The two houses were meeting in joint session this day, what had once been the lawmaking body of the Tsarzor nation, and now the entire planet. Eight hundred and fifty Klassekians legislators had gathered in the building. Like all their kind they had several siblings on their staffs, connected through the quantum tissue of their brains, giving each one the brain power of multiple Klassekians. There were another thousand beings in the main chamber and some of the side rooms, more staff, security, reporters. And several thousand more in other offices, plus a battalion of soldiers outside to protect against the madmen of the Honish religion who might consider a terrorist attack.
The President was on his way to meet with the legislature. He was expected to make a speech to the joint session, calling for hope and perseverance, and asking their enemies on the planet to cease the action that was taking attention away from the foreign enemy, and also exposing their own people to greater risk.
A security guard in the basement of the building was the first to know that the Machines were coming through. He was only aware for moments before he was no longer aware of anything, ever again. In most species he would have died without giving warning. In his, his five siblings had all seen the robots blast through the floor with his eyes. Three were also on the Capital security force, and the word was spread as fast as they could speak into the com to their immediate supervisors. They knew the Machines were coming, but the next question was what could they do about it.
* * *
The Presidential car was in the air when the attack occurred. President Rizzit Contena enjoyed the aircar the Imperials had given him to take the place of the helicopters his people used. The car was much more comfortable, not shaking like the rotary winged craft, its grabbers moving it smoothly through the air in all wind conditions. It was much safer, and its defensive suite made it almost impossible for terrorists to shoot down. And right now the President was looking forward to making his speech and hopefully calming his people.
“Mr. President,” said his Security Chief, closing his eyes for a moment. “We need to get you to the retreat.”
“What’s going on?”
“The Capital Building is under attack,” said the worried looking Chief, whose job was to worry about anything and everything that might affect the safety of his primary.
“The Honish?”
“No, sir,” said the Chief, activating the vid unit that projected an image into the air. “Those devil Machines.”
The vid activated, the small letters at the bottom showing that it was from a newsfeed from one of the larger agencies in the city. The floor erupted upwards in flame, the light of laser beams shining through the smoke of burning materials. Dozens of legislators in their desks disappeared into flares of steam and ash as they were incinerated. The first of the spiderlike robots came jumping up from the floor below a moment later, followed by a dozen more.
Security tried to fire on the robots, but in many cases their lines of fire were blocked by the people in the chamber who were scrambling for their lives. Some fire still struck the robots, not enough, and more clambered up from the floor below while additional holes appeared in that surface with the commiserate destruction to people and material. Machine fired lasers cut through Klassekians still trying to evacuate the room, in most cases killing them with holes or slices through their flesh.
“Get those people out of there,” yelled the President as he watched legislators, both friend and foe, fall before the robots. The Machines were frightening in an extreme, death dealers with no mercy, no feelings whatsoever. They were programed to kill living beings, and they were doing their best to follow that programing with terrible efficiency.
“They’re trying, sir,” said the Chief, his own eyes locked on the vision of death hanging in the air.
The vid died, replaced by static for a moment, and the President knew that the cameraman who had been sending those images was dead. Another vid took its place, this one of the main corridor leading out of the chamber to the central rotunda. That corridor was crowded shoulder to shoulder with panicked Klassekians trying to get to safety, getting in each other’s way. A laser beam lashed out, burning through thirty meters of hallway and over sixty Klassekians, killing them all. The beam swept to the right, cutting through more panicked people who were trying to get out of the way but having nowhere to go. Bodies dropped to the floor in the limp forms of the dead, very few bleeding as the lasers had cauterized their wounds. More beams joined the first, and soon the view was obscured by the rising pink steam of vaporized flesh. And another vid died.
The faster of the Klassekians, those mentally quick enough or close enough to the exit from the joint chamber to get out first, made it to the rotunda and heading out the building to the steps leading to the courtyard. Security were within the rotunda, covering all the ways leading into the large chamber, all waiting to fire on the Machines without hitting their own people. Machines came clambering into the chamber, some at floor level, others breaking through the walls further up and climbing along the stonework, firing down into the crowd. Those Machines were easier targets for the security police than those lower down, and thousands of hypervelocity rounds fired from human supplied weapons shredded many of them.
The President wanted to shout at the Chief again, to tell him to get those people out of there, but he knew they were doing all they could. The vid died, and it was ten seconds before another came on outside the building. This one showed a company of Klassekians in power armor moving up the steps. They lacked the grabbers of the human suits, and so couldn’t fly. They could run as fast as a quick Klassekian, and the troopers were able to jump thirty meters in a leap. Right now they were running shoulder to shoulder, weapons at the ready, getting up to the top landing and readying themselves.
“Mr. President,” came the voice of the human commander, General Travis Wittmore. “I have two companies of Marines in heavy armor on their way. They’re dropping in from orbit as we speak.”
