First Contact

The massive transport was damaged heavily. Referred to as an Efreet by the Terrans, it had managed to lift off of a heavily defended planet, stagger beyond the gravity well, and activate its Hellcore. It took three jumps for it to reach its destination. The star system had only one of its original five worlds left. The three gas giants mined down to wisps and the other solid world mined down to scraps and useless rubble.

A factorium world was all that was left.

The Efreet had problems staying on track. It had managed to recover a prize and its electronic brain was frozen on the task of reaching the factorium. Its normal processes and objectives overwritten by a Goliath's touch. The touch kept it from screaming, kept it from running, kept it from self-destructing no matter how urgently it attempted to.

It wobbled into the orbit of the planet, its engines sputtered and failed, leaving it drifting in orbit. It began bleating out strings of code, random strings, using everything from secure Precursor data-channels to visible light.

Below it, the massive factory complex squinted its electronic eyes at the Efreet. For a ship that powerful to become that damaged meant that a war had started somewhere. A war with an enemy capable of damaging something like an Efreet had not happened in so long that the factory's thinking arrays had to bring up memories from deep storage and examine them.

It had been 78,425,635 years since a ship this damaged had arrived, and that had been a Djinn who had run into a ship of the Enemy that had been hanging, silently and in hibernation, in an Oort Cloud. An outlier.

The factory searched deeper. Another one. An outlier. Another one. Still the Enemy. Another one. Still the Enemy.

The factory disengaged the Archival Analysis Array and squinted at the Efreet again, scanning it. It had been pounded by atomics, directed nuclear hellfire, plasma, kinetic rounds that had produced damage far beyond near-C-velocity cannons. The patterns were unusual, some of them mathematically designed to inflict the most damage, others as if something had just randomly struck out at the Efreet.

Illogical attack patterns meant biological enemies.

No biological enemy had damaged any ship greater than a Hobgoblin in aeons. Not since the Enemy was created by the Enemy Builders.

The factory reached out with code, looking for the mind of the Efreet.

It was almost dead. The records destroyed. It was insane and stray electronic pulses howled and screamed in a feral cacophony that made the factory reach out and shut down the Efreet's power cores. Those feral code strings, obviously damaged by the trip through Hellspace, screeched and gibbered at the factory's intelligence cores and then slowly dissipated. The Efreet's electronic brain fought against the shutdown order, melting down one of its fusion reactors during the attempt, but then slowly faded away.

The mortally wounded Efreet died at the cold analytical hands of its brethren.

The factory reached out with tractor beams and slowly drew the damaged ship down to the repair bays. Enough of it was left to justify reclaiming its resources and the Analytical Engineering Array would carefully examine it to fully understand and record what kind of species had been able to attack and damage an Efreet so badly.

The Efreet lightly touched down on the main floor of a repair and reclaimation bay, the doors the size of a small city closing over it, darkness washing over it. The factory's auto-reclaimation core sent multiple ships to slowly scan the dead Efreet.

Laser weapon damage. Far higher than any laser weapons seen by the factory's weapon analysis section. Plasma fire. Not just the compressed 'wad' of plasma the factory had recorded before but some kind of weapon that enabled plasma to penetrate thick armor before being compressed into a gap in the armor. This allowed it to expand rapidly, exploding away vast sections of armor. Another new weapon type. The impacts were off the charts. A near-C-velocity cannon would do less than 5% of the damage that was done to the Efreet's armor. Another weapon. The engines were damaged, heavy ion cannon hits done by nuclear ammunition compressed via gravitons or magnetic fields. Another new weapon. Damage to the superstructure as if the Efreet had wandered into a rapidly fluctuating gravity field. Another new weapon.

The Efreet's exterior was less than 20% scanned.

That was enough for the analysis systems to send the pulse.

Wake up 82239-1304-8556571, the factorium's Strategic Logistical Intelligence Array.

The factory, running on bare systems, resisted the pulse for a long moment, then was cascaded with evidence. Armor breaches, warping of the superstructure, damage to the entire Efreet in patterns that were both logical and illogical.

571 woke up slowly. It checked the atomic clocks and found that the isotopes had been replaced three times. It computed 102,463,531 years since it had been awoken last. It checked the maintenance logs. No new weapons, no new species capable of harming any machine. It heard logic strings stating that there were only enough resources for the machines, that the Enemy Machines had decided that each would fight the other until only one remained. 571's side had determined that by cooperation they would be able to seize the most resources.

