Temple of S.A.R.A.H. 7: Upgrades (6 page)

"I will check on the status of the AI shipments for your fleets, Admiral," Hearlis replied making a note to himself.

"With so many ships and installations to install, I am certain our people are doing their best, Lord Admiral." He glanced at another monitor for a moment. He sighed. "Navigation! Alter our entry vector and order all ships to begin full power deceleration! Make certain the new warheads are mounted on our missiles but do not initiate the thermal reactions until we are ready to launch!"

"Excuse me, Admiral, that order you just gave, are those the new warheads from Apollo?" Hearlis asked.

The Simonian nodded. "They are. The designer was obviously rushed to get these out to us. The warheads themselves are not unstable unless there is an active thermonuclear reaction taking place inside them. My weapons officer devised a work around for it. He added a small module that can remotely initiate the reaction inside the warhead just before launch. We've been building them since we received and altered the design."

"That would certainly help, can we impose on you to get a copy of that module design?" Hearlis asked.

"I'll see to it right now, Lord Admiral. I did tell my armorer to share it with you, but he might have gotten busy," the Simonian Admiral replied.

Hearlis looked at his ops officer. "When that gets here, put it out to all our people and send a copy to Apollo for the designer."

The big Simonian nodded. "There, our course has been altered and we are beginning to decelerate. We will still be fast when we arrive, but we will not be pushing phase lock. Thank you for letting us know about this, Lord Admiral. Our arrival is now ninety-two minutes… Mark!"

Hearlis nodded. "The bugs are just holding position at the moment, but I believe they are simply trying to decide on the best way to protect their ships from these new missiles. Once they have that worked out, they will begin moving again."

The Simonian nodded, then grinned. "The way they are massing their ships so close together will give these new missiles much to work with. This should be interesting if nothing else. I see that they sent out their seeding ships, how did the new defense systems work?"

"Very well so far. Nothing has been able to get anywhere close to our inhabited planets. There are only two seeder ships remaining and they are not long for this world," Hearlis replied.

"The Aracs have never been any good at small ship warfare, even when the Synod controlled them," The Simonian Admiral replied. "We will join you there shortly Lord Admiral, by your leave, I will leave you to your work."

Hearlis smiled at the respect the big Simonian was giving him. "We look forward to your arrival, Admiral."

The Aracnise fleet held position and moved ships around for another hour before very cautiously beginning to move in system. The fleets guarding the Novalus system used their cruisers to move up, fire missiles at extreme range, and back off.

The Aracs tried to focus their point defenses on the new missiles almost exclusively, but the missiles proved very difficult for them to track. By the time the Arac fleet made it to the next mine field, their fleet had been reduced by half and nothing smaller than a heavy cruiser remained. The assault had turned into a war of attrition for the Aracs, but they kept coming anyway.

The Simonian fleet arrived just as the Aracs were in the center of the inner mine field. As he had said, the Simonian ships were still moving very fast when they arrived, and headed straight for the enemy fleet. As they approached, they began launching their missiles. Just before those missiles impacted the massed Arac fleet, Hearlis ordered the mines detonated, knocking down the shields and damaging most of the remaining enemy ships. When the Simonian missiles arrived, it was a bedlam for the Aracs.

Hearlis ordered the station back into position around the planet as the only remaining enemy presence were two heavily damaged Arac ships. A battleship that had no propulsion, but still had power, and the biggest ship, the command ship where the queen was suspected of being. Not even the huge command ship was unscathed, however. The bow of the ship was completely gone, exposing most of the forward decks to space. The craft still had power, and most weapons, but it was hurt badly.

Shortly after Guardian Station began to move back to its original position, alarms started going off.

"What's going on?" Hearlis asked.

"The Arac command ship is initiating its jump drive! Hyperspace sensors are predicting a jump to our location!" the tracking officer reported.

"Is that even possible that deep into the system?" the operations officer asked.

Hearlis nodded. "It's possible, but it’s going to be hard on the ship and could affect the orbital mechanics of the system. All units, stop that ship before it can make the jump! Concentrate all fire on the command ship now! Shut that bitch down!" He looked at the operations officer. "Arm all station weapons systems, divert all emergency power to the shields!"

Admiral Rhines sent half her forces toward the station at emergency speed in an effort to protect it, while the other half began firing every weapon that could possibly reach the command ship in time.

Admiral Gohnes pressed his entire fleet forward in an all-out effort to destroy the command ship and the remaining battleship. The Simonian Admiral had flown past the remains of the enemy fleet, and was turning to come back, but as yet were still out of range. As they moved, almost every ship in the two fleets in range fired everything they could. The first missiles had only just hit the command ship when the initiation finished and the ship jumped.

Main Force Command Center

Ares Base

Icarus Plateau

Mars, Sol System

"Are you alright? How much damage did you take?" Vance asked the battered image of Hearlis.

"We got pretty banged up, but we're still functional. We took more casualties here than the rest of the fleet did in combat; mostly thanks to your new armor and the AI. The only reason we took so many casualties was because the Arac command ship actually rammed us. Without the new armor, there would have been many more dead, and without Athena, we could have lost the station.

"As soon as we are capable of it, we will be jumping to Sol for repairs. Three of the Councilors are still in the medical section, but they'll be transferred to the planet with the rest of the Council before we leave," Hearlis replied. He was wearing a bandage around his head that covered one eye and his left arm was in a sling. Although he was sitting down, Vance could see that he had bandages on his legs as well. From the scorch marks on his pants, Vance thought the leg wounds might be burns.

