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

  “Most especially that capability, Exec. I want them to think we’re the only ones that have any kind of contact with them, and that we have no means of contacting our Empire without going back to them. I want them to think we are on our own. That may lead to different behavior on their part than if they knew we had instantaneous transmission back to our base. And I especially demand that they not get a clue that we might be able to get help here if needed.”

  “That could make things a little hotter for us, ma’am,” said the Tac Officer.

  “That’s OK,” said Sung. “Part of our mission is to find out what we’re really dealing with. And that entails some risk.”

  Chapter Five

  Here’s a news flash: No soldier gives his life. That’s not the way it works. Most soldiers who make a conscious decision to place themselves in harm’s way do it to protect their buddies. They do it because of the bonds of friendship - and it goes so much deeper than friendship.

  Eric Massa.

  PLANET NEW MOSCOW APRIL 12TH, 1002.

  Lt. General Samuel Baggett walked down one of the main thoroughfares of the camp, faceplate raised. The odor was almost indescribable, the scent of unwashed bodies, millions of them, crammed too close together. And underlying it all, the sickly sweet odor of death. Baggett wondered what the odor had been like when the camp was filled to capacity. Now it was at only half capacity, the other half having been moved out, most evacuated off planet. There were still columns of humans walking out of the camp and toward the caverns under the mountains, heading for the wormhole. Others were heading into the camp, to the lift shafts leading down to another wormhole.

  Baggett looked up to the sky, a cloudless vault that would have been beautiful if not for the haze that seemed to be a permanent fixture after the battle. The smoke and dust of multiple hundreds of large scale explosions had lifted the particulates into the air, where it would hang for years if measures weren’t taken to clean it out. Baggett hoped that someday those measures would be taken, but first they had to beat the Ca’cadasan force that was in system to destroy them.

  “Thank you,” yelled one of the New Muscovites, waving from ahead.

  “Bless you and your Emperor,” called out another.

  The calls kept coming, and some people ran out to clap him on his armored back or shake his hand. Baggett felt somewhat aggravated by the delay, but couldn’t keep the smile off his face. The expressions of these people showed hope for what had to be the first time in the months since the Cacas came here. He looked around and saw that most of the people around had food in their hands, bowls or sandwiches, some with fruit. Baggett remembered the huge depots that had sprung into existence overnight outside all of the camps, filled with all the food and supplies needed to return these people to health. Large hospital tents had been erected, where hundreds of Imperial medical personnel were working on the weakest or most injured of the people.

  We still need to get the rest of them out of here, he thought, feeling an itch between his shoulder blades that he couldn’t scratch. With a thought he ordered his suit’s nanite systems to take care of the distraction. I wish I could ditch the damned armor, he thought. They were still in a war zone, there were still armed Cacas on the planet, and orders from Army called for every combat soldier to remain in full battle gear until otherwise told. The suits were supposed to take care of all their needs, providing breathable air when necessary, food and water when wanted, and recycling systems that would replenish them as long as the suit had energy. Its batteries had just been changed out, and he should be good for a couple of weeks at normal operating power. I still could do with a bath, he thought. The suit nanosystems were supposed to keep him clean as well, but it just wasn’t the same.

  Ahead were the people he had come to see, and he picked up his pace, the suit easily moving him along. Two men and a woman were standing talking, one of the males gesturing to the impromptu gallows that had been erected in the cleared area before them. Six bodies swung from the ropes of the gallows, while those who had sentenced them to death talked about the future of their people. A little girl stood by the gallows, looking up at one of the bodies, tears streaking her face. A woman came running up, calling out the name ‘Elizabeth’, then ushering the child off the field.

  “Colonel Gorbunov. Ms. Vakhrusshev,” called out Baggett as he caught their attention.

  “General Baggett,” said Vahkrusshev, an agent of New Moscow Intelligence who had volunteered to come into the camp before the assault. “We were just talking about you.”

