Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle

by Doug Dandridge

  * * *

  The Task Force Leader stared at the holo on the bridge of his battleship, a predatory smile on his face. The holo showed the icons of a score of ships in hyper V, identification data filling in below each marker based on the hyperdrive emissions of each vessel. As far as he could tell there was one of the light scout ships that humans called cruisers, four of the escort vessels, and fifteen other ships that looked to be the commercial vessels of the human Empire.

  “I wonder why the stupid creatures continue to try and run commercial ships through this space,” said the Tactical Officer. “It makes no sense.”

  “No,” agreed the Task Force Leader, looking at the representation of his own force on the holo. “It does not.” He had six battleships, six supercruisers and eight escorts in his force. One of his battleships could take out that convoy by itself. The humans can be tricky, he thought, considering sending in a part of his force and letting the rest continue on to its final destination. No, he thought, giving a head shake of negation. I won’t even waste missiles on these weaklings. He had been warned to not try and get into a close range fight with single enemy commercial vessels, as they seemed to carry some kind of weapon that could kill ships, at least the smaller ones. At the moment he didn’t feel any threat from these targets.

  “We are almost ready to translate down, my Lord,” called out the Helm Officer. “We should be within three light minutes at that time.”

  “How long to close with them and match velocities?” asked the Task Force Leader.

  “Twenty minutes from time of translation,” answered the Navigator, looking over his board.

  “I want some of those ships captured as intact as we can get them,” said the Leader, looking to his Tactical Officer, then the Com Officer. “Make sure every ship’s captain knows my wishes. I want prisoners, and I want tech. If we are lucky, we may find out more about some of these new weapons they deploy.”

  “If they deploy them on these ships, shouldn’t we engage them at range with missiles?” asked the Tactical Officer.

  “I doubt they deploy anything new on a commercial convoy,” answered the Commander. “That is not to say that they will not have people who know about these weapons. How they are produced, and how they are deployed. But we will only get that information from live aliens. Or from intact databanks.”

  The Tactical Officer gave a head shake of acceptance and turned back to his board. The lights on the bridge dimmed for a moment and the Task Force Leader clamped his jaws shut against the nausea that came with translation. It took almost ten seconds before he really had enough control over his stomach to be aware of anything else. Some of his bridge crew were still trying to settle their stomachs as he regained awareness, a point of pride for the senior officer.

  “We are starting to vector toward the convoy,” reported the Helm Officer, one of the fastest on the bridge to recover from the nausea, one of the reasons he occupied that position.

  “And what are the aliens doing?” asked the Leader, looking at the holo tactical plot.

  “They look like they are trying to get away,” answered the Sensory Officer. “The commercial ships are moving in what look like random directions.”

  “And the escorts?”

  “They are continuing forward, trying to form a screen between us and their charges.”

  “Perfect. We will cripple the escorts, and then move on to take the commercial vessels as prizes.” He smiled as he thought of the honors that would be his if he came back with a windfall of intelligence.

  * * *

  “They’re heading this way, sir,” said Lieutenant SG Lasardo, the Tactical Officer of the destroyer, and a man who von Rittersdorf had handpicked for the position. “No surprise there.”

  “Nope,” replied the Captain, looking at the tactical display that showed the overwhelming force coming toward him. “No surprise.”

  And why the hell did I have to tell the Commodore that this was a good idea. His was the only hyper VII capable ship in the escort, and the only ship likely to get away if they ran. The three hyper VI destroyers might make it, while the VI light cruiser wouldn’t have much of a chance. He was in charge by dint of being a squadron commander, though the rest of his squadron was with the Commodore. That, and the fact that his ship was equipped with a wormhole com. I wish I had some of the other stuff he Commodore’s ship has, he thought, knowing that such would not be wasted on a mere destroyer.

  “Get me the Commodore on the com,” he told his Com Officer. It’s about time to make sure everyone is on the same page.

  * * *

  The Commodore stared at the holo, watching the movement of every ship in hyper V. Her own command was superimposed on that holo, sitting in normal space, coasting at point two c to the point of entry, while the timer ticked down. Everything was set into motion. Her force was tracking the enemy both through their hyperdrive emissions as received in normal space, and the tracking information of von Rittersdorf’s vessel coming through the wormhole. She had unprecedented tracking capabilities, and hopefully weapons that were beyond the wildest dreams of the Cacas, especially in a knife fight like she was developing.

  “All stations report readiness status green,” said the Com Officer, looking back at the Commodore.

