Exodus - Empires at War 04 - The Long Fall (Exodus Series #4)

by Doug Dandridge

  Commodore Natasha Romanov sat in her command chair aboard the hyper VI light cruiser Orleans, watching on the plot as Hephaestus crept forward in hyper II, never above point three c, so that she might be able to decel and jump to normal space before an enemy ship detected her. The fifth and final destroyer was deployed eight light years ahead, where she could warn the other ships about an enemy approach while they were in the middle of deployment.

  Normally this was not a proper command for a flag officer, even a one star. But the mission was important enough to warrant her deployment with it. Now she watched with nervous excitement as the last ship moved toward her deployment point. Then the net would be complete and any enemy traffic coming through this corridor would be noted, and the High Commands of both nations would be alerted. And if something less than a warship came through, like a courier? Then we might have a surprise for them, she thought, anticipating the moment.

  “You’re doing fine, Hephaestus,” said the Tactical Officer over the com, monitoring the plot. “You’re still in the clear.”

  “Pinafore is signaling that they are picking up hyper VII emissions,” called out the sensory officer. The tactical plot showed the destroyer eight light years ahead. It was sending its information through its wormhole connection to the New Terran Republic Fleet Headquarters. From there it was being fed to all the ships in the net. And the light cruiser’s transmission was going through its wormhole back to HQ, then on to Hephaestus.

  Romanov looked at the plot that showed the icon of the oncoming enemy, resolving itself into a pair of battleships and some freighters. Two red rings moved with them, the inner their detection range of a ship in hyper II, the outer, over twice the diameter, their detection range of a vessel jumping from II down to normal space.

  “Emergency decel, now,” ordered the Commodore to the destroyer. “You need to get into normal space as soon as possible.”

  She received acknowledgement from the destroyer, and watched its vector numbers change, going downward. The outer red ring was drawing closer by the moment. The enemy ships were in VII, and pulling point nine five c. The destroyer’s downward jump emissions would be in detection range in minutes. And if they decided to slow down and attack the destroyer, or launch missiles in hyper to decel down and go after her, there was nothing she could do to come to its aid. That might risk the whole net, which was more important that any single destroyer.

  “They need to jump,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.

  “Just a few moments more,” came the voice of the destroyer captain over the com.

  The red line was almost to them, and the ship was still too far from point two c. Then the vector numbers jumped, and the destroyer put on another thirty gravities deceleration above her inertial compensator max. She put on yet another couple of gees, then jumped back into normal space, just ahead of the detection line.

  The Commodore sat with her breath held for some minutes more as the enemy ships passed through their space. The detection line was after all an estimate. They really didn’t know the detection range of a Ca’cadasan warship. It took the enemy ships a little over six hours to pass beyond the detection range of the net, and they veered not a kilometer from their course. The information was passed to HQ, and from there to Imperial Command, where it was transmitted to their own net, letting them know what was coming.

  “Good job, Captain,” she told the commander of the destroyer, who had gotten his people into the tanks at the last moment for that final burst of decel. By the next day the destroyer was in place, and they prepared for the long and boring job of monitoring enemy traffic.

  On some days a large convoy would come through, on others a formation of warships, on still more days a few ships. Traffic also flowed the other way, always convoys with some protecting escorts. But overall the flow was toward the human kingdoms, empires and republics.

  And then had come the day when the Imperial net informed them that a single courier was heading their way. When they were sure there was no traffic coming the other way they made ready. The courier was larger than one of the vessels the humans used for that duty, over thirty thousand tons. About the third the size of a frigate. That made it easier to track.

  The Commodore kept close watch on the track as it came into range. Four of the five ships in the net could track it, and the light cruiser was able to triangulate and get a sure fix on the enemy. They knew exactly where it was from moment to moment. So she knew exactly when to fire.

  “Fire missiles,” ordered the Commodore when the courier entered the engagement envelope. Three missiles left the tubes of the light cruiser and translated up to VII. They popped into hyperspace less than ten hyper VII light seconds in front of the enemy ship. The closing speed from head on was almost point nine nine light. There was no way for the courier to avoid them as she sped forward. He had defenses, and picked off one missile. Two got through, but it only took one to blot her out of space. And whatever message she carried back to the Ca’cadasan Empire was blotted out with her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. Mark Twain.

  THE DONUT, MARCH 30TH, 1001.

  Lucille wanted to be in on the opening of this gate, and insisted on being there when the process was initiated. She had seen hundreds of wormholes opened since coming to the station, but this was going to be the second permanent ship gate, capable of letting a superfreighter transfer hundreds of light years in an instant, or three battleships at a time. Beowulf was the chosen system, a core world around a G class star three hundred and twenty light years from the black hole. It was right on the edge of Sector Four space and the home to three billion people. It had heavy industry and antimatter production, and it was thought to be a prime target, something the enemy was sure to strike at in the very near future.

