Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle

by Doug Dandridge

  * * *

  Commodore Bryce Suttler (brevet rank) sat in his command chair and looked at the system ahead on the tactical holo. His ships were all closely arrayed in a diamond pattern, decelerating inward at ten gravities, not detectable by any known technology at greater than fifteen light minutes. It would be a long slow voyage into the system, one light week over a one and a half month period. If all went well they would be in a perfect position to perform their primary mission, gathering intelligence while preparing for the disrupting strike that was their secondary task.

  “Message from Dolphin,” said the Com Tech manning that station.

  “Put it on the holo,” ordered Suttler with a nod.

  The image of Commander Chris Browne appeared on the holo, a worried expression on his face as he looked at his squadron commander. Browne, though an experienced officer, was a first time ship’s captain, and as such always seemed to sweat every detail. Not sure if this is the first mission he needed to grow comfortable with command, thought Suttler. But the man had earned command, and his ship had been available for this mission, so here he was.

  “We’re picking up a track at twenty-five degrees east of Imperial center, fifteen degrees north, at approximately three hundred million kilometers.”

  “So, they picked up the arrival and departure of the battle cruisers,” said Suttler, looking at the tactical plot which now showed the enemy scout ship. “No reason to think they picked us up.”

  “We’re picking up graviton emissions from that scout ship,” called out the Sensor Officer from her station. “They’re signaling their base.”

  “Should we fire on them?” asked Browne, his eyes narrowing.

  “Hell no,” said Suttler, staring into the eyes of his subordinate. “Then they’ll sure as hell know we are here. We keep as quiet as we can and cruise on in. They’re still too far off to pick up our little bit of graviton emission. The few they might pick up will be indistinguishable from the emissions from the star.”

  At least I hope they haven’t picked us up, thought Suttler, looking at the tactical holo. He had faith in the tech of his ships. With their light bending fields they were basically invisible to most electromagnetic detection. And their wormhole heat sinks sucked up all of the ergs a ship their size produced. Even the neutron emissions of the antimatter reactors, the little bit that got past the shielding, were mostly sent through the wormhole that was also their com link.

  If we fired a missile, they would pick up the launch from the graviton emissions of a hundred ton missile accelerating at ten thousand gravities. Then they would pick up the heat coming off those grabbers, estimate where they were launched from, and, not seeing anything here, know what they were facing. “We might take them out, Browne. But not before they told the system what was out here. And I don’t want them knowing that until we’re ready to strike.”

  The other commander nodded his head, looking chastised. “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “That’s why you have me here,” said Suttler, smiling. “For you to bounce your decisions off of someone more experienced, until you gain your own experience.”

  “We’re picking up movement from the edge of the system, sir,” called out the Tactical Officer, Lieutenant SG Walter Ngovic. “From emissions, they appear to be a pair of battleships, and two of the supercruisers.”

  “So they had ships out at the hyper barrier as well, just like we figured.”

  “They’re jumping to hyperspace.”

  “Least time ETA?”

  “At least ten hours, considering they have to stair step up hyper to get here, as well as accel and decel.”

  “Wonder why they’re even bothering?” said Browne from his bridge. “They have to know that the battle cruisers have already left the area.”

  “Just being thorough, I guess,” said Ngovic, following the ships through hyperspace by their hyper resonances. “In case we left something behind.”

  “Like we did,” agreed Suttler, nodding. “I want tight emission control across the squadron. Everything on lockdown.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the acknowledgements from his own crew. Within moments every control on the ship that might trigger something that would give them away, emergency transmitters, life pods, weapons, acceleration controls, were locked down. Only the ship’s captain could override the lockdown. There was no chance of anyone hitting something by accident that could possibly give them away. Moments later the other captains were acknowledging that their ships were also secure. Suttler felt a flush of pride as he recognized that his crew had accomplished the command faster than the others. And a feeling that the others would have to get better at their tasks if the mission was to be successful. That’s what we get using new ships and crews that haven’t worked together past shakedown. But it was all that had been available at the time.

  Ten hours and thirteen minutes after they had entered hyper the enemy ships moved back into normal space, on an outward heading at point three light. The missiles were almost ten light hours closer to the system, well beyond any conceivable detection range of the ships. The stealth attack squadron was eight light hours further out from the missiles, within detection range of most ships, if they hadn’t been stealth attack. The enemy ships were still decelerating as they came through, their active sensors sweeping the heavens on full power.

  Hours later the passive sensors of the Seastag rang with the energy of sensor sweeps as they briefly passed over. Anything that struck the ship was absorbed by the composite matrix of the hull. All the enemy ships could do was continue to decelerate until they could vector back, and there was absolutely nothing for them to find.

  I would love to take your fat asses out, thought Suttler, looking at the enemy ships on the viewer, or at least the vessels as they had appeared several hours before. But even if that had been within mission parameters, which it wasn’t, it would take almost a day to change vectors to come back at the enemy, giving away their position from graviton emissions the entire time.

