Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above

by Doug Dandridge

“We fly aircraft,” answered the squadron commander. “We move over the enemy and attack them from the sky.”

  Pendergrass saw the concentration on many of the faces as they went back into the link. He wasn’t sure, since he didn’t have a fine sense of their expressions, but he thought he read disappointment on some of those faces. Probably would have impressed them more if we rode around in tanks, or fought in the heavy armor suits. Or, better yet, if we were crewing spaceships.

  There were no more questions, and within minutes the auditorium was emptied, the children going back to their classes. This was the way human children had gone to school prior to the computer revolution, when almost all studied at home. It had been found that children didn’t socialize well with that routine, so for the last eight hundred years it had become a mix of home study and several class/exercise days each week. But here they still went to school most days of their week. Pendergrass wondered how long that would last with Imperial tech making its appearance on this world.

  They next toured several of the classrooms, watching and listening as lecturers gave the children their lessons. Sibling groups sat together, and were constantly glancing at each other, holding conversations. About the lesson? The Warrant wouldn’t have been surprised if mostly what they were talking about in their heads had to do with sports and hobbies. And not a thing the teachers could do about it.

  When walking from the classroom one small child stepped in front of the Pilot and looked up at him. “My daddy said that you humans brought the monsters. And that you won’t be able protect us from them.”

  A teacher ran up and wrapped the tentacles of one limb around the child, pulling it away while apologizing to the humans.

  No problem, thought Pendergrass, shaking his head. We did bring the monsters, indirectly. But I swear we will do everything we can to keep them away from you.

  Chapter Five

  I still find it hard to understand that anyone could argue that you can't have machines that exhibit consciousness. Iain Banks

  BOLTHOLE SYSTEM.

  “We’re just about to leave hyper, Admiral,” reported Montgomery over the wormhole com. “I’ll be sending missiles up their ass as soon as we break into normal space.”

  The force was decelerating so they would come in at the same present velocity as the Machine ships, so they would maintain their distance. They would then accelerate along with the Machine force, making sure they stayed well back. Later, if needed, they could use their superior acceleration to catch up to the planet killers if needed.

  “Just make sure you don’t send any along this path,” said Beata, sending the data through the com. “I wouldn’t want one of our fighters running into a friendly missile that couldn’t see it.”

  That was a problem in a battle like this. There were going to be a lot of objects flying around in space, not all of them visible to the other platforms. Inertialess fighters could not be tracked by any tech known to the Empire. But a two hundred ton capital ship missile intersecting one would still blow through the negative matter barrier, maybe losing a ton of its own mass. The fighter, or at least its remains, would return to normal space with a spectacular inertial rebound, resulting in an even more spectacular explosion.

  “And just to be sure,” continued Bednarczyk as the plot lit up with more objects, all with the designations to tell Montgomery what they were.

  Mara studied the plot, formulating a revised path into the system. There were over a hundred asteroids marked with the symbols of missile batteries, in both of the belts. Thousands of missiles symbols hanging in space, mines, missiles in launch tubes that would wait until a target entered close range before firing. Another thousand fighters, these the usual kind that could not go over light speed, coasting in ten wings, undetectable at any kind of range. A couple of cruisers that were near the paths of the enemy would take, more special units which might or might not accomplish anything. And several light seconds away from each of the cruisers a small attack ship that would run them by tight beam remote.

  “What do you want us to do, Admiral?”

  “Just do what you do best, Mara. Be a nuisance to them. Make them think that you are another major threat.”

  “I’ll do my best.” As the words left her mouth the nausea of translation hit, and she choked back the next thing she was going to say to prevent her gorge from rising.

  “Firing wormhole missiles, now,” called out the ship’s Tactical Officer over the com.

  Mara was amazed that the officer had been able to acquire the targets so quickly. Then again, they already had the targeting data pre-jump, and the Tactical Officer must have been an easy translator. Whatever the case, the ship shuddered slightly as the missiles came through the wormhole, a tiny bit of their inertia washing into the ship nearest to the hole, the battleship carrying it.

  Thirty missiles out in less than a second, traveling at point nine five light, with no graviton and almost no heat emissions. They were heading on a path that would intersect the Machines in eleven minutes, coming up from behind. Closing speed would be point seven four light, enough to impart considerable kinetic energy into their targets. The sensors on the Machine ships would probably pick them up at about two light seconds’ distance, less than three seconds’ travel time. At that time the missiles would go active, seeking the closest target and shifting their vectors enough for a hit, hopefully. In some cases they wouldn’t be able to produce enough of a vector change and would fly through or by the Machine formation without any affect, except they would explode on closest approach to the vessel they couldn’t hit, which might or might not cause damage. The Machines would have less than three seconds to react, not a difficult task for fast calculating AIs. But it might not be enough time to track and fire their weapons at the approaching missiles, which would then be changing vectors enough that first shots were likely to miss.

