Machine Planet (Conquest of Stars Book 4) Read online

  MACHINE PLANET

  Book Four: Conquest of Stars Saga

  SID KAR

  Copyright © 2017 Sid Kar

  This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, events, persons are fictional and product of author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places and events is purely coincidental.

  Book Cover Designed by Duong Covers

  All rights reserved

  Sid Kar’s Books

  1. Starship Conquistador (Conquest of Stars Book 1)

  2. Battleship Avenger (Conquest of Stars Book 2)

  3. Megaship Maverick (Conquest of Stars Book 3)

  4. The Storm Maker

  5. War Machine

  6. One Man Army

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Starfleet Majestic

  Chapter 2: Siege of Bravo

  Chapter 3: Surprise at Rainmar

  Chapter 4: Fleet Tactics

  Chapter 5: Fight or Flight

  Chapter 6: Siege of Rainmar

  Chapter 7: Reborn

  Chapter 8: Machine Planet

  Chapter 9: Chemicals of Joy and Wonder

  Chapter 10: War Pact

  Chapter 11: A Plan of Attack

  Chapter 12: Power of a Planet

  Appendix

  Machine Planet

  Chapter 1: Starfleet Majestic

  “Capitan,” he said, “the interior mirrors are off balance by at least a dozen microns more than that recommended by the operating manual”. The laser technician stood up and stretched his back. After stooping over the laser turret for more than half an hour he had finally diagnosed the cause of the laser beam’s inaccuracy over long distances of space.

  “Can you fix it?” Capitan Setvyk asked while he leaned down below into the depressed, fortified pit in which the laser turret was installed. He was in command of five laser guns and this was one of them.

  “Not here,” technician Bobyett answered while he started taking off and detaching his instruments from the gun. “I have tools to align the interior mirrors,” he stopped working and looked at the Capitan, “but I won’t be able to tell correct alignment without the benefit of the simulators available in our test firing facilities in the interior of this starship.” He then pointed outside the transparent diamond-glass window, which also doubled as the shield, and said, “now if we had an asteroid belt, a comet or even a rocky moon with distinct features, I could observe the firing accuracy as I worked. But there is nothing out there except distant stars.”

  “There is that gas giant,” the gunner of this battery, who was seated on a curved sofa-bench placed around the interior walls of the pit, spoke up with enthusiasm and pointed to the large gas giant of dull gray color that was still visible outside their spaceship. But then he saw his capitan’s face and his emotions changed back to aloofness.

  Capitan Setvyk scoffed in his own mind at his gunner’s foolishness but he didn’t want to demoralize his crew so he calmly said, “the laser would pierce the gases and get absorbed by them. Unless there is some reflection or deflection of the laser, we can’t measure the accuracy.”

  “Quite,” Bobyett replied, “But why not let me take it down to the laser gun repair facility? My crew can dismantle and transport it there in two hours and we will have it back here in one day after being thoroughly examined and calibrated to the original manufacturer’s specifications.”

  “Would that I could let you, I would,” Capitan Setvyk said, “But our Commodore has scheduled a ‘Battle Imminent’ live-fire drill to begin forthright in five hours and fifteen minutes”, he said looking at his watch as he spoke his last words.

  “They would understand if your laser is miscalibrated through no fault of your own or of your teams,” Bobyett said, “The spokes of one of the turning wheels of the interior mirrors are thicker by a few microns than the engineering specifications in the blueprints. Over a period of time, they encounter greater resistance from the ship’s internal atmosphere, rotate at a different speed than the other wheels when the gun is turned, and throw the laser beam’s alignment out of balance. All of this I will write in my report which is acceptable as a proper justification according to the army regulations.”

  Capitan Setvyk laughed and Bobyett was puzzled, “Not laughing at your technical explanation, not at all,” Setvyk said, “all that I accept on your words. But I don’t report to the ship’s Chief Engineer and no army bureaucrat back in the House of War has any say upon our starship’s operations now underway. My senior officers in the command room will expect me to have caught and rectified the problem earlier and I agree that I should have.”

  “The Starfleet was dispatched quite unexpectedly and in total secrecy,” Bobyett said, “I didn’t even know that I was going on a space mission till I was abroad an army airship which transported me to the orbital spaceport.”

  “Even then, Starfleet Majestic is our main strike fleet: the largest and the most powerful. We have to be ready to be on our way at a moment’s notice and the officers and the crew are expected to be prepared for that,” Capitan Setvyk said and shook his head, “Not for this drill, do even technical excuses suffice. This drill is second only in intensity and importance to an actual battle and with an entire laser cannon out of operation, my section can expect to score a max of 80% even at our best. Not an acceptable score, not with the war imminent against this mysterious enemy we are sent to hunt.”

  “What can I say Capitan, except to offer my sympathies and regrets,” Bobyett said.

  “Save those for the dead,” Setvyk chuckled, “just a damn machine and scores are just numbers on a paper. What matters is what we will do in the actual battle and I want you to personally make sure it is ready for THAT.”

