The chamber seemed hot to the low admiral. It always seemed hot, which made sense since they were so close to the star. The huge darkside radiators struggled to keep the inside temperature down, not always successfully. Everyone in earshot was working quietly, all anxious to get the mission over with.
Well, soon, thought the admiral, looking at the plot hanging in the middle of the unusual ship. He really didn’t like the idea of dying any more than the rest of them. His loyalty to the empire, as well as the promised reward to his family had led him to this point, were of paramount importance. And he wasn’t about to back down without fulfilling his oaths.
And they haven’t seemed to have spotted us yet, he thought with some disbelief. Of course they were looking for superbattleships, and were expecting what they were looking for. Not something that looked like an object with an entirely different purpose, like the vessels in his command.
At least his people were volunteers, unlike the poor males in the army and fleet units further out. Some of those were, the other admiral for one, but many had been ordered here to fill a role in the deception, and had no idea what was about to happen. That was unfortunate, and dishonorable of the high command, and nothing he could do anything about. He paced the deck of the bridge, lower hands behind his back, upper swinging at his side, listening to the conversation between the crew as they fired information back and forth. The reactors were ready to ramp up, the hyperdrive projectors checked and rechecked. When the time came they would be ready.
And we don’t even have a name, thought the admiral, snorting. That was also against tradition, but then everything about these vessels was against the traditions of the fleet and the species. Males could be ordered into situations where they were unlikely to survive. Until recently, and that word unlikely had been dropped from some mission briefs, replaced with simply not to survive. So the dozen great ships waited for their ride with death.
“We have some more traitors, my Lord,” came a call over the com, a holo opening up in the air beside the admiral, showing the face of his security chief.
“What were they doing?”
“Plotting to sabotage the hyperdrive projectors when the time came,” said the other male, the holo panning to show a trio of males on their knees.
The admiral shook his head in the way of his people when they were saddened. They had tried to weed out males that might obey the Church before they performed their duty to the Empire. Having smaller crews than were needed on true warships had helped. Projection Ship Number Fifty-three only had a couple of hundred males aboard, versus the more than four thousand for a real battleship, and everyone had been questioned before their assignment to the vessel. Still, some Church provocateurs had obviously slipped aboard each of the vessels, and constant monitoring had exposed many of them. All of them? The admiral thought not, though he truly hoped that there weren’t that many of them still active.
He wasn’t sure how many might have been caught aboard the other ships as the time for firing came. They wouldn’t risk com for such information that might be traced. Hopefully not as many as on Fifty-three. If there had been more he wouldn’t have been surprised. If there were they would have to make do without them. The ship could function with a crew as small as a dozen, though then they ran the risk that any major malfunctions or damage couldn’t be repaired in time.
“What do you want us to do with them, my Lord?”
“Give them a burial in space,” replied the low admiral.
The males were hustled to their feet and led away. They had a date with an airlock.
“The Gods will punish you, Admiral,” yelled out one of the saboteurs, turning an angry face toward the camera. “The Gods will have their revenge on our people for this abomination.”
The admiral shuddered. While not a devout follower of the Church, he still carried some of the beliefs instilled in him since childhood. He didn’t like the idea that he was going to commit one of the greatest sins of his religion. He also didn’t like the idea of disobedience to his emperor. He had made his choice, and had to hope that those who thought the religion a sham were correct. He knew the empire was real, and that it was in trouble. About the Gods he was not so sure.
* * *
“They caught three of our fellows,” whispered one of the engineering techs, looking over at the sub-officer who was the leader of his section.
“And we’ll be caught if we don’t watch out,” said the senior, looking around as if he would spot any of the nanite surveillance devices. So far this area of the ship had remained clear of them, thanks to the strong magnetic fields of the superconductor coils that fed power into the hyperdrive.
“Soon we won’t have to worry about that,” said the tech, also looking around.
That is true, thought the sub-officer, what would be called an engineering chief petty officer on a human vessel. The officers might be in charge of the working of the vessel, but he and his fellow chiefs were the real heart of any Ca’cadasan ship. Nothing worked without them. And the chief was hoping that this one wouldn’t work when the time came.
“We do the work of the Gods,” said the chief, holding up a hand and making the sign of the God of Life, Philastees, one of the most powerful in the pantheon. “But we don’t do their work by failing before the time comes. So hold your tongue out there. Let’s go.”
The pair walked from the alcove where they had been talking, carrying their tool kits as they moved, playing the part of males who had been performing maintenance. Heads turned their way, and the chief forced himself not to meet the eyes of those who were in his flock. They never knew who was watching, and looks could give away the game before it was time to act.
Engineering was a hive of activity. Systems that normally worked to perfection on most warships tended to develop glitches on these jury rigged monstrosities. Add to that the constant heat and radiation of a close star, and keeping everything running was a true nightmare.
