Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front

by Doug Dandridge

  “Admiral Wallace is asking when we are going to get in our evacuation position in the queue?” said the Com Officer.

  We have almost fifty thousand people on this ship, thought Sung. There were even Klavarta military personnel sitting on the floor of the bridge, trying to stay out of the way. The hangars were packed with people, no small craft on-board. The two repair capsules she still retained were attached to airlocks, ready for emergency use.

  “Admiral. We have to move. We’ve gotten three billion of your people out. I wish I could get them all, but the Cacas aren’t going to let that happen. You staying here will accomplish nothing. It will not help your people. It will help your people, all of your people, if you let us evacuate you. They trust you, and we’re going to need that link with them.”

  The Klavarta Admiral looked around the control room, completely empty but for him. He shook his head, looking at the globe of his homeworld. “Very well,” said the highest ranking survivor of the system government, tears in his eyes. “Go ahead and send your capsule to pick me up. And may God have mercy on my soul.”

  Sung nodded at her Tactical Officer, who also was monitoring this evac mission. That officer sent the message sending the capsule on its way.

  “Thank you, Admiral.”

  Sung sat in her chair, looking at the tactical holo as the wave of missiles kept getting closer. It held a morbid fascination for her, the death of a world approaching at high relativistic speeds, like a natural disaster, a supernova, that they could do nothing about.

  “Missile impact in five minutes,” called out the Tactical Officer.

  Sung looked at the tactical holo again. Now New Earth space was nearly empty, only the large defense stations and a couple of ships still on the display. Pinta was going through the portal, just ahead of the Nina. A pair of light cruisers were disappearing through the other wormhole, while the superbattleship Prince Henry was last in that line.

  Finally the moment came when it was the Nina’s turn. The huge vessel slid through the portal in less than two seconds, the unfamiliar sensation of being spread across the Universe almost causing a panic among the passengers. The crew handled it a little better, but most of them hadn’t experienced the sensation either. And then they were in the space of the Donut, twenty light seconds out, moving ahead through the cleared space. Around them were literally tens of thousands of different vessels, from huge vessels over twenty million tons to the suborbital craft. A line was stretched to the docking facilities of the Donut, delivering refugees.

  We’ve done everything we could, thought Sung, looking at a holo of the wormhole behind her. As far as she knew, that was true. As far as she knew.

  * * *

  “We got over three billion people out, your Majesty,” said Sondra McCullom over the com. “That includes forty-six million of the unmodified humans, including all the children, and two billion nine hundred and seventy million of the modified Klavarta, including over a billion and a half children, the bulk being skilled warriors and industrial workers.

  And still two billion left behind. If we had another day or two, we could have gotten them all. “Good work, Admiral. That was what, a billion more that the initial prediction?”

  “We lost some ships, sir. And we have over five hundred of the Klassekian equipped fighters that we won’t be able to recover for another two months.”

  “But the important part is that they are recoverable,” said the Emperor, watching as the wormhole gates in New Earth space dismantled themselves. They wanted those wormholes to remain in Klavarta space so they could still use them. Except for the one that he was going to use for the final act of this play. And maybe we need to find another name for them. I understand about the need to keep their real identity hidden from the Cacas, but that’s over and done now. No more need to hide what the other side already knows.

  ‘Missile impact in two minutes’ said the text below the holo picture. The frame of the wormhole he was watching was folding, detaching and deploying on grabber units back through the portal. Each section sealed itself off to contain its negative matter, and the wormhole shrank as if took itself apart. At one minute to missile impact both wormholes had shrunk to centimeters across, still capable of accepting the signal from the small recon drone that was a couple kilometers from one of the holes.

  One of the holes turned and started boosting away, heading away from danger at thousands of gravities as it ejected high speed plasma from its orifice. The other backed away slowly, maintaining its observation of the moon, the drone backing with it. The mass of defense platforms, human and Klavarta, had hit the wave hard, knocking out tens of thousands of missiles. Almost all of them had been destroyed, taking out ten thousand more Ca’cadasan missiles in the ultimate inanimate sacrifice.

  “You don’t have to watch this, your Majesty,” said McCullom.

  Yes, I do, thought Sean. The responsibility for the success of the evacuation was his people’s. The failure to get the last two billion off was also his responsibility, and he owed it to those people to watch their end.

  It was a spectacular show, or would have been if it didn’t involve so much death. The hundred thousand plus missiles came speeding in at over point nine light, searching for targets in orbit. There were still lots of those, orbital defense satellites, missile batteries, industrial ship building structures that were either too big or not useable for the evacuation. The missile batteries were empty, having fired all their weapons when the attack missiles were still ten minutes out. They had been used in a last ditch attempt to take out the enemy missiles. The detonation of twenty thousand missiles had resulted in the destruction of a like number of missiles, barely a dent in the wave.

  The unmanned defense stations went up so quickly, hit by a dozen missiles, that their plasma spread so fast it appeared to have teleported away. Bright flares marked where close in defense sats had been, still firing at the attacking missiles up to the last second. All of the missile batteries went, till there were no more targets in space.

