Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.)

by Doug Dandridge

  In four days it would be Empire Day, the traditional New Year’s Day by the standard calendar that was used for Imperial business. Government functions would be closed for the day, all of the schools would be out, and the military parade would be held downtown. And I’ll miss this year’s, he thought. Jennifer and the babies would be the center of attraction, while he was off on a meeting with the leaders of Crakista and Elysium on the homeworld of the reptilian species, the first summit of all the major rulers since the war had engulfed them. He would be back soon, thanks to wormhole travel. That thought brought a moment of disquiet, not as powerful as a prophetic dream, but just a feeling that he needed to take care of business and get back here as soon as possible.

  Sean put the still smoking pipe down in the holder and headed back into the house. He walked back into the house, ready for sleep and the start of a busy morning ahead, before he walked through the wormhole net to the summit.

  * * *

  CAPITAL SYSTEM, CENTRAL DOCKS, DECEMBER 28TH, 1002. D-4.

  “Wormhole traffic control has cleared us for transit, ma’am,” said Captain Ahmed Shamir on the side holo. “We’ll be going through in seven minutes, Duchess.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Rear Admiral the Duchess Mei Lei, sitting back in a chair in her main quarters and watching a holo image of the space they were moving through, stroking the fur of the soft Himalayan cat in her lap. Satin purred deeply in his chest, his blue eyes locked onto the face of his mistress. “And am I to assume that the rest of the task group will be following us through.”

  “All have been given passage right behind us,” said Shamir, nodding his head.

  “Then let me know when central docks have us lined up for slips,” ordered Mei. They were after all a couple of days early, but the Admiral thought it might be good to get some of her people leave on one of the double worlds, Jewel and New Terra, or for some the terraformed moon of Ariel.

  “At once, Duchess.” The holo went blank, her Captain knowing her well enough to tell when she was through talking.

  Mei sat back in her chair, a hand on her cat to steady it as the seat reclined. She still wasn’t used to having Duchess on her name, but people sure liked using it. She smiled at the thought. The war had been good to her, raising her two ranks and giving her a patent of nobility. That thought was followed by an attack of guilt, as the faces of all the people she had lost came to her. Starting with her Exec, Xavier Jackson. A man who would probably have his own ship by now, if not a squadron, except he had done Mei’s job and had been the last person off the ship, leading to his death when it catastrophically translated out of hyper.

  Satin gave her a plaintive meow, breaking her from her mood. She stroked the cat and laughed. “I know. You’re the important one here.” Actually the little animal was doing his job, keeping her from retreating into a morose haze of depression.

  With a thought she brought up a side holo, showing the ribbon of the Donut stretching around the central black hole. The hole had been cleaned up of any orbiting matter except for the huge station, and the only indication that it was there the distortion in space that caused it to be enveloped by a halo of starlight. The Donut itself was illuminated by the hundreds of millions of lighting elements built into its structure, as well as the reflection from the halo. It all looked so tiny, until one remembered that the infinitesimally thin ribbon was actually a hundred kilometers in width, and over fifty in thickness. It was the largest structure that humankind had ever attempted, if not the greatest ever imagined. Those would be the Dyson Spheres of legend, and the Admiral wondered if humankind would ever attempt such a construction, which would have to take thousands of years of effort. She didn’t think so, since the number of inhabitable planets, with those easily terraformed added in, was almost limitless.

  The Donut was the greatest weapon of the war, taking over a century to construct, and giving the Empire almost unlimited industrial capacity. It was also the most heavily defended asset in human space, more so than the capital, since it was the only structure whose loss could mean defeat. A lot of the experts were now calling it unassailable, but Mei didn’t believe it. There was no such thing. As more than one ancient strategist had said, any weapon developed that couldn’t be destroyed would just attract the ultimate attention of the enemy, who would do whatever was needed to destroy it.

  “Prepare for transit,” called out a voice over the ship com system, through multiple thousands of speakers and every implant aboard.

  The Admiral changed the aspect of the holo viewer to show the shimmering mirror ahead. It was mostly dark, though the miniature representation of the halo and the running lights of the gate itself reflected from it. And the growing image of her flagship, the Jean de Arc. The even smaller images of the rest of the task force behind reflected in that surface, seven more battle cruisers, twenty light cruisers and forty-two destroyers, all hyper VII scout ships.

  Jean de Arc was the second ship of that name to serve under the Admiral, both first as her fighting platform when she was a captain, then later as her flag as a commodore or admiral. She was a member of the newest class of hyper VII scout capital ships, what looked to be destined to be the largest class of battle cruiser ever built. She measured a little over twenty-three hundred and fifty meters in length, six hundred meters in width, and five hundred meters in height from hyperdrive array to hyperdrive array. She massed eight million three hundred thousand tons, with a maximum safe acceleration of five hundred and twenty gravities, and had a complement of over three thousand five hundred naval personnel, including a small Marine battalion of four hundred and fifty. There were more powerful ships in the fleet, as well as faster and more agile vessels, but nothing with her combination of the two, and the Admiral would not wish to be on anything else.

