Rogue A.I.: Mike Stedman Book 2, page 5
Alyndra said, “It’s too bad my people can’t have such technology.”
Chrystal nodded, “Maybe someday, right now it’s not possible to read brain synapses and brainwaves from a distance.”
They changed the subject at that point, and after dinner retired to their quarters.
They didn’t talk about their doubts, or their worries, but he, Chrystal, and Nadia loved each other gently, slowly, and with deep intimacy that night before they slept. In the morning, the first battle would come…
Chapter Nine
He felt nervous, and doubtful. Was this the right thing? It wasn’t strictly self-defense, he couldn’t protect everyone either. He truly believed they would come back though, when they found a way to exceed the abilities of the Xaran empire. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have energy readings from the invasion, they’d know when they’d succeeded. Still, just the idea of changing his mind and leaving those civilizations to die filled him with rage.
That too worried him. Sort of self-defense, but with a lot of aggressive anger thrown in. There was no question the race deserved it. He couldn’t even come up with a word to cover their crimes. The Kascorix hadn’t simply performed genocide, since that implied one species. Galaxicide? Not a word, probably because the idea was too horrible to imagine or contemplate.
They’d killed a whole galaxy, and as far as he knew they’d set their sights on the Milky Way next. No, anger or not, they were doing the universe a service by putting this race on a leash.
“Ten seconds,” Chrystal said softly.
Her voice pulled him out of his mental fog and second guesses, and he brought up the hologram over the table for their target solar system, as well as deeper data in his overlay to keep an eye on it. It would take time to fill in, even time for the passive sensors to process data. It’s why he always came out of subspace three light minutes from the planet, it allowed time for a picture to form, and a few minutes for any last minute decisions or changes to strategy.
They dropped out of subspace three light minutes from Edraonus. It took a few seconds for both the passive and active sensors to start mapping the system in the hologram.
Chrystal was on his right, Nadia on his left, and Alyndra on the other side of Chrystal. Dahlia was also on the bridge, and would watch the battle before heading back down to the shuttles to lead a surface attack.
“Well, you were right, there’s just three of those two mile ships, and two others that are only a half mile long. That seems to be their standard deployment for worlds they’ve invaded. I don’t think we can call the new ships just freighters though. Can we hit them with gravity?”
It was a standard deployment, but he didn’t think that would last.
Chrystal shook her head, “They must have funneled that change to their whole fleet, the active subspace apertures are changing five times a second.”
He frowned thoughtfully, “Can we do that? I know our artificial gravity shields are stronger, but if they make an advancement it would be nice to have the counter already in place.”
He felt stupid, he should have thought of that and ordered it before they’d left the Milky Way. He’d been thinking with his anger toward the enemy, and it also probably didn’t help how distracted he’d been with Chrystal and Nadia. Not that he’d change a moment with either of them, but he was suddenly worried that he’d missed other obvious stuff too.
Chrystal nodded, “Easily.”
They were almost in range, and all five of the enemy ships were moving toward them.
“Launch five shuttles, one each. Let’s hang back a bit.”
He wasn’t exactly that nervous, but he did have a lot of lives in his care, and if a small shuttle could make a hole and cut up an enemy ship, well there was no point in putting the battle ship in danger.
The five ships raced ahead of them as they slowed, and moved to intercept one ship each.
The enemy ships all fired at the shuttle coming towards them, with five beams each. The shield absorbed the strikes and dissipated them. He sat back, and took a sip of his coffee, and tried not to look nervous.
It was thirty seconds later that all five ships fired again, this time at one shuttle.
The large battleship would have easily absorbed the twenty-five beams on its large surface, but the shuttle was small, the size of a car, and its shields were overloaded quickly, as the energy spread out and joined, and then the shuttle disappeared in a flash of destruction.
They quickly took out a second shuttle. But the third through fifth reached gravity range, and quickly opened holes in the hull and flew inside. Their low powered and small, but still subspace energy beams, started to carve the ships into pieces.
“Launch two more shuttles at the last two.”
The shuttles launched, and as they started to close the first three ships fell apart, and were ultimately ripped apart by secondary explosions.
“When they fire at one of the shuttles, I want to hit both of them with a twenty foot wide pulse at full power.”
He figured at the edge of energy range with the sensor delay, plus the two shuttles as a distraction, they wouldn’t be able to capitalize on their split-second vulnerability.
Chrystal replied, “Will do. But I don’t think even doubled up two ships can take out a shuttle, I think it would take at least three of them, but it’ll be close.”
He nodded, “Well, the shuttles will have nice big holes to fly into with no waiting then.”
Nadia snickered.
The two ships opened up on one shuttle, and Chrystal was right, they came close with ten beams, but the shuttle survived the attack.
Chrystal immediately sent out two pulses of energy at each ship, and it ripped straight through them. A few moments later, and the shuttles flew inside to finish them off.
He checked the plot, and outside of some sensors, he didn’t see any additional defenses.
“That seems odd, no satellite weapons, or space stations?”
