“Tactical. Find that object and destroy it.”
The Tactical Officer nodded, then started to work on his board. Moments later he turned back with a smile on his face. “Done, ma’am. I think it was just a sensor drone.”
And the odds that there would be one right here where we came out are still astronomical, thought the Captain. Unless they seeded this space with the things. And what’s to prevent them from doing that?
“Ma’am,” came the call of the Sensor Chief. “We have vessels vectoring toward us from multiple directions. Twenty battleship sized objects just jumped into hyper VI and are on a heading for us. Estimate that all will arrive in three point one minutes.”
“All?”
“They’re adjusting their accelerations to arrive within seconds of each other. And they’re talking to each other by grav pulse.”
“Why in the hell would they do that?” asked the Exec. “Any one of those ships could take the entire squadron in normal space. And they have to know they can’t do anything to our ships in hyper VII.”
“Unless they know they can do something about our ships when we jump up,” said Matthews, realization coming. They had only seen the graviton beams on the planet killers, the only ships that seemed capable of carrying such a massive weapon. But what if a score of twelve million ton vessels could each carry a smaller version of the beam, not powerful enough on their own to drop a ship out of hyper, but combined with more of their kind?
“Should we prepare to jump to hyper, ma’am?” asked the Helm.
“Prepare. But don’t jump until I order it.” She turned to the com holo that showed her Exec. “Prepare our hyper shuttle for launch as soon as we’ve jumped.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Well, it may be a stretch, but I want to test a theory. So here’s what we’ll do.”
* * *
The Machine AI in charge of the closing force watched as the enemy ships jumped back into hyper VII, then started to vector away from the closing warships. They were on a path that would still take them past one of the battleships, but that one ship would not be able to drop them out of hyper.
What’s this? thought the AI as another object separated from the trio of scout class ships they had been trying to trap. It was boosting on another vector from that of the launching vessels at about six hundred gravities. The AI wasn’t sure what it was, though the best answer it could come up with, based its size and acceleration, was a small manned vessel they were determined would be able to enter the system and gather more information. And that was something they couldn’t allow to happen.
The vector of the enemy craft was such that it would fall into the trap the twenty ships were setting. It didn’t for a second think that hiding a capability was a good idea. There was a ship that needed to be stopped, they had the ability to do so, so it was a given that they would drop it out of hyper. And there was always the chance that they would be able to capture a hyper VII capable ship. Sure, it was a long shot in any single instance, but as they dropped more human vessels into normal space the chance that one of them would be salvageable would approach certainty.
* * *
“It’s dropped off the plot, ma’am,” called out the Sensor Chief. “I think it’s gone.”
I sure hope so, thought Matthews. She had ordered an antimatter charge placed on the shuttle, the only hyper capable one that had come aboard her vessel, that was set to go off if the craft left hyper VII for any reason. If it hadn’t been ejected from VII by a graviton beam, or combination of, it would eventually run out of energy and fall out on its own. No matter the case, there would not be anything left of the craft for the Machines to study. But she had no way of proving that was what had happened, and that worried her.
“I think we have proven your point, Roberta,” said her XO over the com. “I think command will be glad to get this information.”
“Make sure they get this post haste,” Matthews told her Com Tech. “You can get back to sending the other information after they get it.”
She still hoped they would get back with all of the hard pictures and vids, but if they didn’t, at least command would have the rundown. She looked back at the plot for a moment, looking for the next spot they would drop out of hyper to gain more information on the system.
“We will go here, by this route,” she ordered, tracing a path on the plot to the next observation point, away from any known enemy concentrations, and now hoping that they didn’t have any groups of battleships in normal space along the way. After a moment’s thought she gave a last order. “I want all the ships to separate enough where they can’t drop all of us at the same time,” she told the Com Tech, interrupting her transmission back to base once again.
The Klassekian nodded and switched gears once again, while Matthews went back to her main job, worrying about her ship and her command.
* * *
Fleet Master Goran again looked at the plot, wondering where in the hell the enemy was going. He had thought they might be heading for one of their home bases. From there he was sure they would head back into his Empire again, with significant reinforcements. But why they would do that, when they could have just waited in place for the reinforcements to come up? What they were doing made no sense.
“We have another group moving in on another vector,” called out the crewman manning the sensor station. “It looks to be several hundred vessels, my Lord. And…. by the nether regions of the gods.”
“What is it?” asked the Fleet Master, walking to that rating’s station.
“I have never heard anything like this, my Lord. One of the objects is, enormous is the only word I can think of. By the resonance it is trillions of tons, maybe an order of magnitude larger.”
The Fleet Master, who had worked sensors for part of his career, looked at the sine wave and listen to the vibrations for a moment, jaws dropping open in disbelief. He had never heard of such a thing. In fact, he had never imagined such a thing. In the hands of the robots it could only serve one purpose. The destruction of life. And what a life destroyer it must have been.
