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

  “Try to reach them by grav pulse,” she ordered Lt. Commander Rosaro Picard, the Com Officer. “Let them know who we are, and what are our intentions.”

  “Not sure how long it will take to establish a com protocol,” said Picard, working his board.

  “And as soon as you send out that first signal, contact the other ships. I want us at full decel as soon as everyone is prepared.”

  We’re here to meet someone, and these seem technologically advanced enough to be our people. So we might as well act friendly until we know otherwise. But..

  “Mr. Fujardo. I want all weapons powered up and tubes loaded. I hope they’re friendly, but I don’t want to take any stupid chances.”

  “We’re getting a pulse back,” said Picard, wide eyes looking back at her.

  “Can you understand it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, their sending their pulse in the standard code of Old Earth.”

  Chapter One

  Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

  Marcus Aurelius.

  CA’CADASAN SPACE APRIL 8TH, 1002.

  “My, Lord,” said the bowing officer, his upper hands grasping the base of his horns while his lower arms crossed over his chest in an aspect of absolute obeisance.

  Great Admiral the Superior Lord Jarrashinata Karzott glared down at the officer as if he were looking down on the vermin of his home world. While the male was giving the proper display of respect to one of his stature, with the double advantage of supreme military and civil rank, being as he was a cousin to the Emperor, there was something about the aspect of the Cacada he did not like. More than just the general fear of a subordinate reporting to the exalted presence of his supreme commander. The fear of someone who was afraid that the news he was about to bring would cause him great pain, or even death.

  “Out with it,” said the Great Admiral, who had taken command of the Front weeks before on the orders of the Emperor. “I do not punish messengers merely because of the news they bring.”

  The male glanced up at the Great Admiral as if he wasn’t quite sure to make of the words. After all, the last commander was quick to punish anyone who brought news he didn’t want to hear. Which was why on occasions important facts were withheld from him.

  “The Klavarta have taken the H’lada system, my Lord,” blurted out the male, as if giving the information quickly might mitigate the response.

  “When?” growled the Great Admiral, thinking of what little he knew about that system. It was one of the linchpins of his defensive front, and a major staging area for launching forces into the flank of the enemy Empire. It contained shipyards, depots, even rest and recreation facilities for his forces. And it was fifty light years behind what he had assumed were the lines, safe from enemy attack. But now it seemed not safe enough.

  “We just received word from the courier minutes ago, my Lord,” stammered the male. “It took that ship twenty-five days to get here.”

  So, about fourteen hundred light years, thought the Great Admiral, looking away from the male and ordering the chamber holo to show him his command area with a thought. The Front stretched almost four thousand light years from rimward to coreward, and over two thousand from the top to the bottom of the galactic disc. Essentially, there was no way to blockade that much space. The only possible defense was to have scattered strong points, systems with heavy defenses and a strong fleet presence. And to patrol the regions in between.

  “How did we lose that system?”

  “From the records the courier brought, my Lord, the same way they have taken all of the other systems they have assaulted. With overwhelming numbers.”

  The Great Admiral turned and stomped away, trying to calm himself down before he actually hurt the messenger, something he didn’t want to do, lest others be afraid to give him information he was sure not to like.

  They are like vermin, he thought of the Klavarta. They reproduced at an unbelievable rate, and unlike most vermin they carried a fearsome sting.

  How in the hell did we get ourselves in such a situation, thought the Great Admiral, plopping down in his chair and gesturing for the messenger to leave, then motioned for one of his serving slaves, a moderate sized radially symmetrical mammalian, to bring him a drink. He ran over the situation in his mind, recalling the reports he had read, the videos he had watched.

  The Empire had been expanding in this direction, down the Sagittarian arm, as they always had, overrunning other civilizations with a battle or two, then taking them into the Empire. When they met another expanding species, always still in the early stages of their growth as a power, it took some more battles, but in no instance had the fight lasted longer than two or three years. The Ca’cadasan Empire was fulfilling its destiny, and it looked like in two or three thousand more years of steady expansion they would truly rule the entire Galaxy, just as the Gods intended.

  And then they had hit the border of the Klavarta, as they called themselves. There was still debate as to whether there were other species in their Empire, which stretched two thousand light years along the Sagittarian and Perseus arms. So far no others had been found, though there was some intelligence that another species actually ruled their Empire, hints gleaned from captives who were otherwise noncompliant to any known interrogation technique.

  The unusual thing about that border region, for two hundred light years up to the first Klavartan outpost, was their complete and total lack of intelligent life. One billion two hundred million cubic light years of emptiness as far as intelligence was concerned, an area of several hundred million stars. There were worlds with life, the same number as most regions the Ca’cadasans had already conquered. And there were ruins, everything from stone age encampments to supercities, all burned out. And skeletons, for those sophonts who possessed bony skeletal framework.

