“First, I must
say, Captain,” stated the Commander. “You have done as well as could be
expected with your limited resources. But we need to mobilize a much greater
response if the Empire is going to take advantage of this resource.”
“Resource?”
“Yes, Captain,”
said the Admiral. “Resource. Of course we do not want this species to go
extinct, and the Command has an obligation to make sure their genotype does not
die out. But this, telepathy of theirs. This could be a game changer.”
“It’s not really
telepathy, sir,” said Sekumbe. “It only works between siblings from the same
birthing. It’s like before the separation process, while the siblings are
still only one being, an entanglement occurs in one piece of neural tissue,
which then separates when the brains pull apart in the individuation process
about the fourth month of the pregnancy.”
“Excuse me,
Commander,” said the Admiral. “The explanation is all well and good, and I’m
sure we’ll have many biologists assigned to this phenomenon. But it acts like
telepathy, for all intents and purposes. And I, for one, can think of a lot of
uses for that kind of ability.”
“I thought the
wormholes were giving us instantaneous com, sir,” said Albright, pulling on an
ear as she thought about what the Admiral had just said. Not that she hadn’t
thought it herself, but she had tried not to get too excited about the
prospect.
“The problem
with the wormholes, Captain Albright,” said Captain Susan Lee, Nguyen’s Chief
of Staff, walking into the room, “is that we only have one station that
generates them. They can make about two dozen a day, or about eighty-seven
hundred a year. And all of that is spread among ships, planets, bases, more
places than we can possibly service with wormholes. Especially as the Fleet
itself has over a hundred thousand major vessels in service. Add in five
thousand inhabited planets of developing rank or above, the ships of our
allies, and the hundreds of thousands of small craft used for reconnaissance
and strike duties, and you can see that there are nowhere near enough to go
around. And with combat losses, there probably never will be.”
“We’re starting
to deploy subspace coms in all of our ships as soon as they hit a major base or
repair ship,” stated the Admiral. “In fact, your ships will be equipped with
them as soon as my engineering people can get the equipment over to them, in a
day or two. That will give you the ability to communicate at over ten times
light speed, in most conditions, which is nothing to complain about. But it is
short ranged, no more than a score of light hours, and doesn’t really give us
that instantaneous com we really want.”
“Still, sir,”
said Albright after digesting what she had just heard. “It would seem that if
flagships were equipped with wormholes, and everyone in the task group is
equipped with subspace com, everything is solved.”
“Not quite,”
said Nguyen with a frown. “Two factors make that proposition just a little
more complicated. One is the fact that a wormhole equipped ship cannot traverse
a wormhole. Something to do with the twisting of space when two space warping
connections interact. Any ship that tries is totally destroyed, converted to
energy that comes spewing through the other end of the wormhole they are trying
to traverse, as well as through the hole that the ship’s wormhole connects to.
Not something that the other ship or base would really be looking forward to.
And the wormhole they are trying to traverse also goes up in a blast of energy,
at both ends. Ships with com departments with one or more of these,
Klassekians, do you call them? They won’t have this problem.”
“At least that’s
what the people of Tsarzor call their species,” said Sekumbe, nodding his
head. “The other language groups have a different name.”
“You said there
were two factors, sir,” said Albright, curious to hear what else might be in
the works that the Klassekians might be able to aid the Empire in.
“What I’m about
to tell you is Top Secret Cosmic,” said the Admiral, using the term for the
second highest level of secrecy in the Empire. “No one in this room is to talk
about this out of this room, though we will be briefing all ship captains and
executive officers on this in the near future, since knowledge of this
development will help you to judge and evaluate tech and phenomenon you find
for possible inclusion into this project.”
The Admiral
looked down for a moment, then back up, looking from eye to eye, including the
Marine Officer in the room. “What do you know about inertia? In particular,
the possibilities of an inertialess drive?”
Albright looked
at the Admiral with a blank expression, as did the Phlistaran Marine. Sekumbe
looked as if a light bulb had gone off in his mind.
“I know there
was a lot of arguing going on about whether it was possible or not, sir,” said
the Exec. “From what I remember, the majority of the experts thought it wasn’t
possible, though some big names thought it was.”
“Well, now we
know, Commander,” said Captain Lee. “And not only is it possible, but we have
a working system that gets our attack craft up to twice the speed of light.”
