Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole Page 4

  “Missile launch,” yelled out the Tactical Officer a moment later. “We have multiple launches. Five launches from Bogey Four. Acceleration four thousand gravities. Time to impact, thirty-two minutes.”

  Nguyen looked at the salvo, wondering if that’s all they would send.

  “Correction,” shouted the Tactical Officer. “Second launch. Five weapons. Total of ten weapons on interception heading. Second wave accelerating at four thousand and fifty gravities.”

  They would be coming in as one wave, this time trying to swamp the defenses of at least one of the human ships. The Admiral sat in his chair thinking, not sure if he wanted to launch counter missiles this time or not. If he did, he would be giving away the capabilities of his counters. If he didn’t, he might be risking the destruction of one or more of his ships. He watched them on the approach, a minute away from counter range. They had already been in laser range for several minutes, and the beam weapons had been firing for all of that time, getting a hit here or there. But the eight thousand ton weapons could absorb a lot more energy than a smaller human missile, and they weathered the storm.

  “Send the signal to the force,” he finally ordered his Com Officer. “Lock on integrated counter missile defense. But only release on my orders.”

  The officer nodded and went to work, making sure every ship in the force knew what their guiding brain wanted. And then he sat back and fretted, trying to decide what the best course of action would be, and knowing that he had very little time to decide.

  “We’ve detected their pattern, sir,” called out the Tactical Officer. “They have repeated the same evasive pattern three times on approach.

  That made his decision. “Lock onto all weapons with full power laser shots, based on their calculated positions at time of contact.”

  “Locked,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.

  “Fire.”

  Every ship in the force had been assigned a target for all of their laser rings. Some of the enemy missiles only had three beams targeting, while others caught the full brunt of five or more. All intersected the weapons at the predicted point, pushing all of their energy into the eight thousand ton vehicles. They all exploded outward from the transfer energy, their warheads going off a moment later.

  The Admiral wondered what they would try next. What they did was the unexpected, the following force decelerating and falling behind, the leading force, accelerating on a new vector and moving away. The enemy vessels on the flanks also moved away, coming onto a following vector at the edge of sensor range.

  It looked like they were going to keep the herding dogs in sight, while the rest of the enemy force went away. But to where?

  Chapter Three

  A robot-arm in a factory doesn’t decide minute by minute whether to rivet or revolt - it just does the job is has literally been trained to do. It’s if and when we build a conscious robot that we may have to worry.

  Daniel H. Wilson

  BOLTHOLE, FEBRUARY 18TH, 1002.

  “Three contacts, bearing five three degrees from the ecliptic, three one degrees from Galactic North. Range, two hundred and eighty-one million kilometers. Velocity, point three two light. Acceleration, five hundred and ninety gravities.” The Com Officer was repeating the words of the Tactical Officer, who was speaking them into the voice com.

  The officer looked over at the station that had been shoehorned in next to his own on the light cruiser’s bridge. Greshra returned the gaze as she repeated the words verbatim.

  “Three contacts, bearing five three degrees from the ecliptic, three one degrees from Galactic North. Range, two hundred and eighty-one million kilometers. Velocity, point three two light. Acceleration, five hundred and ninety gravities.”

  She felt the contact with her sister, on the bridge of the battleship that was over three light minutes away. Three minutes light speed com, or even fifteen seconds by the subspace com they didn’t have. And she was in instantaneous contact with her sister. She looked at the central holo that was showing the vector arrows of the new contacts, sending that information as well, so that her sister could shift the view to her implant, and from there to the other ship’s holo.

  The words of her sister’s thoughts came into her mind. “The Admiral orders us to go to heading one three four ecliptic, one seven six from Galactic North.”

  The Captain nodded, while a bridge caller repeated the message to make sure that it had been clearly stated. Greshra acknowledged the repeat, ensuring that what the human said was what she had originally stated.

  “We have missile launch,” yelled out the Tactical Officer. “Twenty four missiles, acceleration five thousand gravities, on a heading straight for us.”

  Greshra went through the same procedure as before, relaying the information, cutting down on the communication lag. She really didn’t see where the saving of less than a half a minute was of that much benefit in fighting an enemy over fifteen light minutes away. She looked over at the holo that was showing the vector arrows of the enemy missiles, which she understood would be repeated on the battleship’s holo at almost the same time from the graviton emissions.

  Her sister, Janshra, started transmitting the information through her thoughts, the orders of the Admiral. In the middle they started becoming garbled, then cut off altogether, her link to her sister fast fading, then disappearing altogether.

  “Something’s wrong,” shouted Greshra, standing. “Something’s happening.”

  “Stop the simulation,” came the voice of Admiral Gonzales over the bridge speakers. “We have a medical emergency in simulator three.”

  Janshra, thought Greshra, frantically trying to reestablish the contact that had been with her all her life. The thoughts of her other sisters were like a babbling brook in the background, confused and noisy. There was now a hole in their consciousness, and they still weren’t sure how it got there. It was sort of like Janshra had died, but not quite. And then Kreshra ran into the simulator room and all of the sisters watched the scene vicariously through her senses.

