Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  Four men went down and accepted the bulk of the bomb handed to them. They lowered it to the floor of the lower chamber, and Cornelius jumped the five meters from hatch to floor, his augmented bones and muscles easily absorbing the shock. “What now?” he asked.

  “There’s an access hatch over there,” said Boudreaux, pointing up the chamber. “We’ll have to put the bomb through lengthwise. Otherwise, it won’t fit.”

  “And is that hatch an airlock, Doc?” asked Satrusalya, frowning.

  “I don’t think so,” said the scientist, his eyes widening. “Oh, crap. What the hell am I thinking?”

  “What’s the problem?” asked Cornelius, looking from face to face.

  “If we open that hatch, we expose this compartment to space. And none of us have suits.”

  “Well, shit. Is there another place we can push this bitch out of?”

  “There’s a hangar for maintenance craft about a kilometer up the ring,” said Boudreaux.

  “We don’t have time for that,” blurted Cornelius. “We’ve got to get it out of here, now.”

  “If I can have one volunteer, I think I can wrestle it out,” said the PO.

  “Without a suit?” asked the incredulous scientist.

  “I’ve done it in training,” said the large man, nodding his head. “Not really pleasant, but doable. And if we don’t do it now, we won’t have the chance later.”

  “I guess it’s my job,” said Cornelius with a sigh, not really looking forward to doing what the man was talking about. “Everyone else out of the room. Now.”

  “Good luck, Ranger,” said Chung, just before he jumped out the hatch and closed it behind him.

  “What do you want me to do, PO?” he asked Satrusalya, wanting to get this over with before his nerve broke.

  “Help me wrestle this thing over to that hatch,” said the man. “We’ll need to turn it on end to fit it out. I think it’ll fit, but if not, we’ll have to widen it with the laser cutters we brought along. How are your nanobubbles? Have you had a refill lately?”

  “About a month ago,” said Cornelius, thinking of the small diamonoid spheres that contained pressurized oxygen, floating through his bloodstream. They were standard equipment for all Imperial military personnel, allowing them to supply their muscles and nervous systems with oxygen in a hostile environment. At full charge they could supply a human with an hour of breathing gas. And a month after charge they would still be at ninety five percent capacity. “The last time I used the system was in training. And we were under water.”

  “Well, this is going to be very different from water, Lieutenant,” said Satrusalya with a frown. “In fact, the one thing you don’t need to do is hold your breath. With our augmented bones and muscles, there’s not really much chance that you’ll rupture a lung. But, just to be safe, blow out everything in your lungs as soon as the air starts getting sucked out.”

  “Can we lower the pressure to a vacuum before we open the hatch.”

  “Probably,” said the PO. “But it could take some time. This kind of room was never intended to act as an emergency airlock. It was intended to be opened to space in a more sedate manner, and only when necessary.”

  “We don’t have time for that,” agreed Cornelius, grabbing hold of the antigrav handle. “Order the system to start cycling the air anyway. Any reduction of pressure differential has to help.”

  The other man grunted in surprised agreement as he grabbed the handle of another antigrav. “You aren’t so dumb, for a grunt,” said the man with a laugh as they moved the massive container toward the hatch.

  “I’m not sure about that,” said Sean, returning the laugh as they moved the bomb along slowly, not wanting to let its inertia get out of hand. “After all, here I am on a suicide mission with a stupid Spacehead.”

  Both men laughed, the camaraderie of facing death together drawing them closer. As they neared the hatch, they started to swing the bomb casing until its cylindrical shape pointed down. And now it was obvious that the bomb was not going to fit. Not by much, only a few centimeters on each side of the slightly oblong weapon, trying to fit it through the circular hatch.

  “We’ll have to open the hatch and cut,” said the Commando, setting the antigravs to station keeping, a setting would keep it in place no matter the forces pulling on it, as long as they weren’t too severe. Can you hear me on your link?

  Because we aren’t going to be able to talk to each other when this chamber evacuates, he thought. Loud and clear, he sent to the other man.

  Then bond a handhold to the deck and hold on, said Satrusalya, doing the same himself, putting a handle shaped object that had been made for just this purpose and setting the nanites on its ends to bond to the hull metal.

  Opening hatch now, said the Commando, reaching over and keying in the safety code that overrid the system that was set to keep the hatch closed with unsuited people in the chamber. The hatch slid open swiftly and air started rushing out.

  Sean opened his mouth, letting the air in his lungs rush out as well, sliding his body along to the hole, the head of the laser cutter in his right hand while his left kept a death grip on the handhold. He looked through the hatch for a moment, down at the distortion in space that was the black hole. The light of the stars behind it were bent around, forming a ring of light circling the dead stellar mass. It was the most frightening thing he had ever seen, a mass that could swallow a planet, even a star.

  Most black holes were surrounded by deadly radiation, the result of their accretion discs and the matter that constantly fell into them. This black hole had been swept clean of any and all debris larger than molecular dust, and had very little in the way of radiation, other than that produced by the natural virtual particles of Hawking radiation. The station itself was protected by electromag fields.

  We could have erected a cold plasma field here, he sent to the Commando as he shifted back a little and fired up his cutter.

