What in the hell are you? thought the Captain, looking at one of the huge, curved spikes rising out of the mountains in the center of the continent. The view was from the ground looking up at the structure as it rose up through the clouds, taken from the camera of the crew that was working that site, looking for any evidence of a construction center that might have been used in raising it. We’ve been here almost a month, and we still don’t know what you are. She sat there staring at the structure, trying to will it to give up its secrets, to no avail. There must be a reason you are there. No one with the tech to build something like this is going to just put it up for decoration. So what are you for?
“Ma’am,” came a call over the priority com. “We have a situation on the planet.”
What now, thought the Captain, looking at the source of the call, her heart skipping a beat as she saw it was from her Security Chief.
* * *
Ensign Meridith Danvers was new to service, and to Exploration Command. Clark had been her first assignment out of the Academy, and she was looking forward to many voyages of exploration aboard this ship, or one like her. Now it was looking as if she might have reached the end of her career, and life, before either had truly begun.
The Ensign had thought she was safe, walking back to the shuttle on her own, not even dressed in the light battle armor that security was wearing for this mission. She was not security, though she was armed with a military class laser pistol. The people in this city had seemed to friendly and helpful, answering all of the team’s questions about the ancient construct that arose from the plain at the edge of the city and swept up into the clouds. Then there had been a slight interuption in telemetry, and Lt. Commander Larson, the team leader, had ordered her to check up on it, as all other hands were busy with mission oriented tasks.
She had just disengaged the locking protocol of the shuttle through her implant when she became aware that there were locals closing with her. A lot of locals. She just had time to send one warning squawk out and touch her hand to the butt of her pistol when they were upon her. She had time to throw two blows that sent aliens to the ground, one with what looked like a broken neck. Then something hard slammed into her head, and everything went black.
When semiconsciousness returned, she found herself being carried along through some darkly lit hallways, her hands bound. She wondered in almost panic if she would be able to contact the ship. It was obvious that she was not going to get herself out of this with her own resources. She could see one of the aliens to her front waving her laser pistol in the air, and many of the rest seemed to be armed with weapons that must have been taken from the shuttle. As they reached a branch in the tunnel most of the aliens headed away through the cross passage, moving very quickly with that strange gait of theirs that seemed to eat up distance as fast as a sprinting human.
Her head finally cleared enough for an attempt at communication, she tried to raise the ship and almost breathed out in relief as the warbling carrier wave appeared.
Help me, she thought over her implant, sending a transmission to the ship.
Stay calm, said the officer on the other side of that transmission. Keep your eyes open, so we can see what is going on. We’re tracking your whereabouts, and will have a response team there as soon as possible.
The Ensign, an assistant com officer who was also assigned to Sociology/Psychology, sent a mental nod as she forced her eyes to stay open. She knew she had to have suffered some brain damage from that blow to the head, which, due to its effect, had to have been given with a very hard blunt object swung with a lot of force. In someone who was not protected by military grade nanite systems, she would still be concussed, and probably sliding into a coma. But her systems were in the process of repairing the damage to her brain, and, while she still felt great fatigue, and a tendency to lose her track of reality, things were improving.
But is that a good or bad thing? she thought, straining her hands against the plastic restraints that were holding them together to her front.
She was hustled through an open door which slammed shut behind her, then forced into an alien chair that did not fit her body. Skilled hands released her restraints, strong arms forced her arms down to those of the chair, and she was secured in place. Bright lights shone in her eyes, and she caught sight of the aliens standing around her, all wearing masks to prevent their identification.
“What did you come here for?” asked one of the larger of the creatures, a shadow in the light shining on her.
“We came here to help your people,” she said, her tongue feeling the strange gaps in her teeth that the aliens had left when they struck her. “We are here to save you from the supernova.”
“You lie,” hissed the alien, his masked face lowered so his eyes could stare into hers. “You came here to destroy our culture, throw down our institutions of faith, and eventually enslave us. Admit it.”
“That is not what we are here for,” she protested, crying out as a hand grasped her hair and twisted. “We mean you no harm.”
“Confess your sins before us,” said another of the aliens, this one of gentle voice. “The God will have mercy upon you if you speak truly, and will punish you eternally if you continue to lie.”
“It is not my God,” she said, summoning up a bit of defiance.
“But you are on his world, and so you are subject to his judgment. Now tell us the truth. You are here to enslave us, to bind us to the service of your evil kingdom.”
“Enough,” yelled the first speaker. “Is the cast going out?”
“It is,” said another alien, this one with what looked like a camera pointed her way.
The leader drew a long sword from its sheath and moved it into a position even with her neck.
We’re coming, Danvers, said the voice of the security officer in her head. Delay them, somehow.
“Wait,” shouted the Ensign. “If you spare me, I’ll confess.”
