The spotting feeds watched the missile swarm close on the enemy. Unlike his flyer feed, the spotters included a lot of attendant spheres, so Caden had sound on other feeds. Over half of the missiles made it past the defensive fire and struck the target. A plume of smoke rose on a wave of thunder.
Kroooom!
“Oh yeah, that’s so slickblack,” Caden burst on the channel. “Got one?”
The enemy symbol on the tactical changed to a different icon: target eliminated.
“Yes! Come back around. Let’s get the next one. Maybe just one missile each?” Caden suggested. His instinct was that they had overkilled the first. They had only lost a handful of their attack machines. The sounds of battle traveled through the canopy from the tower line.
Krak. Booom! Kraaak.
“The outer force towers are starting to fall,” Telisa announced on the team channel. “We’re bringing in the Iridar.”
Caden saw a colossal—the only one on the tactical—coming in behind the tanks it had presumably brought with it. An energy beam lanced out from the Destroyer, cutting through a kilometer of jungle and incinerating a Celaran force tower.
Krooooom!
Rather than dig through the many panes of information in his PV, he decided to just ask.
“Magnus, are the reserve mines in position? My squadron may go for the colossal.”
“The mines will be there in time. If they work, those Destroyer tanks will never get through. Am I counting these right? There’s only one colossal and seven tanks left...”
“Yes. There’s only one this time. We have it,” Caden said. “You don’t need to risk the Iridar!”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Telisa said. Her voice was level. Caden could not tell if she agreed with the assessment or not.
“Change of plan,” Caden told his squadron. “Let the tanks advance to the mines and the inner tower line. We’re going after the colossal!”
He plotted a new course for the disk machines that sent them back south so they could loop around and hit the largest Destroyer from the rear.
Caden marked his target on the shared tactical. The group of flying disks turned away from the industrial complex toward the attacker. They remained below the canopy to cover their approach, even though it reduced their speed.
Attack now with half our missiles, or go back for a reload?
Caden did a quick calculation based on the colossal’s speed. If the disks went back for a reload, the largest enemy would be too close. At least some of the buildings would be destroyed, unless the Vovokan battle spheres or the Iridar could delay them.
“We’ll bulk launch all remaining missiles. If it survives, we’ll come back for a full reload,” Caden decided on the robot handlers’ channel. He had already started second guessing himself.
This would have worked if we had launched a full load of missiles for sure. But now we only have half the missiles left... too much for a tank, but too few for the colossal? We need to learn more so the squadron knows where to hit and how hard.
The Destroyer detected the threat. It unleashed huge beams of energy at the vine jungle, incinerating swaths of vegetation as wide as buildings.
Krooooom!
The group started losing more disk machines. Caden had to push back more doubts. The Celaran robots were almost close enough... they lost another three disks. The whole squadron was at sixty percent of original numerically and still at half-ordnance load.
“Rise and fire,” Caden said. The squadron ascended above the canopy as one and fired off their missiles. Trails of smoke marked the departure of the missiles. The Destroyer continued to shoot. Its wide beams took more disks down. Somewhere out of mind, his real body pumped a fist in excitement.
“Survivors, scatter and return to your reload points,” Caden commanded mentally. It was an automatic, trained order. Caden’s attention was on the missiles and their target. He watched a feed integrated from several sources: towers, disk robots, and attendants. The Destroyer capital machine continued to shoot defensive beams for one more second.
Broooooooom!
Caden’s feed showed the huge explosion as their missiles struck. He heard it from the many audio pickups out in the jungle. A few moments later, the sound came to his real ears. He smiled.
That had to hurt! Was it enough?
He watched for long moments. Smoke obscured the target... but nothing emerged from the cloud. The target dropped from the tactical as sensors in the field verified the kill.
We did it. I didn’t waste our entire squadron on a failed attack.
Caden checked the status of the rest of the battle. The last tank had just died to a multi-mine ambush. The Vovokan battle spheres were squashing the drones like bugs wherever they turned up. His exuberance grew.
Victory!
Caden checked the PIT team before he allowed himself to fully celebrate. He saw everyone was alive and well.
“That was too easy!” Caden said. “Our defenses held!”
“Are there any more coming?” Telisa demanded. She was not ready to join him in celebration.
“Top half of the squadron, belay my last order,” Caden instructed. “Patrol the entire approach path out to six hundred kilometers. Bottom half, continue toward the reload points.” He watched the disks scatter.
If there were more Destroyers coming, they would know soon.
Chapter 14
Marcant went back on-retina and opened his eyes in his quarters on the Iridar. Adair’s Vovokan attendant sphere hovered nearby. Since his AI friends had taken control of the little attendants, the Vovokan machines’ small bodies had stopped their incessant orbiting. Now, they wandered about here and there like lost souls, pausing before anything they found. Achaius’s attendant floated into view from behind a support beam.
Possibly a fake structural member, he reminded himself. The Vovokan ship had been given a Terran look and feel by Shiny—or his AI—to make the PIT team feel at home. Marcant had been told that renovation included rubberized decking, shower tubes, and the removal of a great deal of sand.