Vance nodded. "I'll alert our own medical sections to expect your wounded as well, Lord Admiral. We should be able to help you with those burns and that eye."

Hearlis grinned. "I'm sure you can, that was one of the things I was going to ask about getting upgraded while we were there. We have the nanos in our armor, and the medical section can work with them, but only to a limited degree. I'd like to get us upgraded fully so we can really take advantage of what the nanos can do."

"Just let me know when you're coming and I'll make sure we're ready for you, Lord Admiral," Vance replied. "Is there anything you need us to send? Were any of the civilians hurt?"

Hearlis shook his head. "No, the fighting never made it to any of the populated planets. However, we did find that each of the out-system facilities had been invaded and a couple were seeded with hives. Those are being cleaned up right now. You folks just keep doing what you’re doing, and we'll all be just fine."

Vance snorted and nodded. "Until the Aracs figure out where all these new weapons and systems are coming from, then they'll throw everything they have at this system. But, we'll be ready for them. There is stuff in the works that would amaze you."

"I'll look forward to reading those reports then. Personally, I'm looking forward to that transit gate you mentioned. I hate hyperspace travel," Hearlis replied.

"You'll love the other stuff they're trying to figure out; photon torpedo launchers, nano-assisted self-repairing ships, unmanned combat drones, there's just about everything you could think of and some you never would have imagined being researched here," Vance said proudly. "Even ways of terraforming planets that had once been over-run with Aracnise."

Hearlis smiled at Vance. "Keep talking, and I'll switch jobs with you! You did a damn good job getting us the reinforcements we needed to survive this battle. I doubt we would have done it without the extra help you sent us."

"Now I know you're telling stories. The Simonians sent half their Home Guard fleet to you," Vance said slightly embarrassed at the praise.

"Oh they certainly helped, but if not for the extra ships you sent us, this battle would have turned out far differently and lasted much, much longer," Hearlis replied. "And that was your doing."

Vance cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Any idea when you'll be able to make the jump?"

Hearlis grinned at him, but let him get away with it. "Our engineers tell us they'll have the jump engines back on line within two days. The repairs to the superstructure will take at least three days, at least enough of them to make sure the station doesn't break up during the jump. So all in all, we should be there in about three weeks."

Vance raised his eyebrows. "You know, the new command station we were building as your backup will be finished in five weeks. Let me do some checking and see if we can't shift more resources to it. If we can get it close to finished by the time you get here, you could just move into that one. It would certainly cut down on your repair time,"

"I had no idea it was that close to being finished. The last report I saw said it still had months to go," Hearlis replied.

"That was before Earth became a Core World. All our projects have sped up since then. We have a lot more manpower now," Vance said. "Even here on the military base, we are almost at full capacity in training. I've been worrying about what I'm going to do with all the extra crewmen and Marines I'm going to have soon, since the ships being built for them won't be ready in time."

"Well, we can rotate a good portion of them out to our fleets and give some of our other sailors and soldiers a break by sending them through training for the new systems. Are the Shallans still insisting on rebuilding the GMASS facility there?" Hearlis asked.

Vance nodded. "In fact, they have already gotten a very good start on it. It'll take centuries for them to completely rebuild the entire facility, but what they have already finished has already started building new ships. From what I understand, all they really basically need at this point is the empty module shells. They are filling each new module with their equipment as soon as it gets built and hooked up. Eventually they will run out of equipment and need to build that too, but for now, they are getting the new facility running much faster than anyone ever thought they could."

"Will you be able to handle a few extra ships in the upgrade bays?" Hearlis asked. "I was planning on bringing some of the older ships back with me as escorts."

Vance looked thoughtful and pulled up the refit schedule on his terminal. "That might be difficult, but I could probably shift the schedule around a little to make room for them. I'll see what I can make happen."

Hearlis nodded. "Okay, I've been ordered to try to get some rest, and frankly the pain killers are starting to get to me. I'm going to leave Fleet Command on you for the next couple of days in order to get ourselves back to some form of order around here. Let me know if anything new happens."

Vance nodded. "Will do, get some rest Sir."

Hearlis nodded and ended the call.

Office of Lord Dr. Cowan

Alliance Apollo Base

Selene, Earth's Moon

Sol System

Ced and Tul-sa won me over. I did talk to the psychology folks and let them know that I wouldn't be able to work with them as much as I have been because I was switching my focus. It was easier to do that since I hadn't actually committed to AI psychology yet, but many of them had expected it of me. When I explained why I was doing what I had planned, they said they understood, but many of them were somewhat disappointed that I had.

The meeting Ced had asked for was… well it was unexpected, scary and impressive as hell. The people doing the research into the nature of the AI crystals and how they used quantum computing was very enlightening to me and explained quite a few questions I still had about how Sarah did the things she did and how she could have developed a unique personality.

Back when I first wrote her program, all she had was the old, cobbled-together computer cluster I had built from available parts. In those days, she simply didn't have the capacity for a personality even if I had programmed one. As it turned out I hadn't programmed the personality, but I did make it possible for her to develop one when she did have the capacity for it. Luckily, when she did begin to develop her personality, she was still limited to a few select people to interact with and did not have many negative influences to adopt traits from.