Extinction

that rings.”

“Let’s suppose for a second we can build these things-and that they work,” he said. “How can so few of them carry enough men down into the tunnels?” he asked.

“We’ll puff the nanite skins up to carry every man we can. When we get to the mountain, we’ll dump the men out and let them follow the drill-tanks into the tunnels on foot.”

Robinson was silent for a few seconds. “That will pretty much leave the base defenseless, sir.”

“Hopefully,” I said, “the Worms will try to stop our attack, rather than counterpunch against our base.”

“Do you really think the Macros would pull out and leave us here? Is that their style, to just give up and run? Maybe it’s all a bluff, sir.”

“In my experience Major, computers rarely bluff,” I told him. “Besides, there is more at stake here in any case.”

“How so?”

“What if that priority-queue includes Earth as a target? Our failure may well constitute a breach of our arrangement with the Macros, in their eyes. Perhaps we will have outlived our usefulness in such a case. Earth might be reclassified as a target again.”

“May I state for the record that I’m less than satisfied with your plan, sir?” he asked.

“Your objection is logged and filed, Major Robinson,” I told him in my most officious voice. “Riggs out.”

The next eighteen hours went by quickly. In the end, we had eleven ungainly-looking drill-tanks ready to roll when the deadline arrived. We’d unshipped with twenty hovertanks, but seven had been lost in the first Worm attack.

The last two hovertanks I’d left unaltered. They still carried their long range weaponry. They had the mission of escorting my redesigned taskforce to the mountain. I was worried about getting hit on the way to the target. The two hovertanks, still carrying their long-range heavy beam turrets, could protect us as we skimmed over the surface of Helios, exposed. Afterward, they would return to base-defense duty.

I had bloated each machine to hold as many troops as possible, but we could only take six hundred troops with us. When we reached the mountain and folded the tanks down to fit into the tunnels, the marines would have to jog after the tanks. The balance of our infantry forces would stay behind and garrison the base. I set their factories to spilling out new, stationary beam turrets of the sort we had on Andros. Given enough time, they could build themselves an impregnable defense.

With so many men aboard the drill-tanks, the machines whined and growled, straining to lift the weight. Occasionally, they touched down and scraped over the surface. The high gravity caused the tail section of each vehicle to drag and bang over spots in the landscape that thrust up. Rocky outcroppings and bulbous growths were scarred and pitted as we passed over them.

We approached the Worm stronghold with sensor arrays fully active and pinging. I half-expected to see the ground beneath us churn and collapse, a thousand white-skinned Worms revealed and seething. It didn’t happen. They watched and waited, biding their time. I could feel their alien senses tracking us.

As we approached their stronghold, I studied the mountain. The blackened craters that had scarred the rocky walls where the Macros had bombarded them seemed faded. I wondered about that. There hadn’t been any noticeable precipitation. No snow, rain or sleet. What had cleansed the black marks off these mountains? The damaged areas had been huge. I zoomed in with my goggles, but the mystery wasn’t solved. I didn’t see any worms up there, smoothing over the surface. And yet the surface had changed. I thought about what the Macros had called the mountain’s surface: mound-shell? What did that mean, exactly? I could have asked them, but I had been too busy trying to negotiate a way for my marines and my entire species to survive. When I talked to the Macros, I always felt it was best to keep the conversations as brief as possible. That way, the odds I would screw up horribly were reduced.

I felt the heavy atmosphere hitting me as I rode in the open back of an altered hovertank. In order to maximize seating, my drill-tanks had been opened up like yawning clamshells. We’d spread the nanite skins to their limits to fill them with troops. This left everyone open to the thick gusts of Helios. The planet’s high-pressure atmosphere resisted our passage more than it naturally would have on Earth, just as slogging through water was harder than walking through air. Driving at fifty miles an hour, the wind resistance was harsh and buffeting. It roared and tore at my suit with clawing, invisible fingers.

I’d ordered the pilots to take a curved route to our destination. In case the Worms had dug massive tank- traps beneath the surface, the indirect approach should circumvent them. I was wary of taking expected paths after my experience with enemy tactics underground.

As we drove on toward the mountain and it loomed ever larger, until it dwarfed the land like an endless wall of dark stone, I began to doubt the wisdom of my attack. We had superior technology. We had just taken the initiative by launching this assault. But once we entered their domain I thought the advantages shifted to their side.

I tried to think of an alternative, but could not. And so we kept going, heading for the looming wall of rock on a wide, curving path. The mountain fortress had more than one cavernous entrance. We did not head toward the largest entrance in sight, but rather one that seemed out of the way. Tactically, this might mean the entrance didn’t lead to a tunnel that would take us all the way into the heart of the stronghold. I figured if we hit a dead- end, we would employ our drill-tanks and continue that way.

When we reached a range of a mile or so, we met our first hints of resistance. From high-up on the mountain, probably from alcoves and cave mouths that were barely noticeable from below, long-range rifle fire rippled down upon us.

The incoming fire was quite a bit different than it would have been on Earth. First of all, we could see it coming. Each projectile came down as an orange spark like a tracer round. I doubted the bullets were designed to behave like a tracer, but because of the increased thickness and the composition of the atmosphere, the bullets were actually burning up as they came. Another difference was the fire wasn’t straight, even though they weren’t more than a mile off. The rounds came in a dropping arc, like artillery fire, due to the tremendous gravitational pull of Helios. Despite the thick air, and therefore increased air resistance, the gravity caused the bullets to fall harder at the end of their trajectory. The bullets sped up a fraction as they came. They rained down on us like falling meteors.

I was impressed most of all by the Worms’ skill with their weapons. They dropped those bullets into our midst with precision. They did not seem to be picking out individual targets, but instead landed their fire in the middle of my sitting marines. I never saw a single shot miss my tanks entirely. To do that took great skill, I knew, as we were moving at high speed and they could not sight on us directly the way a sniper could on Earth.

Bullets punched into the curved metal surface of our yawning drill-tanks. Near me, a man was hit in the shoulder. He spun around and fell into the lap of a second man. Then the bullet popped inside his body-it must have had a timer. The marine howled and writhed. Blood poured from the wound.

I could order the tanks to button-up, but doing so would require that my men disembark and run after the tanks. That would leave them moving slowly and more exposed than they were currently. I reached for my com- link, but paused. The two escorting hovertanks had already begun to return fire without orders.

The enemy snipers had no doubt thought they had the clear advantage. We were exposed and they were well-covered, invisible to the naked eye from this distance. What they had not calculated upon was the precision of Nano sensors and Nano brainboxes, which unerringly swiveled, locked and spat back gouts of energy. Almost as soon as each turret fired, it swept a fraction to one side or the other and fired again.

I zoomed in with my goggles, watching the enemy die on the mountain walls. I saw burnt, twisting Worms falling from their perches, struck dead. Within thirty seconds, the incoming fire faltered, and a minute later stopped entirely. Even using the technique of slipping forward, taking a quick shot and retreating wasn’t enough to escape our defensive fire. The brainboxes tracked them and remembered them-even timed and predicted their next exposure. They were burnt the moment they revealed themselves.

I smiled tightly. My scripts were slaughtering the enemy. It was a good feeling, but a grim one. Somehow, it was hard to enjoy watching artificial systems slaughter biotic troops-even when I was on the winning side. The Worms were, after all, defending their home.