“Mr. President,” said Wittmore, switching the com to the Klassekian head’s office. “We have another problem.”
* * *
Twenty small craft knifed through the air, heading for the light of the city ahead. Each craft was a one and a half meter disc, flying along at several thousand kilometers an hour. Ground based antiaircraft engaged where they could, but only had seconds to target and fire at the low flying aircraft.
The squadron of Klassekian fighters dove down on their targets, twin engines pushing them ahead, passing Mach three in the dive. The most advanced fighters in the Klassekian inventory, carrying upgraded sensors and avionics thanks to the Imperials, they locked on all weapons and rippled off pairs of missiles from each of the sixteen aircraft. Four of the intruders flared into expanding clouds, two more wobbled from proximity hits. The rest darted at hundreds of gravities away from the missiles, causing the unmanueverable weapons to miss, slamming into the ground in balls of fire. A small town lay below, and the misses came at a terrible cost to the people of that municipality. The fires would burn until morning, when there was nothing left to feed the flames.
The Machine drones went over to the attack, zipping through the sky in turns so tight no organic could have survived. Particle beams fired, Klassekian fighters exploded in mid-flight, and more flaming debris rained down from the air. In moments it was over, and the best fighter jocks the Klassekian Air Force had were so much dead meat. The robots leveled out, back on course for the city. They passed over the skyscrapers, their hatches opened, and they dropped that cargo onto the city. The hatches closed and they forged ahead, changing course for the next target.
* * *
The F231 attack fighters sliced down from the upper atmosphere, their grabbers silent as they propelled the craft at Mach ten. The sonic boom roared to their rear, unable to catch up with the advanced fighters. They arrowed in on the remaining Machine drones, advanced sensors looking through the three centuries less advanced stealth like it didn’t exist.
“Light them up,” called out the Flight Commander to the other three craft. “But be careful about collateral damage.”
Acknowledgements came in, while the Imperial Army Captain locked onto his own targets, then quickly checked the firing solutions of the other ships to make sure there was no overkill. The fire seemed to be distributed evenly across the sixteen craft, which were still showing no reaction to their destruction coming from above.
The fighters opened up with particle beams and lasers, splashing eight of the enemy craft from the air immediately. The others went into terminal maneuvers at hundreds of gravities acceleration, vectors that would surely lose the targeting lock of any of the native made fighters. No you don’t, thought the Captain, allowing his fighter to maneuver automatically to keep weapons on target. His own craft could pull more gravities than those of the Machines, thanks to its grabber units that doubled as inertial compensators, turning inertia into heat. They glowed white hot as the nose of the fighter drifted over to maintain lock. The particle beam speared out, and the Machine craft was sliced into two unequal pieces that spiraled down to strike at terrific velocity into the ground.
The Captain brought his fighter out of its attack vector and pulled in behind his last target, accelerating up to its maximum speed and lining up on the enemy. As his nose crossed the target the particle beam reached out, and the last of his victims rolled over and into the ground below.
* * *
“We have decon units moving into Mattocan at this time, sir,” said the Lt. Commander on the other side of the com. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, yet, but I’m guessing they dropped nanites on the city.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Wittmore, looking at the holo globe. There were fewer red points on that globe after over an hour of counter attacks. There were also some new ones that had sprung up, in several cases within some of the larger cities, where civilians would complicate operations. And some of the dots had expanded to a much greater range than he would have liked, the sign that the attacks that had gone in against those landing zones had been unsuccessful.
Give us another year and I would have had the entire Klassekian ground force modernized. The General shook his head, watching as another red dot flared and expanded, and two more died. The Universe could care less about the plans of the creatures who lived in it, and those creatures had to take the Universe as it came, even when it showed up at your doorstep to find you surprised and less than ready.
“Any movement from the enemy spaceships?” he asked the Naval officer while he had her on the com.
“Just a sec, General,” replied the officer, looking off the holo for a moment, then back. “Most of them are still hanging out there. Captain Camstock thinks they are waiting to see if their attack creates an opening.”
Wittmore nodded. Camstock was the naval commander of the orbital defenses, and would be the one watching the enemy ships most closely.
“We are picking up some of their ships coming in from the asteroid belt, General.”
“Any idea what they’re doing”
“They’re pulling metallic asteroids behind them,” said the officer. “The Captain believes they are either going to bombard us with them, or use them to manufacture more of their robot invasion probes.”
“Or maybe both,” said Wittmore, bringing up the telescopic view of those ships, six of them, all pulling asteroids much larger than they were with magnetic grapples. “Can we stop them if they send those big rocks at us?”
“We don’t know, General. It depends on how many they send, and their velocity.”
“So we need our ships to come back,” said Wittmore.
“That would help, sir, yes,” said the Lt. Commander.
And yet another thing outside of my control, thought the General. Even their one wormhole was off with Admiral Hasselhoff. He could contact New Gaea Base, but they couldn’t do anything about his situation. He had been in contact with Hasselhoff though their Klassekian com techs, and he knew that at least they wouldn’t have to worry about the planet killer. Which wouldn’t help a bit if the Machines smacked the planet with a fast moving rock.