  Thirty seconds later another tube was in place at the other end of the wormhole. The wormhole that had moved the previously launched missiles back slid into place on the next ready tube. Missiles had been accelerated up to speed in that tube, and as soon as the launch wormhole was in place, the hole being used to return missiles to the beginning of the tube for another acceleration run was pulled out of the way in a picosecond, a process that had taken over a year to perfect. And the missiles fell through the wormhole that led to the launch portal of the ship. Another thirty missiles were on the way, the system cycling again and again until all dozen of the launch tubes assigned to this launcher had fired, and were busy at work accelerating the next batch, which would take about an hour.

  All the ships in the force were also volleying their carried missiles to the limited ability of their built-in acceleration tubes, turning on their own grabbers as soon as they were in open space. The missiles varied their boost and vectors as they grouped together into a wave. In thirty seconds all tubes were reloaded and firing again. Those missiles boosted at a higher rate than their predecessors, then decelerated some as they pulled into formation, doubling the mass of the wave.

  “We have fired off the two ordered volleys, ma’am,” called out the Force Tactical Officer, who had been monitoring the fleet action from his station. “Any other orders?”

  “Go ahead and close up on that force until we are at the ten times the minimum safe distance,” she ordered, looking over at the Com Officer. “And be ready for anything.”

  Heads nodded around the flag bridge. All they could do was keep her apprised of what was going on, then relay her orders to the rest of the force. It was up to the officers and crews of the component vessels to react, while trying their best to fight the battle.

  Mara looked back at the plot. If this had been a normal fight, the Machines would have been toast. The human force was overwhelmingly more powerful. But the three large objects at the center of the plot were the five ton carnivores in the pasture. And the estimates were that any one of those vessels could destroy this system and all of its defenses.

 
* * *

  “Starting boost, now,” called out the Helm Officer as she punched the orders into her board. The massive object started moving, the battle cruiser grabber units pushing it ahead at the maximum five gravities they were capable of.

  Captain Sheila McGurty nodded as she looked at the plot. The Stonewall and her sister ship, the Megatron, had to be the most ill-conceived vessels of all time, in her opinion. They were tough enough, but they fit the definition of large slow targets, the kind of vessel no spacer wanted to serve aboard. Stonewall was a ten kilometer diameter nickel/iron asteroid that had been hollowed out just enough to place an incomplete battle cruiser inside it. The ship was incomplete, but she did have a working matter/antimatter reactor system hooked up to the grabbers that were still attached to the battle cruiser. Superconducting cables channeled the heat from the grabbers out to the surface where specially built radiators would get rid of it.

  Essentially the asteroid had been turned into a slow accelerating battle station with four kilometers of raw nickel/iron armor. Electromag projectors had been placed all over the surface, along with laser domes and missile batteries. She could absorb a lot of energy from enemy beam weapons and keep on. Enough to withstand a hit from one of the enemy planet killers? No one knew, which was one of the Captain’s greatest worries. The largest thing she had to hit back with was the specially built accelerator that fed the forward weapons array, giving her a much more powerful particle beam than any ship in the local force.

  They had shuttles aboard to get the crew off when the whole thing went up in molten rock and metal. McGurty doubted they would have the time to get everyone off, and flying shuttles close to dueling warships did not strike her as a good idea either. In fact, the whole thing struck her as a really bad idea, but she had been a Commander without a command, so an order and a promotion had put her in the hot seat.

  “Steady as she goes, helm,” she ordered. “Make sure everyone has a chance to eat something,” she told her Exec over the com. Might as well make sure the condemned have a good meal, she thought, even though it would be twelve or more hours before they saw any action.

  * * *

  The AI was now getting a good handle on what it was facing. It was actually more than it expected, but definitely below any level where it would have to recalculate its strategy. There were a lot of objects coming at it, ships and missiles, and possibly some things it still wasn’t sure of. It calculated that some of the enemy weapons would get through, and that it would lose no more than fifteen percent of its ships. And none of those loses would include its three most powerful assets.

  The organics must realize they can’t win here, it thought. The only logical move was a fighting retreat while they got their assets out of the system. Anything else was just preplanned self-destruction, suicide as the organics called it. It couldn’t imagine they would try such a thing. It calculated some more, and came up with the possibility that they could hit them with enough ships in ramming attacks to actually take out one of the larger assets. Not all of them, but even one was more than it wanted to lose. Perhaps a better strategy would be to change vector and leave the system, then wait for even more assets to arrive, which could happen as soon as thirty days from present.

  But it needed to fight the humans in normal space, and if they all got away that would not happen. It could think of no way to capture one of their hyper VII vessels in a hyperspace battle, and it had reasoned that it would need that technology before its war against the sentients was over. The sooner it acquired that tech, the sooner it could make use of it in getting its own vessels from point to point at one fourth of their present transit time. And they would be able to attack the enemy hyper VII ships, and not just defend against their dimension to dimension attacks.

  Wait a moment, it thought as information started coming in from one of the forward ships. What is that?

