Exodus: Empires at War: Book 9: Second Front Page 4

  “We will follow. Know that our ships cannot accelerate much past one hundred and ten Earth gravities.”

  “Why so slow?” asked the alien.

  “And what is your name?”

  “I am Slardra,” answered the alien with another bow. “I am a task force leader.”

  “Well, Slardra. Our ships are explorers, built for the long haul. We have traveled over thirty thousand light years to get here, and that was actually a much shorter trip than we were designed to take.”

  “My people only have time for warships,” answered Slardra. “I am surprised your people have time for anything else.”

  The holo went blank, and Sung turned to Picard. “Send a message through the wormhole com back to the Empire. Let them know we have found what we came for. I will have a report for them in a couple of hours.” And they truly are not going to believe what I have to tell them. But first she wanted to discuss it with her staff and get their take on it.

  “This is obviously the ally we were seeking,” said Major Saul Briggs, her ground force commander. “We were hoping we could find a power that would be willing to work with us, and have enough military might that they could carry their own weight. I would say that we have found them.”

  “I have to agree with the Major,” said Fujardo, rotating a three dimensional model of one of the Klavarta ships in a holo to his front. “If they’ve been fighting the Cacas for twenty-five years, they have the military power. And I’m betting they can teach us a few things about the big bastards.”

  “XO?”

  “On the surface, they seem to be everything we were expecting,” said Laaksonen, looking over the table, the five people really in the room, and the nine sitting in through holo. “But something just doesn’t feel right about them.”

  “I didn’t know you were part of the Imperial family, Gauroi,” said Captain Markus Palachi of the Santa Maria. “Are you having prophetic dreams about them?”

  There was some laughter around the table, and Laaksonen’s face reddened in embarrassment.

  “That’s enough of that,” said Sung, staring at the senior of her two captains. “The Xo said that something didn’t feel right to him, not that he had received a psychic premonition. And it doesn’t feel right to me either.” She looked back at the Exec. “So, what do we know about them?”

  “They say they are one species, the Klavarta,” said the Exec, pulling up a holo that showed the force leader of the aliens. “But we have identified four distinct subspecies so far. The Pilots, or ship’s command crew. They call themselves Alphas.” The holo switched to show a large Klavarta, taller than the last, and much more muscular. “The Engineers? At least that’s what they seem to be.” The holo changed to show a smaller version of the second, much thinner. “The repair and damage control specialist. We think the small size is indicative of an ability to get into small spaces. And finally this bruiser.” This time the holo showed what appeared to be a nightmare.

  “That’s one ugly bastard,” said Commander Millie van Dussel, the Exec of the Pinta.

  Sung turned a glare on the woman for a moment, then shook her head. They were all officers in Exploration Command, and xenophobia was not tolerated in that organization. It wasn’t considered polite in human society, but the Command was expected to meet a variety of strange, sometimes never before seen, aliens. Looking back at the nightmare, she had to admit that van Dussel was correct. Not only was that subspecies unappealing, they were the stuff of nightmares.

  Not appearing in the least human, except for the proportions of their arms and two thirds of their legs, it was hard to imagine that they were even the same species as the others. The hands on the ends of those arms only had four digits, three fingers and a thumb, all tipped with sharp claws. Both of the forearms had a pair of spikes protruding from them. The feet also had four digits, two on the end, and two further up the structure. They walked on the balls, much like many animals, and it was easy to see that this was a running creature. The five horns sweeping back from the skull looked capable of disemboweling with a toss of the head. But the real terror was the mouth, lipless, and full of sharp teeth. That organ looked capable of biting the head off a human.

  The entire creature stood two and a half meters tall, and had to weigh a hundred and fifty kilos of bone and muscle. Though smaller than a Caca, it appeared very capable of killing one in hand to hand combat.

