Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

by Doug Dandridge

“Yes, it is,” responded Matthews. “It is.” A lot more than an imperial warship would produce. “That sphere shape allows it to carry a lot of armor protection over its entire surface, but it inhibits the offloading of heat.”

  The ship started opening its hole into hyper, and the heat signature went up considerably. And that’s why they have restricted their acceleration. They are already up to the heat limit at twenty gravities. And that jumps into the danger zone when they translate, which means they can’t afford to jump too many times in succession.

  “Send orders to Carmine,” she told the Com Officer. “They are to head to Command Base at best speed, avoiding all actions. I want Admiral Douhou to know about this as soon as possible.”

  The Com Officer acknowledged and turned back to his board.

  “And what are we going to do, ma’am?” asked the Helmsman.

  “We, meaning us and the Lindberg, are going to follow that thing and see where it’s going,” she told the PO. And we’ll get a ringside seat at whatever they are going to do.

  * * *

  ENROUTE TO BOLTHOLE. MARCH 1ST, 1002.

  “Eight days standard Galactic time to Bolthole, sir,” called out the Navigation Officer, looking back at her Captain. “A little under three days ship time.”

  “Very well,” replied Captain Geros Francois, the commander of the hyper VII battleship Napoleon Bonaparte. He looked over at the tactical holo that show his ship and her sister, the Shogun Kamakura. Both were among the most modern ships in the Fleet, at sixteen million tons, a million more than the standard battleship. That extra mass was needed to allow them to translate up to VII, without losing any of their offensive or defensive capabilities.

  At the moment, both ships were moving through VII at point nine five light, with a time compression of three point three to one. But they were moments away from starting their decel, so they would be able to translate down from VII before hitting the barrier just outside of the Bolthole system.

  Galactic Standard time really didn’t exist. It was a construct used to keep things straight in a Universe where almost everything was moving at various velocities, all with their own time dilations, even if it was only seconds per day. A mathematical program calculated the average time dilation of the Milky Way Galaxy, and used that as a benchmark against which all other times were measured.

  And I’ll bet they can’t wait to get these wormholes, thought the Captain, the senior officer of the two battleship division. As far as Bolthole knew, they were supposed to be getting one wormhole. Both ships carried a pair of the portals, one for com, the other as a wormhole weapons port that could fire missiles or particle beams, depending on what was linked to the other end. The mission called for the ships to unload all of their wormholes, then transit back to Sector I Headquarters through the ship gate when it was functional. So Bolthole would actually be getting four wormholes, two leading back to the Donut, two to Sector I HQ.

  “Sir,” called out the Sensor Officer. “I’m picking up hyper resonances to coreward.”

  “Who are they?” asked Francois, turning to look at the tactical holo, which showed a half dozen icons heading their way from the starboard bow of the ship. The range was the maximum they could detect objects of multi-million tons in hyper VI, a little over a normal space light year.

  “Resonances unknown, sir,” replied the Sensor Officer. “We have nothing like them on record.”

  “They’re accelerating toward us,” said the Tactical Officer. “Twelve hundred gravities.”

  “What the hell kind of compensators do those ships have?” said the Helm Officer, a frown on her face.

  What kind indeed? thought the Captain, staring at the holo. They were already moving at too high a speed to translate up to VII, if they were able to. Based on their acceleration, he thought they probably could. And what was their maximum velocity for translation?

  “We’re picking up more of them, sir. Directly ahead.”

  There were now twenty-one icons coming in from the starboard, the first group, bogey one. Ahead were another nine of the objects, all in the one to three million ton range.

  “Battle stations,” yelled out the Captain. “Battle stations. This is no drill.”

  He looked over at the com officer. “Send my orders to Kamakura. Captain Benoit to follow our lead.”

  “What do you want us to do, Captain?” asked the Helm Officer, turning to look back.

  The Captain was aware that all eyes were on him. Should we plow ahead into Bolthole, over whatever they throw in our path? If they send missiles into our path, it could be a really short trip. So far they had seen no evidence that whoever these people were they could get to hyper VII. Which didn’t mean they couldn’t.

  If they do turn out to be more advanced than we are, they’ll beat us no matter what we do. If they aren’t, we’ll be able to fight our way through with ease. And if they’re our equal? Then we get to find out.

  “All ahead full,” he told the Helm Officer. He looked over at the Tactical Officer. “I want all defenses ready. Stay sharp, because we have no idea what they can throw at us.”

  “And offensive action?” asked the officer.

  “Only on my orders,” said the Captain. The enemy might not be able to fire at them if they couldn’t get anything into VII. They had the capability of sending weapons down into VI. Like most Imperial warships, they had a limited supply of hyper capable missiles, able to translate up and down through any of the transport capable dimensions.

  And if they can’t do anything to us in VII, we still have to worry about them when we go down to VI. At least they would be able to track them if they were in any level of hyper. But when they entered normal space, they would only be able to track them if they were accelerating. Of course, by then they would be in a friendly system. Or would they?

  * * *

  BOLTHOLE, MARCH 5TH, 1002.

