Exodus: Empires at War: Book 17: The Rebirth

by Doug Dandridge

  “And ideas?”

  “My people have come up with some, and we're pursuing the most promising.”

  Sean knew Chan. Knew that she would be pursuing all the ideas, though emphasis would be placed on the most promising, as she said. But even the least promising might just some through against all odds. And he respected her for giving credit to her people where it was due, though she wasn't adverse to accepting praise on their behalf, especially those ideas that she had been responsible for. That made her a jewel of great measure. Not just was she one of the most intelligent people in the Empire, she had a knack for supervising other scientists and managing their great but fragile egos.

  “Spill it?” he asked.

  “New sensors for the scouts for one. Sensors with much greater sensitivity, as well as more powerful lidar and radar projectors. And some new weapons to combat them.”

  “And you think these will work?”

  “So far they have worked on our own stealth/attack,” she said with a smile. “And I can guarantee that ours are much better than anything the Cacas have.”

  Sean believed that wholeheartedly. The Empire had very good stealth ships before the war, and the use of wormhole tech had made then many times more effective. The Cacas were just entering the field, so anything that picked up his ships would surely pick up theirs at longer ranges.

  “They won't pick them up system wide,” cautioned Chan. “The best we can do is parse them out from a light minute or so, if we're lucky. But we're also working on small probes that can pulse sensor bursts and give us a location.”

  “An offshoot of you decoys?” said Sean, smiling. Those had already proven their worth in the current battle. After it was over the analysts would come up with the proper way to deploy them. Unfortunate, but not unheard of with new tech. They could only hope that the new didn't become a disaster.

  “Same team is working on them, your Majesty. Test models are doing everything we expected, and we should be able to deploy the first batch in a week.”

  The Emperor nodded. That was fast work, less than two weeks from conception to production. In this war humanity had to ramp up the deployment schedule. It was imperative that they stayed ahead of the Cacas.

  “Good job, Admiral. And my compliments to your people.”

  Chan took that as the sign to stop speaking and leave her Emperor alone with his thoughts. While Sean studied the last carrier in the five forces that were engaged in battle, and it looked like it wouldn't be around much longer.

  * * *

  “We have enemy warp fighters on the plot, my Lord,” reported the sensor officer.

  “Where?” blurted Lokasure, his eyes trying to pick out their icons on a plot filled with the graviton tracks of ships and missiles. “How many?”

  He didn't think they would have many, not with a single damaged carrier in the battle. But he couldn't rule out that a bunch of them had been in space, waiting for the moment to strike. Not what he would have done if his ships were in the predicament they found themselves in, but...

  “Twenty five, my Lord. Maneuvering to the port of the carrier and heading out.”

  Now that he knew where to look he found them easily. Two small formations, nine craft ahead, sixteen behind. So a full squadron and part of one, and probably all they had.

  “I think they plan to loop around and strike us in the rear. I advise that all ships in the rear of our formation turn to present their warp lances.”

  “Do it,” grunted the admiral. It was what he was going to order anyway, and the significance of the tactical officer thinking along the same lines went a long way for making up for his past mistakes. “Take care, though. From the intelligence reports they have a much longer ranged missile.”

  “And remember, they're faster as well,” said the sensor officer. “Twenty three lights for both groups. And they're looping around. ETA for a stern attack, thirty-one seconds.”

  Suddenly the warp fighters turned in space, changing their vector in an instant. That type of ship could come to a dead stop in a second, then head off in any other direction, immediately back up to full speed. And now they were coming in on an unexpected vector, one that would be lightly covered by the warp lances he had.

  Warp lances was a term the humans had come up with. Warp projectors that set up a linear field that could be used as a weapon. The Emperor thought it appropriate, and had started calling them that himself. What the Emperor called something, soon everyone was doing the same.

  “They're launching, my Lord. Eighty-two missiles, coming in a twenty-five lights.”

  They were on the plot, the small objects outlined by their warp fields, with, like almost every propulsion technology in space, emitted huge quantities of gravitons. They were distinct from the forms released by hyperdrives and grabbers though, making them easy to spot.

  “Another launch, my Lord. Eighty-two more.”

  So the larger squadron is made up of their new attack craft,” thought the admiral, doing the math in his head. They wouldn't be quite as maneuverable as the space superiority version, but even if he had any warp fighters to match against them, the humans would still have the speed advantage. The Ca'cadasans needed to improve their fighters, and fast, if they were to have any chance in fighter to fighter combat.

  The fighters had launched from beyond warp lance range. One light minute. And the missiles had taken less than three seconds to cover that gap. A score or so still fell to the wide spread fire of the lances. The rest bore in, and fifty-seven hit. Seven scouts went up in flares of plasma, the warp fields of the missiles driving through their hulls and rupturing the warp containment fields of their reactors. A dozen more slowed acceleration, and couple stopped boosting altogether. Five cruisers were hit and damaged, not enough to put them out of action, enough to slow three of them.

