Exodus: Empires at War: Book 16: The Shield.

by Doug Dandridge

  “ETA, seven minutes. Wormhole ready. Donut is reporting that the projector is powering up.”

  Now, if everything goes right, thought the admiral. She barked a short laugh to relieve the tension. When had everything gone right? That was why she had a couple of hundred ships, mostly light cruisers and destroyers, guarding the area to catch anything that made it through. She hoped it was enough.

  “Six minutes. Ships are reporting readiness status. We have a couple that haven't gotten into position yet.”

  And some wouldn't, thought Beata. They were moving under control of the central command from her flagship. There were too many ships, too many independent vectors, for the ships to safely maneuver on local control. Once they slid into place they would again have control, since not even the computer on her ship could move everything where it needed to be to deal with their local threats.

  “Five minutes.”

  What if this is the wrong move? she thought, the butterflies in her stomach fluttering strongly. This was untested tech, being used in a novel and untested manner. If it worked to perfection she would turn away this blow. If not, she might lose a good portion of her fleet. The planet might get hit by many missiles traveling at relativistic speeds, killing everything on that world.

  “Four minutes.”

  The missiles on the outer edge of the swarm were starting to boost now, changing their vectors to get the best chance of an attack around the sides of the shield. The five graviton shields in their current configuration stretched out to twenty thousand kilometers, with some gaps in between at the inner and outer edges. And, of course, the five thousand kilometer wide gap in the center.

  “Three minutes.”

  The missiles in the center started to boost, driving for the gap in the graviton emissions they were now detecting. If the missiles had been true AI they would have been surprised that such a gap existed. With their simple brains they only noted the lack of a field and drove forward to take advantage of it.

  “Projector is at full power. Ready to fire on your command.”

  “Two minutes.”

  Beata was going to wait until the clock got down to one minute. Her tactical analysts had calculated that the beam would be optimal at that range, taking the enemy missiles under fire for the more than a minute it took to close that distance. She could wait no longer.

  * * *

  “Beaming energy to projector six,” called out the chief engineer from the Donut control room.

  The viewer to Yu's side showed the light show linking the inner edge of the Donut and the surface of the black hole. It had been going on for some time, feeding energy to the five devices that were powering the graviton projectors, beaming microwaves through their wormhole gates. Additional microwave projectors came online on the outer surface to the Donut, adding their beams to the mix, and newly designated projector six lit up with power, adding to that already residing in its massive bank of crystal matrix batteries. An instant later the million pentawatt beam of invisible energy left the front of the projector, set mere meters from the gate, lashed into place with purpose built connections to the wormhole frame.

  The most powerful laser ever fired, it was still invisible. The wormhole surface rippled as the photons penetrated, moving across the thousands of light years and coming out as if it was less than a meter. In truth it was much less than that. Normally a laser beam would be focused by a powerful grav lens. There was no lens powerful enough to focus this beam, and it spread quickly. In fact, it was meant to spread quickly, and the outer edges of the beam actually hit the edges of the graviton shield, distorted as they slid through. There was nothing to damage there, and a beam that could kill a battleship in an instant was projected beyond the shield.

  Beata held her breath as she waited for something to happen. The missiles continued in, and so far she could see no effect to the laser beam. The experts told me to wait until they were at the on a minute's mark, she thought, grimacing. Maybe she had been too impatient. Maybe the beam wasn't working as advertised, and the missiles would cruise on through the hole in the shield.

  “Ships on the periphery are starting to engage. Off ship assets will be opening fire in thirty seconds.”

  The thousands of ships on the edge of the shields had started to fire their counters, sending them out as fast as possible. Thirty seconds later thousands of mines and floating box launchers released their loads of counters. Thousands of enemy weapons dropped off the plot every second. Lasers and particle beams joined the fight, and many more thousands of missiles were destroyed or damaged.

  It was looking like some weapons would get through out there. Not many, but enough to cause some damage to her fleet. And the mass moving up the center was still coming on, the laser seemingly having no effect.

  Suddenly a missile exploded, its antimatter warhead breaching. A couple of missiles near it followed suit, struck by the plasma from their destroyed brother. Two more went off, then several score. Then hundreds and finally thousands. It was looking better, but too many were still coming on.

  “All ships in the center. Start targeting weapons that look like they're going to make it through. Fire at will.”

  Those ships abstained from firing missiles. Anything they fired would go through the laser beam and would be immediately destroyed. The beam obeyed the square of the distance rule, and was more powerful closer to the wormhole, falling off as it widened with the increasing distance. Not much, hopefully not enough. Thousands of missiles were exploding every second, but over a million had vectored toward this hole, and their simple minds were not smart enough to try to change vectors. Not that it would have made any difference, and it didn't to the three quarters of a million missiles that were heading straight into the shields.

  “Thirty-five seconds to the hole.”

  Beata was wondering what would happen if a bunch of missiles, or even one, made it through the wormhole. Theoretically that was impossible, but it was looking like reality might not fit perfectly with theory.

  “Twenty eight seconds.”

  A second later every single missile the laser was shining on exploded, a sheet of bright plasma obscuring the space beyond.

