Exodus - Empires at War 04 - The Long Fall (Exodus Series #4)

by Doug Dandridge

  “Then we better start worrying about them finding our station and doing something to it.”

  Sean continued to stroke the cat while he thought about that last. They would have to fight their way through the Core Systems, then take out the most heavily defended station in known space, within the sixty light hour hyperlimit of the black hole. And that would be impossible, wouldn’t it? He thought long and hard on that, remembering that what was thought impossible by one side in war was often found possible by the other when they put their minds to it. And it wasn’t a possibility his side needed to ignore.

  *

  CONUNDRUM, NOVEMBER 30TH, 1000.

  “How are they getting all these soldiers into systems we already hold?” yelled out Great Admiral Miierrowanasa M’tinisasitow, sending a scathing gaze around the table. “No ships made it to those planets. At least, that is what the system commanders swear. And I don’t think all of them are lying.”

  “Perhaps they had more people on those planets than we thought,” said the High General commanding all Ca’cadasan ground forces on the campaign. “And they hid the soldiers away until now.”

  “On all of those planets?” asked another incredulous officer. “I could see that happening on a few of the more populous ones. But not all of them.”

  The Great Admiral gave a head gesture of negation, then looked over at his Intelligence Chief. “What do you think is happening?”

  “I am not sure, my Lord,” said the Low Admiral, confusion in his eyes. “But we have been looking at some data, and to date, every one of these systems save one has been recently visited by a small fast ship of the enemy.”

  “What did these ships do?” asked another officer, this one in charge of the local battle force.

  “They jumped into the system and then accelerated toward the planet. Some of them unleashed more missiles than we thought such ships capable of carrying, but it was assumed the enemy just added missile pods to the ships, though they did have a very unusual acceleration profile.”

  “And then what happened?” asked the battle force commander. “They escaped?”

  “No,” answered the Intelligence Chief. “They were destroyed further into the system, every one of them.”

  “None were captured?”

  “We did disable a few, or it was assumed we had. But they self-destructed before they could be boarded. Or, in several occasions, as they were being boarded, with the loss of the entire boarding party.”

  “Could they have dropped something into the systems that we didn’t see?” asked the Great Admiral, pulling up information about the incidents on his flat pad, then sending one to the table holo. A small ship, something the humans used for carrying messages between their larger units, appeared out of a hole into hyper, then accelerated to continue into the system. A burst of static obscured the picture, a very long lasting burst, as if someone was trying to hide something. Then the static was gone and the ship was moving in all its clarity. “Could they have dropped a probe just then, something they could use to scan our system?”

  “I’m not really sure what good it would to them, my Lord,” replied the Intelligence Chief, looking down at his own flat screen. “It would not be able to communicate its information back to base unless another ship entered the system and uploaded the info. Or it wended its way far out of system and sent a burst transmission, which could at most reach a couple of light years out and contain limited information. Either way, a probe is just not practical.”

  “But it could be a weapon of some type, stealthed down and waiting for something of ours to come along?” said the local force commander.

  Stealthed, thought the Great Admiral. Like the attack ship that hit my station?

  “I am sure we will find out what happened eventually, when it bites us in the ass,” said the local force commander with a gesture of resignation.

  “I have some even more disturbing information, my Lord Admiral,” said the Intelligence Chief, calling up another holo, this one of a recorded battle in hyperspace that had been pieced together from multiple angles and perspectives.

  “Now, we won this battle,” said the Intelligence Chief, showing his teeth in a predator’s smile. “But the enemy pulled some tactical surprises on us. In fact, they pulled some surprises that could be attributed to chance if so many of them hadn’t happened in this one battle. This, for instance.”

  The holo showed how one enemy force was being enveloped by a superior Ca’cadasan task force. And three enemy task forces began to move as soon as that envelopment was started.

  “How is that possible?” growled the Great Admiral, looking at the scale of the holo. “They are out of the range of laser or hyperdrive pulse. And even if they developed a laser that was capable of transmitting through hyper, it would take hours to reach from one force to another.”

  “And here’s an insystem fight,” said the Intelligence Chief, changing the holo. “Now we see the enemy forces again making a move in response to one of ours, which had been observed by one of their closer forces. There is no way possible they could have seen our move from across light hours of space in that time frame. We detected no hyperwave bursts, so they weren’t projecting that code over the space. And most interesting, this time there was some time delay between our initial move and their response. Still not enough of a delay to account for the light speed barrier though.”

  For the next hour the Intelligence Chief showed more holos, supporting his assertion that the enemy was up to something.

  “Wormholes,” said the Great Admiral, sure that was the answer. “They’re using wormholes.”

  “But, how, my Lord Admiral?” asked the local force commander, giving a hand gesture of confusion and disagreement. “Are they so common around here that there are that many for their use.”

  “That would make some sense, my Lord,” said the Intelligence Chief. “If they could find a way to move them and use them for their own purposes. But as the Admiral said,” the IC looked at the local force commander, “could there be so many of them?”

  “Could they make them?” asked the Great Admiral.

