Chapter 6

Sergei decided to go see Vodka. He was regarded as the most intelligent, oldest of the crew. Vodka's habitat was a wide white room filled with... nothing. Vodka did not need consoles or fake environments; he fed all data directly into his brain through electronic interfaces.

"Every time I see you, I wish you were really a bottle of Vodka."

The humanoid called "Vodka" asked Sergei: "I have heard that you named this unit after a container filled with a toxic liquid, that you drink in order to poison your brain. Should this unit be insulted?"

"No. Think of it as a compliment." "Vodka" was completely transparent, like a bottle, filled with gleaming organs. Metal limbs sprouted out of his bottom, but he had no organic legs nor arms. The food he ate, a clear liquid substance, swirled through his visible innards like alcohol being poured into a glass of ice-cubes. He was a kind of advanced cybernetic organism. Instead of side arms, he directed small robots to do tasks for him.

Sergei asked Vodka whether he knew anything special about where the 2-2-2 came from. Vodka replied from his unmoving mouth: "Negative. The 2-2-2 sent a machine to this unit's world and took this unit away. This unit's people did not previously know that the 2-2-2 existed."

"But where does the 2-2-2 come from?" Sergei asked. "And why was it a secret to all of us? How could it take us all by surprise? Everyone I asked said the same thing; the 2-2-2 were unknown to their worlds before it took them."

"Positive. Following the logic of these facts, the 2-2-2 machine culture is older than our civilizations. Possibly it dates from the first planet where intelligent life evolved, and where thinking machines were created."

Tripod, who had been listening in through a small drone, spoke through the intercom system: "I say when you ask me first time, the 2-2-2 came for me. I do not say the 2-2-2 was always not known to my people."

"Tell us, Tripod." Sergei set the intercom system to address all crewmembers, wherever in the base planet they happened to be. "Tell us about the 2-2-2."

"They come from my planet."

"What!"

Tripod's big ribcage heaved and sank slowly on the intercom screen. He seemed tired, or defeated.

"The training room. Remember? We ask the 2-2-2 to simulate the world where they began? Now I remember what I learn as a young Yyypyylyy. One time long gone, our people dug out very old ruins... old things from the time before we came. Half as old as our planet. Another people lived then, and we find their bones. Their bones... mixed with metal. They created the 2-2-2 and the 2-2-2 live after they died. The thinking machines left our planet because they do not need to breathe or drink. They need the black space, the hard energy of the stars. In space, they can grow without limit, without being seen by us. They did not hide from us! They were there, all the time, waiting for us to go into their black space."

Sergei fell quiet, watching the humanoids around him; so many shapes, so many different senses, but still all based on living organic tissue. All breathed oxygen. All lived on through procreation. All were violent and eager to fight for turf, spoils or glory. It was not that their nature had changed... but something had been added to it.

"I am not the man I was when I was taken away from Earth. I have learned much. And I understand that we are the enemy of the 2-2-2. We, living things. But the 2-2-2 wants us to fight for them. Why? It does not need us. Does it?"

Vodka did not get the time to reply. Suddenly, the crew of eight started to feel a new physical force, pressing from outside. The base planet had begun to accelerate. Soon they were ordered into their quarters and sedated by the machines. As Sergei fell into a dreamless sleep, he was told that they would be awakened when they arrived at their first target star system.

He mumbled a question as he lost consciousness: "What's the name of the star?"

"You are not allowed to know," said the 2-2-2. "Sleep... sleep..."

And the crew slept.

When Sergei was awakened, many Earth years had passed outside the base planet.

The crew ate and dressed, and gathered in the main monitoring room of the domed city.

On the many screens, they saw a sharp camera image of their destination; a spy drone had been sent out to take pictures. A yellow sun blazed out there, its light reflected against a blue and white planet with a single moon. The planets were distant enough to resemble glass marbles. In the unimaginable distance, the Milky Way lay vast and glowing.

"Is it Earth...?" Sergei whispered. "Did they take me home?"

Other crewmembers muttered or peeped familiar names, as if they too hoped for the impossible. Tripod, who stood beside him, gazed at the planets on the display and said: "My planet... Yyynil. No, not Yyynil. Resembles, but is not."

Afro, her face hidden inside the ball of rainbow-colored fur around her head, moved around fitfully, agitated, but did not speak. The drone came closer to the planet's moon, and Sergei studied it.

"This isn't my moon. The craters are different... and what's that? Cities... and a big frozen lake on the southern pole. No, this is some other moon."

He waited for better images of the blue planet. But there were too many clouds to make out the coastlines. They tried to call up infrared and radar images, to see past the clouds. They asked to listen in on the planet's radio traffic. But the drone refused; it must avoid detection by the planet's automated defenses. The 2-2-2 blocked any attempt to overhear radio transmissions.

"This planet and its moon are your first target," the 2-2-2 declared to the crew. "Enter your attack ships, leave the base planet, and fly down. Destroy. Make them fear you. And then return. The attack ships will land automatically. When you land, you must show yourselves to the intelligent beings there. They must remember you with fear. Take anything you want with you, but do not speak to them. We the 2-2-2 will do the rest. Great spoils will come to you and us. Now go! Enter your spacesuits! Fight! Be terrifying!"

The 2-2-2 sent small, smarting electric shocks through the floors to make its point. The crew scrambled to the launch silos, suited up and entered the attack ships. These were sleek, black armored vessels, each a hundred meters long. Each humanoid had his or her own ship.

