Shit. Now Bednarczyk was feeling an edge of panic start at the fringes of her awareness. She needed all of her defensive batteries working. If she could use her wormholes, she could start bringing more weapons over for her ships’ magazines. Problem was, all the wormholes were in use. She had her missile colliers, four of them, enough to fill all the magazines in her ships one and a half times. She had thought they would be of use to rearm her fleet after the battle was over. It would be more efficient to transfer weapons from those large ships, with their multiple loading hatches. Unfortunately, they were hanging out behind the inhabited planet, safe. And four hours at maximum accel/decel from her force. If they could even make it to her force before being blown out of space. The ships were obvious targets at ten million tons, and were not as heavily armed as true capital ships.
“Some of their missiles are getting through,” called out another spacer on the flag bridge. “Almost three hundred have made it through the counter basket.”
It was up to the lasers and close in weapons now, and three hundred might be a little much for them.
“Send orders to all ships that aren’t holding a wormhole,” she said, a sinking feeling hitting her hard. “They are to do whatever it takes to protect the wormhole equipped ships.”
She thought for a moment. Was there anything else she could do? The plasma torpedoes, she thought, wondering why she hadn't considered them before. Probably because they were crap offensive weapons. But her force still had some of them. They were no longer being built into new vessels, since the space could be used for more laser emitters or magazine space. Still, she had some older ships that still mounted the weapons. A quartet of cruisers and eleven destroyers. If the captains had followed protocol, their plasma chambers would be full and charged up.
“Order these ships to move ahead of the fleet and fire their plasma weapons at rapid rate. Right into the teeth of the enemy missiles.”
Rapid rate meant a bolt every two seconds, up until they ran out of plasma. That would take about twenty seconds to empty their chambers. And then ten minutes would have to pass to refill and reheat the plasma. The weapons were short range, as far as space-based devices went. The plasma spheres expanded after a few seconds, and the super-heated substance cooled to the ambient temperature of space within minutes. Of course, those ships would be the first targets for anything that made it through, and might not be around for another maneuver. Her order could be condemning them and their crews to a quick death.
The com officer looked just as sick as she felt, but he nodded and turned back to his station, sending out the orders. Ships started to shift their positions, moving into missile lanes to protect those vessels still firing from their wormholes. Lasers crisscrossed through space, invisible unless they beamed through space that was roiling with vapor and debris. Small explosions rippled across the air, thirty-five-millimeter shells from the close in weapons, traveling at ten percent of light speed, exploding at the closest forward approach of incoming missiles.
The Machine missiles blasted ahead with their own lasers. This did nothing to the lasers trying to search them out. They did detonate many of the streams of shells before they approached their optimal range.
Still, almost two hundred missiles exploded in space, their antimatter warheads breached, bright pinpoints in the darkness. Another fifty odd were knocked off course as their missile bodies were struck, most turning to vapor, releasing their warheads to tumble through space.
The ships with plasma launchers fired, releasing quickly expanding balls of superheated gas, held together by the magnetic field of the projection capsule pushing them on from behind. Several hundred missiles traveled through the ball, most of them overheating in an instant, their warheads breaching and adding their own plasma to the mix. Over a hundred made it through, many with melted sensor heads and grabber units reduced to stubs. About fifty made it through with enough drive and sensor capacity to still lock onto targets.
Thirty-four exploded close enough to ships to hit them with heat and radiation. Seventeen exploded in jets of plasma that struck ships with varying degrees of damage, heavy in many cases. And nine hit.
Four destroyers, two light cruisers and a pair of heavies converted to plasma, including three of the plasma launchers. A battle cruiser was also hit, taking out twenty percent of the ship and sending it on a tumble into space.
It could have been worse, thought Beata, watching as a dozen wormhole tubes sent out one hundred and twenty counters each, heading into the next wave of missiles. It was like a shotgun blast, the counters hitting two minutes after launch. Thirty seconds later another three hundred and sixty hit, while the counters from ships that still had them in their magazines joined in a moment later. The third wave took out the heart of this enemy launch, and lasers and close in weapons took care of the rest. None made it through the plasma field launch by those remaining ships.
“We have a lot of ships reporting that they are out of thirty-fives, ma’am.”
It just keep getting better, thought Bednarczyk, shaking her head. At least they had stopped the last Machine wave, but another one was on the way in, and she was running out of the organic means to stop them. Soon they would only have what was coming out of the wormholes and the lasers.
“Hits on the enemy, ma’am,” yelled out Quan in an exultant voice. “Thirty-six of their ships just dropped off the plot.”
That was good news. She just needed six more strikes like that and half the Machine fleet would be gone. She would have more coming up after seven more counter launches. The admiral only had to hope that she got as many strikes out of the counters as the last couple. And that the Machines would start running out of missiles themselves. Because when the counters ran out many more Machine missiles would start getting hits.
* * *
“Uh oh.”
