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

  They looked just like jaguars, the animals their genetic profiles were based on. Large cats, with a body about one point eight meters long, massing around a hundred kilograms. All turned their heads to look at the new arrivals, and Cornelius, looking into those fiery eyes set in larger than normal skulls, knew he was seeing more than a mere animal. He had of course heard of the Super Jags. Everyone had. But they were so specialized in their employment that most soldiers never saw one.

  “Captain Walborski,” said a man who walked forward with the grace of the augmented. “I’m Staff Sergeant Mika Jefferson. And these are my soldiers.” He gestured back at the jaguars and the three other handlers.

  “I’ve heard of them, but have never seen one up close,” said Cornelius, stepping a bit closer. All four of the cats came to their feet and oriented on the Captain.

  “As long as we’re near they’re harmless,” said the Staff Sergeant, walking over and placing his right hand on the head of one of the creatures.

  “How do you control them?” asked the Top.

  “They have implants in their heads, that link into the net we also use. And they understand several thousand words.”

  “That many?” said Slater after a whistle.

  “They have just about the same intelligence as an unaugmented dolphin, and their vision is as good as yours, while their hearing and smell, of course, are a level of magnitude better. And much more discriminating than the natural cats they spring from.”

  “So they’re improved jaguars,” said Slater, shaking his head. “They’re still kind of easy to see with that orange fur.”

  “That orange fur, with the black rosettes, allows them to blend into the shadows,” said Jefferson. “But when they are in different backgrounds, they can change their fur at will to blend in, like so.”

  All of the cats seemed to blur slightly before the eyes of all the watchers, the color bleaching out of their fur until they were almost a perfect match for the brownish gray stone they were laying on. They weren’t really invisible. The Rangers could still seem their forms, and especially their eyes. But they could all imagine how hard these beasts would be to pick up in a natural setting.

  “They give off almost no scent,” said the Staff Sergeant. “And they are very quiet, and smart enough to know when they need to be silent.”

  “And if they need to attack?” asked Cornelius, looking over the cats and trying to figure out how he would fight them.

  “Their muscles and nervous systems are augmented to the same extent that ours are,” said the Staff Sergeant. “And their claws are coated with a monomolecular alloy in a carbon fiber sheath. Wouldn’t want them to attack a Caca in battle armor, but against one without that kind of protection? Well, my money would be on the cat.”

  “How many days do you need to get them acclimated to the jungle?” asked Cornelius, now that the tracking animals were here, ready to get back into the jungle and hunt down some Cacas.

  “A couple of days at least,” said Jefferson, nodding back at his charges. “I’d like some of your people to show me around, while me and my people let the cats get the lay of the land.”

  “I would be happy to lead you around, Sergeant,” said Cornelius, a smile on his face. “I can’t wait to see your, children, operate.” And I can’t wait to see how the Cacas react to them.

  Chapter Four

  And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

  Andrew Carnegie.

  GALACTIC SPACE APRIL 12TH, 1002.

  “Your technology is wonderful,” said Slardra as she sat for dinner at the Commodore’s table. This was the second visit of the Commander of the Klavarta task group to her ship, along with some of her officers.

  The Commodore was still having a lot of trouble getting a grasp of this nation they had made contact with. Obviously there were more or less standard humans at the top of the pyramid, and the Klavarta were actually genenged humans. And it was obvious that the standard humans did not want the Ca’cadasans to know that they even existed. It still was not clear what the status of the genenged humans were within their not empire. Were they equal citizens, or merely slaves?

  “You have hyper VII ships,” said Commander Alexandru Ionesco, the chief engineer of the Nina. “And acceleration ranges well within our levels for the size of the ships you have.” Actually, they seemed to have better acceleration rates on their ships, but mostly that was due to having oversized inertial compensators and grabber units on their vessels. Which, of course, did point to a significant industrial capacity, since the production of supermetals was an energy intensive process.

  “We reversed engineered most of what we have from tech we captured,” said the Klavarta engineer who had come across with his? Leader? “From what we understand about your Empire, you have millions of scientists and engineers working on improving your technological situation. While we do not, since our only scientist come from the Pure among us.”

  “And the Pure are, what?” asked Sung, her eyes narrowing, thinking she already knew the answer to that question.

  “The Pure humans, the predecessors,” said Slardra. “Like you. Not the impure, like other species, like ourselves, who are only meant to further the cause of the Overlords.”

  “Do these, Pure humans, interact with you?” asked Sung, wondering how this differed from slavery, or a class system that was slavery in everything but name.

  “The high command of the military and industrial sector interact with them all the time in the capital system,” said Slardra, her face taking on an expression that seemed to mirrored both ecstasy and disgust in a normal human. “They, and the security forces are the only ones that have regular contact. Others may be called to New Earth, as we call our capital among ourselves, or Klavarta when we are forced to interact with lesser species. One day I hope I may look upon the creators in the flesh.” Her mouth stretched into a wide smile that seemed to be somewhat false. “But here I am, talking to ones that are like the creators themselves. Immortal beings, but ones that are willing to put their precious lives in danger to seek out others of their kind.” Now her smile looked much more genuine.

