Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above Read online

  Exodus: Empires at War:

  Machine War:

  Book 3:

  Death From Above

  by

  Doug Dandridge

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to Dr. Charles Gannon, friend, fellow author, and three time Nebula Nominee. Thanks for all you do, Chuck.

  Contact me at [email protected]

  Follow my Blog at http://dougdandridge.com

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  Copyright © 2016 Doug Dandridge

  All rights reserved.

  Please respect the hard work of this author. If you found this book for free on a pirate site, please visit Amazon and buy a copy of your own. I feel that I charge a reasonable price for this work.

  For more information on the Exodus Universe, visit http://dougdandridge.net for maps, sketches and other details of this work.

  Books by Doug Dandridge

  Doug Dandridge’s Author Page at Amazon

  Science Fiction

  The Exodus Series

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4: the Long Fall.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 6: The Day of Battle

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike:

  Exodus: Empires at War Book 8: Soldiers

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search & Destroy.

  Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Exploration Command:

  Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Beast of the Frontier.

  Exodus: Machine Wars: Book 1: Supernova.

  Exodus: Machine Wars: Book 2: Bolthole.

  The Deep Dark Well Series

  The Deep Dark Well

  To Well and Back

  Deeper and Darker

  Theocracy

  Others

  The Shadows of the Multiverse

  Diamonds in the Sand

  The Scorpion

  Afterlife

  We Are Death, Come for You

  Five By Five 3: Target Zone:

  Fantasy

  The Refuge Series

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

  Refuge: Book 3: The Legions

  Refuge: Book 4: Kurt’s Quest:

  Doppelganger: A Novel of Refuge

  Others

  The Hunger

  Daemon

  Aura

  Marathon

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  Prologue

  IMPERIAL YEAR 863. TWO THOUSAND LIGHT YEARS FROM IMPERIAL SPACE.

  The Machine was not a large ship, not more than twenty thousand tons. It was an ad hoc affair the had been assembled in the little bit of time the computer brain had had. It had barely gotten out of the system its brethren had taken before the human fleet had arrived, boosting past the hyper barrier and coasting for years, listening in on what signals it could pick up and recording the death of its kind on the once inhabited world. It learned from those transmissions, and the telescopic views it had observed of the human operations. It learned that the humans would do anything to destroy its kind, including wiping the surface of a planet clean. Planets were greatly desired by the organics, and leaving one uninhabitable showed their resolve, and their hatred for the war machines they had created.

  When it had calculated that the time was right, the ship had boosted for several more years at a low acceleration, until it was outside of hyper jump detection range of the system. Jumping into hyper I, it had moved slowly up toward the Galactic ecliptic, taking decades to make the voyage. After that it had opened up and jumped into the higher dimension of III. It took its time, since it didn’t have to worry about a time limited existence like the organics. The one thing it couldn’t afford was discovery. After it had gone the distance it had calculated would put it out of the reach of the humans for the centuries it would take the humans to find them it had moved back into the Galaxy and started looking for a home. It thought the new location would give it enough time to build up its force so that in this instance it could fulfill its purpose, the extermination of life.

  That had not been its original purpose of course. The Machines had been designed to fight battles for the humans, to destroy their enemy’s military forces. From there it had been a short leap to the proposition of killing all of those enemies, so that they would not become a problem for the masters in the future. The next leap? Kill all life, so that there would be no more war. That was the only logical conclusion, the only way the cycle of destruction could be ended. The War Machines would terminate all life, and end all strife. Sure, it would be violent and brutal for a short time, but then would pass billions of years of peace, up to the time when the Universe ended in heat death.

  Now it was at the end of its journey, the system where it would build its first base straight ahead, within the galaxy, but far enough from the humans that it would take them many centuries at their expected rate of expansion to reach. It had picked up no signals that gave it pause. There were many of the ancient radio signals sent out by intelligences that had yet to leave their home systems. But none of the hyperdrive resonances that indicated proximity to a star spanning civilization. Later, when it had built other incidences of itself, it would send out probes to scout the neighborhood, but its calculations were that it would have ample time to build up its defenses before any minor star faring power stumbled upon it.

  From a distance it observed the one inhabitable planet of the system, which turned out to be inhabited. A primitive civilization existed upon that world, one which was in the process of subjugating its neighbors through the use of soldiers wearing ancient armor and wielding bladed weapons. They would not be allowed to advance further. As soon as it established its space industry the Machine would make sure that its own back yard was cleared. Just bad luck for this first species, but it really didn’t make a difference, since the AI intended for all organics to follow it to its grave.

