Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above

by Doug Dandridge

  “We are sorry for the misunderstanding. All of my ships were ordered to take no aggressive actions, and that one disobeyed. It has been taken care of, and I assure you that the offending crewperson has been executed.”

  “Is he serious?” asked the XO on the local com. “That seems kind of harsh for an error.”

  “What did you do to the crewperson?” asked Matthews, hoping that there had been a mistranslation.

  “He was executed for disobeying orders,” said the alien through the translation. “Believe me, it will not happen again. The lesson has been learned. You have nothing to worry about.”

  Nothing to worry about? thought Matthews, a chill running up her spine. He just ordered one of his people to be killed because of an error. What kind of people are these? What kind of society do they have?

  Matthews forced a smile on her face, not knowing if the aliens would be able to tell that it was a stressed out simulation of a smile. She doubted it, but one could never tell. She tried to keep herself from judging them. She was here to make contact, and to gather information. It would be up to her superiors to decide what to do with that information, and how much further they wanted to pursue contact with these people.

  “I have something to ask you?” came the computer’s voice as the alien’s mouth moved. “From one of the pictures you sent I see that you have had contact with the artificial life forms. May we ask how this contact went?”

  “Careful, ma’am,” said the Exec. “We don’t need them to know we created those damned things.”

  I know. But I doubt they are the friends of the Machines. And I don’t want to start our contact out on a lie. So I guess I need to fall back on omission, which is not quite the same as commission. “We are at war with the damned things,” she finally said. “We are fighting them across this region.”

  “What does, damned, mean?”

  “It’s an explicative,” she tried to explain. “Something different from holy. Not from our Gods.”

  The aliens stared at her for a moment, then looked off the holo and said something in a quiet voice that was muted, as if he didn’t want it to come out over the com. He looked back at her, the expression of shock still on his face. “You believe in Gods? But, you are so much more advanced than we are, and we have not had belief in the supernatural for generations, not since we became a space faring race.”

  “Not everyone in the Empire believes in deities either,” she said, again trying to be careful about what she said. “Many believe completely in materialism, that there are no supreme beings, no afterlife, but some still believe. That is up to them.”

  “Why would you allow a belief that some of you follow and others don’t? This makes no sense to me.”

  Great. So now they will think we are illogical beings. Or is it something in the freedom we allow our citizens? Are they so totalitarian that everyone has to think the same thing in their society? She had a feeling that this was a people they would not ally with in normal times. But this was war, and the Empire was stretched to the limit militarily in this region, so far from home.

  “I am sure some of our ways will be strange to you, just as some of yours will be strange to us. I am sure that we can learn from each other. And if you are at war with the Machines as well, maybe we can be of immediate aid to each other.”

  The alien again looked at her with an unreadable expression. This part of the first contact was maddening. They had no experience with these beings, and even though, hopefully, the verbal translation was correct, there was no way they could read the nonverbals. Yet.

  “We are winning our war with the artificial life forms,” said the alien, so quickly that Matthews thought something else was going on.

  “They are not winning,” said the XO. “He wants us to think they are stronger than they are.”

  “That’s what I think, too.” Roberta wondered just how large their nation was? What form of government, size of fleet? She doubted that she would learn that at this time.

  “And how are you doing in your war with them? Have they attacked any of your worlds?”

  ‘We are fighting them,” said Matthews noncommittally. “So far we have been lucky enough to not have any attacks on our homeworlds, though one of our allies has experienced an assault that we helped them to fight off.”

  “We would like to know how you accomplished that,” said the alien.

  “I would have to talk with my commander about that,” she said. “We will send a message to them and see what they say.”

  The eyes of the alien widened, and she thought that might be a sign of excitement or disbelief.

  “How far away are they?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t discuss that at this time.”

  The eyes of the alien narrowed, and she could see the tip of an agitated tail over his shoulder. Was he getting angry? Frustrating?

  “Would you like to come over to my vessel?” he next asked.

  “Not at this time. Just a couple of more questions and I have to talk with my officers about where to go to from here.”

  “Proceed.”

  “What are your people called? And what are you called?”

  “I am Fleet Leader Goran. And we are the Gorgansha.” He looked off the holo for a moment, then back. “I think our meeting here is something my Dictator needs to know. I will be sending a trio of ships back to my Consolidation to let them know that we have met new friends.”

  And we won’t do that, which means when we get instructions from command, you will know that we have a means of contacting our base from a distance. But they still wouldn’t know just how fast that communication was.

  “Can we meet again in an hour?” asked Matthews, hoping that they understood the time reference.

  “That will be fine,” said the Fleet Leader. “I will wait for your initiation.”

  The holo went blank, leaving Matthews alone with her thoughts for a moment. “All department heads are to meet in fifteen minutes. Study the interchange between myself and the Fleet Leader. I want your feedback about what was said, and whether I could have done anything different. Make sure that your assistants are ready for anything that might happen.” And I have to hope that these people aren’t insane enough to try anything that might turn the Empire into their enemy.

