Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search & Destroy

by Doug Dandridge

“Baronet Humphrey Kroger?”

  “You have me at a disadvantage, sir,” said the fat noble. “And this is a private party.”

  The young light colonel looked at the Marine officer in his dress reds, another man he recognized, and one he had nothing against. “Congratulations on your promotion, Major?”

  “Do I know you, sir?” replied the Marine. “I am Walter Kroger, and as my cousin told you, this is a private party.” The Marine’s eyes widened as he took in the medal. “Though I would be more than happy to buy a drink for someone who has served the Empire so well. I didn’t know the Imperial Medal of Heroism had been awarded three times to anyone living.”

  “Such a dashing young officer, Humphrey,” said the ordinary but well-dressed woman sitting beside the Baronet. “Perhaps you should ask him to stay.”

  “Why not,” said the Baronet with a smile. “He’s obviously a noble born.”

  The Major’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the Ranger. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “I think so. I used to lead hunts for the Duke.” The young man turned his fierce gaze on the fat noble. “You might remember me, Baronet. Walborski. Cornelius Walborski. And I remember you, Baronet.”

  The fat man looked confused, but the Major had a look of recognition on his face. “I remember you. You led the hunt on the Duke’s estate. And you have certainly come up in the world.”

  “You were the low born lout who led those hunts?” exclaimed Humphrey. “I thought you had fled the planet.”

  “Low born lout,” repeated Cornelius with a sneer. “That is the Count Cornelius Walborski, knight of the realm to you, you fat fool. And I have not forgotten that you were responsible for the death of my father. Or that your actions cost my wife her life.”

  “Walter. Call security. We have a madman on our hands. Impersonating a noble is a serious offense.”

  “I don’t think he’s an imposter, Humphrey,” said the Marine, his eyes locking on Cornelius’. “I’ve heard of you. The crazy fucking Ranger who rose up from the ranks.”

  “What do you want?” asked Humphrey, his voice quivering a bit.

  “What I want is your hide,” said Walborski, looking away from the Marine to skewer the Baronet with his gaze. “If New Detroit recognized the duello, I would call you out, not that I think a coward like you would answer.”

  “How dare you,” said Humphrey, trying to sound fierce and failing. “I am related to the Duke.”

  “Oh, I won’t do anything to you here. You’re safe enough, here. I just want you to know that I’m out there. I want you to be constantly looking over your shoulder, never knowing when I will come for your cowardly ass. Understand?”

  “I will have you thrown under the Duke’s jail, Count,” said Humphrey, trying to sit up straight and stare at the Ranger. His gaze dropped after a moment under the intense stare of Walborski.

  “I think Sean owes me enough to give me a get out of jail free card. And I know an Emperor trumps a Duke any day. Now have a good night, ladies, gentleman,” he said, giving a short bow to the women and the Marine. “And pleasant dreams, Baronet.”

  Walborski opened the door and walked out of the room, avoiding the waitress who was on her way in with the drink order. He walked at a normal pace to the entrance of the restaurant, just in time to be met by a pair of uniformed police, big men in light armor.

  “Stop,” said the senior of the cops, raising a hand, the other on the butt of his stunner. “We’ve gotten a complaint about someone meeting your description, sir.”

  Cornelius was sure that he could take both of the men down, despite their armor. But he wasn’t here to get in an altercation with the police.

  “My business is finished here,” he told the cops. “I am the Count Lt. Colonel Cornelius Walborski, Knight of the Empire, and I swear to you that no harm was done here this night.”

  “That’s not what the Baronet Humphrey Kroger said in the text he sent to the station,” said the leader of the pair. “He..”

  “My cousin exaggerated,” said the Marine Major, coming up behind Walborski and putting a hand on the Ranger’s shoulder.

  “And you are?”

  “The Lord Major Walter Kroger. The Baronet is my cousin, and is prone to panic.” The Major held up an ID, which the police scanned.

