That was a major worry. If those ships were trapped, there was no way they could accelerate away fast enough. The Machines would catch them, and with the numbers they had they would surely destroy them.
Mara concentrated on one of the plots, watching as the thousands of Machines headed toward the barrier. She expected for all of them to jump in hyper, and most did. But over a hundred continued out in normal space, still accelerating.
“Admiral,” came the voice of one of the picket commanders. “We have a bunch of Machine ships heading our way. Blasting space with active sensors.”
Mara sucked in a breath. Those were battleships, most of them. Even the smaller vessels were in the heavy cruiser class. There was a light cruiser and three destroyers in their path, and even with the best of stealth they would be highlighted by radar and lidar when they enemy got close enough.
“Orders, Admiral,” came the voice of the commander of the light cruiser Des Moines, Panic creept into the young man’s voice. Mara couldn’t blame him. There were no orders she could give that would save him and his crew.
“Sensors are pinging off our hulls, ma’am. They’re still three light minutes away, but we’re right in their path.”
The Machines would know they were there by sensor returns in three minutes, if they didn’t make them sooner from infrared emissions.
Mara tried to come up with a solution. The captains and crews had known the risk of picketing those systems, but what it came down to was they had followed her orders. She thought about ordering them to abandon ship, to take to the shuttles and evacuation pods. But that would accomplish nothing. The Machines would still detect them as they closed, and the people would die floating in their pods, for no return.
“Get the hell away from there,” she finally ordered. That wouldn’t do any good, of course. But it would give them a slight chance to get away.
“We’re starting to boost,” said the captain, his voice cracking from the stress.
They’re going to die, she thought. Moments later the Machine ships fired on them, hundreds of missiles heading out with an initial velocity of point three two light, accelerating at ten thousand gravities. Mara didn’t want to keep watching, but as the commander she needed to. Some quick screams came over the com just before missile traces merged with those of the ships and they disappeared.
“Admiral. The captain in charge of the picket at system November Nine-four is reporting Machines ships heading for him.”
I’m going to lose all of those ships, she thought, closing her eyes.
“Are they heading out for us?” she asked, pulling up the local plot.
“Yes, ma’am. They’re going to get to the pickets before us. Same with system Lima three-seven.”
That was the system where her other major force was sitting. They were much further out than the pickets, but only relatively. The Machine ships in hyper were still forging their way out, starting to change their vectors.
“Order the pickets to make a run for us. After the Machines have closed and fired missiles, they are to jump into hyper and head for us. All ships with wormholes are to calculate firing solutions, based on their positions in hyper. Let’s get going on this and make it work. Let’s make this good people.”
They sent the same orders to the other major force. The pickets would have one chance. It wasn’t about fifty-fifty, but that was better than nothing. And if she couldn’t save them, she just might be able to avenge them.
The Machines were seven light hours further in from her force. She had no battleships, but of her twelve battle cruisers, six were equipped with wormhole launchers. None of her light cruisers, twenty-six in number, carried anything but their organic weapons. The same with the forty-one destroyers. If she met a large enemy force in battle she probably didn’t have enough to defeat them, unless she used those wormholes along with some brilliant tactics. Her best bet would be to lie low and not let them know she was there. Since that would doom her pickets, she couldn’t bring herself to do that.
Her flagship shook slightly as thirty missiles erupted from her wormhole, heading for the Machines. Within seconds the other five ships fired, their missiles on slightly different paths. She wasn’t sure where the enemy ships would be in the almost eight hours it would take the missiles to reach them. They were up to over point five light, and would surely be over point six by the time they reached her destroyers. It would take them hours to get down to point three light, low enough to jump into hyper and rejoin the rest of their fleet. They might be able jump into hyper before her missiles got there, if they started to decelerate quickly, but she suspected they would continue out in normal space for some hours, looking for more of her scouts.
A half an hour later the Machines had closed to within a light hour of her destroyers. Missiles appeared on the plot, their graviton emissions giving Mara almost instantaneous locations on them. They would have a flight time of almost two hours to reach the destroyers. The destroyers were up to point one five light, heading out. Their missiles appeared on the plot, heading back to the Machines.
Mara paced back and forth on her flag bridge, stopping to look at the plot. Both plots, since the other major force was also planning the same kind of engagement. The timetable was going to be tight. Workable, but tight.
“Speak to me, Admiral,” came the voice of her superior officer, Beata Bednarczyk. The face of the older woman appeared on a holo. “What’s going on? And what in the hell are you doing?”
“The Machines are starting to move,” said Mara, stopping in her tracks and forcing herself to stand in place while she reported. “In force. My people should have sent the entire sensor feed to you. And, I, uh, lost ships that were picketing some of the systems.”
“And you feel responsible for them?”
“Of course I do,” said Mara through gritted teeth. “They were there on my orders.”
