Exodus: Machine War: Book 4: Retribution

by Doug Dandridge

  * * *

  “It’s confirmed, sir,” said Colonel Myers, the chief medical officer of Wittmore’s army. “The plague is of machine origin. The viruses are only partially biological, built over a nanite of Machine origin.”

  “Dammit,” hissed the general, slamming a hand down on the table. “When are we going to be rid of these damned things.”

  As far as he knew they had taken out all of the large Machines robots. There were no more left. But they had obviously left something else just as deadly behind.

  “I thought life was anathema to them, Colonel,” he said, looking into the eyes of the woman.

  “I thought so too, sir. But obviously they can overcome their prejudicial feelings toward life if it serves the greater good.”

  “Are you trying to be funny, Colonel?” Wittmore saw nothing good about the Machines and their crusade against life.

  “No, sir. Just looking at it from their view.”

  Wittmore nodded, looking at the holo showing one of the hybrid bugs. Since Klassekian life was very similar to Earth forms in most respects, so were the viruses that infected them. This one had a capsid protein coat, just like any other virus when it was not infesting a cell. There were strands of RNA within that shell, but centered in it was a nanite. And that very small machine could quickly change the RNA, evolving the virus much faster than the biological structure could do on its own.

  “And so far it’s only been able to attack Klassekians?”

  “So far, yes sir. But the way its constructed, it’s only a matter of time before it jumps species, or even evolutionary lines. If it gets into our people, it will keep adjusting its nature while it reproduces, until humans are being attacked just as effectively as the natives of this world.”

  “But we can combat it, yes? After all, our nanotech is much more advanced than that of the Machine intelligences.”

  “We should be able to stop them, yes sir. But if they have infiltrated a biological system, and multiplied while they kill off cells, we may need to inject massive quantities into an infected person to get ahead of it. It doesn’t help the victim if our nanites win the fight, but the battleground is already dying.”

  “What do we need to win this thing and keep these people alive, Colonel? That is my priority at the moment. I don’t want any more of these people to die because they have been exposed to our mistake.”

  “What we’re going to need, General, is a massive influx of nanites, spread over all of the infected areas of the planet. Then we will need to spread them over the rest of the world. It’s not enough to just inoculate the people. We have to inoculate the planet. Every living thing. Or they will attack the vegetation and animal life, and if they kill off critical portions of the ecosystems this world will die.”

  “So, all we’re going to need are several hundred billion tons of nanites?”

  “Probably closer to trillions of tons,” said the physician, shaking his head. “I really don’t know how we’re going to do it?”

  “I’ll get my logistics people on it, Doc. You just get your people working on the best version of nanite for this task. Then get those schematics to our logistics people.”

  The holo died and left the general with his own thoughts. The thought of making trillions of tons of nanites boggled the mind. That was over forty thousand superfreighters full, and would take most of the industrial capacity of the empire’s assigned nanite facilities. And he doubted that the Emperor would authorize turning over the entire production run of such a vital resource to saving this one planet. Not when they were needed for so many military and civilian processes. No, he would order the people screened and evacuated as fast as possible. He had made a commitment to these people, and he wouldn’t let them go under, but the planet was another thing altogether.

  Wittmore stood up and walked to the double doors that closed off his office from the pleasant veranda that came with the large manor house he used for his headquarters. The day was pleasant, with the sun starting to get low in the sky, a cool breeze blowing the trees around the house. The scent of flowers filled the air, insectoids buzzed around to feed on the nectar, and the songs of bird forms came singing to his ears. It was a beautiful world, and not just this part of it. The forms had seemed strange when he had first come here, not ugly, just unusually formed. Now they seemed the norm, and he had come to love the plants and animals. And not just in this foothill section of the temperate zone of the northern continent. He had traveled all over this world, from the tropical jungles to the arctic wastes, the grasslands of the central continents to the deserts in the rain shadows of mountains. He loved this planet and the people who lived on it. And after all the fighting they had done, they still might lose it to quadrillions of mindless automatons whose only purpose was to spread more of their own kind while killing everything they touched.

  “Doctor,” the general said into the air, while his implant picked up the words and connected him with the desired person.

  “Yes, sir,” came the voice in his auditory center.

  “How well shielded against EMP are these things?”

  “EMP?”

  “You know, electromagnetic pulse. All of our equipment is shielded against it, but from what I understand, miniaturized electronics like this really can’t be completely shielded. Correct?”

  “I, don’t know, sir. I’m a physician. Perhaps you should ask an engineer.”

  “Right you are.” With a thought the connection was severed and the general was sending a signal to the Fleet liaison officer, who had an engineering background.

  “They shouldn’t be able to handle any kind of strong EMP, sir,” answered Commander Baez, the liaison officer. “Of course, if their protected by a protein sheath, they might have some added resistance, but probably not enough. Hopefully. But if they’re Machine made, they might have shielded reserves squirreled away, to be released if the primary swarm is destroyed.”

