Battle Station

— 5

I knew I had to get out of this situation, and get out of it fast. I had no intention of running off with Butcher. I wanted peace with the Crustaceans, not only because I had enough enemies, but also because I’d had enough of killing fellow biotics.

“Butcher, begin recording a command script. Do not execute the script until I order you to do so.”

“Ready.”

“You will eject the two occupants of this ship into space and then fly to rejoin the approaching fleet. You will not fire on fellow Nano ships. You will find a new pilot, going back to your original programming. You will not reveal anything about myself or this entity known as Marvin.”

“Command script is self-contradictory.”

I gritted my teeth. We had less than an hour to get out of here, and I didn’t want to spend it all arguing with a Nano ship. “What portion of the command sequence is in conflict?”

“Joining the approaching fleet will not allow us to acquire a new pilot. None of the orders given match my original programming. Auto-defense mandates require returning fire when fired upon, thus-”

“I get it, I get it,” I said in frustration. I tried to focus. It was hard to sort out a verbal program for an alien ship while hundreds of enemy vessels came closer with each passing second. I felt a growing urge to just run. I could use this time to set up defenses on Eden’s side of the ring. If I had blown it, and three hundred lobster ships were about to come through and attack my forces seeking vengeance, I needed to get to my side and gather up my destroyers. The mines would get a lot of them, and I figured my destroyers could outgun the rest. Tactical solutions sprang to mind easily. We’d fall back, letting them plow into the mines. When the survivors advanced, we’d open fire. The destroyers were equipped with three guns each, all of which were larger and had a greater range than any of these Nano ships. We could pop them one at a time with concentrated fire, burning them out of space before they were even within range of my ships. If they turned around and ran, I’d let them, but otherwise…

“Combat appears inevitable, Colonel,” Marvin said calmly.

I shook my head. No, dammit! I didn’t want it to go down that way.

“No,” I said aloud. “I’m not going to start a new war. I’ve cooked one sentient being today, and that’s quite enough. They may not even have full control of their ships. This ship didn’t even have its new pilot acquisition program turned off.”

Marvin swung a number of cameras toward me, but said nothing. I wondered what he was thinking about this entire sequence of events. I didn’t know, but I suspected he was taking notes and enjoying the drama he’d helped stir up between three species-two biotics and the Nanos themselves. Perhaps he thought of it as a grand, sociological experiment.

I recalled the early days of dealing with the Nano ships, back when they would mass up and charge anything that entered our system, oftentimes suicidally. Those had not been fun days for the pilots. For all I knew, the lobsters were madly trying to figure out how to stop their ships from attacking.

I spent the next ten minutes or so working out a script Butcher would accept. I wanted it to dump us, then fly back to where the Crustaceans came from-I suspected it was one of those hot-water moons I’d scanned-and pick up a new pilot. Hopefully, the rest of the ships would stand down and not try to destroy us.

There was one more obvious step to take before exiting the system. I needed to make contact with the pilots of these Nano ships. I needed them to know we were not invading monsters-if they could be convinced at this point.

“Butcher, open a channel with the pilots of the approaching fleet. You will translate our English into the natural language of the pilots.”

“Channel request sent.”

It took about thirty tense seconds before we heard anything else. They were still a long way off. “Channel open,” the ship said.

“Hello fellow ship captains. We are not hostile. Break off your attack. We wish to exchange information, not laser fire.”

About half a minute later, the response came in: “Your threats do not impress us. You are alone. We have the advantage.”

Threats? I mulled over my words. Perhaps they’d taken my reference to laser fire as a threat. I heaved a sigh. Another touchy bunch of aliens. At least they weren’t talking in pictures.

“Colonel Riggs?” Marvin asked. “Could you tell the ship to transmit the original alien speech to me as it comes in? I would like to learn this new language.”

“Don’t know this one, huh? Okay,” I said, and gave Butcher the orders. I watched as a black tentacle of nanites extended down from the roof of the bridge and intersected Marvin’s body. He watched it descend with a large number of squirming cameras. I could tell he could hardly wait. Nothing turned on Marvin’s brain like a new alien language.

“I come in peace. This ship attacked me and forced us to participate in tests. I was forced to kill the pilot. I apologize, and will now return the ship to your people. A new pilot can be selected. No one need lose another life.”

After the delay-which was fractionally shorter than before, the response came back: “Claiming your errors were made from ignorance will not save you. Errors are crimes, and you will be slain for having communicated these concepts. I can’t believe such a creature as you overcame one of our principal investigators.”

Principal investigators? Errors were crimes? I thought about that. These lobsters sounded different than the Worms or the Centaurs. The Worms were brave individualistic warriors. The Centaurs thought of little other than herd honor. What I was hearing from these guys was something that reminded me of a group of prissy academics. I’d known plenty of those in my college-teaching days. They were prideful of their intellect and scornful of others. To them, there was no greater crime than mistakes, lies or cheating.

“I speak the truth,” I said. “I’ve investigated primitive cultures such as yours before. You have much to learn from me. I offer you a helping hand-in the spirit of friendship.”

“Insults!” came the response. “It is as we suspected. Insults often follow errors.”

