“I will keep trying, my Lord,” said one of the engineers. “But I know nothing of their security systems.”
“Then keep at it, fool,” growled the General, his frustration rising. He looked back at the commander of the battalion that was already partially over. “When the rest of your regiment is over,” he ordered, pointing at the officer, “tell the regimental commander of two to start sending over the weapons.”
“Then we will detonate them,” said the officer, his face a mixture of fear and religious ecstasy.
“Maybe,” said the General, giving a head shake of assent. “But I would prefer to have more area under our feet, where we can spread out the blast effects of the weapons.” But that might take hours, just to get all the males over here.
The sounds of fighting had retreated into the distance, and the General was curious as to what was going on. “I will tour the front, and see how much of this thing we have taken.”
Without waiting for acknowledgement he walked to the end of the chamber, with its single working wormhole. There were other gates in the room, all deactivated. It had taken but minutes to find out how to shut them down quickly. That had been a major worry, as there was always the threat that the enemy could bring in a force from another world and strike them from the rear.
The end of the chamber was a mass of melted metal and the rubble of decorative stonework, the effects of the one ton yield mininuke that had slammed into it. There were human bodies lying in that rubble, most of them in soft uniforms, burned from the explosion. He glanced back for a moment, his eyes roaming over the hundred odd other bodies in the chamber, the humans his troops had cut down in taking the chamber.
A satisfying start, he thought, but nowhere near enough. Even this whole station, with all of its obviously huge population, is only a small start, though it might be the start that rolls the vermin into oblivion.
The corridor beyond was several hundred meters in length. It led into another two hundred meter long wormhole gate room. There were also bodies here, including those of some of the human Marines in their medium ship armor. He frowned as he saw that some of his men had died taking this room. Against mostly unarmed humans, and a few of their warriors.
But more of the gates were shut down, he thought, looking at the blank cubbies along both walls.
This thing is much bigger than we thought. Who would have believed that any inferior species, with such a short life span, would make a commitment to a project like this. And it would take us just as long to build one of our own.
He entered yet another chamber, and a male ran up to him and motioned him down. “It’s still dangerous in here, my Lord General,” said the male. “We just pushed the humans out of the room.”
The General gave a head shake of agreement as he hunched over and ran to the Ca’cadasan forward command post, some officers squatting down behind one of the human’s decorative planters, in aspects of listening to their coms.
“What’s the situation?” he asked the officer in charge, a Company Commander.
“We pushed them from this room a few minutes before you arrived, my Lord,” said the Senior Officer, not bothering to give a salute, since it was a combat situation. “They offered serious resistance this time, with several squads of their Marines, and some armed Spacers.”
“And your men are pushing through the next corridor?”
“Yes, my Lord.” The officer looked frustrated for a moment. “Is there no end to these rooms?”
“Not as far as we are concerned,” said the General. “But we don’t have to take all of them. “I want you to take the next chamber, then set up a defensive position there. That, with the other direction, will give us over a kilometer of depth. The follow up units will move to the sides and give us a larger footprint on the breadth of this station.”
The General activated a holo projector on his gauntlet and looked at the large scale schematic of the station. Measurement figures appeared underneath, both Ca’cadasan and human scales. It was enough to cause him to think twice about trying to destroy this thing, despite all of the firepower he had brought along. Fifty kilometers thick, the same as almost fifteen superbattleships end to end. One hundred kilometers wide. And over twenty-five million kilometers in circumference. Twelve trillion cubic kilometers of volume. Looking at it again, he wasn’t sure that he species would have had the willpower, or patience, to construct such a thing. Most of it was filled with machinery, generators, crystal matrix batteries, the accelerators used to make negative matter.
And it would take them another century to make a replacement, all the while losing their greatest advantage over us. My name will go down in the history of the race, and my children will be elevated to the level of high nobility.
He expanded the schematic, looking for areas that would need to be destroyed to cut the ribbon. He found six one kilometer thick cables that ran the circumference of the station, three along the bottom of the ribbon, three along the top. Of each trio, one was at each edge, while the third was directly in the center.
And there is no way we can reach all six of them, he thought, slamming his hand to the wall, his armor and the enhanced strength from the suit making a large dent in the alloy. We’ll just have to go for the three bottom ones and hope that’s enough. I know they built some redundancy in the supports, but how much? Surely not double what was needed. Now, what about my fourth weapon? He studied the schematic, then made his decision, just before making his next one. The sheer size of the station could still be his undoing. There is no way I am going to take that much territory with less than six thousand males. So, if I can’t cover all that territory, I will have to do it the old fashioned way. With infiltration. Now, we just need to find a path.
* * *
“What the hell is it this time?” cried Dr. Lucille Yu, sitting in her office.
Klaxons were sounding, the lights were flashing, but in patterns unfamiliar to the Director.
