Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (22 page)

Some
antiaircraft missiles shot up after the sting ships, tracking in on their
heat.  The ships countered with the beams from their laser rings and
micro-counter missiles, blowing all of the planned revenge fire from the sky. 
Soon the sting ships were out of range, turning through the air to seek out
their next targets.

The Third
Hrrottha’s Wrath division was on its way into the city from another direction. 
The low crumps of explosions sounded in the distance to the south, and rising
clouds of smoke and dust became visible.  They were not sure what was
happening, but hopes were high that one of their sister units had hit the
aliens hard.

Third Division
did not even see what killed it.  In orbit, the light cruiser
Chan Chun
released
a pair of canisters that shot downward under their grabbers, entering the
atmosphere at forty times the speed of sound, sending out a boom that was heard
across the continent.  Forty kilometers above the ground the canisters
exploded, sending out hundreds of small but dense objects that spread in a fast
falling cloud.   Each object scanned the area below in an instant, oriented
onto a target, and boosted.  A fraction of a second later the division was
gone, every vehicle, every soldier, destroyed.

*     *     *

The pair of
assault shuttles came down over the city at what could only be called a
meandering speed.  At two hundred kilometers an hour they made barely a sound
other than the slight rustling of the wind of passage.  Fully stealthed, they
didn’t appear on radar, or any other sensor system, and even their infrared
signature was tiny, since they hadn’t just dropped from orbit, but had flown at
low altitude from the lake they had been sitting in prior to the assault.

Four more
shuttles were behind them, the follow up platoons that would secure the
perimeter while the apprehension platoon went into the building.  Higher up
were a quartet of sting ships, ready to provide ground support.

The two shuttles
slowed to a hover over the capital building, the last known location of the
Leader of Honish and his staff.  As soon as they were in place the side panels
of the shuttles opened, and twenty-two medium suited figures fell from each
craft, their grabbers slowing them to a soft touchdown on the roof of the large
building.

The other four
shuttles did the same with their cargo, one half platoon on each side of the
building.  The Marines fell down the side of the building, half of them
reaching the ground, the other half remaining in the air on overwatch.

Captain Stacy
Jangerson, the overall commander of the raid, followed her first platoon leader
and approached the door that led to the stairs downward.  The door was
constructed of heavy armored alloy, most probably capable of withstanding a hit
by a locally produced antitank rocket.  Jangerson nodded to the Sergeant
standing in front of the door, and that Marine slapped a breaching charge on
the barrier.  All backed away, just as the sound of shots from local weapons
sounded from street level.

“What’s
happening, Yoshi?” asked the Captain of her XO, who was in charge of the street
level force.

“Just some local
soldiers poking their noses in where they’re not welcome,” said the Marine Lt.
in his softly accented Terranglo.  “So far, no problem.  And Sashra’s platoon
is ready to breach the doors at your command.”

The breaching
charge on the door blew, the almost microscopic antimatter shape charge blasting
a hole through the metal, the heat melting the armor outward until a large
gaping opening occupied the door, including the part that had held the locking
mechanism.  Two Marines in heavy suits ran up to the door and tossed stun
grenades through the hole, then, using the strength of their robotic muscles,
pulled the ruin away from the opening.

Jangerson
watched the men of the first squad file through the door, tossing some of the
new incapacitation grenades down the steps.  After some moments they signaled
all clear, and the second squad went through the door.

The Captain
stood on the roof for a moment, tracking her company on her HUD.  One squad of
first platoon was fitted out in heavy suits, the rest in mediums.  It had been
thought that the smaller suits would be better for a building assault, where,
just like on a ship, things could get very tight.  But the squad with the heavy
suits, and their greater strength and protection, were along to handle
situations where firepower and their virtual invulnerability could tip the
balance.

First squad
flowed down the stairs, while second blew the doors to the elevators and
dropped down the shafts.  The Captain and her two security people came after,
with the third squad trailing.

“Take the
doors,” he commanded Yoshi Taragowa, starting three more squads in motion into
the building.

“The reaction
force is, well, reacting,” said the Exec, over the muted sounds of explosives
and the angry buzzing of particle beams.

