Admiral Lestroud’s people were already forming up as she reached out to the human officer.
“Admiral, we have a possible tool for you to use,” she told him as soon as she had the connection. “Your Captain Catalan used our bombers to augment his firepower against the Matrices before.”
“We considered it,” Lestroud confirmed. “The need to allow for their lack of compensation was too much of a risk.”
“But why take the bombers at all?” she asked. “My Great High Mother reminded me that we reload our guardships with linked chains of cartridges, twenty bombs at a time. We keep those here, in Vistan orbit.
“We can’t keep up with you, but we can give you three thousand extra lasers in your opening salvo if you wait a few minutes.”
Lestroud paused for a few seconds, and Sings was quite sure she knew what he was doing: watching the Matrices that were already charging out to block their cousins from approaching the planet.
With an unknown enemy ship leading ten combat platforms, five recon and security nodes and twenty recon ships, they’d need those blockers—but leaving them to act on their own put them at risk.
Sings had been told all of the reasons why that trick worked, all of the reasons why their robotic allies were safe. She didn’t buy them. Not completely.
Sooner or later, that was going to fail. Even if it failed today, however, it should buy the time for the human ships to strap hundreds of extra one-shot munitions to their hulls.
“Do it,” he ordered. “We can only hold in orbit for three minutes at most. How many can you give us?”
“As many as we can strap on to your ships in three minutes,” Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters promised. If her people weren’t already moving, there would be some trips to dark water coming up.
In her encounters with humans, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters had learned that Vistans had a far broader awareness of what was going on around them, but humans tended to be able to pay attention to details better.
Thanks to the datasong, for example, she was consciously aware of the position of her fleet, the status of the ammunition transfer, and the status of the two Matrix forces approaching each other. She was receiving all of the information on everything going on in Hearthfire, thanks to the audio image of the system she was receiving.
Because she was semiconsciously aware of all of that, however, she missed details. She missed the exact moment when everything began to go wrong.
The first thing she registered was when one of the friendly combat platforms self-destructed. The massive smooth ovoid was part of the central formation of the Matrix fleet one second and a ball of uncontained energy a moment later.
The formation of the friendly robots came apart as she watched. Her echolocation chirps sharpened in horror as two recon nodes self-destructed, joining their larger sibling in death.
There was some kind of battle going on, one she didn’t understand. One her datasong couldn’t interpret because their sensors couldn’t even see it. The friendly Matrices were stopped relative to their hostile cousins now, twisting around each other in complex and potentially deadly patterns.
She clearly saw three of their nodes launch attack runs on one of the remaining combat platforms. The maneuver was unmistakable, even if no weapons were fired. The chaos was the strangest thing she’d ever seen—and then a cascade of near-c missiles smashed into it.
The entire strategy around using the friendly Matrices as blockers was built around the protocols that stopped the enemy attacking them. The Rogues had found a way around that, and half of the friendly units vanished under the missile storm.
The rest vanished a moment later, and Sings was frozen in her command pool.
“Did they…did they punch out?” she finally asked aloud.
“Yes, First-Among-Singers,” a Voice-Of-Eyes reported slowly. “One combat platform and ten recon platforms made it out.”
Once again, Sings wished she could close her ears to the world around her.
That meant seventeen of the AI ships were gone, and at least four of them had self-destructed.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“We are not entirely sure,” Swimmer-Under-Sunlit-Skies told her from his post. “But the humans just identified the largest Matrix unit, and the officers I am communicating with suspect that it’s related.”
“How?” Sings demanded, focusing her attention—a far more limited resource than her awareness—on the arming process for the Terran ships.
“It’s a Sub-Regional Construction Matrix,” Swimmer explained. “A far more powerful AI than any we have encountered before. Even the humans do not know, but they fear that it may be capable of overriding our allied Matrices.”
Allied Matrices who had, in at least some cases, self-destructed to protect Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters’s world.
“The humans are moving out,” Swimmer reported after a few seconds of silence. “It looks like they got just over fourteen hundred bomb cartridges aboard.” His chirps were dull and slow.
“I hope it’s enough.”
45
No one had ever considered the threat inherent in the clear hierarchy present among Matrix units. They probably should have, Isaac realized now, but their robotic allies were still mysterious in many ways.
“Task Force Vigil is in motion,” Connor reported. “All ships report ready for battle. We’re towing eight hundred Vistan bomb-cartridges. The strike cruisers have two hundred and twenty apiece.”
Isaac nodded silently, his attention on the incoming enemy fleet.
They’d dealt with Matrix recons before. They’d seen Matrix reconnaissance-in-forces, security flotillas for terraforming projects, even the mid-weight defenses assembled around a single Rogue Sub-Regional Matrix.
This was none of those things. Most notably, there were only nine recon nodes in that fleet. The lightest Matrix ship the Exiles had encountered, the recon nodes had been used as escorts and fire support in every battle prior to this.
