Chapter 9

Sergei dropped through the elevator in his seat and plopped out on the ground, underneath the belly of his attack ship.

The planet’s gravity was a little higher than Earth, and at first he had to drag his booted feet along the ground. The pressurized suit's internal motors kicked in to help his legs move, putting a bounce in every step.

He had landed in the fresh crater of the crew's bomb run, the last one before landing. Black smoke billowed up everywhere he looked, so he switched to infrared vision and saw a projected thermal image on his helmet visor. The flickering images indicated many life forms beneath the wreckage.

He stood silent and listened for screams. It was very quiet, apart from the crackle of flames. The atmosphere had a yellowish tint; in the orange sky above, explosions went off. Sergei worked the control panel of his suit and requested fire support to clear the wreckage. Suddenly, his attack ship shuddered, and the ground beneath it cracked open.

"Shit!"

He rushed for the ship entrance and climbed through the hatch just in time before the entire vessel began to topple over. The autopilot took over; the starter jets blasted the collapsing ground with scorching heat, just as some gigantic machine reached up from the crack to grab the ship's black hull.

The alien machine crumbled under the heat, and Sergei only glimpsed its shape through a porthole before it exploded - it seemed to be a drilling machine or tunnel excavator with multiple arms.

Now the fire support from the base planet's drones hammered the crater all around the ship. Sergei had not had the time to get into the cockpit, and lay on top of the entrance hatch. He braced himself against the cramped elevator shaft as the shaking ship moved to another landing spot a few kilometers away.

"Bloody stupid 2-2-2... maybe the natives knew we were coming... I could be getting quite a reputation. Me, a Galactic Gangster."

He laughed, and waited for the ship to come down again. After a few minutes it landed near the smooth, concrete-covered coastline. Sergei exited the ship again; it was part of his standing orders to stay as visible as he could, so that the natives could identify their enemy.

The sea was faintly visible underneath an endless canopy of transparent roofed barges, each fifty meters long. Green plants grew on the barges; the sea functioned as a huge greenhouse, producing food for a planet of billions.

"Ship," Sergei said to the suit's control panel. "Firebombs, where I point! There, there and there!" He pointed with both arms, and from the humped top section of the ship, charges shot up and rained fire over the floating plantations. "Burn, baby, burn!"

He would have enjoyed himself more, had he not known the 2-2-2 were running the show, and he was nothing more than their serf.

Sergei turned around to face the planet’s landmass and its unending urban sprawl. Doorways opened in the ground itself only meters away; humanoids emerged, armed with various unrecognizable devices. Sergei rolled down on his belly and opened fire with his multi-purpose gun. Scores of defenders fell down, but others came in their place.

The advancing humanoids varied in appearance. Some had yellow skin, others were chalk white; many had three or four arms, and artificial appendages on their heads. Only a few had fur.

All of them had three legs and knobby arms with three-fingered hands. Sergei realized something, turned grim, but continued firing. One of the humanoids got as far as to throw an explosive device at the attack ship; it detonated with a pathetic bang against the hull, making a small dent in the black armor.

Sergei crawled to his feet, firing as he did so, and walked in circles back toward his ship, emptying the last few rounds of ammunition into the terrain. Then he entered the elevator, and was launched up into the cockpit. The ship started, and left the planet.

"You bastards," he said to the cockpit controls. "That is Yyypyylyy's home planet, isn't it?"

"Correct," said the 2-2-2, revealing no emotion at all. "Now prepare to raid the second planet. While you are in flight, we suggest you eat and replenish yourself. The second planet will be more difficult to attack. All its installations are underground. The atmospheric pressure resembles that of Planet Venus near your Sun."

Sergei cursed in Russian. "You had to remind me, didn't you? I told you I wanted to forget. Is there an in-flight movie?"

"We will now allow you to see the transmission we will send to this target world after it has been attacked. Watch it and learn its meaning."

The cockpit's main screen lit up with a transmitted 2-D message in sound, symbols and colorful images. Sergei had learned enough of Tripod's native language to recognize some of the symbols and sounds.

The broadcast started with a montage of the 2-2-2 crew, coming out of their black ships, shooting down the three-eyed humans of future Earth. Slogans in Yyyynian symbols were cross-cut with images of the crew's carnage, and close-ups of Sergei screaming and laughing. The montage said, in so many images and juxtapositions, "This is your enemy."

A flashing caption read: BIPEDS! MAD BIPEDS! WHAT CAN PROTECT YOU FROM THE BIPEDS?

Then, against a neutral orange background, appeared the symbol of the 2-2-2: three pairs of interconnected dots. Soothing notes played. Sergei heard the 2-2-2 speak in an Yyynian tongue, and repeated some of the words out loud.

