My financial take from our fight had been colossal. I was even able to buy some of Buster’s most precious and useful materials and stash them in my own vault.
Buster the construct, the lifelong soldier and former slave, became a guest headliner on the Trakennad Dor, and a socialite. She bought a lovely home on the West coast of this continent, and was working on a project she was being obscenely secretive about. As befit her status, she had acquired many cats. The Mek adored her.
Cherish and Ravish went back to their ersatz family on the Anything Goes. Kitty has even allowed them to become part owners. They’ll continue to service clients, after all, one must do something with one’s time.
The deputies of the computer forensic sciences division went over Kitty’s system like mosquitoes extracting blood. The Nameloids, after extensive evaluation, proved to have several exploitable physical and psychological peculiarities. A plan was derived.
Among other things, Nameloids liked to clean things up, because they’re highly susceptible to several common toxins, mercury being one. They were hazardous materials specialists extraordinaire, and presumably, they’d developed uses or markets for the materials they stole.
The docs discovered their weakness by examining the physiological profiles Kitty had collected to make the sexbots, and from her films of the creatures themselves.
Hides of thick, elephant-like skin protect most of their volume, but not all. Several potential lethal entryways, namely the eyes, and some peculiar pits which ran vertically along their sides under the armpits, were especially vulnerable. The doctors thought these had something to do with respiration. The Nams don’t have noses, unfortunately.
Ammunition dealers went old school and created copper jacketed, hollow point, shattering rounds. They filled the slugs with mercury and other common toxins.
It seemed the enemy could be easily blinded by ultraviolet light. The scientists decided the sun in their home system must be weak, or perhaps the light was reflected and they had no nearby star. The creatures’ ocular receptors exhibited nearly invisible shields, which were not natural to their biology, and shimmered slightly on the recordings when filmed from certain angles. The scientist somehow determined what the shields were made of, something about how the shields reflected light and therefore what they protected against. These protective devices projected electronically from a button adhering to their skin over a prominent bone in the forehead.
Our soldiers mounted ultraviolet light projectors, each with their own minute power source, on their weapons above the scopes, and also sewed them onto webbed, adjustable vests which the soldiers wore on their torsos over their other gear. The combination of signal disrupters and ultraviolet beams would blind the Nameloids. Eye shields, of course, were designed for the soldiers’ protection. Theirs didn’t depend on electronic signals, so the disruption devices would have no effect on them. Humans suffer eye damage from UV light as well, especially the weaponized version.
During the design of this equipment, a group of five soldiers were sent to me repeatedly to make sure the equipment functioned well, especially the vest. We needed to make sure the soldier’s were able to move without restrictions while wearing the mesh harness. Also, they needed to be able to get at the things they carried under the webbing.
Since I was familiar with the ways in which many different species fight, the defense department asked me to help, which made me feel good.
We started in the gym, and while running through even the most basic movements, it became clear the webbing wasn’t fine enough. Thumbs and fingers kept getting caught in it, destroying the soldiers’ ability to get their hands on weapons and whatever else they would be carrying and might need. We even had a few injuries. Different webbing was sourced.
We also found that the vests needed to be redesigned because they not only blocked access to weapons, but in several cases, on the men with built up shoulders, they cut into armpits.
You would think after all these centuries the military would have these kinds of things figured out, but apparently, this is not the case, because humans keep getting taller; especially the ones who are born and raised and otherwise spend a lot of time in space.
I didn’t know if the Nameloids were fighters, or how they’d fight, so I couldn’t try to mimic them. The ones I’d seen looked large and clumsy, but presumable those weren’t soldiers. Anyway, I had a lot of fun grabbing soldiers by their vests and tossing them around the mat room. Discussions ensued. It was just too easy to grab those vests and slingshot the poor devils.
In the end, they solved the problem by ditching the vests, bonding the ultraviolet light emitters onto patches, and having the soldiers sew them directly onto their combat uniforms in a specified pattern.
