* * *
“We’re going to take years getting this thing back together again,” said one of the Officers in the War Room. Vibrations from explosions were coming through the hull continuously, muted not because of their lack of power, but due to the massiveness of the object they were transmitted through.
If we’ve still got a station left to repair, thought Admiral McCullom. It had taken a hundred years, and a good percentage of the industrial capacity of the Empire to build it in the first place. They didn’t have the industrial capacity to spare in the middle of this war, nor the time. If it was destroyed they lost it, and with it the war.
“The evacuation is proceeding as fast as we can get them through the gates,” said one of the Com Techs, looking back from her station. “The station commander is asking if he can start moving military personnel through.”
“No,” growled McCullom. “We will defend this station to the last.”
“What about getting as many wormholes off the station as we can?” asked another Officer. “Just in case.”
“And how would you evacuate them?” asked Sondra, pointing to the plot, which was covered with objects quickly changing their orientation, when they weren’t just disappearing altogether. “Put them on shuttles and try to fly them through that mess? And what do you think the Cacas are going to think of any ships we try to sneak through them?”
And that was the other thing. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to put most of the wormholes here on the station, where they could serve as the instantaneous com and logistics links of the Empire. That had been the purpose of putting so much space on the station not devoted to energy generation and storage, or to industrial concerns like antimatter and negative matter production. The station was to be the hub of the industry of the Empire, with business travelers stepping from planet to planet through this hub. Now they might have to rethink that, and spread the hub to multiple locations. Unfortunately, two thirds of the wormholes in the Empire linked to this station, and if it were gone, so were those links. Or were they?
“Get me Dr. Yu on the Com,” ordered McCullom, an idea forming.
Chapter Eighteen
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. George S. Patton
“What information have you heard from the Empire?” asked the Klavarta Admiral over the com holo.
“Nothing good, ma’am,” replied the human Vice Admiral. “They hurt us, bad, in the Capital system. Reports are still fragmentary. Preliminary reports are that we beat off the attack, but they hurt us. Over a hundred million dead, hundreds of ships lost, docks, shipbuilding facilities. It sounds like we lost a major battle, though it could have been worse.”
“And the Donut?”
“That’s still up in the air,” said the Vice Admiral. And unfortunately, more than two thirds of our wormholes terminate at the Donut, or one of the orbital stations around it. If the Cacas take those out, we’re in a lot of trouble.
“We can’t do anything about it,” said the Klavarta. “So I guess we need to concentrate on what we can do.”
We could pray, thought the Vice Admiral, herself not a believer in any deity. She didn’t think more than half of the citizens of the Empire did, and she wasn’t sure there was any kind of religious belief among the Klavarta. But it was just about the only thing she could think of.
“So you want to go ahead with the offensive?” asked the Vice Admiral.
“I don’t know what else we should do,” said the Klavarta. “We have the ships in place, and the eyes of the enemy are on the other front. Your intelligence is saying that they have reinforcements coming this way, but they aren’t here yet. So now is the time to strike.”
And intelligence hadn’t been too sure about their information, thought the Vice Admiral, looking over at the tactical plot that showed the projected dispositions of the enemy units, mostly clustered around the score of inhabited systems nearest to their primary front base. The enemy had been weakened in the last Klavarta operation, coming on the heels of the attack by the Cacas deep into the Nation of New Earth’s space. Losses had been heavy on both sides, but the Klavarta had new construction coming out of the shipbuilding slips, and some reinforcements had come through from the Empire. And they had wormholes, over a hundred of them, with more coming. Half the wormholes reached back to the Empire, two to ship gates that would allow vessels from either front to transit immediately to the other. The rest to weapon systems that doubled as com portals. The other half had come to the front with both ends carried in sealed containers, and were now functioning as ship gates and com portals for the Klavarta Fleet.
“I still wish the intelligence was a little more, firm,” said the Vice Admiral. “It would have eased my mind if more of your scout ships had come back from their missions.”
“The ones that came back reported information that agreed with your intelligence estimates.”
And that was what was bothering the Vice Admiral. Anything that had come across any unsuspected shipping might have been destroyed. While it was unlikely that everything sent out that stumbled upon something would have been snapped up, it was always a possibility. And any intelligence they developed in the Ca’cadasan Empire, an expanse twenty-five times larger than the New Terran Empire, would of course be sparse, and suspect. But this was not her command, or her Empire’s. She and her ships were here to support the Nation of New Earth in their prosecution of the war.
“We will move on our targets in six hours,” said the Klavarta Admiral, a firm order that left no room for argument. The Klavarta turned on the holo. “Send the orders to all units.” Looking back at the human Admiral she smiled. “And if you would be so kind as to let you units know my orders, and transmit them to my units in their proximity.”
