Radiation was one thing that could purge their systems of working nanites, the fast moving particles not only damaging their cells but also battering the nanoscale robots. And the robots were really the only thing that could repair the damage to their cells, so they would be in great need in the near future.
Orders given, Albright jumped to her feet and ran to her armor cubby, which was opening at her approach. She backed into the cubby, letting her arms and legs seek their hollows while her head rested against the back of the helmet. The connections, neural and sanitary, were made, and the suit closed up around her. As soon as closure was made the nanosystems sealed the seams to the point where they no longer existed, and would not exist again until those systems opened them.
Albright looked for some other cover, something that would help them to survive until they could get out of the system and into hyperspace. The planet’s moon was still there, still moving in the same orbit for some reason.
“What’s the gravitic environment?” she asked her Sensor Officer as he got back in his seat, his own armor sealed.
The officer looked to his board for a moment. “We’re still sensing the presence of the planet, even though it’s not there as far as we can tell through any other means.”
“And the moon?”
“Still in its path, just like the planet is still there.”
“Helm,” she called out. “Get us behind it as fast as possible.”
“ETA to sheltering position, fifteen minutes, twelve seconds,” called back the Helmsman, working his board.
“Radiation wave in fifty-three seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer.
So we will be exposed for over fourteen minutes, she thought, looking at the moon, three thousand kilometers of rock with a small metallic core, which would stop everything but neutrinos, and neutrinos couldn’t hurt them. Neutrons could, and would go right through their electromagnetic field like it wasn’t there.
“Make sure the Admiral gets all of our data on continuous update,” she ordered the Com Officer. “Both grav pulse and cast.” Even if they don’t get the cast while they’re in hyper.
The main threat was not the wave per se, which was a wave much in the way a tsunami crossing deep water was. It was expanding as the inverse square of the distance from the point of origin, for each doubling of distance a quartering of the particles. Not all the particles thrown out of the supernova had not been given equal force, though it was pretty close to equal. It was spreading out in depth as the slower particles were outpaced by those with greater velocities. It was now a light week in thickness. By the time it reached the nearer stars, light years away, it would be over a light month from wavefront to end. That did not make it any less deadly, since the radiation would strike over a longer period of time, though of course it would have lost some of its strength due to that same inverse square law.
The main threat to the ship was the presence of violent beams of neutrons that were intermingled with the general wave, with did not spread as much and carried hundreds of times more energy per square meter of front than the rest of the expanding tsunami of death. The odds were remote that they would be hit, but not out of the realm of possibility. And in a Universe where anything could happen, it would, eventually.
“Wavefront impact, now,” called out the Sensory Officer.
The wall of radiation washed over the ship, alpha, beta, gamma, more exotic particles. Charged particles were either repelled by the electromagnetic field, or grabbed and pulled around the ship by its attraction. This was true for about three quarters of these particles, as the screens were overloaded by the sheer volume. The uncharged particles were not affected by the fields at all, though many of them hit the hydrogen molecules in the cold plasma and were deflected away. But many in this mass meant a very small percentage of them, and the great majority pushed through to hit the armored nose of the ship. The armor was a very good particle shield, and over ninety-five percent of the neutrons that hit it were stopped, while that five percent made it through. It hit more barriers after it passed the hull, so that only one half of one percent of the original neutron radiation made it through to hit the crew in their armored suits, where about half of it was stopped as well.
Everyone aboard the ship, save those working within the engineering section, where there was shielding intended to keep the radiation of the matter/anti-matter reactors in check, felt a wave of nausea pass through them with the radiation, minor, not anything they would not recover from. But the radiation continued, and each second some of their internal nanites, the tiny robots that would fight cellular damage, were taken out.
Albright checked the readouts from the ships sensors, and the composite of the takes from each and every crewperson, analyzed by the computers, and was sure they would make it through to their hiding place. From where the crew could be re-injected with nanites.
As soon as she had that thought, while still almost ten seconds from shelter behind the moon, they were clipped by one of those high energy neutron beams. It didn’t hit head on, but through the stern third of the ship just to the rear of engineering. Not the full width of the beam, only about a third of it, and only for a microsecond, it was still enough to shoot killing radiation through sixty-one of the crew while causing severe radiation sickness among forty two others.
Warning klaxons sounded throughout the ship, and Albright looked at the schematic to see where they had been hit, her face going white as the casualty figures came through her link.
“Medical emergency, sections forty through forty-six, decks nine through seventeen,” came a call over the com.
Clark slid behind the moon at maximum deceleration, putting the body between itself and the radiation wave. Commands were imputed into the computer that would force the ship to hold position, fighting against the orbit its velocity and the gravity of the moon wanted to force it into, through the constant pull of its grabbers.
“We made it,” called out Commander Nord Sekumbe from CIC, which had been too close for comfort to the section that had intersected the neutron beam.
“Are you OK, Exec?”
