“And so they told me as well, Madame President,” said Sean, taking another sip of coffee. He had only been in bed for a couple of hours when he had been awoken by the latest crisis within a crisis. He had already dealt with the revelation of the second invasion, shooting off orders, hopefully covering everything. Then it was to bed, tired from the flood of emotions the day had hit him with.
At least this one was worth getting up for, he thought with a slight smile on his face. Not that there was anything at all funny about this attack in force on two fronts. But he had become used to being awoke for any little thing on all of the fronts. And he was really tired, his brain flooded with the biological detritus of overwork. “They’re still your ships, and you can have them back on your command.”
“So we bring them back by portal,” said Graham, her eyes wide. She shrugged her shoulders and held her hands out. “And what about their wormholes? It kind of helps to have those wormholes, and the weapons they lead to. Without them my fleet is only half as effective as it could be. And we’re still outnumbered.”
“You still have your Crakista force, and they will be sending everything they can your way.”
“And what about all of those ships you have holed away for your offensive?”
For my offensive now, thought Sean, holding back a grimace. When they had formulated the offensive that was meant to smash the center of the Caca line and start the thrust into their space, Graham had been completely onboard. Everyone had been. But now that the Cacas had sprung a surprise on them, it was Sean’s plan. Of course it was.
“There is still a threat in the center,” replied the Emperor. “My intelligence analysts don’t think this is their entire force. Most of it, yes, but maybe a quarter of it is still off the screen. Maybe more. We have to be ready for them if they come at us through the center.” And that would be the way he would bet if he had been in their shoes.
Why worry about it? If I let those time travel people have their way, we could go back and strike their capital with a wormhole bomb before they even discover us. He shook his head at that thought. It was tempting, though if he understood the theory correctly, it would take years to set up that strike, while the attack ships went back in time in the other dimension. He could still lose most of his empire. And then again, what difference would that make, since after the strike everything would be set right again. Or would it?
It was enough to drive a sane man crazy, thinking of all the repercussions. People grew up with causality, knowing that effect flowed from cause. No way around it. When things happened they were set in stone, and there was no way around that. But there was, and regretting what happened was not the final recourse. Then there were the possibilities, the repercussions of changing the time stream. Legend said that the Ancients were done in by meddling with the timeline. Was that true, or simply legend, the stories and lies that followed any now extinct culture that left little in the way of records behind?
“If you wait to see if a possibly illusionary force is real, my nation will be destroyed by those genocidal sons-of-bitchs. You lose my people and all our industry. Is that what you want, Sean? Because that is what you’re going to get. I think that’s what the empire has always wanted, ever since we gained our independence from you monarchist assholes.”
Sean stared at the woman. He wasn’t angry at her rant, and at the things she had accused him of, the names she had called the people of the empire. No, he was more concerned that she was losing it in a stressful situation, at a time when all leaders needed to remain calm.
“Look, Julia. I understand you’re frightened. I would be too in your situation. But I need you, we need you, to stay calm and fight your battle to the best of your ability. We will get more ships to you. I guarantee it. But you have to hold on to what you have until we can get there.”
“Okay, your Majesty. We’ll do our part. Now you better damned well do yours, or you will end up fighting this war without us.”
The holo blanked, leaving Sean alone with his own thoughts. He pulled up a holographic map of the front, shaking his head. He thought they would win this fight. He still had the ships and the wormholes, and they were about to unleash some new tech on the Cacas that would take them by surprise. He thought they would win, but the death and destruction to his people and his empire would be incalculable. They might even lose core worlds before this campaign was over.
Sean looked at the map for another couple of seconds, then killed the holo. He had almost come up with a decision, but he needed to talk with his wife about this. He needed counsel, but he didn’t need his thoughts spread to far among his staff. Jennifer was someone he trusted, and she had good common sense. She also knew about the possibility of the time strike, at least a little bit. If anyone could tell him that what he was thinking about was the wrong way to go, it would be her.
“I’ll be in my private quarters,” he told his detail over the com before walking out of the office. “Only disturb me if it’s something that will shake the Galaxy to its foundations. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the loop in an hour.”
* * *
DONUT SPACE. MAY 8TH, 1003.
“The nexus is approaching,” said one of the Ancients in the ship’s control room.
Jackson sat in the seat they had placed in the chamber for him, looking at their tactical plot, which displayed a hell of a lot more information than any he had ever seen aboard an Imperial ship. It gave every vector arrow along with exact tonnage figures. Even objects that weren’t moving were pinpointed, though Jackson wasn’t sure how, since many of them weren’t giving off any kind of emission.
“And many of their ships are evacuating through their wormhole gates,” said another.
Something is going on. Has to be the Cacas, and ships that were here to defend the Donut are needed elsewhere.
“Now is the time to move forward, before it is too late,” said Klorasoft.
Jackson was not sure what position his Ancient friend occupied in the command structure. He was not the commander of the vessel, but when he spoke his fellows listened.