  “Yes,” shouted the tactical officer.

  Yes indeed, thought Beata. There were still missiles to deal with, but they had knocked more than half of them out of space with that one weapon.

  Missiles started hitting the shields, detonating from the collision with space made solid by the graviton fields. Nothing material made it through, nothing larger than a particle and relatively few of them. Photons made it through. Only a black hole would have stopped them, and a field like that would have been impossible without an unimaginable power supply. So light came through, and the heat that the light carried. It wasn't a laser, but it did heat objects, and many ships on the other side of the field took mostly minor hull damage.

  On the sides the engagement was also over quickly. With weapons moving that fast, they were either killed within seconds or they continued on, some to strike targets. Icons flashed on the plot, then disappeared. Each represented hundreds to thousands of people, gone in an instant, their ships vaporized along with them. Beata cried out inside as she watched those vessels cease to exist, a little part of dying with each.

  “It's over,” called out the chief of staff, Captain Janssen.

  “When can we expect the next wave?” she asked, ready for a repeat performance.

  “Not for at least another twenty minutes,” said Janssen. “Possibly longer.”

  “Ma'am,” shouted the tactical officer. “They're on the move.”

  Beata zoomed in the plot, taking in the vector arrows and acceleration figures under the massed icons of the enemy fleet. The vector arrows pointed almost straight at her, the acceleration figures showed they were boosting at maximum. The enemy fleet was coming into the system, all indications pointing to them crossing the barrier in less than thirty minutes. They were coming for her.

  * * *
>
  “Great Admiral Mrastaran,” said the Supreme Admiral of the Ca'cadasan fleet. “You are charged with treason to the Empire, and hereby relieved of command. You are to report to the capital post haste for your disposition.”

  Mrastaran felt himself shrink inside. Disposition? The other male might as well have said execution, since both words meant the same thing in this case. Treason because he hadn't been able to meet the unrealistic expectations of an immature Emperor. And there was only one punishment for treason in this Empire. They wanted him back there so they could place his head on a pike, or his body on a cross, an example to others who failed this lunatic of a ruler.

  “Great Admiral Tonnasar,” continued the supreme commander of the fleet. “You are hereby promoted to command of the Klavarta front. Your Emperor commands that you close with and destroy that enemy within the system post haste.”

  “That is a bad idea,” blurted Mrastaran, seeing the disaster such an order would precipitate.

  “Silence, traitor. You are through with issuing commands or making suggestions. You and your flagship are to transit through a wormhole gate and come to the capital planet, immediately. Great Admiral Tonnasar. You are to fire on Great Admiral Mrastaran's flagship in he disobeys.”

  “With pleasure,” said the grinning face of the other great admiral, Mrastaran's greatest rival on this front.

  You finally get what you want, thought Mrastaran, bowing his head to the inevitable. He would go back to face a kangaroo court, if even that. It might simply be an Imperial Decree that ordered his end, and that of his family. He felt another shiver of terror as he thought about the males aboard his ship. They would be put to the question, making sure that none of them had been tainted by his actions. Many, innocent or guilty, would die as well.

  Whatever Tonnasar was going to face, it would be fearsome. Mrastaran could see what the enemy had erected through their graviton emissions, the individual shields outlined in their energy readings. And the huge hole in the center, where most of his missiles would have headed. Where all of his missiles had disappeared, as if into a black hole. There might have been ships there that took out the missiles, but not in such a massive wave, forward to back. No, they had something else in there, something the Ca'cadasans had never before faced. Well, it was no longer Mrastaran's problem. He had given his all to this rotten Empire, and they deserved no more from him.

  Good luck, you fool, he thought as he looked at the face of the other great admiral. This human female is going to hand you your head.

  * * *

  “You know what to do, Mara?”

  “Yes, ma'am. Though I still can't believe that the canny bastard is coming at you after seeing that demonstration.”

  “I don't think that, canny bastard as you called him, is still in command over there,” said Beata, wondering what had happened to that male. Hit by a lucky shot, among his mass of ships? Or relieved of command for not meeting a time table, as Sergiov had suggested. That last was hard to believe. That was a thinking admiral, one of the few the Empire had faced in this war. How could a nation on the ropes make the mistake of recalling such an officer.

  The ships that had been chasing Mara had all been recalled, moving through hyper to rejoin their fleet. They were going to come in as a hammer blow, holding nothing back.

  “We can always hope,” said Mara, nodding. “Either way, I will wait until they cross the hyper barrier in, seventeen minutes, then move into position.”

  The enemy fleet had been on the move for a half an hour, starting out at point one five light and building up. Beata wasn't sure if they would come straight at her, building velocity the whole way, or decel to come to a stop near the planet. She had prepared in her mind for either contingency. She would prefer the straight in without slowing approach. It got the enemy into her basket much sooner, and gave them less time to think about it.

  “They came at us in the same old way,” said Beata, contemplating the battle ahead.

  “That quote from the, Napoleonic Wars, was it?” asked Mara, brow furrowing in thought. “And you're going to handle them in a whole new way.”