  “You’re free to go, my Lord,” said the lead cop to Walborski.

  After they had left the Ranger turned to the Marine, a question in his expression.

  “I couldn’t let a hero like yourself get pulled in on an assault charge, now could I,” said the Major.

  “Thank you.”

  “Were you serious with your threat to my cousin? He’s not really a bad man, if a bit of an arrogant lout.”

  “As long as he stays on New Detroit, he has nothing to fear,” said Walborski, his cold stare making the Marine drop his eyes. “And since the Emperor has work for me that is higher priority than my revenge, I won’t spend my time stalking him.”

  “And what’s to keep you from hiring someone to take him out?”

  “Do I look like the kind of person who would contract out my revenge?” asked Cornelius, a hard smile on his face.

  “No. You do not.”

  “Let me tell you, Major,” said Cornelius turning back after he had taken a few steps away. “I found you to be a good man, even when I was a low born lout.”

  “Thank you, sir. And good luck in your future adventures.”

  “Same to you, Marine.” Cornelius walked off, onto the street, sending for his car and driver on his implant. There were other people who had wronged him on this world, but none as badly as the Baronet. And none as badly as the Cacas, for whom he reserved the greatest measure of his hate.

  * * *

  HEXAGON: JULY 30TH, 1002.

  “I wish you would quit taking my ships, your Majesty,” said Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis Mgonda. “I’m sure I’m going to have need of them before this thing is over.”

  “We’re not really taking ships from your command, Taelis,” said Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom, like her Emperor looking at the holographic image of the Duke projected through wormhole link. “We’re just not sending you the reinforcements you want at this time. Don’t worry. We will get you what you need when you need it.”

  “I’m sorry, Duke Mgonda,” said Sean, feeling the weight of the Galaxy on his shoulders. “We have too much going on right now, and not enough to do it with.” He almost laughed at the thought running through his mind as he said that. The Imperial Fleet was made up of over two hundred thousand ships of all classes. It was a little smaller than it had been, thanks to battle losses, and the inability of the Empire’s industry to make good on those massive losses. And now we have more fronts to fight on, all demanding their resources.

  “I understand, your Majesty,” replied the Duke. “But no commander wants his force reduced. Or not increased as much as he thinks it should be.”

  “Yours is the quiet front at this moment,” said Sean, looking at the holo map of the Empire and its environs that was above the other end of the table. “I know it won’t remain that way for long, but hopefully we can get some of these other fires under control in the meantime.”

  And how much of a lie is that? thought Sean, focusing on the map of the Empire one sector at a time, linking in with the Hexagon computer to speed his thoughts and boost his memory.

  The Lasharan Autocracy was still a trouble spot, as was the border region still inhabited by majority Lasharan populations, though in some ways the region was less of one than in the past, in others even more so. There was no Lasharan fleet, it had been totally destroyed during the last operation. Several large task forces of Imperial allies, the Klashak Concordium and the Margravi Hegonomy, patrolled Lasharan space, looking for any ships that might have escaped to hide for another day, and any sign of renewed ship building. An Imperial light infantry corps, reinforced with some heavy brigades, still occupied the capital planet, and a small army group occupied the Lashara
n majority planets in the Empire. The problem was that Lasharans, being the religious fanatics that they were, refused to believe that their god might not be on their side, and continued to carry out terror attacks against both their own people and the Imperials.

  The Fenri Empire had all but been driven to its knees. Their Emperor was in hiding, they had almost no fleet, and all of the slave races had welcomed the Empire and its allies as liberators. But the remaining Fenri were sly, and what ships they had, along with the ground forces, continued to wage a guerilla war against the occupiers. The problem there was that the Empire had to walk softly lest the former slave species suffer inordinately from the continued warfare. The region was almost pacified, but continued to occupy forces that could be of use elsewhere.

