Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) (17 page)

“Yes, sir,”
agreed the Admiral with a frown.  “That will mean sacrificing some of the
young we could otherwise save.”

“I know it’s a
rotten way to do things, but we need to consider both the good of their species
and the benefit they can be to the Empire.  I realize we could save more
children than adults in the hull space we can deploy, but we need those adults,
now.  That doesn’t mean not rescuing the young, but I want at least half
the bodies on the rescue ships to be adult sibling groups.  Is that
understood?”

“Yes, your
Majesty.  Completely.”

And at least
we’ll be rescuing more of them than otherwise
, thought the Emperor. 
So
they win, even as we win.  So why do I feel so dirty ordering sentient
beings into what will basically be indentured servitude to humans?

*    
*     *

“Any progress to
report?” asked the Admiral in charge of Core Sector Intelligence.

“We’ve learned
that the Yugalyth are definitely working with the Cacas,” said Captain Ishuhi
Rykio, sitting at his desk where he had been composing the report he was going
to send the Admiral in a couple of hours.  “It seems that our friends the
Knockermen introduced the Cacas to the shape shifters during their little
operation to take out the primary space station over the Elysium
capital.”  He didn’t need to add that in that same operation the
Donut
had almost been destroyed.

“We were afraid
of that,” said the Admiral, her face looking out at him from the
holo.   “It seems that Elysium Intelligence has come to the same
conclusion.  There are still some Knockermen in revolt in their Empire, one
of the reasons they have not been able to commit more ships to the
alliance.  But as far as a threat to us?  Not really.  But the
Cacas?  That’s a different story.”

Ishuhi nodded as
he thought over the implications of the shape shifters working with the major
threat to the Empire.  It was bad enough that they had other operatives
within the Empire, humans and aliens both, people willing to sell out their own
species for some temporary comforts.  But to have the shifters working for
them as well, that was a counterintelligence nightmare.  There were rumors
that Imperial Intelligence also had double agents within the ranks of the Caca
spy rings.  Of course he knew better than to pursue those rumors, since,
in his position, he didn’t have a need to know.

“Our
interrogators believe they will be able to get a good neural scan of the mother
in a few more days,” he told the Admiral.  “We’re sure it isn’t telling us
everything it knows, just enough to keep us from causing it undue pain.”

“Not that you’re
likely to get much of use out of it with torture,” said the Admiral,
nodding.  “Our experience with them so far is that they have a high pain
threshold, even if they don’t like it.  And we could never really trust
anything they gave us under torture.”

“It’s not telling
us so, Admiral, but I believe this wasn’t the only mother in the Capitulum
area.  I couldn’t tell you how many there are, but even a couple are too
many.  The way these things reproduce, there could be thousands of
operatives running about by now.”

“And as long as
they don’t try to penetrate sensitive areas, we can’t scan them close enough to
pick out the imposters,” agreed the Admiral.  “We’ve asked the Imperial
Judiciary to suspend privacy rights for the duration of the war, but so far
they aren’t listening.  And his Majesty doesn’t want to turn us into a
tyranny if he can help it.”

The former
police lieutenant thought about that for a moment.  For the past five
centuries, since the reign of Constance the Great and the change over from a
parliamentary body of law to a constitutional monarchy, privacy had been one of
the paramount rights of citizens.  The suspension of privacy rights could
only be ordered by the Supreme Judiciary, on evidence of major criminal
conspiracy; or by the Emperor during time of war.  They were at war, but
even so the Emperor did not wish to suspend the rights of privacy for fear that
the Empire might never recover.  No Emperor had ever invoked that power
since the establishment of the Constitution, and Sean did not want to be entered
into the history books as the first.

“So what do we
do?”

“We can blanket
the public ways of the city with micro drones and nanites, and scan for these
things on the hope that we turn up their genetic markers,” said the Admiral
with a scowl on her face.  “Not much of a chance, I know.  These
things seemed to be designed to escape detection.  But maybe we can get
lucky.  Stranger things have happened.”

The holo faded,
leaving the Captain alone with his own thoughts.  Biomedical was still
working on a way to detect the creatures reliably from a distance, with little
success.  There were theories, but so far nothing that had borne fruit.

But we have
more than enough samples of these things to work with
, thought the Captain,
remembering all of the
children
they had captured when they had taken
the mother.  He was sure that all they needed was time. The only problem
was not knowing how much of that commodity they had.

*    
*     *

“Your Majesty,”
said the Countess Esmeralda Chee, bowing before the redheaded woman who had
entered the room.  Fiona Ogden Lee Romanov’s almond shaped eyes, the color
of sapphires, sparkled as the tall woman returned the bow with a shorter one of
her own. 
She looks just like her mother
, thought the Countess,
recalling the appearance of the Empress Anastasia.

