Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) Read online

  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. Sean 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 Emper
or, 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.

  Prologue

  NEW MOSCOW SPACE, JANUARY 25TH, 1002.

  Narwhal was the stealthiest vessel ever built by any known power. Her grabbers and her hyperdrive were tuned to especially tight tolerances, giving off as little in the way of graviton emissions as possible. Her built in wormhole whisked away all but the merest hint of radiation, heat or other. And she was the first dual drive equipped vessel in generations, carrying not only a VI dimension hyperfield generator, but also a subspace drive which could be used to sneak up to systems without the characteristic signal of translation from hyper to normal space She needed all of that stealth capability for the current mission, scouting out a system well behind enemy lines.

  And it would have to be a system crawling with enemy shipping, thought Commander Ariella Ben Gurian, the captain of the vessel. Her Jewish family had given her a name which meant lioness of God, but she was feeling very sheepish at the moment. Seeing over a hundred Ca’cadasan warships moving about the system while in a one eighty thousand ton ship tended to do that to even the most aggressive commanders. And there was no telling how many more were powered down and out of detection range.

  They had come out of subspace a week before, and spent the entire time creeping into the system, coasting at point zero one light. If they were spotted it would soon be realized they were not a natural object, not moving at three thousand kilometers a second. They needed to get through the system and out the other side, though, and with their stealth, being spotted was of low probability.

  “We’re in range for a good view of the planet, ma’am,” called out the Sensor Officer.

  “Then let’s see what we have.”

  The holo changed, showing a blue and white orb, the one habitable planet in the system. They were looking at a globe that was half dark, half light in its current orientation to the ship, which was coming in at a ninety degree angle from the orbit of the planet. The night side was unusual in that there were no lights showing, on a world that had recently been the home to seven billion people. There were rumors that there were still people on this world, New Moscow, once the capital of a small Empire. Less than there were. Probably less than a half billion. But still there, and still alive, for now.

  “Get some close up views from the day side,” Ben Gurian ordered the officer. A moment later they were looking at the surface, a view equivalent to being in low orbit. The gravitic lens adjusted, and the view clarified, showing the web of rivers, cities scattered around them, and the heavy transport net linking the habitations.

  The lens focused to higher resolution, and one of the cities, a very large one, resolved on the holo. Resolved to become ruins, the smashed remnants of a city. Several large craters occupied the center and the west side of the former metropolis, the sign of either kinetics or large nukes, possibly antimatter. Most of the tall buildings had toppled despite being made of superstrong alloys reinforced with carbon fibers. Those that still stood leaned drunkenly, some of their supports still intact, most stressed to the breaking point. The city was otherwise deserted, nothing moving on the rubble strewn streets.

  The view moved up the river that was flowing over the fallen bridges, to a smaller city, also damaged, if in a different way. Here were the signs of ground fighting, buildings holed, the smaller craters of bombs and shells. Still, it was just as dead as the capital city.

  “Keep looking,” Ariella told her Sensor officer, glancing for a moment at the tactical holo that showed the enemy shipping. They were coming up on the closest approach of a pair of those vessels, supercruisers, four million ton warships that could take Narwhal in an instant. It was the closest approach, thirty-one light seconds, unless the enemy ships moved their way. There was no reason for them to do so, but reason didn’t always have anything to do with reality.

  The scene kept changing as it moved over the surface of the world, the Sensor Officer adjusting the view based on a larger image being pulled in by another gravity lens. More cities, towns, villages, small farms, all deserted. Some wild areas, and the dinosaur sized wildlife that occupied them. And then, on a wide area of field, they found what they were looking for.

  “My God,” whispered the Captain to the deity of her ancestors.

  The camp covered hundreds of square kilometers, and must have housed tens of thousands of tents. The tents were not of human manufacture, and seemed large even for something the Ca’cadasans would use. The view shimmered a moment as the Sensor Officer adjusted the focus on the grav lens, and the inhabitants of the camp became recognizable. Humans.

  “What’s the estimated count?” asked the Captain.

  “At least a million,” said the Tactical Officer, who was monitoring the take and feeding the data into the ship’s computers. “Maybe two.”

  The ship continued to coast into the system, her grav lens telescope looking over the surface, finding more of the camps, some larger than the first. And, with many of the camps, some large structures with smoke pouring from the stacks.

  “That matches up with what we got from the Republic,” said Xavier Patton, the Exec.

  “Yes,” said the Captain in a flat voice. “It does.” Death camps, with food processing centers nearby. The Ca’cadasans were turning human beings into rations, processing them and storing them for future use.

  “How many do you estimate are on the planet, Xavier?” she asked, her eyes glued to the image of the largest camp they had found, one that must have had ten million or more within its fences.

  “Seven hundred million,” answered the Exec in a hushed voice. “Maybe eight hundred. And they have to be processing them at a couple of hundred thousand a day.”

  And this is what command sent us here to find out, she thought, looking over at her Com Officer, who was busy making sure that all of their information was gettin
g back to headquarters through the wormhole.

  There had been rumors of people being rounded up, and not just slaughtered and eaten in place. Which made sense, since the Ca’cadasans couldn’t have eaten that much meat, and most would have gone to waste from spoilage. It made her wonder how many other planets might have the same activity on them. In the Republic the Cacas had set up camps on every major world they had taken. They hadn’t followed the same pattern in the Empire, where the casualty rates among the planet dwellers had been much higher, and there were fewer survivors to bother with.

  Now we just have to hope that command can do something about this. I don’t know what, but they don’t pay me to consider those possibilities. No, they paid her to sneak into enemy held systems and view atrocities like this first hand. This would be one system she would be glad to leave, though she had suspicions that command would keep her here as an observer to whatever they had in mind for the last humans of the Kingdom of New Moscow.

  Chapter One

  The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

  Edmund Burke.

  CAPITULUM, JEWEL, JANUARY 30TH, 1002.