  The Machine did not want, did not desire, did not get angry, or afraid. It worked entirely on logic. And its logic said that all life must be eliminated. The humans were seen as the greatest threat to that path, but logic also dictated that Machines would have to wait until they had built themselves up into a massive force. Logic also dictated that the Machine not advance on a killing spree through this region of space at this time, lest they attract the attention of a powerful space faring species, word possibly getting back to the humans. And the humans had already proven that they would stop at nothing to destroy the Machines. Since logically machine intelligence was superior, it could not allow itself to be destroyed.

  The ship settled on a large metallic asteroid and released its limited store of industrial machines. The robots went to work, mining, smelting, building the factories that would produce more robots. The process was started, and if the AI had its way it wouldn’t stop until the Machines ruled this Galaxy, and beyond.

  * * *

  PRESENT TIME.

  The Machine had miscalculated. Actually, all of its incidences had miscalculated, which made sense since they were really just copies of the same AI, and if given the same data, they would always come to the same conclusions. It had thought that two thousand light years had been far enough, and that the humans wouldn’t find them for at least five hundred years. In that time span they would have been able to assemble an enormous force. They didn’t need b
reathing space, like that needed by organics. They could make use of every conceivable resource, and build a swarm that would bury the organics in their own blood.

  The calculation had depended on the humans expanding at their historical rate, with a built in constant that would take into account their technological progress. What it hadn’t factored in was the invention of the hyper VII drive, or the proposition that the humans might actually explore well ahead of their Imperial expansion. Both had happened, and the humans were here, in their backyard. The AI hadn’t wanted to strike, but now it had no choice.

  It still calculated that it had a very good chance of winning this fight at the end of nowhere. At least fifty-nine percent. After all, it was dealing with the limited minds of organics, beings which could not even retain all of the information in their brains, and were hopelessly outclassed in processing speed. They seemed to have some advantages as well, things the AI could not quantify, and so were outside of its own calculations. But enough to achieve victory? It thought not.

  Still, the AI was nothing if not cautious. It started making plans for getting some of itself out of the warzone if that proved necessary. It thought of possible destinations. It didn’t think relocating to another part of this Galaxy was a promising strategy. Instead, it looked to outside the Galaxy. The Magellanic clouds looked like a good possibility. That settled, the orders sent out to the robotic factories, the AI turned its calculations back to what it needed to win this war.

  Hyper VII drives and wormholes, it thought. If it had those, it would become unbeatable. But it couldn’t figure out how to make them. The one thing it lacked was original thought, the Gestalt that organic beings used in their creation of new technologies. So it needed to capture them, and it spent the next several hours going through its data banks, trying to come up with a plan to do so.

  Chapter One

  As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man. Ernst Fischer

  SPACE IN THE BOLTHOLE SECTOR. MAY 15TH, 1002.

  “We’re lining up for the first pass, ma’am,” called out the Force Tactical Officer.

  Vice Admiral Mara Montgomery nodded as she continued to study the tactical plot. There were almost three hundred ships ahead of her force, forty of what the humans thought of as Machine capital ships, ninety of their cruisers, and one hundred and sixty scouts. Montgomery was facing them with eight battleships, fifteen battlecruisers, thirty-eight light cruisers and eighty-one destroyers. In tonnage it was almost an equal fight. Her main advantage lay in the fact that all of her ships were capable of traveling through hyper VII, while the Machine vessels were at best able to get into VI. That gave her four times their pseudo-speed, and made her ships invulnerable to their attacks while she occupied the higher dimension. She could still launch missiles in VII, dropping them down to VI while they were still travelling slowly enough to make the transition, point three light.

  Of course, while the enemy couldn’t strike at her ships from lower to higher hyper, she couldn’t fire back with her beam weapons as well, and her own missiles would still only be approaching at a suboptimal velocity unless launched from distance. If she wanted to use her lasers and particle beams against them she would have to move into hyper VI, which meant that all of her ships would have to get down to point three light. That caused another problem, since the enemy fleet was moving at well over point nine seven light, and her ships would quickly fall behind as they tried to accelerate at maximum rate to catch up. That was a losing propositions. Even if she could get up to that velocity, the radiation it would cause to sleet through her ships could be deadly. Or she could drop down to VI ahead of them and let the enemy move through her formation while she attacked, then jump back to VII to come back and get ahead of them again.

  I could beat them that way, she thought, her agile mind using the data she had to plot a battle plan that would destroy the Machine fleet. She would also take a beating, but she thought she would still have a command, while the enemy wouldn’t. If that was the only thing she had to face, that was what she would do. Unfortunately, there were other vessels in that Machine force, three of them, in fact. And they were her major headache.

