If everything worked as planned they would take out one of the major human systems in the region, the only one that had the industrial muscle to actually support their fleet. The home world of the alien allies the humans had found early in their time in the arm were not advanced enough yet to supply much to the battle fleet. The reptilians were much more advanced, but not even in the same league with the humans. Destroying the asteroid base and all of its industrial platforms would cripple the humans.
Six million, three hundred thousand seconds till we reach the base, thought the AI. Approximately seventy-four days. It couldn’t make a more accurate estimation, since it didn’t know what course it would take once it dropped back into the disc. What it found in Bolthole space would determine what happened then.
* * *
“We’re getting ready to translate into hyper, Admiral,” reported the young commodore who was leading the convoy out to the Gorgansha home system.
“Understood, Commodore Zhou. Good sailing and a safe voyage.”
Normally, anything sent from Bolthole to Admiral Bednarczyk went by way of the wormhole gate. Through to the Supersystem, to the gate network around the Donut, and then onto the admiral. Unfortunately, they couldn’t send the wormholes they had been ordered to send to Beata through a wormhole. So the convoy was transporting the ten wormholes they were thought not to need at this time. Four battleships, a dozen cruisers and twenty-nine destroyers, a good portion of his system defense force. Thought enough to carry the wormholes safely through to the battle zone so far away.
Henare had protested that they were taking too much away from him, but the Admiralty hadn’t listened. Ships were in short supply everywhere, he had some that were sitting around doing nothing, and they had to do something. So his defense force was being reduced, and they were leaving him with two wormholes, total.
I hope the Admiralty is right, he thought, watching the plot as the departing force went past the hyper I barrier and jumped into the higher dimension. If something happened, like an enemy showing up as his doorstep unannounced, they could still send reinforcements through his gates. What they couldn’t send were wormhole launchers.
Henare turned away from the plot, pulling up a holo that showed what he had left in the system. A dozen battleships, all hyper VI, thirty cruisers and sixty destroyers. Four wings of warp fighters, and, of course, all the hundreds of missile and laser batteries based on his industrial assets. It should be more than enough to defend the system from any wandering pirates. The Machines were not wandering pirates, and if they attacked, they would come in force.
“Admiral Bednarczyk is on the com, sir.”
“Put her on my side holo,” replied Henare, grimacing. He was sure he knew what she wanted, and he was already doing the best he could. All of his people were.
“We need more missiles, Admiral,” said Beata, her grim face looking out of the holo. “We’re going through them in job lots. I have ships that are almost out. They only have what are in their tubes, with no reloads.”
“I’ve sent all we have, Admiral. We’re running more off, but I have to wait until we have more antimatter.” Henare thought for a second, all the admiral would give him. “Can’t you ask for more from the Empire?”
“They’ve sent all they can,” said Beata, her frown growing. “They’re building up a reserve for an upcoming offensive against the Cacas.” She stared out of the holo, grimacing again. “You didn’t hear that from me. Sean is only putting out information on the next offensive on a need to know basis. Intelligence will be disseminated to lower ranking commanders when the offensive is about to kick off.”
“Well, we won’t have any for export for at least a week. We can send you dribbles and drabs on a daily basis, or let the stock build up and send you weekly shipments.”
“What about your own tactical reserve?”
Henare felt his face flush. With the tattoos he had covering his face, it was hard to hide that flush, and he was sure the admiral knew he was angry. They took away most of my defense force, almost all of my wormholes, and now she wants my system missile reserve.
If an enemy came out of hyper and attacked Bolthole, there wouldn’t be time to run missiles off the assembly line. Sure, the fabbers could turn them out by the hundreds an hour, but in a fight they would be using thousands of missiles in every launch.
“I would prefer that my tactical reserve be left alone, Admiral Bednarczyk.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral Henare,” she said, her face going flat, emotionless. “We are in the hot zone of this war, and you are in a rear area. I want you to send me two thirds of your reserve, not to include what is on your ships.”
“But…”
“No arguments, Admiral. This is a direct order. And don’t you dare cook your books to make it look like you’re sending all I ask. I’ll be checking.”
“I would never disobey an order from a superior, Admiral. And I am insulted by your insinuating that I might.”
Beata stared at him for a moment, her face still emotionless. After a moment it softened, and she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Admiral Henare. I shouldn’t have said that, and I apologize. And I know that you are only looking out for your command. But I have a war to fight here, and if I don’t have the ammo I could find my ass in a crack.”
“Understood. I can’t say I’m happy about your order, but it will be carried out, to the letter.”
To the letter, he thought as the transmission ended. Not to include what is on your ships. He smiled at the thought.
“I have some orders for you,” Henare said as soon as he had his chief of staff, Captain Cassidy Carson, on the com. “Admiral Bednarczyk has ordered that we send two thirds of our tactical reserve to her. So here is what I want you to do.”
* * *
“Where are we supposed to go?” asked Lt. Commander Darcy Evans from the bridge of her fifteen-hundred-ton fighter.
