Exodus: Empires at War: Book 12: Time Strike Read online

  Exodus: Empires at War:

  Book 12:

  Time Strike

  by

  Doug Dandridge

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to all the self-published authors out there who forged the path that led to my success. Thanks you for making the opportunity available.

  Contact me at [email protected]

  Follow my Blog at http://dougdandridge.com

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  Copyright © 2017 Doug Dandridge

  All rights reserved.

  Please respect the hard work of this author. If you found this book for free on a pirate site, please visit Amazon and buy a copy of your own. I feel that I charge a reasonable price for this work.

  For more information on the Exodus Universe, visit http://dougdandridge.net for maps, sketches and other details of this work.

  The Story So Far is now located at the back of the book, on the recommendation of many fans.

  Books by Doug Dandridge

  Doug Dandridge’s Author Page at Amazon

  Science Fiction

  The Exodus Series

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 1

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 3: The Rising Storm.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 4: the Long Fall.

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 5: Ranger

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 6: The Day of Battle

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike:

  Exodus: Empires at War Book 8: Soldiers

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front.

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

  Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy.

  Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Exploration Command:

  Exodus: Tales of the Empire: Beast of the Frontier.

  Exodus: Machine Wars: Book 1: Supernova.

  Exodus: Machine Wars: Book 2: Bolthole.

  Exodus: Machine War: Book 3: Death From Above.

  The Deep Dark Well Series

  The Deep Dark Well

  To Well and Back

  Deeper and Darker

  Theocracy

  Others

  The Shadows of the Multiverse

  Diamonds in the Sand

  The Scorpion

  Afterlife

  We Are Death, Come for You

  Five By Five 3: Target Zone:

  Fantasy

  The Refuge Series

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 1

  Refuge: The Arrival: Book 2

  Refuge: Book 3: The Legions

  Refuge: Book 4: Kurt’s Quest:

  Doppelganger: A Novel of Refuge

  Others

  The Hunger

  Daemon

  Aura

  Marathon

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  Cast of Characters

  The Capital

  Emperor Sean Ogden Lee Romanov: Emperor of New Terran Empire.

  Empress Jennifer Conway Romanov: Sean’s Wife and Physician.

  Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom: Chief of Naval Operations.

  Admiral Ekaterina Sergiov: Chief of Imperial Combined Intelligence Service.

  Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri: Army Chief of Staff.

  Field Marshal Betty Parker: Commandant of the Imperial Marine Corps

  Tomas Gijardo: Business Analyst and citizen living in Capitulum.

  Nick Stumpfield: Leader of the Temporal Realignment Faction.

  Lucille Yu: Director of the Donut.

  Count Nicholas Stumpfield: Leader of Temporal Realignment Faction.

  Achieng Okoye: Assassin in the employ of Stumpfield.

  Dr. Kenji Guatarrez: Time Travel Researcher.

  Prime Minister Countess Haruko Kawasaki.

  The Fleet

  Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis Mgonda: Admiral in command of Hyper VII battle force.

  Grand Fleet Admiral Gabriel Len Lenkowski: Commander: Battle Fleet.

  Vice Admiral Jefferson Muldoon: Commander, Retribution Squadron.

  Commander Xavier Jackson: Captive of the Ancients.

  Captain Wilma Snyder: Warp fighter wing commander.

  Captain Anvi Patel: Warp fighter wing commander.

  Captain Natatuk Igua: Warp fighter wing commander.

  Rear Admiral Natasha Sung: Commander of Special Exploration Force.

  Lt. Commander Timothy Bonaventure: Sung’s com officer.

  Imperial Army

  Cornelius Walborski: The Count. Ranger Colonel and three time holder of the Imperial Medal of Heroism.

  Colonel General Samuel Baggett: Imperial Army Commander, Fenri Front.

  The Republic

  President Julia Graham: Elected head of the New Terran Republic.

  Ca’cadasans

  Jresstratta IV: Supreme Emperor of the Ca’cadasan Empire

  Others

  Klorasof: Ancient.

  Sgornar: Guerilla, Fenri Front.

  Prologue

  CA’CADASAN HOME SYSTEM, APRIL 7TH, 1003.

  “The fleet will be in position to strike within the month, my Supreme Lord,” said the Great Admiral that was the current commander of the battle force on the primary front.

  The Emperor of the Ca’cadasan Empire, Jresstratta IV, gave a head motion of acknowledgement over the wormhole com holo. It was four months since the attack against the home system of the humans, as well as the battle for the wormhole generating station. While great damage had been done to the home system, and the generating station had also taken a beating, the strikes had not met with the hoped for measure of success. The human capital system was still there, and the great generating station was still a going concern. Just as bad, the offensive at the frontier, after some quick initial gains, had been repulsed when the human Empire’s allies had rallied back to the cause.

