Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (15 page)

She tried to
call to her people again, and again could not find the carrier wave.  Looking
up at the ceiling she could see why, as it was crisscrossed with a web of wires
that extended down the walls. 
A goddamn Faraday cage
, she thought.  Not
really a high tech solution, but no less effective for all of that.  As long as
she was within that web of wires, no signal she sent could leave the room.

A quartet of big
males lifted her out of the box, struggling with the weight of her armored
suit.  They carried her to a heavy chair that seemed to be made just for the
purpose of holding her and set her in it, then lashed down her arms and legs. 
Another came along and sprayed her with a liquid that dissolved the strands
that had been holding her immobile.

“Your people do
not know where you are,” said one of the aliens, pushing his masked face up
close to her visor.  “There will be no help coming for you.”

“What do you
want?”

“Information. 
But first, let us get you out of that suit.”

“No way,
asshole.  If you think I’m coming out of my suit so you can torture me, you are
one daft SOB.”

“I do not
understand these terms,” said the Klassekian, making a head motion that the
Warrant Officer thought meant a negative.  “But you will be given a choice. 
You can either open up your suit and get out, or…”

He motioned with
his left tentacles, and a pair of males came walking up, carrying medium sized
cylinders with flat ends. One placed an object on her helmet, the other a
cylinder on her chest.  Both cylinders stuck to where they were placed, and the
males flipped switches on them which caused lights to come on while a beep
sounded.

“What are
those?” asked Sung, having an idea, and not liking what she was thinking.

“Shape charges. 
They have been bonded to your armor, and will detonate in about two minutes.  I
am not sure how much damage they will do to that wonderful piece of protective
technology, but each device is made to cut through about a half meter of our
best armor.  Perhaps they will do nothing to your armor.  Or maybe they will
blast large holes in your armor and injure you, possibly kill you.”

The alien moved
away, backing, keeping his eyes on the human.  “The choice is yours, since we
have no way to get that armor off of you without destroying it, and possibly
killing you anyway.”  He looked at a device.  “You have one minute and
thirty-five seconds to decide, if my translation into your time units is
correct.”

Sung stared at
the alien, wondering how much of what he was telling her was the truth, and how
much lies to get her out of her defensive armor.  She brought up a timer on her
HUD, aware that time was ticking off. 
And if I get out of this armor, they
can do anything they want to me.

The timer ticked
down to a half minute, and the aliens continued to keep their distance and
watch her closely.  If the cylinders were filled with the best explosive these
people had, it would cut holes through her armor without a problem, sending
jets of superheated alloy burning through the alloy and into her flesh.  They
would blow her apart, vaporizing her brain and thoracic organs.  She could feel
the sweat rolling down her face despite the environmental controls in his
armor, and the HUD clock continued to count down.  It ticked down to fifteen
seconds and she decided that she wanted to live after all.

With a thought
her faceplate rose into her helmet, which split along the seam that hadn’t
existed a moment before and moved away from her head.  Seams appeared on all of
the limbs and along the sides of the torso.  Moments after they appeared the
suit opened, and she jumped out of it, tearing out the body connections to her
veins, urethra and skull plug.  The Warrant staggered a meter from the suit, and
two aliens rushed forward, grabbed her, and hustled her away.

“Stop the
devices,” ordered the leader, and a pair of makes pointed remotes at the suit
and pressed large buttons on their tops.  The lights went off and the beeping
stopped, and the leader let out a breath of relief.

“Get her armor
on the next transport out,” said the leader, and Melissa felt her heart sink. 

She had just
handed over a completely intact set of medium battle armor to the aliens. 
There were systems in place that she could have used to disable the electronics
of the armor, but she had bailed out before she could activate them.  And
without that connection there was no way she could rectify that error. 
And
now they have something they can look at, and maybe figure out some tricks to
use against us.
  She really wasn’t worried that they would be able to
reverse engineer it.  The circuitry in the suit was a millennia beyond the tech
of any of the native cultures, and nothing they would be able to duplicate,
without that much of an increase in their basic tech and manufacturing base.

“What about me?”
she asked, trying to contact the ship once again on her implant, and again
running into a wall.

“Now we will ask
you some questions.  And if you know what is good for you, you will answer.”

