Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  I really didn’t ask for this shit, thought the Admiral, wondering why he had ever worried about losing this command. The pressure seemed to be crushing him in his seat. The responsibility of saving an entire species and all of their cultures, even if they were resisting his efforts.

  “Sir,” came the call on the com. “General Wittmore is on the com.”

  “Put him on,” ordered the Admiral, then waited the few seconds for the face of the Imperial Army officer to appear on the holo.

  “What’s the news, General?”

  “We started Operation Grab, as per your instructions, as soon as the news of Big Bastard blowing reached us,” said the Army officer, a slight smile on his face.

  Operation Grab was the plan to kidnap and transplant Klassekians who belonged to the religions of Honish, those who objected to leaving the planet in defiance of the scriptures of their God. Some had suggested that they just use nanoprobes to gather genetic material from members of that ethnic group, then clone them. The problem with that was the manner in which some species responded to cloning. All lower forms of Earth life cloned just fine, until the level of the primate was reached. Primates, including humans, cloned just fine physically, but mentally, psychologically, something went missing. Human clones were psychopaths, with no conscience. It didn’t matter how they were raised, or who did that raising, they all turned out the same. Murderous, criminal, insane. It didn’t work that way with many intelligent alien species, and no one knew how it would work with this species. Some had suggested just going for the cloning, forcing the clones to reproduce naturally, then raise their children away from them. But the Admiral had vetoed that suggestion. In his mind it was better to raise them the way they were used to being raised.

  “How many do you have so far, General?”

  “My special ops people have taken a total of one thousand and fifteen family units so far. Which works out to over seven thousand individuals.”

  And, hopefully, none of them will even go missing, thought the Admiral, thinking about those people, and more, waking up in strange surroundings, not sure how they got there. With all the turmoil going on, with people dying every minute, everyone should just put down the missing to the effects of the riots and retaliations.

  “And they’ve been processed?”

  “All but the last few, Admiral. And over half of the processed have been taken up to the orbital docks for loading.”

  And all we need is for ships to come in so we can load them and get them out of here. This disruption of hyperspace has really screwed up our timetable.

  “Keep working on it, General. We’ve only got…”

  “Sir,” interrupted the Com Officer. “We’re receiving a call for fire support from one of the construction sites.”

  “Show me,” ordered the Admiral, who had moved his forces down to a lowered reaction state, determined to lower the loss of life that had been occurring with alarming regularity as natives attacked the construction and landing sites of the Imperials.

  The scene that appeared on the holo viewer now told him that nonlethal protection was not going to work in this situation. There were tens of thousands of Klassekians outside of the perimeter, and they were not peacefully protesting. Instead, they were crowding forward, throwing flaming bottles and improvised explosive devices, firing off projectile weapons, even dropping artillery rounds into the site.

  The armor of the infantry and their vehicles were protecting the Imperials for the most part. Sonics and gas was being projected over the crowd with some effect, but not as much as desired. And now the tactical holo was showing columns of vehicles approaching through the hills on the roads leading onto the plains. He zoomed in on one of the columns, and cursed as the images of tanks and armored personnel carriers appeared in several of the columns. Where in the hell did they get those things, thought the Admiral, getting the information on the vehicles and seeing that they were the latest models of the Tsarzorian Army, not the old fashioned, obsolete equipment he would have expected from reactionary civilians, even if supplied by the Honish.

  “Get me the First Councilman on the com,” he ordered. “Priority One.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” said the Klassekian leader as he appeared on the holo. Behind him was what appeared to be his council chamber, filled with Klassekian males and females going about their business in an agitated state.

  “What can you tell me about this?” asked Nguyen, shifting over the feed from the other holo onto the transmission to the First Councilman.

  “I was afraid of that,” said the male, making a head motion of disbelief. “I have just received word of mutinies in my military. I am afraid that is a pair of my armored divisions rolling toward that shelter site.”

  “Can you regain control of them?”

  “We have been trying to for the last half hour,” said the leader, giving a head shake of negation. “So, in answer to your question, I would say no.”

  “Then we are going to have to stop them, First Councilman. In their tracks. I’m sorry, but I have no choice.”

  “Do what you have to do, Admiral. I want you to save as many of my people as you can, and if that takes killing some of them, then that is what it takes.”

  “I will be back in touch,” said the Admiral, then terminated that link and went back to the tactical.

  “I’ve lost some troops,” said General Wittmore over the com. “The bastards brought some heavy antiarmor weapons to bear and took out seven of my soldiers.”

  “Light them up, General Wittmore. You have my permission to use all force to clear those people away from that site.” Nguyen switched the com to one of the heavy cruisers that was in orbit around the planet, tasked for a ground support role. “Captain of New Athens. You are hereby cleared to provide fire support to ground combat units at site Beta Six. And lock onto those vehicle columns approaching through the hills. I want them killed, completely.”

