Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

by Doug Dandridge

  And now another line of Klassekians was on the way through the wormhole, heading back to the Empire. They were needed there, and now that it seemed that their homeworld was once again threatened, and even this base was no longer completely safe, it was thought that they needed to get all of them they had here back to the heart of the Empire. There was not a choice now. Every single one was being evacuated back to first Sector I base, and from there to the Supersystem.

  At least if we get overrun, thought the Admiral, we will still have the secret of Quantum entanglement to work on.

  She looked once again at the portal, the mirrored surface that was rippling for an instant with the passage of each Klassekian, one every two seconds. What we need is a ship gate, she thought. Then we could just load them all up on a couple of dozen liners and send them through in less than a half an hour. But they were still not promised one. And if they did get one, it wouldn’t be erected here for another month, maybe two. Then they could be reinforced from the Empire in an instant. Which might be necessary if they found themselves in a full blown war out here in the void. She was still hoping that the wormhole she had sent with Sims would get priority, but there was no telling what would happen with that request.

  Regarding that void, she pulled up another holo of the region, with the Klassek homeworld blinking and the area the Machines were supposed to be highlighted in a different color. That area was not all that large, but the Machines would only need star energy and space resources to build their fleet, and even that small an area had those in abundance. She had ships out there, protecting that home system that was now so vital to the Empire. Definitely not enough ships. She looked at what Nguyen had left at the system before he sent out his scouting parties and took the rest of his force to Bolthole, which was also a priority objective. So many places where we need a strong defense, and we don’t have the vessels to cover all of them, she thought, as she looked at the dispositions for Klassek. Two battle cruisers, a heavy cruiser, four light cruisers, and eight destroyers. Actually a large concentration of Command ships, which normally were not to be found in greater numbers than pairs. But not enough to fight off a powerful strike. Even the force she sent off to reinforce them might not be enough, if they were fighting an entire nation of Machines. And if they were even on time.

  There were also the ships that Nguyen had dispatched to scout out the territory they thought held by the Machines. That was something she approved of. They needed as much intelligence as possible. The problem was that they could just as easily be destroyed while on the missions, and she would gain no new information while her strength was reduced by the lack of those ships. We need wormhole equipped scouts, she thought. The Klassekians, which were missing from those ships as well, but would be quite an asset, were still not in the same class as a wormhole. Not only would ships so equipped be able to communicate whatever was happening to them, but they could deploy weapons through the wormholes. She had hoped to have many of those ships when the Donut project went online. After all, it made sense to equip her ships, or at least one of each team, with the tech, since they were out exploring large areas with no backup. The war had changed priorities, and she had yet to see any wormholes besides the portal on her station and the one she sent with Sims. Several were on the way to Bolthole, which also needed them. Meanwhile, she had a looming war with a power of unknown strength, and she had a widely scattered force of explorers that were not intended to be full blown warships.

  I can only hope that we can concentrate what I have in time, and equip all of our ships with these aliens, she thought, looking again at the line of Klassekians waiting to step through the portal to infinity. They had plenty of the strange looking creatures, enough would be left behind to equip her forces, and her ships needed that instantaneous com to become a viable scouting force again.

  Her head was beginning to hurt. Her eyes were blurring, and she couldn’t remember the last time she had put anything other than coffee down her throat. Internal nanites were all well and good for keeping one fresh, for a time. But even they started to lose their effectiveness after three days without rest.

  “I’m taking some down time,” she told the Duty Officer, turning and looking across the deck at the young Commander. “Do not disturb me unless someone with a lot more clout than I have wants me on the Com, and only then if you can’t talk them out of waiting. Or,” she said with a smile, “if a bunch of murder machines come calling.”

  * * *

  ENROUTE TO BOLTHOLE.

  “Five hours fifteen minutes to jump to VI,” called out the Navigation Officer.

  And we have a damned swarm of whatever those things are all around us, thought Captain Francois.

  There were forty of them in all directions. The humans had the advantage of being in hyper VII, capable of going four times faster than the unknowns. The problem was that they were on an approach profile to the barrier, in decel mode, losing velocity every second. While the unknowns were pushing on at point nine-eight light through VI, changing vectors at extremely high rates of acceleration, sometimes hitting as much as two thousand gravities for short periods.

  No fucking way these things are organic, thought the Captain of the HIMS Napoleon Bonaparte. Not with that kind of acceleration, and dealing with that kind of particle radiation. Unless they are much more advanced than we are. That last didn’t add up, not if they couldn’t translate up to hyper VII. No, they’re non-organic. Someone else decided to develop AIs, and it came back and bit them.

  “What do you want to do, Geros?” asked the Captain of the Shogun Kamakura through the laser com. The ships were no more than a thousand kilometers apart in hyper VII, giving them clear com with full three dimensional receiving. At their current velocity there was a small risk from being so close. If something happened to a grabber unit, for example, there was a minute but calculable chance that they might hit each other, which would be a disaster.

