Exodus: Machine War: Book 4: Retribution

by Doug Dandridge

  Chapter Ten

  Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely. Buddha

  This is it, thought Beata Bednarczck as her force jumped into normal space, still not to the hyper II barrier. That thought might not have been completely accurate, since there were sure to be more fights in the future. But this was the big one, the primary system of the Machines, the one they had determined had almost a quarter of their industrial power. Take this one out, with minimal loss to her own force, and she would be able to destroy all the others in the fullness of time.

  The tactical plot repopulated, replacing the information they had obtained from the scouts sitting twelve light hours out with more recent data. Much was still the same. The four rocky inner worlds, three on this side of the primary, one of the other, had not moved much. The multitude of factories in orbit around each planet were still tracing their predicted paths. Tens of thousands of antimatter production satellites still looped around the stars, producing the most important energy storage material known. Orbital mines among all five of the gas giants gathered the elements needed for major industrial processes, such as fueling fusion reactors. The asteroid belt glowed with the heat of mining operations. And the outer moons and some of the smaller rocky bodies were also hotter than usual for their kind, the homes of supermetal plants producing the hard to make and much needed resource, used in grabber units and hyperdrive arrays. Since the enemy was trying to convert their fleet to hyper VII, they needed more of that commodity than usual.

  What had changed were the positions of the tens of thousands of Machine ships in the system. Ore freighters had moved along in their courses to and from the asteroid belt. Antimatter tankers moved among the close satellites of the star. And warships, from huge capital ships to small missile boats, moved through the system in their thousands, most heading for one of the multiple gathering points of battle fleets.

  And how many ships are there that are not on our plot? thought the admiral. There could be as many of those as there were vessels they were actually seeing. That was a frightening thought, because the fleet they were seeing probably had more firepower than her own, at least without considering her wormhole launchers. That was a tech the Machines were not able to reproduce, yet, and she intended to see them reduced to scrap before they could.

  “Closest enemy force is launching missiles, ma’am,” called out the fleet tactical officer, looking at the holo over her board. “More than three thousand so far.”

  “Their standard weapons?”

  “It looks like it. ma’am.”

  Beata breathed a sigh of relief. They had encountered new missiles in some of the lesser encounters, smaller weapons that accelerated in the same range as Imperial weapons prior to the Caca war. Still larger than their own, in the eight to nine hundred ton range, still tougher than their own, and able to accelerate at just under five thousand gravities. They had proven much more effective than the Machine weapons they were used to. But still not enough to break through fleet defenses in any appreciable numbers.

  “Prepare to fire wormhole missiles,” she ordered, her eyes locked on six objects in the outer system, the closest four light hours away, the most distant seven.

  “Target?”

  “Those supermetal production facilities,” said Beata. “If we take those out, we significantly reduce their ability to construct hyper VII ships.”

  They knew that the Machines had hyper VII ships. They had run into them, singletons and small units. But economically it was impossible for the enemy to convert their entire fleet, not if they wanted to keep the same overwhelming numbers. They could remain a hyper VI fleet, and have a disadvantage against the humans they really couldn’t overcome. They could convert every ship they could to hyper VII, and lose in the numbers game. Or they could take the tack they were, and quadruple their production of supermetals. That would take time, and Beata was not going to give it to them.

  “Targeting all planetoids,” reported the tactical officer. “One volley from each ship?”

  Beata zoomed the plot in on one of the planets, doing a quick count on the defensive ships in orbit, deciding that all of them must have similar defenses. A hundred vessels, including two capital ships. And she had no way of knowing what defenses were on the surface of the planetoid. There could be a thousand missile batteries on each worldlet. She had all the resources of the Donut at her command, but they weren’t infinite, and she was sure the monarch wouldn’t like it if she just threw missiles around without a care. However, he also wanted these things destroyed, so he would put up with some wastage to get the job done.

  “Three volleys each,” said Beata after some thought. She had one hundred and thirty-one wormholes that led back to missile tubes around the Donut. With no other major fights going on at the moment, the Caca front quiet, they had access to all they could use. One volley would put almost four thousand relativistic weapons on target for the worlds, which were big targets that could be badly damaged by even one weapon. Or so they hoped. Since they had never fired on a Machine planet that didn’t have a molten core, they wouldn’t know until they tried. She had just ordered twelve thousand weapons to hit the planetoids. If that wasn’t enough, they would fire more, and the Emperor would just have to get over it.

  “Eighteen thousand missiles on heading for us from the inner system,” said the sensor officer, looking back from his station. “Another ten thousand from the outer system.”

  And she had four thousand ships in this force, including seven hundred capital ships. Swarms like that could kill some of her vessels, but not enough, and by the time they got here she would be back in hyper, moving to another launching point. The admiral had no intention of giving these inhuman things a fair fight.

  “Time till first group reaches us?”

