Exodus: Empires at War: Book 17: The Rebirth

by Doug Dandridge

  “Half volleys. They can't have many more of those decoys.” But he had thought that a little while ago, and they had kept sending out wave after wave of the decoys.

  “Have we received any volleys from those ships recently?”

  “Not for the last four minutes, my Lord. I assumed they had reached the end of their firing queue.”

  “It if fine to assume, tactical officer. But when you do so, I want to hear your thoughts on the matter. Understand?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  Even though the Emperor had commanded that valuable males not be executed for making simple mistakes, Lokasure was tempted to order the tactical officer thrown out an airlock, no matter what the Emperor would think. He had made too many mistakes in this battle. Clenching his fists, gritting his teeth, he calmed himself down. So the human had had four minutes to bring decoys across through the wormholes. How many had they brought, and would they start firing missiles again when their firing queue was again full? That is what he would do, but then he thought like a predator, always on the attack.

  “All ships are now on a deceleration profile, my Lord,” said the navigation officer.

  I should have just let those ships go, and hit them from a distance, thought the admiral. Well, as the Emperor had said, he would learn. Survivors always did. If he survived.

  * * *

  Commander Sheila Francois-Ramirez felt consciousness returning, the confused feeling of not really being sure where she was. She forced her eyes open, seeing the lights and panels of a strange craft in front of her. Taking a deep breath she winced at the pain in her chest.

  What the hell happened? Last she knew she had been in her command chair on the bridge of the destroyer Charles Murphy, watching the plot as a missile bore in, her ship throwing everything it had at it. Then the hammer blow, the thought that she was dead, since a destroyer could in no way survive a direct hit by a missile. Then, blackness.

  It obviously wasn't a direct hit, she thought. Otherwise she wouldn't be here. That she was in what was obviously an escape pod meant the ship had been heavily damaged, probably on the verge of a reactor breach. And someone on the bridge, another survivor, had seen to her instead of just running for the escape pods themselves.

  I am grateful, she thought. The person would get her profound thanks, and a medal if she had anything to say about it, if they survived. After that thought she took stock of her surroundings, plugging into the pod computer through her suit interface. Fortunately the thing was fully charged. Someone aboard her ship had taken their duties seriously, and made sure this means of escape was at full capabilities. She had power for a month, more if the solar panels were extended. Food and water for essentially years, what with the pod recycling systems. The distress signal of course was not transmitting. Before the war with the Cacas it would have automatically engaged from the moment the pod left the ship. Since the Cacas were known to eat prisoners that practice had been relegated to the past. Now it was up to the judgment of the occupant for when they wanted to call for help.

  She tapped into the rudimentary sensor systems of the pod. Enough to let her know where the fleet was. Decelerating while moving to sun-ward. She was passing them since her pod carried the momentum that had been imparted to it by the destroyer at the time of launch.

  “Start full deceleration,” she ordered over her suit com. “I want us on a course to the fleet.”

  “Acknowledged,” answered the pod computer.

  Sheila realized she would never get to them. The pod would run out of power for its grabbers by then, and the pod would then be much closer to running out of life support. She would have to monitor it herself and make the decision when the time came.

  There was a moment of panic as she tried to pull her helmet off and it wouldn't budge. A quick diagnostic showed that the nanoseal, which essentially made the helmet and torso of the suit one unified piece, was damaged. The suit was working on repairs, but it might be awhile.

  The pod engaged thrust without her command, and she was thinking it might have gone into instant avoidance. Something clanged onto the outer skin of the pod. Sheila started, wondering if she was going through a debris field, then stared in disbelief as the outer visual sensors showed her what had impacted the pod. Impacted, and stuck.

  * * *

  Corporal Charles Han was on the verge of panic. He had waited too long, and only had a half an hour's power left. He should have gone into cryo much earlier. Terror at being asleep when he died had prevented him taking that action.

  He could still go into cryo, his body cooled to near freezing, the chemicals injected slowing his metabolism to just barely working. But after a couple of days his suit would be dead, devoid of power. He would freeze solid, and while he could still be revived in a working med bay, his suit would only be noticeable to active sensors within a couple of kilometers. A needle in a field of haystacks, in the immensity of space.

  “There is an object accelerating in our direction,” said the suit.

  “What is it?” asked Han, his heart in his throat. If it was a Caca he definitely didn't want to attract its attention. Death was one thing. Knowledge that he was going to feed one or more of the big bastards was something else.

  “It is a Fleet life pod. Heading in our direction. Do you want me to hail it?”

  “Of course,” yelled Han, his anxiety rising that it might not find him and pass by. That would be the ultimate case of the Universe messing with him.

  “No reply. Do you want me to attempt interception?”

  “What are my chances?”

  “Over fifty percent.”

  That good, he thought. “Do it, now.”

  “Adjusting course,” said the suit. A few seconds later it spoke again. “Brace for impact.”

