Swarm (16 page)

I jerked away as if swatted by a giant’s hand. I flew into the far wall, the one that crawled with golden beetle ships. I hit the wall, and it hurt—but only a little. Something had cushioned my landing. I turned my head to see what I’d landed on. There was nothing there but the metal of the ship’s hull.

“Are you okay?” asked Sandra, coming after me. She laid her hands on my arm. “What the hell was that?”

“What did it look like?” I asked, gingerly touching the back of my skull where I’d crashed into the wall. There was a small bleeding spot in my hair. I touched the wall with probing fingers. It didn’t feel soft at all.

“You just suddenly leapt at me,” said Sandra. “It was amazing. Then you changed directions somehow and twisted in mid-air. Then you crashed into the wall as if someone had fired you out of a cannon.”

Alamo
, I thought,
when I’m not in a combat situation, please tone down these improved reflexes I seem to have. I don’t want to hurt my own people.

Settings can only be adjusted by the operator.

Great. I had to use self-control. I got to my feet experimentally, half-expecting to launch into the ceiling. Things progressed much more smoothly this time, however. I noticed that Sandra stood well back when I got up. She watched me with big eyes.

“I’m okay,” I told her. “I think something the injections did to me caused this. I think they made me stronger.”

She nodded, pursing her lips. I walked toward her, slowly, stiffly.

She watched me.

“I’m controlling it now. I’m new to this. I’m going to try to touch you as gently as I can, okay?”

She blinked. She extended a hand toward me.

Oh great,
I thought,
now she’s scared of me
. A perfect romantic moment had been ruined.

I took her hand and kissed it gently. “See?” I said. I studied her face, looking for signs of pain. Was I holding her fingers too firmly? Was I grinding her bones together? I almost couldn’t feel her hand in mine.

She smiled back. “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got an idea. Just stand there. Close your eyes. Try not to react.”

I did as she asked and she kissed me. It felt good. She followed the first with more of them. Her kisses were gentle, more faint and tickling than I remembered kisses were supposed to be. Her skin felt papery, thin, and delicate against mine. I told myself I was going to have to go very slowly with Sandra. I had to keep control of myself.

We only kissed for about two minutes. I wanted to do it for two hours. But finally, very gently but inexorably, I pushed her away.

Alamo,
I thought,
are we still following the ship—the one now called the Delta?

Yes.

“I have to go,” I told Sandra.

“Don’t go.”

“Is that why you’re kissing me? To distract me?”

She gave a tiny shrug. “Maybe. I don’t want you to leave me here and get yourself killed.”

“I don’t think I can die easily, now,” I told her.

She nodded. “I suppose you’re right. What are you going to do when you catch him—if you catch him?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied.

“I see.”

“Alamo,” I said, speaking aloud for Sandra’s benefit as much as anything else. “What is the
Delta
doing?”

“The
Delta
is engaged in its primary mission.”

“Is the ship still seeking command personnel?”

“Yes.”

“Good. When it stops over a building and sends down its main arm to grab someone, I want your arm to place me there. I want the Delta ship to pick me up.”

The ship hesitated. “Your instructions will place command personnel in extreme danger.”

“Do my instructions contradict your programming?”

“No. Not directly.”

“Then follow my instructions, Alamo.”

“Enter the area named: cargo bay.”

I stood. I kissed Sandra one more time.

“I want to know one thing,” she said. “How the hell are you going to get back aboard?”

“I can communicate to the ship directly now. It was part of the improvements.”

She nodded, impressed. “Go then,” she said, taking her hands off me at last. “That ship is still killing people down there. Maybe you can save a life or two if you hurry.”

“You’ve changed your mind?”

“You’re going to do it anyway. I can tell. Just go.”

I stepped into the cargo bay. The hugely thick, black arm hung down from its root in the ceiling. The door in the bottom of the ship opened. The smell of a summer night in Virginia swept up into my face. It was refreshing, full of humidity and the varied scents of living things.

I could see Pierre’s ship, hovering very close to ours. It ignored us. It was dedicated to its task of rooting about in smashed-out windows. As I watched, someone was hauled up into the belly of the ship. My heart pounded, but I knew of no way to save them. They had to fall, then I would be next, if I was close by.

Sandra leaned up behind me. “You better come back and not leave me trapped up here.” she said.

“Alamo,” I said, “if I’m killed, place Sandra safely on the ground.”

“Program set.”

“Now,” I said, “put me on the roof of that apartment building below us.”

The arm came up, and the three black fingers gripped me. Each finger was as thick as a fire hose. I was swept out into the open sky. With alarming speed, I was dropped toward the roof. It felt like a bungee-jump.

I had a sudden, alarming thought as I dropped down to the roof. What if there were snipers watching the ship? Or helicopters, following us around? There was no reason to think the assassin had been working alone. The Pentagon or their spooks could have decided to take us out by any means necessary. I hoped I wasn’t delivering myself in their hands somehow.

After a sickeningly rapid descent, my feet thumped down on the cement and tarpaper roof of a large building. There were bricks chimneys all around me. I looked up at the two Nano ships. From here, they looked identical.

I took a deep breath, and smiled grimly. Even if I died soon, at least I’d gotten the privilege of standing on my own world under an open night sky one more time. I’d been stuck aboard the
Alamo
for a week. I decided that despite the pain I’d experienced, so far the injections had been worth it.

But I didn’t know all the details yet.

