Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (8 page)

That was the problem with
modern society, even though so many of the ills of the past had been cured. 
People no longer wanted for food or shelter, or cheap entertainment.  They
lived long lives, and could be cured of all known maladies, and most of the
unknown ones as well.  But many people were on the dole, unfulfilled, something
that many people overlooked among the wonders of a society in which every
working citizen could be many times more productive than at any time in the
past.  So there were still thrill seekers, and drugs, and crime for those who
wanted more out of life than sitting in their homes all day long dreaming of
better things.  There was less crime than in the past, but it still existed.

“I’m looking for a man,”
said Angel, flashing a data chip that was encoded with over a thousand
Imperials.  They were legitimate currency, untraceable, used when people wanted
to buy and sell things and not have an official record of the transaction. 
Even the Imperial Government dealt in them, since it was always useful to be
able to get things without anyone being the wiser.

“I took you as someone
who would want a woman,” said the Dealer, who it seemed was also a pimp.

“The man’s name is Harold
Devries,” said Angel, his tone of voice indicating that he was not in the mood
for banter.  “I was told I could find him here.”

The Dealer stared at him
for a moment, as if deciding what to do, then nodded.  “Wait here,” he said,
then turned and walked away, going to a table where four bored looking men
sat.  He got into an animated conversation with one of the men, and Angel focused
in on the conversation with the pickup built into the armor he wore under his
clothes.  The table had a security field around it, protecting the people from
being overheard.  It was a good one, but not good enough to spoof his systems.

“I don’t know who he is,”
said the Dealer.  “But he was asking for you by name.”

“I don’t like the looks
of him,” said one of the men at the table.  “He looks like the law.”

“Go tell him you don’t
know where I am,” said one of the men, identifying himself to Angel as his target. 
“Give him this address, and tell him that I will meet him there.”

And I will be met by a
dozen of his boys and made to disappear,
thought Angel, putting his glass on the
counter and getting off the stool.  He walked to where the four men sat, aware
of their stares the entire way.

“What the hell?” asked
one of the men.  Two of them reached hands under coats, and Angel was sure they
had the grips of pistols in those mitts.

“
I mean no trouble,” said
Angel, holding up his hands.  He hoped the men had enough sense to not shoot
him in front of witnesses, but in this environment that might not be a given. 
People at other tables started to slide their chairs, probably to remove
themselves from the line of fire. 
If I have to I can still take them out. 
But dammit, I didn’t come here to kill some hoods for no return.

“What the hell do you
mean?” asked the only other man at the table who had spoken.

“I need to talk with
Harold,” he said, looking directly at the named man so Devries would know that
Angel recognized him.  “I can make it worth your while.”  As he said that he
moved the fingers of his right hand slowly and a data chip appeared there as if
by magic.  It was a little trick he had learned in the Fleet, good for winning
drinks.  The chip was encoded with a hundred thousand Imperials, enough to
entice even a mid-level hood.

Devries motioned to the
Dealer, who nodded and moved off.  Angel realized that was more trouble, but he
would have to deal with it.

“Well, let’s step into my
office,” said Devries, pushing back his chair and getting up, the other men
following suit.

Angel nodded and followed
Devries and one of his men, the other two falling in behind.  They went through
the curtained door, into the back of the bar, where the smell and sounds of sex
permeated the air.  They continued through to a solid alloy door.  Angel had no
map of this place, is was on none of the city databases, but his sensors told
him there was a long narrow open space behind the door, probably an alley.

Devries opened the door
and went through with his lieutenant, while one of the following men put a hand
on Angels back and pushed him through.  The Assassin didn’t resist.  It suited
his purposes to go into the alley.  But he knew he had to be careful from this
point on.

The alley was dark, but
to Angel’s enhanced eyes it was like bright twilight.  He could see the other
men waiting in what they must have thought were shadows, two on each end of the
alley.  Devries turned toward him while the other three formed a circle around
him, surrounding him to prevent escape.

