Forsaken Skies (59 page)

“How are you even talking to me? You're not speaking any language I know,” Valk insisted.

The words came out differently, of course. They were translated automatically into computer code. He ignored that, focused on finding out what the hell was going on.

The millipede-thing—he understood now that it was a kind of avatar of the queenship—held him in a dozen arms. It twisted his body this way and that, turning him so he faced the red glow of the asteroid's core. Then it flipped him back over on his back. He did not have any capacity to resist it.

Operational parameters include: examine local machines. Learn data transfer protocols for purpose: communication.

“You—you found one of our computers?” Valk asked, trying to comprehend.

In his head an image popped up, exactly as if he'd opened a display. It showed one of his microdrones, floating in interplanetary space. Limbs like scuttering claws plucked it out of the void. Tore it to pieces.

He wanted to shake his head. He found he couldn't move it, couldn't so much as twitch a muscle. “So—so you wanted to talk to us. I mean, we got your message. I got your message. But you didn't talk! You kept trying to kill us!”

Destruction of minds outside operational parameters
.

“What? What are you talking about? You tried to kill everyone—every mind—on Niraya!”

Loading requested data:
Worker unit dispatched to scan local resources. Metals, silicon, energy. No minds encountered at that time.

“That's crap! You killed all those farmers, and the people from the Retreat—”

Reloading requested data:
No minds encountered at that time
.

Frustration tore at Valk like birds picking at his corpse. He couldn't understand half of what the millipede-thing was saying, and it wouldn't explain. It was like talking to one of those advertising drones back on the Hexus—they sounded human, even friendly, as long as you stuck to what they were programmed to talk about. Exceed that remit and suddenly you were shouting at a floor waxer.

“I don't understand. You sent that killer drone to Niraya to look for metals? Not to kill people?”

Return flag: true
.

He wished he wasn't the one having this conversation. Maybe Lanoe would have handled it better. No. He would have just threatened the millipede-thing. Tried to scare it into surrendering. Maybe Zhang would have been better; she was pretty diplomatic. Hell, Maggs, for all his faults, would have probably know exactly what to say to this thing. He probably would have convinced it to sign a contract with Centrocor.

Instead it was him, Tannis Valk, who had to have the very first conversation between a human being and an alien…thing.

“What the hell are you?” he demanded. “I don't even get—”

High-order operational parameters include: move, expand through galaxy. Find planets and planetary objects. Extract resources. Construct infrastructure for future settlement. Construct more units identical to {this unit} for purpose: move, expand through galaxy. Find planets and planetary objects. Extract—

“Wait! Stop! Let me try to understand,” Valk begged. “You're—you're not even military?”

Return flag: true
.

“You're…you're just a miner. Just like Engineer Derrow.”

Unknown designation.

“She's—she's one of the people on Niraya. The people you tried to kill. But you say that's your function. To extract resources.” He tried to imagine it, the alien fleet, all those killing machines. Except…they weren't, were they? On Aruna they'd found worker drones and factories for making the killer landers—except, the killer landers looked like just larger, less functional versions of the worker drones. The mine on Aruna had been defended by smelting towers repurposed to be plasma cannons. The scout drones they'd fought so many times had been pathetically bad at dogfighting—but they would work great as welders and metal cutters.

Valk's mind reeled with it. Was it even possible? The genocidal fleet hadn't come to Niraya to kill everybody. It had come to…what? Mine and extract resources. To build copies of itself.

Even as he understood that, more data came in—more information from the queenship's avatar. Information he hadn't asked for, information he didn't know how to ask for, poured into him. And he got it. He understood.

Space is very, very, very big, and it takes a long time to travel from one star to another. Especially if you don't have access to wormholes. Sometime in the past, some alien—an actual alien, not a drone—had built the millipede-thing, the queenship, and sent it out into space to look for new habitable planets. If it found them it was supposed to extract resources and build infrastructure, so that when the aliens arrived themselves, they'd find prefabricated colonies waiting for them.

Except what happens if you send your machines out into space and they don't find a suitable planet? There were millions of stars in the galaxy with no planets at all, billions with planets that couldn't support life. You would have wasted centuries and have nothing to show for it. So you do exactly what life and evolution did back on Earth: You give your drones the power of reproduction. One drone fleet arrives at a planet and sets up shop. Then it builds, say, ten—no, fifteen—copies of itself and sends each of them out with the same mission. Those fifteen copies each build fifteen more. Eventually one of those copies will find the perfect system, one with lots of habitable planets, plentiful resources, just the right temperature, and plenty of water and all the things you'd want in a new home. In fact, as your machines multiplied throughout the galaxy, they would find hundreds, even thousands of systems like that.

“You're an explorer,” Valk said.

High-order operational parameters include: move, expand through galaxy. Find planets and—

“Yeah, that's exactly what I just said. Damn. This is a mess. This is…How long have you been out here, following your program?”

Time server calculations complicated by relativistic dilation. Subjective time server reports: 2.17 galactic rotations.