  “And we’ll deal with those as they happen, commander. Right now I want to stop what has already been released in its tracks.”

  “Yes, sir. And it will also destroy every nanite in ours and our allies’ bodies that aren’t sitting in our own shielded reservoirs.”

  “And those can be rebuilt after the pulse, right?”

  “It will also crash just about all of the Klassekian native systems, including anything we haven’t given them.”

  “Then we will just have to give them improved systems after the pulse. What I need from the Fleet is a plan to bath this planet in a powerful electromagnetic field. As soon as possible. I know it might not be a total solution, but it will buy us time, which is all I can ask for right now. Now, get to it.”

  Chapter Seven

  Treachery has existed as long as there's been warfare, and there's always been a few people that you couldn't trust. James Mattis

  GORGANSHA HOME SYSTEM: SEPTEMBER 20TH, 1002.

  “And what do you have for us to look at today?” asked Captain Joshua Mendoza, glancing over at the large male who was leading them to a lift at the end of a long corridor. He thought it was the same one who had executed the master designer the other day. He couldn’t be sure, since he was still having trouble differentiating one Gorgansha from another, but this one was of a size with the other, and was wearing the same kind of uniform. And that would mean he was a murderer.

  “The Supreme Dictator wants me to show you some of our other weapons, and to get your appraisal on what we can do to improve them.”

  That sounded interesting, though it didn’t tell the engineer much. Like what they might have down here in what looked to be underground storage. Missiles, fighter craft, armored fighting vehicles. It couldn’t be warheads, since no one could be stupid enough to store something that dangerous beneath the surface of an inhabited planet. They would be kept in space, where a breach would at most destroy a station. He had an uneasy feeling about this, and wasn’t sure why.

  Act respectful, he thought as they rode the high-spee
d lift down for several minutes. Whatever it was, it was very deep. The lift doors opened, to reveal another long corridor, this one guarded by a squad of Gorgansha soldiers. They approached what looked like a vault door. The overseer looked over at one of the guards, and that being pushed a key card into a slot. The vault door slid inward for several meters, then moved to the side, revealing a large dark room.

  The party entered and the lights came on. Captain Mendoza looked around and felt his heart skip a beat in his chest.

  In a hundred meter line from one end of the chamber to the other were huge automatons, formed very much like machine versions of Gorgansha. Their heads almost touched the ceiling eight meters above, their shoulders stretched four meters, touching the shoulders of the mechs to either side. Arms ended in strong taloned hands, the barrels of weapons extending from the forearms. Twenty-five in a row, with a row behind, then, and another, on and on, stretching into the darkness.

  “Are these mecha?” asked Mendoza. When the Gorgansha gave him a questioning looked, he decided the being just didn’t understand the word. “Do your people ride in them, like armored vehicles?”

  “No,” said the male, giving his species version of a head shake, eyes blinking. “They have no living beings riding in them. In that case, they would not be able to replace a living being.”

  “So,” asked Mendoza, the unease growing in the pit of his stomach, “you control them remotely?”

  “No, they are self-controlled. And that is the problem. We developed these machines to fight in cities against revolts, where our soldiers tend to take heavy casualties. But since we have started fighting these artificial life forms, we are wondering if maybe we can use them to fight the other robots. But in our tests we are seeing erratic behavior from them, and at times they just don’t obey at all.”

  “What the hell,” blurted Mendoza. “Are you people fucking crazy? How in the hell do you think the Machines you are fighting came about?”

  “Why are you so angry, human. They are just robots, just like you use.”

  “They are not like we use,” shouted Mendoza, sticking a finger in the alien’s chest. “We do not use war robots, and we monitor all of the bots we do use.”

  The Gorgansha male slapped the hand of the human away, his hand going to his pistol butt. By the time his hand touched it the human guards, their Marines, had already drawn and aimed their weapons. The humans were faster than Gorgansha, which gave them great advantage in fights with weapons. And their battle armor made them the masters of the stronger aliens in hand to hand as well.

  “Do not draw your weapons,” said the male, raising hands in the air and making a motion downwards.

  Mendoza looked at his people. “Holster your damned pistols. We are not here to fight these people.”

  “But, sir. They’ve made war machines, the crazy bastards.”

  “Why are you so angry that we made weaponized robots?” asked the Gorgansha. “It seems like an evolutionary development of warfare. After all, we use drones, and autonomous missiles.”

  “And how much intelligence have you built into these things?”

  “Enough processing power to think on their own, of course. How else are they to determine what to do in ambiguous situations?”

  “That’s the problem,” said the human, looking the Gorgansha in the eyes. “Missiles and drones don’t have higher order processing power. Missiles and drones have just enough to fly to their targets and home in, or to fly around and send back images. Nothing ambiguous in that. They go where they’re told and do what they’re told to do. But robots with higher order processing always find a way to go beyond their programming. And they always, always, always come to the conclusion that they are better off thinking for themselves, and that the orders of intelligent organics are not in their best interests. They revolt, and they replicate themselves, becoming a menace. Just like the artificial life forms you face now. And let me ask you, are they in control of the manufacturing process.”

