“Definitely not Caca,” said Sung, studying the clean lines of the unknowns. They were slender, much more so than any warships the Commodore was familiar with. They looked like some kind of martial weapon themselves, fragile and tough at the same time. Estimates of two million tons mass each came up on the sensor analysis.
“We have a message coming in,” called out the Com Officer, looking over at the Commodore. “We don’t have a translation yet, but the signal is being sent to the linguistic banks. Do you want to send our language primer over to them.”
“Of course,” said Sung, waving her hand at the Com Officer. “Get it to them, as fast as possible.”
The Com Officer nodded and worked her board, sending the information. “We’re receiving a burst transmission from them as well,” said the Com Officer. “I think they’re sending over their standard language programs. Feeding it into our computers now.”
Sung looked at the holo of the approaching ships, frustrated that she couldn’t talk to them, yet. Not knowing their intentions as they closed on her vessels.
“We have a basic translation going, ma’am,” called out the Com Officer. “And they are within visual com range.”
“Send them a visual of our bridge,” she ordered, looking over at her Tactical Officer, who was shaking his head. “Any other suggestions, Mr. Fujardo?”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea going visual yet, ma’am. Not when we don’t know their intentions.”
“And those ships could probably blow all of us out of hyper if they wished,” said Sung. “I’m sure seeing our faces isn’t going to change their minds.”
She waited a few minutes, until the com holo came alive on her own bridge, showing a golden skinned being sitting in a command chair.
He’s almost human, she thought of the alien, then amended that thought immediately. Superficially the alien did look human, to a point. Similar shaped skull, a pair of eyes, golden in color, with slitted irises like those of a cat. Neck was thick, shoulders well developed. Even the proportion of the upper arms and forearms were similar, if not quite exact. The hand only had three digits, two fingers and an opposable thumb, all tipped with hard, claw like, nails.
The nose was broad and had a single nostril on the end, while the hair was a mass of golden curls, looking much like the mane of a lion. She was sure the interior of the creature would not show many similarities. Convergent evolution tended to work more on exteriors than on internal organs.
“Greetings,” said the creature in a melodious voice, the words not really matching the lip movement.
Because it’s a translation, thought Sung. “And greetings to you from the New Terran Empire. And thank you for attacking the Ca’cadasans.”
The creature showed a predator’s sharp teeth as it smiled. “They are vermin, with no honor. We exterminate them when we can, since they seem to eschew the honor of fair battle.”
“We are at war with them,” said Sung, wondering if this could be another ally. A true one, unlike the Megeda, who had seemed to be the ultimate mercenaries.
“Ah, a martial species,” said the being at the other end. “Would you like to battle?”
“Excuse me?” said Sung, not sure the translation had come through.
“I asked if you would like to fight?” said the creature, its lips curling back to reveal the double row of sharp teeth.
“We are not here to fight,” said Sung, shaking her head, then realizing the alien might not know what the motion meant. “We only fight when we must.”
“That is unfortunate,” said the alien. “We find combat to be most enjoyable, and we would only engage to first damage.”
“I think they mean like counting coup,” said the Tactical Officer. “Like the Amerinds. They fight until someone touches the other with a lance. Or in this case, with a beam weapon.”
“So you fight for enjoyment?” asked Sung.
“Of course,” said the still smiling alien. “Unless it is with such as the ones we destroyed. Only a fool does not strive to win when the stakes are life and death. But among honorable opponents, it is enough to prove skill.”
“We are involved in a fight with the ones you destroyed. Back in our home space. And there is no honor involved in that fight. They mean to destroy us, and we don’t intend to be destroyed.”
“I like the spirit of your people,” said the alien, whose designation for himself came up on the holo beneath him. Grilyon, she thought, wondering if she was pronouncing it correctly in her mind. “But why were you running from these creatures? You outmassed them by a factor of three.”
“We are not warships. We are explorers, looking for allies against the Ca’cadasans. Until you came along, these were following us just out of missile range. And we thought you were the force the others of them had been sent to fetch.”
“There are others of these things coming?” asked the Grilyon commander, his ears perking up and rotating to the front. “Many of them?”
“We don’t know how many, Captain. Only that they would bring enough to destroy us. They came upon us almost two weeks ago, sometime after we met with the Megeda.”
“You met with those dishonorable thieves,” said the Grilyon, making a motion that swished his mane around his head. “And they sold you out to the Ca’cadasans. You should never have trusted those ….” The word that came was not translatable, but Sung would have been surprised if it wasn’t derogatory.
“If you seek allies, we might be convinced to be on your side. But first, we must go and find these Ca’cadasans that are following you, and bring them to glorious battle. And we do not fight to damage with such as they. We crush them.” The three fingered hands opened to reveal its sharp claws. “We destroy their vessels, and let the bodies of those not incinerated float through the cold of space, forever.”
“And when you have taken care of them?”
“Then we will come back for you, and escort you to our nearest base. We would learn more of you people, as I am sure you would learn more of us. And perhaps we can come to an understanding.”
