Exodus - Empires at War 04 - The Long Fall (Exodus Series #4)

by Doug Dandridge

  “Sounds fair enough,” said Horatio, nodding.

  “And in return you will allow us to send our own people through, so that we may meet directly with your Emperor and military. And to send communications to our embassy.”

  “And I think we can do that as well. We want a working relationship with your government, to weather this coming storm.”

  “Our fleet is still occupied with putting down this rebellion,” said the High Lord, turning his sad eyes on the human. “The Knockermen are not all involved, but it is still widespread enough that we need a fleet presence in every system. As soon as everything is stabilized we will see what we can do. As I said before, your people have been good neighbors for the last two centuries. These Ca’cadasans do not sound like they would be. Now I must excuse myself. May I drop by your temporary embassy this evening?”

  “Of course,” said the Ambassador, thinking of the temporary shelter they had erected above the shaft to the underground shelter with dismay. Not much of a spot to host the leader of a sovereign power. But, then again, he spent weeks in the underground bunker. “I’ll have bourbon ready for you.”

  “And I’ll bring some honey cakes with me,” said the High Lord. “Covered with Elysium sugar.” And with that the High Lord was heading for his aircar, his security detail forming round him.

  “As long as he’s in charge I trust their word,” said the Ambassador to his aide. “Let’s hope he stays in power through all of this.”

  *

  SECTOR IV SPACE, DECEMBER 5TH, 1000.

  Captain Maurice von Rittersdorf gazed at a sight that few had seen, at least not by the light given off by the objects themselves. James Komorov sat in normal space at the hyper limit of the double star system Hellsfaire, so named since it was the home of two blue supergiant stars. Neither would live over ten million years. But the close orbiting stars would merge in less than five thousand years, forming an even larger star that would explode in fury much sooner than either would by itself. The star system was of no interest to anyone outside the scientific community, and of course to Survey Command, responsible for keeping a watch on the unpopulated sun groups of the Empire.

  There were many dangerous objects in the Empire, black holes, neutron stars, and, of course, stars which could explode in the fury of a supernova and form with its remnants one of the first two objects. These could cause problems for the inhabited systems, and so a close watch was kept on all of them, just in case they did something unexpected. Add to these the millions of otherwise uninteresting red dwarves that might become the homes of pirates or other illegal colonies, and Survey Command was kept busy.

  But that one ship never left here, thought the Captain, looking at the holo that was a composite of all the sensor takes from his three ships. He looked down at his side screen, which displayed the image of what looked like a standard courier ship, though only capable of hyper VI. KXE-19782, whose next stop was the K class system three light years away, which had a mining colony.

  A screen over by the helm station showed how the hyperlimit was also changing as the two stars rotated around each other. They had entered normal space near the outer reach of that limit. Now the limit was further away.

  “Do you see anything?” he asked his Sensor Officer, who was receiving the feed from the other vessels.

  “No, sir,” answered the officer, shrugging her shoulders. “Too much interference.”

  “I was afraid of that,” said Maurice, staring at the holo and trying to will it to reveal the secrets of this star system. But the stars were putting out too much radiation, adding to the gravitonic effect of two massive objects rotating around each other. A true nightmare of detection. Even jumps to hyper near these stars might be damped out by the gravitational swirl.

  “Well, nothing to it but to go in,” he said to the com officer. “Order Argos and Sung Lee to proceed. I want them to stick close and keep a close watch.”

  The com officer went to work, and the Captain was still somewhat perturbed that he couldn’t lead the way. But his ship had the wormhole com, which was why it remained his flag even when a light cruiser was attached to his command. That and his wearing two hats, force commander and captain of the flagship.

  Something I hadn’t thought about when I accepted promotion, he thought, watching as the other two ships accelerated into the system. He knew it might take a while to either find something or clear the system. The hyper limit stretched out to eight light hours from the massive stars, and they wouldn’t see anything behind the stars until the ships got a look. He was almost tempted to move his ship in hyper around the stars, but he would be cut off from com with the other ships if he did that. And he was tempted to split up his other ships, but had a gut feeling that there was something wrong here, and they might need their mutual support.

  The next four hours were pure boredom. The other ships were fifteen light minutes in, over a minute’s one way transmission time by subspace com. Still nothing but the view of superhot stars trading prominences as they performed their less than eternal dance around each other.

  The destroyer was in constant contact with higher command through the wormhole com, instantaneous without delay as much as to not be important. No matter what happened here, higher command would know.

  At eight hours the ships were almost a light hour in, and the Captain decided he needed to take a break, having seen the change of the bridge shift two times since they entered the system. “Let me know if anything happens,” he said uselessly as he left the bridge, heading for the mess hall. He could have ordered food brought to the bridge, but didn’t see the need to not seek some comfort and relaxation. After a meal he headed for his day cabin, twenty meters down the corridor from the bridge.