The base planet vibrated as the fleet left the launch silos and shot out into space, toward their target. The ships accelerated to several kilometers per second, and dived in sharp orbits in toward first the moon, then the planet.

Afro's ship was the first one to strike the moon. Her instruments tracked spaceports, launch sites and alien ships, and hit them with lasers, plasma bombs and clouds of accelerated steel pellets.

Domed cities exploded soundlessly across the airless moon; debris of life cascaded in mile-high clouds up from the surface. Small and large vessels in orbit made futile attempts to strike back; they were mercilessly shot down and crashed, or spun helplessly into cosmic space.

The attack ships made a quick orbit around the small moon, and set course for the bigger blue planet.

Sergei sat padded and protected in the cockpit of his attack ship, in his thick armored spacesuit, and attempted to take in radio or television signals from the blue planet. All that came through was static, but he could discern cities, canals, space traffic; clearly the planet's civilization was advanced and active.

"Damn 2-2-2," he muttered between clenched teeth, "always keeping us in the dark."

He flew in an arrow formation, right behind Afro's ship, and they bombed the major space stations and ships in passing. The inhabitants of the blue planet even had giant elevator cables going from the surface into orbit; he shot the cables in half, and the wires spiraled down among the clouds. A curtain of angry fire enveloped his ship as it entered the outermost layer of atmosphere.

He entered the upper atmosphere on the planet's night half; endless patterns of light glittered below, outlining cities on land and sea.

"So you want destruction?" he said. "What stops me from doing nothing, 2-2-2? Why should I care?"

Stronger electro-shocks shot through his suit, and his muscles knotted in painful cramps.

"Stop it! Stop it!"

"You will attack the planet, Sergei," said the emotionless machine voice in his radio. "Or you shall never know what happened to your home world."

"You will tell me, if I attack, where my home planet is?"

"Yes, we will take you there."

"Won't the people on this planet come after us if we attack?"

"Do not think about that. We shall protect you, make you live forever, as long as you work for us."

"To hell with'em. Who cares. I'll show'em real terror... can I talk to the natives?"

"No. Talk in actions, not words."

"All right."

He activated the weapons menu and launched a plasma bomb at the nearest cluster of cities, thousands of meters below. Enormous kilometer-high towers, dotted with lights, shot fireworks of laserbeams into the night sky. The beams passed straight through the bomb, causing no harm; it continued its trajectory. Tiny dots of light on the ground and in the sky - vehicles - fled the buildings.

Sergei's ship flew over the city cluster and he saw it turn into an expanding fireball. The network of roads around the cities seemed to bounce up from the earth like snakes, twitching in the firelight of thousands of collapsing, shattering, flaming towers. Countless escaping vehicles dropped out of the sky. Other cities came within reach. He fired destructive energy rays at fleeing aircraft, large cargo vessels above floating sky platforms. Structures that were never meant to land crashed into cityscapes that stretched for hundreds of miles.

Sergei watched the passing devastation as his ship sank lower and lower, passing into the daylight zone. He could see the many signs in the endless urban landscape, letters in a foreign language that resembled his native alphabet but was subtly different. There were giant billboards with images of the natives; they were dark-skinned, quite similar to Oriental humans, but each had a third eye in its forehead.

The eight attack ships landed, one thousand kilometers apart, and the crew went out on the ground, wearing their protective spacesuits. A roaring noise of destruction, panic and counterattacks greeted them.

Sergei screamed, even though his voice could not be heard through the transparent suit. He was fully visible in the glassy armor: a bald, hairless Moscow gangster in casual clothes and a leather jacket, marching in oversized metal boots, wielding an oversized gun.

His ship had landed in a white stone plaza, among the rubble of toppled, burning buildings. All around him blinked and flickered the lights of flying vehicles, small robots, and countless sign displays. A ten-story screen on a building showed what might be a news broadcast about the attack; he and his ship were filmed from above by some passing camera crew. He looked up in the smoke-filled sky, tracked the aircraft that was following him, and shot it down.

Sergei screamed as he fired a volley of exploding bullets at the cityscape. Walls, robots and signs shattered. He trampled over dead natives; one female figure, thin and short, ran out of a distant doorway and flailed her arms. He shot her down and laughed like a madman.

"Run! Run all you want! You can't kill me! I'm immortal!"

A whole group of smaller natives - children? - huddled underneath the fallen beams of a tower. Every one of them had a third eye. Their eyes followed him, staring in fear and incomprehension. They shouted something in a language that sounded oddly human.

"Shut up!" he screamed, and fired a phosphorus charge. The children disappeared in a blast of blue and orange flames. "No staring!"

Something crunched underneath his boots. He looked down, straining to bend his torso in the clunky suit. The brittle thing he was standing on was a signpost, some sort of electronic display, flickering between two overlapping images, but each sharp and distinct.

One image showed a map of the planet, where symbols marked out the ongoing attacks. Strange numerics by each mark counted the numbers of dead and injured. Seven-figure casualties on two continents.

The other, overlapping image showed an animated commercial for artificial eye implants. They were fitted into the forehead of a child, and stayed there with the child as it grew up. The implants looked alive.

The language and symbols were different from Sergei's own era. The coastlines of the continents had changed some; evidently the sea level had risen.

But there could be no doubt about which planet this was.

He stopped screaming and cursing, stood frozen for a minute, looking at the signpost - then he ran back to the ship. It took off, causing more destruction with its launch rockets, and joined the other seven attack ships as they flew back to the base planet. The attack was complete.

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