The larger recon and security nodes were serving more of that purpose here. Fourteen of the midsized ships formed the main echelon of the Matrix battle fleet, screening the twelve combat platforms present to provide heavy firepower.
And, of course, the Sub-Regional Matrix at the back of the formation. A thick black disk seven kilometers in diameter, it dwarfed even the kilometer-long combat platforms. Isaac wanted to hope that the main threat presented by it was its computers, but he couldn’t trust that.
The one Sub-Regional Matrix they’d fought before, the Rogue present near Exilium, had encased itself in dozens of cubic kilometers of extra steel construction. That extra construction had dramatically expanded its ability to build ships and terraforming spikes, but it had covered up whatever weapons the ship carried.
“Have our Matrix friends checked in?” he asked, breaking his silence for the first time since their robotic allies had punched out.
“No, sir,” Connor told him. “No communication yet. Commander Rose thinks they might be doing the electronic equivalent of freaking the fuck out—we’re not sure they realized a higher-tier Matrix could override them.”
“I’m not entirely comfortable with the realization that our enemy’s higher-tier Matrices can override the protocols against attacking other Matrices,” Isaac noted. “What else can they actively modify?”
“I’m more worried about what they can do to our Matrices’ protocols,” Connor replied. “We’ll be expecting missile fire in the next few minutes, sir.”
“They know they can’t hit us,” the Admiral said. His ships’ Guardian Protocols were just as capable as Scorpion’s, and the battlecruiser and strike cruisers had a lot more lasers and pulse guns to play with.
Task Force Vigil was directly between the Matrices and the Vistan habitats. The robots could shoot the planet, but the planet was already wrecked. Without detailed scans they couldn’t get from this far away, there was no way they could intentionally target the still-inhabited portions.
Task Force Vigil couldn’t shield them all, but the vast majority of them were behind him.
“No missile launches detected so far,” Connor agreed. “They seem to have that much intel…and they don’t seem to be trying to shoot at the habitats.”
“That’s good news,” Isaac admitted. “I don’t really want to just abandon the planet to them once we’ve pulled the Vistans off, but having it as an option is useful.” He shook his head. “Robots or not, though, I suspect we’re going to start seeing some degree of vengeance-seeking on these Matrices’ part. Sooner or later.”
“I’m guessing shortly after we blow another Sub-Regional Matrix to pieces,” his ops officer suggested. “Our Matrices seem to regard all of their nodes as, well, people. These guys…well, somehow I can see them only valuing the big guys.”
“Fortunately for them, I think we need to shoot the ‘big guy’ last,” Isaac told his subordinate. “We can deal with the light ships easily—the strike cruisers will have them for lunch—and Vigil can probably take the big Matrix.
“We can’t do either of those things and deal with a dozen combat platforms, so I only see one real option,” he continued grimly.
Even outnumbered as they were, he had to marvel at the difference from the first time they’d fought Matrices. That time, a single recon node had nearly smashed the entire Exilium Space Fleet. They hadn’t known the capabilities of their enemy then, and they’d upgraded their systems vastly since then. The difference was stark—and a good chunk of it was due to their alliance with Regional Construction Matrix XR-13-9.
“The interface we rigged up for the X-ray lasers is not going to be particularly effective at aiming them,” Connor warned him. “Our hit percentages are going to suck at anything above about two light-seconds.”
“Then we get to two light-seconds,” Isaac replied. “I was planning on a million klicks, but if we need closer we need closer. If they’re going to come at us at ten percent of lightspeed, that’s only a dozen seconds.”
“The rest of their guns and ours will be in play well before that,” his subordinate noted.
“Closing is going to suck,” the Admiral agreed. “We’ll open up on the combat platforms with everything we have at our best range. The strike cruisers’ main guns are just as good as the combat platforms’ beams—which means better than anything the lighter units have.
“So, we let them ‘force’ us into range of their lighter units’ guns…and then introduce them to our passengers.”
“We’re going to lose a bunch of the cartridges,” Connor warned. He wasn’t arguing, but it was his job to poke holes in Isaac’s plans—and he did it well.
“I know.” Isaac shook his head. “But I’d rather shoot them with three thousand beams with a fifty percent hit chance then four thousand beams with a ten percent chance.”
Isaac’s job wasn’t to manage any single ship. His job was to set out the battle plan, give high-level instructions, and to come up with the tricks that would surprise their enemy.
He spent the entire flight toward combat adjusting the Task Force’s vector, slowly edging all four ships away from a direct clash with the center of the Matrix formation. He couldn’t pull any of the Matrix warships out of range, but he could move his ships such that several had their line of fire blocked.
The Matrices responded by shifting their formation in turn, concentrating the heavy combat platforms closest to him to clear their lines of fire and pulling the Sub-Regional Matrix back. It was the logical counter to his move—and it was exactly what he wanted them to do.
“Enemy firing!” Connor reported. “Juliet and Othello have taken hits; both are unimpaired.”
