Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm

by Doug Dandridge

  “How are they so stealthy, slave?” growled the Admiral as soon as the pain went away.

  “They offload their heat, my Lord,” choked Jana through her snot running nose.

  “We have ships that do that, slave,” growled the Admiral, hitting the pain button again. “We use a hole to subspace to dump the heat radiation. But nothing we have is so efficient. So how did you primates solve this problem? Tell me, or I will let the pain go on for hours.”

  Jana was sobbing when the pain field went off. She didn’t think she could take anymore. As she brought in shuddering breaths she saw the Admiral reach a hand for the pain control band again, and she quickly raised a hand. “Wait, my Lord. Please.”

  “So how do they do it?”

  “Wormholes, my Lord,” cried the woman, the feeling of betrayal overwhelming her, but still not enough to overcome her fear of more agony. “Wormholes.”

  “Wormholes?” asked the Admiral, his mouth dropping open. “How do you get these wormholes? Do you find them? And where?”

  “We make them, my Lord,” said Jana, crying as she gave up the information she knew was important, not wanting to, and too afraid not to.

  “You make them?” roared the Admiral, stepping up to stand over her. “If you are lying to me.”

  “I swear, my Lord. It takes a lot of energy, and it took a long time to build the factory that makes them.”

  “How could you primates do something we couldn’t?” asked the Admiral, his voice dropping. “Where are these wormholes made? Are there any other uses for them?”

  “I don’t know, my Lord. I’m not sure. I wasn’t trained in this area, and only know what was common knowledge across the Empire.”

  “They must be small hole,” said the Admiral, walking back to the portal and looking out. “They must be. Nothing else would make sense.”

  The Admiral turned back around, pointing a finger at Jana. “You may go, slave. And if I find out you were holding anything back you will wish for death, as you pass through the days of agony that will only end with your life.”

  Jana backed away, her muscles still quivering from the pain she had gone through. I didn’t give up the location of the factory, she thought as she followed the assigned officer back to her quarters. I just hope he doesn’t ask me again, or I just might give it up.

  * * *

  “So you believe her about these stealth ships?’ asked the Great Admiral of his new intelligence officer. He thought of the old Low Admiral who had filled the position, not the most brilliant of males, but competent. He wasn’t able to save himself from being dumped into space by the missile hit on the station.

  “I don’t see what else could have hit the tankers and the station, my Lord,” said the Captain who had assumed the position. The Admiral liked this new man, who did not have any of the timidity of the old. “Something snuck in close and unleashed beam weapons on the tankers, then put a torpedo into the station. And we could not pick it up, not even on infrared. Not until it fired. We have a fleeting image of the beams coming out of space, and what appears to be the attenuated bow of a vessel. What they did takes power, and power equals waste heat. But they were able to get rid of it.”

  “But wormholes?” asked the Great Admiral in an incredulous tone. “We have never been able to make wormholes, have we?”

  “It is theoretically possible,” said the Captain. “As you said, it takes so much power. More than an antimatter facility can make in a month. So, with all the other demands of the fleet, it was not thought to be something we could pursue. So surely the humans cannot make them en mass.”

  “I do not like the idea of this thing hiding in our system, spying on us,” said the Great Admiral, replaying the scene of the two tankers exploding in his mind. “Who knows what intelligence it might be passing on to its headquarters? If they can send heat through the wormhole, then surely they can send photons of information as well.” The Great Admiral looked at the viewer that showed the ghost image of the bow of the enemy vessel. “I want this thing found. Preferably captured, so we can look it over. But destroyed if that is not possible.”

  “We try, Great Admiral,” said the Low Admiral in charge of the system. “I have as many ships as I can muster patrolling space out to a light hour. The problem is, there are millions of objects in that space, and we must deep radar all of them.”

  “Keep trying,” ordered the Great Admiral. “This is a priority. We cannot have a snoop hanging around it the system, giving our information to their leaders.”

  “At least we have transmitted everything in code,” said the Intelligence Officer with a smile. “And there is no way known to break that code.”

  “Then make sure we continue to do so. And we may need to find that wormhole production facility, so we can take it out.”

  “Thank the God they can’t make wormholes that allow them to move ships or equipment,” said the Intelligence Officer.

  “And how do you know that is so?” asked the Great Admiral.

  “It would take negative matter to hold the hole open,” said the other officer in a tone that implied he was speaking fact. “And negative matter cannot be made, it must be found. I doubt there is that much just lying around waiting to be picked up.”

  “That is good,” said the Great Admiral, imagining how gates could be used against his people. “Now find that ship.” He got up and stormed out of the room, a smile on his face as he heard the males behind him start brainstorming on how to implement his wishes.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Napoleon Bonaparte.

  SPACE BETWEEN MASSADARA AND CONUNDRUM, MARCH 27TH, 1000. HYPER VII DESTROYER DOT MCARTHUR.