  “We’re sending the negative matter through now,” said the woman at the primary control station. A line of cylinders started through, each containing a thousand kilograms of negative matter. At the same time the gate on this side started to expand as more negative matter was fed into it. The electromagnetic fields holding the negative matter in position started to expand as well, while the magnetic frame holding that field in place moved outwards, pulled by the hydraulic arms of the outer frame.

  The signal coming through from the other side showed the same thing happening there, just slightly behind the process going on at the gate in orbit around the black hole. Remotely controlled robots were hooking up the negative matter cylinders and pumping it into the electromagnetic field.

  “We’re ready on this side,” said the controller. “Should be about two minutes on the other.”

  The viewer was showing a shot of the gate, the mirrored surface now only a hundred meters from the edge of the frame. Behind it was the dark side a planet, cities lighting the dark. And beyond that the disk of the yellow sun the planet orbited around. Lucille watched closely as the wormhole continued to expand, until it locked into place.

  “We have a go,” said the controller, looking over at the traffic control station.

  The man at that station starting talking over his com. Moments later the first of the ships started moving toward the gate, a battleship. It hit the mirrored surface with a flash. The viewer showed the nose of the ship arriving out of a mirror image flash, followed by the rest of the ship within a matter of seconds. Ten seconds later another battleship started through, followed by a third. After that it was a procession of freighters, moving hundreds of millions of tons of machinery, armor and construction material into the system. They were followed by liners full of construction crews and robots. They would be put to work around the clock for the next week fortifying the system.

  In five days another gate would be opened, into another Core System near the sector border, if that system hadn’t already been raided by that time. Lucille thought about it for a moment. They had tripled negative matter production in t
he last year. Something to be proud of, but still not enough to open all the ship gates they wanted. Not that there weren’t plenty of other uses for the holes the opened. The things never sat in storage for very long.

  And we still don’t know how to move a hole through a hole with any guarantee of success. A hole that exploded inside another hole was a scientific curiosity. A hole that exploded inside a battleship, and destroyed a vital passage as well as the ship, was a disaster. Even though they had some successes in trials, she was not willing to risk such a disaster.

  She returned to her office and looked over the reports about the project. They had run three trials during the last week, at the cost of two wormhole gates when one of the trials went up in a terraton blast. A sixty six percent success rate was still not good enough, when the third ship of any wormhole equipped squadron could destroy all the ships involved.

  She received the signal of an incoming com link, and shunted it to her desktop holo when she saw who it was, activating the record function at the same time.

  “Good day to you, Admiral McCollum,” said Yu as the image of the CNO appeared over the desk. “What can I do for you this fine day?”

  “Just tell me one thing, Dr. Yu. Are you ready to sign off on the process of transiting wormhole equipped ships through other holes?”

  “No, ma’am,” she said forcefully, shaking her head. “We are not ready to move wormhole equipped ships through other wormholes. To do so would be courting disaster.”

  “We are already courting disaster,” said the CNO with a frown. “I just received news that we lost two more developing worlds in Sector Four. We need to pull out all the stops if we’re not going to be beaten so far down that we can’t pick ourselves up. Now we need every advantage we can get, but I have been told by highest authority that I can’t send wormhole equipped ships through a wormhole without your signing off on it, since some people seem to think that you are the foremost expert on wormholes.”

  “I’m not really sure how they got that idea,” said Lucille, her eyes narrowing at the woman she now saw as her adversary. I wish Len were still CNO. At least I could have a rational conversation with that man.

  “Well, however they got the idea, you are it. And I need for you to make it work, within the next week.” The holo went dead, without giving her a chance to reply. She thought for a moment, not sure what to do, then came to a decision. If he’ll take my call.

  She sent the request through the com link, and was surprised when her target came on seconds later.

  “What can I do for you, Dr. Yu?” said the young man, looking out of the holo.

  *

  SECTOR IV SPACE, APRIL 5TH, 1001.

  “We have translations into hyper I,” called out the Flag Sensory Officer.

  Commodore Mei Lei nodded as she watched the developing plot. Three enemy supercruisers and what looked like a troop transport were leaving the system. The take from within the system showed the main enemy force, twenty battleships and over thirty smaller ships, still bombarding the lovely blue and white globe almost three light hours into the system. She felt her eyes tear as she watched the take from the nearby wormhole that had been planted in the system.

  There are five hundred million people on that world. Children, mothers, fathers. People who just wanted to live their lives without being on the bull’s-eye. And now they are dying by the millions.

