Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. (16 page)

“I’ll hold your
hand while they put you under,” he said, holding her.  “And I’ll be there when
they wake you.  Look, it’s got to be better than spending a third of a year sitting
in cramped quarters for the voyage out.”

“It’s OK,” she
said, in a voice that told him it was anything but.  “Help me into the thing.”

That looks
like a coffin
, he thought as he helped her to step into it.  Medical staff
started to attach sensors and push tubes into her veins, while he stood over
her holding her hand.  Before he knew it she was unconscious.

“We find it
better to put them under as soon as possible,” said one of the techs, while
another pumped nanites into her body.  Cornelius knew they would scour her
cells of ice crystals before she came out of cryo, and repair any damage caused
by freezing.  Then the lid was lowered and sealed, and his wife was quick
frozen while he looked on with some anxiety.

“Look,” said the
tech who had been talking to him.  “This is old, tried and true tech.  The
founders used it for a thousand years to come into this space, without a loss. 
Well, maybe closer to five hundred years ship time with dilation.  But the
point is that it works, and works well.  And we’ve improved it in the last
thousand years.  So your wife and you will awake in a new system.”

“You been out to
the frontier?” asked Cornelius as he climbed into his chamber, sitting next to
Katlyn’s.

“A dozen times,”
said the tech.  “I really prefer it to the core worlds.  Tens more years of
this and I plan to start a new life out there as well.”

“A new life,”
said Cornelius as the needles were inserted into his arms.  Then the world
faded and he knew no more.

“What happened?”
he asked a different tech as his eyes opened.  “What went wrong?”

“Nothing,” said
the tech.  “You’re going to be a little disoriented for a bit.  But you’re
here, at your destination.  We’re about ready to wake your wife.”

Cornelius sat up
in his cryo box and tried to get out.  “Take it easy,” said the tech, putting
his hand on Cornelius’ chest.

“I promised my
wife I would be there when she came to,” said Cornelius, pushing the hand away
and climbing out of the box.  He staggered over to the next box and looked down
on his wife, still undergoing the process of reawakening.  He stood over her
till her eyes fluttered, then opened.  She saw him and focused, a smile
touching her lips.

“We made it,
honey,” he said, grasping her hand.

The flight to
the surface was bumpy, in an old shuttle that had seen better days.  They
walked out onto a tarmac that was relatively unscared.  A flock of flying
creatures, not birds, flew overhead, and they looked up, then started walking
to the terminal.

“We made it,”
said Cornelius, squeezing Katlyn’s hand.  “We made it.”

“To our new
life,” she said, looking into his eyes.  “And a family.  As soon as we can, I
want to start a family.”

“I can do that,”
said Cornelius with a laugh.  “It will definitely be my pleasure.”

Sometimes the beasts of the frontier
are sentient, though no less violent than those who hunt and kill on instinct
alone.  Some are large and deadly, though their tech allows them to control
weapons larger and deadlier still.  But they are not indestructible, and brave
men and women, even when equipped with inferior weapons, are sometimes able to
become the hunters.

Two thousand
years before, humankind began to reach for the stars, using the dimension of
subspace to plant colonies on nearby worlds.  Then came the Ca’cadasans, an
Empire that had existed for thousands of years, conquering all that was in
their path.  The humans were to be the next conquest, until they had committed
an unforgivable sin, the killing of the heir to the Emperor by a rogue human
when he landed with the ground force to accept the surrender of a colony.  The
human species were declared anathema, to be wiped out, their genetic heritage
destroyed to the last microbe.  The humans lost every battle, the Ca’cadasans
possessing not just the larger navy, but tech more advanced by thousands of
years.  The humans sent out a number of refugee ships, the Exodus class, to
save humankind by reestablishing them at other locations through the Galaxy. 
Only one ship was known to escape, using the more primitive technology of subspace,
which the Ca’cadasans had abandoned millennia before in favor of the faster
dimensions of hyperspace.

Moving from
the Orion sub arm to the Perseus, on a trip of a thousand years and ten
thousand light years, the lone surviving Exodus vessel, crewed by the great
grandchildren of the original crew, finally reached what seemed like the
perfect place to settle.  Unfortunately, it is also the home region to a number
of species who were bootstrapped into space by an extinct race known as the
ancients.  The human race soon found itself fighting a series of wars.  To lose
one would mean the enslavement of the species, so they cannot afford to lose. 
After a thousand years the New Terran Empire has grown to become the dominant
species in the region.  They have strong enemies and stronger friends
surrounding them, and the future looks bright for the human race.

Only then the
Ca’cadasans, still expanding, found the hated humans.  But these humans are
only twenty years behind in technology, and actually their superior in some. 
The humans have been the victors of countless wars, while the conquerors have
rolled over one less advanced civilization after another.  The war of
extermination is on, the larger Empire against that of the smaller, consummate
warriors.  And the battle rages across hundreds of light years and a thousand
systems, while billions go into the long night.