“And what else could you have done,” said Beata in a calm voice. “Station them further out, where they wouldn’t have been able to develop the same wealth of intelligence. You followed SOP, to the letter. And none of us expected the Machines to come blasting out in normal space like that.”
“I should have expected it.”
“So, now you’re an oracle, able to see the future. I’ll tell you, my Dear. You are one of the best tacticians it has even been my pleasure to command. And you are one hell of an audacious scout force commander. You did what you were supposed to do, stationing those ships where they were. Because of them we have developed significant intelligence on the Machines in those systems. Hopefully the intelligence we need to finish them once and for all.” Beata leaned forward, her face growing in the holo. “You cannot see the future. So, stop feeling sorry for yourself and do the job you were sent out there to do.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mara, feeling her face heat with embarrassment. Any other officer, no matter the rank, and she would have fired something back at them. Not this officer, who had been a mentor to her early in her career. Almost like a favored aunt.
“Good. Now, you have five major Machines forces heading out, with no firm idea of where they’re going. Any changes?”
“Not yet. We’ve got some ships following all of them, at what I hope is a safe distance. And those ships are followed just within sensor range by others. I don’t think they’re going to give us the slip.”
“Where do you think they’re going?”
Mara pulled up the plot of the Gorgansha Consolidation, the one with the five systems she had predicted they would go as blinking dots. She forwarded the plot to the admiral.
“These systems.”
“I was afraid of that. We’re picking up coms from those forces to whatever spies they have outside those systems. Along with orders to lay low and wait for the attack to go in.”
“So you will deploy to those systems?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet,” growled Mara, her hands on her hips. “By the Goddess, why?”
&nb
sp; “We can’t let them know we’re reading their transmissions. Not if we’re going to spring Admiral Chan’s surprise on them. Don’t worry, we’ll move when the time is right, and meet them in those systems.”
“How confident are you that Chan’s plan will work?” Mara had her doubts. It sounded like pure fantasy that the Machines would still be carrying around such a vulnerability. She wouldn’t, nor would any human or alien commander she had ever heard of.
“It’s a long shot, but in this situation even a long shot is worth a try. Otherwise, we might be fighting these things for decades, maybe centuries. The way they build themselves, we might never be able to take them all out. So yes, I’m willing to give it a try.”
Mara nodded. They all knew the Machines built more of their kind in geometric progression. Months before they had destroyed every one of their industrial systems. It had looked as if it was only a matter of months before they were all destroyed. Mission accomplished, time to build some alliances for the future, everything good. Instead, they were facing as much or more than they had faced six months ago. The planet killers were no longer in the mix, probably because the Machines had figured out that putting so many resources into something that could still be destroyed with a much lower investment in resources was not a winning strategy.
“Now, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to save my ships,” said Mara, grimacing and jutting her chin. “Am I allowed to do that?”
“It’s your command, so do what you feel is necessary. Then I want you to re-picket all of those systems.”
“You don’t want me to follow them? You might be able to use my ships.”
“I sent you out there to keep tabs on the Machines’ industrial system. I want you to continue that mission until I tell your otherwise.”
Bednarczyk had a strange expression on her face, as if she was concerned about something she didn’t want to talk about. Like maybe the safety of a favorite subordinate.
“Yes, ma’am. We will continue to watch the enemy until we are relieved.” Mara looked over at the plot, where the missiles fired by both sides were approaching each other. “Now, if you excuse me, ma’am. I have an action to fight.”
Beata nodded, then faded from the holo. Mara turned and looked back at both plots. The enemy missiles would strike within one minute. The destroyers in both systems were up to just under point three light. The Machines were coming up at point four light, decelerating so they could make a slow pass and pick up the remains of the human vessels.
“Jumping, now,” called out the captain of the lead destroyer in Mara’s system.
One of the destroyers sent out the signal that signified a jump into hyper, then started putting out graviton emissions as it started accelerating at five hundred and fifty gravities. The crew would be in acceleration tubes.
“Jump failed,” called out the commander of the second destroyer. Moments later it disappeared, along with a couple of missiles that intersected it on the plot.
Mara felt her heart beat faster as she looked on with horror. She had seen the like of this a thousand times, ships destroyed out of sight. If she ever got used to it she would have to think about retirement. But hyperdrive failure was rare, about one in ten thousand jumps. Normally it happened in situations where the failure only resulted in the ship still coasting through space while an embarrassed engineering crew tackled the problem.
The two ships in the other system both jumped perfectly into hyper just before the enemy missiles reached them. They went into acceleration, on a heading for the large scout force further out. Five hundred and fifty gravities.
