Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (14 page)

Maybe we should fall back from human space
, he thought for a
moment. 
We could then come back when they aren’t the only ones with the
advantage of wormholes.
  The Great Admiral gave a double shoulder shrug at
that thought.  There was no way the Emperor would allow them to retreat from
the humans.  And there was no telling what new advances the humans would come
up with.  Surely everything the Ca’cadasans had developed to date, and probably
many tricks beyond.

And what should I do with the forces I have?
thought the Great
Admiral, looking over his dispositions, what was combat ready, what needed
major repairs. 
Some raids for now, without weakening the defenses in my
important systems.  And maybe in a month, another offensive.  But this time I
will strike them where they are weak, and further erode the strength of my
enemies.

Chapter
Nine

Love has its place, as
does hate. Peace has its place, as does war. Mercy has its place, as do cruelty
and revenge.

Meir
Kahane

SAURON SYSTEM. 
DECEMBER 1
^ST
, 1001.

“We’re about to enter the Sauron System, your
Majesty, ” came the call over the com net.

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Sean, sitting at the
table with Jennifer.  He looked at his love, feeling sorry that she would have
to go through another translation.  She already looked a little pale just at
the thought of translation.  “Is it getting any better?” he asked hopefully.

“Not really,” she said.  “Unless you are
talking about my nausea.  When there’s nothing left in my stomach to vomit out,
it’s a little better.  I guess I had better lie down.”

“Want me with you?”

“I really hate having you see me that way,”
said Jennifer, shaking her head, getting up from the table.

Sean watched her walk away, his heart going out
to her. 
At least when she’s back at Capitulum she won’t have to go through
this.  Thank God for the wormhole network.

Sean got up from the table and headed out the
door to his quarters, his guards falling in around him.  He headed for the lift
bank, where one was being held for him, then rode the car up to the level of
the flag bridge.

“Emperor on deck,” yelled out the first officer
to see him.

“At ease,” yelled Sean, striding to his command
chair and taking a seat.  The tactical plot in the center of
Augustine I’s
flag bridge was set to a scale out to two light years, with the ship’s icon
blinking a couple of light months out.  Sean zoomed in on that icon, and saw
that they were represented as being in hyper VII, moving forward at point two
five light.  All around her were other ships, hundreds of them.  A dozen other
groupings followed, while some fairly large groups were closer to the system,
and lower down the dimensions of hyper.

“It’s still an impressive force,” said Rear
Admiral Kelso, walking up behind his Emperor.

“It was damned sight more impressive when I led
it out,” said Sean, thinking of all the ships and crews that did not come back.

“If you hadn’t led them to their deaths, your
Majesty, someone else would have,” said Kelso, stepping around and sitting in
the VIP chair to Sean’s right.  “It’s the price of command.  Win or lose, you
have blood on your hands.  Hopefully more of theirs than that of your own.”

“Does it get any easier?”

“I’m just a lowly two star,” said Kelso,
looking into the holo tank.  “You’ll have to ask Lenkowski or Mgonda about
that.  But I believe they would tell you no.  They gain some more distance,
most of the time.  Not in battles like Congreeve, but then, those kind of
battles don’t come along often, though they might in this war.  No, mostly they
order other lower ranking flag officers to take a portion of the fleet out and
meet the enemy.  They are not there.  But you know what?”

“Tell me, Admiral.”

“I have seen Mgonda looking over the casualty
lists of an engagement, and I could swear he was barely holding back the
tears.  He knows what those figures mean, as cold and clinical as they are. 
They represent real people, humans and non, who have given their lives, their
futures, their children’s mothers and fathers, to implement those orders.  And
he feels just as responsible for those deaths if the orders originated from
him, or from the CNO, or above.”

“That’s the way I feel, Admiral,” said Sean,
looking around the chamber at the men and women who served on his flag bridge. 
“I feel responsible for these deaths, and I was here to see them die.”

“And would you feel any less responsible if you
were sitting in your office in Capitulum when battle was joined?” asked Kelso,
looking into the eyes of the man he had sworn oaths to serve.