  The battle cruiser hit the center of the mirror, traveling at a sedate five hundred meters a second. In less than five seconds she was through, into another system, the crew fighting off the effects of the wormhole transit. The clock on the ship said four point seven seconds, but to the crew it had seemed like hours suspended in some kind of strange limbo where they were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Mei sat in her chair getting her wits about her after going through that surreal experience. Satin meowed, and she looked down on the little beast, wondering what his experience had been like, or the experiences of the several hundred other pet animals aboard the ship. Did the cat experience something similar to what humans did, or was that reserved for animals with higher functions? Someday, someone would find out. But for the moment they just didn’t know, and most didn’t care.

  Now they were back home. Jean had shipped from here with a wormhole, one that could be used as a com port and could also be configured into either a cargo gate, heat sink, or a launch system. It could go from heat sink to cargo gate in a few minutes, but configuring it to a launch port could take up to ten minutes on the ship, and even longer on the other end. Since a wormhole could not be safely transited through another wormhole, every ship in the task group that had one had left it behind to be deployed to another vessel. They would pick up new ones at Central Docks, shipped over from the Donut. Every battle cruiser and light cruiser, and one out of every four destroyers, would receive a wormhole, since her group had been designated a priority scout formation. Every ship would also receive at least one of the Klassekian com techs, either as a primary com resource or as a backup. And while here their ships would receive some upgrades, including a new stealth package that would make them much more difficult to detect in normal space, as well as a new outer skin of ablative armor and structural reinforcement.

  Mei opened a series of holos up around her chair, looking at the views of the double planetary system of Jewel and New Terra, also known as the Capital Twins. Jewel’s formal designation was Sanctuary BIIIA, New Terra as BIIIB. The G0 class star known informally as Home, slightly larger than Sol, shone its golden light on the four living worlds of the system that were part of the Sanct
uary Supersystem, most often just called that last. Jewel and New Terra orbited around a center of gravity that was from fifty thousand kilometers out to Jewel, and fifty-two thousand to New Terra. The small, terraformed moon Ariel, home to two hundred and fifty million citizens, orbited both worlds at a distance of four hundred and ten thousand kilometers from the center of gravity, a course that took twenty-one point six standard days. Its size and albedo made it four point seven times brighter than Luna was on old Earth.

  Jewel was the Jewel of the Crown of Empire, a world slightly larger than old Earth, with a surface gravity of one point zero five. Like its sister world, it received point nine six luminosity from its primary, and was a pleasant world all around. Its biosphere was made up of a combination of native life and transplanted Terran forms, with the majority of the wilderness lands given over to the native. Its day was twenty-two point one standard hours, the same as its sister, while the year was four hundred and twelve of those days. As the center of Empire, its official time ran on the twenty-four hour day and three hundred and sixty-five day year of the standard calendar, something which at times caused problems as seasons rotated at a different rate than the holidays of the calendar. With eleven point one billion sentients on the world, one point seven-five of them non-humans, it was the most populated world in human space. Its night side was turned toward her on the holo, with the illuminated areas of many of the largest cities in human space along the shorelines and rivers of the continents. Including Capitulum, with three point one billion citizens.

  The other globe interested her more, and was the destination she would choose for leave, if she were to actually get any. New Terra was a planet terraformed with Earth life, which did not possess any large oceans. Instead, multiple large areas reminiscent of craters had been converted to large lakes, some well over a thousand kilometers across, interconnected by a system of rivers. There was a huge sea of grass larger than the fabled steppes of Earth, and a scrub and sand desert that took up three thousand kilometers of width from pole to pole, the region she was most interested in seeing. Six point eight billion citizens called New Terra home.

  And at the point between the worlds, where gravity balanced out, was Central Docks. Already large at the start of the war, the complex of space stations, docks and building slips had expanded to the point where it was almost unrecognizable to the woman who had last seen it when taking charge of her ship a year and a half earlier. It had at least tripled in size, and every building slip was full of new construction. It looked like the entire fleet was being built here, which she knew was an illusion, since Central Docks comprised less than eight percent of the total military shipbuilding capacity of the Empire.

  “Any word about our slips?” asked Mei. It would take about two weeks for the work to be done by the highly automated facilities, but there was offloading of missiles and antimatter to be accomplished before then, which could take several days.

  “Central Docks control is saying five days, ma’am. They suggest starting to offload our hazardous materials as soon as we can.”

  “Which we can do in five days with a reduced crew,” said the Admiral, opening a holo to the Captain. “Go ahead and send the people who have been the longest without shore leave to their preferred destination. Signal to the other ships to do the same.”

  “What are you going to do, ma’am?”

  “I’m going to take a quick two days on New Terra, then come back here to make sure they don’t screw up my ships.”

  “I’ll stay aboard until you come back, ma’am,” replied the Captain. “I’ll get them started on the offloading.”