  * * *

  “What do you make of them?” asked Goran of his assistant.

  “They are hiding something. Smart.”

  Yes, thought Goran. Only a foolish species gives away everything at the first meeting.

  “Orders, my Lord?”

  “Keep all sensors trained on them. But make no aggressive moves. I do not want to ruin a chance for an alliance if they prove worthy of such.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Machines take me by surprise with great frequency. Alan Turing

  SPACE BETWEEN BOLTHOLE AND MACHINE TERRITORY. JUNE 13TH, 1002.

  “We have picked up the Machine fleet,” came the voice of Commodore Jassiah Chung over the wormhole com. “They’re just coming into sensor range.”

  “What do you have so far?” asked Mara, waiting for her own tactical repeater to update.

  “Only the large vessels so far. Three of them.”

  That’s the same as the force they sent before. Surely they can’t think that’s enough after their last force failed. But the last attack had been thwarted as much by good fortune as anything. There was no saying that three more planet killers couldn’t take out the system this time. A moment later the situation changed, and two more of the planet killers came onto the plot.

  “They’ve got five of the big bastards,” said the Commodore, not really adding anything to what she was already seeing.

  Almost twice as many of them, thought Mara, a feeling of panic almost overcoming her. “By the Goddess. Make sure that the Admiral knows what we have found.”

  She checked the plot and sent some calculations over the ships computer. “Three weeks,” she said, looking around the flag bridge and making su
re everyone had heard her. “Twenty three days until they reach the hyper barrier outside of Bolthole.”

  “And thirteen days until the other Machine fleet reaches Klassek,” interjected the Force Tactical Officer.

  If they had tactical sense both of their forces would strike at the same time, thought Montgomery. Then the Imperial forces would be forced to handle both assaults at the same time, something she wasn’t sure they could do. And which system would they try to save? Bolthole was important, especially since it was ramping up production, and all of that output would be going to this war. But Klassek was the home of the singular species that the Empire needed in this war, especially with more and more emphasis being placed into the inertialess fighter program. There were probably enough Klassekians off the planet to make them a viable population in the Empire, but the Emperor was adamant that their world be protected.

  And what would I do? she thought. If given the choice, she would defend Bolthole. But was that the smart decision, since they would be facing a force that was infinitely more powerful than the one heading for Klassek? If all the forces at their command were concentrated against the Machine force at Klassek, they would surely defeat it. The same was not true of Bolthole. Everything they had might not be enough to defend that base system, but losing that base system would lead to hardship for the forces in this sector, up to and including inviting eventual defeat. Defending it did not guarantee that they could save it, and the Machine force would surely move on to hit Klassek. Not defending it guaranteed losing it. And that almost guaranteed losing the war out here.

  The real problem when dealing with the Admiralty when it came to this region was it was not that important to the Empire as a whole. At the current time the Core Worlds had two hundred times the industrial capacity of Bolthole. That would change, and eventually the Bolthole system would become the most robust industrial system in the Empire. It had a fraction of the population of a Core World, and that would always be true, at least for the next twenty or more years. The Admiralty was not about to give the region the tonnage guaranteed to handle the Machines, something the Fleet definitely had in its inventory. Only the Emperor could command them to give this region the shipping it needed, and even though he was particularly invested in this war, he still had to defend the Empire from its greatest threat, and that was on the other side of their space.

  “If the Fleet strikes the Machines coming at Klassek, we will still have ten days to recombine at Bolthole,” said the Force Tactical Officer.

  And in the pre-wormhole days that would mean nothing. The Fleet would not be able to fight a battle at that star and move and regroup in time to meet the Machines at Bolthole. Now they could, but there would still be time needed to repair the damage. And they wouldn’t be able to move the wormholes. Would there be enough time?

  “We can be at their projected position in fourteen hours normal time,” said the Navigation Officer. “A little over seven hours ship’s time.”

  Relativity would work to compress the time they experienced. If it had been a straight run it would have been just over four hours. It was not a straight run. They had to change vectors, which entailed losing velocity and then picking it back up, changing the effects of relativity on the ship. And they would be at about point three light coming up behind the Machine force when they got there.

  “Admiral Halliday is reporting an arrival time of nineteen hours, ma’am,” said the Com Officer.

  “Send this order out to both forces,” said Mara, looking at a plot that showed the courses of all three forces intersecting the enemy, coming in behind them. “We will attack in nineteen hours standard time. First run past them and we’ll drop missiles into their sides. After that, we’ll see.”

  She already had some plans, mostly involving her wormhole equipped ships. The others would decoy while they took out the escorts. She was hoping that maybe they could hit the planet killers, but at the moment that was a pipedream. Unless they could come up with something that gave them an opening.

