Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (23 page)

“Identification?”

“Resonances are
consistent with thirty-eight hyper capable vessels, sir.  Twelve in the six to
ten million ton range, sixteen in the one to three million ton range, and the
rest under seven hundred thousand ton range.”

Linking into the
database, he saw that this convoy’s heading and timing was consistent with the
first group coming out of the Empire itself.

“Thank you,
Chief.” 
We should have some more ships coming along in a day or two, but
anything else showing up before then might be of concern.
  “Good job.”

An hour and a
half later the ships finished their final jump after stair stepping down
through the dimensions, and sent their ID codes by grav pulse as soon as they
were able.

Nguyen looked
over the listing, nodding his head.  It wasn’t everything he wanted, but better
than what he had.  An honest to God battleship for starters, fifteen million
tons of warship. 
Countess Ishuhu Murigowa
was an older ship, more than
forty years of age, one of the first of what came to be considered the fifteen
million ton modern era of battleships.  She was one of the first hyper VI capital
ships, and, though long in the tooth, she was up to date on all of her
electronic systems.  What else could be expected when all it took was some
programing and a ton of nanobots to upgrade electronics to the latest specs. 
They
must be reactivating the mothball fleet
, thought the Admiral, who had
wondered when they would start pulling out older platforms so they could commit
the newer ones to combat against the Cacas.

Three more
battle cruisers, an assault carrier, five large freighters and three large
liners rounded out the larger vessels.  Next on the list were two heavy
cruisers, seven medium freighters, three troop transports and four liners.  The
smaller ships were all warships, three light cruisers and six destroyers, with
the exception of a dedicated research vessel, the
Einstein,
from
Imperial University on Jewel.

Nguyen looked
over the list of commanders, focusing in on the overall flag assignment, and
saw that a Vice Admiral Rosemary Gonzales was in charge.  A quick check of the
records showed that she had been recalled from retirement, but she was still
his superior.  His feelings about that were ambivalent.  On the one hand, he
was hoping he would get to remain in command of the effort.  On the other, he
was happy that she outranked him, so the weight of responsibility would be on
someone else’s shoulders.

Looking over the
troop transports he saw something that would probably be good news to Colonel
Margolis.  Or not.  It was a demi-division of six battalions of light infantry
and a reinforced support battalion, commanded by Major General Travis
Wittmore.  Which meant that Margolis was no longer the ranking soldier in the
system. 
Still, he’s been asking for more boots on the ground, and this will
double his strength.

More suicide
bombs had been detonated in both Tsarzor and Honish.  For every bomber who had
hit a high priority target, twenty had been stopped, normally with fatal
results for the terrorist.  They were stopped well before they got within range
of Imperial personnel, which, with their combat armor, meant closer than twenty
meters for even a powerful explosive device, and that would only do minimal
damage to suit and user, easily repairable.  Unfortunately, that was still hard
on any civilians who happened to be with seventy meters or so of the blast.

And,
unfortunately, those terrorists who hit low priority targets, shopping centers,
schools, buses, apartment buildings, were much harder to stop.  They really
didn’t harm the efforts to save as many people as possible from the supernova. 
There were a thousand times more people than they could save, anyway.  But it
still burned up the Imperials that an enemy was killing so many innocents.

*     *     *

As soon as the
ships entered orbit the troop transports started disgorging their shuttles,
transferring their infantry down to the planet.  Major General Wittmore
transferred his command team to
HIMS Boudeuse
, where ground control had
previously set up shop.  Vice Admiral Rosemary Gonzales came over on the next
shuttle, and Rear Admiral Nguyen van Hung prepared himself for being relieved
of his command.

“Admiral on
deck,” called up the boat bay Officer of the Deck, as the doors to the shuttle
opened and the smallish red-haired woman walked onto the floor of the hangar. 
All sprang to attention and rendered salutes, which the woman returned
immediately.

“At ease,” she
said in a soft voice that, surprisingly, penetrated the entire length and
breadth of the hangar.  Admiral Nguyen,” she said on noticing the lower ranking
flag officer.  “I’ve read your reports on the way in.  And I must say that this
situation has really gone to shit, quickly.”

