by Jay Allan
He turned and nodded to the tactical officer to cut the link. He could see the spark in the lieutenant’s eye, and he knew his words had affected the man. He hoped they had been as well-received by the others in the fleet. He wasn’t as sure how he felt. He wanted to be inspired, but he knew he was also manipulating his spacers, tugging at emotional heartstrings to get them to fight harder.
He waited a moment, watching silently as the enemy approached. They would be launching missiles soon, he was sure of that, and none of his ships had ordnance left to return that fire. His vessels could do nothing at long range save endure the enemy’s barrage. So, that left only one option.
“Lieutenant…all ships are to engage engines at full power. Maximum thrust, forward.”
His people might not have a chance, but they wouldn’t go easily either, and they would take their share of enemies with them. And, whatever else happened, they would hold the line long enough for their friends to get the message back to Earth Two.
* * *
The Intelligence analyzed the reports and scans coming in, and it formulated actions, developed tactical plans, and prepared communications to its fleet units. Then, it filed them in its storage banks. The orders from the Regent were clear, and they overrode normal protocols. The enemy ships were, in fact, to be destroyed, but they were to be allowed to extend the fight, to give time for the two vessels that fled to reach some point sufficiently distant for them to alert higher authorities. And those ships were to be allowed to escape. They were not to be pursued or given any reason to fear that they were being followed.
Such orders were in absolute contradiction to the Intelligence’s standard directives, to defend both the planet and the secrecy of its location at all costs. Normal operational procedures called for the Intelligence to dispatch more ships to chase down the escaping enemy vessels, to destroy them before they could communicate the location of the Regent’s antimatter production facility. And, certainly, normal procedure called for tracking any enemy ships that might give an indication where the humans’ primary world was located. But, now, it did nothing. Obedience to the Regent was above all other considerations, and its tactics and strategies were not to be questioned.
The Intelligence had dispatched the ships it had deployed into small groups, with sufficient spacing between each assault to allow the humans time to conduct modest reordering operations and limited damage control. The enemy ships were badly hurt, and their magazines were depleted. But still, their performance in battle exceeded even the Intelligence’s most extreme estimates. It had received updates from the Regent many times, warnings that the human’s prowess in combat defied all logical classification and calculation…yet only now did it begin to truly comprehend the vague generalizations provided in those reports.
The Intelligence considered the Regent’s plan. The enemy was to be allowed to confirm the true purpose of the planet, and to send this information back to their home base. The brilliance in the plan was clear in its simplicity. There was no deception, to trickery…the system was a critical component of the Regent’s power structure, second in importance only to its own secret location. The Intelligence questioned the use of such a valuable asset as bait…yet, it understood, in part, the strange cleverness of the enemy. No staged setup, no phony bait, could be assured to lure them to attack. It was a gamble, but, given the armament the Regent had available, it was one likely to succeed. There was no way the humans could know about the hidden fleets, nor the fact that virtually all of the Regent’s forces would be present, waiting for the attack.
The humans were daring, aggressive, ready to take risks to achieve victory…and all this would be turned against them. They would risk their fleet, the forces they had built up for years, and they would lose all in one great struggle.
There were but two possibilities as to the outcome. Fragments of the shattered wreckage of the enemy fleet might limp back to their homeworld, their discipline obliterated by the crushing defeat they’d sustained. They would lead the Regent’s forces to the location of the final battle, the ultimate extermination of the dangerous biologics.
Or, they would perish, all of them, as their damaged ships fled desperately into the void, to their ultimate doom, leaving the still-hidden humans cowering on their planet, stripped of most of their strength, awaiting the inevitable moment the Regent’s probes would find them.
Either way, the infection of the biologics would be cleansed. The Regent would be victorious, and its predecessor avenged.
* * *
“Reroute power to batteries three and four. Shut down life support to sections C3 and C4, and redirect energy to the main conduits.” Graham had ordered those compartments evacuated a moment before, but if any of his people had lagged behind, they would die in the next few seconds, as Vaughn’s AI sealed the hatches and shut down the heat and air flow to the already badly damaged sections. He didn’t like cutting it this close, but right now his only concern was keeping Vaughn functioning, at least at some minimal level.
“Rerouting power flow now, sir. Lieutenant Terrell reports he’ll have the guns back online in two minutes.”
“One minute,” Graham snapped. He wasn’t angry with his tactical officer, or with the engineer making the report. But, he wasn’t sure Vaughn had two minutes left.
Hell, he wasn’t even sure about the single minute.
The battle had raged for almost two days, his ships using every maneuver they could concoct, every trick of war he’d ever known, and a few he’d made up on the spot. He was down to four ships, at least there had been three others fifteen minutes before, when Vaughn’s scanners had last been operational. All he was really sure of now was that his battered ship was still there.
He was scared, of course, and he’d pretty much lost any slivers of hope that his survivors would find a way out of the fight into which he’d ordered them. But, there was satisfaction, too, a pride in what his people had done. Somehow, they’d held off the enemy forces, driven back attack after attack, and bought time for their comrades to escape…and to get word back to Earth Two that they’d discovered a way to really hurt the enemy, even to destroy their ability to carry on their genocidal war.
