To say that Chihaya was beyond pissed with the news about the quantum malware was obvious. He knew this war was becoming more and more challenging every day. But, so far, he has his doubts about the real origin of this malware.
In the solitude of his ready room in the Battleship Pennsylvania, he was alone thinking about a long forgotten conversation many years ago. The evidence of intelligence in the Galactic Far East came back to his mind now. Could the transmissions be the origin of this malware?
Around him, the fleet was being sanitized. It was a slow, time-consuming process, but he couldn't be more grateful to Zoe. The pain came back when he remembered how Kongo had rescued the copy of Zoe Graystoke from the Cylon Network. In many ways, Kongo had saved the Federation from this insidious enemy.
He sighed for umpteenth time and hated how his modified brain couldn't forget anything. A simple idea was inside his mind. If the machines were the malware creator, they couldn't be infected. It would be illogical to be contaminated with their own malware. He needed a working sample from the machines to look for the malware.
But, for now, he had a war to fight, and this star system needed to be cleansed from the Nexus. According to Pennsy, the mental model of the Battleship he was using as temporary flagship, the fleet still needed at least four days to finish the cleaning.
However, he was not going to wait four days. "Pennsy, please," he said.
The holographic avatar of the ship took shape in front of him, "Yes, Admiral?" she asked.
"Please, call Admiral Tigh and his fleet to a meeting, including the ships from the First Fleet serving under his command." The avatar flashed a sigil on his cheeks and reported, "Virtual Meeting on line in five minutes, sir."
"Thanks," Chihaya said with a grateful nod.
In five minutes, as Pennsy had said, the room was full of holograms, including Tigh, Galactica, Luddendorff, Hyuga, and Ise. Even if she wasn't military, Hyuga included Zoe in the meeting. Gunzou didn't show surprise. After all, Zoe could be the next Federation's savior.
Gunzou thought a bit about his speech. "My friends, we have fought a long and hard battle. We have lost many ships and sailors. The new threat of this malware could be the most extensive infiltration in history. I know Zoe has considered herself guilty of the colonies' loss. Right now, she could have saved our civilization from its destruction. My advisers tell me the malware could release the safeties of every energizer or energy plant back in our worlds."
He sighed, "The extensión of the damage could cripple our worlds and leave us defenseless. I hesitated to send word of this matter back to the Federation. But, I will send Hyuga and Zoe back to Earth immediately to report this matter. Of course, it is always useful to know when someone is spying on you. The cleaning would require weeks or longer, but the fleet, space fortresses, and energy plants will be a priority."
Hyuga nodded and asked, "I will fold immediately. Any special order?"
Gunzou considered the question and said, "I will provide you with a physical missive for the President."
"Understood, Sir."
He changed topics while he looked at Tigh, "Admiral Tigh, you will take your fleet and destroy the Nexus in this star. But, you have another extra mission."
"Why do I think you are going to complicate my life?" Tigh said, smiling.
"I'm sorry Admiral, why should I be the only one suffering here?" laughed Gunzou.
"Ok, shot," the old colonial warrior said, waiting for the bomb to fall.
"We need a working tank or alive if you want it, and see if they are infected, too," Gunzou explained.
"Ok, my marines would love to hunt one," Tigh said with a ferocious smile.
"My friend, be careful with the new station. We don't have any information about it," Gunzou reminded him.
"We will," Tigh said.
After the meeting finished, Zoe said goodbye to Gal, and Hyuga and Zoe folded back to Earth. Meanwhile, the small fleet assembled to destroy the planet was moving slowly. Tigh was having a meeting with Colonel Mercader, in charge of the Mobile Infantry onboard the fleet.
"Admiral Chihaya has gifted us a wonderful, secondary mission, Colonel. We need a working Nexus unit, person, tank, or whatever they are," Tigh explained.
"We can try, but so far, they never surrendered or asked for mercy, sir," Mercader reminded him.
"I know, but this is our order. Don't risk your people and bring some mental models to the ground. They are really hard fighters, and they will be delighted to hunt these things," Tigh replied to the Colonel.
"True, Sir, their attack on Aquaria was legendary," the Colonel accepted. The mental models had proved themselves fighting against the old Cylon Centurions, and they were deadly fighters. They left a mess behind, but they could catch a tank. When are we going to attack, sir?"
Tigh thought carefully about his next move. The incognita surrounding the station weighed heavily on his decisions. What it looked more and more suspicious, together with the lack of a big fleet, was the lack of weapons on the station's surface. Could it be the station itself a weapon?
