Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion.

by Doug Dandridge

  The floor exploded upward, letting in the blast of heat and radiation that converted all organic matter in the chamber to superheated steam. The Primate observed none of this, already dead. The walls of the chamber collapsed outwards as the blast spread. The roof rose up, resisting the blast with the strength of plasticrete and alloy, then collapsing back. Some tons of the building were projected out, many flying for dozens of kilometers before hitting the ground. The majority of the building collapsed back in on itself, leaving a smoking heap.

  The last thing the people in the temples on the planet saw was the vid of the device, with the conversation of the Primate and his underling in the background. And then, static. Thousands of clergy looked on in shock as they realized that the seat of their Church, which had stood for thousands of years, was gone, along with all of the records and artifacts of the religion. Soon the vids, from the news services and from individuals with hand computers, were streaming images of the fallen cathedral over the net. For hours after the com links of the Church were humming with messages, back and forth. No one was sure how they were going to strike back at the Emperor, but they did know that they needed to get the information out for all to see, before the Empire did something to destroy the evidence.

  * * *

  “That should settle it,” said Jresstratta, looking across the intervening kilometers of city between the palace and the ruins of the Cathedral. Where it had towered to the sky, the towers reaching kilometers above the tops of the battlements, now it was a hump of less than fifty meters of rubble. One of the towers stood still, a stump of a kilometer, part of the inner surface gone on what remained. It had been almost perfectly dropped, only a couple of tons of material ejected through structural weak points into the city.

  One block, less than a ton, had crashed down on a slave barracks, crushing part of the building, one side, then rolling over the rest. No telling how many slaves had perished from that strike, and something the Emperor would not concern himself with, any more than he was concerned about the animals his meals came from, which were sometimes those very slaves.

  “There will be questions, Supreme Majesty.”

  “Then set the propaganda people to work spinning it the way we want the people to think of it,” said the Emperor, not concerning himself any more about that as well. He had people for that, and their loyalty was also not a concern. That was for their bosses to worry about, and it would be their heads if anything leaked.

  “We will take care of it, Supreme Majesty.”

  The Emperor made a motion of dismissal with his hand, continuing to stare with satisfaction at the ruins of his enemy’s headquarters. The Cathedral would have to be rebuilt, of course. The people would demand it. But this time he would make sure of the loyalty of the senior priesthood. And the emplacement of proper surveillance gear. That could wait until the bodies, what was left of them, were dug out of the ruins and given state funerals. They would of course be buried with honors in the crypts of the ancestors. That should satisfy the fools who still revered the religion.

  Later that afternoon, when a series of bombs went off at the Secret Police Barracks, killing scores of loyal males, the Emperor realized what a mistake he had made.

  * * *

  MAY 19TH, 1004. CA’CADASAN FLEET.

  “Remember, the Gods revere life. We may be called upon in our duties to take life. The Gods understand this, just as they understand that warriors must take life. Or that life must be killed to sustain the race. But the taking of life on a massive scale is forbidden. Living worlds are a gift from the Gods, given to us for our use. Once destroyed, their distinctive life is gone forever.”

  The chaplain looked out over the Ca’cadasan spacers gathered in the ship’s chapel. It was the holy day, and the crew would be gathering in off shifts, filling the chamber. Over a thousand were currently present. Not everyone on the ship was a believer, though it was always safer to let your compatriots think you were. And not all believers attended services. There was no regulation forcing them to. Still, there were enough here that the chaplain was sure to get his word across to the majority of the crew.

  “The Gods will punish those who destroy distinctive life forms, ending them forever. The Gods placed them in this Universe for a purpose, and it is not for us to decide what should survive, and what shouldn’t.”

  “What about stellar processes?” shouted out one of the males in the congregation, wearing the uniform of an engineering officer.

  The chaplain knew what he was asking about. Maybe the fleet wasn’t creating supernovas, which intelligent beings were not capable of producing, yet, as far as they knew. But the subcritical novas they were creating were frying planets, maybe not down to the level of microbes, but destroying all higher life forms.

  “Supernova’s and such,” said the chaplain, giving a head nod at the officer. “Those are acts of the Gods. Not of mortal beings. But trying to control stars, even at the level our science is capable of, is blasphemy. And those engaging in such acts will be denied to pleasures of heaven, and will be thrown into the deepest depths of the hells, there to freeze solid, their bodies in constant pain.”

  “And if we are ordered by those above us to engage in, these acts?” asked another spacer, his voice quivering with emotion.

  “It is to each to decide for himself what he will and will not do. It is on your conscience. But remember. Some sins can be easily forgiven. And some are beyond forgiveness. One must consider that before taking an action that might doom them. The penalty might be death, but death is waiting for us all. And a painful death will pale in comparison to eternal punishment.”

  The chaplain went silent, letting his words sink in. He hated telling the people he ministered to that they must disobey orders. He wasn’t in fact telling them that, but it wasn’t a stretch from giving them threats to their eternal situation.

