Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

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Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Page 24

by Doug Dandridge


  “I have it, ma’am,” said Lt. JG Calvin, the sensor officer, her own eyes wide in shock at the violence they had just witnessed. “I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “Just give me the numbers, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, ma’am. The hull consists of over two kilometers of carbon infused alloy, with almost a kilometer of liquid metal underneath, followed by another two kilometers of armor. After that, we scanned at least a hundred meters of reinforcement members. Our scan couldn’t penetrate further.”

  “How in the hell are we supposed to hurt that thing” asked Ensign de Palma, the helm officer.

  “Tactical?”

  “I think that liquid metal layer is taking up the force of our hits, ma’am,” said Singh.

  “Any way of cracking it? Can we get through that armor and into the vitals of that ship?”

  “If we get in enough hits,” said the Officer. “And with that laser system of theirs, I can’t see anything but a battle fleet getting in that kind of firepower.”

  “And there’s no telling what’s under the armor,” put in the Sensor Officer. “They really don’t need open compartments for anything but storage, and all of the vital areas could be armored as well, just like our central capsules.”

  Hasselhoff nodded at that. Her own ship had six meters of armor on the outside. And anything that got through that would penetrate a hundred meters of machinery and liquid and bulk storage before striking the two meters of internal armor that sheathed the three areas of the ship that housed quarters, control rooms, med facilities and other crew areas. Ships had been known to take hits that blew through the outer armor only to be turned aside at the central capsules. Of course, a really hard hit by a missile at high relativistic velocity would shatter the entire ship, but this thing was a million times more massive than the largest warship in the Imperial fleet.

  “We will be slowing to a stop in a little more than an hour, Admiral,” said the Helm Officer.

  “As soon as we reach rest, I want the force back on a course to catch these assholes. Navigator. Estimated time to intercept?”

  “Four days, seven hours at maximum acceleration,” replied the Navigator after imputing the numbers into her station.

  It would take one hour at full acceleration to reach point zero five eight light, over sixteen hours to get up to the maximum velocity of point nine five c. From there, it would take the additional three days and fifteen hours to catch the slower moving force, which was only moving at point nine light for some unknown reason.

  “And the hyper VII destroyers?”

  “They will be on return course in approximately twelve minutes, and will reach the enemy in a little more than one day.”

  “Then they are to perform another fly by attack. And all of our hyper VII ships are to jump as soon as they come to rest and follow.”

  It was really all she could think of doing at this time, with the Machines only twenty days out from Klassek. She didn’t think the flyby attacks could destroy the planet killer, not with the limited number of missiles they carried. But if they could whittle down the escorts, enough where they left the Machine planet killer only one option to get the tech they wanted.

  “We could use the wormhole launchers, ma’am,” suggested Singh.

  Hasselhoff thought about that for a moment. They had brought the wormhole out with them, as it was needed for the trap she was hoping to spring on the planet killer if they couldn’t stop them otherwise. She wondered what thirty or sixty high velocity missiles could do, not sure if they would do enough, while tipping the Machine to her ace in the hole. Or they might be able to drop them all out of hyper with whatever that thing was they had used on the other missiles. She looked at Singh and shook her head, not really wanting to take the time to explain.

  She looked over at the Com Officer. “Order all ships released from battle stations. They are to remain at heightened alert, but I want every ship to get their crews some rest.”

  “How about you, Admiral?” asked Commander Jaques La Clerc, the Exec. “There’s nothing more you can do at this time, and we’re going to need you at your best when we encounter the Machines again.”

  How in the hell can I sleep at a time like this? thought Hasselhoff, thinking of the people and ships she had just lost, and those she would put back into harm’s way days down the line. But he’s correct. I need some down time, even if I can’t sleep.

  “I will be in my quarters,” she told the bridge crew. “Commander La Clerc has the con in my absence. Wake me if anything comes up that I need to deal with.”

  Hasselhoff left the bridge and headed for her quarters, the same ones she had used as a captain, only a short distance from the bridge like all ship commander’s quarters on Imperial vessels. She took a hot shower, then got something to eat, finally finding herself in her bed, still afraid that she would not be able to sleep with all the thoughts running rapidly through her mind. As soon as she closed her eyes, those thoughts ceased as she fell into a deep sleep.

  * * *

  The Machine mind in the thing the humans called a planet killer watched as nine of the organic controlled ships flew through its formation in hyper VII. It didn’t feel angry at the humans for launching an attack it could not respond to from the higher dimension. The attacks were no more than pinpricks to its own vessel, though it was a risk to the escorting vessels of its force. It couldn’t feel anger or fear, it couldn’t like or love anything. All it could do was crunch the numbers, run the statistical analyses, and come to logical conclusions.

  The nine ships fired their missiles, the four larger vessels launching twelve each, the smaller ones firing between eight and six from each ship. The weapons jumped from hyper VII and into VI within a hundred thousand kilometers of their targets. The Machine mind viewed this data and found that the humans were becoming more skilled at this type of attack, and four of the escorting vessels took major hits that dropped them out of hyperspace.

