Exodus: Empires at War: Book 17: The Rebirth

by Doug Dandridge

  “Not on your life,” said Cornelius after a quick snorting laugh. “I got a taste of it, and I want more. So don't you say anything about me being here.”

  Shadow smiled back at him and nodded. Cornelius had fought alongside his alien brothers, and their leaders wanted him along with them as well.

  * * *

  Captain Lrissras stared at the plot as his cruiser approached the alien merchant ship ahead. It was a perfect target for his marines, who were armored and ready to board on his command. The only problem was, his squadron commander had forbidden him to do anything other than order the crew off the ship. That vessel, which could make a tiny by significant difference to the logistics train of this part of the front, was then to be blasted from space.

  The Crakista officer knew the reason for the caution. Enough ships had fallen to the traps the Ca'cadasans had been setting to make anyone leery of boarding those vessels. While his own vessels sensors had not picked up any targeting lasers or radar, that didn't mean the ship was without powerful weapons, ready to fire as soon as their systems came up. Something that could be done in just over a second, maybe less. Even if they didn't have offensive weapons aboard they could still self destruct. An in-system ship like that shouldn't have a large store of antimatter aboard, which didn't mean they didn't.

  “Their commanding officer is reporting that they have refugees aboard, and not enough suits for everyone,” said the com officer.

  Which could very much be true, but which didn't change Lrissras' orders one bit. He also couldn't very well demand that people who lacked the protection to survive in space leave their only protection. Standard operating procedure was to make the crew and passengers leave their ship in suits, rescue pods if those weren't available, then wait for the unmanned support vessels to come up and take them aboard for inspection.

  “We are entering the one light minute sphere,” announced the weapons officer, his attention locked on his own board as he kept the suspected ship locked in.

  “Understood,” replied the captain. He had a decision to make. Killing innocents was not something his people did lightly. Orders or no, he wanted to get those people off that ship and to safety. What he really wanted was to capture that ship intact. His people didn't use the prize money system of the Republic forces they supported. But they did have a credit system for status, and the captain wanted the enhanced standing capturing that ship would bring.

  “Tell the captain of that ship that he is to start evacuating his vessel immediately.”

  The com officer took a second to send the message by laser com, then waited the couple of minutes for the light speed turnaround.

  “The captain is refusing. He again states that he has refugees from an asteroid mine that was scuttled by the Cacas, and doesn't have the portable life support to get them off his ship alive. He requests that we dock with him and take his people off directly.”

  Of course he does, thought the captain, his eyes blinking rapidly in the way of his species when uncertain. If the being really did have a problem with having too many people aboard that needed rescue, he would ask what he was asking. And if he was trying to bait a trap, he would say the same.

  “How many people does he have aboard?” he asked of his com officer, then waited for the reply, while the distance between the vessels slowly closed.

  He had over seven hundred people aboard his cruiser. Most were Crakista spacers, but he also had almost a hundred of his nation's aliens, trained marines in battle armor. If he ordered them across they would act immediately and without question. And this potential enemy would have three different attack options when he was close. They could let the marines board and blow their ship, taking all of the invaders with them. They could wait until the cruiser was even closer and detonate their ship, heavily damaging or even destroying Lrissras' ship. Or they could fire their hidden weapons, if they existed, again possibly destroying his ship.

  “Range fifty light seconds,” stated the weapons officer.

  The cruiser was in full decel now, and if he didn't change vectors it would stop within ten light seconds of the other ship.

  “The captain says he has over four hundred refugees, sir. Plus his fifty-seven crew.”

  That many, thought the captain, cringing inside. Of course, the other being could be lying. If only they had the fabled sensor that could detect life over a distance through the vacuum of space. So far no one had come up with even a theoretical basis for such a device.

  “Ask the commodore what we should do,” he ordered his Klassekian com tech, their one method of moderate bandwidth instantaneous com.

  Crakista were thought by others to be logical creatures who didn't make decisions based on emotions, and basically that was correct. What they didn't understand was the species was very emotional deep down. They suppressed the feelings that had caused them so much trouble in their barbarian era, but the feelings were still there. And right now his feeling were screaming at him to rescue the helpless. In his mind he could imagine hundreds of refugees cowering aboard that vessel, sure that they were safe just before a threatening warship appeared to order them off. Possibly children were aboard, with parents trying to comfort them in their panic.

  “Range, forty light seconds.”

  What to do? What to do?

  “The commodore is demanding that you increase the distance and keep the potential enemy ship under observation,” said the com tech, his four eyes, two large, two small, looking over at the Crakista captain. “He has other ships vectoring toward us. The first should be within support range of us in twenty-seven minutes.”

  “Very well. Helm, start vector change to move us away.”

  The decision had been taken from him, and he felt relief at having orders to follow.

  “Sir. We're being painted by targeting lidar. Coming from that ship” The weapon's officer looked at his commander, his eyes wide. “More sources from all around that ship.”

