Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (22 page)

“The Cacas are going to hate you, your
Majesty,” said the Grand Marshal with a laugh.  “Preacher and Walborski.  They
might surrender immediately.”

The dinner was productive, Sean being able to
get his wishes across to all those present.  While not giving many orders, his
suggestions would carry almost as much weight.  It waited until the end of the
after dinner conference before the question came up he had been sure was
coming.

“Do you still intend to lead from the front,
your Majesty?” asked Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom, the
Chief of
Naval Operations.  Everyone at the table leaned forward, waiting for his
answer.

“It would make all of us feel much better if
you ruled from the capital,” said Field Marshal Betty Parker, the
Commandant
of the Imperial Marine Corps.  “The Empire needs your leadership, and cannot afford
to lose you at this time.”

All the heads at the table nodded in agreement
with what the Field Marshal had said.  Sean looked around the table, knowing
that these people, the ones he depended on to keep things running smoothly,
were not going to like what he had to say. 
Well, tough.  This is why I get
to wear the crown, so I can make these decisions.
   He thought for a moment
before giving them his answer.

“I had one of the dreams,” he said, seeing the
interest increase in all of their eyes.  “Yes, you all know what kind of dreams
we have in my family.  And I seem to be one of the most powerful with the curse
that some call a gift in generations.”

“And what did you see in the dream, Sean?” said
Samantha, who as an Imperial Cousin was well versed in the lore of the gift.

“I saw myself, much older, and worn by long
decades of war, walking the bridge of a warship like no one would believe. 
Looking down on the home world of the Cacas.  We had won.”

“That’s wonderful,” said the Prime Minister,
clapping her hands.

“And what does that have to do with you going
back to the front?” asked Lord Garis.

“You have to be leading the Fleet,” said
Samantha, immediately understanding the import of the dream.  “If you are not
in the lead, it will not come to pass.”

“Yes,” Sean said with a cold smile.

“But, the dreams don’t always come true, do
they?” asked Garis, looking uncomfortable about the whole subject of prophecy.

“No,” said Sean, shaking his head.  “They
don’t.  But if I don’t play the part shown me, they definitely won’t.”  He
didn’t tell them about the other part of the dream, the feeling of loss he
experienced when thinking of Jennifer. 
That could be decades in the future
as well.  And what the hell am I supposed to do?  Sacrifice the entire human
species for just one person, no matter how important to me.

“You could still get killed before any of this
comes to pass,” said McCullom, raising an eyebrow.

“All kinds of things could happen,” said Sean,
nodding.  “Still, I intend to lead from the front, and pray that the dream
comes to pass.  And I will listen to no arguments to the contrary.”

It was very late before Sean could pull himself
away from the conference and seek his bed.  Jennifer seemed to be sound asleep
when he curled up next to her.  A moment later she had turned to face him and
had her arms around his neck.

“Are you tuckered out after your long meeting,”
she said after kissing him.

“I’m not that tired,” he said with a laugh, his
hands roaming over her smooth skin under the sheets.

“Good,” she said, her smile growing.  “Because
I’m fertile tonight, the nanites have been sent to bed, and I think it’s time
to make you an heir.”

*    
*     *

The Yugalyth, who considered himself the Prime
of the spy ring the Knockermen had set up in the Supersystem, stared at the
holo as it put more nourishment into its now oversized eating orifice.  The
holo was currently showing a replay of a news show that one of its human
operatives had recorded when it had first aired live, just before it had been
yanked by the Imperial authorities.

And it was lucky that the stupid human reporter
asked the question,
it thought, taking a large swallow of the meat it was using to feed its
metamorphosis. 
Otherwise, we would never have known, and I would have lost
more agents in trying to penetrate their heavily guarded installations.

“We have the reporter here, sir,” said the
voice of one of his human operatives over the intercom.

The Yugalyth looked up from the holo, taking
stock of the large room it occupied.  Fourteen subunits were growing from its
body in a radial pattern, each now a small copy of a nondescript human, though
the skin was pure Yugalyth.  When they reached full sized, they would be
ordered to find, kill, and imitate a particular human.  At that point they
would have been assigned penetration missions.  Not anymore.  Now they would be
used purely for terror, in areas that were unguarded.

The door to the large room opened and the woman
was shoved in.  She stood there for a moment, looking confused, her eyes
adjusting to the shadows.  She saw the creature looming from the shadows, and
hissed in a breath of shock.  Even in a culture that dealt with many different
alien forms, the Yugalyth was shocking to look at.  It hadn’t completed its
metamorphosis yet, but would soon be a queen of its kind, its only task to make
clones of its genetic material, to produce as many of its kind as possible in
the shortest time.  Now it looked like a huge lump of flesh sitting on the
floor, only its head and arms actually appearing human.  Almost.  The head was
too large, the mouth too wide, and full of an alarming array of teeth.  One of
the large hands held a piece of meat that look very much like a human leg, and
the sharp teeth took another large hunk out of the thigh area.

“You are the woman who asked the Emperor the
question about detecting my kind?” asked the Yugalyth through another orifice
that had formed on its chest.

“I, am,” stammered the woman, her eyes wide
with shock.  “And you are one of them?”

“I am,” said the creature in its deep voice.

“And you are allied with the Ca’cadasans?”
asked the reporter, her voice shaking.

“We are not allied with those creatures.  We
are allies with those in the region who see your ascendance as an error that
will cost us all.  An error that must be corrected.”

“Then why are you helping them?”

