Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front

by Doug Dandridge

  Of his eight hundred and twenty-seven remaining ships, almost all of them had some damage. Another eighty-five ships were flying ahead, damage to their grabbers not allowing them to decelerate at the same rate as the rest of the force. Hopefully they would eventually be able to make the jump, but the High Admiral didn’t have the energy to worry about them. His one concern was to get what he had around him into hyper and away from here.

  No more missiles, he thought, staring at the force that was still chasing him, the human fleet that had battered his own fleet with long range fire. He had returned what he had, under the principle of use them or lose them. He was glad he had, since those fifteen hundred ships that had been blasted out of space would have taken all their missile loads along with them. Instead, they had fired them in the face of the chasing fleet, and had resulted in the destruction of a few hundred of the enemy ships. Not enough, not near enough.

  He was surprised that the humans hadn’t sent further missile waves at him. It was a fresh force, and must have had many more missiles in their magazines. Instead, they were following on a profile that would not close the range in time to stop them from translating into hyper and getting away.

  “We have hyper emissions straight ahead,” called out the Sensor Officer. “Two thousand objects, on a heading straight for us.”

  “Can we avoid them?” he asked his Navigation Officer.

  “We can curve our vector, but it will not take us out of their missile range when they enter normal space,” said the officer.

  “We can’t win a battle,” said the Tactical Officer. “If we’re going to do something, we must do it quickly, my Lord.”

  “Set us on the new vector,” he told the Navigation Officer, who went to immediate work to plot the most efficient boost to keep the range open as much as possible. The High Admiral could see from the shoulder slump of the officer that he was disheartened. He was feeling the same.

  Minutes later came yet another shock. “We are receiving a com from the commander of the enemy force behind.”

  “Put it on my personal com screen,” ordered the High Admiral, realizing that this message had been sent over an hour ago, and meant that the commander of the human fleet knew what would be waiting ahead of the Ca’cadasan force.

  “To the commander of the Ca’cadasan force,” came the voice of the human over the com, as the image of an older male human in an ornate uniform appeared on the holo. “You are ordered to surrender your force or be destroyed. As soon as those ships ahead of you enter normal space, they will fire on you. If you wish to surrender, you need to send a message now that will be received by that force. Once the missiles are launched they will not be aborted. So choose now. Life, or death.”

  “We will not surrender,” hissed the High Admiral to the image of the human admiral. The last Ca’cadasan who had surrendered to the humans had paid the price. Or his family had, since he was not in reach of the Empire for punishment. The High Admiral would not allow his siblings and sons to pay the price for his cowardice, despite the fear he was now feeling.

  “We have translations ahead,” called out the Sensor Officer. A moment later the officer turned around at his station, an expression of complete terror on his face. “We have missile launch.”

  The High Admiral was about to ask how many, when he looked at the plot and saw that how many was too many. Thousands of vector arrows appeared on that plot. Many thousands, more than they could weather.

  “My, Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer. “Orders?”

  “We continue on our vector change,” said the High Admiral through clenched teeth. “Prepare all fleet defenses. We will weather the storm until we can jump from this system.”

  The High Admiral stared straight ahead after he spoke, refusing to engage with the rest of his crew. The males had no choice but to follow their last orders, and the fleet boosted along on their path, trying desperately to get away from something they couldn’t possibly escape.

  Chapter Eight

  When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back.

  Charles Krauthammer

  THE DONUT: APRIL 16TH, 1002.

  “And there you have it,” said Dr. Kenji Guatarrez, smiling at the other scientists gathered in the lecture hall. There were over fifty people in the room, all Doctoral Level physicists and engineers working on the Donut Project. “Using this method of resonances with the wormhole creation chamber, at least one end of the wormhole could be created in a different temporal state than the one we have locked into our time.”

  Sounds similar to the Other Universe Project, thought Dr. Lucille Yu, the Director of the Donut Project, ex of that Other Universe Project.

  “And how do you find the proper resonances to open your hole in the time you want?” asked Dr. Jenifa Gua, one of the theoretical physicists who was working on trying to increase the efficiency of the wormhole generating process.

  Dr. Guatarrez did not work on the Donut. He was a professor at Imperial University in Capitulum. The only work he had done on wormholes had been theoretical. The scientist had been out to the Donut on several occasions to observe the process, and take downloads of data back to the University.

  “We can describe the resonances with math and theory, but what it really comes down to is trial and error,” said the Scientist.

  Lucille shook her head. That was how they had discovered new Universes in that project that still haunted her nightmares. Trial and error often turned into trial and terror.

  “So I’m assuming that you will have a wormhole into the past,” said Lucille, raising her hand.

  “Past, or future,” answered the smiling Scientist. “Both are possibilities.”

  “And what will you do with these wormholes?” asked Yu, narrowing her eyes at the man.

  “We will observe the past,” said the excited Scientist. “Learn what really happened in the past, see the things that are now merely conjecture.”

  “And not send anything back, or anyone?”

  “Not at first,” said Guatarrez. “But once we figure out what we can do, why shouldn’t we make things right?”

