Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Read online

  The people who were out swimming had the most time consuming trip to safety, and it was looking like some of them wouldn’t make it. Some of the insect sized robots flew out over the lake, landing on what exposed flesh was showing above the water and thrusting their stingers home. Those stung thrashed and splashed around in the water for a few seconds before going limp and floating face down. More of the robots took off after the last people who had gotten out of the water and started running for safety. Each attracted multiple insect bots, and soon there were bodies lying on the floor shaking and quivering for several moments as the formulated neurotoxin shut down their nervous systems.

  “Take those damned things out,” yelled First Lieutenant Sophia Ngursky over the company com. She had a platoon of militia with her, all wearing light battle armor and armed with particle beams. They had, fortunately, been on a random training patrol. The rest of her company was scattered to the winds, and she wasn’t sure how long it would take them to get to the armory, suit up, and get down here.

  The Lieutenant aimed her particle beam pistol, the targeting system of her suit zooming in on one of the small robots. She brought the robot into a sight picture and allowed the suit to finish the track, moving her arm for her the infinitesimal distance needed to get a perfect hit. The finger of her gauntlet squeezed the trigger, and the pistol immediately linked the barrel and the robot with a bright red line. There was a second of buzz and the robot was splashed into molten metal, the beam continuing on to strike the wall of the cavern.

  The continuous sound of particle beams echoed across the huge chamber. Ngursky cursed as she saw the effect that fire was having, negligible. “Goddammit,” she yelled over the com. “Engage your targeting systems before you fire.”

  Apologies started coming back over the com, and her people started scoring hits. Unfortunately, a large number of the insect like robots made it past them, and several of her people started experiencing suit malfunctions.

  “Command,” shouted Ngursky over the C&C circuit. “We have insect scale robots getting past us. They are deadly, repeat, deadly to unarmored people.”

  “Understood,” came the call from Command. “Hold your positions until told otherwise.”

  “Confirmed,” said the Lieutenant, noticing that her com was blurring just a bit. Her people continued firing on the insect bots, which were still swarming from one of the access tunnels. She ran a diagnostic on her suit, and was surprised to see that nanites were attacking her electronics. “All soldiers. Beware of nanite attack.”

  It didn’t take long for her suit defenses to take care of the invaders, and the diagnostics came back a moment later, letting her know what she was dealing with. Attack nanites, not quite as advanced as the defense nanobots in her own suit. So they really can’t hurt us as long as we’re armored up.

  As that thought crossed her mind, the first of the large battle bots came running out of the tunnel, firing two particle beams and explosive hypervelocity shells. The lightly armored militia found out that their suits were not proof against that kind of firepower, and two experienced immediate catastrophic failure of their protective systems, followed by their bodies, as the particle beams ate into their chest cavities.

  Another pair of robots came running out, then three more. The militia brought them under fire, particle beams hitting the robots and splashing molten metal into the air. One of the robots went down as its head exploded, then struggled back to its feet and continued firing its particle beams.

  “Retreat to cover,” yelled the Lieutenant, as she started back and set her suit sensors to run a spectrographic scan on the metal vapor in the air around the robots. The company moved back to the access tunnel behind them, losing a score of troopers and taking out a half dozen robots.

  It’s nickel and iron, thought Ngursky, looking at the readings. She continued to fire as she backed away, her suit taking some fire, and doing a much better job of repelling it than the light infantry armor her soldiers wore. She still worried that enough would get through, since it wasn’t heavy armor like the Marine reaction teams would be wearing.

  Ngursky sent the spectrograph readings to the Command Center. It made sense that the robots were made out of basic nickel/steel alloy, since those would have been the materials they had access to if they had been built in place. This indicated that they had, and that their armor was nowhere near as strong as the alloys the humans used. The only problem with the light armor was it was too damned thin, and a particle beam was a particle beam, even if it was a weak one like the robots were using, again for not having access to unlimited rare metals.

  The platoon continued to back after they reached the hall, using the cover of doorways, bins, even the bodies of people who had been struck down by the wasp bots. More robots had joined the press, until Ngursky was sure that they outnumbered her people. And despite their weaker armor, they were a hell of a lot tougher than militia light infantry, as evidenced by the number that kept getting back up after massive beam strike damage.

  We can slow them down, but if we don’t get something else down here, they are going to roll over us, thought the Lieutenant as she watched more people go down on her HUD.

  * * *

  “We’re getting reports from all over the habitat and factory sections,” called out Lt. Commander Saphron Huynh, the duty officer, as Fleet Admiral Beata Bednarczyk appeared on the holo, transmitting from the ship she had chosen as her flag.

  “And from my ships?” asked the Fleet Admiral, her eyes narrowing.

  “No reports from any of our vessels, warships or industrial,” said Admiral Henare, looking over at the holo. “It seems that they didn’t want to chance the heightened risk of discovery by attacking ships. Stations, on the other hand.” He looked back over at Huynh, giving her permission to report.

