Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  “OK,” said Albright. “I’m going to compose a message for whomever is in charge of that force. I want it sent out on grav pulse as soon as possible. Then send all of my logs to them timed to get there as soon after they translate down as possible.”

  Maybe once they know what we have here, we’ll get some more aid. Enough to get the majority of the population of this world to safety? Maybe, but if not, enough aid to get a significant number of them away.

  * * *

  Five objects erupted from hyperspace less than a light minute outside of the barrier around the star. All were coasting in at point two c, the maximum velocity they were capable of translating to and from hyperspace. Three of the vessels, two battle cruisers and a destroyer, started accelerating as soon as they were in normal space, over five hundred gravities, set on a least time arrival at the inhabited planet. The two smallest vessels, a pair of couriers, put on six hundred gravities deceleration, obviously planning on coming to a stop, then retreating back beyond the barrier, where they would be ready to haul a message from the force commander back to base.

  Minutes after the ships left hyper the grav pulse message arrived. Gravitons, unlike any other form of radiation, traveled in all dimensions of space, normal, hyper and sub, simultaneously. They made their presence known to ships that could detect them in hyper VIII over a hundred thousand times faster than light speed signals in normal space. Unfortunately, grav pulse was an exceedingly slow way to transmit information. The pulses were a code, much like old style Morse, and it took over a second for the transmitter to generate each note of the signal. The long paragraph that Albright had ordered sent took almost eight minutes. Minutes later the first packet of the light speed transmission from the light cruiser Clark arrived, picked up by the com of both alert battle cruisers. It was a burst transmission, several hundred gigabytes per second, including high definition three dimensional images. It still took over a half an hour for all of the reports to be transmitted.

  Moments after the last of the report arrived, a signal was sent to one of the couriers, which was still furiously decelerating prior to heading back out. Within a half an hour the couriers were at a dead stop, then accelerating back out. Thirty minutes later one of the couriers was translating back into hyper, starting the long voyage back to the nearest Exploration Command base.

  “We’re receiving a grav pulse transmission from the flagship, ma’am,” said the Com Officer, turning to look at the Captain.

  Albright was sitting in her bridge chair, looking at the central holo tank, configured to a tactical representation of the system. Clark sat in a close orbit about the planet, Lewis, now back in the system, in a much further orbit, while the two battle cruisers and the destroyer were accelerating inward.

  “They identify themselves as battle cruiser division 1430, HIMS Boudeuse and HIMS Challenger, accompanied by DD Argonaut,” reported the Com Officer. “Rear Admiral Nguyen Van Hung commanding.”

  A rear admiral, thought the Captain, bringing up the record of the flag officer on her repeater screen. Admiral Nguyen’s face looked out of the screen, of obvious Asian genealogy, by the name Vietnamese. She had never worked with the Admiral before, and was somewhat surprised that a commodore or senior captain wasn’t commanding. Which meant that someone at the base took the situation very seriously, even without knowing about the singular abilities of the sophonts.

  “Light speed transmission to follow,” continued the Com Officer.

  Albright looked over the Admiral’s record, noting that he had degrees in both biology and chemistry, and quite the record as an explorer. Four first contact situations, and commendations from the Emperor himself, which had been Augustine at the time, for his skills as a diplomat. It looked like they had lucked out with this flag officer being assigned to this mission.

  It took several hours for that light speed message to arrive, and Albright found herself looking at the now animated face of the Exploration Command Rear Admiral.

  “I’ve looked over your reports,” said Nguyen. “I think we really have something here. I would like to meet with you on Boudeuse as soon as we get into orbit. Nguyen out.”

  “Not really one for words, is he?” asked Sekumbe, the Exec, from the compound down in Tsarzor, where he had received a copy of the transmission.

  “I’m sure he wants to have a conversation that doesn’t involve long periods of silence,” said Albright with a grin. “I for one am very glad to see him. And all of those Spacers and Marines with him.”

