Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

by Doug Dandridge

  “Well, my Lord, that is the business I wanted to talk to you about,” said Maldonado, showing his best political smile. “It would still take time to gather the support we would need. And don’t believe we won’t be able to. And still more time to gather information for a criminal investigation. But in the meantime there are bills the Emperor would like to see passed.”

  “Like funding Bolthole and Fleet expansion,” said Streeter, a scowl on his face.

  “Like funding Bolthole and Fleet expansion,” agreed the Grand Duke, nodding. “Some things I am sure you can agree would be for the good of the Empire, if not for your own purses.”

  “I would agree with no such thing,” said the PM, shaking his head and pointing his finger at the Grand Duke. “I do not see why I should agree to what looks like blackmail.”

  “Not blackmail,” said the Grand Duke, his smile widening. “Just political maneuvering. Something the two of you are quite familiar with. And I am sure that Purgatory is not all that appealing for someone of your status. Nor yours, Duke Streeter.”

  “And if we agree to help pass these bills, and I am sure the others that you will propose?” asked Streeter.

  “Then we will postpone making any waves,” said the Grand Duke, holding his hands open in supplication. “Then you can continue the session, then retire, let us say, for your health. As long as you promise to stay out of politics , and relinquish all control of defense related industries.”

  “And if I decide to challenge you on your investigation?” asked Jeraviki, glaring at the man.

  “Then you will lose, my Lord,” said the Grand Duke, returning the glare. “Make no mistake. We will win. But overall the Empire will lose. And that I would not wish to see, much as I would like to see the both of you serve time. But of course the decision is yours.”

  “I will have to consider your proposal, your Grace,” said the PM, glancing over at Streeter and noting the angry glare the man was giving the older Lord. And I’m sure you will not be succeeding me as PM either, Theo. I would be pissed too.

  “Don’t take too long to consider,” said the Grand Duke, getting up from his chair and bowing to both men. “I wouldn’t want to see your legacy ruined due to a vote of no confidence. Or much worse. Gentlemen.” The Grand Duke turned away and walked toward the door.

  “That bastard,” said Streeter as soon as the man left the room. “What are you going to do?”

  Nothing I can tell you about, thought the Count, wanting to run after the Grand Duke and strangle him. “I’ll think of something,” said the PM, his tone cutting off Streeter’s reply. “Now I need to go to my estate. I’ll call a meeting of the faction tomorrow, and we can talk over our options.”

  If we even have anything to worry about tomorrow, thought the PM, a smile on his face.

  * * *

  “Calm down Prime Minister,” said the man only known to others as the tall man, who knew himself as Agent One. “You should not be discussing this on a com link.”

  “The damned thing’s secure,” said the PM in a growling voice. “Don’t you think I know how to keep things secure on my end?”

  No, thought the agent provocateur who knew more about security than any other man in the capital. I don’t think you know shit. And you’re about to become a liability.

  “I want that motherfucker dead,” yelled the PM, his voice rising. “He threatened my power and I want him gone. You and your employers owe me that much at least.”

  “I will talk with you tomorrow,” said the agent, grimacing. “Where it’s more secure.”

  “Where?” asked Jereviki, his voice dropping to a whisper, as if that would prevent anyone from hearing him that might be listening in.

  No indication of that, thought the agent, who monitored such things. But he knew that monitoring didn’t always reveal who was listening. If he could do it, so could others.

  “I’ll meet with you when and where I want to,” said the agent, looking over at the screen that showed the Prime Minister pacing in his study. “As usual.”

  He could feel the fear in the man’s breathing, and relished that fear.

  “What about the scapegoat?” asked the PM, and the agent grimaced once again.

  “All is prepared,” said the agent, knowing that the liability would have to be removed before the fool made any more comments over the com link. “Now we need to stop talking about this. I will see you tomorrow. Out.”

  The agent cut the link and glared at the console for a moment. Everything was going so well, and if it continued to go well the plan would succeed, and the blame placed. And then a loose tongue would be taken care of.

  * * *

  The Room was not all that impressive once past the armed guards and the bunker thick door. It was bare except for the object in the center, and that was enough to attract all attention. The mirrored surface was perfect, reflecting back the forms of the observers. The supports, the frame of the mirror as it were, large thick lengths of metal, took up a good portion of the fifteen meter square room.

  “So that is a wormhole gate?” asked Anastasia, holding onto her husband’s arm.

  “That it is, your Majesty,” said the gate technician who was leading them to the portal.

  “And what holds the wormhole open?” asked the Empress, pointing at the mirrored surface. “I thought they closed on their own.”

  “That they do, your Majesty,” agreed the man with the smile of one used to answering questions from people he dared not show condescendence to. “Negative matter holds it open. And those large supports you see there are actually built around a U-shape of Superplatinum which develops a strong magnetic field to hold the charged negative matter in place.”

  “And it’s safe?”

  “We’ve sent hundreds through this gate alone,” said the tech, the smile pasted on his face. “And thousands through other wormholes. Everyone checked out as perfectly healthy.”

