Extinction

-32-

I almost puked. The guilt welled up in me, the horror of knowing I’d screwed up monumentally—even if unintentionally. As I raced back to my ship I wondered if drivers felt this way when they plowed into a group of school kids in a crosswalk.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. The Macros had followed me back through the ring. They’d wanted to come scout our system, even as we’d done to theirs. It was a response that was almost human, and I was sure that I’d awakened that response. What was the old adage about letting sleeping dogs lie?

They’d followed me back through, decided to check out their new ally Earth, and things had gone badly. The Chinese had made the next mistake—I couldn’t shoulder all the blame for that one. They’d panicked. They’d seen four Macros cruising over their nation in orbit, and had taken a poke at them.

Obviously, they’d developed new weapons. Of course they had. Every nation on Earth with half a military was madly developing space-warfare capabilities. They didn’t have fusion technology or nanites, but they had old-fashioned electronic computers, ballistic know-how and nuclear warheads. They’d become paranoid when the Macros came into orbit over them, not wanting to become the next South American wasteland. They’d fired—and to their credit, they had managed to take out one of the four Macro ships.

But at tremendous cost. The three remaining Macro ships now sat over their patch of land and had by all reports unloaded nearly a hundred nuclear strikes. They had not targeted population centers, but had wreaked their cold revenge solely upon military installations. Still, it was China. There were people everywhere, and fallout traveled. The casualties were already in the millions and millions more would die in the weeks ahead due to radiation and general chaos. Those predictions only held if the bombardment stopped now, however.

I raced into the ship in a nanite-charged blur of motion. Sandra followed me and climbed into her seat, strapping in. I ordered Socorro to lift off before either one of us had finished fooling with our buckles.

Sandra looked at me, eyes dark with worry. “What happened?” she asked, her voice small.

I told her about China in a few short, clipped sentences.

“It’s not your fault, Kyle,” she told me.

I thought she might be crying, but I didn’t look at her. My entire face hurt as my muscles twitched and bulged.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“We go to the factories first. We need a few things.”

We flew to our not-so-secret base and I took a quick stock of things. There was a spare engine ready. I also cannabilized a new sensor system and a communications module. With a human vehicle, the repairs would have taken days to complete. Since each Nano ship was essentially made up of billions of workers, I was able to load the systems into a hold and immediately take off. The ship would do the rest, placing the systems, molding itself around them, and getting them operational. We were headed for China within fifteen minutes.

I spent the time getting briefed by Kerr on the China situation and talking to Crow about our fleet strength. I also uploaded all my data files and vid clips to Kerr’s spook outfit. He had plenty of brains at his end who could analyze it all better than I could.

“I decided against flying our fledgling fleet up against the Macros when they first arrived,” said Crow, sounding apologetic on the channel. Even he could feel shame when millions of people he’d sworn to protect died.

“Did you fly up there at all?” I asked.

He hesitated. “No. I kept the fleet grounded.”

“You probably did the right thing,” I said. “Maybe for the wrong reasons, but the right thing, none the less.”

“Talk to me,” he said.

“We have a new protocol worked out with the Macros. Anything that fires on either side is immediately reclassified as a rogue.”

“So, the Chinese forces are rogue now?”

“Yes. And had you been there, you would have been required to fire upon them with the Macros, defending their ships.”

“I would never have ordered that!”

“Of course not. But then, you would be in violation of our treaty with them. That might have broken the deal and the war would have restarted.”

“What’s the difference?” interjected Sandra. “If they are killing millions of us anyway, we might as well be at war.”

“We are in a very delicate situation,” said Crow, answering her before I could. “The Macros have the strength to crush us at will. We can’t let this alliance crumble, even if it is a sham.”

“So why are we flying up there Kyle? What are you going to do?”

I didn’t respond for a while. “Whatever we have to,” I said at last.

Crow and the others gathered behind my ship. There were exactly twenty-nine of us altogether. “Give me operational control Crow,” I said over our private channel.