  The Captain lay on his bunk, looking at the pictures of his father and brothers that seemed alive in their holographic projections. They were his only family, along with his brothers’ wives and children. Now that he was a Duke he thought it might be time to find a mate and produce an heir. Not the best timing, he thought with a laugh. I’ll be lucky to get a wedding leave with all the shit going down. Much less find the time to seek a wife. Unless I ask father to sort out some good prospects for me. Surely the daughter of a count or baron would be happy to become a duchess. As long as I find her suitable.

  Maurice was not a romantic. He had seen other nobles married to women they barely knew, and later come to love them. He had also seen the opposite happen, and a married couple come to hate each other. And he had seen couples who married for love come to both ends. I’ll make it work, he thought, closing his eyes and willing his reticular activating system to put him into a deep sleep.

  “We may have something, sir,” called out the voice of his exec, who had taken the con while he rested.

  Maurice was instantly awake and aware, checking the time on his internal clock. He had been asleep a little under three hours, which meant the pair of scouts were twelve hours into the system, two light hours distance.

  After quickly dressing he headed for the bridge, sending the signal that put him in command as soon as he walked through the hatch, and relegating his Exec in the CIC to the alternate con. “What do we have?” he asked the Duty Sensor Tech as he hit his chair.

  “Argos is reporting some faint graviton traces. Her captain thinks it’s the trace of ships moving further into the system.”

  “Have they sent any idea of what it might be?” Maurice looked up at the timer above the com station that showed the one way transmission time, ten point three minutes. I’ll be really glad when we have wormhole coms in all our ships. Not that it's likely to happen anytime soon.

  “Sending query now,” said the Tech, and the Captain shook his head, knowing he would be waiting over twenty minutes for a reply.

  “Send them a grav pulse,” he ordered, knowing that though the old binary code wouldn’t hold much information, it would only take seconds to cover the distance.

  “They say it’s something big, sir,” sai
d the Tech. He leaned in and listened carefully on his phones. “And there are more of them coming up on her sensors.”

  Crap, thought the Captain, wondering if his need to know might have given the enemy a fix on his ships, maybe something they didn’t have before the cruiser started to send out her own strong graviton waves.

  He fretted for another hour as the ships continued to move inward. He was tempted to order them back, and to keep his own ship watchful at the hyper limit, where he could bug out quickly. But he didn’t know what was hiding against the brilliance of the two giant stars. It could be an enemy scout, or even a logistics ship. Or it could be a task force or larger, waiting here to strike at some more tempting target.

  “We’re getting graviton transmission from Argos,” called out the Com Tech. “They’re reporting hundreds of point sources with strong emissions. They think they’re missiles.”

  “Shit. Tell them to get the hell out of there.” Even as he said that he knew it was too late.

  Ten minutes later the subspace transmission came through, showing the face of the Captain of the light cruiser on her bridge. “We’re tracking over a five hundred graviton transmissions,” said the woman. “Most of them are missiles, but there are scores that look to be very large ships. I’m thinking they’re battleships. They’re five light hours further in, about five light hours from the stars.”

  “That would put them in the graviton swirl from the stars,” said the Exec over the internal com. “And with all the electromagnetic radiation coming off the stars they would have been invisible on any kind of sensors.”

  Until they decided to move, and their own emissions gave them away.

  “Orders, sir,” said the Tactical Officer, turning in his seat.

  “We sit and watch, Mr. Lasardo,” he replied, his hands clutching at his chair arms. “There’s really not much else we can do.” The hyper VII destroyer carried fewer missiles than a VI, part of the price of being able to accelerate faster and move to another level of hyper. He didn’t think the fifty missiles he could put into space would do much. We need more missiles, which mean smaller missiles with similar capabilities. Might as well wish that the enemy would just go away.

  It took seven hours for the missiles to reach the two scouting ships, at which time they were closing at point eight c. The ships had been able to kill their forward velocity and reverse vector in a curve that had them moving out of the system at point one c. Not enough to get away.

  The graviton emissions of the two ships disappeared while Komorov was still receiving the subspace radio transmissions that showed the closing missiles and the frightened expressions of the bridge crews. They’re gone, thought the Captain, watching the vids of already dead people still coming in.

  “They did their job, sir,” said the Exec over the internal com.

  “And if I hadn’t sent them in they would still be alive,” said von Rittersdorf, looking down. “Over a thousand men and women.”

  “And if you hadn’t sent them in we wouldn’t know the Cacas were there. We would have gone back to base to report that there was nothing here, and they would have come out to cause mischief before we could do anything.”

  Maurice sat there, knowing the other man was right, and still not feeling any better. Minutes later the subspace com showed the bridge of the Argos as the enemy missiles came in on final approach. “They’re breaking through,” said the calm voice of the Captain of the light cruiser. The calm of someone retreating to duty in order to escape the emotions of the situation. And then the screen went blank.

  The Komorov sat at the hyper barrier for some more hours, until they picked up missiles heading her way. “Three hours till contact,” called out Lasardo.