  “Twenty hours, ma’am.”

  Beata nodded, a slight smile on her face. They would see their missiles strike well before that time, and she had more volleys to fire. If the Machines thought she was going to go after their warships, they were sadly mistaken. She wanted to knock out their industrial base. If and when their ships started to clear out she would meet them in hyper with her VII ships, firing down from the higher dimension and taking them out without risking return fire.

  Unless they refuse to leave the system while we’re here, she thought with a bit of trepidation. And they force us into a long term missile duel.

  “Ma’am. We’re receiving a signal from the Gorgansha fleet commander. They’re on the final stage of their approach to the system. Estimating their entire fleet will be at the rendezvous point in fourteen hours.”

  “Now maybe we’ll get some use out of those assholes,” said Beata under her breath. She still didn’t like them, but they had shown that they were willing to fight. They had taken out a few of the smaller Machine forces with minimal losses to themselves. And she could use fighters, no matter what their philosophy on life was.

  * * *

  The central computer for the Machine system hadn’t been surprised by the arrival of the humans. It was really incapable of feeling that emotion, though it recognized that the unexpected could happen. When it did, it simply analyzed the situation and came up with what it thought the best response possible. That the best response possible might be totally predictable never entered it algorithm. It simply made that response, and if things didn’t work out it reanalyzed the information and made another determination.

  The humans were here, it knew their numbers and the composition of the fleet, at least what was now detectable. What it couldn’t figure out was what they would target first. Again, it could analyze and predict, but the organics were truly unpredictable. Based on past attacks, it determined a high probability that the humans had launched their wormhole weapons into the system. But how many, and at what targets? Since the weapons left no graviton signature, and were small objects with the best in stealth technology that the humans could develop, they were impossible to track, until they either e
ngaged their grabbers to change vectors, or came close enough to an active sensor platform to return a signal.

  It did all it could, making sure all of its defenses were prepared, and engaging the enemy in its current position with its own offensive missiles. It realized that the enemy would probably jump into hyper before the weapons got there, but it had a surprise for them. Or make that an unexpected development.

  * * *

  “First missiles are just about to hit the enemy supermetal world, ma’am,” reported the fleet tactical officer, staring at the holo over her board.

  Beata looked at the tactical officer for a moment, wondering why she was guessing. It should have been an exact figure, based on accurate measurements of their position and that of the enemy planetoid. About half of the enemy force in the system was now boosting for positions where they could bring the human fleet to battle outside the inner worlds. The rest were staying in place. It was something Beata had become used to expecting from the Machines, who were almost unable to make decisive decisions, and most always settled on half measures. As she had learned at an earlier age, studying the history of land and naval combat on old earth, that almost never worked out for the side not committing to a decisive strategy. And she hoped it would be the same this time.

  “Why so uncertain of the time of impact, tac?” asked the admiral, stalking up to the officer’s station.

  “It looks like they are moving the planetoid, ma’am. In fact, it appears to have been moving for quite some time.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it ma’am. There was a small spike in graviton emissions from the planetoid, but not enough to take notice of, since supermetal facilities have constant fluctuations to start with.”

  “How fast are they moving?”

  “At about a tenth of a gravity acceleration. But if they have been boosting since we entered the system, they could have move at least a planetoid width from their predicted position.”

  “Will our missiles still hit?” asked the anxious officer.

  “Most will. But some are going to have to pull a lot of gees much earlier than predicted to generate a solution. Which will give them more time to target our incoming missiles.”

  “Well, shit. What about the other planetoids?”

  “Two seem to be moving as well, the others, not so far. Whatever they’re using, they must not have gotten it up and running on those other planets.”

  “Chief engineer here, ma’am,” came a voice over the intercom, followed by a holo appearing in the air in front of the admiral. “I’ve been looking at the problem. Those planetoids would probably have been loaded with supermetals ready to be sent to their fleet, and they surely have the power. So it’s possible they have rigged a propulsion system to try and move the planetoid. I don’t think it will accomplish much, though, since they can only push at much less than a gee.”

  “So we should still hit it?”

  “We should still get hits, yes,” said the engineer. “How many? But that’s not my area of expertise.”

  The plot over the tactical officer’s station expanded, showing missiles going active, many of them falling off the plot. A couple score of enemy ships also disappeared, probable hits. They really couldn’t tell what was happening to the planetoid, just that missiles were disappearing as they were on close approach to the world.

  “We should have sent a wormhole probe in with them,” said Beata’s chief of staff, Captain James Rodriguez.

  “Maybe.” They had a number of the specially outfitted probes along, several thousand tons each, as stealthy as it was possible to make an object that size. It wasn’t the risk of losing the probe that concerned her. It was the loss of an expensive and precious wormhole that was the concern. The other possibility was sending a craft in with a Klassekian aboard who could transmit the images through its mind. The problem being, Beata would not send a small ship into that kind of danger by itself. She would have to send in a wing, and it was a sure thing that some of them would be destroyed.

