Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (30 page)

“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 imagination 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 5
^TH
, 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 the 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?”

“The sky is as
bright as day,” said the trooper at the top of the hole as he pulled the older
male up and into the free air.

“By Hrrottha, it
has happened,” said Zzarr, looking up to the sky to the bright star that
dominated it.  It was painful to look at, and after a moment he was forced to
look away.  He looked through the spots over his field of view at the mountain
valley they had entered.  It was lit up as bright as day, more so if his memory
hadn’t failed him.

“Why is the
world still here?” he asked as his science councilor followed him out of the
hole.

“We are seeing
the light of the exploding star,” said the Scientist.  “The radiation wave
travels slightly slower than light, and will be along, soon.”

“Then we must
pray to Hrrottha for the salvation of our souls,” said the Leader, feeling the
joy of religious rapture coming over him.  “For soon this world will fade, and
we will face our judgment.”

“Shouldn’t we
seek shelter, my Leader?” asked one of the troopers, as other people were
helped from the hole.

“Blasphemy,”
said the Staff Cleric, who was now getting back on his feet after crawling out
of the hole.  “The God will soon take us to his bosom, and who are you to try
and escape his judgment.”

“I beg your
forgiveness, your Excellency,” said the trooper, dropping to his knees.

“There is no
time for argument,” said Zzarr, glancing back at the sky.  He looked over at
the Cleric.  “Prepare for the ceremony.  I want us to greet the God when he
brings his hand down on the world.  I want our place in paradise secured, while
the nonbelievers are struck down to eternal punishment.” 
And I bet that the
unbelievers believe now, and wish they had worshipped as we did.  Too late,
because our God is vengeful, and will not listen to the entreaties of those who
turn to him in fear.  They will burn, and their screams will be the chorus to
our ears as we bask on the presence of our God.

*     *     *

“Why are you up
here, First Councilman?” asked the Aide, finding Rizzit Contena on the rooftop
of the Council Building.  “Aren’t you afraid that the light from the star will
kill you?”

“I couldn’t
think of anything better to do with my time,” said the First Councilman, who
was in the process of communing with his siblings, as he was sure most of the
citizens of his country were doing. 
Maybe not most of them
, he thought,
looking down on a nearby church.  Many of his citizens had flocked to the
churches as soon as the news had come from the other side of the world of the
bright light in the sky.

He looked back
at his Aide, and could see that the male was terrified.  “Nothing to fear from
the light, Grozzit.  It’s harmless in and of itself, though I wouldn’t stare
into it if you wanted to keep your sight.  No, it’s the radiation wave we have
to worry about, and there’s really nothing we can do about it anyway.”

“You could have
sought one of the shelters, First Councilman.  With your rank, there was no way
you would not have been admitted.”

And hopefully
you with me
, thought the leader of Tsarzor. 
But the future world will
not need over the hill politicians, or political aides.
  The thoughts of
his siblings came to him then, all in agreement with his thoughts, that the
people of his nation did not need their elders looking over their shoulders as
they rebuilt their world.

The sun was
going down in the west, a large orange ball halfway below the trees of the
large park in that direction.  The sky was darkening, though there was still
something strange about it.  Rizzit turned around to look at the other side of
the sky, the east, where a light was shining on the horizon that hadn’t been
there on previous evenings.  As the sun disappeared in the west, the light
continued to brighten in the east, and what would normally be the coming of
darkness was now merely a changeover of one day for another.  Minutes after the
sun had disappeared, the eye hurting light of the exploded star rose in the
east.

It really
happened
, thought Rizzit, who, though he was sure it was fact, could not
see it as real until it was seen by his own eyes. 
And thirty-eight hours
before the invisible radiation strikes
, he thought,
and the dying
starts.

His science
advisors had told him that there would be some minor damage to the planet well
before that wave arrived.  The planet would go up in temperature, only a few
degrees over several days, at most fifteen during the entire event.  But that
was enough to cause drought, famine, the melting of ice caps, all disasters
that would bring pain and suffering to billions. 
Except they will all be
dead by then.

Rizzit continued
to watch the rise of the star, averting his gaze and looking out of the corner
of his eyes to protect them from damage.  He wondered why he bothered, but
decided it was because he did not want to spend his last days blind as well as
sick.  The blindness might come soon enough anyway, when the radiation hit his
nervous system.  But until then, he didn’t see any reason to hasten the
process.

The next evening
he was again on the rooftop, watching as the sun set and the new, second sun
rose, even brighter than the night before.  Now only fourteen hours away from
the front of the radiation wave, he knew that the rising of the true sun might
be the last he would ever witness.  He spent the night on the rooftop, watching
more people stream into the churches, or loot and riot on the street, the
disbelief of people in their own end manifesting in violence.  His brothers
joined him on the rooftop just before sunrise, wishing for them all to be
together when the end came.  They had decided they would not try to shelter
from the radiation, but would greet it, taking in as much as possible in the
shortest time in order to die quickly.

Or maybe not, as
Kazzit, the financier, pulled out a case of syringes containing a drug that
would ease them easily into the darkness of death, well before radiation could
sicken them.