“And I don’t,” said Sean, shaking his head.
“Then let me have faith for both of us,” said his lady love.
“They’re hitting the antimatter stations,” called out one of the Tactical Officers in the room.
Sean turned to see a holo showing the stations near the star, and vector arrows of many scouts heading for them. The holo zoomed into a live picture, or at least as live as it could be over multiple light hours. “Where is this feed coming from?” he asked.
“A couple of wormholes were dropped out into space before the Fleet left the system, your Majesty,” said the duty officer, a young Rear Admiral. “Marvelous technology.”
“Except that it deprives one of sleep,” said Jennifer with a frown.
Bright pinpoints started to show on the holo, the stations self-destructing before they could be captured. Some waited until the Ca’cadasan assault shuttles had mated with them, taking a few of the enemy with them. And some, a very few, allowed themselves to be taken, the crews hoping that they would be allowed to live. Fat chance, thought the Emperor. He knew for a fact the Cacas wanted to exterminate humanity. They might allow a captive to live for a short period, but the final result would always be death.
“We’re getting this feed, your Majesty,” called out another officer, and a holo came up that showed the take from a battle cruiser. The holo split, showing the flag bridge of the ship and a tactical view of the situation. An enemy battleship and two supercruisers were moving on a parallel course, and the battle cruisers of the scout force started spitting an incredible number of missiles into hyperspace.
“I recognize that Commodore,” said Sean, pointing at the holo take of the bridge as the face of an Asian woman appeared. “Mei Lei. I made her a Duchess.”
“She’s going to slaughter those enemy ships,” said the duty officer with a smile.
It took over an hour, but sure enough, when the missiles cleared the Ca’cadasan ships were gone, with no casualties to the Imperial Force. “They must have already been low on missiles from a previous engagement,” said the Admiral. “We’re hoping to pick off more of them over the next couple of days.”
“And the battle cruisers have the same number of missiles they had before the engagement,” said Sean, nodding. “None. And the base they’re getting them from still has plenty more.”
“What are the smaller ships doing there?” asked Jennifer, pointing at the tactical holo, which showed three battle cruisers, including the two that had fired, as well as some light cruisers and destroyers.”
“Their job is to protect the launching ships,” said the Admiral. “The wormhole battle cruisers also have access to almost unlimited counter missiles, but it helps if the other ships are part of the defensive structure.”
“So, some good news after all,” said Jennifer with a smile.
“Not enough,” said Sean, looking back at the holo of the Cimmeria system. He could feel his anger growing. He wanted to strike back at the enemy.
“We need to raid one of the systems they hold,” he said, looking at the Admiral. “Something that would really hurt them.”
“I don’t see how, your Majesty,” said the Admiral. “The space they hold is swarming with their ships. Anything we try to sneak through will probably be intercepted. And if not going in, then surely coming out.”
“I want to speak with McCollum,” said Sean, and the duty officer nodded. In a moment a holo sprung up before him, and the CNO was looking him in the eyes.
“I want to raid one of their base systems,” said Sean through gritted teeth. “I want them to realize that they just can’t strike at us with impunity.”
“I told his Majesty that we would risk the entire force by sending them in,” said the duty officer.
“There might be a way, your Majesty,” said the CNO. “I’ve been talking with some of our R&D people and they say there might be a way to insert a force into enemy space, raise hell, and get them back, without actually having to go through their space.”
“A wormhole gate?” asked Sean.
“What else, your Majesty,” said the smiling CNO.
“But, how?”
“The same way we’re expanding microgates into personal transport and cargo gates,” said McCullom. “Same principle. We just need the expanding frame and the negative matter. And a system that already contains a wormhole.”
“I have just the one,” said Sean. “Let me get back with you. But if we have the means, it will mean borrowing a large unit of Home Fleet.”
“Parliament won’t like that.”
“Then we’ll do it anyway, and ask forgiveness after it works. It’s always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
The next holo to come up was a com link to Doctor Yu. “Yes, your Majesty, we have enough negative matter on hand for another ship gate. In fact, we were going to try to open one to one of the Core Worlds near the Sector Four border.”
“Then we need to borrow that gate, Director. If everything goes well we’ll be able to return your negative matter, and you can still open that gate.”
“Of course, your Majesty,” said Yu, bowing her head.
In another moment Sean was on the link to back to the CNO, all fatigue forgotten for the moment.
*
“We found this one in a bunker, with lots of guards,” said the officer of ground troops, looking at the Grand Admiral while he pointed a lower right hand at the kneeling human. “The guards fought well. So did this one, in defense of his family. We thought he might be important, so we stunned him into submission. It turns out that he is the civil ruler of this planet.”
“And who are you?” asked the Admiral, while a device translated his words. The man looked more angry than frightened.
“I am Archduke Ferdinand Vladislov Ignatious,” said the man, his angry eyes looking up into those of the Admiral. “And you are the commander of this fleet of criminals?”
“I am the Admiral in command. But why do you call us criminals?”