  Mei nodded, then started on packing an overnight bag for her side trip. She was looking forward to having dirt under her feet and real live atmosphere around her. And just maybe I can take a short trip out to my never before seen duchy when I’m satisfied that they’re not going to screw up the refits.

  Chapter Eight

  The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger. Andrew Jackson

  SPACE OUTSIDE OF HOME SYSTEM. DECEMBER 28TH, 1002. D-4.

  “We’re being hailed, sir,” called out the Com Tech. “They identify themselves as the cutter, Pee Three Eight One.”

  Must be a small ship if they don’t even have a name, thought Jasper as he looked at the plot. Laughing Troll had just come out of hyper I after stairstepping her way down. She had been looked at all the way in by hyper capable vessels to this point. Now she was the responsibility of the system patrol.

  The plot showed a system busy beyond belief. He had thought the home system of the Ca’cadasan Empire crowded with traffic. It looked like a frontier system compared to the human Home. There were scores of ships outside the barrier, the closest what appeared to be a light cruiser about a half light hour out to spinward. There were hundreds of what must have been merchant ships on courses in and out of the system. The largest were above twenty million tons from their graviton readouts, the smallest well under a million tons. Some of the vessels were recognizable as warships be their emissions, and there were some that were frankly unknowns. And near the spinning twin planets in orbit around each other was a cluster of signals so dense that in the distance they looked like one huge emission profile. The docks and shipyards of the enemy, one of their primary targets.

  “We have visual on the cutter,” called out the Tactical Officer, and a holo came to life by the Captain’s chair, showing a squat craft that by its emission profile was in the fifty thousand ton range, much smaller than any real warship. The view showed that the craft lacked hyperdrive emitters, meaning that it was built for insystem work only. Jasper knew it had to be armed, probably a couple of gigawatt lasers, a short ranged missile or four. Possibly a small particle beam. Enough to damage most commercial ships, maybe take out their propulsion systems. He was sure his ship could take it out in a heartbeat in a slugging match. The cruisers and destroyers that populated the outer reaches of the system made such a move suicide.

  “They’re requesting that we maintain our acceleration and bearing while they match,” said the Com Tech. “They’re reporting that they will be boarding.”

  Jasper nodded and looked back at the Ca’cadasan male who was the true mission leader. That male had a worried expression on his face, and the human wondered what he had expected. They were entering the human home system, and it had been unrealistic to assume they would just be passed on here.

  “How long till they can match with us?” asked Jasper, taking action where the Cacada male seemed to be paralyzed.

  “Twenty-eight minutes, sir,” responded the Tactical Officer.

  “Make preparations,” barked the Cacada, finally coming to his senses. “Now.”

  The crew got to work, jumping up from their stations and running to the activation points across the ship. The weapon’s mounts within the holds, set to slide into place in firing ports when needed, now detached and moved into the wormhole, opened in a smaller gate configuration. In less than ten minutes all of the weapons were thousands of light years away in the Caca base system the wormhole led to. Across the ship false bulkheads slid into place, hiding compartments and equipment that they really didn’t want the humans to know about. The larger than normal grabber units were already hidden, much of their mass slid into compartments. The same with the electromagnetic field projectors. On the bridge complete stations swiveled into the wall, replaced by ratty looking jury rigged controls of the type found on many tramps.

  “We’re ready, my Lord,” the Captain.

  “Play your roles well, or this mission will be over before it truly begins,” growled the male, stepping back into a compartment where his compatriots already waited, letting the false bulkhead slide into place and cover their hiding place.

  Some minutes later the cutter pulled alongside, dwarfed by the freighter, like a small dog worrying an elephant. Without another warning they launched a shuttle, the even smaller craft cl
osing and coming to a stop outside of one of the freighter’s airlocks. It mated with the larger ship through a boarding tunnel, and soon armored customs agents were coming aboard.

  “Do you have a copy of your manifest, Captain?” asked the young woman leading the four agent party.

  “Of course, young lady,” said Jasper, handing her a chip that she plugged into her hand comp.

  She spent a few moments looking over the manifest, then looked up at the Captain with a frown on her face. “Running empty?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “We had some hard luck at our last port of call,” answerer Jasper. “Nobody on that damned poor little world had anything to sell.”

  “And you came to the Capital system because?”

  “There was sure to be a useful cargo to be had here, ma’am. After all, if we can’t find something in the Home system that they want out on the frontier, I might as well retire.”

  “Makes sense,” said the Customs Officer. “Let me take a short look around, and I see no reason to not send you on your way.”

  She flashed a disarming smile at the Captain, and Jasper wondered if she was trying to take him off guard. They didn’t have the kind of sensor equipment with them they would need for a deep scan of the ship, which didn’t mean they wouldn’t find anything with what they had. And if they did the game was up. They could easily overpower this team, but they would have to leave the ship and go back to their own eventually. They couldn’t just be coerced to send a message to their ship that all was well. The ship would know something was up, and in less than an hour warships would be within beam firing range.