Stretched beneath me, gigantic blazing orb cradled in vacuum, a planet
burned with cleansing fire.
"Your appreciation of nature and your aesthetic sense never fails to
amaze me," Cara's warm contralto whispered in my ear.
"I wonder if it amazes you because you don't have a sense of beauty and
wonder."
"Not true."
"Oh, perhaps you can tell me what Truth and Beauty mean to you, then."
"Well, that's a rather long conversation, and we'll be rather busy
shortly."
"Oh, we have at least twenty minutes until deorbit is complete. Indulge
me."
"I'd rather listen to your internal dialogue."
"Do you always have to put me under the microscope? Can't a guy get a
little privacy?"
"Ah, that quaint notion again?"
Hurry up and wait, yes that's the life of the philosopher-soldier.
Me and my squad hung, cocooned in acceleration tanks filled with smart
liquid, which were themselves cross-braced and strapped into an armored
ball the mass of a mountain, just beginning to deorbit a world with a
sizable fraction of its atmosphere currently being converted to plasma.
It was going to be a rough ride.
In this enormous chessboard of a battle, we were insignificant pieces,
dwarfed in size and firepower compared to the vast horde of the
coherent ship-swarm that was the local spatial manifestation of
Caretaker. Thousands upon thousands of spheres ranging from millimeters
to kilometers across, clustered together into functional units only
vaguely analagous to what baseline humans might term dreadnoughts,
capital ships, transports, cruisers, destroyers, surface bombardment,
close-orbit supremacy gunships, ground supremacy gunships, mechanized
armor, infantry, synsects, and nanoswarms.
Yet, we were the pawn promoted to queen. In our area of purview, we
could operate, independently, where the rest of Caretaker could not.
And our area was the key to the entire battle.
With EMP and microwave saturation complete, unseen even to my expanded
vision (taken from the locally-centered exponential weighted sum of the
total available sensor platforms and processed for realtime tactical
information), a constellation of microspheres and assorted odd shapes
resembling ancient biological specimens fell: a giant, invading
nanounit plague settling around the volume of the planet, smothering
all resistance.
"Even with your limited memory, you must recall seeing this sort of
thing dozens of times."
"Yes, Cara, and as I recall with my feeble mentation, you never use
exactly the same tactics twice, yet the endgame always looks the same."
"Well, you appreciate that very limited simulation of warfare invented
by your forebears called chess? Even that relatively simple game has
more moves than can be easily totalled by your consciousness."
"It still always looks the same, or nearly so. But then, I suspect you
don't unfreeze me until the endgame."
"Exactly."
"You know, if you're supposed to be my companion through whatever term
my existence takes, it would be nice if we could relate to each other
with some semblance of equality."
"Oh, now, you're just acting like the poor, benighted, overshadowed
human male. You're supposed to be struggling to achieve your potential!
Be all that you can be! Expand your consciousness!"
"Your recruiting memes already worked; I'm in the army now, so you
don't have to keep with the slogans."
"Did I ever use slogans to recruit you?"
"Not that I remember, no."
"Good."
"That's rather ironic considering how psychologically impervious I'm
supposed to be."
"Yes, well that was after I'd been training you for a couple of
centuries. And you're the one that brought up the subject of memes."
"Hmmmph."
"Oh come now, even in your own species, females are generally superior.
You males are supposed to be the path-blazing, yet expendable members
that advance the tribe at all costs, so that their genes can be
protected by the females and passed to the next generation."
"Oh, Cara, please stop with the anthropology lecture now."
"Was that a lecture? If so, I should have taken the time to get the
details more properly correct, instead of generalizing."
"Look Cara, we're almost there."
"Of course we are."
I snorted in frustration.
"Failure and frustration is very motivational."
"Cara ...."
Hanging above us, a kilometers wide flower of superconducting carbon
filaments finished unfolding, petals tilted towards us in a perfect
parabolic arc. False-color tactical displays overlaid the structure
with dense pulses of power, flooding into it from the rest of the
fleet, and then spearing down into us, our sphere drinking zettawatts
to charge its systems. It would be one link in the chain that was our
lifeline to the fleet, supplying power, data, and computation to our
specialized fighting force.
Elsewhere around the planet, in dozens of locations, similiar craft
were also ready for descent.
"Most of those are feints."
"Meaning we're not?"
"Of course."
"That's inspiring."
"There go the bombs."
"Ah, so that means .... " I squeezed my eyes shut.
Waiting was a fugue of anticipation, a long slow breath you couldn't
hold and couldn't let out ....
My stomach lurched as we dropped into Hell.
Of course, squeezing my eyes shut and the butterflies in my stomach
made no difference, since I could still see perfectly well the tactical
displays indicating the start of our descent, as well as the dozen-odd
corebombs preceeding us by a few tens of seconds. There wasn't really
anything to be queasy about; ten million tons of monopolium drops
through an atmosphere with only a few buffets, and in any event my
acceleration tank held me perfectly still and cushioned.
It's just the way I'm wired. Don't ask me to explain it; I don't think
even Cara can.
