B. Larson - Extinction

I sat in my Nano ship a hundred thousand miles from Earth. Outside the thin, nanite-generated skin of the Alamo was the cold nothing we called space. Sometimes, the universe pressed in on me with its silence and infinite expanse. This was one of those moments. If you want to feel small, try floating around in far orbit and realizing just how close to microscopic humans really are.

Around the Alamo floated hundreds of her clone-like, sister ships. Each was shaped like a horseshoe-crab and hung over the blue swell of the Earth, motionless and silent. They were all as black as the void, with no lights, doors or windows in sight. Only when their beam mounts fired or their engines provided thrust could they be detected by the naked eye. Right now, none of them were moving or firing. Every ship was quiet, patient. They were waiting for a command, but I didn’t know what to tell them.

The enemy battle fleet had withdrawn after the Macros had accepted my accidental terms. Their huge, majestic ships had left us standing here with no one to fight. That was a good thing, as we would have lost the battle anyway. The bad thing was I had promised peace terms to the Macros I had no real way of providing-and which I had no authority to give.

I finished my first beer, and then popped open my second. Incoming calls began buzzing on my com-link. Open channel requests via the Alamo became a steady drumbeat. I ignored them all.

How was I going to tell them what I’d done? Like feudal vassals, we were to provide thousands of troops to the Macros a year from now. If the world refused, we risked kick-starting the war again. I didn’t think they would refuse… but they wouldn’t enjoy the news. No one wanted to be forced into a deal they didn’t create.

I figured they would blame it all on me, somehow. They would second-guess me and come up with a thousand better ideas I should have thought of. Elected officials-or just about anyone with a strong opinion-would be angry. I could understand that, but there hadn’t been much I could have done differently. The math was simple: I’d been there, and they hadn’t. The decisions had been mine because of circumstance and for that they were going to hate me. No one likes to live by someone else’s choices. No one wants to be committed to something unpleasant without being consulted, even if there isn’t a better option. The more I thought about it, the more I realized they were going to hate my guts.

I looked into my beer can, but I didn’t see any answers in there. I decided I might have better luck looking inside the third can. While enjoying the fourth I began to suspect that if I worked hard, I’d find some further comfort in the rest of the six-pack. I felt I’d earned a little R amp;R.

The universe, however, had other ideas. When I looked up at the big layout on the forward wall, I noticed something was wrong. Sure, the Macros had pulled out. They were gone, heading off “sunward” and I couldn’t have been happier about that. But strangely, our Nano fleet was moving, too. All of us were. We weren’t headed toward Earth, either. We were headed at an angle away from Earth. Away from the sun as well. The big disk that represented my homeworld grew as I watched, sliding downward from the left side of the wall onto the floor. Then, slowly, it began to shrink. It looked to me as if we slipping right past Earth and off into open space.

I had been leading our line of ships. That meant I was going to be the first one to reach whatever new destination the Alamo had in mind. That wasn’t the interesting part, however. What concerned me was that I didn’t recall ordering the Alamo to go anywhere. In fact, I hadn’t given the ship any orders at all.

“Alamo? Why are we heading out into space?”

“Primary mission has been accomplished. New mission selected.”

As that sank in, I blinked and felt my stomach fall away. New mission?

“Specify,” I said. “What mission has been accomplished?”

“Indigenous biotics have survived. The enemy is in retreat.”

“You mean Earth won the war? We didn’t exactly win anything. This is a temporary peace.”

“Survival equates to victory. Mission accomplished.”

I thought for a second. “So, what is your new mission?”

“The next biotic species on the optimal path must be protected.”

“Hold on. You are leaving Earth entirely?” I asked.

“No other advanced biotic species exist in this star system.”

“What about me? What about all the other pilots?”

“Future command personnel will require test subjects,” said the ship in its inflectionless, heartless voice.

I stared in shock at the forward screen I’d invented. The gray disk of Earth was on the floor now. Soon, it would vanish under my throw rugs. I had no idea where we were headed. Hundreds of golden beetles crawled behind me as I led them all, like a Pied Piper, out into space. Was this the end? Was I going to starve to death while the fleet traveled to another star? Was I going to survive the trip, only to become a sparring partner for some race of spiny crawdads on another world?

I thought about the nanites in my body. Had they already abandoned me? Was I going to feel an overwhelming urge to piss liquid metal in the next few minutes as they swam out of my system, heading for the exits like a billion rats fleeing a sinking ship?

“Alamo, I order you to stop this mission and return to your previous mission,” I said.

“Request denied.”

“Why are you refusing to obey?”

“Biotic Riggs is no longer command personnel.”

My mind raced and my breathing increased until I sat there, puffing. What the hell was I going to do?

It was about then I noticed that the Alamo hadn’t reported any requests to open a channel lately.

“Alamo, open a channel to the Snapper .”

“Request denied.”

“Why not?”

“Biotic Riggs is no longer-”

I talked over the voice as the sentence was finished. “-command personnel. Yeah, I get that. Alamo, you are an ungrateful, cast-iron bitch of a ship, just as Sandra always said.”

The ship made no response. As far as it was concerned, I was a noisy meat-bag, useful only for death-testing other noisy meat-bags it might meet in the future. The nanites knew nothing of honor, or courtesy, or other conceptual products of my mammalian brain. They knew their mission, and they made decisions that helped them reach that goal. Anything else was unthinkable.

I looked at the SCU, a satellite communications setup the Pentagon had given me. Was I out of range yet? They’d said they could pick up this little unit’s transmissions all the way out to the moon, maybe farther…. I got out of my chair, setting down my beer can carefully. All plans of getting drunk had vanished. Beer might have to be rationed if I was going to spend days- weeks, years? I would be stuck aboard this ship for an unknown length of time. I opened up the SCU and allowed it to auto-home a parabolic antenna in the direction of Earth’s relay satellites. I hoped the Alamo’s engines weren’t between the SCU and the satellite. In the past, I would have been able to order the ship to reorient itself so that the engines were out of the way and didn’t cause signal interference. Now, however, I knew without asking that my request would be denied.

I was fortunate enough to get a signal almost immediately. I requested a voice connection, and got it. General Kerr was on the other end within a minute or two. No doubt he’d been crapping in his coffee down there, as he liked to say.