“Order the attack wing to follow us in,” Andrew ordered, shaking his head. The Killers didn’t have the numbers or firepower advantage any longer and they were being mobbed every time they showed themselves. What did it matter if they swatted one or a hundred of the gnats surrounded them, if there were thousands more gnats ready and awaiting their chance to tear the enemy ship apart? The humans had had advantages in numbers before, but they had never been decisive, until now. The new weapons weren't dangerous in small doses, but with thousands of blows…
The Killers didn’t stand a chance.
“Wormhole opening, right on top of us,” Gary snapped. “They’re coming through!”
“Evasive action,” Andrew barked. There was barely any time to react. They skimmed the hull of the Killer starship and barely avoided the burst of white light fired at them in passing. Other starships weren't so lucky. They slammed into the Killer starship hull and died, smashed to nothing against the impregnable hulls. Andrew snapped orders, bringing the attack wing around to engage the new target as it opened fire, sweeping dozens of human starships out of existence. “Take us in, now!”
“Gravity surges,” Gary said. The humans had barely touched the newcomer. “They’re leaping out again!”
The Killer starship vanished again, leaving behind nothing, but a backwash of gravity distortion. The disruptions in local space-time were dangerous, damaging a dozen destroyers that were too close to the wormhole, but survivable. The human starships could and did compensate for them, but it was a nasty new trick, if a dangerous one. Other Killer starships were using the same tactic, ramming their undamaged hulls into human ships and relying on their hulls to save them from serious damage. The starships that couldn’t adapt to the changing face of war – if the briefing had been accurate, that would be most of the Killers – would probably have been wiped out already.
They broke through into a moment of clear space and he looked down at the overall battle. The Killers had lost no less than fifty-seven craft in less than ten minutes, although it had felt longer. The fighting was raging all over the sphere’s exterior, yet the Killers were – for the first time – forced to fight on the defensive, and they were losing. The handful of remaining Killer starships that weren't jumping around in their wormholes were being hammered to death even as he watched. The Killers didn’t seem to be sending in new starships. Perhaps they had finally run out of ships, or perhaps they had decided that they were losing too many ships for nothing. Who knew…?
“Gravity surges,” Gary snapped, sharply. A mighty hand seemed to pick up and shake the Lightning. “They’re firing general blasts at us!”
“Who is?” Andrew snapped. No new Killer wormholes had opened near them, yet they were under attack. Space itself was twisting around their position, trying to rip them to shreds. “What are they doing to us?”
“They’re using the sphere itself,” Gary said, slowly. The updates were streaming in from the MassMind, which was watching through their sensors. The sphere was bending time and space around them, deploying its formidable power as a defensive force. Andrew had to admire the sheer power the Killers were deploying, even as he loathed the way they used it; the sphere might succeed in destroying some of the ships, even though they were wrapped in warp bubbles. “I think they’re channelling energy through the…ah, buildings and pushing it out at us.”
“And if they can tap an entire star, they can probably produce enough energy to swat us, eventually,” Andrew agreed. The Admiral was coordinating the remaining part of the battle, but he had no doubt what he would order. “David, take us down towards the sphere. Prepare for a strafing run!”
The sphere was already dominating the horizon, even from light-minutes away. Flying down towards its surface was like flying right at the surface of a planet, with the exact same result if they crashed into the ground. No one was entirely sure what the Killers had used to construct their Dyson Sphere, but the smart money was on something not unlike their hull material, held together by power supplied by the star. Bombarding it with conventional weapons might just be useless, yet even if it wasn't, it would be…tricky to inflict enough damage to matter. The sphere could lose a surface area a hundred times the size of Jupiter without even noticing…
What do they have inside the sphere? Andrew asked himself, as they zoomed closer. It was impossible to believe that they were not already within weapons range, yet they were still light-seconds away from the target. What do they have inside that will be exposed when we open fire?
The thought nagged at him, even as he checked on the deployment of his attack wing and that of the other attack wings that were closing in on the surface. A human-built Dyson Sphere would have an interior terraformed to look like Earth’s surface; indeed, some of the more outrageous plans put before the Community had consisted of a massive Dyson Sphere that would have housed much of the Community’s population, yet would have been completely undetectable by the Killers. The fact that the news that a Dyson Sphere was under construction would have spread across the galaxy at the speed of light – simple optical observation would have caught signs of the construction program, assuming the Killers had such a system – and in any case, if the Killers discovered the Sphere, the result would have been a quick massacre and the end of the human race.
And yet…what would the Killers have inside a Dyson Sphere? Their own atmosphere – there was no reason why they couldn’t duplicate a gas giant atmosphere inside the sphere – or something else, something more dangerous? It all came back to a different question, the real reason why Dyson Spheres were likely to be impractical, even in a galaxy without Killers. There was a near-limitless supply of Earth-like worlds in the galaxy, so why bother going to the expense of gathering the material and building the Dyson Sphere in the first place? It would be a serious dent even to a post-scarcity society. Just out of curiously, he’d looked it up; it would take the entire Community at least two hundred years to build a Dyson Sphere. The Killers didn’t need to build a fully-fledged sphere just to tap a star, did they? Their technology would have let them take everything they required without the sphere.
