Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  On the thousand year anniversary of the empire, Emperor Augustine I is having prophetic dreams, the gift and curse of his line. He has seen the ancient enemy returning, finding the human species disunited in its three governments, and utterly destroying them. Augustine has fought to expand the military, running into obstructionism from the Lords House of Parliament. It is an uphill battle in the Constitutional Monarchy the Empire has become. Meanwhile, the Donut, a century long engineering project, is nearing completion. The enormous station, built as a ring around a black hole, and using the swirling gravitational energy to generate wormholes, has begun to make the many portals that will be used to eventually link the Empire. And spies have infested the Empire, a race of shape shifters who make most security measures moot, adding sabotage and espionage to the problems facing the Emperor.

  Sean Ogden Lee Romanov, the third son of the Emperor, is a serving naval officer on a battleship in a relatively quiet sector, with no thoughts of ever assuming the throne. He was a mediocre officer, despite his superior intelligence. With two brothers ahead of him in the succession, and a still young father, the throne seems like the least his worries. By this time the Ca’cadasans have made contact with some of the enemies of the Empire, and sent the information back to their leaders. The ancient enemy has been found, and can now be eliminated. Ships begin to disappear in Sector IV, and sightings are made of vessels that fit no known description. Many people refuse to believe these are the Ca’cadasans, and some think that Empire must have fallen in the near past. The Emperor continues to try to rally support for increasing the size of the human military, while Parliament fights him on the economic effects of such a move, and alien powers protest that the humans are planning territorial expansion.

  There is an attempted assassination attempt on Sean, and a successful attempt on the Emperor and his two older sons during a tour of the Donut. The assassin is an officer of the Imperial Protection Detail, causing distrust to grow among the agencies charged with the security of the Empire. The same day as the assassination, the Leader of the House of Lords is killed in his home. Sean is now the heir to the Empire, and the man who must be seated as soon as possible on the throne, but he is almost a week’s one way com range from the capital.

  The Ca’cadasans now attack, sending large fleets into several industrial or base systems, and smaller forces to many other stars. The Massadara system, a major Imperial base, is one of the systems attacked. Sean is serving on one of the battleships that happens to be in that system, and is aboard the vessel as it heads into combat with the enemy. Word comes to the system that Sean is the uncrowned Emperor, and his ship, against his protests, is ordered out of combat. His ship, the Sergiov, heads out of the system before the main battle begins, a small Ca’cadasan force on its heels. The main battle is joined, and, though it inflicts casualties on the Ca’cadasan fleet that is only about a decade ahead in technology, it is defeated, and the system falls.

  The Sergiov is battered by the enemy, and Sean is rescued from the ship by Captain Mei Lei and her hyper VII battle cruiser. The battle cruiser fights its way out of the system with the help of Commander Bryce Suttler’s stealth/attack ship, and, along with Commander Maurice von Rittersdorf and his destroyer, starts on the voyage to get Sean back to the capital and the throne. The Ca’cadasans track the two vessels, and Sean escapes on the destroyer while Mei sacrifices her ship in a battle with the Ca’cadasan supercruisers. The battle cruiser Jean de Arc falls out of hyperspace in a catastrophic translation, a low survivability event, but nonetheless manages to survive and starts the long journey home.

  Rear Admiral Mara Montgomery is dispatched with her scout force to locate Sean and get him back to the capital, while von Rittersdorf plays hide and seek against the Ca’cadasans, trying to get the unseated Emperor to safety. Von Rittersdorf catches one of the much larger Ca’cadasan ships in a brilliant ambush which destroys the enemy ship, while causing severe damage to his own. Montgomery’s task force enters the system, and she dispatches the other two supercruisers, then takes the Emperor aboard her flagship. Von Rittersdorf begins the long journey home in his crippled ship with escorts. Sean learns that one of the nearby systems is under siege and, against the protests of the Admiral, orders her to take her ships to break that siege and evacuate the colonists on the frontier world. Meanwhile, the Leader of the House of Lords advances plans to put an Imperial Cousin on the throne while the true heir’s whereabouts are unknown. The Ca’cadasans invade and take the kingdom of New Moscow, and make serious inroads into the New Terran Republic, the sister governments to the Empire.