The room shook at that moment, and the leader glared at her, then drew his sword back. It blurred forward, and the last thing she felt was the razor edge striking her neck. She saw the room spinning, and wondered what was going on, until her body came into view, the stump of her neck spurting blood into the air. She tried to scream, but there were no lungs attached to the severed head, and her lips worked slowly as it hit the ground and rolled. The world started going dark, and she was gone.
A moment later the door and part of the wall erupted inward, the powerful particle beam eating through tough plastic and stone like it was thin spider webbing.
* * *
Gunnery Sergeant Jack Hawks, Imperial Marine Corps, was the first through the door that his particle beam had blown to splinters. He was dressed in heavy combat armor, a ton of alloy and electronics. It had been a tight fit through the passageway to this point. In fact, the passage had only allowed the Marines to approach in single file. Still, the stealth outfits on the suits had worked perfectly, hiding the massive suits both visually and electronically, getting them to this door unseen, except by the few outlying sentries who had been silenced before they could raise the alarm.
The battle armor scraped the stone of the doorway, breaking off a piece here and there where the width of the suit was greater than the entry. Hawks aimed with his particle beam rifle from the hip, the weapon’s sight projecting an image onto his HUD. He cringed as he saw the state of the Ensign’s body on the chair. Her torso and the top of the chair had been vaporized, as had most of one of her captors.
Bullets bounced from his armor with a rattle, a few striking his faceplate to shatter into small pieces of lead and alloy. He swung his rifle and sent off a quick burst that took out a pair of aliens, dropping what was left of their bodies to the floor. The Sergeant took a couple of steps into the room and fired once again, taking out another alien. Sense seemed to take over the others, and the remaining four dropped their weapons to the floor.
Hawk swept the room with his suit sensors, stopping on the severed head
of Ensign Danvers laying on the floor.
“Medic,” he yelled into his com link, as another Marine came into the room behind him. “We need a medic here, right now.”
It only took moments for the Naval rating to get there, wearing the medium combat armor that the Fleet favored for shipboard duty. The woman knelt down by the severed head, looking it over quickly, pulling out a cryo bag and arranging it on the floor, then placing the head into the bag and pulling the tab that ordered the container to shrink to the size of the object it was holding. Instantaneously the container dropped its internal temperature to a hundred degrees below freezing.
“Are you going to preserve the body as well?” asked the Sergeant, pointing toward the remains in the chair.
The Medic hurried over and ran her scanners over the lower torso and the legs. After a moment she shook her head. “There aren’t enough living cells here to bother with. It will have to be a complete rebuild from the head.”
And that will take a good four months of regrowth, thought the Gunny, just happy that the person they had come to rescue was at least to be listed among the recoverable dead. He looked over at the aliens they had captured, standing under the guns of several of his men.
“We’ve got her, LT,” he sent over the com while the Medic secured the container that held all that was now the Ensign. “Tell the Old Lady that we got her.”
* * *
What an awful ordeal she went through, thought Captain Albright, as she wondered what it must have been like to have her head taken off. She’s going to have nightmares for the rest of her life, if she doesn’t opt for a selective mind wipe. But that would, of course, be the Ensign’s choice. Only people given certain sentences by the courts could be wiped against their will. But she didn’t see why the young woman, once she was back in the realm of the living, would elect to keep memories like those.
“That’s the good news, ma’am,” said Lt. J’rrantar, standing in the holo in his singular battle armor. The huge Phlistaran’s faceplate was raised, and his toothy snout was set in a grimace.
“And the bad?”
“The aborigines stole all of the ready weapons in the shuttle,” said the Marine Officer. “Thirty-three particle beam rifles, a pair of heavy crew served lasers, and a good dozen shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile launchers. Those are what I worry about the most, ma’am. They could use them to knock down a couple of shuttles if they employ them carefully.”
“Will they know how to use them?” asked the Captain, her brow furrowing in worry. “They have to be a thousand years or more advanced on their tech level.”
“They have shoulder fired missiles,” said the Marine, shaking his large head. “They’ll figure them out. And, even worse, some of the units have holographic manuals built in.”
“Any chance of finding them?”
“We’ll may pick up something when they’re activated,” said the Lieutenant. “But remember, we built them to be hard to track in combat. Not impossible. They will have an electronic signature that will be traceable for several hundred meters. We just have to be within those couple of hundred meters.”
“And their range?”
“They can hit a target they are in line of sight of at five hundred kilometers,” said J’rrantar. “Maybe further with some luck.”
Bad luck for us, thought the Captain, imagining her shuttles being knocked from the sky by one of the fanatical aliens that were opposing her people’s efforts to save them.
“I want every weapon we have to have a tracer placed in it,” she finally said after a moment’s thought. “I know that defeats the purpose of all the electronic stealth we have built into them, but I’m more concerned about them being stolen than their giving us away in combat with these people.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Marine, nodding. “Any other precautions you want us to take?”