Nguyen cringed
internally at her words, wondering if his actions were going to be written up
in a condemning manner.

“I doubt if
anyone could have done any better, Admiral,” said Gonzales, walking with Nguyen
to the hatch leading to the lifts.

“And what are
your orders, ma’am?” he asked as they got on the lift, the two admirals and
their Chiefs of Staff.

“I’m not here to
give orders, Admiral Nguyen,” said the woman with a smile.  “I’m just passing
through on my way to
Bolthole
, where I’m set to take charge of the
defense of the system.”

“So I will
remain in charge?”

“I really doubt
if anyone else could have done better, dealing with these damned neobarbarian fanatics. 
And Fleet Command wants this thing to remain an Exploration Command mission,
and not turned over to one of us breakers and killers in Battle Fleet.”

Nguyen digested
her words as they walked to the conference room, then moved to the head of the
table when the Vice Admiral waved him to it.   Lee sat to his right, while
Gonzales and her Chief of Staff  sat across from each other about midway down
the table.

“We came
directly from the Empire,” said Gonzales, leaning her elbows on the table.  “I
was already preparing to head out to
Bolthole
with two freighters and a
trio of liners full of contract workers, when the orders came down from sector
HQ.  The orders originated from the Emperor himself, and directed us to give
you all aid possible.  I gathered what ships were available in the Trevor
system, where we’re staging convoys to
Bolthole,
and headed out a little
ahead of schedule.”

“What ships are
you leaving behind, ma’am?” asked Lee.

“Well, you can’t
have my flagship.  Old as she is, she’s still the most powerful unit I’m going
to have, out there in the middle of nowhere. At least until they cut loose some
more units for me to defend this most important system, out in the middle of
nowhere.”

The Admiral
looked at the flat comp she had laid on the desk for a moment, thinking.  “You
can have one of the battle cruisers, which will bring you up to four here, I
believe. At least until
Challenger
comes back from wherever she went. 
The assault carrier is yours also, since you have a greater need of the aircraft
and shuttles it carries.  I’ll leave one of the heavy cruisers as well, one
light cruiser, and three destroyers, which leaves me with my flagship, two
battle cruisers, a heavy, two light cruisers and three cans, which will give me
a decent core force for
Bolthole
, along with what’s already there.”

Nguyen almost
asked her what was there, but he didn’t have the need to know about the
defenses of the top secret system.  “And the other ships?”

“Three of the
large freighters and the three large liners are already loaded with people and
equipment for
Bolthole
.  The rest of the freighters have equipment
command thought you might need, and you need to go ahead and load the liners
with Klassekians, as many as they can fit in cryo.  We’ll take them with us to
Bolthole. 
The same with the troop transports.  We’ll convoy them back here as soon as
they’re unloaded in the system, so you can use them again.”

Captain Lee
looked at her own flat comp, working on some figures.  “So, we can send over
forty thousand on this trip,” she said after a moment of calculating.  “Maybe
five thousand more if we load up the warships.”

“So, forty-five
thousand it is,” said Gonzales with a smile.

“Any idea how
many more ships are coming our way, Admiral?” asked Nguyen. 
Forty-five
thousand sounds like a lot, until we consider that there are billions on this
world.

“I really
couldn’t tell you, Admiral.  The Emperor ordered all available resources
committed this effort.  But what that means, all available?”  The woman shook
her head.  “With the war going on with the Cacas, and, frankly, a war we are
not winning, I can’t say what that means.”

“Of course the
Emperor and command realize how important these people can be to our war
effort?  The possibilities for instantaneous communications are endless.   They
are a resource we can’t afford to lose.”

“And we are not
going to lose them, Admiral,” said Gonzales.  “We are saving the species. 
Maybe not as many as we would like.  But remember, if we are defeated by the
Cacas, we are most likely exterminated, and then every other species in the
Perseus Arm is enslaved.”

