by Isaac Hooke
At ten thousand kilometers, 46 finally revealed the mission attack plan.
“We make two passes through their ranks,” 46 said. “Eliminating as many as we can. Then we gather with the second battle group above these coordinates. Attack Plan Centrifuge. Once in formation, you will relay control of your power well to me.”
46 sent a series of numbers—the alien version of human polar coordinates—and Jain’s tactical map matched it up to a waypoint on the virtual sphere that represented Earth.
Jain muted 46.
“Xander, can you confirm the coordinates are correct?” Jain said.
“You doubt the effectiveness of my emulation layer?” Xander said. “The coordinates are correct. We’re gathering above the Yellowstone Caldera.”
“Attack Plan Centrifuge...” Saying those words caused Jain to access his cloud database, and the military document Xander had recently unlocked.
Centrifuge called for the equal-sized pyramids to combine, joining their bases in pairs, forming octahedrons. Those octahedrons would then touch their tips together. When combined, the ships opened up portions of their hulls on their apexes and bases, allowing their central power wells to expand into the adjacent ships, essentially combining those wells; by handing control of the wells over to their COs, the vessels as a whole were able to transfer enough power to the bottommost ship in the formation to generate a lightning bolt with a thousand times the intensity. It was a bolt that was easily capable of jump-starting the dormant volcano underneath the Yellowstone Caldera.
“They plan to erupt the supervolcano,” Jain said.
“Yes,” Xander said. “And the extra kinetic energy imparted to the magma chamber from the bolt will cause a super eruption unlike anything Earth has ever seen. It’s essentially an extinction-level event.”
When the supervolcano erupted, it would eject extraordinary volumes of volcanic rock and ash, dust and toxic gases into the atmosphere, spiraling the world into a volcanic winter, which was essentially the same as a nuclear winter but minus the radioactivity.
The magma would soak Yellowstone National Park and beyond, from Yellowstone River to the Idaho Falls, with some flows reaching north beyond Mammoth Springs.
Ash, ranging from two meters deep in the states closest to the epicenter, to three millimeters thick in New York on the other side of the continent, would destroy one or two seasons of crops in the Northern Hemisphere, killing off livestock and starving half the planet. Only the fully enclosed hydroponic farms would survive, but there weren't enough to feed seventeen billion people.
What puzzled Jain was that the southern hemisphere would remain relatively untouched. Certainly, the resulting volcanic winter would also plunge temperatures there for several years, and eventually cause the rest of humanity to starve off, but Jain suspected the aliens would accelerate the process. When they were done with North America, they’d probably move on to other calderas across the world.
Well, whatever the case, he had to inform humanity now, so they could properly shield the Yellowstone Caldera, and perhaps dormant supervolcanoes in other states such as the Long Valley or Valles calderas in California and New Mexico. That would buy them some time to repel the alien fleet. Whether it would be enough time, Jain didn’t know.
Jain upped his time sense to max, freezing external reality.
“Xander, prepare to record message,” Jain said.
“Ready,” Xander said.
Jain hesitated. “Is there anything they can actually do to protect the caldera?”
Xander considered for a moment. “The force field technology used by Sheila’s Wheelbarrow will work, but it will have to be a thousand times more powerful. The defenders will have to layer at least a hundred units to achieve the necessary protective force, considering how broad of an area they’ll have to cover. More than a hundred layers would be preferable, to protect against subsequent attack attempts. The question is: will they be able to transport enough shielding devices to the hotspot, and set them up in time?”
Jain thrummed his fingers on the armrest, staring at the tactical display, and the two battle groups on a convergent course toward Earth. His gaze settled on the dots representing the brave defenders in orbit who were willing to sacrifice themselves to save the organics on the planet below. A sacrifice that could be for nothing.
“It comes down to this,” Jain said. “A small group of far stronger attackers, facing off against a slightly smaller group of far weaker defenders.” He shook his head. “Even if humanity can defend against the combined lightning attack, eventually the force field will break down if they don’t eliminate the source.”
“By placing the shields, they buy time, nothing more,” Xander agreed.
Jain leaned forward, toward the tactical display. “There has to be some weakness… combining their power wells like that can’t be the most stable formation in the world.”
Xander pursed his lips in thought. “The reactor cores in these ships are already under substantial stress during normal operating conditions. If the core were ever to explode, the shockwave would travel into the central power well, the sudden rise in pressure would shatter the containing structures, and the force of the explosion would rip through the apex and base of the ship above and below the well, as well as all decks intricately linked to the central hub. Portions of the blast would travel through the power distribution blocks connected to the core, including those feeding the server farm on deck five; the blocks would explode, tearing into the servers and shutting down the AI core. Essentially leaving the ship an empty, powerless husk.”
“Wait, I thought the power distribution blocks received power wirelessly?” Jain said as he pulled up the pyramid blueprints.
“Most do,” Xander said. “But if you refer back to the blueprints, you’ll realize that those powering the server farm do not. They can’t recharge fast enough to keep up with the power requirements of the AI core, so they have a direct line to the main reactor.”
