Time Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  “What do we have left?”

  “Four volleys, my Lord.”

  “Then launch them at the main enemy force.” It was apparent that he was not going to get his force out of here. That had always been a risk. The other part of his mission had been to cause as many casualties as possible to the enemy force. He wouldn’t take as many of them with him as he had planned. But he would maybe take enough out that they wouldn’t have the forces left to stop the center attack. Which should be coming in several weeks. He wouldn’t be there to see that victory, but he hoped his death would at least make it possible.

  * * *

  “I am truly sorry, your Majesty,” said Lenkowski to the man in the com holo.

  “Nothing to be sorry about, Admiral. We knew going into that battle that it was going to be a bloodbath.”

  “But, all of the allied ships?”

  “I have been in contact with both the Elysium and Crakista governments, Len,” said Sean in a calm voice. “And while they are not happy about their losses, there were no recriminations. They know that you would not have put their forces at any more risk than your own.”

  Len had stared in horror at the losses that the battle had caused. He had lost over ten thousand ships, more than ten million crew. Ten million families in four star nations had lost people. The Cacas had lost many more ships, and probably many more of their male warriors. For some reason loss ratios did not seem to matter. He really didn’t care that he had sent more of the enemy to their hell than he had lost.

  The Crakista fleet had lost over forty percent of their ships and crews. Elysium had lost even a higher percentage of the ships they had contributed to his fleet. The Republic hadn’t lost as many, but they had been harder hit than the Imperial fleet, which had still lost over a thousand ships. He didn’t know everyone who had been lost, but he had known many of the task force and group commanders who were no longer with them, and many of the captains of his own empire’s ships. They had known what they were getting themselves into when they had joined up, which still didn’t make it any easier that they had gone toward the guns at his command.

  “Are you okay, Admiral?”

  “I’m, not sure, your Majesty.”

  “We still need you, Len. You and your fleet. We have another incursion to fight, and possibly another one after that. We’re gathering more ships over at Mgonda’s front. I won’t need you or all of your fleet there. But intelligence thinks there is another Caca force out there that will be striking, probably in our center, and probably very soon. I’m going to need your fleet there, ready to fight.”

  “I will be there, your Majesty.” He would follow orders, and try to do whatever his Empire needed of him. But he wasn’t sure if his heart would be in it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sometimes I wish that I could go into a time machine right now and just look at my self and say, 'Calm down. Things are gonna be fine. Things are gonna be all great. Just relax.' Tristan Wilds

  IMPERIAL CENTER.

  “Good job, Admiral. Now you can take a break,” said Sean, looking out of the holo at Lenkowski.

  It was the day after the battle, and Len had gotten some rest. Not enough, and his sleep had been haunted by dreams of dying people. Many of the crew had not gotten that rest, as there were ships to move through wormhole gates, and the priorities of the fleet came first.

  But not all of my people can take a break, can they, your Majesty? thought the frowning officer. Some of his ships and crews had been through five major battles in the last three weeks. Not all of those were going through the wormholes to Mgonda’s front, but many were. They had won those battles, a shot in the arm for morale. But they had taken heavy losses. Many had been at sensor stations or looking at plots while friendly ships disappeared. Some had been aboard ships that had been damaged in battle, maybe seeing a crewmate blow apart or crushed. Millions of crew, all with their own traumas, without the time to process them before they were sent back into battle.

  He wanted to shout that at the Emperor. But from the strained look on Sean’s face, it looked like the young man was dealing with all he could handle, and he didn’t want to add to it. Len could ask to go along with his redeployed ships, but that Front was Mgonda’s. The other admiral had also been fighting his own kind of war, a delaying action, hit and run. His ships and crews would also be worn down, as would be their commander. They deserved to go on the offensive under the commander they had been fighting for. And Lenkowski would organize the center for the offensive they were sure was going to fall there.

  “Twelfth fleet will be arriving on your positions in the next couple of days,” continued Sean. “Hopefully nothing will come through before then.”

  “If they do, we’ll just have to fight a delaying action and see what opportunities they give us, your Majesty.” The arriving fleet, along with the ships already in place and the one third of his original force he was bringing with him would give him a much stronger force than he had wielded in the Republic. Along with them would come another three thousand Crakista ships, most new construction, and fifty wormholes of their own. There were already three hundred wormholes on the front, and the fleet would be bringing another three hundred with them, including those given to the Crakista.

  “Too bad we can’t send wormholes through wormholes, huh,” said Sean, as if reading his thoughts. “We keep experimenting. And just when we think we might have the answer, the next trial shows that the last was just a fluke.”

  Len had left almost five hundred wormholes behind in the Republic. Not that they would go to waste. The Republic fleet that had remained behind would put them to good use. But he would put them to better use if the Cacas stuck their noses into the empire at this point.

  “At least we can move ships from place to place as fast as we want,” continued Sean.

