Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm

by Doug Dandridge

  “Not something I’m looking forward to,” said Sean with a nod. “At least I can try to distance myself from the people I have to send.”

  “You can, your majesty,” said the Captain. “I wouldn’t recommend it. You need to know something about the people who serve you, so they are not just paper markers to be moved and removed from a map. But let me tell you I think the first plan is not really feasible. I don’t think the destroyer will be able to do enough to delay the enemy. I think I would be throwing their lives away for no gain.”

  “So what’s the second plan?” said Sean with a frown. “I think I can guess. It will have something to do with your ship.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” said the Captain, feeling her face tighten at the thought. “It would involve us falling back on our enemies and engaging them in combat, while you get away on the destroyer. I believe that we could attract enough attention to allow Dot McArthur to fall through hyper and get out of sensor range of the enemy.”

  “So the better solution is to sacrifice over ten times the crew to let me creep away,” said Sean in a loud voice. His face reddened, and Lei knew what he was feeling. “I forbid it. Do you hear? We will get out of this somehow, some other way.”

  “And what way would that be, your Majesty,” said the Captain, leaning back in her chair. She had thought this would happen. He wouldn’t accept what had to be. But in their current situation they were going to be caught and killed anyway, and the new Emperor of Humanity would be killed with them. Which would allow whatever weak cousin the assassins of the Emperor and the rest of the family wanted to manipulate to be put on the throne.

  “I don’t know,” said Sean Ogden Romanov, head down as he looked at the floor. “I just don’t know.” He looked up, tears in his eyes, but the eyes themselves the piercing orbs of his ancestors. “I do know that I’m tired of people dying for me.”

  “It’s something you had better get used to, your Highness,” said the Captain of the battle cruiser, her heart going out to the young man who had never expected this kind of responsibility. “The men and women of the Fleet, the Marines and the Army are under oath to lay down their lives for you. It is up to you and those you appoint to command to make sure that those lives are well spent.”

  Sean sat there, nodding his head and saying nothing. Again Mei Lei felt her heart going out to him. He was very young. In some years he would have worked his way up the ranks and gotten a command of his own, probably a Frigate, making him responsible for a little over two hundred people. Then up the command rungs until he got command of a Capital ship, three thousand or more people. Maybe a squadron command, before his birth and lineage offered him (really ordered) another position outside of the military. And if something unfortunate happened in the succession, he might be called upon to become Emperor, with a century of command and diplomatic experience behind him, like his oldest brother nearly had when he died along with the sitting Emperor. Instead it had all come falling down on him. And he hadn’t even been able to assume command of the Empire he in fact commanded. Or to mourn those who had died, family, comrades or others. She would not have wanted to be in his shoes for anything. Right now the command of her battle cruiser was really more than she wanted, but there was no one else to do that job, so it was hers.

  “How long do I have to transfer over to the destroyer?” asked the Emperor in a little boy’s voice.

  “I think about four hours,” said the Captain, going through her preliminary plan one more time in her head. “We need to set up the situation some. I want to be as sure as can be that we are going to fool them. Otherwise, they will just take off after the destroyer, and we won’t have accomplished anything.”

  A blur moved out of the corner of her eye, and Mei Lei found Satin sitting in her lap, purring deeply. She looked down at the silky fur of the Himalayan and felt tears coming to her own eyes. The cat of course didn’t know what was going on, didn’t know what danger they were in. That was for the humans to feel, as they worried about their animal charges.

  “He’s such a beautiful cat,” said Sean, looking at the animal sitting in the Captain’s lap. “Reminds me of the cats we had around the palace.”

  “You have many of them growing up?” she asked, holding onto the big male possessively.

  “Dozens at least,” said the Emperor with a small smile. “Always under foot. Mother loved them. Siamese, Persians, Himalayans, Havana Browns, Bengals. Dozens and dozens of purebred cats. I also liked the cats that lived all over the grounds. Just plain alley cats, but all wonderful in their own right.”

  “Yes they are,” said the Captain, hugging the cat close, then lowering him to the floor as he voiced his displeasure. “Sorry, Satin. But momma has things to do.”

  “Do you want me to take him with me?” asked Sean in a quiet voice.

  Mei Lei had to take a moment to make sure she had heard him right. She looked longingly at the silky cat as he walked away, tail held high in the air in the question mark that meant cats were OK with the world.

  “I would like that very much,” she said, reaching over to pat his hand. “Keep him for me until I can return. Or make sure he has a good home if I don’t.”

  “The best,” said Sean, grasping her hand. “The palace grounds, where he will never want for anything.”

  “He will like it being outside,” she said, sniffling a moment.

  “They like it wherever their humans are,” said the Emperor with a nod of his head. “Even if it’s the deepest darkest regions of an asteroid mine. They like being with us.”

  “I have preparations to make,” she said with another sniff. “Please excuse me, my lord.”

  “Of course,” said Sean, standing and taking the captain’s hand. He planted a kiss on the hand as he bowed. “Thank you for all you have done for me. And for all your about to do.”

  The Captain could feel herself blushing as she nodded, smiled, and turned away.