“We need some people to look at the laser power runs,” called out an officer.
“What’s going on?” asked one of the engineering crew.
The sub-officer had to wonder that as well. They had thought that the heavy weapons systems installed on the ship were more of an afterthought than anything. What need for them on a ship that would be destroyed well before any enemy got close enough for lasers to be of use? Much less missile launch tubes.
“All you need to know is that we need people to look those runs over,” said the officer, pointing at the crewman who had spoken. “Grab four other males and get your sorry ass to those runs.”
When the male hesitated, the officer put his hand on the butt of his pistol, a threatening gesture. On most ships everyone aboard would be armed while approaching a combat situation, at least with sidearms, in order to defend the ship if a boarding action occurred. Not these. Only the officers carried sidearms, and there were no marines aboard.
“Move.”
The male in question started to move as if his feet were on a red hot deck, calling over some of his friends and walking quickly out of the chamber.
“Try to avoid attracting attention,” said the sub-officer to his compatriot, talking out of the side of his mouth. The other male looked straight ahead, not acknowledging his companion at all, and the sub-officer almost nodded in approval, stopping himself at the last minute. They needed to stick here, in the main reactor chamber, where they could do the most good, or was that harm, and not be sidetracked to the vicinity of some secondary system.
* * *
“Suttler is having problems locating the Caca ships,” said McCullom, looking out of the holo. She was still in the huge war room under the Octagon, the headquarters of the Imperial Military. Her uniform was slightly rumpled, as if she had been sleeping in it. With modern materials it took a lot of time in the uniform to make it look like that, an indication of how long she had been on duty.
“What kind of problems?” asked Sean, sitting at his desk in the palace.
It had gotten to the point where Jennifer had been exhausted, and he thought it best to put her to bed. His office was now configured with dozens of open holos in the air, including two large maps, one of the battlefront, another of the Kallfer system. The holos made the thirty by thirty meter office seem to stretch into infinity, a sometimes disorienting effect for someone who worked long hours in the room.
“He can’t spot them. As if they’re not there. And he doesn’t think they’re using any kind of stealth, since his own systems are starting to degrade.”
“Degrade?”
“The heat of the star is being absorbed into his hulls, your Majesty. And reradiated back out. They might be able to hide from something looking at them with the sun in the background, but from any other angle they are starting to stick out. Anything there will be able to target them, if not now, then soon.”
Shit. The whole purpose of sending those ships in was that they could hide and take the enemy by surprise.
“Could we have been wrong about the trap?” he asked his CNO, wondering how she would take the question that seemed to call the competence of her people into question.
“It’s possible, your Majesty,” she said slowly, almost as if she didn’t want to admit that, but too honest not to. “All of the indications were that this was the setup we thought it would be. I still think there’s something going on here. Maybe a standard ambush, and we just haven’t seen it yet. But not a sub-supernova.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I think we need to get our fleet out of there as soon as possible, before they spring their ambush. It might still be too late, but it gives those crews the best chance.”
Sean sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. This one was on him. He had made the decision for this operation to go forward, based on the best information his people could give him. Now they were giving him a different take on the situation. The information they now had was that they had been wrong. But was it enough information? Not really, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for a decision.
The Emperor pulled up a holo that showed the take of the environs of the star. He had already seen everything there. No surprises, with the exception of the lack of the ships needed to cause the stellar event. Nothing there, except for the one rocky planet, a real hellhole with lakes of magma facing the star and a half frozen surface on the dark side. It kept one face eternally to the star, so there was little change to either hemisphere over time. And, of course, the couple of dozen anti-matter sats, stretching out twenty kilometers from end to end with a large central area housing the guts of the processing station. They looked different than the sats the Empire used. That made sense, since these were alien constructs. Did they look different from other Caca sats? Maybe. But why did that matter?
They’ve got to be there, thought Sean, staring at the space and zooming out. So where in the hell are they? It’s got to be the planet, right?
He pulled up the vid that showed the output from Suttler’s analysis of the Caca ships moving out from the planet. That was still a possibility, but why were they waiting. For Suttler’s ship to move further out of range before coming back in? Possibly. But they wouldn’t have even known they were there until recently. And now they might know those ships were there, and would be able to blast them out of space as they moved to their operating zones.
“Your Majesty. What do you want to do?”
“I think we will continue with the mission as planned for now,” he said, closing his eyes again and shaking his head.
“Your Majesty?”
“It’s my decision, Sondra. And my responsibility. I know what’s at stake here. And part of that is the safety and existence of the Maurids in that system.”
“And our people?”
“They’re important. But they signed on for this mission, and it’s my decision that we will finish it.”
“And what do we do in the meantime? If they spring a standard ambush on us, we’re screwed as well.”
“Open a wormhole gate just out of the system. Then get Len and his battlefleet in there.”
