Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (2 page)

Timeline

2151
AD:  Hiro Yamamoto discovers subspace portal generator.  Opens subspace
dimension to transport of human colonists.

2160
AD:  Alpha Centauri B4 colony established.

2173
AD:  Tau Ceti III colony established.

2208
AD:  Humanity has spread to eight inhabitable systems within 20 light years of
Sol.

2250
AD:  12 million humans living outside of the solar system.

2254
AD:  First contact with Ca’cadasans on Epsilon Iridani V.  Human colony destroyed
without warning or trace.  Incoming ship discovers colony destroyed and runs
back to human space with news.

2256
AD:  Human colony at Altair V attacked and destroyed.

2257
AD:  United Solar System Fleet established to fight alien threat.

2260
AD:  Battle of Tau Ceti, humans meet Ca’cadasans with a five to one advantage
in mass and are handily defeated.

2261
AD:  Construction started on the six Exodus ships to allow some of humanity to
make it to safety outside of human space.

2264
AD:  Ca’cadasans, having destroyed all of humanity’s colonies, attack the solar
system in force. Five completed Exodus ships attempt to leave the system under
heavy escort.  Two are destroyed before they can make it into subspace.  Two
enter subspace with pursuit, while Exodus III makes a clean breakaway into
subspace.

2264
- 3260 AD:  The Long Voyage.  With several fueling stops and explorations,
Exodus III travels along the galactic rim and toward the core, traversing 9,760
light years from Sol.

3261
AD:  Supersystem discovered, along with remains of ancient civilization that
had once owned it.  First human colony founded on Jewel.  Year 1 of New Human
Empire.

3268
AD (Year 8):  Humans make contact with traveling merchant ship from Elysium
Empire. Discover thriving civilizations that sprung from the ancient
civilization that used to inhabit the Supersystem.

3361
AD (Year 100):  Population 2,000,000+.  Establishment of the Fleet.

3460
AD (Year 199):  Beginning of Terraforming projects around super system.

3573
to 3579 AD (Year 312 to 318):  First Gardasian War, human victory.

3589
to 3592 AD (Year 328 to 331):  Second Gardasian War, human victory, Gardasian
race absorbed into human empire.

3619
to 3621 AD (Year 358 to 361):  First Markanan War, human victory.

3669
to 3676 AD (Year 408 to 415):  Second Markanan War, human victory, Markanans
absorbed into human empire.

3696
to 3698 AD (Year 435 to 437):  Kiniman War, Kiniman race absorbed into the
human empire.

3724
to 3733 AD (Year 463 to 472):  First Crakastan War, human victory.

3744
to 3762 AD (Year 483 to 501):  First Lasharan War, human victory.

3772
to 3784 AD (Year 511 to 523):  Second Lasharan War, human victory.

3797
to 3801 AD (Year 536 to 540):  First Margravi War, human victory.

3803
to 3808 AD (Year 542 to 547):  War of Revolt, Imperial Victory, 150 million
humans leave Empire to found Republic of Mankind.

3809
to 3814 AD (Year 548 to 553):  Civil War, Constance the Great triumphs over
Cassius the Terrible (II).

3815
AD (Year 554):  New Constitution establishes Constitutional Monarchy.  (Bill of
Freedoms added in Year 607).

3841
to 3846 AD (Year 585 to 590).  Machine Revolt.  Human built autonomous robots
rebel against humanity.  Billions die before revolt stopped, Man in the Loop
Law enacted.

3848
to 3853 AD (Year 587 to 592).  Second Crakastan War, human victory.

3873
to 3876 AD (Year 612 to 615):  Third Cracastan War, human victory.

3892
to 3897 AD (Year 631 to 635):  Second Margravi War, human victory, ends with
alliance of Margravi and Klashak with human empire.

3913
to 3936 AD (Year 652 to 673):  First Galactic War (against Lashar, Crakasta and
Fenri).

3984
AD (Year 723): 
Donut
Project approved and construction planning begins.

3984
to 4000 AD (Year 723 to 739):  Elysium War, marginal human victory.

4007
to 4008 AD (Year 746 to 747):  War of Man, humanity (Imperium) against humanity
(Republic).  Political pressures bring an end to short, sharp war.

4009
to 4114 AD (Year 748 to 853):  The Century of Peace.  Empire involved in no
extra empire or border hostilities.