  That was not really true. They could send a ship from place to place instantaneously. One at a time. It took time to queue the ships up and move them through. It would take almost two days to move the ships he was sending to Mgonda through the wormhole gates. The ones he had kept would not finish reaching him until tomorrow. And then there were the repair and replenishment ships that would be coming through from the center of the Empire. Some of his ships were barely battleworthy, and most were low on antimatter and almost dry on missiles. Until those deficits were corrected they were little more than targets.

  “And how are you doing, your Majesty?”

  “Why do you ask?” replied Sean, a strange look in his eye. “It’s not as if I have anything to worry me, with men like you and the Duke running the war.”

  “And I know that’s a lie, sir. Remember, I was the CNO before this mess kicked off. I know what goes into keeping a fleet running, and all the political bull that goes into that. And that was during peacetime. Plus, all the personal garbage that must be coming at you because you are at the top.”

  Sean put his face in his hand and rubbed his forehead. When he looked back up Len could see the exhaustion in his monarch’s face. The boy is really getting hammered. I hope it isn’t affecting his decision making. That would be a disaster. There was no one in the empire who had the power of this one young man. If he went completely off the wall and started making crazy decisions, mad demands, the rest of the government would move in and depose him, putting a relative in his place as regent until the heir came of age. And it would take months, if not years, before everything settled back into the efficient government machine that was currently churning away. And in the middle of a war like this, they couldn’t afford that.

  “I’ll make it, Admiral. Sure, the pressure is something I couldn’t imagine as a serving officer. But you and your people are also under a lot of pressure.” Sean looked off the holo for a moment and nodded, then back at his admiral. “And it won’t do us any good to get into a contest as to who is under more stress. We both have what we have, and we have to deal with it, correct. The Empire depends on us. And now, I need to go. Admiral, again
I have to tell you how much we appreciate what you have accomplished. Now get ready to do it again.”

  The holo died, leaving Len a moment for his own thoughts. He had seen the signs of impending breakdown in other people. Hell, he had seen the signs in himself, and still wasn’t sure how he had avoided his last one. And the boy looked like he was about to break. And until he did, there was nothing he could do about it.

  I need to talk with Taelis, he thought, sending an order through his implant into the com system. He wasn’t sure what good it would do, but it would make him feel better.

  “Duke Taelis acknowledges your contact,” came the voice of a com officer over the link. “He is speaking with the Emperor right now, and will contact you as soon as he is free.”

  Good, thought Len. Taelis would hopefully see for himself what was going on. Then they could talk about…what? A coup? That would take more than two admirals, no matter how senior. He shivered at that thought. This was something he had never thought he might get involved in, and he still wasn’t sure if he could go through with it if it became necessary. But if he and the senior officers didn’t, who would? And if they didn’t, and Sean did break down, what would happen to the empire, and the human species?

  * * *

  Sean sat behind his desk in his temporary office, face in his hands. He wondered why he was putting up with the stress. After all, he was going to go ahead with the time strike, and none of this would ever have happened. So it made no sense to keep pushing himself over something that didn’t matter. If it works, he thought, looking up and taking in his office, similar to the one he had occupied at the palace, the one that would be his again in another couple of months, when the personal wing of the structure was repaired. If the time strike works. One of the conjectures about time travel was that everything that could go wrong would, and no matter how hard they tried the past would remain inviolate.

  Then how did they get my son back? he thought, rubbing a hand through his hair. They had altered the past, with no consequences. But that had been one little change. What they were proposing was a big one. And if it didn’t work, the problems facing the Empire now would still be here, and ignoring them now would snowball into even greater problems.

  The Emperor put his face back in his hands, shaking his head slowly from side to side. Something soft and warm bumped its head against his hands, and he looked up to see a small silky creature looking back at him with big blue eyes. The cat meowed, a plaintive request for attention.

  “I almost forgot about you, Killer,” he said in a soft voice, reaching out and stroking the silky fur. Killer had been a present to him from the Duchess Lei, the woman who had saved him from certain death. A pure-bred Himalayan, like all modern cats genetically superior to the originals who had shared home and hearth with humanity for thousands of years, he would live to forty standard years or more. By luck, or miracle, he had survived the strike on the palace, and had been relocated here with all the other survivors of the disaster.

  The cat purred deep in its body, pushing his head back into the pleasuring hand. Sean looked at the cat, all of his stress melting away for the moment, wishing he could be the cat for a day, an hour. The beast cared nothing for the complexities of the war. He cared about food, a warm place to lay, and attention. Sean lost himself in the moment, wishing it wouldn’t end.

  “Priority com for you, your Majesty,” came the call over his office com. “Admiral McCullom.”

  “Sorry, little buddy,” said Sean, trying to shoo the cat away. “Time for work.”

  Killer meowed, stepped forward, and landed in the Emperor’s lap, settling in. Sean put a hand on the animal and started kneading its fur. The cat wouldn’t distract him all that much.

  “What can I do for you, Sondra.”

  * * *

  “I want our forces moving before another day goes by,” said Mgonda, looking from face to face of the members of his staff. “I know,” he said, raising a hand to hold off the comments. “The bulk of our reinforcements won’t be here by then, but we already know where we want to hit them to get them moving where we want. We will hit them where they are weak, and let the rest of their forces react into our trap.”

