King's endgame, Arc 8 of "Gone with the Sun"
Chapter 102 Skirmishes
Pounding Vacuum
By the time Peacemaker and North Cape finally returned to the N-18 relay, the damage to the rear video camera had been repaired. Of all the participants in the ground discussion at the fort around the relay, only Wrex was in favor of an immediate return:
"Pansies."
"All very well for you to say, Wrex, there's no ground in a black hole for you to fight on."
"Wasn't there a planet?"
"It's there, we're calling it Dis, but it's freezing and dead. Although there were passive scans showing thermal blooms just before Mikhailovich's bloody Zero blew the capital Reaper into a gluon gas."
"I want one!"
"We've got mini-zeroes on a revolver in the loading bay."
Garrus' omni-tool bleeped at him. He began checking his messages.
"…Damn. Shepard says not to shoot in that mode without clearance. Mikhailovich gave clearance for Zero only because nothing comes out of a black hole to ruin someone's day two or three aeons from now."
"…they just want to keep the button-pushing all to themselves."
"And that pushes your buttons, I know. All in good time, Wrex. We'll get to use 'em. Now if you'll excuse me, we've made repairs from that blasted Reaper flash. Against my better judgment, we're heading back out."
"The paint on the tail fins is blistered."
"Do tell. That's tinted fused corundum, not paint. We'll survive till drydock."
"If I hand over to this irritating Chinese general who calls me a primordial barbarian toad, can I come?"
"We had a pool on when you'd get around to asking. Shepard wins, confound it."
"And you expected what?"
"Fine. We have a button just for you, Wrex."
Spaghetti à la Russe
The residual Reapers would have received the RECALL/EMERGENCY alert from the destroyer in non-dilated space microseconds before the event horizon rose – too late for most of them. Around twenty managed to power away from the suddenly expanded event horizon: most, however, were caught at least partially. That an enemy might cause the horizon's discontinuous stagger had not been anticipated by any Reaper. No previous cycle had attempted it.
The effective range of orbits which gave significant time dilation was passing narrow, even for an intermediate mass black hole, so many had their 'focus', receptacle of consciousness, lowered to within millimetres of the horizon. These instantly had their QEC links cut off from power. Such lobotomized Reapers collapsed.
What remained were barely aware of doom at first, although a hellish radiation wash would have registered as the horizon passed. Milliseconds would be needed, in their focus' proper time – hours, in ours – to realize that they could not pull away from the singularity, and the only way they would have known that would be from deviations of their spacing among themselves from what was predicted. Reapers which found themselves only partially within the event horizon might just be able to escape by jettisoning armor, legs and priming chamber, but the resulting damage – especially from radiation – doomed them as effectively if they had been swallowed
A thousand generations on, observers from flat space, had they visual superpowers, would still see the delayed light of their frozen status at the edge of the event horizon. (Actually, doing the calculation, no photons of that freeze would escape after second or so, but the principle is sound).
Yet in their own proper time, the Reapers entered the spaghettification phase, being pulled apart at the molecular level, around half an hour later.
We can only guess at their thinking. It is known that the double dozen which did pull out could at first barely function. They could hardly compute impulse trajectories for the ascent to flat space. Computational resources were overwhelmed by the consequences of losing over a billion years of effort, and the end of twenty thousand archived, ascended, intelligent races.
It would take surviving Reapers days at least to get out. The blinded destroyer frantically pinged the Catalyst QEC. All it got back was one word, which being interpreted, said: Surrender.
This was clearly some sort of malfunction.
Meanwhile the slaughtership, following its last instructions, began patrolling and scanning the fluff interior. A day later, its VI noticed the magnetokinetic bow wave of the N-18 planet, Archangel, as it moved through the dust.
It began following the shock wave to its apex.
Making lots of pieces
Peacemaker and North Cape arrived on-station at N-18 before a dozen of Admiral Mikhailovich's favourite DD destroyers, about fifteen minutes before the slaughtership began expelling clouds of Oculus fighters to assert local aerospace superiority.
The frigates went through first, stealthed, so were able to let the intercepting destroyers know what they and the fighters rising from the N-18 fort were facing. Then the DDs closed on the slaughtership.
"Vakarian, we're not going reach the rally point in time. It will have dropped a couple of hundred thousand husks of species past, in the time it takes us to get there."