  The Klang Empire was also occupied, and while the fierce herbivores were not actively fighting the Empire, they still required the presence of a military force to make sure they behaved. The biggest problem with that region was its close proximity to Caca space. Whatever force was there would have to be made much stronger to withstand any kind of enemy push, but there simply were not enough ships to give them more. Fenri space was not as bad, though Sean worried that a Caca strike there could also destroy one of his smaller forces.

  That brought him to the other side of the Empire, where Exploration Command was supposed to be mapping out what would eventually become Imperial territory. And where Bolthole was supposed to be gearing up to make a major contribution to the Imperial war effort. Instead, the Empire found itself engaged in a war of extermination against the machine intelligences that had fled Imperial space centuries before. That situation was anything but stabilized, and threatened to become a black hole that sucked vital resources out of the Empire, instead of sending them back as had been envisioned.

  And all the way across the Ca’cadasan Empire was the second front, where the Nation of New Earth was fighting its own war against the Cacas. The second refuge of an Exodus ship, this one number IV, they had also established a human empire, though different than his realm in many ways. They had been fighting a successful campaign against the Cacas for decades, using stealth and deception to keep the fight going. But they had been ruled by clones of the original crew, genocidal psychopaths that had wiped out every intelligent species in their territory. It was not a government that the Empire could ally itself with, so it had to fall. Unfortunately, the strike to behead the snake had occurred at the same time a huge Caca fleet had discovered their home system, and not only had the government fallen, but so had the home world.

  The government had been reorganized, this time the majority subspecies of Klavarta in charge, and they were still fighting on, thanks in part to the destruction of a good third of the Caca fleet. But they were nowhere near to being back on their feet, and Sean was sending them all the help he could muster. He needed that second front to continue the fight, lest his Empire face the full might of the Cacas. And he needed the alien races of that region to become his allies as well, which was a much more difficult task.

  “What are your sources telling you, Ekaterina?” he asked another of the few people physically attending the meeting.

  Ekaterina Sergiov was the head of the Imperial Intelligence Agency, the premier intelligence gathering organ of the Empire. A middle aged attractive woman, she was dressed in the uniform of the Imperial Navy, the five stars of a fleet admiral on her shoulder boards. It had been decided to combine the intelligence efforts of the Empire, putting all the major players; IIA, IIB, the Imperial Investigation Bureau, Naval Intelligence and Army Intelligence, under one central information gathering and disseminating source. Since the heads of military intelligence for both services were four star flag officers, Ekaterina was given five so she would rank above them.

  Ekaterina looked around the room for a moment, making sure every face, live and holo, was one that was cleared to hear what she was about to say. Her eyes lingered for a moment on Rear Admiral Mary Innocent, then moved to Major General Sandronen Mishkrata, the Emperor’s liaison for Naval and Army Intelligence, newly cleared for the information.

  “From what we have gotten from Shadow,” she said, using the code name for their Maurid source into the Ca’cadasan intelligence apparatus, “the Cacas are hard at work on some new technologies they hope will be ready within the next six months. They have no idea what these techs are, only that they are said to involve captured human scientists.”

  “From New Moscow?” asked Sondra, her eyes narrowing.

  “That’s our best guess,” agreed Sergiov. “And we do know for a fact that New Moscow had their own wormhole project going.”

  “But they didn’t have a Donut,” said Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri,theArmy Chief of Staff. “How would they power the process.”

  “According to Dr. Yu, any process that could generate and store sufficient power could be used to generate a wormhole, as long as the proper techniques were used,” said Sean, who had talked about the tech of wormhole generation with Lucille Yu. “It isn’t like the techniques were top secret either, since there were hundreds of papers written about the possible processes of wormhole generation before the Donut project was approved.”

  “So how would they power it?” Asked the Grand Marshal.

  “Yu thinks you could use a planetary facility, like a supermetal moon, to generate and store enough power in a week or two to open a wormhole,” said Sean.

