“I think it is, Sergeant Xi. Want to ask me what that means?”
“What does it mean, sir?”
“I don’t have a clue. I have my suspicions, and none of them are good.”
Xi shook his head, looking out into the air with a blank stare. “I don’t mind dying in a fight, sir. But I damned sure don’t want to die in such a useless one. If that star blows, then all the bleeding and dying we have done here mean nothing.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” said Cornelius, closing his eyes and shaking his head. He opened them and looked out over the ruined city. “But I’m not ready to give up on our people yet. The damned thing hasn’t exploded, yet. Or it hadn’t as of eight minutes ago. So I’m going to go on as if the Fleet was successful. How about you?”
“Sounds good to me, sir,” said the NCO after a moment’s hesitation. “What’s the next step?”
“We clear the bastards out of this city. Once they’re gone, we can let the natives start the clean up and getting their lives back together. We should have Marines on the ground in the next eight hours if everything goes well. Then we turn it over to them and go home.”
Cornelius looked back at the star, shielding his sensitive eyes from the eye hurting brightness. I’m sorry, Devra, he thought, his spirits falling. I’m sorry, Rebecca, Junior, and Sprout. I didn’t mean to come out here and die. But then, who does?
The general wished he had someone to talk over his regrets with. Unfortunately, he was the senior officer on the surface, and the rule was that complaints and concerns went up the chain of command, never down.
“We have more proton packs for you, human,” said a Maurid female, running up on all fours with a quartet of adolescents behind her. All had packs strapped on their bodies. All were panting from their run.
“Thank you,” said Cornelius through the translation device hanging around his neck, accepting a pair of proton packs and a couple of batteries, then passing one of each to his partner. “We appreciate what you are doing.”
“And we appreciate what you are doing for us. I pray that it will turn out well for all of us, and that my children will grow up in freedom.”
The Maurid gave a nod and started off, her almost grown progeny on her heels. Cornelius watched them run off, picking their way through the rubble.
On most worlds a mother and her boys would not be out during the fighting. They would be covering, waiting for it to be over so they could come out. Not the Maurids. When it was time to fight, everyone fought. They were an admirable race as far as the general was concerned. He thought it funny how much he had hated them only a year ago, when the only contact he had had with them was fighting for his life against them on Azure. Now they were allies. Even more than that, friends.
He still hated the Cacas, and thought he always would. But would that change in the future, when they had beaten the big bastards? When they were forced to work with them to rebuild all of the ruined worlds?
Well, there would time enough for that in the future, if there was one for the people on this world. Now was the time to kill as many of the bastards as possible. If the star exploded and killed all of them, at least he would go to his reward knowing that he had sent some on ahead of him to pave the way.
* * *
“There are only six left, your Majesty.”
“Is that too few to blow the star?” asked Sean, looking at the plot that showed the graviton sources around the raging sun. There were only six major graviton producing sources, not quite aligned around the star in a even pattern. There were other sources, which had to be some of Suttler’s ships maneuvering for attacks. Not many of them, and Emperor had to fear that the others had been destroyed. But those were weak sources compared to those of the platforms. And then there was the most powerful point, in the center of the star, where the six graviton beams of the hyperdrive generators intersected.
“The theorists think they can still set it off,” said McCullom, letting out a deep breath. “Actually, only two could do it, but it would take too long. Twelve lets them go from initiation to detonation in less than an hour.”
“So we have to take out five more?”
“Probably fewer than that, sir. If we can get them to four, I believe we can get enough missiles in to take out the rest.”
So it looks like the warp fighters are going to decide this, he thought, zooming in on them. They had just broken off dogfighting with the enemy fighters. They had outclassed those other ships, but they had also been outnumbered. None of the Caca craft were still generating warp fields. Some of them might have survived, but as long as they weren’t operational that didn’t matter. What did matter was that nine human ships were still moving in warp, heading inward.
“Why are they only going at ten lights?” asked the Emperor, frowning as he saw the numbers populate under the icons.
“The friction of space, your Majesty,” said McCullom, as if that explained everything. When she saw the blank look on her Emperor’s face she went on. “Gravity wells interfere with warp drives, just like they do with hyperdrives, though not to the same extent. That and the particle density. Ten is all they can do at this point, and it will go down the closer they get to the star.”
“Can they get there in time, Sondra?”
“I, don’t know,” said the CNO, shaking her head. “We won’t know till this thing plays out.”
Sean didn’t like that answer. When he was a younger man he would have been angered at a response like that. Now he realized that sometimes there was no good answer, and he would just have to take it as it was offered.
The plan had seemed so easy at the start, foolproof. The friction of battle changed things, sometimes in little ways, sometimes in large. And this one was going to hell quickly. The main difference in this one was that if one part of the plan failed, all the rest of the parts were doomed.
