Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole

by Doug Dandridge

  “I thought we destroyed most of the ones that landed, and that only a few got away,” said Rizzit, taking in a sharp breath from his speaking orifice while his ingestion orifice hung open in shock.

  Wittmore thought for a moment on how to explain what was going on to someone from a tech level that had never dealt with self-replicating machines, until the Empire had introduced them here. “You know how our fabbers work, Mr. President?” He waited for a moment to let what he had said sink in.

  “You use microscopic machines to put things together atoms or molecules at a time, yes.”

  “Yes. Well, the Machines that burrowed underground will have released trillions of the same kind of nanobots each, which will have scoured the surrounding soil and rock for the substances they needed to make more of their kind. Every bit of the material in your planet will have a small but definite supply of just about every element on your world. They will gather those substances and build more of their kind, which will gather more substances, while they build up their factory and start producing robots. The longer they work, the more they will have. They will double their numbers every couple of hours, until there are swarms of them beneath the ground.”

  “And they will strike, like the ones did at Marshuk?”

  “Marshuk was probably just a probe, Mr. President. An attack to test our reactions, our ability to resist. The next attacks will be much worse.”

  “And you can’t find them while they’re underground?”

  “We’ve already found some, and hit them with the orbital particle beam batteries before they spread too far. We will find more as they grow larger and give off a greater heat signature, but the ones down deep will still be difficult to locate until they start coming up and breaking through. In some cases, we might not get to them in time. So, do you understand why we have to destroy Marshuk and make sure our Marines are ready for further attacks?”

  “I don’t like it,” said Rizzit, giving the kind of headshake he had learned from the humans. “But I understand that is it necessary. Please save us, General. After all you have already done for us, don’t let our world die.” The com died, terminated from the other end.

  “The kinetics are coming down, General,” came the voice of Kellings over the com, as a split view holo appeared in the center of the war room.

  One showed a view from orbit looking down on the city and its surrounding area. The other was a view as seen from one of the armored vehicles parked on the perimeter. The first holo showed a bright flash on the ground in the center of Marshuk, while the second showed the same strike from the ground, a bright flash, a shock wave rolling out from the blast, toppling buildings while the mushroom cloud rose into the air. A second strike came down, with the same result, and there were a pair of mushroom clouds rising, the latter one trying to catch the former. The bombardment went on for over a minute, as twenty kinetic projectiles hit the city, each with over ten megatons of force. The last eight projectiles came down on what for all intents and purposes was an area flatten and fused, the only features the craters of the four strikes prior, which had filled in the impact marks of the previous eight.

  “We’re sending in scouts, now,” called out Kellings over the com.

  The orbital view switched to a plot which showed the icons of the hundred or so suits that were moving into the city, along with a dozen armored vehicles. The other continued to show the take from the armored scout vehicle that had cast the ground level view of the kinetic strikes. It showed a wasteland as it moved forward. A flattened ground where nothing built of intelligence was connected to any other pieces of the same object. Almost all of the stonework had been reduced to powder, some of that powder fused into larger objects that were then blown apart. Here and there a few pieces of metal work, girders and such, stuck from the ground, all of them showing the effects of great heat.

  “Nothing here, ma’am,” came the voice of the scout commander.

  The view panned, zooming in on what look like the upper section of a large robot, the remains of one whose limbs had all been blasted away, the material of the head and torso almost melted through. The icons continued to move on the first holo, until they merged toward the center of the city.

  “We’re dropping nanites all through the city, ma’am,” continued the scout vehicle commander.

  The nanites they were dropping were hunter killer types. They would seek out any foreign nanites, under the control of the slightly larger command node robots, and destroy them. This area would be completely sterilized.

  And now we wait for the next outbreak, thought the General, watching as the icons of the suits and vehicles left the remains of the city, formed up with the rest of their brigade, and moved away, back to their catchment area. The General watched them for a moment, then turned his attention back to the situation in space.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  What about passion, dedication, loyalty?

  Can a robot provide those? No!

  On the other hand, it’s easier to retire a robot when its day is done.

  Stanley Bing

  “We’ll be within beam range in two minutes,” called out the Tactical Officer as the scratch squadron approached the machine force that had turned from their job of pushing rocks toward the planet to deal with them.

  Not a bad strategy, thought Captain Jamshidi, watching as the Machine ships came on.

  The Machines had already volleyed their remaining missiles, and the Command ships that still had counter missiles had engaged as many of them as possible. They had still taken out one of Jamshidi’s battle cruisers, a light cruiser and a destroyer; leaving him with two of the scout capital ships, one badly damage, two light cruisers and a destroyer, a total of just over seventeen million tons of ships. While the vessels waiting for them had about twenty-four million tons. They carried a heavier beam weapons loadout per mass, and were much more maneuverable due to not having fragile organics on board.

  “All ships, target the two forewardmost ships,” ordered Jamshidi. “I want those ships knocked out as fast as possible, then concentrate on the next two.”

