Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front Read online

  “There is,” said Sean, looking at the Baron. “I think our people are more competent, our commanders more intelligent, and our tech is advancing at a rate that will surpass theirs in all aspects within the next couple of years. Our ships are better designed, and more capable of putting all of their firepower onto a single target. We have wormholes, something they will not be able to duplicate in any numbers, no matter what they do. Those give us some very definite advantages, and we are discovering more every day. And we have discovered a species that can communicate instantaneously across all dimensions of space, which will give us even more of an advantage in command and control. Still, we are outnumbered heavily, and as Joseph Stalin said over two thousand years ago, quantity has a quality all its own. There is another saying on old Earth, though at the moment I cannot attribute it to anyone. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “And you feel that these xenophobic humans are that friend?” asked the Prime Minister.

  “I don’t see how I can sell them to the members of the Lords,” said the Baron. “Some of my fellows in the Lords might be bastards. But I doubt any of them are going to want to embrace a genocidal group of xenophobes.”

  “That is not known for sure,” said Sergiov, looking at the Baron, then switching her gaze to the Emperor. “Right now this is all conjecture. We need more information, which our people on the spot are trying to gather.”

  “You have a question, Prime Minister?” asked Sean, seeing the concentration on the face of the Countess.

  “Just one, concerning the Cacas. Why did it take them this long to find us?”

  “I think it’s because they didn’t know which direction we headed in,” said Sean. “According to our Maurid friends, the Cacas have been expanding in more or less a sphere, or an oblong, about three hundred light years a century, making sure that what they had taken was consolidated and secured before moving on. Until they finally hit space in which we were known.”

  “And most of us thought they had given up,” said von Hausser Schmidt, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. “Or their Empire had fallen. Because that’s what we wanted to happen.”

  “Your species is known for its predilection for wishful thinking,” rumbled T’lisha. “Sometimes it’s a strength, but often a weakness. It allows you to tackle problems that most other species would find too daunting for words. But it also results in your ignoring problems until they, what is the term, bite you in the ass.”

  “And what do we do if Parliament will not approve an alliance?” asked the Prime Minister. “Go ahead and form a compact anyway, through Imperial Edict?”

  “If I have to,” said Sean, looking her in the eye in unflinching determination. “Right now we are two powerful nations swinging individually at a giant. If we could coordinate, strike in unison when the time is right, we might be able to bring the giant to his knees, for a time. And time is what we need. With time we can field a fleet that is more massive than ever before and advanced beyond anything seen since the days of the Ancients. Without time, we will soon be looking for someplace to run and hide.”

  “I can try to make that point to my fellows,” said von Hausser Schmidt, looking over at the leaders of the other houses. “And I’m sure my compatriots who lead the Commons and the Scholars will do the same. Whether they will listen or not, especially without all of the facts, which I’m sure you will not want told outside of committees, is another matter altogether. If you do find out they are a bunch of genocidal maniacs, many will dig in their feet and refuse to treat with them.”

  “Then I will be exercising my right of Imperial Edict,” said Sean, glaring at the man. “As is my prerogative in wartime.”

  “And then some of the arrogant bastards will dig in their heels even deeper,” said the Prime Minister with a grimace.

  “And what if we arrange for some changes to be made in the leadership of our hopeful allies,” said Sean, looking over at Ekaterina and Lord T’lisha.

  “What kind of changes” asked Ishner suspiciously.

  “I’m not sure, yet,” said Sean. “We need more information. But if we could engineer a change in ownership, might that not satisfy the members of Parliament?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a ‘peace conference’, you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and airplanes.

  Joseph Stalin.

  KLAVARTA SPACE MAY 20TH, 1002.

  “I think they know we are here, my Lord,” said the Chief of the Staff from his chair behind the Great Admiral.

  Great Admiral the Superior Lord Jarrashinata Karzott grunted in reply as he looked at the tactical holo. His own great fleet was spread out over almost a cubic light year as they moved into the space of the Klavarta. Of the damned humans, he thought, glaring at that plot, then looking over at another holo that showed a larger map of the space they were in, their target more than a twelve hundred light years ahead. They were in VII, traveling at point nine five light, about twelve days travel time including deceleration to the newly found capital system of the enemy. They had been in this space for three days. Of course, with relativity, much less time had passed aboard the ship. More like a day of ship time.

  Of course the enemy had their small ships all over this space, making it impossible to sneak in. The plan was to simply rush in with the huge fleet and not give the enemy time to concentrate anything on them. They would only have to deal with whatever small forces could be thrown at them, which could not possibly defeat his fleet. The way out could be another matter altogether, but he thought he would take care of that when the time came. Right now, the priority was to hit the enemy capital and leave it a ruin.

  “Another force coming up on the port side,” called out the Tactical Officer, as a dozen icons appeared on the plot. They were not up to the velocity of the fleet as of yet, but with their acceleration, over eight hundred gravities, they would be able to intercept in another hour.

