Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (13 page)

The real problem was that his was the only
wormhole equipped ship in his command, and as such the only one that had a
connection back to headquarters.  His other ships were spread out in a pattern
to catch any signals that
Komorov
might miss.  But since they didn’t
have a wormhole com, the only way they could communicate was by either subspace
com, or by grav pulse.  Subspace com was very short ranged, not more than a
light month.  Grav pulse could be heard out to a few light months, and gave
away the presence and location of the transmitting ship.

Which meant that effectively he had the only
ship that could detect and send their information up the line.

It was bitch enough sneaking in here
, he thought,
remembering a tense couple of days at hyper I to get to their final translation
point.  Then translation, then waiting several hours to see if anything had
detected them and was going to jump back into hyper and come after them.  They
had never heard that translation, which didn’t mean that something hadn’t
picked them up and crept away out of detection range. 
It’s enough to drive
someone mad, all this guess work.  And we live or die with good or bad guesses.

“We’re picking up ships coming in from
anti-spinward,” called out the Tactical Officer, giving the direction up the
Perseus arm as it curved  away from the Galactic disc.  The direction of the
Ca’cadasan Empire.

“How many do you have?”

“Looks like twenty-two.  No, make that twenty
three contacts.  Seven of them are capital ships.”

They followed the contacts for the next couple
of hours, until they had moved out of detection range.  But an hour after that
there were more contacts, coming out of the system and heading directly
anti-coreward.  “It looks like they’re not going to hunker down completely,”
said von Rittersdorf, watching the ships on the plot.  “Would have been nice if
they had.”

Of course the Cacas were the aggressors in this
war, and were probably not comfortable going completely on the defensive.  And
there was still a lot of lightly defended Imperial space out there.  Easy
pickings for Caca task forces. 
Unless the information we get to HQ can be
developed into an intercept
, he thought, watching as the contacts moved
away and off the plot.

“We want you to configure your wormhole into a
delivery gate,” came the command from headquarters later that day.  “We have
some special weapons for you.”

Maurice sent out the order to engineering to
configure the hole they used for com, after moving it to the forward missile
magazine, which was almost empty after the weapons they had expended in the
running battle to and from the Congreeve system.

The first of the reloads came through, only
they weren’t exactly the kind of missile they had already used up, the hyper
VII/normal space dual drive they had used in the battle.  These were slightly
longer, and a little more massive.

Maurice pulled up the schematics on the
missiles as they came across, a smile on his face. 
These will do nicely
,
he thought, looking over the specs, which included a more efficient crystal
matrix battery system.

Three hours after taking the first missile
aboard,
James Komorov
was deploying the first twenty of the weapons,
making room for more.  The missiles boosted out under minimal power, coming to
rest several light minutes from the launching ship, set in a semicircle that
covered most of the approaches to the system.  They powered down after
decelerating to a stop, the only system still working the com feed that would
accept orders from its launching ship.

Now we just have to get the orders to use them
, thought the destroyer
force commander.  He for one couldn’t wait to spring the surprise on some Caca
ships that wandered into the trap fat and sassy.

*    
*     *

Great Admiral Miierrowanasa M’tinisasitow
growled deep in his throat as he looked at the system he had made his
headquarters.  A system that had contained two of the giant base stations they
had needed to support their conquest.  One was to have moved to another
system.  One was to have stayed here.  And now, according High Admiral
Kellissaran Jarkastarin, his subordinate and rival, both had been destroyed by
the cursed invisible attack ships of the humans.

I should have left a larger defensive force
here
,
he thought, standing with his upper arms crossed over his deep chest, lower
arms clasping their hands behind his back.  He looked back at the armed males
that were his bodyguards, scowling at their presence, here, looking at his
shame. 
I shouldn’t have stuck my horns into that damned trap in the first
place
, he thought, turning and throwing his goblet at the wall.  It hit the
hard alloy and bounced way, liquid flying everywhere. 
And I don’t even get
the satisfaction of a good shattering.

“Throwing a tantrum will help nothing,” said an
accursed voice from the doorway.

The Great Admiral spun and pointed both right
index fingers at the other officer.  “How dare you come here,” he growled.

High Admiral Jarkastarin stood there with both
sets of arms crossed to his front.  His body language showed his challenge to
the authority of the Grand Admiral.  Normally that would have resulted in an
attack by one male or another, if they had been lower ranking youths.  As high
ranking adults they were expected to keep their emotions under control, despite
the pheromones that were filling the room.  Even the guards were bristling at
the heavy scent of male aggressiveness that was part of the genetic heritage of
their species.

“How dare you come here, Kellissaran,” yelled
the Great Admiral, his fists clenched.

“I have every right to be here, on this ship,”
said the other Admiral in a cold voice.  “I am, after all, nobly born, and a
friend of the Emperor.”

“A hanger on is all you are.  And you have no
authority on my flagship.”

“You have failed, Miierrowanasa,” said the
other officer.  “The Emperor gave you the sacred duty to crush these vermin,
and you have failed.  I warned you about trying to fight the decisive battle,
when you should have simply fanned out and crushed as many of their systems as
possible.”

“And I told you, such a strategy was doomed to
failure, as it allowed this enemy to pick and choose targets of opportunity. 
We would be bled from a thousand cuts.”

“And look at your conquest force now, oh Great
Admiral M’tinisasitow,” snarled the other male, glancing at the Great Admiral’s
guards, who had interposed their bodies between himself and his rival.  “It
lies in ruins before you, the once great force, now only a shadow of itself.”

