* * *
“So, as far as
we can determine, Chief Warrant Sung had a powerful fluid explosive within her
body, one that was sealed away so our chemical sensors could not detect it.
And, while she was being probed by our standard scans, x-rays, magnetic
resonance and various forms of radar, the explosive detonated.”
Susan Lee
stopped talking for a moment while everyone looked at the scene of devastation
“Sneaky
bastards,” growled Vice Admiral Gonzales, eyes narrowing. “So they guessed
that we would scan the body, and end up detonating a bomb in our midst.”
“That’s about
it, Admiral,” said Lee, nodding. “The biggest problem now is scanning all of
those bodies in cryo before we load them on ships.”
“Why not just
not scan them?” asked Captain Joshua Zhukov, Gonzales’ chief of staff. “Unless
you think they may have another way of triggering them.”
“We do,” agreed
Lee, pulling up a three dimensional representation of the explosive molecule.
“This one was tailor made to detonate when energy was put into the system.
We’re not sure that what kind of energy triggered it, though our labs are
working on duplicating the molecule and testing it. But right now it could
have been any particular energy, or any type, such as heat. And we will be
warming all of these Klassekians up when reviving them, while the nanites go in
and repair the cellular damage.”
She rotated the
molecule, and several small regions blinked and changed configuration. “Our
chemists believe that the molecules can also be triggered by other explosions,
much as most of our common engineering charges will. Or that the molecule can
be modified to be that trigger. And after a certain amount of time, the
molecule will unwind, like the protein it is, and cause the detonation. Which
would not only kill the native carrying the explosive, but dozens, possibly
scores of those around him.”
“But not enough
to really damage a ship?” asked Gonzales.
“We think not.
Not even if several of them detonate sympathetically. The Klassekians are kept
in chambers that are not housing any vital equipment, and the bulkheads of the
ships are too strong for even this explosive to penetrate, as seen in this
explosion. In fact, if the hatch had been closed, the blast would have been
restricted to the surgery.”
“And in a
liner? Or if there are a bunch of these bodies stacked up in one place, next
to the outer hull, let’s say?”
“Hard to say,”
said Lee, shaking her head, then pulling up the schematic of one of the smaller
liners in orbit around the planet. “It’s still hull metal, and tough. But not
armored. Not even as strong as the bulkheads of a light cruiser like
Clark’s.
I guess it would depend on too many factors for us to really know.”
“The best thing
we can do is make sure none of these seeded bodies get on-board,” said
Gonzales, looking at her own Chief of Staff. “How long would it take to scan
every Klassekian in cryo with nanites before we take them aboard the ships?”
That was
probably something we should have done before this
, thought Nguyen.
But
we really didn’t expect to be loading time bombs.
“It will add
four days to our schedule,” said Zhukov, a deep frown on a face that was made
for such. “All because of the lack of forethought.” He said the last while
glaring at Susan Lee.
“No
recriminations,” said the Vice Admiral. “I’m not sure anyone could have seen
this coming.”
But I should
have
, thought Nguyen, nodding in agreement with the higher ranking flag
officer anyway.
We were dealing with fanatics, and they have been acting
true to form
. Nguyen thought that over for a moment while the conversation
went on around him. The Empire was not used to such, or were they? There were
the Lasharans, with their what humans considered a death cult. Their behavior
was much like the Honish.
But we’re here to save them.
Which didn’t
matter at all when they thought the wishes of their God were being opposed.
“I hope they
didn’t get any aboard
Lusitania
,” said Lee, her face tight with the
tension of worry. “Or any of the escorts.”
“Something we
also can’t worry about right now,” said Gonzales, picking up the cup of coffee
that had sat untouched in front of her for the entire meeting. “Let’s
concentrate on what we have control of, which is quite enough for right now.”
Chapter Nineteen
Expect the unexpected is a great
slogan. But there are times when the permutations of the unexpected reach the
total number of atoms in the Universe. What then?
Imperial Fleet Tactical Manual.
Captain Trevor
Whitlow of the
Lusitania
sat in the comfortable chair of his day cabin,
thinking about what it would mean to arrive at
Bolthole
, only five days
from their current position.
Lusitania
was at point nine-two c in hyper
VII, the maximum velocity her electromagnetic screens could handle, giving her
a pseudovelocity of almost thirty-seven thousand times the speed of light. The
three warships in her escort, the light cruiser
Chan Chun
and the
destroyers
Harold Tillman
and
Auguste Piccard
, could pull point
nine-five c with their military class electromag fields.
But they can only
go as fast as the slowest ship in the convoy
, thought the liner captain, an
employee of the Connover Lines and not in the Fleet, though he could be
recalled under his reserve commission at any time.
Us.
He looked up
from the reader he was using to peruse one of his favorite tomes, to look at
the holo display that showed their progress through this section of the Arm.
It was literally unknown space. Maybe a dozen ships had been through this
section, which was not on the usual path out to the region
Bolthole
was
in, since they had doglegged out to Klassek, and then more or less headed back
toward the Empire at an angle. One day soon this space would also be crawling
with Exploration Command ships, seeking out more living planets, more
civilizations, increasing the knowledge of the Empire. But not now.