“I don’t think so,” said Sean.

“Good.  You should feel responsible, just as
you should feel responsible when you pull off a victory like you did at
Congreeve.  It is so sad that so many had to die in that battle.  And so
necessary.  No one wants to die in battle.  But sometimes it is necessary that
many die, that so many more might live.  Never forget that.  You are our
Emperor, our commander in chief.  And you sometimes must choose who to send
into harm’s way that the Empire might live.”

Sean stared into space a moment, digesting what
the Admiral had said, then looked back at Kelso.  “And tell me honestly,
Admiral Kelso.  What kind of leader am I?”

“Not the most educated,” said the Admiral
without hesitation, raising a hand to stop Sean from making a defensive reply. 
“Very good for your age, but lacking experience.  A lot of potential, just
waiting to grow.  You can be very immature at times, and wise beyond your years
at others.  But most importantly, you listen to the people who are under you. 
You learn.  You don’t always agree, nor should you.  The hard decisions are
yours, not theirs.  And most importantly, you accept blame where blame is due. 
That is very important in a leader, and has been lacking in many through
history.  You own up to your mistakes, and don’t try to scapegoat others.  Now,
you just need to work on accepting the credit you deserve as well.”

“Jumping to hyper V,” called out a voice over
the intercom.  The lights dimmed, and the space on the main viewer showed as
the slightly less vibrant red of the dimension they were now in.  Neither man
showed much effect from the jump.  Both were experienced spacers, with a high
natural tolerance, and hyper travel would never get the better of either of
them.

“Am I making a mistake, leading from the
front?” Sean asked the man, who had become one of his primary military
advisors.  “Some in Parliament are saying that I should stay on Jewel, and keep
my hands off the military.”

“Parliament just wants to run the war their
way,” said the Admiral, shaking his head.  “And that would be an unmitigated
disaster.  Their plan would be to fall back and protect the Core Worlds,
leaving the rest of the Empire to be picked off by the Cacas, and picked clean
by the other powers.  As vital as the Core Worlds are to our effort, they are
not all there is to this Empire.  The Developing Worlds are responsible for
almost twenty-five percent of our military construction and materials.  Plus,
most of us in the Fleet think their plan would only result in the loss of the
Core Worlds as well, one by one, or a couple at a time.”

“And what about my leading from the front?”
asked Sean, a slight smile on his face.  “You avoided that one very neatly,
Admiral.”

“The, uh, Admiralty seems to have mixed
feelings on that, your Majesty,” said the Admiral, who was looking decidedly
uncomfortable.  “While some see the advantages that you bring to the table,
others, uh, are uncomfortable having you in actual operational command.”

“What about the Spacers and Marines serving under
them?” asked Sean with a frown.

“Those people would follow you into hell, your
Majesty,” said Kelso without hesitation.  “They think the world of a seated
Emperor who puts his life on the line beside them.  But there are some
reservations there as well.”

“They don’t like seeing me on the front of the
battle line,” said Sean, nodding.

“That they don’t, your Majesty.  Being in the
same system is enough for them to see that you are really one of them at
heart.  But they also want to feel that you are the Emperor, to be protected. 
It’s good for morale to see you in the battle force, but bad to see you
actually putting your butt on the line.”

“And bad for the Empire if I get killed,” said
Sean, shaking his head again.  “But I’m just one man.  I can be replaced.”

“No,” said Kelso, raising his voice and
pointing a finger at the Emperor.  “At this moment, you cannot be replaced.  If
you were to be killed, then the fight for the throne would be on.  There are
too many people out there with a claim, none of them particularly strong.  A
fight for the succession is not what we need at this time.  You marrying the
Duchess is a step in the right direction.  Getting an heir will be another, as
long as that heir has a strong advisor while he or she grows up.”

“So.  I need to get married, knock up Jennifer,
and get myself a smaller ship, so
Augustine
can go into the line of
battle where she belongs, without putting the head of state at risk.”