4065
AD (Year 804):  Dissidents from New Terra Republic found the Grand Duchy of New
Moscow.

4114
to 4131 AD (Year 853 to 870):  Second Galactic War, Elysium, Lashar and Fenri
against Empire, New Terra and Margrave/Klashak, human victory.

4167
to 4180 AD (Year 906 to 921):  Third Galactic War, humanity's victory.

4206
to 4216 AD (Year 945 to 955):  Klang Consortium attacks New Moscow.  Empire of
Terra and Republic of New Terra come in on New Moscow’s side.

4256
AD (Year 985): 
Donut
Generates first working wormhole gate.

4261
AD (Year 1000):  Empire celebrates 1000 years of existence and growth.  January
1, 1000 local Galactic calendar.

March
15
^th
, 4261, Ca’cadasan invasion of Empire begins in earnest with the
attack on Sestius and Massadara.

March
29- April 5
^th
4261 AD, Sean leads rescue mission to
Sestius.

Maps

The
Story So Far

In 2254 the human species had spread to eight
star systems after the discovery of the Subspace drive, allowing humankind to
achieve pseudospeeds of over eleven times the speed of light.  That was the
year the human species first encountered the long lived Ca’cadasans, three
meter tall horned carnivores whose empire had been expanding for thousands of
years.  That was the year the aliens attacked the
Epsilon Iridani V
colony. 
When the heir to their imperial throne was killed after the colony had
surrendered, the Emperor ordered the complete extermination of the human
species.  After a short, sharp war, humanity had no other option than to try
and flee the killer aliens.  The six Exodus ships were built, each capable of
moving fifty thousand humans in cryostasis, along with all the knowledge of the
human species.  One ship is known to have gotten away through subspace, a
dimension through which the more advanced hyperspace faring Ca’cadasans are not
prepared to follow.  Four generations of crew navigated the Exodus III over ten
thousand light years in a thousand years, reestablishing humanity in a system
of eight stars in orbit around a black hole, the Supersystem.  Once the home of
an extinct species that had helped raise most of the intelligent races of the
area to technical civilizations, it was also the perfect region for the
newcomers.  Over the next thousand years the New Terran Empire fights, wins and
expands in a number of wars, improving their technology at breakneck speed,
becoming the dominant military power of the region.  Humanity also improves its
genome, becoming stronger, faster and smarter, and seemed destined to rule the
Perseus Arm, given time.

On the thousand year anniversary of the empire,
Emperor Augustine I is having prophetic dreams, the gift and curse of his
line.  He has seen the ancient enemy returning, finding the human species
disunited in its three governments, and utterly destroying them.  Augustine has
fought to expand the military, running into obstructionism from the Lords House
of Parliament.  It is an uphill battle in the Constitutional Monarchy the
Empire has become.  Meanwhile, the Donut, a century long engineering project,
is nearing completion.  The enormous station, built as a ring around a black
hole, and using the swirling gravitational energy to generate wormholes, has
begun to make the many portals that will be used to eventually link the
Empire.  And spies have infested the Empire, a race of shape shifters who make
most security measures moot, adding sabotage and espionage to the problems
facing the Emperor. 

Sean Ogden Lee Romanov, the third son of the
Emperor, is a serving naval officer on a battleship in a relatively quiet
sector, with no thoughts of ever assuming the throne.  He was a mediocre
officer, despite his superior intelligence.  With two brothers ahead of him in
the succession, and a still young father, the throne seems like the least his
worries.  By this time the Ca’cadasans have made contact with some of the
enemies of the Empire, and sent the information back to their leaders.  The
ancient enemy has been found, and can now be eliminated.  Ships begin to
disappear in Sector IV, and sightings are made of vessels that fit no known
description.  Many people refuse to believe these are the Ca’cadasans, and some
think that Empire must have fallen in the near past.  The Emperor continues to
try to rally support for increasing the size of the human military, while
Parliament fights him on the economic effects of such a move, and alien powers
protest that the humans are planning territorial expansion.

There is an attempted assassination attempt on
Sean, and a successful attempt on the Emperor and his two older sons during a
tour of the Donut.  The assassin is an officer of the Imperial Protection
Detail, causing distrust to grow among the agencies charged with the security
of the Empire.  The same day as the assassination, the Leader of the House of
Lords is killed in his home.  Sean is now the heir to the Empire, and the man
who must be seated as soon as possible on the throne, but he is almost a week’s
one way com range from the capital.