“Hurry, General. Those are men and women I have known for decades dying there.”
“ETA three minutes, sir,” replied the General. “I wish it was faster, but that’s as fast as we can go.”
That’s a lot faster than anything we can scramble, sent the President’s sibling over the quantum link.
Can you get us more soldiers?
I have a mechanized battalion on the way, but they won’t get there for another ten minutes.
The Klassekian heavy suits were in place when the Machines came running out of the front entrance to the building, right into the lasers of the soldiers. Now it was their turn to go down as metal vaporized under the heat of the beams. More poured out of the building, their foot pads sticking to the molten metal of their fellows, dying as did their compatriots. More and more came out, then the first started from the windows, smashing through glass and running along the sides of the buildings. They fired back at the soldiers, and here and there one would go down as a suit limb was disabled, sometimes with the destruction of the organic limb underneath.
It looked like the soldiers were going to hold, and another company got into place on the other side of the building, while some more squads covered the wings. Then it looked like the Machines were about to overwhelm them. It was at that point the Imperials arrived, their shuttles blasting down from hypersonic to a couple of hundred kilometers an hour in seconds.
The heavy suits ejected from the bottom of the shuttles, slowing and dropping on their grabbers as they came into the open. Hundreds of suits came down, most of them with the still strange configuration of humans, unusual to the Klassekians, that is. There were some of the much larger suits of the centauroid Phlistarans as well. And all were firing as soon as they located targets, their much more powerful particle beams slicing through Machines and filling the air with metal vapor.
The lasers of the Machines were reflected back from the vapor, unable to penetrate. The metal vapor screened the Machines from visual and infrared scans, but the he
avy suits also had sonic and radar sensors, and were still able to target the robots. It took less than a minute to clear the outside of the capital, and then the Klassekians on the ground charged into the building, past the smoking remains of hundreds of robots. The Imperials took the high route, going in through the dome of the rotunda and the roofs of the wings.
“I think we have it under control, Mr. President,” said Wittmore, his face reappearing on the holo. “I am sorry we weren’t there in time to save so many of your friends.”
Rizzit stared at the human for a moment, his emotions bubbling up, unsure what to say. He felt like screaming and crying at the same time, but neither of those responses would help. “Thank you, General. Clear out that infestation. Then clear out the rest of them. Free my planet from their presence.”
The President killed the com before words he didn’t want to say escaped him. “Take me back to the Presidential palace,” he ordered.
His Security Chief looked uncomfortable with the order, and the President gave him a nonverbal assent to speak.
“I think it would be better to take you up into the Mountain Retreat, sir. The palace is only twenty kilometers from the Capital, and there’s always a chance more of these things can come up on us unawares.”
“No,” said Rizzit after a moment’s thought. “I will not be run out of my city. We will go to the Palace and wait for the Imperials and my soldiers to clear this infestation. I will not have my people seeing me for a coward.”
Your Security Chief is correct, sent his brother, General Mazzat Contena, the commander of native planetary forces, through their quantum link. But I can understand your point as well. I will join you there.
The President was about to argue, to order his brother to stay away, but despite the closeness of their quantum connection, he thought it would be comforting to have him around. And hopefully his sibling would bring along some of his troops to augment the Palace security. He may not have wanted to be seen as a coward, but he wasn’t about to turn down additional protection. His mother hadn’t raised fools, after all.
“Set up the studio for an address to the people,” he said over his com as the aircar started in for its landing on the roof of the building. “I’m sure they will need comforting after what just went out over the news net.”
* * *
BOLTHOLE SPACE.
“I’m not sure what this is,” said the platoon leader over the com. Madison really didn’t know the man, who was in another company. She had been too busy with her own platoon and company, though she seemed to recall him from battalion officer’s call.
It’s a hatch protecting something important, you dumb shit, she thought, looking at the slightly recessed panel of alloy set into the curved wall of the large globe. The globe itself was a good twenty meters in diameter, inside a larger globular chamber that had been filled with liquid nitrogen before the Marines breached it. That breaching had caused some consternation as the liquid had flowed out, much of it sublimating into a still frigid gas. The heavy suits had protected the Marines who had been caught in the flood, but some had still sustained minor damage. As far as the spacers could tell, the globe was only two kilometers above the absolute center of the ship, just above the matter/antimatter reactors, the most protected part of the ship. And the control runs leading from the globe through the cooling chamber had all been severed on the other side of the refrigeration container.
“The bitch is still sending out graviton pulses,” came the voice of a naval officer who was leading one of the tech crews. “We’re trying to locate the control run.”
