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

by Doug Dandridge

  “As soon as they're in com range I want to talk with their commanders,” said Klanarat. “Keep searching for ships. And keep sending out com pulses.”

  “There's still a chance that a Caca force might pick up our com pulses and come after us,” cautioned the com officer.

  Klanarat looked over at the graphical representation of his growing order of battle. Including the ships joining up with them now he had eighty-one battleships and over three hundred smaller vessels.

  “I'll take my chances that I have enough to defeat a Caca patrol,” he growled at the com officer. “Now, follow my orders and lead more ships to me.”

  * * *

  “That was the last of them, Admiral Bednarczyk,” said Mara Montgomery, a flat expression on her face.

  Beata recognized that expression, and knew that her subordinate was crying inside. Of course she was too disciplined to let it out on her bridge.

  “There are still some floating hulks,” continued Mara, “but nothing powered up and ready to fight.”

  “And your losses?”

  “I still have about two thirds of my total force. Most of my battle cruisers survived, but I'm down to eight wormholes. By the goddess, but they gave me a hard fight.”

  “Then put those wormholes to use. Fire on their main fleet with everything you have.”

  “What about that secondary force that's breaking for the hyper barrier.”

  Several thousand ships, including a thousand of the superbattleships that were the terror of the Caca fleet, were heading out, changing their vectors. It didn't take a military genius to figure out what they were up to. They would get past the barrier, translate in hyper, and work their way around so they could come in and strike one of the human forces like a hammer. That done, they would do the same with the second force.

  “We'll take care of them. They're closer to our firing line anyway.”

  Not that the wormhole launches would do as much as hoped to that force. From their graviton emissions they were already making small adjustments in their courses as they went. Beata thought they would soon make some major adjustments, evasives to throw off the targeting of missiles they knew would be coming their way. The missiles would adjust to follow them, but they would then be tracked and would lose their element of surprise. Still, they needed to keep them under fire. Attrition was a slow way to destroy an enemy force, but it could still delete some of their combat capacity over time.

  “What about your damaged ships?” asked Bednarczyk. She had some crippled ships herself. A few might be able to move into hyper and get away. Those that could only get to hyper IV or below might as well be considered total losses. She would have to order the ships to scuttle unless she could get them through a gate. Some might make it, but there were too many and the transit time would be prohibitive. Most of her damaged vessels could continue to fire missiles, but when it came time to leave they would also be scuttled.

  “We're making sure all of our to be scuttled ships are empty of missiles. Either fired off, or transferred. I'm catching some flack from the Klavarta captains whose ships look like they're not going to make it.”

  “What kind of flack?” asked Beata, knowing that she might be facing the same problem with the Klavarta in her immediate force.

  “They don't want to leave their ships behind,” said Mara, an exasperated expression on her face. “Something about their warrior code and dying with their ships.”

  “Shit. That is so stupid.” There had been the tradition of human captains going down with their ships on old Earth. That tradition had not followed them into space. The captain might be the last to leave the ship, but they still left. Ship commanders were valuable, probably more so than most of their highly trained crew. It was a waste to let them stay on a ship so they could set off a scuttling charge, when that could be done with a computer given the proper, verified instructions.

  “If they refuse to leave, I want you to order their arrest,” growled Bednarczyk. “Remove them from their ships.”

  “We might have some problems with that, ma'am. What am I supposed to do if they refuse to leave their ships?”

  “How about if you send some crew over in combat armor to help them evacuate to your other ships,” said Beata, rubbing her brow. “At the last minute your people can disable the coms and haul the captains off their hulks.”

  “Still might cause some problems,” said Mara, shaking her head. “But I'm willing to give it a try.”

  “Enemy missiles will be in attack range in five hours, ma'am,” called out Beata's chief of staff. Janssen looked over at his board and some figures that were displaying on a few holos overhead. “We need to start boosting for the barrier in three and a half hours.”

  “Let's start boosting in three hours,” said Bednarczyk after a moment's thought. “No use taking chances on something breaking at the last moment.

  “So get your ships across the barrier in time.” she continued, turning back to Mara. “We'll start gating our ships in the system out soon as well.”

  Her insystem fleet would not be able to escape across the barrier. If they started boosting for interstellar space they would be picked up and fired on. It was doubtful that any of those small groups of ships would make it. The problem was she had some valuable ships with scarce resources within the system. Thirty battleships and twenty-two wormholes, twenty aboard ships.

  The admiral had planned for this. Most of those ships were close to one of the two insystem wormhole gates. Or at most a three-hour maximum boost. They should be able to outrun any missiles fired at them. The problem was the wormholes, which couldn't escape through those gates. Not unless they wanted to be the center of a stellar scale explosion.

  Still, she had a plan, and if everything went according to that plan she would get her ships out and the wormholes would be safely hidden. It meant she would have twenty-two spyholes sitting in the system, undetectable, capable of being moved around through small jets of plasma. They could be expanded and used to fire missiles when the allied fleet returned.