The PIT team felt more secure after their recent victory, but given their belief that the Destroyers would keep attacking, they had resolved to continue to innovate and build defenses. However, Telisa had confided in Marcant that she valued the chance to parlay a peace treaty. That meant Marcant needed to conquer another alien language.
“You know, instead of being trapped in your clumsy Terran cases—” Marcant began.
“Let’s not get reckless,” Adair said.
“You know what I’m about to say?”
“You’re about to suggest we copy ourselves into those Vovokan battle spheres.”
“Well, you could keep your current spheres as backups,” Marcant said.
“I don’t think I’m ready to start copying myself nanotube over fullerene,” Achaius said.
Not ready? That implies a future plan to do so, Marcant thought.
“Well, you could put yourself in there, and then put your original into stasis, download updates now and then—”
“The new me would think of itself as me and wouldn’t much care to ever switch back,” Adair said.
“Okay, I won’t get into the copy debate with you. Just saying, if it’s good enough for Trilisks—”
“I think the Trilisks understood the nature of consciousness,” Adair said. “Or maybe they just didn’t care. I’ll take a pass for now.”
“What have you discovered?” asked Achaius, changing the subject. “Or have you come to a conclusion of some sort?”
It knows I came on-retina because I’ve made a discovery. Is it any wonder I find conversations with ordinary people cumbersome?
Marcant took a long sip of his glucose drink.
“The attendants we sent out into the ocean are sensing vibrations and EM pulses,” he said. “There’s a lot of activity out there, though I’m not able to localize it as much as I’d like. The attendants were already in short supply from t
he first battle, and this spying is costing us more. I don’t have anywhere near the context I need to start doing any translation, either. I’ve already arranged to coordinate with the Celarans.”
“Ask for their help, you mean,” Achaius said.
“Yes,” Marcant admitted.
“Good. It’s logical,” Adair said.
“I’m working on devices that’ll be able to go into the water and transmit as well, once we’ve decided we have something to say... and yourselves?” Marcant prompted.
“We have the new weapon designs in production,” Achaius said. “Also, I’ve discovered the Destroyer fleet does operate with a hierarchy, though of only two tiers. The unusual ship is directing the others. The previous guess of a fleet of machines under the control of a small number of the creators is a good one.”
“Whose guess was that?”
“Cilreth released the information. I think it must have come up in her analysis of the fleet battle. I’ve been thinking of ways to take advantage of the relationship, but we have to assume the Destroyer ships will keep fighting even if that flagship is destroyed. More interesting would be to isolate and threaten it, or to take control of it.”
“We can’t speak Destroyer yet, native language or software. That’s an interesting goal, though,” Marcant commented. “I wonder if we could build our knowledge of their protocols with the goal of disrupting them.”
He looked at Adair’s attendant and waited for its report.
“I’m ready to seize the battle spheres,” Adair said. “You two should be elsewhere when I attempt it in case of retribution if I fail.”
“I’ll stay. I don’t want to abandon you,” Marcant said.
“That doesn’t make much sense, jelly-brain,” Adair said.
“We should minimize the risk,” Achaius added. “Please carry me to another part of the colony. We can await news of Adair’s success from there.”
“Your verbal vote of confidence is drowned out by your pleas to scamper off and hide,” Marcant said.
“Adair knows we’re loyal friends,” Achaius said. “We’re just acting rationally.”
Marcant shook his head. In this group, he got to play the ‘overly emotional Terran’ way too often.
“Can’t we obscure the source of the attack?”
“In the Sol system, maybe. Here? Not really,” Adair said.
“Very well,” he said, standing up from his VR chair. He pulled Adair’s mind casing from his Veer suit and set it down in the chair.
“You have the conn,” Marcant said with a smile.
“Very funny,” Adair said dryly. Its attendant sphere swooped down and nudged the casing over slightly to dispel the illusion that Adair was helpless there.
Marcant decided to grab a PAW from the ship’s armory as a consolation to the chances that a few drones might still be alive among the vines. He did not count those chances as high—he had found the Destroyers to be single-minded, aggressive attackers that did not display any stealth or subtlety in their methods.
He exited the ship and selected a course to the industrial yard on the tactical. As he walked, Marcant opened a connection to Lee. He tried to be as upbeat and energetic as the aliens were, hoping it would come through in his preambles. When in Rome...
“Lee, I’m learning to talk to the Destroyers. I hope you could spare a little time to help me,” he said.
“I can help, though as you might expect, it does little good to talk with the predator as it tries to eat you,” Lee answered.
“I have to try anyway. Now that we’ve won a battle, we might be able to negotiate from a position of strength.”
“That sounds so mean!”
“If you could supply me a lot more samples of their language, I might be able to make headway.”
“We’ve recorded many Destroyer transmissions, both in space and when they attack us on land,” said the Celaran. “We have a large corpus of Destroyer chatter to send you.”
“Perhaps they’ve already achieved your objective but are too polite to say, or don’t understand your goal and so haven’t mentioned it,” Achaius suggested.
