Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

by Doug Dandridge

  The attack ships flew through five minutes later, before the Machine ships could get the rocks under control. They fired all of their beam and close in weapons at the attacking craft, scoring some hits. The missiles launched by the fighters, which all had two remaining offensive weapons, blasted those ships into pieces.

  Slaviska breathed a sigh of relief as his force moved through the remains and back out, started to decelerate so they could get back to the planet in about thirteen hours. He looked over his own casualty figures and breathed another sigh. He had only lost three fast attack craft and eleven fighters all told. While totally destroying this Machine attack force and saving the planet from the asteroids. But there were still Machine ships in the system, including a force that had been on the way to reinforce the group they had just destroyed. Those ships were starting to change their vectors, heading out to the asteroid belt, where they could pick up more rocks, bigger rocks, and start the process all over again. And Slaviska doubted that this plan would work a second time.

  * * *

  “Jumping to normal space in one minute,” reported the Helm Officer, as the Exploration Command battle cruiser Buzz Aldrin coasted toward the last hyper barrier before the Klassekian system.

  Alongside the hyper VII ship were three other of the VII explorers, the light cruisers Ingolfur Arnarson and Alexander Forbes, accompanied by the destroyer Zheng He. The ships were members of two of the scout groups dispatched by Rear Admiral Nguyen to scout Machine space, meeting up and returning with the intelligence they had gathered.

  “We’re picking up a large number of graviton resonances from the system, sir,” said the Sensor Officer to Captain Pamiuk Wood.

  Wood nodded as he watched the tracks of those waves, of course distorted through the filter of hyperspace. He rubbed a hand across his copper red forehead as his eyes narrowed in thought, calling out a mental prayer to his spirit guide to let him know what he should be doing. Because all of those tracks looked a lot like a missile duel, possibly between large forces, and he didn’t want his small force jumping into the middle of a fight without knowing what was going on.

  “All ships, jump to normal space, now,” he ordered, still seven light minutes from the barrier.

  Aldrin jumped almost immediately, followed a few seconds later by the two light cruisers, which appeared in space a couple of light seconds ahead. He was the last to jump, understandable as they were set to jump just before the barrier, but it entered normal space almost a light minute ahead.

  “Updating tactical plot,” said the Tactical Officer, moment before the central holo tank blurred for a moment, then firmed up with the tracking vector arrows of everything moving in the system. A smaller holo appeared to the front of the bridge, showing the visual scan of the system, everything out of date from two to six hours, depending on where the activity had occurred in that space.

  “It looks like two fights in the system,” reported the Tactical Officer, highlighting the areas of interest. “We have missiles moving between these two forces here. The inner force is most probably Machine based on the resonances, while the outer is a Fleet force. Missiles are just about to contact the Machine force.”

  “And what about that one?” asked the Captain, pointing to the other highlighted area.

  “It looks like another Machine force, though their acceleration is very low. And that is a combined attack craft strike force along with some of what look like capital ship missiles heading toward them. And smaller missiles going back and forth.”

  “Anyone have any ideas?” asked Wood as he watched one of the Machine ships and all of the attacking missiles drop off the plot.

  “I say get in touch with the system commander and see what orders they have,” chimed in the Exec over the com.

  “Sounds like a good idea, XO,” replied the Captain, looking over at the Com Officer. “Send that message to the system commander by grav wave. Standard encryption.” They ought to know we’re already out here, if they have any grav wave sensors left.

  Wood sat back in his chair and waited as his force coasted inward at point three light. They passed the last hyper barrier during that time and were committed to normal space. He watched the holo, seeing most of the Imperial force of larger ships drop off the plot, at the same time the great majority of the enemy missiles had. He watched as the remaining four vessels of the Imperial force changed their vector to go on a chase of the much larger Machine force, which was now vectoring toward the asteroid belt. While that was obviously what the other Machine force was doing, pushing rocks toward the planet, in an instant they were no longer a problem.

  “Message coming in,” called out the Com Officer, concentrating on her board. “Header from Captain Havelik Jamshidi of the battle cruiser John Glenn.”

  Wood ran the man’s name and ship through his implant into his ship’s database, finding that Jamshidi had eight months’ time in rank over him, making Wood’s force subject to his command. And he probably already ran my name and ship, and knows he commands.

  “Captain Jamshidi wants to know if we have any offensive missiles aboard?”

  “Let him know what we have,” Wood told the officer. “And let him know everything we have is at his disposal.”

  A minute later the Com Officer looked back at her Captain. “He orders us to launch everything we have at the Machine ships vectoring away from him toward the asteroid field.”

  “Target those vessels,” said Wood, looking over at his Tactical Officer, then looking at his Com Officer. “Send those firing instructions to the other ships. We will all launch together, and continue launching until we have nothing left..”

  “Targets locked,” called out the Tactical Officer.