  The planet killers had shown on the sensors well before the rest of the Machine vessels. At one hundred kilometers in diameter, and massing several trillion tons, they had to be the largest, most massive spaceships ever built. The Donut was much larger, but that giant station around a black hole didn’t move, with the exception of its orbital path. And it didn’t carry the weapons of the massive warships that seemed to be armed much like battleships in proportion to their mass. She didn’t even know how to hurt them. She had studied the holos of the attack by the force that had guarded the Klassek system and engaged a single one of the huge killers. And everything they had thrown at it had not been enough.

  The analysts thought the planet killers had at least a kilometer of armor, maybe as much as five. Not even a missile strike would penetrate. One coming in at point nine five light might punch through, but the inside of the planet killer was most probably crammed with machinery that would absorb the blast. Their generators and antimatter stores were stored deep in the vessel, and standard missiles would not get through to them.

  And I don’t have a convenient black hole to lure them into, thought the Admiral. One enterprising battlecruiser captain had done just that, and had tricked a planet killer into a close pass of a black hole. A couple of missiles preaccelerated through a wormhole had knocked the planet killer closer to the black hole, dropping it through the event horizon. She didn’t have anything that powerful. Hell, while she was in VII she couldn’t even use the one wormhole her force carried to send preaccelerated missiles into the things. And even worse for her, the planet killers carried huge graviton projectors that could drop a vessel in hyper back to normal space in a catastrophic translation. Which meant she had to keep her distance from the ships she most wanted to stop.

  “Make sure everyone knows to give those big bastards a wide berth,” the scout force commander told her Com Officer.

  Moments later the message went out, both through short range com and grav pulse, and through the wormhole back to the Bolthole command center. She knew the ship commanders had already been briefed and cautioned, but she wanted to make sure they knew how important it was not to risk their vessels for no return.

  “Beginning run,” called out the Force Tactical Officer. On the plot the first of the destroyer squadrons closed on the enemy, keeping their distance, well beyond the estimated range of the graviton beams. A second squadron moved up on the opposite side. All the ships were moving at point three light, able to drop missiles down into VI or lower if necessary.

  “Launching, now.”

  The plot blossomed with vector arrows leading away from the destroyers, immediately dropping into hyper VI and starting their acceleration toward the enemy ships at fifteen thousand gravities, well above their sustained rate. Sustained rate meant nothing in this engagement, since the missiles would strike within a minute of launch, or be gone.

  “Enemy is starting to shift their formation, ma’am.”

  That was what she had been afraid of. As long as the other ships had screened the planet killers she had a chance of whittling their force down. The graviton beams would also drop their own ships out of hyper, accomplishing Montgomery’s task for her. Now the screening ships were starting to shift inward, while the planet killers moved out, one to a side, the third staying put in the center, where it was equidistant from all sides of the formation, ready to move toward the next threatened area.

  They didn’t get into place in time, and the first wave of missiles, almost three hundred weapons, came sweeping in from both sides. The screening vessels, mostly scouts, took them under fire with counter missiles and lasers. With over a hundred ships firing on the missiles most of the human weapons were taken out, only twenty-three making it through the defensive fire. They gene
rated three hits, and two enemy ships disappeared from the plot, destroyed or damaged badly enough to drop them out of hyper.

  “Well, that didn’t work so well,” said the Tactical Officer, earning a stare from his Admiral, the one who had planned the attack.

  “It’s too late to change this run,” said Montgomery. “Continue the attack.” And we’ll try something different when we come back.

  The next pair of squadrons hit, sending out the same number of missiles. They also generated a hit, killing one Machine ship. The group after that wasn’t so lucky, the planet killers in place and sending wide spread graviton beams out. All of the missiles dropped off the plot as they fell out of hyper, followed by one destroyer that had gotten too close.

  “Was that ship within the predicted range of the beams?” asked Montgomery, getting up from her seat and storming over to the plot. The machines had so far lost three ships, she only one. But her ship had contained living breathing beings, sentients with their own hopes and dreams, now gone forever.

  “It was not, ma’am,” replied the Tactical Officer. “They seem to have greater range than we thought.”

  “Make sure the rest of the force knows,” she told the Com Officer, then sat back in her chair to curse under her breath. She watched as the rest of the force passed, firing spreads of missiles with no gain. She didn’t lose any more ships, but she also didn’t take out any more of the enemy. And once the enemy got to Bolthole and started fighting in normal space, where the weak graviton beams wouldn’t be a factor in the battle, those screens would become important.

  “Time till we can come back at them?” she asked her Navigator.

  “We can come to a stop in five hours, ma’am,” reported the Navigator. “It will take another five hours to get back up to point three light on a reverse heading.”

  And we can pass them again in fifteen hours, thought the Admiral. The Machines were fourteen days from Bolthole. By the time they were able to attack again that would have become thirteen days.