The Com Tech went about getting the message out while Mei continued to study the plot. More enemy craft kept coming, seemingly out of nowhere, in endless numbers.
“Captain von Rittersdorf is reporting that he and two of his squadron will be sticking with us, ma’am,” said the Com Officer.
“Excellent,” said Mei with a grin. “No one I would rather have guarding our flank.”
“Any other orders to go out, ma’am.”
“Find out where in the hell these guys are coming from,” said Mei, her eyes flashing. “There has to be a launch vehicle somewhere. I want to find it and kill it.”
* * *
Most of the attack wave heading into Jewel was coming in on the dayside, on the hemisphere that was always facing Central Docks and the planet New Terra. The hemisphere of Capitulum and many of the other megacities of the planet. The attack craft that were carrying ship killer missiles veered off from the planet and moved into a launch position on the six orbital forts, five of which were in a position to take them under fire. The forts were launching their own anti-fighter missiles, as well as some ship killer weapons that were tasked as area kill devices.
Missiles streaked out from the attack ships, heading for the quintet of forts that were in sight, as well as a half dozen superfreighters and four liners in far orbit. The forts had the ability to defend themselves, the freighters not so much. Heavy warheads detonated several thousand kilometers above the atmosphere, doing little more than shining momentary bright lights on the surface. All six of the superfreighters took hits, blasting their thirty million ton bulks with a gigaton of force each. The bulk freighters were mostly empty space, sturdy enough for their task, but without the inherent toughness of warships. Ten million tons of ship and twenty million of cargo were scattered across space, much of the bulk going into the atmosphere to burn up on the way in. Some of the larger pieces didn’t go up in vapor, and became the first offensive objects to strike the planet.
The liners were a little sturdier, if still unarmored, and they were also finished by single warheads they couldn’t battle. The missiles heading into the civilian traffic stations above the planet fared much the same, though it took several hits to destroy the three massive objects in orbit. The weapons heading for the forts had a harder task, as those structures were made for battle, a hundred and twenty million tons of heavily armored mass each, with weapons aplenty. Each was targeted with from ten to nineteen missiles each, and only two weapons total got through, to detonate on the hulls that were battleship tough. As the flashes cleared away the two forts were still in action, if at a reduced capacity. Return fire killed over a hundred of the Caca ships, and the survivors veered off, letting the next wave have a crack at the forts.
Another group of Caca craft sent the first wave of kinetic penetrators into the planet below. Each was a rod of dense metal massing about a hundred tons, small grabber units accelerating it well beyond the reach of gravity alone. Most were aimed at the capital city, the primary target, some at specific locations, others at random areas in order to cause chaos. Several hundred penetrators were launched, and over fifty of them hit the debris that remained of the freighters and liners, either vaporizing on impact or damaged to the point where their original trajectories were only a wish.
Forty squadrons of the smaller fighters, the first wave, lanced into the atmosphere as the first of the pinpoints of light that were the kinetics striking flared. Five hundred and sixty fighters, they diverged on individual squadron paths and started on a search for targets of opportunity. Into the heaviest defensive fire in the New Terran Empire.
* * *
I got you, you son of a bitch, thought Visserman as she pulled her fighter into an approaching angle on the flight of Caca craft. Her Peregrine responded to her practiced touch like it was a part of her, and as soon as the indicator lit she triggered her twin particle beams at maximum intensity, walking the lines of hyper-velocity protons into the hull of one of the enemy fighters. Alloy blew out, the cockpit flared, and the craft dropped dead from the sky in a tumble that was soon superheating from the uneven friction of an uncontrolled reentry.
The Chief Warrant pulled her fighter around, killing her velocity in an instant, then pulling down at maximum acceleration into the atmosphere, lining up on the rear of another Caca bird. Particle beams still in need of some cooling, she took aim this time with her nose laser, hitting the tail of the Caca fighter with the megawatt range weapon and burning off one of its stern grabber units. The Caca fighter veered, whether from the action of the pilot or the unbalancing of its thrust due to the loss of the grabber she couldn’t tell. Since her finely honed reflexes moved her with it, she really didn’t care, and she hit it again with a laser, this time burning through the hull along the port side, pumping enough heat into the craft to blow it out of the air.
The other two ships in the flight now took note of her, pulling up and around. That made her task a little more difficult, since these two would now try to kill her as a team. But it was also keeping with her mission, as this pair would not be able to search for targets if they were trying to deal with her. As she pulled her fighter on its side and banked away she saw a couple of flashes from the ground, kinetics hitting the city below. She cursed again, dodging away from nearest fighter that tried to line her up, staying as close as she could so she didn’t have to worry about their missiles. She also didn’t want to get in a missile duel at this time. She doubted she would have a chance to rearm, and she had a feeling she would need her long range sting later on in this fight.
Chapter Twelve
Whether people be of high or low birth, rich or poor, old or young, enlightened or confused, they are all alike in that they will one day die. Yamamoto Tsunetomo
“Jesus Christ,” screamed Margo as the ground shook under their feet.
