Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

by Doug Dandridge

  “Why you…”

  “Quiet,” yelled Douhou, looking at one man and then the other. “Quit acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. There is a death machine on its way to that system to kill it, and we don’t have time for childish arguments.”

  Everyone was silent for a minute after the dressing down, while Douhou continued to look from face to face.

  “What stupid plan was this, Gertrude?” asked Douhou, her face softening a bit.

  “I suggested that we upgrade every missile we have to hyper capable weapons,” said Hasselhoff, trying to ignore the glare that Sims was bestowing upon her. “Then take our entire force out and hit them hard. With a little luck we can take out both the vessels already around this system, and the escorts of the planet killer.”

  “And what about the damned planet killer itself,” whined Sims, a tick appearing over one eye. “What are you going to do about that, you fucking idiot? Hope you get lucky?”

  “I’m hoping we can lure it away from this system,” said Hasselhoff, ignoring her superior officer who looked like he was about to have a fit. “With some skill, and yes, some luck, we can give Klassek some more time.”

  “And when it still comes here,” hissed Sims. “What then?”

  “What about these ancients who saved the planet from the supernova?” asked Douhou. “Surely they have the power to destroy this thing. Or maybe just make it go away, into whatever dimension you found yourself in, Commodore.”

  “They told me that they were leaving here after they returned the planet and my ship to normal space,” said Hasselhoff, shaking her head. “I think they’ve taken off, gone to handle some other problem.”

  “Pity,” said Douhou. “We could have used them.”

  “Which still begs the question,” said Sims, his voice noticeably shaking. “How in the hell are you going to get rid of that thing. Just leading it away isn’t going to stop it. It will eventually come here, and we will still be fucked, unless we get a complete battle fleet from the Empire.”

  “And we just might get that fleet, given time,” said Wittmore. “And Gertrude’s plan may give us that time.”

  “And how likely is that?” asked Sims, his voice cracking again.

  Wittmore looked at the Rear Admiral, wondering if he was going to come apart in this meeting.

  “How are you going to destroy them if they only follow for a short time, then head right here. We don’t have a fucking nova bomb to hit them with. Or do you intend to hit them with a black hole.”

  “Well,” said Wittmore with a smile. “We do happen to have one sitting six light months from here. It’s kind of new, but it should still be effective.”

  “That’s suicide,” yelled Sims. “I will not lead my force into that hell of radiation. Do you hear me, I won’t.”

  Everyone stared at Sims for a few moments, while the man sat there hyperventilating, a look of panic on his face.

  “Rear Admiral Sims,” said an expressionless Admiral Douhou, her eyes locked on the man. “You are hereby relieved of command and your brevet rank removed.”

  Sims’ eyes widened in shock, and he stammered as if he wanted to speak, but couldn’t put voice to his words.

  “Commodore Hasselhoff, you are hereby promoted to the permanent rank of commodore, and raised to the brevet rank of rear admiral. Congratulations are in order, I guess. Though I’m not sure they are appropriate to be raised in rank just to lead a mission that could surely lead to the death of your command.”

  Gertrude nodded, speechless.

  “Will you carry out your plan, Admiral?” asked Douhou, her eyes boring into those of the newly promoted two star.

  “I will, ma’am,” replied Hasselhoff. “And I’m sure my people will too. They’re good spacers, and they know their duty.”

  “Very well, then. I leave it to you to work up your plan. And Commodore Sims,” she said, shifting her gaze to the newly demoted flag officer. “You are hereby assigned to liaison duty to General Wittmore. You will be on that planet when that thing comes to kill it, so you had better do everything in your power to make sure Admiral Hasselhoff’s plans work.”

  The blood seemed to drain completely from the man’s face, and he looked away from Douhou’s image and back to the floor of whatever chamber of his ex-flagship he happened to be in.

