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

  There is an attempted assassination attempt on Sean, and a successful attempt on the Emperor and his two older sons during a tour of the Donut. The assassin is an officer of the Imperial Protection Detail, causing distrust to grow among the agencies charged with the security of the Empire. The same day as the assassination, the Leader of the House of Lords is killed in his home. Sean is now the heir to the Empire, and the man who must be seated as soon as possible on the throne, but he is almost a week’s one way com range from the capital.

  The Ca’cadasans now attack, sending large fleets into several industrial or base systems, and smaller forces to many other stars. The Massadara system, a major Imperial base, is one of the systems attacked. Sean is serving on one of the battleships that happens to be in that system, and is aboard the vessel as it heads into combat with the enemy. Word comes to the system that Sean is the uncrowned Emperor, and his ship, against his protests, is ordered out of combat. His ship, the Sergiov, heads out of the system before the main battle begins, a small Ca’cadasan force on its heels. The main battle is joined, and, though it inflicts casualties on the Ca’cadasan fleet that is only about a decade ahead in technology, it is defeated, and the system falls.

  The Sergiov is battered by the enemy, and Sean is rescued from the ship by Captain Mei Lei and her hyper VII battle cruiser. The battle cruiser fights its way out of the system with the help of Commander Bryce Suttler’s stealth/attack ship, and, along with Commander Maurice von Rittersdorf and his destroyer, starts on the voyage to get Sean back to the capital and the throne. The Ca’cadasans track the two vessels, and Sean escapes on the destroyer while Mei sacrifices her ship in a battle with the Ca’cadasan supercruisers. The battle cruiser Jean de Arc falls out of hyperspace in a catastrophic translation, a low survivability event, but nonetheless manages to survive and starts the long journey home.

  Rear Admiral Mara Montgomery is dispatched with her scout force to locate Sean and get him back to the capital, while von Rittersdorf plays hide and seek against the Ca’cadasans, trying to get the unseated Emperor to safety. Von Rittersdorf catches one of the much larger Ca’cadasan ships in a brilliant ambush which destroys the enemy ship, while causing severe damage to his own. Montgomery’s task force enters the system, and she dispatches the other two supercruisers, then takes the Emperor aboard her flagship. Von Rittersdorf begins the long journey home in his crippled ship with escorts. Sean learns that one of the nearby systems is under siege and, against the protests of the Admiral, orders her to take her ships to break that siege and evacuate the colonists on the frontier world. Meanwhile, the Leader of the House of Lords advances plans to put an Imperial Cousin on the throne while the true heir’s whereabouts is unknown. The Ca’cadasans invade and take the kingdom of New Moscow, and make serious inroads into the New Terran Republic, the sister governments to the Empire.

  On Sestius IV Brevet Brigadier General Samuel Baggett fights the landing of the Ca’cadasans with his mixed command. Farmer and ex-hunter Cornelius Walborski deserts the militia to get his pregnant wife to safety. Though bleeding the enemy, Baggett is forced to fall back into the wilderness before the enemy ground warriors. Walborski’s son is born, but his wife is killed while they are running from the aliens. The farmer goes mad, and stalks the jungle with the skills he had learned as an assistant hunt master, killing many aliens in the jungle. He meets the legendary Preacher of special ops fame, now a retired Ranger and current minister on the planet.

  Montgomery’s task force takes the system and the planet, and evacuates all those that want to leave, just before a larger enemy force enters the system and forces it to flee. Sean meets Dr. Jennifer Conway, who has lost her own fiancé’ in the invasion, and falls in love with her. The scout force fights a running battle back to Conundrum base, rescued at the last moment by the fleet of Duke Taelis Mgonda. Von Rittersdorf makes it to safety, while Mei Lei and her crew are rescued from hyper by another battle cruiser. The XO of the Jean de Arc, Xavier Jackson, falls out of hyper while trying to rescue some crew who could not get off the ship. Surviving the translation, he is rescued by beings from legend, the Ancients that everyone assumes are extinct.