“Any trouble?”
asked Jangerson, as the sounds of fighting erupted from a couple of floors
down.

“We’re handling
it.  I think we had best leave the sting ships in reserve for now.  And the
assault squads have already encountered resistance.”

It would be
better if they just gave up
, thought the company commander, watching as the
icons of her unit moved across her HUD.  They were equipped with the new
knockout gas that medical had come up with.  It was effective either through
the lungs or the skin, though some of the environmental suits of the natives
might be able to resist it.  For a short time, before the nanites built into
the gas ate their way through any protective barrier not attached to an
Imperial battle armored suit.

She didn’t think
the guards in this building, who had probably been selected for their loyalty
or fanaticism, would give up without giving their lives to resist this
intrusion.  Making her way down the building, floor after floor, passing the
unconscious bodies of Klassekians, many in full environmental suits that had
not protected them, she was happy she could take them out without killing them.

The sounds of
fighting intensified over the com from the units outside.  Fanatical soldiers
of the Honish poured into the attack, hundreds of them, charging into the teeth
of particle beams and explosives as if they didn’t have a care for their own
lives.  Gas was taking some of them down, lethal force many others, and the
Marines still in the air fired down on them like miniature aircraft.

“Committing the
sting ships, now,” called out Taragowa, and the icons of the three support
aircraft blinked onto the HUD.  “We…”

The com link to
the XO died, at the same time as his icon blinked red twice on the HUD and fell
off the display.

“Yoshi,” yelled
Jangerson, afraid that she had lost her Exec.

“He’s dead, ma’am,”
said Lt. Ferguson, the third platoon leader, and the next ranking officer. 
“One of their tanks put an armor piercing shell through his suit.  A couple of
other men got taken out the same way, before the sting ships took out the
tanks.”

And that’s why
I should have insisted that we all wear heavy suits
, thought the Captain,
looking back at one of the Marines in a heavy suit go crashing through the
corridor. 
I thought we had taken out all of their nearby armor.

She lost three
Marines pushing down the building and into the basement, reaching the entrance
that led to the subbasement.  The suits, even the medium version, made them
invulnerable to the small arms of the Klassekians.  Even antipersonnel grenades
and heavy projectile weapons bounced off the armor.  But some of the soldiers
had shoulder fired antitank rockets and some older recoilless cannon.  Those
could penetrate the armor of medium suits, and possibly even the heavier
version.

Fighting their
way down the elevator shaft to the command bunker cost two more Marines, and
the resistance down at the lowest level became truly fanatical, males actually
blowing themselves up, suiciding to try and take out the invaders.  In all
instances that was futile.  Explosives in and of themselves couldn’t penetrate
the armor in the quantities a male could carry.  Only purpose built armor
piercing weapons could do that, unless the explosives were employed in a shaped
charge, which the defenders didn’t have time to produce.

It took massed
particle beam fire to take down the final door to the command bunker, a portal
thick enough to withstand a moderate nuclear blast directly on the building
above.  And when they entered the room.

“Get me the
Admiral,” said Captain Jangerson over the com as she looked on the empty room
that had been the command center of the nation of Honish.  “Sir.  They fled. 
There’s no one here.”

*     *     *

The massive door
closed behind the party, shutting with a boom.  The two hundred and so
Klassekians looked at each other as they waited for the elevator that would
bring them down to the actual shelter.  This, the entry chamber, was set at the
end of an old, abandoned mine shaft, reaching down three kilometers under a
massive mountain.  Once a source of precious metals and gems, it had played out
years before.  The actual mining camp had been demolished, the area returned to
its natural state, perfect camouflage.

The first party
rode the elevator, twenty kilometers straight down into the bedrock of the
planet.  It was crowded with twenty beings, males and females, the leaders of
the nation and their families.  After the long trip down, they exited into
another large room, with a large door much like the one above set into the
armored wall.  The door was open, and the party could see the luxurious refuge
ahead.

They had all the
power they needed from the small fission reactor.  Years of food and water had
been stored, everything the inhabitants would need for an extended stay.  The
only communications in and out were by fiber optic, totally secure, not giving
off any residual signals that could be traced.

