“Should we start the process, my Lord?” asked Admiral Trostara, Mrastaran's chief of staff.
“Not yet,” said the Great Admiral, a troubled look on his face. When he gave the order the system, and every living thing in it, was doomed. He couldn't bring himself to give that order just yet. He told himself it was because he wanted the enemy to push more ships into the trap, but he wasn't sure that was the true reason.
“We will watch the enemy when the light image of their arrival comes at us. Once I am sure there are enough ships in the trap to make it worth our while, I will give the order.”
“But, the Emperor has demanded that we destroy them,” said a stammering chief of staff.
“And so we shall,” said Mrastaran, arising from his seat and clapping the other male on the shoulder. “As his Supreme Lord commands.”
He still didn't know where the rest of the fleet was. There had to be more ships, and those ships would have the majority of the wormholes. Right now it was a stalemate out here. He didn't have a target to launch toward. But neither did they. Or at least he hoped so. He had been moving his ships at slow acceleration, after all. They could have streams of missiles traveling his way at high relativistic speeds and he wouldn't know it until they were less than a minute from contact with his outer screens. Those screens were deployed five light minutes out, which should give his main force, the ships that mattered, a good long warning that they had trouble coming.
Of course the enemy had to know that he had screening ships, and with that warning he would simply jump into hyper and avoid all of their weapons. Anything he fired at them would be just as useless. Except it would give him their location, and he could force a hyperspace battle that they couldn't win.
“Commander inner task force reports that all is ready, my Lord,” called back one of the com officers. “He anxiously awaits you command to start the process going and destroy the enemy fleet.”
And why is he so anxious to give up his life? thought the great admiral. It was another insane tradition of his people, that the father went to his death so his sons could advance. When the philosopher that was this admiral thought it would be much better for those sons to have their father around.
“He can wait a little longer,” said Mrastaran, looking into the face of the com officer. “When the time is right, he can make his and his males' sacrifice.
“Keep looking for those other ships,” growled the admiral, looking around his bridge, making eye contact with every male. “If we don't get those wormholes, this will be a hollow victory.”
“What if they have them near the planet?” asked the chief of staff. “I know they couldn't have brought them with them through the gates, but maybe they had them aboard their stealth ships all the time.”
“A possibility,” agreed Mrastaran, turning toward the other admiral. “But I don't think so. She wouldn't have brought all of her wormholes into the trap, where they couldn't do anything but be destroyed.”
“A female,” scoffed Trostara, giving a head motion of negation. “Who knows what goes through her head?”
And our people continue to underestimate the females of the enemy, thought Mrastaran, returning a negative head motion, though not in agreement with the other officer.
* * *
They had not caught sight of an enemy soldier in hours. Captain Xferd Canara did not think that a good sign. There were still deep shelters on the planet, though the damned Cacas had used nuclear demolition charges to seal most of them up. From what he understood about what was planned by the enemy, they would probably be able to ride out the storm down there, while dooming the few Plesians who might have been able to survive in the shelters. The bastards.
“Well, we know Admiral Bednarczyk is up there in orbit,” the officer told his gathered men, along with some hundred of the Plesian guerrillas. “So she must have something planned. A leader like that is not one to commit suicide.”
“We hope,” said one of the Klavarta warriors, sparking some laughs.
“So, what do we do, sir?” asked another of his long time troopers.
“We dig in near the entrances to the shelters the big bastards went into,” he said, a tight smile on his face. “And we rig charges to bury them when they try to come out. It's the least we can do.”
“And if the admiral doesn't prevent the nova event?” asked one of the Plesians, one of the few who could speak the modified Anglo that was the official language of New Earth.
“Then we set off the charges before we are hit by the photon wave,” said Canara, letting out a breath. “Let them dig their way out, if they can.”
Canara was hoping it didn't come to that. That the human admiral could prevent the detonation. From what he understood, if she couldn't, they would be hit with a photon wave, massive amounts of light particles that would fry everything on the surface of the planet, at least what was facing the star. Following some time behind would be masses of particles, traveling fast enough to be considered hard radiation. Everything not deep underground, or under water, would be fried.
Even if she stopped the event, as he had come to think of it, as if it were some kind of celebration, she would still be facing the Caca fleet. She hadn't been able to defeat them the last time around, though as he understood it she had fought a brilliant hit and run campaign that had hurt the Cacas with little loss to her own force. Could she do it again? And would it be enough to drive the big bastards out of this system for good?
Hell, I'm just a ground pounder, thought the warrior with a huff. If he had been meant to understand space warfare he would have been born an Alpha, after all.
“Let's get to it,” he ordered after one last look around at the lush foliage that might soon be crisped vegetation. “I wouldn't want our guests to come poking their noses from underground and think we forgot about them.”
* * *
“All of the capital ships are through, ma'am,” said Captain Janssen, getting up from his chair and heading toward the plot.