“We can get there in eighty-seven hours,” said one of the Ancients manning a control board. “With absolute certainty that we will be detected. Or, we can arrive at our original schedule with very little chance of detection.”
“And the nexus will occur at just about that time. Do we dare take that chance?”
“From the method we have determined they are using,” said Klorasoft, “it will not really matter if they have started or not. The other end of the wormhole will only have moved a couple of hours into the past, at most, and the end anchored in our time will still be on the target.”
The target. That term sent chills up the back of the human. They were talking about the most important asset in the Empire, one with tens of millions of people aboard. And they were planning to blast it out of space. Maybe they wouldn’t destroy the whole thing, but if they cut it in pieces, some of those parts would fall into the black hole, which would kill those people just as much as if they had been blown out into space, their bodies shredded. Or even worse.
Jackson had a talk with a minister one time who had warned about playing around near event horizons. The man had believed that the entire person was sucked into the hole, body and soul, and that the soul was then doomed to never be united with God. He wasn’t sure how much of that he believed, since the preacher had no proof to back up his theory. But then he had no proof of heaven and hell, or God. And Jackson still believed in those.
“We must close to less than ten light seconds on the structure to be sure of a kill,” said the Ancient who was the ship commander, and one of their highest ranked council members as well. “Anything further and we cannot guarantee enough force to separate the halves.”
“What kind of weapons do you use?” asked Jackson, looking over at the only Ancient he felt even halfway comfortable with.
“We use lasers, but it has been determined that it would take too long to cut thro
ugh the entire ring,” said that being, Klorasoft, swiveling his body so he was facing toward Jackson. “So we will use conversion beams.”
And what in the hell are those? thought the human, though he had a general idea. Total conversion was a dream of the engineers, and had been for centuries. Unfortunately, it was still nothing but a dream, and it didn’t look like it would become reality anytime soon. If the Ancients had it, and why wouldn’t they, it was something that Jackson would love to get off this ship.
Who am I kidding. The commander wanted to shake his head, but stopped in the middle of the first motion. It wouldn’t do for the Ancients to know what he was thinking. That might raise their suspicions. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he was going to do something, no matter the cost. Jackson did not want to die, but he couldn’t just stand by while these beings destroyed the most important asset in the empire.
“Take us in on the most stealthy profile possible,” said the Ancient who commanded. “We must be successful. This is our last chance to save the timeline.”
* * *
Sean once again sat at the head of the long table, in a room he had become very familiar with. To his right sat his chief of naval operations, Sondra McCullom, to his left his chief of combined intelligence, Ekaterina Sergiov. Sitting to Sergiov’s left was Rear Admiral Mary Innocent, Sean’s personal intelligence officer. Also in the room were Field Marshal Betty Parker, the commandant of the Imperial Marine Corps, and Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the Imperial Army Chief of Staff. The two ground pounders looked out of place at the meeting, and so they were, since what the military brain trust had come to discuss was the largest space offensive the Empire had ever faced.
Attending by distance were the two best battle commanders in the Fleet, Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis Mgonda and Grand Fleet Admiral Gabriel Len Lenkowski. Both were represented by near perfect holograms occupying their seats, only detectable from the real thing by the slight shimmer, and the fact that solid objects would pass through them. The duke was actually on his flagship on the Fenri front, while Len was at his headquarters base at the central front. The director of Fleet R&D, Admiral Chuntao Chan, was also attending by holo. It was hoped she would be able to pull something out of her ass that would change the tactical situation. Since Sean knew everything her department was working on, he doubted there would be any new revelations, but her active mind might be able to find something.
Over the table was a holo of the Empire and surroundings, including the Fenri Empire, the Republic of New Terra, and the Kingdom of New Moscow. Angry arrows poked into the Fenri Empire and the Republic, a trio in each. Neither had penetrated very far. At their current rate of advance it would take over two weeks to plow through the Republic, a little over a month to get through the former Fenri space. If they went full bore they could probably cut a third off of that time, but fleets couldn’t move through space like that. They had to scout ahead, making sure there was nothing laying a trap for them, protectimg their supply convoys. One big battle could drain the missile magazines on an entire fleet, and then they would need colliers to bring up new loads.
“What do we know about their supply lines?” asked Sean, looking over at Sergiov.
“As far as we can tell, your Majesty, they are keeping their supply ships right up and tucked in tight behind their front-line units. It’s going to be hard to hit them, unless we can get them to separate. And even then, they will have scouts all over the place. I don’t know if it will be possible to sneak anything in behind them.”
“Admiral Chan?”
“I can think of some possibilities, your Majesty,” said the tiny woman. “Not surety in any sense, but we might be able to get some ships in behind them.”
Sean nodded as he looked at the total front, which stretched over five thousand light years from end to end. The Fenri Empire was about two thousand light years wide, and the enemy would have to penetrate over two thousand light years of space before they reached his empire. The Republic was about a thousand light years in width, and had a thickness of just under a thousand light years. There wasn’t as much distance there, but it was heavily fortified and industrialized, and would take more than a quick fly through to take. And then there was his part of the front, much farther back from the open space around New Moscow, but still covering about fifteen hundred light years.