  Now we have twice the fleet in place that we had in that operation, thought the Emperor. And they had more of their own wormholes, making sure that each task group had at least one. They still didn’t have enough wormholes to start producing the weapons the humans used through their portals, like the powerful particle beams or missile preacceleration systems. They could send masses of missiles through the wormholes from a free space launch, but that didn’t give them the flexibility the humans had with theirs.

  There will be seven more wormhole generating moons in five months, thought the Emperor, showing his canines in a display of displeasure that had the Great Admiral on the other end showing some fear that he might have done something to offend his Supreme Lord. Males had died for less. But the Emperor was thinking about the discrepancies in wormhole production. His Empire was producing twenty a week, and the new production facilities would raise that to twenty-seven each seven days. While the humans were still producing thirty a day, two hundred and ten a week, almost eight times as many. Plus they were many years of wormhole production ahead of the Ca’cacdasan Empire. It seemed to Jresstratta that no matter what they did they would never catch up to the humans.

  “Have I displeased you, my Supreme Lord,” stammered the Great Admiral, earning grudging respect from the Emperor.

  “No, Great Admiral. Just something I was thinking of. Make sure you make good use of the intertialess fighters. They cost use greatly in resources, and we need to get a good return on them.” He was sure those would come as a surprise to the humans, when the weapon they thought of as theirs was used against them. But the humans and their allies seemed to adjust quickly to new developments, and he was sure they would do the same to t
he fact that the Ca’cadasans now had the same technology as themselves. So his people needed to hit hard with the fighters while they were a surprise, and not give the humans time to adjust to them before they shot their bolt, so to speak.

  “We will ream them, Supreme Lord,” said the great admiral with a look of determination on his face.

  And that is always what we think, thought the Emperor. And we always seem to fail. He wouldn’t say that to his great admiral, since he needed that male to be at his best, which included being confident in his force. And this time they were striking at different targets than before, bypassing the space of New Moscow altogether. There was not much of interest there, with the exception of a lot of defenses and a lot of ships. No, this time they would come through Fenri space, brushing aside the Imperial fleet investing that Empire, then striking into human space, taking out the human force in Lashara. He hoped this would suck in most of the Imperial units, while the second force that was still in the process of moving into place would attack the New Terran Republic, giving them a tough choice for deployment. If they could take out one of the smaller but still major human fleets in the other front, then knock one of the alliance members out of the war, the entire thing could be turned around. And then the final hammer blow would fall.

  “Do not fail me, Great Admiral,” said the Emperor in a cautioning tone. “Crush the enemy in front of you, the get your force out of there before they trap you. I will need you to attack again after we crush the Republic.”

  The Emperor cut the transmission before the admiral could answer. He already knew what the male would say, and it wouldn’t make any difference to the outcome. His military leaders had been promising great achievements throughout the war, and had been found wanting.

  Jresstratta looked at the great holo that hung in the throne room, displaying his Empire and the fronts they were fighting on. The Second Front, that of Klavarta, had stabilized, despite the enemy finding a new ally to aid them in the fight. That front could wait. It was not the primary concern. Once the humans were reeling, their allies fallen, their core worlds under attack, he could concentrate again on the foe across the Empire. Am I just engaging in wishful thinking? thought the Emperor. He considered that he might be, but that was the way he had to think. Any other way of thinking, in himself or others, was defeatism, and he could not tolerate that in any male, himself included.

  * * *

  CAPITULUM, JEWEL.

  Sean Ogden Lee Romanov looked out of the window of his aircar at his capital city. Those buildings that could be repaired were in the process of having their internal supports reinstalled. Those that were ruins had been dropped into the most compact piles of rubble possible. Some had been removed, some were in the process, and many more were waiting their turn.

  Sean cursed in his thoughts as he looked at the scars the Ca’cadasan attack had left on his city. What he couldn’t see at the moment were the hundreds of millions of dead that were the cost of that attack. He couldn’t see them, but he knew about them. Everyone agreed that he would not have been able to do anything about it, everyone but himself. He took the blame for every one of those deaths, especially his son and heir, Augustine. Jennifer had said she forgave him for that one small life that had been lost. He didn’t believe her.

  “The Hexagon should be repaired in another month,” said Sondra McCullom, the Chief of Naval Operations, and the highest ranking officer in the Fleet.

  Sean nodded without saying a word. He still felt some anger himself. Most directed at the Cacas, but the members of his Fleet were also the recipients of some of that anger. After all, they had been responsible for the defense of this system, and had let the enemy through. He knew that was not fair. But the Emperor didn’t really feel like being fair right now.

  “How go the preparations?” he asked. He didn’t need to fill in any details. Sondra knew what he was talking about.

  “The ships will be boosting up today, your Majesty. We expect them to be on target in about six months.”

  And then we’ll see how you bastards feel having it done to you, thought Sean, a scowl on his face. His Fleet staff had cautioned against this plan. They could lose hundreds of ships, possibly thousands, for little return. And it was almost a certainty that they would lose the fifty wormholes that were going along. He didn’t care. The people volunteered for the transfer, and the ships that would go through the portal would do as they were ordered, just as in any military operation. And the enemy would learn that one didn’t strike at the capital of his empire, unless they wanted the favor returned.