“We are here,”
said Zzarr, walking into his own large quarters, his wife and son coming in
behind him.  “Make sure that we have everything we need for comfort,” he told
his wife, then looked back at his aide.

“I want a staff
meeting in four hours, after everyone is down and settled.”

“And the agenda,
sir?”

“We still have a
war to fight,” said the Leader, looking at the pool of water in the living room
that swarmed with decorative water life.  “And I intend to win it, no matter
the cost to my people.” 
It’s what Hrrottha would expect of me, of all of
us. 
And he wasn’t about the let his Deity down.

Chapter Eighteen

A determined man with no thought
of his own life can accomplish much.

Old Phlistaran saying.

MAY 28
^TH
, 1001.  D-35.

“That’s the
fifth one today,” said Captain Susan Lee, looking at the main holo that was
showing a large vehicle exploding on a street in Tsarzor.

“”What are we
going to do about it?” asked Colonel Margolis, sitting in the
guest
seat
near to the Admiral’s flag bridge station.

I know what
you’d like to do about it
, thought the Admiral, looking over at a side holo
that showed the 
Lusitania
and her three escorts streaking through the
holes into hyperspace, on the first leg of their trip to
Bolthole
. 
Almost eight thousand Klassekians on the way to survival, and future
contributions to the Empire.  And only a drop in the bucket. 
But we have
more immediate problems.

“I suggest we
start deploying nanites in all the major cities set to look for the chemicals
necessary for explosive production,” said Lee.

“There might be
ways around that,” said the Colonel.  “For instance, if they make sure the
chemicals are in hermetically sealed containers.”

“It’s worth a
try,” said Lee.  “Any we catch won’t be exploding on the street and killing
Tsarzorians.”

“Go ahead and
deploy what we have,” ordered Nguyen, looking away from the holo.  “Have the
labs come up with the components of that binary explosive.”

“We have,” said
Lee, pulling up the chemical structure of the compounds, displayed side by
side, then a morphing graphic that showed the two chemicals joining together to
make a third substance, the explosive.

“Our chemists
believe there are several different permutations of this combination,” said
Lee.  “That’s one of the biggest problems, since they may have several dozen
different binaries, trinaries or more that can end up with the same explosive. 
They are only deploying the one binary so far, but they might have many more.”

“Or this could
be the only one they have knowledge of,” said Margolis, shaking his head.  ‘We
don’t know.  And we won’t until a new combination makes its appearance, and we
won’t be able to detect it until it’s used.”

“Which doesn’t
mean it isn’t useful to catch some of them before they switch off.”

“The Captain is
right, Colonel,” said Nguyen, his eyes narrowing as he looked at all the
permutations for this single explosive.  And there could be more.  After all,
the Tsarzorians said that the Honish were very advanced in the science of
chemistry, probably more than the scientists of Tsarzor.  “Deploy all the
nanites we have, and crank up the manufacture of more.  I’m more concerned
about protecting our own assets, the landing fields, the processing centers,
than the city centers of the Tsarzorians.  Or the Honish,” he added, thinking
of the bombs that had gone off in that nation’s cities as well.  “But it would
be useful to catch as many of the terrorists as we can, and maybe backtrack
them to their sources.”

“Too bad we didn’t
capture their leader and his staff,” said Margolis, closing his eyes and
shaking his head.

“Our political
science and sociology people think it wouldn’t have made any difference,” said
Lee.  “As long as the orders were given out, the terror campaign would progress
as planned.”

“It still irks
me that we didn’t get that bastard,” growled the Marine.  “He’s sitting in
comfort in some hidden refuge, and laughing at us.”

I doubt he’s
laughing at us after being driven out of his capital and having most of his
military burned to the ground,
thought the Admiral.  “And how is the
occupation progressing otherwise, Colonel?” asked Nguyen, looking over at the
Marine.

“As well as can
be expected with only two battalions to work with,” said the Colonel with a
frown.  “We have control of the capital, most of the time.  Any attacks made
against our troops are of course defeated, though one of their suicide bombers
injured some of my Marines.  But we just don’t have enough to manpower to keep
track of everything, and, of course, the population is on their side.  I
wouldn’t expect it any other way.”