"What about the fighters? They were outnumbered?"
"Only just, they and Boris' destroyers are making mincemeat of the attacking Oculi. That pressure's off, but the slaughtership's landing husks."
"Oculi are the DDs job, our visible fist. The slaughtership is hovering? Stationary?"
"For now. It'll move when it finishes dropping a husk army."
"We engage the slaughtership and destroyer from stealth. One FTL round, each. As quickly and as simultaneous as we can make it. Captain (D)?"
"Aye, aye, General?" This was a Russian voice commanding the destroyer flotilla, a distinctive accent even through the auto-translator net. Interesting.
"Disengage on our mark. We'll try to zap the bad guys while they're still as a rock. Czernykh, you tell Eva to slay that bloody destroyer before it goes after the DDs."
"Acknowledged." Czernykh was fascinated to observe Eva's mobile licking her lips in nervousness. Implications of basing the mobile's AI architecture on human neural maps clearly ran deep.
On cue, North Cape took out the destroyer from stealth with a blinding radiant FTL missile. The destroyer's attendant escorting Oculi were stunned by the FTL radiant flash, too. Flotilla DDs turned back and finished them after a fifteen-minute dogfight.
There had been fleet actions which accounted for Reapers before, beginning with Sovereign. Shepard himself had arranged for a thresher maw to kill a destroyer just like this one, had targeted another for the guns of an entire fleet, and brought down a third with a Thanix missile battery from point-blank range.
But all those were desperately close-run things. This, then, was the first ship-to-Reaper combat triumph not attributable to one particular man, but routinely performed. Czernykh felt his ship had made history, told her she was a hero, and saluted.
Lastly, North Cape's gunnery chief sliced the Reaper destroyer's main brain in little pieces with her Thanix cannon. Eva could have done this herself but just supplied targeting data.
She must have been concerned, even so; her mobile was biting its lower lip.
Making a great peace
Peacemaker got the slaughtership – easier, but far from trivial – fractionally later:
"Oooh, can I?"
"The button is here Wrex. Ready on my mark. Ten seconds."
"This will be so cool. Are we taking pictures?"
"Three. Two. One. MARK. Let's give them Reaper tactics!"
A new sun shone for two seconds above N-18.
It wasn't clear whether either the slaughtership or the destroyer got off a distress signal, but Eva and Tarquin doubted it.
The troops emerged from bunkers, cheering. This changed to cries of alarm as the first, slightly singed, husk waves of a two-hundred thousand strong army threw themselves on the fort perimeter.
But the perimeter was fifty kilometres in diameter. Because it housed a million of Zhukov's combat infantry. The Chinese and Indian troops inside suddenly realized that they outnumbered the peculiar husks, mostly looking like collectors, five to one.
Most husks were shot or bayoneted with omni-blades. Marauder types were on the receiving end of fire from snipers who heavily outnumbered them. Those roughly resembling cannibals were never seen for the number of their executioners.
All this was caught on Chinese newsreels. "This is my kind of war!" – said the Chinese general. She was whooping like Patton.
Making a small peace
Potemkin's QEC hologenerator was rather low-resolution, but Maria instantly recognized Shepard's friend when she stepped into the field of view.
"Lieutenant? Nurse Chambers? You wanted to speak to me?"
Kelly considered the formality of this gambit for half a second and responded: "Ensign. Cede the scan volume to the officer watching over you, please."
Maria glanced to her right and moved out of the field of view. The DD flotilla commander was just in time to see the nurse move out and be replaced by…
"Captain Shepard? What is–"
"Commander Romanov. Pay close attention. For your zeal in assuring the safety of Ensign Maria you are to be commended. Your chaperoning of said ensign's private conversations, however, is emphatically not desired and will cease forthwith. Clear?"
"Captain, I must protest!"
"You may protest to your Admiral. Bear in mind he will have my report, also."
Three weeks
In Orizaba's war room above N-16, Shepard, EDI, Chambers, Tali, Lawson, Bryson, Vega, and Coats watched slow-motion video of first, the impactor strike on the Capital Reaper (which had burned out the central CCD sensors of Peacemaker's rear vidcam); second, enhancement of the red glow as the singularity expanded–
"How the hell did they get that picture?" Vega clearly didn't believe it.
