Now he had the opposite problem. Because of the wormholes, and soon with the addition of the Klassekians, he could see things happening in real time. He could issue orders to fleets that would be carried out almost instantaneously. A temptation he was determined to avoid when possible. Or he could watch a situation like this one, frustrated that there was nothing he could do, no commands he could issue. He may have been the supreme ruler of his Empire, and the great majority of the members of the human species, but the Universe owed him no allegiance, and there was no order he could give that would sway the laws of physics.
Hurry up, he thought, watching the tactical plot that showed the battle cruisers still over an hour from the barrier. But they were hurrying as fast as they could, and nothing he could order or will would make any difference.
* * *
OUTSIDE KLASSEK SPACE, MAY 9TH, 1002.
“Enemy ships are moving at velocity point zero seven light. Acceleration, nine gravities.”
“Mass of objects they’re pushing?” asked Rear Admiral Hasselhoff and she looked at the plot that was being broadcast to them from the system through a sibling of their Klassekian Com Tech.
“From between five hundred million and a billion tons, ma’am,” stated the Tac Officer after checking the masses of the ships and their acceleration. “Energy at impact will be over forty petatons. About a hundred times the energy release in the Chicxulub Crater on old Earth.”
“A dinosaur killer?” asked the Exec.
“Much more than that, XO,” said Hasselhoff in a low voice. “An impact of one of those things will raise the temperature on the planet by several thousand degrees. All life will be extinguished.”
“And they have five of them,” said the Exec. “All they need is one hit, and it’s all over.”
“Time to impact on planet?” asked Hasselhoff, staring at the holo and trying to will something to happen to their benefit.
“Five hours, three minutes.”
“Time to hyper barrier?”
“One hour and thirteen minutes, ma’am.”
“And if we launch the missiles from the wormhole as soon as we drop into normal space, time to impact?”
The Tactical Officer went back to his board, imputing the data and letting the ship’s computer calculate courses, accelerations, all of the multiple variables needed to come up with a solution. “We can hit them in two hours and forty-eight minutes after launch. Any missiles launched from our shipboard launchers will arrive in four hours and forty-nine minutes.”
So we have one shot with the wormhole launched missiles, though we only have two accelerator launchers at the other end of the tunnel. It will take an hour to build another launch to velocity at that end. So four hours and twenty minutes or so to hit them with a second launch, and by that time they will have hit the planet.
“As soon as we jump back to normal space I want a firing solution on those ships,” ordered the Admiral, looking around the bridge and making eye contact with everyone. “Boost toward them at maximum sustainable acceleration. Five minutes before jump I want everyone in acceleration couches.”
She knew that no one was going to like that, as the ship went eight gravities above the capacity of her compensators. They would like it even less if the compensators glitched, much less failed, in which case there would be heavy casualties onboard. It might not do any good to push the ship so fast, but she couldn’t just sit back and watch the planet die without making the effort.
One hour and thirteen minutes later the lights dimmed on the bridge, as they had dimmed six previous times during the stairstep into the system. The ship entered normal space at point three light, its grabbers immediately thrusting it forward at five hundred and thirteen gravities, pushing every battle armored figure in the ship back into their acceleration couches with the force of eight gravities. Without the strength of the armor not a hand could be raised. Breathing became a struggle that was aided by the suits pumping high pressure, oxygen enriched air. It was still torture for the over three thousand crew, and one they could expect to endure up to the time when the ship was at maximum system velocity.
Firing, came the mental voice of the Tactical Officer over the link. The ship released the first string of thirty pre-accelerated missiles through its wormhole. The missiles came out of the ship’s tube the wormhole was attached to at point nine light, their grabbers pulling five thousand gravities acceleration that would have them up to their maximum insystem velocity of point nine five c in less than ten minutes. From there they would coast the rest of the way to the enemy ships, engaging grabbers from minutes out to acquire their targets.
Two minutes later the second wave came out of the tube, while the first accelerator back at the Donut system was fed new missiles to begin the acceleration process all over again. Challenger had done all she was capable of at the moment, and two hours and forty odd minutes later they would know if it had been enough.
* * *
“Hasselhoff has launched, sir,” said the Captain who was now second in command of system defense with the return of the Admiral.
“Understood,” said Wittmore, watching the icons of the missiles the Admiral had launched. Those missiles launched with incredible starting velocity thanks to the wormhole launch system. They would be up to their maximum velocity in about ten minutes. As they moved through space their velocity generated their own radiation field from the incoming particles in their way. They could go faster, but to do so risked serious damage to their sensors and computers.
If only we had tasked more pre-acceleration launch tubes for this mission, thought the General. Unfortunately, that had slipped through the cracks, no one had thought about it until it was too late. It would take over two hours to move the other end of that wormhole, or the tubes to it, and by then it would be too late. You’d think that after two years of war we would plan for things like this, he thought, even while admitting that this was still a backwater front.