  And then the second wave came in more of them were taken out by warp lances, and four more scouts taken out. This time three missiles struck a single cruiser, and it converted into plasma, sending a few large pieces out that struck other ships, causing more damage. And then it was over, and the warp fighters were looping back around to head for their own force. To rearm? That's what he would have guessed.

  Lokasure sighed a breath of relief. That full force, the one that had existed before the Ca'cadasan missiles had hit it, would have been able to launch an attack of over five hundred fighters, launching between two and three thousand missiles in a volley. And there would have been plenty of reloads. Lokasure felt fortunate to have taken those weapons out of the enemy arsenal from the start. Still, they had enough to hit him, even if it was just a pinprick.

  “How soon before we're in beam range?” he asked. One light minute was the maximum effective range, but it was preferred to get within a half light minute or less. The enemy was still dodging, and their new decoys were just too effective. The gate was busy launching swarms at the inner force, something he didn't want to interrupt. And unfortunately, he was in the way of his stealth ship, so anything it sent out was likely to hit him before it got to the enemy.

  “Sixteen minutes, twenty-one seconds, my Lord,” announced the sensor officer, getting a nod from the tactical chief.

  “Should we continue hitting them with missile volleys, my Lord?” asked the tactical officer.

  To what result, he thought. If they had deployed those decoys before he had hit them they might have got off with minor damage. Fortunately for him they hadn't. When they got within close range missiles would not be as effective, easy to track, easy to kill. But beam weapons would hit them no matter what their maneuvers. Some might miss, but enough coming in would surely get hits. It would be a slow death, but it would amount to kills.

  “Keep sending some at them, but no more than ten percent of our capacity,” he ordered, hoping that was the right decision. While the Emperor might feel free to let them use all the missiles they wanted, the admiral was sure that any saved for the battles down the road would be appreciated. And he might poss
ibly need them for something more immediate.

  * * *

  “The captain wants a progress report,” said the voice of the damage control officer over the com.

  Since Finn was receiving it the cast had to be going out to all and sundry working on the arrays. That was unusual, and meant the commander wanted the input of everyone working out on the hull.

  “We can give her V in about ten more minutes, sir,” answered a chief petty officer who was the senior engineer on the job. There were officers out here, junior all, and none with the chief's experience. Intelligently, they all deferred to the expert.

  “Can you give her any more, maybe down the road?”

  “No, sir. We're doing what we can with what we have. Without more supermetals we can only do so much. V is the best we can do.”

  Finn realized the news was not good. They would soon be able to duck into hyper, able to avoid missile swarms launched in normal space. The enemy, however, would still be able to get into VII, doing sixteen times their turn of speed, not even accounting for their greater acceleration. They would catch the small force in no time, and blow their fragments back into normal space by dropping missiles down on them.

  Finn thought of something she had read. About when Duchess Lei's battle cruiser had been trapped in hyper, unable to open a hole back down due to the loss of some of their array. It took less energy to stay in hyper than to drive into the higher dimensions. Or the lower. The solution they had come up with was to cut off pieces of their ship, reducing its size and mass. Not something a ship's captain wanted to consider, but if it saved the ship and its crew it might be worth a shot. The only other possibility was to evacuate the crew to the mostly still intact battleship and let it escape.

  “Ma'am,” said Finn, nervous at breaking into the conversation.

  “And you are?”

  “Petty Officer First Marcia Finn, ma'am. And I wanted to remind the captain of what Admiral Duchess Lei did to save her ship, trapped in hyper.”

  Finn continued to make connections as she spoke. They needed the array functioning, didn't they? No matter what the final decision was.

  “Let me pull that up,” said Captain Merkle. She was silent for a moment, and Finn wondered if she would find anything useful in that report.

  “That opens up some possibilities,” said Merkle. “Thank you, Finn, for taking the initiative.”

  Which could mean that the captain would order that plan put into effect, or not. It was up to her, and the petty officer had done all she could by giving the idea to the God of the ship.

  * * *

  “You think this crazy idea might work, Captain Merkle?” asked Admiral Garasra, looking into the holo at the ultimately stressed human officer, his own beak hanging open in disbelief.

  “Probably not, sir. But what else can we do? Short of a large force appearing near us within the next twenty minutes, I don't see any hope. This gives us something to do, and the possibility of cheating death.”

  “You can't evacuate to other ships?” asked the admiral, grasping at straws. He knew that the cupboard was bare out there. She had two battleships, both heavily damaged, one to the point that it was barely combat worthy. A pair of light cruisers, sixteen destroyers, all with varying degrees of damage. And the logistics ships, one empty, and neither with the acceleration to escape on their own. No, she was most likely to have to evacuate those ships as well.

  “The battleships are already in trouble. We'll probably have to evacuate the crew of the most heavily damaged one to the other. And that one doesn't have the life support to take on all of my people as well. So we really have no choice.”

  Garasra's tactical officer waved for attention, then raised five digits into the air. Garastra got the message, and looked back at the anxious captain in the holo, ready to give her some good news.