“The new force is moving to match vectors with the original force,” said the rating. “The first force is not adjusting their own vector, but are remaining on the same course.”
“Why isn’t it heading into our space?” asked the Fleet Master. “What must they be looking for?”
“They might have already found what they are looking for, my Lord,” said the rating, looking up at the Fleet Master. “Now they are on the way to crush it.”
And when they are through they will come back and crush us. What can we do about such a monster? he thought, trying to imagine the weapons and armor on such a thing, and failing.
“Some of their vessels are starting to decelerate, my Lord. I think they are trying to fall back and challenge us.”
“And we will meet the challenge,” growled the Fleet Master. If the robots wanted a fight, he would give them one, as long as he didn’t have to face insurmountable odds. Then he would run, with no shame. He wasn’t about to sacrifice his entire command for no reason. But this was looking like the enemy trying to push him off the trail, while the power of their formation forged on to wherever they were headed.
Moments later they were launching, sending their own hundred ton weapons out at four thousand gravities, the best his technology could do. They still had to play catch up, meaning their closing speed would be low. The enemy fired their own weapons at his formation from their position of decelerating in respect to his force. Their closing speed would be higher, and the Fleet Master thought they might take a beating in this exchange. Still, he had more ships, and he had sent off thirty times their number of weapons, even if of lesser mass. He was wondering how fiercely the enemy would press this attack, since they had to know they wouldn’t win the knife fight that would follow the weapons exchange. He was still wondering that as the enemy missiles drove home.
* * *
BOLTHOLE SPA
CE. JUNE 3rd, 1002.
“It would be nice if we could get a look inside that thing,” said Commodore Harta Sukarno, Admiral Henare’s chief of staff.
“Might as well wish for the Galaxy,” said that officer, his frowning face showing his pattern of Maori tattoos. “Even if it’s disarmed now, I’m not about to order people aboard that thing.”
I wouldn’t either, thought Beata, looking at the two men on one com holo while glancing at a second showing a view of the heavily damaged planet killer. They had been pounding the ship for two days, hitting it with missile after missile, ships closing to light seconds after it became apparent its huge lasers were no longer capable of firing and shooting their own beam weapons at anything that looked like it might be any kind of intact machinery. But I could ask for volunteers.
The view of the ship changed as the warship containing the wormhole moved around it, until a fifty-meter-wide hole appeared. Visual showed a deep gap, going down at least twenty kilometers into the body of the craft. Infrared showed the glowing residual heat of the weapons that had dug that hole, a stream of missiles that had precisely targeted to dig it through the armor and machinery underneath. Not every missile had struck just right, as evidenced by the craters around the hole, but most had. Deep radar scans indicated that there were still openings at the bottom of the shaft leading into the interior. They had worried that the heat might have melted those access ways closed, but luckily that hadn’t happened.
“We could ask for volunteers, ma’am,” said Captain Okari Tagaru, the commander of her flagship, the Dictator Chang Lee, echoing her thoughts.
“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Beata after a moment’s thought. “Send a message across the fleet. We need a couple of companies’ worth of Marines and a hundred or so tech ratings. And the officers to lead them, of course.”
It didn’t take long to get the volunteers. In fact, two complete companies from her flagship’s reinforced battalion volunteered, along with the battalion commander, Colonel Cho. That wasn’t unexpected, since Marines tended to be big into comradery and unit cohesion. It was fortunate, since a unit that had been training together for some time was likely to better know how its members would react. The Fleet ratings were also quick to join, though in their case they came from across a dozen ships. They would have volunteered for the chance of quick promotion, and it was also fortunate in their case that there weren’t to many from any one department of one ship.
“Get them on assault shuttles,” ordered Bednarczyk. “But first, I want some probes sent down that hole. Let’s see if they’re going to face any resistance.”
Boarding actions were always dangerous. Not all crews were willing to go into captivity, some more likely to blow up their ship than accept imprisonment with some species they knew little about. The Machines were even more likely than most to self-destruct, since they had no fear of the death they couldn’t experience, and were more concerned about giving up intelligence.
The probe went down into the shaft, moving slowly along. The planet killer was still coasting along at point zero two light, the speed it had achieved in deceleration before its grabbers were taken out. Everything around it had matched velocities and it was as if it were standing still in space. The probe was a modified missile used on ships to gather information from close up, and was capable of five thousand gravities acceleration. Now it was barely moving forward at ten meters per second, all of its sensors straining to gather every erg of electromagnetic radiation coming toward it. The probe was sending its information to a relay sitting just outside the planet killer, which sent its take back to the superbattleship, sitting a thousand kilometers away.
Bednarczyk studied the take intently. Not only residual heat was coming up from the guts of the ship. There was still some electrical activity down there, something was still shifting power, even if it wasn’t under intelligent control. The problem was, it could be. By all external indications the ship was dead, which didn’t mean anything, since something trying to draw them into a trap would play it that way.