  * * *

  “Matthews is authorized to give them anything that might sway them our way, outside of technical schematics of stuff they don’t have,” said Sean over the holo.

  Bednarczyk nodded, looking closely at the face of her Emperor. He looks like shit, she thought. Still a young man, with at least two hundred more years of life ahead of him, more likely two fifty. And he looked like he was a hundred. She knew that stress and lack of sleep would do that to anyone, and that he would be much better as soon as he got some rest. The problem was, with everything going on, a stretch of time with nothing stressful going on was probably not in his future.

  “So you think we can trust them?”

  “I don’t know, Admiral. They seem to be right assholes, from what I can gather. But we need the military power out there, and any ally looks good at this time.”

  “We may find ourselves fighting them someday.”

  “That’s true of every ally we have, Admiral. Just because they are our friends today doesn’t mean we won’t part ways someday. And right now they are not our enemy, but are the enemies of the Machines. So yes, I want them to become our allies if that is possible. We’ll decide on what tech we want to give them when they ask for it.”

  “And if they want something we’re not willing to give?”

  “Then we don’t give it, and they have to deal with that. Look, Beata. They need an ally just as much as we do. Maybe more so. I’m sure they’ll bend over backwards to keep us on their side.”

  “I hope so. We’re sending one of our Exploration Command battle cruisers and a light cruiser to that system to back up Matthews. Not that I don’t trust her, but I think she’s a little junior for this kind of diplomacy.”

  “Who’s in charge of that mission?”

  “Rear Admiral Khrushchev, your Majesty. I know she has been in charge of a first contact before, and came in early on the Klassekian negotiations.”

  “Good choice. Does she have a wormhole aboard?”

  “She does. I had to think hard on that one, your Majesty. We only have so many, but I thought this was important enough. She might have to end up going to the homeworld of these, Gorgansha. And I thought she might need the ability to move people back and forth.” And if these assholes try to take her ship, she can get her people back before blowing it to hell.

  The Emperor nodded, and the Admiral was sure that he was thinking pretty much the same thing. It was always less risky to contact primitive people, those still planet bound. The most that could happen was some explorers would get killed on the surface, and maybe their weapons and com gear would fall into the hands of people who would have no idea how to make more of them. Those just barely in space might be able to find a way to reproduce the tech they captured, but the odds of them getting those devices back to their planet were remote. And the chances of them capturing an Imperial ship were all but nonexistent. But those with interstellar capabilities were dangerous if they wanted to try and take a ship. And they could probably reproduce that tech in a relatively short period of time once they had it.

  The other possibility, discovering a species with superior tech, had only happened twice in history. When the early kingdom had been approached by one of the other species in their region who had opened trade negotiations with the humans, leading to great advancement just before humanity found itself in a war it wouldn’t have won without that tech. The other had been the Ca’cadasans. The first time humanity was greatly outclassed, and was almost wiped out as a result. The most recent was still undecided.

  “We have some more weapons for you, Admiral. Well, not weapons in the common sense of the word, but something we were able to use against Cacas with some success. And we’re sending an expert along with them.”

  Wonderful, thought Beata, forcing a smile on her face. Just what she needed, something that wasn’t really a weapon, and some expert to tell her how to use it.

  “Get us a new ally, Admiral,” said Sean, a smile s
tretching his fatigued face. “Don’t let us down.”

  The holo faded, leaving Beata with her own thoughts. She had come into this position with nothing but disdain for this Emperor. She still wasn’t sure if he was the military genius some people thought. But she had to admit that he was a hands-on ruler, who wasn’t about to let the war (wars) get away from him. She still wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She was still of the opinion that the professionals should handle the military, while the civilians gave the military what they asked for. He had been a Fleet officer, but a very junior one. Well, he’s in charge, and can do it however he wants, she thought, shaking her head. No one had asked her opinion on the matter, and she thought it would be a cold day in hell before anyone did.

  * * *

  “We have been authorized to give you this information about our Empire,” said Matthews, nodding at her Com Tech, who pushed the transmit button that sent the data in compressed mode over to the alien ship. They had already established a protocol for sending burst transmissions that the Gorgansha computers could handle. Which had given them some information about the computer capabilities of the aliens. The estimate was they were seventy to eighty years behind the Empire overall, which made them fairly advanced in the scheme of things.

  “We thank you for your trust in us.”

  “The Emperor decided it was time to let you know what we had, so you would feel comfortable sharing with us as well.”

  “What it this word, Emperor?”

  “He is our ruler, the person who makes the decisions for the Empire.”

  “Like our Dictator?”

  Matthews didn’t like the sound of that word, and wondered if it had been a mistranslation. But dictator was really only just a word, and just because they used a word with negative connotations in her language didn’t mean it meant the same to them. Their leader might not be a Joseph Stalin, or an Emperor Ivan the Mad.