  The one thing she could not do was evacuate the civilians. She had never had the resources to do that. The resources were in place to evacuate the Klavarta warriors. Only those people refused to leave their posts, defending the civilian aliens. Nothing could get their commander to budge. Not even orders from the president. Well, they would just have to deal with the consequences of staying in a system controlled by the enemy. The planetary defense assets would be left in place, so the warriors would be able to cause some damage to the Cacas. What they would not be able to do was win.

  Beata intended to lead a force back here, if she was allowed. There was no guarantee of that, and she still had a fight on her hands. She wouldn't defeat this fleet in this place, but anything she could do to weaken it before she fled the system might pay dividends in the near future, for whomever was leading the allied fleet.

  “We have the Klavarta president on the com, ma'am.”

  Wonder what he wants, she thought, thinking of some way she could avoid him. He might be on the com to order her to hold the system at all costs. In which case she would have to disobey. He might be able to get his own ships to engage in a suicide defense, but she was not going to allow her people to join them in death.

  “Mr. President,” said Beata as the face of the Alpha came up on a com holo.

  “Admiral. How goes the defense?”

  “About as we had figured, President Klanarat,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “I've hurt them, maybe even more than expected. And my losses were low, on the whole. But I didn't beat them.”

  “We didn't expect you to,” said the president, an understanding expression on his face. “If our own commander hadn't allowed the enemy to defeat his force in detail, we might have had the ships to beat them.”

  Beata nodded in understanding. Sometimes she forgot that the president had once been an admiral in his own fleet. He understood the military, especially his own. And he realized who
had made the tactical mistakes at the beginning of this campaign.

  “Admiral Klanarat has contacted me, Admiral Bednarczyk,” said the president, his eyes hardening.

  Oh shit. The son of a bitch is alive. She didn't trust that Alpha's military decisions. He had done well enough when he commanded a major battle group under the last Klavarta commander, now deceased. But fleet command had exceeded his capacity. In military terms, he had risen to his level of incompetence.

  “He is gathering up all the ships he can at the frontier. Everything that survived is starting to flock to his banner.”

  And he is to take over as soon as he can bring those ships to battle, she thought, cringing.

  “I have talked this over with your Emperor,” said the president in a rush, as if he wanted to get it out before he was interrupted. “I can't sack my admiral without oversight from my senate.”

  “So he will be in command when he gets here?” asked Beata, a feeling of dread coming over her. She didn't want her ships and crews serving under that officer. She didn't trust his decisions, and never would.

  “He will be in command of the Klavarta contingent, just as his position calls for,” said the president, slowing down and enunciating every word so there would be no misunderstanding. “He will not be in overall command of the allied fleet. That will be your job.”

  Beata felt shocked. This was something she hadn't expected. The Emperor must have put his foot down. The president and the Emperor talked about this, she thought. And Sean had probably insisted that his people serve under someone competent. Or he would withdraw them from the front, and the Klavarta could deal with the consequences. The New Terran Empire was the senior partner in the alliance, and what they said went. She guessed.

  “How will Admiral Klanarat feel about that?” she asked, knowing how she would feel.

  “He will accept it, or he will be invited to resign his commission,” said the president, showing his teeth in a feral smile. “I can't fire him, unless he starts disobeying orders. So either way, he serves under you, to your satisfaction, or he goes away.”

  Beata still thought of a lot of problems that could occur. Admiral Klanarat might drag his feet, refusing to act with any kind of urgency. There were ways she could prevent that, like taking his ships and attaching as many of them as she could get away with to her Terran battle group commanders.

  I can make this work, she thought, smiling for the first time since the president's holo had appeared.

  “You have some thoughts?” asked the president.

  “I can win this thing,” she said, thinking of the advantages coming her way. More ships, or course. And within a week she would have forty-six more wormholes reaching back to Imperial space, ready to link them to the accelerators in space around the Donut. “If you give me a chance.”

  “You will have your chance, Admiral.”

  “And does Admiral Klanarat know what's about to happen?”

  “No,” said the president, shaking his head. “I think it's best that we allow him to act as if he's going to be in command. That way he will continue to do his best to gather all the forces he can. I'll let him know how things stand when he gets to you.”

  The president looked off holo for a moment before turning his attention back to the Imperial admiral. “I hate to say it, but even with whatever force he gathers, and what we can send up from our core worlds, you are still going to be outnumbered.”

  “That's okay,” said Beata, looking at the plot and studying the ongoing fight. “I know how to defeat an overwhelming force. If I have enough resources in hand.” And it was looking like she would have those resources.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell. Buddha

  “We've launched all our missiles, sir,” reported the pilot of fast attack craft Charlie Five.

  “Continue evasives,” called out Ensign Kallaris Plisias. He knew what his pilot wanted. It was the same thing that he wanted. To get his ship, one of the few surviving from his original squadron, the hell out of here. So they could do all of this again in the future. Insanity, plain and simple.