No one knew what was being transmitted by grav pulse, but they were definitely sure of the target. The other big bitch coming this way to try and prevent them from doing what they had planned. It was thought that the signal was coming from the AI they were trying to breech, unless there was a secondary processor that was working the com, always a possibility. At least nothing had tried to blow the huge ship up under them, yet. That was still a possibility, one that was making everyone sweat despite the chill in this air and the environmental systems in their armor.
“We’ve cut all the leads,” said the Fleet officer. “There are no connections. There…”
“Look out,” yelled another voice over the com.
“Where the hell did they come from?”
Suarez looked over the feed to see the swarm of robots coming through the wall. Of course they had checked those walls to make sure there were no hatches. But nanotech was actually old tech, something the Machines would be well versed in. Nanites could close openings, turning moving hatches into part of the solid wall. The same could be done in reverse, turning a solid unbroken structure into a passage.
“We’re being swarmed here,” shouted a voice that the com identified as a squad leader. “We could use some help.”
Suarez looked at the situation on her HUD, cycling through the feeds of all the units involved. The attack was hitting the platoon closest to her own. The intentions were clear. They were trying to isolate and trap the two companies that were in place around the AI capsule. The third company involved was also being hit, and were using all of their resources to keep from being overrun. She wasn’t sure how much of a reserve the ship still had, but they definitely had scraped together enough here to possibly win this fight.
“First platoon,” she yelled into her command com without hesitation. “Follow me.” She may have been borrowing something from the tradition of the Imperial Army, but it seemed like the right thing to say. And from the movement she saw on her HUD as she rocketed her suit ahead, it had translated into an immediate response from her people.
All of her people had full weapons, fully charged proton packs and new batteries. The rifles were cooled, the suits had full strength electromag fields, and the Marines were ready. They moved down a kilometer of twisting corridor in a four wide column in less than a minute, and hit the back of the Machine mass screaming their battle cries.
They burned through half the robot mass before the rest could react. Many turned to take the charge, and the Marines platoon they had been pressing now pushed forward as well. In what seemed like no time at all there were no more robots separating the two groups. The Marines that had been pressed stood still for a moment, trying to get their breath. Suarez kept her people moving while they still had the momentum, heading through the series of corridors to the next group of robots, these forming the plug to trap the two forward companies.
Robots couldn’t panic like organics, but they also couldn’t forge through with the adrenaline that living beings used to fuel them to superhuman efforts. They responded as quickly as machines could, but it still wasn’t enough. Before they could bring their weapons to bear, first platoon had sliced half way into their formation. By this time their particle beams rifles were overheated and in need of new proton packs. Pistols were unholstered, monomolecular blades were deployed, and the fight became one of close combat and melee.
Gunny again was true to form, moving like a one ton whirlwind in his suit, pistol in one hand blowing holes through carapaces into brain boxes, triple monomolecular blades slicing through limbs and weapons. Suarez was right beside him, screaming her fear, turning it into rage, dealing destruction to the robots around her. Again it seemed to go on forever, though her internal clock told her it was less than two minutes. She was still swinging when the Gunny grabbed her arms to stop her from hitting her own people.
Half of her people were down, and she left it up to the two platoons she had rescued to carry on taking the fight to the Machines. And that they did, until all of the robots were swept away.
“We’re bringing in EMPs,” came the voice of the Fleet officer in charge over the com.
Suarez wondered why they hadn’t done that before. EMP would do nothing against the larger robots, shielded as they were, but it would tear the hell out of the nanites they were using.
It took some time for the spacers to cut into the globe they were now cal
ling the Vault. It was hard alloy, and thick, with many superconducting cables built into the armor to distribute heat. They used up several power packs burning through, but what it came down to was lasers could cut through just about any material substance if given time. The Vault may once have had the nanites to reseal the cuts, but the EMP devices had taken them out, or at least most of them, and there weren’t enough to make any kind of useful repair.
“We’re through,” called out the Commander who led the insertion. “Everyone move away.”
Suarez was not near enough to have to move back, since she was actually in a corridor almost a kilometer away, guarding the way out. But she could watch on her HUD, holding her breath as the spacers attached the come hither units to the hatch, their own nanoadherance units linking into the alloy and becoming a solid piece with it. The hydraulic units attached to the arms started back, moving slowly but smoothly at first, then catching for a second, before tearing the door out of the globe.
“Sending in probes.” The probes were small, half meter globes with miniature grabber units and full suites of sensors. And one small but powerful laser. One went through the hatchway, took a couple of moments looking around, then waited as its two partners came through.
“There it is,” said the Commander as the view zoomed onto yet another globe, this one about five meters in diameter, hanging in space. Floating around it were a dozen one meter diameter globes that were connected with the central unit by beams of light.
What the hell is this thing? thought Suarez as she stared at what they thought was the target they had come for. It looks like nested Russian dolls. She couldn’t tell how it was getting its power, unless it was coming in through the smaller units by laser. But then, what was powering them?
Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above Page 17
