Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  Martin dropped his suit down toward one of the government buildings, angling toward an open window the occupant of the office was using to enjoy the weather. Stopping right outside the window, he snaked a thin nozzle through the opening and started spraying a light mist into the office.

  His HUD showed him the take of that mist, which was not made up of any liquid, but instead was comprised of hundreds of millions of nanoscale machines. As soon as they entered the office they floated throughout the room, attaching to any surface and crawling about. It would be some minutes before a number of them were outside the room and into the hall, starting on their way to other rooms. In an hour or two they would have infiltrated the entire floor, in a day the entire building, and Intelligence would start to monitor the take all day, every day, looking for keywords that might alert them to conversations of interest.

  “Ministry of the Army is good to go,” the Chief transmitted to the ship.

  “Acknowledged, Chief,” returned Commander Bergland, the intelligence officer in charge of the operation.

  After rising toward the roof, the Chief pulled a small unit from his suit’s belt and pushed it onto the stonework of the building, where other nanites attached to the contact surface bonded with the structure. The unit would control the nanites in the building and organize their data, which would consist of sound and vid bites, then transmit it up to one of the battle cruisers, whose massive computers would crunch the data.

  The same procedure was being followed in the capital of Tsarzor, Tsranar, and the capitals of all the smaller nations would soon follow. And then every military base, every major corporate headquarters. If there was anyone involved in the terrorist or guerrilla attacks in any of these organizations, eventually the word would get back to Admiral Nguyen, who would then act.

  Chapter Eleven

  Search and rescue operations can involve from one person to an entire task group. The size of the operation is not the only measure of its importance. The saving of any sentient life is of the utmost importance.

  The Imperial Navy Manual of Search and Rescue Operations.

  DECEMBER 23RD, 1000. D-194.

  Eight ships translated down to hyper I a couple of light seconds from the limit. The ships insystem had tracked them from their approach through VI, their highest hyper, down through the dimensions and into normal space. They had been expected, but any commander worth his salt tried to be ready for the unexpected even when the expected was scheduled.

  Ships’ captains and tactical officers still breathed a sigh of relief as what came out of hyper and into normal space matched up with those expectations. The largest ships were a pair of fast freighters, seven million tons of vessel, including over four million tons of cargo each in their voluminous holds. Almost as large were a pair of liners, five million tons, capable of carrying six thousand passengers in comfort, or almost three times that number in cryo. Each carried a battalion of Marines, detached from the brigade that garrisoned the Exploration Command base from which the ships had originated. A light cruiser headed the escort, along with a pair of destroyers.

  Admiral Nguyen read the message from the grav pulse transmission, sent by Commodore Natasha Khrushchev, the commander of the convoy. His own orders had already been transmitted by the same method from his com section. He wanted those freighters in orbit and unloading as soon as possible. The fusion reactors and electromag generators would allow them to place particle protection around a number of the sites the natives were preparing.

  Nguyen pulled up one of the sites, in, of course, Tsarzor, since only they and their ideological allies were trying to save some of their people. Honish and their coreligionist couldn’t seem to care less about saving anyone, and were still arguing over the airwaves that such efforts were against the will of their God. The problem with digging in was the amount of material needed to protect living things from the massive wave of particle radiation that was coming. It could be done, but it would take most of the efforts of the building nations to put a relative few into the ground, whereas high tech protection allowed the construction of shelters much closer to the surface.

  “Sir,” came the voice of Captain Susan Lee over the com. “Intelligence thinks they have a lead on the attacks.”

  “Tell me,” ordered the Admiral.

  “Let me show you instead, sir,” said the Chief of Staff, and a holo sprung into existence over the Admiral’s desk.

  The image showed what looked like a conference room, with Klassekians in the military uniforms of the Nation of Honish sitting in their peculiar looking chairs around a large table.

  “We have the bombs in place, sir,” said what looked like a young alien with the rank insignia of a ship commander in their navy. “At your command, we can detonate them. All at once, or one at a time.”

  “I think it would be more effective if we set them off one at a time, sir,” said another officer, this one a division commander in the male only military of the ultra-religious nation.

  “But if we set them off one at a time, we will alert the aliens to our plan,” said yet another officer, this one a wing commander in the air force of the nation. “They will increase their search assets, and with their technology, they would be very likely to find our unexploded weapons.”

  “I still like the idea of setting them off in a sequence,” said the male with the most ornate uniform in the room, sitting at the head of the table, both indications that he was in charge. “But it isn’t really up to me. I have to kick this upstairs, and see what he says.”

  And who the hell is he? thought the Admiral, trying to will the male to say a name.

  The conversation went on for some minutes before the officers started getting to their feet and filing out of the room. “What else do we have?”

  “We think we have a copy of their operations plan,” said the Chief of Staff. “At least it looks like it, and some of these same people had met on it last week.”

