by B. V. Larson
Her single gun blazed, stabbing down into the atmosphere. I knew she couldn’t do any harm. The soupy gases would stop any beam from traveling more than a few miles into the interior. The Blues seemed to inhabit a zone thousands of miles deeper. But it didn’t matter. The Nano ships had seen the action, and were sure to register it as an attack.
This was the part that left me sweating and uncertain. Up until this point, Alamo hadn’t even mentioned the ongoing hostilities to me. The ship was flying with the rest of them, zooming for the far side of the gas giant to defend the planet. Alamo would never get there in time, of course, but futility had never stopped a Nano ship from trying.
I chuckled and sent my final transmission to Socorro. It was risky, as the Nano ships might be smart enough to realize they had a traitor amongst their command personnel. But I didn’t think they would. Their AI only went so far.
Socorro broke off the attack, and slid out of the atmosphere. She glided around the planet’s southern pole, leading the rest of the Nano ships on a merry chase. She didn’t outrun them entirely. In fact, I’d programmed her to gently slow down throughout the journey. I wanted the Nano ships to calculate they were gaining on their quarry. Otherwise, they might lose interest and head back to their station over Eden-12.
But they didn’t. They flew on directly toward the inner planets. I grinned ear to ear as I saw my plan unfold as I’d wished. There was only one problem now-they were following Socorro toward Eden-11, the Centaur homeworld. They’d marked my Earth fleet down as an enemy, since we were in control of the ship that had attacked.
I silently rode with the rest of them through space. After a few hours, a message came in from Rear Admiral Sarin.
“Colonel Riggs,” she said with an excited ring to her voice. “There seems to be a large number of Nano ships behind you, heading toward my position. Can we assume these ships are friendly? Did you negotiate an alliance with the Blues?”
I grimaced. She had a big disappointment coming. I sighed and decided to answer her. She needed to know the truth. As my transmission would take an hour or two to flash across the void between worlds, so I made a full speech of it, explaining what had happened and what I had done. After I was finished, I played it back, made a few edits, then sent it.
I’d dozed off in my seat a few hours later when Alamo told me the response had come back in from the fine-looking admiral. I winced as I told the ship, “Play it.”
“Riggs!” she shouted at me. “What the hell? You started another bloody war? I can’t believe you. I’m not going to be a part of this. Earth is pulling out. I’m flying for the ring. Rear Admiral Sarin out.”
This message grabbed my full attention. I was still more than a day from Eden-11. If she wanted, she could get her cruiser out of the way. I cursed and opened a channel. I needed every ship I had in on this one.
“Negative, Rear Admiral, I repeat, Negative. First of all, we are both ‘Earth’ forces. We are Star Force. As we discussed and you agreed, you are under my command while in this system, as long as I’m still alive. Crow isn’t here, and you will take your orders from me.”
I paused, but didn’t send the message yet. I tried to think. “Jasmine,” I said, softening my tone. “This is important. The Nano ships are chasing Socorro, who is running toward Eden-11. But that is not her final destination. She will veer off, and head toward a new target. You are hereby ordered to wait until Socorro makes her course shift, then leave orbit. You will take every Star Force ship we have with you. Load them all with marines for deployment as assault forces. I would suggest you don’t accelerate too hard, as you don’t want to outrun the Nanos.”
Hoping against hope it would work, I sent the message. Then I waited. Just over an hour later the reply came back in.
“A new target? You have to be talking about the Macro stronghold, Eden-9. You are crazier than I thought. Miklos and I have been working out your strategy. We’ve been wargaming it through on the boards. I think now it is very clear what you are planning, and I must object. How can we hope to win this conflict? If both the Nano ships and the Macro ships are firing on us, how can we win a three-way battle? We are the weakest force in this system.”
I smiled now, believing I had her. At the very least she was curious. I was encouraged that she hadn’t mentioned running out on me once in the entire transmission.
“Rear Admiral,” I said slowly, forcing myself to relax and speak in a confident voice. “I’m glad you’ve figured out my plan. You asked how we can win a three-way battle in this system-the answer to me is clear: by being the last one to the party. We will join the action after the battle has begun, and we will destroy whoever is left standing. Jasmine, we’ve fought together for years in space and planet-side. Let me win this my own way, the only way it can be won. Thanks in advance for your support. You have your orders. Riggs out.”
I waited, trying not to sweat as the message traveled through emptiness to her ship, and she had time to digest it. No response came in for a long time. I began to worry. Many unpleasant scenarios went through my head. Was she trying to talk Welter and Miklos into joining her? Were they arguing-arresting one another? I was out of the loop, and it was agonizing.
I thought of a dozen things to transmit as another hour slipped by without a response. I recorded them, but when I listened to each statement afterward, I could only see that each one made me sound weak. I’d made my argument and given my orders. Prattling on and repeating myself would only remind people I wasn’t there to enforce my words. Command at a long distance was an art form. I wasn’t a master by any means, but I did know you didn’t want to sound needy.