The Daisy Mae, fighter Zeta-seven-seven-four, was assigned to the small squadron of the battleship Duke Stephan, one of eight. The squadron took up half the main hangar of the ship. The many shuttles the ship carried had already left, sent to the production hangar of the Bolthole asteroid.
“Just get your fighter off the ship,” announced the captain of the capital ship. “We’ll figure out where you’re going within the hour.”
The large hatch of the hangar was open, and large containers were on their way in, pushed by a small manned tug. The containers were marked with the symbols denoting missiles. The commander had to wonder why they were moving offensive missiles into the hangar, a space not intended for them.
Missiles were stored in special magazine compartments in warships. The warheads were stored off their missiles, mated up robotically before launch. The warhead compartments were bathed in an electronic haze that powered the containment fields until they were ready to be deployed on their own. Those compartments could be ejected in case of an ongoing breach, just like the matter-antimatter reactors and the antimatter containers that fed into it.
And here some more containers were coming into the hangar, these marked with the danger symbols of antimatter, obviously warheads.
What in the hell is going on here? thought the commander as she looked over at her pilot and nodded.
The man lifted the fighter from the hangar deck, then edged it forward slowly, moving to the side to make damn sure that they didn’t get in the way with the incoming containers. After they had left the ship they flew to an assembly point where the fighters of a bunch of ships hung in space, waiting to be assigned a home.
* * *
“We’ve gotten twenty percent of the reserve missiles onto ships,” reported one of the Bolthole supply officers. “The hangars are full on most of the ships. The only way we can get more aboard is if we start putting them in the crew quarters.”
“That’s good enough, Commander. Now, allot two thirds of what’s left and get them off to the fleet.”
To the letter, thought Hen
are with a smile. It might not be enough for his defense if the system was attacked, but they would be better off than they would have been with those missiles out of the system. Of course they would make more, but Bednarczyk would undoubtedly be asking for the production of every run from now on.
Now, we need more launch platforms, he thought, pulling up a schematic of an orbital missile launcher. They could run those off, and it was something the admiral was not likely to ask for.
* * *
“We’re about to put the reactor online, Lord,” said the chief engineer of the project. The male had a look of excitement on his face, unsurprising since it was a new toy and the creation of that Gorgansha.
“Very good,” said Hraston Gonoras, the supreme dictator of the Gorgansha People.
The other members of the government had not liked the idea of putting an antimatter reactor on the surface of the home world. If the humans had known about it, they would have been terrified as well. Fusion reactors were safe. The worst that could happen with a fusion power plant was a meltdown. Maybe a small explosion, a superheated wave of air projected out to kilometers around the facility, but no radiation.
The antimatter reactor would produce many times the power of a fusion reactor, ten to twenty times the power of the standard version on the planet. It could power the lasers and particle beams that the dictator had ordered built for planetary defense. As much to defend against the humans as the Artificial Lifeforms. The problem was the risk. If an antimatter reactor blew it would be hundreds of megatons of blast, along with a mass of neutron radiation. It would also breach the antimatter in storage, more hundreds of megatons. The reactor blowing would destroy a large part of the continent it was on, in its case the one the capital resided on.
Hraston Gonoras felt that he could not make a mistake, therefore, building the reactor within a couple of hundred kilometers from the capital was not a risk, since nothing could go wrong with anything his fingers touched. Forgetting all about the battle robots he had ordered built, which had revolted as soon as they were activated.
“Let me know if you have problems,” he told the engineer, not expecting any.
The holo winked out, and Gonoras sent a command to connect with another of his minions.
“How is the plan coming? Can you pull it off?”
“We’re still working on some of the logistical problems, Lord,” said the commander of ground forces. “The biggest problem will be getting out shuttles within range before they get suspicious. Those ships can blow everything we use to board them out of space.”
“What about using the fleet for support?”
“We are already looking into that, Lord. We still face the same problem. They will detect anything we send into close proximity of their ships. There’s no way around it. Our stealth technology is not good enough to fool their sensors.”
“Can’t we use the human’s own tech against them?” The dictator really didn’t understand that tech.
“Maybe. But they know their own tech. The only way I can see this working is if we fool them, somehow, into thinking our movements are somehow no threat to them. So far we haven’t come up with a way to do that.”
“Figure out a way,” growled the dictator, shaking both clawed left hands at the holo.
He wanted to capture those human ships, with all of their tech and intelligence intact. He realized that it was a difficult task. The humans, if they had even a minute’s warning, had the capability of resisting. Possibly enough resistance to give them time to set all their tech to self-destruct. Even a few seconds would allow them to dump all their data. So, how to do it?
That was not the dictator’s problem. He wanted what he wanted when he wanted it. And it was up to his subordinates to make his wants reality.
* * *
That bastard, thought Rear Admiral Natasha Khrushchev, watching the take of the conversations between the supreme ruler of the Gorgansha and his subordinates.
