Refuge

by Glynn Stewart

  “It’s not like the Matrices can fight anyone,” the operations officer concluded.

  “They can’t fight other Matrices,” Isaac pointed out. “Let’s not assume there’s only one threat out here.” He shook his head, now following Connor’s gaze to look at the two ships.

  “Get me that tachyon link to Captain Catalan as soon as we can,” he ordered. “And keep the fleet at Status Two at least until I’ve spoken to him.

  “I have the feeling that we’re going to be seeing something ugly soon enough.”

  61

  “Captain Catalan. It’s good to see you again,” Isaac greeted his subordinate.

  Catalan looked nervous but otherwise rested and ready to go. Whatever they’d found aboard the alien ship, it hadn’t required him to spend the travel time back working twenty-four hours a day.

  “Admiral,” Catalan replied with as close to a crisp salute as the ex-engineer ever managed. “We successfully intercepted the Creator ship—they’re apparently called the Assini—and discovered it was in dire straits.

  “It had been boarded by hunter-killer drones that had murdered all of its crew. Fortunately, there were a number of passengers frozen in cryo-stasis.” He paused. “So far as we and the ones we’ve awoken know, they are the only surviving Assini.

  “There are about five thousand of them.”

  Isaac was glad he was sitting on the flag deck. If he’d been standing, the body blow of that news might have caused problems.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Long story very short, the Rogue Matrices we know stopped them colonizing other worlds, there was a solar flare that wiped out their home planet, and the AIs meant to guard their new colony ships from the Rogues also went mad and turned on them.”

  “I’m guessing the tachyon pulses following the ship are those AIs?” Isaac asked, the pieces falling into place in his mind.

  “Yes, sir. They’re called Escort Matrices and they are extremely powerful warships. We have full schematics of them now, which my people should already be forwarding over.”

  The command seat had six separate screens that could be used for a dozen purposes, plus controls for the main holographic projector. Isaac flipped the schematics up onto one of the screens while he continued to speak to Catalan.

  “Ugly,” he noted as the numbers ran down the screen. “How many?”

  “Twenty-six. We estimate they’ll be here in about sixteen hours.”

  “That’s a hell of a storm you’re playing harbinger for, Captain Catalan,” Isaac said quietly. “A hell of a storm. I hope you’ve got some good news?”

  “The leader of the people who survived was the Assini’s top AI scientist, a being by the name of Reletan-dai,” Catalan replied. “He believes he has developed an overlay that would allow our allied Matrices to more closely control what their targeting software flags as a fellow Matrix.”

  “Allowing them to attack these Escort Matrices?” Isaac asked. That would help. Six combat platforms could make the difference between victory and defeat.

  “Allowing them to attack the Escorts…and to engage the Rogues,” Catalan told him. “The Assini themselves appear to be pacifists in the main, to a nearly suicidal level. Reletan-dai is unusual in that he can even bring himself to work on robotic war machines.”

  That was going to make things complicated.

  “So, the machines that have genocided a good chunk of the galaxy were built by pacifists?” Isaac demanded.

  “The irony isn’t lost on me, sir. I can bring Reletan-dai into this call if you want, let him bring you up to speed on what he can do for our Matrices. He’s already promised to turn over his technological databanks if we save them.”

  Isaac snorted.

  “If we don’t save them, I don’t think there’s going to be much left of their databanks,” he pointed out. “All right, Captain Catalan. I need more information, but it sounds like you made the right call…or at least, the call I would have made.

  “Put this Reletan-dai on. Let’s see what we can hash out.”

  The strange, dark-skinned, centaur-like alien told Isaac the story in somewhat more detail than Catalan had, filling the Admiral in on just how bad the situation had become in the region around the Assini home system, and their eventual realization of the doom they faced from their uncaring star.

  While Reletan-dai told his story, his code was being reviewed by the Matrices. They took far longer than Isaac would have expected the computers to need, but they did eventually get back to him.

  “All right.” Isaac didn’t quite cut the Assini off, but he interjected himself into an appropriate pause. “XR-13-9 and his sub-Matrices have reviewed your overlay, as you call it. They agree that it should do what you say and are certain that it won’t harm them.”

  He blinked as he saw the next comment from Combat Coordination Matrix ZDX-175-18. It was one word.

  Implementing.

  He sighed.

  “And I forget sometimes how quickly the Matrices work,” he noted. “Our local Matrices are apparently implementing the code.”

  “That is probably wise,” Reletan-dai said. “We have limited time until my rogue foals hunt us down. We are best served, I hope, if every warship in this system can engage them.”

  He visibly trembled.

  “I apologize,” he continued. “The discussion of violence is still upsetting to me. I must adapt—my people are guilty of too many sins for me to do otherwise—but it is hard.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any way to update the Escort Matrices code to their original loyalties,” Isaac asked. “That would make this fight far easier.”

  Reletan-dai made a noise that Isaac very carefully did not mentally classify as a “neigh.”