“They’re hitting the city,” said Tomas, looking up at the ceiling as if he could get information on what was going on overhead.
The ground shook again and again as multiple kinetics came down. The lift continued to smoothly move them to the lower levels of the building. Unfortunately, everyone else in the building was also trying to get down and out, and he had to keep overriding the system that wanted to stop on each floor to let more people on.
“Should you be doing that?” asked Margo.
“If we want to get to the bottom of the damned building I do,” answered Tomas, wondering if he should cut her free as well. He thought about it a moment and decided against it. Just earlier this day he had thought of her as the love of his life, and he needed to do whatever he could to keep her alive if he wasn’t going to live the rest of his life thinking of himself as a bastard. As long as he could keep her from getting him killed.
The building shook again, this time a much deeper shock, and the actual lift car shuddered to a stop. A rumble sounded outside, and the light blinked for a moment, then came back with a lower intensity.
“I think this is where we need to think about getting off,” said Tomas, hitting the emergency door override code. The door slid partially open, revealing that they were actually between floors.
“How did you know how to do that?”
“I’m a survivor, honey. I make it my business to know how to work things. Now, we need to get off this thing.” He looked at the door and saw that the opening for the lower floor was too narrow to get his own body through, though Margo might be able to. But then they would be separated by a floor, and there was no telling what shape the stairs were in.
The building shook again, this time from a shock wave that had to be much further away.
“Here, you climb up through that opening,” he told the woman. “I’ll give you a boost, then I’ll follow.”
Margo nodded and started through the opening with the assist of Tomas boosting her foot. As soon as she was through he climbed after her, having to squirm a bit to get his heftier body through the opening. He was almost afraid that someone would be waiting on the lift landi
ng. At a time like this he couldn’t trust anyone. It was a relief to find only Margo there, and to see that she had enough sense to have her Defender in her hand.
Looking up at the markings over the lifts he cursed. They were on the hundred and eleventh floor, much lower than his apartment, but still a long walk down the stairs. A lift harness was going to be his next large purchase, but the plan to get one in the future did him no good at this point.
“I guess we need to start walking down,” said Margo as the building shook once again.
“One second,” said Tomas, moving to the end of the hall where a large glasssteel window overlooked the city. “I want to see what in the hell is waiting for us when we get down there.”
The window looked down on the river at an angle, all the way out to the bay and Peal Island, the home of the Fleet Academy. The air was filled with haze, making it difficult to see in the distance, but he had no trouble seeing the mushroom cloud that was rising from the center of the island.
“Are they hitting us with nukes?” asked Margo, coming up beside him.
“Probably kinetics,” he answered, pointing to a deep crater on the other side of the river that was starting to fill with water.
“What the hell was down there?”
“Probably a shelter,” he answered. “The kinetic penetrated down, and probably took out the whole thing.”
“Those poor people.”
Tomas nodded. It was a chance going down in those things, but there were thousands of them, and the odds that a kinetic would hit the one you were in were pretty remote. He looked over at the huge archology that had stood on the other side of the river from them, which was now a crumbled wreck bowed in the middle where the kinetic had struck. A megascraper nearby was sheared in half, one side of its tough structure still reaching for the sky, the other side gone.
Something flared in the distance and another cloud started its rise. Moments later the ground shook again. Bright lines shone through the clouds of dust, while other streaks appeared momentarily and something high up in the atmosphere flashed fire and died.
“Well, we’re fighting back at least,” he said, pointing toward another flash. “I just hope it will be enough.”
He looked back at Margo, who was still staring in horror at the city that was the center of the Empire. It was a huge megalopolis, and only a small portion had been impacted as of yet. Which didn’t mean it wouldn’t get the shit pounded out of it before all was said and done.
“Enough looking,” he finally said. “We need to get out of here.”
“What happens if the building gets hit before we get out?” she asked.
“Don’t think about that,” he told her as he led the way to the stairs. Because if that happened, the odds were they would never even know what killed them.
* * *
“OK, everyone,” yelled out Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom over the noise of the War Room. “Everyone evacuate the building. Head to the garage and get an aircar out of here, or to the basement and jump to the Donut.”
“We have a battle going on at the front, ma’am,” called out chief tactical officer, a Vice Admiral.
“And you won’t be directing any battle if they drop the Hexagon on our heads,” replied McCullom as another tremor went through the floor. The Hexagon was probably the most heavily armored building in the city, but it wouldn’t withstand a high impact penetrator dropping onto the roof. One wouldn’t collapse the whole structure, but with bad luck it could come right through the ceiling of the War Room and kill every valuable officer and enlisted spacer in the chamber. And she was pretty sure this would be a primary target.
“Why aren’t they using antimatter warheads?” asked on the Techs, getting up from her station and looking at the nearest exit.