"I will send a submarine to scout around the station. I feel we shouldn't get too close with the fleet. Let's keep the position for a few hours. Colonel, prepare your guys for a capture operation on a few isolated units. Nothing too big. So, we will wait a few hours. Dismissed."
One of the submarines, a girl with the weird name of Nautilus, received the order to scout the planet and the station. The planet, a barren world without oceans or moons, didn't offer any place to hide. Any folding maneuver would be detected immediately. The only possible option is to dive here and be patient with a few days of travel.
Nautilus, a nice black haired girl with an irreverent sense of humor, was chatting with her crew. "Ok, we have a mission. The baldie wants to know what is different about the station, and we will do it. Does anybody have any idea about this thing? I'm going to punch anybody with a stupid reference to Evangelion!" They have been watching the old animated anime last night, and casually, one angel was quite similar to the station.
After a good round of laughing, the engineer, Mason, said something crazy, "Would you attack a planet if you have a big bomb, ready to destroy everything, including the attacker?" Everybody turned to look at Mason. "That's a typical machine answer," the mental model replied, a bit worried.
"Lara," she said to her comms officer, "sent a priority one warning to Pennsy, for Chihaya in person."
"Ok,... already done, Naughty," the woman said. The short name came naturally when the submarine mental model began to express her naughty and strong humor sense. The coincidence with her ship's name was, of course, a casuality.
Nautilus, sure that at least this concerning idea was safe with the admiral, said to the assembled crew, "We will make a little distraction before we use our sensors at full power. When we reach the orbit behind the station, assuming that the place is not full of armed satellites, we will launch a jumper with an ECM warhead. It would saturate all the spectrum, and we could go around the orbit undetected. We will launch a full spectrum analysis, and we will dive as fast as we can."
During all this conversation, Hang, the sensor officer, the ship's ears was a bit... distracted. His sensors were exploring the EM signature from the station. Naughty frowned a bit since she had access to her own sensors, obviously, but she didn't observe anything useful.
"Hang, what's wrong?" she said. The officer turned around and explained, "It's the EM signature, Naughty. I'm sure I have seen this waveform behind, in some report." The mental model frowned while she compared thoundsand of sensors' records. Finally, a clear gesture of recognition and fear was plastered on her face. "It is the same signature of the antimatter cargo ship sister Iona identified."
"A huge antimatter deposit?," Mason asked.
"Or an antimmater bomb. If you are an enemy, and you got close to the planet, and you can't defend yourselves... then you blow up everything. Nothing for you and nothing for me. Mutual anhilation," Naughty concluded, accepting the cold machine logic.
"It's a bit extreme, but it could work. Of course, now we can erase them blowing the star so it's useless," Masson commented with his usual practicity.
"Well, we must confirm our guesses. Rina - the helmsman - set course to the opposite side of the station," the mental model ordered, " Masson, I need a jumper ready to launch when we reach our first coordinates." The missile, a composite of fleet and colonial technology, this time was loaded with a huge ECM emmiter. Its only mission was to jump to its target and flood the space with a powerful blast of radio.
Two days required Nautilus to reach the other side. She had received a congratulation from a Fleet Admiral, nothing less, for good tactical reasoning. She raised her old and trusted periscope and took a fast look around. She detected several satellites, but it was a civilian version. She emerged and launched the jumper. The missile jumped and reappeared close to the station, releasing a powerful mix of electromagnetic and gravitic pulse.
Naughty was on her bridge, watching through his periscope. She went to flank and accelerated. Just in case, if the machines were infected, she kept the new shield up. The station grew bigger on her target reticles, and she emerged completely, opening her sensor arrays. She knew she wouldn't have time to recover them, so she would leave them fall down on the atmosphere. Hang was already putting so much energy as he had through the array, when he finally screamed, "It's ready!". She dived against the planet, transferring momentum to the arrays and released them. She dived into her ocean and hoped the machines didn't have any surprise.
So far, she was free and set course to Tigh's fleet. She knew Hang and Masson were already analyzing the data, but she wanted to know. A perfect resonant pulse, characteristic of the antimmater storage device, was present, perfectly clear. We were right, she murmured for herself. A huge amount of antimmater must be present. Bomb or deposit, if this thing exploded, only the battleships would survive undamaged. We'll, not my problem. Let the Admirals and Flagships decide.
The little submarine sailed back to her fleet.
Supercarrier Galactica, Admiral Tigh Ready Room.
"Well, we have a problem, right?" Gal said with a bit of deception in her voice.