She thought again about one of the shuttles, hit with a hyper velocity missile that blew through the hull, or ripped off a wing and its grabber units. “From now on, all personnel are to be in full battle armor, at least medium suits, at all times to and from the planet, and whenever there is a possibility of contact with the aliens. That includes helmets on at all times. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the Marine crisply, snapping to attention.
“I will not have my people be easy targets for the fanatics among these people,” she said with finality, then cut the transmission. And I will be damned glad when some support comes, she thought.
She was limited in the number of personnel she had. Each light cruiser had just under seven hundred and fifty crewmembers, Spacers and Marines. Almost all of the Marines from the Clark were on the planet, with the remainder, a couple of squads, on-board as a ready reserve. She also had over a hundred Spacers, officers and enlisted, on the planet, more than she would normally deploy for the initial surveys this kind of ship was intended to conduct. Lewis had also put a similar number of crew on the planet, just before she headed off on her own mission to the blue supergiant. Both ships could still operate very well with such reductions in on-board personnel. Unfortunately, as shown by this incident, the Imperials needed more boots on the ground.
“Message coming in from Zzarr, ma’am,” came the call from her Com Officer over the link. “Do you want to take it?”
“Not really,” said Albright, grimacing at the thought of talking with the leader of the Honish. While the Tsarzor had been giving her problems, they were nothing as compared to the fanaticism of their enemies. And I bet when we get those people we captured to talk, they’ll have a connection to the bastard’s country. “Put him on, anyway.”
The glaring face of the Premier, really the dictator, of the Nation of Honish, looked out at her from the holo. They had given the native leaders com sets that allowed them to send and receive holos. The units were black boxes that couldn’t be tampered with without causing a meltdown of all the molycircs on board.
“How dare you kill the people of my nation, Captain Albright,” growled the alien, primary and secondary eyes all locked onto hers. “What gives you the right to do so?”
“Your, people, kidnapped and decapitated an officer under my command,” said Albright, returning the glare. “Under interstellar law, that gives me the legal authority to kill or capture the perpetrators. And I have a question for you, Premier. Did these people act on your orders?”
“That’s a preposterous allegation,” said the alien, his glare growing even more intense, if that was possible. “I resent what you imply, Captain.”
And of course your people will not know from whence the orders originated, she thought. You’re too smart for that.
“I order all of your people off of my territory, Captain Albright,” continued the Dictator. “You have one day to remove them, or my military and police forces will remove them.”
“I would not advise that, Premiere,” said the Captain in a low voice. “You know we have the firepower to keep you from doing that.”
“And how will you use this, firepower?” asked the Dictator. “I do not believe you will hit us with kinetics or nuclear weapons. That is not your way. Your way is that of a soft people.”
“Believe what you want, Premiere. But be assured that we will not allow you to use force against us without our complete and total resistance, with every means at our disposal. And you also might see to it that the weapons that were taken from my shuttle are returned.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” said the Dictator, his tentacles waving in the way of his people, like a human shoulder shrug. “You seem to labor under the misconception that I have complete control over all the supplicants of the religion I adhere to. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“We will defend ourselves against those weapons,” said Albright, pointing a finger at the Dictator. “By any means possible. You might want to remember that, before your people try to take out any of my assets.”
With a thought over her link she killed t
he transmission, feeling a small surge of victory as the last thing she saw was the Dictator opening his speaking orifice to fire back at her. What the hell is wrong with these people? she thought. We’re here trying to save them, or at least as many as we can get out of here with our limited resources. Can’t they see that?
Unfortunately, the religion of the Honish, the worship of their God, Hrrotha, of which the blue supergiant was the physical manifestation, called for them to accept the fate their deity had proclaimed for them. They looked forward to the end of their race, believing that they would all awaken in the heaven of their God. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they also rejected the idea that anyone of their race should survive, not just the relatively few nonbelievers of their own land, but those of all other nations.
We could probably just get away with taking the volunteers from Tsarzor and the other nations. But I really want to get some of the Honish away as well, if they would let me.
She thought again about the relief she had sent for. The hyper VII courier would take at least three weeks to get back to Exploration Command base. Depending on what was available, relief could head out in two or three days after the arrival of the courier. How soon they got here would depend on what they sent. Hyper VII would arrive in three weeks or less. Ships with a VI hyperdrive would take four times as long.
It had been planned to replace all the current Exploration Command ships with hyper VII vessels, due to the huge volume of space they operated in. The war with the Ca’cadasans had sidelined those plans. They had some VII vessels, and were receiving a trickle of new ones, but the need for ships to match that of their enemy, which were all hyper VII, had sucked most of the new ships out of the Exploration Command pipeline.
Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova. Page 6