“That’s the best we can do, Admiral. Unfortunately, we can’t transport a wormhole through a wormhole, unless we want to destroy Bolthole.”
“What would happen if we did that in front of one of the Machine planet killers?” asked the Admiral, her brows narrowing in concentration.
“Theoretically, a massive explosion. That had happened in some of the tests we ran with smaller vessels when we were thinking of pushing one through another. The mathematics showed it would happen, but we had to see for ourselves.”
So that’s still a possibility, thought the Admiral. But from the sound of it, only as a last resort.
“Unfortunately, Admiral, you are at the end of a very long supply line when it comes to wormholes. We can push anything else through to you instantaneously, except wormholes. And you are almost three months’ travel time in hyper VII from the source of the holes. We are also sending more of them to Command Base and Klassek, but they would take even longer to get to you if rerouted.”
“Can I get more ships?” She knew that was a request unlikely to be fulfilled, at least not to the extent she would wish.
“I’ll try to get some more cut loose for you, but I can’t promise much. Maybe some few more squadrons of capital ships.”
“Anything we can get will be appreciated,” said Bednarczyk, again holding her tongue. She needed this boy on her side if she was going to get anything she wanted. If he was against her, she was sure he wouldn’t just cut off her command, but he might not do his best to make sure her command was reinforced. And that was something she couldn’t take a chance on.
“There is something that my father used to tell me when I was growing up,” said the Emperor, a wistful look in his eye. “If you can’t impress them with your ability, dazzle them with your bullshit. I think it was in reference to Parliament, but I don’t see why it can’t be used in battle as well.”
“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked the Admiral, holding her temper in check at the last moment.
“What it means, Admiral, is that you have technologies at hand that the Machines have never seen. And when they see it, they can’t help but assume that it is a danger to them.”
“But they don’t feel fear, your Majesty.” Unlike my people. Unlike myself. It was something that was really bothering the woman. She had always been the fearless officer, calm and composed in all situations, unless she was angry. But in reality a lot of the anger was actually a cover for the fear she still felt deep down. These things scared the hell out of her in a way that no living enemy could. They didn’t feel, didn’t love, didn’t fear. She couldn’t use their emotions against them, since they had none. And that was enough to scare the hell out of any rational organic creature.
“We know for a fact that they have a strong sense of self-preservation,” said Sean. “Fear or no fear, it is part of their programming to survive at all costs, unless their sacrifice is of benefit to their kind. If you show them something they don’t understand, and that seems threatening, they might back off until they can analyze the problem. And if your dazzle them enough, that may take quite some time.”
“And what do you suggest I use to dazzle them, your Majesty?”
“You can’t think of some things yourself?” asked Sean, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe I picked the wrong woman for that command.”
Maybe you did, you little bastard, thought the Admiral, keeping her face a mask. Only one thing came to mind at the moment. “Inertialess fighters. That has to be something they’ve never experienced. They’ll seem to just appear in front of them out of nowhere. It will take them some time to figure out what is going on, and to realize they aren’t as great a threat to them as they assumed.”
“Very good, Admiral. And research and development are working on something to do with the inertial rebound of those fighters. We are still some months from even producing a prototype, but we might be able to come up with something that can aid you in dazzling them. This is need to know information, but of course you now have clearance for it, and to clear whoever you need to authorize to help you. Just make sure it doesn’t become common knowledge.”
“Understood, your Majesty.”
“Keep me informed. And anything you need, ask, and I will try my best to get it for you.”
The holo died, leaving Beata Bednarczyk to stare at empty space for some moments. She was still angry at the Monarch, but had no reason to doubt he would do his best for her and her command. If there was something she needed and he couldn’t get it, then no one could.
* * *
KLASSEK. MAY 18TH, 1002.
Lt. General Travis Wittmore stood on the tarmac of the landing field, watching as troops disembarked from the landed assault shuttle. The shuttle was still shimmering from the heat of atmospheric entry, and the Army corps commander could feel some of that heat on his face, even from fifty meters away. The troops walking from the hatch were all in heavy combat armor, and the heat would have no effect on them in their environmentally controlled suits.
Wittmore himself was in light armor. He was not planning to go into a combat zone today, though combat could always come to him without warning, what with the Machines still active on the surface. He had a bodyguard platoon around him to protect him if necessary. Not that he wished to take up the time of so many combat troops, but the Admiral in charge of the system insisted.
One of the people in a heavy suit looked his way, turned to one of the other soldiers, then bounded over to the General. The suit stopped in front of Wittmore and the wearer raised the visor, revealing the face of the attractive woman within. A hand came up in a salute, as Wittmore’s implant gave him the identity of the officer in front of him.
“Colonel Wilma Jackson, First Brigade, Thirty-ninth Heavy Infantry Division reporting, sir,” said the woman, white teeth flashing in an ebony face.
Wittmore returned the salute, then stuck out a hand as the woman dropped her salute. The larger mitt of the heavy suit engulfed the smaller one of his light armor gauntlet.