  The holo changed, the view of the room fading and another room, this one much smaller, with the kind of lighting that reminded the Admiral of a dungeon like chamber deep beneath a building. Some of the same people who had been in the last holo were in this one. Nguyen had trouble differentiating between the aliens, but the computer didn’t have that difficulty.

  The view changed to look down on the table as the computer took the take from the nanites scattered through the room to give a shot of the most important angle. There was a map on the table, showing all of the land masses of the planet. And sixteen dots on that map.

  “We think these are their targets,” said Lee, and the action stopped and the holo zoomed in on one target after the other. “Six shelter sites, five Tsarzorian cities, and five landing zones that we have been using.”

  “I want all of those areas searched, and any warheads there disarmed,” ordered the Admiral, pointing at the holo.

  “Do you want us to take those officers into custody?”

  “A couple of them,” he said after a moment’s thought. “A few on the periphery, that we might be able to spirit away without creating too many suspicions.”

  The Admiral looked again at the map, now presented in its entirety. “How are our studies of Klassekian neurology coming?”

  “If you mean, have we developed nonlethal gases that are effective against them, then the answer is yes,” replied the Chief of Staff. “That was actually relatively easy, once our biological staff got on it. As far as working on nano-interrogation? That’s a different matter altogether.”

  The Admiral nodded, wondering if they should have started that research earlier than they had. If Albright should have started on it before he had arrived. No use worrying about the past. “How much do we know?”

  “We have a pretty good handle on whether they are lying or not when we question them. As far as tapping into their memories? That’s a different matter entirely.”

  “Push the research,” he ordered, scowling as he saw the disapproval on his Chief of Staff’s
face.

  “I’m not sure that’s ethical. Not with the volunteers at least. They volunteered to help us with our research into their biology, so we might be able to transport more of them to safety.”

  There had been several thousand volunteers from Tsarzor, open minded citizens who were willing to do almost everything for the promise that their families would be transported off the world before the radiation wave hit. There had been many groups of siblings in the mass of people, giving the Imperials even more insight into the phenomenon that allowed Klassekians of the same litter to communicate across almost any distance.

  Some of them had been used to test incapacitating agents, something that a few of the medical staff had balked at, until it was explained to them that it might otherwise be necessary to use lethal force on those who tried to interfere with the evacuation. After that they had proceeded, cautiously, and none of the natives had been harmed in that testing.

  But this would be an angle of research of much greater risk and invasiveness than even the testing of the incapacitating agents. Nanites would have to be injected in great quantities into the minds of the aliens, used to monitor the release and absorption of neurotransmitters at trillions of synapses during the presentation of various stimuli, not all pleasant. It was a long, drawn out process, and had been used on many other alien races in order to get a look into memories and thought processes. It allowed intelligence interrogators to ask questions of, and receive information from, the most intransient of subjects.

  “Just do the preliminary scans on the volunteers then,” ordered Nguyen after some thought. “We’ll obtain some other subjects for the more intrusive procedures.”

  “What kind of subjects?” asked Lee.

  “The kind that look to already be involved in trying to make us abort our mission,” growled Nguyen. “That kind. So see to it that we have some of that kind.”

  An hour later, Nguyen was in a video conference with First Councilman Contena.

  “We should be able to load up the first twenty thousand of your people in the next couple of days,” said the Admiral, looking into the face of the Leader of Tsarzor. He was almost proficient at reading the expressions of those faces, and could tell that the Councilman was excited about the news.

  “Do you have a place to bring them?” asked the alien. “And how long will it take to get there?”

  Good questions, thought the Admiral. The less time it took, the more trips the liners could make, and with them the freighters that could bring enough supplies for them to survive until they got their own agriculture going. But they needed a planet that met several requirements. For one, it couldn’t be within twenty light years of the blue giant, or they would just have to be either moved or shielded again in the near future. It also couldn’t be inhabited by an intelligent species, unless such a race could be convinced to allow the strangers to settle. And the environment must be suitable for the biology of the settlers. Not all biologies were compatible. Some were indeed deadly.

  “We’re still working on a place to settle them permanently,” said Nguyen. “But we could always start by taking the first groups to our base. We can expand it to handle at least a hundred thousand of your people.”

  “And your shielding of our shelters?” asked the leader, his species’ equivalent of a scowl on his face, teeth showing.

  “The freighters have enough fusion reactors and electromagnetic field projectors to protect maybe a dozen shelters. And we should be able to produce enough shielding material to handle the neutrons.”

  “So, you can maybe protect a couple of million people.”

  “That’s the bad news, First Councilman. However, there is some good.”

  “And I can’t wait to hear this news.”

  “First off, more equipment will be coming, and we will also be setting up factories to build reactors and projectors in place. Probably more than you need for your shelters, though we will also add to those, with your permission.”

  “That is wonderful news. Any other?”

  “All of the people saved will be yours or those of your allies, since the Honish don’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.”

