Swarm

-23-

The conversation slowed to a buzz when I entered the bunker. A dozen eyes swiveled and locked on me. I threw back my hood and removed my goggles because everyone else had. I ignored their scrutiny and stepped up to the big tabletop computer that filled the center of the room. Everyone had circled around it.

“Welcome, Commander,” General Kerr said, without a smile or any hint of warmth.

I saluted him. Everyone stared for a moment, then the General returned my salute. I knew not everyone accepted that I’d earned my rank, much less the right to stand among them. I pretended not to notice or care.

He went back to the briefing. There, on the tabletop computer, a map of the region was displayed. Various tributaries of the massive Amazon River were all around us. In between the squiggly lines representing the river were areas of bright green, which I felt certain represented millions of trees. We were a blue hash mark to the north. A dozen other blue marks representing troop concentrations were strung along the line in front of several hundred advancing red dots. As I watched, the red dots shifted a pixel or so north about once a minute.

In between the Macros and us was a tight line of yellow hazard symbols. I didn’t have to ask what they were.

As we watched, I saw the Macros were even now passing over some of the yellow hazards. I fully expected them to poof and thought it odd we hadn’t yet buttoned up our suits. But the line kept marching, and the bombs sat idle.

“Any questions?” asked the General at length. There were none. “How about you, Commander Riggs?”

I looked up from the battle screen. “Just one,” I said. “Why don’t we smoke the Macros now? I count three that have passed over the mines.”

He smiled at me without friendliness or amusement. “We want a few on our side of the firewall before we light them up. Do you approve?”

I shrugged. “It’s your show, sir.”

“Very good. Well, as you say, we are about to ‘smoke them’ now. Hard to believe they are churning through this dense growth at close to thirty miles an hour, isn’t it? Just goes to show you what having huge metal legs will do for you. They can walk through jungle like a man pushing through a dense cornfield. Any more questions?”

I raised my hand again. The General gave me a nod.

“How are we going to catch up with them if they are running around so fast, sir?” I asked.

He gave me another indulgent smile, as if I was eight years old. “Don’t worry. They will come right to us. And once they engage, they won’t leave targets alive. They’ll stay on top of us until every one of us is dead, or they are.”

“I take it you’ve fought with them before, sir?”

“Yes, my last command was part of the rapid-deployment force in Argentina. We were among the first to encounter the enemy directly.”

“Glad you made it out, General Kerr.”

“Very few of us did.”

“But I have seen the Macros retreat, sir. It is possible. I’ve fought and destroyed four of their ships in orbit. At the end, they did try to back out.”

All of them were looking at me now. I wasn’t smiling. Neither was anyone else.

“I’ll take that under consideration. I have to admit, we’ve never really hurt them enough to make them retreat down here.”

I nodded, satisfied. A klaxon went off then, alerting us to take cover. Everyone moved to a wall and braced themselves. We put on our headgear and stood ready.

First, the flash of light hit us. That came before the rest of it. Even though we were in a sealed bunker the light seeped in somehow. Camera hookups went white as well, adding to the effect. The light of a million suns flared up on the surface of the Earth. I wondered how long it had been since we’d done that—lit one off at ground level on Earth.

It wasn’t long until another flash loomed up, then a third and a fourth. Then the initial cracking sound hit us, rolling over the camp. We were too far out for a pressure wave. Too far away to feel the blast itself. But we were in range of the gusting winds.

More flashes. More rolling thunderclaps. The walls shook. Each grain of sand around my boots shook individually, dancing a thousandth of an inch from the surface. Dust rolled around inside the bunker as the weight of sandbags shifted and released fractions of their contents.

Finally, the all-clear sounded. The General pin-wheeled his arms. “Out, topside everyone. Let’s have a look at what we’ve done today.”

We marched up onto the sandy soil and gaped at the sky. A dozen mushroom clouds expanded in a line to the south. No, I thought. There must be nearly twenty. I counted, and came up with nineteen, although they were beginning to overlap.

“What about fallout, sir?” asked a colonel. It was the first time I’d heard one of the other officers dare ask a question. I had gotten the idea that General Kerr didn’t really like questions.

The General huffed. “In three or four days the hot zones will be livable as long as we stay in our suits. I believe I’ve mentioned that in previous briefings.”

“Yes sir, but will the fallout come in this direction?”

“No, not unless the weather boys are complete morons. The prevailing winds are to the south in this area at every atmospheric level. And today, luckily, is no exception.”

“And what will attract the surviving Macros to us, sir?” I asked.

The General turned toward me. One of his eyes was visible through the portholes in his suit. His voice came through in a muffled manner, as if he spoke through a pillow.

“Our decoys. They are already headed down there to tease them. They’ll come back this way as soon as they get their attention. Based on past behavior, the Macros will assume whatever is buzzing around is the culprit and needs to die.”

“Decoys, sir?” I asked.

“Helicopters. A few hundred of them.”

“But the radiation, the pilots...” I said, trailing off. I had assumed when he said decoys he had meant remote-controlled aircraft. I supposed however, now that I considered it, we probably didn’t have any drone craft designed to tease huge robots into following them.

“Volunteers, Commander,” the General said sharply. “They were all volunteers. Just as every man on this beach is a volunteer, including you.”

I couldn’t but help notice he used the word were, rather than are when referring to these volunteer pilots. Perhaps it had been a slip of the tongue.

I nodded and fell quiet. Internally, I did not call myself a volunteer. I recalled having been drafted by a silent, black starship, in the middle of the night.