The Code

by Doug Dandridge

  Orbiting hangars vied for space in the orbit, holding brand new shuttles, fighters and other specialist vessels. The orbit space was very full, even with multiple orbital shells extending out to thousands of kilometers. More factories were under construction, beings in spacesuits cutting and welding parts, the flares of their torches adding more lights to the mix. For every one of the points of light there were a dozen beings using nanojoiners that didn't use heat.

  It's amazing, thought the admiral, admiring the energy of the people building this base. It also worried him. People in the asteroid could shelter under ten or more kilometers of nickel/iron crust. Those in the platforms, millions of them, wouldn't have that protection, and they would be scrambling to get to someplace safe in case of an attack.

  The shuttle headed toward one of the huge habitats a little further out from the factories. Forty kilometers long with a diameter of fifteen kilometers, each rotated to give the habitats an outer skin pseudo-gravity of one gee. There were over a million people, workers and their families, living in each of the two habitats, with room for many more. Henare was concerned about the habitats, though he knew they were necessary, he knew they could only evacuate a couple hundred thousand people an hour. In case of an attack, they were sitting ducks, and the loss of life could be horrendous.

  Unfortunately, the asteroid only had an internal gravity of less than point two gees. That was enough for people to move around, carefully. To sleep on beds without strapping down. It wasn't enough for some applications. There was artificial gravity on some levels, just liked used on spaceships. But spaceships had huge energy budgets, with more than enough left over for artificial gravity. Not so for the Bolthole asteroid. The habitats had gravity of a sort, enough for the medical procedures and childbirth that went much easier in a normal, for sentients, gravity field. Which brought up another concern. There were tens of thousands of injured in the two hospitals, industrial accidents, or just plain household mishaps. Bar fights, training accidents, the list was endless. And those people would also need to be evacuated during combat, not the easiest thing to do when some were not even ambulatory.

  “Okay, Warrant. Take us out to the ships.”

  The Gryphon warrant officer who was piloting the shuttle nodded and turned the ship outward. The flight lanes were crowded, and the warrant made sure that the ones he boosted into were clear. The admiral's shuttle had priority in most situations, but that didn't mean that some civilian shuttle wouldn't get in their way.

  They passed by row after row of missile storage units, most empty at the moment, though a heavy shuttle was docking with one to offload the product of the industrial platforms. Missiles were formed of bodies, electronic modules, and grabber units. Bodies were fabbed in the asteroid, using the nickel/iron, mixed with other metals. They were transported up to orbital platforms, where grabber units, manufactured in other platforms, and the electronics packages were attached. Seemed easy enough, but it required tens of thousands of supervisory workers to make sure that everything ran smoothly through the assembly line.

  “There they are, sir,” said Warrant Officer Halastr, expanding the view ahead.

  Three battleships sat in a row, almost complete. Only missing a few of their outer accouterments, running lights, numbers, the lifepods. They would be ready in a couple of weeks, to be shipped out and back to the Supersystem, where they would be crewed and go through their working up period.

  The shuttle coasted by the battleship furthest in, and Henare looked on the ships with feelings of pride.

  “Damn,” said the warrant, causing Henare to turn toward the enormous gate.

  A superfreighter had erupted from the mirrored surface of the portal, immediately boosting to the side and turning onto a heading toward one of the space docks. Moments later a standard freighter went in through the mirror to head for the Supersystem. A traffic control platform sat out a thousand kilometers from the gate, always fully manned, keeping the traffic moving. There had been some accidents, nothing critical, but the possibility of something bad happening was always a concern.

  The admiral turned back to look at the next row of three battleships coming up. These were not quite as finished, missing many of their outer hatches, sensor domes and other installations. The reactor core was being maneuvered through an opening in the upper stern. These ships wouldn't be ready for a month or more. The next row would take several months, while those further on would be ready in from four to eight months.

  There were further rows of ships, battle cruisers, heavy cruisers, the light variety, destroyers. Fast attack ships were also being built in platforms. They were not quite up to full production. When they were they would be sending eight battleships a week to the Empire through the gate.

  Augustine would be proud, thought Henare, smiling. The last Emperor had actually picked Henare for this position, and he was determined to do it right. Of course, having to fight off the Machines, repairing all the damage they had inflicted, had slowed progress. But things were looking up. If only they would be left alone by both their enemies and the Parliament.

  Bolthole was planned as an industrial base that couldn't be attacked, because no one would know where it was. Wormhole gates had still been just a dream, since Donut had not been completed when the project was first envisioned. If the structure worked to build wormholes, ships could go back and forth in an instant. If not, they could still navigate hyper for several months to reach the Empire. And anything that wanted to attack them had to navigate the same space. Nothing could threaten it, until they had discovered the Machines.

