Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search & Destroy

by Doug Dandridge

  Another pair walked in and stood beside the first pair, followed by another. With the six warriors in place everyone in the room looked down at the floor. There was an air of anticipation in the room, and Smirnov couldn’t keep himself from glancing up to see the august presence of the ruler of the Ca’cadasan Empire come striding into the chamber.

  The Emperor was not the largest Caca in the room. In fact, every one of the six guards towered over him by half a head. He wasn’t wearing plate like his guards, but Smirnov wouldn’t have been surprised if the flowing robes covering the Imperial form also hid body armor. The material of those robes, while of good quality, did not look all that special to the human’s eyes. The only special ornamentation on him were the horns, which were chased in platinum and gold, with precious gems set into a pattern that must have meant something in the Ca’cadasan culture. His eyes met those of the Caca, and he found himself looking at what had to be the most intelligent of the aliens he had yet to meet.

  “Eyes down, slave,” growled the Supervisor, raising a hand to strike Smirnov.

  “Hold,” rumbled the deep voice of the Emperor, pointing a large finger at the Supervisor. He walked forward, followed by several other robed figures who must have been counselors of some type. Two more armored guards followed, these keeping close to the Imperial presence.

  “Is this the human who has brought us this wondrous tech?” asked the Emperor, his words coming across the implant translator.

  “It is, oh Master of the Galaxy,” said the Supervisor, performing a deep bow.

  “Then he is no slave,” said the Emperor, placing a large, lower hand on Smirnov’s head. It felt like a heavy weight pressing down on him, the hand as massive as his head. “He is an honored servant, who has brought us what we most desired in our hour of need.”

  The huge alien removed the hand, then looked over to the mirrored surface. “Walk with me.”

  Smirnov wasn’t sure he had heard right at first, but when he looked up at the face of the creature he saw the carnivore’s smile stretching it. The Emperor gestured with a lower hand for him to rise, then strode toward the mirrored surface with the human by his side.

  “We are ready with the demonstration, Master of the Galaxy,” said the Supervisor.

  Getting a little ahead of ourselves, aren’t we, thought Smirnov. You aren’t masters of the Galaxy yet. He felt some guilt at that thought, as he recognized that his help might have moved them a little closer to that goal.

  “Proceed,” said the Emperor.

  Moments later the three and a half meter high surface rippled a bit, then a Ca’cadasan warrior in full battle armor stepped through. The creature stood there for a moment, its faceplate up, a confused expression on its face. It took about fifteen seconds to orient itself, after which time it looked at the Emperor and dropped quickly to a knee.

  They take longer to overcome their transit confusion than humans, thought Smirnov, trying to keep all expression off his face. Can we use that against them?

  “And he came from how far?” asked the Emperor, gesturing at the wormhole.

  “From your moon, Represal.”

  “That far.”

  Smirnov nodded. The moon was over three billion kilometers from where they stood.

  “Show respect,” growled one of the Counselors, his predator’s eyes glaring at the human.

  Surprisingly the Emperor gave his Counselor a disapproving look. At least Smirnov thought it was that kind of expression, since it was one he wouldn’t want aimed at him.

  “And you can make one of these each week at the production facility?” asked the Emperor, looking away from his counselor.

  “That appears to be the limit, Master,” said Smirnov, nodding. “It is an energy intensive process, and we can only do so much without the massive station the human empire has.”

  The moon they had turned into a wormhole production plant had been earmarked to become a new supermetals facility. It was packed with fusion and antimatter energy production plants, covering about a quarter of the surface of the moon. Another quarter was the crystal matrix storage batteries that accumulated the energy produced by those plants. Most of the remaining area was covered with heat exchangers, offloading all of the waste calories from the power generation process. Above the moon were the pair of wormhole generating stations, each containing a dozen miniature black holes to open each end of the hole.

  “Then we will build more,” said the Emperor. “How many do we need to equal the output of the humans?”

  “As far as I know, they are producing up to thirty a day, Master.”

  “So we need over two hundred production moons to equal them?” asked the Emperor with a frown on his face. He looked over at one of his counselors. “Make it so.”

  “We will have to put several entire slave species on it, Master of the Galaxy.”

  “Then put those species on it. I want us to be at least the equal of the humans.”

  “It will take many years to achieve that mark, Master of the Galaxy.”

  “Then that is what it will take. In the meantime, we will continue to fight them as best we can. We still outnumber them, and our ships are more powerful than theirs.”

  Neither counselor spoke, and Smirnov wondered if they were telling this Emperor everything they knew about the human war machine. Not my business, he thought. In fact, as long as he could keep his family safe, he was not really on the side of the Cacas.

  “Keep up the good work,” said the Emperor, patting the human on the shoulder, then turning to leave. He walked from the room, preceded by his two close bodyguards. The guards followed in a reverse of the process that had them entering the room.

  “The Emperor looks with favor on you,” said the Rustra. “You will go far in the Empire.”

