Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  Dr. Phillipson looked over at the holo which showed the computer graphic representation of the star, its surface falling inward, till the star was three quarters of its original diameter, then half, then a quarter, shrinking beyond, then stopping for just an instant. Then came the rebound, as the pressure reached the point where the star could collapse no more, for the moment. And it exploded out.

  “Graviton wave moving by in VIII,” said the Sensor Officer. The sensors went wild for a moment, and then the wave passed. Minutes later another wave passed by, this one in VII. About eight minutes later came the wave through VI, then V, all the way down until the III wave, running through the dimension they were in, came roaring up to the light cruiser.

  “All crew, brace for impact.” Anyone with a little bit of forethought sought a chair or acceleration couch. Most made it. Those who didn’t were tossed about by the passing wave, battering the ship like a tsunami moving through a shallow sea. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was gone. At least the tsunami part. The roiling space around them was a seething froth of gravitons, the messengers that something had gone horribly wrong with a gravitational point source nearby.

  “We’re passing the old hyper IV barrier,” reported the Navigator, and Huang nodded.

  Those barriers were now moving as the mass of the star was ejected outward. They wouldn’t change much, at first, but would eventually move out to over twice their original circumference. Then they would rebound in as the globe of ejected mass continued to spread and grow less dense, until they conformed to the mass effects of the new five or so solar mass black hole which was even now collapsing to its event horizon.

  “Give us fifteen minutes at this velocity, then attempt translation up to IV,” the Captain ordered the Helmsman.

  Fifteen minutes later the translation was attempted, with no effect. The hyperdrive generators sent out their masses of gravitons, raising the region just in front of the ship to thousands of gravities for a microsecond. That should have torn open a hole in the fabric of hyper III, giving them an opening into IV. Instead, they were lost among the roiling gravitons that swirled through space, blown away by the gravitational wind that prevailed.

  “No luck, sir,” reported the Helmsman, looking back at the Captain with a frown.

  “Try moving us back down into hyper II.”

  Again the helm activated the hyperdrive generators, again the gravitons were sent out in the focused beam, this time at a lower power level and a different resonance. And again they failed to open space.

  “There’s your answer as to what would have happened to us, Dr. Phillipson,” growled the Captain, looking back at the astrophysicist. “We wouldn’t have been able to translate into hyper, just as my Exec hypothesized. And we would be waiting for the thermal wave to come along and smack us with enough energy to kill everyone aboard, if not melt the ship.”

  The cowed scientist said nothing, simply looked down at the deck. Huang turned back to the main holo, configured in tactical mode, which showed the system behind them. According to the projection, the thermal wave had already obliterated the two innermost planets, and was just about to hit the orbit of the third one out. Anything that survived the awful influx of photons would soon be wiped away by the massive wave of particles, traveling at point nine seven light speed.

  “I guess that the ships at Klassek will get the news when the hyper VIII graviton wave hits them,” said the Navigator. “In about, two minutes from the initiation of the supernova.”

  So, they knew about it some time ago, thought the Captain. And it won’t be long until they can’t translate into and out of hyper either. I sure hope there aren’t any ships approaching the barrier to whatever dimension they happen to be in. That last should not have been a problem, since the ships in and approaching the Klassek system knew the general time frame of the supernova. Still, things had been known to happen because someone hadn’t thought.

  And if they still couldn’t translate six months from now, when the thermal wave hit, or several days later, when the particle radiation came in? The ships would just have to weather it. Their own electromagnetic fields might be strong enough at that range to survive, and they could hide in the shadows of planets until the radiation passed. No, they were not in danger, but the same could not be said for the planet.

  * * *

  Besides being a disaster, the detonation of the Big Bastard was also an event of significant scientific importance. Not important enough for a manned spacecraft to sit in normal space and gather information as the stupendous heat and blast waves passed. Important enough to deploy scores of sophisticated probes in a shell around the star, and behind the larger gas giant worlds. The probes, thirty-eight of them, sat out at the two light week mark, their sensitive instruments pointed in at the star, their grav lens telescopes pointed out past their cold plasma fields, taking in the star and its surroundings. The cameras, in all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, were still seeing the star as it had been weeks before, and would only catch a glimpse of something different some hours before the photon heat wave struck. At that time the probes might only have those hours of life before they were destroyed, though there was a chance some would survive. But the black box, the memory core of the probe that was protected by a meter thick of armor and a superior cooling system, was expected to survive, along with the thousands of petabytes of information.

  Four other probes were stationed within the system, one behind each of the gas giants, their multiple cameras pointed out to both sides of the world, focusing in on the moons in their various orbits. The view they got was spectacular, if a little disturbing, as the probes recorded the fate of moons made of mostly ice as they were hit by the heat wave from the exploding star. Luminosity increased thousands of times, and whatever atmosphere the moons possessed was superheated, then blown away by light pressure in microseconds. The icy surfaces first melted, then vaporized, then turned to superheated gas that was also blown away, leaving what rock had made up the core of the moons to heat up and go molten. Temperatures reached in the tens of thousands of degrees, breaking apart almost every molecule in the crust, the radiant atoms barely held together by the gravity of the bodies. Almost thirty percent of the rock and metal boiled off into space, decreasing the size and gravity of the moons, which were also being pushed out of their orbit.

