Exodus: Machine War: Book 4: Retribution

by Doug Dandridge

  “The admiral requests that we approach the system on this heading and come out of hyper one light hour from the barrier, if we don’t run into anything on the way.”

  “Tell the admiral that I will be happy to follow her request. Anything we need to look out for?”

  The Klassekian was silent for a moment, communing with her sibling. The fleet leader couldn’t help himself from staring at her. To have such an ability, to be able to see through the eyes and hear through the ears of another being, at distances that boggled the imagination.

  “The admiral says that a moderate sized Machine force, about a hundred ships, is maneuvering toward that point. She’s not sure if they’re trying to escape, but she thinks it would be a bad idea if they did. And she adds that you are free to fire on them even if they aren’t heading toward you.”

  “That is nice of her. Give her my compliments and tell her we are happy to fulfill her request.”

  Some of his bridge crew still looked at him with disbelief that he would act in such a manner with a female. The fleet leader thought he understood their thinking, since he wasn’t sure how he would have acted with her before this assignment. He had gotten along well enough with Admiral Khrushchev, who was really more of a diplomat than a warrior. But he had to admit that Admiral Bednarczyk was probably the most brilliant tactician he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. She made everyone in his fleet look like a tyro.

  This was the big one. He wished he had a bigger fleet, like what he would have next year. But they needed to crush this system, and the three after them, now, before the artificial life forms were able to build more vessels, including more of the hyper VII ships. So here he was, contributing to the battle. Hopefully in the future he would be able to win some battles on his own, but he would still wish to have communications with the human, human female, admiral.

  “Send the orders out to the other ships,” he told the com tech and his other communications people. “We will all engage in one minute.”

  That should give them time to get the orders distributed and the courses plotted. It was important that they look good to their human benefactors, and he was determined to look sharp and crisp before them.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up a new force moving in, ma’am. Through hyper VII.”

  “Machine vessels?” asked Beata, not liking the idea of enemy vessels able to get into the higher dimension. And definitely not that many of them.

  Her fleet was only thirty percent hyper VII capable. The rest were very powerful warships with all of the advanced Imperial technology aboard, but hyper VI was their limit. Fortunately, the Machine fleet was even less VII capable. When first met, VI was as high as they could go. Now they had the secret of VII, and she had expected to encounter some of their ships in the higher dimension, which she had, in limited numbers. But she had counted on them not having the resources to convert this much of their fleet.

  “Yes, ma’am. Their resonances are different, but there are enough undertones to make a match. I make two hundred and seventy-three vessels, one hundred twenty-six of them capital ships.”

  “What’s our closest hyper VII force?”

  “Commodore Haskins’ task group can intercept before they get to the system, ma’am.”

  She looked up that force through her implant, hissing as she saw the disparity of force. Haskins had one battleship, four battle cruisers, seven light cruisers and twelve destroyers. With great handling she could hurt them and get away with minimal losses. That was not what she wanted. What she wanted was to destroy that entire force and get away without a loss. That was not likely to happen, but she was committed to getting away with as few deaths as possible. Not just because of humanitarian concerns, though those were important. She didn’t have as large a force as she would have liked, and the one thing she could do to preserve it was to not feed ships into situations where they might get wiped out.

  “Order Haskins to make distant contact with that force, but do not let them into close range. I want Commodore Yamotoru to rendezvous with Haskins’ force as soon as possible. That should give them enough firepower to take out the Machine force.” They would have ten wormholes, which would be able to launch while they were in VII, far enough out on a vector that would not allow the Machines to take advantage of their own velocity.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The battle was becoming very complicated. It had started with them coming into the system and trying to acquire targets. Now they had found most of them, they thought, but the battle had branched out to cover the entire system. Without the instantaneous com assets she would have lost control of the fight. Without the wormhole weapons they would have been reduced to close in fights.

  “We think we’ve come up with a way to attack the planet killer, ma’am.”

  “Well, thank God.” The planet killer was still lumbering out of the system, looking like it was going to hit the barrier in twelve hours and translate out. Once there, its graviton beam weapon would become devastating to everything around it in hyper. “Show me what you’ve got.”

  * * *

  The planet killer continued out, boosting at its maximum of twenty gravities. At its present acceleration it would hit the barrier at just under point one light, its maximum translation velocity, in a little over twelve hours. So far, nothing the humans had sent at it had caused it any problems. The strategy of wide angle lasers against missiles was tried and true, and there had been no doubt they would work against weapons with antimatter warheads. The use of the magnetic fields to tear apart the weapons that were only capable of kinetic strike damage had been theoretically practical, but still an unknown. It had worked, and now the Machines had a strategy for use against those missiles, at least if they were coming at something as powerful as the planet killer. And the way the graviton beams had worked against the inertialess ships would also have been most gratifying if it had been capable of being gratified. It still wasn’t sure if the graviton projectors aboard its capital ships would be powerful enough, but now it would be worth trying.

