I felt bad for the colonel, who had been out since the UAVs had appeared unexpectedly over the island. But I had little time to enlighten him. “I can give you a highly abbreviated version now, but the rest will have to wait. But before I do, I have a quick question. Just before the attack on the island, Nari kicked us out so he could speak with you alone. What did he tell you?”
“It’s not really my place to say,” he replied, taking a seat beside me. “But it had to do with Tessa’s background. Something he wanted me to know. And then he wanted me to advise him on the best way to break the news to you.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Did it have anything to do with Tessa not being born or raised on Earth? Or having nanites long before she claimed?”
Brad shrank back in surprise. “Nari was convinced you didn’t know,” he said. “He was worried that you might take it hard, think that you’d been betrayed.”
“Me?” I said with mock innocence. “Take something like that hard? It’s like Nari doesn’t even know me.”
In that moment, I felt as if I were in heaven. Brad and Tessa were both safe. And I knew for certain that what Tessa and I had was very real, and that we would be together for the rest of our lives. Not to mention that we had thwarted the Swarm’s plan, inches from the finish line, and had gained a treasure trove of knowledge that was truly priceless.
It was clear from my Swarm memories that Nari and the Federation were almost exactly as they had presented themselves. Nari had lied, but had done so at the behest of his AI, or with the best of intentions, as claimed. The Federation really did want to help humanity survive and lead them one day. And they did want our help to defeat the Swarm—a species I had learned was even more horrific than they thought—but not by subjugating humanity in any way. This had been the Swarm’s most malicious lie of all.
I had just one last loose end to take care of.
But before I did, I owed Brad just a bit more explanation.
“So let me catch you up,” I said to the colonel. “The Swarm managed to assemble a large organization the Federation knew nothing about from twelve hundred light years away. An organization calling themselves the Sentinels. The unconscious man across from us is Nick Nicola. He was the second-in-command of this organization, and he’s going to ultimately help us a great deal, and make a valued addition to our team.
“The man on the gurney was the Sentinel’s commander, Kenneth Kussmann. The Swarm can also possess certain people—long story—and he’s one of them.”
“Possess?” said Brad in disbelief. “You mean like a demonic possession?”
“Exactly. They tried to possess me, but it backfired. Another long story. But the bottom line is that things couldn’t have worked out any better. My nanites have recorded the entirety of Swarm memory—an intelligence coup for the ages—and I now have control of over three thousand UAVs the Swarm commissioned to be built here.”
Brad’s eyes widened, and he looked as though he thought he might be dreaming. He opened his mouth to ask the first of dozens of question he no doubt had, but I held out a forestalling hand. “Sorry, Brad, but we’ll have a full debrief another time. Right now I need to wake this guy up and have one last conversation with the Swarm. And then get the hell out of here and bring you and Nari up to speed.”
The colonel nodded, still clearly unable to get his arms around what I had just told him.
We lifted Kussmann into a chair facing us, restrained him, and I administered the tranquilizer reversal agent. He was awake less than a minute later.
“Hello, hive-mind,” I said when his eyes opened. “Before you leave us for good, I want to make sure you fully appreciate just how completely you’ve failed.”
“A minor setback,” said the voice of Kenneth Kussmann, puny compared to the mighty mental voice that had thundered through my brain earlier. “One that will be remedied momentarily.”
I shook my head. “Good try. Just so you know, this is what defeat feels like. I realize this is your first taste of it in ages. But you’d better get used to it.”
“We aren’t defeated. You are. We can take back control of the Sentinel’s fleet any time we want. If you surrender now, we’ll let you and your friends leave in peace. Otherwise, we’ll use the fleet to destroy your entire planet. Your choice.”
“Wow, worst bluff ever,” I said in contempt. “If you had the power to take control of the fleet, you’d have done it already, and we’d already be dead. The concept of mercy and compassion mean nothing to you, so you’d never let us go.”
Tessa and Brad were both following the conversation with rapt attention, but neither knew enough to participate.
The hive-mind abandoned its feeble bluff, changing gears immediately. “How could you have obtained the thought-password necessary to take control?”
“Unbelievable,” I said in disdain. “And here I thought you were the greatest single intelligence in the known universe.”
“You must have gained access to our collective memory,” said Kussmann, answering the Swarm’s own question. “The mental bridge we forged with you must have been bidirectional. Which you somehow managed to conceal from us.”
“Very good. Not that we need your entire store of memories to defeat you, but it will make it easier. Your plan couldn’t have backfired any worse, could it? Instead of hacking the Federation computer, taking over all of our command codes, the opposite happened.
“But you were only after the contents of a computer. We got the contents of your mind. That really has to sting, doesn’t it?”
I paused to let the hive-mind stew on what I had just said, and then changed gears. “Still,” I continued in my most reasonable tone, “defeating you will come at a high cost. So I have a proposal. Change course. You seem to be heading our way, but why not avoid us entirely? Why not divvy up the galaxy in an equitable fashion? Again, I’m now certain we’ll defeat you, but why take heavy losses?”