“Not Majesty,
yet,” said the woman, who had that ageless look that said she could be anywhere
from forty to a hundred and forty.  “And my brother has been crowned and
seated, so I really don’t see how I can ever sit the throne.”

“And would you,
if it were made available to you?”

“I would,” said
the woman, smiling.  “I hate to speak ill of the Emperor, but I do not
think my brother is suited to be ruler.  Not like father, or
Dimetre.  Or even Henry, when it comes to that.  But he is healthy,
and married, and has an heir on the way, so I really don’t see the throne
opening up for me.”

“But if it did
open up, you would be willing to take it?”

“Of course,”
said the Princess.  “It would be my duty to do so, if only to assure that
the Empire is not thrown into confusion in these troubled times.  But why
even ask, since it is unlikely that anything will happen to Sean?”  The
woman’s eyes narrowed, and her gaze became focused.  “Why are you asking
me these questions?”

“Code alpha
sierra one one four three zulu papa,” said Chee in a flat voice.

The eyes of the
Princess went from laser focus to unfocused as soon as the last word left the
Countess’ mouth.  She stood still, not a muscle moving, while Zhee
smiled. 
It works perfectly
, she thought. 
The programers
did a wonderful job.

“You will forget
everything we have talked about today concerning the succession,” she told the
woman in the flat, commanding voice she had been trained to use with the deep
programed.  “You will only remember that you met with me today and we made
pleasant small talk.  And when you hear the triggering code, you will step
up and take charge of the Empire, but only under my control.  Do you
understand?  Nod if you do.”

The Princess
nodded, her eyes locked on the wall straight ahead.

“Oscar charlie
november three three six,” said the Countess.  As the last word left her
mouth the eyes of the Princess focused again, and a smile crossed her face.

“Look at the
time,” said Fiona, checking her implant clock.

This was another
critical point.  If the Princess noticed that time had gone by that she
couldn’t acount for she might start asking questions that would require
additional programing to squelch.

“I’ve really
enjoyed our little talk, Countess.  And look forward to meeting with your
party in the near future.”

Zhee watched as
the woman walked out of the chamber, led by her Major Domo.  The first
part of the plan was in place.  Now all they needed was a plan to remove
Sean from the equation.  They didn’t have that plan, but she was sure they
would be able to come up with one.  After all, if the young fool was going
to keep putting himself in dangerous positions, the odds of something happening
to him were good.  And with a little push here and there, they might even
approach certainty.

Chapter Fourteen

If our soldiers are not
overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if
their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined To
longevity.

Sun Tzu.

NEW MOSCOW, APRIL 9
^TH
,
1002.

Walborksi walked
in a crouch to the last position, the one from which he would observe the
opening of the operation, then lead.  The modified medium suit weighed
over two hundred kilos in this gravity well.  A normal soldier couldn’t
have carried the suit and its equipment, which was where the augmented warriors
came in.  There were some problems with that, of course.

Cornelius lay
down next to the last of the snipers in his unit.  Both were in the medium
combat armor they would wear into battle.  That armor was powered down,
and the Captain had his visor up to at least catch a little bit of the morning
breeze on his face.  The sweat was rolling down his back as the suit
caught his body heat and had no environmental systems to deal with it.  As
they didn’t want to give off any electronic signals the enemy might detect,
everything was off.

The sniper and
his assistant looked over at the company commander and gave him a thumbs
up.  The sniper lay behind his weapon, a beast that had taken the strength
of two normal men to move into place.  That had been done through the
night by men who had moved equipment into position without suits, so they
wouldn’t have to carry all of that weight as well.

Cornelius pulled
out his unpowered field glasses, which depended on fine optics alone to bring
in clear images from across the distance.  He scanned the camp once again,
something he couldn’t stop himself from doing despite the depression it
caused.  It was still the same, a mass of people in a huge fenced in area
with a hundred thousand or more tents as the only shelter.  Humans still
huddled in the camp, looking cold, frightened and starving, while Cacas moved
through the camp killing selected people and throwing them into the carts,
which were pulled by dejected looking humans.

This is the
last day, you bastards
, he thought, focusing in on one of the guard towers
that looked over the camp. 
After today, they’ll all either be free, or
dead.
  That last part really scared him.  He was a soldier, as
were all of his men.  They had signed up for this, but the civilians in
the camp hadn’t.

His shoulder
blades itched, and he couldn’t reach the area to scratch.  He felt
uncomfortable in the armor, and was sure that his men held the same
opinion.  He still wished they could have attacked without armor. 
But the weapons to be employed this day were capable of causing mass casualties
among unprotected soldiers.  They might cause those casualties among the
civilians as well, but there was little they could do about that that they
hadn’t already done.