In the end, the answer didn’t come in the form of a transmission. Instead, I witnessed things unfold directly. When Socorro made her banking course change and headed for Eden-9, the Star Force ships left orbit over Eden-11 and set out for the target world. All of them were moving, and all of them were flying with me into the teeth of the Macro fleet.
But even as I began to congratulate myself, a transmission came in from Sarin: “Colonel Riggs. You are not close enough to the forces to run this operation in real time. I request operational command.”
I thought about it for a minute or so, scowling. She had a strong point. If the tactical situation changed dramatically, I could hardly call the shots from several million miles away. Finally, I transmitted my response. “All right, Jasmine. You’ve always wanted a command role in a pitched battle. Well, now you’ve got it. Show me what you can do. Good luck.”
— 36
At first, the trick I’d played on the Nanos worked perfectly. It was hardly surprising. I’d pulled off similar deceptions in the past. These ships tended to be highly predictable. They had certain imperatives built into their software, and one of them was to attack threats immediately. This strategy worked well enough when the ships were in a single group, but when they were far apart and a threat was recognized, they would charge the enemy and arrive at different times. They were much easier to defeat that way, as it is always easier to fight three groups of ten ships at a time, rather than all thirty at once. We’d gotten around such problems back in the early days of Star Force by ordering the ships to attack distant targets, rather than the nearest ones. They accepted the order, as we were still attacking something. By switching targets, we were able to delay engaging with our ships until we were ready to mass up all our ships on a single target.
Their simplistic approach to tactics was a known weakness in the Nano ships. To fix the problem, the Blues had programmed them to pick up local command personnel to give them better ideas. That was how the whole business of kidnapping and testing people had started.
Right now, only one of the Nano ships had a commander-mine. For an experienced robot-baiter such as myself, it was a relatively easy matter to trick the ships into chasing Socorro. But I wasn’t sure how it would all turn out in the end. I wasn’t in direct command of this fleet, and I was forced to fly with them. When the moment of truth cam
e, I hoped they would fight the Macros when they closed to within range. I wasn’t certain they would engage, however. One complication involved my own Star Force ships. We had to head toward the Macros now, and hit them soon after the Nano ships did in order to be most effective. If we waded into the battle too soon, the Nano ships might well start shooting at us instead of our joint enemy, the Macros. If we waited too long, the battle might be over before we arrived.
I sipped water in my ship and tried to relax while the final hours slid past. I wasn’t sure if I would live to see another day, but at least I was going to have a front row seat for all the action. A message came in over the command channel from Star Force when I was about an hour from the Macro line. Up until this point, the enemy had not moved their cruisers. They sat parked in orbit over Eden-9. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t stay there much longer.
“Colonel Riggs?” Miklos asked over a private channel. Our two fleets were close enough to talk with only a few seconds delay between transmissions.
“Miklos? What’s up over there? I see your ships moving toward the enemy. Tell me everything is all right.”
“Maybe sir, maybe. I’m calling about the local command structure. Rear Admiral Sarin has informed all the Fleet units she is in operational control of this action. Should I ignore her orders-or seek to remove her from command?”
I sat up straighter. “Negative, Miklos. That’s not how I wish you to proceed. You will obey her tactical orders in the coming action. I’m too far out, and I might not survive in any case. Sarin is in a better position to run the battle than I am.”
“But sir, please examine our formation. I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”
I ordered Alamo to bring up a detailed positional diagram of our fleet. I pursed my lips as I regarded it. Instead of leading with the new gunships, she had the destroyers and her own cruiser on the front line. Behind this group came a widely-spread formation of gunships.
“I’ll talk to her,” I told Miklos, and broke the connection.
I cursed for a while in private, getting it out of my system. When I thought I could stay calm and polite, I requested a private channel with Sarin. After a long minute or two, she answered me.
“What is it Colonel? I’m very busy right now.”
“I’m sure you are. I wanted to go over the tactical formations with you, if you don’t mind.”
She hesitated. “Go over them? Are you suggesting you should take operational command again? I-”
“No,” I said. “Not until you’re dead or proven incompetent. But it always makes sense to discuss these things.”
“All right, here’s my plan. I’ve placed the laser armed ships on the front line, that way-”
“You do realize that the gunships have a much shorter effective range, right?”
“Of course,” she said, sounding miffed. “As I was saying, if they fire missiles at us during our approach, I want to have our laser ships forward to shoot them down. Before we engage, the laser-armed ships will brake and fall back. The gunships will accelerate into the front line and we’ll meet them with all our firepower maximized.”
I thought about it, and I liked it. “That sounds pretty good, Sarin. Thanks for the update. Carry on.”
“Thank you, Colonel,” she said, sounding pleased and prideful.
As the last minutes rolled slowly by, I was squirming in my chair. I thought of a thousand reasons to contact Sarin and tell her to make adjustments. I resisted these urges with difficulty. The problem was, the enemy had not yet released the expected barrage of missiles. This variation from expected behavior didn’t improve my mood. They had a plan, some kind of plan. They always did.
By the time we were closing in to tactical range, I had the nanites working overtime on the forward bulkhead. They depicted all three forces now as clusters of bumpy metal. The circle representing Eden-9 hung between us, under the watchful eye of the Macros, who had yet to move. Projected arcs showed the path the two attacking fleets were taking, and we were bearing down on the enemy fast. Two other groups of cruisers were coming this way too-but they would arrive after the battle had begun.
