Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (31 page)

Another view, this time
from a camera, shot from one ship toward another.  Both were traveling on the
same vector at the same velocity, so the other ship appeared to be standing
still in the view.  Suddenly a quartet of stupendous flares appeared around the
other ship.  The one directly behind looked like a star had been born out of
empty space.  Two more grew out of empty space to either side.  And a moment
later one appeared right on top of the superbattleship, engulfing it in a blast
of almost impossible fury.  The ship came apart in an instant, three large
multiton pieces, a score of smaller, and a cloud of various size particles.

“What in all the hells
were those?” roared the shocked Emperor.

“Something new, Supreme
Lord,” answered one of the Admiralty staffers who was standing by to answer
questions.  “We think it is a weapon akin to their impossible fighters.  Very
powerful, but extremely inaccurate.”

“Doesn’t look like they
need much accuracy,” said the Emperor under his breath.  The blast looked to be
in the terraton range, more than a thousand times as powerful as the gigaton
class ship killers that both fleets were throwing around.

“They send out much the same
signal that the impossible fighters do,” said the staffer.  “Unfortunately, by
the time we pick them up, they are only seconds from coming out of their warp. 
And by then it’s too late.  They detonate on reentering normal space, so
hitting them with close in weapons really accomplishes nothing.”

“We must have that
technology,” said the Emperor in a loud voice.  “We must duplicate it.”

“The impossible fighters,
Supreme Lord?  Or the missiles?”

And why do we keep
calling them impossible fighters, when they’ve been shown to be extremely
possible
,
thought the Emperor with a head motion of disbelief.  “Both.  We must have both
of those technologies.  Perhaps the human scientist who has helped us with
wormholes can help us with that as well.”

“We will make him help
us, Supreme Lord.”

The Emperor gave another
head motion, this one of negation. 
When will my people learn that pain and
fear will not result in the best the human scientists can give us.
  “I will
want to talk with Dr. Smirnov myself,” said the Emperor.  “Bring him to my
chambers in an hour.”  He looked back at the holos, where the action of the
battle was still unveiling.  And to another set where the battle in the enemy
space on the other side of the Empire was also in progress.  “Make that two hours.”

“He will be there,
Supreme Lord.”

“And be gentle with him. 
I want him well treated.” 
As long as we give him safety for himself and his
family, he will work for us, if not entirely willingly.  But willingly enough.

*     *     *

The news services were all
over Capitulum in force, as well as all the other cities of Jewel.  The
expensive ultra-high definition holo was centered on a young woman talking, the
Galactic News Network logo below her image.  And behind her, the image of the
city, shattered buildings, smoking pits.  Here and there an intact structure
still towered, off in the distance entire neighborhoods of low rises were still
sitting peacefully under the smoke filled sky.

“We probably won’t have
total casualty figures for days,” said the young woman.  “But the preliminary
count is above two hundred million in Capitulum alone.  Other cities hit
include Frisco, New Paris, Rio and New Shanghai, with the death toll in the
tens of millions.  Earth Town, also filled with vacationers there for the long weekend,
was hit with a half dozen kinetic weapons, and over three hundred thousand
people were killed, including many children.”

Jennifer stared at the
holo in shock, tears rolling down her cheeks.  With eleven point one billion
citizens, Jewel was a crowded world, one that was a desirable destination for
people from all over the Empire.  As such, only a limited number of reproduction
licenses were issued in any year, only enough to keep up with the limited
losses from death and emigration.  And in a population whose members lived to
over two hundred years, in many cases three hundred, there were only about
forty million babies born in a given year.  They were scarce among the
population, though an amusement park like Earth Town was sure to have as many
as half its attendees be children.  Parents brought them to see the
reproductions of old Earth, the Eifel Tower, cathedrals, a section of the Great
Wall.  And many of those three hundred thousand people killed would be
children.

Jennifer looked down at
Glenn, lying in her lap, the bottle she was holding in his mouth as he happily
sucked away.  So innocent, with no knowledge of what had happened this day. 
Do
you miss your twin?
she thought, looking into his blue eyes. 
Or is it
someone you will never remember, only to know him from pictures and vids we
show you when you are older.

The view from the
newscast swept across the city, where rescue crews were digging through the
rubble, trying to recover survivors and those who could be resurrected before
it was too late.  They would try their best, and in many cases that wouldn’t be
enough.

“Do you really want to
continue watching this, your Majesty?” asked her Chief of Detail.

Jennifer looked up with
angry eyes at the Secret Service Agent. 
You lost my son,
she thought,
holding back her rage. 
Your one job was to protect the heirs, and you
failed. 
She shook her head, closing her eyes, then opened them to look
back at the holocast.   She knew the agents had done their best to get her and
her sons out of the target that the city had become.  If not for them, she and
the precious life she held in her lap would also have been killed.  She looked
back up at the Agent.

“I am the Empress, and
these are my people.  I need to see what happened to us.”

The Agent nodded, his
face one of stone.  Jennifer turned back to look at the holocast as she took
the bottle from Glenn and pulled the baby to her shoulder, patting him on the
back in the age old method of burping a baby.  The holo was now showing an
aerial view of the city, sweeping outward from the bay, the irregular shape of
the metropolis nestled up against the mountains to the West, the hills and forests
to the north.  Three hundred and seventy-five thousand square kilometers of
city, the largest in the history of humankind.

