Annihilation (Star Force Series) (39 page)

What we did notice was a cessation of the signal going through the rings. They’d stopped sneaking transmissions in between our ham-handed jamming techniques.

As hour four began, I became restless. We’d been patiently knocking on their door for long enough.

“Let’s drop a few,” I said, going over our stocks of thermonuclear weapons. “I’ll set the depth at—”

“Sir,” Captain Sarin said, “can I speak to you?”

I looked up in surprise. She and all the rest of the staffers were staring at me. Most of them looked pale. I frowned back, becoming annoyed.

“Do you have unexpected news?” I asked. “Let me guess, the Blues have announced they’re ready to talk, right?”

“No sir, it isn’t that.”

“What did they say, then?”

“Why—nothing, Colonel. They’ve yet to respond.”

“Captain,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “You’re from Calcutta, aren’t you?”

“I fail to see what—”

“Indulge me.”

She muttered something I didn’t catch. A few of the staffers struggled not to grin. My frown deepened.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I said ‘yes sir, I’m from Calcutta.’”

“Right. Now, imagine you’re a suspect in a serious criminal case back home. When the cops come to your door in your hometown, and they hammer on it and yell for you to open it and talk to them, how long do they wait before they break it down?”

She hesitated. “Not long.”

“Far less than four hours, I’ll bet. Well, that’s the situation we have here. We’re the cops and the Blues are our prime suspects. I’m not waiting any longer. Load the missiles and set the warheads to explode at a depth of six thousand miles.”

There was some confusion amongst the staffers.

“Excuse me,” Ensign Kestrel said as they nudged her in my direction. “Sir?”

“What is it?”

“According to our intel, the Blues reside much deeper than that.”

“Thanks for the trivia, Ensign. Now, drop those bombs. I want ten warheads going off in a descending pattern. Start at six thousand and work your way down to sixty-five hundred. Fire them off slowly, with a ten second interval between each of the launches.”

They programmed it in and we all watched as the first burning spark went down, down, down, plunging into the coffee-mocha-cream atmosphere. The spark was swallowed up, like a match being dropped into liquid. I ordered more missiles to be launched. We’d fired three by the time the first one went off.

A brilliant light flared deep inside the sea of gases below us. A hydrogen bomb, twenty megatons of force, looked like a lightning strike seen through a raincloud from our perspective.

After the seventh warhead was launched, Jasmine waved at me frantically. I lifted my com-link to my ear, and listened.

“You’re presence has not been requested,” said a strange voice. I knew in an instant that I was talking to a Blue.

I signaled Jasmine, and the staffers worked to stop the bombing and disable the last warhead we’d dropped.

 “Well,” I said to the Blue, “I thought maybe nobody was home. What’s your name, creature?”

“I am known as
Tolerance
.”

“That’s an encouraging name,” I said. “Have I spoken to you before, in some previous iteration?”

“No,” said the voice. “I would have remembered a dense-thing such as you. The being known as ‘Colonel Kyle Riggs’ is notorious on our world.”

“I’m notorious in a lot of places. Now, let’s talk business. As part of our previous agreement, it was stipulated that you would not attempt to contact the machines. We know you have breached—”

“There are limits even to my pity, and you have exceeded them. Do you understand that your weapons have brought this matter incredibly close to the end? Do you understand that annihilation is at hand?”

I frowned. Sometimes, the translator brainboxes didn’t interpret idioms quite right. I figured that this might be one of those times.

“I sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure I understand you. We dropped our weapons to force you to give us your undivided attention. We have no intention of destroying any of your people today, as long as you answer our questions to our satisfaction.”

“Answer your questions? The conceit is amazing. I was informed of this unbridled arrogance, but I did not credit it. Now, however, the evidence is overwhelming. Your species must have a very low regard for life.”

“On the contrary,” I said, not quite sure again if I understood the Blue, but trying to go with the flow, “we regard life highly. We do not regard the machines highly, however. We plan to destroy the artificial race we call the Macros in any way we can. Toward that end, we’ll promise not to drop any more bombs into your atmosphere if you will accede to our demands. You must not converse with the Macros in any way.”

A strange sound came over the speakers. It took me a moment to identify it.

“Excuse me, Tolerance? Are you laughing?”

“I almost do not know where to begin. Your misunderstanding of the situation is almost total.”

“All right then,” I said. “Enlighten me. You spoke of annihilation, yet we don’t intend to harm you.”

“I was not speaking of the annihilation of Blues at the hands of dense-things such as yourself. I was speaking of the annihilation of humanity by my species.”

I sat there in my chair for a second. Then I stood up and slowly walked toward the central console. The staffers made room for me in their midst. I muted the audio pickup on my collar.

“Jasmine,” I said, “have they fired anything at us?”

“Nothing that I can see.”

I relaxed a little, but not much. I unmuted the channel again. “Tolerance,” I said. “Are you claiming your people have the power to damage us?”

“No,” said the voice. “I’m informing you that we have the capacity to erase you from the cosmos. All of you.”

-33-

How did that old saying go? That you should be careful what you wish for? Well, I’d wished for the Blues to talk, and now I was regretting it.

Our conversation continued for another half-hour after Tolerance had informed me that the Blues were considering the annihilation of all humanity. I got nothing else of use out of him. Rather than presenting any evidence of his claims, he discussed my shortcomings as a sentient being at great length.