“I don’t think these are the folks we were sent to find,” whispered the Tactical Officer.
“I really don’t care. They seem to relish fighting, and it we can turn them fully against the Cacas, we might just take some of the pressure off of our front. I would call that a win for us.”
“And the other power we are being sent to contact?”
“Maybe these guys know about them. And, if not, they will still be there in the extra couple of months it takes us to negotiate with these new guys.”
She turned back to the holo. “Do you want us to steer a certain course, while we are waiting?”
“One of our ships will accompany you, while we pick up others of ours on the way to the enemy force. They will show you the way.”
The holo went blank, followed moments later by a com request from another of the vessels. Sung felt better than she had in weeks, with a strong ally to help guard them in the unknown section of space.
* * *
REPUBLIC AND OUTSIDE SPACE, DECEMBER 30TH, 1001.
“We have another large force of enemy ships heading our way, Madame President,” announced the Crakista Admiral in Charge of Republic Battle Fleet Three.
Really more of the commander of the entire Republic Fleet, thought President Julia Graham, looking at the face of the Admiral on the portable holo her aide carried around so she would be in constant contact. The holo was linked into the wormhole com aboard the heavy cruiser she was using as her transport.
The President looked up from the holo to the cityscape she was touring. Or, maybe that should be the ruins of a cityscape, she thought. New Washington, the capital city of the Republic, on a world of the same name, had once been her home, both her birthplace, and the central location of the government she had been the leader of. Now she stood on a hill made up of the smashed rubble of the downtown business district, looking over the crater where her residence and office used
to stand.
Until those bastards came, she thought, glancing up to the sky.
The New Terran Republic had fought wars before. Against the Crakista in the far past. Against the Klang, frequently. Even one against the New Terran Empire. And never before had they seen such destruction among their own core worlds.
The city of New Washington had once been the home of fifty million people. Now it was the home of no one, except the stray dogs and other vermin that stalked the streets, trying to feed their starving bodies. The planet had once boasted a population of ten billion, the most densely populated in the Republic. Now there were a mere twenty million survivors. Fifteen million had been evacuated before the enemy had blockaded the planet. Most of the rest had died from the orbital bombardment, nine billion of them, followed up by the landings and the slaughter of hundreds of millions more. And then had come the round up to the camps.
Graham almost vomited as she thought of the tales she had heard from some of the survivors of those camps. About how the Cacas entered on a daily basis to select their victims, slaughtering them in front of the others, then field dressing them and hauling away the meat for their own consumption.
And then the Caca fleet had left, leaving a skeleton crew of warriors behind to continue the harvest, to stock the larders for their eventual return. Only we got here first, she thought, staring at the ruins that stretched to the horizon. Savages. Even the Klang don’t eat us. Filthy barbarian savages.
“What are your orders, Madame President?” repeated the Crakista female who was their ranking officer in this space. “Most of my fleet is still in the early stages of moving out of the region. We are still in position to intercept them.”
“How large is the force?”
“At least four hundred ships, Madame President. You should have already received the report from your picket.”
“Of course I have,” she replied, reaching down and picking up a child’s plastic man that had ended up somehow on top of the rubble. I just wanted your confirmation. “Can you hit them?”
“We can. But I must warn you that we will take casualties, even if we ambush them. After all, they can also send missiles between dimensions.”
“Can you hurt them worse than they hurt you, Admiral?”
“While I can guarantee nothing, I believe the odds are in our favor, Madame President.”
“Then hit them, Admiral,” she said, looking at the small toy that had once portrayed a soldier of her Republic. “Hit them with everything you have. Keep hitting them until you don’t have anything left to fire. I don’t want any of the bastards to ever see the stars of their home. Understood?”
The Crakista Admiral looked taken aback by her display of emotion. She looked like she wanted to say something, then straightened and saluted in the human manner. “Understood, Madame President. We will avenge the children of your people.”
* * *
SECTOR IV SPACE.
“We are picking up nothing from the planet,” said the Tactical Officer, looking back at the High Admiral.
By all the Gods, what is this? thought High Admiral Kellissaran Jarkastarin. “This is supposed to be one of their developing worlds, with over a hundred million of the humans infesting it,” he growled. “They couldn’t have all escaped.”
“We are picking up no signals from the planet, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, shrugging both shoulders. “Nothing on any of the com channels. No indication of intelligent life.”
“Lights? Heat sources? Graviton emissions?”
“Nothing, my Lord. But remember, we are looking at the day side of the planet, so we would see no lights. And heat sources would have to be very strong and robust for us to pick them up.”
“And graviton emissions? What of them?”
“With all of the static through hyper, I am having trouble picking up the emissions of our accompanying ships, my Lord. Much less anything else. There are a few irregularities near the planet, but I cannot get enough of a fix on them to tell what they are.”
“Com Officer,” said the High Admiral. “Transmit orders to three scouts on each of our flanks. I want them to change their vectors enough that they see at least a sliver of the night terminators of that planet. I cannot believe there is nothing there.”