  On the Donut it is discovered that an ancient race known as the Yugalyth, another creature from legend, capable of changing its very body form over a period of days and duplicating any creature, is at large. A Yugalyth agent imitates Dr. Lucille Yu, the station Director, and attempts to destroy the huge construct. Dr. Yu uses quantum teleportation, an experimental technique that only succeeds in moving about half the material being teleported to its target, to teleport negative matter to destroy the bomb the creature put on the station attitude control board. The new enemy is discovered, one which originates in the realm of the Empire’s close ally, Elysium.

  The Knockermen, a reptilian race in the Elysium Empire, revolt against the dominant Brakakak. The Brakakak eventually curb the revolt, but are forced to commit their entire fleet to searching out the rebels and breaking the rebellion. The leader of Elysium and his family are forced to take refuge with the Terrans during the battle of the capital.

  Sean comes back to the Supersystem by the wormhole gates that are now being deployed through Imperial space. Chief of Naval Operations Gabriel Lenkowski gathers a fleet that transports Sean to the capital planet, where, with a large force of Marines, he lands during the coronation ceremony and stops the Lords from crowning his cousin. Sean is now Emperor, Commander and Chief of the Imperial Military, and, given his wartime powers, the most powerful Monarch in a century. His companions go off to other commands; Mei Lei to a battle cruiser squadron, one equipped with new wormhole launched weapons; von Rittersdorf to lead a new destroyer squadron; and Baggett to command of a heavy infantry brigade. Cornelius Walborski, on the recommendation of Preacher, joins the Imperial Army with hopes of being augmented and becoming a Ranger.

  The Ca’cadasans hit Conundrum, the HQ of Sector IV, hours after Sean jumps through the wormhole from there. They take the system, and land troops to complete the conquest of the planet. Sean is forced to engage in a hit and run war against an enemy that is still more advanced, and more powerful, than his own fleet. He orders his units to refuse combat when possible, and only to fight when they can inflict maximum damage on the enemy. Q-ships, militarized merchant vessels with quantum teleporters capable of sending antimatter into the interior of an enemy ship, bait and destroy Ca’cadasan raiders. The Lords go on the warpath against Sean, demanding that he commit his fleet to a major battle. His prophetic dreams indicate that one of the core worlds, the heavily populated industrial planets at the heart of the Empire, is a target. But the dream does not tell him when.

  Wormhole gates are dropped in occupied systems, then maneuvered to planetfall, allowing ground forces to insert. This is done on most of the occupied worlds, allowing the units to engage the aliens in Guerilla warfare. Preacher leads a Ranger brigade against the Ca’cadasans on the surface of Conundrum, and the campaign forces the enemy off the planet. The Lasharans, religious fanatics, are again attacking the frontiers of the Empire, and Baggett’s unit, as part of a heavy infantry corps, is sent to take their home planet and occupy their primary temple, breaking their will.

  The Ca’cadasans strike at the Cimmeria system, utterly obliterating the two inhabited industrial worlds located there. Sean retaliates by sending forces through wormholes to strike behind the main enemy fleet and destroy their bases. The Fenri Empire, old enemies of the humans, sign an alliance with the Ca’cadasans, and the New Terran Empire launches a spoiling attack on those aliens. The logical beings of the Crakista Empire, seeing the Ca’cadasans as the greater threat, join the human cause, ordering their military to offer all possible aid to the humans. Things are beginning to look up until the Ca’cadasans launch yet another assault, almost overrunning all of Sector IV.

  Sean and Jennifer become lovers, a fact taken advantage of by the Yugalyth agents, who kidnap her and threaten to kill her if Sean does not place himself in their hands. Se
an agrees, and has himself equipped with a pair of small wormholes that allow him to kill the kidnappers when they think they have him in their power.

  Cornelius completes Ranger school, finds a new love himself, and is assigned to the planet Azure, one of the deadliest in the Empire. He and his men stalk the Ca’cadasans through a jungle that is an enemy to both, and encounters a new client race of the Ca’cadasans, the supremely competent hunters called Maurids. Cornelius saves and is saved by a young girl, Rebecca, and completes the mission his company couldn’t, destroying a Ca’cadasan headquarters. He returns to the capital system again a hero, one of the few to win the Imperial Medal of Heroism twice. He marries, and gains a new mom for his baby son, and his adopted daughter, Rebecca.