Valk did the calculation in his head without even trying. It took the galaxy about 250 million years to rotate, so…the alien machine had been traveling the galaxy for half a billion years.

Forget humans. On Earth, creatures with spinal cords hadn't even existed when this thing left home. For a second Valk was overcome by a wave of awe at what its creators had done. Did they even still exist? Had they wiped themselves out millions of years ago, and forgotten to turn off their machines? They certainly had never had a grudge against humanity, a species they couldn't even have imagined someday existing. The aliens had never meant to kill the Nirayans, or any humans, they had…

No. Just because it was an accident, that didn't excuse all those dead farmers.

“You failed in your mission,” Valk told the millipede-thing. “You've deviated from your program. You were supposed to talk to any…any minds you found. Not kill them.”

Reloading requested data:
No minds encountered—

“What do you call those Nirayans you killed? They had minds, they—”

Return flag: false
.

Valk stared down at the molten core of the queenship. It was all he could do. “I don't understand. Your programming requires you to talk to other minds. But you didn't even try! You just killed the first humans you found, you—”

Loading operational parameters, subroutine 61D341A: maintenance of work areas. Keep work areas clean of debris and castings. Scan for damage to equipment and repair where resources available. Eliminate vermin that may damage equipment.

“I didn't ask for your task list. I asked why you killed those—”

Reloading requested data: eliminate vermin.

Ehta shut down all the displays. The tender could send any new information directly to her suit, and just then she didn't want to be alone. She climbed out of the tender's hatch and watched the gun crews running around the base camp. The guns weren't firing as fast as they had before—it took her a second to remember that half of them had been destroyed—and she was grateful that they didn't make her head spin so much. She headed over to where Engineer Derrow leaned on a console, looking like she was about to collapse.

Elder McRae was over there, rubbing the engineer's back through her suit. “Is there some new information?” the old woman asked, as Ehta came up. “Please tell me there's some good news.”

Ehta just bit her lip and sent her files over to the engineer's equipment. A display lit up in front of them, showing the slowly spreading cone of orbiters headed for Aruna, and the squad of drone ships that wove and flitted around it, protecting it.

“Good news? No.”

The elder and the engineer stared at the display in shock. Ehta didn't blame them. She took a step back, letting them process what was coming for them. Only then did she notice the green pearl in the corner of her vision. It was a paler shade than usual, which meant she was being added as a silent connection to an ongoing communication. Zhang had patched her in, but kept her line muted. Clearly she was supposed to hear what was being said—whether other parties in the connection wanted her to or not.

“—need you here, there could be…I don't know,” Ehta heard Lanoe say. “Something could break and I'll need you then, need everybody I can get to—”

“If you don't let me go down there,” Zhang said, “they will die. All of them. Roan, and the elder. The people who hired you for this job in the first place.”

“I wasn't hired. I volunteered.”

“So did Ehta. She's down there. You remember her? Your squadmate?”

“Ehta,” Lanoe said.

He sounded very far away.

“You know how to push my buttons, Zhang. I'll give you that. But I know you, too. I know that if I order you to stay, you will,” Lanoe said.

It took Zhang long enough to answer that it was obvious he was right.

“If we all have to die here,” she said, finally, “I want to die fighting to save the people I care about.”

Lanoe grunted in frustration. Ehta could see him in her mind's eye, shaking his head back and forth that way he did when somebody pointed out that he was wrong, and he didn't want to admit it.

The funny thing about Aleister Lanoe was that when you backed him into a corner like that, when you forced his hand, you would expect him to lash out. To get defiant and angry and refuse to listen to reason. Just like anybody else. Except—sometimes he didn't.

“Go,” he said. “Go. And come back as fast as you can. I'm not ready to give up, not yet. I'm not ready for any of us to just lie down and die. But go—go save Ehta.”

“Vermin.” Like rats chewing on cables. Like birds fouling a construction site. That was how the aliens saw human life. Something that needed to be eradicated so work could proceed unhindered. There was no ethical question there—it was like spraying for bugs. “Vermin,” he said again. “They were not vermin! They were people…they were people with minds and lives and…”

Return flag: false
.

“You have to understand. I know you're just a machine, maybe the distinction doesn't mean anything to you. But I have to make you understand—the people out there, the ones you're trying to kill, they're not vermin. You can't just wipe them out. They're not just rats…” He tried desperately to find a way to make the millipede-thing understand. “Rats don't build spaceships!”

Second-order operational parameters include: adjust value definitions based on new data. Space-going vermin discovered during seventh iteration. Logged: vermin definition expanded to include: organic units capable of damaging or polluting work areas. Vermin definition includes organic units found on ground or in space.

Valk grunted in frustration. “You encountered…space-going vermin,” he said. Meaning people—not human people, but people—in spaceships. “And you're supposed to exterminate vermin. So you send your, your welders—the scouts—after these vermin. But I don't understand—what about the interceptors? Those aren't construction machines.”