  As long as my family is safe, the damned Caca Empire can rot for all I care, thought Smirnov, wondering how he could sabotage the Caca war effort without placing his loved ones in danger. Some means came to him almost immediately, and he thought the Cacas would never catch on.

  Chapter One

  Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization.

  Pierre Schaeffer

  KLAVARTA SPACE, JULY 28TH, 1002

  “On your life, do not allow them to escape,” said the High Captain, pointing a pair of right index fingers at his Helm Officer, then looking into the repeater screen that showed the faces of the other ship commanders in his squadron.

  The squadron, a trio of supercruisers and a quartet of scouts, had been sweeping this region of Klavarta space for the last ten standard days with no luck, until this pack of their small attack ships had seemed to come out of nowhere as soon as the Ca’cadasans had translated into normal space. The High Captain wasn’t sure what they were after, since their fragile attack ships had been totally outclassed by his command. Still, they had crippled a scout ship and damaged one of his supercruisers before being driven off. His had taken out a third of the three score attack ships, and he was determined to take out more of them.

  As he watched one of his missiles caught up to an unlucky craft, exploding meters away and vaporizing the fifty thousand ton ship. Two others avoided the missiles with their superior maneuverability and close in weapons. A laser speared out and killed another of the attack craft, while the remainder went into furious evasives.

  All of them are not worth the loss of one of my scouts, thought the Ca’cadasan. They had lost over a third of the total fleet assigned this front in the surprise attack launched by the other humans, the ones who were fighting on the other side of the Empire. That still left them with over twenty-five thousand warships, and the enemy was in disarray. Or at least that was what the new commander had told them before unleashing the fleet on the rest of the enemy kingdom. The problem was that this enemy was so hard to find. They had found world after world, beautiful, full of life, and all uninhabited by the Klavarta.

  Might as well call them what they are, he thought as he watched
more missiles heading out for the enemy, who were firing back as well, their missiles leaving the attack craft and killing velocity to head towards his ships. They’re just another type of human, led by the regular kind we are tasked to wipe out. And wipe them out we will.

  “They’re changing their vectors, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, pointing toward the central holo. “I think they’re heading toward that gas giant and its moon system.”

  “Follow them,” he ordered.

  “They might be leading us into a trap, my Lord.”

  “With what? Those fleas they call warships. I want them caught and destroyed. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, my Lord,” echoed the bridge crew.

  “Are you picking up anything ahead?” the High Captain asked the Sensor Officer.

  “Nothing, my Lord.”

  “Keep a close watch. Just in case.

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The chase went on for over a half an hour more, the Ca’cadasan ships losing ground to the much faster attack ships. They picked off a couple during that period, but the chasing missiles were coming in at too slow a closing velocity to be very effective. The gas giant and its moons grew in the forward viewer, while the central holo gave a three dimensional representation of that system. Of course the representation was not completely accurate, as they had never been in this system, and had only seen the layout from this angle.

  “They are decelerating at eight hundred gravities, my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer. “It looks like they’re going to try and lose us in that moon system.”

  “How many bodies are there?” asked the High Captain, looking over at Sensor Officer.

  “Based on gravity readings and visual sightings, there are eighty-three moons in the system,” replied the officer. “Also numerous smaller bodies, maybe in the tens of thousands.”

  “Almost like an ocean reef,” said the Helm Officer.

  “Can they get away from us?”

  “They have built up too much velocity to hide behind a slow moving object like a moon,” said the Tactical Officer. “They might be able to temporarily escape our notice, but as we change our own orientation, we will be able to detect them.”

  Then they are moving out of desperation, thought the High Captain. “Stay on them as much as possible. The more velocity they lose, the better position we will be in to kill them.”

  “Do you want us to decelerate, my Lord?” asked the Helm Officer.

  “Only as much as you need to keep us on their track. I want to keep any advantage we have.”

  The enemy ships continued to forge ahead, reducing velocity and heading for one of the moons, the one they were obviously going to use to hide behind. The Ca’cadasans were going to pass by another moon, this one quite a bit smaller than the one the enemy was going for.

  “We’re picking up graviton emissions from behind this moon,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.

  “What are they?” shouted the High Captain, watching as red vector arrows appeared on the central holo.

  “Three vessels in the eight million ton range,” called out the Sensor Officer before the Tactical Officer could run his own scan. “Accelerating at one hundred gravities. Twenty-four objects in the two hundred ton range, accelerating at ten thousand gravities. Thirty more.”

  The High Captain sucked in a breath. Those were missiles, curving around the moon on a vector that would bring them in from almost directly in front of the Ca’cadasan ships. And there was nothing they could do about it.

  * * *

  Commodore Sirene Papadopoulos watched the plot as the flies entered her trap. Her command comprised three eight million ton hyper VI battlecruisers. Not able to keep up with the hyper VII Caca ships in hyperspace, they were still faster and more maneuverable in normal space. And perfect for ambushes like this.