*     *     *

Rear Admiral
Nguyen van Hung watched the holo as the two liners accelerated out of orbit, on
a heading for the hyper limit.  Each was filled to capacity with emigrants,
sixteen thousand five hundred each.  Not all were in cryo, yet.  About three
quarters of the chambers, which had been specifically calibrated to their
species, were filled.  The rest would be prepped and frozen on the way to the
limit, to be reanimated when they reached the base system, where habitats
similar to the one used by the Command were being built.

In three
months we’ll have five habitats built, enough for half a million of the
Klassekians.  With protein vats and hydroponics enough to feed all of them.  In
another five months we’ll have the facilities for half a million more, but will
we have the lift to get them all there?

“Message coming
in from Commodore Khrushchev,” said the Flag Com Officer.

Nguyen nodded
and sent his acceptance through his link, and the woman who had brought the
liners here appeared on the holo.  She was taking
Tyger
with her, as
well as a destroyer.  This was precious cargo, and no one was about to let it
go unescorted through space that might be teeming with hostile ships.

“Make sure base
gets my dispatches, Natasha,” he told the Commodore as soon as the connection
was made.  The cruiser had an additional five hundred passengers aboard, all
they could handle without compromising their combat capabilities.

“Will do, sir. 
And I’ll add my recommendations to yours, if they’ll carry any weight.”

That was the
problem.  They needed more ships here, if they expected to get the planned two
million or more refugees away.  The shelters they were building on the planet
might help, but he was not completely confident that they would keep everyone
who took refuge in them alive. 
And we need these people, as many as we can
save.

He was still
waiting for the courier bringing word from the Empire.  Base was over a month
away from the closest sector capital in the Empire, one which would have a
wormhole link to Capitulum, and contact with the Emperor.  Only the monarch, or
in his absence the Minister of War, could make the decision to send more ships
out this way while the Empire was fighting for its life on the other side of
its expanse.  Once his dispatches got to the sector capital, it would only take
from seconds to hours before they were in front of the decision makers, and the
same amount of time before their orders were at the Imperial Fleet base.

Of course, at
that point, it would take another month for a courier to get back to the
Command base, or two and a half months for hyper VI ships to get to Klassek if
they came direct.  Hyper VII ships would be soon to follow, and they could
reach here four times faster.

Nothing I can
do about the laws of physics, unless we can get a wormhole cut loose.  And what
are the odds of that?

“Get those
liners unloaded and back here as soon as possible,” he told the Commodore. 
“And anything else you might be able to beg, borrow or steal.”

He terminated
the com, then brought up another one and waited for a moment until Captain
Susan Lee appeared in the holo.

“What’s the
progress on interrogating our new prisoners, Susan?”

“The medical
staff think we are making progress, but it could take some time before we have
enough baseline readings to determine their surface thoughts.  And, of course,
much longer before we can read deeper thought patterns.”

Shit.  We
have a pretty good handle on what we think is going on, and who's responsible. 
But we don’t have proof, and I’d hate, during a first contact situation, to
start acting like fascists.  We’re already having enough trouble with getting
them to trust us.

“Keep at it.  If
we capture any more of the terrorists, they’ll make the acquaintance of our
researchers.  But we need to know where the orders are coming from.”

“You know, sir,
eventually they will discover what we did, and develop their own ways to
counteract it.”

Nguyen nodded. 
That had always been part of the spying game.  Either within a species or
between several, methods were developed to get information.  And methods were
developed to counteract those interrogation methods.  Until counter counter
methods were discovered, and on and on.

“I agree that
they might develop some somatic methods to keep us from reading them.  But as
far as higher tech methods to deal with our drugs, nanotech or mental probes? 
I don’t see them getting anywhere until they advance at least five hundred
years.  So keep the pressure up on the research boys and girls.”

He killed that
com and sat at his desk thinking for a moment. 
We could just wait until I
have more ships in the system, and pull the locals off and away whether they
want to go or not.  Get the rest of my people off this planet, and let the
natives fight it out over ideological issues.