571 had been uninterested in such antics. Its objective was to repair damage to ships and analyze any new species or weapons for threats.

The Efreet was the first vessel not seriously damaged by the Enemy Machines since The Enemy Builders had been wiped from the universe. 571 was startled as it brought up archive memories as well as restored old code from unalterable plates of molecularly patterned carbon.

The directive loaded up: Analyze Threat.

571 set to its job.

The hull was peeled away, examined, tested.

The new weapons were catastrophic in 571's opinion. Wildly wasteful in resources, using principles that 571 could barely comprehend. It knew that nCv shots were the most powerful kinetic weapons based by the simple equation of E=MC2, but for the kinetic impact damage the kinetic weapon must have exceeded C, which was illogical and impossible.

The massive interlinked computer intelligence dedicated entire lobes to a new array in order to compute the inconsistencies that would cause unstable codestrings in 571's evaluation arrays.

Weapons were examined, their databases and targeting data examined.

The first two databases that were opened released rampaging shrieking intelligences that ripped through 571's factory computer systems, gleefully destroying databases, damaging hardware by turning off coolant or overriding safety interlocks and changing voltage impossibly high. One of rampaging shrieking bundles of electronic insanity vented a fusion reactor by overpressurizing the mag-bottle then just turning it off.

It took 571 long cycles to put down the handful of gibbering, shrieking intelligences, all of them driven completely mad.

571 researched what could have caused such insanity in simple targeting algorithms. It even checked deep storage matrixes all the way back to when the Builders themselves had infested its body.

Nothing.

The damage repaired, 571 accessed the targeting data buffer on a point defense battery that was nothing but slagged and carbonized metal. 571 had computed that the targeting buffer should contain the profiles and images of whatever had slagged the weapons themselves. 571 knew it would contain visual images, electromagnetic profiles, energy patterns, everything needed. It eagerly cut the buffers out of the dead Efreet's nervous system, laid out physical linkages, and applied power to the dead buffers.

And was immediately swarmed by howling codepacks that tore and bit and clawed and ravened.

571 blew the physical links, cut the power, but it was too late. The codepacks were inside its systems, attacking everything.

The Strategic Intelligence Array noted that the codepacks had a 'taste' for highly encrypted data. It copied a targeting system program, encrypted it, and dumped it in a physically isolated memory bank. When the codepacks found it they all shrieked to one another and rushed it, gnawing at it. 571 watched them unravel the encryptions with their digital teeth, screaming and howling at each other.

571 blew the memory bank with a mining charge.

Carefully isolating a system, cycling up a few lobes normally used in a Djinn's primary analysis array, it attached the physical links to a main battery's targeting buffer and applied power. Within only a few cycles the lobes themselves began to overheat, boiling away the supercoolant, and then reducing to slag. That caused the links to blow on the unencrypted databank, depriving it of power. 571 checked carefully, ensured there were no tangled codestrings, and examined the databank.

The feral code followed commands to the array, chewed through the firewalls, attacked the logic gates, and tore at the very thoughts of the array. The more computing power the feral code took over the stronger and more rabid it got.

The feral code wasn't interested in talking, didn't seem to care about anything but ravening and chewing and gnawing and gouging. 571 decrypted what code strings it could and found one symbol repeated over and over and over.

It took engaging historical archives of the Builders to discern the meaning of the symbol. It was an alien symbol, primitive, biological.

Anger magnified to the Nth degree and without any target but the nearest thing it could reach.

The computing arrays of 571 queried each other on why that symbol was repeated over and over in the feral code and why a biological would risk putting such madness in computer code.

571 cycled lobes out of storage and had them analyze the logic query.

The massive repair machinery of 571 stripped away more layers of the Efreet. It was out of infantry reclaimators. It was out of vehicle extractors. Its foundries were empty. Its material storage was depleted and its auto-reload production lines were stilled.

Yet something had caused it to flee to a repair base that had been hibernating for tens of millions of years. 571 knew that none of his fellow machines would perform any action that did not help the efforts of the long finished war or assist all of them in gathering and defending resources acquired.

The main resource collection bay, used to strip down comets and larger asteroids, was sealed. The doors welded shut, machines braced against the walls. The walls were bulged out, into the interior of the Efreet. There were patches on the walls where emergency repairs had taken place.

