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

by Doug Dandridge

  “Can’t be much quieter from an Agency standpoint.”

  “So we take the offer of this, at best, double agent. At worst, a plant.”

  “She’s not asking us for any information. From what she implies, her network will be gathering that on its own.”

  “And the, Maurid, understands that we will be searching for her agents? Trying our best to uncover her network.”

  “She understands, and accepts, that as part of the risk of doing business. And from what she said, she will limit the information she reports to the Cacas to intelligence that won’t do too much damage.”

  “While feeding us information that is of vital importance.” Sean shook his head. “It seems almost too good to be true. So, what in the hell is she getting out of it?”

  “It seems that her people have been slaves to the Cacas for thousands of years, even before we first ran into them. She wants freedom for her people.”

  “Then why don’t they just revolt?”

  “Because she does not want her people to be destroyed. She feels that will be their fate if they are found in betrayal of their masters. So she is forced to play both sides, hoping that we can pull off a victory.”

  “And if we don’t, they are no worse off,” said Sean, digesting everything he had heard up to this point.

  “It’s up to you, your Majesty,” said Sergiov. “I personally think it’s an offer we can’t refuse.”

  “Then go ahead and accept, Director. But I hope we can come up with a better way of communicating with her than swapping messages on a frontier planet. I don’t like the five days or more one way transmission time.”

  “The Maurid said she is moving to a more advanced planet, where she can run her network, so that will not be a problem. Oh, and there was one other thing, your Majesty. She said we should look out for an attempt by the Cacas on our wormhole generator. That had to mean the Donut.”

  “And does she know how?” asked Sean, trying to figure out how they could accomplish such a thing. The Donut was over a week’s travel time inside the hyperbarrier of the black hole. At least a couple of days missile flight at near c. And it had ship gates nearby that could call up a formidable defense force if necessary. Wormholes? But all of the gates were well guarded. They would have to take a capital ship, or a planet, before the gate could be switched off, which was unlikely.

  “Unfortunately, no,” said Sergiov. “I get the feeling that the Cacas operate much like we do, your Majesty. Compartmentalized, with need to know.”

  “Get back to me as soon as you know anything more, Director,” said the Emperor.

  The holo went dead, and Sean went back to work on his flat comp, affixing his electronic seal to the plethora of orders that needed his OK. The com chimed again in his link, and he checked to see who was trying to reach him, knowing that his secretary wouldn’t pass on anyone who wasn’t important, but still not sure that was somewhat he wanted to talk to right now.

  “Len,” he said with pleasure as the man appeared on the holo.

  Grand Fleet Admiral Gabriel Len Lenkowski appeared on the holo, the flag bridge of his ship behind him.

  “Greetings, your Majesty,” said the former Chief of Naval Operations under his father, who was now the commander of the Imperial Battle Fleet. His force had fought at a disadvantage since he had taken charge, but the Admiral had still fought it brilliantly, saving it from total destruction on several occasions, while inflicting heavy losses to the enemy with hit and run tactics. “I have good news. I could have let it come through the channels, but wanted the pleasure of telling you myself.”

  “Conundrum?”

  “Yes, your Majesty. The strike went off almost perfectly.”

  “Almost?”

  “Suttler did lose one of his ships. Not his fault, and frankly, lower losses than I expected.”

  “Suttler? Bryce Suttler?”

  “You know him, your Majesty?”

  “He and his ship saved the battle cruiser I was on at Massadara. A Ca’cadasan battleship got in the way, and Suttler helped to take them out.”

  “Well, he stayed in the system and spied on them. Then went on to hit their first space station. He didn’t destroy it, but he sure damaged it badly. Then he opened his heat sink wormhole into a ship gate to allow our raid of that system.”

  “And now he’s in Conundrum?” asked the Emperor, shaking his head. “The boy gets around.” Sean linked into his personal computer system aboard Augustine and started a replay of the attack on the Conundrum stations, which had been loaded into the memory as soon as the Admiral contacted the ship.

  “He made full Captain after we pulled him out of Massadara. We brevetted him to Commodore for this mission.”

  “Make the rank permanent,” said the Emperor.

  “He’s a stealth man through and through,” said Len, shaking his head. “He’ll want to remain in a ship, and not at a desk.”

  “Then leave him in a ship. And send him a knighthood as well. He deserves at least that much for all he has done for the Empire.”

  “That will be a pleasant surprise,” said the Admiral.

  “And the Cacas will be less than pleasantly surprised,” said Sean, watching as one of the Ca’cadasan stations exploded into plasma and small pieces on the holo. “I would love to see the look on their faces when one of their ships comes back into that system.”

  “If it’s only a single warship, or, even better, a logistics ship, then Suttler’s squadron will also take them out. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.”

  “I like it.” Sean started the replay over again, then noted the time. “We need to talk about something else. We are one day out from Congreeve. From what I have been told, by your intelligence officer, Admiral, the Cacas will be there in five. Is Battle Fleet ready?”

  “As ready as possible, your Majesty.”

  “Would more time have been better?”