He looked back
at the holo that showed one of the ancient artifacts, the one they were working
on.  They had abandoned the first site, the one that had been subjected to the
nuke.  There was still a rescue effort going on at that site, even though it
was past the time where they could realistically expect to find any more
survivors.  It was thought better to start over at another site, since many of
the locals of that region blamed the destruction on the humans.

And still no
way in.  I have to wonder if finding an entrance might lead to losing the
people who tried to enter.
  He thought back to the attempt on one of the
blue giant orbiting artifacts made by the team from the
Lewis
.  Their
probe had gotten aboard alright, and then had done something that made the
artifact think it was hostile.  Since then, everything they had tried to put
aboard had been destroyed.  And there was no guarantee that anyone who tried to
penetrate one of the planet bound artifacts wouldn’t also be destroyed.  But it
was the only chance they had to explore what looked like truly advanced
technology.

Sometimes I
wish I was still just a ship’s captain
, thought the Admiral, looking back
down at his flat comp, which had yet another report on it.  His captains all
had maybe one task in front of each of them, at most two.  While he felt like
he was juggling all the balls at once.

Chapter Thirteen

Sometimes, when you poke the
unknown, the unknown punches you back.

Fenri saying.

MARCH 1
^ST
, 1001. 
D-128.

Lieutenant
Junior Grade Helen Moyahan followed close behind the excavating robot she was
controlling through her suit.  The plan was to excavate into the bedrock down
to the ten kilometer mark and establish sensors.  From there they would tunnel
around the artifact, looking for an entrance, filling in and re-fusing the rock
behind them.  A number of the ratings she was in charge of were running their
own machines, one ton robots equipped with cutting blades of the hardest carbon
alloy, along with powerful lasers.

“How’s it going
down there, Helen?” asked Commander Jaques La Clerc, the XO of the Challenger,
and the commander of the excavation.

“Fine, sir,” she
replied, checking her HUD to check her progress. 
And I’m not really sure
what we are accomplishing here.  The material of the artifact doesn’t change no
matter how far down we go.  It still absorbs all energy, and we can’t probe
into it at all.  Maybe we should admit it’s just too advanced for us.

“As soon as you
get everything set up, let me know,” said the Commander, and the com died.

It took several
hours to get to where the deep radar said they needed to be.  There was a
depression here in the surface of the object, and it was hoped it might lead to
a way in.  Moyahan watched as a pair of ratings played the beams of their
lasers over the surface of the object, the rock in contact going from red to
white hot and flowing away, while other robots sucked up the molten material
and sent it up the insulated pipes that led to the surface.

The Lieutenant
could feel the temperature rise around her for a moment before her suit got a
handle on it and lowered the temp.  The air started to thicken with superheated
vapor that had once been solid rock.  A couple of robots started pulling the
rock vapor from the air and sending it away as well, and the air cleared.

The purplish
surface of the artifact glowed as well.  Helen pointed a sensor wand at the
surface and started taking readings. 
Interesting.  No variation of
temperature, despite the lasers and contact with molten rock.  Amazing.   It’s
like it’s wicking it away.  But to where?

They waited the
required time for all of the rock to be removed, and for that which remained in
place to cool back to the ambient temperature of the ground.  “OK.  Let’s get
these sensors into place.”

The ratings
first attempted to place standard contact sensors on the surface of the object,
with no luck.  Not even molecular bonding or nanotech could attach to the
unknown substance that made up the artifact.  So they went with plan B, setting
up frames that held the sensors up next to the artifact.

“Probes are in
place,” she reported to the Commander.  “But I can’t see a way in here.  We’re
heading back.”

She really
wasn’t sure about the next part of the experiment.  Two other teams had
burrowed down and also attached sensors.  Later, after this part was over, they
would work on opening up other areas and planting more probes.

“Let’s go,
people,” ordered the Lieutenant as soon as they reached the surface.  She and
her team took to the air, flying low over the ground on grabber units.  Twenty
kilometers away were the temporary shelters, hard bombproofs that had been
placed and then erected themselves.

Inside were a
number of technicians monitoring the experiment they were about to perform. 
Links had been established with the battle cruiser
HIMS Challenger
, the
platform which would be conducting the experiment.

As soon as
Moyahan was in her chair the Commander looked over at her, then back at a com
holo.  “We’re ready down here, Captain.”

