Exodus: Machine War: Book 4: Retribution

by Doug Dandridge

  “Sir, we’re receiving a message from one of the scouts we left behind,” called out the Klassekian com tech. “They report two hundred enemy ships on a course for this star. ETA, thirty-one hours.”

  Chung stared at the Klassekian female, wanting to not believe her, but forced to.

  “What dimension of hyper are they in?”

  “VI, sir.”

  Chung, like many military people, was a history buff. This reminded the commodore of some battles he had read about on old Earth, where armies had marched into each other without knowing what was ahead of them, both feeding in more and more forces until they were engaged in a general battle. And here was the space navy equivalent, unless the Machines knew something he didn’t.

  At least they are VI, he thought with some relief. If he had to go back out and engage them in hyper he would have all the advantages.

  “Navigator. If I want to meet that incoming force in hyper, ten hours before they reach the hyper VI limit, when do we need to turn back and head out.”

  “I’ll get right on it, sir,” said the woman.

  If he could time this right, he could cripple the enemy force in the system, weakening it enough for Boroslav to take it out, while he moved back out in hyper VII and did more drop down attacks on that group. If he could do it properly, he could leave a considerably weakened force at the edge of the system, one he and Leticia could handle between them with ease.

  “Keep sending missiles into them. We’ll rearm on the way out, bringing in new missiles through the wormholes.” He could only hope that they could take out this force before he needed to turn. If not, he would have a decision to make. To stay and kill this force, and abandon his plan for meeting the incoming force in hyper, waiting until they were in normal space. Or leave, while the enemy was still alive and moving on its target, ensuring that he got to the other force before they got here, but possibly dooming the ships already here. And his orders from Bednarczyk were to make sure that large device made it out of here, if at all possible.

  “Sir,” said the navigator. “We need to start decelerating at safe maximum in six and a half hours, then start out. That should get us to the enemy fleet ten hours out.”

  At least those Machines don’t know the situation here, and we can get the jump on them, I hope. He was planning an ambush. If he hadn’t have had the enemy already in the system he would have been able to go ahead and start, always a good idea when trying to set up something like he was thinking about.

  * * *

  “We’ve come to a stop, Letitia,” said Commodore Chung, looking into the eyes of the other commodore on the holo. “I want to get set up and give our new guests a warm welcome. But I think you should be able to handle them from here on.”

  Boroslav smiled as she looked out of the viewer in the air. A smaller version of the plot was set in the air to the side of the com port, showing less than twenty Machine ships, most with some kind of damage, still heading in to the system. She had almost as much mass of vessels as they did, and all of hers were serviceable, while her wormhole still gave her a great advantage.

  “We’ll handle them, Jassiah. Get the other bastards, and be careful.”

  “Not in my job description, my dear,” said the laughing officer. In fact, it was not in the job description of any Imperial line officer. They were to accomplish the mission to the exclusion of any other considerations. A good officer tried to bring back as many of his or her people as possible, but their survival was not a priority.

  “We have missile loads, ma’am,” said the tactical officer.

  “Then light them up,” said Boroslav, looking back at the plot. The ship shook slightly a moment later, the only indication that the thirty missiles had come through the wormhole configured for launch. Faint objects appeared on the plot, the missiles only detectable from extreme close range. They had been accelerated through magnetic acceleration tubes that had moved them over and over again between a set of wormholes that returned them to the origination point for another run through the tube, until they had built up to high relativistic velocity. Because they hadn’t used any internal power, they were almost temperature neutral objects, and would lose what little heat they had as they moved through space. And they didn’t use grabbers or active sensors until they were already within close detection range.

  Thirty seconds later the second launch came through, slightly off from the first, to try and range in on the Machines as they went through their cycles of evasive maneuvers with the undetectable missiles in mind. The missiles would still be able to attack them, though some might have to engage their grabbers from light minutes away in order to adjust their trajectory. This allowed the Machines to engage them for a longer period on the way in. But the speed of the missiles still made them difficult targets.

  Her own ships were now lying doggo in space, powered down as much as possible. Her flag was no more than ten kilometers from a small asteroid, masking her from enemy detection, while she fired the weapons they couldn’t trace. The rest of her ships were also in hiding, as much as possible. They would open up when she thought the time right, and she hoped she could get in one heavy punch that reduced the enemy force to scrap. She didn’t think that would happen, at least not to the level she hoped. But she would take over half of the enemy fleet gone to hell. That would give her a great advantage over the remains.

  * * *

  “We’re almost in position, sir,” called out the tactical officer.

  Chung looked at the plot, still blank in the direction of the oncoming enemy. The system was on the far side of the plot, and since nothing was moving in hyper that was also a blank, though a second plot showed what was happening there thanks to the wormhole coms. The enemy only had nine ships operational by this time, and they were still driving toward Boroslav’s ships. There was no fear in the Machines, no quit. Every assault could become a suicide attack in a moment. Or those vessels might just try to shift vectors and get away. There was no way a living being could predict some of their actions, though others, such as when they jumped back into normal space at the edge of a system, were as regular as clockwork.

