Extinction

-22-

We sent General Kerr back to the mainland six months after his failed invasion. Truthfully, he had become kind of a pain by then. I really didn’t want him snooping around, looking at everything we were doing. Publicly, he was our prisoner. Privately, he operated as a liaison. But I suspected he was more of a spy than anything else. Crow came up with the release idea. Kerr had to go undercover to go back home, of course. The public believed he was the architect of a coup. He was a spook now, and I don’t think he liked it.

“You know what’s worse than dying for your country, Riggs?” he asked me the night before he shipped out.

“What?”

“Living on as a ruined man, having sacrificed everything, and then witnessing firsthand how little everyone cares.”

I eyed him. He seemed sincere. I fell silent and looked around the base.

We’d named it by now, and I pressed for a new tradition: we would name places after our fallen. So, the base was now Fort Pierre. Sure, to deserve the name we should have filled it with red velvet settees. We were fresh out of them, however. We had to make do with corrugated steel, concrete and conical beam-turrets.

Fort Pierre had doubled in size over recent months. We had more troops, supplies and buildings than ever. I’d set up weighing stations recently as well. I’d learned that a fully-equipped and operational fireteam of four marines weighed in at just over a single metric ton. Of course, most of the material we’d be loading onto the Macro ship in six more months wouldn’t be the troops themselves. Each troop needed to eat, for example.

In the sky overhead, a black chopper slid over the treetops. It had come in from the sea. Some kind of ship out there past our borders had sent it in. There were no landing lights on the chopper. It was dark and quieter than a normal bird. I supposed that no one back home wanted to advertise who they were picking up tonight.

“Well,” I said to Kerr, “if you ever need a new home, we are still recruiting.”

Kerr looked at me in surprise. “Really?”

I nodded.

“In what capacity?”

“Everyone here starts fresh. Latrines don’t dig themselves, sir.”

He huffed. “Thanks for the offer,” he said, then as the quiet chopper landed, he climbed inside and buzzed away into the night sky.

“Good riddance,” Major Barrera said from behind me.

I turned and nodded to him. “He’s finally gone. Have you finished the loyalty checks?”

Barrera nodded. He stood with his hands behind his back. I’d made him my Security Chief. He was paranoid and thorough. I could not recall ever having seen him give more than the slightest smile. He was perfect for the job.

“Now that Kerr is gone,” he said, “there’s no one on this base I don’t trust…. Within reason, that is.”

“Make the call,” I told him. “Roll in the tanks.”

People had seen them before, naturally. Every man on the island knew we had a ground force. But very few knew how many I’d built. I’d been hiding them until Kerr left.

An hour later, as the column arrived, I thought to myself I might have overdone it. Sixty hovertanks glided into the base, and another sixty remained in secret reserve at strong points around the island. Barrera played traffic cop, directing them to slide underneath a dozen camouflaged structures around the base. The militaries of the world had been busy putting up new satellites to replace the ones the Macros had knocked down, but they had less than a tenth their previous number. Still, I didn’t want any of them to get lucky and get a clear count of our numbers.

The hovertanks were built to serve two purposes. First, they would aid in any defense of the island. The beam turrets were powerful and symbolic, but vulnerable. If NATO or someone else got a wild idea for a new sneak attack, they might very well knock out my static defensive line. The tanks were my backup, they were my inner line of defense. They could stop any invasion by themselves, I felt sure.

Their second purpose involved the Macros. Many of these sleek tanks would be going with us when the Macros came back, demanding their cargo. After seeing their effectiveness when combined with my ground troops, I’d decided they would be indispensible to any campaign on a distant world.

Crow came out to complain while the column continued to rumble out of the forest.

“You went nuts, Kyle. I thought that was our deal, that you wouldn’t do anything crazy.”

“It’s in my nature, Admiral,” I said.

“You promised me a new fleet, Kyle. What the hell are we going to do with all these tanks?” he demanded.

I turned to Crow. Barrera watched the two of us quietly. He was quiet for an officer, and that alone made me want to promote him.

The three of us stood in the middle of camp, far from the barracks and other buildings. We watched as the tanks lined up neatly under their netted camouflage. I knew that infrared systems from satellites overhead would show their engines, but I hoped they wouldn’t quite know yet what they were looking at. The tanks gleamed and the sands beneath them rippled and flattened as they passed over. They left tracks of a sort; it looked as if a giant beach ball had rolled over the land.

“You screwed me, didn’t you?” Crow asked. “This is your way of doing it, of removing me from power. You aren’t going to build me any ships. You command the ground forces, and—”

“I wish I’d thought of that, sir,” I told Crow, smiling. “Send in the prototype, Major Barrera.”

“Yes sir,” he said, and he spoke into his com-link. We’d gotten better at building communications systems now, too. His was a button on his collar. He ran his finger over it, and spoke into it quietly.

Crow looked at me in disbelief. “You mean?”

I nodded.

He spun around, looking up into the sky. A portion of it darkened, blotting out a slice of the starry night. Silently, something loomed over us.

“It’s big,” he said, his voice hushed. He looked like the kid who’d finally gotten that damned pony he could never shut up about.

“It’s all yours,” I said.

He looked at me with big eyes. “What’s it like?”

“Just like Snapper, sir,” I said. “But it has no system software out of our control. Also, it doesn’t have an arm yet. And there is only one gun and one engine. No duplication equipment on board, either.”

“Why not?”

“The reactor is too small to support it, and we wanted to build it fast.”

“But it’s big,” he said, his eyes glittering.

“Yes sir, approximately fifty percent more displacement than the original Nano design.”

“What the hell is taking up all that space?”

“Mostly air, sir,” I explained.

He stared at me as if I was mad. “Just tell me one thing, Riggs.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“How do I get inside?”

“Tell the pilot to land it, Barrera,” I said.

Barrera ran a finger over the extra button on his collar. He spoke quietly to it. Soon, the great ship came slowly down to rest in the open area in the middle of the base. We’d been using it as a picnic area, but originally, it had been there to fill landing pods with marines. Now, it would begin to see use again as a landing zone. Without arms, these newer, lighter, scarier-looking ships would have to land to pick people up.

“She’s a beauty, Riggs,” said Crow in a hushed voice. “What’s she called?”

“Whatever you want to name her, Jack.”

“I think I’ll call her Digger in your honor, mate!”

I smiled and nodded—but I wasn’t sure that I felt honored.