  “Launch,” ordered the Captain, and the battle cruiser shook slightly as its six forward tubes accelerated missiles out, leaving the tubes at just a little under point three one light. The ship pivoted around, exposing port tubes, stern tubes, then starboard tubes, before returning to orient the bow launch systems back on target. The other ships were doing the same, putting out every weapon they had, until eighty capital ship missiles, one hundred and thirty cruiser weapons and forty-five destroyer class were on their way at five thousand gravities acceleration.

  Wood watched them go on the plot, wishing he had the capacity of a hyper VI warship, which carried over four hundred of those weapons. But his ship suffered from the double handicap of being an exploration vessel that committed more space to sensors, labs and probes; and being a hyper VII ship, which cut into its magazine capacity even more.

  He had what he had, and he could only hope that the two hundred and fifty-five missiles would be enough of a wave to swamp the enemy defenses. Missiles were most effective at long range, and these had three and a half light hours to go to intersect the targets they were fired at.

  In one hour’s time the weapons would be speeding through space at just below point nine light, and would coast the distance almost to the targets in three and a third hours, at which point they would kick in the acceleration again until they were up to their point nine-five light optimum attack velocity.

  “Captain Jamshidi is ordering us to head toward the enemy force at our best velocity,” said the Com Officer. “He will rendezvous with us for an attack run on whatever is left of the enemy force.”

  “Set course for the asteroid belt,” ordered Wood, looking back at the tactical holo. He really didn’t like the idea of a beam fight with the Machine ships, but the planet was more important than he and his crews.

  * * *

  It looks like we might actually survive this attack from space, thought Wittmore as he looked at the tactical holo in his command center. There was still a Machine force in the system, eighteen of their ships, moving in two groups toward the asteroid belt. Where they were sure to grab more rocks and start them on their way toward the planet. Only this time, there would be more ships, and more rocks. But Jamshidi’s attack, along with the strike from the FACs and fighters, had bou
ght them some time. And the missile attack coming in from out system was going to hit the Machines prior to their mating up with more asteroids and starting them on their way.

  I almost wish that Wood had waited to launch until after the Machines had mated with their bombardment projectiles. They would be more vulnerable at that time, and least able to handle the missile wave. But Jamshidi had issued the orders, and Wood had fired before the General could object.

  “We’ve found one of the diggers, sir,” said Brigadier Sutombe Kellings, her face appearing on one of the com screens, then transferring to the holo nearest the General. The holo switched to a view of Imperial heavy infantry and tanks moving toward what looked like a newly created pit at the edge of a city.

  “What city?”

  “Mreeshmbau,” replied the Brigadier, as another holo popped up showing the city on the map.

  That’s one of the cities they dropped nanites on, thought the General, pulling up that information on his implant for a moment and swearing under his breath. Over a thousand Klassekians had died before the people he had sent in had gotten it under control. They were still experiencing brown outs and other technical problems as the inserted nanites ravaged their way through every piece of machinery they could reach. And there were still thousands of Klassekians whose bodies were battlegrounds for two different species of nanites being treated.

  “I want you to crush that robot incursion as soon as possible, Brigadier. I don’t want them getting into that city and forcing building to building fighting.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the Marine, as the battle armor and tanks went forward and close air support flew in to spiral over the pit, spitting out particle beams and launching hyper-velocity missiles at whatever was coming up from that hole.

  The view switched to that seen by one of the ground support craft, the pit crawling with battle bots, including some large and heavily armored versions. A tunnel led down, and more objects were moving up.

  It’s only been twenty-seven hours since they burrowed down, and that one digger has already built an army, thought Wittmore, shaking his head. That was the danger. The Machines could build more of themselves and reproduce at a geometric progression. Every robot built would go to work building another, until there were hundreds of them. If these had waited, there might have been thousands coming up from the ground at this point. And there would be thousands, tens of thousands, more, coming up from other points.

  That was why the original Machine rebellion had only been stopped by the complete devastation of three living worlds. He didn’t want this to be another example of what happened when they were entrenched on a world.

  The infantry went over the top of the pit, the tanks levitating along with them. Scores of particle beams reached down into the pit, sending splashes of molten alloy and glassy shards of sand into the air. A couple of marines went down as their suits were blasted by return fire, while one of the five hundred ton medium tanks plopped heavily to the ground as something streaked from below and took out one of the lifting vanes on the bottom of the vehicle.

  Some more hyper velocity missiles came down from the above, striking with bright flashes that blew clouds of dirt over the Marines. The firing stopped, and armored suits jumped into the pit.

  “We’ve got this breakout under control,” reported Kellings as the holo switched back to her face. “We’re sending a missile down the rabbit hole to see if we can take out whatever it is down their manufacturing these things.”

  “Make sure that it’s taken out. Send a probe down there afterwards to see that you got it.”

  The holo went blank, and the General turned back to the tactical plot, watching the players move across the system to their appointments with destiny. Knowing he could do nothing about it, which was harder than actually fighting a battle.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The purest case of an intelligence explosion would be an Artificial Intelligence rewriting its own source code.

  The key idea is that if you can improve intelligence even a little, the process accelerates.