-18-

The night sky was warm and humid. It enveloped me like a gush of hot breath. Even the breeze was warm and wet. As a native of the arid middle of California, I was unused to East Coast summers. I reveled in the natural feel of everything, however. It felt as if I’d been released from a hospital or a long cruise on a submarine.

I walked to the edge of the roof and gazed downward. People streamed away from the building. The word was out now, everyone was running from the black ship that loomed like a shadowy angel of death overhead. An old woman carried a cat under each arm and one against her breast. A mother dragged a screeching child like a rag-doll behind her. A man with a pistol in each hand ran out next, shoving aside the old woman, who lost a cat and hurried off without it, crying. The people who lived in the building ran from every exit in a steady stream.

“Hey you! Run, you crazy bastard!”

I noticed the man was in a uniform, shouting up at me. A policeman, I figured. I waved at him unconcernedly.

“He’s a fighter,” said the man with the pistols. “He’s going for it. Just forget him.”

Both men wasted no more time on me and followed their own advice… running for it.  The crowd melted away down the quiet asphalt roads, vanishing behind trees and buildings. Soon, the ship would run out of victims here and have to move on. We knew from observation that when they moved, they traveled far. The ship would head in a random direction and stop hundreds of miles from this spot to hunt for fresh, unsuspecting game. It would perform its grim tests until properly ordered to stop. And apparently, the assassin hadn’t given that order yet. Probably, he didn’t know how, or even that it was required.

I had time to think about the changes that must have been wracking Earth in my absence. There were people called
fighters
now? People, perhaps half-crazed, who let the ships take them? Were fighters people like me, who invited the opportunity to pass the ships’ deadly tests by standing on a roof? I found that interesting. If humans were one thing, it was unpredictable. I thought about the cop’s reaction as well. He hadn’t worried about the younger guy with the pistols. He hadn’t tried to stop the ship. He hadn’t stopped running to help anyone, except to shout up at me. The coming of these roving ships, I realized, had changed a lot of our social rules very quickly. About half of the ships had found ‘command personnel’ now. That gave us a fleet hundreds strong, but it also meant that thousands of people were still failing and dying every day aboard the remaining ships. The Nano ships roamed freely over the world, collecting people as men might harvest an endless field of melons.

I noticed that I’d been here several minutes. I was just beginning to hope the last victim had won through somehow. Perhaps they made it to the bridge, I thought.

Then a body fell from the ship’s belly. Twisting, long hair fluttered like a flag as the corpse dropped. It was a young male, shirtless and athletically built. The body crashed down through the branches of an ash tree and finally thumped in a dead heap on a grassy spot near the apartment building’s front street entrance.

I looked up, taking in a big breath. Soon, as I knew it must, the arm descended. I did not flinch. I was determined. That last young man had been dead when he fell. The easy tests didn’t kill you before you were dropped out, only the combat test did that. The assassin who had taken Pierre’s ship was still at it—still killing.

Maybe he liked it that way, I thought. Maybe he hadn’t turned off the ship’s automatic testing on purpose. Maybe he was having
fun
.

My face was flat and expressionless as the three-fingered hand wrapped itself around my waist and hoisted me into the sky. I hoped my nanite-infested body would give this guy a surprise he hadn’t bargained on.

I rode my way up into the ship and into the first featureless cubical. I went through the tests methodically. I had to wonder if any human had ever been as calm and cold while he took the tests as I was that day. Pierre’s Nano ship was identical to mine on the inside and out. I felt right at home.

The last few tests were still outstanding when the door to the bridge opened. I wondered which one the ship thought it was giving me now, the leadership test or the aggression test? It hardly mattered. I was going to kill whoever I found there anyway, if I could.

I decided along the way I would reject the new name for the ship, as I rejected its new owner. This was the
Versailles
, not the
Delta
. I stepped onto the bridge of the
Versailles
, and despite my mood, I almost smiled. Pierre had been busy. The place was full of loot. There were no less than three ornate golden chairs, none of which matched. I figured all of them had once served someone as a throne. There were piles of Persian rugs, overlapping one another on the floor. The couches were red and velvet and looked insanely expensive. Paintings lined the walls, looking old and priceless. Was that a Van Gogh? I seemed to recall it from an art book I’d been forced to read in college. Even the low coffee table was made of teak and encrusted with gold doubloons.

In the middle of the room stood another surprise. It was a woman. She was young, and good-looking in a stark way. She stared at me flatly. She had a pistol in her hand. She wasn’t aiming it at me, but I got the feeling she knew how to use it. I eyed the pistol thoughtfully. It looked like a Glock 9mm to me. I knew I was full of nanites, but I had to figure bullets would still cause pain, at the very least. So far, the nanites hadn’t been concerned with my discomfort, only my survival.

“You made it through the tests?” she asked in a calm voice.

“I know them well,” I said.

She eyed me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Commander Kyle Riggs.”

“Commander of what?”

“Star Force.”

She laughed then. “Is that what you pirates call yourselves?”

“We aren’t pirates.”

She snorted and waved her hand at the evidence that surrounded her. She picked up something that looked mysteriously like a Faberge Egg and twisted her lips at me in disgust.

“Yeah, well,” I said, “we aren’t
all
pirates. And we do more than steal things. We’ve saved the human race twice in the last week.”

“Don’t tell the people in Argentina that.”

“If those big ships had all gotten through, humanity wouldn’t have had a chance.”

“You’re not pros,” she said. “You have no right to rule. No one appointed you. No one voted for you.”

“The ships chose us.”

“And now this one has chosen me.”

I thought about that for a second. She had a point. Hadn’t we all challenged and killed to get control of a ship?