* * *
Grampus sat dead in space, without power. She was lucky that she was still capable of surporting the lives of the crew aboard. Suttler didn’t feel all that lucky, since there were still targets she could go after. If she didn’t kill those targets then she was dead anyway.
“There’s only five of them left, sir,” said the tactical officer, trying to cheer up his commanding officer. “And engineering should have power for us within the hour.”
“That’s great news, tac,” said Suttler in a derisive tone. But will we still be here when the lights get switched back on?
Their last victim lay a couple of thousand kilometers away, dead in space, with no hope of getting the lights back on. Grampus had put a trio of missiles into her, the last three onboard. They hadn’t carried enough kinetic energy to make them hard kills, but three of the one gigaton warheads had done the job, distributing their fury over the entire length of the platform. It was still there, tumbling in space, on a course that would splash it into the star in a couple of days.
Suttler stared at the plot, picking out the few ships in his command that were still capable of motion. Three of them, all barely boosting, with not enough power to get over more than a couple of gravities. And none were close enough to attack any of the remaining platforms.
All those others, he thought, sighing. He had never lost this many ships in an action. The point of the stealth/attack ships was to sneak in, get kills, and not take damage. That had been the plan here as well, but when they couldn’t locate the targets, and the heat of the star had revealed them, it had turned into the kind of fight they hadn’t been made for. And they had failed.
* * *
“What in all the hells is happening?” asked Jressratta, glaring at his staff before turning a baleful gaze back on the plot. “How did they kill so many of the platforms?”
None of the staff answered. They didn’t have an answer. The truth was, brave beings had gone into battle and did their best to make their own plans move forward, and in the process counter the plans of the Empire.
“We have reports of mutinies aboard some
of the platform, Supreme Lord,” said one of the lower ranking of the staff, he who had been chosen to be the bearer of bad news.
“What?” screamed the Emperor, turning on that male and stepping forward.
The sight would have been ludicrous if it had not been so serious. The still not fully grown Emperor stepping angrily toward a warrior who towered over him, standing a half meter taller, massing fifty percent more. The smaller male had tradition on his side. As the crowned ruler of the realm he held the power here, and everyone knew it.
“We, have reports of mutinies on the platforms, Supreme Lord,” said the male, forcing himself to meet the eyes of the Emperor. “True believers of the faith who thought what they were doing was a sin against the Gods.”
“And how in the hell did these fools figure out what was going on?” screamed Jressratta, jabbing a pair of index fingers into the chest of the male.
“People, find out things aboard a ship, Supreme Lord,” said the male after swallowing in fear.
The rest of the males looked at each other. The young Emperor had never served aboard a ship, a lack that would never be made right. He didn’t realize that information on a warship spread faster than a plague released in a city. What one rating learned, all knew before the day had passed. Besides, ratings weren’t dumb, no matter the opinion of aristocratic officers. The sub-officers especially knew their jobs, even if the people under them didn’t. And they could look at equipment and how it was used and figure out what the mission was about.
“We need to stop that,” yelled the Emperor. “What good is it to forbid the information to the lower deck scum, and then let them in on it anyway?”
“It was classified secret, Supreme Lord. The problem is that the technicians have to be trained on the equipment they are using. They aren’t completely stupid. They figure things out.”
Jressratta turned and stomped away, and the male he had been confronting huffed out a breath.
“We still have enough ships to detonate the star, Supreme Majesty,” said the Chief of Staff, pointing to the holo that showed how the event was proceeding. “It will happen.”
“And what about those,” growled the Emperor, pointing at and zooming in the view of the human warp fighters.
“They will have to drop out of warp before they reach our platforms. And then they will be easy targets for our platform defenses.”
“They had better be,” screamed the young male, stomping his feet as he walked around the main holo. “I will have heads if this doesn’t work. And we will have to purge the fleet of the religious.”
The high ranking males all exchanged worried looks. Sixty percent of the personnel in the fleet were believers. Maybe more. A purge like that would cripple the force. And probably lead to almost universal mutiny.
“It will work, Supreme Lord,” said the Chief of Staff, holding his hands behind his back for luck.
“It had better,” growled the Emperor, and his glare let the admiral know where one of the fallen heads would come from.
Chapter Nineteen
A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end. Bhagat Singh
“How fast are we going?” asked Captain Wilma Snyder, not believing what her eyes were telling her.
“The instruments aren’t lying, ma’am,” said the pilot. “We’re barely pulling one third light.”
“That’s insane,” said the sensor tech.
“It is what it is,” said Wilma, looking at the plot. She had never liked the truism, but what else was there to say. She really didn’t like the vulnerability that the lack of speed brought. “Now get me on a target.”
The pilot nodded and turned them in space. A huge prominence rose above the star and they barely missed it. One of their nearer compatriots wasn’t so lucky, and hit the mass of plasma dead center. It was too much for the warp field to handle, and pieces of it came out as gas, churning ahead at high velocity as it dispersed.
