Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier.

by Doug Dandridge

  The larger creature was now on an outward heading, passing the frigate, and entering the firing arcs of the remaining pair of warships that were coming in. It looked like it might have a chance, especially when it jumped its acceleration up to eight hundred gravities. That is, until one of the incoming frigates launched one of its missiles, accelerating toward the creature at five thousand gravities.

  The missile struck, its two hundred megaton warhead flaring high above the planet, showing a bright pinpoint to anyone on the ground who happened to be looking up. Heat and radiation burned through the creature, destroying millions of tons of the protoplasmic substance through the tough, stone like membrane. The second missile took out what little was left.

  “One left,” said Jensen in a quiet voice. “And once you’re gone, this place is once again paradise.”

  * * *

  The last free Gatherer cringed in its mind as the larger manifestation of itself died in space. It realized that it didn’t have a chance against the ships of these tiny intelligences. In its memories of the last Galaxy there was nothing of the tech level of these intelligences except for the creators. It would have to have taken over a third of the Galaxy before it would be able to handle the firepower of these things.

  Its senses picked up the craft that was following it when it was still seconds from contact. It wasn’t sure what it was, but it was travelling at three times the speed of sound and still accelerating. With a burst of energy the Gatherer dropped down and hit the water in a large splash. Moments later the follower, now at substantially reduced speed, followed suit and sliced into the water.

  The Gatherer looked for a hiding place, but the water here was still too shallow, and it recognized its mistake at leaving the air before it had gotten over the safety of the deep. It hesitated for a moment, deciding between attacking the thing after it or continuing to flee. It thought it could outrun it. It thought it might be able to defeat it, but its certainty was not strong after what had happened to the others. So it decided to run, since it was the only member of its species left with freedom of action. And it also decided to get rid of the five hundred ton weight that rode within it, dropping the tank out of its body to head for the bottom.

  * * *

  “It’s pulling away, ma’am,” reported Kama, looking up from his board.

  “Can you catch it, Zaya?”

  “Not a chance ma’am. Not in the water. It’s already exceeded our maximum speed.”

  “Prepare a pair of torpedoes, Master Sergeant.”

  “Are you sure you want to kill it, ma’am?” asked Kama, brows furrowing. “It’s proven by its actions that it could be an intelligent creature. That means we aren’t supposed to kill off the species.”

  “It’s also not a natural evolved animal,” countered the Major. “It’s a construct, as much machine as anything else, and therefore the restriction does not apply.” And we know how dangerous self-aware machines are, she thought.

  “We don’t really know what it is ma’am.”

  “Follow my orders, Master Sergeant,” growled Jensen, a scowl on her face. “This thing is too dangerous to live. I take full responsibility for this action. So get those torps ready. As soon as you have a lock, fire.”

  Kama nodded and looked back at his board.

  I might get busted out of the service for this, thought Jensen, never taking her eyes of the plot. But once it gets into the deep, we may never find it again. Until it’s ready to come at us again, when we aren’t ready.

  “Firing,” called out the Master Sergeant, and the sub shivered slightly as it released the pair of torps. The weapons sped away through the water, tracking unerringly on the creature that was twenty kilometers ahead.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Zaya, as two smaller objects left the main body of the creature.

  “I have no idea,” replied Kama, “but they’re heading directly into the paths of the torpedoes.”

  “It’s sending pieces of itself, like interceptors,” said Jensen. It made sense when she thought about it. The creature was smart enough to know that the two objects tracking on it were bad news. It was able to split, and every piece of it could think, after a fashion. “Can you set the torpedoes to avoid them?”

  “I can try,” said the NCO, sending the orders out on his board. Both torpedoes veered off, trying to curve around the small beasts, which also adjusted their own courses to follow.

  “Get us out of the water,” the Major ordered her pilot.

  Zaya pulled up on the control yoke and the sub headed for the surface. She was almost there when the first of the torps was hit by the smaller interceptor beast and detonated with a twenty megaton blast. The shock waves started to strike the sub, bouncing Jensen in her chair, just before the sub rocketed into the air.

  Ahead was a rising mushroom cloud of vapor. A moment later the other warhead went off, sending another spout of water that converted into a high climbing mushroom cloud. The shock wave spread through the water, while a several hundred meter high wave ranged out in a rough circle from the two nuclear explosions.

  “Get us around those and onto the track of the creature,” ordered the Major. “And prepare the last torp for a ballistic shot.”

  Kama nodded and set up his weapon, while Zaya pulled the sub in a curve around the mushroom clouds. Kama frowned and looked over.

  “I think I’ve got it, but I can’t be sure. Launching a probe to check it out.”

  The probe, which looked like a smaller version of the torpedoes, dropped from the sub and flew ahead ten kilometers, then dropped into the ocean. As soon as it hit, it started sending out active sensor waves while its passives listened.

  “There’s a lot of turbulence,” said Kama, shrugging his shoulders. “I’m having trouble localizing anything.”

  Jensen nodded. She could see how two nukes going off in the ocean would cause all kinds of reverberations through the water. “Keep at it.”