  As it was heading out it was blasting away at everything its lasers could reach, throwing out missiles, doing everything it could to change the balance of the fight in its sector of the system. Mostly it was getting misses, some very near. There had been some hits, and several capital ships had taken serious damage, while one destroyer had gone up in a flare of antimatter, spreading two hundred thousand tons of plasma into the near space.

  The rest of the Machine force was starting to react to its success. Groups of ships were vectoring in, to take up station around it at a distance where they didn’t obscure its defensive weaponry, and still took advantage of its offensive capabilities. The situation changed, the central brain decided on another strategy, and the orders that came in by grav pulse told the huge vessel to stop boosting for an escape, and to decelerate to a stop just before it reached the barrier. Then it would help to sweep the system of the presence of organic controlled ships.

  * * *

  “It’s starting to decelerate, ma’am,” called out one of the staff officers, manning a sensor repeater terminal that was displaying the aggregate reading from the entire fleet.

  “Why in the hell would it be doing that?” asked Beata, looking at the plot to see the action for herself. Really, all the information presented there was that same as what the crew people were seeing, but once her eyes had seen the plot she could believe it. It was slowing down, decelerating at its maximum rate, and the line projecting from it showed the stop would occur well before it got to the barrier. And other lines were heading for it. Machine task groups that obviously intended to join up with it, if she let them.

  “I want every ship that can to launch on those task groups,” she shouted to the bridge. “Starting with the ones that will get there first. I want them taken out before they can join up.”

  Acknowledgments came back, and officers and crews began to work the numbers and send out the orders. The admiral wa
sn’t sure what the Machines would accomplish by joining those forces. She still thought she was going to destroy the Machine presence in this system. But that damned planet killer could prove her wrong.

  “This might work out in our favor, ma’am,” said her chief of staff, walking up to stand beside her where he could talk quietly to his commander.

  “How so?”

  “We’re falling behind our timetable to deploy the weapons against the Machines. In fact, we’re estimating it wouldn’t have been ready until they were well out of the system in hyperdrive. Now we have additional hours. If they start back into the system we will get the weapon ready.”

  “But if they don’t start boosting back out, how do we catch them?” asked the admiral, running the situation through her mind. If they were trying to run the darts into something running away, not only would they risk not being able to catch it, but they would lose much of the kinetic energy needed to penetrate its armor.

  “That is a problem, ma’am. But something may develop, and when it does, we will be ready.”

  * * *

  “Jumping to normal space in three minutes, sir,” called out the navigator.

  The fleet leader gave an eye blink of acknowledgment, then realized that the male was not in his line of sight. “Very well. Are all weapons ready?”

  “All weapons powered up, loaded, and ready to go, my Lord,” called out the weapons officer and com officer simultaneously. The Klassekian took a moment to contact the others of her kind to get the report from the other task groups that were outside of easy com range. “Yes, sir. All groups report readiness.”

  “As soon as we enter normal space I want targets acquired and fired on. But make damned sure they’re not Imperial ships.”

  His military had its share of friendly fire incidents through its history, and he understood the humans had as well. It was much more difficult in space, where targets were most often distant, and vessels had electronic suites that identified them to foes. But it was still possible, and the last thing he wanted was for the humans to think badly of his people’s military prowess. The Universe knew they had enough to hold against his people for their political system and the way they treated their subservient races. He had never thought about their system. It was what he was raised in, what he had always known. But the humans were not like that, and were a military power that made his own look like small fry.

  “We’re plotting the movements of artificial life form ships in the outer system, my Lord. Being added to the plot.”

  The fleet leader looked over at the central holo tank, the new human model that had been installed and was capable of displaying a much higher density of data than what they had carried previously. It didn’t look like very large groups, the largest a couple of dozen ships. But there were a score of the groups, and they were on vectors to join up. Fortunately, they hadn’t done so yet.

  “Jumping into normal space, now.”

  The lights dimmed for a moment, though all the major subsystems stayed powered up, unlike before, and the translation nausea hit. And then the stars of normal space were all around them. Ahead was a very bright star, the primary of the system. Immediately the holo plot filled in with more information, including visuals that were fed into the central computer and rendered as dots on the holo.

  “Firing,” yelled out the tactical officer of the ship over the com. The ship vibrated slightly as it released eighteen missiles, all of the forward and side tubes that could bear. “Adjusting orientation.” The nose of the ship moved over, pointing at the closest enemy group. “Releasing distant launched missiles.” The ship shook just bit more, for less than a second, and the only wormhole launcher in his force let off thirty weapons traveling at point nine-five light, untraceable until they reached engagement range.