Chrystal answered, “It’s their race’s psychology. While Earth, and Mars has defenses, and pretty much every other race in the empire, the Kascorix is aggressively offensive.”
He grunted, “Best defense is a good offense?”
Chrystal nodded, “Taken to the extreme.”
Dahlia said, “Our turn, what are we looking at?”
Chrystal zoomed to a planetary view as we closed in to make orbit. There were large permanent buildings instead of those small lander ships, of course this world had been in Kascorix hands for a long time, so permanent camps and emplacements weren’t a surprise. The lander ships were obviously just a temporary measure for the invasion stage of taking a planet.
Chrystal said, “There are fifty locations all with this same layout. The largest building is a pen area, for breeding and keeping the Edraons locked up. The two secondary smaller buildings appear to be barracks for the Kascorix warriors. I’m only picking up fifty warriors at each location, which are all identical to this one. The eight towers set up in a square around the area are both gravity generators to protect from orbital attack, and also house plasma turrets.”
Dahlia frowned thoughtfully, “We’ll have to split up into units of two hundred, I don’t like those odds, each of those turrets could take out two or three of us before we take them out. Twenty-four per site, fifty sites, that’s twelve hundred casualties per each planet. That’s… too many if we need to do this a hundred times. We’d all be dead by planet nine or ten.”
He brought up the specs on their armor, and identified the problem immediately, as well as the reason the Mirosians weren’t a L2 subspace society. Their power systems sucked. He didn’t have to give them his latest power core either, an earlier one would do well enough he thought. In fact, there wouldn’t really be a difference, the armor’s shield generator wouldn’t handle all the energy it could provide, so even the lower quality power core would have to be throttled back as it was.
He said, “I think I can upgrade your armor, to withstand a turret shot. In fact, it would take three turrets, or ten of the Kascorix hand weapons to stop you. Eventually they’ll adapt and figure that out, but it will lessen casualties by a great deal even when that comes to pass.
“I wish we could just fly the shuttles in skimming the ground, and take them out, but I have a feeling they’d dome the place and go defensive if we tried.”
Dahlia replied, “I would be grateful. How long will that take?”
“Ten minutes? Then you’d have to pass out and swap out power cores on your armor, and configure them to output the extra energy into shields. This would also be a loan, for this campaign only.”
He sent, “Chrystal, just the old generation cores, not my new ones.”
Chrystal replied, “Shouldn’t we get a vote on this? Medical technology on Mars isn’t restricted which is why I shared the implants, but power sources?”
He thought about that for a minute.
He sent, “And if they say no? They don’t exactly support this effort. It’s temporary anyway, we aren’t giving the technology to the Miroth world, just a loan for the duration. There are already safeguards against tampering so they can’t figure it out? It’s no different than them using our shuttles to land, or flying in our ships, if they don’t get to take them home.”
His conscience wriggled a bit at that, but if he could keep casualties down, he’d do it. What he was doing pushed the line of things, but if a vote came back negative then he’d really be breaking the rules. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission as the saying goes.
Chrystal sent, “I suppose.”
She’d sounded a bit dubious, but started on the work.
Dahlia said, “I’ll go down, and give instructions, we’ll launch in a half hour?”
He nodded, and Dahlia left the bridge.
He asked, “I’ve been thinking maybe we should leave behind a destroyer instead of a scout at each planet? Just in case they come back here after we leave, they almost have to when their food sources start to disappear out from under them.”
Chrystal tilted her head, “Maybe. They will most likely come for us directly though, which means they’ll send more ships where we haven’t been yet in case we show up there next, or a response force to hit us in our current location. Reclaiming their worlds while invaders are still around isn’t that likely with their temperament. They’ll all be drooling to come kill us first, then they’ll worry about food. Don’t forget they have a large larder built up. But that should be fine, we should keep an eye on them, and a destroyer won’t take long.”
Even a destroyer with shuttles might not be enough, but if the enemy did send people to recover the world they would know about it, and be able to come back here. Most likely, the Kascorix would prepare and attack them before they even left this world, while they were helping to undo some of what the Kascorix had done to this world.
“Will a week be long enough?”
Edraonus was a primitive culture, so he knew she’d be focused on reforestation and things of that nature. There were no cities to rebuild. The energy to matter device had a five-mile reach, so they’d be able to do it all from orbit. It could also find the new patterns from what flora were left, and basically just copy it.
Chrystal nodded, “That’s more than three hours at all fifty sites, to help restore the eco-system. It should be enough, the population is only a couple of million spread out worldwide, so even the decimated prey animal population will have time to be built back up and recover on its own. I’m building the destroyer now, the power cores for the Mirosian armor are finished. After that, I’ll start on the planet.”
Nadia said, “The danger is passed I suppose, but I’m sticking around to see how the Mirosians make out as well.”
Yeah, he thought this first fight of theirs would be the easiest as well. The next planet they enemy would compensate for the new shields, but perhaps not enough. Eventually though, the enemy would figure it out. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t nervous as hell, who knew what surprises the enemy might have in store?
