Conquest

-27-

Being a commanding officer had its perks. One of them was being given a cot and a tent, even when such things were in short supply. Normally, after a base had been wiped out, I would have spent the night in my personal ship. But I’d given up the Socorro now for the good of the cause. She was behind the Moon, hiding from the Macros with the rest of the Fleet. The only good thing about that was Crow was hiding out in space with the rest of the Fleet, which meant I didn’t have to listen to him. He only rarely sent a message out to us. Maybe he feared the Macros would home in on his signal and run down his comparatively small force of ships.

I woke up the next time the sun shone. It could have been morning, but it felt more like noon. The tropical heat was already in the tent with me, making my face stick to things. The inadequate pillow they’d given me was glued to my head with sweat. I knew enough not to complain, however. Most of my marines could only fantasize about a bed and a pillow. They were out shoveling already, finishing up the walls and the underground nanite-woven defenses I’d had them working on for over a day now.

I groaned and looked around blearily, but didn’t get up. Sandra was gone, probably having become bored with waiting for me to wake up. I finally hauled myself up and put my feet on the floor.

When my feet touched the floor I triggered some kind of trap. At the time, I had no idea what was happening to me, but I felt a powerful shock running up through my body. I flopped back on the cot, and saw flashes of light in my head.

Something had gone off. At least, that was what the part of my mind that still operated told me. Something like a flashbulb, but with only the tiniest flare of bluish light. Whatever it was, I felt stunned.

I commanded my muscles to leap out of bed, but it didn’t work out that way. Forcing myself to move, I rolled off my cot and slumped onto the floor on the other side of cot. My body wasn’t obeying me yet.

What had hit me? I could only think it was an electrical shock of some kind. Something meant to stun me into submission. In my foggy mind, there were no happy reasons why someone would want to do this.

I heard words then: “That’s it, move, move, move!”

The words came from strange throats—voices I didn’t recognize. The words were spoken in low tones, louder than whispers but clearly not meant to be heard at a distance. I heard feet tapping and cloth swishing as unseen figures approached.

I managed to struggle up to all fours before they reached me. I reached for my pillow, which was still soaked with my sweat. My hand slid under the cloth and my fist closed around the hilt of a combat blade. Every second that passed brought greater strength and coordination to my limbs. I pulled out the blade and held it low as I slowly began to stand up.

Coincidentally, my assassins were armed with blades as well. The first one made a mistake. He grabbed my hair, yanking my head back and moving his blade to my throat. His knife never quite made it to my neck, however. I took his hand off for him, as my blade was ready and flicked a split-second faster than his did. A hand fell, still tightly gripping a combat knife like my own. I don’t think the guy even knew what had happened at first. Maybe he was confused at the sudden lightness at the end of his treacherous wrist. He made two more sawing motions at my face. Blood gushed hotly onto my cheek.

He figured it out after that and began to howl and keen in shock. The other guy was smarter, unfortunately. Perhaps he’d grown wiser after seeing what happened to his buddy. He just stuck his knife in my back, nothing fancy about it. The blade bit deeply into my left kidney—wrecking it. The explosion of pain was a new kind of shock. Oddly, rather than stunning me, it seemed to bring me more fully awake.

I didn’t have the time or agility to jump up and fight with him. Instead, I slashed at an ankle that was too close. He was stooping over me, and when his foot left his leg, he pitched forward onto my back. It was understandable, as he was now seriously off-balance.

Things became nasty after that. We were all injured. There was blood everywhere. I caught a glimpse of my pillow and saw it was no longer white except in patches. I knew I was getting weaker. I had several cuts—but I hadn’t lost a limb or a major artery yet.

I looked at the two assassins. Their faces were pale, terrified. They were both Caucasian-looking men. They weren’t wearing uniforms, so I knew they weren’t my own marines. I was glad for that small comfort. To know I was dying at the hands of my own men, that would have made my last seconds more horrible.