That was the question, thought MCullom. The Cacas, however they got here, were using high yield warheads up above the atmosphere. If they dropped a gigaton into the center of Capitulum, it would be really bad. A quick check of the databanks showed just how bad. The fireball would be over fifteen kilometers across. Even the supertough structures of the city would be vaporized in that region. Another five or six kilometers out and most of the structures would be heavily damaged, leading to some collapse. In a prespace city that region of almost total collapse would reach out up to thirty kilometers from ground zero. With modern materials there would be some damage, even to those structures, but nothing penetrating. Basic stone and wood structures, of which there were still many examples even in this city, would be totally destroyed out to seventy-five kilometers, though the modern buildings wouldn’t even be touched, and the massive archologies and high-rises would shadow most buildings down range of them. One of the worst affects would be from thermal and radiation damage. People in the open out to thirty kilometers would simply be gone, even if they were partially shaded by buildings. Citizens out to two hundred kilometers could suffer third degree burns and major radiation sickness. Under normal circumstances all of those people could be saved and repaired. In a city that was well smashed that could be a problem.
They could actually do much more damage by dropping a gigaton’s worth of ten megaton warheads, or the equivalent in kinetics. Though she really couldn’t understand why they just didn’t saturate the city with gigaton range warheads.
The room started to clear out, people heading for one of the two evacuation points. McCullom had already decided on her path. The Donut had its own War Room, fully manned, ready to take over all of the datalinks from the battle going on at the Front. Sure, the Donut was also at risk, currently under attack, but it would be hours before any enemy weapons got close enough to do any damage to the structure, whose very bulk made it as damage resistant as any object known to humanity. It would take thousands of hits by gigaton range warheads in a compact area to break it apart. There was always the risk of the quark warheads the Cacas had used in the last attack on the Donut.
“We need to go, ma’am,” said Captain Xiun, her aide.
The building shook again, then an air blast erupted over the city, something carrying some antimatter warheads breached under ground fire. The Admiral followed her Aide and the security detail to the lift. Fortunately, the War Room was under the ground level of the building, only ten floors up from the subbasement that housed the secure wormhole room. The closest garage was twenty floors up, seventeen from ground level. As long as the lifts were working it was much less than a minute’s ride. If they went down, all of the very fit military personnel would be able to navigate the stairs quickly.
“In here, ma’am,” said her Aide as he waved the heavily armored Marines aside.
McCullom stopped in place for a moment, conflicted about leaving the building, her post, even though it wasn’t necessary for any of them to stay here. She turned for a moment toward the Marine Sergeant in charge of security.
“Get every Marine in the building suited up who has one,” she told the anxious NCO. “Then evacuate the building and report to the local authorities. They’re sure to need you.”
“But the security of this portal?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that at this time. And we can secure it at the other end just as well. Now go.”
As she was talking more of the personnel in the building ran into the room and through the portal, until there was a stream of them.
“Hold up,” shouted Captain Xiun, stopping he exodus for a moment. “We need to get you out of here, ma’am.”
McCullom nodded, then followed the first of her security detail through the portal, feeling the confusion once again of transiting spacetime instantaneously. It was a sensation she was sure she would never get used to, but it got her from here to there faster than anything else.
“Ma’am,” said a man in a Marine Brigadier’s uniform. “We’re receiving a message from the Emperor. He wants to talk to the ranking person available, which I’m guessing would be you.”
McCullom moved away from the wormhole, not wanting
to block the way of the others coming through. Xiun started giving orders, sending the techs and officers to the tram station that would take them to the auxiliary War Room and its ancillaries.
“Your Majesty,” said McCullom as soon as she was linked in.
“Admiral. I’ve been apprised of the situation, so don’t bother to go into those details. What I want to know is if you have any information about the Empress and the children?”
“Last I had heard, sir, they were on their way out of town with her security detail.”
“Not to the palace?”
“I don’t think so, your Majesty. The detail asked for air clearance all the way to the Imperial Retreat. I know, because I issued the clearance myself.”
“Thank god,” said Sean, his voice breaking.
There was a hesitation for a moment, and McCullom wondered what must be going through the Emperor’s mind. No matter the outcome, this would be a black day for the Empire he led.
“What are your plans?” he finally said.
She linked into the structure’s tactical net and got a look at what was going on through the wormhole links. “We still have the wormhole gate going through to the Central Dock area. I’m not sure why they haven’t taken that out yet. But we can still shift forces at this time.”
“Don’t do anything to weaken the defenses of the Donut,” cautioned the Emperor. “If you can, transfer some ships from the other Supersystem worlds into the space around Jewel. But if we have to lose one, I would rather it was the capital.”
“Are you sure, your Majesty?”
“Hell no, I’m not sure. The one thing I am sure of is that if we lose the Donut, we lose the war.”
“Will you be coming back from the Front, your Majesty?”
“It will take seven hours for the ship I am on to get down to a safe transfer velocity,” said the Emperor. “And we would have to leave the fleet to do so, since I am not about to stop all of these warships in space while we have a priority target ahead of us.”
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) Page 15