  “This is definitely a warrior,” continued the Exec. “It’s really hard to imagine that something like this arose naturally from the other subspecies. In, fact, it’s hard to imagine that any of these forms, optimized as they are to the different functions of running a warship, ever evolved this way. Another red flag is their ability to breathe in liquid. They appear to be warm blooded forms, and as such they must be able to pull in oxygen sufficient to power their brains. Water cannot hold enough oxygen to feed the brains these creatures carry. The only, and I mean only, reason for having fluid aboard a ship when the crew can breathe air is to cushion the acceleration.”

  “And that means?” asked Captain Kali Gadhavi, the commander of Pinta.

  “That these people were all genetically engineered to perfectly fit their function,” said Sung, her eyes widening. While genetic engineering was not considered completely unethical in the Empire, as evidenced by the overall improvement of the human species, and the augmentation of special operatives like the Major, this was something beyond the pale. To manipulate an entire species, to make them your toys. That would be considered criminal by most of the Empire’s population.

  “This is all speculation,” said Captain Palachi, shaking his head. “We don’t know any of this. For all we know, they are a naturally evolved alien species. Or they engineered themselves.”

  “The speculation fits what we know,” said Laaksonen. “And I find it unlikely that any species evolved such perfect specialization to ship board operations in so short a time.”

  “And we all know that the unlikely happens all the time,” said Palachi, his eyes narrowing as his holographic image glared at Laaksonen. “The impossible only occurs at somewhat regular intervals.”

  “We aren’t getting anywhere with this,” cautioned Sung, waving a finger in the air.

  “What we need are some genetic samples. And to get those, I think we need to get some of the Klavarta over to our ships.”

  “That we can work on,” said the Commodore, a smile on her face. “As soon as we’re on a course for wherever we’re heading, I’ll invite their Captain over.”

  It took several days to shift the vector enough so they were heading the direction the Klavarta wanted them to go. A week into the journey the Commodore issued the invitation, and as she had suspected the Klavarta Alpha literally jumped at the opportunity. The Klavarta flagship eased in close to the Nina until their hyperfields intersected. Moments later a small shuttle left the Klavarta ship and slowly moved to the amidships port hangar, where a reception party, including the Commodore, was waiting.

  The hatch to the shuttle slid open and the Marines on deck, kitted out in their dress uniforms, brass work gleaming on red coats, brought their ceremonial magrail rifles to a present arms salute. Sung stood at the head of a dozen of her officers, also in dress uniforms, in their case the blues of the Fleet.

  The creatures stepped out, two of the really scary ones leading the way, their eyes scanning the hanger. They were dressed in a greenish uniform that looked like it must have been the semi-dress version of their shipboard outfit. Both wore side arms, their hands never far from the butts, as they walked forward with a grace that belied their size.

  One of the Pilots came next. Sung couldn’t tell which one, since she was still having trouble differentiating them from facial features. From the medals and brass on the tan uniform she would have to guess it was the task group commander. Two more of the pilots followed, then the bulky form of an engineer. Last out of the craft were a pair of the diminutive engineering assistants.

  Music play
ed across the deck, the anthem of the Empire, since they didn’t know what passed for such with the aliens. Sung stepped forward, offering her hand, wondering if that was an appropriate gesture, thinking it must be if humans were their rulers.

  “Task Force Leader Slardra, I presume,” said Sung, grasping the smooth hand of the pilot. “Welcome aboard the Nina.”

  “I so wanted to see your wonderful vessel, Commodore,” said the alien commander with a smile. She turned back to the others in her party. “Let me introduce my officers.” She went through the introductions of the other pilots and the Engineer, but omitted the Marines and the engineering assistants.

  “And these are?” asked Sung, gesturing to the assistants and then the Marines.

  “Not important,” said Slardra with a dismissive gesture.

  And I wonder what that’s about, thought Sung, immediately sending the thought through link to her other officers. She, and every other alien species she had ever heard of, would have at least introduced visitors on another ship, no matter their station.

