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

  The Caca roared, the sword dropping to the ground gripped in the severed hand. It grabbed at the stump with its right upper hand, its eyes staring at the human, a panicked expression on its face. Cornelius didn’t give it time for thought, throwing his body through the air and slamming both feet into the creature’s left knee. The Caca went down, the Ranger rolled on top, his knife poking the side of the creature’s neck.

  “Surrender,” he told the Caca in its guttural language.

  The Caca went limp, shaking its head, right upper hand still trying to put pressure on its bleeding right lower wrist. “Who are you, human, who speaks our tongue, and fights like a demon.”

  “You might have heard of me,” said Cornelius, getting off the Caca and waving one of the heavy infantry troopers, a medic, forward. The rest of the Cacas were walking slowly from the cavern, a look of defeat on their faces, dropping their weapons in the dirt. “I’m called the Hunter by my people.”

  The Cacas eyes widened. “If I had known I was facing you, I would have ordered all of my males to attack. But it would have been an honor to have defeated you in single combat.”

  “Well, that’s something none of you bastards can brag about, yet,” said Cornelius with a grin. “And I’m going to see to it that none of you ever can.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

  Jonathan Haidt.

  NEW MOSCOW MAY 20TH, 1002.

  Gauroi Laaksonen was shocked by what he had seen on the short walk from the underground garage to this meeting room. Not that it was frightening or disgusting or anything like that. But the contrast between the what could only be called a ghetto and the advanced city of the Pures was striking. Almost everyone was dressed in one of several types of jumpsuits, versus the varied and colorful clothing of the Pures. The shops they walked by were empty of anything but more utilitarian clothing, simple tools, and basic electronics. It was obvious that this was an underclass as compared to the normal human Pures.

  Laaksonen wasn’t sure that the covering robes and hoods he and his people were wearing would really disguise them, and would in fact make them stand out. But there seemed to be many beings out on the streets wearing similar robes and hoods. The Exec really couldn’t figure out why anyone needed to dress like that, or what advantages it conferred. That it helped the Imperials to blend in was useful, and Laaksonen wondered if that was the purpose.

  They only walked a couple of blocks, and the Exec was sure that it had been meant to show them the city, and the second class status of the Klavarta. Slardra turned into a doorway and led the way into one of those small shops, nodding at the Engineer subclass who was the obvious shopkeeper. That being nodded back, moving to the door and making sure it was shut, then engaging the lock and turning on a closed sign. That the Engineer was feeling some anxiety was obvious, and the Exec again wondered what he had gotten himself and his people into. He was down here to gather information, and he was willing to take some risks, though he wasn’t sure if all of his people would agree. Tough. They signed up for this job, and no one told them it was going to be safe, or that they would die in bed. It was a brave thought, but he wasn’t sure if he really felt that way deep down.

  They walked through a storeroom, down a long set of stairs, and through a door that led to an underground hallway. Several doors opened on the hallway on both sides, but Slardra led them to the door at the end, stopping for a moment and knocking in what had to be a pattern.

  The lock on the heavy hatch clicked, and Slardra pushed the door in, looked in for a moment, then opened it completely and waved everyone to follow her. Laaksonen looked around as he walked through the opening, surprised at the number of beings in the large, thirty by twenty meter chamber. There were a dozen of the Alphas sitting at the long table, along with eight of the Warrior class, six Engineers and five other Klavarta of a subtype he was not familiar with.

  One of the Alphas stood up and walked around the table, holding out his right hand.

  “We have been so looking forward to this meeting,” said the Alpha, who from his age and bearing had to be a senior officer of some type. “I am Admiral Manstara, the subcommander of the Home Fleet.”

  “And who is the commander?” asked Laaksonen, grasping the smooth hand of the semiaquatic being. “Let me guess, a Pure.”

  “The Admiral is the actual commander of the fleet,” said Slardra quickly. “But they do not trust us enough to give Manstara the actual command codes for an insystem force. That task is given to a Pure, which prevents us from having any kind of naval force at hand.”

  “She is correct,” said the Admiral with a grimace. “Though I could have wished that she had waited to give you that much information about us.”

  “What are you?” asked Major Briggs, staring at the Klavarta Admiral. “Is this some kind of revolutionary committee?”

  “It will all be explained, in time,” said the Admiral, motioning to the empty seats along the near side of the table. “Now please, make yourselves comfortable, and we will try to satisfy your curiosity.”

  The Exec nodded to the people in his party, giving them permission to sit. They were here now, and would only leave here if these Klarvarta decided to let them.

  “And now,” said the Admiral and he sat back in his own seat, “I would like to introduce you to our teacher and our leader.”

  A holo came to life over the table, a human face, a Pure human face, looking out of the hologram. Laaksonen thought that the face looked familiar, someone he had seen before, but could not remember the circumstances.

  “Welcome to our nightmare, my friends,” came the voice from the holo.

  “Who are you?” asked Laaksonen, his mind struggling to come up with the connection his memory was making to this face.

