Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle

by Doug Dandridge

  Oh, please, thought the Admiral, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a grin. The Emperor himself ordered this.

  “You think this is funny, you petty functionary,” yelled the man at seeing the hint of the grin on her face.

  “No, sir. I think this is pathetic,” she said, her anger taking control. “Your people are at war, and all you can think about is your personal cost.”

  “I…”

  “No. You listen. We are trying to accomplish something here of benefit to the Empire. I can’t tell you what, because it is a military secret. As a citizen of the Empire, I expect you to cooperate. You will be reimbursed for your expense, if we win this war.”

  “And if we lose?”

  “Then you, like all of the rest of us, will be dead, and the expense of this station will not matter.”

  “We’re ready to start the installation, ma’am,” called out one of the Naval Engineering officers from the doorway.

  “I will protest this to Parliament,” said Johnson, refusing to see reason.

  “Do you have a home on the planet?”

  “Why, yes. I do. Why?”

  The Admiral activated her com link and connected with her security personnel, then spoke aloud for the benefit of the Citizen. “Mr. Johnson is to be immediately brought down to the planet and placed under house arrest in his residence. He is to speak with no one.”

  “This is an outrage,” yelled the man as armed Spacers entered the room and surrounded him. “I will have your head for this.”

  “I would leave with the Spacers if I were you,” said Miroslav, pointing toward the doorway. “Before I charge you with threatening an Imperial official.”

  “Come with us, sir,” said the Petty Officer in charge of the detail.

  Johnson gave her one more killing look, then followed the leading Spaceman out of the room. As soon as he was gone the Admiral gestured for the engineering officer, Commander Marc Dawson, to enter, then walked over to the holo table that displayed the station.

  “We’ve got everything we need in place to remake this station, ma’am,” he said in his New Scotland accent, pointing to the cargo ship that was docked to the structure. The holo changed, showing the station as it would look once they made all the attachments.

  “Looks good,” said the Admiral, nodding.

  “Looks good to us,” said Dawson. “It remains to be seen how it works with the aliens.” The younger man looked at her, a frown on his face. “You really think this is going to work, ma’am?”

  “The Emperor and the Chiefs of Staff do,” said Miroslav. “And that’s a decision above my pay grade.” She looked at the viewer that showed the night side of the sparsely populated world they orbited. You couldn’t tell there were now less than a hundred thousand humans down there, she thought, looking at what looked like major cities on that surface, after our evacuations. The great ice sheets to the north and south reflected the light. From a distance it made the world appear even more densely populated, one of the facts that had led to this world being chosen. And what? A hundred thousand native sentients. There were fewer now, since the Fleet had evacuated ten thousand natives and representative life forms from the system, just in case the unthinkable happened. And that had been holy hell as well. I almost thought those scientists were going to have me drawn and quartered.

  “And when does the big man get here?” asked the Commander, using the unofficial code name they had hung on the bait for this operation.

  “Two more weeks,” said the Admiral, knowing she could trust this man she had worked so closely with through the last year. “But don’t spread that around. Need to know.”

  “Then I’m surprised you told me, ma’am,” said the other officer with a short laugh.

  “You do need to know. So you can keep kicking the asses of those people under you. I want everything in tip top shape to impress the big guy.”

  “Looking for another star, ma’am?”

  “I wouldn’t mind another,” said the Admiral, laughing. But I’m more interested in protecting my butt from angry trillionaires. Johnson had been very angry, and he was one of the hundred richest men in the Empire. All of them had more wealth than could be imagined, and only a score of them were nobles, with a gentleperson’s inbred regard for serving the Empire, well, most of them. Of course, the Emperor was the richest person in the Empire, as well as the politically best connected.

  The Admiral spent the next couple of hours watching the reconstruction job on the one commercial station in orbit about Congreeve IV. Engineering Spacers in work suits and robots moved pieces of alloy into place, so others could use nanosprayers to place nanites on the alloys to bond the new members to the structure. At the end of the several hours the station did not look like itself, but like the commercial docks of a much more populated world, in keeping with the general theme.