Vaughn shook again and, as he gripped the sides of his chair to steady himself, he could hear creaking sounds and the distant echoes of structural supports collapsing deep inside his ship. The cruiser was dying, he knew that, but she was still fighting, and as long as his desperate spacers and the legion of bots racing to restore what systems were still reparable could get a gun back online, the battle would go on.
“Batteries three and four operational, sir!” The tactical officer’s voice was shrill, excitement at the restoration of the guns momentarily overcoming the dark mood that had taken them all.
“Fire!” Graham said immediately, but still too late. His gunners had been on orders to fire at will, and they beat their commander to the punch. Graham could hear the distant, high-pitched whine as the guns fired. Both shots hit, at least in his mind, as he closed his eyes and imagined the lasers slamming into one of the robot-controlled ships chasing his vessel. But the reality was more uncertain. Most of Vaughn’s sensor suite was down, and what little scanning capability remained to the battered vessel had been diverted to the gunnery stations. He knew what that meant in terms of the likelihood of scoring any hits, but there was nothing to be gained dwelling on it.
Then: “Captain, gunnery reports one hit on the lead enemy ship. Preliminary assessment indicated moderate damage inflicted.”
Graham just nodded. It was a near miracle that the guns were back online at all, and another one that the gunnery teams had manage to hit anything at all, considering the status of Vaughn’s scanners. But, Graham couldn’t completely push away the disappointment at the reality compared to the pair of critical hits he’d seen in his imagination.
He was losing it, to an extent at least. He was going to die, almost certainly. All of them were. There was no way to escape, none that he
could see. The emotions welling up inside him, fear of course, and sadness for those he’d never see again, but also guilt. He had come to the G47 system because he’d been ordered to do so, and he’d ventured into G48 because duty demanded he investigate the First Imperium contacts his people had encountered. But that didn’t alleviate the guilt. He had more than sixteen hundred officers and crew in his force, and save for just over a hundred in the two ships he’d sent back, they were all dead…or about to die. He tried to tell himself there had been no choice, that he’d only done what he had to do, what he’d been trained to do. But, he still felt responsible.
“Lieutenant, I want those guns recharged as quickly as possible. Tell Lieutenant Terrell to push it right up to the limit.” Graham’s mind struggled to cope with the reality that he was very likely living the last minutes, even seconds, of his life. Yet, one thing was blindingly clear to him. If his people had to die, they were damned sure going to take as many of those accursed machines with them. They would die well here, even if no one lived to tell the story.
“Sir, Lieutenant Terrell reports maximum energy flow to the guns underway. He projects a full charge in…” The officer didn’t finish his report…and Vaughn’s batteries didn’t fire the shot Graham had been waiting for.
Instead, the tortured vessel shook hard again, and the bridge went dark, save for the showers of sparks flying around as systems overloaded and burned out in spectacular fashion. Graham could hear internal explosions from within his ship, and he looked all around his chair as the dim battery-powered emergency lights came on, squinting to see how many of his bridge crew were still there, at their posts.
Rageski, the comm officer, was dead. There wasn’t any doubt about that. Her head and half her torso had been crushed by a felled girder. The tactical officer, Roan Harken, was down, too, thrown out of his chair by a heavy shock from his destroyed workstation. He was lying still on the deck, but Graham couldn’t tell whether he was dead or alive.
Graham felt woozy, his vision blurry. Then, he noticed a trickle of blood making its way slowly down his face. He reached up, and he could feel his hair was wet. Soaked with blood, he realized.
He looked at the deck around his chair. There is was, a piece of one of the conduits that ran along the bridge’s ceiling. That had run along the ceiling. It had broken loose from its mountings…and hit Graham in the head.
He hadn’t felt a thing, not at first. But, now his head was throbbing, and his vision was becoming fuzzier. He looked around the bridge, trying to find one of his officers still at his or her post, someone to shout orders to before he slipped into the blackness even then coming from all sides to take him.
Simmons. She was still in her chair, her hands moving frantically over her dead workstation.
Jill…he shouted out to her, or at least he tried. Her name was in his mind, but nothing came out of his mouth. He just sat, still, helpless, trying to say something, anything.
Then he leaned forward and fell to the deck, as darkness took him.
Chapter Six
AI Chamber
Victory City, Earth Two
Earth Two Date 10.18.42
“You have done quite well, Terrance. Your situation as a youth was far from optimal, and any standard pattern of human development and behavioral characteristics virtually ensured your earlier difficulties. You have exceeded likely parameters in returning to the Academy and completing your cycle of education.” The slightly machine-sounding voice paused for just a few seconds before adding, “And, you look quite the part in that uniform, Captain Compton.”