  “Me too,” admitted the Exec. “I kinda hate having to send out research teams without enough security. And forget about our people leaving the compound in Honish, or any of those flyspeck nations that border them. Damned fanatics.”

  Albright nodded. There had been scores of incidents since the decapitation of her ensign. None of her people had been killed in any of the attacks, though there had been some serious injuries that required tanking the crew people. And there had been significant equipment damage. I’m surprised they could find ways to hurt our stuff at their tech level, she thought. But I guess it doesn’t take much more than ingenuity to make effective explosive devices.

  “I wonder how those fanatics in Honish are going to react when they see those battle cruisers enter orbit?” asked Sekumbe.

  “I would give just about anything to see his face when that happens, said the Captain with a smile, thinking of the Premier.

  * * *

  What have the devils brought to our world now? thought Zzarr, looking at the viewer that showed the massive ship in orbit around his world. It is almost incomprehensible that they could put something that large into space.

  Unlike most of his kind, Zzarr did not have the wisdom of his siblings to chime in. He had come to power partially through the elimination of those brothers. He was sure that whatever he planned was only in his mind. What others knew of his thoughts was restricted to what he told them.

  There must be thousands on each of those things, and now we will have thousands of the aliens on our sacred soil. This must not be. But there was really nothing he could do to them up there in orbit. His nation had expended all of its ICBMs on the strike that the smaller alien ship had thwarted. He still had nukes, but no way to get them into orbit. But once they are on the ground, that’s another matter. He would make sure that they took none of his people away from their fate, against the wishes of Hrrottha. And it was also the God’s wish that the infidels of Tsarzor, and all the other nonbelievers, suffer their fate as well. Hrrottha had a place in hell waiting for them, and he did not want the God to be disappointed.

  “Summon my military commanders,” he said into the intercom after he had pushed the switch. We have much to discuss. He wasn’t sure that his military could stand up to the aliens in a fight, but his people were past masters if hidden warfare, such as they trained other peoples in to resist the Tsarzorians. He was sure he could hurt them. Maybe even enough to make them leave this world, and leave the fate of its people in the hands of God.

  * * *

  “William Clark arriving,” announced the Officer of the Day, the officer charged with the scheduling of departures and arrivals from the battle cruiser Boudeuse.

  “Permission to come aboard, sir?” asked Captain Mandy Albright, rendering a hand salute.

  “Permission granted, ma’am,” replied the OOD, returning the salute.

  Mandy turned and saluted the banner of the ship that was hanging on the wall, then did a slow turn to look at the boat bay, one of four on the vessel, each capable of hangaring more ships than both of the light cruisers combined under her command. A half dozen assault shuttles sat in their cradles, along with ten smaller general purpose craft. Halfway through the turn she saw the large hatchway her shuttle had passed through, seemingly open to space. The slight shimmer of the cold plasma, held in place by a strong electromag field, kept the air enclosed in the compartment. When flight operations were suspended the armored hatch would be closed, giving the compar
tment almost as much protection as the hull afforded the rest of the ship.

  “Captain Albright,” said a tall, slender man wearing the insignia of a captain as well, bright teeth shining out of an ebony face. “I’m Captain Joshua Jackson, Admiral Nguyen’s flag captain. Welcome aboard the Boudeuse.”

  “Thank you, sir,” replied Mandy, holding out her hand. Technically, she was of equal rank with the other captain, but he commanded a capital ship, and she only a cruiser. “Let me introduce my executive officer, Commander Nord Sekumbe. And this is my Marine commander, Lt. J’rrantar.”

  Jackson shook hands with the other officers, looking up at the Phlistaran Marine as he clasped that being’s great paw.

  “First time aboard a battle cruiser, Captain Albright?” asked the other Captain, obviously in reference to her star struck appearance while she had surveyed the hangar.

  “I served aboard the Golden Hind as tactical officer,” said Mandy, shaking her head. “I had just forgotten how, big, everything was.”

