Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion.

by Doug Dandridge

  From there it started losing steam as the photon storm and globe of plasma expanded, losing mass and energy per square kilometer according the square of the distance. Twice the distance, four times the surface area, so one fourth of the mass, one fourth the energy. But everything in the system of importance was dead.

  “And you said they picked up hyperspace anomalies?” asked Sean, still not sure what he was looking at.

  “That’s the information sent by Duchess Mei’s people,” said Chan, nodding, then reaching off holo to do something with a hand. “Unfortunately, they’re only getting the aftershocks of whatever happened to cause this. We have no idea of the magnitude of the hyperdrive projection.”

  “Hyperdrive projection?”

  The holo changed, showing an image of one of the Caca ships as it had appeared just before the star had gone nova. It looked like any one of their superbattleships, vessels that had given the Empire a hard time in the war. Even with the innovations of human science, which had allowed them to surpass that of the Cacas for the most part, it was still a handful.

  “Look at the hyperdrive projectors, your Majesty,” said Chan, highlighting that part of the ship.

  The image was still a little blurry, as would be expected from a grav lens view from light weeks out. The image sharpened as the computers made their interpretations and smoothed it out, based on images they already had of the type of ship.

  “They’re larger,” said Grand Fleet Admiral Len Lenkowski, his virtual image leaning forward.

  “By about twenty percent, sir,” said Chan, moving the highlight to the sides. “Built up here, but mostly here, on the front. They increased the size of the projector that opens the hole in space. We’re estimating twelve ships to do whatever they did. Preliminary thoughts are that they ripped a hole in hyperspace right in the center of the star.”

  “I thought it was impossible to open a hole that deep in a gravity well,” said Grand Fleet Admiral Taelis Mgonda, also a virtual. The admiral was of an age with Len, and as dark as the other admiral was fair. The two were the Empire’s best field commanders, and on a day to day basis Sean would have had a hard time saying which was the better tactician, though Duke Taelis was the better strategist by a short margin.

  “It is impossible to open anything that can be used for transport,” agreed Chan, reaching off to push something else.

  The holo changed, showing a smooth sine wave, then another right next to it, rough spikes projecting almost randomly.

  “The one on the right is a perfect example of a portal into hyperspace, opened beyond the hyper barrier. The other, to the left, is an example of one that was an attempt to open inside the barrier. The portal never appeared, but the space the graviton waves were projected into still shows the effect of that attempt. I’m thinking something similar happened to our star, with the combined graviton energy of a dozen ships projected into the center, causing some kind of, collapse, for lack of a better word.

  “Now, we expect this event to have an effect on ships trying to get into or out of hyper. Any that are heading in will not be able to drop out and will hit the barrier.”

  All of the faces in the chamber winced at those words. That was what was called a catastrophic translation, so named because ninety-five percent of ships that hit that barrier were totally destroyed. The five percent that made it through all had massive damage to their onboard systems, which included their crew. Everyone sat silent for a moment, digesting the implications and not liking it one bit.

  “So they have to move these ships into position around a star to get this to work?” asked Len, breaking the silence, his image looking over at Chan’s.

  “That’s the way it appears, Admiral Lenkowski. Yes.”

  “What are you thinking, Len?”

  “Just, your Majesty, that this doesn’t appear to be a very effective offensive weapon. They would have to fight their way into a system to deploy it. Against a heavily defended system these things would be toast. Against a lightly defended system, they could get the same result by bombarding from space.”

  “I agree,” said Mgonda in his basso voice. “But it would make a hell of an ambush weapon.”

  Sean felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. If the enemy had more of these deployed, and could suck a major fleet into that system, they could cause serious damage.

  “Do we have a projection of what this would do to one of our ships?”

  The asked for projection appeared, and Sean gave Chan an appreciative look. The woman might have been the brightest in the room, but she was no Ivory Tower professor. Her job was to make theory translate into useable military hardware, so of course she had already looked at the implications.

  “Total destruction out to two astronomical units. Heavy damage out to five AU. Beyond that, some roughing up, but very survivable. I also might add that we don’t think this would work on a class M red dwarf star. The result would probably be minor on a K. Now on a G, like this example, or an F, we could expect a massive wave running out from the star. It’s not moving at the speed of light, much slower in fact. But the photon wave preceding it is, much like that of a supernova. And that’s the true killer.”

  “Get what information we have out to our units on the front,” said Sean, the sinking feeling growing. “They need to know about this before they blunder into it.”

  “I think we might be too late,” said Sondra, a stricken look on her face as she looked at something on the flat comp she had brought to the meeting.

  Chapter Three

  Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Saint Augustine

  APRIL 18TH, 1004. CA’CADASAN SPACE.