  Not enough time, sent back the other man, his own laser cutting into the hard alloy of the hatch frame.

  Fortunately, they did not have much cutting to do, as the hard alloy of frame and hatch were very difficult to cut. In a moment it was done, and Cornelius got to his feet without the pressure of flowing air to push him out. Nor was there any air in his lungs, which hurt like a bitch. His vision was slightly blurred from the pressure of the fluid inside pushing against the tissues. His joints ached, a symptom of the bends, the nitrogen in his blood bubbling out due to the lack of pressure around him.

  Let’s get it out, sent the Commando over the link. Here, help me.

  Cornelius nodded and grabbed hold of an antigrav, pulling the weapon down, breathing a mental sigh, the only one he was capable of at the moment, as the cylinder slid through. There was a bit of resistance, while both men pulled with straining muscles until it pushed through the obstruction.

  The bomb fell through, dropping away. Satrusalya had set the antigravs to then go to the opposite setting once they were through, pulling them toward the greatest gravity source in the region, the black hole. In an instant the bomb was speeding toward the black hole, where it would either be swallowed up with a blip of radiation, or explode too far from the station to do any damage.

  He was admiring his work when the Cacas blasted through one of the doors and atmosphere came screaming back into the chamber. Enough to propel him through the hatch and into space, to start the long fall toward the hole that would crush him out of existence.

  * * *

  “That’s the third one, Doctor Yu,” said the Marine General commanding station security.

  The Director of the Donut Project looked at the schematic that showed the device falling from her station toward the black hole, an object a hundred gigaton explosive device would not even affect.

  “Are, are the people who pushed it off the station OK?” she asked, feeling rising anxiety at the fate of Jimmy Chung, whom she had not been able contact for the last ten minutes. Not that such was surpr
ising, since the station com links were overloaded with vital traffic.

  “They took severe casualties, ma’am,” said the General in a low voice. “Both my Marines, and the ad hoc force we sent in from the other side.”

  Ad hoc meaning the on leave special ops troops, and Jimmy’s people. “Thank you, General,” she said, looking at the man’s grim face.

  “We’re still hoping we can get to the last one before it goes off,” said the General, the expression on his face showing he really didn’t believe that would happen. “We….”

  The holo went blank for a moment, while warning klaxons started sounding across the control room that fronted Yu’s office. She jumped up from her desk and ran into the room, her eyes darting around the chamber at the multitude of stations with screens up, their operators staring intently at the scenes being presented there. Some of those scenes were from sensors along the curve of the station, looking toward the area the Ca’cadasans had taken. A bright point had appeared there, toward the center of the width. Large pieces of hull flew from the area, heading toward the black hole.

  They detonated the last bomb, thought the Scientist, staring at the large trivee scene that had appeared over the high wall of the chamber. The bright area expanded, moving kilometers to all sides of the blast. It kept growing, until it had encompassed a circle ten kilometers on the underbelly of the station. And another schematic showed the internal damage, reaching out five more kilometers. The schematic showed that the central cable, a kilometer thick of hard but flexible carbon strands, had been severed, over a kilometer if its length simply gone.

  The station shuddered, the shock wave finally reaching their area, and more warnings went off. “We’re being pushed off our optimal orbit,” called out one of the control room crew.

  “Take control of the grabbers,” ordered the supervisor, the best man they had for this job, called up as soon as the emergency struck. “We need to get this girl under control.”

  Lucille looked up at another schematic, this one against the wall over the entrance to her office. It showed the circular form of the station, and the black hole in the center, and two other circles. One was the optimal orbit of the station, the other the point of no return, the point at which the station could no longer recover from a destabilization. And due to the push of the massive explosion, they were drifting that way.

  * * *

  Cornelius really had no hope of making it back to the station. He was drifting toward the hole, not at the acceleration of the bomb, which had the efforts of its antigrav units pulling it toward the gravity well. But he was picking up speed.

  The big objects coming out of space, silhouetted against the bulk of the Donut, looked like angels in his eyes. The two Marines grabbed him, one on each arm, and started to boost back to the station. A couple of seconds into the boost the heavy battle armor suits closed in around him, cutting off his view of the station.

  What the hell, he thought, as a bright light shone around the edges of the suits. The one we didn’t get, he thought, thankful for the protection of the heavy armor and their electromag fields. A couple of objects flew by at high velocity, really just streaks, and one of the suits jerked as something slammed into it. Nothing too bad, as both suits kept boosting back to the station. And if it had hit me, I would definitely be dead by now.

  It took several minutes, well within Walborski’s time frame for continued oxygenation from his nanobubbles. Still, he was feeling the effects of the vacuum on the rest of his body. But I’m going to make it, Devera, honey, he thought, seeing the approaching station as the suited Marines turned until they were again beside him.

  The airlock door closed behind him as he and the Marines settled to the floor, and air hissed into the small chamber. Cornelius pulled in a deep breath, and almost vomited as the pain shot through his lungs.

  “Take is slow, Ranger,” said one of the Marines over his suit speaker. “The alveoli of your lungs have been damaged some by the exposure to vacuum. You’ll need to replenish the liquid layer in your lungs in order to exchange gases again.”