  “No, your Majesty. It would be better if it were today. My people are just itching to get at those bastards.”

  “And Carrier Task Forces BF-4 and BF-5?”

  “Locked, loaded and ready to go,” said the Admiral. “They will be in position later on in this twenty-four.”

  “Confidence in them?”

  “Complete, your Majesty. Complete.”

  “Damn, where does the time go,” said Sean, his link buzzing with another incoming com. He checked it, and decided it was one he needed to take.

  “I’ll get back with you, Admiral, when we get to Congreeve. I need to take this incoming com.”

  The beings on the com switched out, a human figure exchanged for one of the Gryphon species, so named by the humans because of their eaglish face and light body covering of feathers. They were built like small dinosaurs, with large legs, a balancing tail, and three digit hands on muscular arms.

  “Lord H’rrressitor,” said the Emperor, recognizing the being by the feather pattern on his face. “What word?”

  “The word is success, your Majesty,” answered the Imperial Minister of Commerce and Industry. “The new supermetal plant is up and running. We opened the first accelerator this morning, local time. We’ll be opening two more at the end of this week, and the other three by the end of the month.”

  “That is great news, Minister,” said Sean, all smiles. He called up another holo that showed the planet in question, a frozen world in orbit around an outer gas giant of a developing system in Sector I, as far from the Caca invasion as possible.

  The holo zoomed in on the world, and the surface installations became visible. Because of their size it did not take much zooming to see them. To the uninitiated they looked like random structures, but Sean had studied how the supermetal manufacturing process worked, and had no trouble identifying them.

  One wide valley, surrounded by ranges of water and methane ice, was lined by scores of large fusion plants, each able to generate hundreds of gigawatts of energy. Fifty kilometers over was another such valley, also filled with reactors. O
n a plain to the north, covering an area of ten thousand square kilometers, were arrays of crystal matrix batteries, enough to power a sector fleet, using the sub-zero temperatures to increase their efficiency. The particle accelerator in operation ran in a ring around that plain, three thousand kilometers of magnetic tube, capable of slamming particles together at one hundred millionth of a percent below light speed. Such a tube was capable of producing tons of the metals each day, artificial elements that sat in a small region of stability high on the periodic table.

  Other accelerators could be seen in some of the other flat areas of the hemisphere. It was a major industrial project, taking the same resources as the construction of a thousand battleships. And necessary for the functioning of the fleet.

  And all of this is increased production over what we had prior to the start of the war, thought the Emperor. There had been five of the planets before the invasion, barely able to keep up with the needs of the Fleet and the Empire. One had been nearing the end of its fifty year life span, the waste heat having built almost to the point where efficient production was no longer possible. A new plant was under construction, the hundreds of billions of tons of machinery being built for eventual assembly on a likely planet.

  One of the plants had been destroyed by the Cacas when they took a Core World system. That plant had soon been replaced by the one that was under construction, making up the shortfall. This plant would allow for military expansion by twenty percent, while five more had been ordered from Imperial industry. When those were online prewar imperial production would have increased by two hundred and twenty percent. Unless we lose some more production planets in the meantime.

  “Great job, Minister. With efforts like this, we cannot lose.”

  “You can’t lie to a professional bureaucrat, your Majesty,” said the Gryphon. “I know it will take more than this to win.”

  “And I am depending on you to give me that more, Minister. You, and the Ministry of Science. Keep it up.”

  Sean went back to his paperwork after he cut the connection with the Minister. There were so many problems, and never enough time to deal with all of them. Shortages of this and that, too many resources wasted on civilian production that really wasn’t needed, that someone had forgotten to turn off at the source.

  Negative matter is still the bottleneck to deploying more inertialess fighters, and maybe the new missiles. And we can always use more antimatter. He looked over the production figures, then linked in to look at the progress on the two new antimatter production facilities being built around F class stars. Both were comprised of thousands of production satellites in close orbit around the stars of developing systems. Each would produce antimatter using the power of those stars at a rate of one point two to one, turning the ergs of sunlight into the stored assets of the volatile material.

  The Lords had wanted the new facilities to be built in the Core Worlds, of course, where most of the really powerful of them had major holdings. But it made more strategic sense to build the production satellites around developing worlds in quiet sectors, isolated from the threat of the Cacas.

  He switched to the view of one of the new shipyards, also in place around a developing world. He hoped to double shipbuilding capacity from prewar levels in another year, then work on doubling it again in another two. The only way we’re going to win this war is to become even more of an industrial juggernaut than we already are. If we have enough time. If we don’t win this coming battle it might not matter.

  It was a risk, but a risk he thought needed to be taken. And if we lose, I will go down in the history records as the one that lost the final war. If we are even mentioned in the history records.

  I wonder how Bolthole is coming? he thought, moving onto another database. Bolthole had been the brainchild of his father, a very active Emperor who had laid much of the groundwork for many of the innovations that were being developed. Bolthole was a system a thousand light years beyond the antispinward border of the Empire, along the Perseus Arm. The plan was to build an industrial system that could not be found by any conceivable enemy, using a very large metallic planetoid as the industrial base, and an almost terrestrial planet, which could be transformed into a habitable world with minimal effort. Everything would be built in place with the industry of the system, shipyards, antimatter production, even a supermetal plant. It would be the final arsenal of the Empire, if everything else went to shit. A place to keep the fight going, while supplying the Fleet with more units.