  The service broke up, the crewmen filing out of the large room and heading back to their quarters or the galley. Before the last of them were out of the room other males pushed past them and into the chamber. These were hard eyed warriors in body armor, weapons on their sides. Some of the congregation stopped to stare, and received hard glares in return, while hand motions waved them on.

  “You are to come with us, Priest,” said the leader of the warriors, a lieutenant of marines. “The Captain has some questions for you.”

  “I have another service to hold in a couple of hours,” said the chaplain, wondering if he would be available for that event.

  “That will be up to the Captain,” said the marine, motioning toward the exit. “I’m sure your assistant will be able to handle it if you aren’t around.”

  Those last words struck a chill of fear into the chaplain. It had been a risk to talk to the congregation as he had, but he answered to a higher authority. And the orders from above had been clear. His life didn’t enter into the equation.

  Two hours later the assistant chaplain gave the same sermon. This time the marines were in attendance, and security tried to arrest the assistant chaplain. Which sparked a riot in the chapel. It was not the only one to occur on an Imperial ship that week.

  Chapter Nine

  Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Napoleon Bonaparte

  APRIL 23RD, 1004. JEWEL.

  “The damned Cacas have used their terror weapon against the Klavarta,” hissed Vice Admiral Mashara Ignoa, the New Terran Empire commander of the force working with the Republic of New Earth, the star kingdom established by the second ship that had made it out of the original human home system. The Gryphon admiral’s fierce avian eyes looked out of the holo. The eyes of the species always appeared fierce, but the Emperor could read the rage underneath that look.

  The dominant species of that nation were not what most people would think of as human. Over ninety-five percent of the people of human stock had been heavily genetically engineered to make them the best warriors the genome could produce. Five percent had remained general human
stock. The real problem with the star nation had been the leadership. The cloned duplicates of the original leaders who had led them there from Earth, with the original uploaded brains. And like all clones, they were complete psychopaths, genocidal against all non-humans. They had turned every species in their region of space against them, those that had survived.

  It had taken great effort by the new government, with the help of Sean’s people, to build alliances with people who had no reason to trust the Klavarta, as the genetically engineered humans were called. But it had been done, and now New Earth had a strong alliance to battle against the Cacas. Not everyone in the region had signed on, but enough had, and there was still a chance that more would come over.

  Assigning an alien commander of the force of New Terran Empire ships in the region had been the idea of the Empress, who thought a non-human face would aid in convincing other aliens that the Klavarta were under new management, and no longer the xenophobic maniacs they had been. That the admiral was also a fine strategist had been a plus. That he really cared for the welfare of his allies was even more of one.

  “How bad?” asked Sean, closing his eyes.

  “Not as bad as it could have been, but bad enough. Almost eight hundred ships, mostly older designs, and five hundred thousand Klavarta.”

  My God, thought the Emperor. He had lost more spacers in a single battle, many times more. But…

  “What were the Caca losses?”

  “Maybe fifty ships and the crews, which might not have been full strength. Another Klavarta force was preparing to enter yet another system, but we got word to them in time. A couple of scouts went in, and the Cacas went ahead and detonated their weapon when it was obvious that nothing else was coming. Millions of slaves died on the habitable world, which was, of course, killed.”

  Sean thought about that for a moment before speaking. His main objects during the invasion of Caca space had not just been to beat their Empire, but to free the trillions of intelligent beings they held as property, many as food animals. And now the Cacas were killing those people in job lots on both fronts. It was something he couldn’t stand, or stand for.

  “The Klavarta government will be contacting you, and soon,” continued the admiral. “I believe they will be asking for weapons that can level the playing field. And more wormholes, so they can configure wormhole bombs.”

  And I’m not sure I want them to have more of those devices, thought the Emperor. The point being that he didn’t really trust the Klavarta to not engage in wholesale slaughter against their enemy, and the collateral damage could be epic.

  “Do the Klavarta have any idea why the Cacas are killing living worlds? I thought that was against their prime religion.”

  “They only think of the Cacas as big murdering brutes,” said the admiral, scowling. “So I don’t think it comes as any surprise to them. To the Klavarta the Cacas are nothing short of demons. They are surprised that we attribute any kind of normal feelings to the creatures.”

  Sean could see why they thought that way, though he didn’t agree. On general terms the Ca’cadasans were evil in a way that most people couldn’t imagine. Sean had read extensive histories of old Earth, and there had been references to people and political systems that were just as bad. The National Socialists of Germany. The Fascist government of Japan and their Bushido code. The Communists of so many nations, best exemplified by the Soviet Union and China. The Caliphate. There were people at the top who had gone down in history as mass murderers. However, they still had some qualities. They cared for many of their people, even loved some of them, and tried to do their best for them. That their actions led to the deaths of millions didn’t diminish their good points, few as they were. They also didn’t cover for their bad points.