  Other than the gravity source of the system the battle plot of the battleship was empty, though there were some arrows pointed at where the enemy force was bound to come from. The force was in normal space, and would not be picked up through its hyperdrive arrays since they were powered down. At the moment they were still coming to a complete stop with their grabbers, which were too far away for the oncoming enemy to pick up, and wouldn’t be detectable until the Machines were almost on top of them.

  “We’re at a dead stop, sir,” called out the navigator, who was monitoring all the ships in the force.

  “All ships are to begin boosting on planned course.”

  The orders went out, and all of the vessels started boosting at maximum safe speed on the required course. The hope was that they would be moving back toward the system at point three light by the time the Machines passed by on the start of their stair step approach.

  A half an hour later the first of the enemy ships appeared on the plot, coming on in a straight line, directly toward the pass that tactical had predicted from the information relayed by the scouts. There were almost two hundred Machine vessels, over fifty of them capital ships. His force consisted of forty-seven vessels, including seven battleships, five of them deploying wormholes. It looked like a hopeless situation, since his force was so heavily outnumbered, and drop down attacks ran the risk of being dropped out of hyper by the graviton beams of masses of Machine capital ships. That would be true if he played it fair, but he had been taught at the academy that only a fool played by any kind of rules of fairness. A winner was a nasty schemer that took every advantage against the enemy that presented itself. A winner fought like a bastard. And so it would be here.

  “Enemy is moving at maximum deceleration, twelve hundred gravities,” called out tactical. “They will be at our position in one hour, seventeen minutes.�
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  “And we will be right at the barrier at that time,” said the navigator. “At just under point three light on a heading for the system.”

  “Prepare to drop missiles as soon as we hit point three light,” ordered the commodore.

  They would not be firing their ship launched missiles, but would instead be ejecting them through the magnetic tubes gently, to drift ahead of the fleet at point three light, gaining a bit of separation by the time the Machines arrived. Chung hoped to have over a thousand weapons deployed by that time, just floating in space, ready for the signal his tactical people would send when the time was right.

  Time went by as it always did. There was some effect of relativity. Not much at this velocity, but enough to affect the calculations, and the tactical crew were checking and rechecking their numbers to make sure. They might have been right from the start, but they had the time, and if nothing else it was good practice. The rest of the crew sweated in the perfect environment, their perspiration having nothing to do with temperature. Everyone was in battle armor, ready to drop their visors at a moment’s notice to enhance their chances of survival. If the ship was hit by a high relativistic missile that wouldn’t help, and the medium armor ship suits would convert to plasma along with the rest of the vessel that contained them. A small hit holing the hull and many more would survive than otherwise. Anything in between and it was anyone’s guess. Some would live, some would die, the numbers depending on where and how hard the ship was hit.

  “It’s all on you, tac,” said the commodore, putting the orders in the hands of the man on board best able to calculate the right moment. That man nodded, sweat running down his eyes. If he made the wrong call the enemy might continue on without hitting them, though the ships in the system would be in a lot of trouble. Or the enemy might hit the deceleration, drop down, and come back for them, resulting in a general battle between unequal forces.

  The enemy all dropped down to hyper V just before they hit the barrier, as predicted, and moved over the swarm of floating missiles. And the tactical officer sent out his signal, ordering all of the missiles to jump up to hyper V and start pouring on the boost, fifteen thousand gravities for a short time. The missiles went up into the higher dimension, spending a couple of microseconds to acquire their targets and take off, slamming into as many of the enemy ships as they could.

  The Machines had at most less than a couple of seconds to react. In several instances they had much less. They still blasted two thirds of the slowly closing weapons into plasma. Missiles hit, not carrying much of a kinetic charge, but all equipped with the standard one gigaton ship killer warhead. Two thirds of the enemy force came apart in hyper, losing their fields and dropping catastrophically into normal space, many as clouds of plasma, some a bit more intact. A half dozen enemy vessels, or what was left of them, dropped out of hyper within visual range of the human fleet. Sharp eyed tactical people fired missiles into those craft, completing their destruction and not taking any chances that they might self-repair and make it back into action. Some others dropped out that were too distant to engage and evaluate, but everything that was detected got a missile for its trouble.

  “Jump now,” yelled out the navigator, his orders going to the other ships through the com techs. Nausea struck, the ships fell into the holes in space, and moments after the order they were surrounded by the red background of hyperspace, dotting with a profusion of the black dots that were the manifestations of the gravity wells of stars.

  “Fire,” shouted the tactical officer, and on five ships streams of thirty wormhole launched missiles leapt into space at point nine-five light, erecting their hyper fields as soon as they left the front of the firing vessels. One hundred and fifty missiles streaked into the enemy formation, not giving the Machines enough time to come up with firing solutions on such fast moving objects. All but four of the remaining enemy ships were blown out of space. Those ships fired back, their missiles having to fight against the inertia that was carrying them in the opposite direction and having no chance against the combined defensive firepower of the human force. A second wormhole launch and the last Machine ships were gone.

