Exodus: Empires at War: Book 15: All Quiet on the Second Front? Read online

  Exodus:

  Empires at War:

  Book 15:

  All Quiet On The Second Front?

  by

  Doug Dandridge

  Dedication

  This novel is dedicated to all of my fans and readers who have stuck by me while I dealt with serious illness. You are the best, and there will be better times ahead.

  Contact me at [email protected]

  Follow my Blog at http://dougdandridge.com

  Follow me at @BrotherofCats

  Copyright © 2019 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. I would like to thank Larry Southard, probably my biggest, and definitely most vocal, fan.

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

  Prologue

  “This is the best you can come up with, Supreme Admiral,” growled the young Emperor, Jresstratta V. He looked with disapproval at the holo star map the naval officer had projected in the center of the meeting chamber. “I want to punish the humans on this front. They are the greater threat.”

  “And that is because they are stronger than the other kingdom,” pleaded the Supreme Admiral, who knew that his very life was in the balance, and the wrong words could tilt it to a fall. He forced the expression on his face to stay neutral, showing neither fear nor exasperation, either of which could set the undisciplined young male off.

  The Supreme Admiral took a quick glance around the chamber. Before the human attack this kind of meeting would have taken place in a traditional stone chamber, sturdy enough, but not proof against the weapons that had brought the palace down on that horrible day. Now it was a similar sized compartment of the toughest alloys the Empire could produce. That brought some comfort to the admiral, though he knew that modern weapons could blast through that alloy just as fast. It had taken slaves, operating heavy machinery, a month to clear the rubble, two more to reconstruct the palace. A small revolt had added to the time, and the bodies of the slaves, rotting away on x shaped platforms or slid down to the bottom of impaling poles, still scented the air outside, though the environmental systems inside kept the stench at bay.

  None of the officers of the Ca’cadasan military relished meeting with their new Emperor, who had only held the seat for a couple of weeks. Many heads had already rolled in that time, as the strong willed and angry young monarch had asserted his will, no matter the answer. It was hinted that he was thinking about instituting similar means of execution for Cacada as was mandated for slaves. A horrifying thought. A Cacada failing might face death, but not the ignominy of that kind of end. And he had now demanded a plan to attack the humans and drive them out of his Empire.

  The problem was the humans were too powerful on this front. The Ca’cadasans still had more ships, but the humans had caught up to and surpassed them in technology. With their wormholes, produced in almost unlimited numbers, along with their new warp fighters, they were more than a match for any number of the big alien’s ships. They also had allies. Both the avians on one side of their Empire, and the reptilians on the other. The Ca’cadasan fleet had been fighting hard to keep them out of the Empire, and failing. It had been a hard struggle, and the humans still had several thousand light years to go before they reached the capital. Unfortunately, the slaves that the Empire depended on were jumping onto the side of the humans. As soon as a human fleet entered a Ca’cadasan system, all of the slaves, no longer fearing the retribution of their masters, rose up in revolt.

  Worst of all, the humans had carried out a strike on the capital system, ravaging it, destroying almost all of its space-based industry. That they hadn’t destroyed the home world of the race when they had the capability, and had it their sights, was something the average Ca’cadasan couldn’t understand. The Supreme Admiral knew why they did it. They wanted to show the people of the Ca’cadasan Empire, dominant species and slaves alike, that they would settle for surrender, and not the extermination of the population. While the admiral couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want to kill his entire species, since that was what they had planned for the humans, he thought it a good strategy. Not only would the slaves fight harder against their masters, but the Ca’cadasan soldiers and spacers might not struggle quite as hard.

  This Emperor would not surrender. Not only was he prideful, though without the accomplishments to earn that pride, but he knew that he would not survive his surrender. His line had caused too much damage to the humans, billions of death, and they would want their revenge. Maybe not against the Ca’cadasan people as a whole, but certainly from the military and civilian leaders who had prosecuted that war.

  The Empire was still involved in a two-front war. The Klavarta, as those genenged human products called themselves, were not as powerful as the New Terran Empire. They had the same tech, more or less, and great numbers of ships, but nowhere near the total military power of their senior ally. And they were slightly further from the capital, not having driven as far inward. They also now had allies, when before they had been universally hated in their space. That was thanks to the humans of the New Terran Empire, who had proven to be masterful diplomats in smoothing over the impression made by the Nation of New Earth, as the rejuvenated star nation was called. The allies weren’t as powerful as the nations bordering the human empire, but they were contributing ships. And every ship added was turning the equations further against the Ca'cadasans.

  “We are spread too thin, Supreme Lord,” said the admiral, bowing once again to show his subservience. “We need to beat the enemy back on one front, so that we can concentrate on the other. And our best chance is against the Klavarta and their allies. We can shift more of our forces to that area and overwhelm them. Smash their industry, destroy their fleets, kill enough of them that it will take decades to recover. After that we can shift our forces back to this front and launch an offensive against the human empire.”

