Extinction

-14-

It was just before midnight and the forest was full of peeping creatures. Things buzzed, rustled and occasionally thrashed about in the dark trees. I’m a trusting soul, so I didn’t take along my reactor and beam projector. I did have a 9mm pistol at my hip and I wore my combat suit, with the full vest underneath. Kevlar and nanites would slow down anything but a headshot, I figured.

Kerr stood in the dark, smoking. I’d never seen him smoke before, but he’d always seemed like he should have had a cigar. I was mildly surprised to see he had a pipe in his mouth. The bowl glimmered orange and although the aromatic smoke was invisible in the night, I could smell it.

“You’ve already let me in too close, you know that, don’t you Riggs?” General Kerr asked me.

“Yeah, I know that.”

“You are too far from your defensive line. My boys—if they were hiding in those trees over there, for instance—they could pick you off right now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And I know I could kill you with my bare hands in less than one second.”

Kerr gave me a hard look. “That wouldn’t fix your situation.”

“Neither would your sniper.”

Kerr nodded. “Okay, Riggs. You’ve gotten stubborn about this situation. I understand that.” He pointed around at the broken Bradleys. His finger was sweeping and accusatory. “Your stubbornness killed a lot of fine men here, Colonel.”

“I didn’t order the attack.”

He worked on his pipe again for the better part of a minute. He had a lighter that flashed a metallic gold when he flicked it into life. I almost asked him why he preferred a pipe. It seemed like a lot of trouble to have to relight it all the time. But I just stood there, waiting and wondering if his pipe was some kind of signal to a sniper. I guess I wasn’t in the mood for pointless chit-chat.

“Is that why you are here, General?” I asked finally. “To smoke and threaten me?”

“Did you ever figure anything new out about the Blues, Riggs?”

“Since the last time we talked?”

“Aren’t you curious about them? We’ve come up with another theory as to why they can’t leave their world.”

I blinked at him in the darkness. He waited. I let him wait a few long seconds. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Okay. Tell me your theory.”

“They’re all dead. Extinct. That’s why their robots are running around, doing mad, pointless things.”

I thought about it for a few seconds. Finally, I nodded. “You could be right.”

“My nerds give that answer the highest probability,” Kerr said. “But we can’t really know the truth. Anyway, I’m here to tell you one thing: This power-struggle is over. It’s finished—as of right now. You can keep your weapons and maybe even the island. No one really cares. All you have to do is hand over the camp with the alien machines intact and walk out of here. This is your last chance, your last warning.”

I looked at him appraisingly, an outline in the darkness. He didn’t have the manner of a man who was bluffing. I’d never seen him bluff about anything. “What are you going to do?” I asked. “Nuke us?”

Kerr tilted his head to one side, as if considering it. “There are options. We could use an EMP blast. Did you think of that?”

“Interesting, but we barely use our communication systems now.”

The General made a snorting sound. “Think bigger, Kyle. I’m not talking about a few kilowatts. I’m talking about an electronics-frying tsunami.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it would work, sir. My reactors and beam projectors can take that sort thing.”

“Ah, but can your nanites?”

I startled and looked at him. I hadn’t thought about that. The nanites had to have circuitry in there somewhere. Would they simply fall dead by the billions, like a plague of locusts stricken down by the hand of God?

“Yes, the nanites… poor little buggers,” Kerr said.

“Hard to deliver in real terms,” I said dismissively, simulating a lack of concern I didn’t feel.

“We’ve tested it. What will your men do when they can’t lift their own beamers? They’ll be flat on their backs with those reactors pulling them down, like beached turtles. And what will your smart turrets do when their brainboxes shut down?”

I narrowed my eyes and stared back at him. “You would have done it already if you thought you could get away with it. There’s something you’re afraid of,” I said. Then I snapped my fingers. “The factories. You don’t want to wreck them. You have no idea if they would be destroyed or not.”

General Kerr sighed like an overindulgent father. “It doesn’t matter, Kyle. We are going to try it soon—or something worse.”

“What’s worse?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

“Nukes? Pointless. Why destroy the factories?”

Kerr shook his head slowly. “Not all such weapons have to destroy hardware, Kyle.”

I thought, suddenly, that I knew what he was getting at. I felt a tickle of sweat. I had to stop myself from reaching up to scratch my head. “Neutron bombs?” I asked. “I thought we outlawed those things in the seventies.”

“We outlaw a lot of things, Riggs. Not every law is followed to the letter.”

I thought about it, and the more I did the less I liked the idea. A neutron weapon would burn us all to death with radiation. The equipment would be left intact. Nothing in the region would survive, not even those big tropical cockroaches that seemed to crawl into everyone’s shed at night.

“We need a little more time, Kerr,” I said.

“For what? Why would I give you any more time? The last time I did that, you built a bunch of laser turrets and smoked my Bradleys.”

“That was self-defense.”

Kerr swept all the words away with his hand. He took a step toward me, then a second. His nose was only six inches from mine. “You listen to me, Riggs. You don’t have any more time. The only reason you’re still breathing is because people at the top have to give the final order, and they are still screwing around. The assets are in place. Do you understand me?”

I nodded. He turned around and left me standing there. He didn’t say goodbye or shake my hand. Silently, he headed back to his chopper. I would have killed him, if I’d thought it would do any good. But I knew it wouldn’t.

I walked back to camp and began a long night of hard work. By two a. m., the first hovertank took shape. I had a new idea by then. I decided to camouflage them. I made them look like boats. Big ones.

It was easier to do than it sounds. Nanites, when you have enough of them, are like smart, liquid metal. They can be told to generate any reasonable structure. They can balloon and puff themselves into any shape you describe to them, just as I’d made a toilet out of them back on the Alamo. Now, however, instead of a toilet, I built a hull in the shape of a blocky patrol boat. Inside were all the weapons and my men, twenty men in each vessel and another man to drive it and operate the gun. The brainboxes were so new, so young and inexperienced, they needed a human to call the shots for them—literally.

By four a.m., I had eleven of these bloated vehicles. With the extra weight, they would barely be able to skim over the waves, but Fourteen assured me they would be able to move. I contacted Kerr again, and he answered instantly. I smiled, they had been watching us and sweating it. I could almost hear their thoughts. What the hell is that crazy bastard Riggs up to now?

“Riggs? What the hell have you been building?” Kerr asked.

“Never seen a troop-carrier before? I’m pulling out. Tell your people to hold their fire—if you really have any people out there.”

“Okay,” said Kerr. “That’s great news. And just in time, too.”

“You have to give me another hour or so to clear out.”

“Don’t think you can load those factories onto your metal zeppelins, or whatever they are.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, General. The factories are too big, anyway. I’m sure your spycams have relayed the info back to your nerds for analysis. What did they tell you?”

Kerr hesitated. “That you can’t carry much more than your troops and some equipment. That even if you did steal a machine or two, you would have nothing to supply it with.”

“Exactly. So stop worrying. Riggs out.”

I turned to Sandra and Crow, who were both looking at me with big, freaked-out eyes.

“That should hold him for a few hours,” I said. “When he sees us glide out of here over the water, he’ll count it as a win.”

“Won’t they come in and take over the camp?” asked Crow. “They will have clearly won at that point.”

I smiled grimly. “I never said we were turning off the turrets.”