Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Read online

  Nazzrirat followed the human out the wide double door and down a corridor, passing numerous other doors on the way. Each led to another chamber of the arms factory which occupied this area of this level. Until they reached one door, more massive than the rest, with warning markers on it. Racks of weapons on a cart stood outside, and as they approached a workman pushed another such cart out of the door and down another hall.

  “This is quality control,” said Quan, motioning at the door. “This is where we test each weapon to make sure it is functioning properly before it goes to one of the armories for further distribution.”

  They entered the room and a human ran up to Quan, a questioning look on his face. The Supervisor spoke quietly to the man, who nodded and pointed to one of the doors set against a far wall. As the Klassekian watched, one of the doors opened and a human strode out, a rifle identical to the one Nazzrarit held in his hands. The air smelled of ozone, and seemed to crackle with electrical charges.

  “The shift here is going off,” said Quan, pointing to that open door. “We’ll be the only ones here for the next hours of so, when second shift comes on.” The factory worked two eight hour shifts each day, both to rest the robots and because there wasn’t enough manpower to work all the industrial concerns on the asteroid three shifts.

  When they got in the room Quan opened a cabinet and pulled out a long cylinder and a square pack, handing them to Nazzrarit, who grabbed them with four tentacles.

  “Let’s see if you can load it. And for God’s sake, keep the barrel pointed down range while you do.”

  “It has a safety,” said the Klassekian as he looked over the rifle, finding the catches to the loading compartments.

  “Safeties are for a final backup,” said Quan, pointing to the Klassekian’s head. “Your brain is the primary safety. Remember that.”

  Nazzrarit gave a human head nod as he inserted a battery into the compartment in the stock, feeling it click into place and closing the compartment. Next he slid the proton pack into the front of the rifle, again letting it click into place. Keeping the barrel pointed down the long tunnel that was the range, he engaged the power switch, feeling the vibrations as the accelerator inside grabbed some of the protons from the pack and spun them up to high velocity.

  “Now aim at the target, sight down the scope, and fire.”

  Nazzrarit had a little bit of trouble fitting the rifle to himself. After several attempts, he came up with the solution of placing the stock into his chest and wrapping four tentacles around the weapon, using a fifth on the pistol grip to place over the trigger. He looked down the scope, sighted onto the holographic target at the end of the hundred meter tunnel, and pulled the trigger.

  A bright red beam seemed to link the rifle with the target instantaneously, while a sound like a thousand buzzing insects almost deafened him. Ozone filled the air, which thundered like a storm around the beam, and sparks and molten metal flew into the air at the target. He held the beam on the target for many seconds, as it ate into the wall at the end.

  “Release the trigger,” yelled Quan, tapping the Klassekian on the area above his left tentacle cluster. “You can overheat the rifle otherwise.”

  Nazzrarit nodded as he released the trigger, feeling the awful heat coming off the gun.

  “The Marines using these will be in full armor, and the heat won’t be such a problem to them. You could burn off your tentacles if you don’t watch out.”

  “So much power,” said the Klassekian as he gazed in awe at the weapon. “Like nothing my people have.”

  “They’ll be getting them soon enough,” said Quan.

  “And can the rest of our crew, my people on it, come here to test the weapons?”

  “I don’t see why not. I’ll ask for permission from my superiors, of course. But they’re sending out a call for more militia, and maybe they could use your people as well.”

  Nazzrarit aimed and fired again, this time a more measured burst, letting the rifle cool a bit before firing again. He continued in this manner until the proton pack was empty, and he was sure he could use this weapon if need be.

  That night, in his quarters with his brothers, he transmitted his knowledge of firing the rifle through their Quantum connection. At the end of several minutes it was as if they had fired the weapon themselves.

  * * *

  BOLTHOLE SYSTEM, MARCH 17TH, 1002.

  The potentially habitable planet in the Bolthole system had harbored life about forty thousand years prior to human discovery of the system. Fossils were everywhere, both the mineralized ancient variety and the mostly bone more recent kind. The planet at that period had entered an age of what looked like giant six limbed mammals. There was the possibility here that intelligent life would develop in some millions of years.

  And then had come the day when a forty kilometer wide asteroid had come roaring out of the sky at almost a thousand kilometers a second. It had smacked the planet, sending out a shock wave that leveled mountains and sent kilometer high tsunamis racing back and forth across the ocean basins. The surface temperature of the world had risen to over a thousand degrees centigrade, a level that slowly dropped over the centuries. Even the microbes were killed, and all life ceased to exist on the planet, with the exception of some deep ocean forms, themselves unicellular.

  So the humans had found a world in the Goldilocks zone, with liquid water in large oceans and lakes, an atmosphere heavy in nitrogen, low in oxygen and somewhat thicker in carbon-dioxide than was healthy. Still, it was a world ripe for terraforming, a place that could go in decades from lifeless to a paradise. Nakajima Corporation had been contracted to turn this world into that paradise, a place where the workers and military people of Bolthole could come for real rest and relaxation, where delicious natural foods could be grown for their consumption, where natural vistas could calm body and soul.

