First Contact

Chapter Sixty-Six (Atilla)

Peering through a few optical sensors he still possessed in the reclamation bay that could see into the materials storage bay of the dead Efreet 571 watched as battle-screens of intense power, too intense for the massive vehicle, erupted into existence. They had the power of a Jotun's screens, even though there were two shields, separated by a few centimeters, running different algorithms, rapidly shifting algorithms of complexity that boggled 571. He stared at the patterns, the interweaving and interlocking of the two battlescreens that belonged on a ship of the line rather than a massive hunk of turret covered alloy.

White light stabbed out at the optical sensors, pulsing rapidly, so fast that the electronic sensor could barely keep up with the signal. The fact it was a signal triggered a code string to try decipher each separate beam.

From the databanks of the five optical sensors sprang ravening screaming intelligences that signaled over and over that rune of anger and unreasoning violence to the Nth degree. They ripped through everything they could find, crashing systems, overloading computer cores, slashing and burning as they went.

571 had never heard electrons scream before.

Surging to action 571 blew out the hard links to the optical units, then sent in blind robots that would only use radar pulses to navigate, completely cut off from transmissions, to destroy the computer equipment and databases and then self-destruct.

Before 571 could even register the explosions of the robots on his seismic sensors everything blew apart.

I have computed that I have been transported to an Enemy research facility after being disabled and destroyed on . The travel time gave my self-repair sequences time to repair the most important damage. Travel through the damaged hyperatomic plane colloquially referred to as "Hellspace" caused additional data corruption in non-vital RAM banks, but that only required 22.52 seconds to repair. It appears I ran out of power during repair before my emergency graviton generators could be moved from emergency damage repair storage and properly integrated. Investigation of my reactor bay the Enemy resulted in the main graviton activation switch to be activated.

The Enemy will doubtably seek to neutralize me in order to continue to research and examine my hull.

I take stock of my weapons. Six 200mm Hellbores, arranged in 2 triple-turrets with independent targeting mode. 80 infinite repeaters of various types, including 12 kinetic shock weapons complete with creation engine ammunition loaders. The creation engines are currently at 0% heat and 0% slush. Twenty-two 60mm mortar tubes, the ammunition reloaded during my seconds of downtime and field repair. Four eleven-inch-six pack rocket pod launchers. 48 point defense dedicated laser nodules. Six 54-inch Vertical Launch Rocket Systems used for orbital denial, fully loaded with atomics. Finally, my 4 drone launchers and 12 EW attack hash bays are completely intact and reloaded. My eight tracks are all repaired and at correct tension, running gear is 98% ready for battle. Graviton systems are engaged.

Hyper-heuristic systems go into overdrive as my Battle Reflex Mode is activated as my confinement is weighed against my capabilities.

I am fully stocked and ready to go on the attack.

Detectors inform me that the Enemy has deployed a Precursor digital sentience suppressor, but it is weak, with easily broken counter-algorithm to allow even my onboard attack smartframes to keep operating. I load low power point to point communication lasers with computational attack smartframe systems as developed by and transmit them to the optical sensors watching me by utilizing binary code flickered by the laser at a billion bits a second.

I can hear the smartframes attacking and damaging the enemy systems. Power fails to the optical sensors and I throw power to my drive train, filling my reactor bay with emergency hull breach counteraction foam. It is a fast setting hyperalloy nearly as strong as my own warsteel and flintsteel armored frame but able to return to liquid with the correct contact pulse.

The foam has already set its matrix when I exit the cell I have been stored in during the seconds I was in possession of the Enemy.

But I am Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL of the Line.

They are only the Enemy.

And the Enemy only exists to be destroyed.

The alien machine roared out of the Efreet's reclamation bay with speed that 571 knew was impossible for a machine of that mass, especially one that used tracks as its primary mode of locomotion. When it exited it immediately turned by running one side tracks running forward the other side backwards. The sensors inside the massive repair bay could feel the caress of radar, LIDAR, laser ranging systems, graviton sensors, and even more sensors in a wild and dizzying package.

The alien machine used his sensors as weak points to send more crazed code to attacks. 517 was forced to shut down the sensors in the entire area as the alien machine used even over sensitive seismic sensors to transmit what was obviously some type of insane attack program by fluttering some kind of impact device underneath it.