  Dawson and his men did a fine job, she thought, looking at the holo of the station in orbit. She pulled up the list of tasks they still had to accomplish, what looked like an impossible workload in the time remaining. Not impossible, she thought, linking to the station computer and prioritizing tasks. The difficult we do today, she thought, using the Imperial Naval Engineering motto. The impossible takes a little longer.

  * * *

  SECTOR IV SPACE. OCTOBER 24TH, 1001.

  “Board the enemy ship,” called out the Ca’cadasan Captain over the com. The Marine Force Commander acknowledged over the com as he led his troops across the narrow gap between the supercruiser and the human destroyer. The destroyer had taken heavy damage in the running fight through hyper VI. The Captain, looking at that damage, was amazed that the destroyer hadn’t catastrophically translated out of hyper and back to normal space, a process that normal annihilated the vessel.

  There was no guarantee that the ship still wouldn’t drop out of hyper, or that the captain or surviving superior might not turn off the hyperdrive and force them out. That had been known to happen, too often. The Marine commander knew it as well, but obedience was ingrained in Cacada from birth, and the penalty for disobedience was swift, harsh and sure.

  “What do you expect to get from this ship?” asked the Executive Officer, confusion and concern warring on his face.

  “Intelligence,” growled the Captain, staring at the enemy ship. “Any information we can gain that might benefit us in our destruction of these creatures.”

  “They are bound to have wiped the memories from their computers, and their minds.”

  The Captain gave a head gesture of agreement. “But there is always the chance. And unless we risk, there is none.”

  The marines had to fight once they got aboard. It was not much of a fight, as the ship had taken heavy casualties. Some humans were taken prisoner, wounded ones who could no longer fight, and were hustled off the vessel and onto the supercruiser, while the rest of the party continued the assault.

  The destroyer started to shudder, then disappeared, no longer in hyper. It was most likely now rubble, floating in normal space, along with all aboard, including the Ca’cadasan marines.

  “We took eleven prisoners, Captain,” reported the ship’s Medical Officer. “Seven were completely self mind wiped. We were able to prevent four of them from completing the process by taking out their nanites with EMP.”

  “But will they have any information of use?” asked the Captain, still staring at the holo, at where the destroyer had been, along with his marines.

  “It is too soon to tell, Captain,” said the physician. “Possibly.”

  “Then get to work, and let me know when you have something.”

  The voyage back to the base system of Conundrum was uneventful, just a normal trip through hyper. Except that the physician was able to get information from one of the prisoners, an officer. Information that could give the Ca’cadasan Empire a great advantage in the war.

  * * *

  DREADNOUGHT AUGUSTINE I, SECTOR IV SPACE. OCTOBER 26TH, 1001.

  “Welcome aboard, Jana?”
said Sean as the woman entered the room. She was dressed in a Senior Master Chief’s uniform, promoted for her service to the Empire. She still looks like she’s been through hell, he thought, looking at her eyes.

  He looked over at Jennifer, seeing the concern in her own eyes as she glanced at the Master Chief. Sean nodded his head, happy to see that look. He had told Jennifer that Jana was just a petty officer he worked with. She had seen through that lie, and he had admitted that he had a crush on the woman, something that had ended long ago, when he had met the Doctor. That had seemed to satisfy his fiancé’, though he had still sensed undertones of jealousy. Now he was glad to see that her compassion had been awoken.

  “You are looking good, your Majesty,” said Jana in a flat voice, her haunted eyes looking into his.

  My God, what the hell did those bastards do to her? He had, of course, seen the reports, the condensed interviews that got to the heart of her captivity. The terror, the degradation, the helplessness. He had seen the vids of her crying out in her sleep through the restless nights.