  What in the hell are they waiting for? thought Plisias, glancing every couple of seconds at the Klassekian com tech, as if he could force the needed message to come through.

  “We just lost another craft,” called out the sensor officer, her words distorted by the liquid that filled the cockpit.

  Looking at the plot the ensign could see that there were now only three ships left from the original twelve ship squadrons. There were a dozen other squadrons nearby on the plot, none more than half strength.

  We're fodder, thought the officer, wishing once again that he could have been assigned to a battleship. He wouldn't be in command of his own ship, but the larger ship would be far more difficult to kill. Plisias knew his type of ship had killed some Caca vessels, and damaged many more. Still, he didn't think dying for those prizes was beneficial for him as an independent being.

  “Recall has been sounded,” said the voice of the com tech in his ear.

  He looked back over at that being, her face covered with a mask, her lower jaws moving as she spoke into the mic underneath the breathing apparatus.

  “Pilot. Get us back to the nearest gate as fast as you can.”

  “You want me to continue evading, sir?” asked the rating, looking back over his shoulder with wide eyes.

  “Damn right.” The ensign wanted to get to safety as soon as possible, but getting blown out of space was counterproductive to that goal.

  The target started blinking on the plot, indicating the gate that was closest in time to them. There was one closer in absolute distance, but it would take more boost and time to get to it, decelerating from their current vector.

  “A ship from Echo squadron was just hit,” called out the sensor tech. “One million kilometers to port.”

  Plisias was no more religious than any other member of his species. At the moment he wished he had a deity he could pray to, existent or not.

  * * *

  “We're ordered back to the carrier, sir” said the Klassekian sitting in the com tech seat.

  “Which one?” asked Captain Michael Lauren, looking over at the alien, then the plot. There was a carrier out by the asteroid cluster where one of the new gates was located. It had been taken off of the battleship that was using it to launch into the enemy fleet and converted to a gate.

  “One of those with the main fleet,” replied the com tech. An icon out with Admiral Bednarczyk's force started blinking.

  “We can be there in about ten minutes,” said the pilot, running the numbers in his head.

  I wonder why they want us out there, thought Lauren, looking at his remaining order of battle on a holo screen hanging in the air beside his command chair. He had thought they would want him to rearm on the nearer carrier and head back on another strike, covering for the slower ships still trying to make it to the gates.

  Well, orders were orders, and the command had to come from the admiral. Or someone who was under her, and he wasn't about to question it. Especially if they got his forty-four remaining fighters out of here before he lost more people. No guarantee of that, though. They might still rearm them out there, then send them back in. Because of their tech advantages, including not having to take off velocity before changing vectors, and being able to cover space at twenty times light, they could be used all the way up to the moment the fleet was ready to leave.

  Of course, they would need to be aboard a hyper capable ship to go to another system, unless they went through a gate directly to another star. Or they were left here for some reason. That last was a chilling thought. Left behind and hiding out, waiting for the next campaign in the system. There were places they could hide, but Lauren would prefer to get the hell out of the system.

  “Get us out there,” he told the pilot, th
en looked over at the com tech. “Make sure all the other fighters get the order.”

  Moments later the fighter was back into warp, pointed toward the main fleet and eating up the space ahead, spitting it out behind.

  * * *

  “Orders coming through from the admiral, sir,” called out the Klassekian com tech on the bridge of the Slarna flagship.

  I wonder what in the hell she wants now? thought Admiral Connandra, pacing back and forth on the flag bridge of his ship. He didn't have to ask which admiral the tech was talking about. Only one officer that he knew of in the system was known simply as the admiral.

  “We are to head for the nearest gate for insertion to another system,” said the tech after a few moments of waiting for the officer to ask her what orders he had received.

  About time, thought the Slarna senior officer. He had a little more than five hundred ships left in his command. He had no missiles. Those were long gone, and he had decided to stop playing moving target and decoy and had headed into an asteroid cluster to take cover. The human admiral had called on him to continue taking casualties so other ships, more useful to the humans, would be spared those missiles. Her prerogative, of course, as he considered it his to disobey.

  And he would be damned if he would let the last ships and Slarna that had been entrusted to his command be destroyed just because a commander of another species had decided they were expendable. He might have to face angry leaders in his nation, but that was better than dying for no purpose, and letting the people under him never return home.

  “Head for the nearest gate,” he ordered, looking at the plot. They were almost a light hour from the nearest Caca ship, a little more than that from the main fleet. The nearest vessels were heading in the general direction of his force, which meant their launches would start off with the momentum of those ships. The farther force was heading away, toward Pleisia, and anything they fired would have to decelerate for at least two hours before they could head back out. Still, the fifty-eight ships heading out, supposedly to check out the asteroid cluster he was hiding in, which was also hiding a human battleship with a wormhole, would be enough to really hurt his force as they struggled to the other gate. And he had no missiles to return fire.