B. Larson - Rebellion

The campaign against the Worms was over. My surviving marines were orbiting the dusty world wed named Helios inside a vast, cylindrical invasion ship. Macro Command had left us floating in orbit for days, waiting for something. We didnt know what.

A giant, reddish-orange star burned nearby. Its swollen glare filled much more of space than Sol did back home, being over forty times the diameter of our sun. Somehow, that huge red sun made me feel even more insignificant than usual. Combined with the heartless treatment of the Macros, I understood how a sentient amoeba might feel when faced with the microscopic nature of its existence.

We hung in space near the same ring wed used to invade the system. Escorting the invasion ship was the single surviving Macro cruiser. Its thick-snouted belly-turret prowled ceaselessly, despite the fact there was nothing to aim at.

My command brick was amongst the various pieces of my unit that had survived the war against the Worms. It was no longer neatly stacked with the others, however. Wed clamped the bricks down with magnetic footings to the curving metal interior of the hold in a nearly random pattern of dispersal. I hadnt gotten around to reorganizing them into neat rows-and I probably never would.

Inside the command brick, I worked with my surviving officers to reestablish effective command and control over the unit. Mostly, we licked our wounds. Wed lost two-thirds of our troops, and roughly half our equipment. Wed left thousands of dead back on Helios. Hundreds more aboard the invasion ship were injured or dead. The lost men I couldnt replace, but injuries healed fast with the help of our little nanite friends in our bloodstreams.

Not even the nanites knew what to do with the worst of the injured however, those that lay in-between life and death in comas. They could be kept alive indefinitely by the efforts of the countless tiny robots working inside them. But as their brains no longer flickered with even the slightest activity, I wasnt sure who was benefiting.

I also wasnt sure what the Macros were doing while we waited. Perhaps they needed permission from a distant source before they took us home, or maybe they were just thinking about it. In either case, I didnt pester them because I was glad for the break. We stayed quietly on hold at the ring, drifting for days.

At first, we watched the surface of Helios and the space surrounding the two Macro ships nervously, expecting a Worm missile attack to follow us up from the planet. None came. After a time we relaxed, but we were also saddened. I had no idea how hard a blow we had delivered to the Worm civilization. Possibly, wed crippled them. It was a fine way to introduce ourselves to a newly-discovered sentient species.

The only positive thing about this expedition was that it was nearly over. Everyone aboard talked about what they would do when they got home, where they would go first. Some planned to hit Miami, while others confessed they would probably sleep for a week. Marines grinned as they asked their comrades if they would sign on for another tour next year for double the pay-almost universally, the answer was: hell no.

Helios had been a grim trial. Id expected a tough time of it, since the Macros had brought us in only after their own big machines had failed. In retrospect, I could see why the Macros had not been able to conquer the enemy fortresses. The mountainous, termite-mound cities of the Worms were full of small tunnels that would have been difficult to traverse for the Macros. Worse, the enemys tactic of tunneling underneath your base and setting off a nuke had probably taken out their domes. Macro tactics depended on those domes to produce countless new robot replacements to overwhelm an enemy. Their first assault on Helios had probably ended in disaster, resulting in Macro Commands decision to send my troops in. What did they have to lose? We were cannon fodder to them anyway.

Humanitys position within their empire had become painfully clear. We were far from allies-we were more akin to slave-troops. We were to be used callously as suicide forces to storm resistant biotic strongholds. Id come to conclude after reviewing recent events that our status within the Macro empire was intolerable in the long term. How could I even hope to recruit men for these missions when they amounted to horrific slaughters of aliens that should rightfully be our allies? Even harder to sell were our own grim losses.

I regretted what wed done to the Worms. In retrospect, I wished wed tried to communicate with them. Although they hadnt shown any signs of interest in anything other than our destruction, I suppose I could have tried harder. My girlfriend Sandra scolded me over this point.

So, you didnt even give the Worms a chance? she asked again the third day after lift-off. She couldnt seem to get over it.

I shrugged. We sent radio signals. Obviously they could receive them, but had no idea what we were saying.

I looked at her, thankful shed lived through the hell that was Helios. She was still shapely, young and attractive, and she was still mine. She looked a lot like she had the day Id met her, except her hair no longer hung half-way down to her butt. It was way over regulation length, but Star Force had yet to write a book of regulations. At the moment, I wasnt complaining. It touched the shoulders and was very feminine. When I got done admiring her and brought my eyes back up to her face, her almond-shaped brown eyes flashed at me dangerously.

We didnt give them any real opportunity, she said. We just slaughtered them.

Now hold on, I said, trying not to yell at her. Id learned long ago that yelling at your mate rarely made ones day go better, no matter how tempting it was. They didnt exactly give us a chance. They attacked the moment we landed. We werent equipped with a thousand linguists, we came down with thousands of Star Force marines.

You could have tried to figure out their language. They seem to communicate at some level, the way we do. They arent telepathic or anything.

There just wasnt time, Sandra. Learning an alien language might be possible given enough time, and if they had come out peacefully and given us a chance to talk. They didnt. They attacked, and we defended ourselves. Once a battle is engaged, survival is all either side has time for.

Youre blaming the Worms for their own destruction?

I shook my head. Not really. Im blaming the Macros. We had no chance. The Worms had no choice, either. Imagine if we were on Earth, beaten down to our final strongholds after many assaults. The Macros then show up with new invasion forces, aliens weve never seen before. What if they had landed with Worm troops on, say, Texas? Would we have greeted them with open arms after fighting a long war of extinction against their masters? Would we have put flowers in our hair and smiles on our faces? No, we would have hit them with whatever we could, and fought to the death, assuming the new enemy troops were not interested in talking. Thats exactly what happened. Once they attacked us, we had to go for them. The battle was on.

There was no way out?

I shook my head. Probably not. The moment we came down in a Macro ship, events were locked. We were destined to fight it out. We didnt have any time or room for negotiations with people we had no idea how to communicate with.

Sandra fell silent. I noticed the sour look on her face. I figured Id won the argument, but had made no points with her.

But you could have tried, she said stubbornly, crossing her arms under her breasts. Her eyes were half-closed and annoyed.

We were both inside our modular living quarters, and wed just awakened. I applied steady pressure upon a point on the nearest wall, causing a radial menu to bead up under my fingertips. The walls of all our bricks teemed with nanites and were programmed to be touch-sensitive. The interface quickly became second-nature to everyone who worked with it. To make the menu hot spots easier to find through a thick glove, I had scripted them to shiver slightly when active. They felt like hard, quivering pebbles under my fingertips. I caused my locker to spring open and pulled out a combat suit.