  Ten years into the process and the ocean was seeded with algae, huge schools of game fish nested in the pseudo-coral reefs that had been left by the extinct creatures that had lived in the waters prior. Millions of square kilometers of dead dirt had been processed into the first stages of soil, while specially engineered bacteria worked on the second stage of the job. The twenty huge processing plants worked night and day pumping oxygen into the atmosphere, while a dozen airships flew through the sky, scouring CO2 from the air while producing the ozone that rose into the outer atmosphere. They were less than a year from introducing the land and air animals that were being raised in the domed enclosures on the surface.

  And they want us to evacuate the job? thought Johnny Nakajima, the youngest brother among the family that ran the corporation. We aren’t a target. There is nothing militarily significant about this planet.

  Still, he had left it to the employees working the job to decide if they wanted to evacuate back to the security of the asteroid, or to stay here working the project. Almost thirty-eight thousand of the crew had elected to leave, and only two thousand remained, enough to supervise the job at a stepped downed rate with twelve hour shifts.

  “We’ve got something going on in sector Charlie Twelve,” came a voice over the com.

  “What do you have?” asked Johnny, switching the viewer to the drone feed from the sector in question.

  “I’m not sure what we have, but it doesn’t look good,” replied the woman in the command and control center who was monitoring the situation.

  The viewer showed a valley, one that had been terraformed, small trees waving in the wind. It was a sign of their success in turning this planet back into a living world. And in the center of the valley was a large dark spot that grew as they watched.

  It’s dying, thought the Terraforming Engineer, ordering the view to zoom in over his implant. Now he could see individual trees, the palms and tropicals that they had planted in this equatorial zone of the planet, the initial foothold on the world. As he watched a branch fell off a Banyan tree, then another, while a frond on one of the palms shriveled up and fell into d
ust.

  “Nanites,” said one of the supervisors over the com, saying the word like it was a curse.

  Nanites, thought Johnny, nodding his head. Killer nanites, spreading out and attacking every living thing. And there was not much that they could do about it. The nanites they were using to till the soil were not in the same class as the nanites the Empire used to control disease or infections by these types of microbots. They had some of those, but not in the quantities to fight this kind of threat.

  “I’m going in there to get samples,” said the Terraforming Engineer who was a junior partner in the corporation, responsible for this project and these people. “I want three volunteers to go with me. One pilot and two security. All in biohazard armor.”

  He didn’t have to wait long for the volunteers. His people were dedicated to bringing worlds to life. Here was something that would try to kill this dream. Karen, Tomas and Daiyu were all long term employees of the company, willing to do what was needed to get the job done, including being transported in to a secret location well over a thousand light years beyond the borders of the Empire.

  The aircar was specially equipped for this kind of job. A full sensor suite, isolation and containment units, and most important of all, built in defenses against foreign nanites. Karen Swartz was the pilot, isolated in the cockpit from the others, though she was still geared with a light hazmat suit. She was the backup who would get samples out if the rest of them didn’t. Everyone else had the full hazmat armor, similar to the medium armor the Fleet used, with nanosystems under the skin and a low grade EMP field from the skin out to a couple of centimeters.

  They brought the car down to thirty meters above the treeline, over a small clearing a hundred meters from the edge of the dying area. Nakajima didn’t want to take chances, and was hoping they would touch down in an area that was still clear, but close enough that they could still get the samples they needed. The plain fact was that he didn’t know how far the infestation reached out from the dying area. Killer nanites were not his specialty.

  The humans dropped slowly out of the aircar, sticking close while watching all areas around them. They stopped their drop several centimeters above the ground and floated forward on grabber units. Sixty meters from the drop point the vegetation was taking on a decidedly unhealthy look. Twenty meters further and it was definitely dying.

  “I think this will do,” said Nakajima, pointing to a soft trunked palm that was wilting before their eyes. “Everyone else stay alert and continue to float. I’m going to land and take a sample of the ground around the tree, then the plant itself.”

  Johnny lowered himself to the ground, activating the once a second EMP burst on his boots that cleared the soil for ten centimeters in each direction, including straight down, forming a bubble of deactivated nanites.

  Nakajima pushed the needle of a probe into the trunk, sucking out some of the fibrous biomatter and whatever had infected the plant. The material was funneled into a small chamber that was immediately dropped to just a few degrees above absolute zero. He ejected the needle and put the container in the iso bag he carried, then pulled out another one. Squatting down, he pushed the probe from the second sample container into the soil.

  “Look out,” yelled Tomas, his panicked voice sounding through the com over the angry buzzing sound of a particle beam.

  Nakajima straightened and turned in one motion, ejecting the probe needle and reaching for his pistol. What came into his sight was not what he was expecting, not a two meter long animal that looked like a cross between a bear and a big cat. Tomas’ particle beam was slicing through the center of the beast, blowing pieces of molten metal into the air.

  They’re robots, thought Nakajima, pulling his pistol from his holster as he watched three more of the creatures erupt from the ground and start toward them much faster than any natural creature could run. Tomas brought his aim onto one of the creatures, Daiyu onto another, while Johnny aimed his pistol at the third. The machines were fast, and undoubtedly tough, but they couldn’t take a particle beam through their vitals. One went down immediately, the other two fell, then staggered back up and limped on.

