Exodus: Empires at War: Book 17: The Rebirth

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Exodus: Empires at War: Book 17: The Rebirth Page 12

by Doug Dandridge


  “Not yet. But I'm sure it's coming.”

  “I am so sorry, your Majesty.”

  “Not your fault. And really nothing you could do anything about. But this does call for a change of tactics yet again.”

  “Such as?” asked McCullom, leaning forward expectantly.

  “We might have to something out of the history books as well. What if we...”

  Chapter Eleven

  In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten, then he who continues the attack wins. Ulysses S. Grant

  AUGUST 3RD, 1004. CA'CADASAN SPACE.

  “What are you thinking, Supreme Lord?” asked Great Admiral Trostara, looking over at his Emperor, who was obviously considering something of great import.

  “The humans are still coming on, but much slower than previously,” said Mrastaran, looking up at his chief of staff.

  While not the supreme commander of the Ca'cadasan fleet, the great admiral was basically charged with the maintenance of channels between the Emperor and his force commanders, including the supreme admiral. It was a new arrangement, and one that still needed some ironing out, but Mrastaran thought it was working well enough, so far.

  “But they are still coming,” said the great admiral, making head a motion of negation. “We are still losing territory to them. Our sacred lands.”

  Mrastaran returned the head motion, though his thoughts were on a different track. Too many of his people thought the planets they had basically stolen from their inhabitants as sacred, and not the ill gotten gains of thieves. He saw them as nothing more than resources for the advancement of his people and their power. He didn't feel bad about taking them from their owners. That was the way of the Universe. The strong advanced and conquered, the weak were used by those stronger than themselves.

  The humans were proving to be the stronger in the one asset that had proven to be superior to all others. Intelligence. His people might like to trumpet how they were physically stronger, able to beat down any other species, though that really wasn't true either. Physical strength did little good when boosting through space at relativistic speeds, throwing missiles at each other. Even in surface warfare, the humans and their allies, with their better powered armor, could laugh at the size and bulk of the Ca'cadasans.

  “It will take time to reverse the tide of their advance, Trostara,” he told the other male. “Time we didn't have while they were moving swiftly through our territory. We are buying the time. Hopefully we will be able to again go on the offensive.”

  He didn't tell the other male his real thoughts. That no matter how successful they were in the next offensive, they were still at too great a disadvantage. Only if the humans decided the cost of conquering his Empire was too great would any kind of victory be theirs.

  “What if they take our capital?” groaned the great admiral, pointing a finger at the glowing dot on the Empire plot. “The sacred soil of the ancestors. If they take that, all is lost.”

  Mrastaran didn't believe that, but thought it best to let his people hold to their beliefs, at least for now. He looked at the vast territory of the Empire. Too much for the humans to ever garrison sufficiently. Too much to place sufficient fleets to defend. While he could place industrial assets in bits and pieces, across thousands of systems, too many for the enemy to root all of them out. He could continue the war for a thousand years if need be. To the shorter lived humans that would seem an eternity.

  “They're still almost two thousand light years from our home, admiral. Have heart. If we keep doing what we have been things will turn around.”

  Washington the President had it right, thought Mrastaran, recalling a text he had recently read. In earlier years he had fought in the rebellion of his country against their masters across a great sea. His superiors had wanted him to fight a decisive battle, one which he knew he couldn't win. So he had marched here and there, letting the enemy chase him. Using the concept of army in being. As long as he had an army in the field, he was a going concern, and had not lost the war. It had worked, up until he had been able to surround their army, with the help of an ally, and force a surrender.

  “I believe the enemy will next attack these systems,” said Mrastaran rapidly pointing at and highlight a score of systems.

  “So many?”

  “I don't think they'll attack all of them,” said Mrastaran, biting off the fool he wanted to add to the end of the statement. “Those are the most likely targets, based on what they hold within the grip of their stars. They might strike all of them, or none, and possibly go after other targets. But our intelligence analysis seems to think these are the ones.”

  Of course, most of those analysts were not Ca'cadasans, who were not mentally attuned to looking over and parsing great reams of data. While it was difficult to trust the analysis of aliens, Mrastaran had found several species who were bright enough and pliable enough to work intelligence. Placing a few of his cousins, also brighter than the average Ca'cadasan, to head up the bureaus was heartening as well.

  “We will leave wormholes on the edges of those systems,” he ordered, calculating in his mind how many they had, and how many they would have in the next couple of weeks. “From there we can decide what to deploy to the systems.”

  He sat there for a moment, trying to determine what he should earmark for the operation, then pulled up a holo with the available order of battle. The two new battle fleets, designated First and Third, were not to be touched. He had plans for them that would require their full strength, and he wasn't about to squander them in delaying operations. There were other forces that were already engaged in operations that forced them to stay in their current deployments. That left...

  “These ships will be moved to the locations of our ends of the wormholes. I want them prepared to move through the wormholes and attack on a moment's notice. I'll decide on the force structure once we have a good idea on what they'll be facing.”