  “I don’t see how,” answered the Intelligence Chief. “We’re talking about energies orders of magnitude greater than any we have ever harnessed. How could these primitives have done something we couldn’t?”

  “Not so primitive,” said the Great Admiral. “Not what we expected at all.” He looked over at another of his officers. “I want a message sent to the commander of the New Moscow conquest. He is not to kill all the humans. We may need to use all their intellect in our fight against them. Find their scientists and military thinkers, and gain their cooperation.”

  “They may not want to cooperate,” said that officer, noting the order on his flat comp.

  “Then find a way. They may want to see their own children survive. That is a common motivation of intelligent life. Meanwhile, I am going to talk with my pet human, and see what she had been keeping from us.”

  Chapter Ten

  Remember the words of Chairman Mao: 'It's always darkest before it's totally black.'. John McCain.

  NEW TERRAN REPUBLIC SPACE, DECEMBER 1ST, 1000.

  Xenia was unusual as far as habitable systems went. In the first place, the system star was M class. While not impossible for the production of habitable planets, it was unlikely. Most planets close enough in the be Goldilocks Zone soon became tidally locked to the star, meaning one side received all the sunlight, the other none. There were some habitable planets orbiting close gas giants, their orbit simulating the day night cycle of a normal rotating world. But Xenia was not one of those planets.

  Still, the planet Xenia was not tidally locked, not yet at least. It had a very long day period, seventy-five standard hours, and was lengthening slowly but surely. Scientists believed that the planet had not formed with the star, but had been a wanderer that had just appeared one day, to be captured by the star in an extreme elliptical orbit that had smoothed out over time, as the pla
net thawed out under the heat of the starlight and tidal forces. Strangely, the planet had salt water seas and a heavy nitrogen atmosphere, along with some oxygen and a lot of carbon dioxide, leading to speculation that it might have been a living planet at one time. Being heavy element poor lent support to the theory that it was a first generation planet, from the early universe, that had been ripped away from its star by some outside force, probably another stellar mass. And now it was a living planet again, transplanted with genenged life.

  President Julia Graham thought of none of that as she looked out over the ocean, reflecting the crimson light from the enormous red sun rising slowly to the east. On the veranda the black leafed plants turned their light gathering surfaces to catch the light they had not seen for over thirty-seven hours.

  So unlike the capital, she thought, recalling the bright light of the K class star that New Washington orbited around. She had been on vacation to Xenia, her home world, when the aliens had struck her Republic. Since the several weeks after that attack no word had come from the capital. There were rumors that it was still holding out. But only rumors.

  “We’re ready, Madame President,” said the voice of her military advisor, Admiral Jackson Mirable.

  Thank god for officers like him, thought the President of the New Terran Republic, the second largest human polity in the Persius Arm. If only I had listened to their entreaties to modernize the fleet to hyper VII capability. Of course there had seemed to be no need to do that, beyond a small cadre of scout and exploration vessels. They had been at peace with their larger neighbor, the New Terran Empire, and the other nearby powers had not yet advanced to the level of VII. The only real threat was the Klang, and the Neutral Zone was holding them in check. That, and the more advanced fleets of all three of the human powers.

  Graham sat down at the table of her conference room, nodding to her cabinet members, most newly appointed, and military chiefs. A holo was projected above the table, showing a number of humans and some aliens in another room. Graham found her attention drawn to the huge crococentaur in chamber thousands of light years away, Phlistarans, a species not known in her Republic.

  “His Majesty is running a little late,” said a small Asian woman, the new Prime Minister of the Empire.

  Graham almost wanted to get angry that the other leader was not adhering to her schedule. She held that feeling in check. She needed the other power much more than they needed her. They were the ones who had invented the wormhole tech that had made this meeting possible. They were the ones who had sent her a wormhole gate, just arrived less than twenty hours before. Now they could communicate in real time, and actually send people across the more than two thousand light years separating the permanent capital of the Empire from the temporary capital of the Republic.

  “His Majesty, Sean the First, leader of the Empire,” called out a voice as everyone in the other room jumped to their feet. No one in her chamber moved. They had formed the Republic so that they didn’t have to respond to someone’s position of birth, and still had a lot of pride in not having to bow to kings or emperors.

  A face took up the holo, and Graham was surprised at how young the man was, despite reading his complete dossier several hours ago. The young man was smiling, but she could read the stress and strain in his eyes.

  “Madame President,” said the young man.

  “Your Majesty,” she replied, giving a very slight head bow.

  “We have been friends for many years now,” said the young man, his voice strong across the link. “Allies. And now we need to be closer than ever, if we are to weather this storm.”

  He speaks well, she thought, nodding her head. “I look forward to a close military relationship, your Majesty.”

  “Call me Sean,” said the young man with a smile.

  “Then call me Julia, Sean,” said the President. “Since we are not going to stand on formality here. We are willing to share all of our intelligence with you, and my Secretary of State has told me you are willing to do the same.”