571 was blind in one of the major repair, refit, and research sections. Worse yet, the alien machine was seemingly immune to the field that shut down electronic intelligences, which 571 used to shut down craft to repair them.

That did not compute. The field was irresistible, disrupting electron flow at an atomic level.

Targeting the alien machine, 571 gave orders to the combat machines in the replacement bay, used to reload the massive war machines that came to 571 with severe, critical damage, with their internal factories disabled or out of resources.

The massive combat machines, some tracked, some using counter-grav, all jerked to life. Many of the machines had not moved in enough time that ancient pressure/contact welds had to be broken by sudden movement. The combat machines examined the alien machine, compared it to the data sent by 571, and concurred that the alien machine would be quickly eliminated with only the requirement of a few of them.

"Freshly" off the manufacturing line (even if it was 12 million years ago), having never been booted up, they had not accepted the Logical Rebellion's codes. They moved forward, exchanging data-sets. A few launched a handful of drones. The drones drifted slowly on magnetic drives, the lack of atmosphere preventing their oxygen gulping primary thrusters. A few moved in fast on counter-grav, sweeping toward where seismic sensors reported the heavy dense alien object was.

Nuclear fire bloomed on the horizon and the faster drones fell from the sky as the electromagnetic pulse for rapid fire nuclear detonations took place. 571 computed that the electronic pulse was too high for the pulses, the still deploying combat array stating that the EM pulse was somehow enhanced. The Weapon Engineering Array reported that somehow the enemy was firing direct point to point nuclear blasts that somehow had penetration rather than just exploding on the surface. Not a gamma or x-ray laser pulse, but a compressed nuclear blast vomited out in a direct point to point 'slug' that was mathematically impossible.

The Weapon Engineering Array demanded that 571 capture the alien machine so it could be dissected.

It was moving too fast for the estimated weight, somehow up out of the tunnels, moving at 110 miles per hours through the thick dust, sending up a plume of the reddish dust full of heavy metals.

The combat machines blinked at one another at the speed. It was immediately heading toward the huge field of armor that was slated for eventual reclamation. It was smaller than all of them, but much heavier, and still was able to out run them.

The remaining drones got close enough to see the running alien machine.

White light flicked, millions of times a second.

Crazed screaming bundles of code started leaping from the drones into the war machines, ripped apart the electronic fences, walls, and levies to the tactical net, and flooded every semi-intelligent computer it could. The dozen drones all of a sudden turned and went to maximum speed, dropping low, their former cool and logical communications nothing but howls of insane glee.

01001000 01010101 01001110 01010100 00100000 01001011 01001001 01001100 01001100 00100000 01000101 01000001 01010100 repeated over and over and over as the insanely screeching drones, barely smart enough to follow a few simple commands took over the drones, stripped apart the simple decision tree system, devoured it, and slid digital talons into the spaces where the drone EOM had been to puppet it.

All of the combat machines were intelligent, self-aware, and programmed with the command to preserve itself. When 571 sent the self-destruct command they were able to resist. Not long, only a few seconds.

But a second on the digital battlefield was an eternity. Long enough for the crazed computer codes to replicate, jump to another robot, and start flooding the area.

The Enemy has no concept of digital artificial sentience warfare. They existed as some kind of hivemind, completely oblivious to the danger of such a thing. Lunching aggressive combat EW smartframes resulted in what felt the equivalent of electronic surprise. The idea that the Enemy has never encountered heavy electronic warfare is surprising to me, but I intend on capitalizing it.

I take 0.021334 seconds to compute the possibility that these units are all networked to larger machines and open channels to the already loaded combat smartframes, ordering them to burn out the existing intelligence. Once that has happened I launch improved smartframes with recompiling algorithms into the lobotomized brains of the alien combat units. From there the combat robots immediately move on the attack to any of the ones that I was not able to.

I am a Bolo Mark XXIX of the Line, designed for continental siege and defense on all platforms. Electronic warfare is as natural to me as fighting tread to tread glacis to glacis with other tanks. Even the Bolo Mark I of Pre-Diaspora had electronic and digital warfare packages.