“And just what the hell
can I do for you?” asked Devries.  The men around him laughed, and Angel was
sure that this meeting was not going to end well for someone.

“I understand you did
some work for some people.  Involving the use of some muscle to acquire some
specific items.”

“Who sent you?” growled
Devries.

“I’m here on my own,”
said Angel.  “This is a personal matter.”

“I don’t quite believe
that,” said Devries with a grin.  “Take him.”

The other three men
started to move while Devries reached into his jacket to pull a weapon.  The
men must have thought they could surprise and overpower the Assassin.  Why not,
since they were used to dealing with the scared and the weak.

As soon as the words left
the crime boss’ mouth Angel began to move, his body going into the fugue state
of the enhanced.  Everything around him seemed to slow to a crawl, while to his
sensibilities he was still moving at normal speed.  To the criminals attacking
him it seemed as if he was moving in a blur, three times the speed of a normal
human.

Angel grabbed the first
hand to reach for him, grabbing the wrist and twisting, feeling satisfaction as
he felt the bones snap.  The man opened his mouth in a scream, but Angel was
already moving to deal with the second man, planting a powerful side kick into
his solar plexus, doubling him over and flinging him away.  A spin on his foot
and he was bringing a fist into the throat of the third man, crushing his
larynx and sending him to his knees, choking.

Devries had pulled his
pistol by this time, an illegal high powered laser, a military weapon forbidden
to civilians on the core worlds.  He had pulled the trigger before lining it up,
meaning to sweep it through Angel like an infinite sword.  The beam may have
moved at the speed of light, but the arm of the man wielding it did not.  Angel
ducked and blocked at the same time, pushing the man back, then pulling a hard
uppercut into the jaw of the boss.  Devries fell onto his back, out.

Muscle Number One tried
to hit Angel with his good hand while his other flopped on the end of his arm. 
Angel gave him another broken limb for his trouble, this time at the forearm,
then kicked the hood in the groin, doubling him over.

He hit the second man,
the one he had side kicked, now stumbling toward him with a hand on his side,
in the head with a spinning backhand, sending him off his feet and out of the
conscious world.  Man three was on his knees, still choking, now spitting up
blood.

The other men came out of
the shadows, weapons in hand.  None had lasers, and he made all the guns out to
be magrails, projectile weapons that could send a round through him at three
thousand meters a second.  The two to one side were still raising the weapons,
and Angel decided they would be first, since he was already turned their way. 
He lowered his head at the same time that he raised his weapon, not giving the
people behind him a shot at the back of his head.

The particle weapon
hummed in his hand, sending an angry red beam at a sizable fraction of the
speed of light into the body of the man on the left.  Red steam spurted into
the air as a good sized chunk of the man’s torso disappeared, the fast moving
particles turning their kinetic energy into heat as they burned into the hood’s
body.  A fast sweep and the beam struck the side of the next man’s neck and
then up into his head.  That body part disappeared into steam and exploding
brain matter as the skull blew out from the pressure.

Something struck Angel
hard in the back, and he grunted from the impact.  One of the hoods had shot
him in the back, but the thin mesh armor under his clothing had stopped it, not
without some of the pain of the impact coming through.  Angel ducked, turned
and rolled as more rounds struck his body.  He came around in a prone position,
firing his pistol as soon as it lined up on the first target that came into
sight, sending another mutilated body to the ground.  A round hit the pavement
less than five centimeters from Angel’s head, and he quickly took care of that
problem before it became too much of a hindrance.

Devries was coming to
when Angel walked over to him, his eyes still unfocused.  Angel was sure the
man had a concussion, and it would take some minutes before internal nanites
repaired the damage.  The Assassin made sure his three partners were done for,
sending a short burst of protons into each.  The pistol was too hot to
reholster, so he put it down on the ground for a moment while he removed an
injector from his coat.

“Who the hell are you?”
mumbled Devries, his eyes still unfocused.