  “We’re ready to make our drop,” came the voice of the ground force commander over the com.

  “Go ahead,” replied Rear Admiral Stanford Bennington, looking at a plot that was showing next to nothing.

  The system was not that much to talk about. Intelligence had indicated that it was a major repair and refit base. It might have been at one time, but from sensor scans all of the asteroid mines and orbital facilities had been cold for some time.

  “Marines are reporting in, sir,” came the call from his flag captain, Francois Juin.

  “Well.” Sometimes the admiral became frustrated that people didn’t just go ahead and tell him what they wanted to say. He himself was a direct kind of commander. If he wanted someone to have information, he told them, otherwise he told them they weren’t going to get it from him. Why leave people in suspense?

  “It looks like that docking facility was stripped clean. The major is reporting that they even cut away fittings to take with them. I think we can assume they did the same to all the other orbiting facilities.”

  That didn’t make sense to the admiral. Why remove the fittings when they could have just disassembled the facilities themselves and moved them to another star? There were a few dozen antimatter sats still in orbit, not surprising, since there had been no indications that this had been a major production system in the first place. Still fewer than expected, and Bennington wouldn’t have been surprised if those facilities were also empty husks. But why?

  “Are we being set up for something, Francois?”

  “That’s what it’s looking like, sir. But we haven’t been able to locate any forces in the system. Maybe waiting outside, ready to jump into hyper. That’s what I would bet.”

  Bennington closed his eyes and thought, rubbing his forehead. It wasn’t unknown for the Cacas to set those kind of ambushes. But if they had the force to overwhelm his, why play this kind of game?

  The task group was built around the strength of three battleship squadrons, each with four ships. They had started the war with three ship squadrons, but the shortcomings of that configuration had made itself apparent soon into the war. Four ships gave them two equal strength divisions, with more tactical flexibility. A scout force of four battle cruisers, along with escorts from a light cruiser
squadron and three of destroyers, rounded out his battle force. All were within beam range of the planet with the exception of the battle cruisers and a squadron of destroyers hanging out at the hyper limit.

  The four transports and a half dozen logistics ships were the reason the rest of that firepower was here. The transports carried a division of heavy infantry, there to actually take the planet, while a brigade of light infantry would be left as a garrison to track down any Caca stragglers. The logistics vessels carried not just missile refills for the warships, but also supplies for the garrison that would be expected to hold the planet. A wormhole would be left behind, of course, so the planet could be reinforced if needed.

  The planet itself was nothing special, in a system that was anything but. A small terrestrial slightly on the cold side, with little in the way of land life, though the oceans had many simple forms of sea animals. The land was mostly desert, with large tracts of land planted with crops tended by several million slaves. The Cacas might have been carnivores, mostly subsisting on the very slaves they used as their workforce, but most of those workers needed plants to eat. The planet was not really important for anything other than providing sustenance for the space based industry, which meant it was now absolutely useless.

  The Empire was planning to use the system as a supply and refit base, and soon after it was taken a train of freighters would be bringing in the needed hardware through wormhole gate. Any of a number of systems at this point of the advance could have been used. This one was picked randomly as much as for any particular reason.

  “The first shuttles are landing, sir. So far, no resistance.”

  The admiral grunted again. What in the hell were the Cacas up to? Were they going to hide out in the hinterlands and fight a guerilla war? That made no sense. It was barren, with little in the way of mountains, or even hills. Any force moving out there would be picked up from space immediately, then bombarded. None of it made sense.

  An hour passed, the heavy infantry moving across the surface, making contact with the slaves, trying to gather intelligence to figure out just what the hell was going on.

  “The infantry is reporting that there are no Cacas on the surface,” said Juin over the com, his voice rising in excitement. “Not a single damn one.”

  “What are the aliens saying?”

  “That the Cacas pulled out weeks ago. They loaded up all of their equipment and boosted into orbit.”

  And then took off from there. What the hell is going on?

  “Could we be looking at a wormhole bomb here?” asked the admiral, feeling a rush of terror.

  “Could be. But probably not. They would have to have a wormhole in place in orbit, which we have no indication of.”

  Bennington shook his head. They really didn’t need one in orbit, and a wormhole could exist as a very tiny hole until it was expanded.

  “I want all of our fighters in space on a search pattern. See to it.”

  If there was something hiding in space they might find it. If not, they might just become the target of a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with that scenario was wormholes were expensive, and they had no indication that the Cacas had much in the way of production capacity. Wasting two of them on a force this size, especially when the target might not be concentrated enough, seemed like a stupid tactic. The admiral looked over the plot and his deployment. The battleship squadrons were far enough out, and spaced in their division packets, that even a wormhole bomb would only take a couple of ships with it.