Jain nodded. “I see it.”
“Now, according to the blueprints,” Xander said, “when linked, the combined power well acts as one big, central hub, reaching through all ships. If the defenders could detonate the reactor core of the ship located at the dead center of the Centrifuge, the resultant explosion would extend into each of the connected wells, successively detonating the main reactors of each ship in turn, resulting in a chain reaction that would destroy every member of the Centrifuge, reducing them all to lifeless shells.”
“Now that’s something we can work with,” Jain said. “Everything has a setback… by connecting themselves like that, not only do they become a super powerful weapon, they also put themselves in serious jeopardy.”
Xander nodded. “It won’t be easy to get to that central ship, of course: you better believe the aliens will be protecting it with everything they have.”
Jain resisted the urge to thrum his fingers again. He pulled up the translated tactical manual that referenced the Centrifuge formation, and studied the image it contained of the combined pyramids.
“How sure are you about this?” Jain said.
“There are examples in the alien database of reactor cores exploding in the past,” Xander said. “And the consequences are as I described.”
“For a single vessel…” Jain said.
“Correct,” Xander said.
“So a ship has never exploded while part of the Centrifuge before,” Jain said.
Xander shrugged in agreement.
“So you could be wrong,” Jain told him.
The Accomp smiled slightly, as if that was an absurd notion, but then the smile faded. “Yes. I could be.”
Jain studied the formation a final moment, then closed the manual. “All right. Well. Record message.”
“Recording,” Xander said.
Jain identified himself, and then explained the Mimic plan, along with Xander’s suggestion of shielding the hotspot of the Yellowstone Caldera. He also included a diagram of t
he Centrifuge formation, and described the prospective Achilles heel, highlighting the location of the reactor core in the center ship.
“While combined like this, they expose themselves to a serious vulnerability, giving us the potential to win this battle, and the war,” Jain said. “We destroy this reactor, we destroy the entire fleet.” He glanced at Xander. “End message.”
“Message is recorded,” Xander said.
“Transfer the message to the stealth skirmisher, and set it to transmit thirty seconds from now,” Jain said. “I want the skirmisher to travel along a diagonal course, away from my ship, so it looks like I didn’t launch it.”
Jain had considered launching the skirmisher toward another vessel, to make it look like that vessel had sent the comm signal, but he decided that was an unnecessary risk: the ship in question might destroy the skirmisher the instant the transmission was detected, preventing it from ever reaching Earth. By launching it behind the fleet, in their wake, at least he gave the skirmisher the chance to finish its broadcast.
“Ready,” Xander said.
“Launch,” Jain ordered.
He reverted to normal time and watched the stealth skirmisher eject from the bay. It didn’t appear on his tactical map, of course, since it wasn’t transmitting any identifying gamma rays.
Thirty seconds later Jain received the expected human-protocol signal.
Three vessels in the battle group immediately left formation and jerked toward the signal source. They fired their lightning weapons at the same time.
“The message was cut off,” Xander said.
“At what point?” Jain asked.
“The part where you were describing the Achilles heel of the Centrifuge,” Xander replied.
“Well, the important part got out,” Jain said. “We can share the Achilles heel later.” He watched as the three ships returned to formation. “Well, that was overkill on their part.”
“Apparently they believed the signal source came from a Mimic ship in disguise,” Xander said.
“Yeah, well, now they know that wasn’t the case,” Jain said.
“There is a traitor in our midst,” 46 transmitted a moment later. “All units, keep watch.”
Jain still had 46 muted of course. He intended to keep the mute active, at least until he was directly addressed.
Black holes, barracudas, lasers, and missiles continued to come in; cloaked ships and teleporters still appeared, though with much less frequency. The aliens kept up their barrage of Terriers and skirmishers. So far, Jain had seen no sign that the defenders had received his message.
“Are you detecting any mobilization on the Earth’s surface around the Yellowstone hotspot?” Jain asked.
“Possible, but it’s hard to say,” Xander said. “There is some elevated air traffic from nearby cities. It could be military aircraft en route to deliver the shield technology in question. I’ll know for sure in another few minutes.”
As the members of the alien battle group began breaching the six thousand kilometers mark from the defending vessels, they began to unleash their lightning weapons.
The Mind Refurb vessels were in a high orbit, which allowed them to space themselves relatively far apart, though a quarter of the vessels were still within four thousand kilometers of the next craft. As such, lightning still arced between some ships. However, the defenders had been careful to choose which ships overlapped within arcing range like that—most were equipped with force fields like Sheila’s Wheelbarrow, and some even had the shield-capable drones of Gavin’s Hippogriff, which, when combined with the force field, prevented the lightning bolts from arcing from the target ship at all, let alone causing it any damage.
“It’s time to strike,” Jain said. “Drop us out of the attack formation, and prepare to fire.”