"It worse than you think," Ise said. Everybody looked to the crazier sister. "If there is enough antimmater there, and it explodes, the gamma pulse would be like a supernova. The radiation pulse would be catastrophic for close human occupied stars. In a few years, obviously."
"What about the ships here? ," a very worried Tigh asked.
Gal made a negative gesture with her head. "Perhaps Luddendorff and I could survive, but the rest would be dead. Maybe the heavy cruisers would survive if we made a wall of battleships, but the crews..."
After a long five minutes without any reasonable ideas - an eternity considering the minds involved - Ise said, "There is only one way to absorb so much energy: a black hole."
The flabbergasted faces in the room were enough evidence of the surprise and the magnitude of this proposal. Tigh only could speak, after a few seconds of muteness, "How?"
"It's quite simple, Admiral. You are sitting quite close to several ones, in fact," the smiling Ise explained everyone.
Tigh sighed. It's true. The energizers were machines built to collapse matter inside an artificial black hole. "Can we build a... black hole generator? What shape would it have? A bomb or a beam?"
"It should be enough if a battleship realigned her main super graviton guns to impact the same coordinates," explained Ise.
"Wait, wait, everything is great, but if we open a black hole, we are going to destroy the entire star system," Avi interjected in the discussion.
Now, everyone turned to look at Ise. She was making a good simulation of somebody thinking hard, and finally she explained, "Not really, girl. To avoid the risk, we can make four or five little black holes far from the planet to absorb most of the explosion. Compared to one really big one, these are going to be micro black holes. In a few months, they would evaporate by themselves.
"Are you completely sure?" asked Tigh.
"No, but the priority is to contain the radiation pulse," Ise replied coldly. There is the war machine, Tigh thought silently.
"Ok, at least, now we have alternatives. Ise, thanks for this idea. I will talk to Chihaya. This is...too big for me to take action, so thanks. Dismissed."
Tigh and Gal remained alone, the old Admiral and his ship. The ship said, "This war is testing us, right, Admiral?" The admiral looked in return to Gal, and he finally replied, "Do you think all of this is part of the Test version two?"
Gal watched the virtual screens on the wall, showing a stunning view from the star system and the Milky Way around them. "Sometimes, I believe the Test never ends, Admiral."
Superbattleship Luddendorff. Chihaya Ready Room.
Only the two admirals were present in the room. It was that class of meeting, with a brief exchange of ideas and followed by long silences. "The logical conclusion of this new enemy device is to warp this station in our stars and force us to surrender," Chihaya said.
Tigh couldn't avoid a frown. "We must eliminate them now. No more losing time with morals. We made this mistake with the cylons and almost ended extinct."
The other man remained in silence. He really missed Kongo and her counseling sessions about hard issues like this. Somehow, she understood the moral dilemas even better than him, the human. "Sadly, the virus excluded more communication with them. Too risky, and this time, we can lose the fight. But we can say goodbye to catch a living sample. The planet will not survive, I'm sure."
Tigh couldn't care less about the sample problem. "Look, I understand why we need a sample, and maybe, just maybe we could board a ship and catch one. But let me remind you that survival is our priority. If we lose time and you are right about a warp capable station, we are going to sacrifice millions by moral issues." He left in the air he was not going to wait more time.
Chihaya recognized the veiled threat. He didn't need a mutiny, and the old man was right. Colonials were hard people, and they had learned their lessons in the hard way. Chihaya agreed with him, "You are right. We will open the micro black holes, and then we kill the station. Then, we fold out of this system and watch what happened."
"Short and simple. I like that," the old colonial said. It seems I put some common sense in that hybrid head of you, thought Saul.
The fleet was already clean of the insidious malware, and news from the chaos inside the Federation were arriving at the Fleet. Even the transmission had to be scanned by the quantum malware, and the first ones were contaminated. Everything was contaminated. If the malware sent critical information or not, it was a matter of speculation, but the spying possibilities were too tempting to waste. Of course, that depends on the mysterious enemy mindset. Players or puppeteers? That's the question.
Right now, Gal and Luddendorff were the leaders of two fleets. Escorted by scores of heavy battleships, each one armed with heavy SGCs, folded to five light minutes of the planet. The weird station showed more detail, and the complete lack of weaponry on its hull was apparent.
Gunzou sent the order. Luddendorff and Galactica opened her main weapon muzzles and launched what it should look like a defective attack to the machines. The beams converged in one point and what began to produce a white, bright point which grew in intensity to collapse into a black, almost invisible singularity. The process was repeated again, and the four black holes started to vacuum gases and matter.
