Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  “Get me the Admiral,” said Captain Jangerson over the com as she looked on the empty room that had been the command center of the nation of Honish. “Sir. They fled. There’s no one here.”

  * * *

  The massive door closed behind the party, shutting with a boom. The two hundred and so Klassekians looked at each other as they waited for the elevator that would bring them down to the actual shelter. This, the entry chamber, was set at the end of an old, abandoned mine shaft, reaching down three kilometers under a massive mountain. Once a source of precious metals and gems, it had played out years before. The actual mining camp had been demolished, the area returned to its natural state, perfect camouflage.

  The first party rode the elevator, twenty kilometers straight down into the bedrock of the planet. It was crowded with twenty beings, males and females, the leaders of the nation and their families. After the long trip down, they exited into another large room, with a large door much like the one above set into the armored wall. The door was open, and the party could see the luxurious refuge ahead.

  They had all the power they needed from the small fission reactor. Years of food and water had been stored, everything the inhabitants would need for an extended stay. The only communications in and out were by fiber optic, totally secure, not giving off any residual signals that could be traced.

  “We are here,” said Zzarr, walking into his own large quarters, his wife and son coming in behind him. “Make sure that we have everything we need for comfort,” he told his wife, then looked back at his aide.

  “I want a staff meeting in four hours, after everyone is down and settled.”

  “And the agenda, sir?”

  “We still have a war to fight,” said the Leader, looking at the pool of water in the living room that swarmed with decorative water life. “And I intend to win it, no matter the cost to my people.” It’s what Hrrottha would expect of me, of all of us. And he wasn’t about the let his Deity down.

  Chapter Eighteen

  A determined man with no thought of his own life can accomplish much.

  Old Phlistaran saying.

  MAY 28TH, 1001. D-35.

  “That’s the fifth one today,” said Captain Susan Lee, looking at the main holo that was showing a large vehicle exploding on a street in Tsarzor.

  “”What are we going to do about it?” asked Colonel Margolis, sitting in the guest seat near to the Admiral’s flag bridge station.

  I know what you’d like to do about it, thought the Admiral, looking over at a side holo that showed the Lusitania and her three escorts streaking through the holes into hyperspace, on the first leg of their trip to Bolthole. Almost eight thousand Klassekians on the way to survival, and future contributions to the Empire. And only a drop in the bucket. But we have more immediate problems.

  “I suggest we start deploying nanites in all the major cities set to look for the chemicals necessary for explosive production,” said Lee.

  “There might be ways around that,” said the Colonel. “For instance, if they make sure the chemicals are in hermetically sealed containers.”

  “It’s worth a try,” said Lee. “Any we catch won’t be exploding on the street and killing Tsarzorians.”

  “Go ahead and deploy what we have,” ordered Nguyen, looking away from the holo. “Have the labs come up with the components of that binary explosive.”

  “We have,” said Lee, pulling up the chemical structure of the compounds, displayed side by side, then a morphing graphic that showed the two chemicals joining together to make a third substance, the explosive.

  “Our chemists believe there are several different permutations of this combination,” said Lee. “That’s one of the biggest problems, since they may have several dozen different binaries, trinaries or more that can end up with the same explosive. They are only deploying the one binary so far, but they might have many more.”

  “Or this could be the only one they have knowledge of,” said Margolis, shaking his head. ‘We don’t know. And we won’t until a new combination makes its appearance, and we won’t be able to detect it until it’s used.”

  “Which doesn’t mean it isn’t useful to catch some of them before they switch off.”

  “The Captain is right, Colonel,” said Nguyen, his eyes narrowing as he looked at all the permutations for this single explosive. And there could be more. After all, the Tsarzorians said that the Honish were very advanced in the science of chemistry, probably more than the scientists of Tsarzor. “Deploy all the nanites we have, and crank up the manufacture of more. I’m more concerned about protecting our own assets, the landing fields, the processing centers, than the city centers of the Tsarzorians. Or the Honish,” he added, thinking of the bombs that had gone off in that nation’s cities as well. “But it would be useful to catch as many of the terrorists as we can, and maybe backtrack them to their sources.”

  “Too bad we didn’t capture their leader and his staff,” said Margolis, closing his eyes and shaking his head.

  “Our political science and sociology people think it wouldn’t have made any difference,” said Lee. “As long as the orders were given out, the terror campaign would progress as planned.”

  “It still irks me that we didn’t get that bastard,” growled the Marine. “He’s sitting in comfort in some hidden refuge, and laughing at us.”

  I doubt he’s laughing at us after being driven out of his capital and having most of his military burned to the ground, thought the Admiral. “And how is the occupation progressing otherwise, Colonel?” asked Nguyen, looking over at the Marine.

  “As well as can be expected with only two battalions to work with,” said the Colonel with a frown. “We have control of the capital, most of the time. Any attacks made against our troops are of course defeated, though one of their suicide bombers injured some of my Marines. But we just don’t have enough to manpower to keep track of everything, and, of course, the population is on their side. I wouldn’t expect it any other way.”