  “This is my Chief Engineer,” said Sung, putting her ruminations on the back burner for the moment. “Commander Ionesco.”

  The short officer bowed, then put his hand out to shake that Slardra.

  “You maintain this huge vessel,” said the Engineer who had come with the aliens.

  “Yes,” said Alexandru, nodding. “And the Commodore has tasked me with the privilege of showing you this, huge vessel.”

  “And after you finish the tour, we will have dinner in my dining room,” said Natasha, bowing again to the visitors.

  Watching the aliens walk away with his Chief Engineer and an honor guard that contained a few armored Marines, surreptitious guardians of both the aliens and the ship, she wondered if even her armored soldiers would be a match for those two warriors, moving as they did with the grace of dancers despite their bulk. Their heads were constantly on the move, checking everything out, sometimes blurring with speed. As soon as they were through the hatch she moved to another and was heading for the lift to the bridge and her day cabin.

  “We’re getting back the scan from the nanites,” said the voice of her Exec in his brain.

  The nanites had started infiltrating the bodies of the visitors as soon as they stepped into the atmosphere of the hangar. They were everywhere, throughout the ship, and since one of their functions was to scan for damage, both to the vessel and the crew, it was hoped that their infiltration into the bodies of the visitors, uninvited, would not be remarked upon. Of course they expected the aliens to have their own nanites, that would locate and destroy the invaders soon after they entered their bodies. That was what the humans’ internal nanites would do to any unknown invaders. But these unknown invaders didn’t need much time, only enough to penetrate some surface cells and burrow into the nuclei, where they could perform a thorough scan of the chromosomes and their constituent genes.

  “They have forty-six chromosomes,” said the Laaksonen, his tone that of someone who had been proven right. “All of them, all of the subspecies. Forty-six chromosomes.”

  The same as we do, thought the Commodore. About three quarters of the intelligent species discovered thus far used the nucleotides of DNA, most of them the same four as humans, some of them a substitute, a few more an extra. The others used some other arrangement for storing genetic information. Of those that used the same subset of four nucleotides as humans, which forced their chromosomes into much the same structure, only a few had the same number of the larger constructs.

  “What about the arrangement of the genes?”

  “That’s going to take some more analysis, ma’am. We’ve gotten some good snap shots of the couple of hundred thousand different nuclei we’ve invaded, but the nanotech of the visitors is quite advanced, and we’re about to lose our entire scanning group. Once we’ve assembled all the data and crunched it, we’ll have a better picture. But the initial analysis points to them being of human origin.”

  So, we probably have humans here, thought Sung, hitting the lift and sending it instructions to move her up and over to the bridge. And the question is, why change them this way? She could think of only one reason, to engineer the supersoldiers that they needed to beat the Cacas. But that still brought up some major ethical concerns as regarded these creators.

  Chapter Two

  Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.

  Joseph Stalin.

  NEW MOSCOW SPACE APRIL 11TH, 1002.

  “We think that’s the last of them, Admiral,” said the Fleet Tactical Officer from his station on the flag bridge of the Constance the Great. “Thirty-two hundred and fifty-three. That same number the scouts have been passing along to us on the way, minus the thirty-three they’ve taken care of.”

  And not saying anything about the sixty-one ships we lost in those exchanges, thought Fleet Admiral Jerry Kelvin, watching the slowly moving icons on the tactical holo. Several hundred of those icons were in hyper II, mostly scout ships with a smattering of supercruisers, the force that was going to come through to scope out the system before the battle fleet arrived. Half of those ships were in hyper III, the others still in IV. They’re learning. I guess we couldn’t expect them to be stupid every single time.

  Kelvin pushed himself out of his seat, his battle armor, giving him the strength of five strong humans, moving his and its mass with ease. He walked toward the central holo tank, glancing for a moment at the viewer that showed the tactical bridge of the vessel, where the captain and his crew would fight the ship. That section was in the amidships central capsule, one of the three inner protective structures on the huge ship. His flag bridge was in the forward central capsule, while Rear Admiral Lawrence Kelso, his Chief of Staff, was ensconced in the stern capsule, where he could take over the coordination of the fleet if something happened to Kelvin, just as the Exec in the CIC, sheltered within that same capsule, could take over for the Captain.