“How is the contingency plan going?” he asked the Captain.
“All ships are in place, sir. All we can do now is wait, and hope for a little luck.”
And the way things have been going, that might just be too much to ask for, thought the General.
* * *
“I really don’t like this idea, sir,” said the Exec to his Captain as their ship finished decelerating to a stop a light minute from Klassek.
“Nevertheless, Commander, you and the crew will follow orders,” said Captain Havelik Jamshidi, looking at his Executive Officer in the com holo. Jamshidi was already feeling guilty about leading so many ships and crews to their deaths which to him looked like too poor a return. And I’ll be damned if I let those bastards kill that planet.
Their light cruiser consort had gone ahead to go into orbit around the planet, the absolute last barrier to those asteroids and the Machines pushing them. It really wasn’t much of a barrier, and he doubted a light cruiser could stop an attack. An eight million ton battle cruiser though.
So they were stopped here, in full stealth, sending reports to the planet about their orientation compare to the enemy. The Captain knew he had a good crew, probably better than he deserved. They had fought the ship well, despite his mistakes, and they were following his orders despite the fear that had to be congealing their guts.
“Enemy path will cross ours in two hours and forty-seven minutes,” called out the Navigation Officer.
And hopefully not all of them will make it that far, thought the Captain, looking over the tactical plot.
Chapter Twenty-six
Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Jean Cocteau
BOLTHOLE, MAY 10TH, 1002.
“We’re tracking the Machine probe through hyperspace,” said the Commander in charge of the system sensor net over the com.
“As soon as they jump back into normal space, I want our ships to move,” ordered Admiral Bednarczyk, looking at the plot
that showed the small Machine ship moving through hyper I.
There was a burst of static as the ship jumped into hyper II, then continued out. It was obvious that the Machine had calculated that it would not be tracked at its small size that far outside the system, but the Imperial Fleet had seeded the entire area with the small, three hundred ton scout ships that had been built at Bolthole, each with a Klassekian com tech among their three person crew. They had crept into position at low gravity profiles that made them extremely difficult to track, especially by small probes with tiny sensor suites.
Mara Montgomery’s face appeared on another holo that popped up in the air beside the Admiral.
“I have the task force ready to move,” she reported, the holo changing to a tactical view that showed Montgomery’s group still moving out of the system, decelerating for their jump to hyper as soon as they went past the barrier. Of the one hundred and thirty-eight hyper VII ships in her force, thirty were highlighted; a battleship, four battle cruisers, eight light cruisers and seventeen destroyers. These ships were slowly curving their vectors to put them closer to the line of the path the probe was taking. They were the strike force that would take out the Machine ships waiting outside the system, while the rest of the task group continued on with the primary mission of first scouting, then striking at the Machine battle fleet moving on Bolthole. The plan was for Task Force Scout 1.2 to rejoin the main force in time for the strike.
I hope I’m not giving them more than they can handle, thought the Admiral, as she looked at the system holo that showed the battle fleet sorting itself out within a few hundred thousand kilometers of the Bolthole asteroid. She still hadn’t decided what the first thing she was going to order that formation to do. If she made the a mistake in that deployment, in what it did to the Machines, it might be the last command she gave it. The Emperor ordered that I not sacrifice that fleet, and he’s correct. It’s the only major force we have in this region, and it has to survive.
She knew that the Emperor had made his reputation with the Fleet with his unwillingness to throw away ships and crews for no return. Many of the people in the Empire had thought that a bad choice, including members of Parliament. When he had started winning battles against the Cacas those people went silent. She had been one of those who thought it a bad idea to avoid battle with the Cacas, since it cost the Empire worlds and people. And since then she had come to understand the rationale and to embrace it.
“The probe has jumped back to normal space, ma’am,” said the Commander in charge of the system sensor net.
“We’re showing the same, Admiral,” said Montgomery over the com. “We’re five minutes from translation.”
The projected position of the Machine ships, based on the entry point to normal space of their probe, appeared on the plot. There were no signs of anything there after the translation energy of the probe, the Machines quiet. Possibly they might be moving through normal space at low gravities, and so could not be tracked at that distance. But they wouldn’t get very far doing that.
The timer clicked down, with no noticeable signs of the Machine presence, until the scout force hit the hyper barrier. The task force detailed to take out the Machine scouts had altered their vector enough that they were pointing in the general direction. All of the ships in the task group jumped within seconds of each other, looking at a distance like they were heading the same way. It would take some minutes in hyper for the separation to become apparent.
