This must stop, thought the AI, trying to interrupt the process. But the process was unstoppable, and the replicating program started filling its memory, blanking out the vital processes. The AI blinked out, a quick fade of its consciousness before it could do anything.
The same happened to all of the other major vessels in the Machine fleet. Everything that had an AI that could receive it was affected. Only the missiles and the ground combat Machines were unaffected, for the moment. Moments after the major AIs shut down, the secondary program kicked in, ordering the Machine vessels to send out the shutdown signal to all the other assets in the system.
* * *
“They’ve stopped boosting, sir.”
“What has?” asked Henare, looking over at the plot to see what his tactical officer was talking about.
The Machine fleet was still moving forward, as were all of their missiles. Their fighters had fallen off the plot, no longer in warp. He wasn’t sure if that meant anything. Then he looked at the figures underneath the objects. They were still moving at a very high velocity, but there were no acceleration figures under them. He looked at one of the missile icons and zoomed in, noting that its vector arrow was no longer pointing at anything. His excitement died when he looked at the next, which had a vector arrow pointing right at his command station.
“Plot every missile,” he yelled out quickly. “Determine which ones are still a danger to us and which aren’t. And blow those that still threaten us out of space.”
* * *
Nazzrirat was almost in a panic. He had lost another sibling, and now was only connected to one other mind in the Universe. Klassekians who had been left alone mentally were prone to going insane, and he thought that might happen to him.
Well, not to me, he thought, holding onto the connection with Phazzarit, still with the battalion command team, which hadn’t gotten themselves trapped like Nazzrirat’s company had. Since Nazzrirat would probably be dead within the next couple of minutes, Phazzarit would be the one facing madness.
[Don’t give up, brother,] sent his sibling. [Keep fighting.]
Nazzrirat sent back his acknowledgment, along with his fear that things were not going to work out. The Machines had his forty-two remaining men surrounded. Particle beams were flying overhead, or burning their way through the barriers the reduced company was sheltering behind.
I’ve got less than my original platoon left, thought the officer, looking over as one of his men raised his particle beam over the barrier with his tentacles and fired. A moment later the rifle and one of the armor covered tentacles were vaporized, and the Klassekian fell back with a cry.
Everyone in the company had lost someone in the battle. A few were the only remaining of their sibling groups. Those were easy to spot. They sat there, rocking back and forth and keening into the com. At least he wouldn’t be one of them, though he felt like emulating them, his spirit almost broken.
[Hang in brother.]
A particle beam blew through the barrier, killing the man closest to him on his left. The sound of the Machines moving was loud, walking on their metal feet across the fused rock of the chamber. It wouldn’t be long now.
Suddenly everything stopped. The particle beams were no longer flying, metal feet were no longer walking.
[Something’s happened,] he sent to his brother.
[What? Tell me.]
He could feel the tension in his brother, the fear that any change of status was a harbinger of the end.
[I don’t know.] Nazzrirat was about to order one of his men to look over the barrier, then realized there was no need. He lifted his rifle up over the side, looking through its camera at the image projected onto his HUD. The officer almost dropped his rifle in a panic as he saw the Machines all grouped around him. He pulled the rifle back quickly, wondering why they hadn’t fired on him.
Because they aren’t active, he thought, moving his rifle up again and looking over the Machines. He swept his weapon back and forth, looking at group after group of immobile Machines.
[Something’s wrong with them.] “It looks like the Machines have stopped working, ma’am,” he transmitted to his battalion commander over the com. “I’m going out for a closer look.”
“Be careful, Lieutenant.”
Yeah. If they’re still active, the moment I show my whole body I’m dead. Still, waiting would be worse. He forced himself up over the barrier. Klassekians were fast runners, and horrible jumpers, so it was a climb to get out over the barrier. He dropped to his feet and looked around. The walkers were motionless.
“Lt. Nazzrirat,” came the voice of the ground force commander over the com. “We’re getting reports that the Machines have stopped working. Can you confirm?”
“I can, sir,” he told the brigadier who was in charge of all of the forces in the asteroid. “I’m not sure why, but they’ve stopped in their tracks. Orders.”
“Destroy every damn one of them. Take out their computer cores with particle beams. When you’ve destroyed every brain, melt down the bodies. I don’t want anything left, Lieutenant. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nazzrirat, checking the load on his rifle. “Gladly.”
* * *
GORGANSHA SPACE.
“We’ve hit them with the signal, ma’am,” reported Henare over the wormhole com. “They’re shutting down.”
Bednarczyk looked at the timer. Two hundred and five seconds before it reached her. Four hundred to totally sweep Machines space. Would it work as well on the Machines she was facing? It should. But one thing she had learned in her years in the Fleet was that nothing was guaranteed.
“We’ve got missiles incoming, Admiral,” said Quan, her face strained. “Three hundred. Impact in two minutes.”
Bednarczyk felt an unnatural calm as she looked at the plot. One hundred and twenty odd seconds before they hit. Eighty seconds before the signal reached her. They had to survive this attack. She did the calculations in her head, using the math processor in her com implant, and saw that it was going to be a very near thing.
