Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.)

by Doug Dandridge

  Several suits shot out of the water, their wearers remembering their grabbers under the duress of sonic shock. Walborski studied them carefully, too many rising too far above the water, easy targets for whomever was waiting. We’ve got a lot more training to do before I’ve got people who can fight in armor. He knew they wouldn’t ever be as quiet or stealthy in armor, despite its systems, as they would be when operating in their usual fashion. Still, his expectations were that they would be much better than regular grunts. And they would meet his expectations if he had to run them into the ground.

  After half of his men made it across before he turned away and started through the woods himself. He had just attended a week of training in the suits, part of the effort to let the teaching trickle down. Even so, he was having problems slipping the suit through the thick woods, something he normally prided himself on, thanks to his work as a game guide on New Detroit. This was a more serious business than helping rich lords find their trophy animal. This was going to be life or death, and not just for them.

  The last obstacle was just ahead, and about thirty of the men had already hit it, and been hit back. Suits stood in frozen positions all up and down the bare slope of the hill. There were soldiers at the top of the hill, sighting down their laser rifles, set on ultra-low power, taking sighted shots at every suit they could see. As the lasers hit the medium suits the training programs kicked in, and the armor froze in place for exactly thirty seconds.

  A few more Rangers stepped onto the slope, coming out of the woods before they noted their frozen fellows. One ducked back into the woods, the other two stopped in place, and a moment later there was another pair of statues standing on the hill.

  The Captain engaged his stealth field, his suit fading into the background as its electromag shield bent the light around it. His own systems, set for instructor mode, didn’t react the same way to any laser hits. His HUD told him when a laser contacted his field, but he didn’t freeze up the way the others did. When thirty seconds had passed the frozen suits started coming back to life. In most cases, as soon as the suit started to move it froze up again as it was hit by another beam. Cornelius walked up the hill under his invisibility field, taking a couple of hits, only one a sure strike at his suit, the other terminating with the suddenness of a sweep that was aimed at something else.

  Moments later some blurs came out of the woods, showing up on the Captain’s sensors from their infrared signature. Most stayed low to the ground, taking advantage of what cover and concealment there was, just as they had been trained. Most made it a third of the way, some even half way, before they were hit.

  Walborski listened in as the company began to shake out into its individual platoons and squads, plans made, orders given and received. Men started to move in groups, making their approaches under stealth, some quickly moving in and out of sight while others came up the sides or back of the hill, moving slowly, taking advantage of all the cover.

  The first man to make it up and tried to grab one of the infantrymen and drag him from his position. The suit blocked him from that action, so he started picking up small rocks and tossing them at the grunt. This was enough distraction that some more men made it up through that soldier’s field of fire. That opened the floodgates, as soldiers got in the way of the men in their firing positions, taking the beams and freezing in place. Cornelius smiled as he watched the action. His men had figured out the situation, and were gaming it for all it was worth.

  In five minutes everyone was crowded together on the top of the hill, their objective. All knew that if this had been real most of them would have been killed, but they had satisfied the requirements of the exercise. The smile still on his face, the company commander walked to the top of the hill.

  “So,” he said, looking around at the suits that seemed all the same, the name of the wearer appearing over them on his HUD. “who was the last man up the hill? Who owes us all a drink?”

  “You were the last, sir,” called out First Sergeant Fujardo, laughing. “You owe us a round of drinks.”

  Cornelius cursed under his breath, just loud enough for it to be heard over the com. Inside he was feeling fulfilled. His plan had worked. Buying a round of drinks would have hit any of his people hard in the wallet. Him, not so much. He was wealthy, and the multiple rounds he had planned to buy wouldn’t cause him any difficulty. And it was all to the benefit of their morale, building unit cohesion.

  “OK, everyone,” he said. “On the road this time, to the club. And good job.”

  Chapter Three

  Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  NEW MOSCOW SPACE, FEBRUARY 25TH, 1002.

  “Nothing detected in the system,” called out the Tactical Officer, looking back at the Pod Leader.

  “Helm. Put us on a least time profile for the habitable planet,” ordered the Pod Leader, looking at the tactical holo that showed the six supercruisers of his command. If this had been a defended system, he would have felt some trepidation in bringing such a weak force, a mere twenty-four million tons of warships. One enemy battleship squadron could blow them out of space, though they would have done some damage to the human force as well. Which would be a slight consolation for their own deaths.

  “We are picking up signals from the planet,” called out the Com Officer, as the central holo focused in on the blue and white globe that was in orbit around the K class star.

  This had once been a developing world in the Kingdom of New Moscow, the home to a hundred million people. The Ca’cadasan fleet had come here early in the conquest, blown all of its defenses out of space, and killed the majority of the human population, dropping kinetics from space and following up with an infantry landing. Then they had left the system, and probably a million survivors, behind. The plan had been to come back when the race was ready to colonize the system, and the humans could provide rations for the nascent colony.

  Now it looked like that wasn’t going to happen, and the plan had changed. Command wanted this system cleaned, all human life wiped out. Since it had a native ecosystem, that left out the option of simply bombarding the planet until it was lifeless. There would still be a bombardment, and then a landing.

