“And what the hell is that?” she asked, pointing to the very large icon on the plot, moving out of the orbit of one of the closer gas giants at twenty gravities. “Is it what I think it is?”
“If you think it’s a planet killer, then yes ma’am, that’s what it is.”
“So this is where the last one is,” said Captain James Rodriguez, her chief of staff.
“If you assume that’s the last one,” said Beata, looking back at the old captain. “That’s an assumption I’m not willing to make. And I definitely don’t want that thing closing with us.”
The planet killer was a hundred kilometers in diameter, with armor over five kilometers thick. It had lasers that could vaporize any ship in her fleet at under a light minute’s distance, and particle beam generators more powerful than her wormhole weapons. Its major weaknesses were its acceleration and its terminal velocity for entering hyper. It could only accelerate at twenty gravities, making it a scow compared to any of her ships. And it could jump to hyper at a maximum of point one light, verses the point three of her ships. It was a devastating offensive weapon, since, if it was coming into a system and heading toward something that needed defending, it had to be stopped, which could mean coming into close range. As a defensive weapon it was not quite as powerful. It could be avoided, and if in orbit around something important, it could be bypassed by moving launching platforms to different vectors. If she had been in charge of the thing, it would have remained hidden near one of the most important assets of the system, ready to use its lasers wide beam to take out incoming missiles. Or possibly catch one of her task groups unawares.
“Shall we launch on it, ma’am?”
“Not yet. We have missiles with warheads in the tubes, and they can destroy those with wide angle lasers. Which, if they are using their computer brains, that thing will be putting out continuously within the next couple of hours, well before our weapons can reach them. We’ll wait for those shots.”
“We should be getting visual on the supermetal planetoid at any minute ma’am.”
They had picked up the graviton signals of missiles engaging at three of the other five planetoids, and the fifth and sixth would be registering soon. They had assumed they were doing damage to those planetoids, but they really didn’t know. Now would come confirmation of at least one strike.
The view, brought in clear through gravity lens telescope, showed the planetoid with its defensive ships in orbit. There were also some orbital defense platforms, lasers and missile batteries. The surface was a maze of machinery. Accelerator tubes, fusion reactors, millions of square kilometers of cooling systems. What they couldn’t tell was if any of that machinery was weaponry, though Beata had to assume it was there.
Something flared on the view, one of the incoming missiles engaged and destroyed, followed by more. The orbital weapons and ships could take them out quickly, if there weren’t too many. And there were eight hundred missiles coming in at point nine light, in an interval of less than a second. Followed by two more after that. Almost a hundred missiles had flared in space before the first hit was generated, one weapon striking a destroyer class robot warship, converting it to vapor. Two more destroyers followed, then the prize, a battleship. Close detonations took out groupings of orbital platforms, some more damaged smaller warships. The first wave passed with no hits on the planetoid, though the defenses were degraded. And they still knew nothing about surface defenses.
The second wave came in and destroyed more of the orbital assets, ships and platforms. Now the weapons on the planet opened up as a greater mass of weapons made it through the outer defenses. Lasers, particle beams and close in projectile weapons took out over two hundred weapons, most of those that made it past the outer defenses. And the first two hits were generated on that surface. Bright flashes spread out over tens of thousands of square kilometers, digging deep into the surface, gouging large craters. All machinery in those areas was totally vaporized, while the thermal wave radiating out destroyed a much larger area, and the seismic waves toppled structures and ripped connecting infrastructure apart further out.
The third wave came in, also losing most of its number while taking out more of the outer defenses, including a second battleship. Surface installations again hit them, but almost forty made it through. The result was almost total devastation on the surface, entire supermetal factories, thousands of reactors, millions of square kilometers of heat exchangers, blotted out of existence. The thermal wave rolled around the surface, meeting on the other side, leaving no working facilities their wake.
“Yes,” said the tactical officer, pumping a fist in the air.
Bednarczyk was satisfied with the result. Assuming the enemy didn’t lose this system at this time, it would take months to build the machinery for new production plants, and more months to put them in place and get them running. On planetoids that might take even longer to get down to an efficient temperature for making the metals.
Now, if only the other strikes go so well, thought the admiral. There was no reason to think they wouldn’t. This strike had been overkill. The planetoid could have been swept clean with half the hits they had achieved.
“Admiral Hahn’s force has jumped into hyper and are starting to work their way around, ma’am.”
Yes, everything was working out well. Too well. And that was worrisome. And the clock was still ticking.
Chapter Eleven
Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily. Napoleon Bonaparte
“That’s the last one of them, ma’am,” called out the tactical officer as the view of the final Machine supermetal planet appeared on the holo, huge flares appearing all over the surface.
“How are the strikes against their antimatter satellites going?” asked Bednarczyk, looking back at the main plot.
“Our missiles are falling off the plot soon after engaging grabbers at about the point where we would expect them to generate hits,” said Captain Quan, looking back at her admiral. “And that’s all we know for now.”
“Jumping now,” called out the com to the command bridge. The nausea hit for a moment as the flagship jumped into hyper II, followed by all the vessels in its battle group.