  Cornelius simply nodded, unable to speak, while the inner door opened. The Marines helped him in, while a Naval Medic ran up and started to inject him with meds, nanites and nutrients. They helped him to a seated position on the floor, and the Medic handed him a vaporizer bottle and told him to start inhaling the vaporized water.

  “I thought we had lost you, LT,” said Satrusalya, coming up and sitting next to him, a vaporizer in his hand as well.

  “I have a confession to make,” said Cornelius in a hacking voice. “I’m still a cadet lieutenant at the Academy.”

  “Well, you’re an officer to this Spacehead, Ranger,” said Satrusalya, giving Cornelius his hand. “I would serve with you any day.”

  “And the Emperor will sure be glad to see you made it as well, Walborski,” said Jimmy Chung, walking up to the pair.

  “You know the Emperor?” asked the now wide eyed Commando.

  “The Emperor pinned two Imperial Medals of Heroism on this man himself,” said Chung. “He may just get a third one for this one. As might you, Satrusalya.”

  “I’ll put in the word myself,” said Cornelius. “What you did in that room took balls.”

  “Says mister big testicles to me,” said Satrusalya, with a laugh. “But I’ll take it.”

  * * *

  The blast of the one device, bigger than anything ever seen in Imperial space not of natural origin, vaporized the cable along a one kilometer length, as well as the outer hull for five kilometers in each direction. Five kilometers further on large pieces of that hull flew off into space, to fall into the black hole within minutes. Internal divisions, floors, walls, bulkheads, were also vaporized for several kilometers into the station, along with everything that was contained within those chambers. Ten kilometers further everything was smashed, machinery ripped apart, people pulped. Some of the blast moved through openings, tram tunnels, lift shafts, spreading the fury in seemingly random directions. In some sections, thirty kilometers from the blast, all organic forms were vaporized, while across a bulkhead there was no effect. In several places the top of the station blew out.

  The region affected was more than the area of ten thousand battleships, an area almost beyond comprehension, though only a tiny portion of the enormous station. On the outer areas of the devastation robots and emergency personnel went to work containing the damage. In the area of total devastation there was nothing to be done, and over ten thousand sentient beings were gone, mostly Ca’cadasan commandos and human Marines. And, of course, the station had been pushed off kilter by a blast that none of the designers had ever envisioned.

  * * *

  “I think I’m going to lose her,” yelled out the Tech that was supervising the grabber array on the Donut. The station was moving toward the point of no return, the section opposite the blast shifting closer to the black hole, as the section nearest the explosion drifted out under the impulse of the force of the weapon.

  “How much power are you giving the grabbers,” said Lucille, running over to the man’s station.

  “One hundred percent,” said the Tech. “All they’ll handle.”

  Lucille looked up at the schematic, cursing under her breath. She looked back at the sweating Tech. “Give them one hundred and ten percent.”

  “That could burn them out,” argued the Tech.

  “And if we hit the hole, it doesn’t matter if the grabbers are intact or not. Now give them everything you’ve got.” There’s supposed to be some extra capacity built into the units, she thought, praying that it was true.

  “Giving them one hundred and ten percent,” said the Tech, his fingers striking the panels and overriding the system. The power meters on the system climbed past the blue columns that indicated normal power, moving into the red zone that was the warning that too much was being asked of the millions of units.

  The station continued to move on its path to disaster, everyone in the cont
rol chamber staring at the schematic. There was a shudder through the floor, not as sudden or strong as the one the explosion had caused, but in some ways more powerful. The fabric of the station stressing and straining under the multiple forces pulling on her.

  “I’m losing some of the grabbers,” yelled the Tech.

  “How many?” yelled Lucille, glancing at the control panel.

  “About point one percent,” said the man. “With more going every second.”

  “Keep the power feed going,” said Lucille, thinking of ordering another increase, weighing the odds in her mind. “One hundred and twenty percent,” she ordered.

  “We’re going to lose more,” blurted out the Tech, his fingers inputting the new orders.

  We could lose several percent and still have an increase in power, she thought, but is it enough?

  “I think it’s working,” yelled the Supervisor.

  The column showing the percent of failed grabbers was climbing, passing one percent, then to two, then speeding up and hitting four. The remaining grabbers were still pulling at space harder than all of them would have at one hundred percent power.

  And then the station barely moved away from the point of no return. Slowly at first, barely noticeable, then speeding up.

  “Ease off a little of the grabber power when she crosses the fifty percent line,” said Lucille, putting a hand on the Tech’s shoulder.

  More were overheating, but they would have to pass ten percent before that was a problem. They reached eight percent overheated when the station hit the halfway line, and the Tech pulled the power back to one hundred and ten percent, then to one hundred a few moments later.

  “She’s going to make it,” shouted the Supervisor in glee. The station was speeding up, getting closer to the mark.

  “Back them off to fifty percent,” said Lucille. “I don’t want her to rebound past optimal.

  It took several more minutes for the station to slide into that optimal orbit, and only then did Lucille allow herself to feel the relief that they had saved the situation from falling into disaster.