  A missile slammed into the planet. The gigaton warhead flashed fire at the same moment as the kinetic energy of a hundred ton missile, speeding at point nine two light, was released into the crust, dwarfing the energy of the antimatter. A continent died, tremors taking down the sides of mountains, opening chasms, while a blast wave of burning air swept out in all directions at multi-Mach speed. Plants and panicking animals were reduced to ash that swirled away in the blast. Magma flew into the air at the point of impact, a rising fountain of molten rock pushed out under extreme pressure.

  A second missile struck an ocean, penetrating the crust. A massive wave flew out from the strike, kilometers high, while a column of superheated steam rose from the impact point. A moment later it was really impossible to pick out the individual strikes as hundreds of weapons came in. One entire hemisphere of the moon was turned into a lake of lava as its crust was obliterated. The far side of the moon was spared the strikes, though the seismic waves took down every building, volcanoes exploded through every mountain range, and superheated air made its way around the curve of the moon. Maybe a hundred thousand people survived, but they wouldn’t for long. For all intents and purposes, New Earth was now a dead world.

  One other moon, already a dead rock, took a couple of hits. The greatest number of the remaining missiles slammed into the gravity well of the gas giant and fell into its atmosphere. Hundreds of bright flashes flared from deep in the clouds, while blast waves roiled the atmosphere. Like many gas giants, it was also a living world, full of cloud dwelling creatures. They had nowhere to shelter, and after the strikes the entire gas giant system was rendered lifeless.

  Enjoy your victory, you sons of bitches, thought Sean as he watched the destruction. For as long as you can.

  * * *

  NEW EARTH ORBIT: JUNE 4TH, 1002.

  “We are victorious, my Lord,” crowed the Chief of Staff.

  It seems that way, thought the Great Admiral. But we still have the res
t of their nation to take out.

  Having taken their home system, that seemed something that would only take time. This had to be a mortal blow, to both their military power and morale.

  The main body of the fleet was within the gas giant system, over fifteen thousand ships. The flagship was in close orbit of the moon, which was shrouded in a thick layer of poisonous gases and smoke. The bright points of impact craters shone through the clouds, still shooting magma into the sky.

  And the damned priests are raising hell that I killed a living world. His eyes strayed to a holo that showed the gas giant. Maybe two. But the Emperor is sure to forgive that when I present him with a victory on this front.

  He looked over at the tactical holo. His trap had not been needed, and all of those task groups were now within the hyper barrier, sitting, waiting for the orders that would send them ranging out through this star nation.

  He had sent back a strong courier force, five hundred ships, to relay news of his success, as well as the data he had on the New Terran Empire resources that had been used in this system, including the readings on the frightening attack craft. They would return with some more logistics assets to replace those he had lost in the battle.

  “We have something happening about a thousand kilometers in from the moon,” called out the Tactical Officer.

  “What the hells is that?” asked the Chief of Staff.

  “Wormhole,” answered the Sensor Officer.

  “Should we fire on it, my Lord” asked the Tactical Officer.

  “Order all ships within range to target the entrance. We’ll give whatever comes through a warm welcome.” With that command, thousands of capital ship laser domes were targeted on the expanding wormhole. Anything coming through would be forced to surrender immediately, or be destroyed. As would everything behind it.

  * * *

  “We are a go, your Majesty,” said McCullom over the com.

  “Execute,” ordered Sean, watching the multiple holo screens in front of him. One showed the moon of New Earth from about ten thousand kilometers away. Next to it was a holo of a tactical plot, showing the thousands of Caca ships in orbit around the moon, from a couple of hundred kilometers out to thirty thousand. The next holo showed a wormhole opened in the black hole system, four light hours out from the Donut. It was fully open, in ship gate configuration. Unseen was the other wormhole being used in this operation, a few light seconds from the gate. And, of course, the wormhole they were watching this through, a light minute away.

  And waiting a couple of thousand kilometers from the entrance to the wormhole, a ten million ton ship, an obsolete battleship from another era, serving a useful purpose for the first time in almost a century. Inside was the other end of the small wormhole. Everything was ready for this final act, the wormhole on the ship set for an almost guaranteed overload. There would be no chance of a successful transit for this ship.

  The ship started accelerating at a rate that a crew could not survive. It was unmanned, controlled remotely and it built up velocity quickly, hitting the wormhole at a hundred kilometers a second, the two kilometer body of the vessel through the portal in a fiftieth of a second.

  The entire ship converted to energy, the equivalent of five million tons of antimatter interacting instantly with five million tons of matter. Ninety five percent of that three hundred and ninety times ten to the fifteenth power energy went through the gate to the other side as both wormholes collapsed in a catastrophic manner. Three hundred and ninety quadrillion tons, three hundred and ninety billion megatons, came blasting out a thousand kilometers from the moon in a wide arc. The remainder came blasting back into supersystem space, both from the gate and the smaller wormhole. That was the reason it was so far from any structure within the black hole system. It was a brilliant fireworks display, and nothing more, its radiation too diffuse to penetrate any of the electromagnetic fields in the system by the time it reached them.