  It didn’t feel sorrow at those ships and their very similar electronic minds being destroyed. It didn’t feel aggravation. It calculated that it could still fulfill the mission that it had been programmed to complete, ending organic life, most importantly those of the old enemy and their allies. But some mission parameters would have to change, as its scouts were removed from its order of battle. That was a negative, and it had been programmed to prevent negatives from happening.

  All of this thought went through its mind in a nanosecond, while the enemy ships still penetrated its formation from the higher dimension. It had the missile defense weapon that only worked in hyper. Theoretically, it would also work with much larger objects, unless the ships had some kind of defense against it. That was possible, but it calculated that it was not probably. Something had to be done, it calculated that it had the means, and at the proper moment it acted.

  * * *

  “What the fuck was that?” yelled out Captain Havelik Jamshidi as his vessel, the John Glenn, shook under his feet. The battle cruiser was in hyper VII, supposedly invulnerable to anything the enemy they were attacking could do.

  “We’re being hit by a powerful gravity wave,” shouted out the Sensor Officer before the ship shook once again.

  The Captain looked at the tactical plot in time to see four of the machine ships fall off, followed moments later by three human ships, two battle cruisers and a destroyer.

  “What the hell just happened?” shouted the Captain before he noticed that the vibrations that had been racking the ship were dying down. “What happened?” he asked again in a quieter voice as he watched the force moving away from the planet killer and the last six ships of its escort.

  “That big bastard hit us with directed gravity waves,” said the Sensor Officer, looking over the readouts at his station.

  “How much?” asked the Captain, staring at the Sensor Officer. “And why didn’t we drop out of hyper as well?”

  “Estimating that the maximum at the center of each beam was about half a gravity
,” said the Sensor Officer.

  “Shit,” exclaimed the Captain. Half a gravity might not seem like much, but it was still the force on the surface of a small planet, much more than Mars produced. A ship itself produced more than that within its body, but that force was contained within the hyperfield. And the Machine ship had beamed a grav wave that simulated half a gravity over a large span. Even the very weak gravity field at the edge of a star system was enough to drop ships out of hyper.

  “We were on the edge of one of the beams, Captain, which was why we experienced the turbulence. The ships that were targeted were not so lucky.”

  No, thought the Captain, playing back a visual of that ship as it fell out of hyper, already beginning to break up before it was kicked back into normal space. There was only a five percent chance of a vessel surviving that kind of catastrophic translation, and seeing pieces of the battle cruiser already breaking off was not a good sign that the ship would be that kind of survivor.

  “We can’t put out a beam that strong,” said the Tactical Officer. “And they don’t have near our level of tech. So how in the hell did they do it?”

  “They brute forced it,” replied the Captain, shaking his head. “They could put a graviton projector the size of a battleship, hell, a hundred battleships, and it still wouldn’t take up more than a fraction of a percent of that thing.”

  “Orders, sir?” asked the Com Officer. When Jamshidi gave him a blank look, the officer closed her eyes for a moment, then spoke. “Captain Lovett’s ship was one of those that fell out of VII, sir. That leaves you in charge.”

  “We have enough missiles for one more run, sir,” said the Tactical Officer. “I would recommend a firing run that takes us outside any conceivable range for the graviton beam.”

  “And what is any conceivable range?” asked Jamshidi.

  “None of our ships were hit after we had passed two light seconds in VII,” replied the Tactical Officer after a look at his panel. “So say eight light seconds in VI. I would double that to four light seconds in VII.”

  “Which also octuples the range of the missiles we drop into VI to attack them,” said the Captain, still shaking his head. He thought for a moment, then looked back over at his Com Officer. “Send orders to all ships. Decel to stop and return for another attack, distance from planet killer, four light seconds. We’ll blow through the enemy force and head for a rendezvous with the Admiral. She has to know about this thing can kill ships with this new weapon.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Winston Churchill

  MACHINE SPACE, APRIL 27TH, 1002.

  “I wonder why they’re slowing down here?” asked Chief Petty Officer Karmen Mohammed, the Helmsperson.

  Commander Roberta Matthews asked herself the same question as she watched the machine task force they had been following across the light years decelerate toward an F1 class star. Fs were very energetic stars, F1 among the most highly of that class, with a mass about one point six times that of Sol. It was much more luminous, and had a main sequence life span of about two billion years, barely enough time for early stage advanced life to develop on rare occasions. There were many habitable planets around F class stars in the Empire, since humanity only demanded a couple of million years of habitability before they colonized.

  “Launch a probe into normal space,” she ordered the Tactical Officer, realizing that she only had a couple of the hyper capable probes left in her inventory.

  The probe, the size of a counter missile, about twenty tons, launched, decelerated, and opened a hole into normal space, dropping through. In moments it was transmitting its take to the ship through grav wave. It would continue transmitting for twelve hours, at which time it would self-destruct through the small antimatter charge aboard.

  “Something is weird about this star, ma’am,” said the Sensor Tech, PO Chandra.