“Enemy weapons passing by,” called out Quan, watching the plot that was now being fed by other wormhole equipped vessels still in normal space.
It took several minutes for the Machine weapons to pass, all now trying to decelerate at their maximum level so they could eventually return and engage other targets.
“Jumping down into normal space,” came the call from the command bridge, and the nausea hit again as they translated.
“Open fire on their largest battle force,” ordered Beata, looking at the plot. She took a look at the enemy planet killer, which had moved further out and looked like it might actually be trying to leave the system. That would be bad, since its graviton beam projector would protect it from anything coming its way in hyper. “Order Hahn’s force to fire on the planet killer. And start vectoring fighters in on it.”
She didn’t know if she would be able to take it out without more effort than she really wanted to expend, more risk than she wanted to take. But she would try to damage it as much as possible before it got into hyper.
“Send some volleys of our own at it. ETA?”
“About fifty-two minutes, ma’am.”
“Then let’s get to it.”
* * *
Thousands of weapons came flying in at the last Machine planet killer, all traveling at point nine-five light, all untraceable until the last ten seconds of flight, when they would normally engage their grabbers. With a target as large as the planet killer they didn’t even have to do that, engaging the grabbers at two seconds before contact. Or at least that was the plan. Instead the missiles started breaching and detonating at thirty light seconds distance, victims of the wide-angle laser spotlights shining out from the huge Machine. Ten volleys from over a hundred wormholes were destroyed in sp
ace, leaving the great Machine untouched.
“Dammit,” yelled Beata Bednarczyk, watching the plot. She had hoped that the missiles would get in before the Machine thought of using the wide-angle beam to short circuit the attack. Apparently not. It had seen the possibility, and had acted on it. And now she would have to explain her wastage of missiles to the Emperor.
“Order the preacceleration tubes to load weapons without warheads. We’ll see how it handles those.”
In the past the planet killers had not handled that tactic very well. Even as they absorbed giga-photons of light that left them almost molten by the time they struck, they had still hit with huge explosions of kinetic energy. While not destroying any of the planet killers, they had inflicted severe damage on the things. She had to kill it from a distance. Knowing the firepower of that particular robot vessel, she was not about to let any of her ships get within beam range of it. One of those lasers could vaporize a battleship with one strike. In fact, it could still kill a capital ship at a light hour’s distance, if it could generate a hit. Which was why all of her ships were currently moving on random evasive patterns.
An hour later they had their answer, as magnetic fields projected by the planet killer tore apart the molten remains of the missiles as they came streaking in, reducing them to droplets not more than a couple of grams in mass. Not enough to even penetrate the surface layer of the huge mobile structure.
“Anyone have any suggestions?” asked the admiral, trying to think of something herself.
“We could send in inertialess fighters carrying other fighters, like we did before,” suggested one of the tactical staff, a young woman who looked to have just graduated from one of the academies.
“It’s seen that before, but I can’t think of anything better at the moment,” said the admiral. They had brought along a couple of the, what she called, killer darts, that the Bureau of Weapons had come up with to fight the planet killers. She still wasn’t sure she liked them, since launching them required a ship to get in close to the planet killer, making it an easy target for the huge lasers of the enemy vessel. And what was to say they wouldn’t turn the dart into a piece of molten metal to be ripped apart by the fields that had destroyed the missiles.
It took several hours to prepare that attack, gathering the inertialess fighters, mating two together, one manned, one unmanned. Then accelerating them up to the attack. Meanwhile, engineers were looking over the darts, huge projectiles like spear points made to crash through the five kilometer thick armored skins of a planet killer. They didn’t carry a warhead, since the laser energy put out by their target could cause those to breach as well.
“Inertialess fighters are beginning their run,” called out one of the tactical staff.
They couldn’t see those fighters on the plot, but it had become easy to communicate with them through their Klassekian com techs. And they had a fair approximation of their position due to the inertia navigation system aboard each ship. Even more important, they could transmit changes in speed and vector of the target to the fighters, making an attack go from iffy to a sure thing. The fighters they carried with them were meant to be the weapons used to strike the planet killer. There were plans afoot, of which only Beata among those present had been apprised, to develop purpose made weapons that would be, hopefully, more accurate, and not a waste of a perfectly good fighter craft.
Beata watched as the fighters approached, or at least their best approximation of the fighters. They were not truly undetectable, unlike wormhole launched missiles. There was a resonance they transmitted through hyperspace while in their negative matter bubble. Material objects couldn’t travel in hyper within the gravity well of a system, but gravitons could, which was why ships and missiles under boost could be detected almost instantaneously within and without a gravity well. And so the inertialess fighters could be picked up. With them it wasn’t an exact process, but if given good enough sensors, general direction and heading could be determined. The planet killer had enormous sensor arrays, just like everything else it carried, and it could tell that the enemy was getting close. In its memory was the knowledge that this attacker could carry a weapon that could hurt it badly.