  He thought the Cacas were similar in many ways. They didn’t see themselves as evil. They were the good guys of their story, and what they did benefited the Galaxy, at least as far as they could see. They saw the humans as the evil species that had killed the heir to their empire after offering their surrender. And those same humans were now trying to destroy their empire, and the vision of the Galaxy they were trying to make. Just like the Germans saw the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain as the bad guys, so did the Cacas see the Empire. From what he had learned from intelligence reports, the Caca males cared about their offspring, or maybe that should be amended to male progeny. They really didn’t care about their females, but it wasn’t like the other sex were the intellectual equals of the males. Another concept foreign to the sensibilities of the humans, whose females were just as capable as their males, if not as gifted with physical strength.

  The examples from human history didn’t have an all encompassing religion like the Cacas, though, with the exception of the Caliphate of the mid-twenty-first century Middle Eastern Earth. As far as he knew, they only had the one faith, which seemed to humans a contradiction of beliefs. But, then again, weren’t many human religions? Most human religions seemed to have tenants about getting along and treating their fellow beings with compassion and dignity. Yet some of the worst excesses of violence in human history had been caused by religious zealotry. All had eventually gone through reformations that had tempered some of their more violent tendencies. Islam had been the last, but despite their sometimes still bizarre notions of religion, they were as well behaved, as civilized, as any other adherents to a faith, and just as accepting of the scientific truths that ran technic civilization.

  He realized that he actually knew very little about the Ca’cadasan faith, and maybe it was time to rectify that lack.

  “Connect me with Great Admiral Miierrowanasa M’tinisasitow,” said the Emperor into the air, groaning in his mind as he mangled the name. Ca’cadasan names were hard to pronounce in the first place, and the former Caca battle fleet commander had one more difficult than most. Part of that was because the Caca admiral was from a very old and distinguished family, one that might have risen to the rank of emperor with some different historical outcomes.

  It took several moments for the connection to be made through multiple links, including several wormholes. It wasn’t a com link that just anyone could request. In fact, there were only a dozen people in the Empire, outside of the guards and staff of the prison, that even knew the warrior was in Imperial custody. The Ca’cadasan Empire knew the admiral had been captured, but they didn’t have any idea as to his final disposition. The male had been forthcoming in helping the Empire to understand his people, but he had given no military secrets. Sean had to respect the admiral for that, if nothing else.

  “Emperor Sean,” said the Caca admiral in heavily accented Terranglo, his bright eyes looking into those of the human.

  Sean had to admit that the aliens did look like demons, at least according to the conception of some human faiths. The males were large, massing at least three hundred kilograms and standing over three meters. The furred faced looked like that of a predator, with an extended snout and sharp teeth showing through the black lips. Intelligent eyes looked out of that face, while horns rose another half meter above the head, completing the demonic image.

  The Emperor had talked with this male extensively, trying to gain an understanding of the psychology of their species. He would have liked to have actually visited the warrior in his quarters, they really couldn’t be called a cell, but Imperial Security had threatened to knock him down and sit on him before they would let him occupy the same space as the massive alien. Sean didn’t really feel fear at the notion of being in the same room as the big Caca. Cornelius had killed several Cacas in hand to hand, and Sean was augmented in much the same manner as the Ranger officer. Still, a fight was never a sure thing, and if the Caca became suicidal enough, he might possibly get lucky.

  “I have some questions for you. Feel like talking?”

  The Caca gestured to the room around him, the holo moving to follow his motions. It was a very spacious chamber, with a large comfortable chair and a table laden with foo
d and drinks to the front. Several females lounged in the chamber, while a pair of males sat drinking, waiting on the commands from their lord.

  “As long as you don’t ask for military secrets. Of course,” continued the male, smiling, “I’m sure any information of a military nature I might have would be completely out of date.”

  “Nothing military. I would like to learn something about your religion.”

  “Ah, the Faith. We call it Hrassatora, the way of the Gods.” The admiral laughed for a moment. “I haven’t believed since my days at the fleet college, learning to be an officer. Most of the truly intelligent members of my species are not believers. Which means the great majority still are. The stupid fools.”

  “Where did this, Faith, come from? And when?”

  “Hah,” snorted the Caca, giving a slight headshake. “The origins are lost in the mists of time. From the rising of the race from hunter gatherers to living in villages, then cities. Like most hunter gatherers they worshipped nature, from whence came their sustenance and the materials they needed for crafting the artifacts of their culture.”

  “Much the same as on Earth,” agreed Sean, nodding. “But we grew out of that kind of worship and started concentrating on monotheism. What was different with you?”

  “From what I have read, not all of your religions were monotheistic. Even your Empire still contains some of those.”

  “They are in the minority,” said Sean, thinking as he spoke that Wicca and Hinduism were still large and vibrant faiths. But still a relative minority. “They lost much of their following once we got into space. Polytheism has a much harder time resolving their beliefs with science, when their gods are actually said to manifest in the real world. So I ask again, what was different with you?”

  “Ah, but were you conquered when you were still in your early industrial era? Did another species come to your world and wreck your ecosystem, slaughter your people, treat you like offal?”