Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Read online

  Chapter One

  By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  BOLTHOLE, FEBRUARY 16TH, 1002.

  Well, so much for R N R, thought Commodore Natasha Khrushchev as she walked down the hall leading to the conference room. She had only been insystem for a little over three days, only a day and a half after getting her flagship, the battle cruiser Francis Drake, in dock. The ship would be spending the next two months in dock, getting her back to combat readiness. Unfortunately, they were also short of flag officers, and the Commodore only had scars on her psyche, which wasn’t an excuse for not being assigned a command.

  The Marine sentry, outfitted in full medium battle armor, rendered a rifle salute as she approached the door to the conference room. He held out a multiscanner, and the Commodore looked into the glowing aperture while she pressed her thumb on one of the small pads made to take fingerprints and a DNA sample. The device blinked green, and the Marine nodded, his suit transmitting the approval of the three point scan to his com. “They’re waiting for you, ma’am.”

  “Thank you,” said Natasha, when she wanted to say something smart instead. Unfortunately, she believed courtesy went both ways, and taking out her ire on the Corporal would do nobody any good.

  She walked into the chamber, snapping to attention as she faced Admiral Anaru Henare. The Admiral stood and returned her salute, his face, tattooed in the traditional Maori warrior manner, breaking with a smile. He offered her his hand and gave her a firm hand clasp that was still controlled enough to let her know he was not a crusher.

  “Welcome, Commodore,” said the Bolthole system commander. “I’m sure you know Vice Admiral Gonzales, the commander of system defense.”

  “Yes, sir. Ma’am,” she said, nodding to Rosemary Gonzales.

  “And this is Commodore Harta Sukarno, my chief of staff.” The small dark skinned man nodded. Natasha returned a smile, knowing that this was the man she would probably have the most contact with on the command staff.

  “And Mr. Gunther Hartmann, the civilian Chief of Operations for manufacturing. And next to him, Ms. Zhao Lei, in charge of worker relations.”

  “Mr. Hartmann. Ms. Zhao,” she said in greeting, then headed for the chair that had a blinking cursor over it, transmitted to her implant to show her it was hers.

  “We’ve looked over the data downloaded from yours ships,” said Sukarno, pulling up a holo that showed a tactical still of Khrushchev’s battle with the, whatever they were. “Except for the exceptional acceleration figures on the ships, they really don’t have what we could consider superior tech.”

  “They had numbers, Commodore,” said Khrushchev, nodding at the tactical that showed the red dots of the twenty-six enemy ships at the start of the fight.

  “Which leads us to concur with your assumption that these were not pirates,” said Sukarno, pointing at the holo. “This enemy is organized, and intelligence believes that we cannot take the chance that this is all of them.”

  “We’re trying to come up with a system defense that could hold against an unknown number of these enemies,” said Admiral Henare, glancing at Sukarno, then locking his gaze on Natasha. “While we are expecting reinforcements from the Empire, our current ship strength leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Khrushchev nodded, knowing that many plans for this region had been sidetracked by the war. Ships that had been earmarked for Bolthole or the Command had been instead assigned to one of the active fronts, of which there were three. Of course Sector IV took precedence, but the Lasharan and Fenri fronts also needed ships. And with the increase in pirate activity in the other sectors, the outer reaches kept getting put on hold. Until something like this blew up in their faces.

  In fact, Khrushchev really hadn’t expected to get assigned to Bolthole. All she had planned in coming here was to run the last convoy, then return to Command Base. Funny how hostile action by a new enemy will change plans, she thought. As soon as she had entered the system her orders had changed. Henare was not actually in her chain of command, not being Exploration Command. But one didn’t argue with a four star flag officer when one only possessed a single star.

  “But we only have what we have at the moment,” said Admiral Gonzales, pulling up a second holo that showed their ship strength, each hull represented on the view, with their significant numbers underneath.

  Natasha looked at that holo, her practiced eye taking in the numbers and classes of the vessels. One out of date battleship, four hyper VI battle cruisers, including the wreck she had brought into the system, and two heavy cruisers, also including her other wreck. Six light cruisers, two of them VIIs, and fourteen destroyers, four of them VIIs as well, more than she really expected.

  “I would think the smart way to play it is to keep all the ships in the inner system, in one task group,” she said, her quick mind putting those ships into deployment.

  “Normally, I would agree with you, Natasha,” said Gonzales, shaking her head. “Unfortunately, we have too much infrastructure going up beyond the hyper barrier. In point of fact, the supermetal production planet, which is already manufacturing a small but significant amount of those vital materials. And is the current home of eighty thousand workers. We must defend it as well, which means we must split our forces.”

  Khrushchev looked at the other woman, realizing the logic in her argument, but not liking it one bit. And she had a sick feeling that she knew who would get the shitty assignment, based on relative ranks.

  “Mr. Hartmann?” said the Admiral.

  “We have suspended construction on most of the ships in the building docks,” said the civilian who ran the actual manufacturing side of the base, the reason for its existence. A holo came up, showing many shots, centered on the twelve building docks orbiting the asteroid, and interior shots of another dozen slips within the huge metal planetoid. “There is one heavy cruiser and five destroyers near enough to pre-trial commissioning that we are continuing their construction, and hope to have all of them ready within a month or two.”