The cast then went on to
show the Imperial Zoological Gardens.  Here the tragedy was as great, as the
large gardens, almost three thousand square kilometers, had also been packed. 
Several large warheads, or kinetics, had struck close to the gardens, and a
multitude of people and animal exhibits had been destroyed.  Many more of the
exhibits had been freed, and some were dangerous in the extreme.  Crews were
working to round them up, to stun them and bring them back into captivity. 
Some would have to be put down, and that again was a tragedy.

It would take years to
repair the city, decades to replace all of the animals and the botanical
exhibits in those gardens.  More reproductive licenses would be issued, more
people would immigrate, and eventually there would be nothing to show that
anything had ever happened here.  Except in the memories of the people who
would miss the loved ones they would never see again.

This news of course was
going out over wormhole to all of the other systems hooked into the wormhole
com net.  All of the other core worlds, major industrial developing worlds, any
with large Fleet installations.  Other developing worlds and the larger
frontier worlds would get the news through the hyper link net, which could take
as long as a couple of days to appear on their planetary news casts.  And still
others would not get the news until a ship called on their system, meaning from
a week to a month.  But all would eventually get the news about what the Cacas
had done to the heart of the Empire.

And we’re lucky the
Donut
survived
,
thought the Empress. 
Otherwise we might not have an intact wormhole net.

“Son of a bitch,” growled
the Chief of Detail as the scene switched on the holocast, this time showing a
man in battle armor pulling debris away from a rubble pile, then lifting some
injured people from the destruction.  “I’m sorry, your Majesty.  It’s just
that…”

“What?”

“That’s the armor worn by
the man who tried to kill you and the Emperor.”

Jennifer took a closer
look at the man on the holo, reversing the picture and running it again when it
switched.  “It is him.  What the hell is he doing?”

“It looks like he is
rescuing people, your Majesty.”

“Why would that monster
do something like that?” asked Jennifer, shifting Glenn back into her lap and
placing the nipple of the bottle into his mouth.  She knew the staff around her
here in the bunker wanted the professional nurses to take care of the now
heir.  But she didn’t want to let the baby out of her sight.  Not the only one
she had left.

“Maybe he isn’t quite the
monster we feared,” said the Agent.  “After all, he could have killed you and
the Emperor.  And he didn’t.”

“But he was still a
killer.”

“Yes, he was,” agreed the
Agent.  “But he…”

The holo changed, showing
the image of a young woman in a Fleet uniform.  “Your Majesty.  The Emperor is
on the com.  He wishes to talk to you.”

The face of the man she
loved, the father of her children, the ruler of human space, appeared on the
holo as the newscast faded away.  She wanted to yell at him, to call him names,
to throw questions in his face. 
Why weren’t you’re here, protecting your
family?
  She stopped herself, reading his face, seeing the stress and
strain written there.  Sean was a young man, not even forty, with at least two
hundred natural years ahead of him.  Yet he looked like a man of a hundred and
fifty, reaching the lower boundary of middle age.

And his eyes?  They had
the hundred-yard stare that she had seen in too many combat veterans.  An
endless stare that seemed to look at all the terror of the war he was fighting,
and, seeing no escape, turned inward.  And sorrow.  A deep, abiding sorrow. 
She knew it was tearing him apart.  So many of his subjects.  His heir.

“I was hoping you would
call,” she said, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice, and failing.

“I am so sorry,” he said,
looking down and breaking eye contact.  “I wish I could have been there for you. 
For Augustine and Glenn.  If there had been any way, I would have been there.”

Jennifer was silent, not
knowing what to say to this man.  She understood the physics that had kept him
away.  He had been aboard a warship, traveling at high relativistic speed for
the last four days.  It was impossible to transit a wormhole at that velocity. 
The gates could absorb some momentum change, but velocity differences above
point ten light were too much to handle.  The ship, a super heavy battleship of
the latest design, was needed in battle, so it could not slow down. 
But you
didn’t have to go.  You could have stayed here.  You could have watched the
battle from here, instead of haring off to the far side of the Empire.

“Augustine is dead,” was
all she could say.  
And you should have been here.
  Immediately the
thought struck her.  To do what?  To repel the Caca attack by Imperial decree? 
They might have ridden together in the same car, but the Secret Service would
have insisted that one of the children ride in a separate car.  Would Augustine
still have died?  Would theirs have been the target car instead.  The
philosophers continued to hash out the vagaries of changing the time line.  One
person in a different place could change much, maybe everything.  Sean being in
the capital wouldn’t have changed the Caca attack, but what he did change might
have killed them.

“I’m so sorry,” he said
again.  “If there was anything I could do to change it, I would.”

She nodded.  They would
have much to talk about when he returned.  She decided it was time to change
the subject, before their talk hurt both of them too much.  “How goes the
battle?”

“We’re at the point of
decision,” he said, looking up, some of the life, the fierceness she had known
in the past relighting his eyes.  “This ship and its task group will be going
back into battle, soon.  And then we will know.”

“And the
Donut?
  I
understand we have won that fight.”

“We won, but the battle
is not over.  It will not be over until those Caca ships have all been
destroyed.”  He spat out the last words, and his eyes narrowed.  Now his mood
had changed.  She had never seen him so angry.  This was the man the Empire
needed at this moment, not the one crushed by grief.  And she would let the
Empire have him.

“This is your heir now,”
she said, holding up Glenn.  “This is who you fight for.  Leave him a strong
Empire, and crush his enemies.”

Sean nodded, then the
holo went dead.  A moment later the newscast came back on, but Jennifer was no
longer interested in what it had to say.

“I will go to bed now,”
she told her Chief of Detail, who looked like he could use some sleep himself. 
“Please have a nurse put Glenn to bed.”