Storming Heaven (30 page)

“No way to know,” she said, looking down at the black hole she’d created.  The Shiva Hole – as she had decided to call it – was barely visible now, but there were still some hints of the remaining gases from the star.  When the battle was won – if the battle was won – she would have to begin the immensely more dangerous task of tuning the black hole to use it as a communications device.  The whole process was rooted completely in theory.  She, for the first time in far too long, would be performing genuine original science.  “One way or the other, we’ll find out soon.”

***

“They’re working as a team now, sir,” Gary reported, as the
Lightning
narrowly avoided certain death by a completely random burst of fire.  The Killers had pulled all their starships together and were working to cover each other, an unprecedented display of concern about their human opponents, although they were still winning.  The Killer starships had been damaged – all of the starships had lost parts of their hull material – yet they were still dangerous.  “We’re just not making enough of an impact.”

Andrew nodded, bitterly.  The antimatter weapons, deployed against the interior of the Killer starships, should have ended the fighting in short order.  Instead, they seemed to be snuffed out as soon as they were deployed, leaving particle beams and energy torpedoes to wreck havoc on the Killer starships.  It just wasn't good enough.  He had the grim certainty that they’d started a battering match that would only end when one side was completely wiped out…and the human race had already lost two hundred and seven starships.  Their deaths hadn’t been in vain, but the Killers hadn’t even lost a single ship.

“Lock particle beams on the exposed areas of their hull,” he ordered, shortly.  “The attack wing will follow us in and bombard the areas we target.”

“Understood, sir,” Gary said.  He sounded tired; for the first time, Andrew understood why the Killers sought such close harmony between their biological bodies and their technology.  If they ever got tired, no human had ever seen any evidence of it.  “I have weapons locked on target.”

Andrew nodded to David.  “Go,” he said.  “Take us in.”

The
Lightning
spun on its axis and dived down towards the immense Killer starship, running through a series of evasive manoeuvres to avoid incoming bursts of fire.  The Killers seemed to have problems targeting multiple foes at once, although Andrew had to keep cautioning himself that that might be nothing more than wishful thinking; the sheer volume of firepower they could put out was daunting in its own right.  They drew more fire as they zoomed closer, but none of the Killer blasts came close enough to blow the
Lightning
into dust.

“Weapons locked on target,” Gary said.  “We are engaging the enemy.”

Andrew watched as the particle beams dug deep into the Killer starship, vaporising metal and burning through deep into the interior.  The strange Killer atmosphere – which they now knew to be representative of a gas giant – was streaming from a dozen holes, yet the damage wasn't deep enough to be fatal.  Gary launched a spread of energy torpedoes into another rent, but half of the spread smashed against an protected section of the hull, and the remainder simply didn’t inflict much damage.  Andrew was sure, looking at the power curves as they ran over the Killer starship, that they were hurting the enemy ship, but it showed no inclination to run, or to die.

Gary added a spread of implosion bolts as they roared up and over an undamaged part of the Killer hull.  The Killers returned fire with a cold fury that seemed to rend and tear at space itself, but somehow the
Lightning
escaped destruction.  The tiny explosions – tiny, but so devastating n the long run – sparkled on the Killer hull, before they were swept away by particle beams from oncoming human starships.  The
Lightning
climbed away from the Killer starship, firing another spread of energy torpedoes and noisemakers to cover its flight; David avoided the last two bursts of Killer weapons fire with ease.  The Killers had other targets to engage.

“Two more starships were destroyed in the run,” Gary said, shortly.  Andrew nodded once and pushed his feelings away into the back of his mind.  They’d mourn later.  If there was a later.  It was easy to build hundreds of destroyers, even factoring in the new weapons, but harder to train the crews, even though the Community had had plenty of volunteers after the Killers attacked human settlements…and humanity had proven that they could be beaten.  “Another…sir!”

Andrew turned and saw one of the starships.  Somehow, it had been hit, but survived.  It was falling down towards the Killer starship, using the last vestiges of its drive field to point itself right at the target and ramped up the drive to full power.  It flew right into one of the damaged sections of the Killer hull and exploded.  A moment later, a series of massive explosions tore the Killer starship apart.  There was nothing left of it, but a wavefront of expanding plasma and radiation.

“Sir, the
Melbourne
and the
Payback
are launching suicide runs,” Gary reported.  Andrew stared in numb disbelief.  The starship commanders were ignoring all signals from the command ships, or entities from their friends, but launching themselves against the enemy.  The
Payback’s
Captain, he recalled suddenly, had lost family at Asimov.  He had been the first to grasp the possible uses of the new weapons.  “They’re throwing themselves right at the Killers!”

Two minutes later, three more Killer starships died.

Chiyo found herself looking onto a scene from hell.

She had been studying the Killer communications network – and trying to understand some of the Killer race memories she had figured out how to access – when she’d sensed a wave of alarm rushing through the network that played unwilling host to her.  She’d thought, at first, that one of her duplicates had been detected, or that Chiyo Prime herself had been located, but the Killer mind had seemed unconcerned about its own security.  Instead, she had become aware – as it had become aware – of new gravity waves sweeping across the galaxy, marking a sudden change in the universe itself.

