Robert Sawyer - Wiping Out

They say flashbacks are normal. Five hundred years ago, soldiers who’d come home from Vietnam experienced them for the rest of their lives. Gulf War vets, Colombian War vets, Utopia Planitia vets—they all relived their battle experiences, over and over again.

And now I was reliving mine, too.

But this would be different, thank God. Oh, I would indeed relive it all, in precise detail, but it would only happen just this once.

And for that, I was grateful.

In war, you’re always taught to hate the enemy—and we had been at war my whole life. As a boy, I’d played with action figures. My favorite was Rod Roderick, Trisystems Interstellar Guard. He was the perfect twenty-fifth-century male specimen: tall, muscular, with coffee-colored skin; brown, almond-shaped eyes; and straight brown hair cropped short. Now that I was a Star Guard myself, I don’t think I looked quite so dashing, but I was still proud to wear the teal-and-black uniform.

I’d had an Altairian action figure, too: dark green, naked—like the animal it was—with horns on its head,spikes down its back, and teeth that stuck out even when its great gash of a mouth was sealed. Back then, I’d thought it was a male—I’d always referred to is as “he”—but now, of course, I knew that there were three Altairian sexes, and none of them corresponded precisely to our two.

But, regardless of the appropriate pronoun, I hated that toy Altairian—just as I hated every member of its evil species.

The Altairian action figure could explode, its six limbs and forked tail flying out of its body (little sensors in the toy making sure they never headed toward my eyes, of course). My Rod Roderick action figure frequently blew up the Altairian, aiming his blaster right at the center of the thing’s torso, at that hideous concavity where its heart should have been, and opening fire.

And now I was going to open fire on real Altairians. Not with a blaster sidearm—there was no one-on-one combat in a real interstellar war—but with something far more devastating.

I still had my Rod Roderick action figure; it sat on the dresser in my cabin here, aboard the Pteranodon . But the Altairian figure was long gone—when I was fifteen, I’d decided to really blow it up, using explosives I’d concocted with a chemistry set. I’d watched in giddy wonder as it burst into a thousand plastic shards.

The Pteranodon was one of a trio of Star Guard vessels now approaching Altair III: the others were the Quetzalcoatlus and the Rhamphorhynchus . Each had a bridge shaped like an arrowhead, with the captain—me in the Pteranodon ’s case—at the center of the wide base, and two rows of consoles converging at a point in front. But, of course, you couldn’t see the walls; the consoles floated freely in an all-encompassing exterior hologram.

“We’re about to cross the orbit of their innermost moon,” said Kalsi, my navigator. “The Alties should detect us soon.”

I steepled my fingers in front of my face and stared at the planet, which was showing a gibbous phase. The harsh white light from its sun reflected off the wide oceans. The planet was more like Earth than any I’d ever seen; even Tau Ceti IV looks less similar. Of course, TC4 had had no intelligent life when we got to it; only dumb brutes. But Altair III did indeed have intelligent lifeforms: it was perhaps unfortunate that first contact, light-years from here, had gone so badly, all those decades ago. We never knew who had fired first—our survey ship, the Harmony , or their vessel, whatever it had been named. But, regardless, both ships were wrecked in the encounter, both crews killed, bloated bodies tumbling against the night—human ones and Altairians, too. When the rescue ships arrived, those emerald-dark corpses were our first glimpse of the toothy face of the enemy.

When we encountered Altairians again, they said we’d started it. And, of course, we said they’d started it. Attempts had been made by both sides to halt the conflict, but it had continued to escalate. And now—

Now, victory was at hand. That was the only thing I could think about today.

The captains of the Rhamphorhynchus and Quetzalcoatlus were both good soldiers, too, but only one of our names would be immortalized by history—the one of us who actually got through the defenses surrounding the Altairian homeworld, and—

And that one was going to be me, Ambrose Donner, Star Guard. A thousand years from now, nay, ten thousand years hence, humans would know who their savior had been. They would—

“Incoming ships,” said Kalsi. “Three—no, four— Nidichar -class attack cruisers.”

I didn’t have to look where Kalsi was pointing; the holographic sphere instantly changed orientation, the ships appearing directly in front of me. “Force screens to maximum,” I said.

“Done,” said Nguyen, my tactical officer.

In addition to my six bridge officers, I could see two other faces: small holograms floating in front of me. One was Heidi Davinski, captain of the Quetzalcoatlus ; the other, Peter Chin, captain of the Rhamphorhynchus . “I’ll take the nearest ship,” Heidi said.

Peter looked like he was going to object; his ship was closer to the nearest Nidichar than Heidi’s was. But then he seemed to realize the same thing I did: there would be plenty to go around. Heidi had lost her husband Craig in an Altairian attack on Epsilon Indi II; she was itching for a kill.

The Quetzalcoatlus surged ahead. All three of our ships had the same design: a lens-shaped central hull with three spherical engine pods spaced evenly around the perimeter. But the holoprojector colorized the visual display for each one to make it easy for us to tell them apart: Heidi’s ship appeared bright red.

“The Q is powering up its TPC,” said Nguyen. I smiled, remembering the day I blew up my Altairian toy. Normally, a tachyon-pulse cannon was only used during hyperspace battles; it would be overkill in orbital maneuvering. Our Heidi really wanted to make her point.

Seconds later, a black circle appeared directly in front of me: the explosion of the first Nidichar had been so bright, the scanners had censored the information rather than blind my crew.

Like Peter Chin, I had been content to let Heidi have the first kill; that was no big deal. But it was time the Pteranodon got in the game.

“I’ll take the ship at 124 by 17,” I said to the other two captains. “Peter, why don’t—”

Suddenly my ship rocked. I pitched forward slightly in my chair, the restraining straps holding me in place.

“Direct hit amidships—minimal damage,” said Champlain, my ship-status officer, turning to face me. “Apparently they can now shield their torpedoes against our sensors.”

Peter Chin aboard the Rhamphorhynchus smiled. “I guess we’re not the only ones with some new technology.”

I ignored him and spoke to Nguyen. “Make them pay for it.”

The closer ship was presumably the one that had fired the torpedo. Nguyen let loose a blast from our main laser; it took a tenth of a second to reach the alien ship, but when it did, that ship cracked in two under the onslaught, a cloud of expelled atmosphere spilling out into space. A lucky shot; it shouldn’t have been that easy. Still: “Two down,” I said, “two to go.”

“Afraid not, Ambrose,” said the Heidi hologram. “We’ve picked up a flotilla of additional Altairian singleships leaving the outer moon and heading this way. We’re reading a hundred and twelve distinct sublight-thruster signatures.” I nodded at my colleagues. “Let’s teach them what it means to mess with the Trisystems Interstellar Guard.”