  The Pod Leader hated this kind of mission. He sat his command chair and scratched at the base of a horn, his singular nervous habit. He had a shortage of Marines to start with, and was sure he would lose some more before all was said and done. Orders were orders, and he would not leave this system until he was sure all the humans had been eliminated, since the next occupier was sure to be human as well. And leaving humans to be rescued was a future victory for the New Terran Empire.

  “Keep scanning for enemy vessels,” he ordered his Sensor Officer, pointing a pair of right index fingers at the male. “I don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”

  The Sensory Officer acknowledged, and the force forged into the system, a day and a half out from the planet.

  A sleep cycle and three meals later they were sliding into orbit, all sensors now focused on the planet, picking up any electronic emissions and heat traces that might be human made. There were few of the former, and many more of the latter than expected. Targeting systems locked the targets, and the first of the kinetics dropped from its launching ship and sped to the surface. Seconds after launch a brief streak of fire appeared in the atmosphere, followed by an eye hurting pinpoint of light blossoming on the ground, the one megaton kinetic hitting what was supposed to be a human encampment of considerable size.

  The second target was selected, and another ship launched, repeating the performance on a second camp, while the force prioritized targets and sequenced the next launches. This shouldn’t take long, thought the Pod Leader, watching the probe projected view from the surface as it followed a mushroom cloud climbing into the atmosphere.

  “We’re picking up a transmission, my Lord,” hissed
the surprised Com Officer. “Pinpointing, now.”

  “We’re picking up twenty-four point sources on the surface,” shouted the Sensor Officer over the other male.

  “What the hell are they?” asked the Pod Leader, watching as the sources appeared along the breadth of the equatorial continent. Before the Sensor Officer could answer, he knew.

  * * *

  “Fire,” yelled Brigadier General Margo Tumboni over the com, watching the plot that was showing the six enemy ships in orbit around the world. The Imperial Army officer had worried for a moment that the enemy vessels wouldn’t all come close enough to engage with her thirty-six shore guns. Fortunately, the enemy had come in as fat and arrogant as normal, and now they were about to pay for it.

  The signal went out by fiber optic cable from the underground command bunker, reaching the transmission station on a mountain fifty kilometers away in microseconds. The signal went out from there, and, as prearranged in the fire plan, twenty-four of the one thousand ton portable guns brought up all their systems, a process that took less than two seconds. While the defensive fields were stabilizing the targeting systems locked on to the nearest targets, and the guns fired.

  Each weapon system carried a powerful gigawatt range laser, and particle beam capable of sending out protons at point one light, and a two hundred millimeter mag rail cannon. All basically fired within twenty milliseconds of each other, locked firmly onto a single target. In this case, three of the orbiting supercruisers, eight guns on each vessel.

  First to hit were the lasers, striking the cold plasma fields of the warships, weakening and disrupting the defensive outer screen. An instant later the particles beams struck, putting twenty kilograms of protons into each gun’s target. About fifty percent of each beam sliced through the electromagnetic field, striking hulls, cutting deep into the armor and surface machinery, tearing along the length of the ship. Eight of them to a ship, they destroyed between twenty and fifty percent of the surface installations on the bottoms of each supercruiser.

  The magrail cannon rocked the huge gun back on its stabilizers, sending the two hundred kilogram supermetal penetrator, with its ten megaton antimatter core, into the ships at point zero three light. While not that great a velocity in terms of space combat, it still covered the twelve thousand kilometers to the target in one point three seconds. The penetrator punched through the electromag screen as if it wasn’t there and dug deep into the armor just before the antimatter warhead detonated.

  Each gun got off a second shot of each onboard weapon before the ships could respond. What they left were two vessels among the three targets, both with severe damage, still combat capable, but at only fifty to sixty percent capability. One had converted to plasma from a lucky hit, showering the surface below with fast moving debris and radiation.

  The guns powered down, all except for their propulsion systems, which moved them away from their firing positions as fast as possible. Shoot and scoot, it sometimes gave the gun a chance to relocate and engage again. Nine of the guns went up seconds after they started to move, four more a moment later.

  That was when the twelve guns which hadn’t shot before brought up their systems and fired on the three ships that had yet to be engaged. They also got off two shots before scooting, and four of them didn’t make it. But while they were being hit the eleven remaining guns of the first group came back online and fired again.

  * * *

  “Destroy all of them,” yelled the Pod Leader, shaking a pair of right fists at the holo. “By all the Gods, kill them all.”

  “We’re picking up graviton emissions from the vicinity of the planet’s moon,” called out the Sensor Officer, while the ship bucked from the release of a kinetic weapon and all surviving laser domes fired.

  “Show me,” ordered the panicked Pod Leader, wondering what kind of a trap he had stuck his copulating member into.

  The holo changed over to a planet-moon system view, showing ten vector arrows that were coming around the other side of the satellite. All were accelerating in the five hundred gravity range, and a second later the mass figures came up underneath.