When the Macros finally made a move, we were all taken by surprise.
“Missile launch detected,” Alamo said.
I stood up and eyed the front wall. A series of tiny slivers of metal appeared among the Macros.
“Target?” I asked.
“Insufficient data to project destination.”
I paced, but never took my eyes off the forward screen. They could be firing at either of our fleets, or both of them. Less than a minute later, I had my answer. By that time, I had a transmission waiting from Jasmine.
“What are they shooting at, sir?” she asked, forgetting to call me Colonel and lapsing back to the familiar “sir”. It was the only bright spot in the conversation.
I didn’t answer right away, as I didn’t like what I thought I was seeing. In fact, I didn’t want to witness it at all.
“I don’t get it,” Jasmine said. “They aren’t firing toward either fleet, those missiles-oh, no…”
The projections were coming up on everyone’s display now. The computers had calculated the course and destination unerringly.
On the big forward screen, the line was drawn between the missiles and their target. It was a very short line indeed. They had targeted the Centaur habitat. When faced with two incoming fleets, they’d chosen the third option-to engage in genocide.
“Why are they doing it, sir?”
“Watch the ships themselves. They’re underway now.”
The big cruisers had all fired up their engines in unison. They ponderously turned their pointed noses around and away from both oncoming fleets. They were leaving Eden-9.
Soon, the missiles struck. We’d put a lot of effort into building up laser turrets on each of the Centaur habitats, but the armament was insufficient to stop them all. The real problem was the habitats couldn’t really take any hits. A ninety-percent defense wasn’t good enough when the target was essentially a big balloon in space. Two missiles made it through, or at least got close enough to detonate themselves with devastating effect.
I was glad the sensory system was only a crude one built by nanites. The beads on my forward wall didn’t show the graphic details. I didn’t want to see the floating bodies freezing in space by the thousands. In this sort of situation, high-def video was overrated.
All the same, it was hard to watch millions of innocents die. Every time I’d gone through it, I felt nauseated slightly. This time was no different. I was numbed by the magnitude of the loss of life I was witnessing. I didn’t feel any psychic scream or ripple of lost life force. What I felt was disgusted and angry. My hatred for the machines tripled on the instant. When I had the opportunity, I would root them out and dismantle them all. I’d said and thought these things before, of course. But I still felt the horror and rage as if it were fresh.
“They’re gone, sir,” Jasmine said.
“Yes.”
“Was it our fault?”
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But we can’t do anything about that now. What we can do is win the coming battle.”
“Battle? They’re running, Colonel. Are we going to chase them?”
“Most definitely. We have a lot of built up velocity going for us. Even at maximum acceleration, I doubt the enemy can escape our two fleets now. But I don’t think they plan to run from us for long.”
“Why did they choose this option?”
“See the merging arcs? They are going to meet up with the rest of the cruisers coming from the inner planets.”
Jasmine was quiet for a time. Finally, she sent another transmission. “I see it now, Colonel. They will turn and fight when they have their fleet amassed.”
“Probably. Now, may I make a suggestion?”
“Certainly, Colonel.”
“Don’t keep flying straight at them. Take a detour. Maybe slingshot around behind Eden-9.”
&nb
sp; “Why would-oh, I see. You don’t want our two fleets to come too close to one another.”
“Exactly.”
When we finally ran into the massed Macro cruisers, the Nano ships were still leading the charge. Actually, the first ship into the fight was none other than Socorro. I felt bad for the little ship. I’d had a lot of fun times aboard her, not the least of which was the scouting trip to the blue giant star system Sandra and I had taken long ago. I remembered the ship fondly right up until the moment the cruisers fired in unison. They used their big turrets, rather than their missiles. There was no need to waste ordnance on such an insignificant target.
Socorro dodged and weaved as she closed with them, just as I had told her to do. She couldn’t shoot down the big chunks of flak coming her way, but she could get out of the way. The railguns were electromagnetic accelerators which used intense magnetic fields to push a ferrous mass to extreme velocities. The projectiles traveled only a fraction of the speed of a laser beam, but they struck with much greater kinetic force. Each pellet that struck home delivered a force like a high-yield bomb.
Socorro fired as she closed in with the cruisers-but not at the cruisers themselves. Instead, she fired behind her at the following Nano ships. I’d given her those orders. I wanted to make sure none of the Nanos got any bright ideas about reversing course at the last moment.
Eventually, the tiny ship’s luck ran out. A hit was scored, and she went into a spin. A moment later, the ship came apart and turned into a hail of fragments. I tensed, watching the reactions of both the Macros and the Nanos. Would they fire upon one another?
The first change was in my own ship. Alamo hit the brakes-hard. I stumbled forward and had to reach out with a gauntleted hand to keep from slamming into the forward wall. The stabilizers worked overtime, but it wasn’t enough. The ship was trying to do a U-turn. The Nanos had destroyed their target, and now planned to return to their defensive station over the Blues’ homeworld.