  “Sir. Something is going on with the star.”

  “What?” Bennington pulled up the view that the tactical section was looking at. Huge prominences were rising from the star, dwarfing anything the officer had ever seen. Still, that wouldn’t be a threat to his force, no matter how big the prominences became. Would they?

  “We’re picking up hyperspace resonances from near the star,” chimed in the science officer from his station. “Twelve points sources arranged around the star. And one larger one in the center of the star.”

  “In the center of the star?” hissed the admiral, storming over to the science station. “Are you sure? What the hell are they trying to do?”

  The science officer looked up at his admiral, confused at the rapid fire questions. “I’m, not sure what they’re trying to accomplish, sir. But whatever they’re doing, it is having an effect on the star.”

  And it can’t be good for us, whatever they’re doing, thought the admiral.

  “Start getting the troops off the surface of the planet,” he ordered, spearing his com officer with a quick look.

  “What about the natives?” asked the flag captain over the com.

  “We can’t do anything for them,” said Bennington, shaking his head. “We need to get our own people out of here. Start the warships out.” He wasn’t sure what was going on, but the Cacas wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble unless they had something planned to hurt the Imperial Fleet. He didn’t know how much time he had, but he was going to try and salvage as much of his task group as possible.

  “And make sure Fleet knows what’s going on.”

  The prominences they were watching were in the past, eight minutes in fact. There was no telling in real time what was going on, but the hyper resonances were building, so whatever was going to happen would be kicking off soon. It was looking like they wouldn’t get the time they needed to get away.

  “Something just happened, sir,” shouted the science officer. “The hyper resonances just peaked, then died.”

  “Shit.” Whatever they were trying to do just started.

  “Hyperspace is resounding with echoes. It looks similar to what happens during a supernova.”

  “They made the star go supernova?” shouted Juin, panic in his voice.

  “I don’t think it was that big,” replied the science officer, his voice quivering. “But whatever happened, it’s not going to be good.”

  “The ships at the barrier are reporting that they’re locked out of hyper,” called out the com officer.

  “We were set up,” said the admiral under his breath. The Cacas had set up the situation perfectly. The force they wanted to destroy was not only deep in the system, but hyperspace was barred to them, even if they had made it out to the barrier.

  “Sir. The drive system is not functioning properly.”

  What now? “What do you mean, functioning properly?”

  “We’re pushing the grabbers up to max and only getting a couple of gravities. They’re overheating to hell. It’s like they can’t get a hold on the space itself.”

  “We’re screwed,” hissed the admiral. At two gravities they would never make it out of the system before the gas envelop, however large it was, hit. They were already in line for a photon storm, and from the size of the graviton rebound from the star, that was going to be just an couple of orders of magnitude lower than a true supernova. Enough to fry his ships this close in.

  “We’re getting a message from the Emperor, sir. He want to speak with you.”

  “Configure the every wormhole we have into gates. Let’s get as many people away as possible.” He didn’t think that would be many, many a couple of thousand from the thirty thousand or so in the force. That wouldn’t include any of the Imperial Army troops, which wouldn’t engender great memories from that branch for his name.

  “Your Majesty,” he said as the face of the man he had sworn his oaths to appeared on a holo.

  “I am very sorry that we failed you, Admiral,” said the young man. “Intelligence has just discovered the threat. Another couple of days and you wouldn’t be in that position.”

  “Couldn’t be helped, your Majesty,” said the admiral, not sure he really felt that way. It was the job of Fleet Intelligence to make sure they didn’t get surprised like this.

  “I want you to get your ass through one of your wormholes, Admiral. I need you back here to answer questions about what happened out there. We need the wisdom of the commander on
the spot.”

  Bennington felt a rush of gratitude that the Emperor was going to save his life. A moment later the depression of reality set in. If he bailed out he would forever be known as a commander who had run from the destruction of his command, leaving others to die. Forever tarred.

  “My science officer would make a much better expert witness, your Majesty,” Bennington found himself saying, almost as if it was someone else. The shocked young man looked up, disbelieving.

  “Get going son.”

  “I’m giving you an order, Admiral. You can bring back whomever you want with you, but I want you on Jewel in an hour.”

  “Please don’t make me do that, your Majesty. This is my command. Please, don’t.”

  Understanding flashed across the face of the Emperor and he nodded. “Very well, Admiral. I will honor your wishes. And again, I’m sorry.”

  The holo died, and the admiral turned in time to watch his bridge crew all head out the hatch toward the wormhole a couple of hundred meters to the bow. Probably all of them would get off. Many others wouldn’t.