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

  “You saw, Admiral?” asked Montgomery, looking into the com holo that had formed near her chair.

  “I saw,” said Fleet Admiral Beata Bednarczyk, frowning. “You should have hit them with your forces more concentrated, and swarmed them with missiles. Oh, I know,” said the commander of the new Bolthole Front. “You wanted to make sure they didn’t take out your entire fleet with their graviton beams. I don’t blame you for that. But I need you to take the risks necessary to whittle them down.”

  “And what are you going to do when those planet killers get to Bolthole?” said Montgomery, choking back the angry retort she wanted to voice. Bednarczyk was well known as an acerbic soul, one who didn’t watch what she said to anyone, above or below her. She didn’t give the same leeway to her subordinates. Montgomery had served under her as a ship commander when the Fleet Admiral was a mere commodore. She had been the same way then, but Montgomery had also found her to be a brilliant leader who truly cared for her people, notwithstanding her demeanor.

  “What the hell do you think I’m going to do?” growled the Fleet Admiral. “Kill the bastards, or die trying.”

  Montgomery almost told the Admiral that the Machines, not being alive, couldn’t die. She didn’t think that was a good idea with the temper Bednarczyk was in.

  “I have a plan to, a, whittle them down, ma’am. Let me give you a rundown, and see what you think?”

  She knew that as the commander on the spot, her orders went, though she could be relieved of command if she happened to make a horribly flawed decision that might get her force destroyed. But she also knew that Bednarczyk was a better tactician than she was, and it wouldn’t hurt to get the Admiral’s input into her plan.

  * * *

  The primary brain studied the attack by the organics. Every ship had its own brain, and many of them had subsidiary brains for the smaller craft or ground assault robots they carried. Even the brains on the five to ten thousand ton craft they used as missiles were advanced as compared to what the humans used on their weapons. And all ran the same algorithms, giving them all the exact same thought processes. Given the exact same data, they would always come up with the same answer, leading to the same solution or action. While the Machines thought of this as an advantage, since every one of them were always on the same page in any action, it was actually the same as a sentient board meeting in which everyone found themselves dedicated to supporting the decisions of their leader. It was like an echo chamber, in which no new opinions were voiced, no new pathways opened to explore. Even though all of the minds in this force were the same, one was still designated the leader, so that decisions could be made without having to query every AI in the force and waiting for the consensus. At times different AIs might make different decisions, since they might not all have the same information.

  The central planet killer, the one that had stayed in a position where it was equidistant from all sides of the formation, was the designated leader, and now it was taking in all the information from short range coms and digesting it. The human ships were all using the higher dimension of hyper, the one the Machines had yet to reach. Even though they could do the math that described that higher dimension, they lacked the Gestalt that sentients had used to reach past the mathematics and physics to come up with the method of transiting into VII. Its remote sensor platforms, the other ships, could pick up and analyze the resonances of the human ships’ hyperfields, something that might come in useful in the future when it tried to develop its own VII hyperdrive.

  It knew what it needed to do to get that hyperdrive. It needed to capture one of the human ships, more or less intact. Then it could reverse engineer the hyperdrive, something it could do even better than the sentients. The problem was coming up with a way of capturing one of the human ships. Battles tended to wreck ships, and made it unlikely that something on the exterior of the vessels would survive. It was even worse in hyper, where significant damage would cause a catastrophic translation, leaving what remained of the ship, mostly particles and small pieces, to drift within a piece of space that would be difficult to determine. And therefore, difficult to send something after the ship.

  The human ships swept by, firing their missiles, dropping them from VII to VI. The AI was confused by their tactic, as they didn’t not sweep by in one large mass, trying to overwhelm its defenses with a missile swarm. It easily defeated the first two groups, each arrayed on either in two formations on either side of it. It lost a few ships, but not many, and it had time to move the other two planet killers to the flanks, one on either side of its formation, where they could use their graviton beams to defeat anything coming at them in hyper, including the higher dimension.

  The AI didn’t rejoice when its forces dropped one of the humans’ scout ships out of hyper, most likely to be destroyed. That was an emotion, something it was above. It calculated that there was no chance it could recover that ship, even if it defied the odds and survived the catastrophic translation. If it ordered some of its ships to decelerate and come back it would take days to accomplish something that would still leave them unlikely to find the one ship in normal space, and made it all too likely that the humans would pick off those ships with no loss. Its mind still considered capture as a necessity, but thought it most likely to occur in a system, in normal space.

  The humans swept by, taking a few more of the Machines ships, losing no more of their own. They exhibited much more caution, staying well out of graviton beam range. The AI calculated that it should have let the first formations through without trying to use the weapons at maximum range. It might then have been able to catch some of their larger ships in the beams. It felt no regret at missing the opportunity. It merely made the decision to try and lure another group of enemy ships into range in the future.