  “Time to visual?”

  “One hour, fifty-three minutes, ma’am.”

  “Then we have time to watch and assess.”

  “Just sit here, ma’am?” asked the tactical officer in a disappointed tone.

  Bednarczyk smiled. Tactical officers wanted to blow stuff up, and this one was no exception. The young woman had control of the offensive power of a fleet, and she wanted to use it.

  “What kind of targeting solution can you get on their antimatter production plants?”

  “It would be better to fire from above the plane of the ecliptic, ma’am.”

  “I understand that,” replied Beata, feeling her anger rise. She was used to getting obedience from subordinates, not have them question her orders in the midst of a battle. “But here we sit, and I would like to knock out more of their vital production. So, I ask again, what kind of solution can you get on those satellites.”

  “Well, we could send missiles in and let them go active a couple of light minutes out. That way they can get a fix on individual targets and adjust courses. We don’t even need a hit, just a close detonation. And..”

  “Just figure out the solutions, send them to the firing vessels, then let’s get another three volleys in at those satellites.”

  The chastised tactical officer nodded, but couldn’t get the wide grin off of her face. She was a tactical officer through and through, and getting the chance to make difficult shots and kill things was even better than just blasting away. Moments later the ship vibrated slightly as it released the first stream of missiles. Soon almost twelve thousand more missiles were winging their way into the system silently, untraceable for most of the journey. Some might pass within sensor sweeps of active arrays, some might collide with other objects, but most would make it in to acquire fragile targets that were all but helpless. There were too many of them for the missiles to take out completely, even if they all generated hits. But they were sure to get the Machine intelligence thinking about what the humans might do next.

  * * *

  Now the central processor knew which targets the enemy was firing at. The missiles were engaging grabbers and appearing on the plot for seconds, before dropping off again. Most were being blown out of space, or hitting warships. Even killing its ships was not a real problem, since they were there to intercept, no matter the cost to them. The concern was that the targets, so far, were a worst-case scenario. While there was no evidence the humans had targeted all of the supermetal production facilities, the probability was high that they had.

  Grav pulse signals started coming in from the ships around the outermost of the supermetal production planets, the one closest to the human fleet. It now knew which ships were being taken out, thanks to the coded grav pulse. The two capital ships went first, just the vagaries of chance, but devastating to the defense. More missiles were hit by counters right after they got within active sensor range. And then disaster struck, as one missile plowed into the center of one of the supermetal production complexes, its kinetic energy and warhead flashing thousands of megatons of energy. That was one of the six production facilities that would need a complete rebuild to function again. More missiles struck, and now the code told of two more facilities offline. Six more strikes after taking two score defensive ships out and the planetoids entire production capability was gone. The temperatures on the worldlet had risen far above the optimal for supermetal production. It would take some months, if not years, before the world was again at the proper temperature. At least there was no danger of hot magma spreading over the surface of the tectonically dead world.

  The intelligence looked over the data, trying to come up with a way to hurt the human force, if not destroy it. It knew it just couldn’t sit here and let the humans pound its system to scrap. And firing missiles at them while they sat beyond the barrier also wasn’t the answer. Its decision made, it sent the commands out to all of its vessels by grav pulse. Attacking the humans m
ight lead to wholesale destruction of its force, but it calculated it was the only way to possibly stave off the attack. The message was sent, and within moments the graviton emissions of its entire fleet appeared on the plot, sure to be on the human scans as well. What they didn’t know was that the battle fleet from another industrialized system was on the way here. If things worked as planned, they wouldn’t know until it was too late, and they were trapped between two large forces, each able to take them out in a normal space battle.

  * * *

  “I’m still not really sure what they’re up to, ma’am,” said the fleet tactical officer, Captain Lyndsey Quan, looking up from her board.

  The plot was showing the thousands of enemy ships, twice as many as they had picked up when they first entered the system, moving out to meet them. The ships were boosting at various rates, and it seemed the Machines were trying to get their forces into close engagement range en mass. Bednarczyk wasn’t sure if that was the smart play, since a lot of those ships would be taking a longer time reaching her, which meant she could bring them under long range fire for a much greater period of time.

  “Send orders to Admiral Hahn,” said Beata to the fleet com officer. “I want him to move his ships around in hyper and set up to take the antimatter production satellites under fire from that point. He is to continue firing at his prerogative.”

  Tiberius Hahn had been her battle fleet commander, in charge of the bulk of the combat ships, since the Battle of Bolthole. His ships were all hyper VI, lea by a brand new superbattleship, one of the last to come off the building slips. He had one half of her capital ships, but most importantly forty percent of the wormholes. As long as they were out here beyond the barrier they could maneuver around the system before the enemy could get to any of them.