Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  Of course, now that the New Terran Republic and the Crakista were attacking ships in that region, it might seem a good idea for the enemy to avoid it. But they can’t know about those operations here, can they?

  “And if they do try to do it again?” asked the Captain.

  “Then hit them with everything you’ve got, as long as it doesn’t risk your command. You’re more important on picket duty, giving us notification of their movements, than in trying to stop a force larger than your own. Still, I’m going to ask the Admiralty for more of the remote attack missiles for your area. I might not be able to get many, but I will make sure you get as many as I can steal.”

  “We’re about thirty seconds from attack,” said von Rittersdorf, looking off the holo.

  The Commdore kept the link open as he waited for the firing, on the edge of his seat as he held his breath. Hoping that they would get some good results from the impromptu ambush.

  * * *

  “We have translations ahead,” called out the voice of a Ca’cadasan from the bridge.

  What the hell? thought Dr. Ivan Smirnov, his head turning quickly back to the holo that showed the region they were traversing. How the hell could they have known I was aboard? Or even what I was going to do?

  Three objects appeared on the holo, only seconds away from the small force. Acceleration figures appeared under the missiles, ten thousand gravities, Smirnov’s implant converting the Caca script into something he could read. If they had been coming in from just about any angle they could not have caught the Caca force, which was now accelerating at five hundred and twenty-five gravities, building up its velocity in hyper.

  The Caca ships opened fire, their lasers aiming on the juking weapons. Particle beams were useless, their matter dropping back into normal space as soon as they left the hyper fields of their firing vessels. And the weapons were too close, coming in too fast with the combined closing velocities, for counter missiles to be deployed.

  One of the missiles dropped off the plot, flaring briefly in the space a couple of light seconds ahead of the Cacas before the plasma fell back into the normal Universe, leaving behind only the photons of electromagnetic radiation to spread, some striking the Ca’cadasan ships, with little effect.

  Two of the missiles struck, one each to a scout ship, with a combined closing speed of point seven one light. Both scouts ships, five hundred thousand ton vessels, blew apart under the combined kinetic and antimatter energies. A moment later the plasma was gone, translated back into normal space.

  Smirnov stood before the observation deck holo for many minutes, waiting for more missiles to appear. When they didn’t, he breathed a sigh of relief and looked over at his wife and children. We’re still alive, for now. But what else are they going to send after us?

  * * *

  SEVERIDE SYSTEM, SECTOR IV. DECEMBER 9TH, 1001.

  “Prepare to match velocities and be boarded,” came the signal over the com.

  Prestor Johnson looked at the com board as if whoever had sent that signal would magically appear over it. He linked with the com and ordered the signal to appear on visual, and the person who had sent the signal did appear over it, a youngish looking woman with the uniform of the Fleet, a busy bridge behind her.

  Just my luck, he thought. Enigma, his thirty thousand ton personal yacht, had translated into the Severide system, home of a developing world on the edge of Sector IV space, bordering on Sector III. He had thought he would outrun any mention of himself to this system, which, as far as he knew, didn’t have a wormhole connection. Or any reason to have one.

  And here he was, facing a one hundred and eighty thousand ton destroyer, actually within her beam weapon envelope. While it was an older vessel, the Naginata was definitely more than a match for his luxury ship, as technologically advanced as it was. And the holo showed four other ships closing on his location, all smaller than the destroyer. All capable of blowing his ship out of space.

  “Acknowledge, Enigma,” said the woman on the holo, her transmission coming across three light seconds of space. “Acknowledge our transmission and your compliance, or we will open fire. All of our lasers and particle beams are locked on, and any attempt to jump into hyper or subspace will result in the destruction of your vessel.”

  Prestor removed his hand from the control panel button he had just been about to push, the one that would have opened up the subspace portal. The destroyer would have picked up his graviton emissions almost instantaneously. It would have taken his ship almost five seconds to open the portal into subspace or hyper, and he would have taken two seconds of laser fire in that time period.

  “I acknowledge, Naginata,” he said into the com. “I am ordering my ship to match velocities with you.”

  “Don’t try anything, Enigma,” said the Captain of the destroyer. “As far as I can tell, you have done nothing to warrant the death penalty, or a mind wipe. And I would hate to have to execute you for no reason.”

  But you would, you fascist, thought Johnson, as he watched the destroyer draw closer, both ships now communicating with each other and making sure they matched courses and velocities so that boarding could occur.

  Ten minutes and some odd seconds later an assault shuttle left the hangar of the destroyer and flew the short distance between the ships. Enigma did not have a hangar that could handle the craft, so the shuttle linked to her by way of mating tube to one of the small vessel’s airlocks. As soon as the shuttle docked Prestor hit a panel on his com panel.