  The enemy ships all started to decelerate after they had passed, identifiable by the Machine sensors through their graviton emissions. One of the problems in hyper was there really was no hiding and sneaking up on someone. Anything coasting was given away by the graviton resonances of the non-boosting ship maintaining itself in hyperspace, and any boost immediately became available as information on course and acceleration.

  The AI calculated how long it would take the human ships to stop and come back, using the correspondence of hyper VII to catch up to the fast moving hyper VI force. Then it simply waited. It had no way of knowing what they would do when they returned, but it was sure they would try something different.

  At the calculated time the human ships reappeared on the sensors of the rearmost Machine vessels. They were still decelerating, moving down to a predicted point three light in the higher dimension, which they would most probably be at by the time they were passing. The best speed they had demonstrated they had for dimension transit, indicating that they would probably be launching from VII to VI once again.

  The Machine force was coasting at point nine seven light, but the human fleet would have no problem passing them in the higher dimension. Point three light in VII was the equivalent of one point two light in VI, an impossible speed in the lower dimension. The human force would pass them by at the equivalent of point two three light. The human force started to maneuver, setting itself up for the attack, and the AI reacted accordingly.

  * * *

  Mara watched the plot as the enemy force started to maneuver to accept her passing assault. At the moment she was arrayed in two large concentrations, with equal numbers of destroyers, cruisers and capital ships in each. Her flagship, a hyper VII battleship, was to the port side. All tubes to one side were loaded with the newest dual purpose missiles, and they would only have one shot with them while they were directly to the side. They could continue firing as they moved past, vectoring the missiles back.

  All missiles needed to use supermetals for the grabber units that boosted them, for most of the newer ones at ten thousand gravities acceleration for up to twelve hours. They could boost much higher for a shorter period of time if necessary for short rang
e attacks. To travel in hyper they needed a much greater amount of supermetals for the hyperdrive arrays the weapons needed to remain in the hyper dimensions.

  The new missiles could be configured for either normal or hyper. The single hyperdrive array each could carry could be attached or removed according to the needs of the moment. It took less than a minute to do either, and not firing hyperdrive arrays out into normal space was a net savings for the fleet, while allowing every ship to use their entire magazine load in any situation. Of course, hyperdrives sucked more power out of the crystal matrix batteries, and the missiles could only boost for a couple of hours in hyper, and would fall out within five hours even if sitting still. That really wasn’t a concern in hyper most of the time, since detectable ranges were correspondingly shorter than in normal space.

  “Starting maneuver, now,” called out the Tactical Officer as they reached final approach and the Machine planet killers moved into their predictable positions. Now the cruisers and capital ships changed their vectors, pulling five hundred gravities to move either over or under the formation, at the maximum distance from the planet killers on a close approach. All ships fired at the proper moment, their systems set to automatic and preapproved by the organic officers at the weapons stations. Four swarms of missiles went in, two into the teeth of the graviton beams. Those were really nothing more than decoys, forcing the planet killers to react to them and not change positions. The other two swarms, cruiser and capital ship missiles, came in from above and below. The third planet killer was paralyzed for a moment, trying to decide which group to move toward, allowing all of the missiles to move at their targets.

  Thirty-one Machine ships dropped from the plot, killed by missiles, or damaged to the point where they could no longer remain in hyper. The human fleet moved past, almost to safety before one of the planet killers boosted up and at them on a vector that brought two destroyers into the range of graviton beams. The two ships shimmered a moment on the visual scan, then disappeared as they dropped out of hyper, one visibly coming apart as it translated.

  Mara cursed under her breath. The plan had been to lose nothing, but the Machines had other plans. Next time we’ll come in from further out, she thought. That would protect her ships, but the missiles would be faced with a longer transit time, more vulnerable to the Machine defenses. But let’s see how you handle this one, you sons of bitches.

  As preplanned the fleet now boosted again, changing their vectors until they were directly in front of the enemy force, moving away at point three light in VII. All started to launch, sending out every tube they had as they rotated in space. The missiles jumped down to VI, then started decelerating furiously to try to reach a stop. They really didn’t have to cease all their forward vector, as the enemy ships were now coming at them at a closing speed of point six seven light and increasing. By the time the missiles closed to attack range that closing had crept up to just below point seven light, and the planet killers were not in the proper orientation to do anything about them, not without dropping their own ships into catastrophic translations. Two thousand missiles came in, and the Machine ships fired every defensive weapon they could bring to bear. Point seven was not optimum, but it was good enough to get several hundred weapons into final approach. Thirty-seven hit, and twenty-eight of the Machine ships disappeared from the plots, vaporized or damaged severely enough to drop them out of hyper, which amounted to the same thing as being blown to plasma.

  The force fired again, releasing the same number of missiles. This time the Machines knew what was coming, and only lost two ships. The third wave did nothing, and by that time the human ships have moved too far past to make another volley worthwhile. Now they concentrating on decelerating to a stop so they could come back and attack again.