“Because you slaughter a helpless population,” said the man.
The Admiral laughed at that, wondering what foolishness the man was speaking. His side had the power to do what it wanted in this system. “If you didn’t want this to happen, your fleet could have tried to stop it. Instead, they left you to your own devices.”
The Admiral looked over at his ground force commander. On the holo behind the human shuttles were leaving one of the troop transports and ferrying soldiers to the surface. “Are we still experiencing much resistance on the surface, General?”
“More than expected,” said the officer, glaring down at the human. “We should have broken their resistance days ago, but more of their warriors keep coming at us, seemingly out of nowhere.”
“The wormhole,” said the Admiral in a hiss. “They have a wormhole on the planet, and can bring as many of their people through as they want.” The Admiral looked down at the Archduke and engaged the translation device. “Where is the wormhole?”
“I have no idea,” said the Archduke, shaking his head. “The military didn’t let me in on where they were putting it.”
The Great Admiral raised a hand and a door opened, then three armed Cacada warriors led a woman and two small human children into the room. “Perhaps they will jog your memory,” he said to the man. “Now, where is the wormhole?”
“I don’t know,” screamed the man. “Dear God, don’t hurt my family.”
The Great Admiral nodded, and one of the warriors pick up the largest of the children, he thought it was a male. “Now tell me, where is the wormhole?”
“I don’t know,” said the frantic man, trying to struggle to his feet and being pushed back down. “I don’t know. Don’t hurt my son, please.” The adult female tried to fight her way to the child, and was held in check by another of the warriors.
The Admiral nodded again, and the soldier holding the child by his hair pulled a monomolecular blade from a sheath at his side. He took car
eful aim, then swung the blade. Blood splattered. The warrior held up the boy’s head while the body fell limply to the floor.
“You have one more child,” said the Great Admiral, showing the man his predator’s teeth. “And I will ask you again. Where is the wormhole?”
The man cried and shook his head. The Admiral nodded again and the second child, a little girl, was brought forward. “Your species does not live for long. Not like mine. You have so few years, and yet you are so willing to part with them. So, what is your answer now?”
“For God’s sake, tell him, Ferdinand,” screeched the woman, tears rolling down her face.
“I will not,” said the Archduke. “Don’t you see? We’re already dead. And I will not be a traitor to my own people.”
The Admiral pointed and the second child died. The man cursed and tried to get to his feet, only to be clubbed down by the warrior guarding him. “So, you will not tell me where the wormhole is. Maybe you truly don’t know where it is. But you are the civil authority on this planet. Will you order your people to surrender, so no more of them will have to die?”
“You’ll kill them anyway,” said the Archduke, shaking his head. “I will not give that order.”
The Admiral gestured to the last warrior, and the male pulled the woman up by her hair. She was mumbling some words, probably a prayer to whatever effeminate Gods they worshipped.
“Last chance to save your mate,” said the Admiral, staring at the man.
“You know I can’t do that. Katherine,” he said to the woman. “I love you.”
“I know,” she said through her sobs. “I’ll see you in heaven.”
The warrior took her head off cleanly, and the body fell to the floor to lie beside those of the children. The Admiral looked at the bodies for a moment, knowing that the meat would not go to waste.
“Take him away,” he said, looking at the human male who had shown more courage than he thought any of them possessed. A Cacada would not betray his people just to save himself, or even his family. He hadn’t known a human would as well.
The warrior pulled the human to his feet. As soon as he had his feet under him the man pivoted, much faster than a Cacada could, and pulled the warrior’s monomolecular blade from its sheath. The blade sliced in, and the warrior fell with a great gash to his body spewing blood. With a scream the man turned and started to run at the Great Admiral, the blade held close to his body in a professional manner. Before he man took three steps he was punched backward by a flurry of projectiles fired by the other warriors. The man fell on his back and stared up, taking ragged breaths as blood oozed from his mouth.
“You go to hell,” the Archduke told the Great Admiral as he looked down at the man. Then, with a ragged breath and a shudder he died.
“Find that wormhole,” yelled the Admiral to his ground force commander.
“And how do you suggest we do that, my Lord?” said the other male. “It’s not like they can be detected on a sensor sweep.”
“I don’t know how, just find it. I want to establish a forward base here, and that wormhole gets in my way. So find it.”
*
Jennifer got tired of just hanging around the palace complex, the official physician of a strong young man in perfect health. There was very little for her to do. The Secret Service and military had their own doctors. So when she had asked permission to work in one of the local hospitals she had not been surprised that Sean had forbid it, saying that she was too valuable to risk. When she had threatened to resign she had been told that she was now considered an important resource for the war effort, not to be risked, and would not be allowed to leave. So she had used the final tactic used by women throughout history. She had withdrawn her affections from the Emperor, and had gotten everything she wanted, within limits.