  Han wondered what kind of impact it was talking about, then found out as the pod appeared and grew in size within seconds. The suit collided with the pod, and the impact was tooth jarring. The corporal could feel bones snap, then consciousness left him.

  Fortunately the suit was programmed for just such an event. One of the hands gripped a hold on the pod, then the other. The umbilical snaked from the suit and sought one of the feeder ports placed on the outside of all rescue pods for just such an occurrence. The umbilical mated with the port, and energy started flowing across into the suit, recharging all systems.

  * * *

  Well, this is just fantastic, thought Sheila as she monitored the vitals of her new passenger. I get someone to keep me company, and they're down for the count.

  Actually, Corporal Charles Han had lucked out on two counts. One, the chances of his contacting her pod, or any pod really, had been astronomical. Two, the differences in velocities, while enough to hurt him severely, hadn't resulted in the kind of massive terminal deceleration that would have killed him instantly. He did have severe internal injuries, possibly including brain damage. The suit had stabilized him, just as it would in ground combat. Its internal systems would inject him with large quantities of nanites to start on the repairs. He would survive, though it would take some time in a medical facility to return him to duty.

  I just want him conscious, thought the commander, looking at the man's face over the viewer, transmitted by the internal helmet camera that was used for communications. She could force a wake up in the future, but wasn't sure it would be in his best interest. Still, just the thought that she wasn't alone was comforting.

  Even with the corporal onboard the pod had enough energy and life support to see them through the next couple of months. If they hadn't been picked up by then they probably never would. She would wait for two days and then engage the distress signal. Again, if the Fleet hadn't won the battle by that time and completely occupied the system, they wouldn't. And if any Cacas approached she would set off the pod self destruct. The corporal would not get a vote, but she was pretty sure he would agree with her.

  Chapter Twenty

  If we know that our own men are in a condition t
o attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. Sun Tzu

  Merkle stared intently at the viewer that was showing the enemy gate, the grav lens making it as clear as it could in the darkness. The gate was at an angle to her, indicating that they were still firing at the admiral's force within the system. He could take care of himself, while she was just glad that they weren't unleashing waves of missiles at her. Would that change when they were ready to leave the system?

  A missile wave was on the way in now, still several minutes from contact. She was still anxious that they might get one through and take out her ship. The engineers were working as fast as they could to make them ready for a hyper jump, but they could only do so much in a given time. She had all of her decoys deployed, hopefully enough. And...

  “The warp fighters are making a run through the missiles, ma'am,” said the Klassekian com tech who had siblings aboard one of the fighter squadrons.

  Merkle nodded, hoping that the new antimissile tactics worked as advertised. Most things given to them by research and development worked well, tested to perfection before deployment. Still, there had been failures, and she was praying that this would not be one.

  “How are they coming on the hyperdrive arrays?”

  That had been a risk as well. She could have settled for a lower warp, or gone ahead trying to get as much as she could out of them. She had decided on the latter, even though it meant the arrays were useless until the task had been completed.

  “They'll have you V in three more minutes,” said the chief engineer over the com. “It will be at least a half an hour before we can eject the first section of the ship we are cutting away.”

  And will that even be necessary? thought the captain. The enemy was retreating, after all, even though they were still firing. If they fired again after this coming wave the force would be able to jump into hyper V and avoid them. The enemy might be able to jump missiles in after them, but her force could then jump between dimensions to generate misses. Might as well carry it out, she though. The sections they were cutting away were really of no use to the crippled ship, and they could be replaced when the Northrup went to the yard for the rebuild she needed.

  “Carry on engineer,” she said, watching the enemy launch approaching. These were all ship launched missiles, like the others. The gate launched were all going into the system, a blessing. The ship launches were taking longer to get to her because of the growing distance. On the other hand, they were gaining velocity with the distance, making them more effective.

  The mass of decoys was drifting in space close behind. They were moving in the same direction, carrying the velocity of the ships at the time they were launched. The ships were still accelerating, though the captain would have to make a decision soon as to when they need to stop. They would be lucky with their damaged arrays to be able to jump at point two eight light. And they were approaching that velocity, hitting it within the next hour.

  The icons of the warp fighters closed in on the missiles, and large swaths of them started falling off the plot. That was a new tactic as well, and one that promised a great return for the investment. And possibly a greater risk.

  * * *

  Commander Winifred Rodriguez really didn't like this kind of maneuver. It was precision flying, the type normally reserved for atmospheric airshows, not in two thousand ton ships traveling through warp. Some genius had thought this might be a good idea, and she couldn't even blame this one on R&D. And even worse, she didn't have the ability to com link her ships' computers to coordinate their actions. The Klassekians could send commands, even transmit data, but they didn't have the bandwidth to link fifteen navigation computers into a functioning whole. The only way around it was to space the fighters out so they had some wiggle room. More missiles would make it through, but hopefully not enough to compromise the defense.

  “Right turn, ten degrees, now,” the com tech said, the Klassekian showing complete concentration on her words and transmitting them to her siblings.