  “Now, I’ll let you people get to it. I’ve got some coms to send to see if we can get some more help out here ahead of schedule. Douhou out.” The com died, followed a moment later by the one from Commodore Sims. Wittmore shook his head in disgust, thinking of the waste of an officer they had sent him. He looked back at Hasselhoff, whose expression showed the weight that had just been dropped on her.

  “We’ll be setting up the orbital factories to give you everything we can, Gertrude,” he told the Admiral. “Just let us know your priorities.”

  “Will do, General. Now, let me get with my staff so we can do some planning, and I’ll get back to you with those priorities in a moment. One thing we will need is those hyper capable missiles. At least the hyperdrive units for everything we already have.”

  “We’ll get on it,” agreed Wittmore.

  The last holo in the room blank, leaving the General alone with the Klassekian President.

  “And some of my people consider you the new gods,” said the President, staring at Wittmore. “But you have the same troubles that we do, disagreements, cowardice, and probably many more than I saw here today.”

  “Yep,” said Wittmore, nodding. “You got your impression from the best we had to offer. Now you’re seeing some of our worst. Though, to be fair, Sims was probably a great explorer and diplomat. He just isn’t a warrior, and that’s what we need right now.”

  “Can you save us?”

  “I can’t tell you that for sure, Mr. President. But what I can tell you is that we will do our best, and we will try to stop it, at the cost of our lives.”

  “Then I feel much better, General,” said the President. “Because your people have accomplished wonders, so what is one more.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.

  Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

  Edgar Allan Poe

  SPACE TWENTY DAYS HYPER VI TRANSIT FROM KLASSEK, APRIL 10TH, 1002.

  “Grav wave coming in from Earhart, ma’am,” called out Lt. Lei, the Com Officer of Exploration Command battle cruiser Challenger. “They’re picking up the Machine force at extreme range. So far only the big one.”

  Rear Admiral Gertrude Hasselhoff nodded as she sat in her bridge command chair. She had never transferred to the flag bridge that all capital ships carried, nor had she appointed another captain to her flagship. She was still feeling her way into flag rank, having never attended the flag officer’s school that was almost mandatory for promotion to her present level.

  Dammit, I feel more comfortable in my own chair on my own bridge, she thought. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her XO, but he was really good at his job, and she didn’t feel comfortable moving people around before a major battle. If it turns out to be a major battle, and not just a suicide run.

  She looked over at the plot in the central holo tank, showing her force, fourteen battle cruisers, all explorers; one heavy cruiser, her only real warship, eleven light cruisers and eighteen destroyers. A six destroyer scout force, led by the DD Amelia Earhart, was ahead at extreme grav com range, just inside of their graviton track. The destroyers on the plot were clear as they traversed the higher dimension. They were all hyper VII ships, coasting along at a velocity that would transit the same amount of normal space in the same amount of time as the ships in VI, and they would overfly the Machine force with the enemy unable to touch them in the higher dimension.

  Her own ship, like most of her force, was only hyper VI capable. The engineers at Klassek had built up her hyperdrive units to look like VIIs, as had been done to five other battle cruisers i
n her force. If it became necessary to implement the decoy plan, she would have ships that looked like they contained the technology the Machines wanted. If things went wrong, and one of the vessels was actually captured, it would have none of the VII tech aboard, and all databases would be scrubbed clean before the first robot could come aboard. That last part might not be necessary, since Hasselhoff couldn’t think of a captain that wouldn’t self-destruct her ship before letting those things get to their crews. It was something she had thought about, and she knew she wouldn’t hesitate to turn her ship and crew into plasma before turning them over to the tender mercies of the Machines. And hopefully the Machines would consider that if they ended up in a chase to the trap.

  “All ships, prepare for battle. All tubes loaded with hyper capable weapons.” She wasn’t really sure she had needed to add that last, since they were in hyper VI, and the enemy was also in VI. She had some VII capable ships in her force, but with most of them only capable of VI, she didn’t want to split her forces between dimensions, and all of the problems with coordination that would cause.