  * * *

  Nazzrirat looked over the assembly line that was churning out parts for battle suits. The powers that be had decided that all of their supervisors needed experience on other lines, so he had been moved from the weapons production facility to the armor.

  A gauntlet came out of the fabber, the left glove of a heavy battle armor suit. It rolled in front of Nazzrirat, who used a microscopic viewer to look it over. He couldn't find any defects in the shell. Quickly plugging a tester into the data port of the glove, he looked at the readouts. Everything worked, and he scrawled a mark on the gauntlet, passing it back to the conveyor and reaching for the next one.

  It was a mind-numbing shift, gauntlet after gauntlet, almost all of them perfect. There were a couple that didn't pass, tossed onto a reject belt. After eight hours of acting as a quality control drone, with a couple of breaks, his shift was over.

  “How was it?” asked Lonzzarit, sitting down next to his brother at their table in the local bar, the Shivering Trident.

  “Boring as hell,” answered Nazzrirat through his breathing orifice while gulping his drink through the eating orifice below.

  “Now you know how we feel,” said Phazzarit. His brother, Klazzrirat, nodded.

  “I already knew how you felt,” said Nazzrirat in his defense. “Hey, I worked the line for particle beams for months before they moved me to supervisor.”

  “Along with a commission in the militia,” said a scowling Phazzarit. He smiled and slapped his right tentacles over his brother's shoulder. “Just kidding, brother.”

  Nazzrirat could feel the emotions of his brothers coming over their link. All were happy that he was getting ahead in the hierarchy the humans had set up. His honor was theirs as well, as their achievements were something he could take pleasure in.

  “I would like to work on the computer circuit line for grabbers,” said Phazzarit, waving at the serving bot so he could have his drink refilled.

  The flashing lights of the bar and the loud music was distracting to most of the patrons, though Klassekians could think mind to mind and add that to their spoken words.

  “We have drill tomorrow after work,” said Nazzrirat, eliciting groans from his brothers.

  It wasn't that they hated drill. Actually they like it, training with the high tech of the medium armor suits they had finally been equipped with. It was just after the mind-numbing task of working an as
sembly line they all wanted to blow off some steam and drink. Nazzrirat was worried that his brothers might turn too much to drink, and he would have a bunch of addicts on his hands. He took another sip from his glass and snorted. There was nothing to say that he wouldn't get caught up in drink if he kept it up. After all, they were identical genetically. If one had a predisposition for addiction, they all had it.

  * * *

  Lt Colonel Jun Jin grimaced as she walked over the surface of the asteroid, her battalion of battle-suited Marines maneuvering in front of her. She had three line companies of a hundred and eighty-five Marines each, as well as a weapons platoon and an HQ section. Giving her a full-strength battalion of six hundred and sixty-five suits, not including the support personnel who didn't go into battle. Of course she was missing a few, people on sick call, those who had gone home on leave, but she still had over six hundred and fifty Marines ready to kick ass and take names.

  “We're picking up contacts from the left flank, about four kilometers ahead,” called out one of the scouts on the com.

  That Marine was using a direct line of sight whisker laser to communicate, sending back to the next person behind him, then one, until it reach his platoon leader, company commander, and, of course, Jin.

  “First company, hold in place,” she ordered, taking a knee in her suit to reduce the target she presented. “Second company. Maneuver to the left flank and set up a base of fire.”

  Jin didn't like maneuvers on the surface of the asteroid. It was too dark, too silent, and too lifeless. She understood that these kind of maneuvers were necessary. Especially since the Machines had attacked through the surface once in the past.

  “We're talking fire, ma'am,” called out one of the forward scouts. “We're....”

  The com ended, and a blinking red light appeared on the colonel's HUD, showing one of her people had been killed.

  “They're coming at us,” called out one of the platoon leaders. “Hold the line. Keep firing.”

  Jin looked ahead and saw the flashes of explosives, hammering the first platoon of first company into the dirt.

  “We're in position,” said the commander of second company.

  “Hit them,” ordered the colonel.

  Second company fired from the flank, ripping into the enemy force, then getting up and charging on their grabber, just over the surface. More flashes, particle beams and grenades.

  “They're falling back. Pursuing.”

  “Wait,” called out the colonel as she watched a hundred and fifty-two Marines flow after the enemy.

  And right into the ambush. Icons fell of the plot by the dozens. Some of the enemy were hit as well, but they had cover, and all of the advantages.

  “Second company. Hit them in the flank. Now.”

  The acknowledgment came back, and the second company attacked. Now the route was on for the Opfor, the Opposing Force.

  “Stop,” called out the Brigadier, his loud voice coming over the com. “Battalion commanders, report to me.”

  Jin closed her eyes and shook her head. The general didn't sound happy, at all. And she was sure that she was about to get a reaming for the way her subordinates had forged forward into the ambush despite her orders. It will still be considered her fault.

  * * *

  GORGANSHA SPACE.