  “One is in the one and a half million ton range, two in the just under million ton, and seven in the two hundred thousand ton range.”

  So, they faced one of their heavy cruisers, two lights and seven of their scout ships. Less than six million tons, what would have been an easy kill for his force before they had been chewed up by the shore batteries, that were still firing on his ships.

  “Get us out of here,” he yelled at the Helm Officer. “Maximum acceleration.”

  “T’kakash will not be able to keep up,” said the Navigator, talking about the most damaged of the ships.

  “They will just have to do as well as they can,” said the Pod Leader, changing the holo to look at the entire system, wondering what else might be waiting for them. He looked over at the tactical officer as the ship shook again from another ground launched penetrator. “Engage those ships.”

  The Pod clawed its way from orbit, heading out at five hundred gravities, one of the ships falling behind at its slower acceleration rate of less than three hundred gravities. The enemy ships moved into sight as his own vessels fired a volley of missiles their way, a hundred weapons accelerating at eight thousand gravities. A moment later the human ships let loose with their own volley, one hundred and six missiles accelerating at an incredible ten thousand gravities, a rate these Ca’cadasans had never before seen.

  Both forces fired second and third volleys, each pushing toward the enemy in separate waves that were fifteen seconds apart. Due to the range the missiles could not build up to a deadly closing speed, and most were killed by defensive beam weapons before they had covered half the distance. Both forces exchanged lasers and particle beams in a close in knife fight. At this point the Ca’cadasans still had the advantage. They still had the majority of their beam weapons, and their ships had the greater mass, better able to handle the transfer energy.

  Two of the supercruisers were battered by the energy from protons and photons. A light cruiser and two destroyers shuddered as transfer energy blasted armor and pieces of hull from their bodies. And then the surviving missiles came in.

  Of the twenty-one missiles remaining of the human first wave, eighteen were blown out of space before they could strike. Two detonated within attack range, their heat and radiation pouring into three of the supercruisers. One hit, a hundred megaton warhead detonating directly on the stern of the Ca’cadasan ship. The kinetic energy was negligible, but the antimatter warhead was anything but, and the heavily damaged ship spun away, its acceleration falling to almost nothing.

  Fifteen enemy missiles made it to within attack range, eleven of them falling victim to close in weapons. Two were proximity strikes, sending waves of heat and radiation into a human light cruiser and four destroyers. Two of the destroyers of that group were hit head on by two hundred megaton warheads that shattered both vessels, sending large chunks of ship out on diverging paths.

  When the exchange of missiles ended, two of the supercruisers were still heading out, with two cripples falling behind to be swarmed by the six surviving human ships. The Pod Leader stared at the holo, happy to have escaped with his life, sure he would get free of the system to report this trap back to his commanders.

  “We’re picking up graviton emissions,” called out the Sensor Officer, switching the holo to a far view. “Two vessels, in the fifteen million ton range.”

  That was two of the enemy battleships, and there was no way they were going to win that fight. Even as he watched, forty vector arrows left the icons of the enemy vessels. And these were distant enough at a light hour for them to achieve a significant attack speed.

  * * *

  “Good job, Commodore,” said Rear Admiral Benji Yamamoto, looking at the face of the large woman whose force had weathered the close in fight with the Cacas. “I don’t think we’ll see any of the bastards back here.”

  “We
can certainly hope so,” said Commodore Susan Smith of the New Moscow Navy. Her ships had been among the few hundred that had made it out, escorting liners and freighters full of refugees, people who would someday want to return to this space. But her thoughts ran more to the point of believing that the barring of this space to the Cacas would not be a sure thing until their Empire was utterly defeated.

  “You go ahead and take all of your ships back to base,” ordered the Admiral, mentioning the system where the repair ships, tankers and missile colliers were located. “Get them back into shape. We’ll keep a watch here.”

  Smith nodded, looking at a side holo that showed the planet, which still had thirteen of the large shore guns on the surface. That, and three battleships, should be enough to keep the million or so survivors on the world unmolested. The Cacas were in retreat in this part of the kingdom, and no one really expected them to make a recovery for a year or so. And by that time, the Empire planned to take the offensive to them once again, and not give them back the momentum.

  * * *

  CAPITULUM, JEWEL, FEBRUARY 28TH, 1002.

  “So that’s settled then?” asked the Baron Emile von Hausser Schmidt, the leader of the Majority Party of the Lords. He looked the question at Archduke Percival Marconi, former leader of the Opposition Party, whose voting block was now solidly in Schmidt’s, and the Emperor’s, camp.

  “As far as I’m concerned, the Emperor’s appropriation request can be passed without comment,” said the Archduke, nodding back at the Baron.

  “Not so fast,” cautioned Countess Esmeralda Zhee, leader of the Opposition Party and a sworn enemy of Sean I. “I’m still not sure we shouldn’t cut our spending. After all, the Cacas are beaten, driven from our space, and the space of our ally, the Republic. And since there is no way we can invade them, I see no reason to throw away money like this. It’s a lost cause.”