Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (13 page)

“Yes sir,” said the
adjutant, unfocusing for a moment while he sent the information into the
command net and dispatched the vessels.  “They will be off shortly, sir. 
Anything else?”

“Not right now, Hen,”
said the Admiral.  “I just pray to God that he’s still safe, and we can get him
home before the balloon goes up.”

Just give us a few more
days, Lord
,
prayed the Admiral silently. 
I don’t want to know how the government will
stand another death of an Imperial Family member. 
The Admiral stood up
from his desk and went to the credenza, hoping for a drink to settle his
nerves.

“Sir,” said Captain
Henniman, running back into the room.

“Problem, Hen?”

“Unscheduled courier
came in from Massadara, sir,” said the Captain, a worried look on his face.

“Unscheduled?”

“Next courier is not
due for another day.”

“So what was the news?”
asked the Admiral, feeling hollow in the pit of his stomach.

“There was an
assassination attempt on the Prince,” said the adjutant, a shocked expression
on his face.  “Somebody tried to kill him planet side.”

“But he was alright,”
said the Admiral.  “When the courier left he was OK?”

“Yes sir.  He’s
confined to the ship now, where they can look after him.”

“I doubt this is
coincidence,” said the Admiral, slamming the flat of his hand on the desk. 
“Someone is trying to decapitate the Empire.  And I doubt that the timing is
arbitrary.”

“Orders, sir?” said the
adjutant.

“Change the orders to
the couriers.  The Prince is to come back aboard his own ship.  Unless there is
a Hyper VII Capital available to bring him.  We can’t take a chance that
someone won’t try and attack his transport.  I want something in place that can
fight off an attack.”

“Yes, sir,” said Captain
Henniman.  “I’ll send the orders out right now.”

“And keep this
information under wraps, Hen,” said the Admiral.  “Transmit the message for the
eyes of Admiral commanding Massadara or the Captain of the
Sergiov
only.  I don’t want anyone else getting information they might be able to use
to hurt us.  It’s going to be a hard enough hit on morale knowing that the
Emperor and the heir are both dead.”

“Aye sir,” said
Henniman, walking from the room as he transmitted through his link.

“This can’t be a
coincidence,” whispered Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis Mgonda, running through
the chain of events in his head. 
Something is about to hit us hard.  That’s
the only reason you decapitate a command structure.  To make sure that
decisions are not being made while you attack.

The Admiral hit a pad
on his desk panel comp and waited for the acknowledgement.

“All staff are to meet
in conference room G3 ASAP,” he said through the comp. “Be prepared for a long
one, ladies and gentlemen.  We have our work cut out for us.”

Chapter 5

Political tags - such
as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and
so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into
those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.  Robert
A Heinlein.

For such a sparsely
populated planet, Sestius seemed to have a disproportionate number of
injuries.  At least it seemed that way to Dr. Jennifer Conway. 
Like it
wouldn’t,
she thought, remembering where she was.  Frontier Worlds had lots
of people engaging in hazardous occupations, working around unpredictable
animals and machinery that could crush them without notice.  Add to that the
arms that most everyone carried, and the heavy use of drugs and alcohol, and of
course there were going to be a lot of injuries beyond the ability of local
clinics and medics to treat.  And many facilities could not afford an auto-doc,
which meant a flesh and blood doc must be called in.

Fifty-three minutes,
more or less
,
she thought, looking out over the heavily forested countryside as the air car flew
back to Willoughby.  That was what they taught in med school.  If a person who
has ceased to live by all standard measurements could be gotten into some form
of stasis, they could be revived.  After that there was nothing to bring back. 
The body might live again, but it was not that person.  In fact it was the
worst nightmare imaginable.  And twenty two of the men and women in that mining
town had passed that limit and were permanently dead. 
But, my god, did he
have to kill those children
, she thought, cringing at the memory of the
four small bodies that had inhabited the morgue along with the eighteen adults.

She had treated the
fifteen severely injured.  Twelve would remain at the clinic, where they could
receive adequate care and then return to work on the radioactives mine that the
town serviced.  Three were placed in stasis and were to be shipped to the
capital so they could be rebuilt at a proper hospital. 
At least I was able
to work on them
, thought the doctor, a slight smile coming to her face. 
That made it all worthwhile. 
And if only we had been able to see what was
coming down the pike for that poor man that shot up the town
.  But it had
taken everyone by surprise.  And there hadn’t been enough left of Jacob
Schneider to even think of reconstruction outside of cloning.  And everyone
knew the trouble that cloning would result in.

The air car jerked and
alarms started going off, the lights on the dash blinking red while a short
siren sounded.  A light on the panel indicated that the right front lift fan
was not working, and a glance toward that section of the car revealed a cloud
of smoke rising from the fan and trailing from the moving car.

“What happened?” she
asked the car.

“A native avian flew
into the number one fan,” answered the car.  “The fan mechanism is shattered.”

“Can we make it back to
the city?”

“Unknown at this time,”
answered the computer that was the brain of the vehicle.  “The three fans are
providing sufficient lift.  But number three is starting to overheat.”

“Crap,” said Jennifer
under her breath.  The nanites incorporated into the car should have kept all
the systems in top condition.  But somehow, in the care of fan three, they had
failed, and while all engines were working it wasn’t something that anything
noticed. 
I wish I had a grabber equipped car
, she thought. 
Then
there wouldn’t have been anything for a bird to hit and destroy.  Wait a
second.

“Car.  How had the body
of a flippen bird destroyed the fan?  Wouldn’t the alloy be strong enough to
handle it?”