  “Will do…”

  But before Bobyett could finish his words, the second person on the bench, the target setter, stood up, pointed out the window and exclaimed, “Look, there are storm clouds forming on the gas giant; look at those big dots. I read of them in my astronomy class. Our laser can disperse and break them.”

  Capitan didn’t know what to say but when Bobyett said, “smart man, this might just work,” his face lit up.

  “Will you try?” Setvyk asked.

  “I will,” Bobyett replied, “Give me a few minutes to put it all back together,” and he got to work putting back the parts he had taken apart for examination. He was helped in this task by the third person on the bench, the maintenance man, who was trained in taking apart, cleaning and maintaining the laser cannon, but wasn’t a specialist capable of diagnosing and repairing it.

  Capitan Setvyk walked over to a computer terminal attached to the wall and sent a test-fire request to the command room. He couldn’t just order his gunners to open up with their lasers except in an emergency when an enemy might have sneaked upon them. The entire starfleet was already on the edge of their seats and the sight of the lasers shooting out of the flagship of the fleet could fray the jittery nerves and might just cause the individual starship’s commodores all across the fleet to immediately escalate to ‘Battle Stations’ on their own initiatives, with all the bedlam and chaos that would follow. And be blamed on him, Setvyk knew he had to get express permission first.

  As he waited for the approval to come back he reflected on this strange mission that lay ahead of them. They weren’t informed of the enemy or even the nature of the enemy: that was state secret only a few commodores and the starfleet commander knew of. And even though the Commander of Starfleet Majestic was their very own Commodore Melvyk Rytar, he hadn’t let a word of the mission’s briefing leak outside of the command room.

  “What are you doing?” Setvyk
asked Bobyett when his eyes fell on the strange contraptions still attached through the wires to the laser cannon’s turning mechanism.

  “That’s for real time evaluation of the calibration, Capitan,” Bobyett replied, “and allows me to tune the interior mirrors without having to take it all apart.”

  “Alright,” Capitan said then turned around to look at the computer terminal, “good, we have received the permission from the command room to test fire our laser cannon. How much longer?”

  “Just a few,” Bobyett replied as he worked.

  “I should get Corporal Buntar here for the test,” Setvyk said and then transmitted the orders to him over the terminal. Corporal Buntar was in-charge of this particular laser gun. He had worked for hours, right through his break, to try to fix the gun with the crew’s help, but to no avail. Then they had called the technician. Setvyk had decided to give Buntar some rest so that he would be hundred percent during the drill.

  “Corporal Buntar reporting for duty sir,” Buntar a tall, slightly fat man with scrubby chin, saluted Setvyk and then his facial expression changed to dismay when he saw the wiring connections in and out of his laser gun.

  “We are going to calibrate it by firing it into the gas giant’s clouds,” Setvyk said, “take over.”

  “Yes sir,” Buntar replied and stepped in the pit. Now it was crowded with five individuals in a small space barely sufficient for the four man operations team. Most of the time the laser guns were operated by the computers abroad the starship programmed with battle algorithms. But sometimes the commanders preferred manned operations when they wanted to try unorthodox strategies or when they wanted trained individuals to exercise judgement, something a computer could not do.

  “Is the fleet still lost sir?” Buntar asked Setvyk while he entered his code into the laser gun computer to authorize operations.

  “We aren’t really lost,” Setvyk replied, “We broadly know our location in the galaxy. We are near the edge of it. This is not a sight that most, including our Army’s deep space exploration starships, get to witness. Bright stars shining in half of our spherical vision and the near black emptiness of the intergalactic space in the other half.”

  “But our Star Maps are wrong,” Buntar said while he checked the charge on the laser, “For example, this gas giant is not supposed to be in this star system,” Buntar pointed out the window at the large planet, “our navigation data indicates only three small, rocky planets and much closer to their star.”

  “They are there alright,” Setvyk replied, “I read the gravitron scanner report sent out by the command room earlier. But you have to realize that our starships rarely if ever venture out this far near to the edge of the galaxy. The data is sketchy and is pieced together by our army’s Star Navigation Department from the reports and sightings of adventurers, explorers, spaceships that get lost and are rescued later, some of our own army missions and even from the stories of pirates and fugitives.”

  “Gunner, the charge is full, prepare laser for test fire,” Corporal Buntar said after looking at the charge reading.

  “Yes corporal,” the gunner replied and took his place next to the trigger and started adjusting the sight.

  “Which makes me curious,” Buntar turned to Setvyk, “Just what type of enemy are we chasing out here? Can’t be a pirate or outlaws; you wouldn’t need the entire Starfleet Majestic. And if we are launching a surprise attack on any of our enemies but circumnavigating through extragalactic space and then doubling back; I can think of much better and faster routes through deep space inside the galaxy.”

  “Beats me,” Setvyk replied, “It would appear to be some spacefaring power from outside the galaxy. We don’t even know what lies outside of our galaxy, perhaps our government has known more than it has let on.”

  “Laser ready for test fire,” the gunner spoke up when there was a lull in the conversation of his corporal and the capitan.