“Everyone survived,” he said, stopping to cough. “We’re all a little sick, and ten more meters would have hurt a lot more. But I think we’ll make it.”
And we’re all lucky to have made it, thought the Captain, looking at the place where the planet had been, and still was there, according to its gravity, even if materially it was gone. Some hadn’t made it, but it could have been much worse, and she was thankful that it hadn’t been.
* * *
“The grav pulse signal has repeated for the third time, Admiral,” said Captain Susan Lee, standing beside his command chair. “We’ve cleaned up all the inconsistencies caused by the static, and we’re sure of the content.”
“Which is?” asked Nguyen, looking up at his Chief of Staff. “Just the gist of it.” He knew it had taken over ten minutes for each iteration of the message to come through. It had been severely distorted by all of the radiation, and by some new distortions they had never before encountered. Maybe from the planet jumping dimensions.
They still had not actually seen that the planet was missing, not stuck in hyperspace like they were. The ship’s commander had scheduled a probe launch to translate back into normal space in time to catch the visual image of the planet when it was said to have translated. The probe would spend the minimum time it could to gather the information, then jump back into hyper, bringing with it the take from real space.
“From what Clark transmitted, the planet disappeared just before the radiation wave reached it. The alien artifacts glowed with almost painful brilliance, and the planet was gone. And with it the cover that the cruiser was depending on to provide protection from the wave.”
“And the condition of Clark?”
“They report having made it to safety with some damage and heavy casualties. The planet’s moon is still there, and they sheltered behind it.”
The moon is s
till there? What the hell happened there? Why didn’t it go flying off on its own, or into a new orbit? Of course, it might have, and we won’t know until we’ve gotten firm com with the cruiser. “Did they say how heavy their casualties were?”
“No, sir. Only that one word, heavy.”
“And they stayed there on my orders, so they could observe a planet that doesn’t need further observation.” Nguyen rubbed his eyes, the guilt of however many men and women had died or been injured falling squarely on his shoulders.
“You couldn’t know that, sir,” said the Captain, laying a hand on his shoulder. “As far as any of us knew, that planet was going to continue being there, no matter what else happened.”
“And those objects on the planet? What were they for? And why did they take the planet out of normal space?”
“To save the planet and the people on it would be my guess,” said Lee. “Some other civilization saw this coming, thousands of years ago, if the histories of the Klassekians are to be believed. They set up the machinery to take the planet out of the way of the radiation wave.”
“Is such technology even possible?” asked Captain Jackson, the ship’s commander. “It boggles the mind.”
“It’s only a matter of scale over what we already do,” said Lee, nodding. “We move objects of millions of tons between the dimensions of normal, sub and hyperspace. And with the Donut in operation, who can say where our own abilities will end.”
“And will it be coming back?” asked Jackson. “The planet, I mean?”
“I would think so,” said Lee, looking over at her Admiral.
“I guess a better question would be,” murmured Nguyen, “is whether they went to the same place as Challenger. And if Challenger will come back through when they do?”
* * *
“So, it seems as if your aid was not needed in the first place,” said First Councilman Rizzit Contena over the com. “Not that we don’t appreciate the help, since it looked to those of us with enough rationality to think that we were doomed as well.”
“We have no idea who these creatures are who saved you,” said Captain Gertrude Hasslehoff in return. “They contacted us as soon as we made it back to this location, and explained somewhat how this was going down. Other than that, and some basic information on what they look like, we know almost nothing about them.”
“Is this where we stay from now on?” asked Rizzit, his eyes looking off screen for a moment. “Not that we’re not grateful to them as well, but I think we will miss the sight of our own sun, and the stars in the sky.”
“They told us to stay close to the planet if we want to return to our space,” said Hasslehoff, recalling the words of the alien. “I don’t think they would tell us that if they didn’t intend for you to return as well.”
“When?”
“Surely not until the radiation wave has passed,” said the Captain. “Say, two to three weeks.”
“My people are already celebrating their deliverance in the streets. They even put an artificial sun in the sky, so that the plants won’t die.”
“You will still face some problems in the future,” said Hasslehoff. “I’m not an expert on supernovas, but that one had to have put a lot of material into space, and not just what’s in the radiation wave. It’s going to make a hell of a nebula, and, though it may take centuries, or longer, your system will eventually be invaded by that gas cloud, and I have no idea what effects it will have on your planet. But I can already think of some really bad consequences.”
“So, what are we to do?” asked the leader, looking like a depression was about to overtake him, if the Captain was reading it right.
“By the time the nebula reaches you, you should be advanced enough to take one of any number of technological solutions. And that we can help you with.” Unless the mysterious aliens have that covered as well. But they told us they were about to go on their last crusade, so it will probably be up to us to take care of the Klassekians.
“So what should I do?” asked the First Councilman. “I mean about the current situation.”
“Talk to your people. Keep them calm, and reassure them that things will return to normal. Do you have contact with any of the other nations?”
