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

by Doug Dandridge

  “Very nice of them,” said Zhukov with a smile. The commander of the three frigates might have actually outranked him, but he had the backing of Captain Pasce behind him, so there was no argument. Those frigates and the class III fort around the planet were the only defenses in the system, enough to handle just about any conceivable pirate force, but not a capital ship as powerful as the one that was coming to call.

  Zhukov took a second to study his Com Tech, still a strange looking creature if he had ever seen one. Most humans were used to aliens, and members of the Fleet were more used to non-humans than most. There were over thirty species of alien that were citizens of the Empire, and scores more in the region under the other governments. Zhukov had served with nonhumans throughout his career. His current command only had a couple aboard, two Malticons who worked engineering, where their small size might be an advantage. Otherwise, most destroyers were single species only ships, not having the space for special equipment or recreation facilities that other species might require. But the Klassekians were a special case. They had an ability in high demand, and he was glad to have her with him, as short as her deployment might be.

  The Commander wondered how she felt about being aboard a ship full of what, to her, must be strange looking aliens as well. Her culture had never had contact with another species before humans found her planet. He wondered what she thought of humans. Did she find them hideous? What did she think of her circumstances, coming from a planet that had barely clawed a toehold in space, now serving aboard a starship, thousands of light years from her homeworld, involved in a war between the stars. He wasn’t sure how he would have handled it, put into her circumstance.

  “Enemy ships now on plot,” said the Sensor Chief. “They’ve entered continuous scanning range.”

  And now we’ll see you all the way in, thought Zhukov, wondering if he would still be alive in those minutes after the enemy entered normal space.

  * * *

  “Jumping to normal space, now,” called out the Driver, as the battle cruiser entered the hole leading from hyper I back to the Universe that the ship belonged to. A moment later the light cruiser that was her only ally in Imperial space followed after her, coming out several light seconds ahead of the capital ship.

  “Scanning system now,” called out the Sensor Operator. The instruments on the ship drank in every photon, registered every graviton, until she had a picture of the system before her. The graviton readings were parsed first, coming as they did almost instantaneously from their sources. Every gravity source, every object moving under high tech drives was found and catalogued. The planets, moons and major asteroids appeared on the plot, which also updated with the information in the databanks of the system particulars. Everything was located and catalogued, including a score of commercial vessels and three frigates. Moments later the visual inputs were added, in most cases hours behind what the graviton sensors were showing.

  “We have located all targets, Lord,” reported the Master of Battle. “It appears the frigates are moving to get between us and the prime planet. Two are in close proximity and further out, while the last is only a couple of light minutes out from the planet.”

  “Have you located the destroyers?”

  “No, my Lord. If they’re here, they’re not under power. And we’re not picking them up on passives. I am sending out active pulses, but it will take time to cover the entire system.”

  “Very well. Let’s launch at the planet and frigates, then get out of here.”

  The Master of Battle acknowledged, and the ship shuddered slightly as a full spread of missiles was released, twenty weapons heading toward their target at five thousand gravities acceleration. Some would take out the frigates on the way in, while the rest hit the planet with enough velocity to kill it. There was also a fort in orbit around the planet, unlike the last system they had hit, so the ship launched another spread. Forty missiles, all heading in. The system was dead. It would only take six hours of missile flight time for it to realize it.

  “Get us out of here, Driver,” ordered the Lord of Millions, staring at the plot with bared fangs. “I wish we had the time to watch the missiles hit, but we must get moving, lest the enemy get more ships vectored on to us.”

  The Driver acknowledged, and moments later the ship opened a hole back into hyper, while the ship drove toward and through it.

  In a way the Lord wished he could stick around to see his handiwork. In another way he was glad he was leaving before he had to watch the death of a living world. He was a noble, and his family business for generations had been mostly agricultural. He had grown up learning how to grow products on his homeworld, to understand the rhythms of the living biosphere. His father and grandfather had taken him on numerous hunts, where he had learned to love the land and its wildlife. And here he was killing worlds that had their own unique life forms. He hated himself for doing it, but it had been ordered by the Emperor, so what else could he do?

  “Course, my Lord?” asked the Driver.

  He thought for a moment, bringing up the star chart of the local cluster. “I think to that star,” he finally said, pointing to a G class star that was not too far off of their initial course. “And I’m guessing our shadows are still with us.”

  “Hanging in Hyper VII, where we can’t get to them,” said the Bridge Manager in a disgusted tone. “If only they would come down to our level, so we could get at them.”

  They’re smarter than that, thought the Lord, spotting the enemy force moving on the plot, staying out beyond the VII barrier but staying as close to the Fenri pair as possible. They’re brave enough, these humans, but they don’t often make foolish mistakes.

  Fifteen minutes later they were in hyper II, accelerating at maximum rate, approaching the point where they would start to decelerate again, working a least time profile to stair step their way out of the system and back to hyper VI.