  It’s a tipping point.

  Like trying to balance a pen on one end - as soon as it tilts even a little, it quickly falls the rest of the way.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  BOLTHOLE SPACE, MAY 6TH, 1002.

  Fleet Admiral Beata Bednarczyk stood on the flag bridge of her ship and watched as the new ship gate blinked its warning lights, indicating that transit was about to occur from the other side. She wasn’t sure why that was necessary, since the gate had only become fully operational minutes before, and they had already signaled the other side that they didn’t have anything to send across.

  The first ship poked its nose through the gate, its more than two kilometer length sliding through at a hundred meters per second. The shape of the battleship still looked strange to her eye, despite her making a similar ship her flag. The sixteen million ton warship looked both top and bottom heavy with its larger hyperfield generators. A standard hyper VI battleship had four hundred thousand tons of mass in each of its generators, a total of eight hundred thousand tons. Supermetals had reduced the total by a factor of three, so that ships didn’t have to use most of their mass to carry around their means of getting around the light speed barrier. A hyper VII battleship still had to quadruple the mass of its hyperfield generators, to three point two million tons. Part of that was taken up by the extra million tons of mass, except that the ships also had to carry a greater power generation capacity. Because of this, they carried a much more powerful beam battery, and a lesser missile capacity.

  “The admiral in charge of the hyper VII force is on the com, ma’am,” said the Flag Com Officer. The com holo came to life, showing a red haired woman standing on the flag bridge of the newly arrived battleship, the Prince of Conway. She smiled, and Bednarczyk smiled back, recalling this woman, who had served under her when she had been the commander of a mere destroyer, and this officer her ensign tac witch.

  “Welcome to Bolthole, Mara,” said Bednarczyk, returning the salute the Vice Admiral rendered.

  “And thank you for asking for me, ma’am,” replied Mara Montgomery. “And by the Goddess, it’s good to see you in a position of command again.”

  “And that’s a wonderful ship you have under you. The same class as Kamakura?” asked Bednarczyk, waving at her own flag bridge.

  “Newer class,” said Montgomery, shaking her head. Her ship started to vector off to the side of the gate, leaving the space open for the next ship through, another Hyper VII battleship like her own.

  “We’re carrying a double load of cruiser class missiles, more advanced than any we’ve ever carried. We just finished our shakedown cruise, and many of the ships coming after me didn’t even get a chance to do that.”

  Dammit, thought the Fleet Admiral, looking at the list of ships that were coming through today. That means crews that aren’t used to working together, as well as ships that also have no idea what the strengths and weaknesses of their squadron mates are. “I’ll expect you to whip them into shape, Mara. And we don’t have any training time. I’ll need you and your ships to scout and strike as soon as possible.”

  “Understood. We‘ll be ready.”

  The third ship came through the gate, another of the Hyper VII battleships, and the next to the last of those vessels that she would be receiving until the Empire could cut some more loose.

  “We have the new subspace coms aboard all the ships coming here,” Mara continued. “And repair ships are coming through to install units on all your current vessels.”

  Bednarczyk had heard of the modern upgrade to old technology that the Empire was now using on the primary front. Subspace had a correspondence of twelve to one with normal space, meaning a signal sent through that dimension had an apparent speed of twelve light. All that was needed was the specialized sending and receiving sets on ships using them. Com could be sent through hyper, of course, but not within the gravity well of a system. Subspace co
m would work within all but the heaviest of gravity wells, close to a planet, or within the closest orbits of a star. Grav waves were faster, but subspace com could transmit huge amounts of data and images, and Bednarczyk couldn’t wait to try them out.

  “We will be placing Klassekian com techs aboard all of your ships, Mara. In the case of flags, multiples. I’ll not have my scout strike force sail away into oblivion without knowing its fate and having its intelligence go down a black hole.”

  The last battleship cleared the gate, and soon after the nose of the first hyper VII battle cruiser poked through. Bednarczyk wished that they all could be hyper VII, since those ships could strike out of the higher dimension without exposing themselves to Machine fire, with the exception of that close in weapon the planet killers carried. But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. There weren’t that many hyper VII ships in the Imperial fleet yet, and they took such a high mass of scarce resources, they might never be in the majority. The Cacas only used hyper VII warships, so the Empire needed all they could get on the primary front. Only because it was a quiet sector at the moment were any being pulled from that front at all.

  Her deployment list showed four battleships, fifteen battle cruisers, thirty-eight light cruisers and eighty-one destroyers. And she could add two hyper VII battleships, as well as two more battle cruisers and a couple of lights. Of course she would have to give up her flagship, because there was no way she was going to leave the main fleet, and Montgomery would need all the firepower she could get. Bonaparte was almost ready to be deployed, and would become the sixth battleship of that force.

  “As soon as you have all of your ships gathered and commands assigned, I want you to send out a half dozen scout forces. We pretty much know the vector the planet killers are coming on, but we don’t know what else may be on the way on different courses.”