“Any minute now,
sir,” said Corporal Schmidt, the sniper.  That man was once again checking
his targets, then looked over at the Captain.  “Any minute now.”

Cornelius nodded,
checking the time on his internal implant.  The implants were of course
activated, at least their basic functions.  As long as they didn’t use
them to tap into a net, which at the moment they didn’t have, there was no way
they could be detected.  His timer said there was still an hour and
forty-five minutes to go, and he wished he could cause the time to
advance.  Lacking that power, like every sentient being he had ever heard
of, time was going to advance at its own rate.

Now everything
depended on the Fleet’s part of the operation going off on time.  The
first act of that play was up in two minutes.  And if it didn’t go off on
time, the second act would be stillborn, and the third act would come in
without knowing that the others hadn’t gone off as planned.  And if that
happened, the ground element would just have to sit in place, until orders came
down to do otherwise.  The problem was that every minute the tens of
thousands of troops sat in their positions the odds of discovery increased.

Nothing to do
about it but wait
, thought Walborski, putting his glasses back to his face
and sweeping them back over the camp, his heart beating fast as he waited to
see the alarm go off down there, the Cacas to react before the operation got
off the ground.  If that happened, this might turn out to be a good day to
die, and for the civilians the last day of their lives.

*    
*     *

Captain Stella
Artois stood in her heavy engineering combat suit in the cavern ten meters
below the floor of the camp.  She was starting to feel claustrophobic,
both from being packed into the multiple caverns with a battalion of Rangers in
armored suits and her engineering company.  Added to that was the helpless
feeling of being trapped in a half ton of armor that her own muscles couldn’t
move.  It had taken four Rangers sans armor to pick her up and carry her
to this point.

It has to go
off soon
, she thought, checking the timer and cursing under her breath when
it showed that she still had an hour and forty-five minutes trapped in the
damned unresponsive armor before she could power up.  Of course the Fleet
was beginning their part of the operation in two minutes, and not for the first
time she wished she had opted for the Navy instead of the Army.  At least
they got to sleep in comfortable quarters, eat good meals, stay more or less
clean, and didn’t have to wait in armored coffins.

And we really
don’t know if any of this is even going to work
, she thought for the
hundredth time.  They still had to try, as they were the only hope the prisoners
above them had.

*    
*     *

Cat dropped the
last of the devices she had been given into the dirt by the inner fence. 
She knew she should have gotten it there sooner, but the Cacas had been
patrolling the area unexpectedly, and this was the first chance she had gotten.

She didn’t know
why she was dropping the small devices out by the perimeter fence, and they
never told her what they were.  She knew enough about modern tech to know
they were electronic devices of some kind, and that they were powered
down.  The people who had given them to her had hinted that something was
going down this day, without giving her any idea of what it was.  Only
that it was important, and the only thing she could think of that would be
important to any of them was freedom from the Cacas.

She looked up at
the noise of a Caca unit moving through the camp, six of the carts behind them,
two already fully loaded.  One of the Cacas was checking his scanner and
pointing out people, so several of the soldiers with him could terminate them
and toss them into one of the carts.  As always in a situation where
everyone had lost hope, there was no struggle, no attempt at escape.  They
simply stood there or sat, and stared hopelessly at their captors until a dart
was placed between their eyes.

Cat looked at
the conquerors with hate filled eyes, hoping she would be around long enough to
see them get theirs.  She was still glaring when the leader looked up,
pointed the scanner at her, and shouted out a command, pointing a lower left index
finger at her.

Cat had not
given up hope, not since she had been enlisted in the underground.  She
wanted to live, just so she could see retribution come to the ones who had
killed so many of the people she had cared about.  As one of the soldiers
started walking her way and raising his pistol she spun to the right and ducked
between a couple of tents, then took off at a run.

The Cacas
shouted behind her.  Some darts ripped through the material of a tent,
just missing her, though a cry from another tent indicated that they hadn’t
missed everything. 
Go to hell, you assholes
, she thought as she
negotiated a right turn beyond another tent and took off down a walkway that
was crowded with people trying to get to the morning ration delivery.

An adult would have
been dead meat at this point.  A child, especially a smart, athletic and
frightened to death one like Cat, could take advantage of the crowding. 
She twisted and turned, sliding between adults, at one point punching a man in
the groin, anything to get through the crowd and get away from the Cacas who
wanted to turn her into unprocessed rations.

One more dart
sped by, plowing into the back of a woman in front of Cat.  She dodged
around the falling body and worked her way deeper into the camp, until she found
a place where she could scoot into some shadows and hide.