  None of them saw the robot that came up behind them. It flew over the heads of Daiyu and Nakajima, landing on Tomas’ back, knocking him to the ground and raking at his armored suit with monomolecular claws. The claws cut into the armor, but not deep enough to hurt the man in his tough suit. A long tube extended from its head and a bright beam struck the back of Tomas’ helmet.

  Nakajima fired his pistol, afraid of also hitting Tomas, but sure that if he didn’t act the man was dead anyway. His particle beam ripped into the back of the robot, which continued to blast a hole in the helmet of his employee.

  “There are more coming sir,” shouted Daiyu as Tomas’ body went limp and that heavily damaged robot pushed itself off its victim.

  “Let’s get out of here, now,” shouted Nakajima over the com, then boosted his armor straight up into the air. Daiyu followed closely behind, a pair of robots jumping after her and barely missing.

  Johnny looked down from the aircar as they regained it, seeing the body of his man down on the ground, more of the robots clustered around it, red beams cutting into the suit, slicing it up so they could use it for making more of their kind.

  Nakajima was pretty sure what they would find in the samples when he got back to base. There would be nanites in both samples, and the macro robots, the killing machines that had taken Tomas, were really all the proof they needed.

  “Send a message to Bolthole Base,” he ordered the Pilot as she turned the car back toward their HQ and accelerated away.

  “They’re on the other side of the star, sir,” replied Karen. “The production base will have to contact one of the antimatter production stations to relay.”

  And that will take over an hour to get them a message, thought the Terraforming Engineer, hoping that something like this was not going on elsewhere in the system.

  * * *

  “Admiral on deck,” called out Commodore Harta Sukarno, the Admiral Henare’s Chief of Staff, and therefore the chief of staff of the station. The Marines snapped to attention, rifles coming to a position of salute, while all the Fleet personnel rendered the hand version.

  The small redheaded woman had just stepped out of the wormhole gate, the normal slightly confused reaction affecting her. The confusion left swiftly, and she turned to look at the wormhole with a scowl on her face.

  “You,” she yelled, turning, a finger spearing out to point at the Commodore. “What in the hell is wrong with this picture?”

  “Ma’am,” replied Sukarno is a choking voice.

  “Why is this damned wormhole set up in this damned greeting room? Why isn’t it set up as a cargo gate in some place where we can bring the stuff I need into this station?” The Admiral’s voice started as a growl and rose to a scream as the words came out of her mouth.

  “We thought we would move it after the VIP came aboard, ma’am,” said the Commodore, feeling like a basilisk was gazing at her. “Admiral Henare thought we should show you a proper greeting, in respect to your rank.”

  “And in the meantime, I have missiles, spare parts, and the parts for orbital weapons systems waiting on the other side, where, by the way, they have put up a cargo gate in a major transshipment point to get the shit we need here. Or at least what they can get us until we can get a damned ship gate up.”

  “We didn’t think about that, ma’am,” groaned Sukarno, her face reddening.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” said Fleet Admiral Bednarczyk. “Fucking Exploration Command. Well, we are no longer dealing with scientific discoveries and the meeting of fluffy aliens. This is now a combat command, and I expect people to act accordingly. Stroking my ego is not important. Getting us the materials we need is. So get that fucking gate set up in a proper place for it, and start getting the shit across.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the Commodore, holding in her anger and embarrassme
nt. “Would the Admiral like to accompany me to her quarters.”

  “Since I seem to be the only admiral on this deck, I assume that you are talking to me,” said Bednarczyk, the scowl deepening. “And you may address me as ma’am, Admiral, or, if I’m not listening, that bitch. But I am not to be address in the third person, like I was a member of the Imperial family. Is that clear”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The Admiral looked back at the naval personnel who had followed her through, a Lt. SG that was her aide, and the Chief PO that was her steward. The Aide had his own locker suspended on antigrav, while the Steward was pulling one that was three times the size.

  “I would not like to see my quarters, since I won’t be using them for at least the next forty eight hours. You can have someone take my people to those quarters, and let them square everything away. I will follow you to the main conference room, where every senior officer on this base will present themselves for a planning session. And I want any close enough that they won’t be more than three seconds out of sync to attend by holo.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then send those orders, and show me to the conference room. Come on Commodore. We have a war to fight.” A smile appeared on Bednarczyk’s face, the first since she had arrived, leaving no doubt about how she felt about the prospect of war.

  * * *

  “And I will be taking the Kamakura as my flagship,” said Bednarczyk, looking at Admiral Henare. “At least until we can get some other real capital ships out here. I want her to return to orbit forthwith.”

  “She’s Admiral Nguyen’s most powerful unit,” said Henare. “And bringing her back here is going to weaken his outer system force considerably.”

  “I understand that, Admiral. But it is more important to me to get a flag deck under my feet, and the captain and crew of that ship to become responsive to my ways.” She looked over at Gonzales. “Rosemary, as the second ranking combat officer out here, you will be my deputy commander. You’ll retain the task force you have now, until we can get you some more ships to play with.”