Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (3 page)

The same process was
going on in another wormhole generating satellite sitting a thousand kilometers
distant in space.  Wormholes needed two openings, and both sought the nearest
portal, forming the tunnel that was the connection between them.  Robots
entered both chambers, which were still much too hot for organic beings to
enter, and would be for some hours.  The wormhole ends were carried out to be
boxed, then shipped to wherever they were bound.  In some cases both ends would
leave the system, in others only one. 

What would become of the
pair?  They might be shipped to the Second Front, or to some other destination
where it was desired that both ends be.  In some cases they would become ship
gates, or passenger gates.  Or weapons ports to missile acceleration tubes and
particle beam accelerators.  Or wormhole heat sinks.  That was not her domain,
the decision on how to use them was the purview of the Admiralty.  Her only
responsibility was to keep cranking them out, and another pair of generators
were already online, the
Donut
starting to spin up its massive dynamos
to powered up the next creation.

Lucille leaned back in
her chair and let out a satisfied breath.  The greatest machine that humankind,
or really any other species, had ever created.  Hers to control.  It wasn’t
invulnerable, but as protected as it was by security, sitting in the middle of
a sixty-four light hour radius hyper-shadow, it was the closest thing to it.

*     *      *

“We’re almost ready for
the next event,” said the alien technician who was manning the control board.

Dr. Ivan Smirnov nodded,
then realized that not everyone in this control chamber was familiar with the
human head gesture.  “Let me review the numbers before your initiate,” he told
the tech, his voice coming out of the translator in the alien’s native
language, just as that being’s speech came out of the translation device in
his.

The human scientist knew
that this facility was not on the same scale as the
Donut
, an object he
had actually toured on a scientific delegation from New Moscow.  This ice moon
had originally been slated to become a new supermetal production site, using
the icy surface and the deeps of space far from its primary to cool the
process.  A thousand great fusion reactors sat on one side of the large moon,
while most of the rest the surface was taken up by huge banks of crystal matrix
batteries that were more efficient in the frigid temperatures.  The great
particle accelerators used in the creation of supermetals were quiescent,
unneeded for this task.

The fusion reactors had
been pushing power into the batteries for six days now, building to the peak that
would be needed to create a wormhole.  Above the moon was a huge satellite
containing two wormhole creation chambers, set up much like the human version
that Smirnov had seen during his tour.  It was a makeshift production process
at best, but it worked, even though one of the plants could only produce a
wormhole every six days.  The Cacas were trying to make up for that by
converting a score of moons to wormhole production, allowing them to create up
to twenty-three wormholes a week, about nine percent of human capacity.  Or it
would be by the time all the moons were finished.  New ones would be added, but
it would be more than a decade before they could even begin to produce half as
many wormholes per week as the one human station made.

Smirnov glanced over at
the Caca supervisor and his guards, all of whom were glaring at what they
considered the lesser beings in the chamber.  The lesser beings who had been
responsible for all of their scientific innovations, what there was of it, for
millennia.

The numbers hit the mark,
and Smirnov gave the command.  Thousands of kilometers of microwave projectors
beamed their energy up to an equal mass of receiving antennas on the satellite,
starting the process.  In fifteen minutes they had a new wormhole, ready to be
shipped off and put to use.

Smirnov smiled as he
watched the end of the process.  To everyone involved it seemed as if they now
had a perfect example of one of the weapons the humans had used against them. 
What they didn’t know was Smirnov had programed some minor quantum variations
into the hole.  It would work perfectly, for a time.  Eventually, a week, month
or year in the future, something would go wrong with the hole, and it would
collapse.  He could only hope that a lot of Cacas were nearby when that
happened.  Or, better yet, transiting the tunnel at the time.

Chapter Two

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every
opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.  Winston
Churchill

BORDERLANDS, NOVEMBER 12
^TH
, 1002. 
D-50.

“We are well into the
space of the human Empire, sir.  My Lord,” said the Navigator, looking at
Jasper, then the Ca’cadasan Overlord.

Four four eight three
one, known for this mission as Ship Master Tom Jasper, watched in relief as
they got to the point where they could start playing the role that would
hopefully get them to the target.  He looked back at the Master, wondering once
again why they had to come on this mission, when his people could have handled
it very well by themselves.  He then looked at four four three seven six, known
as Mary Sowell, the First Mate, as well as his mate.

It had taken them
thirty-six days to come through the borderlands space in hyper IV, something
they could have pushed through in a day and a half in VI.  But by transiting in
four, they were putting out a hyper signal that transmitted only a sixteenth of
the distance that they would in the much higher dimension, while picking up the
enemy at sixteen times that range.  The fear had been that a human ship would
still coast past them, picking up their hypersignal and jumping down to
investigate what would appear to be a smuggler or infiltrator trying to sneak
into their space.