“That’s the invasion signal,” said Jimmy Chung, stopping for a moment, his eyes unfocusing in the manner of someone going into link.
Who the hell could be invading anything like the station? she thought. It was an inconceivable notion that anyone could think they could take the station. Destroy it? Impossible. Then she remembered the shape shifter that had almost done that very thing, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem so impossible after all.
“It’s the Ca’cadasans,” said Jimmy, his eyes wide. “They’re on the station.”
“How many?” asked Yu, shaking her head in denial.
“A thousand? More? We just don’t know at this point.”
A holo appeared above her desk, the face of a Marine Colonel in battle armor appearing, his visor retracted. “Senior Agent Chung. We’re having a problem here.”
“What now?” asked Lucille.
Chung raised his hand to silence her, then looked at the holo. “What’s the problem, Colonel? Get your men to those compromised areas and stop the Cacas.”
“The problem, Senior Agent, is that the Commander of Marine Security is ordering us to form a perimeter well out from the Cacas, and to not push forward until we can get the other regiments up.”
“And how long will that take?”
“The way the division is spread out, six hours. Maybe longer.”
“And this command came from the General in Charge?”
“I wondered about that myself, Senior Agent. I asked the General, and he said the orders came straight from Admiral O’Hara.”
“Dammit,” yelled Yu, glaring at Jimmy. “I told you.”
“Colonel,” said Yu. “You are now an independent command. You have orders to take what you think will be the most effective action to repel the enemy intrusion.”
“I hate to tell you, Senior Agent, but you are not in my chain of command,” said the man.
Oh hell. Do we have an automaton on our hands, not able to think for himself?
“Listen, Colonel. Are you a loyal citizen of the Empi
re? Above and beyond your oath as a Marine?”
“Of course I am, Senior Agent,” said the man in an angry tone.
“Then think, man. Do you care more about your career, or the Empire?”
The expression from the hard faced Marine answered that question without a word.
“Then do what needs to be done, and depend on me to get the orders passed down through the chain of command. I will get in touch with the CNO and have her get orders to you, and to your commanding officer. So start moving your men in and push back their invasion force. And look out for any heavy weapons they might have brought.”
“Yes, sir. Will do. But, what kind of weapons? It would take a really huge antimatter bomb to disable the station. And what about Admiral O’Hara?”
Jimmy’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then he looked back at the officer. “Admiral O’Hara will be in custody within the next few minutes. Now get to it, Colonel.”
The holo faded, and Lucille looked at Chung in admiration at the way he had taken charge. His eyes unfocused again. He looked back at her after a moment. “Admiral McCullom has been informed. The orders should come down in a moment.”
Lucille nodded, then her eyes went wide as she thought about part of the conversation that had escaped her at the moment. “The weapons. That has to be it.”
“What weapons?”
“Remember that thing I couldn’t tell you about?”
“Yeah. Some kind of weapon’s project, from what I understood.”
“Quark warheads. The military’s answer to bigger blasts from smaller devices. Something they could use on covert ops.”
“Just like what the Cacas are pulling here,” said Jimmy, understanding dawning in his eyes. “How powerful are these things?”
“Several hundred times more blast effect per mass than antimatter.”
“And how in the hell do they achieve that effect?”
“They split protons and neutrons to their constituent quarks, then the quarks to the subquarks.”
“I thought quarks were the bottom of the hierarchy,” said Jimmy, alarm on his face.
“Nope. We discovered subquarks centuries ago, but never found a method of splitting enough quarks to actually get practical energy from them. Well, now we have. And if we have, chances are the Cacas already possess weapons like that.”
“Any way to track them?” asked Jimmy.
“I wouldn’t know. But if there is, Admiral Chrone and his team will know about it.”
“Then you get in touch with the Admiral and see what he can do about tracking those, Quarkium, warheads. I’ve got to organize my people.” Jimmy started to head for the door.
“And what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to lend myself and my people to the Colonel. I’m sure he can use every hand available.”
“Against the Cacas? Are you crazy? You’re not a soldier.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, moving out the door with the speed of the enhanced.
Said the man who is going to be facing particle beams in a suit, thought Yu, already worried for his safety. No matter his abilities, his flesh isn’t proton resistant.
* * *
Admiral Benjamin O’Hara sent out his last order on the com, then started to see to his escape. He had started the change hours before. He was still the same height and general mass, and still had the surface genetic structure of the human he had used as the template for this form. But now his face looked different. He had made some minor changes to his facial bone structure, some tweeks to muscles in his face and neck, color corrections to skin, hair and eyes. He was dressed as a junior officer, and his apparent age fit the rank.
The Yugalyth shape shifter checked the feed from the camera he had put in the hallway and cursed under his breath. All of the people he saw were in civilian clothing, the kind worn by the IIA agents. And they moved with the grace of the augmented humans, something they tried to hide, successfully from most observers, but not against a trained infiltration agent.
