Extinction

-25-

We’d ordered a large number of pilot seats for our ships from various defense contractors. There had been mutterings amongst the earther brass, but what could they do? They’d put us back in charge of Earth’s space fleet. No one else could to build the new fleet, as we’d held onto our factories despite their coup attempt. We were still Star Force, and we had to have ships to fly, and these new birds needed seats that could hold a pilot in place.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought this situation might work out best for Earth in the long run. If any one nation had stolen the factories, would the rest of the planet freely give them the resources they needed? Probably not. They would be terrified the possessing nation would want to dominate the world. By maintaining a neutral stance, we’d gotten humanity through some tough spots. They still called us amateurs—for good reason—but we had a monopoly on Nano technology at this point and we hadn’t failed Earth yet.

The pilot seats were absolutely necessary with the lack of stabilizers. Our nanotized bodies could take more punishment than normal pilots, but it would be hard to fight my ship if I was bouncing around the bridge like a dime in a drier.

I had six more ships built by the time I was ready to go check on our alien friends. They might not like what I was doing, so I didn’t want to take off and leave no combat ships behind me. We had put fighter pilots in four of the new ships, real pros. Due to the distances involved, you couldn’t fly the craft visually, and combat took time. You often had to fly them strategically, almost as if you were a sub commander. I put a group of navy sea commanders on two of the Nano ships for this reason. It was something of an experiment to see who would outperform the other.

Crow and I had hand-chosen each of the pilots—and not only for their skills. We made sure every pilot was from a different nation. Some might call it diversity, but I called it security. It would be hard to organize an internal coup if the pilots didn’t trust or even know each other.

The day I was leaving, Crow tried to talk me out of it. This was at least his seventh attempt.

“What if you go out there and cock-up the treaty?”

“I won’t pull anyone’s tail,” I assured him. “If I see a Macro ship, I’ll run home.”

“If you must go, you should check out the spot out in the Oort cloud, not Venus. We don’t even have that location pinpointed, and you could find out where my last fleet went.”

“That’s about two thousand times farther away. I want to be back in hours, not weeks.”

“Yeah, if you are coming back at all,” Crow grumbled. “What the hell am I supposed to do with all these jarheads if you go off and feed yourself to some alien threshing machine?”

“Your concerns are touching, Admiral,” I told him.

I soon tired of Crow and politely broke the connection. I reflected on how our relationship had changed since the failed coup against us. We were equals now, with separate turf. He ran the Fleet and I ran the Marines. I didn’t take orders from him anymore, but we pretended I did in public. Our real relationship was more like a partnership—or a bad marriage with a lot of yelling involved.

I’d already told him why I had to go. We just didn’t have enough information about our enemies. I needed intelligence, and I’d built a set of spyboxes with nanotech. These systems were essentially a brainbox attached to a passive sensor array, a small power source and a transmitter. I planned to lay a few of these out there near the system entry point, whatever it was, to watch for alien activity. I was sure similar earther systems had already been launched. I could have sent one of my new pilots, but they were unproven and I didn’t want to risk a diplomatic incident over the actions of a green scout.

There was another reason I was going myself, of course. I was burning to know what was out there. There were so many secrets in this game, and this one was just sitting there, daring for me to do something about it.

“Socorro, lift us off gently.”

“Command acknowledged.”

Damn, I thought, she sounds so much like Alamo. I’d thought about trying to get her to use a different voice, but had never gotten around to it.

“Head straight up until we exit the atmosphere.”

We glided upward at what felt like one G of acceleration, added onto Earth’s one G of gravity. I felt heavy, but not terribly uncomfortable. Soon we broke through the atmosphere and reached orbit at about a hundred miles above the surface. I’d installed cameras in my ship this time around. Not just cheap webcams, either. These were high-def with high-grade, military lenses. I’d installed an OLED screen in front of my pilot’s chair, and joysticks to direct the cameras on the outer hull of the ship.

The view was breathtaking. The Earth was a blue-white crescent, textured with clouds and landmasses. I could see the various Caribbean islands. The sun reflected blindingly from the surface of the Atlantic far below.

I smiled. I really felt like a space traveler today. Up until this moment, I’d been further out in space than any human currently in the Solar System, but I’d never seen my own world from orbit.

I checked the forward screen. The big board had a number of metallic dots crawling around, but nothing seemed out of place. I decided to check out my observatory. When I’d requisitioned the building materials from the government, there were raised eyebrows. I told them there were things I wanted to see with my own eyes out there. It was the one major extravagance I’d installed aboard my ship. I had real windows in the observatory—or rather a single thick sheet of auto-shaded, ballistic glass embedded in the floor. I was sick of imagining what space looked like outside of my ship. The observatory worked like a glass-bottomed boat, and I meant to look directly down on Earth from inside my ship.

“Socorro, give me enough acceleration toward Venus to walk properly.”

Within seconds, the ship had reoriented itself. I was thrown against the straps, then once our course was set, I felt my weight increase steadily until it was about half of normal.

I turned and tilted my head. What was that sound? I’d heard something, a thump or some shifting of material. I unstrapped and got up, annoyed. Everything should have been secure.

“Socorro, secure any loose cargo.”

“Done.”

There was another sound. What was that? I thought it came from the observatory, which I’d built adjacent to the bridge, right next to the living quarters. Had my new window out into the universe cracked already? Grunting in irritation, I walked up to the wall and touched it. The metal turned to liquid and instantly melted away.

I stepped into the observatory. The view below my feet transfixed me. The floor of the room was blindingly blue-white. The Earth rode down there, moving very slightly. We were over Canada now, as best I could tell through the clouds. I could feel the cold outside, it had already chilled the room. I’d have to make adjustments for temperature. Apparently, the skin of the ship did that automatically, but the glass floor let the exterior temperature seep inside.

“I suppose you think this is very funny,” said a voice above me.

I reacted with startled speed, crouching and jerking my head up. There she was, strapped to my ceiling. A dozen little black arms had grabbed her and pulled her up there ‘securing’ her. I smiled and relaxed.

“Brings back memories,” I said, “only this time you’re not naked.”

Sandra hissed at me. “If you ever want to have sex again,” she said, “you’ll get me off the frigging ceiling, Kyle.”

I got her down in a hurry.