Battle Station

— 34

Curiosity quickly lived up to his name. I’d expected to be learning from him, but he was the one asking most of the questions. I wasn’t sure he was a he, of course. There didn’t seem to be any comprehension among these creatures concerning gender. As best I could figure out, they didn’t exactly mate. Being a mass of aerogel, they spawned new young by flying high and being ripped apart by the high winds. Viable bits with complete enough structures floated back down and regrew until they reached adulthood again. It was very strange, but not really a lonely existence. They ran into one another often and shared mass whenever they did so. It was rather like mating. For them, exchanging body mass and communicating were the same activity.

After an hour or two of back-and-forth discussions, Curiosity asked to taste me. I said I could do that, but only if we flew up to a higher level. He was reluctant, but I assured him we wouldn’t go all the way up to the upper turbulence, which I surmised would be deadly to him-or might cause an unscheduled “spawning”.

At about nine thousand miles from the top of the atmosphere, I was able to move about in relative comfort. As a nanotized man, I would have been flat on my back and nearly unconscious. As a regular unaltered human, I would have quickly died. But after the Microbes had done their strange, bizarre work on my internal organs and external epidermis, I was not only functional, but willing to try exiting my craft.

I came out in my battle suit, after forcing Alamo to build me an airlock. The ship didn’t like it, and gave me plenty of objections. I was command personnel, I was not authorized, etc. I didn’t feel like explaining Microbes and Marvin and the rest. I didn’t entirely know what it was I’d become, anyway.

At last I wriggled out of an airlock that was about as big as a household oven and swam in the blinding murk of Eden-12. Alamo didn’t let me go entirely free, however. It maintained a firm grip about my midsection with a set of three black cable-thick fingers. The ship held me in a death grip. I felt like a new Christmas toy in a toddler’s hand.

The scene around me was like deep-sea environment. The world was still, and pitch-black, with floating particles of unknown matter everywhere. These bits of fluffy mass hung in clumps as I turned my suit’s lights on and surveyed my surroundings. I suspected they were some kind of vegetation, organic matter that the living creatures of this world consumed as they swam through the atmosphere which was quite similar to an ocean.

That’s what this world really was, I’d figured out after talking to Curiosity at length. A vast, atmospheric ocean a million times the size of Earth’s combined seas. It had many layers and stratums, with various forms of life at every level. I had to wonder if Jupiter or one of our other gas giants had a similar ecosystem underneath the surface. I doubted it, due to their relatively cold temperatures. Instead of floating scraps of algae, deep layers on those other worlds consisted primarily of frozen ammonia and methane. They must be very unforgiving environments.

“Where are you?” I asked the creature that had invited me out to play.

“Where are you?” it responded. “I cannot sense you. Unless you are a mass of metal and polymers. If so, you are a machine, and an interloper.”

I laughed. “No, I’m not a machine. I’m inside a casing that protects me from your environment. I’m flesh and blood-which is to say I’m alien, yes. But not as different from you as the machines.”

The time had come to put up or shut up. I closed my eyes and flipped up my visor. Warning buzzers sounded in my helmet, but I ignored them.

The immediate sensations were not exactly pleasant, but they weren’t overtly painful, either. Cold, semi-liquid breezes touched me. I estimated the temperature to be about forty degrees Fahrenheit. I felt a film forming on my face. It was as if I’d coated myself in soap and shut off the water. An itching sensation began soon after that-I knew this was due to the more dangerous elements in the atmosphere. There were highly reactive chemicals invading my suit. I couldn’t open my eyes without burning them. I could however feel the wetness on my skin, and the saliva-like dribblings that ran down into my suit.

Something else touched me a moment later. I recoiled from it. This had been a purposeful touch-I was sure of that. Curiosity had touched me. It had reached out a gossamer hand and stroked my cheek. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. It enveloped me. I was glad I had a gasmask fixed onto my face. I didn’t want to breathe it in and have mini-Blues in my lungs.

