Exodus: Empires at War: Book 15: All Quiet on the Second Front?

by Doug Dandridge

  He couldn't do that, despite his feelings about his cousin, who had been known in the family as not the brightest bulb in the cabinet. Now he was regretting the decision to let his distant relation lead the battle fleet. Leading it into a disaster.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. President,” said the standard human who ran fleet procurement and construction, Valle Klein.

  The middle-aged woman looked like the strain of her position was getting to her, and he had to hope she could hold up through the next couple of years at least. She wasn't a warrior, but she held a position as important as any strategist or combat commander. She ran the shipbuilding industry of New Earth, giving the fleet the muscle it needed.

  “We need as many ships out of the slips as you can give me in the next two weeks.”

  The eyes of Klein widened, and she let out a whistle. The president knew he was asking a lot, but he had to ask it.

  “The next flight of battleships will be ready in two months,” said the Director of Procurement. “Every slip is full, and my technicians are working overtime. We don't have the workers to ramp up production even more.”

  “Then concentrate on what you can get finished in two weeks. Shift personnel from some ships to get more production on others. Send your parts to the ones you can finish the fastest.”

  “Well, we have two hundred battleships in this flight,” said Klein, her brows furrowed in thought. “I might be able to get forty of them out of their slips and ready for working up in less than a week. But they're not really going to be ready for combat. It takes time to crew them and make sure those people can work as a team.”

  “Let me worry about crewing those ships, Ms. Klein,” said the president in a firm voice. “Just get me those ships. Pull people off of all of the other ships we have building if you have to.”

  “That will disturb the ship balance,” complained the director.

  “I want our best heavy ships ready to fight off an invasion of our core systems,” siad Klanarat, his voice rising. “That's all that matters right now. So please, no arguments. Just give me what I want.”

  “Yes, sir. We'll do our best.”

  The president dismissed the holo, sitting back in his chair and thinking about what else he might do. He could call up all of his allies and see what else they could get him. Probably not much, but every ship would help. The main difficulty there was distance. The Slarna, their closest ally in distance, was still seven weeks at best speed from their frontier to the New Earth capital. Add on another month from their central systems, where most of their ships would be, and it was the next best thing to three months. By the time they got here the Cacas would have likely destroyed the core worlds of New Earth. And if that happened the war on this front was the next best thing to over.

  The other allies, with smaller fleets, were ever further away. If they had established a wormhole gate network like the Terran Empire had they could shift ships around at will. There were some gates, giving them a modicum of coverage, but most of what they made were used for combat. The only other ally they had easy access to was the New Terran Empire. And they had already gotten about all that could be expected from them.

  Maybe not, thought the president. After all, the Empire depended on this front siphoning ships from the Caca fleet. If the front collapsed, the Cacas would be able to shift almost all of their fleet to confront the Imperials. So I might be able to get something from them, he thought.

  * * *

  “Do you think you can beat this Caca admiral and his force?” asked Sean, leaning forward in his chair, his face in perspective closing on the holo.

  “I, really don't know, your Majesty,” admitted Bednarczyk. She didn't want to admit that, but the numbers didn't lie. She was outnumbered and outgunned. If she could pull a miracle out of her ass she might beat him. But how many more miracles could her anus produce. She had gotten several against the Machines, but any commander could only expect so much good fortune.

  “I appreciate your honesty, Beata,” said Sean, a slight smile playing across his face. “I want you to do your best to defend that system and do major damage to the Cacas. I also want you to retreat and save your force for another day if you think things are going south. Understood?”

  “Yes, your Majesty. Don't worry. If I think I'm about to lose my ass, I'm outa here.”

  “Good,” said Sean, his smile widening. “If you can maintain a fleet in being you can still accomplish something.”

  Beata felt a flash of anger that this man, who had only served as an assistant weapons officer on board a battleship before he ascended the throne, would lecture her on tactics. However, it was his right to do so, wrong or not. And in this case he was right.

  “I'm sorry, Admiral, if I am stating the obvious,” said Sean, as if he could read her face. Not unlikely, since the admiral was not known for her diplomatic skills. “I should know better, but I've become somewhat of a control freak since I landed this job.”

  Of course you have, thought Beata, nodding. An Emperor had to be a control freak, since every decision ended up on his desk. That Sean recognized it and apologized for it was something in his favor. He was a very likable young man, who had done a very good job of running an empire at war, despite not being prepared for the position.

  “I will, of course, give you all the aid I can,” said the Monarch, leaning back in his seat. “I can't send you many ships, and of course you know why I can't give you more wormholes. What I can do is assign as many wormhole launchers as feasible. I'm sure you can use them.”

  “Yes, sir. All you can give me.”

