“Listen Kyle,” she told me seriously. “We need to talk. I can tell you are devastated, but you are still thinking reasonably clearly. That’s exactly why the ship made you into a commander. That’s why you are leading this pack of survivors.”
“No need for a pep-talk.”
“Yes, yes there is a need for one,” she insisted. “We need you. Earth needs you. Sure, you’ve suffered. Lots of people have. I died, for God’s sake. But this is bigger than us. We have to do our best, because we are everything now. We are all that our world has up here to protect her. Everyone might die if we don’t do it right.”
I sighed. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you are doing a lousy job of it.”
She laughed. I didn’t laugh with her, but I knew she was right.
But still, in my own mind, I had a different set of goals. I wasn’t really in this to save Earth. I wanted to find out what was going on, who was pulling the strings. I wanted to tear them up. Maybe it would take years. Maybe I would die trying. But I was going to get some revenge if I could, even if it was on a machine that didn’t feel anything and didn’t care as I destroyed it. Screw them all, that was what I was thinking.
I was no longer angry with the Alamo. It was a tool. I might as well be angry with the fence pole that speared my wife. I wanted to find the creatures who built this ship.
If nothing else, my hunger for revenge would keep me going.
11
“Riggs? Commander Riggs, are you there?”
“Yes Jack, go ahead.”
“Give me a break and call me Commodore at least when other people are listening, okay Commander?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“I’ve got some new people now. A whole new crop of them. Take a look at the screen you invented.”
I looked at it, and saw a dozen or more new golden beetles crawling around on the surface of the Earth. You could tell the new recruits from the old hands, they tended to roam around randomly.
“I see them. Are they joining up?”
“Yes. It’s going very well. There are only a few rogues left. After that last battle, people began seeing things my way. All the ships with human commanders aboard went up to meet the enemy, whether they wanted to or not. Watching other ships blow up did a great deal of the convincing for me. They know now they can’t hang back and hide. The screen you came up with helps my recruiting efforts as well. Once I tell them how to show the entire tactical system on their living room walls, they get the picture, literally. I tell them to color us green and themselves a chicken-white. They stand out and look lonely. That gets most of the bloody dags to join up immediately.” Crow broke off, erupting into a gust of laughter.
Somehow I found him less than amusing. “Commodore? I’ve got another idea for you.”
I told him about the Nanos and the Macros. I told him the Macros were coming back, and they wanted raw materials.
“That’s not good. I tried talking to them, you know, the guys in the big red ship. I had several of my lieutenants on it, trying to establish contact. They ignored us completely.”
“Maybe they will listen now that we blew up one of their ships.”
“Let’s hope.”
“I’ve got a new idea, Jack-ah, Commodore.”
“Let’s hear it.”
I described to him another screen, a predictive screen, which we could lay out on the ceiling or the floor of the bridge. If we could show a plan visually, such as how each ship should position itself, everyone would have a much easier time following orders and acting in coordination. It wouldn’t just show where ships were, but rather where we would like them to be.
“That’s a fantastic idea. Let’s set it up now and test it.”
After an hour or so of work, we had a working system. The ceiling worked best. We tried the floor, but Crow complained that furniture kept getting in the way. I gathered that Crow had done a lot of pirating. He had by his own admission a morass of carpets and things strewn over his floor. In the end we set ourselves up in comfortable chairs and gazed up at the planning screen on the ceiling. We found it worked well, we could easily talk and plan strategies. We could even give our ships formations to fight in.
“I’m impressed again, Commander. We make a great team. I’ll relay this to everyone else and next time we’ll be flying in organized squadrons,” Crow said, but then he hesitated. “Do you really think there will be a next time? Soon, I mean? Your ship suggested they would be back, but it might not know the difference between a day, a year, or a century.”
“I think the ship means soon, sir. We have to be vigilant. Logically, it makes sense to me that the threat is real and ongoing. If the Nanos are trying to protect Earth-in their own special way-they’ve overdone it at this point. I mean, just one enemy ship came to the party? We fought with clueless commanders and only forty-odd ships and won easily. Why then, if that was the end of it, did the Nanos send over seven hundred vessels here?”
“I don’t like it,” said Crow. “But you’re right, we have to assume they will be back for more soon, and in strength. And we have to assume we are in an all-out war.”
“We need to alert the governments of Earth to the situation,” I said. “They probably saw the battle. They have to be tracking us. They must do what they can to mobilize and protect themselves.”
“So far, with humanity’s primitive, homegrown tech, they can’t do much.”
“Has any nation tried to nuke one of these ships yet? That would probably do the trick.”
“Not to my knowledge. But you’ve got a point there. We should talk to them before they get desperate. I’ll put another officer on it, I’ve got just the guy, his name is Pierre and he could sweet-talk anyone out of their wallets. He’s an ex-confidence trickster. He’s got a silver tongue.”
“An ex-con man?” I asked doubtfully. Did we really want a criminal as our representative to governments? I supposed plenty of the world’s diplomats came under that description, but still…
“Well, maybe not so ex,” Crow went on. “Pierre’s been living off internet scams for years, I gather. He always kept a loaded weapon with him, expecting some mark to hunt him down for revenge. That’s what saved him when the Nano ship grabbed him.”
“I see. Well, if he’s the best we have for now.”
“You might do well as a liaison,” said Crow, “if that’s what you are thinking. I know that. But you can’t do everything. I need you focused on figuring out these ships and what we can do with them.”
“Agreed.”
“Commodore Crow?” asked Sandra suddenly.
“Who’s that?”
“My name is Alessandra, but people call me Sandra.”
“Oh indeed? How old are you, Sandra?”
“Twenty-six.”
“My estimation of your abilities grows ever larger, Riggs. You have to tell me, how did you manage to smuggle one of your students aboard your ship? Everyone that I’ve brought aboard was immediately subjected to deadly tests.”
I explained that she failed the tests, but was brought back aboard afterward. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I supposed the ship was ignoring her and tolerating her because she was a failed applicant for command. She was a loophole. She wasn’t to be tested, because she had already failed the tests. She wasn’t hostile, so she wasn’t to be killed. She had already been kicked out once, so there was no urgency to kick her out again. I’m sure that the Nanos would have preferred to drop her somewhere as biotic waste, but were held in check by my orders.
“Well done,” said Crow. He paused, and I got the feeling his mind was racing with ideas. “So,” he continued thoughtfully, “to get someone aboard with you, they have to go through at least one of the tests. Maybe… What if