“Not known at this
time,” said the car.  “According to all know information about life on this
planet, an avian should not have destroyed the fan.  It should have been
shredded and ejected.  However, it did hit the fan, and currently the fan is
not working.  And fan three is in the process of failing.”

“Crap again,” said
Jennifer, this time in a loud voice.  “Can you set us down before we come in
for a crash landing?”

“Searching for landing
areas at this time,” said the computer.  “Nothing within a ten kilometer
radius.”

“Crap a third time,”
said the doctor, looking at the dash screens, then out the canopy, hoping that
maybe her organic vision could find something the car’s active sensors could
not. 
A forlorn hope
, she thought, knowing that she still had to do
something.

“Fan three is failing,”
said the car in its infuriatingly calm tone.  “Losing altitude.  Prepare for
crash landing.”

Jennifer checked her
restraints, knowing there was little else she could do.  She checked the link
to make sure the car was sending a situation report to the authorities, and
breathed a sigh of relief on noting that it was.  The green canopy was rising
toward her, and the car started to twist around, before the computer corrected
and pulled it back.  It was losing speed all the while, but it remained to be
seen if it was enough.

And then the canopy of
the dense forest was no longer below, it was slapping at the bottom of the
car.  With the cracking of small branches the car fell through the foliage. 
Fifty meters down it hit a large branch, and careened off course, skirting a
couple of really large trunks that reminded Jennifer of the Redwoods of her
home world.  The car smacked into one of those trunks and turned over, and
Jennifer cried out as the protective foam filled the cockpit and cushioned her
bouncing ride among the trees.

With a final crunch the
tough canopy slammed into a trunk, cracking the plastic that was supposed to be
proof against any conceivable impact.  The car twisted in the air, the fans
trying one last push to slow her downward progress.  Another slam and there was
only one working fan, and then the car slammed to the ground and slid along,
ripping through a couple of smaller trunks and coming to an abrupt stop against
one of the larger specimens.

That feels like a
concussion
,
thought Jennifer, the strange smell in her nostrils and fuzziness of thought
giving her the clue.  The car rocked back, then stopped in place.  The hardened
foam began to break apart as the car told it that it was no longer needed.

“I am continuing to
send out a signal,” said the computer.  “Acknowledgment of search and rescue
team is on the way received.”

“Open the canopy,” said
Jennifer, pulling the quick release buckles on her straps and releasing herself
from the seat.  Her mind felt definitely fuzzy, but she wanted to get out of
this vehicle as soon as possible.

“That is not
recommended,”” said the car in its calm tone, as if it had not just suffered a
crash that was catastrophic to its system.

Which it hadn’t
, thought Jennifer. 
The computer was a black box system, and nothing short of something that
vaporized it would affect it much.  “I want air,” she said, her voice rising. 
“And I want out.”

“That is not
recommended,” repeated the car, and the canopy refused to retract.  “It is
dangerous out there, Dr. Conway.  The only logical action is to wait in the
safety of the car until aid arrives.”

“Double crap,” said the
doctor, hitting the emergency release within the cockpit of the car.  With a
swishing sound the canopy started to rise.  It jerked to a stop for a moment,
then released with a grinding snapping sound, then continued to rise and slide
back.

Jennifer pulled herself
out of the car, feeling a little weak.  She knew she must be forgetting
something but continued to pull herself out of the car and put her boots on the
ground.  The head was still dizzy, and her vision slightly blurred.  She
reached back into the car and pulled out her basic medipac, then, leaning
against the car, searched through it for what she wanted.  The emergency nanite
injector confused her for a moment, but she puzzled out the setting and placed
the device to her neck, directly over her carotid artery.  A push on the proper
area of the cylinder sent billions of nanites through the skin and into the
artery.  Their target was the brain, where they would start to repair the
concussive damage of the crash.  Her head felt a little clearer as soon as she
injected the nanoscale robots into her system, something she was sure was
mostly psychological, as it would still take minutes to see an actual physical
effect.

The doctor looked
around the woods, her eyes pulling in all of the little light that was reaching
the needle carpeted floor.  To her enhanced eyes it was the same as the
beginning of dusk, dark, but not too dark to see.  She sniffed the air and
caught the scent of flowers, different than any she had ever smelled, with a
definite undertone of something strange, but still intoxicating.  Her eyes
located the blooms up the trunk of one of the trees, hundreds of them, with a
buzzing of this world’s insect analogues working their eight legs among the
flowers as their proboscises plunged deep into the reproductive organs of the
parasitic plants.

“Dr. Conway,” came a
voice over her link, relayed to her by the car.

“Conway here,” she
replied, starting at the noise of something moving through the branches above.

“This is planetary
search and rescue,” came the voice of a young woman.  “We have your locator
beacon and should be there within the next fifteen minutes.  Stay in the car,
ma’am, and all will be well.”

“I’m already out of the
car,” said Jennifer, looking up and over as some lower branches shook under the
weight of something heavy.

“I recommend you get
back in the vehicle, ma’am,” said the woman in a sharp tone.  “It can get kind
of hairy in the deep woods.  I think you should…”

A face from a nightmare
thrust down from the branches above, and Jennifer screamed out before she could
stop herself.  It was a wolfish face, but much larger than any canine the
doctor had ever heard of, the size of a grizzly’s head.  Long sharp teeth
grinned from the slavering mouth, and orange eyes looked coldly out of a hairy
face.  Another movement and the beast came flying out of the trees in an arc
that would have taken him into the human if she didn’t move.  She did, jumping
and back peddling as her hand reached for the sidearm she always carried, a
movement that Glen had trained into her.