  “And we’re opening thirty a day,” said Mgonda. “They’re going to have a hell of a time catching up.”

  “Remember,” cautioned Sergiov. “The Cacas control an enormous Empire, with almost unlimited resources and labor. They could build a hundred generating facilities, maybe two or three hundred, and start cranking them out as fast as we are.”

  “So are you suggesting that we start building additional facilities to produce wormholes?” asked McCullom, rubbing her temples as if a headache was coming. Which, considering the subject, it probably was.

  “Not at the moment,” said Sergiov. “We have need of more supermetal production facilities above all else, if we’re going to transition to a total hyper VII fleet.”

  “And the good news there is that our supermetal production capabilities will increase three fold within the next year,” said the Emperor. “The total production capacity of six core systems is being channeled into setting up new supermetal manufacturing moons or planets.”

  That was the one bit of good news that the war had brought. The Empire normally had a less than fifty percent employment rate, with hundreds of billions of adults sitting on the dole. They were approaching full employment, and the industrial might of the Empire was approaching full stride. The bad news was that with the war effort resulting in so many citizens going into the military, and employment reaching above ninety percent, they were heading toward the production limit, unless new and more efficient techniques were developed. Work was progressing on that front as well, but like most research projects, there was never a guarantee as to the amount or rapidity of the progress.

  “Which brings us to ship production,” said Sean, looking over at Sergiov. “Unless you have something to add, Ekaterina?”

  “Only that we expect the Cacas to resume operations against us in the next four to six months,” said Sergiov, eyes narrowing. “At that point, the tactic of robbing Peter to pay Paul for military operations may become counterproductive.”

  “So we need to do what we can as fast as possible,” said Sean, nodding. He looked over at Yamakuri. “Sorry that this topic isn’t of interest to you, Mishori.”

  “Oh, it’s of interest to me, your Majesty,” said the Grand Marshal with a smile. “After all, without the Fleet, we can’t get my boys and girls to the places they need to be for the Army to win the war for you.”

  There was laughter at that from the naval personnel in the conference. The rivalry between the two services was long standing. The Fleet was considered the senior service, which made sense in a space faring society. Without t
he Fleet to transport it and keep the space lanes open, the Army was only useful for defending planets from invasion. And without a Fleet presence even that defense became problematical.

  Sean nodded and turned to look at the holo image of Fleet Admiral Jonathan Vickers, the Chief of Fleet Procurement and Supply. “Is what I heard about the mothball fleet true, Jonathan?”

  “I’m afraid so, your Majesty,” said the slender Admiral who looked more like a college professor than a naval warrior. “As of two days ago, every ship in the reserve fleet has been deployed. Approximately forty-two percent have been lent out to allies, while twenty-seven percent have been refurbished for use in border and anti-pirate patrols, freeing up first line ships for other duties.”

  “And the other thirty-one percent?” asked Mgonda.

  “Turned over to training command. We need more platforms for training all the new spacers coming out of planetside basic. And this gives them to us.”

  “And what about the new ships?” asked the Duke, his holo image leaning forward.

  “We’re building them as fast as we can, sir,” answered Vickers, pulling up another holo that showed the classes of ships under construction, with numbers and building times under each icon. “We can build a capital ship, in year or so, including factory time to turn out the major assemblies. Super heavy battleships take about fifteen months, supers thirteen, while the standard sixteen million ton hyper VIIs take eleven to twelve months. We’re trying to get more of the super heavies out, but we still have more production slips capable of turning out the standard battleships. And the definite bottleneck for building all hyper VII ships are the supermetals. So we’re still turning out VIs, with the modifications needed to upgrade them to VIIs when we have the resources.”

  “The planning board recommended that we build a larger percentage of capital ships to cruisers and escorts than we normally would,” said Sean, pointing at the icon of a heavy cruiser. “I approved their recommendation. While we still need scouts and escorts, we have greater need for line of battle units. And many more of these.”