“And as soon as
we have enough of them worked up into wings, we’re going to shock the Cacas
with something they’ve never seen before,” said the Admiral. “And they will
not see it coming until it hits them.”
“The only
problem is that the inertialess strike craft are, for all intents and purposes,
cut off from the regular Universe,” said Lee, pulling up a picture of the
inertialess attack craft, which looked like a much larger version of a standard
attack fighter. “No radiation goes in through the bubble, and none comes out.
So communications are more or less impossible. They may spend several hours in
their bubbles, with no idea of what their targets are doing. Ships can change
vectors. And fighters can come of their bubble into an attack profile and find
their targets have moved by millions of kilometers.”
“So you think
having Klassekians aboard each fighter, tapped into a tactical net with the
carrier, would allow them to receive the information they need to adjust to
target?” asked Sekumbe. “That could be kind of rough on Klassekian sibling
units.”
“We would only
use volunteers, those who would join our military establishment,” said Lee,
looking at Sekumbe with narrowed eyes. “They would be forced into nothing.
But, just maybe, they might feel grateful that we have rescued them from
annihilation as a species.”
“And if these,
bubbles, cut them off from the rest of the Universe as well?” asked Albright,
playing devil’s advocate, even though she knew that the awareness of their
possible utility would push the Empire into saving as many of them as it could,
and not just a minimal breeding population.
“They seem to
have passed every test you’ve given them,” said Lee, shrugging her shoulders.
“If they pass the bubble test as well, great. If not, they still offer us a
resource for regular fleet communications that we cannot pass up.”
“I have sent one
of my couriers back to base in order to request all the aid we can get,” said
the Admiral. “Normally, there would not be much available at this time. But I
think we can shake some loose once Fleet hears about the potential of these
people. I asked for a wormhole as well, though I really can’t say how much
luck I’ll have with that request.”
“We’re still
having a problem with the natives cooperating with us, sir,” said Albright,
thinking it was all well and good to talk about what they were going to do with
this people, when the people in question, at least a good number of them,
didn’t seem to want the help.
“I’ve brought
along two rump battalions of Marines,” said Nguyen, looking at the Phlistaran
Lt. “That’s four reinforced companies, almost nine hundred men and women. If
the Lieutenant could get with Lt. Colonel Isaiah, I’m sure she would appreciate
your take on what security concerns there might be. But we will establish a
presence on this world, on all parts of this world, whether the leadership
wants it or not. I will not have people turned away because of what their
government thinks about us. If the people themselves don’t want to leave,
that’s their decision. And I have asked for more Marines, along with the
liners and transports I hope will come.”
“I’m not sure
how the Honish will respond, sir,” said Albright, already seeing trouble on the
horizon. “They are the most problematic of the people down there. They want
to see this supernova cleanse their planet. They see it as a judgment from
their God, a judgment that applies to all the people of the planet, believers
and non both.”
“Then we will
have to guard against their obstructionism, Captain,” said the Admiral, his
eyes almost glaring at her. “Let me make it clear. Our mission is to get the
most of these people to safety that we can. How they feel about that is not
really my concern. We will evacuate as many as we have room for. Is that
understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now,” continued
the Admiral, his features relaxing a bit. “Our next priority is this thing.
Or should I say things.” The holo changed to show one of the massive quarter
arcs that arose from the planet to reach into the near space. “If not for the
singular attributes of the natives, and the threat of the, what did you label
it,
Big Bastard
, these would be our primary focus. From your report,
these things represent a technology well beyond our own. And what we might
gain from it?” He shook his head as he stared at the holo.
“The only
problem, sir,” said Albright, “is that we cannot find out anything about them,
besides the fact that they seem to repel any kind of energy we have tried to
probe them with.”
“That is a
problem,” agreed the Admiral, nodding. “And not one I have an answer to. And
these objects in orbit around the blue giant? They seem to be made of the same
material?”
“They sure look
like it,” said Albright. “Of course, since we can’t take a sample, that’s the
only connection we have between them. The way they look.”
“Then let’s just
assume that they were put there by the same people,” said Nguyen, looking at
the Captain, then back at the holo. “Which, to my intuition at least, means
they are there for a purpose. The same purpose. But what is that?”
The Admiral
looked at the holo for some moments, everyone else in the room silent, letting
him think. He looked over at his Chief of Staff. “I want as large a research
team as we can gather looking at these arches. If we can’t look into them, we
can at least look at the geology around them. Let’s see how far they go down,
and if there might possibly be some entry way below the ground.”