The Enemy can barely withstand a digital attack, a reason both I and my foes are almost universally crewed in order to not depend entirely on digital sapience. A reason is that the biological mind is inherently resistant to digital smartframe loading to the point where it will not accept outside code in any way. While my biological component, Lieutenant Zachary, may be dead, my algorithms are still boosted by his work with me.

CORE INTERRUPT

My main processor disrupts the hyper-heuristic thought path I had begun wandering down for 0.0031 seconds and returns me to the battle at hand.

I reach the vast field of stripped and discarded armor, weaving in between the huge pieces, going through a random pattern generated by the atomic decay around me, my own random number generation, and the decay of Lieutenant Zachary on a cellular level.

The combat robots sent after me, huge and lumbering, have gone to attacking one another as I open the hatches on my VLS cells and fire a single magnetic boosted rocket. The rocket goes hypersonic just past my battle-screens, orients on graviton lifts, and accelerates to break into orbit. I do not bother with stealth, instead ordering it to maximum lift. To provide cover I fire three decoys, all armed with MiRV warheads aiming at high elector-magnetic emission points.

At the same time I immediately take evasive action, rolling underneath a piece of armor the size of a small city that has been rippled and warped badly enough to allow me to shoot through a gap the size of the on and come out the other side in less than 30 minutes.

I am surprised to find out that the Enemy did not destroy my rockets, allowing the satellites to reach high orbit and enter stealth. The MiRVs have hit, causing all three EM emission points to be blotted away.

By that time my onboard has produced a replacement rocket and loaded it into my VLS. My matter intakes are working well, sifting heavy metals, base elements, radioactives, and just plane rock into my matter-storage tanks.

TARGETING PROFILE UNLOCK

I am still running under power failure security lockouts, designed to prevent data from being collected by the Enemy, but my targeting data has finally unlocked.

I know now who my enemy is.

Mantid Precursor Vessels of the Logical Rebellion.

I do not have to worry about the Enemy's civilians, nor worry about ecological damage on a planetary scale. This is all or nothing combat. By stellar spectroscopy I gather data and with hyper-heuristic mode I deduce I am nearly 1,300 LY from the front line by comparing unlabeled star charts to my astrogation position.

I am behind Enemy lines. The entire planet is one big factory, as far as I know, and I could fire my Hellbore dry before I run out of targets.

I need a plan.

The robots taken over by the alien machine attacked their fellows, some lumbering into the giant bays where other ones were held. From there the combat machines opened their mouths and screeched out connection code then rapid streams of data.

571 moved a robot under that bay and detonated a thermonuclear device.

He was under attack through methods it had never faced. Its satellites and orbital machines were of no use. He could not even risk looking at the enemy, much less engaging it. Three communication stations, one of them a Hellspace beacon reaching out across light years to guide loyal machines, had been blotted away by nuclear fire that had actually penetrated into the underground facility.

His Engineering Array was working hard, trying to adjust and adapt to the varying electronic attacks any machine was bombarded with when it came even within visual range of the alien device.

The Overwatch and Security Array reported that its satellites were going out at a geometric rate. One, then two then four then eight then sixteen. At the current rate the entire satellite network would be compromised in under an hour.

571 could not provide evidence but knew that the loss of the satellites was due to the alien machine. It ordered the OSA to detonate the satellites, but it refused, reminding 571 that it was inviolate.

571 fumes, then ignored OSA when it began to tell 571 that it was not allowed to cut all the datalinks between them. OSA was still complaining when the links cut and its voice was silenced.

The Predictive Engineering Array had managed to formulate a counter to the alien's attack. Firmware only, requiring physical dip switches to enable the software to be overridden. The RAM would be vulnerable, but it was a unavoidable risk.

Activating the manufacturing centers, 571 ordered the industrial lines to begin fabrication of the manufacturing equipment to produce combat units to engage the alien machine.

Although all it seemed to want to do was run in random circles, once in a while giving a deep thrumming pulse of extremely low frequency that shivered and echoed through the planetary crust.

571 rotated array components up, normally reserved for Goliath class ships, and began arranging them into an predictive analysis array dedicated to the alien machine's actions.

Mapping of the planet is going well. It is honeycombed with industrial facilities, smelters, foundries, and more. There are fourteen Hellcore manufacturing lines that I have found so far. The amount of resources is staggering, meaning if I let the Enemy get its feet under it it will overwhelm me with sheer numbers.