After all was said and done I reflected on the process and wondered why the military hadn’t started with the patches instead of using the webbing? Well, hindsight is often twenty-twenty. I didn’t say anything. Maybe they thought it would be easier to issue the webbing with the emitters properly placed and already attached than to give the soldiers the responsibility of getting the patches sewn on right, or maybe some other consideration was in effect, I just didn’t know.
Anyway, for a short while, a lot of seamsters and seamstresses made extra TanNotes by sewing for the soldiers. Even members of the Faire textile trade got in on the job. The military made sure the sewers on both Faire and KekTan received the diagrams showing how and where to sew the damn things on.
Kitty revealed the information about eight heavily armored ships the Nameloids had put in orbit around Earth. After they’d negotiated the contracts for service, she’d been instructed by them to put the Anything Goes in orbit between these vessels and the planet while conducting business.
The human military had done a good job of beefing up its ranks in the decade since the pox had taken so many, encouraging the Mek and other protected planet members to join and serve, and most of the Odok ships were out of dry dock. They were fully manned and mekked and had been patrolling the invisible borders of the Galactic Union, protecting the planets and people within.
Usually without much to do except routine boring patrols, the soldiers grew excited about their prospects.
It was generally acknowledged that the marines would bounce in first to take out the Nam ships in orbit, and destroy any defenses on the planet which might be capable of shooting into space at incomers. Plenty of ingress points for our Odok vessels existed in Earth’s space, and the Nams would be taken by surprise.
Secondly, several ships working in precise formations would encircle the Earth, following night around the planet. They’d direct electromagnetic transmitter disrupters toward the planet’s surface. Nam electronics, including their eye shields, would fail; then those ships would be bounced out.
The next team would beam wide swaths of the UV light down onto the surface, blinding the aliens. After this, hundreds of thousands of fighters would land to take the big cities. The Nams didn’t seem to like the countryside much, only small work groups went outside of their cities, Kitty reported.
These assaults would occur during the busiest times of the Nameloids’ day, which Kitty said was between 8 PM and 12 AM, Earthtime.
The Mek pilots and infantry were pumped. All the ships stolen from Trakennad Dor when we slaves had made our escape[8] were to be used, along with the Odok fighters. The Mek were eager to kill Nameloids for us, since humans had enabled them to live and thrive as free kin on their very own planet.
This encompassed my interpretation of what I was able to glean of their plans; soldiers don’t talk about freely. Loose lips sink ships, you understand, but there’s this, sort of, osmosis of information...
Further details escaped me. Maybe I had the gross picture correct, or perhaps not. Who knew what was what? Not I. I’m just an ignorant civilian; an ignorant civilian with lots of Very Important Friends who are certain I can keep my mouth shut, and who sometimes even ask my opinion. I am, after all, a ver
y old, extremely experience alien killer, and supposedly, a long time ago, I’d been a soldier. I remind them, when necessary, that those memories are long gone. To this, they say, “Once a soldier, always a soldier.” My opinions are respected, which is pleasant enough.
I am such a shameless fraud.
Unlike previous military leaders, today’s commanders wanted as few casualties as possible. Soldiers were expensively trained specialists, and they and their costly equipment couldn’t be wasted uselessly on battlefields. The ancient practice of throwing overwhelming numbers of soldiers and billions of dollars worth of equipment at the enemy, I’m pleased to say, went out in the years following the Middle Eastern wars in the early twenty-first century.
After the Western World regained its senses, enough people realized the ends hadn’t justified the means; too many civilians and soldiers had been killed and maimed, too many businesses, communities, and historic sites were demolished, and too many enemies had been made and perpetuated through memories and stories of atrocities passed down through families and friends. Openly acknowledging, in the following decades, that certain types of political leaders, soldiers, and groups of soldiers within armies will always commit atrocities - there’s no way around this - had the effect of causing the acceptance of war and other types of interference, to wane. Too little cooperation and good will had been created.
