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

  Light seconds on either side of Constance were the super heavy battleships Chang Lee, named after the first ruler of what was to become the New Terran Empire, and Claudius I, the last of the pre-emperor kings. Each had the same launching system. Each put the same number of missiles into space at point nine light, sending them toward the area where the enemy scout force was expected to arrive. A region a mere thirty light seconds away.

  “Estimated enemy translation in twenty-four seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer. “Particle beams fully charged and ready.”

  And now we wait, thought the Fleet Admiral, watching as the icons of the enemy scout force moved toward the hyper I barrier, velocity holding steady at point three light, their maximum translation speed. While more of the main force made the jump from hyper II to I.

  * * *

  “The scouts will be entering the system in three minutes, Great Admiral,” reported the Tactical Officer to the commander of the Ca’cadasan relief fleet.

  Great Admiral Kleshinki Jaranona’so growled his response as he looked at the tactical holo. He thought it strange that they were not picking up any ships in the system they were heading into. There was supposed to be a substantial Ca’cadasan presence in the system, and some of those ships should have been under power, emitting the gravitons that would give them away even to ships in hyper. Had the system been taken? Not that there was anything he could do about it until he entered normal space. His fleet was committed. There was no way they could decelerate enough to turn around and avoid the system. In fact, at maximum deceleration, they would be over an hour into the system before they could start acceleration back out, if that’s what he decided to do.

  “And we will enter the system, when?”

  “In forty-four minutes, my Lord,” said the Navigation Officer, looking up from his board. “First ships from the main force will translate into normal space in forty minutes, the last at fifty-three.”

  So he would have his entire force within a couple of light minutes of each other, and separated by nine minutes of time. He had little experience with the humans, other than the information other Cacada had brought back from the front. They were said to be devious, tricky, capable of great deception. But here he had three fifths of a conquest fleet, surely enough to handle anything that might be waiting for him.

  “I want all vessels ready to fire on anything that isn’t identified as one of ours, as soon as they enter normal space,” he said to the Com Officer in a tone that brooked no discussion. “If we can fire on it, they are to fire, and hit it with everything they have until it is a cloud of expanding plasma.”

  “The scouts are translating into normal space now, my Lord,” called out the Navigation Officer. At that moment the lights dimmed slightly on the bridge, and the characteristic nausea of a translation struck the Great Admiral. Ca’cadasans, as a species, were not easy translators, hit hard by the biological disorientation of changing dimensions. And the Great Admiral was one of the more sensitive ones aboard the ship.

  “My Lord,” cried out the Tactical Officer, turning around, his teeth bared in alarm. “We have missile launch in normal space, heading into the scouts.” The officer turned back to his board as the icons appeared on the plot, followed by another massive surge of vector arrows appearing in front of the main fleet. “We have missile translation, coming up from normal space. Straight ahead. Closing speed, point three four light.”

  Tricky indeed, thought the Great Admiral, gritting his teeth, watching as several thousand vector arrows headed into his fleet.

  * * *

  Two hundred Ca’cadasan ships translated into normal space just outside the hyper I barrier, within light seconds of their projected entry point. The Ca’cadasans, at least these Ca’cadasans at this time, were predictable in the way they entered a system. A straight line from their point of origin, jumping with almost pinpoint precision from dimension to dimension. It was masterful navigation, but one that led to giving away part of their game.

  The dozen supercruisers and their escort of one hundred and eighty-eight scouts started scanning space as soon as they exited the holes they had created between the dimensions. And saw that they were in a really bad situation, with nothing to do but weather the storm and hope.

  One thousand and eighty missiles were streaking toward them at point nine light, their grabbers lighting as soon as their sensors picked up the translation of their targets, accelerating them at a vector changing twelve thousand gravities, adding almost a hundred and eighty kilometers per second to their velocity. Normally only capable of five thousand gravities over the long haul, these weapons were trading duration for acceleration, and would only be able to maintain that rate for about five minutes before their grabbers burned out. It would be more than was needed.

  The enemy tried their best to survive the wave. Their best was not good enough, and only twenty-three ships survived the onslaught. They warned the ships still in hyper through grav pulse, not that there was anything the rest of the fleet could do for them.

  Chapter Three

  As long as your ideology identifies the main source of the world’s ills as a definable group, it opens the world up to genocide.

  Steven Pinker.

  NEW TERRAN EMPIRE SPACE APRIL 11TH, 1002.

  “As far as we can tell, they are of human origin, your Majesty,” said Dr. Lois Lenki, a geneticist and advisor to the Ministry of Science. The tall, black haired woman had come all the way from the capital to brief the Emperor, though he had received a preliminary brief a couple of days before.

  “But are they still human?” asked Sean, looking over the genetic structure that had been relayed from the Nina over the wormhole com. The patterns looked human, as far as that went, until one probed deeper and saw the differences. Some genes were missing, others substituted. And the structure was different from class to class.