  The twenty-five birds had their forward and rear warp fields expanded, turning them into several hundred kilometer wide cones at the limit of their affect, versus the ten or less of their normal spreads. It gave them a greater reach, but unfortunately, because of the larger reach of space processed, it reduced their speed to a mere three lights. Not that it mattered, since everything else in the fight was moving slower than light.

  The twenty-five fighters, nine space superiority and sixteen of the bomber class, were arranged in a large circle, side by side, a couple of hundred kilometers between the forward and read aspects of the fields. They were sweeping one way, then the other other, letting the expansion and compression fields disrupt the bodies of the missiles. Each fighter was getting scores on each sweep to the front, maybe ten to the rear. There was real danger here. If anything came into them from the side they could be in trouble. The warp bubble would handle small bits of matter, not at all like the hundreds of tons the forward and rear fields could destroy. Something large enough would spew atoms, just like anything else, but enough solid mass coming through at high velocity could spell doom. As could the ships to each other if one strayed into one of the fields of the others.

  They could only make two turns through the missile field before they were out. Two forward sweeps, two to the rear, and over two thousand missiles were gone, and the plasma from their breaching antimatter added new hazards to the space the other weapons were traversing.

  If she had a full wing she could have made short work of the missiles, though the hazard of collision would have been greater as well. And now they came to the most critical maneuver.

  “First group turn. And watch your lanes.”

  The fighters would be turning in space, getting on a heading to go back through the missiles. Of course, now they would be sweeping their forward and rear fields around, and that presented a terrible hazard to the other fighters. Winifred had worked out the maneuver by computer prior to the start of the mission, but things didn't always work out in real life.

  “First group has turned,” called out the navigator.

  “Start turning the second group, then close up.”

  The commander stared intently at the plot, watching as the graviton signatures of the fighters registered.

  “Fighters fourteen and eighteen. Watch your fields. Your...”

  And it happened. The forward field of fighter fourteen swept across the body of eighteen, and that fighter came apart. There were, or course, no survivors. There couldn't possibly be with forces like that tearing at the fabric of the stricken fighter.

  “All birds have completed their turns,” called out the navigator. “Forming up.”

  The fighters that had made the second turn now had to move up to even with the others, so that they reduced the chance of fratricide on the next pass. Winifred closed her eyes and said a quick prayer for the souls of the crew of fighter eighteen. That was all she had time for, since they had reentered the missile field and all of her attention was called for.

  “Orders coming across from Captain Merkle,” called out the com tech. “The space superiority birds are to continue taking out missiles as they come. Our squadron is to repair back to the Northrup to rearm.”

  “Rearm with what,” growled Winifred. As far as she knew they had no more warp missiles. Which meant some genius had come up with something new. Which wasn't always good news.

  * * *

  Petty Officer First Marcia Finn sweated in her armor as she placed the small antimatter charge in the place she had hollowed out of the hull for it. It wasn't hot in her armor, but the knowledge that the small charge could reduce her to something that wasn't even worth remarking on was sobering. When this and the other charges went off a million and half tons of the ship would go spinning into space behind them, reducing the length of the vessel by several hundred meters.

  Wish I had never come up with this idea, she thought. The enemy was a
ctually heading away, and it was looking like hyper V would be enough to keep the missiles off. Still, she couldn't fault the captain on keeping her options open. The break away of the stern section wouldn't only reduce the mass and length of the ship, it would also provide more missile protection, thanks to the other charges they had placed within.

  “Looks like something is taking out missiles,” said Spacer Second Yanatov, the youngest crewman on her team.

  She though the spacer sounded like a whiner, and his voice grated on her nerves. She was too damned tired to argue him into shutting up, so she let it go. And looked back over the curve of the hull to watch the light show.

  There were strings of light behind them, quickly flaring and dying. From the pattern, warheads going off in a series of lines, she had to think they were being serviced by the fighters. Another flare erupted, away from the missile mass, and with a sinking feeling she realized that at least one of the fighters had met its end. Not that it was much considering all of the other ships that had fallen in this battle, and might still fall. But it was another death, immediate, and it bothered her beyond its true impact.

  More bright pinpoints, slightly larger than the last. The missiles were encountering the counters, then the decoys. Thousands of flashes, most of the remaining missiles falling. And then the announcement she had been dreading.

  “Brace for impact.”

  These missiles weren't closing very fast in the grand scheme of things, and the velocity of the ship was taking some of that closing speed away. A hit wouldn't vaporize the ship, though it would cause severe damage. Maybe enough to kill all of their acceleration. She couldn't see the lasers that were now reaching out for them, but more flashes showed them at work.

  “Everyone get to cover,” she yelled to her crew, looking at the gap she had made in separating the stern section from the rest of the ship. It was large enough for her suit, she thought, so she forced her way into the gap and held on. If this section was hit it wouldn't protect her, but it was the only hope she had.