“Your worst nightmare,”
said Angel.  “Just know that you tried to take out the Angel of Death, and your
people paid the price.”

Devries eyes now showed
panic as he realized who he faced, a legend, and like most legends it was
something he hadn’t really believed in until his face was rubbed in it.  “What
do you want?” he stammered.

“I want some
information,” said Angel, putting the injector against the man’s neck.  “And
since you decided not to do it the easy way, that leaves the hard way.”  Angel
activated the injector and sent the drug through the skin of the man, sending
him back into the darkness.  He hefted the crime boss over a shoulder and jogged
toward the end of the alley.  He would need a place to work on the man to get
what he wanted, and to make sure he got all that he wanted. 

Chapter Six

When confronted with two alternatives, life and
death, one is to choose death without hesitation. Yamamoto Tsunetomo

IMPERIAL CORE SPACE.  DECEMBER 24
^TH
,
1002.  D-8.

“They’re hailing us, my
Lord,” said the human Captain, Tom Jasper, turning toward his Ca’cadasan
overlord.

The light cruiser had
approached from the edge of detection range, speeding in to intercept and
matching course and velocity with the ease of a predator.  They had not
contacted the freighter during the approach, had made no demands for the ship
to decelerate or alter course.  The bridge crew had watched nervously as the
warship moved from the sensor detection and into visual, then moved into the
course that left them apparently motionless in relation to the freighter that
was moving at point eight five light in hyper VI.

“Of course they are,”
said the large Cacada male.  “Answer them.  You know the procedure.”

The Captain nodded,
turning back to the holo that showed the enemy ship, matched to their velocity
and seemingly hanging fifty kilometers off the port bow.  The laser rings of
the light cruiser were illuminated.  They were fully charged, ready for
action.  He was sure the same was true of their particle beams.  The ship was,
after all, patrolling the space at the heart of the human Empire. 
Laughing
Troll
was only seven days from the cluster of stars the humans termed the
Supersystem, and it had been thought that the searches would be more intense
the closer they got.  Still, it was hoped that they would be able to pass, but
this ship looked ready for a battle.

“This is the registered
freighter
Laughing Troll
,” said the Captain, sending his information
over on the same transmission.  “We are empty, but seeking cargo in the Capital
System.”

“Stand by,” came the
voice of the human commander.  The other ship had not established visual, also
a bad sign.

“Perhaps you and the
other males should prepare to hide,” he told the Overlord.

“Not yet.  It will take
them at least ten minutes to launch a shuttle and board us.  We have plenty of
time to work with.”

Suddenly the nose of a
shuttle poked over the top of the cruiser, launched from the other side of the
ship where the freighter didn’t have a view.  It banked quickly and headed for
the freighter, its nose laser glowing with power.

“
Laughing Troll
. 
Your registry does not match what we have on file.  Stand by to be boarded.  Do
nothing.  If you make any hostile moves, or attempt to avoid boarding, you will
be destroyed.”

Which means if we try to
do anything to their shuttle
, thought the Captain.  The shuttle approached
quickly, giving them little time to react.  That it was hyper capable was
obvious from its leaving the hyperfield of its mother ship and heading toward
the other large ship in the tableau.

“They are suspicious,”
said the male, crossing both pairs of arms over his chest.  “But not sure.  And
they do not know what they have caught.”

The freighter outmassed
the cruiser by a factor of ten, though in most cases the armor and weaponry of
the cruiser would be more than a match for any cargo ship.  When
Laughing
Troll
had her complete weapons package deployed she would be the superior
of the cruiser, but most of her weapons were still on the other side of the
wormhole.  Her hull was tougher than it looked, much tougher than the ship
facing them, more in the class of a heavy cruiser.  Her hidden electromag
projectors could erect a battle cruiser class field, and could run up that
barrier in an instant.

“What are your orders, my
Lord?”

