Extinction

“What?”

“I don’t know!” roared Crow in irritation. “Some kind of stabilizer. Didn’t you ever notice that these ships could move with wild acceleration patterns and we barely noticed? Well, now you will notice, believe me.”

I nodded, putting my hand on my chin. I hadn’t thought about it, but it made sense. I wondered how many other devices the originals had built into them that I hadn’t known to include. I’d never seen a stabilizer system, had never found it during my explorations on the Alamo. But apparently, some such apparatus had been aboard.

“So, we are flying beta versions,” I said. “Well, they are better than nothing. The brass back at NATO must be watching us in a panic. We’ve got a fleet again.”

“Yes, you did manage to make these things look frightening,” agreed Crow. “At the end of the day, I have to congratulate you, my yobbo engineer. What are we going to do with your ship, now that you have it?”

“I’m going to mass more of them and face down the Macros.”

“No sense of adventure,” he said.

“What are you going to do? Hunt for a new girlfriend on a lonely street? Is that why you want the arm so badly?”

“Pull your head in! We don’t need to do anything so drastic now. We’re famous. I should be able to get a chickie-babe to climb aboard with me now, no worries.”

I thought for a second about adventures. It had been a long time since I’d done anything other than work hard for the war effort. Maybe I should take Sandra on a little trip. It would be like old times.

Then, an idea struck me. “I know what I’m going to do, Crow. I’m going to fly out and investigate the mystery spots. When I have this ship fully outfitted, I’m going to find out how these aliens get in and out of our star system.”

— 24-

With only two months to go until the Macros were due to come and collect their tribute, I screwed up. Sandra finally figured out I meant to lead the expedition.

We’d never really discussed it before. I’d been so busy building up the new Fleet, the legion of men and mountains of equipment, she hadn’t even considered the idea I was going with them. In her mind I was in the Star Force Fleet first, not a ground-pounding marine. She knew I’d fought in the South American campaign, but that wasn’t how she thought of me. She met me as the pilot of Alamo. Now that I had a new ship, I’d returned to that role. Naturally, she’d known I had critical roles in both halves of our organization, but somehow my evasiveness on the topic of who was to command the mission had succeeded for months.

There were very few things I’d managed to keep her from learning in the course of our relationship. I was surprised on the whole that she hadn’t figured this one out sooner. Looking back, I had to wonder if she hadn’t wanted to know. Maybe she didn’t want to think about being left behind while I went off into the total unknown to wage war for the benefit of a race of alien monsters. Maybe the idea was so horrific, she couldn’t even conceive of it.

Sandra figured out the truth one sunny afternoon while we talked about Crow and the Fleet. She asked me since he was commanding the Fleet and I was commanding the Marines, then who would be commanding the legion we were so busily training?

I hesitated. That killed me, I think. Before, I’d glibly deflected her. I’d said things like who knows? Or Robinson is a good man. Or sometimes even some Pentagon type, I suppose. But this time, I didn’t blurt out an easy lie. Probably, it was because the day of reckoning was so near. It seemed wrong somehow to keep such a big secret from her. I knew that ignorance was bliss-but at what point did the sin of omission become a lie?

Sandra stared at me. I knew, watching her eyes search mine, that I had already blown it. If I tried a lie now, she would probe more deeply, suspiciously. I would be forced to either tell her the truth, or attempt an outright lie. I didn’t have the heart for either, so I dropped my eyes and said nothing.

“What is it?” she asked. “You-you don’t think you’re going with them, do you?”

Suddenly, her hand fell on my wrist. She squeezed. If it hadn’t been for the nanites in my flesh, her claw- like grip might have been painful.

“I’m commanding the mission,” I said evenly, raising my head back up and looking her in the eye.

Sandra released me and fell back against the couch we shared, thumping her shoulders into the cushions. She made an exasperated sound.

“This is about the kid-thing, isn’t it?” she demanded suddenly.

I blinked. “Huh?”

“If you need to take a break from me, if you really are all messed-up in the head about your own lost kids, then just tell me now. We don’t have to do this, Kyle. We really don’t.”

She was angry. I could tell that. I couldn’t figure out the rest of what she was saying. It didn’t make any sense to me. I didn’t respond, figuring that was the safest move.

“You weren’t even going to say anything, were you?” she demanded. She got up off the couch by sliding away, throwing her arms high so as to keep as far out of reach as possible. I made no attempt to grab her. She walked around our living room with quick, pissed-off steps. Her arms were crossed; her head was down, her lips pouted. Her long hair hung around her face like a hood.

“Of course I was going to tell you eventually,” I managed to get out.

“No. No you weren’t. You were just going to vanish one day. The way you did the last time the Macros came. You almost went off to the stars that day, too. You remember? You have some kind of fantasy about leaving me, don’t you?”

I wondered if this was it. I wondered if the proverbial professor had been wise beyond all imagining. I told myself it wasn’t fair, it had been less than a year. I deserved at least another six months. Had I miscalculated the beauty-to-age ratio? Damn.

“I don’t want you to leave me, Sandra,” I said.

“Then why the hell are you leaving me?” she demanded.

“Because I have to,” I said. “I set this up. I can’t send thousands of guys off to die on a distant rock after I negotiated the deal. What if they never come back? How could I live with myself?”

She stared at me. “It’s not about the kid-thing?”

“No, Sandra. Really, it’s not.”

“When did you decide to go?”

“About an hour after I made the deal with the Macros.”

Again, I’d been overly-truthful. She huffed and almost slapped me. I saw her hand coming up, and I flinched. I’m not sure why. Her slaps never hurt. I supposed it was reflex.

“You didn’t tell me all this time?”

“Are you happier now that you know?” I asked.

Sandra breathed very hard for a while. Her lower jaw jutted out, showing teeth, while she paced around the room. Her hair had somehow become tousled. “I’m not going to let you go without me,” she said.

“You don’t have any choice,” I said gently.

She walked out then, and slammed the door behind her. The walls weren’t terribly thick, and the window rattled.

I sighed and went to the kitchen to get myself a beer. I thought about the proverbial professor and his ratios. If the old bastard was still alive somewhere, I wanted to strangle him in his sleep.

Several hours later I was back on the couch. Things were fuzzier now. I’d formed a pyramid with the cans I’d drained. The last one-number ten, I think it was-wouldn’t sit right on top of the others. It kept crashing down. Somehow, this seemed funny to me. I picked it up again and tried to stack them all neatly.