“Talk to me,” said Henare, looking over at his tactical officer.
The news was not totally bad at this point. While the situation was still up in the air within the asteroid, it was looking like they had stopped the Machine advance. What that meant to the future of that situation was unknown, and the Machines could be cranking out more war bots further in. The situation at the terraformed planet was also in hand. There had been only one hit, enough to severely damage one continent, the one that had gone through the least terraforming effort. They were even holding their own out at the supermetal production moons. There had been some hits, but a hit on one of those moons was not the disaster it would have been on a heavily populated world. A hundred kilometers either side of the strike was a total loss, which meant some of the power and cooling facilities were gone. There was enough redundancy to keep the actual particle accelerators that fired heavy masses into other heavy masses to make the denser elements working. Two were offline, out of eight across two moons, which meant that they were no worse off than they would have been under normal operating conditions. The sparring match between her forces near the asteroid and the main Machine fleet was another matter. A newsie might spin it to show a victory. The admiral didn’t believe in spin, and it was looking like he was going to lose.
“It looks like the Machines are starting to target the wormhole gate, sir.”
“Shit.” Henare needed that wormhole to stay open. He needed the missiles coming through it. “What more can you do to protect it?”
“Not much, sir. We can move ships in the way. We still have a couple of small freighters, and a liner that never loaded up. They won’t survive long.”
“Get them there, then get the crews off.”
He didn’t like using ships as decoy/targets, but if he had to, he would rather use ships that couldn’t defend themselves for that purpose. Since the ships that could defend themselves could also defend the gate and other orbital assets.
“We’re running out of missiles, sir,” called out another of the tactical staff.
“What about our fighters?”
“They took on their last load of wea
pons before their last sortie. They’re down to their onboard weapons.”
Which meant they could only fire when not in warp, or make inaccurate runs with their compression beams. Not the best use of them, but the only one they would have.
“Dammit. What the hell are they doing on that projection ship?”
He knew he was being unfair. If they could get it working, even after the gate was taken out, it might still win the fight.
* * *
“We’re ready to power up, Captain.”
“About time,” said Captain Gunther, looking up from the readout he was studying at a bridge station. All the reactors were online. The comeback from the transmitter was indicating it was ready for powering. The computer was online, ready to send out the code. Now, if only the code worked and the transmitter got through to the AIs of the Machines.
“Let’s see how ready we are,” he told his engineer. “Send the current through the system.”
All of the subsystems had been tested, but this would be the first test of running power through all the conduits. Including those that had just been hastily replaced. There was still no guarantee the transmission would work, even if everything in the system did.
“Give her some power,” ordered the captain.
“Powering up, now.”
The lights on the bridge dimmed for a moment as the energy from the reactors was sent into the grid established for the transmission. There were actually a dozen transmitters scattered throughout the ship. Two had been totally destroyed when the ship was hit. Another had been damaged, but crew had rebuilt it with spares. The point was, one transmitter could probably handle the ships in this system, if the code worked. But they wanted to get all of the ships in this region at the same relative moment. If they could shut down all of the Machines the problem in this space would be solved. If all of the Machines were in this space, something command assumed, then the problem would be over and done with.
“Shit,” called out the engineer. “The runs to transmitters five through seven fried out.”
“How long to fix them?”
“We’re going to have to pull out the current superconductors and replace them entirely, sir.”
“Damn.” He looked over at his com specialist, a full commander who was the expert on this system, a hyper VIII transmitter that was supposed to send out a clear, full strength signal over a thousand light years. Not really in a globe, more of an arc, a hemisphere, that would cover the entire space to the left of the Gorgansha home world.
“Admiral Henare,” said Gunther, calling up the com connection.
“What do you have for me, Captain?” answered Henare, his face appearing on a holo.
“The superconductors went down on several of our power runs. It’s going to be another fifteen minutes.”
“Can’t you go with what you have?” Henare’s eyes narrowed, and the captain winced at the tic on the officer’s eye. It was never good to see a superior looking like he was about to lose it.
“We could. But I can’t guarantee coverage of the entire operational area.”
“What if I ordered you to go ahead,” said Henare, his eyes closing for a moment. “We’re about to get wiped out here.”
“I’m, not sure what I would do, sir,” said Gunther, hoping it didn’t come to that. “Orders from above are to only transmit if I can cover the entire area. In fact, they should have sent me to the system Admiral Bednarczyk is in. We would have been able to get a better arc from that point.”
Henare was silent for a moment, and Gunther was afraid the admiral was going to order him to go ahead. The admiral let out a breath, closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Get the whole thing working before you transmit. You may need to keep under cover, because the rest of us might no longer be here.”
The holo faded, and Gunther felt his own tension rising. If this didn’t work, he might have the only ship still in the system, without the power to influence anything without the transmitter.