Now they were in the
space where an Imperial merchantman might be expected to be.  Still some
suspicion this close to the border, but a place where they might be able to
talk themselves out of an inspection.  Then again, they might not.

“What has the plot looked
like?” asked the Overlord.

The Captain looked at the
plot, currently set on a twenty light year radius.  Their normal range of hyper
VI detection was about a light year, but anything jumping would be detected for
a few moments out to two and a half to three light years.  Unfortunately, they
would also be detected to the same range when they jumped to VI.  But they
would jump to VI in one step, giving the enemy only one chance to detect their
translation.

“We have seen nothing for
over a day, my Lord,” said the Sensor Tech.

“I believe it is safe
enough,” said Jasper, looking back at the Ca’cadasan.

The male was silent for a
few minutes, thinking.  Jasper knew the Masters were not the fastest of
thinkers, with less flexibility than his own people.  He had been raised to
think of the Masters as superior in all ways, physically and mentally.  It soon
became obvious to anyone who worked with them that they were truly the
physically superior species, or at least the stronger, longer lived race.  It
also became obvious to anyone working around them that the Ca’cadasan were not
mentally superior to most of those they ruled, especially the mentally flexible
humans.  The only reason they ruled such a large Empire was the luck of
timing.  They had advanced at a time when their neighbors weren’t to far ahead
of them, and became too large to fail as they steamrolled single and small
multisystem species afterwards.

“Proceed,” ordered the
big male.

“Jump,” ordered Jasper a
moment later.  The lights dimmed for a moment as the ship put all of its power
into the hyperdrive arrays, which projected a wave of gravitons to open a
temporary hole between the dimensions.  The ship slid smoothly through the hole
from the red background dimension of hyper IV into the brighter red higher
dimension of VI.

The ship coasted in VI
for ten minutes, holding her entry velocity of point two light.  She actually
had the capability of jumping at point three light, in the same range as most
of the warships of both sides.  But she was playing the deception game, and
anyone picking her up before or after jump would see what they wanted to see.

“No tracks,” called out
the Sensor Tech.  “As far as I can tell, there is nothing out there listening
to us.”

Which might not mean they
weren’t there.  In the past, any ship listening to hyperdrive emissions could
only transmit the information to other waiting ships by grav wave, detectable
by the ship they were tracking.  The humans had changed all that with their
wormhole tech, and their other strange methods of instantaneous com.  That
seemed to Jasper the mentally superior species, his long lost people, and
recently he had started wondering if he was serving the right side.

“Accelerate up to point
eight five light,” he ordered.  “One third maximum acceleration.”

The Helm nodded, then
pushed forward the grabber units up to the maximum that a freighter was
expected to do, about one hundred and seventy gravities.  In actuality
Fool’s
Bane
could pull five hundred and fifteen G’s, similar to most warships. 
But again, she was playing a game, and had to look the part.

They pushed the ship
ahead for many hours, eventually getting up to point eight seven light,
slightly above the norm for merchant ships, but not outside the realm of
possibility.  They travelled several hours more before Jasper felt a sense of
relief.  They were well inside the Empire now and had not been challenged.  In
fact, they had seen nothing on their scans.  A bit of luck, but not unexpected
when military forces had so much space to cover, and most of them were
congregated at the frontier they had already penetrated.

“Time to target system, forty-six
days,” called out the Navigator.

Jasper nodded.  When they
reached the target system they would be three day’s transit from their
objective.  The other ship was five days ahead, since they had a much longer
transit into the gravity well of the black hole.  With luck they might even
make it back home at the end of the mission.  They had a wormhole, after all,
and if the Masters gave permission they could step across twenty thousand light
years in an instant.  He didn’t expect that to happen, either for them to
survive to that point, or for the Masters to even consider extracting them. 
But it didn’t hurt to stay hopeful.

*     *     *

CAPITULUM, JEWEL. NOVEMBER 18
^TH
, 1002.

Angel Sergio Martinez
stood on the balcony of his townhouse and looked out over the city of
Capitulum, lit up like a true gem in the night.   The balcony was situated a
thousand meters up on the megascraper.  Jewel was situated in the edge of the
northern tropics of a planet slightly colder than Old Earth.  It could get
uncomfortable during the day, and sometimes at night, if one were not in the
climate controlled confines of a building.   The added altitude took a little
bit of the edge off of that temperature, though sometimes the winds could get a
little rough.

Tonight it was perfect,
and the man known to the Underworld as
The Angel of Death
was enjoying
the sight of the city, feeling its pulse as he watched the chain of lights that
were aircars moving across the night sky.  The city, with over three billion
inhabitants, truly never slept.  At any time of day or night there would be at
least a billion sentient minds awake, if not always sober and alert.  More
during the day, of course, but the night life was legendary.  If he had not
been such a wanted man he might be enjoying that night life himself.