Chapter Twenty-two
I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
BOLTHOLE, MAY 4TH, 1002.
“We have a ship entering normal space from the direction of Machine space, Admiral,” said the voice of the duty officer over the com.
“One of ours?” asked Fleet Admiral Beata Bednarczyk, sitting up in the bed of her stateroom aboard her flagship.
“Yes, ma’am. It appears to be a hyper VII destroyer, dropping out at the VII barrier. We’re picking up the header of a grav wave transmission.”
And it always has to happen when I’m trying to sleep, thought the Admiral, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and deciding she would go back to sleep as soon as this routine arrival was taken care of. Wait a minute, came the thought that woke her up completely. What the hell is it doing dropping out at the VII barrier?
Ships routinely made their way in stair step fashion into systems in order to reduce their travel time. They still had to slow down to point three light, in the case of a warship, to make each jump, but would accelerate, then decelerate, in the space between the barriers. They only dropped out of VII or VI into normal space if the tactical situation required it, or if they had an important message to send by gravity wave.
“We’ve decoded the first part of the message, ma’am,” said the duty officer. “It’s the HIMS Edmund Hillary, Commander Roberta Matthews commanding. She reports having scouted through several Machine systems.”
With a thought the Admiral brought the Commander who was the duty officer up on the holo over her bedside table. The Commander was looking at the com station where the grav wave message was being decrypted. The woman sucked in a breath, then looked up and out of the holo at the Admiral, her eyes wide.
“What is it, Commander?”
“They’re reporting that a Machine force is on the way here. A force with three of those planet killers.”
Shit, thought the Admiral, jumping up and out of bed. “I’ll be up in two minutes,” she told the duty officer.
The ship gate was supposed to be opened in the morning of the next day. That was soon to be followed by major reinforcements to her command, and hopefully enough of a force to actually go on the offensive against the Machines. Now she wondered if she would have enough to hold this system against the Machines after all.
She walked onto the flag bridge in a little less than two minutes after she had gotten off the link, still putting her hair up into the style she wore on duty. Decorum was important, but she also knew that sometimes her appearance as an officer could take a back seat when time was of the essence.
“They’ve completed their message, ma’am,” reported the Duty Officer. “They’ve jumped into hyper VI and are working their way toward the system.”
That made sense. They had delivered their priority message about the Machine force, without, of course, any detailed video or sensor readings, which would take months to reach the system from their current position. Now they would make their way over a little less than two hours to the last hyper barrier, a couple of light hours from the base, and transmit the rest of their information on the way in. Then they would have a better take on what was coming their way, though they did have some information sent from the force that had engaged one on the way to the Klassek system.
“Twenty-four days,” said the Admiral after letting out a breath of relief. They weren’t going to show up on the doorstep tomorrow, and she would have a much larger force here to confront them when they arrived. Whether it would be enough was the question, and she would know more in about four hours.
“Send a message to all command staff,” ordered the Admiral, turning to the com stations. “We will meet through virtual conference in four and a half hours.” And hopefully someone can pull a miracle out of their ass.
* * *
KLASSEK SYSTEM, MAY 5TH, 1002.
“What do you have, Tactical?” asked Captain Havelik Jamshidi, sitting in his command chair of the Hyper VII battle cruiser John Glenn. He had two more Exploration Command battle cruisers in his command, along with a quartet of light cruisers and seven destroyers, all that was left of the force Admiral Hasselhoff had led out minus the three battle cruisers she had taken to the black hole.
As far as they knew from the last com from the Klassekians aboard that trio, the Admiral had destroyed the planet killer. That meant they were sixty-four hours from reaching the first hyper barrier. From there it was only a short jump to the barrier of Klassek, but those two and a half days were the killer, since the Admiral had the only wormhole gate they possessed. And the only means of replenishing their missiles.
“Computers have analyzed the graviton emissions,” said the Tactical Officer, pushing a tab at his station and setting in motion the change to the central holo tank. “We’ve also inputted all visuals of the system.”
“Very well,” said the Captain, turning his attention on the tactical plot that was now alive in the holo tank. There were nineteen objects hanging in space about ten light minutes from the planet, barely using their grabbers to keep station. From the resonances of those grabber units, which were off most of the time, only coming on for a few seconds every couple of minutes, those were Machine ships. There were another eleven ships moving toward the planet on a path from the belt. From the graviton emissions of those ships and their apparent velocity, they were pulling or pushing something much heavier than themselves. Four more objects moved along with those ships, the look of escorts.
“Tactical? What’s going on with those ships?”
“I think they’re pulling objects from the belt to throw at the planet,” answered the officer, a anxious expression in his eyes.