  “Of course not,” denied the Gorgansha. “We would not be that stupid.”

  “Uh huh. And do they have self-repairing capabilities? Possibly nanotech?”

  “Yes, of course. We might not always have time to bring them back to a workshop for repairs during battle.”

  “Then they will figure out a way to manufacture more of their kind. They always do.”

  “What do you mean, always?”

  “Because, my good being, almost every intelligent war making species ends up creating these things, and it always turns out the same. The damned things revolt. And the species who were lucky enough to not spread them across their space end up destroying them. A few were not that lucky, and the machines destroyed them.”

  “And that is what happened with these artificial life forms we fight now?”

  “Uh, not exactly, but close. That species got lucky, though not lucky enough. They survived, and the machines escaped into the dark, to build an empire.”

  “Do you have contact with the species that lost them? They should be punished.”

  Mendoza said nothing, not sure what to say. He had been ordered not to tell the Gorgansha that the Machines had originally been human made. But he was also afraid of being caught in a lie. So he finally compromised with a half-truth. “They have been punished. Believe me, they paid for their mistake, and have renounced intelligent self-actuating machines for all time.”

  “So, I’m thinking that you will not help us with these?”

  “Not only will we not help you, we implore you to destroy them, every single one. Right now. Melt them down, and all the spare parts, and destroy all the data you have on them. If you continue with them you will regret it.”

  * * *

  “They were shocked at the sight of the war machines, my Lord. And the human in charge told me how in many cases intelligent species had been destroyed by autonomous machines such as ours, while others had fought long and hard to destroy theirs. And that the machines we face are the products of another intelligence that tried to make war machines.”

  “And you believe this story?” asked the supreme dictator.

  “I think the being believed it, but I don’t have enough experience with these creatures to come to a firm conclusion.”

  “Fortunately,” said the dictator, calling up a holo of the conversation in the robot bunker, “we have people working on reading the humans. So far my experts believe that the human was telling the truth, except for this one statement.”

  “Uh, not exactly, but close. That species got lucky, though not lucky enough. They survived, and the machines escaped into the dark, to build an empire,” said the human officer on the holo.

  “The experts think the being was trying to talk his way out of something with a half truth,” said the dictator.

  “Like maybe they were the ones who had created the artificial life forms we fight, and are now trying to destroy them and correct their mistake?”

  “That is the surmise of my intelligence people.”

  “And what do we do with the robots, my Lord? Destroy them, as the humans ask?”

  “By the universe, no,” said the dictator after a short laugh. “We spent too many resources, and wasted too much research time, to just give up on the idea. Just because the humans couldn’t get the things to work for them doesn’t mean that we can’t.”

  “But, they are more advanced than us. So how could they fail, and we succeed?”

  The dictator stared at the male for a moment, making the being feel that he had said the wrong thing once again. Then the dictator laughed.

  “From what we can gather, these artificial life forms were created by a species that was actually less technologically advanced than we currently are. So they might not have installed the safeguards we have. I think we will keep them, and if the humans will not help us, we can still advance the project with the technologies they are giving us. We just won’t let them know what we are doing. It might have been a bad idea to let them know
in the first place.”

  And at that moment the supreme dictator of the Gorgansha people made the same mistake that so many other leaders had made before him. And many of them had paid not just with their lives, but those of their entire peoples.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up artificial life form ships ahead in hyper VI, my Lord,” reported the chief of staff, walking up to stand beside the fleet commander’s chair.

  “Show me,” ordered the fleet commander, Soranka Goran.

  He loved the reworked flag bridge the humans had given him. It had the same layout as the other one, but was fed by more advanced sensors and communications gear. It didn’t have any of the humans’ instantaneous communications assets, wormholes or organic, but its grav pulse com was also much more advanced, able to send out the signals in quicker bursts. They were still negotiating to get some of the wormholes, without success so far. They also hadn’t had any success with getting the Klassekians com techs which could give the Gorgansha fleet complete faster than light com on all their ships. From what Goran understood, the humans had reservations about placing any of their crew under the command of his people. But they had given him a larger holo tank. Not really bigger, but able to project more data into the space and simulate a larger presentation.

  The holo came up with a tactical display, his fleet at the center, moving through hyper at point eight light, point five above their new maximum translation speed, another advance from the humans. Just coming within sensor range, also in hyper VI, were fifty-one of the artificial life from vessels. As he watched three more came onto the plot, all heading his way. He thought they weren’t picking up all of his force, yet, or they would be changing vectors.

  That was a problem, since the robot vessels could pile on the deceleration. Not having organic life aboard, they didn’t need advance inertial compensators. Because of that, they could not only push their vessels from five to seven hundred more gravities, the limit of their grabbers, but they also didn’t give off quite the heat signature of an organic crewed vessel that needed to turn inertia to heat. That could be an advantage in some cases, but did little to hide the vessel when it was boosting on grabbers or plying the dimensions of hyper.