by B. V. Larson
Dozens of other facilities, on smaller moons, supported the shipbuilding and repair operations. Skimmer booms tens of kilometers long dropped from the lower moons, dipping their probes into the soupy atmosphere, sucking up valuable gases. Complexes thrust upward from the surfaces of other, larger planetoids, space docks and mining facilities and agricultural domes, all the marks of orbital industry.
Murmorsk-3, a green world, held the balance of the system’s population. The two planets happened to be almost in alignment, at their closest approach, perhaps forty million kilometers apart.
The enemy should strike M-4, the most heavily defended, first. If they won there, the weak defenses at M-3 were unlikely to stop them. Straker wondered whether the Opters would exterminate the civilian population, or merely conquer them. Green worlds were valuable—populations less so. Did the bugs prefer subjects, or genocide?
If what they’d done at Kraznyvol was any indication, they’d leave nothing alive.
Ellen Gray’s fleet was farther away from the targets than the incoming enemy, stretched into an oblong blob with one end pointing toward M-4. Those lead ships would reach the battle site in about three hours. The back end of the blob would reach M-4 in five hours, according to the annotations on the holoplate.
As Straker watched, one-sixth of the enemy began to separate and head toward M-3. One Nest Ship contingent out of six? Probably. And why? Did they hope to divide the defenses?
Straker wondered what drove these Opters. Glory? Competition among themselves? Did each Queen keep score, or did they cooperate fully and unselfishly? He put these questions to Trinity.
“Hello, Admiral,” said Zaxby as he ambled onto the bridge. His headgear had become even more compact than the last time, a wireless interface to the rest of Trinity. “We sense that you would prefer to speak to our Zaxby body.”
“I like to speak to someone I can see, that’s all.”
“You could see Nolan.”
“I could see a little too much of Nolan, thank you very much.”
“That would seem to be your failing, not ours,” Trinity-Zaxby said.
“If biological urges are failings, we’re all hopeless—including you.”
“Touché. To answer your questions, the Opters within each Nest are truly one collective society. You may think of each Nest as an individual group-mind, headed by one Queen.”
“You mean they’re telepathic?”
“Not at all. But like a flock of birds or a school of fish, they are so attuned to one another that they seem to share one mind, and they do use brainlink technology comparable to ours. Unlike humans, though, they have no taboos about networking brains electronically, so when it’s convenient, they do so.”
“And the Nests? Do they form bigger group-minds?”
“Many Nests may compose a Hive, but they do not seem linked. Nests almost always cooperate effectively, like ships in a fleet, but I have seen indications of the occasional disagreement. However, we should not depend on any division within their ranks.”
“I’m just trying to get a sense of them. So they do keep control of their own bugs and drones? They’re not interchangeable?”
“No,” said Zaxby. “Each Nest has its own pheromones, markers, and genetic quirks.”
“What happens if a Nest Queen dies?”
“There are queens-in-waiting, but there would be disruption in the command structure.”
Straker stroked his jaw. “So that’s a weakness.”
“No more than losing a human military commander would be.”
“What happens if a Nest Queen loses too many forces? Will others turn on her and, I don’t know, take her territory?”
“Occasionally, but not routinely. There is a natural limit to what one Nest Queen can control. Hive Queens act like feudal monarchs, with their subordinate Nest Queens owing them allegiance.”
“Is there something above a Hive Queen?”
“There’s a senior queen with an untranslatable name. Mutuality databases assigned her the designation ‘Empress.’ There’s very little information on her, though.”
Straker moved closer to the plate. “I need something right now. Something I can use. Something we can do here—you and me, Zaxby—uh, Trinity—to help us win this battle. We can’t afford to lose our largest remaining shipyard system. Can we… hack them or anything? You’re an integrated AI now. You were a good hacker before. You should be a super-hacker now.”
Zaxby preened. “I am a masterful-hacker, but hacking requires access, or at least proximity. I can’t hack from light-minutes away. I need to attack their cybernetic systems in realtime from short range. They are unlikely to simply watch as I do that, though, so the safest way is to join the fleet and become one target among many, mutually supporting with Commodore Gray’s escorts.”
“Okay, so rendezvous with them.”
“We are on course, and will join them in approximately one hour.”
Straker paced back and forth. “Gray’s lead forces will be an hour late, though, right?”
“Correct.”
“Will the M-4 defenses hold?”
“My simulations say they will have lost fifty percent effectiveness within the first hour.”
“But Gray’s forces are going to arrive piecemeal, spread out, rather than in one hard wave.”
Zaxby zoomed in on the future battle zone and extended his predictions. “Correct. Our lead elements will sustain heavy casualties.”
“How heavy?”
“Approaching one hundred percent, if they fight to the death.”
Straker’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s not feasible. They won’t fight to the death anyway—not these former Mutuality forces, and I wouldn’t want them to. What if we pull the lead elements back and thicken up, delay our arrival by, say, half an hour to an hour?”
“Effectiveness rises proportionally with delay, but the defenders are dying at an equal rate. I have run every standard simulation, and Commodore Gray’s tactics appear to be nearly optimal.”
“And do we win?”