At that time, when the course was obvious, when the Machines had to know that a strong force was heading their way, they still made no move. Bednarczyk was sure that they had calculated that the Imperial ships did not really know where they were, but were maneuvering to see if they could get a reaction. And we will definitely get a reaction when we get closer, thought the Admiral, watching as the force translated into hyper II. They went into hyper III with still no reaction from the unknown Machine force. They hit IV, and still no reaction, and Bednarczyk was beginning to wonder if there actually was anything there. When the human ships hit V, closing to within a normal space light month of where the Machine probe had jumped, things started to happen.
Two objects, in the two million ton range, jumped into VI and started accelerating in different directions. They were starting from a standing stop, accelerating at twelve hundred gravities. Two battle cruisers started to change their vectors, each heading after one of the Machine vessels, each still at translation velocity of point three light, jumping up to VII where they would easily be able to close with the fleeing ships. As the main body closed two more vessels, these both of a million tons, jumped, and were immediately chased by two light cruisers and a pair of destroyers each, also jumping up to VII. The battleship and the rest of the vessels continued on, starting to decelerate so they could jump back to normal space at the designated point.
“Dropping now,” called out the Rear Admiral in charge of the formation, followed a moment later by the translation signals of twenty vessels returning to normal space.
The formation came into normal space in a globular spread two light minutes in expanse. All the ships started searching nearby space with both passive and active sensors. Less than five seconds after entering normal space a destroyer found the enemy, four vessels plus the probe, six light seconds away. Those ships all launched at the destroyer, which picked up the missiles by graviton emission and jumped back into hyper. The missiles followed, still accelerating, until they were up to point three five light and closing on the destroyer. At which time the scout warship jumped again, up to hyper VI, avoiding the missiles which didn’t have time to decelerate down to translation speed.
The four Machine vessels, a four million ton cruiser and three one million ton scouts, jumped up to VI and started to vector away. The Imperial force jumped after them, in the close correspondence of hyper VII space, only light seconds away, and overtook the hyper VI ships, dropping hyper capable missiles as they passed close which translated in almost on top of the enemy vessels. In seconds it was over, the four machine vessels and the probes they carried turned into clouds of plasma that translated back into normal space. Minutes later the other fleeing ships were destroyed, at a total cost of thirty-five missiles.
Bednarczyk smiled in satisfaction as she watched the masterful deployment conceived by the Rear Admiral in charge of that task force, using his greatest advantage, the ability to jump one level of hyper higher than his enemies.
“Good job, Admiral,” said Beata into the com. “Now go join Montgomery, and give the other Machines the same treatment.”
According to their calculations the Machine planet killers and escorts were still almost nineteen days away, and the hyper VII ships would reach them in four. And then it would be a running battle, trying to hurt the Machine force as much as possible while gathering all the data they could. Data they would send back to Bednarczyk. Data she could hopefully use to figure out a way to stop the big bastards before they destroyed the Bolthole system.
* * *
Captain Vergar Slaviska watched the Machine ships and the asteroids they pushed on his viewer, looking for a second at the tactical holo. The Machines had weathered the missile attack launched from the outer system minutes before. The remains of four machine ships and the shattered pieces of an asteroid spread out in space behind the still functional ships, the clouds also moving in the general direction of the planet from the momentum they still retained. The remains of fifty-three missiles were mixed into the debris field, while the seven that had gone through without acquiring a target were in the process of decelerating until they could return for another pass. Unfortunately, the weapons would not be able to kill their velocity and return until hours after the asteroids had struck Klassek.
“We boost in three minutes,” he told the pilot of the attack fighter he was riding in.
Slaviska had come up through fighters, starting as an ensign/pilot, then transferred over the fast attack craft missile boats when he reached lieuten
ant sg. He would have preferred to still be in one of those craft, with their greater protection than the more fragile fighters. But their sixteen times greater mass made them perfect for this operation, and with the mission parameters he did not want to ride it out in one of them. Plus, they didn’t have any missiles for those ships. The only capital ship missiles in the system at this time were those seven misses and the later launches from Hasselhoff’s force that would not arrive in time.
“Is the other ship ready?” he asked the Klassekian Com Tech.
That being closed her eyes, communicating with her sibling on the other control fighter. “They are ready, sir,” replied the Com Tech in heavily accented Terranglo.
Slaviska nodded, last minute thoughts about the attack running through his mind. His people had descended from flightless plains predators, who had descended from bird like creatures that could fly. They had better three dimensional spatial skills than humans, but after several hundred million years of evolution away from flight, those skills were not as strong as they had been in ages past. He had to depend on the computers as much as any other member of any other species, but somehow the solutions they were showing him did not feel correct for some reason.
“Adjust vectors of all craft up three degrees, starward one point five degrees,” he ordered the pilot who controlled all of the craft on this mission. The Captain looked over at the Com Tech to make sure the change went out. The other fighter was not controlling anything at this time, they were on standby in case something happened to Slaviska’s ship.
“Are you sure you want to do that, sir?” asked the Pilot.
“I do. Now follow my orders.”
Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Page 34