  “Target the storm clouds and fire at will,” Setvyk ordered, “subject to laser specialist Bobyett’s need for periodic evaluation and calibration.”

  The gunner opened up and powerful red laser beams shot out and little over a minute later struck some of the clouds and dispersed them. But a few laser beams missed their target and they passed the clouds clear and then continued to shoot deeper into the gas giant.

  Then to their surprise, some of the lasers bounced back out of the gas giant.

  “What the hell?” Bobyett uttered.

  “Unbelievable,” Buntar exclaimed.

  “Is there a secret mining operation that we just happen to hit?” Setvyk wondered.

  “The odds are astronomically against us striking artificially constructed material against the backdrop of that huge planet,” Bobyett said in puzzlement then added, “fire away.”

  The gunner pulled the trigger and this time he fired relentlessly, breaking some clouds and once again getting a bounce on some laser shots.

  But this time someone fired back.

  A spatter of lasers struck all around their laser pit and a couple shots even bounced off their transparent shield.

  “Bloody hell, I was right,” Setvyk said, “Must be the outlaws we are chasing and the bastards are hiding out here. Keep firing. I will alert the command room.”

  But Capitan Setvyk’s frantic attempts to open a direct connection to the command room were rebuked with a sarcastic, ‘don’t you know we are aware that we are under fire’, and the command’s seriousness was confirmed an instant later when the battle stations alarm rang out throughout the starship.

  “Officers and crew of Starship RedStorm, we are under attack, I repeat we are under attack,” their Commodore Melvyk’s voice boomed from the ship’s intercom system, loud as a crack of a thunder, “This is not the scheduled drill. I am not giving you a surprise test. This is war. Prepare for battle and await your specific orders from your section commanders. Alright then.”

  Laser batteries from the other pits of their section and from the other sections opened fire. But whoever that was hiding behind the dense gas of the planet had sufficient firepower of his own. For lasers came back, a lot more this time, and targeted towards multiple batteries abroad the starship.

  “Who is mad enough to engage Starship RedStorm in a direct battle?” Setvyk wondered out loud while his crew kept firing away. Even with an inaccurate gun, they seemed to have plentiful targets and one could always hope for a lucky shot in a target rich environment.

  Then their starfighters and those from the other starships launched out and ventured forth towards the gas giant. Thousands of them firing their lasers and shooting off their rockets.

  Something was off, Setvyk scratched his chin as he watched the scenario unfold through his battle telescope and on his battle computer, alternating between the two every few seconds. The starfighters were firing their rockets all across the gas giant and not just at the locations from where their fleet was receiving the laser fire.

  “What are they doing?” Corporal Buntar muttered out loud, “Why are their rockets going awry?”

  “Beats me, Corporal,” Setvyk said, “Maybe they are trying to shake loose the outlaws.”

  “From across the entire planet?” Corporal said while looking confused and Setvyk had to admit he himself had no clue what tactics the starfighters were implementing.

  Then there were explosions across the surface of the gas giant and when Setvyk looked at his battle computer he was puzzled even more that the rockets hadn’t penetrated deeper into the gaseous atmosphere of the planet.

  “Capitan look,” the gunner cried out but he didn’t have to get his capitan’s attention because Setvyk was already staring out at the gas giant with his eyes wide open.

  There were multiple large gas storms rapidly forming on the planet and the gases were being sucked inward as if large industrial scale vacuums were suctioning them down to the surface.

  What the hell? Setvyk said to himself. This was no astronomical phenomenon he had ever heard
of and for it to coincide with their arrival…

  Then his jaw dropped to the starship floor and likewise for his crew.

  The gases started disappearing into the planet revealing metallic spots wherever the gas had cleared.

  But it was no metallic soil with high concentrations thereof, it was metal itself, pure, shiny, black, STEEL!

  “I didn’t know there exists planets with steel surface,” the gunner blurted out.

  “Bloody fool!!!” Capitan Setvyk could not restrain himself, “Someone has covered that whole planet with steel. That is no natural phenomenon but industrial engineering on the largest scale.”

  The gases had now completely dissipated pulling aside the curtain of fog to reveal an entire planet covered with steel. And with artificial structures. Large, metallic fixtures that looked like small dots from afar but were as tall as the skyscrapers with thousands of floors; large mechanical structures with moving parts – operational machines – pipes and tubes with appearance of a thread to a naked eye but with diameters in hundreds of feet and running across the surface for thousands of miles with smaller tributaries and capillaries joining and leaving across the length of the pipelines.

  “The whole planet is one giant factory,” Bobyett the technician said, “but whose?”

  “I don’t see any living creatures on that,” Setvyk said, “And the battle computer indicates no sign of life on the planet.”

  “Who was firing them lasers then?” Bunter asked and they all looked at each other horrified. Had a Battle AI taken over an entire planetary scale factory; correction, a weaponized factory? Setvyk thought to himself as a chill ran down his spine and he could see the look of fear on all of their faces. They were all tough men who had accepted the risks that an army life entailed. And they were all veterans of the last war. But this was beyond imagination…