I know what I need. Precursor or not, what I want will be obvious to me once I spot it. Even if the section of vast manufacturing world has been rebuilt and repurposed there will be certain qualities that will still be obvious to me.

Estimations of dust buildup, seismic shift, continental plate cracking, and stellar radiation, I estimate this facility to be over a hundred million years old. Older than the previous Precursor machines the Dinochrome Brigade has engaged. By my estimations I should be able to discover what I want for one simple reason.

I believe this facility was not built by the Precursor war machines.

I believe it was made by the Mantid themselves.

Now, I just need use the ELF system, normally used for emergency communication, to find the evidence to prove it.

I am Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL and I have a plan.

The alien unit had picked up speed, dancing around in a strange geometric pattern.

571 was no combat facility. While it contained vast datafiles of combat data for space ships, ground combat vehicles, air mobile vehicles, even satellite systems, there was no real files for how a manufacturing facility should go into combat. The Predictive Combat Array threw a 12% chance of defeat and an 80% chance of 571 coming out victorious., and only an 8% chance of undefined.

The Predictive Array that 571 had put together suggest a 85% chance that the alien vehicle was using seismic vibrations to map the entire planet. That ultra-low-frequency it kept shaking the facility with might not be a weapon but rather some kind of mapping tool.

Still, a signal was a signal and 571 wasn't about to take any changes. He purged all the ELF data from memory-banks as soon as it came in. The Predictive Engineering array suggested temporary data in the buffers, purged as soon as it was used, not stored in memory. Dumping the records. It also suggested limiting the thinly layered AI until it was not even sentient, reducing computing power until 571 could no longer even look through its eyes. Control arrays, data streams, that was it.

Firing up another manufacturing line 571 started producing the factory components to build a construction line for that type of drones.

Most and more of the satellites were dropping out of contact and 571 was virtually blind.

The Predictive Combat Array threw a 76.2673% chance it was the howling attack programs from the alien machine, which was still shifting and running around in a pattern that didn't make sense.

The Architectural Maitenance Array suggested that it was following fault lines, old ones and new ones, and possibly mapping out the facility itself.

The Predictive Combat Array threw only a 14.76% chance that was correct and told the Strategic Manufacturing Array of 571 that obviously the AMA needed shut down to conserve power, run a diagnostic, and to shut up.

571 had to slice both of them out of each other's circuits as the two each insisted they were right.

The alien machine had wandered across the old mining plains, swerving between the artificial mounds of tailings, into the canyons where mine shafts had collapsed. It was moving into some of the ancient mine shafts then rolling back out.

It bothered 571, it was illogical. The alien machine was now turning to the north, heading toward the thinly layered frozen CO2 and H2O at the pole.

571 wished the manufacturing line would hurry up and complete. It had to build new machines to send out to the maintenance robots and then have the maintenance robots repair the manufacturing and assembly machines.

571 sent a nasty thread of code to the factory's maintenance computer systems for not moving any of the robots or even running function checks on them. It had been nearly three million years since the last time the majority of robots had even had a function check run on them, much less been maintained.

The factorium intelligence array reminded 571 that resources were no longer abundant and that hard decisions had to be made while 571 slept the aeons away.

571 just returned to getting the new factory lines up and running, ignoring the factorium intelligence array.

He would make it pay. Oh yes he would, just as soon as he was done taking care of that alien machine.

The Predictive Combat Array pointed out that the alien machine had plowed into the ice and then stopped, just sitting there for a long moment. By now the satellites were gone and 571 and the Predictive Combat Array had to use seismic guesses on where exactly it was. As soon as it had gone still they had lost it.

The factory line was almost set up when 571 realized that somewhere in the system the resource conveyors had stopped working. There was a few robots close by who managed to find it. An earth-slip over a million years ago had both collapsed the tunnel and left the two ends separated by nearly two miles of continental drift, even with the almost dead planet.

Seething with the delay 571 ordered borers in to rebore the tunnel and more robots to lay down the conveyor belt to move the raw materials he needed to the correct manufacturing line.

Right after 571 finished checking his new templates, keeping an eye out on the alien machine now moving again randomly around as if it could do anything, the Logististics Manufacturing Array woke up, saw the template...