“I’ll prove my point,” I said. “Your investigator failed because he did not alter the programming script of his ship. He allowed it to continue picking up new pilots to test against him. This function can be turned off.” I continued, explaining how to stop a Nano ship from picking up new pilots and killing people whenever it felt like it. I didn’t stop there, however. I lectured them on the niceties of the nanite injections, which would allow the pilots to pick up passengers without chaining them to walls. I even explained how individuals could be picked up and dumped at low altitude, harmlessly. That would mark them as failures and trick the ships into ignoring them. Lastly, I told them how to script visual systems into the ship’s walls so they could perceive their environment using the ships sensors.

There was a pause when I was finished. Marvin squirmed his metal body closer to the forward wall. He rasped on the hull, making a grating sound that set my teeth on edge. He studied the display of metallic beads with a number of cameras. “I believe they are decelerating, Colonel Riggs,” he said.

I smiled and nodded. “They know another professor when they hear one.”

What came next was a barrage of questions. I fielded them all, and told them everything I could-with certain reservations. I didn’t reveal our numbers, or our strength. I didn’t tell them about the minefield that lay beyond the ring, either. I simply indicated we had nothing to fear from their paltry three hundred-odd ships. My arrogance was complete, and before they were within laser range, they’d come to a complete halt. Their fleet faced my single ship, and we sat there in space, eyeing one another suspiciously.

“Colonel Riggs,” Marvin said, interrupting me during one of my lengthy speeches. This one was on the topic of defeating Macros with ground forces.

I paused the transmission and turned to him. “What is it, Marvin?”

“I’ve calculated a significant probability these biotics are simply learning all they can from you before executing their original plan.”

I nodded. “I’ve thought of that, too. But I’m hoping to instill enough doubt in them to keep them on their side of the ring. If we know so much, and are willing to give it up freely, we might be worthy of their fear. No matter how self-confident they are, they know I waltzed in here and took out one of their people without a problem. I’ve fed them a lot of information, which should impress them despite their natural arrogance. If they are academics, as I feel they are, there really isn’t any way to impress them other than to demonstrate you are smarter than they are. They’ll still hate me, but they may also respect me.”

After another hour of mostly one-way lecturing, they had had enough at last.

“We feel it is now our duty to respond in kind,” they said while I was taking a break. My throat was dry. “There are a number of misstatements in your statements, which we have carefully cataloged.”

Prissy in the extreme, they proceeded to go over statements I’d made that were in any slight fashion contradictory, or unclear in meaning. I listened, murmured appreciative responses now and then, and never became annoyed. Again, this was part of the academic process I was thoroughly familiar with. Faced with superior knowledge, many nerds turned to nit-picking to save face. This was an important shift in demeanor, however. They’d moved from the role of fellow professors to worst-case students.

I let them have their fun. I acknowledged every tiny flaw in wording and other inconsistencies they’d found, and thanked them for the input. I felt in them a new swelling pride. I’d injured that pride by pointing out I knew a lot about Nano ships they hadn’t figured out yet. Now was the time to build them back up. It was irritating, but it was a technique that often served to defuse this type of personality.

I learned a fair amount concerning their species as I endured their lectures. They were careful not to reveal too much. They admitted to being from the warm oceans of the moon-worlds I’d seen floating around the gas giant. They were an aquatic species, and had only just begun to master basic spaceflight when the Nano ships arrived. Plunging down into their oceans and scooping up individuals from their rocky warrens in the seabed, they’d been forced to slay one another in what was now a familiar pattern. Prior to that, Macro ships had cruised through the system and destroyed all their satellites and observatories. They had not done much else with their worlds-possibly because they were relatively low in metal content. Being heavily covered in seas, the original Macros had passed them by going from ring to ring. The lobster people had watched the machines fearfully for years before the Nanos showed up. Now, to their surprise, every time a Macro ship appeared their new Nano vessels swarmed it and brought it down.

Most importantly, I learned they’d finished off the Macros that we had chased out of the Eden system. They’d destroyed them, but knew there were others that came through this system from time to time from places further out along the chain of rings.

As they spoke, I could not help but think of the billions of stars in our galaxy alone. How far did the Macro Empire extend? How many ships did they have in total? Were we fleas on a mouse? Or much worse, fleas on an unimaginably huge behemoth that could never be brought down? Really, it depended on the rings, and the extent of them. The Crustaceans didn’t know anything about that, unfortunately. They had been unaware of the rings until the invasions by the Macros and Nanos.

At length, we exhausted one another. We eventually agreed to reconvene for more talks at a future time. In the end, the ship and the Crustaceans allowed me to float back to Eden through the ring. As I drifted out of the star system, I dragged Marvin behind me. He was trying to look as inert as possible.

Before I crossed over into the Eden system, I took the opportunity to look back at the twin suns one last time. I figured these Crustaceans were living on borrowed time. The Macros had bypassed them for now, seeking more valuable targets. But they would get around to this aquatic species eventually, even if they were a relatively low priority.

I had to wonder about the next star system in this chain of rings-and the systems beyond that. The number of life-supporting stars seemed high, but possibly that was just due to the choices of the ancients who had made this highway of rings. Maybe they’d purposefully strung together worlds that teemed with life.

All told, how many other biotic species were out there, suffering under the heels of the machines? I doubted I would ever know the full truth.