The reveal about the antimatter reactor had been shocking. No technological civilization allowed large quantities of antimatter on their planets. Small amounts, micrograms, sure. Those risked explosions similar to what a standard explosive shell produced. Kilograms? No way. Tons?
That male is an idiot, she thought, shaking her head.
Natasha and her com team had been monitoring all coms on the planet for some time. While the Gorgansha really didn’t have the tech to sneak things aboard her ships, or at least she hoped so. Imperial tech had allowed her to insert hundreds of microdrones onto the surface, tapping into databanks and intercepting coms. She had been privy to many discussions that the dictator had assumed were private. More the fool he.
“Make damn sure that we have complete passive sensor coverage around all of our ships,” the admiral ordered her chief of staff. “And I want the Marines and security people on heightened alert status.”
She would be damned if the Gorgansha took her ships. She already had contingency plans to jump through the wormholes that had been established in the system. And to make sure that the aliens didn’t get any use from those gates.
Natasha looked over the plot, cataloging everything in her mind. Her battleship, the Admiral Savoy, sat in the middle of the plot. She missed the Francis Drake, her old exploration command ship, but took comfort in the extra armor and firepower the sixteen-million-ton vessel gave her. Her light cruiser screen sat at ten thousand kilometers from her flagship, arrayed in a loose globe. Ten thousand kilometers further out were her destroyers. The wormholes gates were on either side of the formation. As she watched, a freighter erupted from the wormhole closest to the planet. The twenty-five-million-ton ship dwarfed any of her ships. It actually massed more than her entire force, though one of her destroyers had more firepower.
The Empire was still sending tech to the Gorgansha. After all, they were allies in the war against the Machines, and the Emperor was not willing to pull the plug until they made some overt act against his people.
And if they decide to use that tech against us, they’re in for another surprise, she thought with a smile, watching as the freighter headed to the main space dock above the planet.
“We have more objects leaving the docks and boosting into orbits,” called out the sensor officer on the flag bridge.
Natasha turned back to the plot, with a thought zooming into the planetary orbit. Thirteen objects were moving toward their positions, blinking red on the plot to designate that they had been scanned as weapons platforms.
“Any idea why they’re putting so many platforms into orbit?” she asked her chief of staff. “Defense against the Machines?”
“That would be one answer,” said Captain Johansson, walking up to look at the plot alongside his admiral. “Maybe not the only one.”
“Are they a threat to us?”
“I don’t think so. We’re in beam range, but none of those platforms are powerful enough to punch through our fields and armor. Of course, if they get in shots before we raise our screens, we could be in a lot of trouble. As far as the missile launchers go, it would take minutes for anything the launched from a stop to get to us.”
“Good enough. Make sure our sensors are continuously scanning all of those platforms. If they power up, I want every screen raised.”
“Won’t that alarm the Gorgansha?” asked Johansson, an alarmed expression on his face.
“I really don’t care if it alarms them or not,” said Natasha, shrugging her shoulders. “We can apologize if need be. But I will not have my ships stabbed in the back.”
The chief of staff nodded, then moved away to make sure all the orders went out.
The ball is in your court, thought Natasha, pulling the plot back from orbit and looking over the whole system. When would they move? While they were still involved in the war against the Machines. Not if they were smart, but then again, no one was accusing their leader of exceptional intelligence.
Chapter Four
The only thing necessary for the tr
iumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke
MACHINE SPACE: JUNE 28TH, 1003.
“They’re moving, ma’am,” called out the on-duty flag sensor officer, looking back at her admiral.
“So I see.” Admiral Mara Montgomery stood in the center of her flag bridge, surrounded by five large holos, each showing the take of one of the major Machine systems.
All showed thousands of ships, tens of thousands, boosting out to the hyper barrier, pulling nearly a thousand gravities. They had timed it so they would be at just below point three light when they hit the barrier, able to jump immediately into hyper.
“Any idea about their targeting?” she asked her chief of staff, Captain Khulan Katun.
“No, ma’am. We won’t have any idea until they start making course corrections and we see where they are going to coalesce.”
That made sense. Of course, they might not join up. All could go their separate ways, aiming for five different targets.
“Where do you think they are going, based on where they are now?”
“I would say, these systems,” said Katun, pointing her finger at the systems one at a time.
One of the plots changed, showing the space in the Gorgansha Consolidation. Five systems were highlighted. There were systems between the Machines and those worlds, but they were small fry, a couple of million Gorganshas each. While the five systems were all over two billion. The industrial strength of the Consolidation, only surpassed by the home world. There were other major industrial centers on the other side of the home world, but taking out those five planets would cripple the Consolidation. Besides killing over twelve billion people, which in and of itself was something that would appeal to the Machines.
“Are we still tapping into their coms?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s going to take a little bit of time to decrypt.”
“Get a message to Admiral Bednarczyk. Let her know what’s going on. And make sure to caution our picket captains to lay low and give off no emissions.”
The Code Page 4