  “Shezarim-ko was brilliant, far beyond even my own spectacular achievements. Every Matrix we built was copied from a limited number of seed units. I led one of the first teams to create a new seed unit, replicating their grand achievement. The level of encryption and security included around the Matrices’ core intelligence and core protocols turned out be an essential requirement.

  “Like Shezarim-ko, we included a key. Unlike Shezarim-ko, my key is known…but it was for the AI aboard Shezarim, not for the Escort Matrices. They were based on one of the original seed AIs—and Shezarim-ko took the key for those to their funeral pyre.”

  “Seriously? You built heavy-duty warships around combat AIs you couldn’t edit?” Isaac demanded.

  “We could edit them to a degree until we brought them online,” Reletan-dai said quietly. “We thought that was enough. That should have been enough—except that the very verification process intended to keep their core intelligences intact ended up corrupting them.

  “That solar flare did more than destroy my race, Admiral Lestroud. It destroyed our last chance of undoing what we had done.”

  “And how many species had already died by then?” Isaac asked flatly.

  “I do not know,” the Assini told him. “But there is only one honest answer to that question, regardless of the actual number: too many.”

  On that, at least, Isaac and the Assini scientist were in full agreement.

  “We have less than ten hours now,” the Admiral said into the silence that followed. “The Matrices are ready. We’re ready. What else can we do?”

  “Wait,” Catalan said softly. “We wait, we hope…and I presume some of our people pray.”

  62

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters marveled at how her Guardian-Star-Choir had changed. A year before, she’d had eight guardships, mighty ships carved out of the rocky flesh of captured asteroids and armed with vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry.

  As unstoppable and invulnerable as those ships had seemed, six of them had been destroyed before or since the Impact. In less than a year, her world—her universe—had changed.

  Now she had eight guardships again, but they were far faster than they had been. None of them were using localized centrifuges for ps
eudogravity, and while their main weapons remained the bomb-pumped X-ray lasers, they’d acquired significant batteries of the plasma pulse weapons the humans favored.

  None of her people had even conceived of the bombers before the Impact, but now over three hundred of the small craft surrounded her guardships in a deadly swarm. Unlike their still-ponderous big sisters, the bombers could keep up with the Exilium ships that would bear the brunt of the fighting today.

  The price of the vastly increased power of her Guardian-Star-Choir was unbearable, though. Her world was dying before her eyes. Billions dead, millions relocated either to space or to another world.

  And in the battle to come, Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters would not be in command. Much as every sinew in her body said that she should command the defense of her world, Isaac Lestroud had assumed command when he arrived…and she knew she couldn’t argue.

  Vigil alone could outfly and outfight her entire fleet. The human fleet was simply more powerful and more maneuverable, and they knew the Matrices—and these new enemies were still Matrices.

  And much as Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters loved her ships, she knew that Vigil simply had better equipment to manage this kind of battle.

  “First-Among-Singers,” Swimmer-Under-Sunlit-Skies interrupted her thoughts. “All ships and bombers have reported in. All systems are online, and we are standing by to go to full readiness at your command.”

  “Let them get their rest, Voice-Of-Choirs,” she told him. “A few minutes more sleep may not buy them any skill they would not have otherwise, but we have those minutes to give them.”

  “Before we are once again attacked by the creations of these Assini,” Swimmer concluded. “Why do we fight to save them?”

  “Because they are technologically advanced and can help us,” Sings told him. “Because some of their creations have fought by our side to protect us—some of their creations have died to protect us.

  “Those reasons are true, but there is one more.” Sings was silent as the datasong washed over her, telling the story of the carefully arranged ships above Vista—and of the one immense alien ship now hiding under the minefield guarding her world.

  “These are all that remain,” she finally finished. “A handful of thousands of a race that was billions. We know what it is to watch your people die. We lived only because the humans helped us.

  “I will not let these Assini die because we did not help.”

  “And if they are not worthy of our help, First-Among-Singers?” Swimmer asked. “There is so much blood on their species’ hands.”

  “The question is not if they are worthy, Swimmer-Under-Sunlit-Skies,” Sings replied, the realization finally clicking into place in her own head. “The question is whether we are the beings we wish to be.

  “And I do not wish to be the kind of being that would send the last survivors of a people to dark waters, no matter the reason. So, we fight.”

  “So, we fight,” Swimmer conceded. His undertones suggested she’d even mostly convinced him—but the eruption of new information in the datasong rendered the entire conversation irrelevant.

  “And fight we must,” he continued. “They’re here.”

  It was not, at least, the entirety of the massive flotilla that they knew was pursuing Shezarim. Only six of the new Matrices appeared in the Hearthfire System, and they held position for several minutes while the defenders rushed to battle stations.

  They were far enough out that none of the defenders could maneuver out to meet them, but Sings had seen the specifications on the Escorts’ speed. Fifteen percent of the speed of radiation would get them to Vista in disturbingly short order.

  “Admiral Lestroud suggests all vessels move out at the guardships’ acceleration,” Swimmer told her. “Matrices and ESF units will lead the way to provide antimissile coverage.”

  Suggests. Sings had to wonder if the diplomatic phrasing was on Lestroud’s part or her people’s. Either was possible.