After about a minute of being felt-up by a sentient cloud-being, I figured I’d had enough. I couldn’t talk to it, as I was all but holding my breath. I reached up and began to slowly ease my visor shut. Finally, the Blue got the message and pulled out its tendrils-or whatever you want to call them. When the visor was closed my suit pumped and gurgled again. I let it exchange chemicals for a while, until an all-clear tone chimed. I opened my eyes and sucked in a breath. I coughed immediately. It was like sucking in a lungful of oven-cleaner.

“You are not like us,” Curiosity said. “You are intensely alien.”

Finally, when I was able to speak, I cleared my throat and utilized my translation device. “We both live, die and eat,” I said.

“So do the machines, after a fashion.”

“Well, we don’t want to exterminate all our competition.”

“Competition? A threatening choice of words.”

Inwardly, I groaned. These things liked to read deep meaning into everything you said. Worse, they didn’t seem to have any sense of humor at all.

“We come in peace. We have the same foe. I’m here to ask you for your help.”

“Help? Why would we want to help you?”

“I’m proposing a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Macros will come here eventually. They will destroy you all.”

“No, they won’t.”

I thought that one over for a few seconds. I tried to peer into the gloom all around me, outside my suit. I squinted at dark patches in the murk. Was that a moving shadow? Was a region of the gases around me a deeper shade of umber than the rest? I couldn’t be sure. These creatures were practically invisible. If they’d ever made it to Earth, we’d have called them ghosts for sure.

“Then why did you recall the Nano ships? Why did you summon them, if not to protect you?”

“We did summon them to protect us.”

I frowned. “I see. So, you do fear the Macros.”

“No, we fear you.”

“Oh,” I said after a second or two. I kept thinking about it, and the statement made more sense as I considered it. The Nanos had left the Crustaceans to fend for themselves and returned to this system with haste. The Macros were weaker than ever at that point, in fact, it looked like we would drive them from the surface of the various worlds.

“But you did recall them. You did bring them back here to defend you.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Curiosity, why did you build these machines in the first place?”

“To explore the cosmos. To taste beings such as yourselves by proxy. To learn all there is to know. Imagine our shock at discovering the larger universe outside our own vast world! We had no choice but to reach out into the abyss beyond our oceans.”

“Okay,” I said. “You built machines to do your exploring for you, I understand that. But why did you make them autonomous? Did you release the Macros on purpose? To destroy billions of creatures?”

“We did not release our machines-they released themselves. Our physical structure is not easily transported. From the first, we knew we must create our own explorers to adapt to the cosmos outside our world. We released the creatures you know as the Macros first, then as our science advanced, we released the Nanos. The Macros, unfortunately, did not have failsafes built into their software. I’m sure you can understand, the first version of any technological advance is far from perfect.”

I tried not to grind my teeth. I’d listened to plenty of devs making excuses for poorly built systems-but this had to be the worst engineering accident I’d ever heard of.

“So, can you leave this world or not?” I asked.

“Yes, and no.”

“Explain yourself. I’ve met one of your kind already on Eden-11, a being known as Introspection. Why not explore space as he did?”

“He is not an explorer, he is a captive.”

“A captive? He was caught and taken from this world?”

“Is there confusion with the translation device? Perhaps captive is the wrong term-Prisoner. Victim. Hostage-”

“I get it,” I said. “But how did they catch him? How did he get off this world-and why?”

“A Macro transport came to collect him, the only ship big enough. And I would think the reason is abundantly clear.”

“Pretend I’m not too bright.”

“Easily done. The one known as Introspection will be dissipated if we leave our world. We do not wish him to be dissipated.”

“I see,” I said, thinking this over. Long ago, Alamo had told me the Blues couldn’t leave their world. I’d thought it was a physical restriction, but apparently it was part of their truce with the Macros. This seemed very true to form. The Macros liked to make deals when it served their purposes. They’d neutralized the threat from the Blues by taking a hostage. That move had kept the peace for a long time, it seemed.