  The Emperor now stared at the plot with interest, obviously thinking about the possibilities. Before the Ca’cadasans had their own wormhole gates such a plan would have been impossible. It took months to get to that front from the capital, months more to come back. Now they could send massive fleets through the wormhole gates they had established to that front. It would still take weeks to transit all of them through and back. Still, it was doable.

  “Make your plans,” said the Emperor, giving a head motion of acceptance. “How soon can you go?”

  “A couple of weeks. Possibly a month.”

  “Make it a couple of weeks,” ordered the Emperor in his petulant voice. “As soon as you have your forces in place, go on the offensive. Hammer those vermin, blast them back into the pre-space age, then bring the fleet back here to destroy our primary enemy.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “And Admiral. Make sure you have enough left on the primary front to stop the humans from pushing further into the Empire.”

  The Supreme Admiral looked at the Emperor with disbelief. They couldn’t stop the New Terran Empire fleets from pushing into the Empire with what they already had on this front. The admiral doubted that the reduced fleet could do as much, and if he didn’t transfer enough of it the plan was stillborn before it started.

  I’ll just have to transfer what’s needed, then try to gain forgiveness after I crush the Klavarta, he thought. A dangerous plan, but if he was to
win this war, or even push the humans to a settled peace, it was a risk he had to take. Otherwise, his fate was sealed.

  * * *

  “The next batch of wormholes should be reaching you in another month,” said the Emperor Sean Lee Ogden Romanov, looking at the face of the woman on the com holo.

  The wormholes had changed long distance communications forever. Prior to their development, the best that could be done was sending signals by hyper relays that took days to cross the Empire. Now he could talk with the people of the Nation of New Earth, more than nine thousand light years away in a straight line, as if they were in the same room as he.

  They could also move ships both ways almost instantaneously. Unfortunately, they could not do the same with the wormholes that had become such a vital tech in the war. A wormhole going through a wormhole was a good way to set off a monstrous explosion, and nothing more. New Earth was now making their own wormholes, a couple a week, using the same method the Cacas were using to a much larger extent. The Empire was producing thirty a day, still not as many as they would have liked, but then their wormhole production facility, the massive Donut, had taken just over a century to construct. It was unlikely that anyone else would have one before five or six decades, no matter how quickly they worked on it.

  “We could use them,” said Thallia Thrann, the Vice President of the Nation of New Earth, and the primary liaison with the New Terran Empire. “We lost too many in the last offensive. Among other things.”

  Sean closed his eyes for a moment as he thought about what she had said. His admiral on that front, in control of all the assets the Empire had lent the Nation, had been killed in the last offensive. The Imperial forces had been fighting under the commander of the Nation fleet, but Sean had insisted that his people fight under one of his own. Well, not the fault of the Klavarta, since they hadn’t ordered the human force to strike at the flank of the Ca’cadasans as they had. However, the highest-ranking Imperial admiral on that front was a three-star, a vice admiral, and much too low of rank to command all Empire forces in that region. Admiral Mikal Stuynovich didn’t have the experience for promotion, and frankly Sean wasn’t sure he was the right man for the job.

  He opened his eyes and looked at Thrann, one of the minority of non-altered humans in that nation. She looked the same as any of Sean’s human subjects, though her line hadn’t gone through the genetic improvement project that all of Sean’s people had centuries prior. They were the same as the humans who had fled Earth. Not quite as strong, or as smart, as his people. Thrann herself was on the far side of the bell curve for her people, making her as bright as the upper five percent of Sean's people. More importantly, she knew her people, both standard human and Klavarta.

  The President of the Nation, Manstara Alizar Klanarat, was an Alpha line of the Klavarta, engineered to be the perfect spaceship crewman, a pilot. The Alpha line was slightly taller than normal humans, with nictating membranes in their eyes and gills on their necks, allowing them to survive in an oxygenated liquid environment so they could pilot ships at g forces beyond their inertial compensators. Alphas lived to fifty or so years, maybe a little longer if lucky, after a growth stage of twelve years. That made them longer lived than any of the other engineered lines. Still, not long enough in the eyes of the Empire's humans, who could live to beyond three hundred years with good fortune. The geneticists of the Empire were working on that problem, and the next generation of children were assured double the life span of their parents.

  Thallia herself was about forty, and was already showing signs of age that wouldn’t appear in Imperial humans until they passed two hundred years. If she was lucky she would live to a hundred and twenty, and the Empire was also working on improving that line to the same extent as their own. The next generation would have the same normal augmentation as the humans of the Empire, and the same lifespan.