  “Get our ships into the formation,” she ordered. Every kilometer farther away from Vista they engaged the Escorts was a few more fractions of a second her people would be safe.

  Despite everything they’d done, there were still almost two hundred million people in bunkers on the surface, desperately waiting for the shuttles to carry them to safety.

  Part of her wanted to hate the Assini and Captain Catalan for bringing this fight there, but she knew it had to be here. Nowhere else had the concentration of firepower to even threaten the Escort Matrices.

  “Our Matrices are attempting to open communications,” Swimmer warned her. “That seems risky, First-Among-Singers.”

  “And yet still so very much what they would do,” Sings replied with a chirp of unfeigned amusement. For all of the strange and deadly power of the alien AIs she was working with these days, they often seemed so very young.

  And youth…youth was something the Mother who’d forged the Guardian-Star-Choir understood the failings of all too well.

  “Escorts are on the move.”

  Swimmer-Under-Sunlit-Skies’ next report was much what she was expecting.

  “Course and velocity?” she asked.

  “Directly toward Shezarim, fifteen percent of lightspeed,” Swimmer reported. He paused. “Our Matrices are opening fire with long-range missiles.”

  Sings blinked. She’d almost forgotten that her allies had the same deadly relativistic weapons the Rogue Matrices had used on her people. Their allied Matrices had never actually fired a weapon where she could see it, after all.

  This time, the Assini’s code changed that. Twenty-nine Matrix warships put themselves between their allies and their new enemy and opened fire. The datasong barely had time to register the existence of the high-speed missiles before they were gone, vanishing into the dark waters of the void in pursuit of the Escort Matrices.

  Then the void lit up with fire. Thousands of missiles descended on a mere six ships—and the pulse-gun batteries now ubiquitous in this fight opened fire. Sheets of superheated gases tore through space, pulse guns firing so quickly as to almost appear as a single line of fire.

  Silence fell a moment later.

  “Vigil combat analysis estimates zero impacts,” Swimmer reported slowly. “Our analysts…concur.”

  And Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters understood why the schematics for the Escort Matrices hadn’t included any missile launchers. Against a modern human warship, missiles of any speed were basically useless—and the Escort ships were even more advanced.

  It was going to come down to lasers and particle cannons—but they’d known that, and everything she’d seen said that the Escort’s zetta-lasers, while more powerful than almost anything the defenders had, weren’t any better at hitting an evading target at long ranges.

  That gap, forced on both sides by the limits of the speed of radiation, was really the defenders’ only hope. The Escorts could hurt them at far longer ranges than they could hurt the Escorts…but they both could hit the other at about the same range.

  “Estimate fifty minutes to weapons range at this rate,” Swimmer reported. “We’re holding the rest of the fleet back. They could close in thirty without us.”

  Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters chirped her understanding as she studied the datasong.

  “We need to defeat these ships before the rest arrive,” she said aloud. “One strike, with no survivors, no time for them to report how they died. That requires the entire fleet.”

  But did it? They had no idea how much firepower the Escorts would take to kill. Numbers ran through the private datasong being played into her left ear as Sings-Over-Darkened-Waters assessed the situation.

  The bombers could probably get there before anyone else except the Matrices if they went to full power. It wouldn’t be particularly pleasant for the crews, but the ships’ artificial gravity systems had been a later addition. They were designed to accelerate at twenty times Vista’s gravity and keep their crews functional.

  Twenty-one hundred X-ray l
asers probably wouldn’t be enough.

  The Matrices, though…they could get there on their own, well ahead of everyone else. They were slower than the Escorts, but they had the same near-instant acceleration. Those twenty-nine ships probably wouldn’t be able to take the Escorts on their own…but with the bombers?

  Certainly, if the fleet without the guardships couldn’t handle six Escorts, they couldn’t hope to handle twenty even with the guardships. An overwhelming first strike was a different story, though.

  The Escorts could avoid a fight if they wanted to. They couldn’t get to Shezarim without engaging the fleet, but they could certainly get away from a fight. Outnumbered as they were, they didn’t seem to be trying to evade. Their course was set directly for the Creator starship, and it didn’t seem like they were paying attention to anything else.

  That left several possibilities niggling at the back of her mind, but the immediate concern was a simple question: which was more important? Wiping the Escorts out in one shot or making sure those six ships weren’t around to join the rest of the flotilla?

  “Get me a link to Admiral Lestroud,” she ordered. She wasn’t entirely sure of the answer—but she doubted Lestroud was, either, which meant he was reaching for the biggest hammer he could.

  Just because the problem was a nail didn’t mean it could be solved with a regular hammer.

  “First-Among-Singers,” Lestroud greeted her. “I make us roughly forty-eight minutes from weapons range.”

  The unspoken question of why she was comming was very clear.

  “Admiral, you need to leave the guardships behind,” she told him without preamble. “If the rest of the fleet moves forward without us, you’ll save twenty minutes before engaging these scouts.

  “That’s twenty minutes more we’ll have to rearm the bombers for the next wave and twenty minutes in which the rest of the Escorts can’t show up and catch us between a wave and a reef.”