The male looked over a
couple of holos, making the decision on whether to continue to play dumb or to
strike.  If they were discovered before they struck, the job would become much
more difficult.  Fortunately, the main cargo hatch was already oriented toward
the cruiser.  Of course, if the cruiser had a wormhole com, their command would
already know what they had encountered, and this mission might be over before
it truly began.  That was less than likely this deep into Imperial territory,
but not impossible.

“Order a missile through
the wormhole, to enter in twenty seconds.  Then start to open the cargo hatch.”

Jasper nodded, then
looked at his crew members and gave them another head nod.  He looked back at
the holo that showed the enemy ship, waiting for their reaction to the cargo
hatch starting to move.

“
Laughing Troll.
 
Why is your cargo hatch moving?”

“We thought you might
want to inspect our hold while your shuttle is out in space.  It would save us
time.”

“Close your hatch, now. 
You will make no move until you are told.  Do you understand,
Laughing
Troll?”

“We understand, cruiser.”

Of course the Captain
ordered no such thing, and the hatch continued to slowly open.  The Captain
cringed as he waited for the cruiser to make the next move.  He didn’t think a
couple of blasts of laser energy would hurt them too badly, but things could
happen.  And serious damage might be hard to restore in the time they had. 
Finally, the Captain nodded at his Tactical Officer and the hatch froze, still
open.

“
Laughing Troll. 
You
are ordered to close your hatch, now.  Failure to comply immediately will
result in your ship being fired upon.”

“Something is wrong with
the hatch mechanism, cruiser.  Give us a moment.  Give us…”

The missile came flying
out of the wormhole from the other side, moving at point zero zero two light. 
Not fast in the terms of missile warfare, its target was close, the weapon
covered the hundred kilometers in less than a thousandth of a second, before
even the computer system on the enemy ship could take any kind of effective
reaction.  The grabber units started to move it, laser batteries began to lock
on, but the capital ship missile struck the cruiser before anything could be
done besides those initial reactions.  One laser ring got off a shot that
missed, and then there was no time to adjust as the missile hit with enough
kinetic energy to slam the ship out of alignment.  An instant later the warhead
detonated, a gigaton of force that slammed into the bow of the cruiser,
vaporizing a hundred meters of length and sending the ship into a heavy
tumble.  The freighter’s lasers, ten units with the power of battlecruiser rings,
tore into the ship, several striking the ruined bow and blasting into the
vessel.  Moments later antimatter breached, and the ship went up in a flare of
plasma.

The shuttle started
firing, its small nose laser tearing shallow runnels down the hull of the
Q-ship. 
Laughing Troll
returned fire, putting a powerful beam into the
thin hull of the shuttle near its engineering section.  Another quick blast
from one of the freighter’s laser domes and the shuttle was disabled.

“Launch a shuttle and
bring that crew aboard,” said the Overlord in a growling voice.

“They’re starting to
evade, my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer, looking past the Captain to
the Cacada male they all knew was the true authority.

The shuttle was obviously
hyper capable, and while it might not have the range to reach another Imperial
ship, it might.

“Burn off their grabbers,
but make sure that you do not destroy their hyperdrive.  I want that ship.”

Laughing Troll’s
advanced laser system
took out the grabbers without a problem, while the freighter launched its own
hyper capable shuttle to match velocities, grapple, and drag the enemy craft
into the cargo hold.  From there they pushed the shuttle through the wormhole
gate into the Ca’cadasan system containing the other end of the tunnel.  The
males there would finish the capture of the crew and conduct the interrogation.

“Orders, my Lord?” asked
the Captain.

“Close the hold and
constrict the wormhole,” growled the male.  “Then continue on.”

The Captain nodded, then
looked over at his Helm.  That human acknowledged, then double checked the
course, nodding back at the Captain.  “Estimated time to entry to the enemy
home system, one hundred and seventy-three hours.”

One hundred and
seventy-three more hours
, thought Jasper, running a hand across his sweating brow.   
And then it was another two days from the hyper barrier to the double planet. 
They really could do the trip in much less time with their military grade
grabbers, but it wouldn’t do to attract that kind of attention.