  “Why do you call them immortal?”

  “Because they do not die,” said the Engineer with an expression of confusion. “They have lived for over a thousand years, their lives blessed with an endless duration. We know they can die, but they always resurrect soon after, appearing to glow with the health of youth. The same people. Or at least that is what the priests tell us.”

  Immortality? sent the Commodore to her staff over her implants. Or something else?

  “Not meaning to pry, but how old are you, Slardra?”

  “I am thirty years old by the old calendar,” answered the Alpha Pilot. “If I am fortunate, I will live to see fifty years.”

  That short a life span, thought the Commodore with a sinking feeling. “And how long do the other castes live?” She felt that she was using their stature as Pure humans to get these creatures to volunteer information they might not have otherwise. That caused a little guilt, but she had been sent out here to gather information on these people.

  “Not as long as we do,” answered Slardra. “The engineers live almost as long, while the tinkerers, what you call the engineer apprentices, live to twenty, twenty-five if they are exceptionally long lived. While the warriors are fortunate to reach thirty.”

  “And how fast do you mature?” asked Commander Beoit, the biologist.

  “I had a comparatively long childhood, and did not graduate from my training until I was nearing twelve,” answered the Alpha. “The shorter lived castes of course have much a shorter, briefer growth and development stage. Between six and eight years.”

  “My God,” said Benoit, his face showing his shock. With their branch of humanity more years had always been the goal, until they seemed to run into a natural roadblock. Almost everyone i
n the Empire, as well as the other human nations, lived to well beyond two hundred, some to three centuries, and they were vital and in good health all the way up to the last decade of that time. And here were beings engineered, purposefully created to have lifetimes shorter than pre-space humans. Again the question was why?

  “I know that must seem a brief life span to immortals like yourself,” said Slardra. “But it gives us enough time to do what we were made to do, what the creators need of us. So we are fulfilled with that time.”

  I don’t want a word said about our own life spans, sent Sung over her implant. Let them think we are like their, creators, for the moment. The more they think we are the same long lost cousins to those people, to more information they are bound to reveal.

  “What of other species in your Empire?” asked Benoit, shaking his head at the last big revelation.

  “There are no other species in our Empire, Commander,” answered the Alpha. “Only humans exist within our space, unless the Monsters intrude. And we do our best to make sure their intrusion is short lived.”

  Benoit opened his mouth to speak, and Sung cut him off with a command over her implant. I don’t want to pursue this line right now, Commander. It may lead us to places we don’t want to go, at the moment.

  “I have a question for you,” said Slardra. “What are you doing with the smaller vessels attached to your ships.”

  “The scout ships?” asked Sung, watching as the creature gave a very human head shake. And they are genetically human, she had to remind herself once again. “They were originally planned to be short range scouts when these vessels were envisioned. We were supposed to send them out on side missions when we were stopped at an interesting system. But since we started out on this voyage, we have found their lack of ability to reach hyper VII to be a major flaw, so I’m having engineering convert four on each explorer into hyper VII ships, cannibalizing the supermetals and other equipment from the two remaining ships.”

  “I see. So you will have twelve other vessels capable of reaching the higher dimension, essentially small warships.”

  “They will still be explorers,” stated the Commodore, looking into the very human eyes of the being. She knew that wasn’t strictly true, as they were also beefing up the laser photon emitters that fed into each ring. Missiles were a bit more of a problem, but they were also looking into ways to increase their loadout as well.

  “That is too bad,” said Slardra with a head shake. “We can always use more warships.”

  And you’re not going to get any from us until we figure out what is going on here, thought the Commodore.

  After the meal Sung had some of her lower ranking staff show the Klavarta visitors more of the ship while she called a meeting of her higher ranked staff in another gathering place. She only had her shipboard staff for this meeting. It was a risk using their ship to ship com systems, especially since they weren’t sure of the capabilities of the Klavarta when it came to intercepting a signal and breaking its encryption. So she sat at the head of the table with only her on-board staff, and thought it might be enough.

  “So. What did they mean with that comment about having no aliens in their star nation?” she asked to start the meeting going.

  “Could they inhabit a region of the Galaxy that just happens to have no other intelligent species?” asked the Exec, Commander Laaksonen. “I know it’s a stretch, but I really don’t want to believe these people are guilty of genocide.”

  “I would prefer not to believe the people we were sent to contact were monsters as well,” said Commander Benoit, looking around the table. “However, as a scientist, I cannot come to my conclusions based on what I want to happen.”

  “And what do you think is the probability of a large region of the Galaxy not having any native intelligent species, Commander?”