  “Why were the Rangers removed from the Camp?” asked Gorbunov, a former officer in the New Moscow PD. “We were grateful for their intervention, and would like to express our gratitude.”

  “The Rangers are assets that are needed elsewhere, Colonel,” said Baggett. “We have enough heavy infantry now for reaction forces, and what we need now are hunters. Which are what the Rangers excel at.”

  Baggett looked up at the bodies on the scaffold. “Were these all of them?”

  “All that we know of,” said the third man, Sergie Baryshnikov, third cousin of the late Czar, Archduke of New Kiev, and, as far as they knew, the next in line for the throne of New Moscow. “Collaborators are nasty business. To sell out one’s own people, for the luxury of a little more food, and a delay of the day of death. They deserve what they got.”

  Baggett nodded. He would have preferred to have put those people into a cell, interrogated them, and then executed them in a more humane manner. But these people were under the jurisdiction of the provisional New Moscow government, of which these leaders standing before him were representative, one a probable future ruler.

  “What word on the Caca fleet?” asked Baryshnikov, a frown on his face.

  “We’re fighting them,” said Baggett, shaking his head. “We’re trading ships and lives for time, but I can’t guarantee we’re going to stop them. Which is why we’re still evacuating the people from your world. And that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about, your Grace. The Emperor would like to ask you again to evacuate the planet. You are the dynasty, your Grace, and it would serve no one to have you die on this world.”

  “And again, I must respectfully refuse, General,” said the Archduke. “These are my people, and I will not abandon them.”

  “You were fortunate enough that the Cacas didn’t come looking for you,” argued Baggett. “If they had realized who you were, they would have used you against us, if they didn’t just go ahead and kill you.”

  The Archduke stood there with his arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head.

  He feels guilty about what happened to his people. Even though he was not the ruler during the invasion. Even though there was really nothing he could do about it. And now that guilt is going to make him stay here, when he needs to get his ass of this world.

  “We will try our best to keep the Cacas away from this world, your Grace,” said Baggett, bowing slightly in his heavy armor. “But we can promise nothing. And in the meantime, we will try to get as many of your people off this world as we can before they get here.”

  “No one can promise anything in such a chaotic time,” said the Archduke. “All we can do is our best.”

  Baggett saluted and turned away, walking quickly from the area before he did something stupid, like telling a royal jackass what a fool he was for trying to make a point that didn’t matter. They would either get all of the people off the world in time, or they wouldn’t, and his sacrificing himself to make the Imperials work faster was not going to result in any faster evacuation. Not when they were already doing everything they could.

  * * *

  NEW MOSCOW SPACE APRIL 12TH, 1002.

  Great Admiral Jarrassand’ra Kiritopath glared at the tactical holo, his anger rising as he thought of the day that had just passed. They had outnumbered and outmassed the enemy by a factor of twenty. With odds like that the enemy should have avoided contact. Instead, they had ambushed his force coming out of hyper,
then had not run away like rational beings. Instead, they had maneuvered on the periphery of his force and galled him with long range missile fire. Most of them had paid for it with their lives and their ships, and he had exchanged with them at a rate of three of their tons for one of his. Not a sustainable rate for an enemy, and another indication of their insanity.

  Now he was boosting toward what was obviously an enemy held planet, and he had no idea what was waiting for him in orbit. Whatever was there was switching up their grabber signals, and using holographic projections to spoof his visual systems. Not that he thought he couldn’t take whatever was there, since if the humans thought they had enough to handle his force, they would be boosting for him.

  “We have missile launch, my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer, as a hundred red arrows appeared on the plot, less than a light minute ahead and boosting at fifteen thousand gravities. Not really much of a strike, and they would not attain enough velocity for any of the individual missiles to be much of a threat. But it was the second launch in the last ten minutes, all from heavily stealthed platforms, mines really, that were impossible to track until they were well within that one light minute range.