  Kama nodded again, working furiously on his board. “I think I’ve got it,” he said, looking up from his board.

  “Certainty?”

  “Over eighty percent. I think I should take the shot.”

  “Take it,” said Jensen, mentally crossing her fingers.

  Kama’s finger hit the commit panel, giving the computer firing system the permission of an organic intelligence to do its business. The final torpedo rocketed out of its tube and curved away, striking the water nine kilometers distant. It went under and cut in its water jets, sensors searching for the target. At a little over three kilometers it had little trouble picking up the large creature, and the torpedo accelerated ahead.

  It was within two hundred meters before the Gatherer could release another sub-creature to intercept. The weapon and small interceptor creature met at a hundred meters from the main beast, and the twenty megaton warhead went off with a flash that illuminated the night dark ocean for scores of kilometers in each direction. Heat vaporized water for hundreds of meters in each direction, radiation moved through the water, while the blast wave moved out at over ten times the speed of sound. The Gatherer was pummeled by the shock wave, broken into smaller pieces, which all died under the onslaught.

  “As soon as it's safe, take us down into that,” ordered Jensen.

  It took some minutes for it to be safe, but Argonaut was soon in the water again, searching for any trace of the creature. Water samples showed a high concentration of minerals that were associated with its protoplasm, but nothing more.

  “I think we got it,” she told the crew, linking into the com so the Governor would also hear it.

  “Good work, Major,” responded the Governor. “Of course, we’ll want to keep monitoring the oceans for a couple of years, just in case.”

  “Which means you’ll want us to stay?” asked Jensen hopefully. This world, now that it was free of the menace they had come to fight, was perfect. If she could do ten years here and then retire, it would be the best of all worlds.

  “I th
ink that can be arranged,” said the Governor. “I have some connections.”

  “We’re getting a distress signal, ma’am,” said Master Sergeant Kama, interrupting her conversation with the Governor. “Colonel Suarez and her crew are in her tank at the bottom, about thirty-nine kilometers from here. Requesting rescue.”

  “Then I guess we had better get to it,” said Jensen. “We should be back at the capital in a little over an hour.”

  * * *

  A hundred and fifty kilometers off the southwestern coast of Mu, the last remaining Gatherer found its way back into the open water, ninety kilometers from the surface. It had followed the battle through its quantum connection, and realized that it was the last of its kind in this Galaxy. It thirsted for revenge, but also realized that seeking such at this time would just lead to its death as well. No, the time would come, when the organic intelligences of this world had forgotten about it. With a thought it broke off a several hundred ton portion of itself and sent it into the tunnel it had emerged from, to hibernate until the time was right. It then separated into a dozen more creatures of equal size. They moved out on their own, hugging the bottom, seeking their own individual hiding places. There they would absorb what minerals they could, increasing their size and waiting for the time to strike.

  About the Author

  Doug Dandridge is the author of over twenty-eight self-published books on Amazon, including the very successful, Exodus: Empires at War series, the Refuge techno-fantasy series, The Deep Dark Well Trilogy, as well as numerous standalone science fiction and fantasy novels. In a three year period as a self-published author, Doug has sold over one hundred and fifty thousand ebooks, paperbacks and audio books. He has amassed over 2,200 reviews across his books on Amazon, with a 4.6 star average, and over 2,600 ratings on Goodreads with a 4.118 star average. He served in the US Army as an infantryman, as well as several years in the Florida National Guard in the same MOS. Doug, who holds degrees from Florida State University and the University of Alabama, lives with his five cats and one outnumbered dog in Tallahassee Florida. He is a sports enthusiast and a self-proclaimed amateur military historian.

  Books by Doug Dandridge

  Science Fiction

  The Deep Dark Well Trilogy

  The Deep Dark Well: An Adventure 40,000 years in the making. Pandora Latham was a Kuiper Belt Miner from Alabama. She’s used to landing on her feet, even when the next surface is through a wormhole, halfway across the Galaxy and 46,000 years in the Future. Pandora must discover the secret behind the end of civilization, and the enigma of the Immortal Watcher, the last survivor of the Empire that once ruled the stars. Her decisions will set the path for Galactic recovery, or a continuation down the roads of Barbarism.

  To Well and Back: Pandora Latham is back, working Watcher’s plan to restore Galactic Civilization. But first she has to deal with the Xenophobes of the Nation of Humanity, back in the Supersystem with their sights set on making the Galaxy their own. Pandora is angry at the hyper religious Nation, and you don’t want to make a woman from Alabama angry.

  Deeper and Darker: Pandora Latham is on the warpath. Watcher, her lover, and the only man who can once again unite the Galaxy, is a prisoner of the Totalitarian government of the New Galactic Empire. The Empire thinks they have the upper hand, but they have never faced someone like Pandi, and the peoples of the Galaxy that she has rallied to her cause.

  Theocracy: A young gunpowder era monk becomes the only hope for his doomed world as he is caught up in the game of empire between two more advanced cultures.