  “We have missile launch,” called out the Sensor Operator. “Twenty missiles in normal space. Acceleration, six thousand gravities. Heading into the system.”

  “The destroyers,” exclaimed the Master of Battle. “They must be firing on our missiles.” She looked over at the commander with wide eyes. “Perhaps we should go back and destroy them, then target the planet again.”

  “No,” said the Lord. “That could be what they want. And the longer we tarry, the more chance they will get more ships onto us. So no, we move on.”

  * * *

  “There they go,” said the Tactical Officer, watching as the icon of the Fenri battle cruiser moved into hyper I. It would be some twenty seconds before the visual they had of the ship matched the graviton image. “Too bad we couldn’t take a crack at them.”

  “And we would have been blown out of space, Lieutenant,” said the Exec over the com in the tone one used to tell a child not to play in a predator filled swamp. “So just concentrate on doing what you’re told.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the officer in a hurt tone, looking to the holo screens over his station. “Enemy missiles running straight and true for their targets. Acceleration, five thousand gravities. Time to our launch, fourteen minutes.”

  Zhukov nodded, smiling in satisfaction. It was good for a tactical officer to be aggressive, but sometimes he needed to have that aggressiveness tempered before it turned into foolishness.

  “Enemy ships continuing to move off,” said the Sensor Chief.

  “Carter reports they are ready to launch on your command,” said the Com Tech.

  The timer clicked down, while many sets of eyes watched both the courses of the enemy missiles and those of the enemy ships. Both were of vital importance to the mission. If the enemy ships continued on until the destroyers launched, they would be too far away to come back and catch the destroyers. In fact, they were already too far away, since the fast accelerating destroyers could be out to the VII barrier and safe before the enemy could catch them in VI. But if they came back and launched again, then waited for their mi
ssiles to strike, the destroyers would be stuck on the horns of a dilemma. Could they come back in and launch counter fire again, and risk being taken by the battle cruiser? Zhukov doubted that they would come back. They had to know the longer they waited around in one place, the sooner more ships would be vectored in to destroy them.

  And their own launch time and missile acceleration was of vital importance to the planet. The proper intercept would leave only a few enemy missiles to continue past the frigates and toward the planet. That would give the frigates and the orbital fort an almost perfect chance to take out what remained. Not that the destroyers would know the result, since as soon as they launched they were ordered to rejoin the force and continue to trail the enemy ships. They would have to be satisfied with the statistical probability that they had saved the planet, until something from the system made it to a communications node with word of what happened.

  “Launching, now,” said the Tactical Officer, his voice once again confident now that he was doing his duty.

  The ship shook slightly as she spun around on her axis, launching from front, port, stern and starboard tubes in that order. Eighteen missiles accelerated away, all of them the newer weapons capable of ten thousand gravities sustained acceleration. Eighteen missiles left the Carter at the same time, on the same heading. Fifteen seconds later both destroyers fired another spread, adding thirty-six more weapons to the attack. Seventy two in all, the icons appeared on the tactical plot, separating from the two destroyers on a stern chase of the enemy missiles.

  All of the weapons were on an intercept course, piling on enough velocity each second to catch the enemy missiles just before they reached the frigates. They would detonate among the enemy weapons, close to the side or just ahead. If everything worked as planned they would destroy between ninety and a hundred percent of the enemy weapons.

  “Signal Carter,” ordered Zhukov. “Follow us into hyper. We will rendezvous with the other ships as soon as possible.” And we will dog that bastard to the gates of hell, if that’s what it takes.

  * * *

  THE DONUT.

  “That’s another two thousand of them,” said the Lt. Commander, checking off the new arrivals on his datapad. “Two thousand and fifty-seven to be exact.”

  “And how many groups today?” asked Lucille Yu, watching as the strange looking aliens stood for a moment in awe at the gate room, hundreds of Tori portals, most filled with the shimmering mirrors of wormholes. They look strange to us now, thought Lucille, catching a huge Phlistaran Marine and a Gryphon spacer out of the corner of her eye. But soon they’ll just be another fixture of the Empire.

  “This is the seventh group today, ma’am,” said the Commander, staring at the aliens. “And yesterday it was eight groups, all about this size.”

  The Klassekians were coming in at the rate of about sixteen thousand day, over a hundred thousand a week. That was about the capacity of the shuttles on their home planet to bring them up to waiting liners, where they went through the wormhole gate to the Sector Base, where the other end of the ship portal was located. From there they would transfer to the headquarters in orbit around the planet, then through to the Donut, while the liner went back through to Klassek to pick up the next load.

  The Phlistaran Marine, a major, stepped to the front of the new arrivals who were crowding the chamber. He started speaking, his words coming to Lucille in Terranglo, but other words also coming out of the air from the translation device his implant was linked to. The Klassekians all gave him their complete attention, one of the reasons he had been chosen for this task.

  “All of you will see a cursor in the air to your front. Each of you will have your own cursor. Please follow the cursor, which will lead you to your temporary quarters. You will find a place to sleep and messing facilities. The food may not be the best you have ever had, but I can promise that it will be filling. In the next couple of days you will receive your training assignments.”