  “Your pursuers should be receiving our gift in less than five minutes, Captain.”

  “Your wormhole launches?”

  Garasra nodded. All of his battleships had wormholes, all configured as launchers. With no other targets he had ordered continuous launches. Thirty-seven launchers, firing streams of sixty missiles every thirty seconds. He had a general idea where they would be after the two hour and eleven minute flight time. They were in pursuit, after all, and though they could zig zag a bit, that was slowing them down as compared to an opponent who was leading the movements. His launches, each with sixty of the smaller missiles, had been sent to bracket the enemy. He assumed that between two and ten would be direct hits, not having to change their vectors until the last minute. The other would have to change vectors at about two light minutes out, and would be tracked the whole way, but some should still get through.

  The admiral thought he had the enemy strategy pegged. They obviously hadn't expected to destroy his battle force. Hurt it some, with little risk to themselves, while totally destroying the carrier force. From what he had heard from command, they had succeeded with four other battle groups, taking out all the carriers. In the future those ships would probably be accompanying the battle groups into the system, another change in strategy. If there was serious opposition they would still be in danger, but the protection would be able to handle that, wouldn't it? At least that would be the hope.

  The icons of enemy missiles again appeared on the plot, one of their smaller launches. He wasn't sure what that was about, but he would take it. And then the icons of his own missiles appeared, the ones still light minutes out adjusting their vectors to target the enemy. The enemy started maneuvering furiously, launching counters, their primary attention no longer on the damaged ships they pursued. A minute and a half, and of the over two thousand missiles on the plot, over eight hundred were still maneuvering onto the enemy. And then the hundred and eighty that had gotten within twenty light seconds of the enemy turned on their drives to full, plunging in.

  Almost forty of the enemy ships fell off the plot, destroyed, or damaged and now devoid of thrust. While those missiles were attacking another series of streams appeared on the plot, moving in to attack the enemy force that was still disorganized from the hits it had taken. Thirty seconds later another.

  Garasra smiled. He had launched a full twenty volleys at them. Over twenty-two hundreds weapons coming in at a killing velocity. If only five percent of them hit, a very good outcome in this kind of fight, that would be over two thousand kills. On a force that couldn't number more than four thousand. They would have to break off after taking losses like that. They had to.

  Only these were Cacas, not the most intelligent of beings, known to keep up the pressure even when a loss was a foregone conclusion.

  * * *

  “Pound them with everything you have, Admiral Lokasure,” growled Mrastaran over the com. “I want them dead, and your ships heading back for the gate.”

  “But I....”

  “I know what you were trying to do, Admiral. Commendable, thinking of the future, but you have a battle here, now, and you need to send everything you have at them.”

  It would take more than an hour to come to a complete stop and start back toward the wormhole gate. Then almost four hours to get back to it. And the enemy had to have figured out the gate's general location. He could assume they would be firing on it as well, and would definitely have some launches coming in to that region about the time he got there.

  “Start decelerating now, Lokasure. Keep firing on them, but stop the pursuit.”

  “And if they get away?”

  “Then they get away, and you have already won a great victory.”

  Though not as great as it would have been before I lost over five hundred ships, thought the lower ranked leader.

  “Keep firing at them as you decel. But slow down and get back. We have picked up enemy ships in hyper, heading your way.”

  They weren't on Lokasure's sensors yet, so they had to be farther than twelve light hours away. It was fortunate that the Emperor had been thoughtful enough to place pickets out there to giv
e him early warning.

  “What do they have coming? And how soon before they get here?”

  “Several thousand ships,” answered Mrastaran, his concerned face looking out of the holo. “Graviton emissions indicate they're ships from one of the two major alien allies of the humans. And enough capital ships to take you out without a thought.”

  Lokasure digested that for a moment. All that bother to save what were essentially ships that would spend the next couple of months in the yards, if they survived. He reminded himself that the humans, and their allies, didn't think like Ca'cadasans. To them the individual was important. They would expend people for a victory, but they were careful to conserve as much strength as possible. Ca'cadasans were willing to throw bodies into the fire, like putting missiles into the tubes. The new Emperor was trying to change those thought patterns, but even he was having difficulty changing the perceptions of his commanders.

  “We're estimating they will arrive in the system within six hours. But they could come out earlier, before hitting the two barrier, and launch on you from out there.”

  And of course they would have wormholes, and all of those missiles would cover the distance at almost light speed.

  “How soon before we get back to the gate,” he asked his own navigation officer.

  “Approximately five hours, my Lord.”

  So he would get back to the barrier with an hour to spare. Unless the enemy started bracketing the gate with launches from within the system. If they hit the gate he would be forced to jump into hyper to get away. If he could get away, with the alien force close enough to change vectors and come after him.

  “More of their decoys took out most of our launch, my Lord. Do you want to send in larger volleys.”

  That would be the way to hit them harder, possibly getting some strikes on their primary targets. But he might need those missiles now, if he didn't get away through the gate.