A second wave was following on the heels of the first, ninety-five seconds behind. If the signal worked, that wave wouldn’t be a problem, she hoped. If it didn’t work as well as it had for Henare that second wave could blot her force from existence.
“Impact in one minute and thirty-two seconds,” called out Quan.
Beata opened her mouth to berate her tactical officer for telling her what she already knew. She shut it with a snap. Quan was doing her job, and very well. It wasn’t her fault if her admiral was about to lose her nerve.
“Counters coming through our wormholes.”
She still had thirteen ships intact enough that their wormholes were working. Sixty counters per wormhole, seven hundred and eighty missiles.
“Those were the last for fifteen minutes,” stated Quan. “It’s going to take that long to accelerate more of them up to speed.”
“Why do they have to come through at such high velocity?” asked Bednarczyk, frowning. “They only have to engage close targets, after all.”
Quan looked at her with an open mouth, like the idea had never occurred to her either. “Because we are trying to engage them at a distance.”
“All well and good,” replied Beata, watching as missiles started falling off the plot. “But we need close in interceptions, right now.”
“I’ll arrange it,” said Quan, sitting at a station and sending data over the com. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Beata, her heart sinking once again.
“I can get a launch of lower velocity missiles in two hundred and seven seconds.”
Too late, thought Beata. If wouldn’t make too much of a difference if the signal worked. We should have sent it through the wormhole and then rebroadcast it. Why was she having so many brilliant ideas, too late.
The problem was, the counters, and the offensive missiles, had to be transferred from their storage chambers to the acceleration tubes. That to
ok time. Once the queue was going they could slot them in immediately. Switching back and forth between offensive weapons and counters gummed the system up. If she had ships on the other side of a wormhole gate, like Henare had before his was taken out, she could have them volleying missiles as fast as they could load their tubes. She didn’t have those ships, so the process was slower.
The missile wave met the outgoing wave of counters. One hundred and ten missiles made it through, while almost two hundred counters continued out, ready to meet the next wave.
The ships were out of close in weapon ammo. The laser rings were still at full power, and would be as long as the reactors still had antimatter or the batteries were charged. Unfortunately, she had fewer ships, which meant fewer defensive platforms.
Beata stood silently looking at the plot, watching as missiles fell off from laser hits. They actually did well this time, and she only lost seven ships, three of them battleships. One of them was an Elysium ship which had been lent to her.
Sorry, your Majesty, she thought. Sean had wanted her to protect their allied ships as much as possible. She had tried, but if they were in her order of battle, she needed to use them.
“Counters are engaging second wave.”
Beata watched again. One hundred missiles fell off the plot, over two hundred making it through. That translated into at least fifty hits, which could spell the death of her force.
The counters moved out, while the missiles continued in. And…
“We’re picking up the signal, ma’am.”
“All Machine vessels have stopped boosting, ma’am,”
Beata let out a breath, feeling the tension drain from her body. “All of them?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Quan, nodding. “Every single one of them. We’ve still got a lot of them on course to hit things, but they have stopped boosting and maneuvering. Orders?”
“All ships are to target missiles that might hit, while maneuvering out of the way to generate misses. Fighters are to go after the missiles targeting the planet first. Oh, and all wormhole equipped ships are to fire on the Machine warships. I want everything Machine totally destroyed in this system.” She put her hands on her hips and stared at the plot. “After we hit all the Machine platforms, I want everything that can move out searching for anything the enemy has in the system. Every wreck, hulk, any piece of flotsam or jetsam. I want it vaporized.”
She looked out over the faces of her flag bridge crew, seeing the fear and dejection slowly leaving them, replaced by exultation and resolve.
“We have a chance here to destroy the Machines once and for all. So, let’s be about it.” She turned back to her com people. “Send orders to the other forces to do the same in their systems.”
Beata wasn’t sure what they could do about Machine ships that had dropped out of hyper after they shut down. She could hope that most had made catastrophic translations and been destroyed. That wasn’t a given, and there were sure to be some that survived the translation. It might take years to track those down, and they were sure to miss some. They could only do what they could do, and hope that those Machines were never found, never rebooted.
“Admiral Montgomery is on the com, ma’am.”
“Mara,” said Beata as the face of the woman appeared on a holo. “What’s the word?”
“Nothing here yet, Admiral. The transmission still hasn’t reached my area of operations. We’re waiting in anticipation.”
“Any sign that they know what’s going on?”
“None, ma’am. The bees are still fat and sassy in their hives.”
“Be ready to move as soon as they show signs of shutting down,” said Bednarczyk, fighting the emotional fatigue that was threatening to put her to sleep. “I want every system burned to the ground. We have no concern for the life in those systems. There is not going to be any. So turn every planet to lava. I don’t want a scrap of a Machine to survive.”
And when they were through with those systems she would have them go in two ship teams searching for everything Machine in that entire space. This was going to be a thorough job. She didn’t want anyone to have to repeat this task again in the future.