  On Sestius IV Brevet Brigadier General Samuel Baggett fights the landing of the Ca’cadasans with his mixed command. Farmer and ex-hunter Cornelius Walborski deserts the militia to get his pregnant wife to safety. Though bleeding the enemy, Baggett is forced to fall back into the wilderness before the enemy ground warriors. Walborski’s son is born, but his wife is killed while they are running from the aliens. The farmer goes mad, and stalks the jungle with the skills he had learned as an assistant hunt master, killing many aliens in the jungle. He meets the legendary Preacher of special ops fame, now a retired Ranger and current minister on the planet.

  Montgomery’s task force takes the system and the planet, and evacuates all those that want to leave, just before a larger enemy force enters the system and forces it to flee. Sean meets Dr. Jennifer Conway, who has lost her own fiancé’ in the invasion, and falls in love with her. The scout force fights a running battle back to Conundrum base, rescued at the last moment by the fleet of Duke Taelis Mgonda. Von Rittersdorf makes it to safety, while Mei Lei and her crew are rescued from hyper by another battle cruiser. The XO of the Jean de Arc, Xavier Jackson, falls out of hyper while trying to rescue some crew who could not get off the ship. Surviving the translation, he is rescued by beings from legend, the Ancients that everyone assumes are extinct.

  On the Donut it is discovered that an ancient race known as the Yugalyth, another creature from legend, capable of changing its very body form over a period of days and duplicating any creature, is at large. A Yugalyth agent imitates Dr. Lucille Yu, the station Director, and attempts to destroy the huge construct. Dr. Yu uses quantum teleportation, an experimental technique that only succeeds in moving about half the material being teleported to its target, to teleport negative matter to destroy the bomb the creature put on the station attitude control board. The new enemy is discovered, one which originates in the realm of the Empire’s close ally, Elysium.

  The Knockermen, a reptilian race in the Elysium Empire, revolt against the dominant Brakakak. The Brakakak eventually curb the revolt, but are forced to commit their entire fleet to searching out the rebels and breaking the rebellion. The leader of Elysium and his family are forced to take refuge with the Terrans during the battle of the capital.

  Sean comes back to the Supersystem by the wormhole gates that are now being deployed through Imperial space. Chief of Naval Operations Gabriel Lenkowski gathers a fleet that transports Sean to the capital planet, where, with a large force of Marines, he lands during the coronation ceremony and stops the Lords from crowning his cousin. Sean is now Emperor, Commander and Chief of the Imperial Military, and, given his wartime powers, the most powerful Monarch in a century. His companions go off to other commands; Mei Lei to a battle cruiser squadron, one equipped with new wormhole launched weapons; von Rittersdorf to lead a new destroyer squadron; and Baggett to command of a heavy infantry brigade. Cornelius Walborski, on the recommendation of Preacher, joins the Imperial Army with hopes of being augmented and becoming a Ranger.

  The Ca’cadasans hit Conundrum, the HQ of Sector IV, hours after Sean jumps through the wormhole from there. They take the system, and land troops to complete the conquest of the planet. Sean is forced to engage in a hit and run war against an enemy that is still more advanced, and more powerful, than his own fleet. He orders his units to refuse combat when possible, and only to fight when they can inflict maximum damage on t
he enemy. Q-ships, militarized merchant vessels with quantum teleporters capable of sending antimatter into the interior of an enemy ship, bait and destroy Ca’cadasan raiders. The Lords go on the warpath against Sean, demanding that he commit his fleet to a major battle. His prophetic dreams indicate that one of the core worlds, the heavily populated industrial planets at the heart of the Empire, is a target. But the dream does not tell him when.

  Wormhole gates are dropped in occupied systems, then maneuvered to planetfall, allowing ground forces to insert. This is done on most of the occupied worlds, allowing the units to engage the aliens in Guerilla warfare. Preacher leads a Ranger brigade against the Ca’cadasans on the surface of Conundrum, and the campaign forces the enemy off the planet. The Lasharans, religious fanatics, are again attacking the frontiers of the Empire, and Baggett’s unit, as part of a heavy infantry corps, is sent to take their home planet and occupy their primary temple, breaking their will.

