“It will take us over seven hundred and sixty hours to come within range of the station,” said Klorasoft, still looking at Jackson.
So, thirty-two days, thought the Commander, running the numbers quickly in his mind. He returned the gaze of the alien, wondering if they would reject their own principles and probe his mind for the information they wanted.
“You may return to your quarters,” said the frustrated alien.
Jackson blew out a breath, relieved for a moment. But the tension of the situation still rode on his shoulders. Thirty-two days. The time he had to prevent the alien ship from destroying the most important asset in his Empire.
Chapter One
Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time. Thomas Carlyle
IMPERIAL TRAINING SYSTEM, SECTOR II, APRIL 18TH, 1003.
“Ready for warp, sir,” said the pilot, looking back from his station.
Commander Natatuk Igua nodded as he looked at the engineering status on the holo near his command chair. Everything was green, and he nodded his head again in satisfaction before looking around the small bridge. Besides the pilot and himself there were three other crew in the chamber. To his left sat the com tech, a Klassekian, the only species of use for communications on a ship like this. To his right was the sensor operator, a lieutenant jg, an officer in that position since this was the squadron command ship. Next to the pilot was the weapon’s tech, a chief petty officer, who controlled the release of every weapon on the ship. The engineer and her assistant were in the stern of the ship, monitoring all of the power and propulsion systems of the vessel.
The fifty meter long, eight thousand ton ship was the newest addition to the Imperial arsenal. It was a true Alcubierre drive ship, capable of warping space, and the next development from the inertialess fighters already in service. Unlike those ships, it could go from a standing stop to above the speed of light in less than a second. Not really the speed of light, since the ship didn’t actually travel at all. The space around it compressed and expanded, and the ship appeared to move faster than light. Maximum pseudospeed for this iteration was twenty light, and it could warp at that speed for a maximum of two hours. The circular ring around the center of the ship was the heart of the drive, what moved it in warp. An octet of powerful grabber units could propel it through normal space at eight hundred gravities, slightly faster than a ten thousand ton attack ship.
“Order all units to go into warp in six seconds,” ordered the commander. “Five, four, three, two, one, zero.”
As he said the last word the pilot moved the warp lever forward slowly, and the ship seemed to rocket forward at incredible acceleration. Moments later it had passed light speed as far as the outside universe was concerned. Seconds later it passed twice light speed, then continued up the scale until it was at ten times light speed.
“How are the other units doing?” asked Igua.
“The other eleven ships are with us,” said the sensor officer. The holo over her station showed the vector arrows of the twelve ships in the squadron, including their own.
Unlike the inertialess fighters, these attack craft could be tracked at all times by the graviton emissions of their warp drive. They could also track other vessels while in warp, since they were not cut off from the universe like the smaller fighters. So they could track enemy vessels and change their vectors in no time. And could be tracked across their attack profile. Whether the enemy could do anything about it was another question. One that this test might give them an answer to.
“Time to target, seven point three minutes,” called out the pilot after the sensor officer sent the data over to his station.
“Weapons are all green,” called out the CPO in charge of the offensive systems.
“All ships reporting all green,” said the com tech, her four eyes, two primary, two motion, trying to track on the commander.
Igua thought everything was going well, which made him suspicious. Twelve experimental ships? Something had to go wrong. He could only hope that whatever went wrong didn’t cost lives. But when things went wrong with new stuff, it often led to the loss of life. He sat in his seat, keeping silent, since there was really nothing he could say that would make a difference.
Preliminary tests had shown that the design worked. Based on that, thousands of these ships had been made or were in the process of being produced. Crews were being trained, weapons produced and deployed. In normal times the ships would have gone through years of testing before approval. These were not normal times. It was war.
“Eagle one zero is reporting fluctuations in warp field, sir,” said the com tech. “They’re down to six point four light, and dropping.”
“Order them to leave warp,” said Igua. If this had been a real attack he might have ordered them to continue on. It wasn’t, and it was not worth their lives to push a still untested technology to the limit. Eagle one zero lost way, until it was sitting still in space. The eleven remaining ships forged on without a problem. Until.
“Leaving warp in five, four, three, two, one.”
The Alcubierre drive flipped off in an instant, the ring containing the negative matter, much less than an inertialess fighter would carry, slowing down from its swift rotation to a complete stop. The target was straight ahead. A moment later the target had picked them up on normal space sensors and it fired on three of the craft.
“Crap,” yelled out the sensor officer as all of those ships registered hits. They were low powered and would not damage any of the craft, but they simulated full power blasts that would have blown each of those ships out of space.
“Firing now,” called out the weapons tech, his fingers flying across his control panel. Four missiles dropped from each of the still intact ships and engaged their grabber units, streaking off at twenty-five thousand gravities. They could only maintain that boost for twenty seconds, and they didn’t even need that long. Thirty two missiles streaked in at the platform, twenty-three were blown out of space, and the rest generated simulated kinetic hits on the target that would have blown it out of space if they had been real. Warshots would have carried five hundred megaton warheads.