“Can the planet stop them?” asked Havelik, thinking about what a couple of multi-billion ton rocks traveling at a thousand kilometers a second would do to that world. At a minimum they would kill most of the higher forms on the planet, and start evolution on a new path. At the maximum, they would kill everything on that world.
“They should still have missiles they can launch at those ships,” replied the Tactical Officer. “But can they actually stop them?” The officer shrugged his shoulders.
“And what are those?” asked the Captain, pointing to the many small objects that were moving from the orbit of the planet outwards.
“They appear to be fast attack craft and attack fighters.” The Tactical Officer looked over the data feed of his board for a moment, then back up at the Captain. “Twenty-four attack craft, and one hundred and four fighters.”
“Can they stop them?”
“Possibly. If they can take out the ships motivating those rocks, and hit them with enough to change their vectors. But they would have to get through or around the rocks to get those ships, and that means getting their missiles past the escorts.”
“But that’s really all they have, right?”
“They might still have some missiles in the orbital batteries,” replied the Tactical Officer, looking back at the plot. “I don’t think they will launch them until they can time them on target when they can do the most good in covering their attack force.”
“And what can we do to help?” asked the Captain. He wasn’t sure that he would put his force up against the planet killer again, but he didn’t have to worry about that at this moment. He also wasn’t sure he could beat the Machine force in the system, especially without missiles, but it was something he was willing to risk.
“I recommend we move the force into an attack run on that force pushing the rocks,” said the officer, his voice shaking slightly as he spoke.
“You don’t think we have much of a chance, do you, Commander?” asked the Captain, who didn’t like the odds too much himself.
“No, sir,” replied the Tactical Officer. “Not without missiles. The only shot we have is to close to beam range and take them out in a knife fight. If we can make it through their missiles.”
Jamshidi had to agree with his officer. He didn’t think they had much of a chance. They would lose at least some of their force on the way in, no telling how much. And then they would have to close with the enemy with what they had left and pound each other at close range.
“There’s nothing else we can do,” he finally said, looking around at the bridge crew who were among the over ten thousand people he was about to take on a ride into hell. “We can’t let them kill that planet without trying to stop it. I know I couldn’t live with myself if we stood by and watched them kill an entire civilization.”
He looked directly at his Tactical Officer. “Plot our best attack profile and get us moving.” The Captain looked next at the Com Officer, a young lady who looked like she would rather be anyplace else but here. “Signal to the rest of the force that we will be moving into an attack profile in five minutes.”
The sick looking woman nodded her head, then went about her job.
Everyone is terrified, thought the Captain, knowing that he was. He had thought they had escaped disaster in their attacks on the planet killer, and now they were sticking their necks into the guillotine yet again. Everyone is terrified, he thought again. But they’re all going about their jobs. Which makes all of my crews heroes. Whether we accomplish what we set out to do or not.
“Profile set, sir,” said the Tactical Officer.
“Helm,” said the Captain, looking at the back of that officer as she sat stiffly at her station. “Engage.”
* * *
The Machine brains were basically all the same. All had the same number of processors, the same memory cells. The only difference were the interfaces, which depended on the size of the vessel. One computer brain in each battle group was arbitrarily chosen from among the larger vessels. With the planet killer not here, that command ship was one of the four million ton warship
s which was the largest class of vessel in their fleet. All of the Machines could come to the same conclusion based on the data presented. Those close enough to the command ship shared data, making sure that all had the same, then processed that data and came to decisions based on probability, their operating parameters, and a set of algorithms that would cover most contingencies.
The command ship made its decision as it made a last second track on both the enemy ships coming in from the outer system and those coming out from the planet, then made its decision, assigning its units in the manner that seemed to cover all contingencies it could foresee. The decision was compared with the those made by the other brains, and found to be almost exact. Having passed that last logical test, the orders went out, and the force split up into two components.
Six of the ships, all of the smallest class, a little over a million tons, boosted toward the bombardment ships that were moving the asteroids toward the planet. They would join the escorts, then shoot ahead to deal with the small craft that were shooting out from the planet. The rest, including all of the larger ships, put on one burst of accel to turn them in the proper direction, then boosted at full power outward, toward the full sized human warships.
* * *
“We’re picking up Imperial ships outside of the barrier, General,” said Captain Camstock, the officer in charge of the system defenses. “It looks like three battle cruisers and eleven escort ships, cruisers and destroyers.”
Thank God, thought Wittmore, looking over at the tactical holo set in the system command war room deep under a mountain range. The room was crowded with people, humans, Klassekians and others. Almost a hundred Klassekians manned banks of com consoles, connected to sibling groups on the fast attack craft, fighters, and orbital forts. And with the ships of the system defense fleet, who had kept the General and the System Defense Commander apprised. They had already been aware that this portion of the system defense force was almost back, and that the three battle cruisers that Hasselhoff had taken to the black hole were still two days away. They also knew that none of the ships currently on their way into the system had missiles, limiting their actions. Hasselhoff’s force would resupply on the way back through the wormhole they had. But again, they and their missiles were still two days away.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Page 29