  “Too bad we can’t hit them,” said Ngovic, echoing his Captain’s thoughts. “Nothing to do but a long, slow trip into the system.”

  “And then we become a thorn in the Cacas’ sides,” said Browne over the com, a smile on his face.

  Yep, thought the Commodore. And then we become their worst nightmare.

  About a week later there were more ships short jumping out to their area, within light hours or less in some cases, scanning space with active sensors. The volume of normal space in the outer reaches of the system were enormous, as were the number of widely spaced objects. Suttler had little fear of detection, though he still spent a lot of time in his chair, monitoring the locations of the enemy vessels.

  “What do you think happened?” asked the Navigation Officer as her eyes followed the enemy vessels on the tactical holo.

  “My guess would be that the missiles made their presence known in the inner system,” said Ngovic with a smile.

  “And I believe you are correct, Mr. Ngovic,” said Suttler, hoping that the missiles caused the maximum damage possible, and knowing that to be unlikely.

  For several days ships continued to move around in the Kuiper Belt region, popping in an out of hyper. At one point a supercruiser translated several light minutes ahead, not in their direct path, but close enough. Fortunately the ship was moving on a vector that took it quickly away from the squadron, and the stealth ships were basically holes in space that could only be detected by a concentrated sensor sweep. Which was not likely from a ship that was trying to cover the entire sphere of space around itself.

  Finally, after many hours of searching, the ships left. Suttler was almost sorry to see them go. It would have been a tremendous waste of resources if those ships had continued searching the outer reaches. They would have been unlikely to be in the right place and time if more Imperial ships visited.

  A little less than twelve days later bright flashes in the system ahead told of missiles finding targ
ets. At first there were some small flashes, bright pinpoints of gigaton warheads going off, most likely missiles that had been intercepted and destroyed. Minutes later some larger flashes which had to be missiles hitting targets. Over the next hour there were more of both kinds of flashes, missiles taken out before impact, or hitting a target, all of which had happened almost a week before.

  Two of the flashes were monsters, the types caused by stores of antimatter breaching containment. Which meant some big vessels or stations had gone up. Something for them to think about, thought Suttler. And we’re going to cause them more reason for panic.

  * * *

  “Nothing, sir,” said the subordinate officer over the com.

  “They must have launched from somewhere,” said another officer, wrinkling his snout in confusion.

  “And how did they accelerate them to attack velocities like they did?” asked yet another.

  Great Admiral Miierrowanasa M’tinisasitow looked with disgust on his intelligence braintrust. And it was a shameful day for their mothers when such idiots were birthed.

  The Great Admiral had known for many centuries that he was among the smartest of his species. He knew there was a research position waiting for him when he reached that age when he was no longer effective as a warrior, or even the leader of warriors. And now he wondered if the human way of doing things were better, to put the best and brightest to work as research scientists while their brains were still pliant.

  But then we would have only idiots in charge of our warriors, thought the Great Admiral. And then where would we be?

  “They launched them from wormholes, you idiots,” said the Great Admiral in disgust. “From those battle cruisers that appeared outside the system over a week ago.”

  “How did they build them to such a velocity without us detecting them?” said the officer who had reported the negative sweep of the inner and outer systems. “They would have given off too many gravitons to miss. Much less the heat.”

  “They accelerated them through something on the other side of the wormhole,” said the Great Admiral, wishing he could just execute these intelligence officers and start over with some lower ranking ratings.

  “How did they do that, my Lord?” The other officers stared at him as if he had grown another pair of horns on his head.

  “I really don’t know how they do it. But they do.” The Great Admiral looked down at his desk for a moment, lamenting the damage that the enemy missiles had done, no matter how they did it.

  A battleship, a supercruiser, two scouts and three logistics vessels, including an antimatter tanker. All with no loss to themselves, except the missiles we intercepted, and the ones that flew out of the system. He could still see the battleship as it was hit by the missile traveling at point nine five light, captured on vid from a nearby ship. A hundred ton missile traveling with that much velocity equaled a lot of kinetic energy. Enough to shatter a ship that had almost no time to defend itself. Just our luck the missile was on a close enough approach that it only had to boost for less than a minute to hit the target. The ship had shattered under the strike. There were likely no survivors even before the antimatter breached. The other hits were not so clean. The supecruiser had actually knocked out two other missiles before the third hit. The logistics vessels really had no chance. And they could do it again, even if we place pickets out in the ice ball belt. It’s just something to keep us on edge, and it’s working.

  “Keep searching the system, in case they left something else behind,” said the Great Admiral as he headed for the exit of the conference room.

  “Like what, my Lord?” asked one of the officers.

  “I don’t know,” said the Great Admiral, turning and pointing both right index fingers at the officer. “When you find it we’ll both know.”