  The packages started landing. Their trajectories had been calculated by the powerful computer minds of the launching vessels, taking in every possible variable. The orbits of the objects they were aimed at, in the case of the Bolthole asteroid, or the orbits of objects around other objects, like the defensive and control satellites around the larger body. Ships had not been targeted. There was too much chance that they would move in an unexpected manner before the packages got there.

  There were some variables which could not be calculated. The graviton emissions of passing vessels for one. The packages were able to make minute undetectable changes, enough in most cases to put them back on the proper track. In a few cases they couldn’t, and their programing kicked in to allow them to miss their targets and fly into the void. It was better to lose a few of the packages and not give the game away.

  Each package massed about thirty kilograms. Five kilograms of electronics, batteries and grabber units. Ten kilograms were structural components that could be recycled for other uses. Added to that was another five kilograms of special materials that might not be found on the target. And ten kilograms were specially shielded containers of nanites, the payload, under control of the brain of the package.

  At the proper moment, all of the units started to decelerate at a fraction of a gravity. The objects were undetectable by any means other than a ship getting in the way and having one of the packages bounce off it. Thirty of the units came down on the asteroid. As soon as they touched down four arms telescoped from each unit and drilled with their laser heads into the metal of the asteroid, anchoring them in place. After that the nanite stores were opened, and the nanoscale robots swarmed from the packages and started to burrow into the metal, digging the package in and covering it with a protective coating. That done, they started processing the metal, building the components that would become a factory unit. Some of the nanites created more of their kind out of nickel and iron, using minute amounts of silicon and carbon carried aboard the package to construct the electronic component of each nanoscale machine.

  An hour after landing there were
a hundred times the number of nanites that had landed, as well as four small factory units that could use nanoconstruction to make the larger components of the machines they would be using for this operation. Billions of nanites fanned out from the construction sites, looking for the impurities within the asteroid they would need for their work. Those impurities, more silicon, carbon, gold and others, were there in small quantities. A molecule here or there, sometimes a concentration of several million. More than enough to keep the little miners busy.

  On the stations the procedure was a bit different. They still came down on the surface, in this case the hull, and released their store of nanites. The nanites bonded the package to the hull, changing its appearance until it looked much like any other machinery on that surface. The nanites avoided the interior of the station and its own defensive nanites. Instead, they used the materials of the package to construct a couple of five kilogram robots that crawled over the surface of the stations, gathering materials here and there, never enough in one place to set off alarms, a few molecules here, some more there, adding to their mass until they could spawn another bot that went off to do the same thing. Within a day the two robots had become four, a day later eight, until the hull was swarming with machines that blended in with the stations.

  * * *

  Nazzrirat Andonna sat at the table in the cafeteria and spooned another mouthful of what to him was tasteless paste into his ingestion orifice. He was told that it was nutritious, everything that his body needed, and he didn’t doubt that. Appetizing? No, not at all. But he and the rest of four hundred thousand Klassekians who had been transported here were being fed and housed.

  Some of the people in the large room were complaining about the food, about the crowded quarters, about being away from home. At first they were all happy to be here, when the only other alternative had been to die in the radiation storm of the supernova within six light months of their home system. Now, with the arrival of Rear Admiral Nguyen and the news that accompanied him, some of the people wanted to go back to their homeworld. And, as long as this system was under siege by the killer robots, they weren’t going anywhere.

  “I don’t want to leave here,” said Klazzrirat, one of his siblings, sending his feelings across through their link. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind leaving this place, but I have no desire to go back to our planet. Think about it. We have reached the stars, and if we continue to hitch a ride with them, what wonders will we see?”

  The other six siblings had to agree with that. While they were all individuals, in no way a communal mind, with their quantum entanglement active since birth, they had of course developed similar personalities. It could not be otherwise when throughout their entire lives they had been emotionally connected every minute of every day.

  “I could do with some better quarters than the barracks they have us in,” said Phazzarit, picking up the glass of what the humans called juice of apple, something they all appreciated.

  Nazzrirat gave a very human head motion of agreement. The civil engineers were hard at work expanding the living facilities for their new guests, but it still took time. Just as it took time to construct the protein and fiber vats that would give them actual palatable food.

  “Have you thought about joining the Imperial military?” asked Lonzzarit, looking over at Nazzrirat. “You know they would love to have all of us come on board.”

  Of course, thought Nazzrirat. To them, we are assets to use. And a complete sibling group is of more use than a fractured one. Not that he thought the Imperials would use them badly. They’d had a real concern for his world and his people, and had gone out of their way to save as many of them as they could when they thought Klassek was doomed. And they treated their own aliens well. He had seen many of the nonhumans roaming the base, working alongside the humans as equals. He had no qualms about the way humans treated nonhumans. One basic small difference in his personality made him a little leery of putting himself under military discipline. His siblings didn’t seem to have that problem, and he wasn’t sure why.

