“And how are you going to do that?” asked Ungra, his tone challenging.
“You will be here to see,” said the voice. “And again, we caution you not to interfere in the process. You will accomplish nothing but the destruction of your ship.”
“You threaten us?” asked the Captain, her eyes narrowing yet again. She immediately thought of how preposterous that question was. Here were beings of immense power, obviously thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years more advanced that the Imperials were. If they wanted to they could have reached out and crushed her ship like a toy made of thin plastic.
“We do not threaten you,” said the voice, its tone one of an adult talking to a child. “Only beings of your belligerence would assume such. If we had wanted to destroy you, we could have done so when your ship was firing on our devices. Instead, we placed you in this dimension, as a warning to your other people that it was not wise to poke at our systems. Without actually destroying your ship.”
“I have a question for you,” said Captain Hasslehoff, wanting information, but not really wanting to get into an argument with these beings. “Why are you doing this? Why go out of your way to save one intelligent species among many, when so many others are wiped out all the time. By pirates, plagues, asteroid strikes? We’ve seen the evidence of so many extinctions, most of which could have been prevented much more easily that saving a world from the radiation of a nearby supernova.”
“So asks the makers of the murder machines that are infesting this region of space,” said the voice, and Hasslehoff felt a chill run up her spine.
“But, we destroyed those abominations as soon as they rebelled.”
“And so you believe, but now you are moving into their refuge, and they have grown powerful enough to strike back at their creators. We do not blame you for their creation, since most intelligent species develop such during their technological evolution. Some are destroyed by their own creations, which are later destroyed by other species. Or the destruction of machine and organic creator is mutual. In your case, the machines escaped, without your knowledge. And they are still extant, which is your responsibility, and you will be expected to clean this up once and for all.”
Hasslehoff stared at the map of the Galaxy before her, not having any representative image of the aliens to look at, the shock of the revelation that the existence of the horrible inventions of the past were still around making it hard to think.
“But you ask why we save this species, while we ignore others?” continued the voice. “Not all species will evolve to the next level, the precipice of which our own race stands upon. The Klassekians are one such species. Yours is another. It will take hundreds of thousands of years to reach the next level, which will make you no more Gods than we ourselves are, but will make you much better sentients. Your species has spread far enough that no event like this can threaten you, while this one does not have this advantage.”
“But we are threatened,” blurted out Hasslehoff.
“And you will fight your way through. Or enough of you will escape to keep your species going. This one had a clear and present danger hanging in their sky for a hundred thousand years, with no guarantee that they would develop to the point where they could save themselves. We are few in number, even if our technology is advanced to the point where you, and the Klassekians, would think it magic. We have to pick our battles, where we have the best chance of victory.”
“Why are you few in number?” asked the Chief Engineer. “If you are about to reach the next level, shouldn’t you be a vibrant, expanding people.”
The image of the Galaxy disappeared, both on the main viewer and in the chamber in which the probe was located. Three beings stood there, like nothing that any of those watching, which included most of the crew, had ever before seen. Tall and thin, but in no way humanoid, they seemed to float there, supported by six tentacles that trailed from about the midpoint of the body to the floor. Above was a rounded section of torso, which continued into the head, from which looked a trio of large, luminous eyes of a slightly darker color than the skin. That skin was a bluish green that seemed to glow with an internal light. There were no noticeable orifices of any kind, breathing, eating or speaking.
“They’re beautiful,” said Ungra. The central alien raised one of its tentacles, which went from a thick basal end to a thin terminal point.
“Such shows the maturity of your species, that can look on us, and on the Klassekians, and see an intelligent being, and not a monster. Such is not always possible, even among the most advanced of races. But back to your question, Cenk Ungra. We are few because we achieved immortality. Our natural lifespan is truly endless, we are immune to disease, and all of our systems are self-healing.”
“But, that’s wonderful,” said the Engineer. “That’s been the dream of humankind for thousands of years.”
“And it seemed to us, as well,” said the spokesbeing of the aliens. “Until we realized that we had lost the ability to reproduce. All that we had were all that we would ever have. And while we healed quickly, and had an essentially limitless lifespan, we could still die, of violence, accidents, at our own hands as the endless depression of our existence set in.”
“And you couldn’t clone new members?” asked Hasselhoff, feeling the deep tragedy of these people in her heart.
“Unfortunately, we and you are much the same, as are those you seek to rescue. As seem to be all beings who are capable of evolving into advanced forms. Something is missing when one of us is cloned. And that missing something is what makes us caring beings. We did not like those who were made by such means.”
“Is there a God?” asked the Captain, still a central question of most of the human race, and still without proof.
“We have no evidence that there is, and no proof that there isn’t,” said the being, its eyes rolling to each side to look at its fellows. “But back to the main point of this conversation, do not interfere with what we are doing. Stay within proximity of the shadow of the planet, as this will be your only chance to return to your own dimension, normal space.”