No rejoinder Cara? Didn't think so.
Now indicators came online showing me the status, physical states, and
even moods of my squad. Weapons diagnosis, sensors interlocked,
tactical computers running, mission cues mapped, realtime intelligence
pouring in, stress and load and armor strain; a thousand intricate
details feeding my intuition about the organic being that was my team.
I find it interesting that Cara doesn't show me this information until
we're just about to go live. Just before everything drops, there's a
peace and calmness that comes over my soul, a rightness,
decisiveness, a finality of setting on a path with just one destination.
And a sense of aloneness. Face to face with only myself and destiny.
A shudder, as we dropped throught the molten surface, not burrowing so
much as falling through the planets core, like a molten droplet of iron
in a vast, dark sea. I knew then by the strange, squishy-soggy feeling
of my skin in the tank that the inertial compensators were now fighting
the turbulence of our free fall through solid ground.
Seven minutes and counting.
Some of my team members; Heavy, Point, Sniper, and the Corporal had
drifted off to sleep. Recon was wide awake and anxious, if I was
reading his mood indicators correctly. The others alternated between
boredom and tension.
"Eyes forward, Recon. How's it hanging?"
"Sir?"
"Just an expression, Recon. Sorry, my carbon chauvinism is showing.
Does your species possess a sense of humor?"
"Sir, there are ... events ... which stimulate curiosity and
excitement, as well as a few ... biochemical reactions ... somewhat
analogous to ... the emotion producing ... laughter in your species."
"Thank you Recon, that's good to know. Are you ready?"
"Yes, sir!"
I sure as hell felt those jarring rumbles now, even in the tank.
Everyone woke up. The fluid did strange, swirling dances against my
skin as the ship buckled around us.
Below us, the core bombs were detonating in precise patterns,
excavating our beach-head and flooding the caverns with gammas and
EMPs, killing locally defending nanoswarms, and making a general
electromagnetic soup out of the resonant cavity we were about to
occupy. A soup that nothing artificial would be able to operate in
efficiently.
We hoped.
All around inside the planet, core bombs were cutting the links of the
distributed mesh composing the deep computation layer of the planetary
neurosystems. Disorganizing and disrupting its defenders, if we were
lucky.
We were about to find out.
Once, this world had been an excavated moon of self-building
computronium supporting a vast archailect mind and its ecosystem of
sophonts.
One minute.
We felt the hammerblow of the tanks as our deceleration burn commenced.
Thirty seconds.
Our tanks dumped us along with our fluid down a twisting dark
tunnel. By instinct and with fluidic help, we folded our bodies
into the proper shapes, sliding into our armor in a sluice of red
acceleration liquid, cascading down the squad bay. Everything went dark
as our data connections were temporarily cut.
Twenty five seconds.
We were reborn in a skin of cybernetic armor; sensors boosted to full
gain, tactile touch, tactical display updates. Biosystems came online,
power system test sequences ran. We consciously and subconsciously
flexed our amplified muscles and sinews. Our protective plating
assimilated the current threat programming and began to morph into the
correct mass distribution around us.
Twenty seconds.
We were amped! Shudders reverbrating through the hull as spherical
gunships blasted away from our transport, establishing a defense
perimeter.
With command and control established, EMPs and microwavers were turned
off.
Realtime intelligence began pouring in.
Instantly, fourteen nearly simultaneous isomer bombs detonated to seal
up veins of liquid reserve nanoswarm defenders; grazers engaged thirty
two thousand synsect defenders piling into the breach that was a cavern
of glowing, excavated rock three kilometers in diameter. A strange,
spherical, inverted earth/sky battlefield of hollow rock and monopolium
spheres, liquid assailants and pulsing microwave power links.
One gunship dropped to the ground as a forty meter defending
blobmanaged to focus a grazer onto a power conduit, destabilizing the
superconducting levitation drive. A swarm of defenders melted
under point defense grazer fire but managed to clump onto the stricken
gunship, eating into the breach before defending blue liquid fossilized
its tormentors.
Fifteen seconds.
Perimeter secure. Another gut-busting hammer of stone as the linacs
kicked us towards our target at barely subsonic speed. The gunships
englobed us in cover formation, but the center of gravity of my team
was the power/data transmission ball linking us back to the fleet.
Ten seconds.
Our ballutes deployed, cushioning the shock that we were by now inured
to. A modern combat insertion was a series of inertial torments,
pushing equipment to the max to minimize reaction time available to the
defenders.
Five seconds.
Power-assisted, we landed in squad formation at the beginning of our
objective, the long slanting tunnel towards the tectonic control
station, now cut in two by our corebomb-generated beach head. The heavy
smart cables of hellbores unwound sinously on tungsten-osmium millipede
feet, linking our ravenous main weaponry up with the power transmission
ball and the fountain of energy beaming from the sky.
The air crackled with our charging energy weapons; our suit point
defense grids interlocked firing fields; tactical computers shook hands.
Contact.
Point's and all four of Heavy's hellbores fired, almost as one.