  “As far as the definition of species, able to reproduce with viable offspring capable of the same, no sir,” said the scientist, calling up a holo over the flatcomp she was carrying. “In fact, we’re not sure the classes, better call them separate species of hominids, can reproduce with each other at all.”

  “Separate species of hominids,” said the Emperor under his breath. As far as the human species was concerned, there was only one other primate that even came close to having the same genetic structure. Chimpanzees. Humans had forty-six chromosomes, while chimps had forty-eight, but they both had almost the same number of genes.

  “These beings have the same number of chromosomes as we do, but some are much larger than our corresponding chromosomes,” said Lenki, pointing to the sixteenth through nineteenth pairs, and number twenty-one and twenty-two, which were much longer than their corresponding true human pairs.

  Sean brought up what he had learned about the Human Genome and Improvement Project, the effort to improve humanity back in the second century of humanity’s reestablishment. Humanity had been improved across the board. They were stronger, faster, hardier and smarter about thirty percent across the board. The ethicists had tempered the improvements, making sure that all the improvements still fit a bell curve of human variation. The geneticists and ethicists were afraid that tampering too much with the human genome would lead to problems according to the law of unforeseen consequences. They had gotten rid of all the genetic defects which had plagued mankind. Diabetes, mental retardation, neurological disorders were all things of the past, and nanotech would prevent any of the dread diseases from ever rearing their ugly heads again.

  This kind of genetic manipulation was beyond the pale, separating humankind into completely different species that had no say in what they were to become.

  “What have your simulations shown?” he asked the Geneticist.

  “All of these new species have hyper metabolic systems,” said the scientist, the figure of one of the ground warriors turning in the holo. “They would go from newborn to adult in less than five years, and their lives would be lived on t
he fast track. We can’t give you a firm figure, but their life span would be much shorter than unimproved humans.”

  Sean nodded, thinking about how humanity had lived most of its existence as a brutally short journey through a life filled with death. Only in the latter part of the nineteenth and into the twentieth century did most people live more than half of their potential life span, and in the twenty-first they had started to live into their hundreds, thanks to medical science. The Human Genome Improvement Project had extended that natural life span to between two hundred and fifty and three hundred years. In that respect they had tried to extend it as far as possible, and had run into a wall at the current limit. It was still a great improvement over what they had had.

  Cloning had been experimented with, the growing of new bodies and transferring the consciousness from the old body to the new. But that had led to other problems, as the clones had lacked any kind of human morality. They exhibited the brain wave patterns of psychopaths, and their actions led to the complete banning of that technology. Human body parts could be regrown, but not complete bodies.

  “Anything else?”

  “We’re still running simulations, your Majesty. The problem is that they are only simulations. We won’t really know without observation of some live specimens.”

  “So our brothers had to resort to genetic engineering to fight the Cacas,” said Sean, feeling some trepidation at the very thought of creating a separate species like the people from Exodus IV must have done. “We’ve had to do some things I haven’t liked in order to stop the Cacas ourselves.”

  “This is what we know about, your Majesty,” said the Scientist, her eyes narrowing. “The tip of the iceberg. We have no idea how much suffering this kind of genetic manipulation has caused, or what else people who would resort to this level of biological crime would do.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Lenki,” he said, gesturing for his Military Advisor to step forward. “Now excuse me.”

  The Scientist looked like she wanted to say more, but realized that she was being dismissed. She walked away, shoulders slumped, as Sean turned toward the General who was his liaison with the army forces on New Moscow.

  “How is the evacuation going?” he asked Major General Carla Manuel.

  “We’ve gotten three hundred million off the planet so far, your Majesty,” said the General, her eyes following the scientist as she moved out of earshot. “That leaves over four hundred million to be moved. And that’s just on New Moscow.”

  Sean thought about the other worlds that had been liberated, a dozen planets that had been taken over by the Cacas, with another three hundred million humans between them. Those planets were safe as far as the Cacas were concerned. There were sufficient fleet units in the system and soldiers on the ground to safeguard those civilians, and since there were less than fifty million people on each world, there was enough food to feed most of them. A superfreighter in each system supplied enough food and medical supplies for the rest.

  In fact, they might have been able to save all of the people on New Moscow by leaving them in place, and bringing in what they needed. Except that they had expected Caca forces to come in and reinforce the system, and that there would be a large force of Ca’cadasan infantry on the ground even after the world was taken. They didn’t figure that the Cacas would come along so soon, before the major fleet force reached New Moscow, but there they were. With an alien force in the system that could bombard the planet at long range, taking out the world and the humans who were still there, there really was no choice but to attempt to evacuate all of them they could. The people who wanted to be evacuated from the other worlds would be lifted off, in time. But New Moscow was something that couldn’t wait.