“Our allies. The Honish refuse to return any of our com requests, other than to gloat how they will be seeing us in hell in the near future, seeing as how judgment day is here.”
“And who is their leader?”
“Still Zzarr, if you can believe that, Captain.” He must have seen the confused expression on the Captain’s face. “It happened after you, disappeared. Zzarr retreated to an underground shelter to escape capture, and Admiral Nguyen, as soon as he found the location, hit him with a heavy kinetic. We thought he had gone on to meet his God, but somehow he survived, and is now broadcasting to his people that they are in paradise.”
“And no one has tried to talk him out of this madness and see reason?”
“We’ve tried, but all he does now is tell us how we are doomed.”
“Do you have his general location?”
“No, but we have the frequency he has been broadcasting on. Will that help?”
“I think it will, First Councilman. I surely think it will.”
* * *
Zzarr stood outside the tent that now housed the broadcast equipment that was linked into the national media net, looking up to the sky and wondering when the hells the God was going to make his appearance. After all, paradise was here, wasn’t it? Though he had to admit he felt no healthier, no younger, things that were supposed to go along with paradise. Or did that need the coming of the God to happen. Which again brought forth the question of where that God was.
He looked around at his camp, seeing all of the people still going about their business, putting up more tents from the supplies that were continuing to come from below, waiting for the air transports to come and take them back to the capital. Not that many of his military were actually doing anything like put aircraft in the air, since they had more important things to do, like wait for their savior to come down from heaven.
The first he knew that something other than his own people, or the God, were coming to him was when a trio of the human shuttles came over the ridgeline on their nearly silent propulsion. He recognized them for the assault vehicles used to deliver their ground combat troops. But even recognizing them didn’t mean he believed they were there.
They can’t be, was the thought that kept running through his mind. What the hell would humans, or their machines, be doing here? This is our judgment, not theirs. The thought then hit him that maybe these humans were here to suffer for the sins of the rest. Until the shuttles started on their way down the side of the ridge.
“Zzarr,” yelled a translated human voice over the speakers of all the shuttles. “You are hereby notified that you, and all who stand with you, and under arrest for the violations of the laws of the New Terran Empire, as well as those of the civilized nations of the planet Klassek. These include mass murder and the deployment of weapons of mass destruction both against the militaries of the Empire, the Nation of Tsarzor, and associated nations, as well as civilians caught in the line of fire.”
Hatches popped on the bottoms of all the shuttles, and immediately the armored forms of Marines fell into the air, catching themselves on their grabber units and propelling themselves down the valley. Rocket pods extruded from the bodies of the shuttles, whose laser rings now glowed with power.
“They come for the Leader,” yelled one of the military commanders in the camp. “Stop them.”
The hundred or so soldiers on the ground opened fire, their military discipline overruling their common sense. All they had were personal weapons, rifles, pistols, a couple of light machine guns. Nothing that could hurt the Marines or their shuttles. Bullets sparked off of hard alloys, and the Imperials returned fire with lasers and particle beams.
The fight was really over before it began, the energy weapons destroying their targ
ets, killing three quarters of the Honish troops before the remainder dropped their weapons and tried frantically to surrender.
“Zzarr, Leader of Honish,” intoned the speakers on a Marine’s armor as the suit stopped in front of the elder. “You are under arrest.”
Hard alloy gauntlets grabbed him, then secured him with plastic restraints.
“You can’t be here,” shouted Zzarr, struggling against the restraints that had no yield in them. “This is our time, and that of our God.”
“You God appears to be a no show,” said the Marine, who the Leader thought had the rank of a company commander on his helmet. “Don’t worry, though. We’ve got a good selection of our own. Maybe you can pick up a new one while we have you locked up awaiting trial.”
Chapter Twenty-six
And one day the machines will come back. The giant ground combat robots, the self-aware ships, the things which murdered billions of humans. Some say they are already here, in the darkness, waiting to snag unwary children who leave their homes at night.
Bedtime story told in the New Terran Empire.
FEBRUARY 10TH, 1002. D+217.
“The Crean is reporting hyper resonances at the far edge of their sensor range, ma’am,” reported the Captain of the battle cruiser Francis Drake, Commodore Natasha Khrushchev’s flagship.
The ship in question was the Exploration Command destroyer Tom Crean, named after an Irish born Antarctic explorer from Old Earth. It was the tail end of their rear scouting party, consisting of the destroyer and two sister ships, Xuanzang and Yuri Gagarin, as well as the light cruiser Gjoa, all Command vessels. The forward screen consisted of light cruisers Roebuck and Jeannette, along with the Command destroyers Benedict Allen, Martin Forbisher and Bill Anders, along with the Fleet destroyer James Stewart. Which left the two battle cruisers, Drake and Endurance, both Command ships, the Fleet heavy cruiser New Potsdam, and the light cruiser Greenville, also a Fleet vessel. Flanking the convoy to either side were the Fleet destroyers Mihn Quan and Todrick McDermit.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova. Page 31