  Captain The Duke Maurice von Rittersdorf (and he wondered when he would ever get used to that title) was glad to be back in hyper and heading for a major base. Even if it was only Hyper V, and the base was thirty two days away at her best accel profile. A distance we could have covered in two days in VII, he thought, taking a look around the bridge. It looked clean and well repaired, and he wished he could say the same of the rest of his ship. He looked at the viewer that looked out on the strangeness of the hyper dimension, watching the shimmering hyper field of one of his escorting ships, a VII class destroyer. She was the sister of McArthur, and her abilities were wasted in this dimension.

  “I might have some good news for you, skipper,” came the voice of the ship’s engineer over the com.

  “I could sure use some, Betty,” said the Captain, looking at his personal viewer that showed the engineering spaces of the ship, one of the matter-antimatter reactors in the background. Lieutenant SG Betty Randolph, the Chief Engineer, was seated behind the main control board for the vessel’s engines. “What’s up?”

  “I think can get us up to VI in another couple of hours,” said the smiling engineer.

  “And how are you going to manage that miracle?”

  “By rerigging the power feeds to the top projector with some units I borrowed from laser ring C,” said the engineer. “We can take the top projector offline for the hour I need, since we’re not going to jump in and out of hyper.”

  The Captain thought about that for a moment. It took a lot more of the ship’s capacity to move in and out of hyper. They wouldn’t need a fourth of the output of the projectors to maintain V, and the bottom projector could handle that. They might be in trouble if they had to jump down in hyper, or back into normal space, but that was a low probability situation. And they could get to base in eight days instead of over a month. C ring was a total loss anyway, until they got into a shipyard and got the emitters replaced.

  “Go ahead and do what you need to do, Betty,” said the Captain, making a hand gesture at his Com Officer. “And good work.” The screen went blank. “Get me the Captain of the Athens on the com,” he told his Com Officer.

  It took a couple of moments to establish the connect, but after those moments the face of Captain Jiyoung Kim appeared on t
he main viewer. Maurice told her of his plans and she smiled back.

  “I think that is a great idea, your Grace,” said the other Captain, who had military rank on Maurice by date of commission, but not the social status. “I for one don’t wish to spend too much time in V if I can help it.”

  “I know what you mean,” said von Rittersdorf. “We had to play escort for a bunch of V freighters just before this whole thing blew up. It was not an enjoyable trip. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to jump. And I think we should all decel down to point two c so we can jump when ready.”

  “Point taken,” said the other Captain, nodding. “I’ll be waiting for your word.”

  Fortunately the ships were only at a little over point three c, and it would not take long to decel to the speed limit for a jump. In two hours all was ready, and the lights on McArthur dimmed as she fed power into the projectors, which warped gravity a half a light second away and opened a hole in space. The red firmament of Hyper V rippled, then pinched open, showing the slightly brighter red of Hyper VI, filled with a background of black dots that were the gravity shadows of stars in the normal Universe. McArthur fell through the hole, while her escorts fell through their own openings into VI. The holes closed behind them and the four ships started to accelerate, now closer by a factor of four to their destination.

  One of the problems with hyper was that vessels traversing its dimensions created strong gravity waves that could be detected for great distances. The higher the level of Hyper the greater the energy of those waves. And opening and closing a hole into a Hyper dimension also sent out gravity waves, to a much greater range than mere traveling did. It took the group a couple of hours to pick up the gravity resonances of ships moving in Hyper VII, toward them.

  * * *

  HYPER VII BATTLE CRUISER JEAN DE ARC.

  “Well, there they are?” said Jackson, standing beside the Captain on the bridge. The viewer showed the enemy ships as they translated into normal space, or at least how they had looked about forty minutes in the past. “That was good thinking by the way, Captain. I probably would have panicked and jumped into hyper.”

  “I don’t think you would have, XO,” said the Captain, leaning forward and looking at the enemy vessels. They had tagged them on their entry into normal space, then looked for them at the spot indicated.

  “Think they’ll spot us?” asked Jackson, some concern in his voice.

  “I sure hope not, or they’ll be on us in no time.”

  Jean de Arc was actually thirty-seven light minutes beyond the hyper limit on a vector at a twenty degree angle from the entry of the enemy into the system. Everything was powered down, and had been for the last forty minutes, and the ship was coasting out at forty-two thousand kilometers per second, adding another light minute to their distance every seven point one four minutes.

  “We just have to hope that they don’t take too close a look our way,” said Jackson.

  “They would have to look directly at us to even notice us, and there’s a lot of sky to cover. I’m counting on them figuring we’re still in the system and haven’t translated out. Let them waste their time while we creep out to beyond hyper I detection range.”

  The Captain continued to watch the plot, breathing a sigh of relief as the ships separated onto different vectors and started to accelerate, into the system. Two hours passed, and the battle cruiser gained another seventeen light minutes, while the enemy ships pulled away to add another ten light minutes.

  “Start us on twenty gravities acceleration, Helm,” ordered the Captain. “Go up to one hundred in an hour, then stop accel at just under point two light.”

  “That will take approximately seven point six hours, ma’am,” said the Helm, punching in the commands.

  “Very well,” said the Captain. “Engage.”

  “And then what, Captain?” asked Jackson.