  Around New Earth it was a different story. A thousand Caca ships died instantly in the fury of the heat and radiation that washed over them. Internal antimatter stores breached, and most of the vessels converted to plasma, including the flagship. Huge chunks of the moon were blasted out of its gravity well, rising into space and striking hundreds of other ships. And the heat and radiation blasted through ten thousand more vessels, damaging systems, irradiating and killing crew.

  Sean watched from the far wormhole a minute after the fact, as the tremendous blast, the largest ever produced by humanity, flared to the point where it blotted out sight of the moon and half the Caca vessels. When the flare died down the Ca’cadasan fleet was crippled. They were still a fighting force, but halved.

  Enjoy your victory, assholes, thought Sean. He had bought the Klavarta some time. Now they would need to put it to good use.

  Epilogue

  CAPITULUM, JEWEL: JUNE 19TH, 1002.

  “Good luck on the trip home, Mr. President,” said Sean to the being on the holo.

  “Thank you, your Majesty,” said President Manstara, formerly the Admiral in charge of the former Klavarta home system fleet. Now he was the leader of the newly named Nation of New Earth.

  So many changes, thought Sean. The wormhole gates were now installed in three different systems in that nation. Over the last month a steady stream of ships had passed through those gates, both ways, while the technology and industry of the Empire augmented their own war machine. The Cacas had been stunned by the destruction of their flagship and so much of their fleet, but had gotten over it and went back on the offensive. They had been weakened enough that the New Earth fleet had been able to fight them to a standstill.

  The first of the new Lend Lease convoys had started on the eleven month journey to New Earth. One hundred ships, most of them hyper VII warships, along to protect the precious cargo. Forty of those ships carried wormholes, which would be used to connect the Empire to the Nation, while aboard a couple of the new hyper VII Fleet Replenishment Ships (Fast Freighters) were another fifty of the wormholes, both ends in their sealed carrying containers, along with the frames and negative matter to allow their new allies to use the holes as necessary.

  “Our geneticists think they can correct your shortened life spans within the month,” said Sean, who had just received the report this morning. “It won’t help any of your people now, but…”

  “But our future children will enjoy the same long lives as their unmodified brothers and sisters,” said the President with a smile. “And that is a gift we never would have received under our old masters.”

  “They’re ready for us to board the ship,” said an unmodified human, the new Vice President of the Nation, Thallia Thrann, standing at the shoulder of the Alpha. After the evacuation it was revealed that the woman had been a long time member of the rebellion, using her position as an Underdirector to feed vital information to those on the front lines of the movement. She had supplied much of the information that had allowed the strike teams to get in quickly and quietly to proximity of their targets.

  “Very, well, Thallia,” said the President, giving a very human head nod.

  And he was human, to all intents and purposes. Your modifications are something we never would have condoned. But you’re here now, in your hundreds of billions, and there’s room for you in this Galaxy if we have anything to do with it.

  Not only was the Empire sending tech and materials, they were also sending trainers and teachers to bring the Neohumans, as they were not being called, up to speed on strategy and tactics. No longer were they to be used as cannon fodder, pushing forward in suicidal ferocity. They would be taught to use their brains, their cunning, to strike back at the Cacas.

  And Imperial citizens of alien species were going as well. Phlistarans, Gryphons, Malticons, Centasians, Manticanans, Medlusians, and others. They would both teach the people of New Earth about relations with aliens, and help to forge new friendships with the alien powers around that space. It might take some time, but Sean was sure that
it would pay off in the end. Several CEOs or senior members of Imperial companies were also either on the way or soon to follow. Hashimoto, Garcia Lines, Dawson Shipbuilding, Krupp, Mercedes, Bailey Nano-electronics, M’tumbo Terraforming; a who’s who of industrial concerns to help the people of New Earth set up their industry to build Imperial products under license. While Engineers from New Earth were coming into the Empire to do the same with their specialty items.

  “It is so good to know that we are not alone in this Galaxy, your Majesty,” continued the Alpha.

  “We’ll beat them, Mr. President. Don’t you ever doubt that. Together, we will prevail.”

  The President nodded, then looked away for a moment. “Ms. Thrann looks like she is about to have a seizure,” said the Neohuman, looking over at his second in command. “And while I’m sure they won’t head for the ship gate without us, I guess we should not put the captain through too much stress while we upset his timetable. We will talk when I have set up in our new capital system, your Majesty.”

  The holo went blank, leaving Sean alone with his thoughts. The Nation of New Earth had a daunting task ahead of them, the same uphill fight that the Empire had faced early on in the Caca invasion.

  And our analysts think we are in for renewed hostilities on this front in the very near future. At least they no longer had to worry about the Fenri, not with their capital system now under Imperial control.

  Now, if only we could get something on Zhee, life would be wonderful.

  * * *

  There she is, thought Angel, watching as the well-dressed noblewoman came out of the entrance to the office building, her security detail watchfully surrounding her. Looking like she owns the Empire. She probably felt well protected by the ten bodyguards that went with her everywhere. But an expert like Angel could spot weaknesses in an instant, and he could think of a dozen ways to take the Countess out without breaking a sweat.