“Sir, we have an
incident in Tsarzor,” came a call over the com.

“Show me,”
ordered the Admiral, and a holo came to life in the air showing a large
building with a cloud of smoke rising from it.  Fires roared from some of the
windows, and as they watched, part of the building slid off and fell seventy
stories to the ground.

“What happened?”

“According to
the local news report, a large airliner crashed into the building and exploded,”
said the Com Officer on the other end.  “They’re predicting casualties in the
thousands.”

“An accident?”
asked Lee in a tone that that indicated she believed it was anything but.

“Wait,” said the
Com Officer, and the holo switched views to another airliner, this one in the
process of hitting another tall building.  A large cloud of smoke was rising in
the background, and it was soon obvious that this was the same city as the last
crash.  “This was a major office building, and there were ten thousand beings
there on this work day.”

The holo
switched again, and another airplane crashed into a sports stadium where a
local ball team was playing before a crowd of tens of thousands.  And then
again, as an airliner crashed into the terminal of the local airport, taking
out most of the building and ten or more other airliners that were taking on or
debarking passengers.

“My God,” said
Lee, staring at the holos which were all now open, showing the quartet of
attacks in the capital city.

Like God has
anything to do with this
, thought the Admiral, who didn’t believe in any
gods anyway, much less the Honish variety.

“We’re getting
reports of other attacks across the continent,” said the Com Officer. 
“Airliners, truck bombs, individuals with suicide devices strapped to them.”

“There’s an
incoming call from First Councilman Contena,” said another officer over the
com.

“Tell him that
we’re mobilizing search and rescue, and will respond with all of the help we
can give,” said Nguyen.  “I’ll be in touch with him as soon as we have a better
handle on what’s going on.”

“He’s probably
panicking,” said Lee.  “And I can’t blame him.”

“Me neither,”
said Nguyen.  As far as he’d been able to gather, the Tsarzorians on a whole
were a good people, a society that respected life and celebrated the success of
their citizens.  Their interactions with the Honish, who held almost
diametrically opposed views, had colored the way they looked at the rest of the
world, but still, at heart, they were good people.  And it hurt the Admiral to
see them get hit this way. 
All because the terrorists can’t really hurt us,
or drive us off, so they try to injure us by proxy.  And they aren’t really
accomplishing anything, except kill people who, for the most part, will be dead
within a year.

“Organize all of
the resources we can afford to expend on search and rescue,” he told Lee.

“All we can
afford to expend?” asked Lee, staring at the Admiral in disbelief.   “Shouldn’t
we make every effort?”

Nguyen shook his
head, knowing that was the human response to most disasters.  And knowing that
he didn’t have the time or resources for that kind of effort.  “We need to keep
working on the shelters, so we can save as many as possible.  Keep working on
evacuating them, and gather all the samples of genetic diversity that we
possibly can.  That has to be our priority.  Otherwise, the terrorists win.”

He looked over
at the Colonel.  “All the suits and transport you can arrange, Margolis.  But I
want you to prioritize finding the people organizing this insanity.  If that’s
the greatest good we can accomplish here, and that will have to be enough.”

*     *     *

There weren’t
enough search and rescue personnel and equipment to go around, and time was
also a limited commodity.  Tsarzorian search and rescue did all they could,
fighting fires, treating and evacuating the injured, digging through the rubble
looking for survivors.  With the level of their technology they could only do
what they could when they could move the right equipment into place.

The Imperial
Fleet search and rescue, despite their limited numbers, could accomplish so
much more.  Assault shuttles could lift several thousand tons of material into
the air, moving huge pieces of rubble out of the way that would have taken
local resources hours to move.  Transport aircraft could still lift hundreds of
tons, and spray chemicals that could smother the hottest flames in an instant. 
Even men in heavy suits could cut through steel and alloy supports in seconds,
and haul pieces weighing tons out of the way.

Because of their
efforts, thousands lived who wouldn’t otherwise.  The trust they built through
exhausting work, the care they showed, went a long way to cementing the
reputation of the Imperials with the people of Tsarzor.