Terrance leaned back in his chair, feeling an uncomfortable flush in his face. He knew it was a machine talking, and that it only required a relatively small chunk of code to pick out such an obvious way to complement someone, but he suspected he would never fully adapt to thinking of the Compton AI solely as a computer. He knew he shouldn’t crave the machine’s approval, but he did anyway.
“It shouldn’t be captain anything, and you know it. Just one more bit of preference I got for being…his son.” Terrance had managed to stop saying “you” and “your” when talking to the machine about Admiral Compton, but he still had a little hitch in his speech when doing it.
“You are not a twenty-two-year-old graduate, Terrance. You have many life experiences. An elevated rank is appropriate.”
“And do you think some other cadet who managed to fail himself out of the Academy would be welcomed back years later, and rewarded for completing his training twenty years late by a promotion? Or is that an honor reserved for his son?” Terrance had been privately relieved when President Harmon had given him his captain’s bars. He was embarrassed enough about his youthful foolishness, and he hadn’t been looking forward to working alongside a bunch of ensigns barely half his age. But, now, of course, he was sensitive about the special treatment he’d received. That he’d always received.
“I am not a suitable counterpart for working through your emotional trials related to your past actions, however, I would suggest that you allow yourself to consider the mathematical equivalency. Yes, you made what could be perceived now as some errors in judgment…but you were also placed in a very difficult situation, even from before your birth, as the son of the recently deceased Admiral Compton. There was never a time in your formative years when an entire planet did not look to you, almost demanding that you grow into your father reborn. The expectation that a child, and then a young adult, match up to the abilities of a fifty-year combat veteran is, on purely logical terms, absurd. Yet, your people were still afraid, and they still felt the fresh pain at the fleet’s losses. What happened to you was no one’s fault, and certainly not deliberate, but the stimuli that pushed you to do things you now regret were predominantly external. It is unlikely very many of your people could have done better if they’d been born in your place. I suggest you simply put pointless regrets behind you. With your rejuv treatments, it is likely you can live nearly another century. Do not waste that time brooding over a lost twenty years.”
Terrance stared over at the machine, nothing much to look at really, but a series of shiny silver cylinders. He was still plagued by self-doubt and guilt, but he began to consider the AIs words. He’d disgraced his father when he was a young man, his behavior far from that expected of Admiral Terrance Compton’s son. The machine was right. It had been difficult living up to a father who was nothing less than a revered legend, especially when that father not only died before he was born, but never even knew he existed. Terrance had found solace in only one place, aside from the wildness that had led him astray in his younger years. The Compton AI had been Hieronymus Cutter’s effort to salvage as much as possible of the memories and intellect of the slain leader, and while the achievement had been an astonishing one, the resulting intelligence was not Terrance Compton reborn.
It had taken years for Terrance II to come to realize, and to truly believe, that single fact that he had, on some level, always known. And, it had changed almost nothing. By the time he’d stopped seeking a father’s approval from the complex machine, he realized he considered the thing a friend, perhaps the only close friend he had. And, he’d continued coming there, virtually the only person beyond a software engineer every now and again, who ever visited the semi-forgotten computer.
He wondered sometimes, if there hadn’t been a reversal of sorts, if he hadn’t begun to fill the role the computer had played in his own life. Did the machine ever really considered him a friend? Did it feel loneliness or some rough equivalent as its usefulness, and the attention it received from the others, diminished? Or something akin to satisfaction when he arrived for a visit? The intelligence was a sophisticated one, but according to Hieronymus Cutter, it wasn’t capable of real emotion. Terrance wasn’t so sure. The two of them shared one experience. The machine had also been a focal point for the fleet’s refugees in the aftermath of Terrance Compton’s death, and they had looked, at one time, to the AI that held his memories with the same
sort of wide-eyed hope they had directed toward the great admiral’s son.
“I have not seen an assignment posted for you yet. Have you decided what branch of the navy you plan to serve?” It was a typical conversational question. If the intelligence didn’t have normal thought processes like a human, it did a damned good impersonation.
“I’m still…negotiating…with President Harmon. He hasn’t given what I asked for…yet. But, he seems reluctant to outright refuse me.”
“You have requested a combat posting.” Terrance couldn’t detect any question mark in the AI’s tone. He wondered what percentage chance the machine had assigned to its guess on his decision.
“Yes.” He paused. “I feel like I must follow in my father’s footsteps. I owe him something at this stage…something more than disappointment.”
“You do not have to become a warrior because your father was one. Your father was the illegitimate child of a wealthy industrialist. He only joined the navy to escape the bitterness of his half-siblings and the conflict over control of the family businesses. He felt no particular calling to serve in the navy, certainly not at first.”
“And, yet, look what he did.”
“Terrance Compton became a very gifted tactician, but there was enormous random chance in how his life progressed. His relationship with Augustus Garret, for example, was highly formative to both of them, and contributed in many ways to the growth of the two men into extremely gifted naval officers. However, despite his own achievements, based on his memories, on what I know of the man, he would have been satisfied to see you pursue any field of endeavor, as long as you did your best.”
“You sound like my mother. She’s horrified at the thought of me signing onto the combat forces.”