  The holo switched views of one of the fabber units occupying a space five kilometers under the surface. As units went, it wasn’t the largest the Commodore had ever seen, and by no means the smallest. The unit was the basis of Imperial heavy industry. Unlike pre-nanotech manufacturing, it did not need sets of specialized tools and dyes, and could be set to build any part, or even assemblies of parts, that could fit in the unit. And it could expand itself over a period of time, making it a larger unit if provided with the space to expand. All that were needed were nanites and raw materials.

  “At the moment we are running all of the fabbers on missile production, three thousand a day. The limits, of course, are supermetals and antimatter for warheads, though we can make up some of the latter by the production of fusion warheads, which will give us a lower yield, but more than no warhead at all.”

  The holo switched back to another view of a dock, this one filled with small vessels, not capable of travel through hyper, but possessing a maneuverability and acceleration that larger vessels couldn’t match. Ten thousand ton attack craft, each armed with either eight externally mounted destroyer class missiles, or four of the capital ship variety. Individually they were not a match for a real warship, but enmass they could be deadly.

  “We have fifty of these vessels under construction at this time, all to be commissioned by the end of the week. When they come out of the slips we will be laying down another fifty, plus fifty more in this dock, currently being used for building a battle cruiser.”

  “How are we going to man these ships?” asked Admiral Gonzales, putting a stylus in her mouth and chewing on it as she waited for an answer.

  Good question, thought Khrushchev, who had that thought herself. Each attack craft needed a crew of fifteen. So a hundred and fifty of them would need two thousand two hundred and fifty personnel. The warship would require another three
thousand or so crew.

  “We’ll just have to glean them from base personnel,” said Commodore Sukarno. “Though they are now rear area specialists, many have served aboard ships in the past. We’ll put them on the simulators in shifts and get them up to speed.”

  “I know it’s a makeshift solution,” said Henare, looking over at Gonzales. “But I have a feeling we’re going to need all the firepower we can get our hands on.” He looked back at Sukarno and nodded.

  “We are also building additional launchers into the asteroid, and every platform orbiting,” said Sukarno. “And of course, all of this will be run from the central command post within the rock.”

  Which is under a bunch of kilometers of nickel-iron, thought Khrushchev, meaning it was about as invulnerable as possible.

  A thought came to Natasha as she thought about all of that protection. “Could we build our own battle station out of one of the smaller rocks. Say, another nickel-iron with a five kilometer diameter.”

  “And how do we maneuver it?” asked Henare, looking from Khrushchev to Sukarno.

  “You have an unfinished battle cruiser in one of those docks,” answered Natasha. “It has its grabber units and reactors installed, but not its weapons, sensors and such. So why not hollow out enough space to mount it inside of the asteroid, filling in the space behind it with metal?”

  “I’m not sure that’s the best answer,” said Sukarno, shaking her head.

  Natasha returned a frown, knowing that her plan would work, if not shot down by someone who wasn’t a combat officer.

  “But it might work to put a couple of destroyers in there,” continued the other Commodore. “We could still get ten or twenty gravities out of it, and the ships themselves can become our command and control centers.”

  “I like the battle cruiser configuration myself,” said the System Commander, looking over at his civilian specialist. “How long?” Henare asked Hartmann, who had the most shipbuilding experience of anyone in the system.

  “About a week to get the asteroid prepared,” said the civilian engineer, his brow furrowed in concentration. “Maybe two more to get the battle cruiser installed. And we can put in a couple of battleships worth of crystal matrix batteries and some really big lasers, the same as we put on the main asteroid.”

  “Then go ahead and do it,” ordered the Admiral. He looked around the room once again. “I really don’t know how much time we have. I don’t even know if they will come here at all, but I have a gut feeling that they will. And we will only have what we have on hand when they attack. But if they are the machines, I don’t doubt that we can defeat them if we don’t lose faith. And eventually reinforcements will come. I want them to find us still here and operating as planned.”

  Heads nodded around the room. It sounded like a rah rah speech to Khrushchev, but what else did they have?

  “Commodore Kruschchev,” said Henare, looking again at Natasha. “You will be in command of the outer force. You will have two battle cruisers, and Drake, whenever she’s combat ready. New Potsdam is yours as well when she’s ready. I’m also giving you two light cruisers and five of the destroyers. The supermetal production planet is your responsibly.”

  “Rosemary, you get to keep your flagship, one of the battle cruisers, and our one functional heavy cruiser. You also get two of the light cruisers and five destroyers. Which leaves all of our hyper VII capable ships. I’m going to put them under the command of a senior captain and assign them to outer picket duty. I think Captain Mason will do nicely, since his ship is probably two months from readiness.”

  The Admiral looked back at Sukarno. “And how is the project with the Klassekians coming?”

  “We have started putting implants into volunteer sibling groups,” said the Commodore, looking down at her own personal flat comp. The main holo over the table changed, showing what looked like the brain of a Klassekian, looking very alien in its triple lobed structure. Within that brain was a series of nodes of artificial origin, linked by thin microwires.