  “I would say it was very unlikely, ma’am,” replied Benoit, pulling up a holo of the known Galaxy. “As we can see here, about one in sixty odd systems have indigenous life. That was true near Earth, and it’s true in our sector of the Perseus Arm. And so far it seems to be true in the space up the arm to antispinward as well. About one in a hundred of these planets have intelligent life, maybe a tenth of those at the level of sentience needed to develop a civilization, eventually. That comes out to about one intelligent species to sixty-seven thousand systems. Since we have forty-five intelligent species in the Empire, this seems to be correct, and is so far proving to be the case for the newly explored space. Add to that the number of different hype resonances we picked up on the way here, and the number of slave species the Cacas seem to have, and the ratio holds true for the explored Galaxy. Now we can’t be sure this holds up all through the Galaxy, in the core regions for example, but it’s a smart bet to think it holds true for most of the stars in the Galactic arms.”

  The holo switched a view to the portions of the Perseus and Sagittarian Arms that were occupied by the Klavarta. Or at least what they were told was occupied by those beings. It was perhaps a quarter of the area occupied by the Empire. “Now we would expect, from the other samples, for this region to have at least fifteen intelligent species. And they’re telling us there are none. So, what happened?”

  “It is not outside of the realm of statistical probability that this region simply had no other intelligent life,” said the Exec.

  “No, it isn’t,” agreed Benoit. “But until proven otherwise, I have to go with the hypothesis that this region of space is similar to all other regions we are familiar with.”

  “And if the Cacas killed them off?” asked Major Saul Briggs, the Marine commander.

  “As far as we know, the Cacas have killed off a total of two species through their entire history, while conquering over five hundred such,” said Benoit, switching the holo view to what they knew of the Ca’cadasan Empire. It was a sprawling space, twenty-five times the volume of their own Empire. “Why they would wipe out fifteen intelligent species in this area is something I can’t answer. I don’t think that they did. And, according to our friends, the Cacas don’t know that they’re facing humans across this space, the only other species they have promised to destroy. So what is the simplest explanation?”

  “That the people aboard Exodus IV killed off all of their competition,” said Sung in a quiet voice. “That’s almost too monstrous to imagine. Why would they do such a thing?”

  “We don’t know that they did,” said Laaksonen, shaking his head. “This is all speculation so far.”

  That it is, thought Sung, looking between the two men, both biologists. One looking at the facts and not liking what he saw, but not shying away from it. The other refusing to believe that the saviors they had sought out could be monsters from their worst nightmares. And which one is correct?

  “I think the best thing we can do is reserve judgement until we have more facts,” said Sung, raising a hand as both commanders seemed ready to speak. “We’re sending the information back to base through the wormhole com, which, thank God, these people seem to have no clue about. Otherwise, we’re committed to visiting these people’s home system.”

  “You don’t think we could beat these ships escorting us?” asked Fujardo, raising an eyebrow. “Especially when we get the scouts up to VII capability?”

  Sung stared at her Tac Officer for a moment. She had no doubt that her almost sixty million tons of ships could defeat the couple of million tons of ships that surrounded her, especially if she struck first. She also had no doubt that her ships would all sustain some degree of damage. The last thing she would want for her command would to be in the middle of hostile territory in damaged ships. “I think we could beat them, but don’t want to be involved in a shooting incident with these people. Not yet. And what is so funny, Mr. Laaksonen?”

  “The way you keep calling them ‘these people’, ma’am. As if you’re really not sure what to call them.”

  “I’m not sure what to call them, Mr. Laaksonen,” she replied, her eyes narrowing. “For all I
know these people are the real monsters of this story. Or they are just misunderstood, and we’ll have to wait until we have more information. Anything else?”

  “That warrior captain of theirs, the scary looking son of a bitch, dropped the name of their leader to the Sergeant who was giving him a tour of the Marine facilities,” said Major Briggs, closing his eyes as he went into his link. The holo changed views over the table, going from a starfield to the image of a middle aged woman with light skin and dark hair, eyes the color of black pearls staring from a severe face. “Marion Pallion. There was a Marion Pallion listed as the Exec of the Exodus IV. Ex Terran Defense Force Commodore, suborned under the Admiral who was the actual captain of the vessel.”

  “That must be a relative,” argued Lt. Parata, the Sensor Officer. “A descendant. The same woman couldn’t be alive today.”

  “The Klavarta Leader, Slardra, did say that some of the Pure humans, as she called them, were immortal,” said Benoit. “So unless their Empire came up with a process that the best medical brains of ours own couldn’t, there must be another explanation.”

  “Cloning?” growled Sung, shaking her head. “Even the people of that time knew better than to do that. What would have convinced them to even contemplate such a thing, much less implement it?”

  “Remember, their ship was damaged when exiting the Sol system,” said Fujardo. “There’s no telling how much damage they took, to the ship, or the passengers. And they did have a mandate to continue the human race.”

  “Again, all conjecture,” said Laaksonen. “We really won’t know anything until we meet, these people, face to face.”

  “Which we will do,” said Sung, looking around the table from face to face. “Now I want to be sure that everyone in every division of this ship, and the others, knows what not to say, what questions not to ask.”

  “And that includes our ability to communicate with base?” asked Laaksonen.