The Battle of Honro (bonus story. This was an original draft of the story before I realized that the line of events didn't work with Brick Bronze. I have edited it slightly.)
.
.
Weapons are an important factor in war, but they are not decisive. People are decisive.
-Grand Cuarto Ruekar Ven of the Vengeance Armada.
.
.
.
L.S sat on the bow of her command ship, the ballista frigate SA Elyon's Victory along with several dozen other attack cruisers that accompanied her in deep space. Most of the main war vessels were locked in orbit around the low-gravity planet of Honro IV, awaiting orders to attack the massive combat moons that circled the world. A swollen red sun hung above the world, illuminating the depopulated surface of the subterrestrial world.
After the Battle of the Wanderer's Library, L.S had decided to form an impromptu fleet to destroy the evil AIC evermind Aleph that controlled Honro, keeping millions of beings under the bondage of the superintelligent thinking machines. The forces of the robots had been isolated to a single world in the disastrous aftermath of the war, and with the destruction of Aleph, thinking machine resistance would collapse over the galaxy. The robots on Honro were the exact same that had fought in the Battle of the Wanderers Library, and vengeance was due.
Reconnaissance fleets, propelled by thaumically-assisted spacefolder engines, had returned giving a detailed report of the enemy's strength. "Over a hundred thousand light to heavy cruisers. Tankers, interceptors, dreadnaughts, all of them. Perhaps billions of robots on the planet, automated defense turrets, and those moons will not go down without a bombardment."
"Nanites?" L.S asked. "Are new robot minds being created? Will the scrambler satellites hold them off?"
"Nothing self-replicating, Cano." The officer replied. "The planet has been thoroughly stripped of resources; it should be impossible for the robots to gain a foothold here again. The pulse-atomics and the scramblers should prevent any machine ships from escaping. The magicians in R and D said they put in a little surprise for the tin cans, ma'am."
L.S grinned. They were vastly outnumbered by the machine forces, but they had the advantage. With the Prime Enemy occupied with licking its own wounds, Aleph would have to be going insane. The robots would attack in patterns based on crude, predictable programming, easily countered by a far more unpredictable human force.
With the aid of several thousand Army of Creation volunteers, loaned warships from the Library and its allies operated on skeleton crews, top-of-the-line paratechnology, and many radical Jihadis and Serpent's Hand members, the Vengeance Fleet would liberate one more world from the grasp of evil.
Once the robot fleets had been destroyed by pulse-atomics and the combat moons reduced to rubble and malfunctioning wiring, the light, speedy, and incredibly utilitarian Wanderer class starships would bomb the main machine cities into dust, before a ground force took on Aleph in the Central Hive. Minimal casualties were expected, and the destruction of the robot foes.
Two auxiliary warships, belonging to the radical arm of the Serpent's Hand known as the Serpent's Fang, had made it clear that they would not follow any orders, regardless of the reason. They were full of suicidal Cult of Elyon martyrists, who would not hesitate to ram their frigates into the robot attack lines in order to allow others to enter the planet's atmosphere.
Suddenly, a transmission came from Aleph in the main machine city. "It's the evermind, Cano L.S. Pending request to open comms channels?"
L.S granted permission, and the evermind's vibrant computer core appeared on the screen. "Human vessels, turn back. You are hopelessly outnumbered and cannot possibly defeat our forces with only thirty-three frigates. Such a battle would be a waste of my valued processing time."
Shutting off the line without replying, L.S and the other high-ranking officers in the Army of Creation pressed onward into the lines of machine cruisers, engines flaring with a dull fire. Orbiting in a ring around Honro, the hundreds of thousands of robot warships readied to annihilate the Vengeance Fleet.
Invisibly, the human cruisers released millions of scrambler satellites. About the width of a standard humanoid hand, these miracles of innovation were deadly to any electronic mind, as they emitted a high-wavelength continuous thaumic pulse that was harmless to organic beings. Any robot that passed through a field of these scrambler drones would be immediately destroyed.
The three artificial combat moons, before they could finish charging their attack sequence, began to malfunction. The pulseshields around the space stations were being neutralized by the wave of satellites, confusing the command robots aboard and causing several key systems to fail.
