Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above

by Doug Dandridge

  They passed the second armor layer, multiple kilometers of alloy, just in from the kilometer of empty space that had held the sandwiched liquid metal layer that had constituted both a kinetic absorption and self-repair portion of the ships protection. That layer had attempted to fill in the hole, but multiple warheads and laser blasts had kept it from hardening in the opening, until the liquid much further along the hull had solidified as well, keeping more from flowing in.

  “Look out,” yelled a woman’s voice as a particle beam, no atmosphere present to turn it red with friction, speared out and hit one of the Marines in the side.

  The LT looked over, her faceplate viewer zooming in to see what looked like a mechanical spider crouching in a corridor that led into the opening. The Marine was still yelling as she tried to find cover and the beam burned into her suit. She went limp in an instant, just before a quartet of beams hit the robot and blasted large molten pieces from it. A few seconds of fire and the robot was down, but Suarez’ attention was fixed on the flat lined Marine.

  “Second and third squads, keep a watch on those sides,” yelled the Gunny. “First squad, eyes front.”

  The Gunny moved over to the floating suit of the Marine, and Suarez boosted slowly toward the woman as well. She coughed as her gorge threatened to rise as she saw the holed face plate of the Marine and the ruined remains of the head behind it. There would be no recovery for this Marine, she was gone for good.

  “It happens, LT,” said the Gunny over the private com they shared. “Not anyone’s fault, and remember, they signed on for this, twice.”

  Suarez nodded, realizing the NCO was correct. The woman had volunteered for the Corps, then for this mission. And there hadn’t been anything she could have done to have kept the Marine from being hit. But she still felt terrible over the first casualty in her command.

  “Lt. Suarez,” said the Captain over the com. “I’m moving second platoon up to clear the sides. Wait for them, then continue on, but slowly.”

  Suarez sent back her acknowledgement, looking ahead to where the second probe slow drifted in, about a kilometer from her position. While she was watching the probe second platoon moved up, a squad each taking a third of the circumference of the shaft.

  “Move out,” she ordered after the second platoon leader sent his unit’s readiness. She started boosting forward again, two meters a second, covering a kilometer every eight and a third minutes. Third platoon was fifty meters behind the two leading platoons, the CO and his command group with them. A hundred meters further back was the next company, a unit from their own battalion, intermixed with a hundred Fleet personnel in the same medium battle armor they wore aboard ship, with some small augmentations. Suarez was sure that as uncomfortable as she felt, those spacers wished they had a battleship around them even more.

  * * *

  Beata Bednarczyk felt a little bit of relief with the first casualty, which seemed counter-intuitive. But it meant they now knew what they faced, and the Marines could adjust to meet that threat. Still, a little bit of relief did not mean a total lack of stress, and she was still on the edge of her seat watching the progress of her people.

  She almost wanted to send orders to the Marines, micromanage them in their movements, but she knew that wasn’t the way to go. She was a fleet commander; her job was to run the ships of her fleet. This was a Marine mission, and they were the experts on this kind of action. Best to leave well enough alone and let them do their jobs.

  There was some more shooting coming from the side, a massive maze of openings leading into passageways, some corridors large enough for battle suited Marines, others the size of small repair robots. The Marines took another casualty, this one recoverable, and the covering platoon took out several dozen robots. Some of those bots looked to be purpose built war machines, but most were repair robots, not really meant for combat and at most carrying laser cutters.

  Beata was about to call for more Marine volunteers, possibly an entire battalion, thinking that this target might just be too much for what was already committed. But if it did blow, that would be more people lost. She was about to send the order anyway, then decided to wait. She could have the rest of the battalion on shuttles and waiting outside the damaged juggernaut in five minutes, and surely the two companies could hold out that long if the shit hit it. So we wait, she thought.

  * * *

  Spacers were completing deep radar scans of the walls around them, seeing how far the access tunnels went in, and if there were any under the melted exterior of the shaft walls. Suarez was checking out their feeds between looking over her own unit’s take of the situation. She didn’t have time for it all, it was system overload. But she determined to not be taken off guard.

  “Let it go, LT,” said the Gunny through their personal link. “Those spaceheads know what they’re doing. If they find anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Just as he said that one of those spaceheads was on the com, shouting out a warning. “We have lots of movement underneath the wall, right here.”

  The LT turned in the direction her HUD was giving her for the spacer, and as soon as she had oriented in that direction a cursor on her view was showing her the point in question. It looked solid enough, in a melted alloy kind of way. Suddenly the melted area turned molten again, alloy flowing. A five-meter-wide hole opened and a trio of battle robot spiders came scuttling out, lasers firing. The Marines had not failed to act on the warning, and almost a full squad was there to meet them. Nine particle beam rifles, an auto grenade launcher and a heavy beamer poured their fire into the hole, vaporizing the trio that had already emerged, then lancing into the corridor and slagging a number more. A few laser beams came out, visible in the metal vapor, and then they stopped. A heavy suit flew up, one of the rocket launchers on the Marine’s back swiveling up and over the shoulder, then releasing a hyper-velocity missile that steaked down the corridor. In an instant a blast was travelling back up the access way, the five kiloton warhead releasing its fury deep inside the derelict, a small bit taking the easy way out. The Marines who had been firing down the hole were already out of the way and to the side.