  They must be all grabber units, inertial compensators, and electromag screens, thought the Great Admiral as he looked at a schematic of the ships the Klavarta were using to attack. They were in the twelve thousand ton range, pygmies compared to his smallest warships, not even as big as his couriers. As far as they could tell from the group they had run over on the way in, they carried six missiles, a forward mounted particle beam weapon, and a quartet of laser domes. Not that heavily armed for a warship, though with massive armaments for something its size.

  What they had was acceleration and terminal velocity. His ships could at most pull five hundred and thirty gravities. He had fighters aboard all of his ships that could make over a thousand gees, but they were useless in hyper. And point nine five light was his terminal velocity, unless he wanted to run the risk of all of his males contracting radiation sickness. The enemy vessels were said to be able to reach point nine eight, which seemed impossible on the face of it. Even an electromag field ten times the strength of that his vessels deployed would be leaking high energy particles like a sieve.

  “Are they suicide fighters?” asked his Chief of Staff, staring at the holo and obviously having the same train of thought as his master.

  “It seems that they are,” said the Great Admiral, looking at the craft that were on approach. There was no way they could survive contact with his fleet. If they were lucky they might get in a couple of licks before they were converted to vapor.

  “Order the fleet to close up,” he told the Com Officer. “I want us to be in the optimal formation to destroy them before they penetrate the fleet.”

  The Com Officer acknowledged, and the grav pulse code was sent out ordering all ships to shift inward just a bit. I should have thought of that before. It wasn’t like our formation was really doing anything positive. It was standard procedure with as many ships as they did to have a minimum spread between the vessels. They were rare, but accidents did happen. With attack imminent, preventing accidents was no longe
r the priority.

  “We have translations ahead, my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer, his voice almost panicked.

  Eight more icons appeared on the plot, two hyper VII light minutes ahead. They had translated through at point four light, point one light above the maximum jump velocity of the Caca ships. Even with their acceleration they would not get up to too much higher a velocity before they made contact. But with the velocity of the fleet they were actually approaching each other at near light speed. That in and of itself was counterintuitive, as the velocities added together would be much more that light speed. Due to the dilation of time and space though, that result was impossible. Still, the part that made sense was that two objects impacting on that approach would release enough energy to totally destroy both of them.

  “Have our lead scouts fire a volley of missiles at them,” ordered the Great Admiral. The best strategy was to blast them out of space at enough distance where catastrophic translation would remove all of their matter from hyper, and with it the threat to navigation that somewhat larger pieces would become.

  An instant later a hundred green vector arrows appeared on the plot, forging ahead and maximum acceleration. That acceleration was much less than at lower velocities, since each missile massed almost four times what it did at rest. Still, they forged ahead of the fleet at two thousand gravities, heading for the best intercept they could generate.

  At a distance of one hyper light minute, the distance light traveled in the dimension they were in, and not the comparable massively shorter distance in normal space, the missiles reached their target zone. The attacking ships went into their evasive maneuvers, making them as difficult of targets as possible. There were still two hits, two of the small attacking ships blasted into plasma by warheads that were made to do the same to multi-megaton warships. Other warheads got proximity kills, three of them, as they detonated close enough to fill the space ahead of the target with a concentration of plasma. The clouds only existed in hyper for a second, but that was long enough to form a barrier that the attacking ships were forced through. It was enough to blast them out of hyper as well.

  Three ships came on, launching their own missiles, and boring in after them. Counters and lasers engaged, and two more of the small vessels erupted into blasts that scattered their matter before it glowed and faded out. Of the eighteen incoming missiles, four made it through, almost statistically impossible against the defenses they were facing. Three detonated on close approach, causing some superficial damage to two of the Ca’cadasan scout ships. One hit a third scout dead center, shattering the vessel, sending its remaining pieces into a catastrophic translation.

  And then the remaining ship came in, straight for another of the scouts. It deviated a bit from a straight approach to get through the defenses, then straightened out at the last second and plunged directly through the bow the scout. Both ships disappeared into a flare of eye hurting brilliance and were gone in an instant.

  “They are suicide attack ships,” said the Chief of Staff, giving a head motion of disbelief. “Unless they are robotic attack craft.”

  The Great Admiral knew they were not. Unless they were simple minded computers, and not artificial intelligence, which they were not acting like. The Ca’cadasans, like most advanced species that had tampered with AI, had found out that giving machines any kind of truly intelligent control was a bad idea. “No, those were manned by the Klavarta slaves of the humans.”

  The Chief of Staff gave him a disbelieving look. Ca’cadasans were trained to be obedient, to follow orders without question, even at the risk of their lives. However, they would not willingly go to their deaths without trying to accomplish their mission without giving their lives. But these creatures the humans had enslaved would attack with the intent of suiciding. In fact, they were reaching velocities that more or less ensured their deaths from radiation poisoning.