  “Okay,” said the Emperor, steepling his fingers. “Then I want you to set up one of your wormholes as a gate nearest the inhabited planet. We have a surplus of system defense weapons, and I think you can probably find a use for them. We'll ship them to you as soon as the gate is established. I'm guessing that ground combat units are not are the top of your list.”

  “No, sir.” And I don't think lending me Hunter this time will be all that helpful.

  “Maybe some mobile shore batteries” said the monarch, leaning his head into a hand propped on a chair arm. “Say a couple of brigades. They might not do you any good, but if you can lure some Caca ships within range, they might come as a surprise.”

  “How about mines?”

  “Yes. It might take a day to get any to you, but I think we can round up a couple or ten thousand of them. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds like a plan, your Majesty.”

  “Good. Now, Jennifer has told me that she enjoyed your visit to the palace for your promotion ceremony. She wanted to know when you could come for a longer visit.”

  That surprised Beata. She had tried to be on her best behavior with the Empress, who she had found to be a delightful woman. And a physician. Beata had thought about medicine before she went to the academy, and being able to talk about something that interested her had been a plus.

  “What I'm saying, Admiral, is that Jennifer expects for you to survive this campaign. So don't you dare disappoint her. Clear?”

  “Very clear, your Majesty.”

  “Good. And be sure to com if you can think of anything else we can do. Sean out.”

  Bednarczyk leaned back in her own comfortable chair, closing her eyes while reminding herself that she couldn't sleep. She still had five minutes before her meeting, enough time for a little thought about the man she had just spoken to. She could still remember when she hadn't liked him, thinking he was a jumped-up little popinjay who didn't deserve his position. Then Sean had given her a chance at command, one she thought would never come her way. Since then she had worked closely with him, and found that he possessed many traits of an effective leader. Intelligent enough to formulate good plans, and not afraid to admit when he didn't know something and needed the input of someone else.

  * * *

  “Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen,” said Beata, looking around the conference room at the seate
d figures, almost all of them holos. Are they all bi-gendered species? she thought in almost a moment of panic.

  Most of the participants in the chamber were humans, standard or Klavarta. They knew many of them, if not all. Rear Admiral Natasha Sung, in charge of charting the space to the outside of New Earth, was someone she hadn't met, though Beata knew of her. She wished she had the other admiral's ships now, though they wouldn't have added that much tonnage. She had a wormhole, though, and that would have been welcome.

  There were Slarna, hexapodal aliens that lay on their seats on their bellies, much like Phlistarans. Triple jointed legs, three equidistant claws on each hand. The face was triangular, with three eyes, two across from each other, one centered above, and reminded the admiral of the Gorgansha. The mouth was made up of a set of mandibles. It had on an outfit of shimmering cloth, rank symbols on the shoulders.

  Slarna warships were smaller and less advanced than those of New Earth or the Empire. Four million ton battleships with turreted weapons. They had incorporated what Imperial tech could be shoehorned in, and the next generation of ships would feature eight million ton battleships. Unfortunately, they would be keeping their turreted weapons. None of their ships, only capable of hyper VI, had been with the main fleet, fortunately for them, and had been left at the Pleisia system.

  The only other alien in the chamber was the Vice Admiral in charge of the Gernas, one of the stranger alien species Beata had ever seen. Beata wasn't even sure how to pronounce the name of the admiral. They looked like rocks, or potatoes, gray lumps with a single optical organ taking up most of their dorsal aspect. A quartet of tentacles appeared and disappeared from the body. The locomotion appendages were underneath, and Beata still wasn't sure how many of them there were. Only that they were short and moved very fast, though the creatures weren't the fastest of beings. In fact, she wasn't sure how they had survived, unless their planet's evolution had resulted in all animal life following the same pattern.

  Gernas were heavy planet dwellers, their home world boasting a gravity field of over two gees. They were able to handle much greater acceleration pressures than most, and were expert ship handlers. They used hyper VII ships, though their capital ships were also smaller than those of the main participants of the alliance. Eight million tons, the same as an Imperial battle cruiser, they carried a similar weight of beam weapons but a lower count of launch tubes.

  And of course they were ordered to attend this meeting, thought the admiral, keeping a smile on her face. Still, it was good to be polite to allies who could technically bail at any time.

  “We have a huge fleet of Ca'cadasans heading for us,” said Beata, pulling up the local plot of the region, the blinking icon of the star in question centered. A fleet icon in green was almost touching the system, while one in red was near the edge of the plot. “ETA, four days.”

  There were other icons on that plot. Another green one that was moving out as if to meet the enemy. Several others in transit from one place to another. And a small icon already within the system.

  “The ships that are insystem will be receiving my orders within the hour,” she said, looking from the Slarna commander to that of the Gernas, to the Klavarta system lead. “You are to prep the system for defense. We will be preparing a defense in depth, and you will be placing the assets we need to channel them where we want them to go.