  “Well, you have the same number of hyper capable missiles as we have, Sasha,” said Francois. And I wish they would just go ahead and give us a full loadout of hyper capable weapons. “Make sure all of your tubes are loaded and set to translate down to hyper VI. When I give the order, launch everything you have loaded, as fast as you can, at every target you can reach. I want to give them something else to think about besides us before we translate down.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” asked the other battleship commander. “We’re not really sure they’re hostile.”

  “I’m making the determination that they are,” said Francois, staring into the woman’s eyes through the holo. “For the record, I’m taking full responsibility for this command.” In case they happen to be the innocent aliens trying to catch our attention so we can engage in peaceful dialogue.

  The other Captain looked back for a moment, lines appearing between her eyebrows. “I concur,” the other captain finally said, placing some of the responsibility on her own shoulders. “I have a really bad feeling about these guys, but I thought I needed to play devil’s advocate.”

  “Understood. I want you to stay in close, and be prepared for a fight. We have to get these wormholes through, no matter what. If that means only one of us gets through, so be it. As long as we get as least one wormhole through.”

  Francois did not bother to issue orders he knew would not be obeyed. He wouldn’t order the other Captain to sacrifice her ship and crew, nor would he accept her offer. And he wouldn’t tell her to forge ahead while he sacrificed his vessel and its crew. They would just play it by ear, and if one needed to sacrifice for the other, the situation would tell them which.

  The hours passed, and they moved closer to the barrier. It soon became apparent that the unknowns had a large force clustered near to the jump point, where they absolutely had to translate down to VI. Thirty-two vessels, in the two to four million ton range, either sitting stationary in VI or slowly decelerating into position.

  “Jump in ten minutes,” called out the Navigation O
fficer. They were almost at point three light, the maximum velocity for a translation, shedding speed by the moment. And just below the maximum for the missiles, which only needed to open a very small hole.

  “Open fire,” ordered Francois to his Tactical and Com Officers.

  The ship turned to the port, presenting a broadside, then bucked slightly as it released a dozen hyper capable missiles through the accelerator tubes. They drove through the hyperfield, their own projectors taking over as they started to accelerate away. A moment later they opened their portals into hyper VI and jumped down, immediately acquiring their targets and accelerating toward them at ten thousand gravities. The ship turned swiftly back to center and fired its six forward tubes, then continued on to release its starboard broadside. The ship spun around to release its four stern tubes, then continued on back to the port tubes, reloaded by this time, firing as soon as they came to bear.

  Both ships continued their evolutions, thirty-four missiles per rotation each, sixty-eight total. They completed three rotations, putting two hundred and four total missiles down into hyper and on the way toward the unknowns.

  The timing was almost perfect, the missiles accelerating up to the point where they passed the jump point seconds before the battleships reach them. The plan had been to both hurt the enemy and get their attention focused on something other than the human ships. It worked on both counts, as the missiles came screaming in at point five light, not the best attack profile, but enough to get through some of the defenses.

  All headed into the cluster that was waiting, twenty-one vessels. Thirty-one of the missiles broke through the defenses, six achieving direct hits, blasting those ships into pieces and plasma that immediately fell out of hyper. There were a dozen near misses that caused some damage, destroying sensor installations and laser domes, disrupting their ability to fight.

  A moment later the two battleships translated down, every system of both vessels on alert as they tracked and acquired targets. Immediately they opened up with every beam weapon they had while accelerating at maximum rate. Particle beams sought out closer targets, those within three light seconds, allowing some of their proton stream to reach target before falling out of hyper. Lasers took on the further targets. The fire was concentrated on a mere four targets, ravaging energy playing over their hulls and digging deep into their armor. One vessel flashed with bright light as something on or under the hull blew, sending pieces of vessel out into hyper to flash again as they translated back into normal space.

  The attack had gained them some time, almost five seconds before the machines reacted, allowing them to open the distance between them by four hundred and fifty thousand hyper VII kilometers, gaining more velocity. Normally their profile would be to coast to the next transfer point, but they needed distance, so instead were on a least time profile to the next barrier.

  “We’re being impacted by beams weapons,” called out the Tactical Officer, most of his attention on coordinating their own fire. “Missile launch. We have forty-five objects heading at us at forty-five hundred gravities. Estimated mass, eight thousand tons.”

  “What in the hell are those?” shouted Captain Benoit over the com. She looked off the viewer for a moment, then back. “My Tactical Officer thinks that’s what they use for missiles. They’re trading acceleration for other abilities to fight through.”

  “I see,” said Francois as his ship shuddered slightly under his feet, the target of several beam weapons. The arrows representing the enemy weapons started to blur on the holo, the sign of high order jamming. “Engage them with beam weapons and close in weapons systems.”

  Unfortunately, the close in weapons, which were little more than high velocity, fast firing pellet guns, did not have their own hyperdrives, and only had a range of about twenty thousand kilometers, less than a second’s flight time, before they fell back into normal space. But they were capable of destroying objects that entered that envelope. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough of the weapons to put up a total wall of steel to stop anything from coming in.