  “Launch on those other attack craft,” ordered the Great Admiral, pointing at ships that were still on their interception course. “The sooner we can take them out, the better. I would prefer to have them gone before they, by chance, hit some more of my ships.”

  None of those ships made it into attack range. But the Ca’cadasan fleet had used over a hundred missiles to take out a dozen small ships. At this point, they would destroy a fifth of their own tonnage while emptying their magazines and the reloads on the colliers along with them.

  Minutes later the grav waves from the grabbers of two more small attack forces hit the sensors of the fleet. Moments after they appeared on the tactical plot, two more insect stings on the way.

  * * *

  NEW EARTH.

  “They are different from our own Pures,” said Slardra, looking into the faces of all the other Alphas gathered in the chamber. There were over a hundred of the beings, all in command positions. All cleared by the Revolutionary Committee.

  “But they are still Pures,” said Admiral Manstara, the commander of the Home Fleet, at least in an operational sense. He spit out the word, Pures, as if it was an obscenity. Which, to these Alphas, it was.

  Most of the subspecies of Klavarta were fine with the concept that the Pures were to be served, to follow orders no matter what. But most of the other subspecies weren’t as deep of thinkers as the Alphas, who had been created to pilot and command the most advanced ships the kingdom could produce. They were almost as intelligent as the Pures, in some cases even more so.

  “These, humans, are different in the way they interact with other species,” said Slardra, looking at the Admiral. “They actually coexist with other species, and don’t go out of their way to exterminate them.”

  The chamber erupted with shouts, arguments, Alphas murmuring to each other. The Alpha in charge clapped his hands together and shouted out, trying to restore order.

  “And these are not servants these humans have built to fight for them, like us?” asked one of the Alphas seated near the front.

  “They are genuine aliens,” said Slardra, shaking her head. “The, dracocentaur, I think they call it, is like nothing I have ever seen, or found mention of in the databanks. The avian is like some we have seen before, though not exactly. The one thing I can say for sure is that they are not human.”

  “So these humans actually allow the aliens in their Empire?” said another of the attendees.

  “More than that, they have made them full citizens of their Empire, with all the rights and privileges of their humans.”

  “How can their leadership be so different from our own leaders?” asked the Admiral. “Did you learn anything about their leaders?”

  “They were very open about their leaders, about their hierarchy, even about the other powers in their region.”

  “And they are at peace with all of their neighbors? Or have them in their alliance?”

  “They are at peace with some, and at war with some others. Two of the great powers have joined the two human kingdoms in the region in their war against the Monsters, while one neighbor is on the side of the Ca’cadasans. And one seems to be just crazy as hell, and keeps attacking the larger human power over and over.”

  “And they do not destroy these aliens?” asked the Admiral, shaking his head. There were numerous head shakes in the chamber, many of the gathered not sure whether they believed it as well.

  “They war with them, they take territory and punish them for their incursions. But though they are capable of totally destroying them, they do not.”

  “Would that our leaders had such compassion,” said someone in the assembly.

  True, thought Slardra, nodding. Their leaders seemed to take cruelty to new levels every time their servants thought they had seen it all.

  “And their rulers? Are they immortal, like ours?”

  Of course their rulers weren’t really immortal. They aged, and the bodies their consciousnesses rode in eventually grew old and died, while a much younger version of them took its place. They knew it was cloning, something that the servant s
ubspecies, and even the great majority of the Pure humans, were not allowed to avail themselves of. Every being in the Empire, save the several hundred chosen, aged and died in a normal manner, and were only allowed to reproduce more of their own in the old manner.

  “I looked over the records while on their ship, the ones they allowed me to peruse. And they have had many leaders through the thousand years of their Empire. More than twenty of them. Some have ruled for almost a century, most for much shorter periods of time. They can live for up to three centuries, but most do not ascend to leadership until they are in the late stages of life.”

  “So they don’t clone?” asked the Admiral, a confused expression on his face. “Why would they not avail themselves of functional immortality if they could?”

  “And why wouldn’t the Masters allow the other Pures to extend their lives the same way?” replied Slardra with a question in return. “All I can tell you is that the Commodore and her people seemed somewhat disturbed by the idea of the immortality of our leaders. I get the impression that cloning is a forbidden technology in their Empire, at least the growing of complete organisms, though I did find that they force grew parts to replace those lost in accidents, or battles. But the cloning of a complete being, followed by the transfer of consciousness, is forbidden for some reason.”

  “Something we need to find out more about,” said the Admiral. “There is a great deal about these humans I would know. But carefully. We must not alert the Overlords as to our curiosity, lest they figure out what we are about.”

  And that would mean death to us all, thought the Pilot/Commander. The Masters would not stand for what they planned.

  “I would love to be able to have congress with other intelligent beings,” said Slardra in a quiet voice. “To exchange ideas, and not missiles.” She looked over at the Admiral. “But we are pariahs in this sector. None of the other species want anything to do with us.”