Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  “They’re going for the convoy,” shouted CIC, and Khrushchev turned to the plot to see that the red arrows had in fact diverged, two still heading for the cruiser, the others taking paths that would bring each into contact with a different ship, one freighter and three liners. The liners each had over six thousand Klassekians in cryo, the freighter five hundred Imperial technicians. She didn’t think the cruiser could stop all of them, and there was no good choice here as to who should live, and who die.

  Drake continued to decelerate at 3.9 kilometers per second, Mihn Quan keeping station on the battle cruiser. The convoy had reached its maximum velocity by this time, point nine two five light, and was catching up to the slowing battle cruiser. It would still take some minutes before they caught up, and some more minutes for Drake to fall through the convoy so she could try to protect the merchies from the enemy’s close in weapons. According to the calculations, she would reach the rear of the convoy two minutes, three seconds before the first of the enemy ships brought one of the liners into effective laser range.

  The enemy weapons were a minute from impact as the second to the last volley from the heavy cruiser attacked the alien formation. There weren’t enough of them according to Fleet doctrine, which called for numbers to overwhelm the defenses. Six of the missiles were taken out, and only two got within detonation range. Both were near misses on a single ship, causing noticeable damage, but not slowing her in the least. A minute later the last volley came in, and the enemy defenses took out five of them. One was a direct hit on the most damaged of the enemy vessels, the gigaton class warhead coming in with considerable kinetic energy, and the million plus ton vessel converted to plasma in an instant, before the hot gas was blown out even further by the antimatter within the ship. The two others struck at another vessel, resulting in more near misses that, while damaging the vessel, did not seem to do enough damage to stop the ship. Ten seconds later it was apparent that the first analysis had been wrong, as the vessel catastrophically translated out of hyper, and out of the battle.

  The enemy weapons came in, and New Potsdam started cycling her hyper capable counters as soon as they were within range. At first she tried to engage all the missiles, but the enemy weapons blasted them from space with their own lasers. She switched tactics after that first volley, concentrating on two of the enemy weapons, two that were heading for liners. By the fourth volley she had achieved overwhelm, and the two enemy weapons were blotted from existence by the counters. The cruiser switched her targeting to the other two weapons not targeting her, ignoring for the moment the two heading for her. After a volley of misses, and time running out, she switched everything to one of the weapons. Her lasers and close in weapons started blasting at the two targeting her, taking out one. The other dodged past the fire, to get within eight thousand kilometers of the cruiser before a hit by two laser rings contacted it dead center. Its warhead breached, and eight thousand tons of matter came shooting in a cloud toward the cruiser. About a third struck at a closing velocity of point two three light, the spray cutting through the tough hull and pushing the heavy cruiser back at almost six hundred gravities for a fraction of a second.

  Aboard the cruiser the warning klaxons sounded as the ship was hit by a hammer blow. Inertial compensators went into emergency overload, but fifty gravities still got through for one hundredth of a second. Not enough to kill by itself, but enough to injure limbs and spines.

  “What’s our condition?” yelled out Captain Mason as he struggled to get his wits about him through his red blurred vision. His link was showing severe casualties, and major damage. His ship had survived, but with the enemy closing that was not a condition that would obtain over the next couple of minutes.

  He looked over at the tactical plot to see that only one of the enemy weapons survived, just before it disappeared from the plot, along with the icon of the freighter it was targeting.

  * * *

  Khrushchev sat in her command chair on the flag bridge and watched the tactical holo as Drake slid through the tail end of the convoy. New Potsdam was just ahead and to port, and the enemy ships were closing in on the crippled heavy cruiser with lasers blazing.

  “Fire,” yelled Captain Timofeyavich over the com, and the remaining laser ring of the battle cruiser fired a full power blast into one of the enemy ships. Immediately all four of the enemy vessels changed vector for a moment, then brought the battle cruiser under their combined fire. Timofeyavich followed doctrine and kept his laser targeted on the ship he was already engaging. Drake shuddered as transfer energy exploded into her bow and port side, blasting out armor and tearing new holes in her hull. And then came the hit they had all feared, and the remaining laser ring lost all power. At the same moment the ship they had been engaging had had enough, and blew up in an explosion that tore her into three large pieces, accompanied by millions of smaller ones.

  “Requesting permission to ram, Commodore,” said Timofeyavich over the com.

  “Permission denied,” said Khrushchev, staring at the viewer, which was giving her a split view of the three surviving enemy ships. She looked over at her Com Officer, who looked back with fear in her eyes. Without the laser they had no more medium range firepower. “Contact Mason. Tell him to get any weapons he might have back online. Then tell Mihn Quan to come in, on my signal, with all lasers blazing at any whatever targets are left.”

  “What are your orders, Admiral?” asked Timofeyavich over the com.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do, Captain.”

