you on a beach.”
“That sounds perfect.”
“I can’t today, however. I have to set things up. I have to shore up our defenses.”
“Didn’t we win? I’ve been listening to the radio-it works again. They say it was all a big mistake.”
“They are right about that,” I said. “Kerr tells me we won. Should I take his word for that?”
She tore her eyes from the rolling seas and looked at me seriously. “Hell no.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So the first thing I’m going to do is build and set up more laser turrets. A lot more of them.”
She nodded. “You’re right. And after that?”
“After that, I’ll reset the machines to build new forces.”
“What kind of forces?”
“The kind that will keep the Macros from destroying us when they come back.”
She smiled. “It’s hard to argue with those goals. Can we vacation after that?”
“Yes. I think so.”
She leaned her head against my shoulder. The touch was so light, it felt as if a butterfly hand landed there. I thought about that, how light her touches were now that I’d been nanotized. They were maddening, teasing.
“I can wait that long,” she said.
“I didn’t say I would never take breaks.”
She smiled up at me and nodded. I knew, if the guys hadn’t been staring, she would have jumped on me. Her hair was long these days, and the wind coming in from the sea made it dance and stream in dark lines around her face. I managed to get her to the mess hall, where men were already at work cleaning up. Our regular staff had fled, so we would have to make do with slop made by our fellow marines for now. I left her there, promising to return when I could, and went back to check on the situation in the command center.
Barrera was awake now, but he didn’t look happy. His face was a rictus of pain. We’d given him a shot of nanites-not the full treatment, just an emergency injection. I felt for him, the nanites were sewing up flesh in a thousand spots at once. I’d felt those ant-like, prickling sensations on many occasions.
“This is what the nanites feel like?” he managed to hiss out between his teeth.
“Yeah. Sort of burns, doesn’t it?”
“You could say that. How long does it last?”
“A few hours. Better than three weeks of healing up. You’ll be combat ready very soon.”
“Better for whom?”
I regarded him. “Barrera, have I told you my new policy.”
His eyes, squinting almost shut, slid to regard me. I saw a gash in his cheek gleam with a single flash of light. It seemed like it was full of mercury, or hot solder. The liquid metal rippled inside the wound.
“What policy?” he grunted out.
“About officers being required to undergo the full nanite treatment.”
“More of this joy, eh?”
I nodded. “Exactly. But not so itchy-burny. More like they are tearing your guts out, rebuilding them, and stuffing them back in.”
He nodded. “Do I have to do it now?”
“Why not get it over with? What are you saving yourself for, man?”
He managed a grin, but it was little more than a slit revealing his teeth. “Yes sir. Could someone help me to the chair?”
I waved a marine forward. It was a corporal, and he looked sympathetic.
“If you feel the urge to rip at something, try your clothes or your thighs,” I told him. “People tell me you can satisfy the need and do much less damage that way.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind, sir,” said Barrera as the corporal half-walked, half-carried him out the door.
Barrera and Crow passed each other at the entrance to the command center. Crow swaggered as he came in, hands on his hips. “We kicked their asses, as you Yanks love to say.”
“We certainly did, sir. Too bad it took us so long to figure out we’d won. We could have killed fewer men in the process.”
Crow waved away my negative words as if they stunk up the air. “Never mind that. She’ll be right, mate. Now, what did you get out of that smug prick Kerr?”
I told him about the arrangements, and was able to convince him we needed to play along with the fictional cover-story.
“Such a devilish web of lies we weave, eh, Kyle?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir.”
Crow grinned suddenly, expectantly. He clapped his hands together. “Okay, so we are back in business. Now, how soon can you crank out a fleet for me?”
— 21-
Nearly two months later I finally had Andros Island ringed with automated beam turrets. We still had no ships in the sky, but we felt secure.
Sandra complained bitterly about the turrets, saying they were ‘creepy’. They never stopped moving, it seemed, and she found this disturbing.
“Have you watched those damned things?” she asked me. “They are always tracking someone or something. It’s as if they examine everyone, thinking about us. Every seabird that hops along in the surf, every fluttering palm frond. If no one is around, they scan the skies and look at the waves or the clouds as if studying the movements.”
“They are building their neural nets,” I told her.
“They are freaky.”
“Yes, but only because they are machines. If a bird in a tree watched you that way, you wouldn’t feel disturbed.”
“I would if the bird could kill me at any moment.”
I had to give her that one. I shrugged. “They are still young. They are like kids, trying to figure the world out around them. They do learn, but in a more limited way. They are classifying everything around them as normal and safe.”
“Why are they always checking me out then?”
I grinned. “Obviously, they are good judges of character.”
“Maybe they are better at it than I am.”
I thought I might have been insulted, but I went on unconcernedly. “When they see something new, they are very curious about it. They want to know if you are a good, safe thing, or a bad dangerous thing. They have already figured out the trees and the birds. You are something new.”
“When I walk near, they aim their big guns at me and I know what they are thinking.”
“What’s that?” I asked, bemused.
“They are thinking about killing me every second. I can
I shrugged. “I guess we will have to get used to them.”
“What if they get smarter, Kyle? Did you ever think about that? What if they talk to each other somehow, and get ideas? What if one of them, just one of them, decides to go crazy and starts burning down everyone in sight? What will you do then?”
I tried to let the air out of my lungs without sighing. “I know they are disturbing, Sandra. What do you want me to do about it? We have to keep the governments of the world at bay. They won’t try to invade again as long as we have them outgunned.”
She pouted and walked around my office, messing with things. She picked up all my pens, including the