  “We have attacks on eleven stations,” she said, looking from the Admiral with her to the one on the holo. “Two have gone offline, and we can’t tell what is going on there. But the fact that we have lost com is not good.”

  That’s understatement, thought Henare, shaking his head. This is a fucking disaster.

  “Orders, Admiral?” asked Henare, looking at his new superior officer.

  “The asteroid and the stations around it, hell, the whole system, is your command Admiral,” said Bednarczyk. “This is your battle to fight. My battle is the upcoming fleet action.”

  “Fleet action?”

  “You don’t think this attack isn’t a prelude to something bigger?”

  “I think, Admiral Bednarczyk, that we discovered the robots before they were ready, and they had to act,” said Henare.

  “Agreed,” said Bednarczyk with a nod. “But just because this part of the operation was set off before it was ready, doesn’t mean that the other part won’t go off. We’re moving all of the inner system force out to support Nguyen, less three destroyers to provide you with fire support. And half of our Marines. I think they’ll do you more good here than on the ships. If we need them to repel boarders, I think we’re screwed already.”

  Icons were already appearing on the tactical holo, leaving all of the capital ships and cruisers, carrying armored Marines to the fight. The ships, with the exception of the three mentioned destroyers, were moving at five hundred gravities onto a vector that would move them out to Nguyen’s force. Shuttles were still leaving the ships, and would spend almost five minutes killing the outward velocity before they could work their way back in.

  Bednarczyk doesn’t waste any time, thought Henare, turning his attention to the reports from inside the asteroid and from the orbiting stations. The Machines were definitely on the offensive, there were a lot of them, and he really wasn’t sure he would be able to win this fight.

  Chapter Twelve

  In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won’t mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a kni
fe and watching you sleep.

  Daniel H. Wilson

  BOLTHOLE.

  “Get those damned missiles out of the way,” yelled out Gunther Hartmann, the chief of operations, Bolthole’s highest ranking civilian. He had come up to the cargo bay where one of the gates had been installed, a kilometer below the surface of the big celestial body. Large, heavy lifts connected to the surface, while a number of wide double doors led from the two hundred by one hundred and ninety meter chamber into the much larger warehouses.

  A number of hundred and fifty ton capital ship missiles, minus the warheads, were arrayed in a line leading to one of the lifts, waiting for it to come back from the surface, where it had delivered a load of ten missiles to be ferried up to warships. Now they were in the way of what was coming next through the wormhole, and Hartmann was trying his best to get them moved into one of the warehouses.

  A large mechanical forklift, the upper torso of the driver visible through the cockpit plastisteel, slid its forks under one of the missiles and backed away. A second forklift grabbed the next missile, and the way was clear.

  “Send through to the other side that we’re ready for their next delivery,” ordered Hartmann, stepping back and away from the portal. He wasn’t sure what exactly was coming through, but had been told it would be big and bulky, about the same as the missiles they had been receiving for the last day.

  The first object came through, slowly levitating over the floor as it moved away from the gate. Squatter and slightly wider than a missile, the barrels of multiple weapons protruded from the nose and the stubby wings. The swords and anchor symbol of the Imperial Marines was emblazoned on the body, while two helmeted heads were visible through the cockpit.

  “We need to get these things to the surface,” came a voice over Hartmann’s com. The first ship continued out, then turned in place as a second came through.

  “The lift is coming down in a second,” he replied, checking on the status of all four units. He looked over the support craft and thought that they could probably fit three at a time in each lift. “It will take some time to get your squadron to the surface,” he said, as his implant gave him the identity of the unit in question, as well as their number. And there are five more squadrons waiting behind them. “Might I suggest that you send through some other assets while we are waiting.”

  “Agreed,” sent back the Lt. Colonel who was the squadron commander. “Sending orders now.”

  “Sir,” called out the militia officer in charge of the security of this area. “We need to get you and the workers out of here. There are a shitload of those damned killer bots just a couple hundred meters from here, and I don’t think my people are going to be able to stop them.”

  Shit, thought Hartmann. “We’ve got to hold this area, no matter what,” he told the Captain. “If we lose this gate, we’re going to have a much harder time holding this system. So you have to keep them out of here.” He looked over the support craft, wondering if they could help, and didn’t really see how. If the robots invaded his part of the station, this very chamber, the powerful craft would probably turn any that came in sight into so much molten metal. They wouldn’t be so useful against the robots in the hundreds of kilometers of corridors and thousands of rooms within short walking distance of this gate room. And the support craft, with no room to maneuver, would also be easy targets. They had tough armor and strong electromagnetic fields, but a swarm of robots firing enough weapons would get through those defenses as well.

  The first lift opened, and the lead craft slowly, carefully, slid into the opening and arranged itself along one wall. A second craft followed, even more gingerly.

  “Where do you need us?” asked a voice over the com.

