B. Larson - Swarm

Channel open.

“Crow?”

“Kyle? What do you know about this?”

“I was hoping you knew something, sir.”

“No. The regular military didn’t give us any warning. All of our ships just launched themselves. We are heading out toward the sun, though. I know that much.”

Sunward, I thought. One of the few directions in space that meant anything. “Toward Venus, in other words? So the Macros are finally making their move?”

“Looks that way.”

“Ship count?”

“We total just under eight hundred strong now, including the new ones you built on Andros.”

I’d spent some time building a handful of new ships. They weren’t really the direction I wanted to go, however. If only we had been allowed the time, we have could build bigger fabrication units and bigger weapons systems. We certainly didn’t need more of these small science vessels. We needed a ship meant for war. One that bristled with weaponry. But that would take years.

“If you don’t have anything special for me,” said Crow, “I’m out.”

“I’ve got something.”

“Talk to me.”

“We can try to order our ships to maintain a set distance from the enemy. Rather than wading right in, I mean.”

“What the hell for?” he asked.

“There will be a lot of them this time. We need everyone massed up into a single swarm to fight together.”

“Or to die together. Never mind that, sorry. Good idea.”

“Admiral? Good luck, Jack.”

“You too, Kyle.”

He broke the connection. Our ships lifted us up, out of the atmosphere. Soon, I was pressed back in my seat only by the mild gee-forces of acceleration, not by Earth’s gravity. I looked around the bridge. I missed Sandra. Maybe I should have tried to grab her out of the shower. I smiled at the idea of her, naked and angry, being dragged up to the ship. It would have been like old times. At least, we could have died together.

Kyle’s voice gave the commands I’d suggested. We ordered our ships to approach the enemy, but stay at a defined maximum weapons distance from them. The ships had allowed this order. They wouldn’t allow us to run from the enemy, but they would let us stand in formation if properly coerced.

Then the enemy appeared on my walls, and I lost all hope. There were hundreds of them. Maybe even a thousand. I didn’t bother to ask the Alamo for an exact count. It didn’t matter.

I took a deep breath and looked at their approaching formation with my hand over my mouth. What could we do? Attack one flank? Take a few with us, out of spite?

They came on slowly in two ranks. The first rank was of ships I’d never seen before. They seemed triangular in shape. They were smaller than the big Macro ships we’d seen before, but larger than our ships. I figured they were cruisers of some kind. Ship-to-ship killers. Something like the ships I had wanted to build, if I had been allowed the time to do so. The second rank was made up of the big, fat, slow ships, exactly like the one that had dropped invaders on our world months ago. There were about twenty of these.

I understood better now, looking at them. During the first attacks they had sent only invasion ships. When we had destroyed the first ship, they had sent three more. We had managed to destroy two of those and the third had gotten through to drop its deadly payload of self-replicating machines on Earth. When we repelled the invasion, they had changed their tactics.

This time we faced their true battle fleet. This time, we were seeing the strength the Macros had never shown us before. At least, I thought grimly, it was clear that we’d gained their respect, if not their mercy.

It was going to be a matter of selling our lives dearly. We could not hope to win. The best we could do for humanity was spit in this enemy’s eye. We would bite and kick as they gunned us down. I could only hope the Macro’s were capable of feeling pain at a loss.

Crow hailed me again. “Any bright ideas, mate?”

“Stand off. Try to talk to them. When they come in, let’s ignore the combat ships up front and try to take out the invasion fleet. If we can do it, maybe humanity will live another year.”

“As good a plan as any,” said Crow, signing off to make the fleet-wide announcements. His voice was grim. He knew the score as well as I did. Probably everyone did.

Our ships floated up to form a ragged line some thousands of miles from the enemy ships. The others approached. I knew that communications crews were transmitting to them, trying to talk.

The enemy rolled nearer. They were inside the orbit of the Moon now. Then they were about a hundred thousand miles from Earth-very close. We would have to engage them soon. Our ships wouldn’t let us run from this fight.

Just as we were about to charge past them and go for the invasion ships, the enemy line halted. I blinked at the wall, not quite sure if I was seeing correctly.

“Alamo? Did the enemy halt?”

“Enemy velocity reduced. Their relative distance is being maintained.”

“Are they within range of our weapons?”

“No.”

I chewed on my thumb. “What are they doing?”

“They are transmitting a message,” said the ship.

“They are? Put it on audio!”

A continuous screeching sound came from the walls. I listened to it carefully. It didn’t sound like any language I knew. “Alamo, translate the message.”

“Unknown meaning. No frame of reference provided.”

I thought about it. I knew that Crow and his communications team were no doubt poring over the meaning of this right now and transmitting their own answers in every way they could come up with. But would any of them know what they were doing?

“Alamo, can you analyze this language? Can you figure out the meaning of it?”

“Unknown meaning. No frame of reference provided.”

“Try ASCII. Is it ASCII? Or Unicode?”

“No match.”

“Try all known human computer languages.”

“No match.”

I went back to chewing my thumb. After an hour or so, it was getting sore. I’d contacted Crow a few times, and he said he had a team working on it, talking to the Earth teams on the ground. They were trying to puzzle out the meaning. The Macro fleet sat out there, patiently repeating the message all this time. I had to wonder, how long would it be before they timed out on us and began shooting?

“Alamo, record a portion of this transmission. Wait, hold on. Record one second of what they sent to us and send it back to them.”

“Done.”

The sound of the enemy transmission stopped a few seconds later. It had gone on for so long, the sudden silence was shocking.

“Alamo,” I said, trying not to panic, “continue playing their transmission.”

“Enemy transmissions have ceased.”

“Oh shit.”

“Admiral Crow requests a private channel.”

“Open it.”

“Kyle? They stopped talking. What do you make of it?”

I hesitated. “I’m not sure… but I did send them back part of what they were sending.”

“You did what? When?”

“Just before they broke off.”

A stream of harsh language erupted from the air around me. Crow’s accent grew so strong, I wasn’t able to make out many of the words. But I felt certain they were uncomplimentary.

“Why couldn’t you just keep out of it? I’ve got a team of techs on this, Riggs.”

Enemy ship approaching.

“Ah… Crow, something is happening,” I said. I watched as a single contact broke off from the enemy fleet and slowly approached our swarm.

“Alamo, do not fire on that ship,” I said. “Crow, relay that to everyone. Don’t fire. We don’t want to start this.”

“What if it’s some kind of super-bomb or something?”