Since leaving the Fleet,
where he had served as a Naval Commando until being thrown out for reprisals
against sentients on some shithole world, he had always gone first class. 
There had been exceptions, during a mission, a contract.  But since money had
been plentiful he had always enjoyed the life that was his when he wasn’t
planning and executing a hit.  The Imperial Government had frozen as many of
his assets as they could find, but he had too many hidey holes, purchased under
too many aliases, for them to find everything.  And now his lifestyle was at
risk, since he was turning his back on contracts.  After his last run in with
the Imperial authorities, after he had decided that the Emperor did not need
killing, his name was anathema in the Underworld.  Now his hide was wanted by
both sides of the law.

And what the hell is
Sergiov going to think when I give her the information I have
, he thought.  Ekaterina
Sergiov, recent Director of the Imperial Intelligence Agency, now overall Commander
of Imperial Intelligence, had wanted him to come in and serve the Empire.  She
had said the Emperor need not know that he was now on her team, since the
Monarch might still want his neck.  He didn’t really trust her enough to put
his life in her hands, since with a word the most powerful man in the Empire
could overrule any deal she made.

He thought of what had
been waiting in the interrogation room located under a small building fifty
kilometers from where he now stood. 
Was she serious?
he thought,
thinking of the woman who had been his prisoner for some months. 
Or was it
just the delusional thinking of a madwoman?  Fucking time travel?  Who the hell
would try fucking time travel?

As far as he could tell,
Countess Esmeralda Zhee had been telling the truth.  Or what she thought was
the truth, which wasn’t always the same thing.  He had questioned her for
months, using every technique in his repertoire.  He had been a master of his
trade, and getting information out of unwilling subjects had been a useful
tool.

Well, Countess, your days
of manipulating people in the Parliament are over
, he thought with a
slight smile.  They would never find Zhee.  Her disappearance would remain a
mystery.  High powered lasers had taken care of the body, incinerating it down
to the molecular level.  Those molecules had been whisked away and dumped into
the city sewer system by his filtration system.  Not even a cell remained, and
absolutely no DNA.  She was gone as if she had never existed.

Am I a monster?
he thought.  He didn’t
think he had been one when he still served the Empire.  The Lasharans he had
killed had butchered some of his men, after wiping out an entire missionary
village of their people who were trying to distance themselves from their death
cult of a religion.  When he had killed those guerillas, burning them at the
stake, it had been an act of rage.  The killings he had done since were without
passion, simply cold and calculating.  He had thought he had lost all of his
emotions.

Zhee had changed that perception. 
He had hated her, and had brought untold agony to her before her demise at his
hands.  That had been satisfying at the time, hurting the noble who had tried
to have him killed for failing in his mission to take out the Imperial Family. 
Now he had to wonder if he had lost touch with reality himself.

Time to make the call
, he thought with a
slight feeling of anxiety.  His com system was supposedly untraceable, but he
also knew the capabilities of the people he was dealing with.  He took one last
look around the luxurious townhouse, then summoned his car to the rooftop
landing pad.

Five minutes later he was
in his vehicle, cruising at random through the air pathways along the traffic
patterns.  With a thought he coded his com unit to contact the central hub
installed in his townhouse.  It was connected to another hub ten kilometers
away by supposedly untraceable laser optics.  After use the cable would be
disassembled by the built in nanites, and while it might be possible to
eventually trace its former path, it would be difficult and time consuming. 
That secondary hub would send coded signals out to forty external connections
that would route into the citywide com net.  One at a time, switching around
every couple of seconds, it would be a nightmare to try to trace any one of
them.  IIA could and would do so, given a few minutes, and then would come the
toil of tracing up the path.  All they would find in the meantime would be the
townhouse that was no longer his habitat.

“Director Sergiov,” he
said into the com, activating the coding that would put him through directly to
the head spy.  It still took a moment for her to activate her end.

“Angel.  What can I do
for you?  Have you decided to come in?”

“Don’t bother tracing the
call,” said Angel.  “It will do you no good.  And I think I prefer staying out
and free at the moment.”

“We won’t try and find
you, Angel,” said Sergiov.

And I’m supposed to
believe that?
thought Angel with a chuckle.  “What I have to tell you is very important, so
listen.  Countess Zhee was very forthcoming with a little persuasion.”

“So you had her.  We
wondered where she had gotten off to.”

“I had her, and after a
little conversation she told me everything.  I let her go, on the condition
that she leave the capital and disappear from public view.”  There was no way
he was going to confess on the com to a capital crime, no matter what promises
were made.  “The tale she told me was like something out of a bad holo vid. 
But under the pressure she was at during the moment, I believe her.”

Angel was silent for a
moment, letting Sergiov digest what he had already told her, and then started
into the story.

“Time travel,” exclaimed
Sergiov.  “Are you flippen kidding me?”