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

by Doug Dandridge

  * * *

  “That is all we know for now, Mr. President,” reported Admiral Mikas Silveski from his flagship in orbit around the capital planet of the Nation of New Earth.

  The Admiral was the commander of all Imperial forces on the front, to be used in conjunction with the Klavarta forces. He had less of a force than he wanted, fewer than three hundred ships total, with only seven wormholes at the moment, and a couple of score Klassekian com techs. Fortunately, one of his ships with one of the singular com specialists had been at Camelot, so he had received the information about the coming Cacas as soon as it had reached that system.

  “We cannot allow that system to be taken,” said President Manstara, the former Klavarta fleet commander who was now the leader of the Nation of New Earth. “It will cripple our war effort if they destroy the shipyards there.”

  “We’ll do what we can, Mr. President. I have given orders for one of our wormholes to be sent to the system aboard the Duke Montrose, the closest ship such equipped. They should get there a day before the Cacas.”

  And then they would open a gate, and the forces of the capital system, Xanadu, would be able to move to the battle before it started. Of course, all of the wormholes they had led back to Imperial space, which meant that ships would have to enter in this system, then transfer over to another gate around the Donut, to arrive at Camelot. And I’ll be so happy when we have our own wormholes out here, thought the Admiral. But that wouldn’t happen for almost two months.

  The Admiral looked over the order of battle that he would be fighting alongside, shaking his head at the disproportionate masses of the opposing forces. The number of ships was in favor of New Earth by a factor of ten. The tonnages of both forces told a different story. The Cacas outmassed the Klavarta by a factor of four to one. His ships pushed the graph slightly more in the direction of the alliance, but not enough.

  “No offense meant, Mr. President, but how in the hell did you fight the Cacas to a standstill for so long?”

  “We played the part of the Indians,” said Manstara with a smile. “The North American Aboriginals during the pre and early industrial ages, especially the Apache and Comanche tribes, who fought the American army for decades, even though outnumbered and outgunned.”

  The Admiral spent a moment looking up the reference in his ship’s databanks, nodding in understanding.

  “We swarmed them where they were weak, and avoided them when they were strong. Any small force that left the cover of their fleet was destroyed. And when they came after us, we scattered to the stars. They might still catch some of us, but never enough to revenge themselves on us. We fled to our lairs and waited, with enough ships spread through space to let us know what the enemy was doing.”

  “Well, now they have found one of your lairs, and you have the choice of running away or standing and fighting. Running means you lose your new construction, while fighting could mean the same thing, while also losing a good portion of your existing fleet.”

  “And what do you recommend?”

  “I recommend fighting. I believe we can get enough firepower on the spot to win a complete victory, if we move quickly.”

  “Then that is what we will do. And I can expect you to support us?”

  “Of course, Mr. President. That is the command of my Emperor.” What he didn’t say was that Sean had also ordered him to not commit his force to a losing fight. The Empire was willing to help their distant cousins in their fight, but they were not willing to sacrifice their citizen warriors to harebrained schemes to win quickly at great risk.

  “Then let us destroy this invasion force, and send the survivors running back to their home stars with their tails between their legs.”

  * * *

  CA’CADASAN EMPIRE CAPITAL: AUGUST 28TH, 1002.

  The Supreme Emperor of the Ca’cadasan Empire, Jresstratta IV, sat on his throne and contemplated what the rest of the day held for him. Today was audience day, when he heard the petitions of his subjects, mostly the nobles who could afford to pay the Master of Lists to move their names up the schedules.

  He sat there thinking about what his life would have been like if his older brother had survived. The petitioner knelt before him, looking up with anxious eyes as he waited for the decision. The Emperor had already made that decision, but had decided to let the petitioner, a minor Lord, wait, while he used the time for his own thoughts.

  His older brother had been the heir, he who would sit on this throne when their father died. Father still had almost a thousand years of life left in his body, and the heir would assume the throne with a two thousand year rule ahead of him. So the heir, who had some time to wait, was fulfilling the role of a naval officer with the conquest fleet. His career was carefully monitored, making sure that he was not in danger while he collected the medals and awards of an active officer.

  Then they had found the humans, one of the few species they had discovered that had achieved not only space flight, but interstellar travel. They were still primitive as compared to the Ca’cadasan species, not seen as a threat. After the first colony was found and cowed it was decided that the heir would land on the planet and accept their surrender, so that he could one day add the appellation Conqueror to his name.

  He had seen the vids of his brother’s death. The humans had been waiting on the landing field, their leaders and soldiers, as ordered. The soldiers had placed their weapons at their feet, as ordered. The heir had been the first off the lander, there to accept the formal surrender. And that had been when everything had gone wrong. As the Ca’cadasan Marines were coming out of the lander at the back of the heir, someone out of sight fired some kind of high powered hunting weapon. The shot hit the heir in the face, while his armor’s face plate was up. It blew through the skull of the male and totally destroyed his brain, ending the life of the next Emperor before he could ever sit the throne. His suit held him up even though he was dead.