She knew the
Cacas would now be looking for her, though she didn’t know how much effort they
would make in finding her.  There was nowhere to go, and eventually they
would spot her.  Her stomach grumbled, and she realized she would not be
having a morning meal today.  Now all she could do was hope that whatever
was supposed to be going down would do so soon, so that she might have a chance
to live beyond this day.

*    
*     *

“We’re picking up
movement in hyper I, sir,” called out the Tactical Officer of the
Seastag.
 
“Estimating eighteen hundred ships.”

And the Cacas
only have three hundred ships in their outer system picket
, thought
Commodore Bryce Suttler, his knuckles white as he gripped his chair arms and
waited for his part in this most unconventional plan.  The three hundred
ships in the outer system picket were not really his concern.  The almost
two thousand in the inner system were another story.  If he had to deal with
all of them, the operation was over before it began.

“Resonances
match Imperial ships,” continued the Tactical Officer.  “Estimated time to
translation, fifteen minutes.”

“Command
confirms that those ships are Force Alpha,” said the Com Officer.

The timer showed
one hour and forty five minutes before the inertialess fighters were to strike,
and his ships were supposed to open fire at the same time.  If all the
ships were still in place at that time his part of the offensive would be short
and brutal.  Which didn’t mean they wouldn’t open fire, since the ground
forces were depending on them.

“Update on
targeting?” he asked his Tactical Officer, who was also running the overall
targeting profile for the entire stealth/attack force.

“All targets
locked in.  Firing solutions at one hundred percent.”

Suttler
nodded.  One hundred percent was just about impossible to achieve, but
anything over ninety nine point five percent was assigned that perfect tag,
since it didn’t get any better than that.

“Wormhole gate
status?” he next asked the Navigation Officer, who had been assigned the task
of monitoring what was probably the most vital part of the space component of
the operation.

“Frames are
ready for expansion,” called out that officer, who was monitoring the status of
the four units that were being carried by the quartet of ships that had been
assigned them, including
Seastag
.  “Negative matter reservoirs are
filled to capacity.  All parameters met, deployment is a go.”

“We’re picking up
graviton emissions from six hundred and four of the ships near the planet,”
called out the Sensor Officer.  “Accelerations varying in the range from
four hundred and fifty to five hundred and thirty.  Vectors consistent
with headings for the outer system.”

It would take
those ships about thirty hours to make it to the hyper barrier on a least time
profile.  If they met the incoming Imperial force on a least time profile
a battle would occur in fifteen hours.  But more importantly for this
mission, the enemy ships would be over ninety-seven million kilometers from the
planet.  Over five and a third light minutes, well out of energy weapon
range, and even fifteen minutes or more by fastest missile acceleration, since
the missiles first would have to kill the outward velocity of the launching
vessels.

Suttler looked
at the tactical holo.  Not only were the ships in orbit accelerating on an
outward vector, but the great majority of the ships in the system were moving
onto a similar path that would reach the incoming Imperial Fleet at about the
same time.

“What do we have
left?”

“Two hundred and
twelve ships, sir,” said the Sensor Officer.  “Only sixty-eight of them
are warships, twenty-eight of them superbattleships.  The rest are cargo
ships and troop transports.”

“Assign
priorities to those targets,” ordered the Commodore, looking at the holo. 
“Secondary and tertiary.”  He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire on those
targets.  They should be the prey of the inertialess fighters, which, if
they were on time, should be leaving their warp bubbles at the same time his
force was scheduled to open fire.  He was locking them in just in case.

*    
*     *

Lt. Commander
Nahuel Runningdeer looked once again at the target.  His Naval Commando
platoon, one hundred and twenty strong, was spread out all along this section
of  the mountain range that overlooked the line of shore defense
weapons.  It was obvious from the way those weapons were fortified that
the Ca’cadasan had built these defenses with the intention of staying.  Other
emplacements were of a more temporary nature, mere mobile weapons platforms
hidden away.  The main advantage of that kind of defense was they were
hard to locate until they fired, and then they could move.  But these
fixed defenses packed a much heavier punch, contained in a more massive
defensive structure.

This target was
made up of massive half domes that contained particle beams and lasers,
sheltered by hundreds of meters of armor, plasticrete and carbon reinforced
alloy, the exception being the aperture of the beam weapon of the
emplacement.  There were four of the domes set in a pattern across two
square kilometers of land.  The secondary domes of electromagnetic field
projectors surrounded that field, while outside of that field were emplacements
for anti-aircraft and missile defenses.  It was estimated that there were
several hundred Caca infantry in each of these defensive fields, the defenses
against ground assault.