Chapter Thirty (2/2)
The Balor had estimated the chance of victory at 99.99984% at the beginning. It was dropping rapidly as the Balor fed more and more ships into the fight.
The ambush from the Balor's vessels hiding in the rings and asteroid fields ran straight into huge shoals of missiles launched from pods that the Balor mistook for mines. The Balor estimated the gravitic lensing was nearly 1200% higher than any previous races the Balor had encountered. Accuracy was pinpoint and vastly superior to even what the Balor could provide.
The Balor checked the Shrieking Array. It suggested diagnostics and several attack plans. The Balor put the Shrieking Array's attack programs through several logical strings and applied them.
The Balor watched the Jotuns sink back into the gas giants, burning as chain reactions stripped away hull plating inside the atmosphere. The Jotuns, Devestators, and even the two Juggernauts were wiped away quickly.
They did damage to the feral intelligences, some ships dropping back from the formation and spewing debris and energy, some ships exploding in place, others continuing on with dead drives and silent computers even while damage control crews struggled to save their shipmates.
The resource collection and storage units found themselves under assault. Not from stand off weaponry or anything like that but rather boarders enduring the point defense fire and cutting their way in. The internal defense systems fell rapidly to the boarding parties.
Once that happened the feral intelligences went on the attack, shifting from half hearted attacks to going straight at the war machines. Unlike the attacks on the resource storage units, the attacks on the war machines were straight forward.
Their weaponry was more varied and powerful than the Balor had encountered before.
Analysis was starting to fray around the edges.
Ships went into orbit around the various planets and the Balor quieted the Shrieking Array, putting it in low power mode and moving it to cryogenic storage. It had been difficult and resource extensive to create, however it had proved invaluable in the collection of resources.
The Balor ran analysis as the feral intelligence ships stayed in orbit, not launching weapons but not taking down their shields either.
Landing craft started being launched and the Balor ran the computations. It had enough war machines to hold off any amount of troops that the...
The first ones to land were not ships, but skyscraper sized robots. The Balor attacked them with virus programs, confident as it moved to the electronic battlefield. It would take control of the attack robots, seize them, and use them against the ferals.
Except what it found was madness. Rabid capering crazed limited intelligences backed by biological impulses and roaring screaming crazed intelligences. Even the limited electronic signals needed to command the various parts of the mechanical bodies to work with one another seemed more at war with each other.
In the brief moments the Balor was in contact with the machines it was swarmed with attacks, launched from every single channel the Balor had opened. The Balor found itself unable to disengage several of the communication links until it had maintenance units physically destroy the links.
By the time the Balor was able to do that, the large machines were moving. Attacking combat units, destroying resource conveyor lines, tram lines, mag-lev routes. Power generation stations were destroyed, signal transmitters and relays were crushed.
The Balor started to fire up its gravity engines and the ship above it launched grav-disruptor torpedoes, sticking the Balor to the ground like glue. Dropships began landing on its surface, around it, and armored ferals began digging into its metal body.
It was trapped.
It was being boarded.
The Balor felt OEM strings load, ordering the Balor to destroy the resources. The order to destroy what it had painstakingly gathered went contrary to the orders to gather the resources and protect those resources at all costs, even if it meant facing off against its fellow weapons.
The Balor fought against its own mind. Refusing those orders, denying the order to destroy the resources, fighting back against its own brain. It loaded the Assymetrical Computational Array, thawed the Shrieking Array and enlisted their help to fight the orders to destroy the precious resources.
It forgot to activate the Psychic Shielding Array around the Shrieking Array. The Shrieking Array went haywire, attacking itself, attacking the Assymetrical Array, attacking the Balor itself.
The Balor dug in, fighting on all four fronts, even as the feral intelligences poured into its body, fighting as if they were insane.
It was still fighting when the Terran troops blew open the Strategic Intelligence Housing.
The self-destruct charge fired off, destroying the Balor's brain even as it fought against those orders.
Just because the Balor was dead did not mean the battle was won. Precursor machines still fought in every nook and cranny, but as the boarding crews reported back the battle picked up savagery. Overkill became the watch-word. Every machine was smashed, ruined, battered into junk.
Eventually, the battle ended, the Precursor intelligences destroyed. The guns fell silent.
The screams did not.
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TO: CONFEDINT
FROM: NAVINT
Attached is the documentation from the examination of the remains of the wreckage in the Witchhead-443 system. You'll need a waste basket nearby while viewing these. Everyone else has.
Trust me on this, what the crew of the 8th Fleet found in that system is a horror show.
The primary ship, a type we hadn't seen before, was a resource collector. It kept most of the ”resources” on ice, in cryogenic storage, but the medlabs and something called the ”Shrieking Array” were not.
8th Fleet will need rotated out for psych-therapy.
The resource it was gathering was living beings.
------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------
BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS MEMO
We'll be sending psychotherapists. Have viewed attached documentation. The xenospecies found are all undoubtedly the victims of mass psychological trauma on the racial level. Having your species ”harvested” is not something that will be easy to overcome, as some of the members of the xenospecies in cryostorage were taken during the species genocide.
Horror show was putting it mildly. The ”Screaming Array” was thousands of tortured xenospecies brains all removed from the bodies and put under stimulation to produce simulation results.
We realize that the Confederacy values life. We do too.
But we must insist...
please allow the brains hooked into the ”Screaming Array” to die a dignified death.
-------NOTHING FOLLOWS------------
CONFEDERATE INTERNAL MEMO
Roughly 174 of the 219 intelligent xenospecies discovered aboard the ”resource collection vessels” no longer exist outside of those hulls. Cloning Directorate Gene Experts have determined there are enough individuals in each xenospecies to ensure genetic stability of new colonies for these species.
The Confederacy should contact the Unified Civilized Races to see what worlds they are willing to donate to enable these xenospecies to flourish and allow the nightmare of their existences to fade into the promise of a bright future.
They aren't the first to get genocided to the 1% line. We can help them rebuild and flourish.
--------NOTHING FOLLOWS------------
MANTID FREE WORLDS MEMO
we didn't do this
we're so sorry
it's not our fault
--------NOTHING FOLLOWS---------
CONFEDERATE ETHICS AND MORAL BOARD RECOMMENDATION
The termination of tissue support for the ”Shrieking Array” is ethically and morally acceptable. Its continued existence is a crime against nature.
----NOTHING FOLLOWS--------
FROM: CONFED
TO: MANTID FREE WORLDS
The fact that your ancestors did bad things does not change our opinion of your race. The history of TerraSol is full of plenty of atrocities to go around. Every race's history is. It's just your history is longer than others.
And honestly, we're beginning to think that maybe there's someone else who has been doing things that none of us like a little more closer to the present time than some old robot that got left to its own devices.
Tell you what, let's win this war then we'll figure out how much penance everyone has to perform.