  The Exodus Series

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1: The introduction to the Exodus Universe. Two thousand years prior mankind fled from the Predatory Ca’cadasans, traveling a thousand years and ten thousand light years to a new home. Now the greatest power of their sector of space, things seem to be going well for the New Terran Empire. Until the enemy appears once again at the gates. And the years have not softened the aliens’ stance toward Humanity.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2: The saga continues. The Ca’cadasans attack at the moment when the government of the Empire is at its most chaotic. There are other enemies as well, waiting for their chance to fall on the overwhelmed humans. And a young man with no ambition for power finds himself in the position he most dreads.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: Sean is rescued, but he is not about to go back to the safety of the capital without striking back at the Ca’cadasans who have invaded his Empire. But will his decision put the lives of thousands at risk, as well as risking the safety of his own Empire, by depriving it of its leader.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4: Sean is crowned Emperor, and attempts to organize the Empire for war against the Ca’cadasans. But he finds that planning battles and winning battles are two different things. Defeat follows defeat. Can anyone snatch victory from the jaws of defeat? Or will the new Emperor fail before his reign even really begins.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger: Cornelius Walbroski enters the rigors of Ranger training, becoming one of the augmented warriors of the Empire. But his first assignment, Azure, is one of the most deadly planets in the Galaxy, even prior to the coming of the Cacas. Can Cornelius survive his first mission? Or will promising career end before it really begins.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 6: The Day of Battle: Sean and the Empire need a victory before human morale goes completely into the black hole. He develops a plan to bring the Ca’cadasans into battle in space of his choosing. But the Cacas are not an easy opponent, and they have plans of their own, for the Donut.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike: The Empire has weathered the Ca’cadasan onslaught, and now it’s the time to strike back with an offensive of their own. A victory could win the war. But will it?

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers: The Cacas have been ejected from Imperial space, for the moment. But millions of citizens of New Moscow are still held captive in death camps in their former empire, processed for rations for the large aliens. Sean is determined to save as many as he can, and the Fleet and Army are prepared to carry out his directive; free the prisoners at all costs.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front: The exploration mission sent around the edge of the Ca’cadasan Empire has found the other Empire at war with the large aliens. They are not as expected, and Sean must order his military to perform actions that could vilify him in the eyes of his new allies.

  Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Exploration Command: Three novelettes concerning Exploration Command, the arm of the Fleet tasked with pushing back the boundaries of the Empire, and discovering the technology needed to win the war.

  Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova: When a civilization is discovered that has a special ability that would be of tremendous benefit to the Empire, great excitement is generated. When it is found that a nearby blue giant star is due to supernova in less than a year, destroying that world, excitement turns to a frantic race to save as much of that species as possible. And enemies from the past, lurking in space, bring forth a new war to the embattled Empire.

  Exodus: Machine War: Book 2: Bolthole: The Machine Intelligences are back, with a vengeance. While the Empire is busy fighting a war of survival against the Cacas, the murderous killing machines they had created hundreds of years prior are now ready to strike back. And the Imperial stronghold of Bolthole is in their sights.

  Other Scifi

  Diamonds in the Sand: When a perfectly healthy scientist falls dead of an apparent heart attack, it is up to Sarasota Police Detective Lieutenant Gary Lariviere to find out what really happened. The scientist was working on Nanotechnology, a secret desired by everyone from the Government to the Mob. There are too many suspects, including the woman that Gary comes to love. The Army had made Gary better than human, but had they prepared him for the terrors that had been unleashed by the new technology?

  The Scorpion: The Scorpion had been the world’s deadliest living terrorist. Kestral McMann h
ad been in on the kill. Now The Scorpion is back as a mind upload, using clones to penetrate the tight security of an isolationist United States. McMann is the only man who can stop him. But can McMann survive the threat of his own side, and the insane President who leads the Nation, in time to stop The Scorpion from plunging the Great Satan back into the Stone Age.

  The Shadows of the Multiverse: Something has been periodically wiping intelligence from our Universe through the ages. It’s back, and it’s up to three unlikely heroes, the Captain of a Battle Cruiser, a Physicist turned Archeologist, and a Child, to save the intelligence of the Universe from Monsters from another Dimension. Can they learn to use the powers of their unusual Quantum Minds to defeat creatures that have been playing the game for billions of years?

  Afterlife: What if you didn’t believe in the afterlife of the World’s Religions? And what if science offered you the alternative, survival within the Virtual World of a computer, where your mental abilities are magnified and you can do anything you want? And what if the World decided that your way was wrong, and declared war on you, meaning to destroy your reality? What would you do? Afterlife, a tale of survival at all costs.

  We Are Death, Come For You: When aliens strike the Tau Ceti colony, humankind knows that something bad is on the way. They prepare as best they can, but will it be enough against superior technology? The aliens are death worshippers, and only the extinction of the human race will satisfy their evil intent. There are wonders of tech on the horizon, but can they be deployed in time? Or will humankind have to depend on the smallest of their techs to save them?