  “Your people know what they’re doing, LT,” said the Gunny. “Let them do their jobs. You just worry about making the platoon wide decisions.”

  Suarez felt a flush of embarrassment that soon turned to anger. She was about to give the Gunny a tongue lashing. Who was he to tell her what to do? Then the words of her instructors in the academy came back to her. Listen to your senior NCOs. They have been doing this a lot longer than any of you have, and they have survived. Use that knowledge.

  “Thanks, Gunny. I’ll try to follow your advice.” She was sure the NCO had a smile on his face and was thinking smart girl. Making him think so was also in her best interest. She was sure the Gunny wouldn’t try to do anything to her if he thought otherwise, but there was the possibility he would let an idiot officer who was determined to get all her people killed make a fatal mistake.

  “Can we fire a couple of missiles down to the bottom of this thing?” she asked the Captain, switching onto the company command circuit.

  “Not yet, Suarez. We might find something the research boys could use down there, and it wouldn’t help them if we slag it.”

  Suarez cursed under her breath, making sure her input to the circuit was muted. Of course they wanted some kind of technological haul, and her people would pay the price to obtain it. All she could do at the moment was monitor her unit, look for any anomalies, and shout out warnings. Otherwise, she was just holding a place and providing another possible target, reducing the odds of the others in the platoon taking a hit. So much for all of her training.

  We’re really kind of useless, she thought, switching the feed of her HUD back and forth, trying to glean any hints that something might be happening. This is really just a training position for real command, like the company commander. That was true. They were here to give the men something to see, someone to follow in
to danger. The Captain was well back, where he could command all of his platoons, moving them into the position that he thought best.

  A quartet of laser beams came up from below, invisible in the vacuum, tripping off every photon detector in the unit. Two Marines were hit by the powerful beams coming up, the equivalent of a laser on a massive armored vehicle. One sustained a beam hit to the chest, burning through her electromagnetic field and armor in an instant. She flat lined on the LTs HUD, and Suarez yelled a command to get her people out of the way of the beams. The second soldier was hit in the leg, the armor again burned through, the leg of the man, a squad leader, severed. The other two beams hit leveled shields, pushing through the electromag field and throwing sparks from the tough armor. The probe ahead was hit as well by the passing beams, burning runnels in the hull but not destroying the sensor head or grabber units.

  “Heavy weapons,” shouted Madison. “Fire a missile. Take that emplacement out.”

  The heavy weapons Marine didn’t hesitate a moment. The launcher rotated into place in less than a second and sent a hyper-velocity missile straight down the shaft. It was a streak, covering the ten kilometers in a microsecond, striking with considerable kinetic energy a moment before its ten kiloton warhead detonated. The blast funneled up the shaft, hitting the Marines in a second. Every trooper turned away, covering behind shields or holding their arms up over their helmets to protect sensors.

  The priority com alert came up on Suarez’ HUD as she uncovered to look back down the shaft, where the glow of heat now illuminated the bottom on the infrared sensors. Shit, thought the LT, waiting to get yelled at.

  “Good job, Suarez,” said the Captain, no sarcasm at all in his tone.

  “I couldn’t wait, sir. They were going to slaughter my people.”

  “No argument with that. You thought fast, and I’ll back you up if anyone above questions it. Now get moving.”

  The dead and injured Marines were passed back up the shaft while her platoon, less three troopers, continued to move down. The probe was still moving ahead, tracking everything in the range of its sensors and feeding it back to the Marines. They had moved another kilometer forward when more of the robots came out of the numerous openings in the shaft and opened fire. Only a few of them were true combat machines. Still, there was a heavy firefight, and there were casualties on the Marine side. None were from Suarez’ platoon, and she felt some guilt at the relief she experienced.

  It took over twenty minutes to reach the bottom. There had been some more minor attacks along the way, but not the resistance they had thought. The platoon fanned out into the eleven corridors that led into the shaft. Second platoon landed and followed suit, then the third.

  “Get your people into these tunnels,” came the command from the Captain, the HUD showing the map of the area, three of the tunnels leading out highlighted.

  Suarez sent back her acknowledgement, then sent the orders to her squads, getting each into a tunnel, while she, her command group and the heavy weapons team formed a reserve, ready to head into any of the tunnels if a squad ran into something they couldn’t handle. She watched as her people performed the evolution, then again as five naval ratings followed each group of Marines into the opening, scanners on full power. The reserve, two platoons of the second company, hung in the air just above the floor where they would be out of the way, but close enough to respond.

  Now we see what happens, thought the LT, standing near the entrance to the three tunnels that were her responsibility. She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to do a thorough sweep of this monster, but that was above her pay grade.

  “Look out people,” came a voice over the com, identified as the battalion command, who was also along on this mission. “The Fleet is picking up grav pulses from this thing. We’re not sure what it means, but it can’t be good for us.”

