Swarm

-18-

The night sky was warm and humid. It enveloped me like a gush of hot breath. Even the breeze was warm and wet. As a native of the arid middle of California, I was unused to East Coast summers. I reveled in the natural feel of everything, however. It felt as if I’d been released from a hospital or a long cruise on a submarine.

I walked to the edge of the roof and gazed downward. People streamed away from the building. The word was out now, everyone was running from the black ship that loomed like a shadowy angel of death overhead. An old woman carried a cat under each arm and one against her breast. A mother dragged a screeching child like a rag-doll behind her. A man with a pistol in each hand ran out next, shoving aside the old woman, who lost a cat and hurried off without it, crying. The people who lived in the building ran from every exit in a steady stream.

“Hey you! Run, you crazy bastard!”

I noticed the man was in a uniform, shouting up at me. A policeman, I figured. I waved at him unconcernedly.

“He’s a fighter,” said the man with the pistols. “He’s going for it. Just forget him.”

Both men wasted no more time on me and followed their own advice… running for it. The crowd melted away down the quiet asphalt roads, vanishing behind trees and buildings. Soon, the ship would run out of victims here and have to move on. We knew from observation that when they moved, they traveled far. The ship would head in a random direction and stop hundreds of miles from this spot to hunt for fresh, unsuspecting game. It would perform its grim tests until properly ordered to stop. And apparently, the assassin hadn’t given that order yet. Probably, he didn’t know how, or even that it was required.

I had time to think about the changes that must have been wracking Earth in my absence. There were people called fighters now? People, perhaps half-crazed, who let the ships take them? Were fighters people like me, who invited the opportunity to pass the ships’ deadly tests by standing on a roof? I found that interesting. If humans were one thing, it was unpredictable. I thought about the cop’s reaction as well. He hadn’t worried about the younger guy with the pistols. He hadn’t tried to stop the ship. He hadn’t stopped running to help anyone, except to shout up at me. The coming of these roving ships, I realized, had changed a lot of our social rules very quickly. About half of the ships had found ‘command personnel’ now. That gave us a fleet hundreds strong, but it also meant that thousands of people were still failing and dying every day aboard the remaining ships. The Nano ships roamed freely over the world, collecting people as men might harvest an endless field of melons.

I noticed that I’d been here several minutes. I was just beginning to hope the last victim had won through somehow. Perhaps they made it to the bridge, I thought.

Then a body fell from the ship’s belly. Twisting, long hair fluttered like a flag as the corpse dropped. It was a young male, shirtless and athletically built. The body crashed down through the branches of an ash tree and finally thumped in a dead heap on a grassy spot near the apartment building’s front street entrance.

I looked up, taking in a big breath. Soon, as I knew it must, the arm descended. I did not flinch. I was determined. That last young man had been dead when he fell. The easy tests didn’t kill you before you were dropped out, only the combat test did that. The assassin who had taken Pierre’s ship was still at it—still killing.

Maybe he liked it that way, I thought. Maybe he hadn’t turned off the ship’s automatic testing on purpose. Maybe he was having fun.

My face was flat and expressionless as the three-fingered hand wrapped itself around my waist and hoisted me into the sky. I hoped my nanite-infested body would give this guy a surprise he hadn’t bargained on.

I rode my way up into the ship and into the first featureless cubical. I went through the tests methodically. I had to wonder if any human had ever been as calm and cold while he took the tests as I was that day. Pierre’s Nano ship was identical to mine on the inside and out. I felt right at home.

The last few tests were still outstanding when the door to the bridge opened. I wondered which one the ship thought it was giving me now, the leadership test or the aggression test? It hardly mattered. I was going to kill whoever I found there anyway, if I could.

I decided along the way I would reject the new name for the ship, as I rejected its new owner. This was the Versailles, not the Delta. I stepped onto the bridge of the Versailles, and despite my mood, I almost smiled. Pierre had been busy. The place was full of loot. There were no less than three ornate golden chairs, none of which matched. I figured all of them had once served someone as a throne. There were piles of Persian rugs, overlapping one another on the floor. The couches were red and velvet and looked insanely expensive. Paintings lined the walls, looking old and priceless. Was that a Van Gogh? I seemed to recall it from an art book I’d been forced to read in college. Even the low coffee table was made of teak and encrusted with gold doubloons.

In the middle of the room stood another surprise. It was a woman. She was young, and good-looking in a stark way. She stared at me flatly. She had a pistol in her hand. She wasn’t aiming it at me, but I got the feeling she knew how to use it. I eyed the pistol thoughtfully. It looked like a Glock 9mm to me. I knew I was full of nanites, but I had to figure bullets would still cause pain, at the very least. So far, the nanites hadn’t been concerned with my discomfort, only my survival.

“You made it through the tests?” she asked in a calm voice.

“I know them well,” I said.

She eyed me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Commander Kyle Riggs.”

“Commander of what?”

“Star Force.”

She laughed then. “Is that what you pirates call yourselves?”

“We aren’t pirates.”

She snorted and waved her hand at the evidence that surrounded her. She picked up something that looked mysteriously like a Faberge Egg and twisted her lips at me in disgust.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “we aren’t all pirates. And we do more than steal things. We’ve saved the human race twice in the last week.”

“Don’t tell the people in Argentina that.”

“If those big ships had all gotten through, humanity wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“You’re not pros,” she said. “You have no right to rule. No one appointed you. No one voted for you.”

“The ships chose us.”

“And now this one has chosen me.”