  “We were able to plant the nodes in their brains with similar results to other species, including humans. Using nanotech, it wasn’t necessary to use any kind of invasive procedures.”

  Khrushchev nodded, unconsciously using her own implant to play a quick vid of the procedure on her own occipital lobe. Like most modern surgical procedures, with the exception of the most serious medical repair treatments, placing implants in the body did not require invasiveness, other than the injection of nanites and the materials they needed to work with into the desired location. In this case, the nanites had built the implants in place within the parts of the Klassekian brain which had been determined to be necessary for the communication of that organ with the net that pervaded all human vessels and installations.

  “Have they been tested yet?” asked Khrushchev, feeling a bit of trepidation that the Klassekians had been subjected to such a procedure just out of cryo.

  “We know they can tap into the net, though it leaves most of them confused and disoriented,” said Sukarno.

  “We fully expect it to be successful,” said the Henare. “It’s worked with every other species we know of.”

  But their brains are different, thought the Commodore, forcing herself to keep silent. We’ve never run into a quantum brain like this. But there really was nothing she could say. The point was, they needed every advantage they could get their hands on. If they lost here, so did the Klassekians they had rescued.

  “As soon as we get some of the Klassekians worked up we’ll be sending them out to your ships,” said Henare, rubbing his hands together. “I, for one, can’t wait to see them in action.”

  And I wonder how they’re doing at Command Base, thought Natasha of the other population they had saved. Hopefully better than here.

  * * *

  “How are you feeling today?” asked the med tech, walking into the room that Greshra Klasak shared with her eight sisters.

  Greshra looked at the medic with her primary eyes, her secondaries looking at the her sisters to either side.

  “There is some pain in my head,” said Janshra in her native language.

  The medic answered in his own language, but though Greshra heard it as a babble of words, in her head she heard words she understood. She wasn’t sure if it was really her language, but that didn’t matter since the understanding was there.

  “How much?” asked the medic, walking over and looking at the medical scanner that was monitoring Janshra. Greshra looked at the monitor screen that was tracking all of the vital functions of her sister, including her brain waves. It was like something out of a science fiction vid, entertainment she and her sisters had always loved.

  “Not too badly,” said the other female. “Just more a feeling of discomfort, right behind my eyes.” She made a gesture which took in all of her visual organs.

  Greshra didn’t feel any physical discomfort herself, though she had just undergone what she thought of as brain surgery, which the humans didn’t seem to think was any kind of a big deal. She found herself staring at the human, at the strangeness of him. There was definitely still some mental discomfort around the aliens. She knew that was a prejudice stemming from not having contacted aliens in the past, something they would have to grow out of. She felt lightly ashamed of the prejudice, as the human seem to feel no discomfort at all around Klassekians. Then again, they were used to being around different looking sentients.

  “Your biological functions seem to be within normal limits,” said the human. “That includes your encephalogram.”

  Greshra wasn’t sure of that last word, but with a thought she knew what it meant. It was like she had a dictionary in her head, not just giving her the definition, but a short history and the theoretical nature of how it worked. “I just tapped into the net to learn that word,” she said through her breathing orifice, her eating orifice forming into a tooth hiding smile. That was something else she was still trying to get used to, how the humans showed the
ir teeth when they were happy or amused, and hid them when they weren’t.

  “I did that too,” said Kreshra, a smile on her face as well.

  “Keep practicing,” said the medic, showing his own teeth. “The more you tap into the net, the easier it will become. Try watching vids on it. You’ve got the run of the base’s entertainment and educational library, which means most of what there is in the Empire.”

  “And when do we start training?” asked Greshra, who was the unofficial leader of the sibling litter.

  “The Doc would like you to take a week to get used to the new hardware in your heads,” said the medic. “But the Admiral is calling for your deployment as soon as possible, and what he says goes. So probably tomorrow, or the day after at latest.”

  That elicited some cheers in the room. After all, they had signed on to serve with the forces of their rescuers, the people who had saved their entire species from obliteration. Not to sit in a medical facility.

  “But let me caution you ladies on one thing,” continued the medic. “I am a member of Fleet, and I went through a half a year’s training just to become a spacer, then another three months to become truly space qualified. A ship, despite all the safety features built in, is a dangerous place to be, especially if it goes into combat. So take it easy, and if you aren’t sure of something, ask.”

  After the medic had left the sisters all settled into their beds, which were comfortable in a manner which none had ever experienced before. Most of Greshra’s sisters slipped quickly into slumber on the sinfully comforting sleep platforms, but Greshra felt restless, and lay back on the bed to call up visuals on her new implant, feeding the signals directly into the vision center on the front of the middle lobe.

  Greshra first watched an educational program that toured the city of Capitulum, the capital of the human Empire, situated on the east coast of an isthmus connecting the northern and southern continents of the western hemisphere. The megalopolis covered over five hundred and seventy-five thousand square kilometers, with a population of over three billion people. Almost half the population of my homeworld, she thought, then revised that thought as she remembered that there were at most ten or so million people still on that world, and only because they had found room in the shelters the humans had built.