  Janshra lay on the floor, surrounded by humans, a medic kneeling beside her and running some sort of scanner over her head.

  “What happened?” asked Kreshra in a panicked voice, her strong accent making it almost unintelligible to the humans.

  “Vascular brain event,” said the Medic, looking up for a moment, then back down at his patient. “Massive embolism of the primary lateral artery, near to the forward implant.”

  “What?” asked Kreshra, not understanding, and not getting clarification from her sisters.

  “A stroke,” said the Medic, pulling out a syringe and uncapping it. “I’m going to give her a dose of stabilization nanites, then put her in cryo.”

  “Will she survive?”

  “I think so.” But all of the sisters could read the unsureness in even his alien speech.

  They don’t know enough about us, thought Greshra, looking through her sister’s eyes. They don’t have a good understanding of our minds, and we let them put devices in our brains.

  She felt sick to her stomachs at that thought. When would the devices cause them all problems, maybe as serious as those of Janshra? Janshra’s problem must have started the first night after the implants were in place, when she was complaining about her head pain.

  The Medic moved aside to let some other men move in. They opened up a bag and laid it on the floor, then picked up the Klassekian female and placed her within it. They sealed the bag and activated the mechanism. The bag closed up around the female, and it immediately started dropping the temperature down to a hundred degrees below freezing, a quick deep freeze that would preserve the biomass, even as it caused damage at the cellular level.

  “All Klassekian personnel are to report to medical,” came an order over the intercom. “Immediately.”

  And now they would try to find out what went wrong, and who else might be a possible victim. The chilling thought went through Greshra that she and the rest of her sisters were
genetic duplicates of Janshra. If it was something in their makeup, then they were probably doomed as well. And if it wasn’t, then it was still a mystery that might not be solved before another Klassekian had his or her mind self-destruct.

  * * *

  “As far as we can tell from preliminary scans,” said the Doctor, standing at his position at the conference table, pointing at the holo over the center, “this young woman suffered a massive stroke due to a congenital defect to her primary lateral artery. As you can see here, this wall was already weakened, and the increase of blood flow caused by the maximal use of the quantum entanglement section of the central lobe caused it to fail.”

  “And will she recover?” asked Admiral Anaru Henare, lines of concerned etched on his face.

  “We expect a full recovery of most brain function, once the nanites finish cellular repairs to this region. However, the quantum entanglement section is gone beyond repair.” The Physician looked down at his flat comp for a moment, then back up to the faces of the staff he had come here to brief. “Let me rephrase that. We can rebuild the area, but it will no longer be entangled with those of her siblings.”

  “And what about those siblings?” asked Commodore Sukarno.

  “As far as we can tell, they do not suffer from the same deformity of vascular structure. We have done a complete nanite scan on each of their brains, with large groups of the little guys roaming through and looking over every artery, vein and capillary. No weakening of the walls. But I would still advise caution until we know more about these minds we are messing with.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” said Henare in dismissal.

  “We need to go slowly, Admiral,” said the Physician, his eyes saying that he had more to talk about.

  “That will be all, Doctor,” said the Admiral in a more forceful voice. The Physician looked like he wanted to protest, then shook his head and left the room.

  “We need these people,” said Gonzales, who had been running the simulations for the last two days before the shutdown.

  “I hate the idea of endangering them while we try to work out how we are doing them harm,” said Commodore Khrushchev, not liking the idea that they had rescued these people from certain death just to use them in such a manner without proper research.

  “If we are overrun here,” said Henare, shaking his head, “they are gone as well. We don’t really have a choice. We are going to need every advantage we can come up with. I don’t like the idea of doing them harm either, but I would sacrifice every one of their minds, as long as we still had the bodies to use for reproduction.”

  Khrushchev wanted to hate the Admiral for that attitude, but deep down she had to agree with him. If they were about to go to war with what they thought they were facing, they would have to do everything, make every sacrifice, use every resource to make sure that Bolthole was still a going concern. The Empire needed it, and the Klassekians needed it as a refuge. Which meant they would have to face not only the hazards the humans did, but their own particular dangers.

  “So it’s settled,” said Henare, looking at the other officers in order from top of the table down. “They continue their training, we continue to implant them as medical space becomes available, and we use them in our defense, and theirs.”

  * * *

  The three destroyers jumped down from hyper I at a light month from the K class system, well beyond detection range of anything within the barrier. As soon as they were in normal space it was apparent that something was going on in the system, which was not unusual in any natural manner. There was heavy signal traffic bouncing about the system, from the orbit of the primary world, to the series of satellites close to the star, to the huge numbers of stations in the asteroid belt. Over a hundred ships of one type or another were tracked by their graviton emissions. It might not be a primary system, but it was important to someone, or thing.