“Message from
Captain Durrance,” interrupted the Com Officer.
“Put it
through,” he told that officer, and waiting for the holo to change to the face
of Beatrice Durrance, the commanding officer of
HIMS Chan Chun.
They
were within a light second of the cruiser, well within range of a com laser.
“Captain
Whitlow,” said the naval officer, the bustle of her bridge on the holo behind
her.
“Captain
Durrance,” he replied, sitting up straight and putting the reader on the end
table as he noted the look on her face. “What’s going on?”
“
Tillman
picked
up hyper resonances to Galactic west,” said the Captain. “Right on the edge of
her sensors.”
“In which
dimension?” Of course, his ship wouldn’t pick up anything on the edge of a
destroyer’s sensor envelop.
“Hyper VI, as
far as she can tell. And, from what her Sensor Chief is saying, the object is
traveling much too fast to translate to another dimension, if they even can
come up to ours, which is unknown.”
“So we
discovered another space faring civilization,” said Whitlow with a smile,
wondering why that was bothering the convoy commander to such an extent. “So
your people can come out here and make contact when this mission is over.”
The cruiser
captain’s eyes narrowed as she stared out of the holo. “The Chief thinks its
changing its vector at twelve hundred gravities.”
“But, that’s
amazing,” blurted Whitlow.
Or impossible, for any organic life. Unless
they’re much more advanced than we are.
“We’re having
other thoughts, Captain Whitlow. Like maybe whatever this is isn’t organic.
Now it could just be a probe, launched and monitored under organic control.
Or, it could be something different.”
Whitlow felt a
chill run up his back as he thought about what that something different could
be. Parents still told stories about the machine revolt that cost billions of
lives, all those centuries before. Some thought that a few of the machines
might have gotten away, to hide in the dark and build more of themselves,
avoiding humanity until they could challenge it.
Or, it could be
machine intelligence from a different origin. The same thing seemed to happen
to all species that pursued the autonomous robot option.
“We are
monitoring for any other traces,” continued Durrance. “They’ve dropped off our
scan, for the moment. I just wanted you to know if we have to go to general
quarters.”
And now I
won’t be resting well
, thought Whitlow, who remembered the stories his
mother had told him to make him go to bed at night.
* * *
Lt. JG. Helen
Moyahan liked this duty much better than the last. She was not really a
trained biologist, though she had taken enough training to know how little she
actually knew. Still, she felt useful out here in the field taking specimens,
insuring that the genetic diversity of this world survived even if the
biosphere didn’t.
Her suit was
telling her that it was hot as hell out there in this equatorial zone, as if
the steam coming off the jungle couldn’t tell her that already. But she was
perfectly comfortable in her battle armor, another reason to be wearing it out
here in the wilderness.
“You ready with
that tranquilizer gun?” called out Lt. Commander Smith over the com. Smith was
the expert on tracking and trapping animals, and Helen was a good enough shot
to be set in one of the blinds. “We have a big herbivore coming your way, with
a carnivore in pursuit. I’d like to get both of them if we can.”
“Will do,” she
replied over the com, thinking about how she was going to make a shot on
animals she hadn’t even seen yet.
The first animal
stumbled out of the brush. That was really the only way to describe it, as the
multi-ton armored beast snapped a branch off a tree and stomped into the open.
Helen placed her sight over the front left shoulder of the beast, where there
was a break in the armored plate. She stroked the trigger and sent the small,
fast moving dart directly into the target. The neuro-tranquilizer, which had
been formulated for native life, swiftly entered its system and the beast
stumbled sideways, trumpeted, then fell over on its side. The computer in the
rifle had calculated the dosage from the size of the creature it was sighted
on, and she hoped it was correct. Too much and it might suffocate as its chest
shut down for an extended period. Too little, and the thing might be back on its
feet before they could secure samples and a physical scan. And it might surge
back to its feet while she was near, and she could find herself trying to fight
off the mountain of flesh hand to hand. Even with the augmented strength of her
armor, that was not a proposition she wanted to face.
She waited for
the carnivore to appear. And waited, and thought she couldn’t wait any more
before she scanned and sampled. Getting up from her blind, she walked out into
the clearing, her rifle pointed at the herbivore as its scanners took a
complete three dimensional probe of its body. She had just completed the scan,
turning her head while wondering where in the hell the carnivore had gone, when
it came flying out of a tree in a blur of motion.
The carnivore
had to weigh almost a ton itself, and that weight landed on her suit like a
load of falling steel. Its heavy rear legs hit her chest, while the eight
muscular tentacles on its front, each tipped with a single sharp claw, struck
at her head and shoulders. The large mouth opened, revealing an alarming array
of teeth, then the head shot forward and the maw clamped down on her helmet.
Helen felt panic
starting to overcome her thinking, and forced herself to calm so she could
fight her way out of this situation. First off, the claws and teeth were not
penetrating the tough alloys and carbon fibers of her armor, which was to be
expected. The tentacles were still beating her to the ground, but she ordered
the suit to go into overload, and her strength doubled over and above what its
normal capacity was rated at.
