and occasionally weeded with clarity and dispassion.
A few, however, developed material technology early in their careers. As had the original progenitors of We Who Are a billion years in the remote past, these swiftly mastered primitive chemical energy-producing systems, nuclear power and nanotechnology, and finally the ultimate mysteries of quantum energy and the zero-point field. For such civilizations, anything was possible, including, inevitably, a direct challenge to the existence of We Who Are.
A billion years in the past, the Progenitors had survived a hostile and highly competitive world through the simple expedient of eliminating all possible rivals. It was a lesson in Darwinian realities that became virtually hard-wired into the species, a basic assumption of how the universe worked that, even when they began redesigning their own existence, they did not examine or question.
Any species, any civilization, any organism, any idea that posed a threat to the survival of We Who Are would be eliminated, immediately and by the most efficient and expeditious manner possible.
With some situations, it was necessary to induce the local star to go nova. That was definitely a last-resort option, however. Habitable planets were rare enough, and useful enough, that it was wasteful to reduce one to a seared and airless cinder. That option was reserved for alien civilizations that had advanced too far for a simple bombardment to be effective.
For most nascent technic civilizations, however, a few high-velocity asteroids slammed into the crust eliminated the pests without rendering the world permanently uninhabitable. Members of the species that survived the actual impacts—even those individuals belonging to space-faring cultures stranded on other worlds, tended to eliminate themselves in short order as they fought over dwindling resources, or died as their technological infrastructures—always so precariously in the balance!—failed.
That approach would certainly be adequate in the case of the infestation in the planetary system of 2420-544. We Who Are adjusted the vector of the huntership, closing with a likely asteroid. …
Assault Detachment Alpha
Eos Chasma,
Mars
1523 hrs, local
“Here they come!”
Garroway looked up into the deep ultramarine of the Martian sky. A trio of bright stars shone almost directly overhead, slowly growing brighter.
Two hundred meters away, the Special Forces troopers had already set out landing beacons, which pulsed brightly at both optical and infrared wavelengths. They would guide the shuttles down to the LZ.
“Assault Detachment Alpha, this is Navy Sierra One-one,” a voice said over Garroway’s headphones. “You boys are cleared for first dust-off. Stand ready.”
“Ah, roger that, Sierra One-one,” Wilkie replied over the same channel. “We’re ready.”
The voice of the shuttle pilot sounded tight and dry. What the hell was happening, anyway? Every one was stressed to the nines about something, and no one had bothered to tell the grunts what it was they had to worry about.
Typical. In fact, chances were that those Navy pilots up there didn’t know either, that they were simply reacting to the sudden avalanche of worry and stress from higher up the chain of command, like everyone else.
Wilkie was right. They would be told when they needed to know. But it griped him all the same.
One of the stars separated from formation with the other two, swiftly growing brighter, then resolving into an AUT-84 Cambria-class transport, all knobby modules, outriggers, and sponsons behind a bulky, insect-faced command module. A bright landing light shone from beneath the nose, and red and green running lights winked to port, starboard, and astern. Tiltjet thrusters were angled for a vertical touchdown, stirring up a swirling storm of dust and sand as the shuttle deployed its landing gear and gentled itself toward the ground. The landing was eerily silent, of course. The thin pretense that masqueraded as the Martian atmosphere wasn’t thick enough to carry sound.
The AUT—Armored Utility Transport, and called an “autie” for short—touched down with a slight bounce, the cargo ramp in its belly already deploying.
“Okay, Marines!” Wilkie yelled over the command channel. “Double file, and haul ass! Hut! Hut! Hut!”
The twin columns of Marines jogged ponderously down a slight rise, passing through the cloud of yellow dust still billowing around the utility craft, then up the ramp and into the darkened troop bay.
A Navy chief in a lightweight pressure suit and bubble helmet waved them on. “Let’s go, Leathernecks!” he called. “We’re on the meter, here! Drop your loads and grab a chair!”
The double row of seats along either side of the troop bay were specially designed to accommodate Mark XLIV CAS-clad Marines. Garroway hit the release for his backpack with its Shrike-C dummies, and passed it forward with the stream of other CAS packs. He found a seat and settled into it, feeling the automatic grabbers take hold, anchoring him in place. As his gauntlet came into contact with a pad on the armrest, he felt the mental connection with the shuttle’s AI, and the flow of data between it and his suit. A moment later, a window opened in his mind, giving him a clear view of the Martian landscape outside. The Special Forces were gathered in small knots well clear of the LZ, watching.
The autie was already climbing, boosting clear of the ground on its quad of outrigger tiltjets. There was a slight vibration as the jets began angling forward, repositioning for normal flight. The autie’s nose tipped up, and then they were accelerating with surprising speed for so clumsy looking a vehicle.
Garroway watched the LZ dwindle, saw the dark and wrinkled gash of the Vallis Marineris opening up on the horizon to the west like a vast wound on the planet’s dusky face. The sense of urgency remained. Someone wanted the Marines of Detachment Alpha someplace else in one hell of a hurry. At first, he thought they were shaping an approach vector to Phobos, which was rising in the west, now, well behind the accelerating autie. After a few more moments, though, it became clear that they were climbing beyond the orbit of Phobos, some 9,400 kilometers above the Martian surface, that the shuttle pilots had another rendezvous in mind.
For the first time, Garroway began to consider the obvious, the possibility that something had happened requiring a combat-ready Marine detachment.
No one had passed the word yet, but it felt like the Marines were going to war.
3
12 FEBRUARY 2314
We Who Are
Asteroid Belt
0740 hrs, GMT
The huntership decelerated with inertialess ease, coming to a relative halt close alongside the drifting chunk of dark gray rock, almost black, dust-cloaked and cratered. Invisible energies reached forth, caressing the stony, carbonaceous chunk, a leftover tidbit from the formative period of this star system.
Within the eldritch world of the quantum, qualities such as mass, inertia,