"Pulse-atomics, target the moons. Don't give an inch, we only have a couple of thousand warheads." The first wave of missiles released from the frigate's holds, smashing into the helpless combat moons with colorful bursts of celestial fire. One by one, they went down, their internal gelcircutry fried by the magical electromagnetic pulses. Not a single robot remained functional on the derelict battle stations, and they began to fall into the gravity field of Honro.
Surprised by the failure of the battle moons, Aleph continued to have the robot attack fleet press on. Soon, the massive guns of the machine ships would be in range of the dogged Vengeance Fleet. It would be over in a moment.
The millions of scrambler drones first enveloped the warships. Fires in engines died, tanks leaked, power systems broke, and robot crew members and onboard AI systems failed, their gelcircutry minds boiled away. Some of the more shielded gunships broke the line, but the dead hulks piled up by the thousands, causing a few crew members to laugh at the plight of their foes. "Scrap metal, the lot of them!"
Another round of pulse-atomics launched, these models having the "surprise" that the officer had told L.S about contained within them. Worried if she should have saved the missiles for the upcoming bombardment of the machine cities, L.S watched as the pulse-atomics eradicated thousands upon thousands of already malfunctioning robot vessels.
No, not a waste.
The machine fleet was almost entirely destroyed, but the destruction did not cease. Swarms of hungry little mechanical nanites emerged from the wrecked robot frigates, released from the pulse-atomics. Stripping down the surviving robots and metal scraps in a voracious feeding frenzy, the drones replicated their metals over and over again until the entire armada had been eaten away, a cloud of shrapnel and colorful gasses standing where the machine ships had been. The nanite feeders continued gnashing their metallic teeth for another good minute or two, and then their pseudo-anomalous power sources failed, causing them to join the debris field.
Seeing the strewn ruins of what was once the Machine Fleet, L.S felt a twinge of guilt. She knew that these thinking machines had been programmed by the Shadow to be designed to eradicate the Free Peoples, but perhaps they could have been reprogrammed. She had friends that were robots, and had met high-ranking officers of the Army of Creation with synthetic minds. They weren't all bad, but the machines would have to be stopped in this world.
"I am surprised that they figured out how to store all those drones inside the bombs," A bridge officer noted. "The Stage-II Phase Dispersion paradox must have been solved somehow. Spacefolding in a localized space, somehow. Pocket dimensions."
"Glory to Elyon!" A Serpent's Fang member transmitted. "Let us cleanse this machine world in our righteous fervor! We will raze it to dust. Release the craft, and orbit through the upper atmosphere. We bomb from the south pole to the Central Hive!"
L.S authorized her frigate to release the Wanderer interceptors. Small and wafer-thin, they could be brought through the Ways with little effort. They folded around the piolet's form in order to conserve space, the brave warrior kept in a medically induced sleep as the ship fitted their form. Upon activation, the little craft would swoop downward, a Warding Spell upon the cockpit to allow the operator to accelerate to speeds that would destroy a frail human body.
The Wanderer craft poured out by the thousands, with several dozen larger boarding crafts beyond them. The frigates fell into the burning atmosphere of Honro, engines screaming as they flew behind the safety net of the scrambler satellites. Millions of robot attack skimmers emerged from countless machine-operated ports on Honro's surface, swarming in metallic hordes toward the Vengeance Fleet.
The few automations that survived the scrambler net were blasted by the bursts of plasma howitzers from the Wanderer craft. The frigates began to bomb the surface-level machine cities with a cleansing rain of pulse-atomics. Data banks were wiped, and machine transmissions were broken. The Vengeance Fleet crawled onward to the Central Hive, the robot attacks rendered ineffective. Alpha had greatly underestimated the capabilities of the humans.
Once the orbital machine vessels had been destroyed, and the combat moons entirely disabled, Aleph evaluated the data. After a moment of pause, it realized that the human vermin, statistically speaking, might win.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Scrambling the few missiles in storage that were solid-fuel, making them immune to the satellite network, Aleph launched a barrage at the Vengeance Fleet.