  “What you are talking about is forbidden by decree of the Emperor,” said another of the guests, this one in the uniform of the Fleet, Commodore stars on his shoulder boards. “Interfering with history is what we think caused the Empire of the Ancients to fall. And we cannot afford to make the same mistake.”

  “I really don’t think there is that much of a risk,” said the Scientist, his expression now anxious. “Think of what we can learn?”

  “And you aren’t going to learn it on my station,” said Yu, standing up and walking from her seat to the aisle, then up to the front of the lecture hall. “The Emperor, at the advice of the Elysium High Lord, has forbidden any research into time travel.” She walked in front of the smaller man, towering over him. “You will never be allowed access to my station to perform your experiments.”

  “But..” stammered Guatarrez. “What we could learn.”

  “What we can learn is how far you are along in your research,” said the Commodore, walking up to the Scientist from the other side and crowding him. A trio of Fleet Security Police came walking up behind the flag officer. “I am Commodore Collin Walsh, Imperial Fleet Intelligence. And you, Doctor, are in my custody, until we can find out what you know about time travel. And what we can do to keep you from messing with the time line of our Universe.”

  Yu shivered slightly as the Scientist was led away. Just as she had been led away at one time to an interrogation by the Fleet, right after the death of Augustine and his family. That had been a nightmare, and she did not envy the man. But she also didn’t want the Universe to change to the point where everyone she knew, including herself, no longer existed.

  * * *

  “Dammit,” cursed Sean, as he received the encrypted com from Lucille Yu. “What in the hell was that idiot thinking?”

  “I believed he hope
d to go back in time and give Earth the means to stop the Cacas,” said Lucille. “To engineer a major shift in the timeline.”

  “And make trillions of beings that we know of cease to exist,” growled the Emperor. “I don’t care if other people took our places. It would destroy everyone and every place I care about.”

  “That was what I was thinking, your Majesty. Fortunately the Commodore was in the audience. I didn’t even have to think about what to do.”

  “Thanks for the heads up, Lucille,” said Sean, watching as the Admiral in charge of this repair center he was touring walked forward, rendering a salute. “I’ll be back in touch.” He held up a hand to hold the Rear Admiral from speaking while he contacted his personal intelligence liaison.

  “Yes, your Majesty,” said Commodore Mary Innocent over the com.

  Innocent had been with him since before the ambush he had had sprung at Congreeve. He had found her to be intelligent and efficient in gathering and disseminating intelligence, and he always had an internal laugh thinking of her last name, especially in the field she was in.

  He filled her in on what he had been discussing with Yu, and what he wanted her to find out.

  “I’ll get on it immediately, your Majesty,” said the Commodore, “and see what I can find out. Though I really don’t see what the man can do without something like the Donut to work with.”

  Sean was thinking the same thing. What did it matter if the man had theories about time travel through the use of a wormhole. Yu hadn’t thoroughly checked those theories yet to see if they were even viable. He was sure that if anyone could, she was the person. But even if the theories were workable, he needed something like the Donut to make them work, and he would not have it.

  “Please show me around your facility, Admiral,” he finally told the man, who was in charge of the repair base that would soon be in operation around New Moscow.

  “My pleasure, your Majesty,” said the man, waving the way for Sean and his detail to follow.

  Sean tried to pay attention to the tour, but other matters were on his mind, especially time travel. He kept wondering if he really had the right to stop someone from saving Earth. But, then again, from what he had been told by the Elysium Ambassador in a private meeting, there was no guarantee that changing the past would lead to a positive result. It might just make everything worse. The Elysiums had some kind of mystical explanation that purported to show why the Ancients had disappeared at the height of their civilization, and why there were so many small nebulae in the region. They felt that the actual Universe abhorred a paradox, which was sure to arise if intelligent beings traveled back in time. And abhorring a paradox, the Universe itself would manipulate time and space to prevent it from happening.

  He wasn’t sure how much he believed that explanation, but the greatest minds of the last five hundred years couldn’t come up with a theory of how one or less solar mass stars could supernova. And the Ancients, those who had founded the original Empire in this region, were definitely gone, if not forgotten.

  Still, the twenty million ton factory module, just pulled through the wormhole the day before by powerful tugs, was worthy of attention. Its nanotech fabrication chambers were already turning out the structures that would help to heal the damaged vessels in the system, getting them to as close to fully functional as possible without a return to a rear base. And they were building the supports and hull plating that would be processed into other orbital installations, in preparation for fortifying this system against future attack.

  “We’ll be moving three more factories into the system before the end of the week,” said the Admiral, while the Emperor watched robotic arms lifting two hundred meter long curved support beams out of the a nanoprocessing fabricator. Inside, the nanites started to work on the next beam, using the raw materials that were being fed into the factory and assembling the structures molecule by molecule into the perfect alloys for strong support braces that armor would be attached to.