  “We have incoming missiles from the closest artificial life form groups,” called out the fleet tactical officer. “ETA, thirteen minutes. Velocity on contact, point zero seven light.”

  The fleet leader gave an eye blink of negation. That was standing still in modern warfare. Even their old ships wouldn’t have any problem knocking out those missiles, as large as they were. The newly reconfigured warships would destroy them without effort.

  “We’re picking up launches from ships from ten light seconds out to a half light hour, my Lord,” said the fleet tactical officer.

  “Nothing closer?”

  “No, my Lord. I… wait. The fleet is being hit with lasers and particle beams from close range. Two of our ships just went offline. We’re picking up boosts at seven light seconds distance. Forty point sources.”

  The knife fight was on. The Machines had left a force near the barrier sitting silent and powered down. Now they were firing beam weapons into his fleet. All of his ships had full cold plasma screens up, all were armored. On the whole the damage was minimal, except in the few cases where they had ganged up on a few of his ships. And now every one of his vessels was firing all of the laser rings and particle beams they carried. The laser rings of the humans proved their worth, since every ship could fire at any target in any orientation to them, or concentrate every weapon on a single target. A few of his ships dropped off the plot, many more of the artificial life form ships, and the disparity of losses grew by the moment. Then the first of the wormhole launched missiles hit a further group, and many of those ships fell off the plot as well.

  “The admiral is asking for a status report, sir,” said the Klassekian com tech.

  “Send her the tactical information, and add that we have met the enemy and are killing them most efficiently.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death. William Blake

  One of the major weaknesses of the Machines was their constant digestion and analysis of the continuing stream of data coming in through their sensors. At first this would seem like an advantage. Unfortunately, it led to a lack of decisiveness. Decisions were made, actions were taken, then, as more data flowed in, new decisions were made, the old actions stopped and new actions initiated. Organic units also used decisions trees, but were more likely to continue with an action despite new data, unless it was information that was overwhelmingly negative to the plan. So the Machines would often move around the battlefield in actions that defied logic and seemed to accomplish nothing.

  The planet killer had been heading out to the hyper barrier, where it could jump into hyper I and be more or less invulnerable to the human ships. The plan was then to cruise around the outside of the system, disrupting human maneuvers, dropping any it could within range out of hyper, probably destroying them. Then the situation had changed, and the decision with it. Now it was trying to gather all the other ships it could and form a battle group. With proper maneuvering it calculated that it could defend the other ships with its mega-lasers while they fought it out with the enemy ships.

  But it was carrying a lot of momentum outward already, and would take several hours just to come to a stop, by which time it would be within light minutes of the barrier. The planet killer had been fully fueled with antimatter at the start of the fight. It still had most of its load, but the central processor was now trying to figure out how it could top off. Maybe by taking the fuel from the other ships that were vectoring to it. It sent out a query to those ships and received negative responses from all of them. They all thought their maintaining combat capability was just as important as that of the planet killer.

  The planet killer actually considered killing some of the smaller vessels as an abject lesson that it was more important. As soon as that thought entered its system it discarded it as going against its programming. That out of the way, it next analyzed the composition of its force and their arrival times, calculated a plan, then sent out orders that would be obeyed.

  * * *

  “They’re still decelerating, ma’am. Estimating that they will come to a stop in a little over an hour, just inside the barrier.”

  “And then they’l
l head back into the system,” growled Beata, slamming a hand on her chair arm. The attack they were planning on it required that it have some momentum heading out toward their weapon. If they had to chase it back into the system, they wouldn’t get to it. “How long till the weapons are ready?”

  “Three hours, ma’am. And it will take at least another three hours to get it into position.”

  “Six hours,” groaned Beata. “Dammit.” She looked over at the tactical staff, sitting at their stations, monitoring the battle.

  “I need a plan to get that thing to head back out of the system. We need it heading out doing at least point one five light.”

  “We’ll have to offer it some bait it can’t resist,” said the tactical chief. “We would have to put the bulk of our fleet within range of its guns to guarantee the movement we want.

  “Then figure it out and give me a plan. When you get it to me, I’ll give the orders.”

  The rest of the battle was going well. They had decimated the antimatter production satellites around the primary. The orbital facilities around the once habitable inner rocky world were gone. All six of the supermetal production bodies were gone, their surfaces ravaged by dozens of kinetic strikes each. If she withdrew from the battle right now it would still be a great victory. As an industrial enterprise this system was done, for the time being. But the Machines could rebuild what she had destroyed. There were plenty of cold moons that could be used to rebuild the supermetal facilities. They could build more antimatter sats, more orbital factories and shipyards. So no, she wanted this nest of murder machines destroyed, utterly. She wanted every large mechanism blasted to hell, then they would work on making sure there were not even nanites around. And the only way she could achieve that was to destroy the big bastard that was the largest obstacle.