32

As thousands of starships skittered and skirmished around him, crisscrossing on chaotic vectors, pairing up, splitting up, regrouping, some exploding into temporary starbursts, others withdrawing, charging, and circling back to do it all again, Eddie observed and recorded it all with some detachment. Even amusement. The human brain really wasn’t meant for this sort of thing.

It was enough to make you crazy if you thought it about it too much. Eddie had a brief flashback to his childhood struggles with basic algebra and geometry and how he’d had to sweat through the underwater mapping and distance calculations early in his SEAL training. Through raw sweat and will, he’d figured it out, but it had never been anything close to second nature. The brin technology had changed his nature. So here he was commanding a fleet of spaceships whirring through a three-dimensional battlefield and his heart rate was as steady as a metronome and his brow was a dry as a desert.

Well, I’ve still got blood and tears to give. At least I’m still human enough for that. He picked off three mrill ships, trailing the third so closely that as he rocketed through the wreckage, he could hear pieces ping off the hull of his own ship. He knew Nick was similarly bemused and horrified at what he’d become. Ben’s connection was more distant, but Eddie wasn’t sure if that was simply due to physical distance or if Ben kept his emotions on a tighter leash.

Eddie knew Ben had hoped to be rid of fighting, to be left alone. He also knew there was no one better at the art of war, and no one he’d rather follow into it. And if Eddie was being completely honest, there was nowhere he’d rather be. A failure in everything but soldiering, civilian life held only debt, failed relationships, and boredom. Eddie was a Navy lifer. Am I still in the Navy? We might need to think of a new branch of the military for what we are. Space Rangers? He could sense Nick chuckling.

Three more shots. Three more kills.

What really bothered Eddie was the total lack of fear he felt. Prior to his transformation, every firefight, every demolition mission, recon assignment, and protective detail had been fueled by a cocktail of unequal parts fear, adrenaline, and pride. It had probably been that way since the first caveman picked up a stick to fight off the neighboring clan. SEALs were, by nature and training, better able to control those emotions, but the fear was always there. The experience of seeing your friends and comrades ripped apart in combat was never something you got used to. There was no way of preparing for the things you might see. The things you might become.

No longer. Whatever electrochemical reaction in the brain that was responsible for fear had been erased by the brin nanobots—or at least suppressed. Eddie reflected that this was probably the most sought-after weapon in all of human history: the ability to send men to battle who would obey any order, advance on any position, and throw themselves against any defense, regardless of the cost.

A wall of mrill drones swept into view, firing as they came, a flying battering ram. Nick directed a detachment of his own drones to meet the assault, and the two forces slammed into each other. The mrill drones flung their nano bombs and the Chinese drones destroyed them—except one. The lone shot sped through the green blasts and burst open like a pregnant spider. The gray blob of miniature robots coated one of the Chinese drones and began eating it. They devoured the outer armor, exposing the bones of the unmanned craft, which was still dodging and firing as it was disrobed. Then the nanobots began to chew through the powerful support structures under the skin. The glow of the guns and engines pulsed through the drone’s exposed skeleton. The growing gray swarm of nanobots moved over the ship like an infection. Mrill drones kept firing at the limping Chinese drone, which had all but disappeared inside the blob. Occasionally flashes of light escaped, like lightning from a thundercloud.

The nanobots started chomping on the central computer system of the craft. Nick, who had been watching the entire cannibalistic ordeal as he fought his own battles, suspected the nanobots were trying to break into the drone’s communication system to hack into the secure network connecting the humans and the machines. Not happening. He ordered the wounded drone to self-destruct. The craft immolated itself in a green and yellow fireball, consuming the ravenous nanobots and one mrill drone that had gotten too close.

Nick knew the mrill were happy to make that trade. The drone reinforcements had only slowed the pace of mankind’s defeat. The supply of mrill ships seemed endless, as wave after wave poured out of the mothership and broke against the human defenses. Each wave consumed a handful of defenders. Nick had a vision of a sand castle, slopped together with plastic pails and shovels, erected in a panic as the only line of a defense against a tsunami. It was a cruel joke. So be it. If sandcastles in a storm were their last, best line of defense, then they’d shovel until the water washed them away.

Nick ordered a hundred of the drones to form up in two wedges and attack the mothership. “We’ve been playing defense too damn long,” he said out loud to Eddie. “If we’re going to do any damage, we’ve got to turn this thing around.”

“Copy that,” Eddie said. “I’ll take this group from the bottom, and you run the top. Godspeed, man. Let’s kick some alien ass . . . or whatever they sit on.”

Nick laughed, cranked his engines up to full thrust, and charged.