I need to get out of here, thought the being, reaching under his desk and hitting a secret switch. He had hoped to just walk out of this, but if they saw him coming out of this office, he was sure to be detained and questioned. And if detained, they were sure to check his ID, then do a deep scan on his tissue when he didn’t meet the physical parameters of Lieutenant SG Hung.
The desk slid aside, revealing a hatch in the floor that the Admiral had ordered installed by civilian contractors. Of course they will eventually find it, thought the Yugalyth. But once I am free of this area, I really don’t care.
The Yugalyth slid down the hatch, then hit another switch in the egress tunnel that caused the desk to slide back into place. The creature smiled to itself as it walked through the tunnel, headed for the egress point. Behind it the IIA agents rushed into the office with drawn weapons, only to find that their target was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Six
CONGREEVE SPACE.
“They’re back,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.
The Great Admiral turned to the holo, not even needing to ask who they were. He saw the vector arrows of the superfast attack fighters, coming at his force at point nine five light from less than a light minute away. He was about to order his ships to fire on them, something he hoped the captains would do without his needing to give that command. Before he opened his mouth the enemy ships launched, and almost two hundred new vector arrows appeared on the tactical plot. And all of them were heading toward the center of the force, where the flagship was located.
“Launching counters,” called out the Tactical Officer. “Beam weapons tracking and firing.”
We’re taking them under fire faster than the first time, he thought, watching as two of the missiles dropped off the plot. So we should have more success. But how much?
As soon as the last thought crossed his mind another ninety-five objects appeared, thirty-five light seconds from the forward group of the Fleet. Nine seconds later another group appeared, then another, until all six of the enemy attack groups had launched, then flown through the fleet, hitting everything they could with beam weapons.
When the attack fighters had passed, there were over one hundred Ca’cadasan ships expanding in their own plasma, while another hundred and sixty sustained damage, almost a hundred of them heavy.
The Great Admiral looked at the count of attack fighters destroyed. Forty-one, he thought, clenching his fists. He had lost hundreds of millions of tons of warships, hundreds of thousands of warriors, for the return of less than fifty thousand tons of enemy shipping, and what couldn’t be more than three hundred crewmen.
This is total trouble for us, unless we can find out a way to fight back. But right now, I don’t see how.
“We have more of them, coming in from one hundred and eighty degrees, my Lord,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.
Of course. The other attack group, coming back. I wonder if they’ll come back again after this attack. I guess it depends on how many missiles they carry. But it couldn’t be that many, could it?
* * *
“We’re receiving an alert from the Donut, your Majesty,” came Kelso’s voice over the com.
Sean was watching a replay of the first attack by the inertialess attack fighters. The vid had been taken by several vessels that had been hiding on the moon of one of the gas giants. It had been over a light hour away, and it had taken that long for the light from the attack to reach the ship, which had then transmitted it by subspace com to a wormhole equipped vessel. The images were low resolution, a combination of the distance and the speed of the attacking vessels. In fact, the only way to see the attack ships was to slow down the time considerably. It was still a most impressive display, and one for which Chan would be receiving a patent of nobility.
“What kind of alert?” asked the Emperor, sure that if it involved the Donut, it couldn’t be good.
“Invasion, your Majesty,” said the Admiral that held the position of the Emperor�
�s Flag Captain, appearing on the holo. “They are reporting that the Cacas have invaded the structure. Intentions unknown.”
“But assumed to be against our best interests,” said Sean, feeling the tension in his neck and shoulders. He was alone in the chamber. After almost twenty-four hours awake, Jennifer had been exhausted, and he had sent her to bed, promising to have her sent for if he needed her support. But now he had to make a quick decision.
“How did they get on the station?” he asked, his tired brain trying to work despite the fatigue. He ordered his nanosystems to balance his chemicals, something that would make him feel better for a short time, but would have to be paid for later.
“From all indications they came through the wormhole from the Elysium capital,” said Kelso, his voice hushed, as if he really didn’t want to believe what he was saying.
“And, have we received any word from Elysium? Do we know what’s going on there?”
“Not since the Cacas got onto the station, your Majesty,” said Kelso, shaking his head. “I fear for our allies.”
“Me too,” said Sean. Could they have been conquered? Is that even possible, with us facing so much of the Caca’s military might here? It can’t be. But it could, couldn’t it?
“How many Marines can we send through the wormholes to them?”
“Through ships with wormhole gates? Thousands, ten thousand. But, why? They have their own security force, and we may need them here.”
“Doubtful,” said Sean, pulling up a schematic of the enormous station on the holo that surrounded him. As always, the scale of the thing amazed him. He couldn’t see how it would not amaze anyone who saw it. And it was their one irreplaceable resource in this war. “We will probably not need all of our Marines in an action that will mostly be long range and deadly. And any reinforcements the Donut gets will be of use there. Especially since we don’t know the scope of this assault.”
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle Page 36