  What in the universe did we step into, thought Lrissras, just before the graviton emissions of just under a hundred missiles appeared on the plot, coming at him from multiple launch points. Mines, was his next thought, something the Ca'cadasans had been using more of after copying them from the humans. He had been tricked, alright, and he and his ship were about to pay the price.

  “All weapons, open fire on that ships. And start rolling counters.”

  The ship bucked slightly as it launched a broadside of eight tubes. It started to turn, letting off the three stern tubes, then the eight on the opposite broadside, then the three from the bow. The laser rings continued their fire, and the beams would strike minutes before the missiles.

  The captain stared at the plot that showed icons moving away from and toward his ship. It looked like a child's game, until one remembered that each of those icons represented a hundred ton missile. It would take minutes for the first one to reach him, and his weapons would be firing on them the entire way. A quick mathematical formula run through a sharp mind indicated that it would be enough.

  The enemy ship was a wreck from laser fire by the time the first missile hit it and blew it to plasma. The cruiser was also well served, though not as badly as the commercial ship that wasn't made to take laser fire. It didn't make any difference as three missiles struck home, and Captain Lrissras and his seven hundred odd crew were turned into superheated plasma that swirled away in the vacuum of space.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The power to wage war is the power to wage war successfully. Charles Evans Hughes

  AUGUST 15TH, 1004.

  Sean looked over the figures from his front and scowled. He was still getting a favorable exchange rate with the Cacas, but that only mattered if they were looking at things the same as he was. By all indications they were proceeding from a different set of assumptions. His forces were still winning the fights, but they were losing the overall war.

  It really didn't look that way, since he was still advancing into their territory on a wide front.
Slowly though, ever so slowly, and there was still a lot of space in front of them. It was reminding him more and more of the Eastern Front in the Second Global War. The Cacas still had more ships, though many of those were obsolete by this year's standards. He thought his industrial capacity had surpassed theirs, and he didn't have to worry about insurgents to his far rear. Just behind the front was another thing altogether.

  It was a war of attrition, plain and simple, and the Cacas were willing to spend as many lives as necessary to make him think again about continuing his invasion of their Empire. He was reminded of Verdun in the First Global War more than anything.

  That battle had been set up by the German Army, after catching the French off guard and taking the fortress complex at Verdun. They had reinforced the forts with everything they had, and lured the French into a battle of attrition. Over a million men had died on each side in that battle. The German idea had been to kill so many of the enemy that the French would give up. Unfortunately, the French were just as willing to spend lives, and the battle had ended in a draw. In the long run the German strategy would have worked, since the French had fewer lives to throw into the cauldron than the Germans. Having the British helped, but with Russia out of the war things were looking bad, until the United States jumped in.

  I only wished we had a United States waiting in the wings, thought the Emperor.

  Worse of all, the Cacas were trying to target the ships of the allies to the exclusion of his own, trying to make their involvement painful enough that they would quit. So far the other empires were sticking it out, but the rumblings of their people were growing. He had tried to keep them out of the line of fire, but frankly he needed their ships involved in actions, otherwise what use were they?

  That the enemy was targeting Elysium and Crakista was obvious. They had passed up ambushes of his ships that would have hurt the fleet grievously, just to wait until some follow up alliance ships had appeared. The only way he could think to combat the enemy strategy was to integrate their formations more closely into his own. Instead of an Elysium battle group he could place a couple of squadrons of their ships, maybe one of battleships and one of escorts, into one of his battle groups. The problem with that was it removed the higher level allied commanders from their commands. That was something the overly proud Brakakak, and the logical to a fault Crakista, who weren't all that logical when their courage was called in question, wouldn't stand for. And he didn't want to put any of his own higher level formations under an allied admiral. Somebody had to back off, and it was looking like it would have to be him.

  In the positive column, the combined Ranger/Maurid units were working as well as advertised. The augmented humans and the naturally gifted Maurids had similar capabilities. The Maurids had slightly better senses, especially night vision, hearing and smell. But the augmented humans had the better distance vision and fine discrimination. The humans were a bit stronger, a bit faster, and when equipped with bladed weapons were just as deadly.

  The problem with the augments was there just weren't enough of them. Augmented lost a good part of their lifespan, something most people weren't willing to part with. Only volunteers were augmented, and though some of his people had been advocating for forced augmentation, ordering soldiers to undergo the process, the Emperor didn't like the idea at all.

  There was an Esprit to the special ops troops of the Empire that only an all volunteer force could maintain. Before the war the entire Imperial military was a volunteer force. Since the war conscription had reared its ugly head, and new recruits came in to serve for the duration plus one year. They would get the same benefits as the volunteers who served for a ten year initial enlistment, forty for retirement, though many served for decades beyond those four.

  The initial plan was to pair the two species in special ops at a one to one ratio. With the limited pool of humans, and the almost unlimited numbers of Maurids, they might have to rethink the force structure. And would large groups of Maurids agree to serve under a few humans in company strength units? Knowing the history of the Maurids under the Cacas the answer was not certain.