  The Ca’cadasans strike at the Cimmeria system, utterly obliterating the two inhabited industrial worlds located there. Sean retaliates by sending forces through wormholes to strike behind the main enemy fleet and destroy their bases. The Fenri Empire, old enemies of the humans, sign an alliance with the Ca’cadasans, and the New Terran Empire launches a spoiling attack on those aliens. The logical beings of the Crakista Empire, seeing the Ca’cadasans as the greater threat, join the human cause, ordering their military to offer all possible aid to the humans. Things are beginning to look up until the Ca’cadasans launch yet another assault, almost overrunning all of Sector IV.

  Sean and Jennifer become lovers, a fact taken advantage of by the Yugalyth agents, who kidnap her and threaten to kill her if Sean does not place himself in their hands. Sean agrees, and has himself equipped with a pair of small wormholes that allow him to kill the kidnappers when they think they have him in their power.

  Cornelius completes Ranger school, finds a new love himself, and is assigned to the planet Azure, one of the deadliest in the Empire. He and his men stalk the Ca’cadasans through a jungle that is enemy to both, and encounters a new client race of the Ca’cadasans, the supremely competent hunters called Maurids. Cornelius saves and is saved by a young girl, Rebecca, and completes the mission his company couldn’t, destroying a Ca’cadasan headquarters. He returns to the capital system again a hero, one of the few to win the Imperial Medal of Heroism twice. He marries, and gains a new mom for his baby son, and his adopted daughter, Rebecca.

  Sean, in need of a victory, plans an ambush for the Ca’cadasan fleet in the Congreeve system, a frontier world made up to look like an industrial developing planet. The Cacas, using the Knockermen, send in a strike force to take out the Donut. And the Empire sends in a strike against the Fenri Empire, the new ally of the Ca’cadasans. Cornelius attends Officer Candidate School and is well on his way to becoming an officer, while the Opposition Party of the Lords continues to cause trouble for the Emperor, threatening a No Confidence Vote in Parliament.

  The strike into Fenri space is a success, taking the heart out of their fleet and capturing several of their industrial planets, sending the small mammalians into a frenzy. The Fenri still have some power in their fleet, and organize an offensive that kicks the NTE naval force out of their space, stranding Baggett and his soldiers on the surface of one of the planets.

  The Ca’cadasan strike force makes it to Elysium space, commandeers a Brakakak light cruiser, and takes the station in orbit around that Empire’s capital world. The Cacas jump through the wormhole to the Donut, bringing thousands of troops and four Quarkium devices, intending to destroy the station. The Knockermen destroy the Brakakak station with the device that they were given by the huge aliens. And Walborski, heading through the Donut on a short leave to see his wife and children, finds himself involved in another battle.

  Sean lures the Ca’cadasan main fleet into battle, springing his ambush, and ravaging the enemy fleet. They turn into a tougher opponent that he planned on, and some of the enemy fleet escapes to head back to their base, leaving the Imperial fleet with a lesser victory than wanted, and higher casualties than expected.

  Prologue

  SECTOR VII SPACE. NOVEMBER 20TH,1001.

  The pirates must have thought they were undetectable, their base built on one of the moons of a Saturnesk gas giant in orbit around an ember of a red star. The small star was twenty light years from the nearest inhabited system, off the travelled space lanes, while giving the pirates a base close enough to some of the major transit lanes of Sector VII. Yes, they felt secure, their small fleet faring out from the base to strike shipping, taking vessels and slaves, and much wealth in materials and machinery, then returning to their undetectable base. Selling the slaves and wealth to merchants of a shady nature. But though the system was undetectable, its activity hidden by distance, the corsairs that fared out were not, and eventually something was bound to happen.