The flares were becoming worse, plasma arcs large enough to swallow whole planets. Some were starting to break away from the now more energetic star, flying off into space to continue outward. Any that hit the magnetic field of a tectonically active world would fry the unshielded electronics while producing spectacular auroras. To the crews of the warp fighters they were just more hazards, plain and simple.
“That looks like a likely kill,” said the officer as the view of a platform appeared on the viewer. A massive flare engulphed it, to rise further above and leave the large station untouched.
“That was a neat trick,” said Wilma, staring in shock at the station. “Why can’t we do that?”
“They probably have an electromagnetic field twice as powerful as a battleship’s,” said the sensor tech.
Even that wouldn’t be enough to protect it when the outer layer of the star blew off. The photon storm that preceded that would have already killed the platforms, but anything left would be propelled into the system with the rest of the plasma.
“Get us into position and give them our missiles,” ordered the captain.
The pilot nodded and started working his control board, juking the ship around as he bore in on the target. For its part the platform started firing at them with everything it had. Most were misses, a few were hits, but the warp field, still up and functioning, shrugged most of them off, breaking the coherent amplified light into particles in millions of wavelengths and scattering them to the surrounding space.
“Missiles away,” shouted the pilot.
The four missiles they carried deployed their own warp fields a second after they dropped away, then sped at the platform. Hampered as they were by the space, they were still able to race ahead of the fighter. One was hit on the way in by a counter weapon, going up in a flare of antimatter as fifty tons of missile overloaded a small portion of the warp field. The other three hit, their warp compression fields digging into the armor of the ship, tunneling through to allow the warheads to detonate within the hull.
Three radiant blooms of white fire appeared on the platform, destroying large parts the station, but not enough to shut it down.
“Dammit,” yelled the pilot. “We need capital ship warheads. Now we have nothing left to hit them with.”
“Yes we do,” said Wilma in a soft voice. “Configure the wormhole to weapons mode.”
The sensor tech drew in a quick breath, knowing what that meant. The com tech sent the signal back to the Donut, requesting that their wormhole be attached to the nearest available weapons system.
Wilma’s main regret was that none of the other remaining fighters, seven of them, carried a wormhole. Hers had one due to being the command bird. The others had their onboard weapons and nothing else. Another exploded as it was hit by a counter, going up in a flare a thousand kilometers to port.
“Command says they can give us a particle beam in three minutes. Missiles in ten.”
Wilma didn’t think they had ten minutes. “Give us the particle beam. Then line us up on the target and let’s kill this thing.”
* * *
“Another one just went offline, your Majesty. We’re down to four.”
“Which one of our ships got it?”
“None, as far as I can tell,” said McCullom, her brows knit in thought. “Another mutiny? Maybe our friends in their Empire were right.”
And will they still be our friends if we fail to save this planet, thought Sean. Only a minority of the Maurid people had actually signed on board as double agents for the Empire. That it included almost all of them that were actually working for the Cacas as spies and security didn’t mean anything to the common Maurid. If one of their worlds was killed, how would those beings feel about their newly revealed alliance and its cost to them? Would support dry up? Or even possibly turn in favor of the Cacas, even if they were ultimately responsible.
“So we need four more mutinies,” said Sean, looking at his CNO. “Unlikely, wouldn’t you say?”
“We still have some assets on the
attack,” said McCullom.
Sean nodded, recognizing that the battle was not over. But would it be enough?
* * *
“I’m going to have to hold her steady while I’m firing,” shouted the pilot as the ship bucked again from a laser strike on the warp field.
“Understood. Your primary concern is to kill that thing.”
The pilot nodded, reached over to his board and pushed a couple of panels at the same time, setting the program into action. The warp drive winked off, giving the particle beam a clear shot at the target without the interference of the forward compression field, but also making them a vulnerable target. The grabbers came on line and ramped up to several hundred gravities in a few seconds. And the particle beam feeding through the wormhole opened up, serving two kilograms of antimatter a second out at just slightly below light speed, giving it the kinetic energy of multiple tons of fast moving material. It provided thrust that almost completely counterbalanced the pull of the grabbers, holding them almost stationary in space, barely moving forward at a couple of kilometers a second.
The beam hit the platform several seconds after leaving the ship, slamming into the armor, simultaneously blasting through and exploding as matter and antimatter combined, releasing torrents of fast moving particles. The explosion started at one end of the platform and worked its way across, sending fire and radiation sleeting through the structure under the armor.
The fighter was hit with a pair of powerful lasers, burning through its weak electromagnetic field and vaporizing tons of alloy. The small craft went into a spin, the only thing that saved it, and the particle beam winked out as the wormhole inside the fighter collapsed.
“Did we kill it?” shouted the disoriented captain as the ship spun through space, its compensators barely keeping them alive but not completely damping the motion.
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion. Page 30