“That your brigade coming in?” asked Wittmore as three more shuttles touched down, their passengers disembarking as soon as they came to a rest.
“My headquarters section,” she answered, turning her head and body to look behind her. “And there comes my first battalion.”
The small dots of a couple score shuttles appeared on the horizon, following the contours of the planet low after a fast drop from orbit, the pilots practicing their standard assault profile.
“Major General LaClerk and his headquarters will be down with the next lift. We don’t have enough shuttles to bring everyone down at once, plus, I don’t think you have the landing facilities to handle that much simultaneous traffic.”
“Where did you train, Colonel?” he asked as more shuttles appeared, small on the horizon, while the original group grew larger. Each craft would carry thirty of the heavy suited soldiers and their extra equipment, including their uniforms and personal effects.
“The Ecole Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr, sir,” said the woman, “on New Paris.”
“Good school,” said Wittmore, who had graduate from the Sandhurst Academy himself. He thought it kind of funny how they kept naming things for old Earth, like humankind didn’t want to forget the old, or was it that they didn’t want to remember the new?
“I know you’re going to brief the General, sir, since he will be the officer directly under you. But can you give me a heads up on what we’re facing here. I mean, is it really the damned things my mother used to tell me about when I tried to stay up too late?”
“I’m afraid so. And I hate it even more that they infected this planet.”
“I did a term paper at the Staff Command College on those things. Or do I mean these things. The Empire had to sterilize three planets to get rid of them. I’m not even sure we could have gotten rid of them any other way.”
“It’s a different ball game here, Colonel. We can’t evacuate this whole planet, and even if
we could we still have the problem of making sure no one is carrying Machine nanites on them. So I’m afraid we have to dig them out and sterilize a little at a time. We have better technology than they had then, while as far as we can tell the Machines have not advanced near as much. So we should have a better result this time around.”
He could tell by the look in her eyes that Jackson wasn’t quite buying it. That was okay, because he wasn’t quite sure of what he was trying to sell himself. But he would depend on these people, both the troops he already had in place and the newcomers, to defeat the Machines, and he couldn’t afford to have them start out believing it was a hopeless mission.
“The good news is we are going to get even more reinforcements. Besides the two divisions I just got, including yours, I’ve been promised another division, additional shore battery units, and a couple of more wings of atmospheric fighters.”
Besides the two divisions that had come along with Vice Admiral Lysenko’s force, they had brought two brigades of shore batteries, large mobile particle beam weapons and missiles launchers, and two wings of the atmospheric fighters that could also double as orbital and close space defense ships. Count Lysenko would not be in the system much longer, since his mandate was to seek out the Machine bases and strike them however he could. He would leave a strong task group in place, at least as strong as the one that had just fought off the Machines. Few of those had survived, and there was a chance that the group he left behind wouldn’t fare any better. Any defenses he had on the planet would make him feel better, even if it didn’t give him that much more of a chance.
The Colonel still looked doubtful, and he couldn’t blame her. The enemy they were fighting didn’t need to wait for soldiers to be trained, or weapons and equipment to be moved through a logistics pipeline. They built fully functional soldiers in place, completely equipped and ready to fight. And the more of them they built, the more they could build, in a geometric progression, until they overwhelmed whatever force they were fighting. If the Klassakians had been fighting them on their own it would already have been over. He was still glad to have the aliens on his side, as they were a valuable axillary when properly equipped and trained. They just needed the time for enough of them to get up to speed and his force would swell, maybe fast enough to catch up with the Machines.
Something different came down on the field, an object not as large as one of the assault shuttles, though much more massive. The Tyrannosaur Mk II was the newest heavy tank in the Imperial arsenal, meaning it had been taken into service over a decade ago. Given what the Cacas had in armor, there really had been no need to upgrade, since a Rex, as they were nicknamed, could take any four of what the huge aliens used to tanks. At over a thousand tons it was the largest ground vehicle in the Imperial inventory, supported on a dual drive of treads and grabbers.
The tank came down sitting on a heat shield that allowed the beast to be its own reentry vehicle. Grabber units were attached to the shield, powered by the tank’s own reactors. The tank did not need much in the way of supermetals for propulsion, as its built-in grabber units didn’t need to pull more than two gravities, versus the five hundred or more for a warship. The shield would ride back up into orbit on its own power, all that was needed to lift its hundred or so tons. The tank lifted off under grabber power as soon as the shield had settled, then moved off of the tarmac before putting down on its treads. Wittmore nodded in approval. The tankers had been warned that the landing fields of the Klassekians were not up to imperial standards, and the concrete would crack completely under the strain.
While he didn’t have any armored divisions, each of his heavy infantry divisions had two armored battalions attached, one of the Tyrannosaurs, the other of the five hundred ton medium Sabretooths. With four divisions assigned, he had a total of over two hundred and twenty heavy tanks and somewhat more of the mediums, the equivalent of a reinforced division, if a little light on the heavies.