The human nodded, then turned to her own com people to give them the command. The ship carried one wormhole. There just weren’t enough on this front to give any vessel more than one. She also carried a half dozen Klassekian Com Techs, each the member of a different sibling group. There was still pressure by the Klavarta to assign some of the aliens to their commands, but so far the Empire had been adamant at keeping them aboard their own ships and stations.
“Then let us be about it. In four days we strike the first targets. We’ll adjust our objectives depending on what we find.”
Which was at least some common sense from the normally aggressive Klavarta, who seemed predisposed to charge in and think later. That was probably the truth, since they were genetically engineered to be fighters. At least some of the Imperial human thinking was starting to rub off on them, and they were willing to be audacious while still taking precautions that the audaciousness didn’t lead to disaster.
Six hours later the ships started to move. It was still a two-day journey to their target. Other task groups started off at the same time, still more later, so that all the groups would reach their targets at approximately the same time. Most of the ships were still the raider and small destroyer class of the Klavarta, soon to be replaced for the most part by larger Imperial designs. The only problem was, the Klavarta were not willing to let go of perfectly good ships while they could still be of use in the war. Their philosophy was that warriors were cheaper than the weapons they used, so they sacrificed warriors to get the most of the weapons while they had them.
* * *
“Magnificent,” said the Great Admiral as he watched some of his reinforcements coming through the new wormhole gate. It was to date his only wormhole gate, the other three deployed to ships. And with things heating up on the other front, he wasn’t expected too many more in the future. There actually was one more on the way. He knew this because the ship carrying it was in communication with the capital, which was in an instantaneous link with his headquarters through this very gate.
The superbattleship finished its translation, coming through at less than a kilometer per second. It wasn’t going anywhere beyond the system for the moment, so there was no need for
high velocity. It took four seconds for the ship to complete the transit. Twenty seconds later another ship came through. All were of the older designs. Only a few of the experimental vessels, the new battleships, were in commission, and this was still considered a secondary front.
“They aren’t sending everything you asked for,” said his Chief of Staff.
“It will still double my force,” said the Great Admiral, thankful that he still had his command. What they were sending him would not have doubled his original command. Not even close. He had lost so many ships and crews in his assault on the Klavarta that he barely had enough to hold the frontier as it was. He thought a strong attack by the Klavarta would crack his defenses, and leave the worlds behind him helpless. And with a five-month travel time from the industrial heart of the Empire to his command, he hadn’t thought he would get the reinforcements he, or his successor, needed.
Now potential reinforcements were just a short jump away. This very day his force would grow by two thousand warships. Tomorrow by the same amount.
“We’re receiving a grav pulse message, my Lord,” said a male, running onto the observation deck of the station. “It comes from the surveillance line.”
The Great Admiral grunted his acknowledgement. They had taken a page out of the Klavarta book, and left a line of scout ships leading from deep into their territory all the way to this base. The earlier offset line had given them early warning of the enemy entering their space. Now this one gave them the final alert that they were indeed heading here. Just like the Klavarta had done to him, he had stationed his ships just within grav pulse range of each other. Three hundred ships, stretched across just under two hundred light years in normal space. Under orders to not reveal themselves until a major movement of enemy ships was detected. Then, of course, the ships that had picked up the movements would be located, and there was the possibility that enemy ships would be dropping into normal space looking for them. But the ones further up the chain would not be detected, since they would have transmitted their messages already and have gone silent by the time the enemy got within detection range.
“The report we’re getting is that an enemy fleet is continuing to move in our direction.”
“Show me,” ordered the Great Admiral.
A holo plot sprang to life in the center of the chamber, and the Great Admiral and his staff turned their backs on the viewer that was showing the new arrivals. The holo showed the local stars, out to three hundred light years from the base in the direction of the Klavarta, only a score in the other direction. The volume of stars looked like a thin mist among a sea of black. Two blinking red dots had vector arrows leading from them, one behind the other, about thirty light years out, where the first of the scout line ships were stationed. And the vector lines were definitely pointing toward Ca’cadasan space in the general direction of the base.
“And I guess we can assume that they are coming here, on a direct assault?”
“That would be the most likely scenario, my Lord,” said the Chief of Staff. “If they are smart they will be coming here in mass, especially since they know we have spotted them.”
“That would be the smart way to bet,” said the Great Admiral. “But I am unwilling to bet that way. The Klavarta themselves would be likely to rush at us like enraged animals. The other humans with them would not, and we must count on them trying something unexpected.”
“Your orders, my Lord?” asked the Chief of Staff.
“Put the fleet on alert. All recon groups are to move out to their pre-arranged positions and prepare to maintain contact with the enemy when they come within range. Force A units are to form up into battle groups and move to a light hour from the hyper-limit. The rest are to go into their waiting positions.”
“And then?”
“And then we wait and see what shows up at our door.”