  There was acknowledgement from that ship, and the Admiral leaned back in his chair to watch the two holos that were revealing the destruction he had set in motion. It wasn’t something he wanted to do, since he was an explorer, not a warrior per se. This called for a warrior, and he felt almost relieved that he could unleash hell on the stupid people who were trying to prevent him from saving their species.

  The first holo showed the view from the soldiers’ side of the battle, as lasers and particle beams burned into the crowd, while high velocity pellets ripped through other sections. Mortars and missiles followed suit, and the return fire at fist slacked off, then died, along with those Klassekians who were wielding them. The crowd broke, but this time there was no surcease, as the beam weapons and rifles continued to tear and burn bodies, and explosives rained from the sky to hit the far end of the crowd, cutting them off from retreat.

  Maybe they will learn something from this, thought the Admiral, feeling sick to his stomach. Maybe this will teach them that we are no longer fooling around with them.

  He looked to the second holo as what looked like a streak of light connected sky with the front of the column of vehicles in the view. It was not a steak of light, but the trail of the kinetic that had been launched by the heavy cruiser. No penetrator this one, but a weapon designed to spread its blast out from the point of impact, it sent out a circular wall of superheated air and melted earth. The wave reached up and down the small valley, up into the hills on the side which channeled it back into the roadway. Soft skinned vehicles burst into flame as they were thrown backward as if caught in a tornado. Armored personnel carriers were in some cases also set alight, as they were thrown up and back in much the same way as the trucks and cars, if a lesser distance. Concussion and heat killed their passengers and crew, while ammunition popped off inside the vehicles. The tanks were rocked or pushed back, not near as much as the lighter vehicles. Their crews were just as dead from the concussion, and the superheated air set many ablaze as the fierce wind actually blew the turrets off of several of the tanks.


  As soon as the first weapon hit a second landed about a hundred meters further back, a few seconds later followed by another a further hundred yards along the road. Five kinetics came down on that one road, before the cruiser started to work the second cut, then the third. When it was over each of the roads was a junk yard of wrecked and burning vehicles, hundreds of bodies scattered about on the ground, or hanging out of vehicles. Flames reached to the sky while oily columns of smokes spread up and out.

  “I want all of our videos of this sent to every news outlet on the planet,” ordered the Admiral, tapping into the Com Officer’s link. “I want everyone on the planet to see this. And I want to record a message to go along with the vid.” I don’t want there to be any mistake this time. I want them to know what’s going to happen when they attack my people and installations. From now on, there will only be survivors if we happen to miss any, and my orders to my people will be that everyone involved will be hunted down and eliminated.

  * * *

  “What in the Hell is that?” asked Captain Gertrude Hasslehoff, staring at the huge construct that hung in space before them.

  The object in question was mostly spherical, with some exceptions, and measured over a hundred kilometers along its longest axis. It was obviously not an asteroid, since its skin had a metallic sheen to it. The Empire had larger objects, but nothing that existed in a dimension such as this.

  “We’re picking up energy readings from it, Captain,” said the Sensor Officer, looking over his shoulder at his commanding officer.

  That’s pretty obvious, thought the Captain with a small smile. Since there were lights all over the thing, it was using power. “Any idea on what their power source is?”

  “No, ma’am. No neutron emissions consistent with matter/antimatter. No radiation sources pointing to fusion or fission reactions.”

  The Captain thought about that for a moment, her eyes almost locked on it, only straying every once in a while to the shadow form that they thought was the planet Klassek. That was the thing that made the object remarkable. So far as they had seen, it was the only material object in this dimension. Not meaning that there might not be a lot matter in the dimension, somewhere.

  “Could they possibly be using zero point energy?” asked Cenk Ungra, the chief engineer of the battle cruiser Challenger.

  “Pure conjecture, Engineer,” said Hasslehoff, shaking her head. Zero point energy was the dream of almost any intelligent space faring species. Of course, there were theoretical dangers to that kind of energy, up to and including the collapse of the Universe. Which didn’t mean that some species wouldn’t go for what seemed to be free energy. “I guess the next question is whether or not we are in fact near to Klassek? And if so, does that benefit us at all, or are we still trapped in this dimension, with no way out?”

  “No way to tell that, Ma’am,” said the Chief Engineer. “But if we are to have any hope of getting back home, being near to our point of departure has to be a good thing.”

  But is it a good thing if we die here in sight of our point of origin, because we can’t get through whatever barrier separates us from our space?

  “The probe is sending its data, ma’am,” said the Com Officer, who was monitoring all possible communications channels.

  Hasslehoff nodded and pulled up the feed on her side holo. The ship’s computer had already predigested the data, parsing it, screening out the fuzz and distortion and feeding her the information in a manner that made sense to a human mind.