  Hartmann turned to see a squad of humans in heavy battle armor walking out of the wormhole, moving aside as soon as they got a quick look at the area. All were wearing the one ton Marine battle suits that not only gave them the best protection of any infantry in the Empire, but contained a state of the art sensor suite and gave each trooper the strength of ten strong men. They stepped to the side and another group came through the portal. This time forty-eight Marines came through, an entire platoon, every trooper carrying a heavy particle beam rifle, with the exception of three holding very large beamers, four grenadiers, and five Marines in larger than average suits, the box launchers of missiles over their backs.

  As soon as that platoon was through and spread out another platoon came through, then another, followed by more of the heavy weapons suits. An entire company of Imperial Marines, ready for action.

  “The militia Captain will send you a take of the area,” said Hartmann to the Marines Company Commander.

  In a few moments the Marines started to move out, all headed for the tunnels on one side of the chamber. What the hell? thought Hartmann, getting ready to ask the company commander why they were leaving the other approaches open, when more Marines came through, until an entire new company was arrayed on the floor. It seemed like a long time, twenty minutes or more, but when he checked his implant clock he saw that it had been less than four. An entire battalion had come through, four companies and a heavy platoon, and had fanned out to cover all possible approaches to this area. Two of the lifts were on the way up to deliver six support craft to the surface, while the remaining six were maneuvering toward the two elevators that had just come down.

  We’re going to win this thing after all, thought the highest ranking civilian on the station. He wondered for a moment if that was just wishful thinking on his part.

  * * *

  Static lived on every possible com channel the robots could use, the humans blasting the airwaves with jamming that only their own encryption could penetrate. Each of the Machine assault forces were on their own, cut off from any of the others. And once the robots were more than a couple of kilometers from the nests, they too were out of contact. Still, the fronts were moving quickly into the habitat, overrunning the organics, in many cases before they could react. They were running into resistance, of course, heavier than expected based on past knowledge of the humans. It had been expected that only about five percent of the organics would be armed. Now it seemed like thirty percent was closer to the truth.

  The microbots and their nanite cargoes had also been failures compared to what had been expected. They had penetrated into the target zones easily enough, but the nanites had not been successful in more than temporarily disrupting vital systems. Unlike on the planet, here the targets had their own nanite defenses, and they were superior bots that what the Machines were employing, partially because of the materials that had gone into their construction, and partly because the human made nanoscale robots were at least a century more advanced.

  The wasp bots had been much more successful. Most of the humans had been caught without any kind of protective armor, and the neurotoxin, formulated to be especially effective on humans, had killed every one of them that had been stung. And the full sized battle bots had overrun most of the resistance that had materialized in front of them, but that resistance was stiffening.

  They needed more robots, the bots they would have had if the operation had gone off as planned, and not five days early. So on each thrust a score of battle bots had been detailed to reconfigure themselves and start producing more of their own kind, using higher tech materials than had been available in the crust.

  * * *

  “We need help, right now,” called out the Production Manager of the small station that had been packaging hydrogen into high pressure tanks for fusion reactors. Only massing a couple of hundred thousand tons, it was not considered a vital operation, though the product it turned out was useful. Being a small industrial concern, run by a private corporation, it lacked the defenses of most of the other stations. So when the Machines had broken through the hull they had only found the forty-six civilian crew to oppose them.

  One of the battle bots slammed its steel hard fists against the doors, the sound reverberating through
the operations center. A red line appeared on the door, the Machine on the other side using its laser to cut through.

  “We need help. We have killer robots on the station. I am in the operations center with the last five survivors of my people. They’re burning through the door.”

  “I think they’ve cut our com, Mr. Harris,” said one of the crew, her eyes wide as she stared at the communications board.

  “Everyone,” said Harris, reaching into a desk and pulling out a particle beam pistol. “Find whatever you can to fight with.”

  The private ownership of weapons was allowed on all Imperial worlds, though there were some restrictions depending on the development level of the system. This was considered a frontier system, and high powered energy weapons were perfectly legal here.

  And good thing, too, thought Harris, activating the weapon. I don’t think a low velocity slug thrower is going to do much good here.

  The red line extended down the side of the door. Harris looked over his people. One of the women had picked up an iron bar, another a pair of scissors, two of the men knives. This is not going to be pretty, he thought, aiming his pistol at the door. We’re all going to die. But I didn’t come out here to die like a sheep.

  The laser line worked across the bottom of the door, then up the other side. One of the men started crying. Harris couldn’t blame him, but he was damned if he was going to show that kind of fear.

  The red lines joined at the top of the door, and with a smash the robot knocked it into the control room. The door flew in like a missile, and the crying man was silenced forever as it took him in the head.

  As soon as the door cleared, Harris squeezed the trigger on his weapon sent the bright red beam into the head of the robot. Metal vapor flew into the air, and the Production Manager moved the beam from the head down to the chest, cutting deep into the robot as it traversed its torso. The robot fell forward, and Harris continued with the beam into the one behind it.