* * *
This might not be the best idea I’ve even had, thought Angel Sergio Martinez, landing on the platform of the building in his very expensive high tech armor. The armor could be stealthed to a degree that would surprise most members of the Imperial military. It was stronger, tougher, and had more gadgets, all coming at a premium price. And it was also very recognizable, when not in stealth, as something different than anyone else would be wearing this day in this city.
Right now that wasn’t his worry. He took a moment to glance at the city around him, his heart sinking as he took in the destruction. A kilometer away was the Imperial Library, the central branch of the largest collection of books and papers in human space. Fifty square kilometers of footprint on the ground. The thoughts and theories of a hundred million scholars, the imagination of the same number of fiction writers. Books from old Earth, some originals. Most of the really valuable tomes would be held in the secure vaults under the building, but from the collapsed state of the structure, it wasn’t a sure thing that those vaults survived. There were a half dozen craters in the building, and easily a third of the structure had collapsed from kinetic hits.
A kilometer separation to the north was the Imperial Art Gallery, covering another twenty squares kilometers of ground footprint. Millions of reproductions from old Earth, along with some priceless originals. Tens of millions more works that had been created since humanity had reached this space. The building hadn’t been damaged to the extent that the library had, but it seemed not for lack of effort. Seven holes cratered the building.
The bastards, he thought, imagining the gloating faces of the Cacas. A rage bubbled up from his stomach. He may have been a roughneck Naval Commando at one time, and then an assassin. But he still appreciated the finer things in life, and the Cacas had struck at the heart of the Empire. His Empire. It had been a long time since he thought of it as such.
The cries for help came once again over his audio pickups, and he turned his attention back to the here and now. Part of this building was collapsed, and there were citizens in this part with no way out. Search and rescue was out in force, probably every surviving member who could still move. But given the magnitude of this disaster, they were not enough. There wasn’t much one person could do, but whatever it was, he would do it. And he was better equipped than most.
“Move as far back from the rubble as you can get,” he said over his suit loudspeaker, hoping that his words would make it through to the trapped. He gave them ten seconds, then activated his suit laser, cutting through one of the beams that formed the wall. Sparks flew, and the power level on the laser went down slowly as he cut through. Checking the wall with his suit sensors, bouncing deep radar beams from the rubble, he picked the next cutting point and went to work. That done he did another check, making sure nothing he was about to pull out would cause a collapse.
Angel dug his gauntleted fingers into the plasticrete and tugged with all the force the suit could generate, using his grabbers to steady his armor as it moved back. His suit looked like a medium suit that had been augmented. Actually its actuators were more powerful than those used in the larger heavy suits, and he had little trouble ripping ten tons of masonry out of the fallen rubble and depositing it on the ledge behind him. Another jerk and the wall was lighter by another ten tons of masonry. He checked the structure once again, made one more cut, and pulled another chunk out, this time exposing the space within.
People looked out at him. He could see five, but his infrared system made out seven more. Two of the red figures were cooler than normal, the sign of losing body heat, an indication that their metabolic processes had ceased. It was also a sign that they had not been dead that long, and were probably recoverable. The only problem with that being the search and rescue apparatus was heavily overloaded at this moment. By the time anyone got here to revive them, it would be too late. And though his suit had many capabilities, revival was not one of them.
“We need help,” said one of the people he had just freed.
“I’m not search and rescue. Now that I’ve gotten you out, you need to wait until the proper author
ities come.”
“My wife and child need help,” cried the man, grabbing Angel by the shoulders. If he had meant to push or pull the suit he was out of luck. “Please.” He turned and looked at the two people lying on the floor. One adult, and one infant.
How in the hell did you rate a reproduction license? thought Angel, looking into the distraught face of the man. As a core world, Jewel was already at the population limit. Actually well above what any other core world was allowed, being the capital. With a continuous flow of people on planet from elsewhere, children were rare on this world. So an infant was unexpected. Angel linked into the net, getting the location of the nearest intact hospital.
“I’ll take them to the nearest hospital. That’s all I can do.”
Angel picked up the woman in one arm and cradled the infant in the other, backing out of the room until he was again in the open. He took one last look at the father, then boosted into the air on his grabbers, accelerating at a low enough speed, a couple of gravities, that he wouldn’t cause significant extra brain damage to the infant.
The hospital was ten kilometers from the building. One of the thirty-seven in the city, and one of the larger ones at that, it was a miracle that it hadn’t been targeted. Fourteen others had been, or at least had been close enough to targets that they had taken significant damage. In less than a minute he was there, landing on one of the platforms designated an ambulance landing pads. There were four ambulance aircars on the roof, one in the process of taking off. He could see another in the air at a distance. Medical personnel were on the roof, unloading the seriously injured from the remaining aircars.
“These two need immediate stabilization,” he shouted at one of the teams, running over to them, laying the mother on the roof, then putting the child on top of her.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) Page 24