Except for Mara's small allotment of the battle cruisers still in the outer system, everything heavier than a cruiser was with her. With six wormholes, none configured as a launch port.
“Get everyone into position as soon as possible,” she ordered, taking a look at the the wormholes on the plot. They were starting to turn now, getting into the positions she needed them to be in for the plan to work.
The portals themselves massed next to nothing, being rips in space with no material substance. The frames that held them open were more massive than they looked, containing huge quantities of high density superconductors and micro-circuitry, as well as thick supermetal alloys holding it all together. They had many grabber units, enough to move them, but not at any high rate of acceleration. No one had ever thought that to be a need. Maybe in the future. When operated in hyperspace, something they were not often called on to do, they had to be linked in with surrounding warships to take advantage of their hyperfields. A self contained wormhole gate able to operate in hyper was also in the works, but the R and D mavens couldn't say when it would be available.
Other objects were still transiting in a delicate operation that threaten to end in disaster at any moment. Advanced computers controlled a process that no organic mind could keep up with. Large and bulky objects moved through, grabbed immediately by heavy tugs that were about twice the mass of a heavy cruiser. Once the components were gathered at an assembly area piloted construction rigs were called on to assemble something this space had never seen. Of course that process was also controlled by computers, but the Man-in-Loop law mandated organic supervision of such powerful machines.
This has got to work, thought Beata, closing her eyes and taking in a deep breath. There were so many resources gathered here, her ships being the least of them. If disaster struck and all of this was destroyed the Empire would go on, but it would amount to a major setback to the war effort.
“Are we tracking anything heading for us?” she asked, more out of a
nxiety than anything else. She felt foolish as soon was she asked that question. Of course she had tens of thousands of eyes watching the plots of thousands of ships. If anything made the slightest blip on the graviton sensors she would know within seconds.
“Nothing, Admiral,” said Janssen, shaking his head. “Of course, they could have a hundred thousand missiles launched from their own wormholes winging their way to us, and we wouldn't know until just before they made their attack runs.”
“Thank you, Captain. Just what I needed to hear.”
Janssen was doing his job, but sometimes the admiral wished her people didn't have to be so literal. She knew that the enemy had wormholes, and if they had shown no sign on any front of having duplicated the launch accelerators of the Empire, they had proven capable of sending tens of thousands of missiles through those gates. They used up most of their battery power on the other side of the gate accelerating up to speed, but retained sufficient energy to make final maneuvers at the end of their runs. Not as efficient as the missiles of the humans, which retained all of the energy in their crystal matrix batteries, allowing them to make major course adjustments if necessary. Still, the Caca weapons were dangerous enough, and a couple of hundred thousand popping up at the wrong moment could doom the operation before it ever truly got under way.
The whole plan was based on observations of technology from aliens who were millennia more advanced than any of the current combatants. One of several forms of what were called ancients, they could do things with gravity that the Empire's scientists could only dream of. Yes, they had artificial gravity, inertial compensators, grabbers, all using the manipulation of gravitons, and all requiring massive expenditures of energy. The ancients that had attacked the Donut some time past had used a graviton based force shield that had protected them from most of what the defenses could throw at them. They also used a power source far beyond anything the humans possessed, at least in its compactness. Only overwhelming firepower from the most heavily defended installation in the Empire, along with the intervention of a human aboard the alien ship, had saved the enormous station.
That human had survived, ejected in a life pod by the aliens before their ship impacted the black hole, something even their technology couldn't protect them from. The man, Commander Xavier Jackson, had given the Imperial scientists much to contemplate, including how the aliens used zero point energy, a source of almost unimaginable power. And some way far beyond the science of the humans. Jackson was a trained fleet engineer, but it was doubtful that even the most brilliant scientist in human history would have been able to duplicate what they saw aboard that ship. Still, Jackson had given them information that started them on the search for the fabled zero point energy. And a working force field that could actually stop all material and energy sent into it.
They had also gleaned information from the ancients who had saved the Klassekian home-world by transiting the entire planet into another dimension. Another use of unimaginable power, something the humans couldn't contemplate doing for many centuries, at the very least, probably millennia. Teams had been working on the huge constructs the ancients had woven into the very fabric of Klassek. So far with no results. The damned things were all but invulnerable, and the one human ship, a battle cruiser, that fired into it with lasers had been transported into the same dimension the planet had been sent into. Fortunately for it and its crew, they had been able to come back with the returning planet. No one was willing to risk going into a shadow dimension with the possibility of no return, so progress had stalled out there.
Hopefully, what they had learned would be enough to protect this planet from a nova. A Supernova? Most scientists discounted that hope, stating that a supernova was too powerful for anything to stop. But given the energy that could be tapped from the zero point? Maybe, but that fabled tech was something that wouldn't benefit anyone in this situation. So they went with what they had, on a wing and a prayer.
“Admiral Chin is estimating they will have everything up and running within three hours,” said Janssen.
“Get me Chin on the com,” ordered Bednarczyk. She knew the man really didn't need her bothering him at this moment, but she couldn't help herself.