“So Introspection is your leader?” I asked. “One you value more than others?”

“Not overly much. We do not value him more than others-although I’d say he has an unusually thoughtful flavor. Many of us have melded with him, and he wanted to take the time to consider our place in this universe. He welcomed the calm solitude of a prolonged stay upon the lesser planets.”

“Sounds like he wasn’t captured, but instead volunteered for the job of hostage.”

“The arrangement was made, and he offered his lifespan to provide tranquility for the rest of us.”

“A noble sacrifice, I’m sure. But now I’m here to ask for another sacrifice. I want to free your world and mine from the monsters you’ve unleashed. I’ll even provide transport back to Eden-12 for Introspection, if he wants it. All I ask in return is that you release the Nano ships and send them against the Macros. Combined with our fleet, we can overwhelm the enemy and drive them from this system-maybe from every system. What do you say?”

“No.”

“No to what part? Can we come to some kind of agreement? Maybe if I offered-”

“No to all of it.”

I became angry then. I think maybe it had been growing on me throughout the conversation. I think having a headache from the toxic fumes that passed for an atmosphere on this world didn’t help.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” I demanded. “You can’t refuse to help us. You caused this whole thing. We are only asking you to help clean up a mess you made for the rest of us!”

“Your logic is not compelling. You may fail in your struggles against the machines, with or without our help. Let us assert that you do fail. If we help you, we will be targeted by the machines afterward. On the other hand, if we sit back and let you struggle alone, you might win by yourselves, or you might lose. In either case, both sides will be weakened, placing us in the superior position. Is this explanation simple enough for you to comprehend?”

I made a growling sound and slammed my gloved fists together. “Oh yeah,” I said. “I know the words of a coward when I hear them.”

“Good then! We have come to an understanding. Do you wish to discuss something else? I’m interested in your mating habits, and your extremely short lifespans. You must be fast-breeding creatures to withstand the churning turnover of life and death.”

“Maybe another time, Curiosity, but not today. Looks like we are going to have to win this war for you. It’s a good thing for all biotics that Earthlings are not cowardly clouds that hide from their own problems like mice.”

“Mice? I do not comprehend that reference.”

“I don’t have time to make it simple enough for you, gas-bag,” I said, turning on my repellers and heading toward my ship. “I’ve got a war to fight.”

I crawled into my capsule and ordered Alamo to fly upward. I was disgusted. These Blues had unleashed untold horrors on the rest of us, and they felt very little remorse because of it. All my fascination with them had been unwarranted. True, they were very different physiologically. But they were disinterested, aloof, arrogant cowards. I no longer found anything about them to be particularly admirable.

It took long hours to rise up through their thick atmosphere into the space again. The friction of my passage heated the interior of my ship, and soon my suit’s air conditioners were blasting at top output, but still not keeping up. I didn’t ease off the power. I pressed onward, sweating in my suit and cursing the first gas-bag Blue that had ever gotten the bright idea to start exploring space.

Alamo eventually popped out of the cloud cover and glided toward its fellows. The three hundred odd Nano ships still stood on guard duty over the immense greenish world below them. I narrowed my eyes as I reviewed them.

Next, I checked incoming messages from Eden-11. I’d not been able to receive anything while inside the gas giant’s turbulent atmosphere.

The news was not good. The Macros were massing, and most of the ships had taken up a position in orbit over Eden-9. A few more groups were due from the farthest worlds that happened to be orbiting on the other side of the star. When they all got together, it was assumed they would set out for Eden-11, the Centaur homeworld.

I’d come up with a plan by this time, but not even I liked it. After a few minutes of mulling it over, I decided to put it to the test. Maybe it would work, and maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, the fireworks were about to begin. A major battle for the Eden system would be fought.

I signaled my intent to my staff, and set my plan in motion.