  The acknowledgements came back immediately, no ship being more than a light second from any of the others. Commands went out from the Tactical Officer aboard the Glenn, setting the targeting and firing routines for all the ships so that the proper dispersion of firepower would be achieved. The computers would handle the actual attack, ships were moving too quickly and the distances were too great for slow moving organic creatures to initiate the firing. But that firing sequence still had to be approved by organic control, and the Tactical Officer his the commit key on his board that read his biometrics to confirm that he was authorized to unleash the destructive power of the ship. On the other ships of the small force the same procedure was followed until all of the vessels had the attack locked into their systems.

  “One minute,” called out the Tactical Officer, while the two forces moved closer on the plot.

  The two groups were moving with a closing velocity of point seven one light, eating up two hundred and ten thousand kilometers every second. The humans were sure that their grav lenses, further developed in the three centuries the Machines had been gone from human space, would give them the range advantage.

  “Ships firing, now,” called out the Tactical Officer, and each of the ships, now turned to the side so they could give full broadsides, opened fire with all of their lasers and particle beams. The damaged battle cruiser was missing half of its particle beams and one of its laser rings, but was still pumping out all of the energy it had. Everything was fired where they thought the enemy ships would be by the time the beam weapons got there, lasers traveling at the speed of light, particle beams slightly slower.

  The forces were a light minute apart when the beams were fired. Eighteen million kilometers. The Machine ships were moving at point three light. The beams flew through their space at forty-six seconds after firing, when the enemy ships were still at almost fourteen million kilometers
range. The chances of a hit from any single beam at this profile was slight, but the weapons were fired on a wide spread so that there would be some hits. As the forces moved closer the targeting would firm, to a point.

  Glenn shook from a couple of hits, the physical force of photons slamming into the hull while the outgassing of hull alloy acted like thrusters to push the ship in several directions at once.

  “They fired before us?” cried the Captain in disbelief.

  “Their grav lensing seems to have improved over the centuries,” said the Sensor Officer, looking over the readouts on her board.

  “Beginning evasives,” called out the Helm Officer, setting the routines in motion that would move the ship back and forth, up and down in seemingly random patterns while feeding the data to the weapons to keep them on target. The routines were also too fast for the Helm to control, though he could switch up the pattern when he wanted to when the routine was failing.

  The ships continued to close, the human vessels evading with maneuvers of several hundred gravities, while the Machine ships were making similar maneuvers at a thousand gees, giving them the advantage in this part of the game.

  At ten light seconds the beams were hitting more often on both sides, though the Machines were still getting in the greater number. Damage increased exponentially as they closed the distance. At five light seconds one of the Machines ships, a four million ton vessel, went into a tumble as part of the hull exploded under the tender attention of an antimatter particle beam. The ship was now on a predictable course, and two seconds of concentrated fire blew the ship apart. The second targeted ship, this one of two million tons, was damaged to the point where it lost half of its beam weapons.

  The damaged battle cruiser and one of the light cruisers were absorbing most of the Machine fire, and the light cruiser went into a tumble as beams burned deep into the hull, then exploded as the antimatter in engineering breached after a particle beam cut through it containment vessel. A moment later the other battle cruiser also went into a tumble, three of its forward grabbers burned away. It flew away on a vector that took it out of the battle, shields down, weapons offline. The Machines hit it several more times as it flew off before it got out of range. It disappeared into the system, still alive, but barely, while its crew fought to get it into some semblance of combat capability.

  From two light seconds separation, to passing, to two light seconds separation in the other direction, the three human ships and the nine Machine vessels were able to get in frequent and well-aimed hits. Shields failed on both sides, beams burned through armor, or exploded on contact in the case of the antiproton streams. They passed and continued to fire, two more Machines vessels and the Imperial destroyer exploding in space. Seven Machine ships started their deceleration, two of them at the reduced rate brought about by damage to propulsion systems, while the heavily damaged John Glenn and the lightly damaged cruiser Alexander Forbes continued into the system, curving their vectors to head for the planet Klassek, where they might be able to get some repairs so they could come back out to fight the enemy.

  Looking over the damage to his ship, Captain Jamshidi was tempted to order his Helm Officer to decelerate and come about. But his one heavily damaged capital ship, with only one light cruiser in support, was no match for the seven Machine vessels. To take that course of action was to commit suicide, when possibly they could be of use to the planet when the Machines again mated with their rocks and came in to bombard.

  * * *

  “We’re a little bit better off than we were, General,” argued Captain Camstock, the officer in charge of system defense. “We’ve whittled them down to seven ships.”

  “And how many ships do they need to hit the planet with an asteroid?” asked Wittmore, shifting his attention back and forth between two holos in the war room. One showed the system, the two remaining Imperial ships working their way back to the planet, the seven Machine ships on the last leg of their course matching with the cluster of asteroids they were planning to use for planetary bombardment. There was no sign of the fast attack craft and fighters which had moved under minimum grabber power to their positions. They would begin to accelerate again when it was clear the Machines were on their way, their acceleration could be calculated, and their path and timing to the planet was clear. If only they could still hide their acceleration when those ships were clear targets.