  The visual showed an object hanging in space near the huge asteroid the humans used as their industrial base. From the size of the warship sitting nearby, it had to be at least four kilometers in diameter. The surface was at an angle, but even so the AI could make out the reflective nature of that surface. Have they actually solved that problem as well? it thought, running the information through its memory. A wormhole? They have actually found wormholes? That answer did not make sense. It knew of no way that naturally occurring wormholes could be found. They were too short lived, and too small. So the only other answer was that the humans were making them. Which might account for their ability to launch missiles that were already moving at near light speed at launch from their firing vessels. They were launching them from elsewhere, accelerating them either through special launch mechanisms or building up velocity in space, then moving them through the wormholes.

  As it watched the take a ship came through the hole, what appeared to be another cruiser, while commercial vessels lined up as if to transit through back to wherever the warship came from. It realized that this tech allowed the humans to move ships instantaneously across enormous distance, an ability it could not match. It must take immense power to make them, was the next thought, along with the calculations of how much energy that would be. If it had emotions, it would have felt fear as the answer came up. Since it didn’t, it worked on the problem from the standpoint of cold calculating self-interest. It needed that tech if it were to successfully wage war against the human Empire, even more than it needed hyper VII. Actually, it was necessary that it have both of them if it were to win. So have them it would. Anything else was unthinkable.

  Now there was no thought of changing vector, of retreating. If it could capture that wormhole and get the three planet killers through to the other side, and take whatever facility they were using to make the holes, it could find out how to make its own. There was the little problem of how to get a hundred kilometer diameter sphere through a four kilometer wide opening, but it was sure it could figure that out when it was necessary.

  * * *

  “Think they saw the bait, Admiral?” asked Commodore Harta Sukarno, the Bolthole Chief of Staff. The Commodore was not aboard a ship. He would be a spectator to the main event, unless they reached the Bolthole asteroid itself. Then he would be responsible for the rear guard action, covering the final retreat through the wormhole, allowing vital personnel to get away. The surviving fleet ships would simply leave the system and go into hyper, to rendezvous at a preselected system to continue the fight.

  “They would have to be blind to have not,” replied Bednarczyk, continuing her study of the enemy dispositions, looking at anything that might give her another advantage. “Now we just have to hope it doesn’t scare them off.” Or do we? she thought. They might be better off if the Machines retreated, scared off by the sight of the wormhole and the possibilities for reinforcement it gave her command. She doubted that would happen. The Machines had a hard on for killing humans, their creators, and she was offering them another way to get around to accomplishing that mission.

  “Three minutes until Admiral Montgomery’s first missiles hit them,” called out the Fleet Tactical Officer on the flag deck.

  Beata looked back at the plot. She didn’t expect much from those shots, but if they got lucky she would take it. They actually had no way to track those missiles, yet, and were depending on calculations of the positions of the two forces at launch times. That should lead to a very accurate result. Should.

  Suddenly the missiles appeared on the plot, not an estimate, but a real track caused by their graviton emissions as their grabbers came online and boosted at maximum. Fifteen thousand gravities, their short term, short range limit, and they were trying to acquire and hit targets. A moment later half the missiles disappeared from the plot.

  “Damn, they’re fast,” said the Tactical Officer, frowning at the holo over his board.

  Fifteen were still coming in, and it looked like most would miss. Fourteen did, or were blasted out of space at the last moment. One unerringly sought its target, getting a direct
hit that blew missile and cruiser class ship out of space.

  One hit out of thirty, thought Beata, shaking her head. That was not a good percentage for wormhole launched missiles. “Order Montgomery to send instructions to the missiles as they come out of the hole. Engage grabbers five seconds earlier, maximum random evasives.”

  That was the only way she could think of going after them, changing the rules continuously so the Machine AIs wouldn’t get a handle on what was coming in. With their reaction speed it might not make much of a difference, but she had to try everything she could.

  “Machines are launching,” called out the Tactical Officer as hundreds of new icons appeared close to the enemy fleet, vector arrows pointed out.

  So now they’re trying to rid themselves of that nuisance. She still had to wonder why they hadn’t fired on her insystem forces. After all, they had put over two hundred thousand missiles into space at them, while Montgomery had only put out thirty, as far as they knew.

  The second group of wormhole launched missiles came onto the plot. This time two got through, and both were hits on one of the planet killers. As far as she could tell from its graviton emissions those hits had accomplished nothing. Or maybe not nothing, as the pattern of the enemy force started to change, the huge planet killers moving out to confront the missiles from Montgomery’s force directly. A moment later every ship in the enemy fleet opened fire, putting thousands of their oversized weapons into space, and all of them heading toward her insystem resources.

  * * *

  “Shift targeting on next group through,” ordered Mara, watching the icons of the enemy missiles heading out toward them. Fortunately, the Machine weapons could only accelerate at forty-five hundred gravities. Unfortunately, her force was moving on almost the same vector as the enemy force at a similar velocity, and it was almost like both forces were standing still as far as the travel time was concerned.