It was hard to know just what she was actually sensing – she couldn’t tell if the gravity waves were reaching her starship or if the Killer was merely sensing a change in the overall fabric of space – but she could sense the Killer minds reaching their conclusion.  It was unlikely in the extreme, they seemed to decide, although she wasn't sure even if she was understanding them properly, that the star would suddenly have become a black hole.  The conclusion was obvious; the enemy – the human race, Chiyo knew, unless a new player had entered the field – had moved on from creating supernovas to creating black holes.  It had to be terminated, now.

A wormhole had formed around her starship and she had sensed its leap through space to a rendezvous location, where thirty-two other Killer starships had materialised.  The Killer mind had monitored the creation of the black hole while waiting for its allies – Chiyo found it oddly reassuring that the single starship hadn’t gone charging in itself – and as soon as the remainder of the fleet assembled, had ordered an advance.  Chiyo wasn't sure if
her
starship was actually the leader – it was so hard to gain more than vague impressions of what they were saying to each other – but it did seem to be taking the lead.  Space warped around it again and, when the wormhole had collapsed, revealed a black hole only a few AUs away from their new position.

Chiyo watched, fascinated, as the starships raced towards the black hole.  The Defence Force had never studied black holes too closely – they had been more concerned with probing Killer star systems – and she had only seen one at a distance, although the Technical Faction had proved them closely, often at a cost of the starship doing the probing.  A single starship hung in orbit near the black hole; Chiyo guessed, in a moment of dark humour, that the Captain had probably taken one look at the advancing Killer fleet and wet himself.  The human ship was completely outmatched.

And then the human starships had arrived and the battle had begun.  Chiyo had been stunned at the pain and shock in the Killer mind when the human weapons actually inflicted damage for the first time, ever.  Systems that were so old that they had literally worn away, even on a starship that was effectively bonded with the mind controlling it, were pressed into service to repair the damage, even as the Killers gritted their teeth and fought back savagely.  They had never experienced such pain in their entire lives, yet they held on and returned fire.  Chiyo would have been impressed under other circumstances, she decided, but their stubbornness was costing human lives.  She watched, unable to understand why the antimatter weapons weren't working, until the first starship rammed a Killer ship.  A moment later, two more followed…and the Killers lost their first starships in combat, since…

There was no sense of time – she wasn't even sure if the Killers had any concept of time as humans reckoned it – but she had the strong impression that the Killers hadn’t died in a very long time.  They were effectively immortal, she knew; they had no real concept of death, just…stagnation.  The deaths of three of their number shocked them, the more so because they lacked anything like the MassMind, as far as she could tell.  Humanity had invented religions to give the human race some concept of life after death, but the Killers…had not.  Whatever drove them wasn't anything that a human could understand.  For an immortal to die, to be exposed to the fates, had to be terrifying.  Their response to the human kamikaze starships would be drastic.

There’s no more time
, she thought, grimly.  She had already prepared her messenger – a duplicate of herself – and planned her moves carefully.  The duplicate had been compressed down to a tiny data file – she had probably violated yet another legal restriction, she decided, although it would be interesting to see if the Community could legally prosecute her for hurting herself – and she swept her up into the Killer’s data stream.  The Killers used constant low-level transmissions to communicate with themselves – it made little sense to her, but she was sure that she understood what they were doing, if not why – but she had another use in mind.  She launched herself into the transmission stream, took a breath she knew she no longer needed, and pushed the signal out into open space.  One way or the other, the die was definitely cast.

***

“Evasive action,” Andrew snapped, as the Killer starship loomed closer.  The starships should have been cumbersome, sitting ducks for the far more nimble human ships, but now they were throwing themselves around the battlezone like flies.  They were still firing, a mocking reminder that there were still thirty Killer starships near the black hole and that they still had the power to wipe out the human force.  Andrew wasn't sure, even, how the
Lightning
had survived.  One blast had come close enough to scorch the hull.  “Keep us spinning and return fire!”

Another spread of implosion bolts shot out of the ship, hacking away at the Killer hull material and opening new targets for more conventional weapons.  The Killers were trying to avoid a fourth ramming attack, Andrew realised, yet they couldn’t avoid one forever.  A starship made a run for an exposed section of the Killer hull, only to be blasted into vapour before it could ramp up its drive and fly right into the damaged area.  Another twisted and feinted, before firing a spread of energy torpedoes into another rent, sending tiny explosions glaring into the darkness of space.  The Killer starship heeled like a wounded whale, before recovering and blowing the human starship into dust. 

“I have new targets,” Gary said.  “Request permission to engage.”

“Fire at will,” Andrew snapped.  The old rejoinder –
failing that, fire at Fred
– surfaced in his mind and he pushed it down savagely.  “Helm, take us in to point blank range and strafe the bastards.”

“Working on it,” David said.  The starship twisted and rocketed down towards the Killer ship, firing as it came.  Gary fired an entire spread of energy torpedoes into a gaping hole and was rewarded by the sight of a burst of gas blowing out of the side of the starship.  The vaporised interior material lit up space for a second before it cooled and faded out of existence.  “Pulling away…”

The starship shook violently.  “What the hell,” Andrew demanded, “was that?”