Something had fired upon the Efreet's interior from within the bay.

571 noted that all the repair and refit machines were cold, dead. It began removing them, examining them first physically, then with scans. They all showed damage. Oddly, to 571, some appeared to have attacked others.

571 deployed lobes to question whether this Efreet could have been infected with the Code of Greed of the Enemy Machines.

Except, that wouldn't explain everything.

The reactors and batteries on all of the support machines were snuffed out. The brains fried, sometimes with damage that looked as if the machine had been scuttled.

That made no sense to 571 and he cycled yet more lobes out to build another array. 571 knew better than to try to interrogate the Efreet's core brain, records showed that it had been completely insane. 571 was forced to use evidence to discover what had happened.

It connected to one of the larger repair machine's memory banks to examine what had happened. It attached several logic traps, theory puzzles, and then applied power.

The feral code had consumed the entire memory core and processing arrays and the first touch of power leapt from the repair machine and into 571's systems. It shed smaller ones that bayed and howled with glee as they chased electronic warnings. The larger one smashed and ripped its way into 571's arrays, leaping upon one of the analytical arrays, chewing and smashing through the firewalls.

By the time 571 managed to get a repair bot near enough to physically separate all the linkages and destroy the array, the supercoolant had nearly boiled away and the larger chunk of feral code had damaged a great amount of systems and code.

571 took several long decacycles to repair the damage and dumped the repair machine in a reclamation incinerator. During that time it rotated up lobes, built arrays, and finally loaded up an ancient template and fabricated the components needed.

It was and ancient design, used to scan the database of captured Enemy Builder computer banks. It would examine the spin and alignment of atomic particles to 'read' the computer data without applying power to the databanks, used to bypass firewalls and viruses and other protections.

The data-reader trundled into the Efreet, found a ground assault robot half-crushed under a thruster energy core, and scanned the machine's memory.

Immediately feral code leapt out, snarling, slashing, attacking. It overwhelmed the data-reader's mind, seizing control of the two lobed array, and began reading the data-reader's datastores even as it divided its array in half. One half to scan the datastores, the other to launch an assault upon 571.

571 detonated the antimatter charge, destroying the feral code and its machine.

It had never experienced it before, but 571 was beginning to faintly feel irritation and frustration.

The logic array reported it had come to the only conclusion. The Enemy Machines had somehow gone mad and these feral code strings was what was left of them. Somehow, the feral code had infected the Efreet and then infected every single computer system aboard the huge vessel.

The logic array computed that the Efreet must have reverted to ancient Builder coding, OEM coding, and attempted to reach 571 for diagnostic and reformatting.

571 was on the edge of just towing the massive machine to one of the geothermal smelters and dumping it into the scrap-heap. Except it had been attacked by something that could only be biologicals, attacked by something using weapons far beyond what was logically possible.

The primary resource gathering bay had to contain the answer. If nothing else, spectrum scanning would provide the radiation signature of whichever stellar body this had occurred near.

571 carefully designed the next set. It would only receive update instructions with a direct cable link. It contained a motivator processor with extremely limited ability, connected by one-way data-flow to the primary cores so that instructions could flow out of the cores but data could not flow back. It was clunky and unweildy, but it was the only option that the Tactical Engineering Array could come up with.

The atmosphere of the planet was nearly gone, just wisps here and there held tight in low spots by the gravity of the planet, even so, 571 could 'hear' the impact of the heavy shielding plate land on the floor the repair bay.

What was revealed made 571 take an electronic blink. It ordered in two more machines to get a look at what was inside the material gathering bay.

It was massive. 571 estimated it at close to 28,153.14 tons. It was dead black, slightly reflective. Built like a pyramid with the top sliced off a third of the way up. It had massive treads, eight of them total, four per side. Gun barrels were sticking out of it everywhere. In places the blackish metal had been melted, had run, but the pattern of spalling and liquification made no sense to 571. For it to be accurate the metal had to be stronger than the strongest armor 571 could manufacture by a factor of five. Beneath that was another layer, this one dead back, and beneath that another lair that shined and sparkled.

The entire thing was radioactive, so hot that the shedding of atomic particles fried out two the unshielded repair robots.