  “All ships full decel,” was the next order out of her mouth. On a head on pass like this they would only have seconds of firing time with their beam weapons. She wanted to balance having enough velocity that the enemy couldn’t hammer any of her ships, with the ability to get in some shots of her own. They had been coasting forward at point two five light, just below the limit for her ships to transit hyper, with a closing speed of right outside of the velocity of light.

  They would be launching the missiles as soon as the enemy force appeared on their plot. The missiles would only have minutes to accelerate, but again the closing velocity would be as optimal as possible.

  “Destroyers reporting that they will be overflying in one minute, thirty-one seconds,” called out Lei.

  And we’ll see how they handle that maneuver, thought the Admiral. She was pulling out all the stops on this attack. That was the only way she could see to win this fight, and not have to resort to the backup plan that had too many unknowns for her to feel comfortable with.

  The giant enemy ship was now clear on the plot, while the other enemy ships were still hidden by distance. Their own destroyers were on the plot despite their distance due to being in VII, where their graviton signature from hyperdrive projectors and grabber units was over four times the distance it would have been in VI.

  “On my command, all ships fire,” ordered Hasselhoff as the timer clicked down. At seven seconds to the destroyer force overfly the Admiral looked over at the Com Officer. “Fire.”

  The Challenger vibrated as her forward tubes released their missiles, accelerating through the tubes and cutting in their own grabber units as soon as they cleared, jumping ahead at five thousand gravities acceleration. The other ships fired, and one hundred and seventy missiles headed toward the enemy force, time of impact, fifteen minutes. At the same time the hyper VII destroyers released their forward missiles, twelve weapons jumping out and opening holes in hyper down to the VI dimension, almost on top of the enemy force. A moment later, as they passed through, they all launched both of their broadsides, another forty-eight missiles dropping to the lower dimension, immediately targeting the ships around them.

  The Machines reacted quickly, as they always did, but the situation was unfamiliar to them, something they had not simulated. Missiles appeared within light seconds of the Machine force, within all but their close in weapons and lasers. They still knocked out thirty-three of the missiles, while the Imperial weapons achieved eight hits and many more near misses. Five enemy ships turned into expanding clouds that faded out of hyper, while one more also translated despite surviving the hit. The huge battle station took one hit and several near misses, which did little more than scar the thick armor.

  If only I had more hyper VII ships, thought the Admiral, watching as the destroyers went into full acceleration before leaving the plot. They would slow to a stop and come back, using their transiting of VII to catch up to the enemy and perform another such attack.

  “I want all vessels to conduct complete scans on that big bastard when we pass,” ordered Hasselhoff

  Thirty seconds after the initial volley the Imperial force fired again, sending a hundred and seventy more missiles into the enemy force.

  The counter ticked down, until, at six and a half minutes to their first wave impact the enemy fired, each enemy ship releasing two of their eight thousand ton weapons that streaked off at over four thousand gravities. That was only forty-eight weapons, a wave that her force should have been able to handle without much problem, and she wondered why they didn’t fire more, especially with the big bastard that could probably carry thousands of those weapons.

  Missile waves passed, and five minutes later the human weapons were in final approach. Closing velocity was over point nine nine light, with the enemy ships plowing ahead at point nine c. Missiles started dropping off the plot as they forged inward. Only twenty-nine made it into attack range, and of those, there were only two hits. Another enemy ship dropped from the plot, while the huge planet killer shrugged off another hit.

  “We’re seeing no effect of our missile hits on the planet killer,” stated Lt. Commander Singh, the Tactical Officer.

  “They can’t be that tough, can they?” groaned Hasselhoff, wondering how they were going to kill the thing. The missile that hit it was closing enough to generate multiple gigatons of kinetic energy, added to the one gigaton warhead. It had to penetrate, no matter how tough their armor.