  There was a wormhole on the way to that system, which would allow them to communicate with it instantaneously. Until then, all he had were reports that were more than two months old. Sean laughed at that thought. Prior to the Donut coming online, all communications from the outer rim of the Empire to the Core Worlds took from weeks to months. The new tech was already spoiling the command staff. But without the universal use of wormholes throughout the Empire, something that might take over a century to achieve, some communications would still take time.

  He had one last piece of business to look into before the dinner staff meeting. The seven massive ships had all launched four months before, two to the Greater Magellanic Cloud, two to the Galactic Core, and, most importantly, three on a roundabout journey to the other side of the Ca’cadasan Empire. It would take almost three years to get to that region, curving into the interior of the Galaxy to avoid the Cacas. Another war was going on there, and the Empire might find an ally to help in the battle against the Ca’cadasans. All of the ships carried a pair of wormholes, and once they found the other enemy of the Cacas, communications between them and the Empire would be instantaneous as well.

  At the staff meeting, set up as usual in the large conference room, all the usual suspects were present. All looked anxious, and the Emperor couldn’t blame them. Many of them could be dead in five days. Or they could survive, and see the end in sight for their species. But all were here to do their duty.

  “We have important news, your Majesty,” said Captain Mary Innocent, his Chief Intelligence Officer.

  “Good or bad?” asked Sean with a smile.

  “What would you prefer?” asked Jennifer, who was sitting next to him at the table. She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed his muscles.

  “Always good, of course. But I don’t always get what I want.”

  “I’m, not sure what this is, your Majesty. Hopefully good.”

  “And what, pray tell, is this news?”

  “Fleet intelligence got this report from Survey Command,” said Innocent. The holo sprang to life, showing a pair of blue giant stars in orbit around each other. “This is system BG2-785, so named because of the two giant stars. It was a system we have been watching for several centuries, due to the instability of the stars’ mutual orbit. They have been spiraling in toward each other for the last couple of decades.”

  “When are they scheduled to supernova?” asked Sean in a tired voice, seeing more trouble here. “And what inhabited systems are nearby?”

  “They probably wouldn’t have gone off for another ten thousand years,” said the Intelligence Chief. “And when they do, the closest inhabited system is thirteen light years away.”

  “So, what’s the problem?” asked Sean. “We should be able to handle shielding the nearby planets by that time. If we’re still around.”

  “This is the problem, your Majesty,” said the woman as the holo changed, showing the two giant stars finishing their spiral and joining in a titanic spray of energy. “The graviton emissions were picked up for over a hundred light years. They really messed with our hyperspace tracking capabilities, at least in a minor way.”

  “A supergiant?” said Sean, looking into the holo, his eyes narrowing. “And what’s the time frame for its supernova?”

  “Two to three months,” said the Captain. “As we get closer to the event we’ll get a better handle on it. The energy output has increased by orders of magnitude. The two stars were already burning helium. Very soon they will
go up the periodic table. When it hits iron burning the end will come within weeks.”

  “And what’s the result of all this, from a strategic point of view.”

  “When the star explodes, it will flood hyperspace with graviton emissions, like a resonating boom of a blast in a canyon. We won’t be able to track ships through hyperspace for hundreds of light years from the supernova.”

  “And how long will that last?”

  “A week? Two? Of course the effect will diminish over time, but we will not be able to track Ca’cadasan ships in hyper during much of that time.”

  “And the same will hold true for them,” said Sean, thinking of the possibilities. “Tell me. Do you think the Cacas know about this upcoming event?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, your Majesty. This isn’t their space. They probably haven’t visited this star. I doubt they even know it exists. And even if they have by chance visited it, they don’t know the history. So I think this will catch them completely off guard.”

  “And it won’t catch us off guard. Thank you, Captain. I think this will give us an opportunity we have been looking for.” Sean looked at the other faces at the table, his strategic brain trust. “I want a preliminary plan worked out for a strike to coincide with this supernova.”

  “What about the coming operation?” asked one of the Admiral’s present. “We really won’t know what we will have available, or what we’ll be facing, until this fight is over.”

  “Or even if we’ll win,” said another.

  “We have to assume we’ll win,” said Sean, slamming his fist on the table and turning his gaze on each in turn. “Any other outcome is unacceptable. Am I understood.”

  Heads nodded around the table, and Sean jumped to his feet and strode out of the room, Jennifer on his heels.

  “That ending could have gone better,” she said, catching up with him.

  He turned on her, his anger rising. “They are my people, the ones I depend on to fight the enemies of my Empire. If they lose heart, I have already lost.”

  “I understand,” said Jennifer, putting her arms around him. “But remember. You have good people working for you. If they can’t do it, it can’t be done. That was a great job Captain Innocent and her team did bringing together the information on that supernova.”