  * * *

  Group leader Thiaxoquillana growled deep in his throat as he glared at the tactical display in the holo tank. He couldn’t change the laws of physics, in normal or hyperspace. The situation would resolve when it resolved. Not the most comforting thought to an impatient member of an impatient species.

  “How long till contact?” he growled at the navigator.

  “Under current constraints,” said the officer, looking back with a nervous twitch in his eye. “Eleven hours to weapons range.”

  Thiaxoquillana cursed the Gods under his breath. That word constraint said it all. They had at least thirty gravities accel on the aliens. They could easily catch them in four hours or less. The problem was they couldn’t let their velocity profile get too far out of match with the enemy. If they pursued too fast the enemy could decel and drop out of hyper, while Thiaxoquillana’s force swept by, maybe doing enough damage to cripple the enemy, maybe killing them, but not sure of either result. By the time they were able to drop into normal space the enemy would be lost. And his orders were to make sure they didn’t get whatever they thought was so valuable away.

  “And we could be celebrating along with the rest,” he growled, sparking some fearful glances from his subordinates. He thought of the taste of fresh meat. He had heard that human was very good. Instead, they were here chasing after some ships that had run from the fight. Run for an unknown reason. He only hoped that they could take some prisoners, so that he could stock his own larder.

  * * *

  “What do you have?” asked Commodore Blake Griffith in his New Texas drawl, walking onto the flag bridge of HIMS Smaug. The bridge crew looked up at the squadron commander and went back to their duties. Griffith was not much on what he considered useless frippery on his bridge. What the captains of his ships did with their crews was their business.

  “Something big went by in Hyper VII about fifteen minutes ago,” said the sensor tech, looking at the raw data coming from Smaug’s own sensory room. “It gave off the resonances of one of those new Hyper VII battl
e cruisers, traveling along the galactic plane west to east at about half light speed.”

  Griffith did the math in his head as the tech was talking. So they were doing about eight thousand light relative to normal space. But not much of a hurry, or they would have been up to eighty or ninety percent of light. Unless they had recently started their Hyper transit. And there was a destroyer class ship tucked in tight, traveling along with them, if that small spike meant anything.

  “What came along next?” he asked, knowing that he wouldn’t have been summoned to the bridge just because an Imperial ship had been picked up in hyper.

  “Just these, sir,” said the tech, as a series of colorful wave diagrams appeared in the holo tank.

  Griffith had come up the ranks as a sensor officer before his first command, and prided himself on keeping up with the field. He leaned forward in his chair, looking at four almost identical images that were like nothing he had ever seen.

  “Between three and four million tons each,” said the tech, looking back at his Commodore. “Resonances like nothing I’ve ever seen. Same general heading as the battle cruiser, slightly higher velocity.”

  “So these are chasing an Imperial battle cruiser through Hyper VII?”

  “That would be my interpretation, sir,” said the tech with a nod.

  “Captain Bailey,” said the Commodore over the circuit, while an image of the willowy blond officer appeared on the main screen.

  “Commodore,” she said in her thrilling contralto voice. “What are your orders, sir?”

  “Are we past the hyper barrier yet?” asked the Admiral, almost kicking himself in the head when he thought about it. Of course they had passed the hyper barrier if they were picking up this kind of information.

  “We passed the Hyper I limit twenty minutes ago,” she responded deadpanned. “We’ll be to the hyper II limit in another hour at our current rate.

  “Send this order to the other ships of the squadron,” said the Commodore, looking at his com officer. He then looked back at the Captain. “Jump immediately to Hyper I, and to the next levels as soon as they become available. Then the squadron will proceed in a heading directly after those ships in hyper VI, maximum acceleration to the safety limit.”

  “We’ll be in six and they’ll be in seven,” admonished the Captain. “Four times our rate of pseudo speed.”

  “Only a little over half actually,” said Griffith with a nod. “Unless they change their velocity profile. But either way, I want to be behind them. If they drop into normal space, or go for a system, I want us there as soon as possible.”

  “Aye aye, Commodore,” said the Captain with a salute. “We’ll do our best to get them.”

  “I know you will, Constance,” he replied to the ship’s Captain who was also his flag captain. “I just hope we can do something.”

  A moment later the Smaug opened up a gate and flowed into the dimension of Hyper I. Nearby the battleships Czar Nicolas I and Emperor Hirohito did the same.

  * * *

  MASSADARA SYSTEM.

  Great Admiral Miierrowanasa M'tinisasitow gnashed his teeth again as he looked down on the world his fleet had gained. It was a lovely world, or had been. Now clouds of dust and smoke wafted high into the atmosphere. Things would be cooling down on the planet for the next decade or so, until it was snowing at the equator. Then it would swing back, and become lovely again.

  “It is terrible to see such a thing,” said the high priest, looking over the Great Admiral’s shoulder. “A living world ravaged.”

  The Great Admiral knew that what he had done went against the teachings of the universal church of his people.

  “Would you have rather we lost more of our own against these barbarians?” asked the Great Admiral, showing his teeth in a challenge to the priest.

  “Surely not,” said the priest, keeping his own lips over his teeth. “But a living world.”