  “I am, I was, the Assistant Secretary General of the World Government of Earth” said the face. “I was on the ship that brought these people here, in cryo with the rest of the passengers. And like the rest of the passengers, I was killed when we were struck by the Ca’cadasans while escaping into subspace.”

  So that’s where I’ve seen that face, thought the Exec, nodding. Godfrey Jernigan was one of the guiding powers in the Exodus project that saved some of the human race from destruction. “Did they clone you, and reemplant memories in your new body?”

  “There wasn’t enough of my, body, left for cloning. It had been blown out into space through one of the hull breaches. But my memories survived, somehow, mostly. Almost all of the backup memories had gone with the memory banks that were vaporized. About three quarters of mine survived, the most of any of the survivors.”

  “What happened here, Mr. Jernigan?” asked the Exec. “How did you end up with a committee of clones running your government?”

  “And that is the nightmare,” said the holo. “Not anything we had planned, but once you know the history of it, you may agree that there was really no way out. But let me show you, from the memories of those who survived the attack.”

  The room darkened and the holo expanded until it was ceiling height and four meters in width. The bridge of the Exodus IV came up on the holo, the crew, many of them recognizable as the people who ran the council of the Klavarta Kingdom, sitting in tense postures in their seats as the ship forged its way out of the solar system. The countdown on the bottom of the viewer was showing just over two minutes, and it didn’t take a genius to realize what those numbers meant. Another viewer, to the right of the primary, was showing what was coming up behind. There were gasps in the room at that view, though everyone in the chamber could have guessed what it was going to show. Ca’cadasan warships, not all that far behind and catching up quickly. And a small spread of missiles ahead of them, obviously on a path that would intersect the Exodus ship well before it reached the barrier signified by that countdown clock.

  Lasers struck out from the s
hip, and one of the chasing missiles detonated with a star bright flash in space, expanding outward and catching another missile in its plasma, detonating it as well. A third missile went up, then a fourth. All sent heat and radiation into the Exodus, and damage klaxons went off on the bridge. The fifth that blew was close enough to send some of its plasma into the hull of the vessel, and areas on the schematic of the stern lit up while the ship shuddered.

  “Open up the portal into subspace,” ordered the man sitting in the Captain’s chair.

  “We’re not past the safety limit,” argued the helmsman.

  “And we’ll be plasma before we reach that limit, you idiot,” growled the Captain. “Now get us into hyper, or I’ll blow your brains out on your control board.” The Captain got to his feet and pulled a chemical pistol, ancient hardware still in widespread use at that time, from his holster.

  The helmsman shook his head, but did as he was commanded. The hole to the dimension of subspace started to open ahead, but there was a strange look to the forming portal. It was too ragged, and energy seemed to crackle at the edges. The ship headed in, having no choice, as more missiles came up from behind. The ship shook with some heavy hits as Ca’cadasan lasers struck the stern, then was into the opening.

  Everyone watching could tell that the ship was in trouble as it shook like a rat in the mouth of a hound as it transited the portal. Areas of schematic went orange and red until over half the ship showed great damage. A section near the port stern, several hundred thousand tons of mass, broke off and flew into pieces, much of which streamed out of the portal back into normal space.

  A pair of lasers struck the ship as it finished transiting, before the portal could close, and most of the stern defensive weapons were blown offline. The ship bucked hard once again, the bridge crew thrown about in their seat harness. The Captain, who was still standing, was thrown into the air, then caught by a local gravity fluctuation that threw him like a bullet, headfirst, into the rear bulkhead. His head smashed like a ripe fruit on that bulkhead, splattering blood and brain tissue over the rear of the bridge. The body continued into the bulkhead, all of the bones shattering, then sticking to the wall in the gravity fluctuation.

  A missile came through the portal just before it could close, detonating a mere fifty meters from the stern. The stern of the ship was shredded, the blast reaching back through the closing portal before it could completely disappear.

  “We figured afterward that the Ca’cadasans must have thought that we had been destroyed,” said the voice of Jernigan. “They didn’t pursue, at least not immediately, giving us time to slip away. And they almost didn’t need to pursue. The ship was terribly damaged. We were able to accelerate at point five gravities. Fortunately, we were in subspace, and not hyper, so our reduction in generating power to almost nothing didn’t effect where we ended up.”

  Laaksonen nodded, knowing what the being spoke of. If they had been in hyper, and had lost their ability to generate a hyperfield, they would have catastrophically translated back into normal space, and that would most probably have been the end of them all. But once in subspace, they would stay there until they opened a portal to get out.

  “They were not able to navigate with any kind of accuracy. So they pushed up to point eight five light, the greatest velocity the particle shields could handle, or so they hoped. All of the passengers were dead, most of the organic cargo, most of the embryos, the majority of the animal forms, gone. Some of the seeds survived, and you can see the vegetation on this planet, and enough animal forms to make up an ecosystem. And most of the crew was dead as well, only the bridge crew and some others surviving. Most of those were injured. And then the radiation struck through the shields that were not as strong as thought.”

  “So they cloned new bodies and transferred their consciousnesses over?”