“Yes, sir,” said
Lee, making some notations in her flat comp spread on the table to her front.
“Obviously they
have something to do with
Big Bastard
,” continued the Admiral. “And if
I had to venture a guess, the pending supernova is also something that led to
their placement. But why? That’s the question.”
“We may never
find out, sir,” said Sekumbe.
“But we can try,
dammit,” growled the Admiral. “One thing I can’t stand is a mystery. I have
to solve it. It’s part of my nature. And we will do our best to figure this
one out before that star blows. And if we can’t by then, we’ll come back after
the radiation wave has cleared.”
Albright nodded
to that. After all, the blue star was too far away for its thermal wave to
destroy the planets of this star system. That was not the problem. No, the
problem was the particle radiation storm that would come along just a little
after six months, crossing the six light months at point nine nine light.
Slower moving particles would sustain the storm for about two or three weeks.
Then it would clear, and all life, even down to microbes, would be dead all
across the system.
If given time,
they might have been able to prepare deep shelters, far into the bedrock of the
planet, shielded with heavy alloys and electromag fields. They didn’t have
that time, and besides, the planet would be sterile when they left the
shelters, and there would not be any way to grow enough food to prevent
starvation. Even if the Imperials were able to move in protein tanks, large
manufactories that used nanotech to build eatable food, they would not be able
to get enough of them in place in the time they had, and ninety percent of the
population would still die.
So we do what
we can
, thought Albright as the Admiral dismissed them from the
conference.
We save what we can, and have nightmares for the rest of our
lives, seeing the billions we couldn’t save.
Chapter Seven
And on the twelfth night Hrrottha
create the people, that they might worship him, and do his will in all things.
And Hrrottha looked at those who already inhabited the world, and in his wrath
commanded his people to smite them.
From the Holy Book of Hrrottha.
OCTOBER 8
TH
, 1000.
D-271.
“What the hell
are they doing?” yelled the Warrant Officer piloting the assault shuttle as it
dropped into the lower atmosphere. For the last day every shuttle in the small
force had been dropping toward and lifting from the planet, delivering
personnel and equipment to the several compounds that had been established
before the arrival of the battle cruisers, reinforcing them. And it had
proceeded without incident until now. When a squadron of atmospheric fighters
had climbed into the path of the shuttle at high Mach.
“Just make sure
you don’t hit them,” cautioned Lieutenant Junior Grade Helen, occupying the
copilot’s seat.
Everyone in the
shuttle was in battle armor, as per the instructions of Admiral Nguyen. For
the naval personnel that meant the medium armor that most wore aboard ship
during battle drills, or real battle. There were ten Marines aboard as well,
six in the medium suits that the naval infantry wore aboard ship, four in the
heavy suits used for landing operations. The medium suited Marines would
provide normal security for the naval personnel, while the heavy suits would
provide part of the reaction force.
If we can get to the ground
,
thought the young Command officer.
There were a
dozen of the fighters, all approaching fast, paired in six close teams. And it
looked like two of those pairs were going to pass close enough where a collision
couldn’t be ruled out.
A collision would take them out, though we would
probably survive
, thought the woman.
Why the hell would they even
attempt it?
The fighters
blew by at Mach three, their passage rocking the shuttle. The shuttle itself
had slowed down to Mach two after atmospheric entry, part of the policy to not
cause too much of a disturbance in an atmosphere that was teeming with military
and civilian aircraft.
“They're turning
around,” shouted the Warrant Officer, and the tactical plot above the cockpit
control panel showed the twelve objects going into turns, six to each side,
that might have been impressive to those of their tech level. Imperial craft,
with inertial compensators, could turn well within their arcs.
“I think they’re
playing chicken with us,” said Moyahan, looking over at the Warrant.
“I could fire a
couple of particle beams their way,” said the Pilot. “Not anything that would
hit them, you know. Just something to frighten them off.”
“You will not
fire,” ordered the Lt. “They may be looking for an incident, and we are not
going to give them one.”
“We’re being
painted by radar, ma’am,” complained the Pilot. “They’re targeting us for
missiles.”
“How much damage
will their weapons do?”
“I have no idea,
ma’am,” said the Pilot, shaking his head. “Probably not enough to splash us,
unless they get really lucky, but I wouldn’t want to stake my life on it.”
“Right. Then
get us the hell out of here. Maximum acceleration, and full velocity to the
base.”