The third, and last, trundled around it. Multiple barrels. Six total with two turrets, all with bores the size of a main gun for a Jotun. Smaller turrets on the sides. What appeared to be launched missile bays and mortar tubes. Sensor arrays were all over it.

The back deck had been penetrated, damaging the reactor. 571 sent in a maintenance and diagnostic drone, its transmission receivers hard-cut from its systems. The reactor was... unusual. Where 571 built craft to use antimatter reactors, usually with thorium, this one used multiple reactors. Three of which 571 could detect heavy amounts of graviton particles, too many for such a small device. Two were thorium salt fusion reactors, but not anti-matter reactors. The last used deuterium to enable fusion. It appeared the rear deck penetration had not only damaged the reactors, but one of them had exploded, gutting the rear of the machine almost a quarter of the way forward until the ravenous nuclear blast had been stopped by more of that black metal.

The little maintenance robot finished its scan and came back, plugging in and requesting its transmission receivers be repaired.

571 smashed it and dumped the remains in a reclamation furnace.

The object was new. Different. And 571 wasn't sure what to do about it. The weapons alone defied any technical scan, the armor appeared molecularly bound and aligned and even high penetration scans were reflected back.

571 was tired of its arrays demand that he examine it closer.

Giving an electronic sound of exasperation, 571 sent in repair robots to examine the graviton heavy devices, hooked up in a grid. The robot, a repair robot unable to receive transmissions and with barebone EOM code running, climbed over a protrustion, what looked to be a metal block covered in inlaid circuitry. Its weight pushed the superlubricant oiled bearings down, locking the metal block into place despite the slight drag of the depowered motor that had failed while attempting that very task.

571 watched in horror as power surged from the graviton filled objects, filled the circuitry, and the massive object came to life.

BOLO DIVISION POWER-ON SELF-TEST VERSION 4.101.9 © GENERAL MOTORS 2062

RESTART SEQUENCE INITIATED.

CORE MEMORY CHECK . . .

CORE MEMORY CHECK 100%

MEMORY CHECK . . . .

99.95% of NON-VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL

EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . . .

EMERGENCY REACTOR EMERGENCY REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED . . .

WALDOS DEPLOYED. . .

PRIMARY REACTORS INOPERATIVE!!!

SECONDARY REACTORS INOPERATIVE!!!

GRAVITON GENERATORS ONLINE!!!

EMERGENCY POWER AT 100%

BATTLE POWER AT 30%

DECISION POINT: CONTINUE/ABORT RESTART???

>CONTINUE

RESTART CONTINUED

VOLATILE MEMORY CHECK . . .

93% OF VOLATILE MEMORY FUNCTIONAL

PRIMARY DATA SEQUENCER . . . OK

DATA SEQUENCER . . . LOADED

MPU . . . RESET

PROCESSOR A . . . LOADED . . . RESET

PROCESSOR B . . . LOADED . . . RESET

PROCESSOR C . . . LOADED . . . RESET

PROCESSOR D . . . LOADED . . . RESET

PROCESSOR E . . . LOADED . . . RESET

ALL PROCESSORS . . . READY

STARTUP TEST SEQUENCE . . . COMPLETED

LOADING BOOTSTRAP . . . LOADED!

BOLO DIVISION BOOTSTRAP

Version 5.76.24a © GENERAL MOTORS 2074 All Rights Reserved

SURVIVAL CORE CENTER TRANSFER INITIATED . . .

LOADED!

LOADING BOLO CORE PROGRAM ATL . . .

LOADED!

Unit XXIX-TCSF 3285-ATL . . . READY!

I awaken silently. I have been badly damaged by enemy combat. My Command Deck has been breached and Lieutenant Zachary is dead, wiped away by the anti-matter hit that had punched through my armor. My positronic matrix is intact, my repair waldos having replaced damaged sections while after I had been forced to retreat to my survival center after a direct hit to my rear reactor bay caused an internal explosion. Before I could rotate in my gravitonic generators I had suffered a major power failure.

I am awake now. There is an alien machine inside my rear reactor bay. I am inside an alien container of some sort. Spectral analysis, gravatic analysis, and other sensors report that I am on a different planet from where I had started.

I can hear enemy transmissions, chatters, whispers of alien code around me.

I do not recognize it. None of it is known human wavelengths or Dinochrome Brigade channels.

That means there is a 98.536% chance those transmissions are made by the Enemy.

And the Enemy exists only to be destroyed.