  “They're splitting, ma'am.”

  Yes, they are, thought Bednarczyk, watching to regional plot that now showed four huge fleets separating from each other. All looked to be of about equal strength, though that would only become a known when they were scanned from close range. And that would only happen when they entered their target systems.

  “How are your trackers doing, Mara?” she asked her scout force commander.

  Montgomery had completely smashed two Machine systems. Not that she had killed them all off, and they would rebuild, but reconstructing their industrial base was better than letting them run off weapons and ships. Her two forces were currently on their way to two of the remaining large industrial systems. They would repeat their performance there. The Machines would see them coming, but with most of their ships gone, it was hoped the six wormhole launchers in each of the two forces would be enough to destroy their mobile forces and then ravage the systems.

  “Still sticking on their tails. They tried to set a few ambushes, but my people caught them decelerating and jumping down. There was no problem with avoiding such a clumsy attempt.”

  Beata nodded. The Empire had used that ambush tactic many times against both the Machines and the Cacas, setting up in their path and pumping missiles into hyper to strike. It hadn't worked so well for the Machines, when they were being tracked and couldn't set up without being seen.

  “Be careful,” said Beata, knowing that her subordinate would be watching her forces. However, she wasn't with those following units, and the commanders might get a little too cocky and step in it.

  “We will be,” she looked off holo for a moment, talking with another officer. “We've been picking up more grav pulse transmissions between the separating fleets. Our decryption specialists have determined that they are still using the same code. And we can verify that four of the systems are their targets. At least from their transmissions. They haven't started adjusting their vectors to zero in on them yet.”

  That will come, thought Beata. The Machines knew they were being tracked, and they obviously didn't want human fleets waiting for them in those systems. Or even in just couple of them, where the firepower of massed Imperial ships could destroy them. If they kept the Empire guessing until the last moment, they might find themselves facing smaller forces rushed into service. They could kill the system and the defending fleets without much damage to themselves, then head in to take out the next layer of the Consolidation onion. There weren't that many layers, just one more, then the nucleus that was the capital.

  If only the Empire could produce ships like the Machines did. Unfortunately, the Empire had to have supervisors and technicians. The Machines could crank out robotic assemblers by geometric progression, doubling their numbers in hours, then doubling them again, on and on. The only limiting factor was the availability of resources. They needed antimatter, alloys created in atomic furnaces, and most of all supermetals. The last needed ice moons for production, and after so much heat released the body was useless. They could crank out supermetals, but eventually would reach the point in any system where they didn’t have the bodies for continued production.

  Still, the Empire could build so much more if they did the same thing. But because of the Machines themselves, the Empire wasn't willing to do something that might lead to more self-aware murderous battle bots. The Empire was training people as fast as they could, but that was still the limiting factor.

  “I'm sending my forces to those systems,” said the fleet admiral. “I know it's a risk, and they might realize we’re reading their mail. But if we can get enough in the system to run interference, and bring the rest in over a couple of hours, I think we'll get away with it.”

  “And how will Admiral Chan see that?”

  “I plan to let her try her toy, but I'm not going to let over ten billion people die to protect a plan that might not work. I couldn't live with myself if I did that, and they can relieve me of command if they want.”

  Mara nodded, and Beata knew her subordinate agreed. Not that disagreement would have changed her mind, but a complaint to the Emperor might lead to her losing her job. She didn't know which way Sean would go with that decision. He struck everyone as a very humane and compassionate man. But he had ordered the Fleet to hold off when the Cacas had attacked Aquilonia and Cimmeria. That had cost billions of lives, but had saved the Fleet for further operations.

  “I need to start getting my deployment plans together,” said Beata, a moment later dismissing her scout force commander from the com. The units were more or less set, but she would make some adjustments.

  “Get my task group commanders on the com,” she told her chief com of
ficer.

  Chapter Eight

  The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory. Douglas Haig

  BOLTHOLE SPACE. JULY 16th, 1003

  “Admiral to the control room,” shouted out a voice over the intercom.

  “What’s the emergency?” asked Vice Admiral Anaru Henare, the commander of the Bolthole system, sitting up in his bed and fighting to wake up. Checking the time, he found he had only been asleep for less than three hours, and after a very long day. With a thought he ordered his implant to stimulate his adrenal glands, bringing him to full wakefulness in seconds. He would pay for that later.

  “Sir. We have several thousand ships reportedly coming toward us. Detected by the pickets.”

  That sent a chill up the admiral's spine, and for moment he hoped that he was still asleep. He closed his eyes, opened them, and realized that this was reality.

  “How far?” he asked, hoping they still had some time. That depended on how far out the pickets picked them up.

  “Five light years, sir.”

  “Identification? Numbers?”

  “They’re Machines, sir. Slightly different resonances, but definitely Machines. And well over a thousand of them. With more coming into range as we speak.”