  Commander Roberta Matthews, captain of the HIMS Hillary, stared at the central holo as the information on the system filled in. The relative activity in the system was not something to calm her nerves. If there was so much there, what might be waiting out here in the deeps, scanning for just such as emergence from hyper as theirs. At least they had the two other destroyers with them, one a Fleet vessel with a larger magazine capacity, if still not as much as a hyper VI vessel.

  Hers was the only scout force that had three members, since there had been an uneven number of hyper VII ships, and the Admiral was not about to send a single vessel off scouting by itself. That gave Matthews some options the other groups didn’t have. She only had to know when to use them.

  “Keep a close watch on near space, Tactical,” she said to that officer, then looked over at the Sensor Officer, who was responsible for the long range scans at this point. “We may have to leave here at any minute, Josephine. So grab all the intelligence you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Ensign Duvalier, her attention focused on her board and the holos overhead.

  They sat there for some moments as the sensors from all three ships drank in every erg of energy that was impacting the vessels. Every second that passed revealed more of the system, more of the vessels moving on grabbers from one location to another. At least sixty of the ships were what looked to be million and a half ton warships, and there were over a hundred other vessels that seemed to be tankers, ore freighters, manufacturing ships and the like.

  They counted over five hundred large satellites in orbit around the star, obvious antimatter production facilities, and a score of tankers in movement to pick up their product. Another score of ore freighters were moving to and from the asteroid belt, while over a hundred huge factory satellites churned out some unknown manufacture.

  The most chilling scene was the surface of the planet as seen through its light cloud cover. There were oceans on that globe, and lots of rivers in huge networks that covered the continents. And not a sign of a living thing across a world that seemed to be made specifically for life.

  “We’re picking up major energy signatures from that small moon in orbit around the primary planet,” said the Sensor Officer. The viewer centered on the object in question, a hundred kilometer wide object covered with what appeared to be robots.

  “I don’t think that’s a moon,” called out the Exec from CIC. “I’m not even sure it’s a station.”

  The sine waves of graviton emissions appeared on a graph at the bottom edge of the viewer. Matthews looked back up at the video, noting the scores of wings that arose from the body of the globe.

  “It’s shifting its orbital vector,” called the Sensor Officer.

  “That’s definitely not a station,” said Matthews, recognition dawning. “That’s a warship.”

  “It’s too big,” protested her Exec.

  “Not for a planet killer,” she said, staring at the object in horror. “It’s…”

  “We’re picking up graviton emissions,” called out the Tactical Officer, watching near space. “Five contacts, range five hundred and eighty million kilometers. Acceleration, twelve hundred and thirty gravities. Velocity, point zero one light.”

  Matthews turned in her chair to stare at the holo that showed those vessels coming toward them. They were thirty two light minutes away, far out of beam range, though they had to be within the missile envelope. She wondered why they weren’t going into hyper, since it would take them hours to get to them.

  “We have translation up to hyper,” called out the Sensor Officer. “Twelve objects, all in the million and a half ton range. Translation up to III.”

  “Shit,” said the Captain, seeing those ships appear as blinking icons on the holo, showing their estimated location in hyper. And they were far closer than hours away.

  “First group is translating,” called out the Tactical Officer, who was keeping his eye on those ships.

  Matthews shot a quick glance at the tactical holo. “Get us the hell out of here. Emergency jump into VI, now.”

  The Helmsman shot back a quick rep
ly, then started to work his board, while the Com Officer sent the order to the other ships. Hillary opened the hole into hyper VI, the highest they could reach at this proximity to the star, and the wave of queasiness hit the stomachs of the crew as it left normal space. The bright red tint of the highest traversable dimension of hyper appeared on the viewer, the black dots of gravity wells speckled throughout.

  “Orders, ma’am?” asked the Helmsman, looking back at her.

  Matthews thought, knowing that she had to make an immediate decision, and knowing that any decision she made would result in their living or dying. If she separated her command, one or two might escape, or they might all be forced to face an enemy each singly, on their own. If they faced them as a group, they would probably still not have enough power to fight their way through.

  “All ships,” she called out, her mind made up. “Heading ninety degrees coreward on ecliptic, seventy degrees to Galactic North. Full acceleration.”

  All of the ships turned to the proper heading, piling on the acceleration, up to the five hundred and twenty-five gravities that was the maximum safe sustainable accel for their kind of ships.

  She looked back at the tactical plot, her mind spinning as she brought up vectors, accel, velocities. It looked like it might work, if whatever was commanding those ships lacked imagination, like she thought.

  “Tactical, each ship, release one volley of hyper capable missiles on my command. Set to these parameters.” She waited a few moments for the orders to be programed. “Release.”

  Each of the ships dropped one full volley of hyperdrive capable missiles, five each, that immediately opened holes in hyper and dropped back into normal space. Now the enemy had multiple targets, unknowns, if recognizable enough as not being full-fledged starships, but still something that would need investigation.