  “Just trust them, my dear,” said the Emperor, looking into the worried face of his wife. “I’ll step through first, OK.?” He looked back at his two sons and Dimetre’s wife. Dimetre and his spouse both looked excited, while Henry had the same nervous look on his face as the Empress. Just like his mother, and because of that not the best choice to run the Empire.

  “I will go first, your Majesty,” said the technician. “Then I will come back through so you can see for yourself that it is safe.”

  “No need, young man,” said Augustine, starting toward the portal.

  “I insist,” said the man, holding up his hands to motion the monarch to a halt, then turning and disappearing into the portal. It looked like he was walking into a solid mirror, until he had completely disappeared and the surface rippled for a couple of seconds. One of the security detail followed on his heels. It had just set to perfection again and he was coming back through, followed again by the security agent. “All is ready, your Majesty,” said the man, gesturing toward the portal.

  “Then let’s do it,” said Augustine, feeling some butterflies in his stomach despite knowing intellectually that there was no danger here. And I’m going to be asking millions of people to use these things in the near future, he thought. So I might as well start.

  And with that thought the Emperor strode through the mirror. He almost panicked for a moment as he lost all sensation in the first leg through, then remembered that he had been warned to expect that. He continued to walk through, with a feeling that he couldn’t stop himself if he wanted to. The wormhole was sucking him in, and no resistance he could offer would keep him from coming out the other side.

  And then he knew nothing. He was aware that he still existed, but all sensation was gone, and all thought. He came to awareness on the other side, in a room that was a bit more impressive than the one he left. A room filled with people. He recognized many of them, scientists he had talked to, and his own security personnel. The Emperor turned and caught the hand of his wife as she came through the mirror. He smiled at the relieved look
on her face, then turned back to the waiting people. Let’s get this show on the road.

  Chapter 3

  In our enlightened society there are very few crimes for which the penalty is death. Murder, whether a crime of passion or in cold blood, is not one of them. We can rehabilitate the mind of the murderer, or at worst wipe it clean and start over with a fresh personality. No, the only crime that deserves the death penalty is treason, causing damage to one’s own species or people for personal gain. And Regicide, which in many ways is the same thing. For what is more damaging to a species or a people that cutting off the head of the government?

  Justice Jonathon Kuamahu during the sentencing of the murderer of the Emperor Chung Ling Lee.

  "Welcome to the Donut, your Majesty," said the portly man, approaching the Emperor as he stepped from the portal.

  Augustine looked around the large chamber that had been transformed into a formal greeting room. Tables with cloth in the Imperial colors of gold and red stood near the walls, covered with bottles of wines and liquors, trays of delicacies and bowls of fresh fruits. Hundreds of scientists and technicians in their best dress clothing stood around the tables. A chamber orchestra toward the front of the room played the Emperor's march. Newsmen were kept to the fringes, their cameras hovering over the chamber, vying for the best shots and clips.

  The security people had come ahead through the wormhole, meeting up with their counterparts who were already on the station. They were hugging the walls and trying to blend into the crowd. Kind of a waste of manpower, thought the Emperor. After all, everyone in this room had been checked out as much as humanly possible.

  Augustine looked back at the wormhole portal as Dimetre and his wife came through. Except the shimmering edges of the portal where negative matter was held in a vacuum filled stasis field, it looked just like a doorway into another room. Which it was. Except that the next room was over forty light hours away. And it had taken the same amount of time to go that distance as it took to walk from the next room.

  The Dimetre offered his hand to his wife and gently pulled her away from the portal to walk to where the Emperor was standing. A moment later the spare came through on the heels of the heir.

  Prince Henry would probably never have any real power in the Empire, except for the minor power of his name. But he was a likable young man, who was probably as ill-suited to rule as anyone in the family. Augustine put an arm around Henry and walked toward the chief scientist, his hand out in the offer of a shake.

  "Good to be aboard, Dr. Baxter," said the Emperor, looking down at the ebony face that was filled with a wide smile. Not the first man to be in charge of the massive project, but his name would forever be linked to it as the man who had supervised its completion as a working industrial complex.

  “I believe you have communicated with Dr. Lucille Yu,” said the Director, turning to the tall blond woman at his side. She smiled levelly at the large man who was her Emperor.

  “A pleasure to meet you in person, Dr. Yu,” he said, taking her hand and brushing his lips across its back. “I would like to introduce my wife, the Empress Anastasia, and my sons, the Princes Dimetre and Henry.”

  “I would recognize them in a moment, your Majesty,” said Dr. Yu, extending a hand to each of the Imperials in turn. “They are on the V more often than the stars of cinema after all.

  “But I am taking up too much of your important time,” she said with a grin, gesturing to a small group of people to come forward. “I would like you to meet my team.”

  The Emperor made pleasantries with the scientists who had pulled off the greatest engineering project in the known universe, then allowed the Director to steer him and his family over to the refreshments, while the orchestra played background music. Augustine had to admit to himself that the food was first class, and they had a fine vintage of wine and good beer to go with it. Whatever they spent on the party is a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of this thing, he thought as he sipped wine and listened to Yu spout production figures for negative matter and how one of her scientists had figured out the problem with making enough of it. Scenes from the outside of the enormous station played in a holo tank and along wall screens. An infinitesimally thin ribbon it seemed until a couple of freighters and a heavy cruiser entered scenes and gave it a sense of scale.