  “Sir, we have an incident in Tsarzor,” came a call over the com.

  “Show me,” ordered the Admiral, and a holo came to life in the air showing a large building with a cloud of smoke rising from it. Fires roared from some of the windows, and as they watched, part of the building slid off and fell seventy stories to the ground.

  “What happened?”

  “According to the local news report, a large airliner crashed into the building and exploded,” said the Com Officer on the other end. “They’re predicting casualties in the thousands.”

  “An accident?” asked Lee in a tone that that indicated she believed it was anything but.

  “Wait,” said the Com Officer, and the holo switched views to another airliner, this one in the process of hitting another tall building. A large cloud of smoke was rising in the background, and it was soon obvious that this was the same city as the last crash. “This was a major office building, and there were ten thousand beings there on this work day.”

  The holo switched again, and another airplane crashed into a sports stadium where a local ball team was playing before a crowd of tens of thousands. And then again, as an airliner crashed into the terminal of the local airport, taking out most of the building and ten or more other airliners that were taking on or debarking passengers.

  “My God,” said Lee, staring at the holos which were all now open, showing the quartet of attacks in the capital city.

  Like God has anything to do with this, thought the Admiral, who didn’t believe in any gods anyway, much less the Honish variety.

  “We’re getting reports of other attacks across the continent,” said the Com Officer. “Airliners, truck bombs, individuals with suicide devices strapped to them.”

  “There’s an incoming call from First Councilman Contena,” said another officer over the com.

  “Tell him that we’re mobilizing search and rescue, and will respond with all of the help we can give,” said Nguyen. “I’ll be in touch wit
h him as soon as we have a better handle on what’s going on.”

  “He’s probably panicking,” said Lee. “And I can’t blame him.”

  “Me neither,” said Nguyen. As far as he’d been able to gather, the Tsarzorians on a whole were a good people, a society that respected life and celebrated the success of their citizens. Their interactions with the Honish, who held almost diametrically opposed views, had colored the way they looked at the rest of the world, but still, at heart, they were good people. And it hurt the Admiral to see them get hit this way. All because the terrorists can’t really hurt us, or drive us off, so they try to injure us by proxy. And they aren’t really accomplishing anything, except kill people who, for the most part, will be dead within a year.

  “Organize all of the resources we can afford to expend on search and rescue,” he told Lee.

  “All we can afford to expend?” asked Lee, staring at the Admiral in disbelief. “Shouldn’t we make every effort?”

  Nguyen shook his head, knowing that was the human response to most disasters. And knowing that he didn’t have the time or resources for that kind of effort. “We need to keep working on the shelters, so we can save as many as possible. Keep working on evacuating them, and gather all the samples of genetic diversity that we possibly can. That has to be our priority. Otherwise, the terrorists win.”

  He looked over at the Colonel. “All the suits and transport you can arrange, Margolis. But I want you to prioritize finding the people organizing this insanity. If that’s the greatest good we can accomplish here, and that will have to be enough.”

  * * *

  There weren’t enough search and rescue personnel and equipment to go around, and time was also a limited commodity. Tsarzorian search and rescue did all they could, fighting fires, treating and evacuating the injured, digging through the rubble looking for survivors. With the level of their technology they could only do what they could when they could move the right equipment into place.

  The Imperial Fleet search and rescue, despite their limited numbers, could accomplish so much more. Assault shuttles could lift several thousand tons of material into the air, moving huge pieces of rubble out of the way that would have taken local resources hours to move. Transport aircraft could still lift hundreds of tons, and spray chemicals that could smother the hottest flames in an instant. Even men in heavy suits could cut through steel and alloy supports in seconds, and haul pieces weighing tons out of the way.

  Because of their efforts, thousands lived who wouldn’t otherwise. The trust they built through exhausting work, the care they showed, went a long way to cementing the reputation of the Imperials with the people of Tsarzor.

  And meanwhile, the work on the shelters continued, robots digging into the ground and setting up the metal frameworks that would hold the plasticrete, many times tougher than native concretes, that would form the strength of the structure. Once the plasticrete had cured, a process that took hours, the robots buried the structures, piling on ten of meters of earth as the last insulator. At the same time other structures were going up around the shelters, the housings of electromagnetic field projectors that would erect a particle barrier over the site. One larger building, this one the housing of the fusion reactor that would power that field, went up at the same time.

  While on the landing fields used for the evacuation, the processing of Klassekians went on, preparing them for transport, freezing the sibling groups and families and storing them in hangars near the shuttle loading areas.

  And no one knew that eight sibling groups had come through who were not there to be evacuated. They were Tsarzorians who had converted to the religion of the Honish, their bodies suffused with a different binary explosive. And they were there to hopefully destroy some of the evacuation ships, or at least damage them. Just as some others with their mission had already been sent out on previous ships, including the Lusitania.