She grabbed one
of the tentacles with her right gauntlet, gripping hard and pulling away. The
creatures roared through its breathing orifice, releasing her helmet with its
maw. She got her left gauntlet onto its neck and gripped, squeezing hard. The
creature went into a frenzy, and it jerked her off the ground as it pushed
itself upright with its strong rear legs. One of those legs came up, three
large claws extended, and kicked her in the stomach. Her gauntlets were
locked, and she pulled the carnivore along with her as the force of the kick
pushed her away.
Suddenly, the
creature went limp, and she was wondering what happened when Smith came over
her com.
“You weren’t
supposed to wrestle with the damned thing, Moyahan.”
“I didn’t see it
coming,” she said, and she released her grip and stepped back from the
unconscious creature.
“That’s why
you’re going to spend the rest of the day gathering flora,” said the Lt.
Commander.
“But, it didn’t
hurt me,” she complained. “They really can’t hurt us in our armor.”
“It’s not us I’m
worried about,” said the Commander, retracting his faceplate so she could get a
look at his visage. “But I don’t want these animals hurt, if possible. You
might have seriously damaged the hunter there. From here on, I’ll handle the
tranquing, and my techs will drive them to me. You report to Lt. Commander
Lanzowitza, and help her to gather plant samples.”
Helen retracted
her own faceplate, so she could stare the Commander in the eyes. She kept her
mouth shut as she breathed deeply through her nostrils, trying to calm herself
before she did say something. “Yes, sir,” she finally said as she snapped to
attention. She did an about face and stomped off, her face heating with anger
and embarrassment. She had not failed in a task since coming out of the
academy. It didn’t make any difference to her that her specialties were
geology and physical sciences, with a minor emphasis on history. They were
just dumb animals, and she shouldn’t have had any problem handling them. But
the damned biologist had treated her like an idiot child who might pull the
legs off of something by accident.
She walked
through the jungle, which was almost untouched, a wilderness on a planet
crowded with sentient life. There were many strange odors reaching her nose,
some extremely pleasant, some not so much. The sounds of bird analogues, and
animals she had never seen. Even the natives didn’t know much about this
stretch of jungle along the huge continental river. They called it the Lost
Lands. People in the stone age tribes went in and didn’t come out. But those
people didn’t have the protective technology of the Imperials.
At least I
can take my anger out on the damned plants
, she thought, grabbing at a branch
and snapping it off from the tree it attached to. The leaves of the tree
curled up on the other branches, a sign of the rudimentary nervous system some
of the plants in this jungle possessed.
In her state of
mind the officer was not aware of the change around her as she walked into a
small clearing that was free of all vegetation with the exception of one
singular tree, about ten meters tall, that occupied the center. Moyahan didn’t
notice the skeletons dotting the ground until her booted foot came down on one,
crushing the ribs of a moderate size animal. She looked down, then up at the
tree and the clearing around it, wondering why so many animals had died here.
Her next step
landed on the root system, which became aware of her presence. An instant later
scores of sharp pointed woody tendrils shot out from the tree, unerringly
targeting the prey that had stepped into its ambush. The great majority
bounced from her armor, something they had not evolved to handle. Two went
right into her face, uncovered by the face plate she had retracted in anger.
One went into her cheek and through her mouth, hitting the top of her
esophagus. The other hit her cheekbone and moved up as it hit the bone,
piercing her eye and going through the optic tunnel into her brain.
The neurotoxin
it injected was not made with her form of life in mind, but it still did a good
enough job. Her muscles froze up in an instant, and she was unable to cry out
from the agony that was coursing through her body. The tendrils next shot digestive
fluids into her brain and upper thorax, boiling away the organics in seconds.
Her faceplate came back down and locked into place as the suit sensors picked
up the trauma her body was undergoing. It sliced through the tough, fibrous
tendrils like they were made of rotten string. And the suit sent out an
emergency signal to any nearby naval personnel. By then it was too late, and
the brain of Helen Moyahan was gone, eaten away, and it really didn’t matter
that her suit put the rest of her body into cryo.
* * *
“We’ll send the
escorts and the liners back as soon as we unload them,” said Vice Admiral
Rosemary Gonzales over the com holo, her convoy appearing on the system
tactical holo as one arrow heading outsystem at almost three hundred gravities,
the acceleration limit of her freighters.
It had taken
slightly longer than Zhukov had figured to scan and load the bodies of the
Klassekians in cryo.
And we found twenty-eight of the fuckers that had been
implanted with explosive fluid.
A different type than had been present in
Sung, but the same in all cases for the Klassekians. What was even more
frightening had been how they were arranged in the queue. Two sets of
fourteen, that would have been loaded onto two different liners in their groups,
giving each one a concentrated explosive power of fourteen tons of the old TNT
standard that was still used for communicating destructive power.
“Have a safe
trip, Admiral,” he told the other flag officer. “And we’ll keep getting them
ready here.”
The freighters
that had been allotted to his effort were still in the process of unloading,
shuttling their components down to the planet surface, except for the equipment
that was being used to build a pair of small orbital factories. Two resource
refinement ships had also been unloaded, and were even now on their way out to
the asteroid belt to gather materials to put the factories to work.