  “They wish to slow us down, my Lord,” said the Great Admiral’s Chief Advisor. “They think we will realize that the faster we are going, the more dangerous these nuisances will be.”

  “Of course they do,” growled the Great Admiral. And I wish I had brought along some of those who had faced these humans before, to give me their counsel. But the Regional Commander had decided otherwise. That unimaginative male had thought that the only way the conquest fleets that had attacked the humans could have failed was due to either cowardice or incompetence. He had ordered the execution of all the group leaders and ship’s captains, and one in twelve of the junior leaders, and quarantined all of the rest of the officers and crew.

  So he had been deprived of the only Cacada who knew anything about these humans. Not those who thought they knew what was going on, that this was another weak species to be easily conquered, or in the case of these sentients, destroyed. And I’ve already learned that they do not respond as expected.

  “What are your orders, my Lord,” asked the Com Officer, waiting to transmit the commands of the Fleet Commander to the other ships, anticipating the order.

  “All ships are to slow to two hundred gravities,” said the High Admiral, looking over at the Com Officer. “Launch fighters from all scout ships. We’ll let them probe ahead for these weapons.” Hopefully they will find them. If not, then I waste minimal crews and tonnage to trigger the trap.

  “They can’t have seeded the entire system with these things,” said the Tactical Officer, highlighting their path from the hyper barrier to the planet. “It seems to me that they must have known where we were going to enter from hyper well before we got here, then calculated a straight line least time profile to the planet.”

  This one can think, thought the High Admiral, giving a head motion of agreement and satisfaction. “Very well. Curve our vector around to put us on another profile to the planet. We’ll see if they can sow these things without us picking up the ships that are placing them.”

  “My Lord,” called out the Com Officer. “Outer pickets are picking up over a thousand vessels in hyper VI, heading into the system from twenty-three degrees south of coreward.”

  “And I’m sure they are not ours,” said the Tactical Officer. “Should we fire a barrage to reach them when they come into the system.”

  “We have no way of predicting where these humans will be coming in to normal space,” said the High Admiral, giving a head motion of negation.

  “Indications are about half human ships, the other half unknowns,” called out the Com Officer.

  And that increases the chances of unpredictable behavior, thought the High Admiral, since we don’t even know who their allies are.

  “Hold the missiles for now,” he ordered. “We’ll probably need them when everything in the system has revealed itself.” And you are not going to beat me, humans. I will not experience the disgrace of the last males to face you.

  * * *

  “And I refuse to move my ships out of orbit, Admiral Lenkowski,” said Commodore Sheila Stepanowski of the Czar’s Navy. “I don’t care if you are the ranking alliance officer on this operation. I don’t care if the order comes from your Emperor himself. I don’t care. This is our capital world, and we will not abandon it again.”

  Captain Vladimir Schmidt, sitting in his command chair on the bridge of the battleship Sevastopol, nodded his head in agreement as he watched the argument on a side com. His ship was barely capable of making way, her offensive capabilities had been shot to shit, and he doubted she would last more than a minute against a Caca supercruiser, much less one of their battleships. The entire New Moscow flotilla, six battleships, four cruisers and eleven destroyers, were at about half of their full strength. But, like the other captains, he refused to budge from the orbit of the planet they had fought so hard to liberate. A planet that still had four hundred million of his people on the surface.

  Five hundred warships, the original assault group with reinforcement from the Imperial Home Fleet, was preparing to boost to rimward from the planet, hopefully decoying the Caca force, making them chase the only major force in sight. He didn’t think they had a chance in a stand up fight against the Cacas either, and he knew they didn’t plan to get into one if they could help it. What one wanted didn’t always translate into what one got, though. And if the Cacas decided to ignore them, or split their force, something had to be here to guard the planet. And it sure wasn’t going to be the several hundred freighters and support ships that were getting ready to head for the K class star that was the primary, so they could grav sling around it and head out in the opposite direction.