On the tactical display, the Devastator swooped down, leaving the general attack plane. He wanted to put some distance from himself and the aliens, to prevent them from ganging up on him. He planned to engage in a series of guerrilla-style attacks from the flank.
“529, sit-rep?” 46 asked over the alien comm line.
Jain unmuted the line. “Taken some damage to my inertialess drives.” He glanced at Xander.
The alien ships shared their damage status to one another in realtime. Xander had found a way to fake that, and he promptly simulated the necessary problems.
“Return to formation as soon as possible,” 46 said. “We’ll be initiating the Centrifuge after the second pass.”
“Understood.” Jain muted the line again.
Jain started to turn back in, heading toward the right flank of his battle group, when he felt a sudden incredible pain in his upper chest. He actually staggered in place, and felt vibrations running down his spine to his feet. The vibrations faded, but the pain remained, and he quickly dismissed the appropriate pain sensors.
He realized his engines were offline.
“Xander, what the hell was that?” Jain said.
“A cloaked Mind Refurb vessel has struck the top portion of the Devastator, and has sheared decks eight through eleven clean off,” Xander said. “The loss of pressure caused damaged to the main reactor core on deck three, but blowback from the impact, in the form of a compression shockwave, apparently traveled down the central power well first, causing additional damage. Power output has dropped to ten percent. Our drives and weapons are offline.”
“Damn it!” Jain said.
31
Jain switched to his external camera equivalents, and saw the cloaked ship out there. It looked like it could have been Medeia. It was already vanishing, no doubt heading for the next target.
The tactical display was still active. He was worried another Mind Refurb would be coming in to finish him off, but the defenders paid him no attention whatsoever. Why would they? His was a damaged vessel on the fringes of the battle, something that could be attended to later when the situation improved. If it improved.
He noted that the defenders were drawing inward; those gathered in polar orbits moved to meet the Mimic war fleet, which had already reversed course to make its second pass. The defenders on the opposite were doing the same with the Mimic battle group on that side.
He returned his attention to his damage report screen. “I thought the drives were supposed to remain online after a hit like this?” He wanted to get back in the battle as soon as possible.
“It depends on how much damage the reactor core sustains after impact,” Xander said. “In our case, it was too great. We’re only producing ten percent of our usual power. The server farm is using it all.”
Jain crossed his arms. “Can we divert some of that power to the engines instead?”
“No,” Xander said. “Ten percent is barely enough to keep the AI core running. Already I’ve had to shut down half of the cloud database to keep us online. Non-essential memory areas. We’ll need at least twenty percent power output to even think about turning on the inertialess drives, and that to operate them at their slowest speed.”
“That’s all we need,” Jain said. “Get the termites down there. I want our power output at twenty percent ASAP.”
“Termites already dispatched,” Xander said.
“We still have comms, correct?” Jain said.
“Correct,” Xander said. “The comm array on decks one and two have a separate reactor core.”
Jain nodded. He noted that although he still had comms, 46 hadn’t bothered to ask his sit-rep this time. It was fairly obvious to an outside observer that Jain was out of the battle.
He couldn’t help but smile. 46 was going to be pretty angry by what Jain was about to do next.
“Xander, activate human comm protocol emulation layer,” Jain said. “Send out the proper handshake and ID necessary to join the Void Warrior comm line.”
“That will only work if they haven’t changed the encryption on the shared channel,” Xander said.
“They haven’t,” Jain said. At least, he hoped they wouldn’t
. One of them would keep the original channel open, he was certain of it.
“All right, but you realize the Mimics will detect the signal, and know you’re communicating with humanity...” Xander said.
“I do,” Jain said.
“Would you prefer to record a message, and launch the final stealth skirmisher instead?”
“No,” Jain said. “Because we’re so far away from the main battle group, it’ll be obvious to the Mimics that we were the ones who launched it. So it won’t make a difference. And since I’m out of the battle anyway, I’d rather go full duplex this time, so I can make sure there are no misunderstandings.”
“All right,” Xander said. “I tried to convince you...”
A moment later Sheila appeared on the virtual bridge. She looked up in shock.
“Jain!” she said. She left her seat entirely, and ran across the deck to embrace him.
He pulled back. “It’s nice to see you, too, but—”
“Sorry,” she said quickly, and extricated herself entirely. “I thought you were dead.” That last sentence included a timebase sync, the maximum acceleration available to Mind Refurbs, which Xander automatically applied, and external reality ground to a halt. Because of their range, there would now be some lag between their communications—the speed of light was only so fast, after all, and when you slowed down time, you began to hit up against that limit, especially given the bandwidth and range overhead of the underlying comm protocol.
“Glad to refute that,” Jain said.
“We were going to restore you from a backup and reinstate your copy in the Talos, but I wouldn’t let the others do it,” Sheila said.
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something stopped me. I guess a small part of me still hoped that you’d return. I’m glad I waited. I can imagine how pissed you’d be right now if you found out that we’d activated one of your copies and that two of you were running around.”