that they want? Roland, would you please share your thought with us?”
Roland Hanlin cringed, his heavy Cerean brow furrowing. “Don't ask me. How could I know?”
“I am asking you.”
“Uh... Uh... I don't know. They're imperialists. Like the Clementine monarchs. They can't stand to see us running free.”
Shenna had been lying down between the chairs of the two Workers, but she sat up now and looked around. “They are bad dogs,” she said gravely.
Josev snorted. “You're pretty smart, mutt. S'pose we should make you the Queen.”
“They're not all dogs, little one,” Sipho Yeng said, putting a hand on the animal's shoulder. “Only some of them.”
“Sipho,” said Josev. “Loosen your bowels. Dog comes up with a brilliant observation, and all you want to do is correct her.” He leaned over toward the dog. “I think you're absolutely right, Shenna. Good dog.”
Shenna's tail began to wag. “Good dog,” she said softly, to herself. “Good dog, good dog.”
Marshe couldn't help but smile. “Shenna, thank you very much. Next time wait until I ask you, though. Josev, is the outliner picking this up? I don't want to dictate this stuff all over again for the report.”
Josev rolled his chair backward, craned his neck sideways and peered at one of the displays. “Looks like it,” he said.
“Okay. Good. Now, you look like you've got something to say.”
The young lieutenant sighed as he walked his chair back into the circle. He jerked an elbow in Ken's direction. “I have to disagree with Drone, here. I think they're just back-corridor bullies. They've found somebody to smash and hurt and humiliate, and they love it, and if we surrender they'll be doing us up the bung for the next million years.”
“Mmm.” Marshe nodded vaguely. “Maybe so. Sipho?”
“A chastisement. We're doing, or else we have previously done, something they consider worthy of serious punishment.”
Josev let out an angry snort. “Like what? Inventing space travel? Bullies always pick something about you that they don't like, your clothes or your hair or the way you walk, and they punish you. And they make you apologize. And then they punish you some more. Point is, they'll pick on anything at all, or else make something up, and nothing you do or say is going to stop them.”
“Unless you're bigger,” Ken offered darkly.
“Yeah. Unless you've got the tops on 'em somehow. Or unless you're determined to hurt them no matter what it costs.” He met Marshe's gaze. “My humble opinion, oh Queen. Do we get to hear yours?”
She favored him with her best, most humorless look. “I do have a theory. Not just mine, I guess, but... The easiest way to know if someplace is habitable is if somebody's already living there. The easiest way to settle a new place is to steal it from somebody weaker than you. It's called Cowboys and Indians.”
“Cow what?” Josev said, frowning.
“It's an Earth thing,” she said. She looked over at Ken Jonson and saw him nodding thoughtfully. “It's a game where you beat up on primitives and steal their land. You never heard of it? I thought you were a history enthusiast.”
“Oh, Earth is covered with little tribal nations. I never could keep them straight. Never tried much. Ask me, history started with the first visit to Luna. The rest of it is just incidental.”
“A handful of worlds,” Sipho said. “It's a long journey for that, twelve hundred years or more. In that time they could reshape whole planets, in any image they chose. Custom environments. The energy expenditures are probably about the same as for a war, and the risks are lower.”
She smiled grimly. That single point had been the primary obsession of exobiologists since the Waisters had first announced themselves. Marshe had been mulling her argument over for years. “Evolution,” she said, “Is about competition. To expand indefinitely, to fill every crack and crevice with copies of yourself, you've got to kill off all your rivals. It wasn't photosynthesis that let cyanobacteria take over the Earth three billion years ago, it was oxygen. Deadly poison. It squeezed the competition right out of the oceans, and the atmosphere, and finally the dirt. Now the chemosynthetic prokaryotes live in the mouths of volcanoes, in pits of boiling water where the cyanobacteria can't go. We see the same story over and over again, on every living planet. On Astaroth, there are no chemosynthetic prokaryotes anymore.”
“There won't be any anything there in about three weeks,” Josev said.
Marshe stopped, her face flushing hotly. Was she catching Sipho Yeng disease? Astaroth was the major population center of Lalande system, over three billion people. How could she have mentioned it so callousl
y? The Waister armada would pass the planet very soon, leaving behind a ball of scorched rock and seething, simmering oceans. Site cleared for construction.
“No,” she said softly. “No, you're wrong on that one. The, ah, the cyanobacteria will survive. Some of them.”
~~~
“Corporal?” Marshe said, uneasily.
Kenneth Jonson was nude, and in the low gravity of the upspin gymnasium he was balancing on his forearms, his legs curling over behind him, head thrown back, so that his body was twisted in the form of a letter “C”. He was holding very still, and though she couldn't quite see his face, Marshe had the impression his eyes were closed. A noise rose up from his throat, a soft keening that rose and fell in irregular waves, punctuated by clicks and hissing, choking noises.
Marshe realized, with a shudder, that Jonson was attempting to speak the Waister language.
“Corporal,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. The hairs on her arms were standing straight up, her neck and scalp tingling, nostrils flaring.
Eeehaee ##! hhh hwhaeee ##! Hwhh hwhaeee...
She listened to the sounds, trying to make sense of them. The Broca web whispered inside her, tickled faint lightning against the language centers of her brain.
Eeeehaeee #! hh hwhaee ##!
Jonson's voice was strangled, gurgling, as if he were choking on blood or bile, and yet it swayed with familiar patterns, the somber cadence of Waister speech. Like a taste, a smell half-remembered from childhood. I know this, the web thought to her, or she to it. I know this.
She tasted copper in her mouth, felt a faint buzzing in her ears, in her brain.
“Kenneth,” she said. “Stop it. Stop it!”
Jonson twitched, leaned. An elbow changed position, sliding in the light gravity, and like a structure he fell, crumpling sideways to the floor.
“What are you doing?” She asked, her voice quavering.
Slowly, Jonson turned and looked up at her. His eyes were distant, his mouth twitching faintly.
“Ken?”
The corporal's face went slack, his eyes seeming to come back into focus. “Marshe,” he said. “Hi. What are you doing here? You startled me.”