  Komorov continued to wait, gathering what information she could, until she had some semi firm plots on the enemy force. She counted sixty-two ships, twenty of them the huge battleships. There may have been more, and she tried to refine her information while sending everything back to higher command through the wormhole. If Komorov was destroyed here base would still know what had happened. As much as the Captain might have welcomed that end at this time, he had no intention of getting his own crew killed.

  At ten light minutes to engagement by the missiles Komorov opened the hole into hyper I and left normal space. The missiles were closing at point nine two c, and would not be able to make a jump for many hours, even if they had enough energy left to decel down to jump speed.

  Komorov moved away in hyper, moving up to III and then positioning herself twenty light days out of the system, where her jump back to normal space was undetectable from the double star system. There she monitored the enemy ships making their jumps, sending the info back to higher command so they could prepare a warm welcome.

  *

  CAPITAL, FENRI EMPIRE, DECEMBER 7TH AND 8TH, 1000.

  I could learn to like these people, thought the Ca’cadasan Ambassador as he was led from the landing pad to a waiting aircar. Not that the Fenri were all that impressive as a species. They were meter and a half tall mammalians, covered in one of three colors of fur, or mixtures of the three. A human would have called them Teddy Bears, a term the Ambassador wouldn’t have recognized. Their feet were wide and flat, their four fingered hands stubby. The things that spoiled that image were the two tentacles rising from under their arms, and the alarming array of needle sharp teeth in their mouths.

  No, what impressed the Ambassador was the lifestyle of these people. There were many of them in evidence on the landing field that had handled the Ca’cadasan shuttle. There were even more aliens of a dozen species, from reptilians to insectoids, though none were really like the Ca’cadasan equivalents of those creatures, or even the Earth type. It was readily apparent that they were all slaves, totally subservient to their masters, wearing collars or harnesses according to their body structure. So all the species here are already conditioned to serve. Only the Fenri will need to be conditioned, after we have gotten our use out of them.

  The aircar was a little cramped for his three meter tall body, so he rode in the cargo compartment in the rear that allowed him to lay his length down. I need to get some of our own transport down here soonest, he thought. This is not very dignified. Presuming, of course, that they accept our request for an Embassy.

  The Ambassador was charting new territory here. The Race normally did not treat with alien species. They came, they conquered, they took. But this part of the Persius Arm was a situation that might need a new approach. There were more large powers clustered here than the Race had ever encountered. Not just all at once, but ever. United, they might cause great problems for the conquest fleet. Divided, they, or at least some of them, might become great assets. Like those Klang primitives who died for the greater glory of our Empire. The bovines were still allies, for now, and being trained in Ca’cadasan land systems, so they could become ground fodder for the Empire.

  “I hope the ride was not too uncomfortable, alien,” said one of the Fenri, a blond and brown striped male, his voice translated over the Ambassador’s implant. Not able to pick up the nuances of Fenri communication, the Ambassador still picked out the sneer in the communication. He was tempted to reach out and rip the creature’s head off. He kept control of himself, knowing that such an action would not be conducive to his mission.

  He looked up at the nearby palace, and the battle armored Fenri who stood on the landing pad. Taking a moment to look around, he saw a great city stretched out around him. A multitude of aircars flew in lines across the sky. And they have the industrial capacity to be of great service to us.

  And then he was being motioned toward the open doors of the palace, the guards falling in around him. The Ambassador bared his teeth in a feral smile, satisfied at the reaction of the soldiers in moving back.

  The inside of the palace was magnificent, a tapestry of polished rocks and woods set with precious metals and gems. There were hundreds of guards in evidence, armed with what looked like electron guns. Deadly en
ough, capable of putting a killing charge of electrons into his body without endangering others around him. It made sense around one’s ruler, and he wondered what other weapons they might use for real warfare, something electron guns were not suited to.

  “So, this is our new neighbor,” boomed a voice from the front of the chamber. He looked forward and bowed, opening all four hands in the universal sign that he came in peace. The Monarch was short and stout, more so in both dimensions than the others he had seen. Just behind the ruler sat a group of females that he assumed to be the Emperor’s wives. That they were here at all was an indication that they possessed intelligence.

  “The Emperor of the Ca’cadasan Empire greets his brother in the Empire of the Fenri,” said the Ambassador, in a practiced speech. “My ship has brought gifts for the ruler of the mighty realm of the fierce Fenri people, that they may know his friendship is sincerely offered.”

  “Your Majesty,” said a male in ornate robes that his implant identified as the Prime Councilor of the Empire. “These are the people that the humans have feared coming. And they might have good reason for that fear.”

  “That is what I have been hoping,” said the grinning Emperor. “Anything the humans fear I welcome. Too long has our Empire played second golderon to the humans. I welcome anything that upsets the status quo.”

  “I just counsel caution,” said the Councilor. “We may not appreciate the danger of this bedfellow until it is too late.”

  “We will talk with this representative,” said the Emperor, looking down from his high seat at the visitor. “It cannot hurt to talk.”