  The word had spread through the Ca’cadasan Empire and military. A terrible word. Genocide. The Cacada had totally wiped out three intelligent species in the history of the Empire. Really only two if truth be told. One was the communal mind creatures who had actually invaded and conquered the homeworld prior to the Empire. They had been sought out and destroyed in revenge for what they did to the people. The other was an advanced civilization that had stayed in their own system. That species had refused to surrender, and destroyed everything that tried to land on their planet. So the Cacada had been forced to bombard them with missiles moving at near relativistic speeds. Too many missiles had gotten through, and reduced the planet to total lifelessness, along with the intelligent beings that lived there.

  The only other species the Empire had exterminated were the humans, only it was thought some might have gotten away, and a small population was kept to be able to spy on them if they were found again. And then they had found more humans on the other side of the Empire. So even in that instance the Race had not committed genocide, a crime against the Gods according to their religion. They could subjugate other species, hold them in slavery for the good of the Empire. But future genocide, except in the one limited proscribed case, that of the humans, was forbidden.

  The imperative was changed with the discovery of those planets. It was no longer simply conquest and expansion. It was to find and punish the blasphemers who were destroying intelligent life. The Empire switched from slow expansion to a quick thrust by hundreds of small task groups into the Dead Zone, as it was called, looking for civilizations that might have survived, and for that which was killing off the intelligent species in the region.

  Scores of those task forces found what they were looking for, at least the second part. Those task forces disappeared without a trace, followed by more of them in the coming weeks, and the Empire knew it had a real war on its hands.

  Large groups, fleets of a thousand ships each, followed into the Zone, looking for an enemy, that now could not be found. It took a year of cautiously searching before the enemy struck again, and this time they attacked a force that was abl
e to fight them off, at least enough to get away and warn the Empire what they faced.

  What they faced was a species that seemed to have been constructed for war. A species made up of a number of subspecies that were specialized in their function, performing their assigned tasks better than any of the Cacada. They fought in small ships, a hundred thousand tons or smaller, faster, more maneuverable, and what they lost in firepower they more than made up for in numbers. There always seemed to be more of them, and they fought to the end. Every, single, time. Retreat and surrender did not seem to be in their vocabulary. The few who had been captured had been injured too badly to resist, in vessels no longer capable of operation.

  For ten years the war raged on, without the Empire finding a single one of the Klavarta homeworlds, not even a base beyond some large stations orbiting gas giants in otherwise unimportant systems. Back and forth through the Dead Zone, until the Ca’cadasans finally broke into the space of the enemy Empire and encountered a Klavartan homeworld, or at least one that had a shitload of the aliens. After that it was ten years of back and forth into each other’s home territory. And then the last five years, when the Empire at first seemed to be winning the war, pushing back the enemy, until a massive enemy counter offensive pushed them back into their own space once again.

  And then we found the humans, all the way on the other side of the Empire, thought the Great Admiral with a grimace. While always desired, the timing was terrible. The humans were more powerful than it had been thought possible, and now, after the setbacks on that front, many of the forces that had been earmarked for his command had been diverted to take care of the hated humans once and for all.

  “My, Lord,” called out one of his subordinate commanders, this one in charge of his intelligence apparatus.

  “Yes, Admiral,” he replied, looking up with angry eyes, wondering what else could have gone wrong.

  “We’ve located their capital, my Lord,” said the excited male, striding into the room, all hands gesturing wildly.

  “Calm down, Admiral. What do you mean, their capital?”

  “One of our scouts has returned, with wonderful news,” said the Chief Spy. “We have found a world, thirteen hundred light years in from the other edge of the dead zone. And it appears to have all the indications of being a capital.”

  The Great Admiral stared at the lesser Admiral with disbelief. They had been sending out small scout vessels for the last fifteen years, thousands of them. Most never returned, and those that had brought back little information. Merely where another intelligent species had once lived and did no longer. Or where a Klavarta force was temporarily. Not worth the lives of the tens of thousands of males lost, but they continued to be sent out in hopes of finding some kind of target worth striking.

  “Where? Show me,” ordered the Great Admiral. “Show me.”

  The holo came alive again, showing a blinking star almost centered in relation to the border region, as advertised, thirteen hundred light years in from the Dead Zone. A little over eighteen hundred light years from this system.

  “Send couriers out to all base systems. I want all offensive forces to gather at this point.” The Great Admiral indicated a small system on the opposite edge of the Dead Zone from where he stood.

  “All of them, my Lord? But that will leave the border all but undefended. And what of the capture of H’lada?”

  “We will leave them that system for now. In fact, with a fleet of Klavarta gathered there, they cannot interfere with a strike into their system.”

  The subordinate stood there for a moment, blinking in confusion.

  “And if we strike now we might be able to end this war,” growled the Great Admiral, clenching all four fists. “So do as you are ordered.”

  “And who will lead the fleet, my Lord?”

  “I will,” he replied, a predatory grin on his face. And I will gain great favor with the Emperor if I can rid him of one of his greatest enemies.

  * * *

  GALACTIC SPACE APRIL 9TH, 1002.