“I guess that about sums it up, your Majesty,”
said the laughing Admiral.  “And I could suggest some people to help with your
selection of a new flag.  Something that would serve you well.”

“Thanks for the advice, Admiral,” said the
Emperor, leaning back in his chair.  “I’ve got a lot to think about.  Now leave
me to do just that.”

“At your command, your Majesty,” said the
Admiral, standing and saluting.  Kelso executed a picture perfect about face
and walked away.

It’s good to have an advisor
, thought Sean,
watching the straight back of the Admiral as he walked away. 
It’s up to me
to seek good advice, and weigh it.  But the buck still stops here.  It’s up to
me to make the final decision.  Though the advice about a new flagship makes a
lot of sense.
  Sean looked around the flag bridge of the most powerful unit
in his fleet.  There were only five like her in service, three of which were
just coming online.  It was a ship that needed to be in the line of battle,
where he didn’t need to be.

It took almost another hour to make it through
the gradations of hyper, but finally
Augustine
jumped through the final
dimensional breach into normal space.  The stars were out in all their majesty,
many sending their light in blazes of glory through the gas clouds of nebulae. 
The G0 primary of the system was straight ahead, one of the class of stars most
similar to that humanity had evolved around.  About twenty degrees above the
ecliptic of the system, ten degrees to the right of the star, was a bright blue
dot, the blue supergiant, on the fate of which hung the success or failure of
the planned offensive.

Almost a hundred other ships appeared along
with
Augustine I
, several superbattleships, a score of battleships, and
the only other member of the Dreadnaught’s class to have survived the battle. 
That’s
a decision I can make right now
, thought the Emperor, looking at a view of
Archduke Leslie
,
twenty thousand kilometers to port. 
Imperium
, the third ship of the
class that had been engaged at Congreeve, hadn’t made it, proving that in
modern war there were no such things as indestructible ships.  When objects
were flying around with massive warheads at significant fractions of light
speed, anything that could be hit could be killed. 
Superheavy battleships
,
decided the Emperor. 
From now on, that’s what we’ll be calling them.
 
And when they came up with a bigger class, he would pick something out for
them.

He turned his attention to the
tactical holo, which was updated second by second as new information came to it
through the wormhole com, which was receiving information from every other
wormhole equipped platform in the system.  Over a thousand ships were shown on
that display, superbattleships, battleships, carriers, cruisers of all classes,
destroyers, even several hundred frigates, ships usually only used for patrol
duties.

Several hundred icons blinked in
a position a couple of million kilometers from the inhabited planet of Sauron
III.  Sean zoomed in on the icons, grunting with surprise as he saw the
identifications below them.  Not that he could pronounce any of those names,
though he had enough knowledge of Crakistan from recent learning programs to
read them.  The reptilians had only been marginally involved in the Congreeve
battle, though he had heard that they were giving a good account of themselves
in Republic space.  The lizard like aliens, not cold blooded at all, though
they seemed like that emotionally, were staunch warriors.  Fear would never
deter them from a task that was called for in the heat of battle.  They would
fly their ships to their deaths if it was the logical decision that would
benefit their species.  He was happy to see them, and hoped that they were just
as loyal to their allies as they were to each other.

And when the Elysiums arrive, we
will have yet another ally against the Cacas.  Something that will have to
dishearten even those bastards
.  Command structure would be the
problem, if only a minor one.  The aliens would fight in their own task forces
and battle groups, under the overall command of Sean himself.  But the avians
would not arrive until the ship gate was in place, and it was even now being
carried by a superbattleship several light hours behind
Augustine
in the
procession of warships transferring from Congreeve.

In fact, for all the thousands of
ships already here, they were but the tip of the iceberg.  Thousands more were
on the way through hyper, and more would come by way of ship gate when it was
up and running. 
And when Len gets through with his little task, he’ll be
bringing quite a few ships here himself
.  The wormholes were indeed a
godsend.  Allowing them to move forces at unprecedented transit times across
the Empire.  As long as they possessed them, there didn’t seem any way the New
Terran Empire could lose.