And meanwhile,
the work on the shelters continued, robots digging into the ground and setting
up the metal frameworks that would hold the plasticrete, many times tougher
than native concretes, that would form the strength of the structure.  Once the
plasticrete had cured, a process that took hours, the robots buried the
structures, piling on ten of meters of earth as the last insulator.  At the
same time other structures were going up around the shelters, the housings of
electromagnetic field projectors that would erect a particle barrier over the
site.  One larger building, this one the housing of the fusion reactor that
would power that field, went up at the same time.

While on the
landing fields used for the evacuation, the processing of Klassekians went on,
preparing them for transport, freezing the sibling groups and families and
storing them in hangars near the shuttle loading areas.

And no one knew
that eight sibling groups had come through who were not there to be evacuated. 
They were Tsarzorians who had converted to the religion of the Honish, their
bodies suffused with a different binary explosive.  And they were there to
hopefully destroy some of the evacuation ships, or at least damage them.  Just
as some others with their mission had already been sent out on previous ships,
including the
Lusitania
.

*     *     *

Helen Moyahan
hovered the shuttle over the wreckage while the crew chief lowered cable.  A
pair of heavy suited figures grabbed the hook and attached it to the
self-burrowing net of multi-molecular wire.  One tugged on the cable, then
stepped aside, and Helen pulled up on the stick and lifted the shuttle.  The
mass meter told her she was lifting just over five hundred and seventy-one
tons, well within the capability of her shuttle.  It was not a heavy assault
shuttle, but more of a standard landing shuttle, with about half the lift of
the larger vehicle.  Still, it could lift what one of the native heavy cranes
could handle, and those devices had to be moved into place and braced, a long
and laborious process.

She moved the
shuttle over to the dumping ground, where the rubble of several collapsed
buildings was being piled up.  A flip of a switch and the bottom of the
multi-molecular wire net, stronger than molecular wire without the tendency to
cut through everything it touched, dissolved away, and the mass of steel and
concrete fell to the pile with a crash and a cloud of dust.  The Lieutenant
turned the shuttle in the air smoothly on its grabber units and flew over the
assembly site, dropping the netting in an open area, where the engineers
grabbed it and refurbished it for the next use.  Helen watched for just one
moment on her vid monitor, thinking the most amazing thing about the netting
was how it didn’t become tangled, unlike almost any other form of strapping.

She brought the
shuttle down over the next massive piece of destruction and let the engineers
hook it up to a new piece of netting.  She lifted, and the suits closed in and
started throwing aside pieces from hundreds of kilograms to just over a ton. 
One suited figure stopped and pointed down.

“We’ve found
some,” came the call over the local com being used for the rescue effort.

Helen switched
one of her feeds to that of the engineer looking down into the newly uncovered
pit, and a moment later gagged in horror.  The unmoving form of a female was
surrounded by the bodies of eight smaller forms.  Some were completely intact. 
Others had been crushed under the mass of falling rubble.  Orange-red body
fluids were splashed everywhere, legs were bent at unnatural angles, and several
heads were flattened.

Bastards
,
thought the officer as she spun the shuttle around and headed off toward the
dumping grounds.  Then it was time for another load, as the team of a score of
Imperials did the same work it would have taken hundreds of Klassekians
quadruple the time to accomplish.

Again sounded
“we’ve found some,” this time with a more joyous tone.  Helen looked at the
take, and all of the hard work of the day, all the small defeats were
forgotten.  Six adult Klassekians were being helped out of the small cavern the
collapse had formed, while suited figures were strapping three more to life
support gurneys.

A half hour
later they discovered another pocket, where the people within could have
survived.  Unfortunately, they had run out of air, and had all suffocated, and
eleven bodies, four of them children, lay in almost perfect repose, never to
awaken.

*     *     *

“We’re picking
up ships in hyper VI, Admiral,” called out the Sensory Tech who was manning the
resonator chamber of the battle cruiser.  Normally the call would come from the
officer who manned the station on the bridge, who would also get his
information from the Senior Chief who was the real expert on reading the
resonances of hyperspace.  The Sensor Officer was off duty at this time, and
one of the three senior chiefs who manned the resonance chamber had the duty of
relaying the information to the ship’s captain, and the flag officer aboard.