  The Emperor preferred to deploy larger forces than those they would face, hopefully guaranteeing victory. That was best for morale, as ships and males coming back from successful operations always talked up the victory. There were cases, however, where throwing a smaller bu available force into the system to cause as much mayhem as possible would be the way to go.

  Mrastaran knew that many of his admirals thought it should be beneath an Emperor to make these kind of micromanaging decisions. At one time he would have agreed. But when he was the only one he could trust to make intelligent and informed decisions, he had to make them.

  “My Lords,” came the voice of a com officer into the chamber. “We have a report from our asset in the Helgren system. The enemy are ground assaulting the planet.”

  “They must really want that rock,” said Trostara, smiling.

  Yes, thought the Emperor, making a head motion of agreement. The enemy had been avoiding ground combat when possible, only attacking worlds they thought they could take with minimal effort, and overwhelming force. This time they were going to find they had been surprised.

  * * *

  “Advanced elements of the forty-seventh are down, sir,” reported the aide, walking over to his general.

  Lt. General Samuel Baggett already knew that the first battalions of each of the three brigades of that division had landed. He had, after all, the entire battle-space at the tips of his fingers before him. However, it was the job of the young officer to make sure the corps commander knew what was going on, even if he was sure that Baggett already knew.

  Baggett nodded, all the acknowledgment he was willing to give. His total attention was on the landing, and the people he had down there in danger. Not that he thought casualties were likely to be high, but any killed or wounded were too many as far as he was concerned.

  The general was currently watching the take through the sensors of the battle armor of a young platoon leader. He couldn't say that he missed wearing the armor himself, though on occasions he might don a suit and hit the ground.
Not on this operation, which was supposed to be routinely simple.

  “Twenty-fifth is on final approach,” called out the aide.

  The twenty-fifth was the armored division in his corps, with five battalions of heavy tanks along with their heavy infantry. They were landing in the open, away from the cities, where they could use their firepower in support of the infantry divisions. He could have depended on the fleet to provide that support, but tradition called for the army to use its own assets when possible.

  The fighters and ground support aircraft flying over the troops also belonged to Baggett. There were no enemy aircraft to contend with, and the pilots were acting like this was a training mission. Baggett didn't like that attitude, but was willing to put up with it, as long as they did their jobs.

  The other battalions of each brigade came down in turn, forming up on the one that held the landing zones, then moving out in companies. They were in a standard formation, troopers twenty meters apart, far enough away that nothing short of a small nuke would take out more than a couple, close enough that their sensors gave them a complete picture of what was around them. It was a tried and true tactic that had worked through the entire thrust in the Ca'cadasan Empire.

  The young officer whose suit the general was riding cried out, then gasped in pain. The life signs spiked, then went flat, and Baggett knew that something had happened to the officer.

  “We're under attack,” yelled out the company commander of that unit, panic in his voice. “I've never seen anything so big, and moving so fast. We need support. Now.”

  Baggett saw a blur on the camera. It was large, and moving much too fast. He zoomed in and slowed down, his breath catching as he recognized the creature.

  There were thousands of alien species in the Ca'cadasan Empire. While all aliens were exceptional in some way, most were just average in the scheme of things. Some were exceptionally bright, some physical giants, such as the Cacas and the Phlistarans. And there were the creatures intelligence had nicknamed demons, for a very good reason. The creatures were three and a half meters tall in their rest state, massing a couple of tons of bone and muscle. When they went into rage mode, their glands fueling their bodies, they puffed up to four meters tall, with hardened skin and razor claws and spikes protruding from their forms.

  They were an evolutionary nightmare, and the experts couldn't come up with a good reason why they even existed. But there they were, thousands of them attacking one of his units. If his people had been unarmored, or even light infantry, the branch the general had come up in, all of those men and women would already be dead. As it was, they were still being tossed about, many were sustaining broken limbs, and if cornered and attacked by several of the creatures, they would find their armored arms and legs torn away. Since their real limbs were so tightly encased in the suits, their biological parts came with the armor when it was removed.

  More of the huge aliens appeared, coming out of nowhere. These were wearing strap on armor that was proof against particle beams, at least for several seconds, enough time to let them close. They gripped huge mauls in their hands, swinging them in to crush armor, breaking limbs and smashing heads. Some attacked the armored vehicles on the field, to little effect.

  “Get some air support in there,” yelled Baggett over the com. “Now.”

  The heavy suits were fighting back. Lasers may have had trouble burning through the thickened skin, but particle beams that could vaporize hull metal could do the same with iron tough skin. The enemy was dying in droves now, piling up bodies and parts of bodies in front of the troopers. The three battalions of the brigade had now formed into hedgehogs, troopers moving quickly on grabber units and getting in close, sweeping their particle beams outward and annihilating the aliens pushing toward them. Tanks, invulnerable to any number of massive aliens at a thousand tons, rushed toward the infantry units to provide close support. Aircraft flew over, dropping smart mini-bombs that homed in on the body heat of the aliens, blasting through their bodies on contact. The situation seemed to be well in hand until suddenly it wasn't.