  Jackson laughed, then gestured toward the hatch leading inwards. “The Admiral is waiting for you in the flag conference room. If you would follow me.”

  With high speed lifts it was not a long trip, even if they did traverse almost a kilometer horizontal, and several hundred meters vertical to get there. The doors to the conference room slid open as she approached, and she sighted the Admiral sitting at the head of the table as soon as she entered. Snapping to attention, she rendered a perfect salute.

  “Captain Mandy Albright, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  Nguyen returned the salute while remaining seated. “At ease, Captain. I really don’t stand on all the spit and polish BS of the Fleet. Go ahead and take your seats, and my steward will ask what you want as far as refreshments.

  Mandy nodded, then took the seat that had a blinking cursor over it in her implant generated overlay. She asked the steward for a coffee and some croissant, then turned her attention to the Admiral.

  “I read as much of your reports as I could on the way in,” said Nguyen, looking over at another of his officers, a statuesque redhead. “Commander Bergland here, my staff intelligence officer, also read some other sections, and has advised me on her impressions. Commander.”

  “First, I must say, Captain,” stated the Commander. “You have done as well as could be expected with your limited resources. But we need to mobilize a much greater response if the Empire is going to take advantage of this resource.”

  “Resource?”

  “Yes, Captain,” said the Admiral. “Resource. Of course we do not want this species to go extinct, and the Command has an obligation to make sure their genotype does not die out. But this, telepathy of theirs. This could be a game changer.”

  “It’s not really telepathy, sir,” said Sekumbe. “It only works between siblings from the same birthing. It’s like before the separation process, while the siblings are still only one being, an entanglement occurs in one piece of neural tissue, which then separates when the brains pull apart in the individuation process about the fourth month of the pregnancy.”

  “Excuse me, Commander,” said the Admiral. “The explanation is all well and good, and I’m sure we’ll have many biologists assigned to this phenomenon. But it acts like telepathy, for all intents and purposes. And I, for one, can think of a lot of uses for that kind of ability.”

  “I thought the wormholes were giving us instantaneous com, sir,” said Albright, pulling on an ear as she thought about what the Admiral had just said. Not that she hadn’t thought it herself, but she had tried not to get too excited about the prospect.

  “The problem with the wormholes, Captain Albright,” said Captain Susan Lee, Nguyen’s Chief of Staff, walking into the room, “is that we only have one station that generates them. They can make about two dozen a day, or about eighty-seven hundred a year. And all of that is spread among ships, planets, bases, more places than we can possibly service with wormholes. Especially as the Fleet itself has over a hundred thousand major vessels in service. Add in five thousand inhabited planets of developing rank or above, the ships of our allies, and the hundreds of thousands of small craft used for reconnaissance and strike duties, and you can see that there are nowhere near enough to go around. And with combat losses, there probably never will be.”

  “We’re starting to deploy subspace coms in all of our ships as soon as they hit a major base or repair ship,” stated the Admiral. “In fact, your ships will be equipped with them as soon as my engineering people can get the equipment over to them, in a day or two. That will give you the ability to communicate at over ten times light speed, in most conditions, which is nothing to complain about. But it is short ranged, no more than a score of light hours, and doesn’t really give us that instantaneous com we really want.”

  “Still, sir,” said Albright after digesting what she had just heard. “It would seem that if flagships were equipped with wormholes, and everyone in the task group is equipped with subspace com, everything is solved.”

  “Not quite,” said Nguyen with a frown. “Two factors make that proposition just a little more complicated. One is the fact that a wormhole equipped ship cannot traverse a wormhole. Something to do with the twisting of space when two space warping connections interact. Any ship that tries is totally destroyed, converted to energy that comes spewing through the other end of the wormhole they are trying to traverse, as well as through the hole that the ship’s wormhole connects to. Not something that the other ship or base would really be looking forward to. And the wormhole they are trying to traverse also goes up in a blast of energy, at both ends. Ships with com departments with one or more of these, Klassekians, do you call them? They won’t have this problem.”