“Leave me,” roared the Great Admiral.  “Before
I have you arrested for insubordination.”

The other male glared for a moment, then turned
to walk away.  “The Emperor will be notified of your actions, Great Admiral,”
said the High Admiral as he stalked away.  “And I will have your position.”

The Great Admiral stared down the corridor for
minutes after his rival had walked away.  He was tempted to send males to have
him arrested.  Maybe even assassinated.  He gave a head gesture of negation at
that thought.  The High Admiral did have many friends at court, and many allies
in the conquest fleet.  The Great Admiral was afraid that doing anything to the
powerful male might lead to a revolt in his fleet, and then there would be
literal hell to pay when the Emperor found out.  A commander who could not keep
his subordinates in line was of no use to the Empire.

Hours later the Great Admiral was sitting at
his desk when a priority com came through.  “Great Admiral.  We have reports of
multiple hyper tracks from around the system.  It appears the humans are
putting a scout picket around us.”

I would, were I them
, thought the senior
Ca’cadasan.  “Are they staying in hyper?  Or dropping down into normal space?”

“Dropping down into normal space, as near as we
can tell,” said the officer on the other end of the com.  “Do you want us to
sweep space for them.”

“I can’t see where that would do any good,”
said the Admiral, imagining the huge volume of normal space within light years
of the system.  “They will just hide, without giving off the kind of emissions
we would need to find them.” 
And they’ve probably got enough of those
damned invisible ships around us anyway. 
“Any word on the system sweeps?”

“So far, nothing, my Lord,” said the officer. 
“But we have to this point covered so little of the system.”

“Well, keep looking.” 
Though I really doubt
we will find anything.

An hour later a human was brought before the
Great Admiral.  A young male, not an imposing physical specimen, but one with
intelligence shining from his eyes.

“And what are you bringing this one to me for?”
asked the Great Admiral of one of his science advisors.

“This is Doctor Ivan Smirnov,” said the
advisor, as if those words would mean anything to the Admiral.  “He was working
on the New Moscow wormhole project.”

The Admiral’s ears perked up when he heard that
word.  “The small power had its own project?”

“Tell him,” said the Science Advisor, tapping
the human in the back.

“Well, yes, er, my Lord,” said the man in a
tremulous voice.  “We didn’t want the Empire to be the only ones producing
wormholes.”

“I thought a black hole was needed to make
these constructs,” said the Great Admiral, leaning over his desk.  Seated, he
still towered over the human.

“The black hole is needed to generate the
energy, my Lord,” said the human.  “But not for the actual generation of the
hole.  We were working on building up an industrial planet for the same
purpose.  Sort of like the generating complexes needed for supermetal
production.  We couldn’t make as many of them in a specified time period as the
Imperials could, maybe one a week.  But we also found that the Imperials were
using more energy than they needed to form their holes.”

“How, much more?” asked the Great Admiral,
clasping his upper hands on the desk.

“Twenty percent.  Maybe more.”

So, we could make wormholes without having to
spend a century building a station around a black hole
, thought the grinning
Admiral, the implications of such obvious.  They couldn’t make near as many as
the humans, and probably couldn’t use them in so many ways.  But a ship gate
back to a major fleet system was just one of the many advantages it would give
them. 
We could send reinforcements through whenever we wanted, without
having to run the gauntlet of the human fleet.  And instantaneous
communications with headquarters. 
That last could be a double edged sword,
as sometimes it was better for headquarters to be months away.

“And what do you want for this knowledge?”

“Safety for myself and my family,” said the
human, dropping his eyes to the floor.

“Anything else?”

“I don’t care for anyone else in the whole
damned kingdom,” said the human, raising his pain filled eyes to look into
those of the Ca’cadasan.  “Or the Empire or Republic.  Just get me and my
family to safety, and you can do what you want with everyone else.”

The Great Admiral stared at the man for a
moment, forcing the human to look back at the floor.  It was something no
Ca’cadasan would do, sell out his own people for safety.  But, as he was
learning, the human species was a contradiction in thought and behavior.

“Very well,” said the Admiral, looking at his
Advisor.  “I want this male and his family members on a ship back to the Empire
immediately.  With a strong escort.”

“Are you sure you want to spare the ships?”
asked another officer who was in the chamber.

“We need this technology,” said the Great
Admiral, glaring at the officer.  “It may be the most important gift to fall
our way, and I want to see it safely in the hands of our own scientists.” 
As
poor as they may be
, he thought.  The Ca’cadasan version of scientists were
those males too old to still serve in the military.  Unlike the human model,
where young people with flexible minds were in the positions of discovery.

“Yes, my Lord,” agreed the Advisor, giving a
head nod of accent.  “We’ll put him on a supercruiser and get him to our
space.  With an escort of another cruiser.”

“Double the number of cruisers,” ordered the
Great Admiral.  “And add double their number of scouts.  And they are to go
through the remains of the smaller kingdom.”  The Admiral was well aware that
some of his ships were disappearing in transit through the corridor that most
of them traversed to get to the front.

“And tell them that this human is to get
through, at all costs.  If his vessel is taken, their lives are forfeit.”

The Advisor gave a head gesture of obedience,
then led the human away.  The Admiral returned to his comp holo, trying to get
back to his dispatches.  But he couldn’t concentrate on the work in front of
him.  His mind kept coming back to the proposition that the Ca’cadasan fleet
might have wormholes.  It might take some years to develop the production
capacity.  But once it was developed, they could continue to expand it until
they had all that they needed to defeat the humans.