The Machines had gone into an emergency decel like the humans had never seen, over one thousand five hundred gravities. The grabber units were instantly glowing white hot, pulling at space. They didn’t need to convert inertia to heat, since there was nothing aboard the ships that couldn’t handle thousands of gravities. Still, pulling so fiercely at space was enough to cause the grabber units to almost melt. It still took them twenty minutes to get down to point three light. The instant they were there, they jumped, then put on the acceleration to head toward the ship it was chasing. Not as high acceleration as they had gone into decel, only a thousand gravities. They didn’t need more, since the ships ahead of them would be caught in less than fifteen minutes. Or they would have been.
“Keep leading them on,” Mara ordered her two scout groups, the single and the pair. “We’re going to jump in ten minutes.”
At that time the enemy ships at both locations would be within five minutes missile range for wormhole launched weapons in hyper. The destroyers would also be within five minutes of the Machines, and the admiral could only hope they were too preoccupied to pay attention to the fleeing ships.
“What happens if the Machines fire on our ships early?” asked the force tactical officer.
“I’m hoping that they have something else in mind,” said Mara, thinking back to how the Machines had captured some of her destroyers, along with the Klassekian com techs. She still wasn’t sure how they had done it, since they had received nothing from the ships when they had been neutralized. Even the com techs had gone down, painlessly, without their siblings noting their absence. That had seemed impossible, but it had happened, and she was still curious to see how it had been done.
She hated this decision as well. There was no telling what kind of effect the Machine device had on living brains. She was hoping it was just something temporary, at least until the Machines got their hands of the victims.
The destroyers were firing every dual-purpose missile they had, following that up with counters as the Machines closed. It was hopeless, with the defensive fire of a hundred capital ship class vessels taking out everything coming their way.
“Prepare to jump, on my command,” ordered Mara, looking over at the face of the commodore who was leading the other force. “Commodore Whitaker. You know what I want. Attack on your prerogative.”
“We’re picking up some kind of energy wave,” said the com officer, just before the sensor officer turned to give the same opinion.
“What kind of energy wave?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, ma’am.”
That has to be it, thought the admiral.
“We’ve just lost contact with the destroyer,” called out the com tech.
“Same here,” said Commodore Whittaker. “Whatever they’re using just short circuited the com systems, even the Klassekian. But the ships are still forging ahead at five hundred and fifty gravities.”
So, they effected the brains of the crews, but not the electronics aboard the ships.
“Get ready to jump. All wormholes are to fire as soon as we enter hyper.”
She waited a few more moments, letting her sensors gather all the information they could. They already knew that the device, whatever it was, was effective at just under four light minutes in hyper. Was it the same in normal space? They didn’t know. But she would recommend that they find out which kind of ships had the device and stay more than fifteen light minute out of range.
“Jump,” ordered Mara, and felt the slight nausea of the translation to hyper.
The crews of the battle cruisers knew their business. The flagship shook as it released a stream of missiles toward the enemy. Within seconds all of the wormholes had fired. One hundred and eighty missiles speeding out at point nine-five light. Every ship in the force added its own firepower, launching every tube. Those weapons wouldn’t strike at the same time as the wormhole weapons, but they would strike.
It was five seconds flight time to the Machines ships. They reacted with computer efficiency, firing lasers, particle beams and counters. Fast, but not fast enough, as forty-one of the Machine ships converted to plasma as they were hit. The second wave was out after thirty-seconds, after the ship launched missiles had already targeted, acquired and hit.
There were still Machine ships after the second wave, seven of them, three badly damaged. Mara had
lost one destroyer, with damage to some dozen more of her ships.
“Get those ships under control,” ordered Mara, watching the destroyer coasting through hyper close to her, along with the two on the other holo.
She looked at the report from Commodore Whittaker’s command. He had lost five ships, but had shot the hell out the Machines, just like hers had.
“And get medics over to those ships. I want the crews scanned so we can determine what happened.”
Mara wasn’t sure if they would learn anything from those crew. They had to try, but it would be more important to discover which kind of ships were carrying that device, so they could target them first in future battles. That would be the most important intelligence they could develop from this fight.
Chapter Five
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.
Plato
GORGANSHA HOME SYSTEM. JULY 4TH, 1003.
“The fleet is prepared to move, Lord,” said Admiral Soranka Goran, Gorgansha Fleet Commander, looking at the face of Hraston Gonoras, the supreme dictator of the Gorgansha People, on the holo.
“I have final orders for you, Fleet Commander,” said the dictator, glaring at his senior naval officer.
Goran felt alarmed at those words. They had spent hours hammering out their deployments. Parts of the fleet would move to support all of the human task groups. And they would fight to protect their worlds and their people.
“What is your command, Lord?”
“You are to hold back in the battles with the humans,” said Gonoras. “You are to let them absorb the fire of the Machines, until their forces are crippled.”
“What?” Goran felt his mouth fall open as a shiver ran up his spine. The dictator was talking about betrayal. Something that might not concern the dictator, but was of great importance to warriors.
“You are to let the Artificial Lifeforms pound the humans into scrap. After that, you will move on the remains of the human fleets, if any, and kill them.”
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