  * * *

  The enemy was hoping to get technology from this encounter, something they could look over and duplicate. The cruiser was coming back to life, and there was still the fully functioning destroyer at the edge of laser range. And the largest of the warships, lying dead in space, theirs for the taking. All of its laser rings were dead, all with enough damage that it was apparent they wouldn’t be working anytime soon. Its electromagnetic field was down, making it an easy target, and the only thing they could detect as functioning were its hyperfield generators. They might still have particle beams, but there was no evidence of such.

  The command ship, or what had become the command ship after the destruction of so many others, ordered the other two vessels to close with the large enemy. From there they would mesh their hyperfields and send boarders over. The command ship would stay within laser range and cover the boarding vessels from the other ships, if they were foolish enough to come within range.

  The pair of million and a half ton ships slid up next to the battle cruiser, one on each side, meshing their fields so the boarders could cross without actually going into hyper. Hatches opened on their sides and thousands of objects, from one meter to four meters in length, flew out and swarmed toward the battle cruiser. Which was when Drake acted.

  Three systems were activated at the same time on the battle cruiser. The electromag field projectors spun up to full power in an instant. There wasn’t time to inject fresh cold plasma into the field, but it was still at ninety percent of its maximum healthy strength. Second, the particle beams, one to the port, two to starboard, opened fire. They hadn’t had time to spin their protons, or, in this case, antiprotons, up to much speed, and the beams came out at a mere point zero five light. Which meant they still put kilograms of antimatter onto each of the enemy ships in microseconds of firing. The antimatter exploded as it hit the matter of the enemy ship’s hull, blasting deep into the armor, destroying machinery underneath and shocking the electronic systems of the ships.

  It was the third system that was the killer, as three tubes on each side accelerated missiles through them and into the ships sitting less than three hundred meters to each side. The missiles didn’t even have the time to engage their own grabber units. Each missile carried a mere one hundred megaton warhead, the smallest unitary device available for the capital ship weapons. As soon as they hit the warheads, configured to shape charge mode, blasted their antimatter into the bodies of the enemy vessels. Most
of the blast occurred on the surface, but enough was pushed into the body of each ship to send blasts of hellish fire and radiation through every part of each vessel.

  The two enemy ships were dead the instant they were hit. Drake shook like a spiked whale as the blast reached back to strike the battle cruiser. Klaxons sounded, machinery under the hull was smashed, or flared into melting piles extruding superhot vapor.

  The crew had all evacuated to the three central capsules of the ship, the cylinders that held crew quarters, medical facilities, and all control functions of the vessel. Each capsule was protected by an additional meter of armor, and another meter of water as both consumables storage and radiation protection.

  The ship shook like it was about to come apart as its grabbers shot it forward at emergency acceleration, clearing the blast field in moments. There were casualties, mostly injuries, but they had destroyed the enemy ships and escaped with their lives.

  Mihn Quan came flying into laser range at the moment the missile warheads detonated, firing all her own coherent light weapons at the remaining alien ship. New Potsdam let loose with her one remaining ring, with all of two emitters powering it. The enemy ship could have probably weathered the attack, and destroyed both ships, following that up with the destruction of Drake, Endurance, and every ship in the convoy. Its controller thought better of the proposition, and the ship turned away and piled on the acceleration, going above twelve hundred gravities and moving quickly out of range.

  “We survived,” said Captain Timofeyavich over the com, disbelief in his voice.

  “We still have a mission to perform,” said the Commodore, feeling weak as her system came down from combat mode and the relief of survival swept through her. “We still have this convoy to deliver.” And by God, I intend to get the rest of these ships to their destination. And warn the Admiralty that we have another war on our hands.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

  Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

  FEBRUARY 12TH, 1002.

  “They’re glowing again, ma’am,” reported the Sensor Officer to Captain Hasslehoff.

  “I’ll be right there,” she replied over the com, closing her flat comp and heading out of her day cabin at a run.

  She didn’t have to ask what the officer was talking about. Challenger was floating in the air above one of Klassek’s oceans at this very moment, well within the sphere enclosed by the outermost reach of the arms of the artifacts. The aliens who controlled them had not deigned to speak with them again, but she was well aware of their instructions to stay close to the planet. And since they hadn’t been affected by its arrival, it was thought that the effect was only manifested within the reach of those arms.

  The Captain came onto the bridge to find the entire watch staring at the viewer, where two separate images were showing. One was of the huge enemy station, dark now for the first time in over a month, when the planet had arrived in this dimension. The other was a view of the nearest artifact arm, glowing bright as it had on that day when they had pulled an entire world through the dimensions. And getting brighter by the moment.

  “Here we go,” shouted out the Tactical Officer as a queasy feeling hit the stomachs of everyone aboard at the same time. The purple space, the station above, all started fading away, while another sky began to fade in, superimposing itself over the other image. There were stars in that sky, including one brighter than normal one in the direction where the blue giant had been located. With almost a snap the one sky was gone and the other cleared, and they were back in the dimension of normal space.

  “Coms are coming in from all directions, ma’am,” called out the Com Officer. “It seems we’ve caught the attention of every ship that had been hanging here, waiting for something to happen.” The officer hit a panel on his board and a face appeared on the holo.