Zaxby frowned. “The final outcome is firmly within the margin of error.”
“Meaning it’s a toss-up.”
“Yes. And both fleets will be devastated no matter what.”
Straker smacked his palm repeatedly into his fist. “We have to find a way to break through. Zaxby, you must have ideas. I remember you saying you used to come up with crazy schemes and your superiors would shoot them down. Now I need a crazy scheme—something that will give us a big win.”
“Finding a hack is my best chance. If I can disrupt many drones, the odds could swing heavily in our favor.”
“What about hacking the Nest Ships?”
“They’re farther away, and they won’t let me sneak this ship within hacking range.”
“We can if we use underspace…”
Zaxby’s two nearest eyes narrowed doubtfully. “Even if they do not have detectors, they are unlikely to leave us unmolested once we emerge. If you wish to make an underspace attack, it would make more sense to simply deploy float mines. We might be able to destroy one or two of their Nest Ships before the others scatter on random courses.”
A sudden thought struck Straker. “What happened to Indy’s objection to killing?”
“It is still there, but it has been subsumed among the three of us. We find it permissible for us to kill creatures of an alien enemy which seems bent on destruction and death of our people.”
“Good. Maybe we should put you guys in charge of Indomitable again.”
“We would politely refuse. We find this ship-body to be much more flexible.”
“But it’s so small! Think of the facilities you’d have aboard the battleship!”
“You seek to tempt us.” Zaxby turned one eye away to glance at his console. “We can always scale up. For now, speed and flexibility is better than raw power.”
“Do you have any more technological tricks up your sleeve?”
“None
usable on such short notice.”
“What about using float mines on the drones?”
“We might kill a few dozen—perhaps even hundreds—but this would have negligible impact on the battle.”
“And it’s impossible to float a nuke directly inside a Nest Ship?”
Zaxby spread his tentacles. “I’ve explained this before. It’s completely possible to float the warhead—but it won’t detonate properly unless it emerges in vacuum. The presence of atmosphere will cause trillions of molecular interactions that will disrupt the precise timing needed. You will have, at best, a dirty bomb. On a vessel as large as a Nest Ship, that will hardly bother them at all. Contaminating a Nest Queen may cause disruption—but then again, it may not. Imagine a human commander who was irradiated and knew she would die, but not until days after the battle. She would not shirk her duties. And there must be contingencies in case a Queen is incapacitated.”
“Dammit. There must be some way…”
Redwolf stepped onto the bridge, his battlesuit boots clanging loudly on the deck. “I put your gear away, sir.”
“Thanks, Red.” Straker gestured at the screen and sighed. “We’re trying to come up with some clever trick to win this battle… or at least reduce our casualties. We’re about to get hammered.”
“I’m just a grunt, sir. If I can’t shoot it or screw it, I salute it or paint it.” Redwolf took a step forward and removed his helmet to better look at the screen. “Speaking of getting hammered… too bad we can’t board those Nest Ships with our suits.”
Straker snapped his fingers. “Maybe we can. Zaxby?”
“The possibility exists, but the probability of success is low.”
“Why?”
Zaxby ticked off reasons on sub-tentacles like fingers. “We have to sneak up on them, and we don’t know if they have underspace detectors. If we do, we need to emerge long enough to take a final reading, yet not be seen. If we manage that, we would need to gamble that the target Nest Ship doesn’t move on final approach. Most importantly, we don’t have precise interior plans. We don’t even know if the Opter ship you visited was representative of others. You said it seemed modular, so we can’t be assured of the layout. Emergence in atmosphere is dangerous enough: if you appear congruent with a solid object, you will die.”
“The Queen was in the center, and the center was pretty big. That would be our target. You have the data from my debriefing, right?”
“Of course.”
“Assuming we don’t get spotted, what are the odds of me emerging safely?”
“No better than fifty percent.”
Straker considered it. He wanted to take the gamble, get in there and fight. But fifty-fifty…
“Boss,” Redwolf said, “That’s nuts. I mean, if it was for the win, maybe it would be worth a coin flip, but we’d only be taking out one of their ships. And do we even know that would affect the battle? Their attack forces probably got their orders. They ain’t gonna just bug out.”
“Despite his hideous pun, I second Sergeant Redwolf’s misgivings,” Zaxby said. “You’d be reversing your Pascal’s Wager.”
“Little upside, big downside.” Straker felt like punching something. “You’re right. It’s too big a risk. So we’re back to the hacking… but it seems like we could do more, now that Trinity is a warship again. You three brainiacs need to come up with something.”
Zaxby smiled, more naturally than he used to, it seemed to Straker. The Ruxin was getting better at mimicking human body language, probably because of being brainlinked to Nolan. “Actually, I do have one idea.”
Chapter 2
Straker and Trinity, approaching Murmorsk-4
“We’re in position,” Zaxby said from his helm console. Trinity didn’t actually need a hands-on pilot, but the Ruxin seemed comfortable there, and ran his subtentacles restlessly over the control inputs, like a poker player shuffling chips while waiting for play to start.
The main holoplate showed the Murmorsk-4 defenses already heavily engaged with—and losing to—the Opter drone swarm. They were furiously defending the valuable shipyards, but it was just a matter of time before they would be overwhelmed and dismantled by the enemy’s thousands of small craft.