  The other holo showed the planet, and the two new breakout spots that had appeared over the last hour. A brigade of Imperial Army heavy infantry had surrounded the first one, in an arid area where the robots had been clear targets. That breakout was almost cleared when three thousand infantry and forty-four of the one thousand ton Tyrannosaur main battle tanks swept through. The other breakout was again in a city, this one smaller than the last, and with enough warning that some of the civilians had gotten out. The city was surrounded by another of his brigades of heavy infantry, only in place for the last five minutes, while the civilians were scanned and infected with friendly nanites to make sure they were clear of the enemy robots.

  The images blurred before his eyes, and Wittmore rubbed his temples again to try and forestall the headache he felt coming on. He couldn’t remember when he had last slept, and stims and other meds could only carry one so far before the body started to rebel.

  And Hasselhoff is reporting that they will be at the first of the black hole’s hyper barriers in another five hours, he thought. From there they could take a least time stairstep profile up the levels to VII, then run across the open space between systems in less than an hour, then stairstep back down until they were in normal space just outside the hyper I barrier to this star. That would take about four hours total, which meant she would be in the system in nine hours.

  But would she be able to get a missile launch to hit the Machine ships in time? was his next thought, while he zoomed in the holo of the planet to watch the first brigade burning down robots in the wasteland. It was not a one sided fight, though his troops were much superior to the robots that were three hundred years behind them in tech. Still, he was losing people, and even one of the fearsome Tyrannosaurs. He didn’t have enough troops to afford their loss, but he also had a limit on how many kinetics they had up in orbit, and a hard limit on how many they could transport up from the surface. He switched the zoom to the small city, where ground attack aircraft were working it over, and cursed as a particle beam splashed one of the craft into a trajectory that fell into the urban area. Even if the crew survived that crash, which was a good chance, they would be dead minutes after the robots swarmed over them.

  “Kellings,” he said into the com. “You have release for kinetics on the second target.”

  The acknowledgement came back, followed moments later by bright flashes in the urban area that toppled buildings and sent fiery clouds of dust into the air. And if we win this fight, we will have damaged the atmosphere of this planet to the degree that divisions of engineers will be needed to repair it, he thought, wondering how much more he would be sending into the air.

  * * *

  BOLTHOLE.

  It took three hours for the light from the ship gate to reach the Machine probe that was watching the inner system. It took several minutes and a couple of transits for it to figure out what was going on, even if it didn’t understand how it was being done. Ships, very large ones, were appearing through some kind of portal. It didn’t know from how far away they were coming, but they kept coming, until there were hundreds of them in the system. The largest of the ships had unknown capabilities, but its programing assumed that they were much more combat capable than the smaller capital ships they had been fighting, and were probably in the range of the few of that type of ship that had been in the system. Even as it watched, some of the ships gathered in a group and started boosting for the outer system.

  The probe’s decision tree told it that it needed to get this information out to the vessels waiting a few light months outside the barrier. But how? If it
sent a laser transmission to them it would take months to reach them, too late to be of any use. If it hypered out to them, it would leave a graviton emission trail that the humans could follow. It finally decided on a compromise. It would boost out at a couple of gravities until it was a light hour further out, then jump. The humans would still know a translation had occurred, but they would not be able to pinpoint it. It would jump again at II, then it would continue out at a least time profile, which would take a little under three days to reach the task force waiting in the Ort cloud. The probe started boosting, heading outward at twenty gravities, releasing a minor emission profile due to its small size. What it didn’t know was that the minor emission was being tracked by a sublight scout ship that was coasting through space only ten light minutes away. Its Klassekian Com Tech sent the information back to Bolthole, where the data was sent to the analysts. Minutes later it was on its way to the Admiral in Charge.

  * * *

  How did other monarchs handle this? thought Sean, as he followed the progress of Admiral Hasselhoff’s force in the war room of the Hexagon. The room was bustling with activity, and the series of holos showing the battle cruisers approaching the first hyper barrier, with both shipboard views and a tactical holo, were only a few of many holos opened in the chamber. We could host the city soccer championships in here, thought the Monarch, turning his head to take in more of the chamber.

  At least a thousand people were at work in the room, monitoring all the fronts in real time, sending important information to the teams of analysts in other chambers, where it was prioritized and moved up to the decision makers. There were a few of those decision makers in this chamber as well, flag rank duty officers, including a full Admiral who stood next to the Emperor on the catwalk that ran around the perimeter of the room.

  He thought some more about how past Emperors had dealt with the lack of information. They had sent people, vessels, whole fleets, off into the dark, with no knowledge of what was occurring. Whole fleets might disappear for months at a time, news of their fate coming much later, if at all. News of victories, or defeats, would come well after they occurred, and there was no way that Fleet would know to send reinforcements when and where they were needed until it was much too late.