  “Admiral Montgomery will be gathering up what Klavarta assets she can find, then will be shadowing the Caca fleet. She will be hitting the Caca fleet and running away, over and over again. Best case is she slows them down and buys us some more time. A couple of more days would be nice. Worst case, she takes out some of their ships and erodes their combat power by a small but significant extent. Worst worse case, she gets her command shot to hell. Try to avoid the last scenario at all costs, Mara.”

  Mara barked a short laugh while all the other officers stared at her in curiosity. She had just been given a mission likely to see her end, yet she could laugh about it. Beata wondered if the aliens thought the scout force commander insane. That didn't matter to her, as long as the aliens followed Mara's orders to the letter when they met up with her.

  Beata turned back to the plot. “Everyone else? I want you to get here at best speed. If you arrive before the Cacas we will want you to enter the system and add to the defense. It the Cacas have arrived before you get here, hang around out of their detection range. Your orders will be to pick off any smaller Caca groups on approach to the system. Any that head around for other targets are also fair game. What you are not to do is tangle with anything you can't handle.

  She turned away from the plot to look over all of the commanders seated, virtual or otherwise, in the chamber. The Slarna commander, Admiral Connandra, gave her a strange three eyed look.

  “I would rather my fleet be deployed outside the system,” said that being, his image distorting slightly while he was talking. The Slarna had no wormholes assigned to them. What they did have were several score Klassekians, who gave them the faster than light com capability.

  “No insult intended, Admiral,” said Mara, her image the crystal clear of wormhole transmission, looking over at the Slarna officer. “Your ships can't get into VII, which means that while you can hit, you can't run. So it is best that you fight in an environment where hyper dimension access is irrelevant.”

  “I...”

  “Admiral Montgomery is correct, Admiral Connandra,” said Beata, her brows narrowing. “I am not denigrating on the courage of your warriors, but your ships will not be able to keep up with the Cacas, much less escape them.”

  “They will be in hyper VII,” argued the Slarna admiral. “If we approach slowly we can send missiles up at them. If you give us the weapons.”

  “That won't work when they are close to the planet,” said the scout force commander. “When they are starting their approach, they will be able to drop swarms of missiles on top of you.” Mara looked over at her superior, who gave her a head nod.

  “Admiral Connandra,” said Beata in a firm voice. “You either fight the way I want you to or you can evacuate the system. If I can't depend on you doing what I need, then I don't want you.”

  The Slarna admiral glared at her, all three eyes burning with an angry light that sent a shiver up the admiral's spine. This was not a species she would want angry at her, if they had access to her outside of her own environment.

  “And I will be talking with your civilian leadership about your actions if you decide to evacuate.” Beata really didn't want to bring that up. Threatening subordinates was not the best action to take if one wanted to increase their loyalty. But she didn't feel confident that this one and his force would fight as part of her team. She was almost about to interject that his actions could endanger the tech transfers his people were getting from New Earth and the Empire, then decided that might be too hard a push.

  “We will stay in the system and fight at your command,” said Connandra, his head making a strange circular motion that indicated some kind of response, though Beata didn't know what.

  I need to study the reports on these people, she thought, nodding her own head in return.

  “Okay. Then if no one has any questions, let's be about it.”

  The holos faded in sequence as commanders terminated their connections, until only Mara was still in the room.

  “That could have gone better,” said the scout force commander, grimacing.

  “Yes, it could have,” admitted Beata, frowning. “Unfortunately, I have what I have, and there's nothing I can do about it. We just have to make do and hope things work out in our favor.”

  Just once the admiral wished she had the overwhelming force, and an enemy who was panicking over it.

  Chapter Nine

  History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats. B. C. Forbes

  “So, what can we
do for her?” asked Sean, looking face to face at the people who led his Fleet. And the Nation of New Earth by way of helping our officer.

  Maybe someday we'll all meet again in person, thought the monarch. Wormhole communication was wonderful, giving him the ability to meet with people without having to travel the hundreds or thousands of light years to do so. But there was still something to be said for being in the same room, breathing the same air. Something that brought people closer together.

  “We really don't have anything to give her, your Majesty,” said Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom, shaking her head. “We keep dipping into the strategic basket, your Majesty. It's about time we came up empty.”

  “I agree with Sondra,” said Grand Fleet Admiral Len Lenkowski, looking over at his superior for a moment before focusing back on his monarch. “It seems like every time we're in the planning stage for something, we find squadrons of ships stripped from our order of battle. We're the spear point, your Majesty, and the spear is getting mighty thin. If you need ships, why can't you get them from home fleet, or the core world defense groups?”

  “You know why, Len,” said Grand Fleet Admiral the Duke Taelis Mgonda, frowning. “Parliament has a shit fit whenever we take ships away from protecting their cowardly hides. Even if just temporarily.”