Throughout the many wars and other manipulations characterizing Earth’s various countries’ behaviors, corrupt leaders, whom the people hated, had been chosen and propped up in many places. They did not work for their constituents building roads, housing and other buildings, supporting food production, transportation, sewage removal and treatment, delivery of clean water, electricity, and the means of heating and cooling buildings. Instead, they filled their own and their families’ and friends’ bank coffers. Same old story repeated endlessly. Tolerance for this kind of deceit and manipulation, and corruption diminished.
We’d finally learned. We harnessed our technology and massacred fewer and fewer soldiers and civilians. We subdued our own lusts for massive destruction.
We built coalitions instead of competitions, leaving cultures, communities, and families intact. We suppressed greed and excessive accumulation. Humanity’s goals became providing every human with adequate food, shelter, clean water, and cooperative work. We strove to provide everyone with what we all needed, not to deprive others for our own selfish enrichment. The result of all this sensibility - worldwide crime and terrorism plummeted and all groups benefited. This is what I had learned during the past decade by examining the human history that occurred after my death on Earth in 2008, before I mysteriously began finding myself resurrecting other creatures bodies and living their lives.[9]
But this particular war would include massive casualties. All the Nameloids would die. Many soldiers would, too, despite precautions. The Nams must have endured attacks before. After all, they went around stealing entire planets, which was why they’d evolved the disease infection tactic to devastate any probable opposition. They’d teased out deadly diseases from our history and retrieved samples, possibly from corrupted workers at our own research and storage facilities, they altered the diseases on the genetic level to be more virulent, had aerosolized and weaponized them, and had unleashed them on Earth.[10] They’d killed most humans, but not all, and now we had many allies who realize the Nameloids could do the same to them.
Researchers identified the original diseases the Nameloids had inflicted on us as one bacterium and three viruses. They’d all been individually deadly in their time, but each could be survived, often with lifetime complications. Their vectors and other modes of infection had long ago been eradicated. Sanitation practices, vector exterminations, and the genetic modification had decreased the incidence and virulence of these diseases in human populations to null and void. We’d never developed vaccines to use or effective antibodies to defeat these organisms, and because the Nams recombined them; human populace succumbed quickly and in a big way.
Until they recovered me, with my alien recombinant immune system, that is. The docs found specific genomic modifications in my makeup which enhance my auto immune defenses. Other changes in my genome negated the ability of my hyped up defenses to attack my own body. They copied the modifications, created a delivery system, and modified the genetic code of the remainder of humanity.
The vaccine delivered the reengineered sequences to specific areas in an individual’s DNA, sliced out the original genomic sequence, inserted the new, and voila, enhancement achieved.
Deaths from the reintroduced disease combination continued occurring for a while because the vaccine couldn’t cure those who’d already become ill. Medical intervention came too late for them.
This became the first time humans had altered their genetics on a population-wide basis. Controversy still raged regarding the morality of changing the entire human population on a molecular level, however, the counterargument went, those humans survived to argue, which they wouldn’t have without the treatment. The voices of those who refused treatment became silent as, one by one, they succumbed and died. Future consequences, however, had yet to emerge.
The new sequences passed through to the fetuses of treated patients, protecting babies from residual infections, which could have finished us off as well. This represented quite a triumph.
No one has any idea how our interference will affect future generations. Have humans changed themselves irrevocably? For better, or for worse? No one knows, but they lived on to find out.
These Nams would all die for what they’d done, no question about it. Humans have quickly and easily remembered their lust for destruction and revenge. I hoped the inevitable coming carnage will cure them of those impulses. Humans with enhanced immune systems raging across the Infinite in Odok ships? Oh, no, no, they cannot become like those who had almost destroyed them.
It’s easy enough to let the genie out of the bottle, but it’s quite another matter to stuff that wily critter back in.
I had already started to influence many prominent and concurring military leaders, politicians, journalists and newsies, authors, musicians, influential celebrities of all stripes, and political activists. After the devastation, peaceful messaging will commence, because social media is alive and well in the twenty-third century, and spans multiple galaxies.