Utopia War

Chapter 19 - The Gauntlet (iii)

The first thing the team did was enhypersphere the Proxima system with bleeding edge life buoys. Sims indicated they should be able to penetrate the enemy lifejammer fields and retrieve the mind-state of anyone who died. Of course, being state-of-the-art as they were, the buoys were entirely untested in the real.

Each buoy had a starship escort, ready to displace it inside and flee through exponential hyperspace if the buoys were to become targets themselves.

It was hoped that if this mission was a repeat of the performance at the Battle of Proxima at a minimum there would be no permanent mind-state loss. Opinion on how realistic this hope way varied wildly.

The UFO had long since moved on from the Proxima system, but much of the debris was still active, dangerous and in many cases arguably sapient.

A winding, circuitous route through hyperspace was plotted in the hopes of obfuscating the movements of the team for as long as possible. They came crashing through the higher dimensions and into the Proxima system with as close an approximation to stealth as could be managed at this level of mutual technological sophistication.

As soon as they appeared Appetent Centillion.1.1.1.1.1, Punctilious Meticulous Precision.2.8b, and LovesToEatMackerel shot straight for the heart of the debris field.

The spherical drones left over from the Battle of Proxima reacted immediately, firing energy weapons at the fleet and attempting to enhypersphere them. The fleet scattered to make this more difficult, but continued deeper into the debris.

One of the drones managed to position itself just-so, and fired a beam that tore through LovesToEatMackerel's defense field. The hit might have utterly disabled an earlier configuration ship, but LovesToEatMackerel now boasted ablative armor that fell away leaving the ship beneath unharmed.

<Your hypothesis was correct,> observed Appetent <The drones are using some manner of carrier field to slip their attacks through.>

<We'll need more data to jam it,> remarked Punctilious.

<Oh no problem,> replied LovesToEatMackerel <I'll just get hit a few more times shall I?>

Only thanks to some fancy 6d maneuvering was LovesToEatMackerel able to keep himself from being tesseracted-in and blown away from every angle. This didn't stop the drones from firing on him, and scoring two solid hits. The third hit tore through his hyperdrive.

<Shit!> mind-yelled LovesToEatMackerel <I'm stuck in 4d. They're going to eat me alive.>

The drones had already ensphered the ship, which was enough to trap it now that it was cut off from hyperspace. They fired an unavoidable volley of energy from every angle.

<Got it!>

Appetent's jamming field came into existence only a scant few picoseconds before the beams would have torn LovesToEatMackerel to shreds. Instead the beams collided harmlessly with it's defense field.

5 seconds had passed since the fleet first arrived in the system. The battle was being fought on such a high level that none of the co-pilots could participate meaningfully. Even with their perceptions artificially sped up it was all they could do to observe. The ships borrowed their instincts but simply lacked the bandwidth to interact with their conscious minds.

At that same moment the remaining genius missiles, their personalities long-since modified to suit the purposes of the UFO, began to stir. This was what Punctilious had been waiting for. Before they could so much as commit to attack patterns he had snatched their mind-states, burning out the computer brains controlling the missiles in the process.

It was hoped they would be able to find peace in one of the many Consensus virtual realities. In the meantime they would be kept from harming anyone in the physical universe.

The drones continued to fire and ram themselves into the intruding ships, but with the carrier fields jammed they were unable to penetrate the defense fields. The fleet slid deeper into the debris. Sensors burst into illumination as computronium shards were detected all over.

The fleet began displacing all the computronium they could find. Each ship sent whatever material they displaced to the other ships waiting on the periphery, who in turn passed it further along a relay of ships and out of harm's way.

It had now been 8 seconds since arrival.

The drones determined what the goal of their foes was quickly, and adjusted tactics. They began attacking the largest remaining pieces of computronium, blasting some to particles with energy weapons and crashing into others at relativistic speeds.

<Shit! They're on to us. Shit!> exclaimed LovesToEatMackerel.

<Get everything you can,> signaled Appetent <Hurry!>

One of the computronium shards was significantly larger than the others, too large for a single displacement. An intact chunk of such size would contain many billions of potentially-retrievable mind-states. As soon as he detected it LovesToEatMackerel came to a decision. He extended his defense field to encompass it.

<We need to get this out of here!> he signaled.

<No!> said Punctilious <What are you doing?>

The drones swirled into position and opened fire. The defense field was spread too thin and the attacks came thundering through. LovesToEatMackerel was hit in twelve different places, and five of the hits were to critical components.

Appetent grabbed the dolphin's mind-state and pushed it down the relay of ships just before it became irretrievable. He wasn't sure if he had been able to maintain continuity of consciousness but there was no time to check. LovesToEatMackerel began the process of breaking apart.

While most of the drones continued to fly around destroying as much computronium as they could find, some reacted to the mind-state transfer. The life buoys had been made. The drones took off after them.

<We're not going to get another chance at this,> signaled Appetent, seeing the writing on the wall <Get everything you can, prioritize by size.>

11 seconds had passed.

<We can't be certain how long this jamming will be effective,> said Punctilious <It's a risk to the others.> 

<Pull back,> Appetent agreed <I'm going to pull everything I can into my internal storage space.> 

Punctilious grabbed the last few pieces of Computronium it could detect and peeled off into hyperspace. The buoys and attendant ships scattered. 

Appetent opened a tunnel into it's defense field dangerously wide, and displaced the largest of the remaining computronium debris inside itself. With dozens of drones firing at him from every angle, one was bound to get lucky. The shot tore into Appetent's internal sections and atomized some of the saved computronium. Another hit like that and there would be no escape.

Appetetent cursed it's irrational sentimentality and slipped away back into hyperspace.

14 seconds had passed.

The remaining drones didn't rest until the last of the computronium pieces had been reduced to their component atoms.