“Admiral,” said the Asian man who appeared on the com holo. “I'm kind of busy at the moment, ma'am.”
“Just tell me you will have this thing ready on time,” she said. “And that it will work?”
“I can do neither of those things, Admiral,” said the engineer. “I can tell you that it will work in theory, and that we will do our very best to make it happen. And that I my butt will be on the line along with the rest of you. If it doesn't work, I'm fried along with you.”
“I really wish you could lie,” said Beata with a tight smile. “It would have made me feel much better.”
“Sorry, ma'am.” said the man with a return smile. “I didn't get my reputation in the fleet by telling people what they wanted to hear.”
Which was one of the reasons the man had risen to the rank of full admiral, four stars, before his one hundred and twentieth birthday. There was talk that he would take Chan's position when she retired. Beata, along with most of the other hierarchy of the Fleet, thought the only way Chuntoa Chan would leave her office was on a gurney. But that this man would continue to rise high was a given, unless he died in this system.
“It's my ass on the line too, ma'am,” continued the other admiral. “If I didn't have some confidence that this would work, you can believe that I wouldn't be here.”
Beata nodded. She had been briefed by the CNO, Sondra McCullom, on the position Chin was to hold. He didn't have to be here. He could have supervised from the other side of a wormhole, but the man had insisted that he needed to be on the spot, in case communications got fuzzy during the height of the operation. It was comforting to think that the engineer, who had never been a combat officer, rising through engineering, was willing to take such risks. Of course, not being a combat officer had little to do with courage, and Chin was obviously no coward.
“As far as getting it ready on time, I think we will beat the estimates by a good quarter hour,” said the engineer. “But don't quote me on that. We engineers have a reputation to uphold where it comes to timetables.”
“Then I'll leave you to it, Admiral,” said Beata, giving the man a nod.
“Thank you. And if I could ask you, please keep the Cacas off my ass.”
“No promises,” said the fleet commander, shaking her head. “Just remember that they will have to go through me to get to you. So, if we're going to die, we go together.”
“Comforting enough,” said Chin, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You've already garnered a reputation as someone who never gives up. Comforting enough.”
The com holo died, the engineer ignoring protocol for the superior to terminate the conversation. Beata huffed out a breath at the lack of decorum the lower ranking admiral had shown. Not that she was going to do anything about it. His type were often eccentric, and any complaint she raised about him would simply be ignored by people who knew better.
Still, she felt slightly better having talk with the engineer who would put all of this together. He might not be able to pull it off, but if anyone could, she was betting on him. Betting her life.
* * *
“That was the last group, my Lord,” reported Admiral Trostara, sitting in a situation room deep in the flagship where he could monitor every bit of the data coming in.
The Ca'cadasans had a total of ten wormholes with the fleet. Three of them connected back to the largest fleet base on this front, the rest to the center of the empire, where the missile launches would come from. They were getting real time feeds from the other battle groups, each of which had two of the holes.
At the moment all of the wormholes had been expanded into gates, and swarms of tens of thousands of missiles had transited each, on a heading toward Pleisia at point nine light. Maybe not as fast as the human weapons, not able to be taske
d on demand. Still, couple of hundred thousand weapons were sure to take the starch out of the humans, and more were being accelerated toward the portals as the two males were speaking. In twenty minutes another couple of hundred thousand weapons would be on their way through the wormhole gates and into this system.
“And now we wait and see,” said Mrastaran, looking at the plot, watching the take from the planet. The image he was seeing showed it as it was five hours before, transmitted through the wormhole carried by his closest scout force. He estimated that the humans would strike in another hour and a half. Or at least they would see what happened five hours before at that time stamp.
Even as fast as we travel, when space seems to be ours, it is still too vast to contemplate, thought the philosopher admiral. They took it for granted that space was theirs to do with as they pleased, and they were still crawling from place to place on the universal scale. The wormholes the humans had introduced had shrunk that immensity somewhat more. Or had it, really. Ships still had to move through hyper to bring wormholes to their destinations. It would still take decades to reach another galaxy, and those the closest. To reach the other side of the universe? It would take many Ca'cadasan generations to even penetrate half that distance. And while in a system they were still restricted by the speed of light.
So all he could do was wait. And fire swarms of missiles, hoping that there was an enemy on the other end for them to strike. He wasn't sure what they were doing, but if they were inserting a fleet into Pleisia orbit they had to have some kind of plan. They had seen this weapon used on the other front, and had to realize that it would be deployed to this front as well. He knew they were trying to save this planet. How? was the question. They couldn't evacuate the world. There weren't enough ships in their fleet to pull that off in a timely manner. Even if they put a number of wormhole gates on the surface they couldn't pump people through fast enough. What could they save in that way? Millions, tens of, maybe a hundred million. Out of a population of over four billion. A drop in the bucket, using one of the human terms.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 16: The Shield. Page 6