  Captain Stella English looked at the viewer that showed the small system ahead, hoping that the information that had been extracted from the captured pirates was accurate. But then, a score of them had given the same information, every one of the crew that had known the exact coordinates of the system. Amazing what chemicals and nanoprobes can gather, she thought, a slight smile on her lips. She had no sympathy for the scum who preyed on the weak and innocent. Whatever pain or suffering they had to endure was just fine with the commander of Task Force 481, her current command.

  Her flagship, HIMS Lancanshire, was lurking in normal space, moving toward the system at point five light. She and the rest of the force had translated into normal space outside of the detection range of most vessels, it being hoped that the ramshackle fleet of the pirates would not be equipped with the most advanced of sensors. None of her eight vessels were equipped with a wormhole, and it had been decided to run in with communications locked, even the new sublight com system.

  The eight hundred thousand ton light cruiser was the most combat capable vessel in the force. Three of her other ships were two hundred thousand ton destroyers, while the remaining four were one hundred thousand ton frigates. She had asked for another cruiser, or at least a couple more destroyers, but this had been all that was available. And besides, they were just pirates, no matter what the captives said about the corsair force.

  “We’ll be entering planned firing range in ten minutes, ma’am,” said her Tactical Officer.

  “Thank you, Mr. Banks,” she told the officer, nodding her head his direction. I wish we could capture them, and bring them to trial, she thought. There was something much more satisfying about seeing them sentenced to life imprisonment, or possible death, in a court of law. Something that could be publicized, and maybe act as a deterrent to other potential scum. Sure, Stella, and maybe we’ll get the Easter Bunny to start making the rounds again, she thought with a snort.

  Basically, there were too many of them to try for any kind of closing and capturing strategy. She counted eleven frigate and destroyer class vessels in orbit around the moon, as well as several intact freighters that had to be recent prizes. And one ship that had truly surprised her. Just how in the holy hells did they get an old battle cruiser. I wouldn’t think they would have the manpower to take such a thing on a combat patrol.

  But that was the one reason she was not going to risk her command trying to capture the pirates. At close range a ship like that, an ancient Majestic class BC of about five million tons, could take out her whole command in a close in beam fight. Beam weapon technology hadn’t changed that much in the past hundred years, though targeting and defensive tech had, as had the power of said beams. Still, a five million ton platform was capable of truly impressive close in fire. While missile tech had increased by leaps and bounds, and she had a clear advantage in that area.

  “We have an approaching ship in hyper,” called out Banks, looking back from his board. “In the ten million ton range.”

  “What in the hell do we have calling now?” asked the Helmsmen.

&n
bsp; “Hold up on the fire plan for a moment,” ordered the Captain, visions of an old battleship entering her mind. “Let’s see what we have first off.”

  A half an hour later the ship appeared from out of hyper, less than a light minute away from the human task force.

  “That looks like a Vergasa freighter,” said Banks, and Stella grunted in acknowledgement.

  What in the hell would they be doing here? she thought. Vergasa was a minor power in the region, a kingdom of no more than a hundred inhabited systems. They engaged in legitimate trade with the Empire, as well as some more shady operations. Like trading with pirates, she thought, studying the ship in the viewer. They have to have a buyer for their ill-gotten gains. Why not Vergasa?

  “Signal the other ships that we will open fire on the pirates in one minute,” she ordered her Com Officer. All of the vessels were within twenty light seconds of each other, less than two seconds by subspace com. She thought it was unlikely that the Vergasa ship would have a subspace com, and couldn’t alert the pirates anyway.

  “Fire,” she ordered, and Lancanshire bucked slightly as her tubes accelerated a spread of missiles at the target. She started swinging from side to side, bringing her port tubes, then her forward accelerators, then her starboard tubes, to bear. In half a minute she had sent a spread of a hundred missiles toward the pirate base, accelerating at five thousand gravities. The other ships released half of their own magazines, adding over two hundred more missiles to the swarm. It would take three hours for the missiles, already traveling at point two five light from the velocity of the launching vessels, to reach the enemy base. They would reach their maximum safe velocity of point nine five light an hour and a half into flight, and would strike the enemy it the most advantageous attack profile.