  “New Moscow is the largest concentration of people left from the Kingdom of New Moscow,” said Sean, looking at the map of the region in his link. “I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye with the Czar, or his people. But they are human, and I’ll be damned before we let them all die out. New Moscow will live again, and their military will fight alongside us into Caca space. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir. And we’re doing everything we can about them. But we aren’t the Fleet, and we really can’t do anything about the Caca navy, unless and until they come within range of our planetary weapons.”

  Sean stared at her for a moment, until the woman dropped her eyes, then turned his basilisk gaze onto Vice Admiral Klarence Wu, his Fleet liaison officer. “I am damned tired of my military services acting like they are competing forces,” he yelled, causing both flag officers to flinch. “You are all part of the same team, my sword and mace. I don’t care if you fly spaceships or shoot at the enemy from the ground. You are the Imperial military.”

  “Yes, sir,” said both officers, snapping to attention in front of the man they had both sworn oaths to, a young man at least forty years their junior.

  “Good. Then the Fleet will take care of the Cacas in space,” he said looking at Wu. He looked over at Manuel. “And the Army will hunt and kill the Cacas on the ground. And you will trust your sister service to take care of their business, while you take care of yours.”

  There were nods and some mumbled ‘yes sirs’ to that last pronouncement. Sean smiled. Let them worry about him, and of course about their own fiefdoms. He should be the one staying up at night worrying about the big picture.

  Both services are going to grow much bigger before this thing is over, he thought, looking over the field at the seemingly endless line of refugees. The Fleet had always been the senior service. With a space faring civilization, it made more sense to invest in warships than in ground troops. For civilization to function they needed to protect the space lanes from both enemy space nations and pirates. They projected the force of the Empire into other space, and carried out the diplomacy of the government when other means broke down. They were the best way to protect the inhabited planets of the Empire, since a fleet that couldn’t get within bombardment range of a planet was really no threat. And of course the Caca fleet, the greatest threat ever to the human species, could only be handled by his own fleet, and those of his allies. That wasn’t something the Army could do.

  Not saying that the Imperial Army was useless. They did function as a planetary defense force, and protected inhabited planets from invasion. And they would be needed to take enemy planets, especially when the only other way to neutralize a planet was to destroy everything on the surface. With modern buildings and the energy it took to knock them down, that meant enough megatonage to wipe a planet clean of life. There would be a lot of systems to take on the way to the capital of the Ca’cadasan Empire. Unless he wanted to just wipe out planets. And since in their Empire the slaves outnumbered the Cacas a hundred to one, that would just add to the butcher’s bill. I will not become as they are, he thought of the Cacas. I will not commit genocide. No matter how tempting it might be.

  He looked away from the crowded field and those people, all liberated by ground forces. True, the Fleet had a big part in that rescue, but without the Army, and to a lesser extent the Marines, none of those people would have made it to safety.

  “Your transport is ready, your Majesty,” said one of his Secret Service Agents.

  Work awaits, he thought, nodding to the agent, then following his detail. There was nothing he could do about New Moscow at the moment. Everything he could do, he had done. Now it was time to take care of the business of the Empire, which even in wartime meant more than just moving ships from here to there.

  * * *

  PLANET NEW MOSCOW APRIL 11TH, 1002.

  The Emperor wasn’t the only one worried about the battle going on in the system space. Nor was he the only one who knew there was nothing he could do about it, and had to occupy himself with other things. Unlike the Emperor, some of the others had many more personally important things to keep their attention.

  “They’re here,” said First Sergeant Renhard Fujardo, poking his head into the small chamber that his Captain
had taken for his own.

  Captain The Baron Cornelius Walborski opened his eyes as soon as he the other man spoke. He had been awakened by the approach of the quiet man, his heightened senses keeping watch even when his mind was otherwise engaged. That mind should have been engaged with sleep, but the memories of the battle were too fresh, the faces kept floating through his mental vision. He had lost over a hundred and forty of his men, only thirty-seven of them recoverable.

  “About time,” growled the young man as he forced himself out of bed, fully alert in moments. He took a few moments pulling on one of the overalls they used for casual wear out in the field, then grabbed his boots and put them on his feet, sealing them to the legs of his uniform. “What do they look like?”

  “Bad as hell, sir,” said the smiling Top Sergeant. “Bad as hell.”

  Walborski followed the Top down the hall, where the rest of his small unit was gathered. He was anxious to get back into the field, this time to do what he was trained to do. Command had seemed to agree with him, granting his request to lead a half platoon back into the brush to hunt down the Cacas that were still out there. The heavy infantry could track down the larger groups of Cacas, those who were still gathered in dangerous combat units of company size or better. But there were numerous small groups out there, also dangerous in their own way. Command was unwilling to let them just hang out in the jungle, where they could strike for supplies when their own ran out.

  “Aren’t they beautiful” asked Sergeant Timothy Slater as his two superiors came into the large assembly area.

  “They sure are,” agreed the Captain, his eyes glued to the four big animals that were lounging on the rock floor.