  “What do you mean, weird?” she asked the PO, who was as well versed as anyone aboard when it came to stellar phenomenon.

  “Hard to say, ma’am,” said the young crewman. “Fs are normally very stable stars, but this one is showing slight variations in luminosity.” The Sensor Tech pulled up a diagram showing the variations, as reported by grav wave from the small probe he had launched through the hyper barrier moments before.

  Hillary was moving in toward that star in hyper VII, still light months out, decelerating so they could jump when the time came.

  “Decel us down to jump speed,” she ordered the Helm. “I want to get a look at this place from far out.” There was always the risk that something might be waiting for them when they entered normal space. Of course, the further out, the less the risk, not just because most ships didn’t stray into normal space at such distances from stars, but because of the vastness of space at that distance. Even something hanging out at the same distance as the ship entering could be light months distant.

  “Jump in six minutes, twenty-four seconds,” called out Mohammed.

  “No indication of any hostiles in the area,” said Chandra.

  The Machines were continuing on their own course, oblivious to the ship that had been trailing them, the ship they normally couldn’t touch due to its remaining in a higher dimension of hyper than they were capable of reaching.

  At the designated time the destroyer opened the hole into normal space and slipped down. Everyone on the bridge held their breaths, waiting for the sign of graviton emissions that meant something under power was close by. As far as they knew they were the only Imperial ship for hundreds of light years in any direction. If they got into trouble there would be no cavalry coming to the rescue. And the intelligence they carried would never get back to base.

  We should have just headed back to base, thought the Commander. Or to Bolthole. I have no right risking this ship, these people, for more information, when what we have is already vitally important.

  Everyone relaxed a bit as seconds ticked off and nothing appeared on the sensors. The only contacts were the machine ships still moving in toward the system. A burst of noise hit the sensors as the vessels, especially the big one, jumped before they hit the hyper V barrier.

  “We’re picking up a mass of signals from the system, ma’am,” called out Chandra. “I can’t localize any of them at this distance, but there seems to be a lot of tonnage under way.”

  “Try your best to get me a fix on those signals. Meanwhile, let’s have a look at what’s going on visually.” Or at least what was going on a couple of months ago.

  The ship used its wide angle camera to get a good long look at the system, sending the data through the pattern recognition programs of its computers to determine what was there. After twenty minutes of that scan the Sensor Tech and the computer started selecting targets for a finer discrimination scan, the gravity lenses of the destroyer pulling in clear images over the light months. Or as clear of images as such a vessel could gather. The ship had a powerful sensor suite for its class, but nothing like one of the Exploration Command cruisers would have carried, much less a battle cruiser.

  Chandra kept sending images of interest to the Commander as he found them, while he continued to scan through the visuals and align the grav lenses on the next interesting object. Matthews found herself staring in wonder and trepidation at those images.

  “Jesus Christ. Are you seeing these, XO?” she asked of Lt. Commander Stepanowski in CIC.

  “I sure am. Still working on believing. That’s more industry than ten core systems.”

  Matthews nodded as she looked at the reason the star had been mistaken for a variable by the probe, which didn’t have the grav lensing capabilities of the exploration vessel. An enormous globe of satellites orbited close in, millions of them, sucking up all of the light energy they could handle. The globe was not an even construction, with areas of greater and lesser concentration, and that was the cause of the variati
on in radiation coming from the star across its radiative expanse.

  “We don’t have that kind of antimatter production in the Supersystem,” said Stepanowski in a shocked voice.

  “Remember, Exec. That most likely represents what our technology was three hundred years ago. So probably sixty percent of what we’re thinking.”

  “Still an awful lot, Captain. And look at all of these moons around that gas giant.”

  Matthews brought up that view, five large moons in orbit around a ringed gas giant. All of the moons glowed with heat, and the close image showed the enormous industrial complexes of supermetals production facilities. There were also several hundred large satellites in very close orbit of the giant, hydrogen and helium miners.

  “This must be their home system, ma’am,” said Chandra, pulling up shot after shot. “There are only a few of the larger asteroids in what used to be the belt,” he pointed out. “They must have disassembled the rest of them for ship and facility building.”

  And if this isn’t their home system, what does it make it? Just one of many super-industrialized shipyards?

  “Uh oh,” said Chandra, switching a shot back to the captain’s chair.

  Matthews looked at the view hanging in the air by her chair, and felt the breath draining out of her. The planet was unremarkable, a dead world with a split of land and water making up the surface. It might have once been a living world, until the Machines got to it. Now it was sand blowing in the toxic wind of a completely dead world. But it was what was in orbit around that world that hit her like a punch to the solar plexus.

  Another of those damned planet killers, she thought, zooming in on the object, surrounded by cargo and tanker ships. It was in the process of loading up for deployment. Or at least it had been, a couple of months ago. The view zoomed out without her willing it, and she looked over at Chandra, about to ask him what he was doing, just as she caught sight of another of the planet destroyers coming around the curve of the planet.

 

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