Now the machines reacted, sending their magre forces to gain time. The fleet folded to a safer position, and the battleships sent a broadside of plasma and solid rounds to the station. Chihaya sent the fold order immediately. Every ship folded and defolded into the void, one light year from the star.
Now they waited. A dozen probes were left behind at different distances from the planet. The crews were glued to the screens around the decks, watching how the drama developed.
The first probe showed how the broadside reached the station, and the structure exploded into pure light. The probe died almost at once, the image replaced by the next one. A globe of light expanded, hiding the planet inside. The distinct probes showed how the globe influenced the star photosphere, changing visibly the star winds patterns. When the light reached the gas giant, powerful auroras crowned the magnetic poles.
The energy discharge lost power, and the intensity close to the Oort Cloud was still dangerous to an unshielded ship. They waited twenty-four hours and one heavy battleship, Richelieu folded behind a gas giant to test the waters.
Heavy Battleship Richelieu.
Richelieu was looking at the devastation the machines brought to this star. She didn't ask about the radiation levels. She and her crew knew that she was already analyzing the radiation profile. Her powerful shield can protect her fragile crew, so they will be fine. The radiation was interfering a bit, but, as she supposed, the system was a mass grave. The planet was incinerated by the force of the explosion, and the machine's fleet didn't survive either.
"Short and simple. I like that," the old colonial said. It seems I put some common sense in that hybrid head of you, thought Saul.
Richelieu smiled, "Colonel Mainard, please, be so kind to prepare your troops for a boarding attack."
A virtual window appeared on the bridge, and the scarred face of the Colonel Mainard greeted her. "Do you have a good job for my boys and girls, madame?
"Colonel, as under our current set of orders, we need a working, alive sample of the Nexus units," Richieliu said, emphasizing the part about "working."
A smiling Colonel thanked her and closed the window. Richelieu set the course to the damaged sphere.
Twenty minutes later, they got close to the sphere. It was evident through the cameras that the ship's surface was damaged, with melted and charred areas, and gas leaks in several points. It tried to launch an attack, mainly with antimatter torpedoes and a few beam weapons, but they were intercepted by the Klein Field. The beams, too weak to scratch a heavy battleships shield were just a nuisance. The secondaries destroyed surgically the last working weapons, leaving an even more scarred ship. Finally, the locking beam catched the sphere, and the ship stopped her movement. Something couldn't tolerate the stress, and the sphere had a blackout. The ship was dead in space, but the sensors still showed almost fifty units moving around the ship center.
Four assault ships, loaded with twenty-five armored troops and one destroyer mental model each one, left the battleship and approached fast to the sphere. A couple of still working beam turrets fired, and one hit impacted again a transport, but the ship continued. Two well placed shots from a secondary turret destroyed the resistance. The moment every ground soldier waited, finally arrived, when the transports landed hard on the hull. A ring equipped with a corrosive effect emitter perforated the thick hull, and the soldiers jumped into the ship.
Sargeant Hall, a veteran of fight against the little tanks, was the first to jump. Everything was bathed in darkness. The soldiers didn't need light since their night vision devices allowed them to see. The other three groups and mental models began the search.
The soldiers fought their way to the inner citadel the machines made. An improvised network of defensive positions was assaulted, and so far, they couldn't catch any tank. In the end, a mental model found a tank running for his life, and she jumped on the thing.
The fight was short, and the tank lost his tracks. Immobilized, it stopped fighting. The optical sensors of the tank switched between the mental model and the soldiers coming to help her. There was a certain feeling of desperation in the thing, almost as it was resigned to die. The destroyer scanned the tank and confirmed the malware infection. Feeling something like pity, she put a plasma shot into the brain's thing.
"General Withdrawal! The sphere began the self-destruction sequence! Withdraw now!" If there is something a Mobile Infantry soldier understands quickly is, when the guy upstairs said to get out of a ship, you must run, because your remaining life time it's measured in seconds or minutes.
Two transports were leaving at full speed, and a third one was loading the last ones when the self-destruction began to destroy the ship. The fourth transport never left the hull, losing all the crew and soldiers. The mental model, just a puppet, was reformed inside Richelieu. The third transport was ejected from the hull, and the locking beam stopped it slowly. The ship recovered a bit of maneuvering, and it went back to Richelieu.
Richelieu always felt these losses as it were their own. But now, they had solid proof that somebody was toying with Earth and the Nexus. Only three planets remained under the machines control. However, it was time to go back to Federation Space. The fleet folded back to Earth.
Only three planets remained under the machines control. However, it was time to go back to Federation Space. The fleet folded back to Earth.