  Without robotic factories and nanoprocessing, even with the need for human oversight, such a project would not have been possible. With robotics they had been able to match the industrial might of a dozen core worlds just to build this station. And the hoped for dividend was about to be realized.

  “Are you ready for a quick tour of the station, your Majesty?” said Baxter, the smell of alcohol on his breath.

  “Of course, Director,” answered Augustine. “I don’t think I have enough life span left for the complete tour. But the quick tour will do nicely.”

  The Emperor and his family were ushered from the room to a maglev tram that sat in a nearby room. The long train had several compartments with comfortable seats for dozens of passengers in each section. There were four seats to a row with a spacious walkway between pairs. The entire outer skin of the train was transparent, though the Emperor was sure it could turn opaque at a moment’s notice if subjected to a light amp attack. As the family took their seats, security personnel and station staff around them, the train began to move. Slowly at first, the conveyance accelerated smoothly as it built up velocity.

  “We will come first upon one of the many energy generating chambers,” said Director Baxter as the train moved down a long corridor, loading stations blurring by as the vehicle picked up speed. There was no feeling of acceleration as the tram’s inertial compensators kept everything at a steady one gravity to the floor.

  Suddenly the train shot out into an enormous chamber that seemed to go on forever. Augustine looked to the side and could make out the far wall, and four of the massive generator units reaching from the center out. Fiber cables the width of battleships stretched from floor to ceiling, while equally thick strands ran from unit clamp to unit clamp. The car shot past the ten kilometer wide units. A quick glimpse of the intervening kilometer and the next section of generators flashed by.

  “There are six hundred and forty generators in each thousand kilometer long strip,” said Baxter, an ecstatic look on his face. “Thirty two thousand units to a fifty thousand kilometer long block. Fifty blocks equal a million six hundred thousand units. Using the rotation energy of the hole to form a dynamo they can produce two point eight eight times ten to the twenty-seven joules of energy per second. When working flat out, that is.”

  Augustine noticed a flare of electric blue here and there around the passing generators. They were whizzing by too quickly to get a good feel for the energy, but he was sure they were quiescent at the moment.

  “Just how much energy is that?” asked Anastasia, looking at the other side of the passing chamber. “For us mere mortals that is.”

  “Imagine burning over ten thousand tons of antimatter every second,” said the Director, his face beaming as he proudly displayed his station. “More than the entire fleet uses at full battle readiness, for over an hour.”

  “That much to open a wormhole?” asked Henry, his eyes wide.

  “Much more than that,” said the Director as they passed through another room, then another. The tram speeded up to where the huge generators became a blur and the rooms passed faster. At the next to last of the fifty rooms of this block it began to decelerate. It passed into another room after fifty, this one filled with a different shaped unit as large as the generators.

  “Level four quantum crystal matrixes,” said the scientist as they flew through the room. “Enough on the station to hold the energy generated from hours of production. All released in an instant to form a wormhole.”

  “Impressive, Director,” said the Emperor. “It’s almost too much to comprehend. Too much to believe.”

  “But it is true, your Majesty,” said the scien
tist. “It is technology such as no one alive has seen. And it is ours to command.”

  The tram began to slow as it reached the end of a series of battery rooms. It lost velocity quickly and quietly, until it slid slowly into a room with a station and came to a smooth stop. The passengers left their seats as the doors to the tram opened and security fanned out, meeting with their compatriots who had already secured the stopping point.

  “We’ve traveled about sixty thousand kilometers from the chamber where you entered the Donut, your Majesty,” said the Director. “About two tenths of a percent of the circumference of the station.”

  “And the station is in orbit around the black hole?” asked the Empress, hanging onto her husband’s arm.

  “At about point five c angular velocity,” agreed the Director.

  “How does it handle the stress?”

  “Well, your Majesty,” said the man, moving toward a door that had opened on the side of the stop. “The station is made of superstrong carbon materials, as well as the most advanced alloys. And we have over forty-five million grabber units on the ring that are controlled by the central computer. They not only keep the orbit stable so we don’t end up wobbling into the hole. They also push and pull at critical moments to keep the stress on the ring from building to overwhelming levels.”

  “That must take a bit of energy,” said Augustine, as they walked into a large room that had groups of couches scattered about. A bar was open against one wall, tenders filling glasses with champagne, or waiting for orders.

  “Nothing compared to what the station is producing,” said the Director. “Even throttled back to almost nothing, like we are now.”

  “Dr. Baxter,” said Lucille Yu, coming up to the conversing group. “I’m afraid I have to excuse myself for a moment. Something has come up in negative matter production that I have to see to.”

  “Well,” said Baxter with a frown, “come back as soon as you can. We’ll be here for about a half hour, then head over to the nearest antimatter production center to look at that.”