*     *     *

The twenty five
million ton behemoth sent a surge of gravitons ahead and opened a hole into the
lower dimension of hyper VI.  The battleship slipped through the opening into a
dimension that was no less deadly to its existence than the one it was
leaving.  Antimatter reactors powered down as it entered the new space, no
longer needing the energy to switch dimensions, or the shielding needed to
exist in hyper VII.  It still needed power, a little less than a quarter that
necessary for existence in the higher dimension.

“We will arrive
at the final hyper barrier in two hours,” said the Astrogator, four hands on
his board, looking back at the big male who occupied the commander’s seat.  The
bridge was large enough to give each of the large, territorial aliens his own
space.  The officer’s reddish eyes squinted in the harsh blue light of the
bridge, a remnant of the home environment that most of the males had never
lived in.

The Captain
grunted and looked at the tactical holo that showed him nothing.  Just the star
and his ship.  He would know nothing else about the system until he entered
normal space at the edge of the hyper barrier. 
It’s supposed to be a
relatively weak system
,
thought the Captain, thinking back to his
brief.  Not many humans, not much in the way of defense.  The reason the Great
Admiral had made the decision to send one ship, even if it was one of the
Ca’cadasan’s largest capital vessels.  The planet wasn’t important in and of
itself, but it was the home of humans.  And so it needed to be visited, and
those humans eliminated.

“I want all
weapons powered up and all tubes loaded,” said the Captain, looking at his
Weapons’ Officer.  “And keep a close watch behind.  Remember, they like to hang
out at the barrier and catch ships coming in.”

“They can’t have
more than one of their cruisers there,” said the Weapons’ Officer with a sneer.

“And a cruiser
can still put a particle beam and some lasers up our ass,” said the Captain,
pointing the index finger of his lower right hand at the other officer.  “And
one of their missiles can do serious harm to us.  So keep a close watch. 
Anything out of the ordinary, any blip on the sensors, and you are to fire.”

The admonished
male gave a head shake of acknowledgement, scratching a horn with nervous
energy, then looked back at his board, anything to remove the gaze of his
captain.

“Everybody, stay
alert,” ordered the Captain.  “And we’ll accomplish the mission, and get back
to the fleet.”  He left the last part unsaid.  They would have rewards, both
from the tasty meat of the humans, and honors from command.

*     *     *

“We have a
translation, from the hyper VII dimension down to VI,” called out the Sensor
Tech, a Petty Officer manning the station.

“Ours, or
theirs?” asked Lt. Commander Cinda Klerk, watching the tactical holo and
dreading the answer.  She was not a large woman, in fact, the captain’s chair
still felt too big when she sat in it.  And she had the kind of face that
attracted men, which she saw as a detriment to her career, not letting her fit
the image of the warrior woman.

“Theirs,”
answered the PO, a look of anxiety, no, fear showing on his face.  “And it’s a
big one.  Twenty million tons or more.”

It would be
,
thought the captain of the HIMS
Joel Schumacher
, one of the only two
hyper capable warships in the system.  She was the largest ship assigned to the
Compton system.  There were two more ships, both non-hyper vessels of similar
class. 
Schumacher
was the most massive of the three ships due to her
carrying the extra mass of a hyperdrive.  At a hundred thousand tons she was
not the smallest hyper capable vessel in the Imperial Fleet.  The couriers and
fast attack ships were much smaller, as were attack fighters, though only the
fast messengers were capable of reaching hyperspace on their own.  Still, they
were facing the prospect of a visit by a twenty five million ton battleship,
over two hundred and fifty times her own mass.

And we’re
more suited to going head to head with pirate
s, thought the Lt. Commander. 
That was exactly what her ship had been envisioned to take on, either hunting
them, or protecting merchant traffic.  It was ludicrous at best to station her
in a system as defense against an opponent whose smallest warship was in the
six hundred thousand ton range.  Especially with the special orders that came
down from the Emperor himself.

Cinda pulled up
a side holo and stared at the comp representation of the enemy that was coming
her way.  An image originally taken thousands of years before
.  They haven’t
changed
,
she thought, looking at the figure of a tall, furred biped,
standing on two strong legs, double shoulders extending from the torso
supporting four arms.  The head was the horror, a medium muzzled, red eyed
carnivore with sharp teeth showing in a grin, two large horns growing from the
top of the skull.  The creature stood three meters tall sans the horns, and
looked very much like one of the demons she had seen in an illustrated holy
book of her religion when she was a child.

“We’re receiving
a gravity pulse from
New Kiev
,” said the Com Officer, a young man who
looked like he had just walked out of the doors of the academy.  “Her captain
is ordering us to support them in an action against that warship.”