  After the meal Nazzrirat left his brothers and headed for his work assignment. In a way he never left his brothers, they were always with him, no matter how far away. Three of the other six also had work assignments, and he could look through their eyes to see what they were doing at any time. In that way they were never alone. In fact, Klassekians without any living litter mates had been known to go mad.

  No one said that the Klassekian refugees had to work, yet. After all, they were refugees, and they could have just settled into the base and formed a ghetto of their own kind. The cosmopolitan Imperials were encouraging their guests to act otherwise. They wanted these people to join them in their period of time, at their tech level. And most of the Klassekians, even those who wanted to return home, took them up on it. After all, having seen the wonders around them, who wouldn’t want to become the masters of those wonders.

  The long corridor made of fused metal seemed to stretch on forever. The pull of gravity was light, a little over a sixth of what the Imperials called a standard gravity. It was actually stronger than would be normal for such a small body. Since the body was made up mostly of metals, predominantly iron and nickel, though there were significant amounts of other, more precious, elements. That dense body gave the asteroid enough mass to generate a significant gravitational field. It still seemed way too light to Nazzrirat, who had spent his entire life on the surface of a planet. He looked over to the right to see one of the large high gravity gyms that were scattered around the habitat, there for the use of the inhabitants so they could keep their muscle and bone density up to norms. Artificial gravity was one of the most amazing things that the Klassekian had encountered. Yes, hyperdrive, acceleration at hundreds of gravities, nanomedicine, were all really amazing tech. But artificial gravity was something he could feel in the here and now.

  A half kilometer further on he walked by another floor to ceiling window that stretched a hundred meters. A huge carven, a kilometer high by five kilometers on a side, was visible through that window. He stopped and watched for a moment, wanting to use that cavern, but still not sure if he had the courage to do so. As he watched, a human with the large wings of a glider strapped to his or her arms came flying by, twenty meters from the window, banking. Real unpowered flight, thought the Klassekian with a thrill running up his spines. They had hang gliders on his world, of course, but this was real flight, the low gravity giving the flier the ability to generate lift with their wings. And one day he was going to get someone to teach him how to use that rig and fly himself.

  The Klassekian took the next available lift at the bank headed down. He was already five kilometers below the surface of the asteroid. The habitable area was built under three kilometers of the asteroid, giving it better armor protection than any warship. There were four kilometers of habitation, enough to hold millions of people, and still only taking up an insignificant amount of the body.

  The lift dropped a couple of hundred meters and opened, another corridor stretching ahead. This one was not all that long, and widened the further it got from the lift bank. The smell of water was in the air, and Nazzrirat made the motion with both his speaking and ingestion orifices that passed for a smile in his people. He had come this way, the long way, on purpose. A hundred meters from the lift bank the corridor ran into a large open area, a white sand beach filled with people fronting what appeared to be a large underground lake. This was a combination recreation area and food tank, a large pool kilometers on a side, the water taken from a small comet. The water was teeming with life, fish, crustaceans, all kinds of food for the habitat. Without any of the more dangerous predators that would normally inhabit such an ecosystem.

  His people were poor swimmers, too dense and with their ingestion orifice perpetually below the surface, nothing like some of the beings here, including a trio of aliens who looked like they were half aquatic. Still, it was another place that the Klassekians enjoyed visiting, even if they didn�
�t go in the water. I need to go, thought Nazzrirat, checking the time on the timepiece he wore on one of his tentacles. Someday soon he would have an implant, like the Imperials, and always be able to tell the time no matter what was going on, among other things.

  “Glad you could make it,” said the supervisor as the Klassekian walked into the workshop where robots were assembling weapons, in this case particle beam rifles.

  “Sorry,” said Nazzrirat, feeling some guilt at not being here on time. Because of him, three of the robots on the assembly line couldn’t work their part of the production. “I got sidetracked.”

  The supervisor nodded and smiled, and said something under his breath that sounded a lot like ‘primitives.’ Not all of the humans were so accepting of the newcomers, who lacked most of the skills that the Imperials took for granted. “Get to work. Those robots aren’t going to supervise themselves.”

  Nazzrirat gave a human head nod and moved over to the station, imputing his code and bringing up the supervision program that allowed him to watch over the robots. At first he had not understood why they needed supervision with the kind of tech the Imperials had. Then he had heard the story of how the robots had revolted against the humans some centuries ago. And how they didn’t trust automatons except in limited situations where they couldn’t do without them, like probes and missiles.

  As soon as he had them up and running the line started shuttling weapons over across his area, putting the finishing touches on rifles that would be used by security forces assigned to this base. Once they had built up a more than sufficient arsenal, they would be sending the surplus back to the Empire, where they would be used by soldiers and Marines. While he supervised the robots, the intelligent Klassekian used part of his attention to study up on the uses of these weapons. He figured that while he built them, he might as well learn how to use them.

  * * *

  First Lieutenant Sophia Ngursky swore under her breath as the militia company she was training fired their particle beam rifles at the targets down range. The beams, of course, were stepped down to where they barely registered on the targets. Clip on grabber units pulled the weapons in a manner that simulated the recoil of a full strength beam.