Now she was allowed to work a shift at Imperial Hospital, the largest of the two hundred medical centers in the city of over three billion sentients. She still resented being tailed by a pair of Secret Service Agents, but at least they were both trained nurses as well. Even more, she resented the squad of Marines stationed at the hospital as a reaction force. But Sean had been adamant about the precautions, telling her he would go without her favors before he allowed her to risk herself out in public without security. She had seen that she was getting as much as she was going to get, and gave in on that point.
“Your baby is doing fine,” she had told the woman lying in a bed on the maternity ward. Another breech birth, she thought. There seemed to be more and more of them all the time. Even with all the enhancements to the human genome, babies still didn’t know any better than to turn in the womb and get all wrapped up in the umbilical cord. “I gave him his booster nanites this morning, and the little guy is looking good.”
“Thank you, Doctor Conway,” said the young woman, a chemical engineer who would return to work soon after she left the hospital, her specialty vital to the war effort. “Maybe the next one will be better behaved.”
And there will be no next one unless you emigrate to a frontier or developing world, thought Conway as she scanned the flat comp that displayed the patients’, mother and child’s, chart. The fact was that Jewel had more people than any other planet in the Empire. Over twenty billion, supported by the high tech food growth industry and the importation of billions of tons of nutrients. As the capital world it had been partially exempted from the laws that prohibited populated planets from going over a certain population threshold. Still, births were restricted, and most couples would see one child at most, if they were lucky.
“I’ll be back to check in tomorrow,” she told the mother. “I’ll probably discharge you both then. Ah, here he is now.”
A nurse brought the baby in and laid it at the chest of the mother, who smiled down at him. She looked up and nodded her thanks, and Jennifer left the room feeling good.
That afternoon she did her rounds on the floor that served the opposite purpose of the maternity ward. It was called the geriatric ward, but what it really functioned as was as a place to die. Most people didn’t need medical care. The internal nanites in their systems made them immune to any possible contagion from any source. They also aided in the healing process, though not quick enough to prevent a bleed out from a major artery. Bone still needed setting, scar tissue needed to be removed for limb regrowth. There were autodocs in use in all the outposts that didn’t have the luxury of a physician. But people preferred human, or at least sentient, doctors. Living physicians could care, and interact on a personal level, while everyone knew that machines programmed to act that way were doing just that, acting.
Jennifer looked at the chart of the patient, a woman of almost three hundred, about the upper limit of human life span. She had a long and productive life as a historian, contributing much to the knowledge of the Empire. And she was dying. And we can’t do a damned thing to save her, thought the doctor, looking into the clouded eyes of the ancient woman. There was still some awareness there. Not as much as was once present, when this woman possessed an IQ of one forty. Now it was more like the awareness of a young child.
Why the hell can’t we expand our lifespan? We can do everything else. She looked at the latest scans of the woman’s body. She was imaged from the bed every five minutes, and the nanites in her system sent a steady stream of telemetry to the medical scanners. She could look into the individual cells, where the chemical processes of the mitochondria were starting a quick decline into complete stoppage. No ATP production meant the muscles would stop working. Nanites could inject artificial ATP into the body, but eventually the receptors would also stop working. She checked another scan and saw that the chromosomes were also unraveling. One of the reasons that people lived as long as they did was because that problem had been solved, to a point.
It just makes no fucking sense, she thought. The body is just a mechanical system. We should be able to fix anything. The damned Cacas live for thousands of years. But they really didn’t know anything about the genet
ic structure of the Ca’cadasans. She didn’t know if they even used DNA. They had captives now, and that knowledge would soon be forthcoming. And she, for one, could not wait to look at that information.
We could always clone her and do a mind upload, she thought, then shook her head at that thought. And then we would have a young intelligent psychopath. The same reason that artificial births aren’t allowed. Again, it made no sense, and Doctor Jennifer Conway, not the most religious of people, thought there must be something there that science could not explain. Something that worked past the atomic and subatomic level. Or outside of it.
Jennifer left her shift that day, satisfied at the young lives she had helped to bring into the Universe, saddened by those she was not able to help beyond easing them out of their physical existence. She thought about it for part of the aircar ride back to the palace, then let herself enjoy the view of the largest city of the Empire, stretching out on all sides. Another thing she missed was piloting her own car, but that was not done much in a city this size, where the risk of collisions dropping fast moving vehicles into buildings was real. And there were hundreds of distracting vid boards and holos on the tall buildings or floating in the air, more distractions.
Most of those people down there are on the dole, she thought, knowing that the owners and riders of aircars were probably either wealthy, or wage earners. That is changing, fast. As the war continued the human species would not be able to afford to have idle hands. Moments later they were over the huge Imperial Compound, stingships first checking them out, then escorting them to the landing pad.
Jennifer decided to catch the news first before showering. That was where the Emperor found her when he returned from a meeting at the Hexagon. She was sitting on the couch crying, thinking about the images she had seen from Cimmeria, and the blame the newsies had been placing on her love.
Chapter Fourteen
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on. Ulysses S, Grant.
Exodus - Empires at War 04 - The Long Fall (Exodus Series #4) Page 22