  “I did not destroy it, priest,” said the Great Admiral, himself not much into the religion of the masses, which taught that living planets were a gift from the gods to be cherished. Not that everything on the surfaces of those planets was sacred. Not the intelligences that sometimes infested them.

  “No, but the missiles you threw at it did some severe damage,” replied the holy man.

  The Great Admiral turned away, tired of the argument. There had been a couple of massive forts in orbit around this world, which had been some kind of fleet hub to the enemy. That and dozens of other large space structures that were thought to be dry docks and repair facilities. He was already fighting a battle with an enemy that massed as much as his force. And were skillful to boot. Despite the superiority in weapons it had been a near thing. The last thing he wanted was to assault a defended planet with damaged ships. So he had sent ahead a few volleys of missiles that had built up to relativistic velocities on the way in. The giant forts had some ability to maneuver, after a manner, and they were heavily armed with defensive weaponry. Still, the missiles that got through did hit. Pieces of destroyed ordnance and parts of missiles that had struck the forts did end up plowing into the planet, with predictable results.

  The Great Admiral looked at another screen that showed one of the small cities that dotted the surface of the planet. Large horned shapes in body armor walked the streets, two of their arms holding rifles while the others carried other devices. They were herding smaller forms, the humans who were being rounded up for interrogation and eventual butchering. Most of the humans moved along meekly, their faces showing the shock of the situation. The ones we’ve captured said their empire has not suffered a major defeat to another species in hundreds of years. Had never lost a war. And now all of that is about the change.

  The Great Admiral looked over the architecture of the city, surprised at some of the forms he was seeing. Though behind his empire in technology (though not as much as his side had figured) the monkeys still had very creative and innovative minds . Innovative enough to defeat his Empire? He didn’t think so. But then the force he had fought had scared the hell out of him.

  Something moved on the screen, and the view swept out to some smaller figures in hard battlesuits, firing their weapons at his own ground forces. One of the horned figures went down, then another, while beam weapons, visible in the smoke and dust, sought out the human soldiers. There were several explosions and the humans went down, the ground troops swarming toward them to get the bodies for the larder. As a half dozen Ca’cadassian troops stepped over the humans some planted charges ignited, blasting the half dozen soldiers away.

  “Damn,” screamed the task force commander. “They have to stop thinking of these humans as helpless prey. They’re predators, and damned successful ones at that.” He saw someone entering the chamber out of the corner of an eye and turned to see a courier, dropping to one knee with his fist to chest in a salute.

  “Yes,” he said to the spacer as he walked over.

  “We have important news, Lord,” said the messenger, continuing to look at his feet as protocol demanded.

  “And what might that be?” he asked, glaring down at the messenger who shivered under the gaze. He growled a slight chuckle under his breath. Killing the messenger was not unheard of in his society, and most messengers didn’t know how their news would be received.

  “Several prisoners have revealed information on an important personage in the enemy fleet, my Lord,” said the messenger, holding a flimsy up for the Great admiral to take. “We have been informed that one of the officers of the fleet was a member of the royal family of this Empire. The son of the Emperor, in fact.”

  The Great admiral thought for a moment. It would be a real triumph for him to be able to hand the son of the enemy ruler over to the intelligence service. But…

  “Where is this son now?” he asked the messenger in a growl, feeling some satisfaction at the fear that was making the man’s limbs tremble.

  “As far as we can tell he was spirited from the system,” said the messenger in a
quavering voice.

  The Great admiral cursed and smacked one hand into the other. The messenger’s trembling increased, until it looked like the being would fall to the floor.

  “Go,” said the Great Admiral to the messenger, confirming that the man’s fate would not end in this room. “Tell my subcommanders to find this one, if they can.”

  “And if they can’t,” said the courier in a quavering voice.

  “Then I will hope that we have destroyed him already. And if not, what can the younger son of one noble accomplish? May he tremble in fear at what he has seen in this system.”

  Chapter Two

  One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic. Joseph Stalin.

  SESTIUS SYSTEM, MARCH 18TH, 1000.

  The earth had stopped rumbling under foot for almost fifteen minutes. Cornelius Walborski lifted his head above the edge of the trench he was dug into and looked out over the smoke and dust filled terrain. No rumbling meant no kinetic weapons dropped for a while, no sympathetic tremors, no balls of fire reaching into the air.

  “There they are,” came a voice over the com circuit.

  Cornelius looked up to see a trio of assault shuttles moving across the sky. Shuttles of an alien design, still under the constraints of the laws of physics and aerodynamics. Cornelius felt the sick center of fear in his guts as he watched them heading for the main landing field in the city of Frederick, not twenty kilometers from his position. Fear for himself, having to face whatever those shuttles contained with outdated equipment. Fear for his wife and unborn child, hiding out in the shelter under his house. Shelter that seemed very inadequate while facing an invasion of who knew what.

  An autocannon opened up nearby, its swift burping sound cutting through the air. A moment later a couple of missiles swooshed from the antiaircraft vehicle that was hidden from the eye. The missiles climbed toward the shuttles while the cannon continued to fire.