“Have you figured out their language?” Marcant asked Lee.
“Yes. But analysis of the transmissions you’re studying indicates that it is a synthetic communication method to be used by the battle machines. It’s not the native language of those who created the machines.”
“But could we use it as an indirect method of communication?”
“Likely, yes,” Lee said. “Other Celarans have tried to talk to them before with no result. Still, as you say... perhaps it will be different now that we’ve... hurt them?”
“When did you try to talk to them?”
“When our homeworld was attacked. We fled.”
Marcant allowed himself to get dragged off topic, fascinated by the history.
“The Celarans here are all that’s left?”
“No. Many groups fled to different places, but we don’t have contact with any of them.”
“We’re supposed to be talking about learning to speak Destroyer,” Achaius said to Marcant privately.
“Lee said it was not effective,” Marcant said.
“As you touched on, we need to bargain from a position of power,” Achaius said. “If you have the means to strike, then threaten them. That might force a response.”
“I agree,” Adair said.
“What? You agree? Well, it’s decided then,” Marcant said privately to Adair and Achaius.
“Can you teach us to speak it?” Marcant asked Lee.
“I’ll show you the work of those who tried,” Lee said.
Marcant arrived at a line of slender metal ovals sitting next to a Celaran building. Four round tendrils of metal descended from their meter-high bodies then flattened into rough feet to support them. The ovals had opened into a shape that resembled a four-petaled flower about the size of a Terran head.
“Here are our new ocean spy devices. They’re smaller than I expected,” Marcant noted aloud.
“We made a few improvements,” said a Celaran from above.
“Oh, hello,” Marcant said. “Thanks for the improvements. What did you do?”
The new Celaran glided down in a gentle spiral around Marcant.
“I used a superior storage ring assembly. It’s a little tricky since they’ll be immersed in saltwater which affects EM fields differently than air. Also, we’ve added a water analyzer, temperature and pressure sensors, and a self-destruct capability.”
“Why the analyzers?” Marcant asked though he should have known better. It was obvious the Celarans would add a half-dozen extra functions to anything they made.
“We want to learn how similar this planet is to our homeworld,” the Celaran said. It flew through the line of machines, arcing around each one like a cone race course. It turned so hard Marcant heard the air flapping against its body as it made each maneuver.
I suppose that’s fun.
“I’ll arrange to transport them to the ocean,” Marcant said.
“That’s not necessary,” the Celaran said.
The machines shot upward into the air.
“Zeka Zapfarans!” Marcant spat out in surprise. “What—oh. They can fly, too.”
“It seemed expedient,” the Celaran said.
“Thank you very much for building them,” Marcant said as he swooned through the aftermath of his adrenal surge.
“They serve our purposes and yours,” the Celaran said.
Marcant nodded. “I certainly hope so.”
***
After concluding the inspection, Marcant settled down with his back against a Celaran building and connected to the local network.
“Begin,” Marcant told Adair.
There was nothing to do. Marcant had spent many hours preparing this attack, but now it was only a matter of watching the stages roll out. The first step used their normal control of the Vovokan spheres to request processing resources. The Vovokan spheres
and the Iridar could out-compute anything Marcant had ever used. By taking a large fraction of that up-front and turning it into a bridgehead into the machines, Marcant and the AIs hoped to overwhelm the spheres quickly.
As arranged, Adair took on the onus of being the source of the attack to protect Marcant and Achaius. Marcant was not sure how strong their ‘plausible deniability’ was, but he went along with it since Adair and Achaius had agreed.
The Vovokan battle spheres had a central controller which sat along the equatorial ring and oversaw the operation of the entire machine. According to Cilreth and Adair’s analysis of the design, seizing the central controller would be necessary to suborn the combat machine. When the Vovokan machines obeyed the PIT team’s orders, it was because the central controller told it to do so. Theoretically, there were things the battle spheres would refuse to do—such as take actions contrary to Shiny’s goals.
Despite its importance, the central controller was not the first objective. Adair did not think they could breach the controller directly. Instead, they went for the effectors. The Vovokan spheres had six devices placed evenly across their surface which could generate powerful EM fields. In combat, these devices produced energy bursts to destroy enemies, but they could also change EM fields in a super-precise manner. They could pinpoint charges in the central controller and “wipe out” its state. Such a clearing of the state could render the controller inoperative, allowing new code in the rest of the machine to copy itself in uncontested.
Adair received a large chunk of resources from the Vovokan spheres. Adair’s plan had a hedge in that the programs being fed into each of the two spheres was slightly different. One was a quick and brash assault, the other, more measured. The fast attack was riskier but would give a Vovokan sphere less time to send a message to Shiny, if indeed the machines were capable of tachyon communications. If the quick method worked, then the first machine would throw its effectors into the attack on the second. Otherwise, they hoped it would at least disrupt the machine long enough for the slower, safer attack to work.
Marcant monitored what he could as the double assault started. Too much data flowed for him to make sense of it. One long moment stretched into the next. He saw a pane showing reports of effectors being seized and counter-seized.
The Celaran Refuge (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 8) Page 13