  “I am so sorry, Jana,” he said, opening his arms and inviting the woman to come into his embrace. Her shoulders slumped, and she didn’t budge, until he made the first move. She put up her hands and waved him away, her eyes widening in fear.

  “The last person I shared intimacy with, I killed,” she said, her voice again going flat. “With my bare hands. He was a traitor to his own people, a servant to the Cacas, by choice. And he did not deserve to live.”

  “You have been through so much,” said Jennifer, shaking her head. “Are you sure you’re ready for duty?”

  “I must be allowed to serve the Fleet,” said Jana, shaking her head in return. “Please. It’s, all I have.”

  The woman looked down for a moment, then up into the eyes of the Monarch. “You have no need to be sorry, your Majesty. If you had stayed behind it would have made no difference to the survival of Sergiov. And the Empire would have suffered for your loss.”

  “What can I do for you, Master Chief Gorbachev?” asked Sean, willing to give the woman anything she asked, within reason. The courage it took to escape from the Cacas, and bring back all the intelligence she did. Gorbachev had put a face, a personality, on the leader of the enemy, the Great Admiral who was her direct master while she had been a captive.

  “I want to serve aboard this ship,” said the woman. “I want to fight the Cacas.”

  “You know this ship will soon be engaged with a major enemy force, if everything goes right. Are you sure you don’t want a safer berth, somewhere the Cacas can’t get at you again?”

  “I want to kill the bastards,” she hissed, clenching her fists. “I want to see them die, while I serve the weapons that kill them. That’s what I want, your Majesty. Now, can you keep your promise, and give me what I want?”

  Sean almost stepped back from the raw anger of the woman. At that moment he was glad he hadn’t allowed her into his presence armed. “Very well,” he said. “I will order your assignment to the central weapons command of this vessel.”

  Jana nodded, and for the first time a smile crossed her face. She bowed. “Thank you, your Majesty.” Without waiting for a dismissal the Master Chief turned and walked away.

  “I have never seen such a tortured soul,” said Jennifer, putting her arm around Sean’s shoulders and kneading the muscles. “What she must have been through.”

  “It really puts a face on what we’re facing,” said Sean, taking Jennifer’s hand leading her to the couch. She sat and he took a seat next to her, still shaking his head. “The death and destruction, the billions killed, planets left lifeless. And none of it hit home like the look on her face. The blank affect of someone I used to be around on a daily basis. It lets me know that I need to win this battle. Not for myself and my rule, but for people like her.”

  At the staff meeting later that day Sean had trouble concentrating on the agenda, his mind continually returning to his meeting with Jana. Jennifer covered for him as much as possible, until one word brought the Emperor out of his funk.

  “We are getting reports of greater activity by pirates in the uninvolved sectors,” said one of the Intelligence officers.

  “Damned parasites,” growled Sean, glaring at the holo that showed the Empire and its sectors. There were two sectors of the twelve that were red with the dots indicating battle, IV, the main axis of war with the Ca’cadasans, and III, the Fenri front. The upper sectors of VII and IX, XI and XII, were peripherally involved. Sectors V and VI, fronting Crakista space, were almost totally stripped of capital units. Many of his staff had objected to that move, but Sean had felt that if they were going to have the Crakista as allies, they needed to trust them totally. The same could be said of Sector II, fronting Ellysium, and the staunch Imperial allies of Klashak and Margrav. The uninvolved sectors were mostly being patrolled by destroyers and light cruisers, with a small contingent of heavy cruisers to back them up. And the pirates were taking advantage of the scarcity of Fleet resources in those sectors.

  “They have been hitting our commercial traffic, which is mostly unescorted, and taking a toll,” continued the officer. “And we can be sure they are taking a lot of captives.”

  “Who will become slaves,” spat another officer.

  “I want them stopped,” said Sean, slamming his hand on the table, sick at the thought of his people being taken as slaves. Slavery was not really an economically viable institution. Machinery was much more effective. But some aliens liked to keep human slaves, valuing them for the implied revenge they gave them over the so called superior species.