“Changing vector,” said the pilot, while all eight of the craft angled to port and boosted. “Entering warp,” was the next verbalization, and all eight of the craft jumped back up into the space warping drive, spinning up to ten times the speed of light in less than ten seconds.
“Good run people,” said Igua, his words going out on the com as well. It was unfortunate that they had lost a third of their force. But in reality no one had been hurt, and they were still working out the best tactics for this system. They would never get to the point where there weren’t losses, but if they could minimize them and still take out a twenty-five million ton superbattleship, it would be worth it.
“Eagle one zero is reporting that they are unable to get back into warp,” called out the com tech. “Normal space drive still working.”
“Order them back to base at their best normal space speed,” said Igua. Eleven of his squadron would be back at the launch station in less than ten minutes, while the damaged ship would take several hours to make it there. That was just their bad luck. It was fortunate for them that this was just a training exercise, or the luck could have been much worse.
* * *
Grand Fleet Admiral the Duke Taelis Mgonda sat in his command chair and studied the strategic plot of the Fenri Empire. This war was all but won, hundreds of major industrial systems had been liberated, their slave populations freed, while other systems of lesser importance had been left to whither on the vine. As far as they could tell, the remaining Fenri fleet consisted of a few task groups, less than five hundred ships, scattered across space as they fought a naval guerilla war of hit and run. The problem was whenever they hit, even if they won, they lost ships, and the Imperial Fleet was able to absorb its losses, while the Fenri were not. Not that the Fleet was losing many actions.
And soon I’ll be back to the m
ain front, thought the Admiral with a smile. It was all well and good that the Emperor had trusted him to win this campaign, but the disparity in forces after the first couple of major victories had assured that even the worst tactician could have won the fight. The Cacas were a different story. Even if they weren’t the brightest star in the heavens, they had the power to make a fight out of it. In fact, human commanders had to be good, very good, in order to win most of the actions.
“Report coming in from task force three twenty-one, sir,” said one of the com officers, looking back from his station. “They think they have trapped the Fenri Emperor.”
“Thank God,” shouted the admiral, getting up from his chair and walking over to the station. “The sooner we get that son of a bitch the faster this thing will be over.”
The fleeing Emperor of the Fenri had been the rallying point for his forces. As long as he was loose, they refused to surrender. One of the reasons the Empire had been avoiding the lesser worlds was the willingness of Fenri soldiers to fight to the last, knowing that their Emperor was still with them. If they could capture him, and show the image of him in captivity, they could get many of those worlds to surrender. Not all, because with modern tech not everyone would believe that the image of the being was really the Emperor. But maybe enough.
“Task group twenty-three is reporting they are starting back to the Empire,” said another com officer. “Entering hyper at this moment,”
Mgonda grunted in reply. He really didn’t like losing ships from his command, and twenty-three was a powerful task group. A fleet carrier, nine battleships, four battle cruisers, eight heavy cruisers, fifteen light cruisers and twenty-nine destroyers, as well as a number of support ships, it was a strong search and destroy force. But ships were needed elsewhere, and Mgonda couldn’t support a decision to keep hold of that force. In fact, three more forces of almost equal strength were going through the wormhole portal in another system. Twenty-three had a dozen wormholes, which couldn’t travel through a wormhole portal, so they were going by way of hyperspace, the long way around, and carrying some additional wormholes that had been deployed with the forces going through the gates.
* * *
“Starting vector change onto approach course,” called out the helmsman.
Vice Admiral Jefferson Muldoon nodded as he looked at the plot, set on a wide angle of this region of the galaxy. The four ships in his command had been boosting for just over three weeks, ninety light years a day in hyper VII, two thousand and seventy light years from the launch point of the Supersystem, itself a hundred and seventy-three light years above the midline of the Galactic disk. Now they were starting to change their vectors so they could move along above the disc, through an area of space hoped to be sparsely patrolled. They would cruise for five months along that path, to cover a distance of over thirteen thousand light years, before they turned in again and shot for the heart of the Ca’cadasan Empire.
Then we’ll see how you bastards like someone bringing death and destruction to your capital, thought the admiral. If everything went as planned, they would be able to approach within a few hundred light years of the enemy capital before they were spotted. That would be the point where they would use some new technologies to forge through, then bring the attack fleet through the wormhole gate.
“I’ll be in my cabin,” he told the bridge crew as he got up from his seat. His quarters were not far from the bridge, only thirty meters along the long corridor that ran the four kilometer length of the twenty-eight million ton ship.
The vessel, named Retribution, was a variation of the explorer class that had made contact with the Klavarta on the other side of the Ca’cadasan Empire. The ships had been built for low acceleration and high speed over a long distance, but were not warships in any regard. The four ships of the Retribution class had been planned to be utilized in the exploration of the Galaxy, much like the ships already on the way to the galactic center and the Greater Magellanic cloud. These had been upgraded with additional grabber units, heavier electromag shields, and more laser and close in weapons systems. They still weren’t battleships, but they did have a much heavier sting than the original ships.