Losing a limb each seemed to have taken some of the fight out of them. They weren’t nanotized, either. I could tell that. Probably, that had been the reason they had tried to stun me first. It had almost worked, too. But now I was up on my knees, and I had a blade up between us. They were both watched the edge in shock.

The guy with the missing hand had figured out what was missing by now. He took up his blade again in his remaining hand and appeared to still be game. He was coming at me, making thrusting motions. Spittle and blood ran from his face. I wasn’t sure where the blood in his mouth was from. Maybe he’d bitten his own tongue in the excitement.

The second guy was in worse shape. He was on his hands and knees. He held up his blade too, but more in a defensive posture.

I felt sick inside. My back was numb. They gotten at least two stab wounds in there after popping my kidney. I knew I was losing blood as fast as they were, and I was going to be passed out on the floor in a minute or two. That gave me the impetus to go for them. In this kind of fight, whoever passed out from hemorrhaging first lost the game.

“Come on, ladies,” I said to them between gritted, blood-lined teeth. “Let’s finish this.”

My attitude didn’t fill them with confidence. They hesitated for a moment with eyes staring in disbelief. It was their move, but as it turned out, they made the wrong one. They advanced toward me together.

Something blurred into the tent. A dark shape with thin, flashing limbs. Their heads flew from their necks a moment later. The two assassins didn’t even seem to know what was happening. I don’t even know if they saw death coming. The heads rolled on the floor, smeared in blood and sweat. Their eyes were still staring with that same expression of confusion, disbelief and uncertainty about what to do next.

“Hi honey,” I said, “I think I overslept.”

I went down onto all fours again. I couldn’t even raise my eyes up to meet Sandra’s. My knife slipped from my numbing fingers. I grabbed it up again, not letting it go.

Small hands grabbed me. Arms like bands of steel lifted me into the air and cradled me against her chest. Fabric tore and I felt it slide over me. She had run right through the nearest wall of the tent. A moment later, we were outside. The sun was brilliant, making me squint.

“You were right about assassins, by the way,” I admitted.

“Don’t you die on me, Kyle,” she said angrily.

“I think I’m going to puke.”

But I didn’t puke. Instead, my head slumped against her chest. She ran with me, sprinting as only our kind could while carrying a comrade. She moved faster than I could have, I was certain of that. No Olympic sprinter in history could have beaten her. She carried me to the medical tents, I knew. To the place where brainbox doctors with skinny arms of black metal would do foul things to me.

Thinking of nanites just before I lost consciousness, I wonder where mine had gone. Usually by this time, I would have felt them tickling and crawling in their millions, working on my wound to seal it up faster than my biological systems could hope to do. But I didn’t feel them. I barely felt anything at all.

I could still move my eyes, so I looked up at the sun. It was hot today, even for the tropics. My home star looked dimmer to me, however. The brightest light in the world was only a cold spark as my mind shut down.

* * *

When I woke up, Sandra was crouching on another medical table nearby. I could tell she was upsetting the nanite medical systems. Three arms of jet black whipped around her ankles. Occasionally, one of them probed at her body, touching her shapely thighs or tickling at her ankle. I knew they were trying to figure out why she was there, to discern if she was injured in some way. She slapped the three-fingered hands away as one might slap at the unwanted touch of an overly-affectionate pet.

“They want to fix you,” I said to her, slurring my words slightly.

Sandra perked up and shifted on her haunches. I reflected how often she chose that kind of pose lately. Since the Microbes had changed her, she seemed to be comfortable in positions that would be unnatural to most humans. She liked to crouch rather than sit. And when she crouched, she liked to do it up on a high platform.

“You’re alive,” she said. I heard her sigh.

“Why do you perch on things like that?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I’d asked the question. Maybe I had some extra chemicals in my bloodstream that had loosened my tongue and allowed my mind to wander more than usual.