“Ekaterina. Any word from your infiltrators on whether the Cacas have any more ships to throw into the attack?”
Of course they had more ships, a lot more of them. But they also had a very large empire, and it took time to gather everything. That was if they could afford to take all of the ships they had covering their very large, heavily populated slave nation off of their regular patrols and pacification duties.
“They probably have a third fleet out there, your Majesty,” said the intelligence officer. “Sonia says that the contact has been informed that there will be a third attack somewhere along the front. But Striped Wolf doesn’t know where or when it will happen.”
Striped Wolf was a Maurid operative, a member of a very strong, very intelligent slave race used by the Cacas for assault and infiltration, as well as intelligence. The Maurids had been given a great deal of freedom in the Ca’cadasan hierarchy, which made them wish for real freedom all the more. And they saw humans as the best chance to gain that freedom. Sonia Rupert had once been in charge of Sean’s protection detail, but had transferred over to local intelligence after an incident in which the Emperor had put himself at risk against her advice. The Maurid operative had just happened to approach her first, so now she was the contact person with their underground. The main problem with that source of intelligence was it was so damned far from the halls of power where the decisions were made, and often couldn’t deliver useful information until it was almost too late.
“I’m betting they come up the middle, your Majesty,” said Admiral Lenkowski, staring at the holo. Or his image seemed to, though he was actually looking at a duplicate in his location. “They’ll wait until we pull forces away from our center to reinforce the flanks, then come bursting into our space.”
“I agree,” said Duke Taelis, taking his pipe out of his mouth, smoke flowing at his words and disappearing as it left the visual field of his projected image. “Not saying that they won’t reinforce the most successful flank, but to my way of thinking it would be the smarter play to hit us where we aren’t, then come rolling into our industrial core before we can react.”
As he spoke the holo lit up, showing what he thought the Cacas would do. To Sean it looked like the smart strategy, at least against someone who couldn’t move ships around as fast as his Fleet could. But could they move them fast enough, even with the wormholes?
“Okay. So what if we move the bulk of our forces to one of the flanks, then overwhelm the Cacas at that point, before shifting them back to the other flank? How many days would you need to defeat one of their fleets?”
Lenkowski looked over at Mgonda for a moment. The other admiral nodded, and Len looked back at his Emperor. “It would probably take a couple of weeks of maneuver to beat them, sir. Maybe three. And that only if we have overwhelming force.”
Sean looked at the holo and sent a command through his implant to show where the Cacas would be in three weeks if not stopped. The forces pushing through the Republic had cut all the way through and were in Sector V. The invading fleet in Fenri was still only halfway through that Empire, and well away from Sectors III and IV, where they would eventually emerge.
“We need to stop them in the Republic first, or else we might lose it.”
“Kind of a shitty thing to do to the Fenri slaves, your Majesty,” said Len, putting down his holographic cup of coffee.
“Yes, it is,” said Sean with a grimace, reaching for his own very solid cup. “We promised them liberation when we moved in, but dammit, the people of the Republic are related to us. And they are a vital ally in this fight. I can’t lose them. Len, I want you in the Republic
as fast as you can hop through the wormhole network. We’ll funnel as many ships to you as we can, but you’ll have to make do with the wormholes you have there, for now.”
“And who will be in overall command?” drawled Len, his eyes narrowing. “Julia has her own people, and so do the Crakista who will be fighting with us.”
“You will have overall command. If Julia or the lizards balk at that I’ll have to talk some sense into them. We’ll also give you as many of the inertialess fighters and the new warp ships as we can. They can go through the wormholes without a problem. If we can get you more wormholes, we will, but you know the problem we have where they are concerned.”
Len nodded. Everyone knew what problems they had moving wormholes. A wormhole would only go through a wormhole with catastrophic consequences. Sometimes those consequences were desired, but most often they were not.
“Can you stop them here? And here?” The holo lit up with two industrialized star systems that were in the paths of the Caca spearheads.
“I don’t think so, your Majesty. What I would like to do is to set a trap for them, here and here.” The two star systems the cagy fleet commander picked were about forty-five light years further in. “If we could get three or four gates set up there before they arrive, I think I can arrange a surprise they won’t forget.”
“Why so many?” asked McCullom, leaning forward in her seat. “You can gate a lot of ships through one.”
“Not in the time I will have,” answered Len. “At most I can get twelve hundred vessels through one in the allotted time. I need a lot more ships than that.”
“We’ll see what we can do,” said Sean, looking over at McCullom. “Get on the com to Graham as soon as we are done here. We’re going to have to borrow most of her wormholes. Then get the gate assemblies ready to go.
“But before you go, how are we set on ships we can send forward?”
Time Strike Page 4