  “They really had no choice. Not if they had a hope of saving the human race. They did not know that your ship had also escaped, so they did what they had to do to save what they knew of.”

  “So they cloned themselves, and the leaders of this branch of the human species became psychopaths, with no conscience, and no empathy for others,” said Briggs, shaking his head. “And doomed this branch of the human race to become monsters.”

  “That was the nightmare,” agreed Jernigan, his holographic head nodding. “The intent of the Overlords was good, they wanted to save the species. The effect was horrible, a group of essentially immortal psychopaths in charge of the remains of a human race, seeking revenge at all costs.”

  “How long did it take for you to get here?” asked Briggs, looking over at Laaksonen for a moment as if to get permission after the fact to ask. “I mean, you had to actually go through the Ca’cadasan Empire, unless you somehow worked your way around the outside of their territory.”

  “We went through the Ca’cadasan Empire,” agreed Jernigan, his eyes narrowing as if at a painful memory. “We really didn’t know where we were much of the time. The couple of times we came out of subspace and approached a gravity well, we were horrified to find that we were in the midst of Ca’cadasan space. We had no choice to continue on, hoping that we would eventually get out of their Empire. After fourteen hundred years we did so, and came out several hundred light years closer to their Empire than we are now. We were safe, or so we thought, and took six hundred years to establish our own Empire, with revenge constantly on our minds.”

  So they’ve been in place at least four hundred years less than we have, thought Laaksonen. And how far have we come in four hundred years?

  “But you reestablished the human race here, despite losing all of the passengers and most of the genetic material,” said Laaksonen.

  “A little genetic manipulation along the way and we were able to come up with enough diversity to recreate Earth,” said Jernigan.

  “Which you recreated on this moon,” said Briggs with a nod. “We saw the Earth trees you have planted all over the hemisphere we flew over to get to your capital city. And the animals.”

  The holo image grimaced yet again, closing its eyes, then staring out into space as if it were looking into the past. “I argued against that,” he said. “This world already had a thriving ecology, life similar to what Earth possessed in the Cambrian, plants colonizing the land, the first animals following. I argued that we needed to preserve this life. Colonize the planet, sure, but retain at least half the surface for native flora and fauna. But I was overruled, and learned how much power I really had, and how much will.”

  “How much will?”

  “Yes, because though I had the memories of a man, and more conscience than any of the organic Overlords, I was still a cybernetic organism. A word from the Overlords and all will to argue, to fight for this world, left me.”

  “It is OK, my friend,” said Admiral Manstara, his eyes tearing up. “You did what you could.”

  “Whose idea was it to make the Klavarta?” asked Briggs, looking at one of the formidable looking soldier variants.

  “I’m not sure who came up with the idea at first,” said the cyberman. “But once it was agreed upon, they went with it. I thought it was a good idea in general myself, but I quailed at some of the forms they meant to produce. Not the general physical specimens, but the way they wanted to make a slave race, one with a short life span, who would only be good for war, for dying for the normal humans, so that those humans wouldn’t have to.”

  “And from what I have seen, you have your permanent underclass to die for you,” said Laaksonen, shaking his head. “And there will never be any change. As long as the same people are in charge it never will change. And if the people you have in charge have their way, they will always be in charge, for thousands of years, or until you are overrun by the Cacas, whichever comes first.”

  The Imperials sat there in silence for some time, looking at each other, glancing at the Klavarta, who were as much slaves as any who had been enslaved by the Roman, Arab or Southern US cultures of old Earth. Doomed t
o live shortened lives, while the rest of humanity enjoyed the longevity of their improved biology.

  “Why the shortened lives?” asked Briggs, breaking the silence. “Why not give them at least the benefit of a long life?”

  “It was thought that military necessity called for a population of warriors that could be increased quickly over the short term. A subspecies that could go from birth to adulthood in less than a decade. As you must know, longevity comes with slow maturation, which is part of slowing the overall aging process. So, conversely, rapid maturation leads to rapid aging, and none of the Klavarta make it past the sixty year mark, while forty or fifty years is more the norm.”

  “But, what about the experience you are losing by letting your best warriors and crews die young?” asked Briggs. “I’m over forty myself, and hope that someday I make general. If I were a Klavarta, I would be dead before I reached flag rank.”

  “I am fifty-four Earth years myself,” said the Klavarta Admiral, grimacing. “I can expect to hit the old age barrier at any time. In six months from that point I will be dead.”

  “But the Council, the Overlords, felt that since the Pure humans would provide the senior leadership, it really didn’t matter,” said Jernigan. “Some argued that since the region we were in could support a large population, there was really no need for the ability to rapidly increase our warrior population. But the Council disagreed, and so the Klavarta are how they are.”

  Again there was silence in the room, the Imperials too shocked to speak. The Empire had been known to take some desperate measures, but creating a short lived slave race to fight its wars was beyond the pale. Every Imperial in this room had volunteered their service to the Empire and its people. They had done so proudly, and could not imagine being born to be warriors. Having no choice in the matter, and partaking of almost none of the benefits of their advanced society.