  We need to take out that wormhole generating station, thought the senior officer of the Ca’cadasan conquest force, walking down the corridor, ignoring all of the other males who offered their salutes as he passed. They’ll still have the wormholes they already have, but they won’t able to make any others. But of course he had no idea how the mission to strike at the generating station was going. Without a wormhole of their own, there was no way to communicate with the strike force. Of course, we could always build our own station. We have plenty of black holes in the Empire. It would only take us, what, fifty or more years to build such a station.

  The Great Admiral stalked into his private office and ordered that no one disturb him. He had other matters to deal with, matters of some importance if he was to win this war. He sat behind his desk and activated the holo, sending the link address over his implant.

  “How goes the Mankind Project?” he asked the ancient looking Cacada on the holo.

  “We have had a difficult time convincing any of the human scientists from New Moscow to throw in with us.”

  “I would think that guaranteeing the safety of their families would mean something,” said the Great Admiral, feeling his anger rising. “Maybe some executions are in order.”

  “The problem is, Great Admiral,” said the Cacada scientist with a disapproving scowl, “that most of these humans have no families. Or at least none that we have access to. We found most of these humans in remote research labs, or on ships that were fleeing our advance. We don’t know who their family members are, or where to find them.”

  “And they don’t have enough of a self preservation instinct to cooperate?”

  “Even if they do, many of them would rather die than cooperate with us. And those who do cooperate are not trustworthy.”

  And our own human slaves are not trained in their sciences, and so are of little use to us. “Keep at it. Get all the cooperation you can out of them. Even if it is just to get the basics of their science to teach our own human scientists.”

  “What do you hope to get out of them, my Lord Admiral? They are less advanced than us in most ways anyway.”

  “But they will not always be so, Scientist. Even you know as much. And we cannot afford to fall that far behind them when they pass us. Now do as I say.” The Great Admiral terminated the transmission, then made his next connection.

  “Yes, my Lord,” said the being on the other end of transmission. The screen was blank for just a moment while the system determined the security credentials for both parties. The image that finally appeared on the holo would have surprised most Cacada. The red piercing eyes looked over the dog-like snout which wrinkled into a smile, revealing an alarming array of teeth. Its ears were perked up in an aspect of interest, and its solid black fur almost hid it within the shadows.

  My intelligence staff would feel slighted that I had assigned a Maurid to be my spymaster. Maurids were on average smarter than Cacada, and the Great Admiral would not have bet against one in a hand to hand battle with one of his own people. Kilogram for kilogram, Maurids were stronger than his people, and their natural weapons were frighteningly deadly. It’s fortunate that they were savages when we found them, or they might be rulers of the Empire by now.

  “How goes the establishment of your network?”

  “It is normally a long, slow process to establish a living being intelligence network,” said the Maurid with a grimace. “Even with the inclusion of trained humans, we still need a core of betrayers within the enemy Empire. Humans with long standing associations, aliens in trusted positions. We are starting to make some contacts, but as I said, this will take time.”

  “What about the beings our Knockermen friends were talking about?”

  “The mythical shape shifters? Even if such beings exist, they will by nature be very difficult to find. My operatives have orders to seek them out. What the result of their seeking will be, who can say.”

  “And you have no way of knowing how your operatives are doing?”

  “Of course not. We do not have instantaneous communications like the humans. It gives them a great advantage over us.”

  The Great Admiral stopped himself at the last mome
nt from saying anything about that. His plans were not for everyone to know. There were many operations going through on a need to know basis, and the Maurid did not need to know. “Advance your operation as quickly as is feasible,” he told his spymaster. “I need a better take on what my opponent is thinking.”

  “I will move forward as quickly as I can, without compromising the operation. Unless you wish some other to run this intelligence network.”

  The holo went blank, terminated from the other end, and the Great Admiral glared at the space where the vid had been with mounting anger. The Maurids are arrogant creatures, he thought, remembering that many times in the past the extermination of the species had been contemplated. But then we always find a use for them. Like now. He wished it wasn’t true, but it was fact that his people weren’t very good at the intelligence business, and the Maurids were.

  * * *

  The Maurid known as the Spymaster grinned at the dead holo. He knew the position of his people within the Empire. He knew that the Ca’cadasans didn’t like his people. Most sentient beings didn’t like the Maurid people. He accepted that. He also knew that his people were better than most sentients at most things, which made them too valuable to be discarded.

  He looked up at the other Maurid who occupied the room, a lean female with an orange striped coat. Do you think he suspects? signed the female with quick motions of the fingers on both fore and hind paws.

  I doubt he has a clue, signed the Spymaster, using an ancient hunting language of their people that had been modified for modern use.

  This is our best chance of freeing ourselves from the horn heads, signed the female, her mouth grinning. And also a great risk. They may destroy us if they think we are trying to betray them to their old enemy.

  The humans are the first culture we have come across who might actually beat the Masters, he signed, bringing up a holo of the Ca’cadasan Empire. The way the Master’s Empire has spread, there may never be another chance like this. If we waste this opportunity, we may forever be slaves.