“I’m not sure, sir,” David said.  “A random gravity fluctuation…?”

“Get on to the Technical observers and tell them to tell us what it was,” Andrew snapped.  “And then…”

“Sir, the
Havoc
,” Gary said, suddenly.  “She’s in trouble.”

Andrew snapped the live feed into his console.  The
Havoc
had been zooming towards a Killer starship with the intention of ramming the ship – or, perhaps, trying to convince the Killers that they intended to ram.  She was
stopped
, dead in space, twitching violently against an invisible force holding her in place.  The starship was buckling even as he watched; a moment later, it broke apart and vaporised as the quantum tap blew, causing a massive explosion.  There had been no time for anyone to get to the lifepods.

“Hellfire,” he snapped.  “What
was
that?”

“Unknown,” the AI said.  There was a sudden change in its voice.  “Alert; possible viral software detected!”

Andrew blinked.  The Killers didn’t attempt to hack into human computers.  It wasn’t their style.  “Report,” he snapped.  “Who’s attempting to hack into the system?”

There was a long pause, an eternity in computer time.  “Uncertain,” the AI said, finally.  “We picked up a transmission from one of the Killer ships containing a compressed
human
mind pattern.”

“A compressed
human
mind pattern?”  Andrew asked.  “What the…?”

“Confirmed,” the AI said.  “The pattern is definitely human, the product of a Community personality recording implant, standard issue.  I have placed the compressed pattern in suspension and will alert the MassMind.  Further analysis here may put the ship in danger.”

“Cut yourself out of the local command network,” Andrew ordered, shortly.  “If you’re contaminated, we don’t want it spreading throughout the fleet.”

“Yes, sir,” the AI said.

Andrew pushed the mystery to the back of his mind and looked over at David.  “Take us back into the fight,” he ordered, “but be ready to run if they start trying to rip us apart.”

“Aye, sir,” David said.  The display flickered for a second as a fourth Killer starship blew up and vaporised.  A moment later, a fifth followed it as two starships rammed it in quick succession.  There was no way to know, but Andrew would have bet good money that the Killers couldn’t replace their losses any faster – if that – than the human Defence Force.  It only took three days to build a destroyer, yet a destroyer was tiny; an
Iceberg
-class ship was massive.  How long would it take them to replace their losses?  “Do you think it could be an attempt to communicate?”

Andrew shook his head.  “Why would they send us a human mind pattern to communicate?”  He asked.  If it was an attempt to communicate, how had the Killers known how to do it?  Had they taken a human alive after all?  They’d certainly had the opportunity…and there were billions whose deaths had never been confirmed.  “It makes no sense at all.”

***

Paula watched grimly as another human starship was ripped apart before it could ram a Killer starship amidships.  “It’s unbelievable,” she said, shaking her head in awe.  A human mind might have thought of such a system, but actually deploying it in combat?  Anything could go badly wrong.  “They’re actually using focused gravity beams as a weapon.  The power levels it uses must be astronomical.”

“Never mind that now,” Chris snapped, shortly.  “Can they counter it?”

“We should be able to tune the warp fields to compensate for sudden unexpected changes in the gravity field,” Paula said, slowly.  Gravity technology was her area of expertise, after all, and she was learning more from the Killers than they would have liked, if they were even aware of her existence.  “I can write them a formula for it, but their AIs should be able to counter it…hell, if they manage to alter their attack patterns, they should be able to prevent the Killers from taking out more than one or two craft.  They won’t be able to maintain that kind of power generation and deployment for long.”

Chris frowned.  “Are you sure of that?”  He asked.  “We’ve underestimated them before?”

Paula shrugged as another Killer starship died.  The odds were turning rapidly against the Killers, she realised, even though she had never claimed to be a military tactician.  They had to prevent any and all human starships from ramming – and there seemed to be no shortage of commanders willing to commit suicide to take down a Killer ship – while the humans only had to get lucky once.  The fleet might have been reduced sharply – the once-neat attack wings had been broken up and destroyers were flying with whatever wingmen they could scrape up – but there were still far more human starships than there were Killer ships.  She was rather surprised that the Killers had decided to continue the fight, rather than opening wormholes and escaping across the galaxy.

“I managed to get some background figures on what they could handle onboard their ships,” Paula said, finally.  The hours spent studying the captured ship had answered all kinds of questions, and raised thousands more.  “Projecting such massive gravity beams would require…”

Her voice broke off.  “That’s how they’re doing it,” she said, slowly.  “They have a black hole on each of those starships and…they’re using the black hole as a source of the gravity beams.  Damn; that’s clever.  They’re creating the power by skimming it off the black hole and running it through the focusing fields.  I wonder how they actually compensate for the gravity flux…no, they counter that by using their own fields to handle it.”

She shook her head.  “It should be easy enough to watch for a sudden rise in gravity fields and set the warp drive to get the starship out of range,” she added.  “I’d give anything to know just how they do it.”