“We will have a meeting in my headquarters conference room in two hours,” he told the Colonel, sending the same order through his implant so all the other officers would get them. “Duty uniforms. I don’t think I can fit everyone in wearing those gorilla suits.”
Two hours later Wittmore was sitting at the head of the table, looking at the faces of his new officers. Two major generals, three brigadiers, sixteen colonels leading all the brigades, and the over fifty light colonels who ran the combat battalions and the six new fighter squadrons. None of his old hands were available at the moment, and frankly there wasn’t enough room for them in the conference chamber anyway. He never thought he would see the day when the facilities the Klassekians had gifted him with would be outgrown by his command.
“General LaClerk,” he said, looking at the handsome division commander who looked like he had stepped out of an entertainment holo. “I am assigning your division to the larger continent on this world. The only force I have there now are my Marines, since Machine activity has been almost none existent there.” The holo globe of the planet shifted around as he spoke, and the continent in question was highlighted for a few moments. “That worried me, since we had signs that some of the bastards landed there and burrowed into the earth. We tried rooting them out, but I can’t believe we’ve had one hundred percent success. So they’re there, and I think when they finally come up it will be in force.”
“Is what I heard about that region true?” asked the Major General.
“I’m not sure what you’ve been told, but if it’s that this region is the most heavily populated on the planet, and that it’s been a nest of religious fanatics for generations, then that is true. We had a time pounding them into the ground so the more reasonable factions could take charge of the planet. And I’m still not sure they don’t have another revolt or two in them. I can only hope that they see reason when the murder machines pop out of the earth.”
“And if they don’t. What kind of rules of engagement do I have where they are concerned?”
“You can’t wipe cities from the map, if that’s what you’re asking. You can come down hard on any insurgents who try to interfere with your mission. If they fire on you, light them up.
“Now, General Xan,” said Wittmore, looking at the small Asian woman who occupied the seat on the other side of the table, her officers arrayed by rank toward the far end. “Since your division is still in space, that’s where I’m going to leave them for the time being. You’ll be my fire brigade. But you will only launch your troops to the surface on my command, and I’m afraid they are going to go in as battalions or smaller.”
The Major General frowned, but nodded her head. Wittmore had just told her that she would not be commanding her division, at least for the moment. Something no commanding officer wanted to be told. But her nod had said that she recognized his authority to limit her control over her unit. He was the corps and planetary defense commander, and his word was law.
Wittmore stopped for a moment and took another look around the room. “I want to emphasize to you people how important this world is to our war effort. The Emperor himself has stated in no uncertain terms that we are to save this planet no matter the cost. The natives’ singular abilities are vital to our prosecution of the war against the Cacas. These people were almost wiped out by a supernova, and I’m sure you’ve all heard about the craziness that saved them. Now it’s up to us to keep them from being wiped out because of the mistake our ancestors made. And we are going to stop the Machines and clean up this mess.
“The President of this world and his assembly have petitioned the Emperor for membership in the Empire,” continued Wittmore with a thoughtful look. “They see the writing on the wall. It’s a dangerous Galaxy out there, and they realize they don’t have the capabilities to protect themselves, so they’re asking us to do it for them. I don’t want them to be admitted to the Empire, just to lose their world because we couldn’t defend them. And so we will, to the very last one of us.”
“And if they send another
of their planet killers here, sir?” asked one of the battalion commanders.
“That’s a problem for the Fleet to handle. We need to concentrate on our own problems, and let the Fleet take care of theirs. If a planet killer does show up in the system? We will worry about that when it happens. Meanwhile, we are continuing to move twenty thousand volunteers a day off world through the wormhole gate. Call that insurance, so that this people will survive even if their world doesn’t. I wish it could be more, but we have to screen all of them to make sure the Machine infection doesn’t come with them.”
“Sir,” came a call over the commander’s com. “We have another major outbreak.”
“Put it on the holo,” Wittmore ordered. “It was about time you people got a good look at what we’re fighting.”
The holo came to life over the table, taking the place of the rotating globe of the planet. An aerial view of a city on infrared, the bright spots of large energy producing objects among the buildings.
“They came up through the ground,” said Wittmore in a lecturer’s voice, not wanted to let himself think about the thousands of intelligent beings that had died when that had happened. “The flares you see are Klassekian police, and possibly some military, fighting back. They’re going to lose. Not from lack of courage. From lack of modern equipment. We’re training and equipping them as fast as we can, but it seems not fast enough.”
The red of the Machines spread quickly, and within minutes the entire center of the moderately sized city was engulfed. “Anyone tell me why they attack in the cities like that?” asked Wittmore.
“So they can force us to destroy our own works and people to destroy them,” answered the same light colonel who had asked about the planet killers.
Already thinking of them as our people, thought Wittmore with approval. “And that is why this Klassekian unit, one equipped with modern weapons and at least light armor, is now going into the city.” The view changed to show the strange looking aliens in adapted light armor running into the city, particle beams spitting localized destruction ahead of them.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above Page 3