"Incoming solid-fuel projectiles!" An officer said, his green and gold uniform stained with sweat. "Increase essentia flow to the frontal Warding Sigals! If you are in the air, take care of those missiles!"
The Army of Creation vessels shot down most of the bombs. But not all of them.
A missile slammed into the nose of a carrier. Although the shields dispersed the attack with an electroweak thaumaturgic charge, several engines blew out from the strain. Two more craft were hit in the broadside, the fuel tanks exploding. A MC&D loan cruiser was annihilated in a fireball, while one of the two Hand ships had to pull back in order to evacuate their beleaguered crew, the damages unmendable. The fleet continued onward to the Central Hive, wary of what Aleph might send their way.
After two more synchronized cities had been cleansed, L.S realized that Aleph was diverting all of the planet's defense into guarding the Central Hive. The pulseshields and physical barriers around the main machine city would be too strong to breach, even with pulse-atomics. A ground invasion was necessary, yet another part of the carefully thought-out plan.
Some Hand members less inclined to self-preservation took it upon themselves to race downward in a mad spiral, dropping their payload of a single pulse-atomic inside a machine city or outpost. Some didn't return, either destroying themselves after underestimating the distance or being shot down by robot artillery. L.S would mourn the losses later...after Aleph was destroyed.
The Vengeance Fleet launched comsignals to every available network, telling the millions of human slaves that deliverance was at hand. Riots broke out, chains were broken, and prisoners emerged from dark pits to see the Vengeance Fleet silhouetted against the red sunlight. An army of liberated humans marched in joy, ready to strike down any machine that they could find, ensuring that Aleph would never rise again.
Although the thaumic shields had been holding up marvelously against the machine defenses, some of the barriers began to break down. Whenever a freighter lost part of its shielding, it would pull back to allow the still-functioning vessels to absorb the rest of the flak while maintaining their shields. If the fight continued at a standstill for another hour, L.S assumed that the protective spells would fail entirely.
A linkage of robot defense systems was protecting the Central Hive, and no pulse-atomic launched at the city could fully breach it. Even the suicidal Jihadis couldn't get through the protective net from the air. Giving her orders from a carefully read script, L.S commanded the transport craft to land directly at the gates of the city. The crews would take the fighting to the ground.
...
Agent Hopper held onto his tractor grip for dear life as the nearly unshielded shuttle raced toward the Central Hive. Although he was disturbed and restless from all the cleanup work he had volunteered for after the Battle of the Wanderer's Library, he would go into the battle with his fellow mercenaries and Hand members. But air battle was not part of the fight, and Hopper was itching to get a chance to use his new pulsesword.
At last, when the wreckage of the machine ships lay strewn in orbit, L.S and the other frigate captains had turned the transport shuttles loose. Built by a Library subsidiary on an Allied World, the pods were built for speed, not safety or arms capacity. Beside Hopper's craft, he saw accompanying shuttles and ballista bombers full of troops get blown to dust by repeated machine fire.
But most survived. Definitely enough to do their job.
The shuttle streaked down to the gates of the fortified machine city, along with thirty other similar craft. It would be the mission of Hopper and his fellow warriors to make the city safe, remove the defense shields, and plant the atomic charge that would eradicate Aleph once and for all, one more petty tyrant to be disposed of by the Army of Creation.
Survivors of old battles and conflicts rode along with Hopper, like himself. Many had returned for the Battle of the Wanderer's Library and had remained to fight in the many cleanup operations that the Library had sanctioned. Several new radical Hand recruits, 'lizards,' as they were derisively called, had joined this fight as their first battle. At least two were simply inexperienced teenagers from some far-off world, who were almost certainly wishing that they had remained in the Library instead of venturing on a risky and inflexible mission. The strangest allied warrior was a single robot, painted blue and red. How interesting to see a machine fighting against other machines in this setting.
As the shuttles skidded to a halt in the chaos of the machine city, the hatches opened and the warriors poured out, their weapons at the ready. Enthusiastic but clumsy, hundreds of zealot Jihadis bearing archaic projectile guns or any crude weapons that they could find raced to destroy Aleph, or any enemy that they could see. Heart pounding, Hopper leaped into the fray, as the antipersonnel guns at the city gates were neutralized by the scrambler net and precision bombing techniques.