“We are entering firing range,” Gary said. His voice was hushed. Perhaps he, too, was thinking of ancient Old Earth fighter jets strafing a city. They would have had comparably limited results until the deployment of atomic bombs. “Weapons are online and ready to fire.”
Andrew slid his mind back into the neural net. “Open fire,” he ordered. “Tactical pattern delta.”
Lightning shivered as she unleashed a spread of implosion bolts on the surface of the sphere, only to see them splash harmlessly against the surface. Other starships, bombarding planet-sized towers and buildings, had slightly more luck, but they were nowhere near punching a hole through the sphere. The explosions didn’t even scratch the surface.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Gary said. It was hardly the most professional of reports, but Andrew couldn’t blame him. “Sir, the implosion bolts are not breaking through! They’re not even having any effect at all.”
“Hellfire,” Andrew hissed. “Contact the MassMind; we need an explanation and we need it now!”
“They’re wondering if the sphere isn’t made out of something they hold together with force fields,” Gary said, after a moment. “If that were the case, the implosion bolts would be useless.”
Andrew clenched his teeth. “Open fire with energy torpedoes, maximum spread,” he snapped. “Order the other starships to concentrate their fire on the same location.”
The starship shook again as it unleashed another spread of weapons. “We’re having some effect,” Gary reported, slowly. “We caused some carbon scoring on the surface. At this rate, we should be through in another few hundred years.”
“Add antimatter weapons to the spread,” Andrew snapped. White blasts flared up from the surface as the antimatter weapons detonated. “Damnation!”
“Wormhole opening,” Gary snapped. “They’re bringing up additional starship!”
Andrew opened his mouth to order a swarm attack, and then something else occurred to him. The new Killer starship was hanging right above the surface of the sphere, held aloft by powerful gravity beams. If it could be destabilised…
“Keep the fleet back,” he ordered, slowly. It was the work of a moment to link into the command network and transmit new orders to the ramming ships. “Go!”
The first ramming ship came out of Anderson Drive and kicked in its drive field, disengaging the safety interlocks as it moved. Without a warp bubble, it wouldn’t move as quickly as the other ships, but it hardly mattered. The faster it was moving in normal space, the more mass it would carry. The Killer starship ignored them; perhaps believing that if they wanted to crash against an undamaged hull there was no reason to prevent them. The ramming fleet crashed home, slamming the Killer ship down towards the surface of the sphere…and it crashed before it could arrest its fall. A massive explosion blew right through the sphere, releasing a deadly blast of hard radiation…
“I think we’ve made a terrible mistake,” Gary announced, grimly. Andrew could only agree. Stars didn’t put out such radiation. Hindsight was mocking him, claiming that it should have been obvious right from the start. “That’s not a star, sir; that’s a black hole. How the hell do we destroy that?”
Chapter Forty-Five
Paula Handley felt as if she were drowning within a virtual universe of data, surrounded by entire galaxies of icons and symbols representing different aspects of the Shiva Control System. She could reach out with her mind into the stream of data pouring through her head and alter anything, affecting the outside universe in ways that would have been impossible, only a few weeks ago. The black hole’s power existed on levels even she hadn’t grasped until they had worked out the full scope of the Killer Communications System. She felt almost as if she could do anything.
She was barely aware of Chris’s hand holding hers, squeezing it from time to time, reminding her of the universe outside. The virtual universe was a world away from the more normal virtual universes that absorbed the attention of so many humans, allowing them to shut out the universe; there was an edge to her private universe that tore at her, sapping her strength even as she fought to control it. She might be powerful indeed, but she was not God, even within the world she’d created. If it started to swing out of control, she might become overwhelmed…and die. The system she’d created was far more volatile than anything the MassMind might supervise. She could feel its presence within the network, guiding her and helping her to hold it all together, but even the MassMind was tiny compared to the universe opening up in front of her.
“We’re lucky we didn’t know about any of this when we started plotting to take a Killer starship,” she said. Her voice sounded weak and tinny in her own ears. She wasn't even sure if she were talking aloud, or merely thinking. It crossed her mind that she could link into the speakers now and think her thoughts aloud, but she pulled herself away from that distraction. “We would never have dared even thinking about challenging them.”
The Killer Communications Network was more than just a communications network, she saw as it opened up in front of her. It was a vast universe of data and power, roaring away under the skein of the real universe, linked together by thousands of black holes and gravity beams. In hindsight – and hindsight was always so much clearer – she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t guessed that they’d stuck a black hole inside their Dyson Sphere. They seemed to have black holes everywhere else, or perhaps they had started with a star and eventually compressed it down to a black hole. There was no way to know, apart from asking them…and that seemed as impossible as ever. The MassMind, despite its colossal intellect, had made little progress in decrypting the messages spinning through the Killer network. The Killers were transmitting thousands of messages through their network, but it was difficult to trace the source, let alone understand them. They were even gathering their power for something else, channelling it from thousands of black holes, through the network of power links and gravity beams…for what?