  “I think that’s a stupid move, Commodore,” said Lenkowski. “And I’m not sure how your government will view your actions, sacrificing ships and crew in a hopeless fight.”

  “And when we have a government I will worry about that,” said the Commodore, anger dripping from her tone. “Until then, I am the ranking naval officer of my fleet in this system, and my captains will follow my orders, not yours.”

  “Very well,” said Lenkowski in a tone that said it was anything but very well. “Just try to stay alive until I get there. We should be entering the system in another thirty-eight hours.”

  The holo went blank, and Schmidt felt the loneliness of his ship’s position really hit him. They didn’t even have the Imperial stealth/attack ships to back them up. They had cut loose their wormhole gates and gone back out into the system, fulfilling the function of minelayers for the moment.

  “Are we going to continue the deception plan?” Schmidt asked over the personal link to his Commodore.

  “Why not,” said the Commodore with a shrug of her shoulders. “We have the devices in orbit with us, so why not keep randomizing their algorithms.”

  Vladimir nodded. His ship’s tactical department was running a score of the ten thousand ton decoys themselves. The decoys were among the newest of the toys the New Terran Empire had developed. They could be set to mimic almost any kind of graviton emission, from a destroyer up to a battleship, at any apparent acceleration level. Right now they were mimicking several hundred warships in orbit around the planet, while projecting holographic images around themselves of those same vessels. The decoys could only operate at full capacity for about twenty-six hours before they overheated, or a much longer time at a much lower setting.

  And we also serve who sit in orbit and pretend to be what we are not, thought the Captain with a smile.

  * * *

  Bryce Suttler was in one of those stealth/attack ships, cum minelayers, Seastag, one of the twenty-five ships that remained of the thirty-two he had brought into the system. At the moment Seastag and six of her sisters were busy dropping in front of the new path the aliens were on. His was one of four groups, each arranged at what was t
hought to be a likely avenue for the aliens to take if they decided to avoid the mines that they were now sure were in their way. There actually were mines there, but not as many as the enemy thought. And there were three more ambushes set.

  “That’s the last of ours, sir,” called out the Tactical Officer. The ship had configured her internal wormhole into a gate at the stern, and the vessel, drifting inward at five thousand kilometers a second, had dropped twenty of the two hundred and fifty ton mobile missile launchers that served the purpose of mines in her wake. Each launcher contained a hundred and fifty ton missile encased in a package that provided long range passive sensors and stealth systems. Between the seven vessels they had emplaced one hundred and forty mines, which were now decelerating at a sedate ten gravities, undetectable from an object their size at almost any distance. The stealth ships would coast in another million kilometers in a little over three minutes, and drop another twenty devices each. The other ships, those who had been deployed on paths that were now no longer of any importance, were starting their maneuvers to get into some kind of attack profile.

  But we’re not going to win this battle with stealth and striking out of the dark, thought the Commodore who knew the ships better than anyone. We’re going to need some firepower.

  “Is the Admiral getting our take of the enemy?” he asked his Com Officer, turning away from the plot.

  “Yes, sir,” replied the officer. “They’re getting the takes from all the ships in our task force.”

  And I hope it’s enough of what they’re looking for to do some good.

  * * *

  “That’s the one we’re looking for, Admiral,” said Rear Admiral Kelso, highlighting one enemy ship on the holo that displayed the entire Ca’cadasan force. “That is the brains of the operation.”

  Fleet Admiral Jerry Kelvin looked at the blinking dot, which was very near the center of the enemy formation, where a flagship would tend to be. It was well known that the Cacas, on the whole, were not the sharpest pencils in the box. Most people would not have even understood where that reference came from, though everyone understood the meaning. Cacas were not the brightest of species as a whole, something to do with their slow metabolism, which led to long life spans. They could think deeply over periods of time, but were not that quick on the uptake. Except for some exceptional specimens who could be frightfully intelligent, and those tended to rise in rank, quickly.