“We’re picking up radar pulses from below,” said the officer in charge of the sensor section of the battleship. “Something down there knows we are coming.”
“Lidar? Any indication of weapons fire?”
“No, ma’am. At least not yet.”
The probe continued down, a kilometer every one and two thirds minutes. Every couple if seconds it pulsed its sensors, radar and lidar, checking out the area below while making itself very noticeable. When it was two kilometers in a second probe followed it down, keeping track of the first, making sure that the humans monitoring it knew what happened to the initial unit if it was destroyed. At ten kilometers in, five past the armor layer, something shot out of the side of the shaft and speared the first probe. Alloy splashed as heat transferred into the body of the probe. It resisted the blast for less than a second, unarmed and unable to fire back. Two seconds after it was fired upon it died, its computer brain slagged by the beam weapon. It continued to fall forward under its own motion, while more beams hit and made sure it was no longer functional.
“So we know something is still functional down there,” said Admiral Vonstag over the com.
But what? thought Beata. Was it something under control of the central controller, or just a robot continuing to fulfill its programed function to defend the ship. If the first, there was every chance that the ship would self-destruct at any moment. If the latter, they would probably be able to take the ship away from the robot or robots and have a wealth of intelligence. The other question was how many robots there were? This could turn into a blood bath if she had to send company after company in to clear out the ship.
Beata had a reputation as a cold-hearted woman who would sacrifice anyone and anything to complete the mission. The last part was true, she would sacrifice anyone in her command if the mission was important enough. But she was not cold hearted. That was the facade she hid behind to keep her image intact. She actually felt very deeply about all of the losses her commands incurred. And now she was struggling with the decision to send hundreds of men and women into an extremely hazardous situation or not. The payoff could be great, or not. Great enough to help in winning a war and not just saving millions of Imperial citizens, but possibly billions of other sentient lives. Billions possibly saved versus hundreds who could die here and now.
“Send the first platoon of the Marines in,” she said, looking over at the timer. She had only taken seconds to make the decision, though it had seemed like minutes. Her image was still safe, though that didn’t seem important at the moment. It would in the near future, when she again gave orders, and people followed them, not wanting to piss off the stone-cold bitch.
The combat suits of the Marines started disembarking from the assault shuttles, moving from the vehicles to the opening and getting into a battle formation. They had armored shields held by the front rank, a squad. And the rest of the platoon arrayed behind them, weapons at the ready.
Chapter Ten
As Irving Good realized in 1965, machines with superhuman intelligence could repeatedly improve their design even further, triggering what Vernor Vinge called a 'singularity.' Stephen Hawking
This was Marine Second Lieutenant Madison Suarez’ first real assignment. She had graduated from the Fleet Academy and accepted her commission just two months before, and been assigned to the Dictator Chang Lee right after her two months’ graduation leave. She wasn’t sure she was ready for this, but when every other Marine in the company volunteered, she couldn’t refuse. The hope had been that, being the newbie officer, her platoon would be put at the end of the queue. Unfortunately for her the platoon she had been given was the most experienced in the battalion, with a Gunnery Sergeant who had seen three combat tours on the Lasharan front followed by a tour of duty in the battle against the Cacas.
So here she was, along with the second squad, in a position where she could be in control of the platoon. Only she was relying on G
unny Vasilovic to actually command while she learned. The Gunny was up with the first squad, just behind the shield wall.
Marines didn’t normally go into combat behind the shields, which were specialized devices made for certain kinds of boarding operations. The kind where resistance was expected in narrow corridors. Each was twenty centimeters thick, with hardened ceramic armors and superconductors to lead heat away from the face. They also carried electromagnetic field generators to dissipate beam weapons. They might not hold up to concentrated fire for very long, but any time at all could save a Marine.
The heavy battle armor felt like a coffin enclosing the officer. Her breath rasped in her ears through the com, the contact points with her flesh were slick with sweat despite the environmental controls. She knew the armor was as tough as any in the Imperial arsenal, but it was not thick enough to suit her. And it was carrying her toward an unknown threat, something that would scare the hell out of the bravest Marine, which she knew she was not. But she was not about to turn coward, not at this time. Death would be kinder than the stain of cowardice, something she was sure the Corps and Fleet counted on when assigning young people to combat.
“Second probe is moving forward,” came over the com, the transmission identified as originating with the company commander. “Keep a lookout to the sides as we pass the armor belt. Just because nothing fired on the probe at that point doesn’t mean we won’t take fire.”
Everyone in the platoon acknowledged to Suarez, who sent her acknowledgement to the Captain tagged with her report that all of her people understood. She wished she could concentrate on the side herself, but she had people for that, while she needed to pay attention to her front. Between her implant and her HUD she could keep tabs on every member of her forty-six person unit, at least enough to tell what was going on and hopefully give some direction. The Gunny was looking at the same readouts, with a lot more experience to his eyes. If he didn’t note any problems, she wouldn’t worry so much. She would still worry, just not so much.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above Page 12