  “Good job, people,” said Chung, standing up from his seat, his forearms aching from the grip he had placed on the chair arms. “Prepare…”

  “Sir,” interrupted the com officer. “Picking up a message from one of the scouts. Another enemy force is coming into their range, heading our way.”

  “How many?”

  The com officer held up a hand, asking for a moment, then turned back to look at her commanding officer with wide eyes. “At least five hundred vessels, sir. The scout reports they are still coming into tracking range as they speak, and they see no end yet.”

  “ETA?”

  “Forty-seven hours.”

  Christ, thought the commodore, shaking his head. He doubted another ambush would take out this group. It might work, but he couldn’t count on it.

  “Get me Admiral Bednarczyk on the com. Immediately.”

  * * *

  “Crap,” yelled Tanamurta. “This can’t be happening.”

  But whether he wanted to believe it or not, it was. Whatever the draw of this system had been to the Machines, it was still working, and they were still coming.

  “What do you want to do, Captain Tanamurta?” asked his nominal subordinate, Commodore Leticia Boroslav. She outranked him, but by dint of his commanding the ship they called the Exterminator, she was tasked with doing what he needed done to protect his vessel.

  “I want to get the hell out of here and head for the next target star,” he said, glaring at her image over the holo. He knew it wasn’t her fault, but he needed someone to direct his anger at, and the damned Machines just didn’t care whether he was pissed at them or not.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that, Hishry,” said the commodore, lowering her voice. “That thing of yours is just too damn slow. They’ll catch you with missiles before you can get out.”

  “They might not fire on it,” said the engineer, grasping for straws. “After all, they’ve never seen it before.”

  “And what they’ll see is a battleship sized ship that doesn’t look like any capital ship they’ve seen us use, being moved by a trio of battle cruisers. They might not know what it is, but it is an object of interest, and one which we are trying to save from them. So yes, they will fill space with missiles trying to destroy it.”

  “And what will you and Commodore Chung try to do?”

  “Why, we’ll do what Imperial fleets have always tried to do, to all enemies. We’ll try to destroy them in space before they get to their targets.”

  “And do you think you’ll succeed?” he asked, looking at the plot that showed all of the ships in the system.

  “All we can do is try. Commodore Chung just destroyed one force with an ambush. Now, he’ll turn around and try to meet the new force coming through in hyperspace, where we think he’ll try to set up another ambush. Will it work? We’re not sure, but he might slow them down enough.”

  “We can only hope,” said the captain, not sure what else he could say.

  “If we can’t take out this force, and the next one comes in before we’re ready, you need to bail on that thing, Captain.”

  “I can’t leave my invention.” He almost said his baby, but that might get others thinking about his mental stability.

  “You have to, Captain. Your loss would be a great blow to our cause. We… Hold on a moment.”

  The holo blanked, leaving the engineer alone with his thoughts for a moment. When it came back up Boroslav was not looking out of it.

  “Captain Tanamurta,” said Beata Bednarczyk, her eyes narrowing. “I understand that you are loath to leave your invention, and believe me, I don’t want to see it destroyed either. But we can replace it. What we can’t replace is your mind. So I am giving you a direct order. If it looks like the Machines are about to take out the Exterminator you are to evacuate the device
for the most powerful hull available, and get your ass out of there. Understand?”

  “But, ma’am.”

  “I asked if you understood, Captain,” said the admiral in a menacing voice, her eyes narrowing. “I said we need your mind, but I can use it just as well if you are under arrest as not. So, do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the engineer, gulping. “I understand. And I will evacuate before it becomes apparent that I am about to be destroyed.”

  “And don’t wait too long, Captain. If you get killed, I will by damn court martial your ghost. Bednarczyk out.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” said Commodore Boroslav, her face appearing again on the holo. “You are a brave man, and a principled man. Such are those who will die for no good reason, because their moral code tells them they should. And as the admiral says, you are one of our indispensable people, not to be sacrificed. You will seek the shelter of hyper before those bastards get you in their sights.”

  Hyper, he thought, a gestalt moment overcoming him. Is that the answer. “Excuse me, commodore, but I just had an idea on how we can improve this process, and I need to work on some equations.”

  The holo went blank, and Tanamurta was sure he knew what she was thinking. Crazy damned engineers. They would be doing the calculation on the supernova that was about to vaporize them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Leonardo da Vinci

  MACHINE SPACE: NOVEMBER 8TH, 1002.

  “You are to get that device out of the system as fast as possible,” said Bednarczyk over the com. “You understand me, Captain?”

  Tanamurta stared at the fleet commander in disbelief. Orders upon orders, all changing as the situation changed. That was why the captain preferred engineering. As long as things were set up to the proper parameters, they got the same results. Chung had badly damaged the last incoming force, at the cost of half his own force. He and Boroslav had destroyed the remnants before they could do much more than get off a couple of launches. That force was gone, and Chung and Boroslav’s combined command was less than half of what it had been. While another group of Machine ships was on the way in, thirty-one hours out. Much smaller than the last, but still dangerous.