“Why can’t you return us to normal space?” shouted out the Tactical Officer, shutting his mouth under the glare of the Captain.
“Because we do not want you reporting back to your people until after the event is over. It is safer for you to remain here until after the radiation wave passes. Stay near the shadow of the planet, but under no circumstances allow your ship or your people to rest within that shadow. To do so will be disastrous.”
“And what about the machines?”
“That, Captain Hasslehoff, is your problem and your task. The machines must be destroyed, lest they continue to spread. They have been hiding in the dark places for centuries, striking at the life they despise here and there as opportunity presented itself. But they have now achieved the strength they need to come out into the open. Maybe not against your Empire, yet, but here, on the periphery, where you are not strong? Yes. Your task is to end them before they can grow to the point where they overrun this arm. And to make sure that none of them escape. Lest this fate befall all life bearing worlds in this arm.”
The images of the aliens faded, replaced by a view of a world that had no greens of browns, but only the shining glare of starlight on metallic constructs. The view swept in, to show a planet girding city made up not of dwellings, but of factories. And running through the streets of that city, or the air above, more machines, nothing living in sight.
The view changed again, sweeping out to show the Galaxy, a large area of blinking light on the other side, closer to center, the core, than the space known by the humans.
“This is an empire of machines, one that has been moving out from their point of origin for millennia. They possess a much lower level of hyperdrive than does your Empire. As machines, they did not see the need for expanding their domain as quickly as possible. And, as machines, though they are able to engineer marvelous works, they lack the imaginatio
n of organics, who, possessing quantum brains, are capable of deeper thought. Unfortunately, there were no advanced civilizations other than the one that these came from in the region. Because of this, they have reached the critical mass, controlling an area large enough to support a military strong enough to sweep through their section of the Galaxy. And then they will continue on into the rest of the Galaxy, until there is no life left in this island Universe.”
“That’s, awful,” said Hasslehoff, imagining a Galaxy with no life, no laughter, no love. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“No, not you. But we will leave on our last crusade when this task before us is done. In fact, the majority of our power is already in place around their Empire, ready to strike as soon as we bring the last of our force into the region.”
“Can you stop them?”
“We can,” said the being as the image changed back to it and its two fellows. “We can, but the cost will be great, because we are few, and they are many. And though we are much more advanced, we are not invulnerable, and they fight without fear, without thought of self-preservation, and are sure to cause casualties. We have calculated that this will be our last mission, our last fight, but we will see the end of their Empire. Because of that, it is again up to you to take care of this local problem. Make sure that your recording of this meeting gets to your leaders, all the way up to your Emperor, Sean. Now, this meeting is over. Soon you will see wonders that you cannot imagine. Remember this as well, as one day your species will be able to achieve similar wonders, if you survive to that point. Something to look forward to, don’t you think?”
The holo went blank, and the Com Officer looked back at the Captain. “We’ve lost all contact with our probe.”
“Try to get it back,” ordered the Captain, staring at the now blank holo, which soon returned a view of the enormous station.
No matter what they did, they could not get the communication channel back. They tried for days, with no response. They scanned the outer surface of the station, looking for another opening, with no success. The aliens had told them what they wanted to say, and felt no other need to discuss current and future events with an inferior species, no matter how highly regarded.
Challenger sat in the strange space for many more days, all of its sensors trained on both the station and the planet, careful to stay out of the shadow of the planet. Hasslehoff did not know what was about to happen, but she was determined that her ship would gather all possible data when it occurred.
And I want to go home, she thought, looking at the viewer that showed the strange space around her. I want to see the stars, and living planets, and to know that someday I can step out onto those worlds and breathe the clean air.
Chapter Twenty-four
People think that the human species will go on forever, because we have ducked several events that might have caused our extinction. The nuclear age, global ecological disaster, the bio-wars. Now that we are spread out among the stars, we have a feeling among us that we have escaped any possible destruction of our species. But we have already come upon the first indication of a civilization that reached the stars, at the Tau Ceti system, and disappeared soon after. I am sure we will find the traces of others, and someday we may number among them.
World President Carolyn Kowalski, Old Earth, the Year 2234 Old Calendar.
JANUARY 5TH, 1002. D+182.
Nguyen watched as the latest, and last, convoy hit the hyper barrier and translated up to hyper I. Boudeuse, along with much of the rest of the force, sat outside the hyper I barrier, not more than a couple of light seconds from where that convoy was translating. The radiation wave was due in less than forty hours. It was thought that the vessels, at least the capital ships, could weather the storm, with full electromagnetic fields raised, when that radiation hit. Still, it was thought that to be safe hyper was the best refuge, and so all of the ships except for a pair of cruisers were now beyond that barrier. After all, an event like this had never been experienced by Imperial ships. Some ships had observed the recent supernova in the Empire, the one that the Fleet had used to cover their own offensive. But none of those ships had survived. So no one wanted to take chances.
