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.She got out the medical kits we had picked up while ‘shopping’ and taped together the worst wounds.I explained recent events to Crow.He’d known Pierre was dead, but hadn’t figured out that I’d gone over to fix matters personally.“So you actually did it, mate?” he asked, whistling.“You took the injections? What are they like?”I described the sensations briefly.“I thought you had already done it, sir,” I said when finished.“No,” he said.“I said it was nasty because I’d heard from another fleet member that it was, but I never had the guts.”“Who was the other guy?”“Doesn’t matter.We lost him in space during the first Macro attack.Poor bloke.He must be dead now.I truly hope the nanites aren’t reviving him out there in the frozen void over and over again.” He laughed.I didn’t share in the joke.Sometimes, Crow’s sense of humor bordered on the macabre.“So, who else has done it?” I asked.“No one, to my knowledge.We are survivalists, not heroic, experimental types.You are, as far as I know, the only living person full of nanites.”We talked further, but Crow was busy.He told me to contact the Senator again, and demand an explanation.We decided we would only allow known officials aboard our ships from now on, people we’d seen in the news.That should cut down on assassination attempts.“Are we going to even try anymore?” asked Sandra.“They’ve shown themselves to be vicious and untrustworthy.”“Right you are,” said Crow, “but we still have to work with them.What nation has ever arisen in history without having to defend itself? It’s only natural for them to consider us rebels, terrorists, vigilantes.To become worthy of diplomacy, any group must prove it is strong enough to be independent.I think we’ve just taken a step down that road.We can act huffy about it, of course.We can demand apologies and the like, but after a while we will have to deal with them.Neither side has any real choice unless they can conquer the other.”At length, Crow put me in charge of diplomatic affairs.I was the least likely to be assassinated, and I was the only person in the fleet who could get out of my ship if I wanted to.Previously, I had been in charge of tactical combat, but right now the Macros were keeping quiet and hadn’t made any further space attacks on Earth.After we broke off the communication, Sandra kissed me several times.“I want to apologize, she said.“I’m sorry I recoiled from you when you first came—home.”“It’s okay.My looks freaked out the assassin, too.”“One thing is bothering me,” said Sandra, finishing with her ministrations.My face was taped up and slathered with antibiotics.“What about the aliens you fought when you first boarded these ships? The centaur people? Why weren’t they full of nanites and invincible to us?”I thought about it and couldn’t come up with an answer.But I thought I knew who might have one.“Alamo, did the… ah… the biotics that were aboard this ship when I was first picked up undertake the injections at some point?”“Yes.”“Then how could I beat them? They didn’t seem especially fast or strong or full of a metal coating under the skin.”“They were not as you describe.”“So, the nanites left them? You reversed the process of the injections?”“Yes.”“Why?”“Because they failed in their mission.”I felt a chill.Sandra and I looked at each other.Perhaps they would see fit to turn off my nanite population someday, cutting me off as well.“How did they fail, Alamo?” I asked, not sure I wanted to hear the answer.“Their species failed.Their planet was overrun by the Macros.They are extinct now.”“Aren’t there a few of them left alive on the ships that still roam around looking for command personnel?”“Yes.”Sandra tapped at me.“We’ve got to stop them.We can’t kill the last members of a race of people like us! They are fighting us to prevent their own extinction.”I nodded, but I couldn’t think of a way to do it.What could I do?“Maybe we could capture them,” said Sandra, thinking aloud.“I could try to board one ships and beat them unconscious or something,” I said thoughtfully.“If we could at least get a few breeding pairs off the ships, they might not all die.”Sandra frowned, suddenly not liking the whole idea.“I don’t want you to do it.You’ve got about a dozen other missions.We have to defend Earth first.”I looked at her.“A minute ago, you wanted me to save the centaurs.”Her face took on a hard look.“If we can—I do.But I don’t want to see you do it personally.You’ve done enough.I—I guess I’m getting attached to you.”I stared at her.There was an almond-shape to her eyes.She had the kind of eyes that didn’t even need makeup.She was lovely.I thought about the legendary professor and his formula for predicting the longevity of such relationships.I didn’t even bother to try arguing myself out of it.I figured whatever we had would fail in the end, but that didn’t matter.When an unattached man in his thirties meets a hot girl in her twenties and she shows strong interest.Well, there’s no hope for the guy.I sighed internally.At least it would be a very nice two years.-20-When I learned the method by which Pierre had been conducting diplomacy, I almost laughed aloud.He had been doing it via the internet, using a voice system that allowed two-way communication.I knew the software well, my students had used it to communicate with other people worldwide—mostly for online gaming purposes.It did have advantages, I had to admit.By using a cellular internet hook-up and software for voice transmission, you didn’t have to call people and know their phone numbers.It was a little harder to trace, as well.But mostly I thought it was amusing because I was sure it was the same type of system that Pierre had previously used to con people out of money.E-mails to get them hooked, then a faceless, untraceable, cost-free voice coming over the internet to talk them into the scam.He’d naturally taken the same approach when dealing with foreign governments.I had to wonder if he’d done something else he shouldn’t—something that had pissed off the wrong people and gotten him killed.I sat and thought for a while with Pierre’s tiny computer in my hands.Before I tried to talk to the government people—the same people, I reminded myself, that had killed our last ambassador—I felt I needed an edge of some kind.I need a bargaining chip.It would be one thing to get online and make them squirm, calling them assassins and fascists and the like.But I was a big boy.I knew the score.They might be embarrassed, but when the survival of the world was at stake, they were playing for keeps.Fortunately, so was I.I waited until Sandra left me.She had gone exploring the ship.She did that a lot, as it was one of the few things the Alamo would let her do.I had done a bit of it, but not as much as she had over the past week.Inside, the ship had several levels and dozens of rooms of various sizes on each deck.There was a lot of strange equipment on the upper decks, the purposes of which were still a mystery to us.“Alamo, I want to talk to you.”The ship didn’t respond.There was no need.I could have opted to transmit my thoughts silently, but that still didn’t feel natural to me.“Alamo, what if this ship is damaged? Can it repair itself?”“Yes.”“Can it repair the macro systems aboard the ship?”“Yes.”“All of the big components? Even the drive systems and the weaponry?”“Yes.”I made a happy sound and leaned back in my chair.This was what I had been hoping for
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