  “Welcome home, Challenger,” said Rear Admiral Nguyen van Hung. “I’m sure you have a story to tell.”

  “I need to speak with you, Admiral,” said Hasslehoff, thinking about the information the aliens had given her. “Priority Alpha.”

  “Understood,” said the Admiral, nodding. She had used the signal for most important, but hadn’t added the qualifier danger imminent. “Why don’t you bring your ship back up here and make it a spaceship once again, then come aboard Boudeuse as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Captain with a smile at the flag officer’s choice of words. “Helm. Take us out of here and into a medium insertion orbit. Hangar deck. Prepare a shuttle for immediate departure as soon as we achieve orbit.”

  There were cheers and excited speech on the bridge, and over the intercom, a celebration of relief that they had finally returned to normal space, and the rest of the human race, or whatever other species they might belong to. And she knew there were celebrations going on throughout the rest of the force. A ship, three thousand crew, and a planet with over six billion intelligent beings had just come back to the real world. And in minutes she would be telling the Admiral the news that their problems were just beginning.

  * * *

  Rear Admiral Nguyen van Hung stared at the holo for over a minute after the presentation ended. The conference room was totally silent, the feeling of disbelief palpable in the air. He rubbed his eyes, then looked over at his Chief of Staff, who looked like she had already digested the information and was ready to get to work. The reason I asked for her in the first place, thought the Admiral.

  “And they didn’t communicate with you at all after this, recording?”

  “No, sir,” said Captain Hasslehoff. “We continued to signal them throughout our stay in that dimension, but they refused to initiate further contact.”

  “And any idea what this dimension was?”

  “No, sir. They did not give me any hints as to where it was located, but obviously it touches our space in some manner.”

  “Any idea of what these beings are?” asked the Admiral, looking over at Susan Lee.

  “Anthropology and sociology reports no record of any intelligent life form like this,” said Lee, shaking her head. “Biology reports no planets in our records containing life forms that conform to their general body plan. It would help if we had some cell samples to go on.”

  “They didn’t allow us on their ship, Captain Lee,” said Hasslehoff. “If they would have allowed it, I would have gone myself. But they only allowed the probe aboard, and we didn’t get it back.”

  “Any chance they’re related to the Ancients in our part of the Arm?” asked one of the other officers present. The Ancients were a species who had once occupied a good portion of the Perseus Arm. In fact, they had once occupied many of the worlds of the Supersystem where the New Terran Empire now made its capital. They had bootstrapped many of the species in the region to spaceflight, and were rumored to have been capable of some really fantastic technological feats.

  “We have pictures of the Ancients,” said Lee, shaking her head. “They were a completely different life form than these beings.”

  “If those really are pictures of them,” said the officer. “The Ancients, I mean.”

  “We have verification from both the Brakakak and the Crakista that the images we have of the Ancients do in fact match their own recordings of the beings,” said Lee. “And even the Ancients weren’t capable of transporting an entire planet to some new dimension of space. Or harnessing the power of the supernova, like they seem to have had done with those artifacts they placed around Big Bastard.”

  “I think we need to move on to the more important topic, at least more important for the here and now.” The Admiral nodded to one of the ratings in the room, and the holo came back to life, showing the region of space that the aliens had highlighted as containing the machine kingdom they had warned Challenger about. “We need to do something about, our mess, didn’t they say?”

  “They did seem to feel that these machine in
telligences originated with us,” said Hasslehoff, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I didn’t think that any of them got away.”

  “And if we didn’t know they got away, they made a clean escape,” said Lee, looking at the holo. “And who can say how advanced they have become in that time.”

  “The aliens seemed to feel that the machines lacked imaginations, because they didn’t have quantum brains, like organics,” said Hasslehoff. “The machines are capable of copying, even advancing well understood concepts, but they lack the ability to come up with new ideas. The Eureka effect, the Gestalt of the quantum brain.”

  Quantum computers had been a dream of artificial intelligence for many generations. Unfortunately, the breakthrough always seemed to be right around the corner. Or maybe fortunately.

  “First thing we need to do is to get word to higher command,” said Nguyen, pulling up a schematic list of the forces under his current control. “We have four couriers in system. I want one sent immediately back to Command base. From there they can inform the Empire, and especially the Emperor, about our situation out here. Two of the others will head to Bolthole, one by the direct route, one around this space. It is imperative that Admiral Gonzales know what kind of neighbors she has, and prepares accordingly.”

  “You think they know where Bolthole is, sir?” asked Commander Bergland, the intelligence specialist.

  “We’ve been sending convoys through that space for almost a year now,” said Nguyen, giving the woman a cold look. “They’ve been tracking our vessels every trip, unless I miss my guess. What do you think?”

  The Intelligence Officer returned an abashed smile and looked away, while Nguyen turned his attention back to his Chief of Staff. “We need to leave a force in this system to defend it. Damned if we went to all this trouble just so we could lose them all to murder machines.”

  “And my infantry?” asked Major General Wittmore. “And the Marines?”