  “Enemy ships entering attack envelop,” said Lt. Commander Sarkeesian, the force tactical officer. “All tubes loaded, missiles powered up.”

  “Fire when they reach optimal profile,” ordered the Commodore, leaning forward in her seat. “All ships are to move onto intercept vectors at the same time. All beam weapons are cleared to fire at any targets of opportunity.”

  “All commanders acknowledge,” replied the Squadron Com Officer.

  “Firing in five seconds,” called out the Squadron Tactical Officer. “Four, three, two, firing.”

  Rommel shook slightly as she released the eight missiles from her forward tubes, accelerated along the magnetic rings of the tubes. Her consorts released their forward missiles at the same instant, then the three ships moved forward at one hundred gravities while pivoting around to bring their starboard tubes to bear. These fired and the ships continued around, bringing stern tubes to bear and firing. They completed their evolution with the port tubes, and moved forward presenting that broadside aspect to their targets, while one hundred and two missiles flew ahead.

  The missiles hadn’t enough space to build up much closing velocity, though the Caca ships, coming forward at almost point four light, added their motion to the solution. The weapons were too close for the Caca ships to engage with counter missiles. They did get off a couple of shots, but only one connected. Laser domes and close in weapons took out about half of the incoming, which left the other half to track in and engage targets.

  Two supercruisers and three of the scouts took multiple direct hits. One supercruiser and the scouts went up in balls of plasma, while the second cruiser was hammered with near misses that sent it spinning off as a hulk into the gas giant system. The remaining cruiser and scout took enough damage to turn them from capable warships into cripples that could barely fight back.

  The three battle cruisers moved into line of sight, opening up with their twelve laser rings and multiple particle beams. With almost no remaining electromag shields, the beams quickly burned holes through hull armor and into the vitals of the ships. Crew caught in corridors and chambers, surrounded by the vaporized alloy of the ships’ hull and bulkheads, flashed from flame to vapor in seconds, almost before the Cacas realized what was happening.

  The High Captain on the bridge probably wished that had happened to him. Instead, he was a spectator to the computer warning of an antimatter breach, long moments of knowing he was dead and that there was nothing he could do about it. The supercruiser exploded from that breach seconds after the smaller scout detonated.

  “We are so glad to have you on our side, Commodore,” said the Klavarta Pilot who commanded the attack ships.

  “My pleasure, Force Commander,” replied Papadopoulos. “Sorry that you had to lose ships to lure them in.”

  “You hurt them much more than they hurt us, and that was worth it.”

  “Should we head back to base?” asked the Commodore, who, though she outranked the Klavarta, was willing to defer to the local commander for an operation like this.

  “I would prefer to send some more of the devils to their hell,” said the Klavarta.

  Papadopoulos looked at the being on the holo. She was a biped, with a face that looked sort of human, which some major differences. Her subspecies had been genetically engineered from basic human stock to be the best possible spaceship crew, able to breath in the liquid that allowed them to handle over thirty gravities above the compensator limits of their vessels. But they had the same number of chromosomes as humans, and essentially the same genetic structure in those chromosomes. Ninety-five percent of the proteins in their bodies were the same as the generalized humans of the Empire. Essentially, they were human. But now that they were free of the rule of the normal humans that had controlled them for generations, they had decided to embrace the name Klavarta to differentiate themselves from the non-genetically engineered humans, even as they adopted the name Nation of New Earth for their kingdom.

  “Then we will do that,” she told the Klavarta commander with a smile. “I’m not sure if this same trap will work again, but I’m sure we can come up with something.”

&n
bsp; * * *

  CORE WORLD NEW DETROIT.

  The New Detroit restaurant was much classier than anything the young man had frequented before he had started his new life. He sat at the bar, the old eyes in his young face scanning the room of the posh dining establishment, seeking the person he had come to see. It had cost a bundle to get the information, but money was of no problem anymore.

  The man waved off another great beauty who sought his attention. He was a handsome man, though not spectacularly so. The uniform he was wearing was probably the biggest attraction. Blue in color, with the silver oak leaves of a lt. colonel on his shoulder boards, the crossed rifles of the infantry on his collar, Ranger tab on his left upper sleeve. Around his throat was the silver guard of the Imperial Knights, indicating that he belonged to the nobility, while hanging on a ribbon was a medal that had only been awarded once before in the history of the Empire, a stylized cross with oak leaves and diamonds worked into the design. The Imperial Medal of Heroism, the highest award for valor in the Empire for military or civilian, given to this man for three separate acts. And on his pocket, the newly made Special Operations Badge, something he could acknowledge but not talk about. He was thinking that he should have come in different clothes, something more, civilian. But the Imperial Army dress blues fit the image he was trying to project.

  A new party entered, two men and two women, escorted by the Maitre d’ across the floor of the restaurant to one of the private rooms. The man waited until they had entered the room and the Maitre d’ had exited before he got to his feet and walked with a dancer’s grace toward the room. He opened the door and walked into the room uninvited to the stares of four people who were not used to having their party crashed.