Only the combat platforms were firing so far. Isaac’s Task Force’s own weapons matched—in some cases, even exceeded—the effective range of the combat platforms’ grasers against the energy-absorbing armor the Matrices favored.
The Rogues hadn’t known that the new human ships had integrated that same armor into their core construction. They were at a range where they could hit Isaac’s ships…but not at a range where they could hurt his ships.
“Inform Captain Alstairs he is to engage with the main gun as soon as he is in range,” Isaac ordered. “He is to hold the secondary weapons until the strike cruisers are also in range.”
Vigil’s two spinal gamma ray lasers were moderately less efficient than the spinal guns on his strike cruisers. They were also enough bigger to make up the difference in range, at least.
“Bridge reports main gun firing in ten seconds,” Connor replied.
On the old Vigil, Isaac would have felt the gun fire. The ships engines were programmed to auto-compensate for the recoil, but it wasn’t perfect.
The new Vigil’s compensation was perfect—or at least close enough that human senses couldn’t pick up the recoil in the fractions of a moment it existed.
He checked his console. Alstairs was going for the old mainstay of a battlecruiser Captain expecting a long fight. The flagship had eight cyclotrons fueling her main gun—and four smaller ones feeding each of the light particle cannons in her turrets—and each cyclotron took sixty seconds to prepare a charged ion packet.
Every seven and a half seconds, a new shot flashed downrange…and every seven and a half seconds, the range dropped another quarter-million kilometers.
The second shot fired before the data on the first shot’s impact made it back. The recon and security ship Alstairs had targeted clearly hadn’t thought it was in range yet. The charged particles hit it dead-on, punching straight through the robotic vessel.
It wasn’t destroyed, but it was suddenly the lowest threat level among the Matrix ships. Isaac watched as the computers reclassified it, dropping it down the targeting queue as the second shot slammed into a recon node.
That ship simply vanished. The old Vigil’s main gun had been sufficient to crack a recon node’s armor in one hit, if not sufficient to destroy the ship in one blow. The new gun was over ten times as powerful.
Even as that ship came apart, the entire screen lit up with light. The Matrix combat platforms had been firing grasers at long range all along—and now the Exiles returned the favor. A single recon and security node was the target of five heavy grasers.
It dodged three. Two hammered into her, sending her reeling into the path of the fire from the dozens of LPC turrets now lashing the Matrix fleet. Chunks of black armor blasted off into space, and the ship stopped in space as her reactionless drive failed.
“All grasers and LPCs in range,” Connor reported unnecessarily. “Enemy fire effectiveness is increasing fast. Othello reports multiple hull breaches but all weapons remain functional.”
Isaac nodded as impassively as he could. The interior of that strike cruiser would be hell now, and he wasn’t sure how they were keeping their weapons online.
“Time to X-ray laser range?” he asked softly. Their secondary pulse guns would be in range around the same time. The Matrices were already firing the plasma-based weapons but without much effect.
Yet.
“Thirty seconds.” Othello’s icon on the screen suddenly flashed orange and Connor swallowed a curse of some kind.
“Othello took a hard hit. Captain Mak is reporting they’ve lost the main gun and two of their turrets. He’s rotating to protect his damaged flank, but he’s bleeding air and power.”
“We need those turrets and her bombs,” Isaac replied. “Tell Captain Mak to get me a time estimate on the main gun ASAP.”
The answer was almost certainly not until the fight is over, but there was always hope.
“Ten seconds.”
No one asked what the countdown was for now. They’d l
ost hundreds of the Vistan weapon cartridges, the Matrices clearly not even aware they were shooting the weapons down, but over a thousand remained.
“Targeting Protocol Sucker Punch,” Isaac ordered, his voice as calm as he could make it. “Synchronize all weapons with the laser cartridges. You have your targets?”
“I do,” Connor confirmed calmly. “Overrides active. Cartridges are responding to commands. We are go.”
Isaac took one glace at Othello’s icon, his wounded ship spewing air as she still engaged the enemy, and didn’t even check to see where the timer on their plan was.
“Fire.”
One word and the sky lit up with flame. The X-ray lasers were floating around Vigil and her sisters now in rough spheres, carefully aligned to avoid getting in each other’s way.
The screens and holograms on the flag deck automatically darkened as over eleven hundred fifty-megaton fusion warheads ignited as one. Thousands of energy beams stabbed into the dark, and the ESF ships’ weapons fired as well.
Plasma and X-rays and gamma rays and charged ions flashed across two light-seconds in moments. Each of the dozen combat platforms, each a heavier combatant than Isaac’s battlecruiser flagship, was the target of over a hundred energy weapons.
Many of those shots missed. A thousand-plus fusion explosions created enough interference to confuse the human ships’ sensors. Dozens—hundreds of beams stabbed harmlessly into the dark or struck the combat platforms’ escorts.
Enough connected. Twelve Matrix combat platforms, each a kilometer-long multi-clawed warship sufficient to challenge entire space fleets, died. Escorts died with them and as the cataclysmic flame faded, Isaac knew they’d evened the odds.
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