  The innermost gas giant the moons were in orbit around, a super Jupiter with almost enough mass to be considered a brown dwarf, had its own atmosphere superheated, boiled and mostly ripped from the world, streaming out and around the planet. The liquid outer core, starting ten thousand kilometers in, now absorbed the heat and boiled away. The probe at that planet fought the superheated gas with its full strength magnetic field, and failed. It was pounded by streaming gas, superheated, and came apart, only the small black box of pure supermetal alloys surviving. Of course the object, including its supermetal memory core, were superheated as well, but the ultra-dense materials were able to handle the heat at the distance from the star where they had been hiding, over three billion kilometers.

  The black box, which was in fact a perfect sphere, extruded grabber panels and boosted away at ten thousand gravities, staying as much as possible within the shadow of the gas giant. Unfortunately, the heat buildup was too much, and there was no cooler space to radiate to, and that probe came apart in a cloud, all of its precious data gone forever in atoms even the supernova couldn’t produce.

  As the heat of highly energetic photons continued to eat away at the gas giant and its moons, orbiting at over three billion kilometers from the star, three times the distance of Saturn from Sol, the radiation wave, travelling at over point nine light, struck, pushing more energy into the objects. Anything that had survived the photonic wave would have been killed, though the heat would have handled that, but for the fact that the planets and moons had not been around long enough to evolve life.

  The front of the mass ejection wave, plodding along at point two light, was
the next to hit, and when it had passed there was no trace of the gas giant or its moons. All of the octillions of tons of matter that had made up the objects converted into glowing molecules and atoms that were swept along with the expanding mass of the star.

  The next gas giant, this one about the same mass as Jupiter, survived slightly more intact, if the metallic hydrogen core surviving constituted survival. It sat at nine billion kilometers from the star, twice the distance of Neptune from Sol. Temperatures here reached into the tens of thousands of degrees centigrade, enough to melt or boil away just about any matter. The core of the planet survived, as did the probe sitting behind it, even when the ejection mass reached it.

  The last two gas giants also survived, the outermost one retaining its liquid under the gas surface, though much of that boiled and continued to boil into space. By the time the luminosity died to almost nothing a month later, only the metallic hydrogen core would be left. The one icy outer planet and the trillions of Plutinos in the Kuiper and Ort layers were next to go, melted and boiled away by the heat, which still reached destructive levels two or more light months from the star.

  The heightened luminosity of the star, millions of times normal, would continue to shine through the system for months, first increasing over several weeks, then dropping off. The remaining mass of the stellar body, still over five times that of Sol, first moved out with the explosion, then fell back in as gravity re-exerted its force. It heated up to millions of degrees as the pressure increased to almost unbelievable levels, slowing the collapse. But collapse was inevitable, and the matter continued to press inward, first turning the five Sol mass into a ball of neutrons that would normally be the ultimate fate of matter, there being no space between the particles to speak of. This mass was fated to an even more bizarre end, as it crushed past the neutron stage and continued to collapse, gravity rising to the point where even light no longer possessed the velocity to escape. The mass pinched off from the universe into a self-contained bubble of space-time, and a new black hole was born.

  * * *

  “The clock is ticking, First Councilman,” said Nguyen van Hung over the com to the leader of Tsarzor. “The radiation wave will hit your world in four thousand, three hundred and ninety-two hours.”

  “It’s strange to think that this has already happened,” said the Klassekian male, looking into the night sky to see what looked like the still intact pinpoint of the blue supergiant.

  “You’ll see the flare of the star as it explodes,” said the Admiral. “About four hours before the radiation hits. That star will be the brightest thing in your sky for weeks before it fades, but there won’t be anyone alive on the surface of your world to witness most of that splendor.”

  “I knew this was coming,” said the First Councilman, a look on his face that the Admiral had come to associate with shock. “It was still hard to believe that it was ever going to get here.”

  Nguyen nodded. And he knows that he will not be here by the time the radiation clears. He admired the courage of the elderly Klassekian, who had ordered that only those young enough to reproduce, children, and valued scientists and technicians, were to be allowed in the shelters. I’m not sure I could make that decision, not with a hundred or more years of life ahead of me. “We’ll keep putting shelters in the ground while we can, and get as many of your people under cover as possible.”

  “Thank you,” said the First Councilman. “Now, I must talk to my people.”

  And I must talk to mine, thought the Admiral. Now was the time to start taking some tens of thousands or so of the people of Honish and its allies, so that the genetic distinction of those ethnic groups were not lost. And maybe we can breed some of the fanaticism out of them.

  Several hours later the full vid coms from beyond the hyper I barrier were coming in, and the news was not good.