"Clever Eva. The ship AI. She FTL-jumped North Cape to a point just after the gluon flash had passed, but just before Zero dove inside the event horizon."
"Quick thinking there," observed Coats. Bryson was less impressed:
"Neither really showed a lot of detail. What damage to the Reapers, then?"
"Anneliese, you have to remember that flash blistered Garrus' tail out beyond the orbit of Saturn. And it burned out the camera, he's fixing it now."
"Only Dad called me that. I'm Ann, Tali. Look, never mind the burned-out vid, we didn't see anything special with the black hole."
"It it hadn't already cleared the space around itself, you'd have seen radiation as matter was eaten. But you're right, that was a waste of time. However, we still have the stealth satellites at the pole – here's the animation of the gravity wave detector."
Bryson watched the computer reconstruction of the outward pulse. Her attention was caught by little ripples just outside the gray circle representing the event horizon:
"What are those funny disturbances there?" Shepard and Tali stared closer.
"Keelah. Shep, that's like the initial trace of the Reaper coming out of deep orbit."
Vega nodded, slowly. "Yah. But there's a shitload more of them." They looked glumly at the death surging from the event horizon, till EDI looked up:
"No. This is good. Don't you see? They're all coming in a cluster. This is all that's left, these live ones must have been in the shadow of the singularity when the Red Flash passed. That and Zero reduced the threat by three orders of magnitude. More!"
"Even so, EDI, there's at least ten traces there, probably that much again."
"Better tell Mikhailovich," said Miranda, who'd conceived Zero but wasn't proud.
"Can ten Reapers, or even twenty, menace the Citadel?"
Shepard considered this. "No. We'd have their collective ass. But maybe at the cost of half the fleet. And there's still the problem of the fake planet. How long have we?"
"Three days? Weeks? Kill both sets before they're all together and coming out."
"Anne, my dear, you are truly a bloodthirsty minx."
"These are worse than the things who killed my father, and indoctrinated me. Slay them all." But she calmed down when Kelly put a hand on her shoulder.
Plan A
Shepard's report to Boris discussed options for reducing the threat, but did not recommend any particular one. For that, he wanted a face-to-face meeting, which meant traveling to N-16.
"Captain, would you make this quick, I need to get the flotilla heavies to the frozen planet. Somethings waking up there, and others gradually climbing out of the hole."
"Wait, sir. You have the bubbles, One and Two, due in three days. Go then."
"Might be too late. But I can tell the nuke, One, to stop for orders at N-18."
"Tali projects the ones from the hole only get out hours before you fire the crucible and the bubbles. We can keep Reapers occupied till then, chasing ghosts with stings."
Boris shook his head. "I don't want to fire a mini-crucible for the first time on my flagship, never mind near a relay chain, except maybe the last in the chain; and Kilimanjaro has my main command post."
"Then keep Orizaba forward, hidden the way you planned earlier, off N-18, idling, minimum crew. Get it to fire the mini-crucible, when the fort and N-18 relay have Archangel's mass between them and the flash. Leave Kilimanjaro here."
Mikhailovich looked thoughtfully at his ground commander. "Ghosts with stings. Your mother thought like that. A good tactician."
"She'd be proud to hear you say that, sir. Can I make another suggestion?"
"Speak freely."
"Take Orizaba near the Nest and fire it there. We don't know what it will do, but even if it fries the ship as well as the Reapers, it's a comparatively small price to pay."
"The crew might not think that. But I can see how it helps if all the Reapers wake."
"Crew her exclusively with zero-implant personnel. Fabricate some layer-1 survival gear. Shunt everything layer-three and run the systems off the attomechanical layer."
"I doubt we can dispense with layer-3. Just that ship?"
"Just the one ship. The cruisers would be a problem, take them with Kilimanjaro away from the Nest. Everything heavy including at least two frigates and some destroyers, hides out beyond the N-16 side branches."
The Admiral approved of this. "We keep destroyers back as reserve and escort. Others for close aerospace support on the N-18 fort, like this recent struggle. Get a full two squadrons up the chain from the Citadel if it looks necessary. Fire Orizaba's crucible last thing, on autopilot. Everything else escapes through N-18 first."
"That could work. But…"
"…No plan survives contact with the enemy. Even so, a good outline. Dismissed, Captain."
Next chapter: #103, "Engaging"
Tuesday, September 8, 2015