“We’re picking up a concentrated burst of gravitons, ma’am,” called out one of the sensor techs in almost a panic. “Coming from that thing.”
“What the hell?”
Suddenly a dozen of the inertialess fighters found themselves with collapsing negative matter screens. The negative matter negated an equal amount of the mass of the ships, which didn’t amount to much. But it also threw them from the inertia negating field while they were still well above their entry speed. The inertial rebound tore them apart, and each ship pair converted into the same amount of energy they would have produced had an equal amount of matter and antimatter come together. It was the same kind of blast the unmanned ships they carried would have produced, only they killed crews and were nowhere near within effective range of their target. The blasts of some of the ships caught others, blowing through their bubbles and vaporizing the craft. As the vapor came out of the field it too went up in a stupendous blast. All this the admiral saw on the plot, as objects appeared and then disappeared, then visual came back from vessels closer to the action.
“Goddammit. What the hell’s happening?”
“They’re using their graviton beams to disrupt the inertial fields of our fighters, ma’am,” answered the chief of the tactical analysis section.
I know that, you idiot, thought the admiral, shooting a glare at the commander. And she knew what their graviton beams were, projections of gravity particles that could warp space just like a normal source like a planet or star. She had only heard of them being used in hyper as any kind of potential weapon by the Machine planet killers, and sometimes their larger capital ships at very close range. They could drop a ship out of hyper, with disastrous results, most times destroying the vessel. But gravity was actually a very feeble force, very weak at the hyper barrier, light hours out from any star. Even the enormous projectors on a planet killer were feeble instruments, incapable of doing much of anything to a ship in normal space. We’ll, now they had found another use for them.
“What else can we do?” she said out loud before she could stop herself. She wasn’t quite ready for the input of others so soon after losing all those crews.
The admiral looked at the plot. The fight against the planet killer was not the only battle going on in the system. Most of her capital ships were engaged with the Machine fleet, sending streams of wormhole launched missiles into the enemy, then jumping into hyper before the enemy could target them as well. They were mostly successful, and they had taken out hundreds of vessels already. She had lost some ships, not enough to concern her, though again she hated the thought of those people that had been killed, even in a one-sided victory.
“We could just let it get out to the barrier and attack it in drop down launches in hyper,” said one of the tactical officers.
“And then they’ll just drop all of our weapons out of hyper with that graviton beam,” said another. “And maybe the launching ships.”
Beata had to agree with that assessment. Any missiles they fired in a drop down attack, jumping them from VII to VI, could only be traveling at point three light when they translated. That limit was based on how far ahead the hyperdrive of the missile could open the portal that they would have to fall through. They could fire wormhole launched missiles if they were in the same dimension as the target, which still left the firing vessels open to being catastrophically translated. And the missiles could be dropped as well, and in hyper they would be tracked, whether they had engaged their grabbers or not.
Suddenly the sensor resounded with a heavy bass note, a graviton pulse going out with massive strength.
“What the hell was that?”
“They’re sending a message ma’am. We’ve had some experience with that before. That pulse will resound through hyper VIII, and will reach a hund
red light years in one hundred and ninety-seven seconds.”
Their version of our instantaneous com, thought Beata. Not quite as fast, not near as efficient, but it gave the Machines some catch up with the Empire.
“Are they warning their partners in other systems?” asked the admiral. “Or are they alerting something that was already set up?”
Of course there was no answer to her question, and they wouldn’t know until something happened. “Send orders to all the outlying units to stay on the alert.” They should already have been on alert, and she wasn’t sure what her orders would accomplish, but she felt she had to do something. A moment’s more thought and she made the decision about the planet killer.
“I want to try and kill this thing before it gets into hyper. Brainstorm all you need to for the next thirty minutes. We already have the weapons we need to kill it. What we need to figure out is how to deliver them to the target. Now get to it.”
* * *
“We’re receiving a request from the human admiral,” said the new com tech, looking back at Fleet Leader Soranka Goran, sitting in the command chair on his flag bridge.
Goran nodded to the tech, glad to have her, even if she was a female. She had abilities none of his males had, and he was realistic enough to appreciate her, while wondering if the humans had assigned a female on purpose to try and break down some of the Gorgansha conventions. The supreme dictator might not like that, but the fleet leader really couldn’t care. He had been raised a traditional Gorgansha male, and still didn’t like some of those traditions.
“What is she requesting?” he asked the Klassekian tech after a short laugh. Of course she was giving an order, and his fleet was assigned to her for her use, within limits. But the humans were being very diplomatic with he and his people, though he knew they looked askance of his culture.
His fleet had been equipped with a single wormhole, though they had asked for more. It was mostly for com, but they had received training in using it as a weapon as well. But it wasn’t enough for the entire force to coordinate with the humans, and that had been pointed out to them. So they had gotten an even dozen Klassekians, all female. They were still to be considered Imperial personnel, not subject to Gorgansha discipline. To enforce that point each tech came with a squad of Imperial Marines, ostensibly to protect them from the Machines, though the fleet leader was sure it was as much for their security from the people they were being lent to.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 4: Retribution Page 14