  “We’re receiving visual, ma’am,” said Lt. Commander Picard, looking back from his station.

  “Put it on the main viewer,” ordered the Commodore, turning her chair to put the screen to her front.

  It had taken many hours, over a standard day, but the unknown ships had finally matched vectors and velocity with her force while moving close. All of the vessels were small, three of them in the three hundred thousand ton range, the others just over a hundred thousand tons. They had maneuvered at five hundred and fifty gravities, which showed they were at least as advanced as Imperial ships in their propulsion technology. Weapons capabilities were unknown, but when they appeared on visual they had the look of purpose built warships about them.

  The face that appeared on the screen was both alien and familiar at the same time. It was very human in its layout and structure, with a bluish skin and human looking eyes behind nictitating membranes. Even the structure of the body and limbs was human, again with some differences. The chamber behind it was manned by beings who looked much the same, with a couple of exceptions. Fluid was at about waist level and dropping, and the Commodore noted what looked like gills on the side of the being’s neck.

  The creature’s eyes widened, and its gasped in breath showed its surprise. In fact, for obviously not being human, the being’s facial expressiveness was very human. It immediately bowed at the waist moments after it saw her, then straightened up with a look of adoration on its face.

  “My Lady. We could not believe it was more of the Overlords when we received your grav pulse. This is a joyous day. The Overlords will be so happy to know that we have found their brothers and sisters from the stars.”

  “And who are these, Overlords?”

  “Why, they are you,” said the being in perfect terranglo, voice bubbling with excitement. “From Earth.” Another being, this one of a very different appearance, looking like something that was made to kill, all large, sharp teeth in a protruding jaw, clawed hands, horns and spikes, came up beside the spokesperson and whispered something in its ear.

  “My Commander of Warriors has just reminded me that we are not supposed to reveal the existence of the masters, no matter what,” said the being, which the Commodore thought must be the force commander. “But, you are the masters. You come from Earth, do you not?”

  “Our species left Earth some two thousand years ago,” said Sung, nodding. “And settled in our present space a thousand years ago.”

  “As did the Overlords, may the Universe bless them. They have tales about the Exodus ship, and how they escaped Earth in front of the Monsters. And how other ships tried and failed, though one other was scheduled to leave after they did.”

  “And that would be us,” said Sung, feeling a chill go up her spine. The history talked about the Exodus ships, the largest mobile structures made by man up to that point, thirty million ton ships carrying the total sum knowledge of the human race, held on memory discs and the computers of the vessel. Every piece of literature, from the writings of Homer to the most recent novel or comic book. Every movie and trivee, and even before they had 3D. Every piece of music, every painting, even three dimensional representation of every sculpture and building. Along with a genetic sample of every form of life on Earth and the half dozen planets they had colonized. Joining those treasures were fifty thousand humans in cryo, along with millions of eggs and hundreds of thousands of sperm samples.

  Exodus IV had left just a couple of hours before the III, the one that founded the Empire, due to a problem loading the III. It survived intact due to this delay, as every remaining ship in the Sol system fought to get it away. IV had been hit before it went into subspace, and was streaming atmosphere before it entered. The Caca ship that was chasing it, also equipped with subspace drive as a secondary system, jumped after it with some delay, and it had been feared that IV was lost. But obviously they had gotten away, somehow.

  “And you are fighting the Ca’cadasans?”


  “Of course we are,” said the being. “We have been battling the Monsters to a standstill for the last twenty-five Earth years.”

  Twenty-five years, thought Natasha, her eyes widening. And they almost rolled over us in the first six months. How much military power do these people have?

  “Will you come with us, to see the Overlords?” asked the alien, again with a very human like bow.

  Commander Beoit, she sent over her link to the chief biologist of the mission. Are you getting this?

  Yes, ma’am, sent back the Biologist, his link sending the words with an excited overtone. Amazing convergent evolution.

  But is it convergent evolution? chimed in Commander Laaksonen, himself a Zoologist. The correspondence of limb to body is almost perfect. Even Malticons aren’t quite that humanly proportioned, he said, referring to the diminutive humanoids within the Empire. Except for the hands. Look at those fingers. They have an extra joint. And they are so thin and supple, like they were made to run over a control board.

  “Of course we will come with you to see your, Overlords,” she replied to the alien. Or was it Masters. The two terms seemed to be interchangable. “Can you send us the coordinates?”

  “Alas, that we cannot do,” said the alien with a frown. “We are not permitted to give that information to outsiders. It is important that the Monsters not know where the Masters live.”

  “But you know where they live?”

  “Yes,” said the alien with a slight smile. “But there is nothing in this Universe that could make one of us divulge that information.”

  “What are you called?”

  “We are called the Klavarta,” said the alien. “I am a female of the Alpha subspecies, the pilots. And we will lead you to our Masters, as they would wish.”

  I wonder what they would say if we refused to go? sent Laaksonen.

  I really don’t want to find out, sent back the Commodore. I really don’t think they would take no for an answer.