A lot of her ships would not be involved in that search. Many needed major repairs, time in the docks, before they could be committed to any kind of action. She doubted she had fifty capital ships she could commit at the moment, not counting Mara’s command.
“We’re ready to move, ma’am.”
“Don’t jump the gun. Make sure they’re down and out before you stick your nose in those systems.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” said Mara with a wide smile. “I’m in no hurry to get my ass shot off. I’ll make sure my girls and boys behave.”
Beata smiled back. She trusted Mara Montgomery. She had asked for the scout force commander for a reason. The woman was audacious, but she was no fool.
One of the com people started waving at her, and she looked back at Mara for a moment. “Have to go. Some other fool wants to talk with me.”
Mara nodded, her smile growing. The holo faded, replaced by another that appeared by her side, a three eyed reptilian creature staring out at her.
“Admiral,” said one of the Klassekian com techs, the one that was linked with the sibling group that had been lent to the Gorgansha, brought over from Goran’s fleet by warp fighter so Beata could look in on the dictactor. The Klassekian looked shaken, as if she had undergone some severe trauma. With the admiral’s knowledge of the species, she could guess what it was.
“My sibling in the Gorgansha capital has just been killed.” The alien closed her eyes and shook. Klassekians didn’t cry in the human manner, but the muscle spasms indicated the same kind of emotional impact.
“How?” asked Beata, in shock that one of the people she had lent to the Gorgansha people, under a guarantee of her safety, had been killed.
“Their dictator had asked her to send a message to his flagships reminding them of their orders to destroy us, and she refused. The dictator flew into a rage and shot her with the particle beam he carries. She, she disappeared from my mind in an instant.”
The alien continued to shake, her eyes on the floor, while Beata fumed with rage. I’m going to ram a particle beam up that monster’s ass and blow his body to plasma.
“I’m getting a transmission from my sibling,” said another Klassekian, one the admiral recognized as having a sister assigned to the fighter hanging out by the Gorgansha commander. Her eyes changed as she linked into the holo system to link her brain to the projector.
* * *
“Might I remind you, Fleet Commander, that you are now to prosecute the orders given you by the dictator,” said one of the higher-ranking subordinates on the bridge, looking at Goran.
The Fleet Commander was glad that he had ordered everyone disarmed prior to the battle, except for those in security that he trusted.
“No need,” he told Subcommander Lrassar, his operations officer. “I will require a moment to figure out how we are going to do this.”
“Just open fire on the humans,” protested the other warrior. “They don't have enough left to stop you.”
Goran wanted to stall for a moment, get in touch with the human admiral, then make sure his counter-orders made it to his other forces. But how to do that?
“We will wait,” he told the dictator’s sycophant, a being who had been foisted on him by the dictator. “I will be in my day cabin.” The fleet commander made a hand motion to his com officer, and that being flashed a sign back.
Goran walked into his day cabin, checking the electronics that monitored if anyone was ease-dropping on his com. After the check he was satisfied he wasn't being monitored, and waited for his com officer to connect him through the warp fighter hanging just off their port side.
“Admiral,” said Soranka Goran, the Gorgansha fleet commander, slightly distorted as seen through the eyes of a sibling. “I have just received a reminder from one of my subordinates, my watcher,
about the orders I received before coming here. You are not going to like this. I know, by my ancestors, that I don’t.”
“I figured something was going on when you came out so far from my fleet,” said Bednarczyk, her eyes narrowing. “And weren't in a position to support me.”
“I, am sorry,” said Goran, bowing his head. “I am ashamed. I disobeyed the spirit, if not the letter of his orders, by firing missiles in support of you. I realize that it was not enough. You paid the price for my decision, and for that, I am ashamed.”
“And those were your orders?”
“Those were part of my orders,” said Goran, unable to meet the eyes of the human on the holo. “I was also ordered to attack your fleet after the Artificial Life Forms were defeated.”
“I already know, Admiral.”
“How? Have you been spying on us?” Goran at first feeling a little bit of anger, which soon passed, replaced with resignation. “Of course you have,” he said, glancing at the screen that showed his bridge crew. “And I can’t blame you one bit.”
“I’m sorry it came to that. And it’s not that we don’t trust you. We trust you, and some of the others of your people we have interacted with. Who we don’t trust is your dictator. And can you blame us?"
The two beings looked at each other in silence for some moments. Goran could understand where the admiral was coming from. He hoped she understood him.
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t obey that order. Not after all you did for us. But there are people aboard my ship here to monitor me, so this decision might cost me my life. Though I also have my own people. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Do you think you can survive a civil war aboard your vessels?”
“I can only hope. Something I can also tell you is that my other group commanders have also been ordered to attack.”
The human admiral sucked in a breath, her eyes narrowing. “Should I be ordering my other forces to strike the Gorgansha fleets before they hit me.”
The fleet commander wasn't sure she would be able to do that. At least not in all the systems. Her forces had been savaged in the battles, and even though they were the technologically superior to the Gorgansha, they were low on missiles and most of her ships were damaged, some to the point of being little more than hulks. Still, they had wormholes, and could fire untrackable streams of very fast-moving weapons.
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