“The Admiral
won’t like that.”
“He’ll like it
even less if we get hit. So power up the grabbers and get us out of here.”
The Warrant
nodded and advanced the throttle. The shuttle jumped forward at a hundred
gravities, the motion of which they could not feel at all inside. In seconds they
were past Mach three, then on to four, five, six, seven, finally up to Mach
fifteen.”
“That’s probably
enough,” said Moyahan, tapping the Warrant on the forearm. “Decelerate when we
get within twenty klicks of the base, then bring us in slow and easy.”
And
I need to get on the com and make sure that the flag knows about this.
* * *
“That’s the
seventh incident so far, sir,” said Captain Susan Lee. “and it’s only morning
in Honish.”
“And that’s
where all the incidents have occurred?” asked Nguyen, looking up from a report
he was reading on the natives’ abilities.
“No, sir. Four
have occurred in Honish, over in their airspace. Two have occurred in allied
territories, and one Tsarzor, though we suspect the operatives were working for
the Honish.”
The Admiral
pulled up the globe of the planet on the holo over his desk, looking at the
seven glowing icons. He pointed to one, and the holo zoomed in on a display of
that incident, a groundcar slamming into hovercarrier. The hover vehicle, a
large armored personnel carrier, was barely damaged, while the groundcar was
almost totally destroyed, going up in a ball of burning hydrogen fuel. The
Admiral pointed to another one, and that holo showed something falling out of a
window to strike a Spacer in medium armor. Whatever the object was, some kind
of cabinet, it bounced from the armor with little more than some mental shock
to the wearer. But it bounced out and struck a line of children on the
walkway, killing two of them. And so it went on, some action caused by a
local, caught on the scanners, that resulted in death or injury to native
sophonts.
“It’s all over
their local news channels, sir,” said Lee, reaching into the air and pulling
open another holo screen, which showed some talking heads in a studio
discussing the callous nature of the alien invader to their world.
“What in the
hell are they trying to accomplish?” growled the Admiral, staring at the holo,
the translated voices of the newsies coming through loud and clear. The
Admiral looked over at another spot on his desk and sent a signal through his
implant. A moment later the face of Lt. Colonel Isaiah, the commander of the
force’s Marines, appeared on the holo.
“You’ve heard
about the rash of incidents occurring on the planet, Mary?” asked the Admiral,
looking into the stern face of the Marine, who was currently down on that
planet.
“Yes, sir. And
another has just occurred. A truck fell over outside the gate of one of our
compounds and exploded.”
“Were any of
your people hurt?” asked the Admiral, his eyes narrowing.
“No, sir,” said
the Colonel, shaking her head. “But the same cannot be said for a score of the
citizens of the nation of Tsarzor who were burned up by the flames of the
explosion. We sent out a rescue team as fast as we could, and the death toll
would have probably been much higher without our intervention. But we weren’t
fast enough to save those poor suckers closest to the blast.”
“What do you
think is going on?”
“I think we’re
being set up, sir,” said the Marine, who had worked her way up the ranks in the
Command, and had been involved in several first contacts, as well as numerous
follow up missions. “They’re trying to make us look like the bad guys. To fit
into their narrative that we’re here to force them into our service as slave
labor. And once they have convinced enough of their population that their
narrative is fact, they will declare war on us.”
“That’s what I
think as well, Colonel” said Lee, looking up from the other screen she had
opened. “We may be getting some cooperation from the government of Tsarzor,
but the majority of their population doesn’t trust us. If they can erode that
trust some more, the citizens may resist us, despite the directives of their
government.”
The Admiral
looked over at Lee. “Can our people use psychology and propaganda to get them
on our side?”
“We might be
able to mitigate the response some,” said Lee, shaking her head. “But the
problem is they don’t trust us in the first place. They see us as intruders
here to make them do what we want, for our own purposes. I’m afraid, if this
was a normal first contact situation, I would advise that we just pack up,
leave some surveillance assets in place, and leave.”
“And if we do
that, this entire species dies,” growled Nguyen, closing his eyes and shaking
his head. “We might be able to get some of them to go with us, volunteers.
Even some real kidnaps. But not enough.”
“I hate to say
it, sir,” said Lee. “But that may be all we have.”