  Taelis could see the understanding on the faces of most of his people. There was still some confusion, and he would have to make sure that those passing on the orders would be confident in what they were telling those below them.

  He had spent the last month fencing with this enemy, using his rapier against their two-handed sword. Now he had been given the hammer, and he was anxious to use it. The enemy was going to pay for what they had done in the former Fenri empire. He guaranteed it. He would beat them, destroy them, and send them running back into their own space. And then he would follow with one of the fleets that had been designated for future offensive operations.

  If we have the ships, and if I’m still around, thought the duke with a smile. He had come from a military family. His father had been an admiral, and so had his grandfather, great grandfather, and even the great great. All had been storied fleet officers. The great great had won the patent of nobility for his action against the Elysium fleet, a quick and dirty war that never should have started. He had won that patent and the duchy posthumously. Taelis’ father had also died in action, so the current duke knew the risk. Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, and all any man or woman could do was their best, to their last breath.

  Taelis was different from Lenkwoski. They had been friends since they were both junior officers. Len had been two years ahead of him on Peal Island. He knew that Len was a good commander, and had also always looked forward to testing himself in fleet command. But he didn’t relish being in combat, of sending others to die. Moganda got a true rush from battle, he was a warrior born. He wasn’t sure how much of that was due to genetics, though his family liked to say it was because they were descended from the warriors of old Africa. While some of those genes might have passed through the millennia, there had been too much mixing and matching for him to lend much credence to that theory. But no matter the source, Taelis had always felt drawn to conflict. While he had led everything from a weapons section on a single ship to a battle group, he had thought he was going to miss out on the ultimate command, fleet. This war had given him his chance, leading one wing of the fleet, a battle fleet in its own right. But this was the largest force he would have ever led.

  He had over forty thousand ships in his force. Twenty-five thousand Imperial ships, plus thousands from the four non-human allies. The Republic would not contribute to this operation, they were still busy cleaning up their own space. It was hoped they would have ships in the third and last defensive fleet, if the conjecture of intelligence was correct and there was a third enemy force out there waiting to strike.

  His force had almost a thousand wormholes. On paper that looked fantastic. The problem was, he wouldn’t be able to employ them all in any single action, and some were employed in specialty devices and operations such as gates on planets and heat sinks in stealth platforms. At most he would be able to employ four hundred in any one action, since they couldn’t put them through the gates. And there weren’t enough large weapons, preacceleration tubes and particle beam accelerators to service them all. That should still be enough, he thought. The enemy couldn’t have that many of the portals themselves. At most a couple of dozen in their entire sector force. And so far they hadn’t demonstrated any weapons systems such as the empire employed. From the reports of the actions in the Republic, they had used a makeshift system of sending missiles through in waves after accelerating them through space on the other side of the gate. That system had worked well enough for the humans in the past, before they had their own preacceleration tubes. The problem was they had to fire at a predetermined time, since the missiles had to start accelerating many hours before coming through the gate. The current human system could fire on command, at any time during the battle when targets presented themselves.

  Still, it was another com
plication, and evidence that the enemy was learning. They were catching up with the humans in many respects, or they would have if the humans were standing still. The thousands of new warp fighters he would command showed that such was not the case. They would no longer come as a surprise to the enemy, but they probably wouldn’t need the advantage of surprise. There seemed to be little the enemy could do about them, their only limitation being their numbers.

  The staff meeting convened in the flag conference room aboard Taelis’ ship right on time. Thanks to the ancient miracle of holography, the room seemed to stretch to three times its actual length, and the living simulations of scores of flag officers and primary assistants were seated in the virtual space. Taelis still felt a thrill when the space and the people appeared like magic. Only a short time before he would have had to send all the orders out by courier, and the replies would not get back in time to alter the plan. And any objections or suggestions the people on the spot had would be mere footnotes in history. Now they could voice objections and suggestions in time for them to have an effect, if the commander in chief thought they had merit.

  A holo of the Fenri front hung in the air over the table, all the major systems glowing brighter than the minors. Systems the enemy had already taken were red, those still in allied hands were green, while bright yellow marked those where battle was still going on the ground. Arrows marked the paths of the Caca forces. Like the battle in the Republic, there were three wide arrows tens of light years wide, with smaller tendrils within. The center was the widest, with the most tendrils denoting subformations. And all were now over three quarters of the way through the space of the defunct empire, all pointed toward the territory of Mgonda’s empire. If not for the efforts of his forces they would have already penetrated into friendly space.

  All those beings, thought Taelis, looking closely at the holo, individual stars zooming into his vision as he concentrated on them. One ballooned into his sight, facts and figures filling in around the planetary system now revealed. Those figures included population stats, broken down into separate species, and the numbers of Imperial troops versus Caca/Fenri forces engaged in battle. There were scores of planets where conventional troops under his command still fought, and hundreds where guerilla forces and some unconventional Imperial soldiers battled. He didn’t like the idea that his people were fighting under the guns of the enemy fleet. He liked it even less that the former slave species were fighting for their freedom, and dying so that the enemy was distracted.