“I don’t even know if they’re aware of me, or if they care,” she said, wishing for a moment that she could slip out of the new universe and talk to Chris directly, or someone else. A pair of strong arms wrapped around her would feel very good, but she didn’t dare leave her post. The Killer system had to be monitored; she even had to look at the Dyson Sphere and find a way to destroy it, whatever it took. The more she looked at it, the more she wondered how they even dared think about destroying it. The sphere was so large that it could soak up thousands of antimatter warheads and keep going. “But how do they do it?”
The Killer starship Captain Ramage had crashed into the sphere had broken through the surface, exposing the black hole inside…deep inside. Despite its mass – it was over a hundred times heavier than Shiva, suggesting that the Killers had been fattening it up for centuries – it was still tiny on a stellar scale, allowing the Killers all the room on the interior of the sphere they needed. It would let off bursts of radiation that would make the surface uninhabitable for humans, but the Killers had the technology to shield themselves. The interior was more than just a living space, she saw as the human starships flew inside, searching for targets; it was their industrial complex and nerve centre rolled into one. There had to be a way to knock out the communications network, somehow.
She focused in on the gravity fields surrounding the Dyson Sphere and frowned. She could reach out with all the gravity potential of Shiva and attempt to disrupt the Killer network, but the network would compensate instantly, using the power of thousands of black holes to either push her out, or simply route around her. The odd nature of the communications network meant that she was accessing all of their messages, but they wouldn’t care…and isolating Shiva would be relatively simply. The Dyson Sphere itself seemed to be wrapped in invisible gravity beams, firmly embedded in the universe, its sheer mass daunting to her eyes. How had they even thought of challenging such a behemoth?
The plans humans had developed for Dyson Spheres appeared in her head and she scanned them rapidly, looking for weaknesses. The human plans had been intended to surround entire stars, not black holes, but the principle was the same. They had worried about the danger of literally heating up the entire sphere until the population died from heat stroke, eventually cooking the entire interior. A star pumped out heat all the time and, in an enclosed area, would eventually end up creating an oven large enough to roast planets. The Killers had to have some way to drain off that heat and radiation – no, just radiation. The black hole wouldn’t put out any heat.
She frowned to herself as the images of the interior of the sphere grew in her mind. It was all so frustratingly slow. She had grown up in a universe where data on almost anything was available for the asking – the MassMind and the Technical Faction saw to that - but now she had to wait until the starships actually collected the data. The interior of the black hole was vast beyond imagination. The sensors were draining in data at impossible speeds and yet it was far too slow. If Anderson Drive had worked inside the sphere…
The data flowed into her head and she frowned. There was little in the sphere apart from the black hole and a set of six planet-sized objects. They rotated around the black hole at two AUs from its event horizon, wrapping it in an invisible network of gravity beams that focused and absorbed its power, pushing it away from the sphere and into the Killer network. It was enough power to reach all the way to Andromeda and wipe out the entire galaxy, simply by focusing the beams on each of the stars, sending them supernova one by one. A human mind, even a Hitler or a Stalin, would have recoiled in horror. Somehow, she thought that the Killers would merely view it as an excellent method for strip-mining entire galaxies. The Exodus might have been far less of a bright idea than its leaders had thought.
“I need you to take out those planets,” she said, almost wonderingly. How long would it take humanity to duplicate the Killer system? It wo
uld take centuries to build such a device without the Killers interfering…and they would interfere. They’d attempted to destroy Shiva, after all, and a single black hole was far less dangerous. “I need them shattered, now!”
An alarm rang in her mind, dragging her attention back to Shiva itself. The black hole was osculating wildly, its event horizon shifting without apparent cause. She stared at it through her sensors, through the view she’d developed of the Killer Communications Network, and realised exactly what the Killers had in mind. Aware of her presence, unable to dislodge her, the Killers were attempting to force open an entry and turn Shiva into a wormhole. The sheer power they could bring to bear was daunting; they were already altering the black hole’s vibrating patterns, synchronising it with another black hole somewhere in the galaxy. It was already too late to counter their move. It would be bare seconds before the Killers opened the wormhole and sent something through…
And it could be anything. She’d assumed that they would use it as a bridgehead and launch a thousand ships though it, but it could be something far more dangerous, like a discharge of energy and radiation, enough to melt her station and terminate her control of Shiva. She acted quickly, activating emergency programs she’d created for just this eventuality, and watched grimly as the black hole hiccupped. It made her smile – evidently it had eaten something that disagreed with it – as the black hole vomited, crushing the newcomer – whatever it had been – down to energy and absorbing it into its own power store. Starship or energy burst, whatever it had been, it was harmless now. It probably hadn’t even known what had hit it.
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