  “At least that’s what the people of Tsarzor call their species,” said Sekumbe, nodding his head. “The other language groups have a different name.”

  “You said there were two factors, sir,” said Albright, curious to hear what else might be in the works that the Klassekians might be able to aid the Empire in.

  “What I’m about to tell you is Top Secret Cosmic,” said the Admiral, using the term for the second highest level of secrecy in the Empire. “No one in this room is to talk about this out of this room, though we will be briefing all ship captains and executive officers on this in the near future, since knowledge of this development will help you to judge and evaluate tech and phenomenon you find for possible inclusion into this project.”

  The Admiral looked down for a moment, then back up, looking from eye to eye, including the Marine Officer in the room. “What do you know about inertia? In particular, the possibilities of an inertialess drive?”

  Albright looked at the Admiral with a blank expression, as did the Phlistaran Marine. Sekumbe looked as if a light bulb had gone off in his mind.

  “I know there was a lot of arguing going on about whether it was possible or not, sir,” said the Exec. “From what I remember, the majority of the experts thought it wasn’t possible, though some big names thought it was.”

  “Well, now we know, Commander,” said Captain Lee. “And not only is it possible, but we have a working system that gets our attack craft up to twice the speed of light.”

  “And as soon as we have enough of them worked up into wings, we’re going to shock the Cacas with something they’ve never seen before,” said the Admiral. “And they will not see it coming until it hits them.”

  “The only problem is that the inertialess strike craft are, for all intents and purposes, cut off from the regular Universe,” said Lee, pulling up a picture of the inertialess attack craft, which looked like a much larger version of a standard attack fighter. “No radiation goes in through the bubble, and none comes out. So communications are more or less impossible. They may spend several hours in their bubbles, with no idea of what their targets are doing. Ships can change vectors. And fighters can come of their bubble into an attack profile and find their targets have moved by millions of kilometers.”r />
  “So you think having Klassekians aboard each fighter, tapped into a tactical net with the carrier, would allow them to receive the information they need to adjust to target?” asked Sekumbe. “That could be kind of rough on Klassekian sibling units.”

  “We would only use volunteers, those who would join our military establishment,” said Lee, looking at Sekumbe with narrowed eyes. “They would be forced into nothing. But, just maybe, they might feel grateful that we have rescued them from annihilation as a species.”

  “And if these, bubbles, cut them off from the rest of the Universe as well?” asked Albright, playing devil’s advocate, even though she knew that the awareness of their possible utility would push the Empire into saving as many of them as it could, and not just a minimal breeding population.

  “They seem to have passed every test you’ve given them,” said Lee, shrugging her shoulders. “If they pass the bubble test as well, great. If not, they still offer us a resource for regular fleet communications that we cannot pass up.”

  “I have sent one of my couriers back to base in order to request all the aid we can get,” said the Admiral. “Normally, there would not be much available at this time. But I think we can shake some loose once Fleet hears about the potential of these people. I asked for a wormhole as well, though I really can’t say how much luck I’ll have with that request.”

  “We’re still having a problem with the natives cooperating with us, sir,” said Albright, thinking it was all well and good to talk about what they were going to do with this people, when the people in question, at least a good number of them, didn’t seem to want the help.

  “I’ve brought along two rump battalions of Marines,” said Nguyen, looking at the Phlistaran Lt. “That’s four reinforced companies, almost nine hundred men and women. If the Lieutenant could get with Lt. Colonel Isaiah, I’m sure she would appreciate your take on what security concerns there might be. But we will establish a presence on this world, on all parts of this world, whether the leadership wants it or not. I will not have people turned away because of what their government thinks about us. If the people themselves don’t want to leave, that’s their decision. And I have asked for more Marines, along with the liners and transports I hope will come.”