I thought about that for a second. She had a point. Hadn’t we all challenged and killed to get control of a ship?

“Who are you?” I asked. “Who sent you here?”

“I’m nobody,” she said.

“You’re an assassin. A spook. Is the whole government in on this, or just one panicked branch? Or did you decide to go for it, solo? Are you what they call a fighter?”

She smiled tightly. “Would it make any difference what I told you? Pick the one you like. Call it a lie or fact.”

I nodded, crossing my arms. That movement, as slow and harmless-looking as it was, put her on her guard.

“Someone sent you,” I said. “You don’t seem the type who is out for solo power. And it wasn’t the whole government, either. You didn’t have any backup in sight out there. No choppers. No agents. No snipers. You barely know the tests and you can’t operate the ship properly yet. I’d say you came from a panicked group of spooks somewhere.”

She shrugged. “Unfortunately, I’m tired of the conversation now. If you tell me how to turn off the ship, to stop it from bringing test subjects in here for me to kill, you will save some lives.”

“How about my own?”

She shook her head. “Can’t do it. I know the rules that well. Only one of us can leave this room alive.”

I nodded. My next surprise came when she put down her gun on the doubloon-encrusted coffee table. Was it empty?

“Not in a shooting mood today?” I asked.

“I need to save bullets if these tests keep going. And for you, I won’t need it. I’ve read up on you. A college nerd. Unarmed, and with very little combat training.”

She took a step toward me.

I smiled at her. Her face faltered, just slightly. Perhaps that wasn’t the fearful response she had been expecting.

Her first kick went low, to my knees. It might have crippled me, if I hadn’t had a new, hard surface under my skin. I think the kick stung her foot.

She hopped back, made a huffing sound and punched me. My nose stung, but not that badly. I swung back at her. She was very fast. She blocked my blow, but without taking the full force of it on her forearm. She staggered back, looking pained and surprised. My fists were harder now than they had been. Faster too.

She bounced forward again. She was muscular, and she was even stronger than she looked. She rained blows down on my face. My skin broke open in places, and it did hurt. But nothing penetrated deeper than, say, a quarter inch.

I reached for her and tried to grapple with her. I’m not sure what I wanted. I suddenly didn’t want to just kill her. Was it because she was female? Was it because Pierre had so obviously stolen everything that wasn’t nailed down to our good mother Earth? She had a point about us being pirates. The Nano ships had killed a load of people. For all I knew, one of them had murdered her family and she was here for revenge.

I wrapped my arms around her and I was too strong for her. She jabbed me with a half-dozen knees and elbows, but each blow hurt her as much as it hurt me. She might as well have been beating on that teak coffee table.

Before, when I’d had the strength of a half-assed gentleman farmer, she’d have broken away easily. But the nanites had definitely done something to me. She elbowed and twisted, but couldn’t get away from me.

She surprised me then. This time, with a sudden, passionate kiss. It worked on me. I relaxed fractionally for a few seconds, blinking at her in surprise. Was she going to bite my lips off? Worrying about that made it hard to enjoy the kiss.

She slipped an arm free, then managed to turn away from me. I’d loosened my hold on her enough to allow her partial escape. I reached to grab her again, but she was already reaching backward, toward the teak coffee table. I didn’t comprehend what she was doing until it was too late.

She snagged her 9mm pistol off the teak table with her outstretched fingers. She whipped it around, aimed it into my face and fired. Three times.

That did it. I let her go. I staggered back, putting my hands to my face. Blood and flapping shreds of skin came away. I thought maybe I was dead—but I wasn’t.

We looked at each other, both panting. I’m not sure who was more shocked. I must not have looked too good.

“You’re not human,” she said.

“You’re pretty amazing yourself.”

She looked at my face. There was disgust in her eyes, now. “There’s metal showing. You are metal underneath, where the skin is broken. Are you some kind of robot?”

“No, but I’ve been modified. You can’t beat me.”

“Your eye is blow away. It looks silvery, purple underneath. That isn’t a human eye. Drop me out of this ship. I don’t want to become like—whatever you are. I want out.”

I shook my head. “You need to give me a few answers first.”

I sprang at her. For the first time, I used my full speed. I crashed into her, scooped her up, and squeezed her arms against her body, pinning them. She fired a few more rounds, aiming down. I felt lead burn hotly on my foot. I shook the gun from her hand.

She stopped struggling when it became obvious she was helpless. We were close. Face-to-face. Sweaty and scared, she looked younger and prettier to me now.

“I’d make a bad prisoner, alien,” she said.

“I’m human, not alien.”

“No. No human could move like that. You’re a freak,” she said, “that’s worse.”

“Just talk to me.”

“I won’t become like you,” she said.

I heard a crunching sound. I looked into her face, and I knew what she had done. She had bitten into something.

“Why don’t you tell me your name, at least?” I asked.

“Esmeralda,” she whispered, and then she collapsed. I held my breath and hopped backward. I felt bad letting her slump onto the Persian rugs, to die in a heap on the floor. But I didn’t want to breathe that stuff in. I wasn’t sure the nanites knew how to fix a lungful of cyanide—or whatever it was.

I looked down at her body regretfully. Somehow, killing Pierre’s assassin hadn’t been as fulfilling as I’d hoped.

Small black arms dragged Esmeralda to an open spot on the metal decking, where there weren’t any Persian rugs. She slipped through the floor as if it were liquid and vanished. The ship had released her. To them, she was biotic waste now.

“Dammit,” I whispered to nobody.