“…we’ve encountered a number of creatures claiming to possess self-awareness, but your kind stands out as unique,” he said.

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“The details are too numerous to list, but in the interests of raising your collective consciousness, I will stipulate your worst traits.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Without a doubt, the greatest flaw in your species is a refusal to recognize the wisdom of your elders.”

“You want respect, is that it? You’ve been technologically advanced for more centuries, so—”

“Not centuries. Countless millennia.”

I nodded, pushing out my lower lip thoughtfully. “Maybe you’re right on that point,” I conceded. “We might not have exhibited the proper respect for you, as an elderly species. You must understand that we’ve naturally interpreted your slow, deliberate actions as incapacitation. It’s only natural when dealing with weakened beings.”

“Weakened?” asked Tolerance, his voice rising.

I could tell I’d pissed him off. He was threatening me, and I’d told him he looked pathetic to me. Captain Sarin came close to my chair again. She was wearing a deep frown. I muted Tolerance, as he went into a huffy speech about how cool and powerful his cloud race really was.

“Why are you baiting them, Kyle?”

“To find out what they have. I want him to brag.”

She nodded, but kept frowning. I could tell she didn’t appreciate my diplomatic techniques.

“Insulting them is hardly the way to win a new ally,” she said.

I shrugged, and unmuted the line.

“…it is the bitter destructiveness and lack of comprehension that astounds us the most,” Tolerance said in my ear. “I don’t recall any species we’ve encountered who were so utterly naïve and ignorant of their place in the universe.”

“How many species have you encountered, exactly?”

Tolerance hesitated. “Many more than you have.”

“What’s happened to them? Where are they now?”

“Most of them have fallen to the machines.”

I leaned forward, sensing I was about to reach some new tidbit of data, some kind of explanation as to the number of star systems that the ancient rings interconnected.

“Are we talking about twenty star systems?”

“An order of magnitude higher.”

My heart pounded.
Two hundred systems?
Could it be true?

“We’ve seen nowhere near that number of systems in this chain of rings,” I said. “How can that number be right? Are you saying the Macros have two hundred stars under their control beyond the six we know?”

“Possibly. It is unknown.”

I narrowed my eyes. Was he pulling back? Becoming reluctant to share information again? My mind raced. I was trying to think of something to say that would get this Blue to spill some further hard data. At the same time, I was worried he’d clam up again if he knew what I was really interested in. I decided to steer the discussion closer to our original topic.

“Well,” I said, “I have to admit, I’m impressed. I did not know there were so many stars in this chain of rings. You’ve shown a great depth of knowledge concerning this topic.”

“Naturally, indisputably…undoubtedly.”

Realizing how pleased he was with my snippet of praise, I decided to take it away again.

“But,” I said, “you did use a term that undoes all the rest. I’m afraid I must withhold my opinion of your claims for the time being.”

“What word?”

“A small word, but a critical one.”

“Explain, frustrating creature.”

“The word was
unknown
,” I said. “It’s a powerful word, because it unravels all the rest. If you control the machines, how can you not know the extent of their spread?”

“We do not control the machines. We created them, yes, but does any parent fully control its adult offspring?”

“Usually not,” I admitted. “But you’re at least in communication with them. Why not ask them to clear up this unknown value? Surely, they must know the extent of their own conquests.”

“You do not understand,” Tolerance said, “and it is not my task to enlighten you further. This interview has been taxing, and now draws to a close.”

“All right,” I said, “I’m tired of you, too. What I want to know is this: will you continue to use the rings to communicate with the Macros?”

“We will cease the transmissions for the time being. Will your species continue to damage us?”

“No,” I said. “We will not.”

“Then your annihilation will be postponed.”

I frowned and asked him what he’d meant by that, but the channel had been closed. I tried several more times to strike up the conversation again, but they were ignoring me.

I put aside my com-link.

“They got what they wanted out of us, I guess,” I said to Jasmine as she came near. “They wanted us to stop bombing, and I promised we would as long as they stop transmitting to the Macros.”

“What do you think they meant about destroying all of us? Do you think they have some kind of special weapon?”

“They’ve been building
something
down there in the deep gas. That’s obvious.”

“Something so powerful it could wipe us out?”

I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. I yawned. “Probably not. If they’d had a real doomsday weapon that could get rid of us cleanly, they’d have used it when I dropped the first bomb last time around. I’d say they have something real, but they don’t want to pay the price of fighting with us directly. That’s why they’ve been trying to talk the Macros into doing it for them.”

She watched me as I stretched in my chair.

“How can you sit there so calmly after all that, Kyle?”

“How can you walk around the bridge so tense, day after day?”

Jasmine shook her head and went back to the main console. I strolled over and joined the staffers circling the holotank and the primary display, which had the size and general configuration of a pool table.

“How long have you been on duty, Captain?” I asked her.

She avoided my eyes and shrugged. “I pulled a double-shift.”

Ensign Kestrel caught my eye. She made a gesture, pointing upward, behind Jasmine’s back. I figured it out after a moment. She meant the Captain had been on duty for longer than that.

Most command staffers don’t really want their execs to be on the bridge all day. It makes them nervous and makes them feel they should do the same. I decided it was time that we all took a little break.

“How about we go get something to eat?” I asked Jasmine.

“All right,” she said.

Together, we walked off the bridge. I could feel every eye in the place on our backs. I regretted the move almost immediately. I knew what they’d all be saying:
Sandra’s still warm, and he’s already chasing tail again.