“Coffee?”
Alyndra said, “I’ll get it.”
Chapter Ten
The shuttles had to make two trips, just under two hundred warriors at each of the fifty sites. As they had in the past, the large holo-table had the processing camp on the bottom which showed the large building, two barracks, and a few smaller supply buildings, surrounded by the eight turrets. The barracks were now empty, the enemy sure we were coming from them. They’d set up portable shield walls to fire from. The only good news seemed to be that the enemy was outnumbered four to one at every sight.
The bad news was that the Kascorix were dug in and ready for them.
He imagined for a race like the Kascorix, this posting must be a punishment of sorts. Of course, while there were less soldiers than in the invasion, there was twice the amount of plasma turrets to deal with.
The top of the holographic image was a more local view, as if they were there and looking over Dahlia’s shoulder. They hoped there’d be no nasty surprises. Fortunately, if it could be called that, the Kascorix thought of other races as food, so he and Chrystal didn’t believe there’d be bombs or any kind of self-destruct on the facility.
It would be like… a rancher blowing up a herd to keep it from poachers. He just didn’t see it as a realistic possibility.
As soon as the second wave of shuttles landed, they moved as one on the facilities. They ran very quickly thanks to their armor, it would just take five minutes to cover the four miles. The Mirosian forces hit the facilities like a tidal wave. The turrets had no chance to adapt, they all got off a couple of shots which harmlessly glanced off the upgraded shields, and then ten Mirosians each shot a plasma bolt at each of the eight turrets, taking them out before they could adjust and combine targets.
The enemy had obviously been updated from the results of the invasion, because they did team up, three to a target. Which wasn’t even close to enough anymore. The Mirosians fired a few shots killing some as they closed and then activated the energy nimbus around their weapons, and scythed through the rest like wheat.
He let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. It was their first attack, the subsequent ones wouldn’t be so easy at all he didn’t think, but there were no casualties at all. Unfortunately, surprise only worked once.
It took time for Dahlia’s forces to find the controls, and free the Edraons from their cages. Then they retreated quickly, it had been decided there was very little reason to try and interact. The Edraons were an omnivorous race that looked a little like cat people, and were rather primitive. They were fast, and formidable to someone without technology, but with the armor it was easy for Dahlia’s forces to disappear like ghosts.
They monitored the population as they came out and scattered in confusion, he hoped they would be able to survive. They were on their own now, or at least, they would be once Chrystal was done providing resources.
Nadia sighed in relief, and then leaned over for a kiss.
“Okay, I’ll see you all tonight.”
She stood and rounded him, and then gave Chrystal a kiss as well, before she headed back to their quarters to log into her android on Xaran.
That whole week he was rather nervous. The Kascorix had L2 subspace, so they could have had almost any number of ships at the system in hours, yet the first day passed without a sign of them, as did the second, and third. They might have been aggressive, but they weren’t stupid, and were obviously planning their response given their ineffective tactics up until now.
In other words, they weren’t going to just throw any more ships away, and were planning something, he just wished he knew what it was.
The Edraons didn’t go very far from the facility, and it was only two days later that they returned to get some of the nutrient paste they’d been subsisting on in captivity. There was quite a lot of it, but not an unending supply. He hoped they would figure out how to hunt before they starved. There was really nothing more they could do for them though, freedom meant freedom to find their own way, or die.
A hard truth. He was hopeful though, they were primitive, and hunger would help them find their instincts to gather and hunt. Hundreds of years treated as herd animals and food couldn’t undo millions of years of evolutionary instincts for hunting.
Dahlia and the rest of the Mirosians spent all their time training, either weight training in the real world to keep in shape, or combat training in virtual world. Dahlia did start joining them for their evening meals however, and he enjoyed her positive attitude and company.
Nadia continued to work on Xaran for the day, and be on the ship with them for evenings and the night. Their nighttime bedroom activity continued at an unabated pace, but it was her wit and intelligence the rest of the time that was making him fall for her a little more every day. He was fairly sure he was in love with her already, but hadn’t told her so yet.
She also seemed extremely happy, and far more relaxed than he’d seen her before. Without the secrets standing between them anymore, she truly threw herself into their relationship. His life very much revolved around the two women in his life that week, and he hoped for many more years to come.
He also thought she might be learning more on ship than at Xaran, since most nights over dinner Chrystal, Alyndra, and Dahlia compared insights into the other races of the empire. He was sure Nadia was paying very close attention to those conversations.
During the day, he spent almost all of his time with Chrystal and Alyndra. The mornings they usually discussed progress, and ways to make things more efficient. They also planned out their campaign, and what order they’d be tackling the food planets of the Kascorix.
His afternoons were usually spent in the arboretum playing chess and conversing with Alyndra, sometimes Chrystal was there, but some days she worked on her own projects during that time. She was a physician and psychologist and had her own interests outside of their shared life, which was a good and healthy thing.