SUPERSYSTEM, SPACE OUTSIDE HYPER BARRIER OF
CENTRAL BLACK HOLE.  DECEMBER 25
^TH
, 1002.  D-7.

“We’re about to leave
hyper, my Lord,” said the Captain, looking up at the Cacada male who stood over
him.

Ahead was the dark blot
of the largest gravity well that anyone on the bridge had ever seen.  Probably
the largest that almost any member of the Empire had ever approached.  It was
an intimidating sight, made more so by the fact that it would take
Fool’s
Bane
over a week to get within range of its target.  Over a week during
which they could make a fatal mistake that turned the scrutiny of the enemy on
their ship, basically ending their mission.

“Jumping from hyper,
now,” called out the Helm, and the back dot of the hole opening between the
dimensions appeared ahead.

The ship slid through the
hole, the feeling of brief nausea coming over the human crew.  The Captain
looked up at the Cacada male, who looked like he was about to pass out on his
feet from the passage.  The human had always wondered at the weakness of the
huge beings who were so strong in almost every other measure.

It took fifteen seconds
for the Cacada to recover, time when the being was helpless.  In that time the
ship’s passive sensors and computer system had started on their catalogue of
the system objects.  First and foremost was the massive black hole in the
center, the reason for this system’s being.  It was immediately detectable by
its graviton emissions, which actually made it much more difficult to pick up
the lesser emissions of all of the other objects in the system.

“What have we got?” asked
the Overlord in the voice of a male in distress.

“Only the black hole so
far, my Lord,” said the Captain.  “Coming in at the estimate of twenty-eight
standard masses.”  Twenty-eight times more massive than the Ca’cadasan home
star, upon which all such measures were compared.

“What of the rest of the
system?”

“No large planetary
bodies that we can detect, my Lord” said the Sensor Tech, working her station
and interpreting the incoming data.  “We are picking up a large object on
visual.”

The central holo changed
its view, zooming in on the image of a slender ribbon bisecting a distortion in
space.  The ribbon was slightly lopsided as they had not entered the system
perfectly aligned with the orbit of the structure.  It was well lit by its own
external lighting, looking in the distance like a child’s toy.  Until the scale
of the distance, sixty-two light hours, registered, and they realized how large
it really was.

“That is the target,”
said the male with a predatory grin.  “Continue into the system on the planned
course.  I want us broadcasting the recognition code all the way in.”

And if the code is not
legitimate, we are doomed
, thought the Captain as the ship forged ahead at just under
two hundred gravities, high for most merchant ships, but not unreasonably so,
and nowhere within the range of a warship.  It would take them over two hundred
hours to get into their attack range.  Over two hundred hours of time for them
to be scrutinized, detected, tracked down and destroyed.

“We’re starting to pick
up other objects, sir,” said the Sensor Tech, turning to look at her Captain
and eliciting a growl from the Cacada.

“Show me,” growled the
male, pointing a large lower right index finger at the human female.

The holo switched views,
first zooming in on a section of space near the target station, to a cluster of
other large objects in order around the back hole.  The view switched again,
this time showing what appeared to be a wormhole ship gate.  It zoomed out, and
the objects were indicated by blinking icons, Ca’cadasan script underneath.  A
dozen gates, over a hundred warships hanging out.  Other vessels were
transiting toward and away from the gates, moving the materials that kept the
human Empire in the war.

“We have them,” shouted
the male, raising all four fists into the air.

Getting a little ahead of
ourselves, aren’t we?
thought the Captain.  There was no guarantee they would get within attack
range.  In fact, if the Captain were a betting man, he wouldn’t have given them
a chance in hell of getting there.  Unless these humans were asleep.

*     *     *

“I’ll be done in a
moment, honey,” said Margo Saunders, looking up from her desk as Tomas walked
into the classroom.