Ominous combat mechs and warrior robots, their forces already drastically depleted, charged the Army of Creation. Little more than brute force fighters, Hopper ensured that they would fall. He displaced two opponents in the first wave and then threw himself without a thought into the next combat mech, which had just killed one of the rampaging Hand members. With blood still dripping from its sharp blades, Hopper fried its gelcircutry systems and spun about to seek another foe.
Taking advantage of the lower gravity as he swung his pulsesword, Hopper felt like he could fight forever-and there were certainly enough robots to keep him busy.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Deep below the besieged city, underneath the flames, the rubble, the ruined robots, and the charging human conquerors, Aleph attempted to consult the Shadow one last time, moving the flowmetal that encased it.
Hearing no response, the evermind weighed its options. No outcome available was good. The sapient specks of dust had breached its innermost defenses. Its minions were nearly all destroyed.
I will think until I come across a solution.
...
After most of the shield generators had been totally destroyed by the warriors on the ground, machine resistance crumbled swiftly. The Army of Creation had sterilized the planet of robots, and only Aleph remained in his deep chamber.
L.S, near the planet's surface in her command shuttle, saw the deactivated robot soldiers spread across a smoking, utilitarian battlefield. The remnants of the mechanical army massed around Aleph's central dome. Though nearly defeated, they fired at the Library's small Wanderer craft and the larger frigates that had descended from the atmosphere.
Shouting into their comlinks, the piolets bombed the thinking machines orbiting the massive metal spire, the last stronghold of Aleph. Entrenched robots were blown to ashes, but the tower repaired itself with an ingenious web of nanites, sealing each surgical strike like a creature regrowing injured skin. Wary, the frigates began a heavier bombardment, massive bombs descending through the acrid smoke to pound the fortress of the evermind. With the larger blasts, the attacks went deeper, and the dome finally crumbled under the titanic detonations.
Surviving robots in the city were neutralized by pulse grenades and the converging satellite field. The radicals among the Army of Creation slowed in their orgy of destruction, as fewer and fewer machines remained to be destroyed. A few dozen warriors, Hopper among them, headed toward the base of the central spire. There, the final atomic would be detonated, ending Aleph forever, and removing one more threat to the Free Peoples.
Receiving acknowledgment from the warriors, L.S readied the three surgical pulse-warheads. With the ground defenses and the rest of the synchronized cities annihilated, the rest was just an exercise.
The flash was no more dazzling than all the ones before it, but the cheers from the ragged throats were louder. Aleph was gone. Forever.
...
The evermind had just gone over the variables again and was in the middle of a very important thought when the bombs annihilated it.
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
On the ground, L.S counted the casualties. One-eighth of the Vengeance Fleet had been destroyed, but the price was worth the outcome. Relief teams from the Hand and the Manna Charitable Foundation began to work to reestablish human control on Honro, and to evacuate the more hopeless refugees from the planet.
Two Marshall, Carter, and Dark officials had entered the wreckage through a Way, requesting another payment if the Library expected to use their warships again.
"The technology that we and our associates supplied was the deciding factor in this battle," the short, sallow official said. "Seeing that so much has been done by s little, we will aid you again in this fashion, if it becomes profitable. But we require more payment. Our coffers are somewhat shallow, manufacturing space vessels in these troubled times is no cheap task."
Wiring the executives a payment from the Library's bottomless vaults, L.S scoffed in disdain once the two were gone. "They could have sent all the technology in the multiverse to this planet, and the thinking machines would have destroyed it. What really brought the day was the people that operated the vessels, the people that flew the shuttles. People, not mechanical monsters."
Looking out toward the burning city, Hopper hoped that he would never get used to scenes like this, for the sake of his humanity. The line between machine and man disappeared once the latter lost his morals.
"L.S, is there anything else that we must do? I am ready for a long break. A long, long break."
"Firstly, in this setting, you are a member of the Army of Creation, not the Hand." L.S said, smiling. "You will refer to me as Cano. And no, Agent, there is nothing on my mind that we must do..."
"...which means I have to get down to writing a letter."