The vessel also had a dozen wormhole weapons systems on board. They would be moved to other vessels when they came through, but they had to be transported through hyperspace until the other ships came through the portals. If the four Retributions were destroyed, the Empire would lose over fifty wormholes, a heavy price, but one that was affordable given how many they produced.
The next five months would be boring in the extreme. There was unlikely to be anything patrolling that far above the Galactic disk, unless the Cacas had a significant number of colonies out among the sparse stars at that distance. The Empire had some colony worlds up there where stars were likely to be fifty light years or more from their nearest neighbors, and even farther from other inhabitable worlds. That didn’t mean the Cacas would not patrol those sparse areas, but they couldn’t have much coverage up there, and the Imperial ships would avoid any stars, staying well out of hyper VII detection range. His problem would be in keeping the crews alert during this time. There would have to be constant drills, exercises, everything to keep the minds of the crews working at peak efficiency. Because when they flipped back down and headed toward the Galactic disk, they would have to be working at that efficiency to work their way around the patrols that were sure to be there. Those times were sure to be exciting, hopefully not exciting enough to lead to the death and destruction of his command.
* * *
SPACE OUTSIDE FENRI EMPIRE, MAY 3rd, 1003.
“What the hell is that,” called out the sensor chief on the HIMS Geofrey Smythe as the graviton emissions of scores of ships sounded over the speakers. More were entering the range of the sensors every second, ships traveling through hyper VII. Big ships mostly, above twenty million tons, with some in the four million ton range. And all giving off the resonances of Ca’cadasan vessels.
“What is it, Chief?” called out the duty officer, Lieutenant JG Walthers. “Oh, shit,” exclaimed the officer as the contacts appeared on the bridge holo.
“I think what we have, sir, is a major Caca force moving into Fenri space.”
“Captain to the bridge,” called out the duty officer. “Repeat, captain to the bridge. Red alert.”
The klaxons went off all over the ship. Chief Petty Officer Jao could only hear it on the com. Her sensor compartment was isolated from any of the normal sounds on the ship, giving her the ability to concentrate on the emission signals being picked up by the sensitive resonance chamber. She tuned out the com and got back to the job of listening to the incoming signals, trying to determine the classes of all the ships. There were too many to get a good read on all at once, but by working the system she was able to isolate signals and get an accurate take on each and every one.
Shit. More and more of the objects were entering the field. There were already hundreds of them, with no end in sight. And they were a mere destroyer, hyper VI, two hundred thousand tons. She wouldn’t last a second against any of the ships she had picked up so far. A couple of four hundred thousand ton scouts came into range, and she revised that estimate. Smythe could probably last a couple of minutes with one of those ships, only they wouldn’t get the chance to take on one by itself.
Fortunately, the destroyer was sitting in normal space, undetectable by ships in hyper, and pretty damned hard to pick up even in normal space. They hadn’t received a Klassekian com tech yet. Even though there were a lot of them in the service, there were still not enough, and nobody had really thought that the Cacas would be coming through here. So when they sent out a grav pulse that would go up the line until it reached the nearest ship with instantaneous com capability, everyone would know where they were. The only thing that would protect them was the fact that the Cacas were coming in at point eight light, and would not be able to jump down from hyper until they could slow to point three. They couldn’t even launch
missiles down at their current speed, so the destroyer should be safe enough.
The graviton pulse was clear to her ears when it went out. In fact, her system was set to attenuate the signal because it could fry some of her equipment, as well as injuring her ears, if it came through full strength. But that also degraded her long-range scans, and the mass of Caca ships became a blur while the signal was going out. She could still tell there were a shitload there, and more entering range every moment, but beyond that, nothing.
“The signal has gone out, Chief. You should have better listening now. Any change?”
“Just more of them, Captain. This seems to be a major force, battle fleet size at least.”
“Understood. We’ll be transmitting in another couple of minutes, so get me all the information you can.”
Jao nodded, then acknowledged the order verbally, all the while watching the oncoming Caca force, happy that they weren’t decelerating.
* * *
“I have an idea,” said Sean, looking over at Jennifer, who was playing with Glenn, the happy baby squealing as he sat on her lap.
“About what?” asked his wife, turning her eyes toward him. The joy that had been in them blew out like a candle in a wind as soon as they lit on him.
“A way to get our dead back. A way to get our son back.”
“And how are you going to do that?” asked his wife, her tone indicating how tired she was of any kind of conversation with her husband.
“I was contacted by someone recently who hinted that they could go back in time. We could stop the Cacas from hitting the system. And we could get Augustine back.”
The shocked look on Jennifer’s face made him wonder if he had said too much. Then the shock turned to elation as what he had said hit home. Before she could open her mouth that elation had shifted into fear and disbelief.
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