  Later the general would think of other tactics they could have used. The suits staying in their spread formations and rocketing into the air on their grabbers. They could had hovered out of enemy reach while firing down on them. Instead they were packed into a mass that made the perfect target for more modern weapons than muscles and hammers.

  Thousands of small hyper velocity missiles came in, traveling too fast to see, only visible by a short lived streak of light that could be chocked up to imagination. Only these were in great numbers, and the flash the mass emitted was like that of a great explosion reaching out. The missiles had homing sensors, relatively useless with so many in the air. But with a massed target they didn't have to be accurate. In battalions of eight or nine hundred troopers, four hundred or more flat lined on the tactical plot in an instant. Any hit was fatal. Arm, leg, head, torso, any penetration carried enough kinetic energy to vaporize most of the body beneath. The second wave killed most of those remaining alive, until only a couple of score remained effective in each battalion. Those were quickly swarmed over by the beserking aliens.

  Large hyper velocity weapons reached out and hit armored vehicles. Light vehicles went up in balls of flame, flipping through the air from the energy transfer. Tanks fared better, somewhat. A small number were destroyed in the same manner as their lighter brethren. Others rocked in the air, then settled on their grabbers to the ground. Tough armor was able to withstand the hit, as long as it was one of the better protected portions. The beings firing tried to avoid those areas, but weren't always successful. Counter fire from the tanks, lasers and particle beams, swept out and hit some of the incoming, driving them off their paths.

  The aircraft took fire at the same time. These were the same class hyper velocity missiles that hit the tanks, several hundred kilograms that could be fired by humans in heavy suits, or Ca'cadasan soldiers. Half a hundred aircraft exploded in the air while the rest went into radical evasive maneuvers, frantically trying to escape destruction. Some made it, getting objects between themselves and the missile firers. Many more just prolonged the process as they slid into the target baskets of other weapons. In less than ten seconds the air support was effectively non-existent, while the ground troops remained under siege.

  Baggett stared in short lived shock as two of his divisions effectively cease to exist. Even as the shock ran through his system he contacted the orbital support floating around the world.

  “This is Baggett. Do you have my people on your targeting scans.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the senior captain in charge of the three heavy cruisers and twelve destroyers overhead.

  “I want you to destroy everything within five kilometers of my people,” he shouted, watching as more suits flatlined.

  “The collateral..”

  “Damn the collateral. Do as I say. Now.”

  The captain was not about to argue with a three star flag officer, even if he was from another service. Three seconds later lasers and particle beams struck the area, obliterating buildings, vehicles, and any living thing in five kilometer circles around his people. He watched as the huge aliens were burned to steam, wondering the whole time if they were getting any of the Ca'cadasans. The answer came later. Those canny bastards had gone underground as soon as they had fired their missiles. Alive, to set up something else.

  * * *

  “Baggett feels terrible, your Majesty,” said Grand Marshal Mishori Yamakuri, the man in overall charge of the Imperial Army. “I, of course, can't fault any of his actions, and have absolved him of any responsibility in the massacre. And, of course, that depends on your own decision in the matter.”

  Sean shook his head as he looked from the face of his senior army command to the other holos that was showing the casualty figures. Two divisions in Baggett's corps were no longer effective combat units, and wouldn't be until they replaced the eighty percent casualties they had suffered. The great
majority of those casualties were killed in action. Add to that the over one hundred ground attack aircraft that had been shot down, also, in most cases, with the loss of the their pilots.

  The other holo told a story that was just as grim. Tens of thousand of civilians had been killed, both in the ground battle and from the orbital strikes. They didn't have clear figures on enemy dead, but estimated that twenty thousand of the Caca's huge allies had been killed. Maybe twice that number, but they didn't have the bodies to prove it. They did have the bodies of over two hundred Cacas, but again couldn't tell if that was all of them. Probably not, but it was obvious that the majority of the ambushers had gotten away.

  The Emperor knew Samuel Baggett, having met him on several occasions. His impression of the general was he was an intelligent man who made good decisions and kept his head under pressure. Of course, watching most of the men under your command being slaughtered was more pressure than most people would undergo. He had to make a quick decision to save what was left, and in Sean's opinion there hadn't been a good one. The general had made the least bad one, and twenty percent of his people were still alive because of it.

  “Tell Baggett that his Emperor agrees with his decision. There will be no consequences, and I expect him to rebuild his corps and be ready for deployment in...” Sean thought for a moment, not wanting to throw out an unreasonable figure. “Let's say two months.”

  “He might need more time to recover from this, your Majesty.”

  “If he does, he does,” said Sean, nodding. “I would prefer him back sooner, but you know your people. Do what you think is right, and I'll back you up. Now, we need to talk about how we are going to prevent this happening in the future.”

  “I already have my analysts looking over the battle, sir. They have come up with a couple of suggestions I think will work. A more thorough recon of the landing zone for one thing, followed by more assets sweeping out from the area.”

 

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