  “Then we coast again for another twenty hours, which should give us enough separation to jump into Hyper I without giving ourselves away.”

  “You look really pooped, Captain,” said Jackson. “Why don’t you catch some sack time?”

  “And who’s to relieve me, XO?” said Mei, giving the officer a critical eye and not liking what she saw. “You’re just out of sick bay.”

  “Then turn it over to another officer, and we’ll both get the rest we need,” said Jackson, raising a palm when she started to protest. “Look. The Cacas are moving into the system. It will take them hours to kill their velocity and come back out to the limit, and we’ll see them coming when they do. And nothing can sneak up on us in hyper. We’ll see them coming. So why don’t you get some real rest?”

  “I think you’re right, XO,” said Mei, standing up from her seat. She moved to her cubbie and let it take the battle armor off of her. “All crew to stand down from battle alert. Order of the day is normal uniform.

  “Chief Engineer,” she called out over the com.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Put your crew on third shifts, and let everyone get some rest. Yourself included.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the Engineer, a hint of protest in his voice to match his fatigue.

  “And don’t let me find out that you cheated yourself, Engineer, or there will be Hell to pay.”

  Mei Lei made sure everything was set and retired to her day cabin. She lay down, again missing the warm form of Satin crawling in next to her, saying a quick prayer that her beloved pet and the young man that was watching her were both safe. She had a feeling that they both were, that she and her ship’s sacrifice had guaranteed that they would make it back to base. And then fatigue took over, and she was in a dreamless sleep.

  She awoke refreshed, feeling better than she had in weeks, and hungrier as well. Then panic took hold as she noted the time, ten hours out while the ship was still in a hazard zone. She checked on her link and saw that all was well, then hit the shower and got into a clean uniform. By the time she had gotten dressed her steward, who always seemed to know what was going on, even more so than his charge, had delivered breakfast and coffee to her office.

  “What’s the status on our friends?” she asked of the Assistant Sensor Officer as she walked on the bridge.

  “They’re still in the system, ma’am,” said that officer, a smile on his face. “I think we foxed them.”

  “Helm?”

  “We’re in coasting profile, ma’am,” said the Petty Officer that was filling in for the officer. “Seventeen hours till planned translation.”

  “Do you have anything, Chief?” she next asked over the com.

  “This is Sensor Tech Madison,” said the voice from the hyper resonance listening chamber. “We still have traces in VII all over the place. But all are at extreme range.”

  The hours passed, and nothing seemed to notice the ship as it continued to put distance between itself and known enemies. The translation time came and the ship slipped into Hyper I, immediately changing its vector to head for base. The Captain took it easy and cautious, and waited another day before jumping into II, then another day to III, and then it was IV and accelerating up to point nine light, on the path for home.

  * * *

  CAPITULUM.

  Streeter looked at his other partners in crime, sitting around the conference table in his office.

  “Great plan you had there, Prime Minister,” said Jakobe McGregor, head of the Imperial Investigation Bureau. “Why didn’t you just fire a warning shot, so they would keep their heads down. Now there is no chance any member of that triad will put their heads in our noose.”

  “There is nothing to connect me to the attempt,” said Streeter, bristling. “So don’t you go saying I had anything to do with it.”

  “If you want to pretend, that’s fine,” said McGregor, glaring at the Prime Minister. “And before you try to come up with some way to do away with me, because I know too much, be assured that I have safeguards in place for the time that I may become expendable.”

  “Gent
lemen,” said the Lord’s Sergeant at Arms, Countess Judy Decker. “We have serious matters to discuss here. Perhaps the both of you could put on the gloves and fight it out afterwards.”

  “You are right of course, my dear,” said Streeter, stuffing his anger and putting on his best political smile. “We need to get this young man installed in office. But without the cooperation of the military we may have problems. Especially if the people support them.” Streeter looked down at his flat comp and read the figures there. “According to the latest polls, sixty-four percent of the people in the capital agree with that damned admiral. They think we should wait on Sean, then install him on the throne.”

  “And what about the other thirty-six percent?” asked McGregor, leaning on the table to get a look at the PMs flat comp.

  “Twelve percent agree with us, fourteen percent are undecided, and frankly ten percent don’t give a damn what we do as long as we leave them alone.”

  “So we need to sway public opinion our way,” said the Countess.

  “And how do we do that?” asked Streeter petulantly. He had been trying to figure out the way to do that very thing, without success.

  “We play their game,” said Decker, smiling. “We trumpet that there is a war with the ancient enemy on our doorstep. That we need leadership from the throne, but there is no one on the seat of power to act. And then we demand that they produce this prince they keep talking about, or let us seat an Emperor for the safety of the Empire.”

  “You don’t really believe that crap about the old enemy coming back, do you?” asked McGregor.

  “No,” said Decker, shaking her head. “I don’t. Oh, I believe we have a new enemy in that sector, someone we haven’t seen before. But until I see a live Ca’cadasan in front of me I refuse to believe that the old enemy has followed us across ten thousand light years to attack us. That empire is long dead and gone.”