  “Better than that,” said Sean, glancing over at one of his ministers who had a permanent scowl on his face. “I would like for us to have a technology exchange. You give us anything you have that you think we might lack, and we give you anything we have that you don’t possess.”

  “That, is very generous, Sean,” said the President, looking over at her Secretary of Technological Development, who had a wide smile on her face. “I am sure we will benefit from the exchange much more than you.”

  “We have no time for one-upmanship, Julia,” said the Monarch. “We need to pull together on this one like nothing before. The only way we are going to survive is if we have a unified command structure, and that means our ships must be able to mesh their communications.”

  “Does that include wormhole tech, your Majesty?” asked one of her cabinet.

  “As much as we can spare,” said the Emperor. “There is a limit on how many we can make per time period, and we have many tasks requiring wormholes. But I can see us parting with enough to allow you instantaneous communications between your major commands, and ours. And it would help if you could get some negative matter production facilities up and running.”

  “What about New Moscow?” asked the President, referencing the minor power among the human polities.

  “We’re not sure they even exist,” said the Emperor, shaking his head. “We have had contact with some of their ships that have escaped from the Kingdom. Including a small group of warships and evacuation liners that got out early. From what they tell us it was a story of overrun and quick conquest. Something I don’t want to see happen to your Republic.”

  “We agree on that, by God,” said the President, thinking of the billions of humans who had been in their smaller ally. And I have two hundred billion humans and aliens to think of myself.

  “We have dispatched a scout force to have a look at the Kingdom,” continued Sean. “We have com with them, so we know they’re still moving, but it’s unknown how close they will get before they are stopped.”

  “What do you want us to do?” she asked, getting to the point of the meeting. “I mean, in the short term.”

  “I would like to send you some of our engineers though the wormhole,” said Sean, glancing over at another minister. “And have you send us some of yours. I realize that you are not that far behind us in most respects, but we have some things in the pipeline that might surprise you. And I hope we are pleasantly surprised as well.”

  Oh yes, thought the President, remembering some of the toys the admirals had been showing her the past week. Maybe not as impressive as wormholes, but still something that might improve the military tech of both powers.

  “And I would like to set up a summit, whenever you feel ready, but sometime soon. We would host it here, for, ah, security reasons.”

  Safety reasons, you mean. Your capital is not in danger, yet. “I would be willing for that face to face meet, in your capital. And what other allies do you have? Has Elysium come in on your side?”

  “Unfortunately, they have problems of their own right now. I think they will come in, eventually, but only after they have cleaned up their own mess. And our lessor allies are dealing with those damned Lasharans.”

  “Then we’re it, for now,” said the President, bowing her head and saying a quick prayer.

  “For now, yes. And perhaps all we need for right now. We don’t have to beat them right away. We only have to hold on by our fingertips until we can build up our forces. Then smash them.”

  The talk went on for another hour, and when it was over the President felt better than she had for the last couple of months. Her cabinet didn’t agree wholeheartedly. Some were captured by the charisma of foreign ruler. Others thought him far too young for the shoes he was trying to fill. President Julia Graham thought the Empire had found the head of state it needed at the time they had to have him. Watching the huge ball of the sun rising imperceptibly in the eastern sky she felt like th
ey just might win this thing.

  *

  ELYSIUM, DECEMBER 3RD, 1000.

  Ambassador Horatio Alexanderopolis still cringed a bit when he saw a Knockerman out and about in the rebuilding capital city of the Elysium Empire. Of course, they were the beings tasked with clearing away the rubble, and there were plenty of Brakakak guards around, their smaller forms encased in battle armor and their weapons ready.

  We called it Elysium because of the beauty of their many cultures, especially the Brakakak. That, and we hadn’t a clue on how to make those chirping whistling sounds that were the real name. The Ambassador spoke fluent Brakakak, or at least as much as was possible for any human. Those who dealt with him on a regular basis had no trouble understanding him, and he had perfect understanding of the speech of the avian species that was the predominant race of the Empire.

  “It still saddens my heart to see the destruction,” said High Lord Grarakakak in his fluent English. The avians had the ability to mimic a variety of sounds, though few bothered to learn Terranglo.

  “You will rebuild it better than new,” said the human, who considered the High Lord his good friend. He looked out over the city for a moment, then back at the leader of the Elysium Empire. “Has the Council decided on whether to let us install a wormhole here?” he asked, remembering that the ship carrying it would be here in two days.

  “Yes,” said the High Lord, still staring at the city. “We will rebuild. But will we rebuild to only see it knocked down again by an alien invader.” The High Lord opened and closed his beak in a manner of his people when negating something. “There is still some dissent among the new Council. Some think it is too dangerous to allow such a device on our planet. But I think this is stupid thinking by beings who do not understand what is going on in the Universe. So here is what we will do.” The High Lord pointed to the sky, then looked back at the human. “We will allow you to place your device in our primary orbital station, where my military can watch it. You will, of course, be allowed to move your own people back and forth, as long as you don’t try to move a whole division of your Marines. And your communications through the wormhole are secure and will be your own business.”