* * *
Lt. Nazzrirat was still reeling from the death of Sgt Lonzzarit, his brother. Klassekians made great soldiers because they could communicate with each other without sending out any kind of radiation that could be detected. They were also very close to their siblings, close enough that they lived in each other’s minds. And the death of one, the actually mind extinguishing, was more traumatic than losing a spouse was to most sentient beings.
“Are you going to be okay, LT?” asked one of his men, taking a knee and putting a couple of tentacles around the shoulders of his officer.
The Sgt had lost one of his siblings in an earlier fight, and the officer had been there for him, so the NCO was returning the favor. In regular life they could go through days to weeks to get over the death of someone they were so close to. And in regular life death was something that happened in sibling groups at wide intervals. Not during war. During war they didn’t have the luxury of a long grieving period.
I don’t know if I can continue¸ thought the officer, shaking his head much like the humans did. He couldn’t think straight. The presence of his brother was gone, leaving an empty space in his mind. It had happened before during the first Machine attack on the asteroid. He had barely made it through that, and he and his brothers had gotten closer, survivors banding together. Which made this one so much worse. The thoughts of his two surviving siblings were in his head. They too were in shock, and all their thoughts were doing was amplifying the trauma, bouncing it back and forth between their minds.
“Lieutenant,” came the voice of the battalion commander over the com. “I need you to get it together and get your company moving. We have another crisis spot, and your people are needed, now.
The company commander had also been killed in the fight, trying to push the Machines away from a refuge sheltering thousands of civilians. The civilians were armed, but not with the kind of weapons that would have made much of a difference. The only reason most of them were still alive was because of the sacrifice of the soldiers. So Nazzrirat was now technically the company commander, but only if he could get himself moving.
We should be going lower, finding their manufacturing points and taking them out, he thought through the part of his brain that was still working. The Machine fabbers, what had to be down there, were working overtime. And now they had overrun storage areas that had been holding strategic materials that couldn’t be manufactured from nickel/iron, they were starting to send forward even more capable Machines.
“Lieutenant,” said the battalion commander, a slight tone of pleading in her voice. “You’re the best I have. Can you do this, or do I have to relieve you?”
“I, can do it,” said the Klassekian officer, closing his eyes and saying a farewell to his brother. He also sent out a wave of calming emotions to his remaining brothers. He couldn’t do it without them. “Where is the fight?”
The map of the facility came up on his HUD, showing the point was two levels down and three kilometers to the north.
“I assume we’re not the only unit being vectored there. How do you want us to approach?” He definitely didn’t want his reduced company to end up getting into the line of fire of another allied group.
“The tanks will be coming in from here,” said the battalion commander, the HUD highlighting the map. “Marines will be coming up alongside them. So I want you to come up from below here, and strike from the left flank.”
The lieutenant looked over the plan, nodding. It looked good. It probably wouldn’t work out exactly as planned, but it would give them a good start.
“We’re moving out,” said Nazzrirat, his voice firming. “Give us seven minutes to get there.”
Klassekians ran with a strange gait that moved them faster than a normal human, and the medium battle suits gave them the ability to carry all of their equipment as if they were wearing light clothing. The battalion commander might have wished them to get there sooner, but Nazzrirat was not about to run his men into a battle
without scouting it out first.
The entire time, running down two levels of stairs and kilometers of corridor, Nazzrirat was thinking about the death of his sibling. He was sure the same thoughts were going through the minds of many of his men. Most had lost someone in the last two fights. Some would lose more in the coming fight. It was a given.
“See what’s up ahead,” he told his two scouts when they were within a couple of hundred meters from the zone. They could hear the buzzing of particle beams, the crump of explosions, even a couple of short screams over the coms. Those screams bespoke of almost instant deaths. With the kinds of weapons being used, almost any penetration of a suit was fatal.
“The Machines seem to be focused on the attack from the front,” said one of the men who was quantumly connected to one of the scouts.
“My brother agrees,” said the other man, connected to the second scout.
“We’ll move through this corridor and deploy five abreast. On my command we’ll charge forward and spread out. Give them everything you have.”
It wasn’t what he would have preferred, but with the layout of the corridors it was all they could do. And the other troops needed them to move fast.
It went as well as could be expected. He lost some men, twelve, and almost as many troops went through the trauma of disconnection. Neither of his remaining siblings. But the Machine attack was melted where it stood. The soldiers who had been holding the line took heavier losses, but they didn’t have to suffer the trauma of lost connections. Sure, they had friends, in some cases brothers or sisters of their own. But it wasn’t the same.
“We’re about to lose it here,” came a call over the tactical com.
Not again, thought the officer. But he knew it would be again. And again. Until either all of the defenders were dead, or the Machines were no more.
* * *
“Admiral,” came a voice out of the air. The face of Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom, the senior officer of the fleet, appeared in the air beside him. He jumped internally. Even a person used to the holo com could still be startled when someone appeared from mid-air right beside them.
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