  Try to stop that, he thought with a smile, as his com system broadcast all the information he had collected in the Congreeve system, including how he had been unlawfully detained, and how, on the Emperor’s orders, a planetful of singular sentients had been endangered. His original plan had been to try and sneak into a system that hadn’t received an alert about his fleeing the Imperial authorities at Congreeve. A system much like this one. And to get a message through to some ships, possibly those owned by one of his companies, and eventually get it on the hyperwave circuit that still covered more systems than the wormhole net. It took days to transmit messages through the stations that stretched between star system, versus the almost instantaneous transmission through the wormholes. But it also wasn’t monitored like the wormhole system, as information could pass the outer relay of a star hours before it was actually seen by the major bodies of that planetary system.

  But now I just have to hope that every ship in this system gets this message, and that someone moves it further up the line. Hopefully one of the news outlets I own. They’ll transmit it to the public, no matter what those bastards in the government try to do.

  “Keep your hands where we can see them,” called out the first armored Marine to burst onto the bridge, a heavy stunner in his hand.

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” asked Johnson sarcastically, putting his hands up in the air. “Fight a squad of heavily armed Marines.”

  A man in a naval officer’s armor followed another pair of Marines onto the bridge, about all that it could handle. “What are you doing there?” asked the officer, pointing to the com board. The officer was silent for a moment, and Johnson was sure he was talking to his ship. And the ship was listening in on the signal he was sending out.

  “Turn that com off,” said the officer to the first Marine, pointing to the board.

  The Marine reached out with a gauntleted hand and pushed Johnson to the side, none too gently. He reached over and hit a couple of panels on the board, but nothing seemed to happen.

  “Turn it off,” yelled the officer, and the Marine brought down a hand with all the strength of the suit onto the panel, smashing through. Sparks flew for a second, and the board went dead.

  “We’re taking you off this ship,” said the officer, waving two of the Marines off the bridge, allowing two Spacers to move in. “You will give control of your vessel to these people, and then you will be taken aboard the Naginata.”

  “And if I don’t think it’s in
my best interest to give you control of this ship?” asked Prester in a growl.

  “Don’t make this any worse than it has to be, Mr. Johnson,” said the officer, glaring at the trillionaire. “If you don’t give over control, we’ll have a frigate take her under tow with magnetic grapples. That might cause more damage than either of us would want.”

  Prester nodded, then linked with the ship and told it to give the access codes to the spacers. After, he was hustled aboard the shuttle and taken to the destroyer, where he was locked in the small brig.

  It took several days to deliver him to the station in orbit around the habitable planet, where he was again hustled aboard, this time with his hands in restraints. He was led to a lift and then down a corridor, until he was deposited at the office of the Commodore in charge.

  “Mister Johnson,” said the Commodore, whose nameplate over his desk said McCaffrey. “You’ve caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, including yourself. I hope you’re happy.”

  “You have no right to detain me,” said Johnson, trying his best to appear fierce, and failing. “I’m a private citizen.”

  “The charges against you could land you in confinement for quite some time, Mr. Johnson,” continued the Commodore, as if he hadn’t heard a thing that the trillionaire had said. “Don’t you know that we’re at war? And that you were in a combat zone, and therefore subject to the laws governing conduct within that zone, civilian or not?”

  “And what are you planning to do to me?” asked the deflated trillionaire, looking at the magnetic restraints on his hands.

  “I would like to put you on a target drone and give my boys and girls some weapons practice,” said the Commodore, glaring at Johnson. “But orders from the top have given me the parameters of my responses.”

  The Commodore called up a holo over his desk that showed Enigma. “Naval Intelligence thinks that what you have developed here is a nearly perfect spy ship. Capable of sneaking into a system through subspace, which almost no one scans for in this day and age. The only thing missing is a wormhole heat sink.”

  “And what does that have to do with me?”

  “We want the names of the people who developed this vessel. All of them, so we can pick their brains and make ships like this.”

  “And Enigma? Do I get her back?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Johnson,” said the Commodore, shaking his head. “Consider her a donation to the war effort, to go along with your other donations.”

  “What donations are those?” asked the trillionaire with a bit of trepidation.

  “The fines that will be levied against you,” said the Commodore with a predatory smile. “I think the figure mentioned was a hundred billion, to be taken in manufacturing capability of need to the Empire.”

  “You can’t do that?”

  “We can and we will. Unless you want to find yourself confined to Purgatory for a couple of decades.”

  “Put that way, I guess I can part with some of my wealth. It’s only money, after all.” And the news I broadcast will still hurt them. There’s really nothing they can do to stop it from spreading.

  “Oh, and that broadcast you made from your ship before we captured you,” said the Commodore as Johnson was being led from the office. “I just want you to know that the Emperor already told everyone about his error in staging the battle in the Congreeve system, and the way it endangered the Mucanoids that lived there. And you know what? Nothing like a victory to gain the positive attention of people.” The Commodore laughed at the expression on Johnson’s face as he was led out, while Johnson thought over the proposition that he was not so smart after all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.

  Bernard Baruch

  SAURON SPACE. DECEMBER 11TH, 1001.