  The Marines opened fire on the crowd of bipeds, their particle beams burning wide swaths through the people, sending red tinged steam into the air. Humans screamed and ran every which way. The ones he could never fault were the soldiers, who grabbed their weapons off the ground and fired back. Without armor there was no way they could win, but they died bravely in place.

  This Emperor had been in the throne room, a young male, not quite adult, when the news had arrived several months later by hyper VI courier, the fastest available at that time. He remembered the expression on his father’s face, going from shock to disbelief to rage. The Emperor had raged for over an hour, finally ordering his fleet commander to destroy the humans, to wipe the genetic heritage of that species and their world from the Universe.

  Of course that hadn’t happened. Some of the humans had gotten away, and the Emperor had lifted the death sentence from thousands of prisoners. Not that he had given up on killing all humans, but he wanted a conditioned population to use against them when they were again found.

  Jresstratta was then taken out of his military training and treated like a fragile resource that had to be protected at all costs. He really didn’t understand. He had scores of siblings and half-siblings, any of which could ascend to the throne. But his father was determined to not lose another son.

  “Your Majesty,” called out a High Admiral, approaching the throne, then going to a knee and crossing both sets of arms over his chest. “We have finalized the plans. Would you like to see them?”

  “Yes,” said the Emperor with excitement in his tone. He glanced at the supplicant, happy that he didn’t have to deal with yet another male begging for special privilege. And the line of them that followed. He would eventually have to deal with them, but not at this moment.

  The Emperor and his security retinue followed the Admiral to the lift, no one talking, since the project was as secret as it came and there were always ears willing to listen in the palace. He couldn’t imagine anything overheard in the palace getting to the human powers, but he wasn’t willing to take
the chance.

  Down in one of the secure rooms the Emperor took a seat, while the High Admiral and his staff prepared their presentation. The Admiral placed a data crystal in the chamber unit, which was completely sealed off from the palace computer and com systems. A moment after the crystal was in place the central holo came to life over the table. Rotating in three dimensions on the holo were a pair of ships, strange in their configuration to the Emperor, but something he could still recognize.

  “These are human commercial ships?”

  “Yes, your Majesty. What they would call tramps, not their first line freighters. There are tens of thousands of them plying the trade routes of their Empire. The most innocuous vessels there are.”

  “Speed?”

  “Hyper VI capable, with a maximum velocity of point eight-five light. Of course, as we have configured them, they are capable of much more, but that is not something we will flaunt on the way in.”

  “And what mass are these ships?”

  “Both are in the six million ton range, your Majesty. Both have conditioned human crews, as well as Cacada shipmasters and Marines. If they are boarded, there are cleverly hidden chambers for our people to hide from the humans.”

  The Emperor studied the ships, moving his hands to zoom in and out, to open and close the schematics of the vessels. He grunted a few times as he saw the difference between how the ships would be configured for their voyages, and how many changes would be made when they were prepared for combat.

  “They are at the staging area?”

  “They are.

  “And when will the wormholes arrive at the staging area?”

  “All are being transported by courier as we speak. They will be at the staging area in three months.”

  Jresstratta gave a head shake of acknowledgement. That was all the wormholes they had, and until they ramped up production, they would only be able to produce one a week. Two of the wormholes were being delegated to the fleet, so they could have instantaneous com with the capital as well as the ability to move reinforcements forward. The next two produced would be going to the other front for the same purpose. The second pair from the four on the way to the New Terran Empire Front would be assigned to the ships on the holo. And then the humans would discover that they weren’t the only ones who could play their particular games.

  “The one point the operation could unravel is during insertion into human space. It may take a covering battle that is sure to cost us some ships to sneak them through, and if they are discovered in the area they are certain to be boarded, if not destroyed.”

  “It is a risk, but it is one I am willing to take,” said the Emperor. “If we lose the ships, we lose two wormholes, a setback, though not a disaster. If they make it through, we will hurt the humans, badly.”

  The Emperor could see the approval in the faces of the officers present. Most of his high ranking officers were not the most imaginative of males. These males were, and he was thinking of making them his war council, after the successful conclusion of this mission.

  “It will take them about two months to reach their objectives,” said the High Admiral, pulling up a holo of the human Empire. “And then they will learn what it means to oppose our Empire.” The holo zoomed in, showing the eight stars in orbit around the black hole that was the center of the human Empire.

  * * *

  IMPERIAL SPACE.

  The planet Dugon was a pleasant place. Mild climate over most of the surface, small ice caps at the pole, early reptilian life forms that might someday become a hazard to the dwellers, but not at this time. The orange sun was in the sky for about fourteen standard hours, darkness illuminated by a smallish moon for about the same amount of time.