  The enemy weapons came in, while the Imperial force maneuvered furiously and fired with all lasers and particle beams. They opened up with the close in projectile systems, whose rounds could only target out to a couple of thousand kilometers before they dropped out of hyper, fractions of a second after they left the hyperfield of the ship. Two weapons struck, by chance both hitting the same light cruiser within a thousandth of a second, while three near miss proximity hits damaged one battle cruiser and a destroyer.

  The second wave of human missiles hit, the Imperial ships now in visual range, but still two light minutes away. This time none of the enemy vessels dropped off the plot, and over the half the missiles disappeared in one mass.

  “What in the hell was that?” demanded the Admiral, looking over at Singh. “Talk to me Tac.”

  “I have no idea, ma’am. They were just, blotted out.”

  At two minutes time, while still twenty-two seconds from hitting the enemy force, the light from the missile attack reached them, attenuated by hyperspace and enhanced by the computer systems. There was nothing seen from the planet killer, now leading the formation, and fifty-seven missiles all dropped out of hyper as one.

  “Analysis is showing gravitons in a wide beam,” said Calvin, staring back at the Admiral.

  “All ships, evade,” called out Hasselhoff. “Continue firing runs on the outside of their formation.”

  The orders went out, fifteen seconds from contact. Some of the ships reacted immediately, many hesitated at the change of orders They had been planning to go right through the enemy formation and launch broadsides to both side of the ships. Now they were being told to avoid and only bring one broadside to bear. Three battle cruisers, a pair of light cruisers and five of the destroyers didn’t react in time, and still penetrated the enemy formation. Or at least that was their course, when beams of incredible power, this time lasers, reached out from the planet killer and speared all of those vessels. The destroyers fared much as the missiles had moments before, if in a slightly different manner. The beams, each more powerful than what a score of battleships could have put out from all four of their laser rings, flashed through electromag fields and armor in an instant. Half of each two hundred thousand ton ship flared into vapor, antimatter breached an instant later, and five destroyers and over fifteen hundred crew were gone in a moment.

  The light cruisers lasted a second longer, and only converted a quarter of their mass to vapor before they blew apar
t. Two of the battle cruisers held up for the several seconds it took to pass through the formation before they too blew into plasma, while the third lost its entire bow section but otherwise made it through.

  Challenger shook from hits from the other Machine ships, while she returned fire with lasers and particle beams. Most of the fast moving particle fell out of hyper before they reached their targets, but enough hit to cause some damage. And at the proper moment every ship still functional fired every broadside tube they had facing the enemy, then whipped around at a velocity greater than their compensators could handle to fire the other side’s weapons.

  Hasselhoff was flung to the side of her armor, the contacts of her suit to seat holding her from flying off. Damage klaxons sounded as casualty figures came in on her implant, crew who had not been in secure positions smacking into the hull. Another battle cruiser and a destroyer flared and died as the monster ship targeted them.

  “Helm. Get us the hell out of here. Full accel.”

  The gravity forces pushed her back into her seat as the battle cruiser leapt forward at fifteen gravities over what her compensators could handle. Her vision started to black before the battle armor forced blood back into her brain, and a killer beam flew through the region she would have occupied if not for the burst of acceleration. Another light cruiser was not so lucky, and it died before it could follow the lead of the flagship.

  The two forces continued to trade beams as the human force flew off. Eight more enemy ships disappeared from the plot, and they could pick up a series of hits on the planet killer that flared bright into space, and left the intact behemoth to forge on after the blasts cleared.

  The enemy continued to fire on the Imperial vessels as they opened the distance, their random evasive maneuvers making them difficult targets to hit. A few vessels took more damage, but the task force escaped further destruction and continued on through hyper, less ten of their number.

  “Do you have a sensor scan of that big bastard?” asked Hasselhoff, breathing hard and trying to fight the shock that wanted to leave her a helpless quivering lump in her chair. My God, but we all would have been killed if we had followed my initial plan, she thought as she tried to calm her breathing.