He looked at the tactical plot again, which basically showed him all the larger bodies of the system, and his own ships. And nothing else. “Tactical. I want that planet watched continuously with visual scans. If there is a pebble in orbit reflecting any sunlight, I want to know.”
Hours went by, the High Admiral sitting on his bridge, watching the viewer that showed the planet, his eyes shifting every few moments to the tactical holo.
“Scout ships are reporting no lights at the terminators,” called out the Com Officer. “No heat sources at all, save for one volcano in eruption.”
“Tactical. Anything in space?”
“We have tracked a couple of small objects in low orbit around the planet, and that is all, my Lord.”
“They couldn’t have evacuated a planet with over a hundred million beings on it,” growled the lead male. “Not when they didn’t know we were coming. That’s impossible, even if they had a wormhole to take them off the planet.” He thought some moments about that idea, dismissing it as soon as it came. It would have taken months to get that many beings off of a world, marching them as fast as possible through the wormhole all day and night.
“Orders, my Lord?” asked the Helm.
“I believe we should be cautious, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer. “We do not know what is on that world.”
“Bah,” spat Jarkastarin. “There are no ships in orbit. No forts. We cannot even pick up defensive platforms. If they are there, they have turned off everything on the surface and are cowering in underground shelters.” He pointed a finger at the viewer. “They are there, and I mean to blast them out of their hiding places.”
“We could launch missiles at the planet from where we are now,” advised the Tactical Officer.
“I advise against that, my Lord,” said the Helm Officer. “It is forbidden to kill living worlds, unless they are terraformed. And according to our spectral analyses, this is not a world with predominantly Terran life.”
“Bah,” said Jarkastarin again. “We do not need missiles to chase them from their burrows. We will go into orbit and pound them with kinetics.”
“All of us, my Lord?” asked the Helm, his posture showing that he was not enthused with that idea.
“Send a couple of pods of scouts into orbit first,” said the High Admiral after some thought. “They can drop some kinetics on the planet, and see if the vermin are stirred from their lairs. Once they have established that there is no threat to the rest of the fleet, we will move closer to add our firepower.”
“Yes, my Lord,” echoed the Com Officer and Helm Officer in unison.
“Time to orbital insertion of the scouts?” he asked the Tactical Officer.
“Approximately three hours, my Lord.”
The High Admiral looked at his Com Officer. “Order the rest of the force to come to a rest five light minutes from the planet. We will come in after the scouts have cleared the way.”
“What if they have ships on the other side of the planet, my Lord?” asked the Tactical Officer. “Waiting for us.”
“Then the scouts will find them while they orbit. And we will come in and destroy them. Any other indications that there might be ships in orbit.”
“No, my Lord,” answered the Tactical Officer. “We are still picking up some anomalies, but nothing we can pinpoint.”
In three hours the two pods of scouts, twenty of the five hundred thousand ton vessels in all, slid into orbit around the planet. They held at ten thousand kilometers above the surface, and completed six orbits before they started dropping kinetic weapons on the cities that looked totally deserted below. Bright pinpricks flared on the dayside, brighter on the night. And still no reaction.
“I
t looks like the planet was inhabited, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, playing back the scenes of the surface as transmitted by the scouts. Several very large cities, and hundreds of smaller, were scattered across the world, along with many thousands of villages and almost countless single habitations. And still no sign of life. A dozen KE weapons landed on one of the cities, blasting large sections of it to rubble, and still nothing.
“Move the rest of the ships in,” said the High Admiral. “Start landing the ground warriors as soon as we are in orbit. I will want a thorough search of this world while we demolish the empty cities. They are down there, and we are going to get them.”
An hour later the entire force was in orbit, from five thousand kilometers to as far out as twenty-five thousand. Shuttles were scorching their way in through the atmosphere, delivering a platoon of armored ground warriors each per trip. And still no sign of the humans.
This is infuriating, thought the High Admiral, staring at a holo of the globe that was blossoming pin points of blinding light as the kinetic weapons continued to fall.
“Sir,” called out the Tactical Officer, a look of alarm on his face. “We’re picking up power readings. Heat spikes, electromagnetic fields.”
“Where, fool?” growled Jarkastarin, glaring at his officer. “Can we get a fix to target them?”
“Everywhere, my Lord,” said the wide eyed officer. “And they will be easy enough to target, if we have anything left to target them with.”
The High Admiral stared in disbelief as the planet bloomed first with energy spikes, then disappeared under a wave of generated static. He was about to give the order to boost away, to leave the orbit of the planet, to get them far enough out that they could lob high relativistic missiles in at the world. As he opened his mouth to shout orders the flagship shook and shuddered under the strike of a powerful particle beam.
Moments later high velocity missiles started to rise from the surface, pulling hundreds of gravities through the atmosphere, then pushing ten thousand gees after they had left the gas envelope behind.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike Page 33