  * * *

  Helen Moyahan hovered the shuttle over the wreckage while the crew chief lowered cable. A pair of heavy suited figures grabbed the hook and attached it to the self-burrowing net of multi-molecular wire. One tugged on the cable, then stepped aside, and Helen pulled up on the stick and lifted the shuttle. The mass meter told her she was lifting just over five hundred and seventy-one tons, well within the capability of her shuttle. It was not a heavy assault shuttle, but more of a standard landing shuttle, with about half the lift of the larger vehicle. Still, it could lift what one of the native heavy cranes could handle, and those devices had to be moved into place and braced, a long and laborious process.

  She moved the shuttle over to the dumping ground, where the rubble of several collapsed buildings was being piled up. A flip of a switch and the bottom of the multi-molecular wire net, stronger than molecular wire without the tendency to cut through everything it touched, dissolved away, and the mass of steel and concrete fell to the pile with a crash and a cloud of dust. The Lieutenant turned the shuttle in the air smoothly on its grabber units and flew over the assembly site, dropping the netting in an open area, where the engineers grabbed it and refurbished it for the next use. Helen watched for just one moment on her vid monitor, thinking the most amazing thing about the netting was how it didn’t become tangled, unlike almost any other form of strapping.

  She brought the shuttle down over the next massive piece of destruction and let the engineers hook it up to a new piece of netting. She lifted, and the suits closed in and started throwing aside pieces from hundreds of kilograms to just over a ton. One suited figure stopped and pointed down.

  “We’ve found some,” came the call over the local com being used for the rescue effort.

  Helen switched one of her feeds to that of the engineer looking down into the newly uncovered pit, and a moment later gagged in horror. The unmoving form of a female was surrounded by the bodies of eight smaller forms. Some were completely intact. Others had been crushed under the mass of falling rubble. Orange-red body fluids were splashed everywhere, legs were bent at unnatural angles, and several heads were flattened.

  Bastards, thought the officer as she spun the shuttle around and headed off toward the dumping grounds. Then it was time for another load, as the team of a score of Imperials did the same work it would have taken hundreds of Klassekians quadruple the time to accomplish.

  Again sounded “we’ve found some,” this time with a more joyous tone. Helen looked at the take, and all of the hard work of the day, all the small defeats were forgotten. Six adult Klassekians were being helped out of the small cavern the collapse had formed, while suited figures were strapping three more to life support gurneys.

  A half hour later they discovered another pocket, where the people within could have survived. Unfortunately, they had run out of air, and had all suffocated, and eleven bodies, four of them children, lay in almost perfect repose, never to awaken.

  * * *

  “We’re picking up ships in hyper VI, Admiral,” called out the Sensory Tech who was manning the resonator chamber of the battle cruiser. Normally the call would come from the officer who manned the station on the bridge, who would also get his information from the Senior Chief who was the real expert on reading the resonances of hyperspace. The Sensor Officer was off duty at this time, and one of the three senior chiefs who manned the resonance chamber had the duty of relaying the information to the ship’s captain, and the flag officer aboard.

  “Identification?”

  “Resonances are consistent with thirty-eight hyper capable vessels, sir. Twelve in the six to ten million ton range, sixteen in the one to three million ton range, and the rest under seven hundred thousand ton range.”

  Linking into the database, he saw that this convoy’s heading and timing was consistent with the first group coming out of the Empire itself.

  “Thank you, Chief.” We should have some more ships coming along in a day or two, but anything else showing up before then might be of concern. “Good job.”

  An hour and a half later the sh
ips finished their final jump after stair stepping down through the dimensions, and sent their ID codes by grav pulse as soon as they were able.

  Nguyen looked over the listing, nodding his head. It wasn’t everything he wanted, but better than what he had. An honest to God battleship for starters, fifteen million tons of warship. Countess Ishuhu Murigowa was an older ship, more than forty years of age, one of the first of what came to be considered the fifteen million ton modern era of battleships. She was one of the first hyper VI capital ships, and, though long in the tooth, she was up to date on all of her electronic systems. What else could be expected when all it took was some programing and a ton of nanobots to upgrade electronics to the latest specs. They must be reactivating the mothball fleet, thought the Admiral, who had wondered when they would start pulling out older platforms so they could commit the newer ones to combat against the Cacas.

  Three more battle cruisers, an assault carrier, five large freighters and three large liners rounded out the larger vessels. Next on the list were two heavy cruisers, seven medium freighters, three troop transports and four liners. The smaller ships were all warships, three light cruisers and six destroyers, with the exception of a dedicated research vessel, the Einstein, from Imperial University on Jewel.

  Nguyen looked over the list of commanders, focusing in on the overall flag assignment, and saw that a Vice Admiral Rosemary Gonzales was in charge. A quick check of the records showed that she had been recalled from retirement, but she was still his superior. His feelings about that were ambivalent. On the one hand, he was hoping he would get to remain in command of the effort. On the other, he was happy that she outranked him, so the weight of responsibility would be on someone else’s shoulders.

  Looking over the troop transports he saw something that would probably be good news to Colonel Margolis. Or not. It was a demi-division of six battalions of light infantry and a reinforced support battalion, commanded by Major General Travis Wittmore. Which meant that Margolis was no longer the ranking soldier in the system. Still, he’s been asking for more boots on the ground, and this will double his strength.