The Ca’cadasans now attack, sending large
fleets into several industrial or base systems, and smaller forces to many
other stars.  The Massadara system, a major Imperial base, is one of the
systems attacked.  Sean is serving on one of the battleships that happens to be
in that system, and is aboard the vessel as it heads into combat with the
enemy.  Word comes to the system that Sean is the uncrowned Emperor, and his
ship, against his protests, is ordered out of combat.  His ship, the
Sergiov,
heads out
of the system before the main battle begins, a small Ca’cadasan force on its
heels.  The main battle is joined, and, though it inflicts casualties on the
Ca’cadasan fleet that is only about a decade ahead in technology, it is
defeated, and the system falls.

The
Sergiov
is battered by the enemy, and Sean
is rescued from the ship by Captain Mei Lei and her hyper VII battle cruiser. 
The battle cruiser fights its way out of the system with the help of Commander
Bryce Suttler’s stealth/attack ship, and, along with Commander Maurice von
Rittersdorf and his destroyer, starts on the voyage to get Sean back to the
capital and the throne.  The Ca’cadasans track the two vessels, and Sean
escapes on the destroyer while Mei sacrifices her ship in a battle with the
Ca’cadasan supercruisers.  The battle cruiser
Jean de Arc
falls out of
hyperspace in a catastrophic translation, a low survivability event, but
nonetheless manages to survive and starts the long journey home.

Rear Admiral Mara Montgomery is dispatched with
her scout force to locate Sean and get him back to the capital, while von
Rittersdorf plays hide and seek against the Ca’cadasans, trying to get the
unseated Emperor to safety.  Von Rittersdorf catches one of the much larger
Ca’cadasan ships in a brilliant ambush which destroys the enemy ship, while
causing severe damage to his own.  Montgomery’s task force enters the system,
and she dispatches the other two supercruisers, then takes the Emperor aboard
her flagship.  Von Rittersdorf begins the long journey home in his crippled
ship with escorts.  Sean learns that one of the nearby systems is under siege
and, against the protests of the Admiral, orders her to take her ships to break
that siege and evacuate the colonists on the frontier world.  Meanwhile, the
Leader of the House of Lords advances plans to put an Imperial Cousin on the
throne while the true heir’s whereabouts are unknown.  The Ca’cadasans invade
and take the kingdom of New Moscow, and make serious inroads into the New
Terran Republic, the sister governments to the Empire.

On Sestius IV Brevet Brigadier General Samuel
Baggett fights the landing of the Ca’cadasans with his mixed command.  Farmer
and ex-hunter Cornelius Walborski deserts the militia to get his pregnant wife
to safety.  Though bleeding the enemy, Baggett is forced to fall back into the
wilderness before the enemy ground warriors.  Walborski’s son is born, but his
wife is killed while they are running from the aliens.  The farmer goes mad,
and stalks the jungle with the skills he had learned as an assistant hunt
master, killing many aliens in the jungle.  He meets the legendary Preacher of
special ops fame, now a retired Ranger and current minister on the planet.

Montgomery’s task force takes the system and
the planet, and evacuates all those that want to leave, just before a larger
enemy force enters the system and forces it to flee.  Sean meets Dr. Jennifer
Conway, who has lost her own fiancé’ in the invasion, and falls in love with
her.  The scout force fights a running battle back to Conundrum base, rescued
at the last moment by the fleet of Duke Taelis Mgonda.  Von Rittersdorf makes it
to safety, while Mei Lei and her crew are rescued from hyper by another battle
cruiser.  The XO of the
Jean de Arc,
Xavier Jackson, falls out of hyper while
trying to rescue some crew who could not get off the ship.  Surviving the
translation, he is rescued by beings from legend, the Ancients that everyone
assumes are extinct.

On the Donut it is discovered that an ancient
race known as the Yugalyth, another creature from legend, capable of changing
its very body form over a period of days and duplicating any creature, is at
large.  A Yugalyth agent imitates Dr. Lucille Yu, the station Director, and
attempts to destroy the huge construct.  Dr. Yu uses quantum teleportation, an
experimental technique that only succeeds in moving about half the material being
teleported to its target, to teleport negative matter to destroy the bomb the
creature put on the station attitude control board.  The new enemy is
discovered, one which originates in the realm of the Empire’s close ally,
Elysium.