"Protection against... alien invaders... small price... units of metal... coming to collect... we the 2-2-2... create defense works... outside... edge of... Yyyy..."

His jaw dropped. "Bastards really are collecting taxes! And we take all the blame. Bloody brilliant."

But it seemed so dumb: to travel from star to star at enormous expense, just to terrorize other civilizations, frighten them into a protection racket. Sergei understood that his tiny band couldn't actually defeat, much less destroy an entire alien civilization.

And what about those "taxes"? Did it actually profit the 2-2-2 to send him and his fellow gangsters around the galaxy, when they could probably get whatever they needed by peaceful means?

"2-2-2," he said and threw out his arms, "...why are we doing this? Why are you collecting metals from the worlds that we raid? Is there a secret? What sort of 'protection' is this?"

The answer came a few seconds later: "Protection from organic life. Protecting us, the 2-2-2, from your kind. Organic life is competitive, greedy. In order to expand, it needs metals. We drain the metal resources from organic civilizations, to keep them from leaving their systems of origin."

"And these transmissions?" Sergei gestured at the propaganda film on the main screen: It showed the alien Snowball in a private moment, polishing his collection of skulls. "Why do you want the natives to see this?"

"To give the organic beings a proper enemy: themselves. Your kind desires to fight itself, and we the 2-2-2 merely provide you with a reason to do so."

"Instead of joining forces against you, the machine."

"Correct."

"I can’t believe you let me know this." This must be, Sergei thought desperately, the moment when they decide I know too much and kill me off. I don't mind. Get it over with. No point in living forever as your slave...

"You would have understood eventually. We are simply being honest. And you get to live forever, Sergei. You and your comrades. Is that not what organic intelligences want?"

"I'm going to break free," he warned. "You had better kill me now, because I will find a way to kill you."

"Your friend Yyypyylyy made a similar threat after this last raid," said the voice of the 2-2-2. "He and you truly do not understand. If you die now, we can make a copy of you in order to continue the work. And a copy can be programmed."

Sergei clenched his fists and glared hatefully at the screen. "I understand. And I obey."

"Good."

Sergei thought hard about what he had learned. He knew that talking to his comrades would only alert the 2-2-2, so he had to act alone.

"May I send a personal message to the planet we just attacked?"

The 2-2-2 might have been caught off-guard, for it didn't respond until half a minute later. "What kind of message and for what purpose? Specify."

"It would be in English. That doesn't matter now, does it? The people down there don't understand English. And Earth people, if they pick it up, are so far gone they wouldn’t care to answer. I only want to send a... testament. A last word to the ones I once knew and loved."

"The people you once knew have been dead for a very long time. We do not understand your request."

"Just let me say the message, and I let you decide whether to send it to the world we just raided. Okay? Show my face and play my voice... here goes..."

Here goes nothing, he thought. His "plan" had been hatched in the past few minutes. Sergei recalled from old sci-fi TV shows back on Earth in his youth, that big thinking machines were sensitive to contradiction and nonsense. And the 2-2-2, while not exactly a gullible entity, struggled to understand humans and humanoids. Maybe, maybe not, it would fail to see a message hidden in nonsense...

Sergei smiled, crossed his eyes and sang in a schmaltzy tone. The music he knew from a Russian musical, but he altered the lyrics:

Mommy's home,
now you can open the door,
don't be afraid now, not anymore.

Mommy works for the machine
And she wants to break free
strawberries coated with honeydew.
Only you and I can understand this song that no one knows.
Listen to each little word, carefully
and if you hear this song, let me know if you can
lend this mommy a helping hand

Mommy's home,
Now help me open the door,
don't be afraid of me anymore...

Sergei repeated his improvised song once, and then said: "End of message. That's all. Send it to this planet until you're sure that they have received it."

After a few minutes, the 2-2-2 replied: "We the 2-2-2 have decided that your meaningless message will confuse and therefore intimidate the natives of Yyypyylyy's homeworld. Therefore we will broadcast it from your ship, for an extended period until you have returned to the base planet. Now sleep..."

"Great! Goodnight!"

Sergei feel asleep pleased, knowing that he had outsmarted the 2-2-2. What he had meant with the song was a plea, to anyone in space who might be able to outwit or overpower the 2-2-2. A plea for assistance, for help to break free of the machine intelligence's control.

On the next planet they came to raid, he would repeat the song. That song, Sergei knew, would get on people's minds; the natives on the planet he had just ravaged would be infuriated and puzzled by it... but they would spread it around, ask other civilizations in the galaxy: What does this mean? Why does he kill our people and then sing to us?

Somewhere in that galaxy, with its hundreds of billions of stars might be someone, something bright enough to decipher the message... and powerful enough to help him.

Sergei slept, and dreamed of Earth.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

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