  Three hundred and fifteen thousand citizens of the Empire lived on Dugon, the great majority human, with small populations of Manticons and Phlistarans, interspersed with other small groups. There was a Marine battalion on the surface, there to establish a Fleet presence on the planet and enforce whatever edicts the local Governor signed into law. A militia brigade and a planetary police department made up the only other defensive forces on the world. And none of them would do a bit of good to stop the disaster heading their way at point nine five light.

  The two frigates were already dead, each blown out of space by the one of the missiles that had targeted them. One had stopped two of the attacking weapons, not good enough, while the other had only taken out one incoming.

  Warnings had been blaring across the planetary net for the last six hours. Warnings telling citizens to seek shelter, when there was no possible shelter on the surface or below from the planet killers on the way. Those that could were leaving the planet on the available landing shuttles. But even crowded beyond capacity there was only room for a couple of thousand refugees. The rest sought what shelter they could, or prayed for deliverance to whatever deity they preferred.

  The first missile came in, moving so fast that it couldn’t be seen. It would have converted to vapor as it hit the atmosphere from the heat, but it didn’t have time in the four ten thousandths of a second that it penetrated gas before striking the crust. The one hundred and fifty ton missile hit into an ocean, punching through the crust and releasing one point four teratonnes of explosive power, the gigaton ship killer warhead adding a negligible increase in force. This was about a tenth the explosive power of the asteroid that had wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth, and it sent massive tsunamis in all directions, multiple kilometer high walls of water that would crush all the lowlands of every continent bounding that ocean. Massive earthquakes shook the planet, and every fault line released at once. Even buildings built of the most advanced materials on the near coasts, capable of withstanding almost any conceivable force, toppled to the shaking ground.

  Gigatons of ejecta flew hundreds of kilometers up, to rain back down on the surface as fireballs, starting continent wide forest fires. Superheated steam rose from the hole in the crust where seawater contacted magma, raising a cloud layer that sped out in concentric circles from the impact, and every volcano on the nearest fault line went off in gigaton range explosions.

  That one missile would have been enough to cause an ecological disaster. The planet would have eventually recovered after a several year long winter. But it was only the first of many weapons, and the others struck within microseconds of the first. Thirteen additional weapons, each as destructive as the first. The surface temperature of the planet rose quickly to thousands of degrees, and all life was extinguished.

  Fortunately for the humans who had been lucky enough to escape the planet, the orbital station that was established around all Imperial colony planets was on the far side of the world when the missiles came in. The smallish moon and its mining operations also survived, and the ten thousand Imperial citizens who had evacuated the surface had someplace to survive. The same could not be said for those left behind.

  Not only the colonists, but a planet that would probably have developed advanced life of its own was dead, the victims of a cruel fate that they had done nothing to cause. And the Fenri raider group moved on, looking for more targets of opportunity, to cause more death and destruction.

  Chapter Seven

  Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  CAPITULUM, AUGUST 29TH, 1002

  “We thought you might want to be here for this, your Majesty,” said Sondra McCullom, gesturing to the tactical holo in the center of the war room.

  The War Room was a large chamber, over a hundred meters on a side and sixty meters high. The main holo took up a good portion of the center of the room, while hundreds of stations stood in positions where their operators could watch their own displays while also having access to the central display. Tiers of walkways ran up the walls surrounding the chamber, with many offices and meeting stations opening on them.

  Sean took his chai
r in the north side meeting station on the fourth level, giving him a great view of the central holo and the floor. It always seemed to be busy in the chamber, at any time of night and day. Of course that made sense, since the Empire didn’t run on any single day and night cycle, and really none aboard ships in space. About half the stations were manned, not unusual since no major battles were ongoing.

  “And that’s the bastard there?” asked Sean, pointing to the center of the holo, where a blinking icon was located.

  “Fenri battleship, name and designation unknown,” said McCullom in agreement. “We got her consort in the lucky turn of events that brought this one to our attention. They exited hyper outside a colony system and launched on the planet, the murderous bastards. What they didn’t know was we had a pair of our own battleships waiting beyond the hyper barrier. We were able to take out all of their missiles, and put a couple into the cruiser before they could get away.”

  “How are we getting this?” asked the Emperor, as two viewers popped into existence over the table. Both were scenes of ship bridges, labeled BBs Kiroshima and Ramses the Great.

  “Kiroshima had a newly assigned Klassekian com tech, who is transmitting this to us through one of her siblings, while she is also taking in the feed from Ramses.”

  “I didn’t know they could send through two feeds at once.”

  “We’re learning a lot more about them every day,” said McCullom with a smile. The smile left her face as she turned her attention back to one of the viewers. “The Fenri is launching.”

  The holo zoomed in on the actions, as the two view screens transmitted the crews reacting to enemy launch, then launching their own weapons.