  Sean paid close attention to the supervision of the robots There were several people in Fleet powered armor on the floor, and he knew that the remote surveillance was according to the regs. Now that they were at war with the Machines once again, people were making sure that the robots and computers they used were constantly under watch. And to think, just last year I was trying to figure out a way to circumvent the Man in the Loop law.

  “Keep the production ramped up, Admiral,” said Sean, patting the man on the back. “I don’t know when the Cacas will be coming back, but I know they will, and I want this system to become a killing ground for them when they do.”

  “We’ll have the fortifications in place, your Majesty,” said the Admiral with a smile. “As long as we receive the weapons to equip them with.”

  Sean nodded, knowing that the orders had already gone in for tens of thousands of mines, each with a heavy yield missile. As long as the Cacas came in the same old way, he would have the things emplaced to kill them. What he didn’t know was if they would come in the same old way. They were learning, after all.

  “I have news, your Majesty,” sent Commodore Innocent over the com. “I can find no record of a Commodore Collin Walsh in Intelligence.”

  “So who the hell is he?”

  “As far as I can gather, he might be a Commodore Cole Walsh, who is a member of Weapons Development. But there are so many black ops in that Division, and so many roadblocks to my inquiries, that I really couldn’t tell you.”

  Sean thought about that for a moment and didn’t like the sound of it. What in the hell could someone from Weapons Development want with a scientist who was working on time travel. Several answers came to mind, and he didn’t like any of them.

  “I’ll send this up to Ekaterina,” he told the Intelligence Officer. “Maybe she and Lord T’lisha can find out.” And if they can’t, I don’t know who can, he thought.

  * * *

  ELYSIUM EMPIRE CAPITAL APRIL 16TH, 1002.

  “The court finds the defendants, Klausar Mentook, Mirgrad Plooshe and Janarsa Mentook, guilty of treason and mass murder. All charges have been substantiated, and you will be punished for your crimes.”

  The defendants, two males and a female, all Knockerman, stood and glared at the speaker. They were squat reptilian beings, not graceful like the Crakista, but masses of muscle, among the strongest citizens of the Elysium Empire. They were also slow, of body and mind. In contrast, the avian speaking, a Brakakak, was a member of the most graceful species in known space.

  The Brakakak Chief Justice sat on a high chair wearing a robe of colorful feathers, the mark of an elder of his people. To each side sat five more judges in the same type of clothing, with some modifications for the eight who were not of the Brakakak species. That included five other species, including a Knockerman justice.

  “Your plot has caused untold death and suffering in this Empire,” continued the Spokesbeing for the court. “If the Empire had a death penalty, you would have deservedly earned it. Unfortunately, we do not. So by the unanimous vote of this court, you will all receive the maximum sentence we can give to you under the laws of the Empire. You are hereby sentenced to spend the rest of your lives in absolute solitary confinement, to commence immediately as soon as transport can be arranged after the dismissal of this court.”

  There was some murmuring in the court, not that many in the chamber thought the punishment was unwarranted. But it was rarely dispensed. Archduke Horatio Alexanderopolis, wished they had a death penalty in the Empire he was the Imperial Ambassador to. It would make things so much simpler. They had the death penalty in his Empire. It was rarely used, but it was there, ready to be pulled out when an extreme example needed to be made. It wasn’t the sanitary method used in so many so called enlightened societies of the past. It was dirty, painful, humiliating and public, meant to serve as an abject lesson to others.

  The Elysium solitary confinement relied on small automated satellites in orbit around a gas giant in a far distant isolat
ed system. Each inmate was left on their own satellite, which provided everything they needed to survive; food, life support, sleeping and bathing facilities, even a small gym, but absolutely no communications with other intelligent beings. That included nothing to watch, listen to or read. For as long as they lived. There were methods aboard that would allow them, with a little thought and effort, to take their own lives.

  “I demand my right to make a final statement before the court,” growled Klausar Mentook, the ringleader of the trio who were the surviving members of the Revolutionary Council. The being’s Brakakak was harsh, but understandable, especially to one who understood it at a native level. Like the Ambassador.

  And they do have a sort of death penalty, thought Horatio as he looked at the broad back of the creature. Anyone who resists arrest, or battles with the authorities, is subject to it. That is what happened to the other members of the Council, and it is what would have happened to this trio if a mole in their organization hadn’t set them up for capture.

  “Anything you say will not have any bearing upon the sentence that has just been handed down,” said the Chief Justice. This was the highest court in the Elysium Empire, and there was no appeal to their sentence. The High Lord Garakakak had decided to prosecute in this venue to start. That normally would have been a risky tactic, since a non-conviction would have resulted in no appeal by the State for a new trial. In this case, it had been thought that since the revolutionaries had been caught dead to rights, there was no way the State could lose, and that had been proven true.

  “I still wish to make my statement, before I am removed from the Universe of thinking beings,” said the Knockerman.

  “Very well,” said the Chief Justice, nodding to a bailiff. That worthy, a well-built centauroid that reminded the Ambassador of a short snouted, furred Phlistaran, walked over on four long legs, it arms reaching forward to help the Knockerman turn and walk to the front of the courtroom.