  Lucille watched the reactions of the aliens, and really wasn’t sure what those reactions signified, since they were alien, and their culture totally unknown to her. Of course, these were all volunteers for the Imperial military. They were needed in ever increasing numbers in the Fleet due to their singular ability to instantaneously communicate with the siblings born to the same litter, no matter the distance. And due to the threat their planet was under, within the area of operations of the Machines that desired the death of everything living, it was also of great importance to get as many of their singular species away from their world as possible, just in case.

  And what do we really know about them? thought the Director of the Donut, watching as the aliens, always moving in groups of from six to ten, their litters, walked out of the chamber. Normally she wouldn’t see them as a threat. But after attacks on her station by Yugalyth and Cacas, she had become somewhat paranoid of unknown aliens. If it had been her call, she would have moved them by liner through ship gates until they got to their training bases. Since it wasn’t her call, they would continue to come through her station.

  She shrugged and walked from the chamber, heading for the tram stop that would take her back to her area of the station. She passed hundreds of beings, most in uniform, all either standing watch or hurrying about on some military task or another. There was the illusion that the station was full, which it was anything but. Only ten percent of the station’s living spaces were in use.

  This wasn’t the plan, thought the woman who was in charge of the operation of the station’s primary function, the construction of wormholes. This was supposed to be a mostly civilian operation, with thousands of corporations headquartering here. The center of an Imperial hub of transport and commerce. Instead, it was another weapon in the war of extermination that was sweeping this part of the Galaxy.

  She put those thoughts aside as the tram whisked her back to her part of the station. The fact of the matter was that it had been very fortunate that the station had come online when it had. A few years later and they wouldn’t have had the wormholes that were so vital in the successful prosecution of the war. The most probable outcome would have been the Cacas discovering the partially completed station when they took the Supersystem. Then, they would have finished it and used its ability to generate wormholes for their own expansion and conquest of the Galaxy.

  After a twenty minute ride at high acceleration she arrived at the stop nearest the control center of the station. This area was even more crowded. And there were armed guards everywhere. The Empire wasn’t taking any more chances with the security of the station either. If it were lost, it would be a disaster of unprecedented magnitude. Of course, well used regions like this were not really the problem. There were too many people here to hide much. She amended that thought as she remembered the tens of thousands of storage rooms and out of the way nooks and crannies even in the well-used portions.

  The problem was that the station was just too damned big to properly secure. There were too many empty spaces. Millions of floating sensor platforms, a hundred million stationary units, and ten divisions of Marines and Imperial Army infantry constantly patrolling still didn’t cover the whole thing. It was thought that patrols would happen upon ninety percent of possible incidents. Lucille wasn’t even sure she would agree with that statistic, but ten percent still sounded like just too much, when the Cacas had almost taken down the station with three quark devices.

  “Morning, Director,” said her administrative assistant as she walked into the outer office.

  “Morning.” Lucille had to check with the clock on her implant to see what time it actually was, though time was completely arbitrary on the station. They were synchronized to Capitulum standard time, the clock used by the largest city of the Empire. Which didn’t mean that everyone ran their lives on that clock. Lucille knew that she didn’t.

  “Senior Agent Chung is waiting for you in your meeting room,” said the Secretary with a slight smile.

  And it’s not like everyone
and their cat doesn’t know we’re lovers, she thought, shrugging her shoulders.

  Chung got up from his chair as she walked into the room. The short, dark haired agent made quite the contrast to his tall, blond haired lover. A wide smile stretched his face, and Lucille felt her own face return the compliment. She wasn’t sure why she had fallen for the man in charge of counterintelligence aboard the station, but she had.

  “You look lovely today, my Dear,” said Chung, coming around the desk and wrapping her in his arms.

  “Please,” said Lucille with a laugh, shaking her head. “I look like shit. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.”

  “I guess I need to give you a better workout at night, then,” said the smiling Agent. The smile left his face in an instant, and he studied her face. “You do look tired. What’s disturbing your sleep? It can’t be the production of the station. You’ve got it working at peak efficiency.”

  “I just have a feeling that something bad is going to happen to this place,” she said, moving away from him and plopping down in a chair. “I can’t explain it, but I had the same feeling the last three times this place almost got taken out.”

  “So you think you have the Imperial gift now,” said Jimmy, putting his hands on her shoulders and kneading her muscles.

  “That feels good,” said Lucille with a purr. “Almost good enough for me to not tell you to go stick it. I don’t have any Imperial gift. But my intuition does seem to be finely honed, and I have this feeling that something is going to happen.”

  “Ok,” said Jimmy, taking his hands from her shoulders and taking a seat next to her. “You have a feeling that something bad is going to happen. When? And what more can we do about it?”

  “I don’t know when, dammit,” Lucille cried. “As to what we can do about it? Maybe some more security might help.”