  Interesting, she thought, checking out the readings of the shadow planet they were near. According to the readings from the probe, corroborated by the sensors of the ships, the planet did manifest in this dimension as gravity, again proving that gravitons moved through all dimensions, at least all that humankind had actually experienced. Besides that, there was some radiation along the electromagnetic spectrum, about a thousandth of what could be expected from a planet with the reflective surfaces Klassek was known to possess. And from the smaller probes that had been launched at the planet, it was now known that the shadow object did not actually physically exist in this dimension, since the sub-probes had been able to fly through the planet with no problem whatsoever.

  “What do you want to do next, Captain?” asked Ungra, who was also the acting XO.

  “We’re here to explore. And here’s an object of mystery, right in front of us. So I guess we need to go ahead and look into it.” Plus, since we don’t have any way to return home, and here is something that somehow got here from normal space, it seems to be our best chance of finding a way back.

  “Go ahead and launch a multi-probe,” she ordered the Sensor Officer. “But keep it under tight control. I don’t want us to get sent to some other, possibly less hospitable, dimension.”

  * * *

  The probe was a marvel of the best technology the New Terran Empire could come up with. Measuring a meter and a half in length by three quarters of a meter in diameter, it boosted out of the missile tube in which it had been loaded at a modest ten gravities, well under the thousands of which it could possibly accelerate. There was no need for high acceleration this close to the object, but it was good to know that it could escape most high gravity fields less than that of a neutron star or white dwarf.

  The probe moved up to the object, which the Imperials had termed a station for lack of a better term. Its passive sensors drank in every bit of information that impacted on it, eschewing the use of actives at the moment, lest it trigger some kind of response.

  “What’s that?” asked the Captain, her own link, like that of several other officers, allowing her to look through the sensors of the probe. A small section of the surface of the station, which to that point had looked to be solidly integrated, was now showing gaps around its ten square meter surface. Not really a surprising development due to the technology, as the Imperial ship used similar tech. But surprising in that the station seemed to be opening a portal for them to board. Unless it’s opening a weapon port, thought the Captain as the portal slid inward and a deep tunnel manifested itself.

  “Go ahead and send her in,” the Captain ordered the Sensor Officer.

  With a thought the probe moved over until it confronted the opening. It disappeared into the hull of the station, visible for the first twenty meters or so before disappearing into a well of inky blackness. The Sensor Officer brought the light enhancing sensors online, then brought up some lights when that did nothing other than add about another half meter to what they already saw. The lights extended the view another twenty meters, but couldn’t penetrate the blackness beyond that point.

  “I think this thing is really old,” said Ungra, his voice full of wonder.

  “Reasons?” asked Hasslehoff. “Or just a feeling?”

  “Feeling. But I’m pretty sure we’ll find the evidence.”

  “Activating radar and lidar,” said the Sensory Officer. A moment later the tunnel in was revealed in complete detail, reaching five hundred meters and ending in a blank wall. The probe floated forward, covering that distance in half a minute. As it reached a point five meters from the wall another portal appeared, the bulkhead sliding in a half meter and then moving to the left.

  “What do you make of that door, ma’am?” asked Ungra, his attention fixed on the video feed.

  Hasslehoff looked at the door through the sensors of the probe, which gave her the exact measurements of the doorway. Three point one two meters tall by point five wide. “If these doors fit the makers, they were very tall and thin. Possibly low gravity planet dwellers.”

  They moved the probe through the doorway and into a large room. An enormous map of the Galaxy filled the room, obviously a holograph, or else an extradimensional construct of some type. The probe sent out active sensor pings, and determined nothing as the signals were not returned.

  “What’s that?” asked the Sensor Officer as one of the stars in what looked like the subarm Orion started blinking.

  Hasslehoff stared
at the map, dawning comprehension coming. “That’s Sol. They’re telling us that they know where our species comes from.”

  Another whole section of the galaxy lit up with a blue tint, showing the entire Empire, while different colors showed the New Terran Republic, New Moscow, and filled in with the alien powers that surrounded them.

  “They know who we are,” said the Captain, her eyes narrowing. “And where we’re located. I wonder what else they know?”

  “We know much about you,” came the unexpected voice over the com. The main holo viewer turned to the same scene that the probe was presenting.

  “I don’t know what happened there, ma’am,” said the Com Officer, an alarmed look on her face. “That command came from outside our systems.”

  “We have taken control of your computer systems,” said the calming voice. “We mean you no harm, but wish for there to be no misunderstandings between ourselves and a violent species such as yours.”

  “We are on a peaceful mission,” said the Captain, looking around the bridge, wondering what else these aliens might do with her ship if the mood hit them.

  “We know of your mission. In fact, we much laud you on your basic motivations, though there is still an undercurrent of self-indulgence. But there is enough altruism in your species for us to allow you to complete your mission, even if it is not really necessary.”

  “These people are all about to die from the supernova,” said Hasslehoff, not sure why their mission was not necessary. “And I assume that the blue giant has gone off by now.”

  “The star you know as Big Bastard has indeed collapsed and rebounded in the phenomenon you call a supernova. The radiation wave which would sterilize this world is on its way.”