  “I will have a new admiral on her way there within the next couple of days,” said Sean, smiling. “Actually a couple of them, along with more ships. I think you’ll like them.” I hope, he thought. The one he was sending was not his best diplomatic officer, and could screw the pooch big time if she was not careful, but she was very good in combat. At the moment that seemed much more important.

  “And of course you will want most of your arriving wormholes given to that officer’s force,” said Thallia with a grimace.

  “About half of them,” said Sean, nodding. That was still a sore point between the two groups of humans. “However, they will still be in close support of your fleet, and my people know how to use them much better.”

  Thrann looked like she wanted to argue with that, but Sean could tell that she thought it over first and saw that he was correct. She might not like the fact that the Imperials knew their own tech better than her people, but they were still in the process of catching up. In another decade they would have the engineers and scientists in place to match those of the humans, but not yet.

  “I look forward to meeting this officer. And I hope that he will do all that you expect.”

  “She,” said Sean with a smile. “They are both female, and I think you will find them hell on wheels against your enemy.”

  Chapter One

  Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. George S. Patton

  “They’re ready for us to transit through, ma’am,” called out the com officer, looking over at the seat of his admiral in the center of the flag bridge.

  A liner had just come through from the other side, filled with Klavarta who had come into the Empire to be educated in Imperial science and engineering. There were currently millions of them in the Empire, attending colleges and technical schools. Even some tens of thousands serving with the Fleet, getting firsthand experience. Trying to catch up through accelerated training.

  “Take us through, Captain Gerasy,” Grand Fleet Admiral Beata Bednarczyk ordered the commander of the superheavy battleship Romulus.

  The twenty-eight million ton hyper VII behemoth was among the most powerful warships in the Imperial Fleet. The only thing the flagship lacked that her sisters had was a wormhole. Beata was hoping that would be rectified in the near future, not just because it gave her a powerful weapon, but because of the command and control capabilities it imbued her flagship with. She looked over at the bank of Klassekian com techs along one side of the bridge who would give her links to many of her other ships. Still, they couldn't do everything a wormhole could do, like high speed data transmission over tens of thousands of links. But they were the next best thing, and better when it came to providing instantaneous com links to all of the escorts and fighters of the fleet.

  In fact, they were bringing over a thousand sibling groups with them into Nation of New Earth space. The aliens had volunteered readily when they learned about the struggle of the Klavarta against the Cacas. And it wasn’t like they were slaveholders, like the Gorgansha they had refused to serve with.

  “See you on the other side, Admiral,” said Admiral Mara Montgomery over the com.

  “It’s a date,” said a smiling grand fleet admiral.

  It wasn’t the command she had been promised, leading a battlegroup on the flank of Duke Taelis Mgonda’s fleet. Things had changed, and the Emperor had needed a commander he could trust, and had sweetened the deal with a promotion for the fleet admiral. Beata had asked for Mara, and the newly promoted four star had been given to her without protest.

  The battleship, named for the mythical first king of Rome, thrust its nose into the mirrored surface of the wormhole. To the people onboard it felt like they were in transit for an indeterminate but almost endless time. It was the one thing that humans hated about wormhole travel. Not just humans, as every species that went through the gate told of similar experiences. Some worse, some not as bad. Even though the actual measure time was in the nanoseconds.

  And then they were nine thousand light years from their point of origin, from the Central Black
Hole of the Supersystem to the new capital system of the Nation of New Earth.

  “My God,” exclaimed one of the flag bridge crew, watching the scene that appeared on the viewer.

  They had all expected a frontier world, a couple of hundred million intelligent beings, a small but growing presence in the orbitals. Instead they were facing the night side of an Earth-like planet, filled with the masses of lights that bespoke enormous cities. There were thousands of objects in orbit, from defense sats to enormous industrial platforms. Ships were coming and going from orbit, liners and freighters, while warships hung in further orbits.

  “It looks like they have been busy since their home-world was destroyed,” said Captain Gerasy.

  “Obviously,” said Beata, looking over the industrial might of a powerful star nation.

  “We’re receiving a com request from the planet, ma’am,” called out the senior com officer, Commander Cecilia Xang. “They’re saying it’s from their president.”

  Here we go, thought Beata, frowning. She had never got along with politicians. Hell, she barely got along with Sean, the man she had sworn her oaths to. And this was the closest thing to Sean in this space.

  “Admiral Bednarczyk,” said the strange looking alien who appeared on the viewer.

  No, not really strange, thought the admiral. Klavarta were engineered humans, and despite their skin color and their eyes, they were proportioned almost exactly like the humans Beata was familiar with. Convergent evolution wouldn’t do that. Even the almost human Malticons were proportioned somewhat different in their torso to limb length.

  “Mr. President,” said the admiral, bowing her head.

  “I have heard much about you, Admiral,” said the Klavarta President, Manstara Klanarat, laughing. “Some of it good.”