“You know what the bloody hell you are doing this time, Riggs?”

“I don’t have time to talk you into anything. Every minute we wait, people are dying. Do you have a plan?” I asked him. “Tell me how to save China.”

“I have no damned idea, you know that.”

“Then give me operational command and shut up.”

It took him a few more seconds, then he grumbled and ordered everyone to follow my orders for the duration of the engagement over China.

We reached orbit in minutes and glided up over the Atlantic, then Africa and the Mideast. We became weightless for a time, drifting in freefall. I hadn’t had time to replace our cameras, but the one we’d used to guide us home still worked. I had it zoom in on the Far East.

“Look,” I said to Sandra.

She sucked in her breath. Night had just fallen over Eastern Asia. The normal lighting in the cities was missing. The nation was dark, except for dozens of hot spots. Trailing with the winds, long plumes of smoke and ash drifted across the continent into the sunlit world of Siberia, Mongolia and Nepal.

“It looks like volcanoes have risen up,” she said. “We can’t live with these machines slaughtering us whenever they feel like it, Kyle. You have to stop them.”

“I’m going to do what I can,” I said. I thought to myself I should have left her home, but I hadn’t thought of it until now. She’d been onboard the ship so long now, it seemed natural to have her along.

“Socorro, is our main battery operational?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the ship.

“Group-link all ships’ batteries. I want them to fire in concert at my order.”

“Group-link established,” Socorro said after a few seconds.

“Activate main batteries.”

We heard a humming sound. Something shifted overhead, where the ship’s sole turret was located.

“We can’t destroy three Macros with twenty-nine ships,” Sandra said.

I didn’t look at her. I didn’t think she was going to like my plan. I thought about asking her to go into our bedroom and wait there, but I knew she wouldn’t do it, so I didn’t bother.

On the forward wall, the three red contacts had appeared. They were set in up in a perfect formation. You could have drawn a flawless right triangle between them. Each ship was big—huge. They were thirty times the size of my tiny vessel. As we approached, I knew their weapons systems would be tracking us.

“Socorro, light up military targets on Earth under the Macro ships. Show them as yellow contacts.”

A hundred moving beetles appeared like freckles on the wall.

“Turn them red, Socorro,” I said. “Now, remove moving targets. I only want to see stationary vehicles and buildings.”

The screen shifted. Fully two-thirds of the contacts vanished. Those that remained were mostly tiny squares representing radar installations, barracks, communications centers and the like.

“What are you doing, Kyle?” asked Sandra in a harsh stage-whisper.

I kept my eyes on the big board in front of me. “Socorro, have all ships accepted the group-link?”

“Yes.”

“Disable their resets,” I said. “I want the group-link locked until I countermand it.”

“Permissions set.”

I eyed the targets below us. We were over China now, decelerating. So far, the Macros had not changed their formation. They remained on course, drifting over Asia. They weren’t firing missiles at the moment. Perhaps they were determining a new, juicy target. Or maybe they were manufacturing fresh missiles as fast as they could. The fact they had not yet withdrawn or moved to a new part of the globe was ominous in any case. It indicated their mission here was not yet finished.

“Socorro, invert the fleet into firing position.”

Our ships all had their turrets on top of each vessel. In order to fire directly downward, we had to be upside-down. This wasn’t a problem for the crews, however, as we were all weightless anyway and concepts such as up and down were all just a matter of perspective in space.

“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Sandra asked me in a dead voice.

“Uh, you might want to go into the other room.”

“No.”

I drew in a breath, and ordered our ships to fire on the Chinese military. Big green beams stabbed down from space and burnt away trucks, tanks, planes and hangars. Bunkers were exploded to rubble. Missile launchers, abandoned in streets and deserts, melted to slag and I imagined flared into mini-mushroom clouds as their fuel ignited.

Systematically, I disarmed China’s conventional military.