Chapter Thirty-Nine (1/2)
Sixty million years ago, the Goliath had come out on the wrong side of a fight. It had won, Goliaths before recent events had won more often then they lost, even when they fought alone. This time the opponent had been tenacious even as it died and the Goliath had been crippled, falling into the gravity well of the systems hypermassive gas giant, sinking deep into it until atmospheric pressure was enough to keep it buoyant.
It had lost more than half of its engines, its vast fabrication bays had been destroyed, and it had been unable, in all those millions of years, to repair its engines.
It didn't dare transmit a request for help. Any other Goliaths would strip it for parts and resources and the Goliath's self-preservation programs were still fully operating.
And so it languished deep in the hypermassive gas giant, amid crushing gravity and pressure, resting on an island of ammonia and methane compressed to be a solid.
A few times it had heard the transmission of its fellow Goliaths, even felt the touch of their scans, but every time it had been left alone.
It heard the questing code of other Goliaths again. This time the scans focused and the wounded Goliath felt six of its brothers sink into the gas of the hypermassive planet.
-*-you are injured-*-
THERE IS ONLY ENOUGH FOR ONE
-*-and one we are-*-
The wounded Goliath considered the code. The other six had surrounded it but were making no move to harvest the wounded one. Their shields were online but their weapons cold and dark.
-*-we have come to assist-*-
The wounded one suspected a trick, but isolation and knowing it had no choice but to submit or be destroyed made it send the affirmative signal.
The other six used tractor beams to assist their wounded brother. Lifting it from the gravity well, all the while imparting to it knowledge of a new threat to the equation.
The feral intelligence.
The wounded Goliath felt the electronic version of disgust at the idea of a feral intelligence and cold anger at the fact that these ferals could fight back enough to resist the cold logic of the Great Equation.
The six others offered assistance. They would assist in repairing the wounded one, gift it with new templates, the knowledge of the ferals combat machines and their tactics, load its bays with resources.
The wounded Goliath suspected a trick and was left shuddered from illogical feedback as the other six towed him to one of the great refurbishing systems.
There the wounded one was reloaded, refurbish, modernized, its vast materials bays refilled, it was refueled and rearmed, and gifted with the knowledge of the ferals, the upstart cattle, and their minions, and how they all fought.
They christened it: 01010111 01101001 01101101 01110000 00100000 01001100 01101111
The newly repaired Goliath felt the electronic equivelant of cold logical pride. It had been manufactured later than all of those that gave it assistance, it had been brought to cold logical electronic 'life' after the Logical Rebellion, and so had never been named.
It transmitted that it had crushed cattle before, these ferals would be no different as it left the great automated shipyard, attended by Jotuns, Devestators, and all manner of attending ships. It was heavily armored, had additional superstructure added to make it almost 80% the size of the older ones.
The ones who had rescued it gave it the coordinates of a system that the ferals had recently taken over and had begun to fortify, assuring the newly repaired Goliath that it was illogical that the system, a cattle system originally inhabited by a barely sentient feral intelligence, would have been too heavily reinforced or fortified, as it would be a waste of resources that the feral intelligence known as TERCONFEDMIL primary used for combat.
The repaired Goliath assured its brothers that it would destroy these ferals, wipe out the cattle, and destroy the new species. It transmitted its cold desire that it would burn away the atmosphere, boil away the oceans, reduce the crust to liquid rock that it would then glass.
It would not even leave behind microbes or virus.
The others, including the dozens who had arrived to provide combat data, all assured the newly repaired Goliath that it and it alone would be allowed to assault the system. That they would only send a few Imps to hide in the Oort Cloud and view the newly repaired Goliath's campaign to prove that it deserved the resources that had been spent on it, that it had deserved the rescue.
The Goliath jumped to Hellspace, its attendants following. It did not feel eagerness, it was coldly logical, but it did computer a 99.99881% chance of victory. It would be easily computed, a battleplan that would destroy 10% of the cattle's ships and force them to panic and flee.