  We’re going to be in battle within the next fifteen minutes, he thought, wiping at his face with a gauntleted hand. Constance was one of the new super heavy battleships, the most powerful ships in known space, twenty-seven million tons of warship, with five wormholes aboard linking to com and weapons systems. As such, he couldn’t hold her back in safety. She needed to be in the thick of things, and Kelvin thought once again about how Kelso had advised him to use a lesser ship as his flag. But it’s good for morale to be in the thick of things, thought the Fleet Admiral. It had worked for Nelson back on old Earth, and he thought it was still a morale boost in this day and age.

  Kelvin was feeling so inadequate at the moment. He had about the same number of ships as the enemy, or at least would have when the Republic contingent arrived. They were outmassed two to one, which would go down to one point five to one when their allies arrived in about fifteen hours. When Admiral Lenkowski arrived, the odds would switch so heavily in his favor that it wouldn’t matter what the enemy had. But that wouldn’t happen for another thirty-nine hours.

  If we had the person this ship is named after, maybe we would have more of a chance, he thought. Constance had been a member of the royal family and a Fleet Admiral, living over four centuries in the past. She had been responsible for many of the greatest victories in the history of the fleet against alien powers. And then she had led a rebellion that turned into a civil war, rejecting the rule and policies of her cousin, Cassius Garibaldi, Cassius II, know after his reign as the Terrible. Outnumbered more than two to one by the part of the fleet that had stayed loyal to Cassius, she had fought a brilliant campaign over a decade, drawing more of the fleet to her side a little at a time. And finally defeating Cassius to become the first of her name as Empress.

  And he was sure that if she had been commanding, she would have come up with a brilliant strategy to defeat this enemy handily. Instead, they had him. He was the designated commander of this battle, even the Republic force and its Crakistan allies subordinate to him.

  “Fi
rst Picket Force reports they are ready for launch,” called out the Fleet Tactical Officer.

  “They may launch on the command of First Picket Force commander,” replied the Admiral, sure that the officer in question would choose the correct time.

  “Time to our first launch, two minutes, sixteen seconds.”

  Kelvin nodded as he stood looking at the holo. There were already icons of his force on that holo, ships and deployed surprises. They were not boosting at the moment, none of them, and so were not detectable by an enemy moving in hyper. Some, the closer, would be visible to the enemy soon after they entered normal space. By that time they would be under attack, and have little time to devote to anything that was not trying to kill them. He saw them because his ship’s computer had seen them during their last locator gravity pulse, generated over an hour ago. And had estimated their track thereafter. It might be marginally off, but not by much.

  “Launching, now,” called out the Tactical Officer, and the massive ship started the strange vibration that went along with a wormhole missile launch system. The two launchers put out a wave of missiles in a fraction of a second, travelling at point nine light, grabber units powered down, making them nearly undetectable at anything other than very close range. Each launcher let out thirty missiles. There was a quiet period of about thirty seconds as the wormhole at the other end of the link, thousands of light years distant, moved into position. Each launch tube was thousands of kilometers long, and accelerated the missiles through over and over, entering a wormhole at the end of the tube to reappear at the beginning to start the process over again. At the moment of launch the wormhole at the end collapsed to a pinpoint along the side, effectively removing it from the end of the tube in a nanosecond, revealing the next wormhole a hundred meters further on. The microsecond burst of thrumming vibration went through the ship again, and then the wormhole frame rotated into place again and sent out another blast of missiles. The procedure was repeated six times by each launcher, using the half dozen launch tubes in each assembly. In a little under three minutes each launcher had put out one hundred and eighty missiles, three hundred and sixty for the entire ship.