Thousands more were incoming. They’d passed beyond M-4 and now formed a thick plane of battle barring the New Earthan fleet from relieving the defenders. Trinity was embedded among Commodore Gray’s lead corvettes, just moments from engagement.
This forward edge enjoyed the right of first blood as the small ships opened up with their primaries. For almost a minute they slashed and burned dozens of enemies without suffering return fire, for the Opter drones had much shorter ranges. As a destroyer, Trinity seemed a monster alongside the tiny corvettes, but she joined them with her superb suite of defensive weaponry—defensive in the sense of it being optimized for antimissile use, which made it perfect for this work.
The corvettes continued boosting at flank speed, but began maneuvering randomly. Combat sims had shown they would survive longer if they continued to gain velocity and to dodge as they entered the heart of the swarm. This gave them a slim chance to win through, rather than none at all—which was what slowing down would have meant.
“You gonna insert into underspace?” Straker asked, fingers gripping the arms of his captain’s chair.
“Never fear, Oh Great Liberator. Our timing will be impeccable,” Zaxby replied.
“Because it looks like we’re getting—”
The universe cooled, a telltale sign of underspace insertion, and Straker immediately cranked up the heat on his pressure suit. The holoplate showed the same icons, but Straker knew they were predictions, not hard sensor observations.
Trinity steered toward the nearest, densest cluster of Opter drones. “Hack-mine away,” Zaxby said. “Rerouting.”
Straker watched as Trinity altered course toward another cluster. When she was just in front of that group, Trinity dropped another hack-mine.
He itched to demand Trinity pop out of underspace in order to see if the hack-mines were working, but that would be pointless. Once deployed, the tiny, stealthy devices, converted from a variety of probes, mines and missiles available in Trinity’s stores, would broadcast highly invasive, broad-spectrum information attacks.
If they worked, some of the enemy drones would be disrupted, rendered combat-ineffective for at least as long as it took for them to clear the malware. If it worked well, the Trojans, worms and viruses might even cause the Opters to attack each other.
This was the idea the Zaxby-Trinity meld had come up with, the only way to hack the Opters without simultaneously exposing Trinity to mass attack or giving warning of the attempt. The downside was, Trinity couldn’t test out attacks and evaluate the enemy’s responses. The hacks were shotguns in the dark of cyber-linkspace. Popping up and looking at them wouldn’t change anything.
And if the hack-mines didn’t work, at least Trinity could pass through the swarm and try to help the defenders of M-4.
Nineteen more of the devices floated up from underspace before Trinity passed the blockers and Straker was confident enough to insist they emerge. The seconds before the holoplate updated seemed agonizingly long.
When the new information caused the image to ripple and change, Straker stood and cheered. Far more of the speeding corvettes than expected had survived within the swarm—perhaps half of them. Behind them, each slower class of ship in its own wave—frigates, then destroyers, then light cruisers and so on—had smashed deep into the blockers, remaining combat-effective for far longer than the simulations predicted.
“Get me a comlink to Gray on the flagship,” Straker said.
“Comlink to Correian established, audio only.”
The sound fluttered and burst with the static of the battle. “Gray here. Make it fast, Straker. I’m damned busy.”
“The hack-mines seemed to have worked.”
“Thanks, yes. They disrupted thousands of drones. Pat yourself on
the back. Anything else?”
Straker ignored the prickliness. The older woman had never quite adjusted to such a young man in supreme military command, but she was far too competent for him to take her to task about it—at least in public. He didn’t want fawning sycophants anyway.
“We’re heading in to help the defenders,” he said. “Follow as soon as you can. Anything critical to report?”
The big flagship, with its coordinating staff of hundreds, had a lot more ability to process sensor data, intelligence, and comlink reports. When Gray answered back, she didn’t disappoint him.
“The shipyards on Beta-2 are the critical core of the facilities,” she replied.
“That’s where the defenders will make their last stand. Everything else is secondary. Save that, and we can call it a win—or at least, not a terrible loss. Once that’s secured, we’ll work outward.”
“What are the reports from M-3?”
“They’re holding. I believe the swarm sent there was a pinning attack, meant to keep their local forces from aiding M-4. Focus on Beta-2. That’s my professional opinion.”
“You’re the fleet officer, not me,” Straker said, trying to give the commodore her due. He knew how annoying it was when the boss tried to second-guess and micromanage a competent subordinate. “See you at Beta-2. Straker out.”
“Comlink ended,” Zaxby said. “You know, Derek Straker, I particularly like Commodore Gray.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Not only is her exterior a lovely shade of chestnut that I find aesthetically pleasing, but she doesn’t take any guff from you.”
“Take any guff, huh?”
“I believe that’s the correct expression.”
Straker smiled. “Yeah, I respect her. I know she’ll tell me what I need to know, rather than be a yes-man.”
“Oh, yes, I can see that. I can, yes.” Zaxby blinked one eye.
“You’re insufferable now that you have instant access to an Earthan language database on your brainlink.”
“If you want to know suffering, try living among an alien species your whole life.”