  Sean, in need of a victory, plans an ambush for the Ca’cadasan fleet in the Congreeve system, a frontier world made up to look like an industrial developing planet. The Cacas, using the Knockermen, send in a strike force to take out the Donut. And the Empire sends in a strike against the Fenri Empire, the new ally of the Ca’cadasans. Cornelius attends Officer Candidate School and is well on his way to becoming an officer, while the Opposition Party of the Lords continues to cause trouble for the Emperor, threatening a No Confidence Vote in Parliament.

  The strike into Fenri space is a success, taking the heart out of their fleet and capturing several of their industrial planets, sending the small mammalians into a frenzy. The Fenri still have some power in their fleet, and organize an offensive that kicks the NTE naval force out of their space, stranding Baggett and his soldiers on the surface of one of the planets.

  The Ca’cadasan strike force makes it to Elysium space, commandeers a Brakakak light cruiser, and takes the station in orbit around that Empire’s capital world. The Cacas jump through the wormhole to the Donut, bringing thousands of troops and four Quarkium devices, intending to destroy the station. The Knockermen destroy the Brakakak station with the device that they were given by the huge aliens. And Walborski, heading through the Donut on a short leave to see his wife and children, finds himself involved in another battle.

  Sean lures the Ca’cadasan main fleet into battle, springing his ambush, and ravaging the enemy fleet. They turn into a tougher opponent that he planned on, and some of the enemy fleet escapes to head back to their base, leaving the Imperial fleet with a lesser victory than wanted, and higher casualties than expected.

  Cornelius organizes a team to keep the Cacas from exploding one of their devices on the Donut, and only one of the bombs is detonated. The station, though damaged, survives. Meanwhile, Baggett’s force in Fenri space resist the ground assault with heavy casualties, until relieved by the Fleet, and the Fenri are all but knocked out of the war. Natasha Sung is meanwhile closing in on her goal, the aliens who are also fighting the enemy at the other side of their empire.

  The alliance fleet reorganizes and prepares to attack the Cacas, while they are still reeling from their defeat. Using the cover of a supernova explosion, which covers the resonances of ships transiting hyperspace, Sean launched a multi-winged assault on the remaining Ca’cadasan forces in the Empire. The fleets strike without warning, bringing the Cacas to battle and all but annihilating their forces. The Caca commander orders his remaining ships to get away as they can, then is incapacitated during the escape. The Great Admiral’s second in command does the unthinkable and surrenders the remaining fleet.

  The Emperor discovers that about a billion New Moscow citizens are being held in the former Kingdom of New Moscow, including over seven hundred million on the homeworld. The Cacas are processing the humans for their protein, and Sean orders their rescue at all costs. A combined New Terran Empire, New Terran Republic and Crakista fleet invades the space of New Moscow, intent on rescuing the prisoners. The main concern is that the Cacas will kill their captives before the ground forces can rescue them. Using their wormhole technology, the Empire is able to insert a heavy corps and numerous special ops teams, including a company led by Cornelius Walborski, to storm the camps and rescue the hundreds of millions of prisoners.

  The prisoners are freed, and the Empire starts to evacuate them through wormholes, while a massive Caca fleet is tracked on the way to the system, due to arrive well before the main Imperial force. The Fenri, with Ca’cadasan help, strike at the Imperial force invading their space, and inflict a significant defeat on them, sidetracking the invasion force and compelling the Imperials to go back on the defensive so they can regroup.

  Prologue

  GALACTIC SPACE: April 8th, 1002.

  We’re almost there, thought Commodore Natasha Sung, looking at the holo that showed the local region. Local, of course, was a relative term. Within that three hundred light year radius sphere that surrounded her three explorers were millions of stars. Some were highlighted as belonging to some civilization or other, based on either the information from their new friends, the Grilyon, or energy emissions they had picked up themselves. And there was no telling how many preindustrial civilizations there were out there.