  The planet Kraken in the system of the same name was not really of strategic importance. It was four fifths ocean, with a little higher than normal gravity on its larger than normal globe. The main industries of the developing world were aquaculture and tourism, with seven hundred million square kilometers of ocean surface. It had never developed past the blue green algae stage, a form that was compatible with Earth life. And had been an easy task to make the planet over as a larger than life Earth ocean world.

  And now kinetic weapons were striking those oceans and the coastlines of the small continents and large islands, inundating towns, cracking undersea domes and sinking floating cities. Humans weren’t the only ones dying down there. The planet had a sizeable alien and dolphin population as well.

  “I wish I could kill every one of you bastards,” said the Commodore under her breath. “Every last one of you.”

  “They’re following the profile we expected,” said the Flag Tactical Officer.

  Mei studied plot and saw that it was as the man had said. She wished she had a strong enough force to take on the main strength of the enemy. But she had what she had, which was three hyper VII battle cruisers hanging in normal space just beyond the hyper VII barrier.

  “They’re jumping into hyper II,” called out the Sensory Officer.

  “I wonder why they brought that transport with them and didn’t use it,” said the Tactical Officer.

  “That’s a good question, Mr. Gomez,” said Mei, looking back at the holo of the planetary bombardment. “I guess they got tired of losing men on the surfaces of worlds. This is the third one we’ve seen this week as a hit and run. Just go in, smash everything and leave.”

  “I guess they feel they can just crush us at their leisure, and then come in and pick up the pieces anytime they want,” said Gomez.

  “And they might be correct,” said Mei, glaring at the holo as a kinetic weapon came down in the ocean and blasted a circular seismic wave out that would inundate every coastline that sea touched, in some cases for the dozenth time. It was painful to watch each weapon drop onto that globe, knowing that it was killing many people, and wiping out whole ecosystems on islands that were being washed over by waves. The Commodore felt she owed it to those people, and all the other life on that planet, to bear witness to that destruction.

  “According to intel,” said the Flag Lieutenant over the com, “they only give this kind of treatment to worlds with dominant Earth life on them. Worlds that haven’t developed their own native life forms. Like they really have it in for anything with a genetic connection to Earth.”

  “They’ve hit other planets with non-Earth life before,” she said, looking through the ship’s computer records.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the young man who was her aide. “But they only hit the cities and larger towns, then send men down to destroy the rest of the human population. It seems that they try to spare the resident aliens and any ecosystems they can.”

  Even more reason to wish I had enough to go in there and stop them, thought Mei, feeling her anger at the enemy rise. A beautiful world, being killed by monsters. My mother told me once there were no real monsters in the Universe, only beings different from ourselves. And goddammit, she was so wrong.

  “Enemy ships are moving up to III,” called out the Sensor Officer.

  Mei was almost tempted to fire on them now, to let the enemy insystem know they had lost the ships they had foolishly let go off on their own into the space they thought they owned. But they needed to be in hyper VII when they engaged, so that any maneuvers that took them past their max translation speed would not strand them in a dimension they couldn’t use to get away from any enemies that might happen along. Once in VII they would stay in that dimension until they were well clear of the system.

  What seemed like hours, but was only a little over one, stretched by. And then came the moment all were waiting for. “Enemy ships translating up to hyper VII.” The Sensor Officer really didn’t have to announce it, though by training it was an automatic response. The speakers on the bridge were transmitting the great burst of static that indicated translation.

  “All ships, translate now,” she ordered over the wormhole com. The acknowledgements from all three bridges came back almost immediately, the one from her ship only moments before the others. The hole opened ahead and the Jean de Arc slid through into the dimension of hyper VII. Mei felt the momentary disorientation and nausea, and then there were in the red tinged space that was not theirs.

  The enemy ships were coming right at them. There was no escape for them. The battle cruisers opene
d fire with lasers, then particle beams as the enemy ships closed within two light seconds. Each ship had been assigned a target prior to jumping, and all hit those targets with every beam weapon they had. That included, for all three ships, massive particle beams that were fed by accelerators back on the Donut, a hundred times more powerful than those mounted by any ship.

  The Ca’cadasan supercruisers came apart at the seams, two before they could get off a shot. One did fire, and Jean de Arc took a hit to her screens and a minor wound through her armor. Klaxons sounded, and the Commodore flinched as she saw casualty figures come up on her link. Only a few, but any losses hurt her deeply.

  “Take out that transport,” she ordered as the largest ship came forward. It was firing back, and was heavily armed, though not in the same class as a line ship like the supercruisers. A few well-placed shots and she was crippled. A couple more and she was tumbling out of hyper in a catastrophic translation. Mei winced as she saw the ship flash and fade. She had been through that before, on the old Jean de Arc. The odds of survival were not good.

  “I wonder if there were ground troops on that thing,” said Gomez.