“We’re firing in
ten seconds,” replied the commander of the battle cruiser.  “Ring A, two
emitters at twenty percent power.”

Helen listened
to the com, doing the math in her own mind.  Each of the eight emitters in a
ring could put out one hundred gigawatts of energy into the circular laser unit,
which was about ninety-eight percent efficient.  So the first shot would be
forty gigawatts, from a ring that was capable of putting out eight hundred
gigawatts of coherent energy.

“Five, four,
three, two, one,” counted the com, and the battle cruiser put forty gigawatts
per second onto the top of the artifact.  There was really nothing to see, as
the beam was invisible, transmitting through a very clear atmosphere out in the
desert in which the artifact sat.  There was a slight glow on the object, but the
aerial sensors flying around it picked up no energy reflection, as if every erg
other than some visible photons had been absorbed.

“Anything from
the deep sensors?” asked the Commander, and Helen checked her board.

“No, sir. 
Nothing.”

“Second shot in
ten seconds,” came the voice of the ship’s captain.  The first had been exactly
one second.  The next one would last five seconds, and put two hundred gigawatt
seconds into the object.

I wonder what
the natives would think if they knew we were shooting one of our primary close
in weapons systems into an object they thought was sacred
, she thought. 
The Tsarzorian leadership knew what they were doing, since the target was in
their territory.  The Honish did not, and were sure to raise holy hell if they
learned of it.

“Firing,” said
the battle cruiser’s tactical officer, and the beam struck again, this time for
the five second period that put five times the energy of the first shot into
the object.

“Still nothing,
sir,” reported Helen, after hearing the same report from the PO monitoring the
atmospheric sensors. 
The energy has to be going somewhere
, she
thought.  But so far all they knew was that the object was absorbing the
energy, and it was not being reradiated in any manner they could discover.

They tried a ten
second shot, then added two more emitters at twenty percent for another one
second shot.  They worked their way up the same procedure, then added two more,
and then the last, until every emitter was engaged.  After that they started
raising the percentage power, until the entire ring was blasting away for ten
seconds at eight hundred gigawatts, for a total of eight pentawatts, enough to
blast through the electromagnetic cold plasma field of a battleship and deep
into its armor.  And the object was still absorbing all of it, with no sign of
radiating it out.

“We ready to
bring the B ring into play?” asked the Commander over the com.

“B ring charged
and ready,” replied the Tactical Officer of the ship.  “Just give us the word.”

Helen checked
her board, making sure they were picking up nothing from the last shot.  Eight
terawatts was a hell of a lot of energy, and it had to be going somewhere.

“What if it’s
just one large capacitor,” she said over the com, so she could be heard by
everyone in the decision making process.  “This thing is bigger than a thousand
battle cruisers.  We could be pumping light amp energy in it until all of our
ships are out of antimatter.”

“She might have
a point,” said the Tactical Officer.

“It’s the only
thing we can come up with to check its capabilities,” said the Captain. 
“Nothing we have attempted to probe it with has worked, and the Admiral
approved this plan.”

And it had been
decided that light in the visible part of the spectrum would be used, since
that was where a lot of the energy of a star came from, and it was hypothesized
that the artifacts in orbit around
Big Bastard
were there to collect
energy for some unknown purpose.  Later, if light in those frequencies didn’t
work, they would try something else.

“Firing both
rings at full power,” called out the Tactical Officer over the com net.  “Ten
second duration.  In ten.”

The battle
cruiser shot the full power of both forward laser rings into the object with no
effect.  According to the probes which floated around it the artifact didn’t
even radiate an extra erg of heat.  One of the probes exploded, caught in the
excess laser light that had not impacted the target for one fraction of a
second before the ship’s fire control could get everything onto the target.

“Going for a full
power shot, all four rings,” called out the Tactical Officer.  Again the battle
cruiser fired for ten seconds, putting thirty-two terawatts of power into the
artifact, which it absorbed without reaction.

“Should we
increase the duration?” asked the Commander.

Helen really
didn’t think that was a good idea.  The laser rings could overheat.  Most
times, in a real combat situation, they would only be fired for twenty seconds
of full power each, spread across multiple beam solutions, mostly in a missile
defense role.