“Unacceptable,”
said Nguyen, shaking his head even harder. “We have a mission to accomplish,
and we will accomplish that mission. These people are going to be saved
whether they want to be or not. And I mean a significant sample of all their
ethnic groups. There is no way we’re going to take one particular group, and
leave everyone else behind.”
“We may be able
to produce enough species specific nonlethals to let us take who we need,” said
Isaiah. “Gas, or sonic frequencies.”
“I really don’t
want to resort to that,” said the Admiral, gritting his teeth. “But if we have
to, that is what we will do.” He turned to look back at Lee. “Susan. I want
you to get a team together to look into the possibility of developing something
we can use to knock a large number of these people out in one attempt.”
“And test
subjects? I don’t think we’re going to get many volunteers.”
“Are there any
diseases rampant on this planet?” asked Nguyen. “Something their medical
science can’t deal with that we can.”
Imperial
medicine was very advanced, and humanity had not only conquered all of its own
diseases, but those of every client species in the Empire. Gene sequencing and
the application of nanotech to attack the disease vector made it easy work to
cure anything that nature could come up with.
“I’ll get some
of our medical people to look into that, sir,” said the Chief of Staff. “I’m
sure there must be something that the Tsarzorians at least would appreciate our
stamping out. And once we find something that safely knocks out any of the
Klassekians, it should work on all of them.”
“Sounds like a
plan,” said Nguyen, looking back at the Colonel. “When we’re ready to send
some doctors in, I want a strong Marine presence with them. But in the
background.”
“I think that
can be arranged, sir,” said the Colonel. “I don’t think they can see through
our stealth systems.”
If they can
,
thought the Admiral,
we’re already in trouble.
* * *
The shuttle set
down on its grabber units, touching gently to the ground.
We got down in
one piece
, thought Lt. Moyahan, standing by the hatch and waiting for it to
open, the other personnel lined up at her back.
“Tower says the
field is cold,” stated the Pilot over the com.
The officer sent
back her acknowledgement, then turned to make sure the people behind her all
had their faceplates down. The field might be cold, which meant there was no
sign of hostile action, but there was no use taking any chances out in the
open. Not when they had the means to defeat just about any weapon the natives
could deploy against them in a ground role.
The hatch slid
aside, and Helen jumped the short distance to the ground and moved aside,
making way for the next person. She looked around as the other people
disembarked, taking in the sights of the base. The shuttle was sitting on a
flat field, four hundred meters on a side, surrounded by a prefab wall of
plasticrete. There were towers every hundred meters along that wall, each
manned by a pair of Marines with a heavy particle beam weapon. Two other
shuttles sat on the honeycombed alloy landing platform, while a pair of
atmospheric transports sheltered in bermed revetments on one side of the field.
On the way in
she had seen the way the base was laid out, sitting a couple of kilometers
outside a medium sized city. There were four of the landing squares arranged
into a larger square, with a central armored building that contained quarters,
support facilities, and the defensive domes that would defend the base from air
and artillery attack.
The entrance to
the dome was guarded by a thick door of metal alloys and ceramics that could
stand up to anything the planet’s tech level could come up with. Moyahan
followed the first of the people who had come down with her into the quarters,
a set of stairs that led down into the ground beneath the dome and its control
room and labs. Exploration Command had learned through hard experience how to
secure a base in difficult, hazardous territory.
“Lt. Moyahan,”
yelled out a young Petty Officer as she entered the common hall below.
“Guilty,” she
said, looking at the woman who ran up to her.
“I was sent to
show you to your quarters, then take you to meet with Commander Duran, your
team leader.”
Helen nodded and
followed the woman through a series of corridors until she stopped in front of
a door that only opened when the Lt. placed her hand on the locking panel.
Pretty
damned efficient
, thought the officer as the door slid on its track into
the wall, revealing a small chamber containing a bed, chair, desk and small
wardrobe.
“The bathroom is
down the hall, ma’am,” said the PO, pointing the correct way. “Now, if you
will follow me, the Commander is waiting.”
Helen wanted to
ask what the rush was, why there wasn’t time to get out of her armor and into a
more comfortable uniform. But if Commander Duran, whoever that was, wanted her
to come as soon as possible, she had guessed she should start moving according
to his wishes.
The Commander
was waiting in one of the meeting rooms under the dome. Helen looked over the
high ceiling as she entered. It looked solid, like it had been there forever,
and not the prefab construct it was. Again, the Command was equipped for these
situations, and both of the battle cruisers carried the components to put
together several planetary bases like this one.