  * * *

  The remaining planet killer sat outside the system in hyper IV, the highest dimension it could now reach. The hyperdrive units that had been arranged around the hull had been vulnerable to attack, a weakness that the Machines had not been able to solve since the devices had to be on the outside of the armor. When half the hull had been scoured clean, so had half the hyperdrive units. Hyperdrives needed supermetals to work, and the planet killer carried little of the substances in reserve. The AI had figured that it was more important to replace the grabber units that had also been arrayed along the hull and destroyed, so that it could boost at near to its twenty gravities maximum. It wasn’t planning to leave this area, and the ability to get into the higher dimensions of hyper was only important if it intended to depart, which it did not.

  The enemy was still sending missiles its way, boosting them up or dropping them down into hyper IV. The graviton projectors, which were below the armor, being able to project the messenger particles through solid matter as if it did not exist, were still in working order. So far the planet killer had been able to knock out every missile that had come within range back into normal space. Meanwhile, it was working on building new grabber units, taking the supermetals from the grabbers of most of its remaining missiles and recycling them. It wouldn’t have enough to get back up to full boost. Its calculations were that it would get no more than eighteen gravities out of the rebuilds, if it was to hold on to a couple of hundred missiles for offensive purposes.

  It had been some time since it had contact with the other planet killer, the one it had left behind. It assumed that it was destroyed. Actually, that would have been the best outcome, since it obviated the risk of the humans learning anything about Machine technology.

  What is that? thought the AI as it picked up grav pulses in the background. It took a moment to separate the message, which was weak, and was in danger of being drowned out in the background of boosting ships and translations. With a little bit of recording the repetition of the signal, some boosting of what the receivers were picking up, it was able to make it out.

  It survives, thought the AI. Its fellow survived, but had been cut off from all control of its own vessel by several deep hits from the enemy. It had no connection to its power source, none to its weapons or sensors. It had had a transmitter that it used to contact and control its own robots, but that had been taken out by the invaders when they had launched a weapon into one of its defensive positions. Now it was helpless before the invaders, only the autonomous robots within it still capable of resistance.

  And now the humans have a chance to gain one of our brains, thought the AI. They will gain insight into all of our technology.

  That could not be allowed. The survival of this AI was less important than the necessity of stopping the humans from learning too much. It only took an instant to make the decision. An instant later the planet killer was boosting back toward the system, heading for the hyper III barrier.

  * * *

  “The other bastard is on the move, Admiral. It looks like he’s heading back into the system. Most likely destination, the other vessel.”

  “Understood, Mara,” said Beata Bednarczyk, glancing back at the holo of the enemy ship they were trying to take. “How long until it gets here?”

  “We’re estimating that they’ll be in normal space at the edge of the system in two hours and thirteen minutes. They’ll be able to launch at that time.”

  Beata ran her finger across the plot while sending a command over her implant. The position of the still functional planet killer appeared, then a simulated plot of a missile launch. A time track appeared, showing the missiles coming in at an hour and fifty-two minutes after launch. So they will be hitting us in a little over four hours.

  “Keep trying to hit it, Mara,” ordered the Admiral. “I’m sending the rest of the fleet your way, with the exception of what we need to maintain this operation on the capture. You have operational control until Admiral Vonstag is in position with his force.”

  Admiral Joshua Vonstag was in charge of the main battle force of the fleet, commanding from the deck of his flagsh
ip, the battleship King Louis II. Beata would have just as soon had Montgomery in charge of the operation, but she was only a vice admiral, whereas Vonstag was a full admiral, so command was his once he was engaged. Not that he was a horrible officer, but Bednarczyk trusted Mara and her tactical instincts much more.

  “Send a com to the mission commander on the planet killer. We’re going to send him the rest of his battalion. He is to push forward into the ship with all due speed. I want them out within three and a half hours unless I tell them otherwise.”

  If the other enemy ship decided it wanted to hit its damaged fellow she would not have her people on it. Hopefully they would stop that ship, or if not, it could be hoped that it would not be able to destroy the other vessel. She was not about to have her people on that vessel if the other ship was actually able to close to the point where they could drop reinforcements on it.

  * * *

  “All ships, cease firing,” ordered Mara Montgomery over the com.

  She watched as the last volley, the one sent off before her command, disappeared from the plot before they reached the planet killer. Dropping missiles into hyper onto that craft while its graviton beam was still active was accomplishing nothing. The only way she could think of hitting it was to drop a missile right down on top of it, and then the launching ship and the missiles it carried would all get catastrophically translated into normal space. They must have those projectors below the hull, she thought. The ship seemed to have all around coverage. At least, when she tried to hit it from a dozen angles simultaneously it had dropped all the incoming missiles

  “We’re just wasting missiles,” agreed Commander Jason Wooddruft, her flag tactical officer.

  “And all ships are picking up graviton emissions every time our weapons are translated down,” chimmed in the flag sensor officer, Lt. Commander Elin Janson.