  He had no way of knowing what the capital world of the Ca’cadasan Empire looked like, but he could imagine piles of rubble strewn through their primary city. He had thought of doing what they had attempted to do to his world with a wormhole weapon. Jennifer had talked him out of that obscenity. But they would still suffer.

  He looked down on the scar that had been an underground shelter that had taken a direct hit by a kinetic, collapsing the tough armored capsule. The idea had been that the same kind of central capsule that defended the crews of heavy warships would protect civilians during planetary attacks. They worked against nukes and antimatter warheads that didn’t penetrate the ground. Against kinetics, they were worse than useless. But then again, a kinetic had to hit one directly, and that didn’t always happen. Now if they had set off their wormhole squared weapon, every shelter on the facing hemisphere would have been crunched up with the top ten kilometers of crust.

  “Intelligence is warning that they will soon launch another attack on us, your Majesty,” said a concerned McCullom.

  “We knew it was only a matter of time before they were back,” said Sean with a faraway look in his eyes. “Their Empire is too vast, and I doubt they have even fully mobilized their military for this war.”

  It reminded Sean of what he had read about the Second World War on Earth. The Soviets had commanded vast forces against the Germans, but had also occupied a vast territory. They not only had to garrison the western part of their country against the possibility of a German attack, they also maintained a large force in the east against the Japanese. The Cacas also ran a slave empire, and needed to garrison most of the worlds of their demesne. That included naval units to give their garrisons orbital fire support when needed. Now they were moving the units they could to central assembly areas and sending them to the fronts. It was fortunate for the humans that the Cacas hadn’t been able to concentrate their fleet quickly, or they would have rolled over humanity and their allies. And now the innovative humans were deploying new tech while at the same time they were reaching peak production.

  “We could use those ships you lent the Bolthole front, your Majesty,” said Sondra, looking nervous as she spoke the words. Everyone knew that Sean wanted that mess cleaned up, but it wasn’t a primary front.

  Sean just shook his head and continued to stare out the window, silent.

  * * *

  DONUT SYSTEM.

  “This system had changed since last we were here,” said the Ancient known as Klorasoft, waving his two forward most tentacles toward the large holo representation of the black hole system. “Your people have fortified it beyond what they had before,” said the large alien, swiveling on his locomotion cilia and moving toward the one human in the chamber. “What can you tell us of these defenses, Xavier Jackson?”

  “I’ve told you that I will not divulge information that may hurt my people,” said the ebony skinned man who had once been the executive office on an Imperial battle cruiser, until the Ancients had plucked him out of normal space after he had survived catastrophic translation from hyper.

  “Even if it may aid them in the long run,” pleaded the alien.

  Jackson stared at the alien. He wasn’t sure being rolled over by an enemy that was determined to destroy them would be in the long-term interest of the human race. The aliens, of course, were worried about the time line, and what might happen to the entire galaxy if that time line wa
s interfered with. They had caused a number of disasters with their own tampering, and essentially took their own race out. What the humans could do was potentially much worse. But Jackson could not aid them in destroying the Donut, which was the most important asset the Empire had.

  “We are worried about these arrays here, here and here,” said Klorasoft, pointing to three enormous sensor systems set up equidistant from the huge station. Each was hundreds of kilometers in extent, though they had the appearance of a spider web like latticework. They were obviously multispectrum sensors, but Jackson suspected that gravitons were one of the forms of radiation they were designed to detect. Graviton emissions were sometimes hard to read within the swirling gravity waves of the black hole, and a larger array would be more efficient in picking them up. The alien ship was smaller than a light cruiser, though much more powerful, and its engines gave off less in the way of gravitons than any Imperial vessel, both in hyper and normal space. Less didn’t mean none, and though their detection range in VII was less than that of an Imperial ship in IV, they could still be detected if they strayed close enough to a sensor platform. Same in normal space. This ship could boost at fifty gravities and still be almost undetectable. The imperative word there was almost. Get close enough and they would be detected. Give the opponent a powerful enough detection platform and they would be found.

  “We will move in at five gravities,” said Klorasoft, glancing once more at the human. “If we are destroyed, then so are you.”

  As if that matters, thought Jackson. His life was important to him. Of course it was. But he had taken an oath of service, pledging to lay that life on the line in defense of his Empire and its people. So if his death was called for in that defense, he would die.

  He could tell the alien was agitated from the motion of its tentacles. The several hundred thousand ton ship had the firepower of twenty of the fifteen million ton human battleships. Unfortunately for them, there was a lot more firepower in this system. A hundred capital ships, hundreds of cruisers and destroyers, and the unknown defenses of the station. They might not be concentrated enough to bring all that firepower onto a single target, but if they could be given enough warning they could get the tonnage in place to destroy even the ship of the Ancients.