Of course he
is,
thought the Commander, staring at the tactical plot that showed the
disposition of all vessels within the system from the graviton emissions of
their drives. 
New Kiev
was a newcomer, a hyper VI battle cruiser that
happened to be visiting the system on her recon patrol.  But her commander was
a full captain, making him the ranking officer in the system.  And a complete
idiot, as far as she was concerned.

He doesn’t
stand a chance either
, she thought, staring at the icon of the battle
cruiser that was about twenty-five light minutes out from Compton IV, the one
inhabited planet in the system.  The planet was two hundred million kilometers
out from the F2 primary, and the battle cruiser was almost three light hours
from the hyper barrier in her current position.  There was a small liner and a
freighter sharing the orbitals, both doomed.  One of the frigates was within
several light minutes from the battle cruiser, and starting to boost toward a
matching velocity, obviously positioning herself to support the capital ship.

She found the
last of the interplanetary frigates on the plot, about two light hours out on
the opposite side of the primary.  She might escape notice for a while, but
there was no place for her to go. 
And what should I be doing?
she
thought, zooming in the plot and looking at her own surroundings.  She was well
on the inner side of the asteroid belt, five light minutes from the planet,
cruising at point zero one light speed, slow enough for her to get rid of that
velocity before the enemy ship entered the system.  The inhabited planet was
the closest object in her path, and her current heading would take her there. 
She had enough time to change her heading. 
But where to go?

“Do you want to
send back a response, ma’am?” asked the Com Officer, giving her an expectant
look.

He is the
ranking officer in the system, dammit,
thought the Captain. 
And as
such, he is the commander of all the forces in the system.  But hell, the
Emperor himself ordered for all units to avoid combat, unless we can inflict
equal or greater harm to the enemy.
  There was a really good reason for
that order.  Human units had regularly gotten themselves annihilated in combat
involving seemingly equal forces.  Too many such exchanges, and the Fleet would
cease to be as an effective fighting force.  And then the enemy would roll over
the Empire.

“Acknowledge by
gravity wave only,” she replied after a moment’s thought.  Gravitons traveled
in all dimensions of hyper as well as normal space, making them detectable at
faster than light speeds.  It was what allowed ships to track other vessels at
almost real time.  The main deficiency with that mode of communication was the
limited amount of information that could be sent.  Essentially, it was a
digital code system.  And it was a broadcast system, detectable by everything
within the system.

“No vid?”

“No,” snapped
the Commander, glaring at the young man to cover her own discomfort at trying
to avoid an order, even though she knew it was the wrong one.  She ran a hand
through her short brown hair as several of the bridge crew turned to look at
her.  Sweat was flowing down her freckled face, and she knew, despite her
attempt at control, that her green eyes were wide with fear. 
What the hell
am I supposed to feel.  That’s death coming our way, and no damned battle
cruiser is going to be able to stop them, much less a frigate.  That man is an
idiot, and obeying him would be a criminal act.
  She looked again at the
plot, zooming out and looking at the icon of the enemy ship blinking its way
toward the system. 
It’ll be twenty minutes before they could expect a vid
from us.  Maybe I can figure something out in that time.  Something that will
allow us to survive, or at least to die accomplishing more than adding extra
atoms to interplanetary space.

The plot was
showing the eight million ton battle cruiser moving out from the inner system,
tracked by its grabbers’ graviton emissions.  The frigate
Monte Barker
was
beside her, a dog and its flea moving out to do battle with a tiger.

“Those poor
people,” said Lieutenant JG Natalia Romanov, the Navigation Officer, staring at
the main viewer.

“That’s what
they pay us for,” said the Helmsman, Ensign Garibaldi.

“Not us,”
replied the Navigator, nodding at the screen.  “Those civilians, on that
planet.  The Cacas are going to kill every one of them, you know.”

Cinda zoomed in
on the planet on one of her side screen holos.  It was a beautiful world, with
maybe a little more arid area than most.  Still attractive enough to entice
settlers.  Only fifty thousand so far, but fifty thousand dreams that were
about to end. 
And according to the Emperor’s orders, we are supposed to
abandon them as well, so we won’t waste our combat power, small as it is, for
no reason.
  She studied the viewer, her mind trying to grasp any possible
action that would actually mean something.

“What’s that?”
she asked, pointing to the tactical plot.  As soon as her finger aligned with
the dot it started blinking, so her crew would know where she was pointing.

“Comet C509,”
replied the Sensory Officer, looking at her board and using the unimaginative
system of naming minor objects in minor systems.

“Can we get
there before the Cacas translate to normal space?”

“I think so,”
said the Navigator, looking confused.  “But, aren’t we going to support the
New
Kiev
?”