“I can move faster from this position,” she said. “My legs are coiled under me, and I can spring into the air if I need to. When I come down, I’m running very fast.” Then she smiled at me. “Besides, it feels good.”

“Ah,” I said, nodding painfully. “That’s what I thought.”

“You don’t think I’m a weirdo, do you Kyle?” she asked suddenly.

Despite the drugs in my system and my heavy loss of blood, alarm bells went off in my mind. I knew I had to answer this question carefully. The problem was, it was hard to think. I needed to think of something clever to say, but I couldn’t.

I squinted at her in concentration until she laughed.

“It wasn’t that serious of a question,” she said.

“I—I’m glad you’re a weirdo,” I said at last. “Otherwise, I’d be dead right now.”

I was pretty sure it wasn’t the right answer, but it was the best I could do. She pouted for a moment, but quickly recovered. I gauged my answer a near-failure. Probably, I’d been given extra points for my state of body and mind. I had enough brainpower left to try to change the subject.

“They hit me with something. A shock of some kind.”

She nodded. “A metal plate. It looked like a nanite-made surface. Same kind of yellowy alloy. When your bare feet touched it, an electric shock was set off. It was a tiny EMP-blast, actually.”

“Really?” I said, nodding slightly. I winced in pain and stopped nodding. I thought then about lifting the sheet over me and checking my wounds, but I didn’t feel like it. Not yet.

“Yes, they knocked out over ninety-percent of the nanites in your system. They were normals, and must have thought you would be easy game without nanites.”

What most people didn’t realize was that once nanotized, my marines were changed internally forever. The nanites rebuilt us, and once that was done their task became one of maintenance and repair. We weren’t stronger and faster because the nanites moved our limbs for us, they essentially upgraded our bodies and then served later as tiny surgeons to patch up any injuries we might sustain. Still, knocking them out and very nearly knocking me out had been a nice opening move.

My mind coalesced slowly, but steadily. I shook my head as I thought about the assassins and how they had looked at me. They had feared me. Even after they’d pulled their little trick, they had still feared me. “I don’t think they thought I’d be weak. They were afraid of me.”

“Maybe that’s because you chopped off parts of them.”

“They were afraid right from the start.”

“What difference does it make?”

“It means they knew something about fighting one of us. They weren’t experts at killing a Star Force marine, but they had a clue as to how to go about it. That increases the odds they had inside help.”

“Oh, they definitely had help. How the hell else did they manage to rig-up a trap in our tent? Did you think of that?”

I looked at her. She was both lovely and deadly. She crouched there like a guardian angel—or a guardian gargoyle.

“Is there an investigation going on yet?” I asked.

Sandra nodded. “Barrera put himself in charge of it. He’s going through the regular base staff to see what they know. These men came in from a ship, supposedly to seek a job here on the base. They were on the first supply boat from Miami after the Macros retreated over the ocean.”

I tried to get up and Sandra blurred closer in immediate response. I looked down in surprise. Her hand was on my chest, and she was crouching over me on my medical table. Three whipping arms rose up, startled. They reached out tentatively and tapped at her calves. She ignored them.

“Don’t get up yet,” she said sweetly.

“You can’t push me around like this when I’m wearing my battle suit,” I grumbled.

“Well, you’re not wearing it now. You are weak, Kyle. We gave you a fresh dose of nanites while you were out. But they have to learn your body and grow accustomed to it.”

I thought about that. It was a strange thought. I felt a little bad that millions of tiny robots who’d been my friends, swimming in my body for years, had all died. I had new nanites now, but somehow it wasn’t the same.

“I want to know who did this,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Sandra said, “I do too.”

“Go get Barrera,” I said. “I want to talk to him.”

“I’ll call him for you,” she said. “But I’m not leaving you again.”

She kissed me then. My lips were sore for some reason, but hers were soft and insistent. I enjoyed the kiss and the tingling burn she left on my lips when it was over.