  The beam weapons started generating hits, any of which would have destroyed the smaller human missiles. These shrugged off those hits for the most part, continuing on. And even more disturbing, the enemy ships had started accelerating after them at two thousand gravities. They would catch the human ships in no time, and there were still too many of them to ensure a victory.

  “We’re picking up nineteen ships straight ahead, jumping into hyper I,” called out the Sensor Officer.

  “More of the unknowns?”

  “No, sir. Resonances consistent with Imperial vessels. Estimating three capital ships, six cruisers and ten destroyers.”

  So, the cavalry is coming to the rescue, thought Francois, watching as the vector arrows appeared on the holo, accelerations of over five hundred gravities below them. The vector arrows were consistent with vessels on a least time profile stairstep up the levels of hyper.

  “Estimated meeting time?” he asked his Navigation Officer.

  The officer ran the numbers across her board, double checked the figures, then looked over at her commander. “They should be entering III when we are seven minutes from translation down to II.”

  The ship shook again, then once again as a trio of the enemy weapons detonated several hundred kilometers off the stern, speared within scores of streams of hypervelocity particles that ate through their hulls to the warheads underneath. Some of the farther weapons intersected lasers powerful enough in strength and duration that they should have been destroyed. This was where their greater size showed its advantage, absorbing the energy of the beams with minor damage.

  “Prepare all remaining hyper capable missiles for firing,” Francois ordered the Tactical Officer, then nodded at the Com Officer so the same order could be sent to Kamakura. Both ships still had thirty-six of the hyper capable missiles onboard, and once they were gone they had no more hyper missile capacity. When they got back to normal space the equation would change, when they would be able to use the more than nine hundred normal space missiles in their magazines. If only they had more of the hyper capable missiles. If only…

  “Get me Fleet HQ on the line. Now,” he ordered. If they could set things up in time, they might just have another surprise for the things chasing them.

  * * *

  “We are on a least time profile to meet with the incoming ships in hyper III,” said Commander Geofrey van der Griff, the Flag Navigation Officer. “The problem, Admiral, is that we will be heading outbound at point three light, and the battleships will be heading in at the same velocity. We will only be in the same dimension for about seven minutes, and then we will no longer be mutually supporting. And it will take over an hour before we can stop and come back in to the system.”

  “Dammit,” growled Rear Admiral Nguyen. He might lose this entire task force trying to support the two battleships coming in. After all, if two battleships couldn’t beat off this enemy, what could his force, which, though it actually massed about the same, lacked the missile power to be their equal. Only the two heavy cruisers were true warships, built for long range missile warfare, and they were cruisers, not capital ships. But his orders were to get them into the Bolthole system no matter the cost. If that meant losing this entire task force, and everyone aboard, then that is what it would take.

  “Order all ships to load hyper capable missiles,” he said to the Tactical and Com Officers. “All battle cruisers prepare to release the extras.”

  “We have more enemy vessels converging on the battleships,” called out the Sensor Officer, pointing to the tactical holo, that showed more of the Machine ships coming in from several vectors. Most were in hyper VI, some in the other dimensions, moving out so they could translate up.

  They’re going to have over forty vessels there when we meet, thought the Admiral. I’m really not sure we can win this one.

  * * *

  “Stern electromag field is offline,” shouted the Tactical Officer a
s the Bonaparte shook again. The enemy had stopped firing their huge missile weapons. They want to capture us, thought Francois, looking at the tactical plot. They can’t jump into hyper VII, we can, and they want that secret. He was determined to get at least one of his ships into the system, at all costs. But if one didn’t make it, he was damned if he was going to let the Machines capture it. Benoit had her orders, though her ship was in better shape, and looked like it was going to be the one to make it.

  They had fought their way down here to hyper III, and were again on a least time profile to the barrier. The enemy missiles, or whatever they were supposed to call the eight thousand ton monstrosities, were not really that effective in most respects. The battleships’ electronic warfare suites seemed to be much more advanced, and the big weapons were having trouble tracking the capital ships. The same with the enemy warships, that weren’t generating as many hits as an Imperial vessel would. They were getting in enough to damage the big warships, but if their targeting systems had been up to snuff, one or both of the battleships might have been dropping out of hyper by now.

  While the enemy had been firing their missiles, and the battleships had cycled their limited supply of hyper capable counters, they had learned something else about the machine weapons. They had their own defensive systems, much like the fast attack craft of similar size used by the Empire. They fired lasers at the counters, taking most of them out before they came within a hope of a kill. A few of the counters still got through, but not enough. The majority of kills came from their own lasers or the close in systems, while the near and far misses from faulty targeting had been about all that had saved the capital ships.

  They couldn’t hope to out accelerate this enemy, but it still made sense to try to get into the system as fast as possible. Every second they shaved off was one second they were not under fire. And maybe we should just go ahead and translate down into normal space, thought Francois, then dismissed that idea. They would be able to use their full missile loadout, but they would still have to get to the system, and they would be targets for an almost infinitely longer time.