  “I am worried that they might do something to, sidetrack, I think is the term, the rescue attempt.”

  “We are aware of that as well, First Councilman. Our intelligence services are monitoring all of their communications.” And yours as well, thought the Admiral, something he wouldn’t say, but was pretty sure he didn’t have to.

  “I have a question for you, Admiral,” said the First Councilman. “I’m not sure if you will answer it, but I still have to ask. What would you people have done if none of us had been willing to cooperate in our own rescue?”

  “Why, we would have taken as many of you as we could by force,” said the Admiral with a smile. “Don’t get me wrong. One of our prime values is to respect the decisions of other species. However, an even more important value is to not let any species go extinct, if we can prevent it. All worlds have a biological distinctiveness that we feel must be preserved.”

  “Even though the Universe has been ending species, entire ecosystems, for billions of years? And is doing so this day, and will into the future.”

  “You aren’t a believer are you, First Councilman?”

  “I was raised to believe,” said the being, giving a head motion of negation. “I wanted to go on believing. But my siblings, especially the engineer and the general, lost their belief as they delved into science, and all of our thoughts influence those of the others who are connected. So I lost my belief as well. No, Admiral. I believe in science, and the power of the intelligent mind to shape our own future. Not what some deity ordains.”

  “Many of our people still believe, despite our scientific progress,” said Nguyen, thinking of his own parents. “They compartmentalize, faith in one box, the Universe in another. But many of us can’t do that anymore. Which doesn’t make us cold and uncaring as concerns our fellow beings, like many of the religious claim. Instead, it makes us care more, since we realize that there is no caring God out there, looking after his peoples. It’s an uncaring Universe. It couldn’t care less that your world, billions of years of evolution leading to your people, is now within range of a blue giant star about to snuff out all of that hard fought progress. So it’s up to us to do what we can, those of us who are lucky enough to have the technology to do what we are able to.”

  “And you don’t think you’re superior to us primitive aborigines?”

  “I can’t say none of my people do. But most of us don’t think that way. We just started up our technological path before you did. Once you are up to our level, you may very well surpass us in the near future.”

  “Well, Admiral, I for one am very glad that you found us when you did. I’m biased, but I hate to think that my people might have ended, and a people like yours only found the remains of our civilization.”

  “Believe me, First Councilman. We have found enough of those civilizations, though most ended themselves.”

  “Like we almost did,” agreed the leader. “If not for Captain Albright and her ship.”

  Nguyen looked down at a holo, making sure what he thought was true. He looked up into the eyes of the First Councilman. “I’ve noticed, looking over the names of the people who have already been listed for shelter, or evacuation, that neither you or your siblings are on either list.”

  “We are too old to waste the resources on,” said Contena. “We have lived our lives, and all of us have achieved what we set out to do. We leave the spaces to those with lives still ahead of them, those who have children to raise. All I ask for is that my name goes into our history books. Books that will be written, now that you are here.”

  “Commodore Khrushchev is on the com, Admiral,” called out the Communication’s Officer.

  “I have to go, First Councilman. The officer in charge of the convoy is now within real time com range, and she seems to have some news for me.”
r />   “I hope it’s good news, Admiral,” said the First Councilman. “Thank you for talking truthfully with me.”

  The holo went dead, and a moment later another sprung into existence, showing the head and shoulders of Commodore Natasha Khrushchev, who was flying her flag on the light cruiser Tyger.

  “What’s the word, Natasha?” he asked. Tyger was in orbit around the planet, and there was no appreciable time delay to this conversation.

  “You’ve heard about Bolthole?”

  “I got the basic word from your grav pulse. I was kind of surprised it was approved.”

  “Headquarters didn’t see why not,” said the Commodore. “It isn’t like they’re going to tell anyone where it is. Or even know where it is to start with.”

  I don’t even know where the damned place is, thought Nguyen, nodding.

  Bolthole had been the brainchild of Emperor Augustine I’s father. Augustine had gone ahead and pushed a black bill through the Parliament, gotten the initial funding, and anted up some of his own fortune. Bolthole resided in an area about fifty light years across, from thirteen hundred and thirteen hundred and fifty light years from the spinward border of the Empire. There were a lot of stars in that globe, and no Imperial ship was allowed into it without special permission.

  There were now over twenty million Imperial citizens in that system, which included manufacturing facilities and shipyards, major asteroid bases, and a planet that was in the process of being terraformed. Future plans included a supermetal production facility. The idea was to have a fleet production facility that could not be hit by any possible enemy, since they wouldn’t be able to find it.

  The great majority of those people in the system were there as workers, and almost none of them knew where they were really were, astronomically speaking. They had signed long term contracts, twenty standard years, at triple the normal pay scales for their professions. And now higher command was willing to let aliens resettle into the expanding asteroid bases, which showed just how important they were to the military leaders who knew about them and their specialized abilities.