Nguyen stared at
the woman for a moment, knowing she was right, in a manner of speaking. 
Normally the human species was one of the more benevolent ones around, but now
they were being pushed to the limit, and only had so much aid to give.

“How many of the
Klassekians are ready for transport, Admiral?” asked Gonzales, clearly ready to
change the subject.

“Fifty thousand
are currently in cryo,” said Lee, answering for her Admiral.  “And we can
process and cryo freeze eight thousand a day.”

“So we can move
the ones we can take up to orbit in how long?”

“With the
shuttles you’ve brought, Admiral Gonzales, a little under three days,” said
Lee, looking up from her comp.  “That’s, of course, considering all the other
tasks we have detailed for them, and pulling any off of tasks that aren’t
priority.”

“Any chance of
getting a wormhole?” asked Nguyen, thinking of many ways such a thing could
solve their problems.  Like running ships from the orbit of Klassek to the
orbit of either
Bolthole
or main base, without all the inconvenient
travel through hundreds of light years of space.

“I’m afraid
they’re in short supply, Hung,” replied Gonzales, frowning.  “Those are a
little dear at this time.  I’m supposed to be getting one for
Bolthole
,
but I can’t tell you how long it will take to even get one there.”

“All we can do
is all we can do, sir,” said Lee, putting her hand on his forearm.

“Do we need to
cover anything else?” asked Gonzales, looking at the faces around the table. 
“No.”  She folded her flat comp and returned it to the belt pouch it rode in.

“Then let’s
start loading,” said Gonzales.  “I want the convoy boosted out of orbit in
eighty hours.”

*     *      *

Melissa Sung had
her last duty with the Fleet scheduled for that very moment aboard the ship she
had been assigned to while alive, the
HMIS William Clark.
  By Imperial
Fleet regulations, if possible, an autopsy was to be performed on any personnel
who died in the line of duty.  Even though the cause of her death was obvious,
since very few people survive a large caliber bullet to the forehead,
regulations were regulations, and one of the ship’s surgeons, supported by two
medical aides/corpsmen, stood over the naked body of the woman, multiple sensors
pointed at her from all angles.  Two more crew stood within the room, an
intelligence specialist curious to find out how much physical pain she had gone
through, and another pilot, one who had been among Sung’s best friends.

The surgeon
moved his hands through the air, activating the radar, deep radar, x-rays and
magnetic resonance sensors than scanned her body to the cellular level, feeding
their pentabytes of information into the medical system computers.  What should
have happened then was the formation of a three dimensional virtual image of
the body that the surgeon could probe with his thoughts and the motions of his
hands.  Unfortunately, the binary explosive in her veins and arteries was made
to react to several of the energy types probing her, including radar and
x-rays.

The two
kilograms of fluid inside her body was equivalent to one metric ton of TNT. 
The entire mass blew within a nanosecond, completely annihilating the body that
contained it and blasting out in all directions from the table.  If anyone in
the room had been wearing the medium battle armor of the Fleet they still would
have died, from the concussive effects if nothing else.  In heavy armor they
just might have survived.  All were in soft uniforms, and were disintegrated by
the blast, reduced to micro droplets of fluids and small chips of bone.  The
walls of the room, within medical, which was in the middle central capsule of
the cruiser, were over thirty centimeters thick and made of hard alloys infused
with carbon nanofiber support.  They held up to the explosion, channeling it
through the one open doorway into the room.  A jet of flame rushed out of that
chamber, into the office area where two more medical staff worked.  Both were
incinerated, and the blast channeled through the next door, into a small ward
containing a medic and two patients.

The only thing
that could be said for the last trio was that their bodies survived, though
they didn’t.  The ship shook from the explosion, from a tremor that knocked
nearby crew from their feet, to a minor vibration further out that was still
alarming in that such should not have been possible of a light cruiser in orbit
that hadn’t been hit by enemy fire.  Klaxons sounded, and within seconds damage
control robots were rolling into the damaged section, while fire suppression
systems came online and human search and rescue personnel suited up.  By that
time everyone who was going to die was dead, and there was really no one to
rescue.