“That will set some of our other operations back,” argued the CNO.
“We’ll catch up with them later. We can’t have everything, Sondra. So we pull Len’s main force off of their other operations, at least the ones that haven’t kicked off yet, and send them to Kallfer.”
“I’ll get on it, your Majesty.”
Sean sat back again, his eyes locked on the holo of Kallfer. He didn’t hear the entry into his office. He never felt a need to be alert here, in his own home, with all the security he had.
“Trouble?”
“I thought you were knocked out for the evening,” he said, his eyes shifting to his wife, standing in the doorway. She really is beautiful, he thought. Of course love made anyone’s woman beautiful, but Jennifer had always been a very good looking female. Red hair, blue eyes set against fair slightly freckled skin, she was still lithe and lean even after birthing twins.
She really doesn’t deserve this, he thought. That was a strange thought, since there were literally millions of women who would trade places with her in an instant. The wife of the most powerful man in human space. That made them the most powerful woman in human space, right? Not really. But she still had a lot of power, much more than the average citizen, and complete access to all the information the Empire had control of. With that came the stress of sometimes knowing things that were too much to handle. Except for the one break, she had held up as well as could be expected.
“I was worried,” she said, walking into the room, right through one of the holos and up to her husband. With a smile she climbed onto his lap, putting her arms around his neck and snuggling close.
“We’ve got it under control,” said Sean after breathing in the scent of her hair.
“Liar. I’ve seen too much of this war, and the one thing I’ve got to say is that we are never in control. We can try to exert what little we have, give it our best effort, but mostly its out of our hands.”
Jennifer shifted, moving her face close to that of her husband and pressing her lips to his. What started as a shallow brushing of lips developed into a deep kiss.
Sean wanted it to go on forever. He was wishing that he could just step away from his responsibilities and go make love to his wife. But the Universe was not that kind.
“Your Majesty. Excuse me. We’ve had another development in Kallfer.”
Damn that woman, he thought with an internal laugh. He couldn’t step away, not if he was honest about it. If anyone else knew exactly what it was like to be Emperor, there would be no takers. Or, he thought, correcting that, the only people who would take the job are the ones we wouldn’t want in the position.
* * *
“We’re starting to vector away, ma’am,” called out the flag captain.
“About time,” growled Mei, switching her views from the far and near plots.
They had been under fire for the last hour. Not as much as would be expected when approaching a force like the one on the plot. Still, missiles had been vectoring in at a constant trickle, ramping up the tension on the bridge and not allowing it to drop back. There had been very little damage to any of her ships, but the possibility of a hit was something that people couldn’t ignore.
“Not what one would expect from a force of over a thousand ships,” said the tactical officer. “I’m estimating that they have at most twenty fully operational warships over there. And probably some orbital defense stations to thicken the missile storms.”
Mei nodded in agreement. While it was not the job of her force to get in close and duel head to head with heavy warships, she was almost tempted to do so. That her orders told her not to helped to make it an easy decision. Scout forces were not there to get into heavy combat. They were there to draw fire from a distance, to find and fix enemy forces so the main battle fleet could target them. Maybe to get in some hits themselves and weaken the enemy for the follow-up combat fo
rce, but never to fight the battle by themselves, unless the enemy was something they could easily overwhelm. Even then, a good scout force commander tread with caution. Mei considered herself a good scout force commander, and she wasn’t about to chance that there were more ships in that mass than they were calculating.
“How many do we have that have gone through a hard boost?” she asked her tactical officer.
There had been hundreds of traces of different grabber sources. Most had looked like small merchant ships, several like larger commercial vessels. Very few had looked like what they would expect from warships maneuvering violently to try and generate misses from incoming missiles.
“Fifteen distinct sources so far, ma’am.”
So, they can’t have more than twenty fully functioning warships. What the hell are the rest? Her best guess would have been hulks with small reactors and minimal grabbers, empty otherwise. Or small commercial vessels that had been covered with thin metallic mockups.
“We have a launch, ma’am,” called out the tactical officer, his voice rising in excitement. Or was that fear.
Mei turned to see a plot alive with missiles, hundreds of them, all heading her way.
* * *
“That should get their attention,” said the smiling male, looking back at his admiral.
The admiral smiled back, one of the few times in the last week he had felt anything that elicited that kind of reaction. Almost no one in his command knew what was really going on. He hadn’t liked that decision, but it hadn’t been his to make, and he was loyal enough to always follow orders. The admiral knew that this was a suicide mission, and he was okay with that. His family would be well taken care of, his sons advanced in position. To those who hadn’t volunteered for this kind of mission they were just going to their deaths with no reward and no choice.
“We still have another volley there?”
“Almost two of them, my Lord.”
“Target their main force and loose it. All of it.”
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion. Page 26