  “Garrett reports that they are unable to jump into hyper,” said the Com Officer, speaking about the destroyer that had been station out beyond that barrier just so it could test the theory of the XO of Lewis. “It looks like hyper is barred to us at this time.”

  And it will continue to be so for how long? A week? A month? Surely not longer than that. Longer than that would mean that a couple of hundred thousand more Klassekians would die. The figures that Harrison had come up with had hinted at no more than a week or two, but they really wouldn’t know until hyper became available again.

  “Order all ships on the perimeter to engage their graviton beacons with all available power,” said the Admiral, thinking about that light cruiser and hoping they had gotten into hyper in time. We won’t know until they reach here and start sending out their own hyper beacon, if we can even read it with that mass of gravitons.

  At least the ships they had around the system would be broadcasting a simple warning signal to anything approaching the system. Similar to the system beacons used in the Empire, there was no guarantee that they would get through that interference either. But it was the best they could do.

  Nguyen brought up a couple of the media casts on holo, kicking back in his chair to see what the local news had to say. Several were saying that the day of doom had come, and that, although it was still six months in the future, the planet was still officially doomed. Other channels, those of Honish and a few of the religious channels of Tsarzor, were stating that nothing had happened, as there was nothing they could detect on the planet, and that the Imperials were still lying, trying to panic Klassekians so they would agree to be taken off world, where they would toil as slaves in the hypothetical mines of the invading aliens.

  Soon would come more riots, possibly more bombs, the natives killing their own in protest of the Imperials they couldn’t get at. Pure fanaticism, plain and simple, and probably tens of thousands more killed, taking away their final six months of life.

  “Something strange is happening to the artifacts, sir,” reported the Captain of the ship from his station on the bridge.

  Nguyen switched his holo to take a look at the nearest of the artifacts, now glowing softly along its entire length and width. “What kind of energies are we picking up?” he asked his Sensor Officer. The holo zoomed out to show the entire globe of the planet, the half dozen artifacts in view rising high above the atmosphere, all glowing with the same soft light.

  “Simple light photons so far, sir. And nothing else.”

  It can’t be a lighting system, can it? What use is that?

  “Keep it under close watch,” ordered the Admiral, staring at the artifacts, trying to discern a pattern and, except for the equidistant spacing, finding none. Unless that’s the only pattern that makes a difference. “Make sure every sensor we have is looking at those things at all times.” Because there must be a reason for them, and a reason for them turning on right now, at the same time as the star blew.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Many times, celestial phenomena are mistaken for something of divine origin, of religious significance. This is because all intelligent species try to make sense of a Universe that makes none to minds that have developed on planetary surfaces. Eventually, they grow up, and realize that a fluctuating star is just a star that is undergoing some natural process.

  Archbishop L’rranar, Reformed Catholic Church of Phlistar.

  The religious frenzy that swept the planet when the artifacts lit up the night sky was like nothing the Imperials had ever seen. The closest analogue was that of the Lasharans, when they went into a religious fugue state before launching one of their bloody crusades. Klassekians gathered in their churches and praised the Gods for their salvation, or for their coming destruction, each as prophesied by their holy books. The more rational among them continued to count on the Imperials for salvation, if not of themselves, at least of their species. While the more fanatical of them continued to obstruct the Imperials in every way possible.

  These people really hate us, thought Nguyen as he watched yet another riot on the holo. Again the zealots of Hrrottha, this time joined
by those they considered infidels, were marching on a landing field where volunteers were being processed for cryo, then flown up to the new docking facilities that were waiting in orbit, themselves awaiting the arrival of ships that were still waiting in hyper outside the barriers.

  And when in the hell will hyper clear enough for them to translate down, he thought. Hyper I was already usable, as was II and III, as proven by the arrival the Merriwether Lewis within the last couple of days, two weeks after the detonation of Big Bastard. She had come down from III, and today they had been able to send a probe into IV, but all of the ships waiting were interned in VI or VII, the dimension they had traveled in.

  Another ship had been sent back to Big Bastard in hyper I to retrieve the data from surviving probes, and to survey the system that was no longer one. Nguyen had looked over that data, amazed at the information they had gathered that would be years in the analysis by some of the finest astrophysicists of the Empire. But now he had more important matters in mind, including trying to save this species, whose majority seemed determined to subvert his efforts.

  The Admiral switched the view of the holo to another area of the surface, where yet another shelter was being excavated. Massive robotic machines were digging up a hundred tons of earth with each scoop, while in the background construction was proceeding on another shelter, this one already dug, more machines in the process of putting together the framework of the stucture. Once completed and armored with carbon nanofiber and thick alloys, it would be covered by over a hundred meters of packed earth, the revised estimate of the engineers for what would be needed for satisfactory material protection. They were ahead of schedule on this part of the plan, though the experts were still divided on whether the people sheltered would survive, and whether the world could be terraformed back to a living ecosystem in time for their continued survival. If so, they were going to save an estimated twenty million of the Klassekians. If not, they were just delaying the inevitable.