  Two hundred and fifty light years to rimward was the supposed boundary of Ca’cadasan Empire. There was no telling just how accurate that border was, since the Cacas were an expanding Empire. Hell, they had been an expanding Empire for over ten thousand years, their borders always changing. The Grilyon had been fighting with them for the last fifty years, mostly the hit and run style of their race. Still, it had slowed the expansion of the large aliens.

  And ahead, along the Sagittarian Arm, was the power they had come to see. An empire already at war with the Cacas, who had been giving the aggressive aliens all they could handle along their border with them.

  “I wish we knew more about these people,” said Commander Gauroi Laaksonen, her Exec on the Nina. “Even our new friends didn’t seem to have any information on the Overlords, as they called them. Only the common soldiers that formed their military.”

  That part had bothered her as well. Supposedly no one in this region had met the species that ruled this Empire. The Grilyon didn’t even know the name of the Empire, much less the ruling species. All they knew was that the Klavarta, the warriors of the Empire, were not they. They had a good description of those warriors, who they had clashed with several times in the past, and fought beside much more recently, mostly by accident, since no one really liked or trusted them. But no one had ever seen the rulers, who the Klavarta were very emphatic were not they.

  “Well, we’ll find out all we need to know in another two hundred light years or so,” she answered the officer. “We need to be cautious, since they’re sure to have seen nothing like us. If they mistake our ships for invaders, we might have more trouble than we can handle.”

  The Nina, along with her sisters, Pinta and Santa Maria, were large ships, all massing just under thirty-one million tons, and they were armed as heavily as a fifteen million ton battleship. But they were not battleships, they lacked the heavy armor and most importantly the acceleration of a warship. They could accelerate at just over a hundred gravities, as compared to the almost five hundred gravities for a standard battleship. They were travelling in hyper VII, as high a dimension as was possible. The ships had been made for the long haul, getting into VII, then accelerating up to point nine five light and coasting through from months to years.

  Even if they had been warships, there were only the three of them, and the fleets battling it out in this space had to have been titanic, at least the size of the forces engaged in her own Empire. Each of her ships carried six of the destroyer sized hyper VI explorers, eighteen ships that had been intended for other explorations during a voyage. They were about as heavily armed as a frigate, and capable of the same acceleration as a military class warship. Their one flaw was their inability to reach into hyper VII, which the Commodore now thought a criminal lack of forethought.

  “We’re picking up hyper emissions, ma’am,” said Lieutenant SG Atarata Parata, the Sensor Officer. “Just at the edge of detection range.”

  The Commodore e
xtreme zoomed the central holo to a close up of the region around them, about a light year out, and four clusters of ships appeared, three of them with a total of five vessels, one, directly ahead, with seven. The other three groups were arrayed to the sides, about sixty degrees from each other, and all about a light year away. They can’t be very large for us to have detected them further out, thought the Commodore.

  “So, they have us boxed in,” said Fujardo, trying to keep his voice steady, and failing.

  Yep, thought Natasha. And if they’re Cacas, we’re dead. She was not about to surrender her ships to Ca’cadasans, so they could be interrogated, then turned into rations. She had seen the newsflashes from Republic space, of the camps and the way the Cacas treated their human prisoners. And she couldn’t afford to let them have any of the technology on her ship to add to their own tech base.

  “We’re starting to get a profile on the emissions from those ships,” stated Parata, her own voice, though still strained, showing a hint of relief. “Whatever they are, they don’t appear to be Ca’cadasan ships. Emission patterns, unknown.”

  Which doesn’t mean they’re friendly, thought the Commodore. Only that they’re not the primary foe of my race.

  “Ships are decelerating,” called out Fujardo. “I think they’re trying to match velocities with us.”

  And we can probably blow right past them at our current velocity, thought Sung. Her ships couldn’t accelerate worth a damn, another flaw that would have to be addressed on future vessels. But they could get up to as high a velocity as any warship. Actually, slightly higher, as at the moment all three vessels were doing point nine five eight light in the VII dimension. That is, if they don’t decide to put some weapons in our path. Then we’re easy to hit targets, with our own velocity providing the energy for a kinetic kill.