  The Maurids had served the Cacas like no other species in their Empire. That they tasted horrible to the Cacas helped, but having their singular abilities had more to do with it. They had served as enforcers, intelligence agents, even executioners. What the Cacas hadn't realized was how distasteful the freedom loving Maurids had found those duties. They hated holding other species down for their large masters. The Cacas had bought them off by giving them more freedom than any other aliens in their Empire. Self government of their colony worlds, along with more planets allocated to them than to any others. Even their own ships, though the Cacas hadn't allowed any species in their Empire to own armed vessels. Sean's concern was that the headstrong aliens would think the humans were trying to replace the Cacas as their masters. That couldn't be allowed to happen.

  “Get me Striped Wolf,” the Emperor said into the aid, letting the pickups in his office know his wishes. He could have set the same process in motion through his implant, but like most humans he still like to voice them if possible.

  Striped Wolf was the Maurid that was considered the overall ambassador to the Empire. Not an official position, since the Maurids had yet to form a government. There were many of them scattered across the Ca'cadasan Empire, and on a half score worlds of which they had formed the majority population. Three of those worlds had been liberated, including one the Cacas had marked for destruction along with its system. The Empire had stopped them from setting their plan in motion, and the Maurids of the liberated worlds had pledged eternal gratitude and joined the war on the side of the humans. Which left seven more worlds under Caca control. Or at least their systems were. Sean couldn't imagine Caca ground troops taking control of anything the wolf like aliens wanted to deny them.

  The Emperor didn't expect an immediate connection, like he would get with one of his own people. He tried to query the system as to their status before he asked, not wanting to disturb their sleep or other personal activities. When he did call, he could expect a connection within a minute or less.

  While he waited the Emperor tried to recall what his father's Empire was like, before the wormhole network had been in place. If Augustine had wanted to talk with the governor of a planet or some distant lord, he had to send it through the hyper net, a series of platforms that transmitted less than a light year through hyper VIII to the next. It could take hours to get a message to a core world, days to transmit across the Empire. And forget about talking to ship or fleet commanders who were not in a hyper net system. Now, in most cases, he could talk to anyone he needed, pull up any information necessary, in less that a few minutes. So he was actually surprised when the holo came up and the long snouted face of Striped Wolf came up.

  Sean wished he could have greeted the alien with his given name in the Maurid language. Unfortunately, their language of growls, whines and clicks didn't come easy to humans. Linguist were training to talk to them directly, not just to communicate, but to listen in on conversations the Maurids might not want the humans to understand. Not that he didn't trust them, but he had to prepare for the unlikely worst. Maurids could speak Terranglo, but one must listen carefully.

  “Emperor Sean,” said the orange and black striped male of his species. “What can I do for you.”

  Stripped Wolf had been one of the first emissaries to the humans, making contact with a former Imperial Protection Detail agent on a frontier world. He had fed information to the Empire. Information that had proven to be highly accurate, if not always timely.

  “I'm having a problem I hope you can help me with.” said Sean, looking into the intelligent eyes of the alien hunter.

  “With my people? I hope we don't have a dissenter mucking up the works of our alliance.”

  “Nothing like that,” said Sean, shaking his head. “I have been going over my potential ground deployments, something your people figure in. We have been taking too
many casualties landing conventional forces on their worlds, and my experts have been suggesting sending in special ops units ahead of the heavies. They specialize in scouting and raids. But I only have so many augmented to deploy, and your people as as good as my Rangers and Commandos.” Almost, he amended in his thoughts, something he wouldn't say to the prideful alien.

  “So you want to use more of my people in these units,” said Stripped Wolf, giving a very human head nod. “And more of my people want to get into the fight, but we don't have the ships, or the specialized training of your spacers. So, what is the problem?”

  “I know what you people have gone through with the Cacas,” said Sean, leaning forward in his chair. “At the moment you don't have many people who have been trained in military leadership roles. Oh, probably many who could be platoons leaders and company commanders. But not the higher level positions, at least not now. Maybe in a year or so, but we don't have a year.”

  “Are you afraid that my people might resent serving under aliens, because of their dealing with the Masters,” said the Maurid, spitting out the last word. “I think you have nothing to fear, my friend. We have observed your Empire, and your dealings with aliens. And they are nothing like how the Masters treated others. We have seen how you have aliens commanders of your divisions and higher formations, even the ones made up of predominately humans. You have ministers in your government, Lords in your Parliament, who are non-humans. We have no fear that you will replace the Cacas as our overlords.”

  “That's good to know. I was hoping so, but I wasn't sure.”

  “Rest assured that we will accept your decision on how to deploy us. Though I would appreciate it if more of my people were sent to your specialist spacer and heavy ground force schools. Until then, we will proudly serve beside your augmented.”

  “Okay. My plan is to form units with three quarters Maurids and one quarter humans. That will double my special ops forces, in the short term. We can make your people the non-commissioned officers of your people's squads. And then commission those that prove they can handle the positions.”