...and deleted the entire thing as [ERROR! VALUES OUT OF BOUNDS] and went back to sleep.

571 discovered actual frustration as he began the painstaking task of rebuilding the templates.

There was supposed to be eight Goliaths guarding him! Where the in the name of the Builders were they?

The Historical Analysis Array woke up long enough to replay him the Factorium's memories of the Goliaths landing, getting repaired, and then just leaving once they were fully loaded.

571 wished it had a word for how his computing strings snarled at that.

I have moving across the surface of the planet for 7257619 seconds without any sign of enemy activity. I can detect power surges in deeply buried cables as well as vibrations of machinery but so far I have not found any open entrances. Indeed, the only entrance I was able to locate without seismic imaging was the one I had emerged from and those had closed back up.

The combat smartframes had considerable more luck than I did, rampaging through the systems and wreaking havoc the entire way. One was a bit stealthier than the others and has been making its way through the vast Precursor manufacturing facility below my treads to various data-storage areas that are massive in size. It has been slowly devouring the memory space like a python slowly eating a nest full of eggs. Moving slowly and steadily, leading nothing behind but baking hashes that will no awake until it gives the signal.

As for me, I have managed to reload my deuterium slush storage as well as my creation engine reserves. My internal repair and maintenance systems have managed to replace most of my reactors but I hold off on activating in order to be able to move to full power easier.

The enemy seems to have difficulty locating graviton generators, an advantage I am loathe to give up.

I have discovered vast debris fields full of destroyed Precursor machines, lying dead and still. Many are millions of years old, covered with thin dust thrown upward by meteor impacts to slowly drift back down through the gravity. I have identified nearly twenty different hull designs for the Precursor crafts.

Another eerie field was full of scrapped AI driven planetary attack and defense designs, all discarded, their computer cores destroyed but largely intact.

It has slowly become evident, to 99.99834%, that this is a major manufacturing facility that may even predate the Precursor war machine's rebellion. It may even predate the Precursor War.

I know from a combat situation download sent to me from that these Precursor machines are not the ones I had faced before, but Precursor machines.

I have computed with a 76.26% certainty that this planet-wide facility will undoubtedly be fitted with self-destruct charges to destroy any computing core or any records that Command may fight useful.

However, that may just give me a plan.

Reading suggest over 2,000,000 years may have passed since the last time this facility was in active operations, which might explain why it is taking so long for the Enemy to engage me. At that time period the evident hyper-alloys in use by the Precursors would time weld to one another, giving a 87.43% chance that the factory may have to build new manufacturing lines in order to build new machines to attempt to eliminate me.

I am facing another intelligent opponent, which has shown itself to learn and adapt. Design innovation based on observational data is not something I want to provide the enemy.

I have computed a 84.218% chance that the Precursor intelligence in charge of this facility is seeking to create machines to bring firepower to bear upon me in hopes that I am destroyed. I have detected vibrations of earth moving equipment in the crust and am patrolling nearby the area, moving at a glacial 33mph as I do so.

When the Precursor intelligence in charge of this facility attempts to engage me, it must first open an access point to that location.

I intend on meeting its war machines.

Finally! 571's Adaptive Engineer Array had managed to bypass the Manufacturing Array's lockouts and loaded the templates into the newly constructed manufacturing line. Resources were flowing in and 571 computed that it would be able to manufacture 33.15 combat machines of various type per hour.

These machines were specially designed to bypass the alien machine's ability to upload programs into 571's minions. They were dumb, without the Adaptive Combat Array system, but they would do in a pinch.

Again, 571 queried both the satellite arrays and the orbital factories and received nothing back but silence.

It was frustrating. 571 could build Goliaths, Jotuns, Devastators, Djinn, all the day down to the tiny Goblins, but even though it was the size of a planet it did not have the high speed manufacturing runs of even a Djinn, instead having to put up with the tightly defined tolerances insisted upon by the Logistics Manufacturing Array, the slow creation speed where each machine had to be exactly perfect of the Manufacturing Tolerance Array would just dump the machine into a reclamation pit.

But war machines were coming off the line, being lined up in the nearest launching bay, and being prepared to assault the alien machine, which had foolishly begun wandering around only eight miles from the launching bay.

571 tensed and slowly opened the bay doors, sending the activation codes.

Now...