  “I hope,” said Beata. If the enemy pulled some kind of unexpected maneuver she might not get her shot. With Mrastaran she would have bet on something surprising. With his replacement? Who knew. If he had even indeed been replaced. She was banking on a lot of unconfirmed assumptions. Of course, she had little choice. Even if she turned all of her wormholes into gates she couldn't get more than a quarter of her ships away.

  Her orders to Montgomery also mimicked something that Wellington had done to Napoleon at Waterloo. Not exactly the same, the biggest difference being that she was not dealing with infantry lines, and the enemy was heading away from Mara's command, not straight into it.

  “Do they have their gates up?” she asked Mara, the other admiral being in a better position to get a visual.

  “We're picking up a visual, now,” said Mara, smiling. “From twenty minutes ago.. They have taken down and stowed their gates.”

  Beata breathed a sigh of relief. While it was theoretically possible to move an open gate at a good clip, it was ill advised to try to maneuver one at warship accelerations. They might still have tried it, but it seemed that they hadn't.

  “Okay. We're going to go for our shots in fifteen minutes. As soon as our gates are clear.”

  “Admiral,” called out the tactical officer. “The enemy just released a volley at us. Over a million missiles.”

  And we'll be back in shielded configuration well before those reach us, she thought. The enemy missiles had to accelerate along the way, and would take well over six hours to reach her. The enemy would take much longer. Closer to twelve. She would hold her own fire for another hour, making sure the enemy was deep enough in that it would take hours to come to a stop, more hours to get back to the barrier. Leaving the choice of closing the most desirable option despite the fire they would be receiving.

  * * *

  “Second volley is away, my Lord. Do you want to follow it up with another.”

  “If I wanted another I would have already told you, dolt,” growled Great Admiral Tonnasar. While happy to have finally been given front command, he was not so dense as to not recognize the dilemma he was in. He had to succeed, no matter the cost. Or else the child Emperor would be demanding his head as well. A traditional Ca'cadasan patriarch, he wasn't as worried about his own head as he was the lives of his descendants. They must survive to carry on the line, no matter his fate.

  “Any response from the enemy?”

  “No, my Lord. Wait. Their outer forces are jumping into hyper. Or at least some of them.”

  “How many?”

  “No more than a couple of hundred in each group, my Lord.”

  “As soon as they come back into normal space launch a volley spread among them,” ordered the great admiral.

  “They'll just jump back into hyper, my Lord,” cautioned his tactical officer.

  “Of course they will, dolt. Don't you think I know that. But it will make them think about us, and wonder if we might have more weapons winging their way at them from a wormhole launch.”

  He still had his five wormholes, loaded onto a quintet of battleships, including his flagship. They were configured to launch, though in a limited manner. The missiles were being accelerated at the moment back in the home system. In five single files, hundreds of missiles long, they would simulate the missile streams of the humans. Not as close together as the human missiles, there would be over a second between each weapon. Still, they would be coming out at point nine light, moving silently, untraceable, toward the enemy. If even one hit it would give the enemy something to think of.

  Mrastaran was a fool, thinking he could just bombard them out of existence from a distance, thought the great admiral. That was not the traditional Ca'cadasan way. They preferred to close and get into a pounding match, depending on the mass and beam weapons of their huge battleships to win. Firing volleys of missi
les on the way to match their enemy's fire.

  “Any response from the enemy force by the planet?”

  “No, my Lord. And from all indications their shields are down.”

  I wonder why, thought the great admiral. If it had been him he would have had them up the entire time his enemy was on approach. Unless they had reached their limit and needed to be rested. Or maybe some were damaged. Whichever it was, their lack had to be good news for him. Didn't it?

  * * *

  “Firing now,” called out Mara over the com, as her ship bucked slightly under her. The other twenty-eight wormholes of her local force were also firing, sending seventeen hundred and forty weapons at point nine-five light toward a point that would intersect the enemy fleet in the near future.

  “Other forces firing,” said the com officer.

  Which meant another thirty-four hundred weapons were on the way. Thirty seconds later it would be another five thousand odd missiles on the way, on and on, until they ran through all thirty reloads. Then would come the wait for the new reloads to get accelerated up.

  Beata had alluded to Waterloo when she had discussed this strategy with Montgomery. Wellington had arrayed his infantry in front and to the sides of the column of Old Guard that was attacking, firing volley after volley into that group until they broke. Of course, she didn't have ships to the side, and she was firing into a group of ships that was moving away from them. But the analogy hadn't been lost on the scout force commander. Rake the enemy with fire they couldn't return, then mimic another Wellington tactic when they returned fire. Wellington had his men lie down when the French fired their artillery. Mara would do one better by jumping back into hyper.

  “We're firing as well,” said Beata over the com.

  Mara knew exactly what her mentor was doing, reprising something the commander of Bolthole had done in the past. Her gates were open, all six of them, while scores of warships on the other side were cycling missiles through their own wormhole launchers. The missiles streams passed through the gate at point nine light, slightly slower than Mara's, a nod to the difficulty of sending missiles through the gates at that speed. It was unlikely they would have hit, but it was better to be safe than sorry.