  Prince of Conway was the only ship carrying a wormhole, and she put it to use in the best way she could think of. The Hyper VII battle ship turned in hyper to face the enemy, still falling ahead at point three light. When she reached the designated range she jumped down to VI, as soon as she was there sending a spread of thirty missiles through the wormhole, traveling at point nine five light and picking up almost none of the opposite vectored momentum from the launching ship. In less than a microsecond the last missile was gone, and Montgomery paced off her nervous energy as thirty seconds went by for the next acceleration tube, back in orbit around the Donut, to mate up with her wormhole.

  The missiles were closing at the maximum possible rate, just below light speed, the vagaries of relativity making a mishmash of what non-relativistic physics would have said was possible. They still came in like streaks of light, while the planet killers were again trying to move to the front of the Machine force. The missiles struck with the efficiency of their kind, acquiring targets as soon as they left the wormhole. Another eight Machine ships fell off the plot, an exchange rate that any commander would take. Montgomery was not satisfied. She had wanted a one hundred percent hit rate, but that was fantasy. What she really wanted was to put a hundred of the ship killing missiles into each of the planet killers, but that was not going to happen. At right on thirty seconds the second launch occurred, and Montgomery was more than happy at the efficiency of the system that was transferring the other end of her wormhole to another acceleration tube where missiles had been working up to speed for well over an hour. Now they came through, and she was even closer. This time she generated nine hits, including two to their capital ships.

  By the time she was ready to launch again the planet killers were in place at the front of the formation. She still launched, on the hope that she might get lucky. And cursed as all thirty missiles dropped off the plot, sent by the graviton beams into catastrophic translations.

  “Jump us back up to VII,” she called out to the Captain over the com. “Now.”

  The ship opened the hole into the higher dimension and started through before the Captain could even acknowledge the order. A well trained crew, thought Mara as the translation nausea came and went. Now the ship was back in her natural habitat, and falling ahead of the Machine force at the hyper VI equivalent of point two three light. She thought the Machines must now be frustrated, if they could feel frustration, which she doubted.

  A com holo came to life near her, following her as she walked back to her chair.

  “Good job, Admiral,” said the commander of the front over the com. “You stung them about as well as you could. Now, what next?”

  “We come back and sting them again, Admiral.”

  “You realize that they will be arrayed to keep you from hitting them from the front again?”

  “Of course, Admiral. But that will leave them open to a flank attack. I know,” she said, raising a hand before the Admiral could tell her something she already knew. “They will adjust, and we will adjust again.”

  “Be careful, Admiral,” said Bednarczyk. “You’ve done good work, and every ship you take down is one we won’t have to face here in the Bolthole system. But losing your command won’t help. I know you want to take out those planet killers. That would be nice, but I think that is beyond you. So concentrate on the escorts.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And what are we going to do about them when they reach Bolthood?”

  “We’re working on that. We still have some time to think about it.”

  But not much, thought Montgomery as the holo faded. And it’s ticking away every second.

  Chapter Two

  A great war shall burst forth from fishes of steel. Machines of flying fire, lobsters, grasshoppers, mosquitoes. The mass attacks shall be repulsed in the woods, when no child in Germany shall obey any longer. Nostradamus

  BOLYHOLE SYSTEM. MAY 17TH, 1002.

  “What we really need, your Majesty, are more wormholes. The damned planet killers are less than thirteen days from this system, and I don’t have anything that can stop them from getting here.”

  “But you can hurt them once they’re in normal space?” asked the Emperor in a tone that told that he knew
the answer to that already. “Our scientists say that while their graviton beams may be deadly in hyper, they are in no way powerful enough to harm anything in normal space.”

  And I bet you already have scientists working overtime trying to find a way to produce graviton beams that can harm objects in normal space, thought Bednarczyk. Not that she blamed him. She was all for progress, especially when it was her side that was the one progressing. But sometimes she wished things would slow down a bit, so she could take advantage of taking some time to plan her strategy without taking into account the new weapon of the week.

  “Oh, we can hurt them, your Majesty. Though the only way we have come up with to destroy one of those bitches is to pack a battleship to the gills with antimatter and ram. And then the most likely result is they would hit it with something before it gets to them. It would make a spectacular blast, but it wouldn’t really accomplish anything.”

  “And that’s the only thing you can come up with?”

  You arrogant little bastard, thought the Admiral. She closed her eyes and shook her head. He didn’t ask for this, but the job is his, and he’s done a damn sight better than some of our past rulers. “They were working on converting an asteroid into a battle station. I’ve let them continue, since it really isn’t taking any of our offensive resources. Maybe we could pack that with antimatter and send it at them. But we’ve only got the two, including the new one we’re building. We still need those wormholes.”

  “And wormholes are coming your way. A convoy of hyper VII ships should be past the frontier.” The Emperor closed his eyes for a moment, going into link. “It is twenty-four days from you at its best speed.”

  “Which is eleven days too late,” growled the Admiral, almost letting some other words come that might end her command.