  Marc Dawson looked at the engineering control panel once again, marveling over the fact that it was his. I never dreamed I would have this much power under my control, he thought, looking at the holo of the power bars to the six matter antimatter reactors the ship carried. All were running at peak power, putting out more than twice the energy of a fifteen million ton battleship. Augustine I, now wearing the moniker superheavy battleship, was almost twice the size of the standard model, and generated two point two times the energy. And most of that energy could be funneled into the laser rings and particle beams, giving the ship more than twice the punch of the smaller ship, even without the addition of her wormhole fed weapons.

  “Preparing for jump to hyper,” called out the voice over the com, letting him know that the bridge was expecting the energy they needed.

  Augustine was still undergoing repairs from the battle of Congreeve, though all of her major systems were working at full capacity. The outer armor had been repaired as well, and a new coating of nanofiber had been added, making her much more resistant to beam weapons. There were still a lot of repairs going on under the skin, but nothing that couldn’t be continued while the ship tested her main systems.

  “Jumping to hyper I,” called out the Helmsman over com.

  The MAM reactors spiked slightly, more power being fed to the hyperdrive projectors as they converted energy to gravitons and opened a hole between the dimensions. There was a moment’s nausea, then the graphs dropped slightly as the hyperdrive throttled back to the energy needed to remain in hyper I, less than half that needed to enter.

  “Jumping to hyper II,” called out the Helmsman. They were operating far outside of any gravity well, and all dimensions of hyper were open to them here. The captain was just testing all systems by performing one jump after another. Again the graphs moved up, to over four times their peak during the previous jump. The system still had major capacity left over, even at the rates the reactors were working.

  The ship continued up through the levels of hyper, until it reached hyper VII, at which point the reactors were working at ninety-five percent of capacity, dropping down to sixty after completing the jump. The ship started to accelerate after that jump, reaching its safe capacity of four hundred and ninety-five gravities, pulling as many gees as it could while grabbing for more velocity.

  And still the reactors are only at eighty-one percent capacity, thought the Chief Engineer, checking all systems on multiple holo displays. The reactors were now producing enormous amounts of heat, like small stars radiating in their magnetic bubbles within each containment capsule. The heat radiated into the magnetothermodynamic generators that converted it directly to electrical power, with very little waste. What waste there was transferred through superconductor cables to the radiating surfaces of the skin, where supermetals, the most efficient heat radiators known, pushed it into the vacuum of space. Before the discovery of the artificial produced elements, heat buildup was a big problem on large ships. Now it was just another problem solved.

  “Powering up weapons systems and electromag field,” called out the Tactical Officer over the com. A moment later the power graphs on the reactors went up again, to ninety-nine percent capacity, while new holos appeared showing the power status of the thousands of electromag field generators, and the charging of the laser rings by their multiple emitters.

  “Everything appears to be holding together,” announced Dawson to the Captain. “All systems are go.”

  “Very well,” said Captain Javier Montoya from his bridge station. “We’ll maintain current power configuration for the next hour, and see how she holds up.”

  “Yes, sir,” acknowledged Dawson, looking over at some other screens that showed his men and women manning their own stations, monitoring all aspects of the engineering section, making sure that no problem was ignored while it was still small, and possibly becoming big.

  He checked on the sections working near the reactors themselves, each crew member wrapped in heavy suits of augmented shipboard armor. Everyone is working well, he thought, happy at the teamwork his people had achieved.

  An hour later they powered down the per
ipheral systems, lasers, all of the electromag screening save that needed to protect from charged particle radiation. They started on a curving decel profile that turned them while they stopped, then started them on a path back to the system.

  “Good job, Engineer,” said the Captain to Dawson as they reentered normal space at the hyper I barrier. “The performance of your division was to my complete satisfaction today.”

  And hopefully it will be when we enter combat as well, thought the Chief Engineer, patting the hard surface of the disengaged panel. But you won’t fail us, will you girl?

  * * *

  CONUNDRUM SPACE.

  Commodore Bryce Suttler looked through the holo viewer at the system he had basically been ejected from. The enemy had persisted in their search, and it had been a close call for several of his vessels. On his orders they had all repaired to points ten light hours from the star, well outside the system’s hyper VII barrier. The space out there was vast enough to hide just about anything, especially ships that radiated almost no infrared.

  They still had a good view of the system, with the ability to keep tabs on the enemy fleet. Even if everything was ten hours after the fact. At least we can still get almost instant notice of hyper translations, he thought.

  “There’s that convoy we were told about,” said Lieutenant SG Walter Ngovic, the Seastag’s tactical officer. “Too bad we can’t put some missiles into them.”

  “Yep,” said Bryce, staring at the icons that had appeared on the plot. “But they might as well be across the Galaxy for all we can do about it.” Except send acknowledgement back to Fleet that the Caca convoy they knew was coming here, that they had tracked for the last twenty light years, did, in fact, make it here. What a bunch of bullshit.

  “We’re getting a transmission from headquarters,” called out the Com officer.