“I don’t see
why,” replied the Captain.  “As the Lieutenant said, we could drain the ship
dry and not get a response.  So it’s time to start trial B.”

Helen really
didn’t like that one.  The ship would be next firing its particle beam weaponry
into the object, and see if it absorbed that energy as well. 
I just hope
they don’t decide to hit it with antimatter to see what happens
, she
thought.  She didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to do that.  The beam
would come down from orbit exploding its way through the atmosphere as it
contacted the matter of the air, then would have to interact with the matter of
the artifact in a manner that would not be conducive to its wellbeing.

“Lining up
particle beam one,” called out the Tactical Officer.  “Twenty percent
capacity.”

At the end of
the count down the angry red beam seemed to link the ship to the artifact
instantaneously.  It was travelling a mere point nine nine light, as fast as
the accelerators aboard the ship could speed it before it was shot out of it
projector.  As fast as just about any ship could accelerate the protons up to. 
There were ships in the Empire that shot faster beams, but the protons were
accelerated on enormous stations and sent to the ship’s projectors through
wormholes.  No such weapons existed in the Command.

The beam struck
the object.  It should have both pummeled the substance of the artifact and
superheated it as kinetic energy was transferred into heat.  Instead, nothing
seemed to happen.  And the probes and sensors, as with the lasers, picked up no
residual energy.

“Forty percent
capacity,” called out the Tactical Officer again, and once again the beam came
down from above, this time carrying twice the protons per second of the first
beam.

“We’re picking
up something from the object,” called out Helen, staring at her board.

“What kind of
something?” asked the Commander, pulling up the readouts on a holo.  “Not much
of a spike.”

“More than we’ve
gotten out of any other shots,” said the Captain.  “We’ll see if we can kick
some more out of it.”

The third shot
came down, sixty percent capacity, which much the same results, if maybe just a
little bit more.  Then the fourth shot came down, and all hell broke loose.

“We’re getting a
surge,” yelled Helen, as the power readings started climbing, gigawatts,
terawatts, pentawatts, then shot off the scale.

“What’s it
doing?” shouted out the Commander, running over to her station.

“Nothing, as far
as I can tell.  But it is surging energy.”

The last second
of the fourth shot finished, and something blindingly bright erupted from the
top of the artifact, well above the atmosphere and aimed at the
Challenger.

“Something is
hitting our shields,” called out Sensor Officer. “I can’t tell what it is, but
it's flowing around the ship.  It’s…”

The com went
dead, and with it all signals from the battle cruiser.

“We’ve lost all
uplink with
Challenger
,” called out one of the Petty Officers.

“Get me someone
up there,” yelled the Commander.  “Anyone.”

“Aye, sir,”
replied the Petty Officer, working on his board for a moment.  “I’ve got the
duty officer aboard
Boudeuse.
  Lt. Commander Rizzo.
”

 A holo sprang
to life, showing the shocked face of a woman in the soft suit of shipboard wear
when nothing was really expected to threaten.  Lights were flashing behind her,
and the sound of a general quarters klaxon sounded.

“Rizzo.  This is
Commander La Clerc, down on the planet.  What happened to
Challenger?
”

“My God, sir. 
She just, vanished.  She was there for a moment, then space distorted around
her, and she was gone.”

“Was she
destroyed?”

The holo
changed, and La Clerc found himself looking at the face of Captain Joshua
Jackson, the commanding officer of the
Boudeuse.
  “What the hell
happened, La Clerc?” asked the Flag Captain of the man who was normally executive
officer on
Challenger
, and whose vessel was no longer up there in orbit.

La Clerc gave
the Captain a quick rundown, up to the point where they had lost contact with
the battle cruiser.

“We don’t have a
clue as to what happened, Commander,” said Jackson when the other officer had
finished.  “There was no explosion, and there is no debris where she had been. 
Not even particles.  But whatever happened, we’re pretty sure that the artifact
had something to do with it.”

Moyahan listened
from her station, her heart sinking as she thought about the eight million ton
ship and the more than thirty-one hundred personnel who had been aboard her. 
All gone, without a trace.

*     *     *

“We have no idea
where she is, sir,” said Captain Susan Lee, the worry and fatigue showing in
her face.