All of the Marines and soldiers were aboard the crowded ships, their heavy equipment left behind on the planet. That equipment was disabled, and there really wasn’t much of a fear that the survivors would try to appropriate the tanks, aircraft and robotic construction machines. At least not before the Imperials returned, which they would, as soon as the radiation storm had abated.
“Get them there safely,” sent the Admiral over the com to Commodore Natasha Khrushchev, now flying her flag on the flagship of that convoy, the battle cruiser Francis Drake. “We’ll be along as soon as we’re finished here.”
“We’ll get them across,” said the Commodore, who commanded the entire escort of two battle cruisers, one heavy cruiser, four light cruisers and nine destroyers. That was seemingly a powerful escort for the space they were traveling through, but they were protecting over thirty liners, freighters and troop transports. And most important of all, over a hundred and ninety-five thousand Klassekians, almost as many as they had transported to Bolthole to date. That was a precious cargo, and not only because of the singular abilities of that people.
Drake translated, gone in an instant as the hole in space opened and the ship flew in at point two light. A light cruiser and two destroyers followed within a second. The last of the ships translated a moment later, and the entire convoy was on its way to the secret base of the Empire.
Not quite as secret as it was, thought the Admiral, looking at the holo and following the ships on the tactical display as they were tracked by their graviton emissions. The number of officers and crew who knew where Bolthole was located, at least in a general sense, had quintupled since the beginning of this mission. Most would have that memory wiped, and the passengers would, of course, not know where they were, and, when they left, would not know the path they took.
There were twenty million Imperials, mostly human, in the base system, with more arriving all the time. And they were adding about four hundred and fifty thousand Klassekians to that mix, a people who were not up to the educational or technological standards of the Empire. Some could be trained to use basic machinery in months, but others would take years to be brought up to the level where they could contribute to the Empire. Except for the sibling groups we train for com duty with the Fleet, he thought. Those will need to be put through basic training, and then assigned to a ship for on the job training.
They had sent another four hundred and fifty thousand to the Exploration Command base, and the multiple habitats that had been built for them. They had moved, or were in the process of moving, nine hundred thousand of the sentients, as well as samples of the complete genetic heritage of the planet. They had saved the species. Which didn’t always give the Admiral a good feeling as he thought about the six billion they hadn’t saved, who would start dying by the hundreds of millions a day, starting in less than two days.
The Admiral pulled up a holo of the world, with all of the blinking dots that showed where the shelter fields they had planted all over the surface were located. They had finished four hundred and ninety of the buried structures, with a capacity of over twelve million, well past their projections. There was a chance they would survive, actually quite good, if not guaranteed. And they would come out of the shelters to find a world of dead plants and rotting corpses.
“It’s visible, Admiral,” came a call on the com, and Nguyen switched the view on his office holo to the same as that being projected on the main bridge viewer. And on that viewer was centered a very bright star, the most luminous in the skies of this system. Only now it was even brighter, and getting more so by the second, until it was as bright as a second sun.
So much power, turned to destruction, he thought as the bright point grew brighter, until it was so luminous that it could damage the naked eye out here in space. It was th
e sign of a wasted system. Of planets vaporized by their traitor star, the object that was supposed to be the life giver. In another way, it was not a waste. The churn of that self-destructing furnace had also seeded its expanding cloud with materials that a star could not otherwise produce. Heavy metals beyond iron, gold, silver, uranium, and many others that would allow worlds billions of years in the future to become the havens of intelligent, technological sentients.
He had watched the data, visual and other, than had been returned from the probes that had watched the detonation process and its subsequent destruction of the planets. The destroyers that had gone there had risked much, but had found all but a few of the probes, or their black boxes, floating in space, all pushed outward by the combined light, matter and radiation pressure from the event. It had been a humbling experience to watch a process that produced a billion times more energy than his entire civilization had produced in its lifetime.
“Radiation wave arrival at this point in thirty-eight hours, ten minutes,” came the voice of the ship’s computer over the intercom.
“And then a little over two hours from here to the planet,” said the Admiral under his breath, the image of all of those rotting bodies in mind when he closed his eyes.
* * *
“Watch your step, Leader,” said the security trooper, reaching out his left side tentacles to grasp those on the right side of Zzarr.
The bright light of daylight shone down through the hole they were climbing out of. Zzarr looked at his fine timepiece, which had been guaranteed to lose only a few seconds per year, and wondered what was wrong with it. “It should be night.”
“There’s something, different, about the sky, Leader,” said another male who was helping him out of the hole they had dug up from the refuge.
“What do you mean, different?”
Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. Page 29