“Because they are against you,” growled the
creature.  “But I did not bring you here to answer your questions, but for you
to answer mine.  Where did you hear about these new tests to find my kind?”

“I have a source in the government,” said the
reporter.

“I know you have a source, human.  What I want
to know is, who is it?”

“I cannot divulge that information.”

“You think you have rights here,” laughed the
Yugalyth, while its upper mouth tore another chunk out of the leg it was
devouring, adding to its biomass for the production of its kind.  “I will kill
you when I will, and no one will ever know what happened to you.  Now, give me
the information I want.”

The woman shook her head, tears in her eyes,
fear shutting her down.  The Yugalyth reached forward with its other arm and
grabbed the reporter around the neck, lifting her toward it while it dropped
the half eaten leg to the floor.  The woman rose up to its eating orifice, and
the teeth clamped down on one of her thighs and tore out a bite.

“Please,” screamed the woman.  “Don’t kill me.”

“Give me the information I want, and your pain
will end.”

She stammered a name and a position, enough for
the Prime to have his agents locate the person. 
The great thing about
humans is that they will sell out their own for enough money
, it thought,
staring into the eyes of the terrified woman. 
And if money doesn’t work,
terror will.

“Please,” she stammered again.  “It hurts.”

“Then we will end your pain,” said the
creature, pulling her close again.  The Yugalyth did not consider itself a
cruel creature.  It only did as it must to complete its mission.  And part of
its mission now was to get enough biomass into its system to spawn more of its
kind.

The Yugalyth pulled the woman to its eating
orifice and pushed her head in.  A swift bite and it decapitated the woman,
then chewed a few times to completely pulp the skull, tearing apart the
nutrient rich brain.  The woman felt nothing after that first bite.

“I need more food,” he told one of his fellow
Yugalyth over the com.  “And I want this person brought here before me.  I must
know what measures they are about to take against us.”

*    
*     *

“At least two dozen people have been reported
missing within this circle in the past week,” said the briefing officer,
getting the undivided attention of all the detectives in the room.

Capital Police Lieutenant Ishuhi Rykio sat
there with them, looking at the ten kilometer wide circle where all the
disappearances had occurred.  While it was not unusual for people to come up
missing in the city of over two point three billion, that many in one small
area was something to raise concerns. 
I wonder if the shifters have
anything to do with it
, thought the former Naval commando turned detective,
who was also now working for Naval Intelligence undercover.

Rykio had been instrumental in breaking up one
ring of the Yugalyth, those responsible for the murder of two Prime Ministers,
and maybe having a hand in the assassination of the last Emperor. 
And
everyone thought the threat was over when we took those bastards down.  I
thought not, but everyone had victory disease, and preferred to think that we
had gotten rid of the problem.

The Detective called up information on the
victims on his implant while the briefing officer, a captain, continued to
speak.  Again, there were always disappearances in a city this large.  Mostly
people who just wanted to leave a family, or get away from people they owed
money to, which included the organized crime of the city.  There were plenty of
murders as well.  Not anything like what had occurred in pre-space society,
maybe a couple of hundred a day in the largest city of the Empire by an order
of magnitude.  The society allowed people to carry weapons for self-defense,
and by the laws of Jewel all such weapons alerted the police when they were
used.  But no such signals had been received in any of these disappearances,
save one.

And they’re all pretty nondescript people
, he thought. 
No
master criminals, no people that might have pissed someone off.  Just ordinary
people.

“Are we boring you, Ishuhi?” barked the
Captain.

“Not at all, sir,” said the Detective,
swallowing his retort.  His Fleet rank was commander, far loftier than that of
the captain who led a homicide precinct. 
But I can’t let him know that
,
thought the Detective, who used his position on the police force to keep Naval
Intelligence abreast of any problems they were having in the city.

“Well, what did you find?  Don’t keep the rest
of us in suspense.”

“Just that there was no reason for any of these
people to disappear.  And that maybe one or two of them going missing might
make sense, coincidence and all.  But all of them.  No way.”

“A wonderful example of deductive reasoning,”
said the Captain with a sneer, evoking laughter from the other men and women. 
The Captain turned back to the holo for a moment, then looked back out over the
room.  “I want all of you people to hit the streets.  To ask every one of these
people’s neighbors if they know anything.  Anything at all, no matter how
silly.  I want to get whoever it is that’s doing this to these people.  Now get
to it.”

And I need to let Intelligence know what’s
going on here, so they can also, ‘get to it’.

*    
*     *

DECEMBER 7
^TH
,
1001.

Cornelius was not really sure what was going
on, only that he had been ordered to report to one of the rooms of the palace,
someplace he had never been before.  Devera and Rebecca had tried to hide
smiles when he told them, but would not tell him what they thought was going
on.  Now he was walking down the corridor, the brand new gold bars of a second
lieutenant on the collar of his dress uniform, beret under a shoulder flap, as
it was supposed to be while indoors.  Every military member, of every service,
that he saw gave him a salute first, even the higher ranking officers.  The
ribbon with diamond stars on his left breast pocket was the reason they so
honored him.  The Imperial Medal of Heroism, the highest award that anyone in
the Empire could be awarded, military or civilian.  The diamonds indicated that
he had won the award twice, a rare achievement, as the act of heroism to win
any single medal was usually enough to kill the one so honored.  He had been
told in no uncertain terms not to wear the medal itself, and the ribbon that
went around his neck, what he would normally have worn with his dress blues. 
That was also an unusual enough request to raise an eyebrow.