“Thank you, sir.”
The staffers looked annoyed, but dropped it. The meeting went on and became terminally dull before it finally, blissfully, ended.
-39-
Peace went on until I began to think it was permanent. Every morning as I ate breakfast, I thought of the Macros out there behind Venus with butterflies in my stomach. Were they still there? Were they building something to destroy our world forever?
But a man can only worry for so long. It was on the very first day I’d forgotten to think of them at breakfast, that they came back. It was as if they had waited until that weak moment.
It had been a fine week. Sandra and I were talking seriously. We might even get married. Something about that had lifted the cloud that had dampened my life and heart since the kids had died. Perhaps, I thought, there was still time to grab something good from life before it was over—before it ended one way or another.
Then the message came. It came in the form of a long black arm. It popped the bay window of our modular home, which I’d set up on Mangrove Cay some miles to the south of the big base on Andros itself. Some of the other Marine officers lived in the area. It was a pleasant, secluded place. We had a nice hill and an even nicer view of the Caribbean. Geckos came out in droves to hug the banana trees on warm, sunny days. There are a lot of warm, sunny days in the Caribbean, and today was no exception.
The arm, however, was unusual. I jumped up and my first instinct was to avoid those three, thick, cable-like fingers.
Alamo? Is that you?
I am Alamo.
Are you reaching in my window for me?
Yes.
So, I let the ship take me. The glass scratched a line down my back, but I knew the nanites would fix the cut quickly.
Why are you picking me up, Alamo?
You are command personnel.
Are there ships attacking Earth?
Yes.
That was all I needed to know. I had known it, really, the moment the arm had shown up. The ship had not been set to give me a verbal warning. But in its inner programming it clearly knew it needed its captain before it launched itself up with suicidal eagerness to face the enemy.
I thought of Sandra as I sailed into the sky and was swallowed by my ship. I hadn’t kissed her good-bye. I knew without asking that my ship wouldn’t let me take the time to go back and kiss her. We’d made love that morning, and it had been very pleasant. I thought that perhaps this was the best way. If I was never to return, her last memory of me could be one of peace and happiness. Wasn’t that better than a tearful good-bye?
I scrambled to my command chair. Things were much more organized aboard the Alamo these days. I had chairs that didn’t roll around the place. There were straps and harnesses that didn’t have fingers on them. There was a range of proper communications and visual equipment, too. We’d melded our own technology with that of the Nanos as effectively as we could. Large flat screens were attached to the walls in spots, showing the world outside and whatever the military networks saw fit to send me. We still used the metallic bumps on the walls, as they couldn’t break and the Nanos had better range with their sensory equipment than we did. We still didn’t quite understand how they did that, but we were more than happy to make use of the capability.
“Open channel to the Snapper.”
Channel open.
“Crow?”
“Kyle? What do you know about this?”
“I was hoping you knew something, sir.”
“No. The regular military didn’t give us any warning. All of our ships just launched themselves. We are heading out toward the sun, though. I know that much.”
Sunward, I thought. One of the few directions in space that meant anything. “Toward Venus, in other words? So the Macros are finally making their move?”
“Looks that way.”
“Ship count?”
“We total just under eight hundred strong now, including the new ones you built on Andros.”
I’d spent some time building a handful of new ships. They weren’t really the direction I wanted to go, however. If only we had been allowed the time, we have could build bigger fabrication units and bigger weapons systems. We certainly didn’t need more of these small science vessels. We needed a ship meant for war. One that bristled with weaponry. But that would take years.
“If you don’t have anything special for me,” said Crow, “I’m out.”
“I’ve got something.”
“Talk to me.”
“We can try to order our ships to maintain a set distance from the enemy. Rather than wading right in, I mean.”
“What the hell for?” he asked.
“There will be a lot of them this time. We need everyone massed up into a single swarm to fight together.”
“Or to die together. Never mind that, sorry. Good idea.”
“Admiral? Good luck, Jack.”
“You too, Kyle.”
He broke the connection. Our ships lifted us up, out of the atmosphere. Soon, I was pressed back in my seat only by the mild gee-forces of acceleration, not by Earth’s gravity. I looked around the bridge. I missed Sandra. Maybe I should have tried to grab her out of the shower. I smiled at the idea of her, naked and angry, being dragged up to the ship. It would have been like old times. At least, we could have died together.
Kyle’s voice gave the commands I’d suggested. We ordered our ships to approach the enemy, but stay at a defined maximum weapons distance from them. The ships had allowed this order. They wouldn’t allow us to run from the enemy, but they would let us stand in formation if properly coerced.
Then the enemy appeared on my walls, and I lost all hope. There were hundreds of them. Maybe even a thousand. I didn’t bother to ask the Alamo for an exact count. It didn’t matter.
I took a deep breath and looked at their approaching formation with my hand over my mouth. What could we do? Attack one flank? Take a few with us, out of spite?
They came on slowly in two ranks. The first rank was of ships I’d never seen before. They seemed triangular in shape. They were smaller than the big Macro ships we’d seen before, but larger than our ships. I figured they were cruisers of some kind. Ship-to-ship killers. Something like the ships I had wanted to build, if I had been allowed the time to do so. The second rank was made up of the big, fat, slow ships, exactly like the one that had dropped invaders on our world months ago. There were about twenty of these.
I understood better now, looking at them. During the first attacks they had sent only invasion ships. When we had destroyed the first ship, they had sent three more. We had managed to destroy two of those and the third had gotten through to drop its deadly payload of self-replicating machines on Earth. When we repelled the invasion, they had changed their tactics.
This time we faced their true battle fleet. This time, we were seeing the strength the Macros had never shown us before. At least, I thought grimly, it was clear that we’d gained their respect, if not their mercy.
It was going to be a matter of selling our lives dearly. We could not hope to win. The best we could do for humanity was spit in this enemy’s eye. We would bite and kick as they gunned us down. I could only hope the Macro’s were capable of feeling pain at a loss.
Crow hailed me again. “Any bright ideas, mate?”
“Stand off. Try to talk to them. When they come in, let’s ignore the combat ships up front and try to take out the invasion fleet. If we can do it, maybe humanity will live another year.”