  “We are trying, your Majesty,” said the Intelligence Officer. “We have some reports of ships closing with and destroying pirates. But they are multiplying, as lawless humans and aliens are attracted to the improved hunting.”

  “I want the commissioning of Q-ships,” said Sean, clenching his fists. “I want them caught off guard and destroyed. And I want their bases found, and taken out.”

  “There are over a hundred million stars in the Empire, your Majesty,” said his Flag Captain, Rear Admiral Kelso. “Even taking into account the number of double stars, that still leaves about sixty million or so star systems. And they could have a base on any of them, without the need of a habitable planet.”

  “Then we may have to take some more risks with our patrols,” said Sean, shaking his head. “I don’t care what it takes. Shut them down.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” agreed the staff officer in charge of the meeting. “We will send out an order to the affected sectors.”

  “You can’t order men to do what isn’t possible, my love,” whispered Jennifer into this ear.

  Sean smiled and nodded, feeling some of the tension and anger leaving him. I am so happy I decided to let you sit in on the staff meetings, he thought. He knew he had a temper, and could get a little bit out of control. It was only because he cared so much for his Empire, and the people who inhabited it, who made their lives and their futures within it. And there seemed to be no end to the threats that kept multiplying.

  “OK. So what’s next up?” he asked, turning back to the table.

  “Crakista Battle Force One is up and running in New Terran Republic space,” said Kelso with a smile. “Or at least a third of it is. The other two thirds are on the way to meet up with the task force already in the Xenia star system.”

  “I’ll be glad when we have the wormhole gates up and running in Crakista and Elysium,” said Sean to the nodding heads of those around the table. With the gates to those two Empires, ships could go from their home systems to the central black hole in the Supersystem, and from there to other wormhole gates, such as the one in Xenia. And then they would gain an even greater advantage over the Ca’cadasans.

  “Any word on the leaks yet?” asked Sean, his stomach flip flopping at the thought of what those brave crews had been asked to do.

  “So far as we know, five of the ships have not returned,” said Kelso, his own face
showing that he did not like the idea.

  Even though he suggested it, thought Sean. He knew it had been a hard thing for a naval officer to suggest, using brave people as bait. But we had to get the information to the enemy. If they didn’t have a clue that bait was being offered, how could we expect them to strike?

  “What are, leaks?” asked Jennifer, her eyes wide as she picked up on the repressed feelings in the room.

  “We had to make sure that the Cacas knew I was going to be present in the Congreeve system at the proper time,” said Sean, his discomfort level increasing. “Otherwise, all of our preparations would have been for naught.”

  Jennifer sat there for a moment, digesting what she had just heard. Then she turned to Sean with a look of horror on her face. “You sent ships and crews out to be captured by the Cacas. No. How could you?”

  “We had no choice, Duchess,” said Kelso, speaking for Sean, who was too embarrassed to open his mouth. “We asked for volunteers, people who knew we wouldn’t ask them to do this unless it was of vital importance. And we sent out enough ships to patrol Caca space that we lessened the chance that any single ship would get picked on.”

  “And five haven’t come back?” asked Jennifer. “Out of how many?”

  “Fifty total,” said Kelso, looking at his flat comp to escape making eye contact. “Frigates and destroyers.”

  “And ten percent are missing?”

  “So far,” said Kelso. “Another ten have not reported in yet.”

  “Dammit,” cried Jennifer. “You heartless bastards.”

  “We had to do it,” said Sean, putting his hand on hers. “I had to sacrifice those men and women so we could get a needed win. Achieve a victory to lift our flagging morale. Just like I had to allow whole worlds to die to preserve the fleet.”

  Sean looked into the eyes of his lover, imploring her to understand. It took a second, as she fought through her feelings, but finally her eyes changed and he could see the compassion for him, the same she had shown for the broken Jana Gorbachev earlier that day.