The Knockermen, a reptilian race in the Elysium
Empire, revolt against the dominant Brakakak.  The Brakakak eventually curb the
revolt, but are forced to commit their entire fleet to searching out the rebels
and breaking the rebellion.  The leader of Elysium and his family are forced to
take refuge with the Terrans during the battle of the capital.

Sean comes back to the Supersystem by the
wormhole gates that are now being deployed through Imperial space.  Chief of
Naval Operations Gabriel Lenkowski gathers a fleet that transports Sean to the
capital planet, where, with a large force of Marines, he lands during the
coronation ceremony and stops the Lords from crowning his cousin.  Sean is now
Emperor, Commander and Chief of the Imperial Military, and, given his wartime
powers, the most powerful Monarch in a century.  His companions go off to other
commands; Mei Lei to a battle cruiser squadron, one equipped with new wormhole
launched weapons; von Rittersdorf to lead a new destroyer squadron; and Baggett
to command of a heavy infantry brigade.  Cornelius Walborski, on the
recommendation of Preacher, joins the Imperial Army with hopes of being
augmented and becoming a Ranger.

The Ca’cadasans hit Conundrum, the HQ of Sector
IV, hours after Sean jumps through the wormhole from there.  They take the
system, and land troops to complete the conquest of the planet.  Sean is forced
to engage in a hit and run war against an enemy that is still more advanced,
and more powerful, than his own fleet.  He orders his units to refuse combat
when possible, and only to fight when they can inflict maximum damage on the
enemy.  Q-ships, militarized merchant vessels with quantum teleporters capable
of sending antimatter into the interior of an enemy ship, bait and destroy
Ca’cadasan raiders.  The Lords go on the warpath against Sean, demanding that
he commit his fleet to a major battle.  His prophetic dreams indicate that one
of the core worlds, the heavily populated industrial planets at the heart of
the Empire, is a target.  But the dream does not tell him when.

Wormhole gates are dropped in occupied systems,
then maneuvered to planetfall, allowing ground forces to insert.  This is done
on most of the occupied worlds, allowing the units to engage the aliens in
Guerilla warfare.  Preacher leads a Ranger brigade against the Ca’cadasans on
the surface of Conundrum, and the campaign forces the enemy off the planet. 
The Lasharans, religious fanatics, are again attacking the frontiers of the
Empire, and Baggett’s unit, as part of a heavy infantry corps, is sent to take
their home planet and occupy their primary temple, breaking their will.

The Ca’cadasans strike at the Cimmeria system,
utterly obliterating the two inhabited industrial worlds located there.  Sean
retaliates by sending forces through wormholes to strike behind the main enemy
fleet and destroy their bases.  The Fenri Empire, old enemies of the humans,
sign an alliance with the Ca’cadasans, and the New Terran Empire launches a
spoiling attack on those aliens.  The logical beings of the Crakista Empire,
seeing the Ca’cadasans as the greater threat, join the human cause, ordering
their military to offer all possible aid to the humans.  Things are beginning
to look up until the Ca’cadasans launch yet another assault, almost overrunning
all of Sector IV.

Sean and Jennifer become lovers, a fact taken
advantage of by the Yugalyth agents, who kidnap her and threaten to kill her if
Sean does not place himself in their hands.  Sean agrees, and has himself
equipped with a pair of small wormholes that allow him to kill the kidnappers
when they think they have him in their power.

Cornelius completes Ranger school, finds a new
love himself, and is assigned to the planet Azure, one of the deadliest in the
Empire.  He and his men stalk the Ca’cadasans through a jungle that is enemy to
both, and encounters a new client race of the Ca’cadasans, the supremely
competent hunters called Maurids.  Cornelius saves and is saved by a young
girl, Rebecca, and completes the mission his company couldn’t, destroying a
Ca’cadasan headquarters.  He returns to the capital system again a hero, one of
the few to win the Imperial Medal of Heroism twice.  He marries, and gains a
new mom for his baby son, and his adopted daughter, Rebecca.

Sean, in need of a victory, plans an ambush for
the Ca’cadasan fleet in the Congreeve system, a frontier world made up to look
like an industrial developing planet.  The Cacas, using the Knockermen, send in
a strike force to take out the
Donut
.  And the Empire sends in a strike
against the Fenri Empire, the new ally of the Ca’cadasans.  Cornelius attends
Officer Candidate School and is well on his way to becoming an officer, while
the Opposition Party of the Lords continues to cause trouble for the Emperor,
threatening a No Confidence Vote in Parliament.