  Mei looked over at the com station, noting the holo of an officer above the board, the Com Officer on one of the battle stations sitting over a thousand light years away, orbiting the Supersystem black hole.

  “The stations are reporting that they have fifty missiles in each tube,” said the Com Officer. “They’ll be up to max velocity in one point three minutes.”

  “What about the PBs?” asked Mei.

  The Com Officer went to her board for a moment, then looked back. “All particle beams are fully up and ready.”

  “Let the force know we will go on the mark. Philippi and Dauphin will follow our lead. Targets are designated as…” The Commodore pointed to the target icons on the holo and assigned them to her vessels. “We jump in forty-three seconds.”

  The Commodore stared at the holo, watching as the icons of her force, eleven battle cruisers, four heavy cruisers and fourteen destroyers, closed to superimposition with the enemy force.

  “Jumping, now,” called out the Navigation Officer, looking over at the Helmsman.

  The lights on the bridge dimmed for a moment as all available power was transferred to the hyperdrive projectors without tapping into the battery backups. With the transfer came the nausea, for most only a second or so. And then the stars of space were replaced by the red backdrop of hyperspace splattered with the tiny black dots of the distant gravity wells that were stars.

  The tactical holo updated with real time information in less than a second. Before the next second ticked off every ship had opened fire, well before the enemy could react.

  * * *

  “The enemy ships are opening fire,” called out the Tactical Officer, as hundreds of red icons appeared on the tactical holo.

  “How are they getting so many missiles into space?” asked the Task Force Commander.

  “Their commercial vessels are also sending missiles our way,” said the Tactical Officer. “From their velocity I would guess they don’t have acceleration tubes. I don’t think they will be much of a threat.”

  The Task Force Leader sat back in his chair and grinned. The enemy was getting desperate. But desperation would not save them.

  “We have translations,” yelled out the Sensor Officer.

  “Where,” yelled the Task Force Leader, coming out of his seat.

  “Right on top of us,” yelled the officer, as the icons of enemy vessels appeared on the tactical plot.

  Something flared impossibly bright on one of the viewers, which stepped down the intensity in an instant. Two of the icons on the tactical were blinking, one of his battleships, and a scout ship of the enemy. The biggest problem with the icons was they were right on top of each other. Which meant an enemy scout ship had transla
ted right into the path of a battleship, if not directly inside of it.

  A side viewer showed the debris of a twenty-five million ton battleship fading from hyper in a series of catastrophic translations. Not that it mattered to any of the crew of that ship, who were most decidedly dead. And then the flagship shook from the hits of an impossibly powerful particle beam, while damage klaxons went off and the lights dimmed again.

  * * *

  Mei Lei grimaced as the enemy force appeared on the viewer. Not just because they outmassed her force. She was very close to the enemy task force, a lot closer than most captains would be comfortable with. Something flared on the screen, and she grimaced again as she watched one of her destroyers come out of hyper halfway inside an enemy battleship. Both ships fell apart from the combined forces of objects trying to occupy the same space at the same time, and the difference in velocities and vectors that tore at them.

  In the cold calculations of war of attrition, she should have been happy with that result, trading two hundred tons of warship and two hundred and fifty lives for twenty-five million tons and many thousands of the enemy. But all she could think about were the brave men and women of that ship who hadn’t even had time to realize they were doomed.

  “Firing,” yelled out the Tactical Officer, and the ship bucked as she fired all weapons at the nearest enemy vessel, a battleship.

  All of the vessels in her force opened up with lasers and particle beams, tossing missiles at the same time, giving the enemy some extra targets to deal with. All but three of the ships were equipped with standard weapons loadouts for their classes. Jean de Arc and her two sisters had the normal loadout, with the exception of the two wormhole weapons’ ports each carried.

  The three battle cruisers each let loose with a pair of massive particle weapons, the pairs of beams all striking a different battleship. The enemy ships were moving at point three five c, while the human vessels were moving at an almost parallel vector to the Cacas at point two c. The beams were from accelerators much larger than the battle cruisers would have been capable of carrying without dispensing with most of their other weapons. Those accelerators were actually over a thousand light years away, on purpose built battle stations in orbit around the Supersystem central black hole. Each accelerator massed over four million tons, half the mass of the ships they were feeding. Protons, or in this case, antiprotons, were accelerated up to point nine nine nine nine c, and fed through the wormhole to the projectors of the battle cruisers.

  A ton a second of ultrafast particles fired from the two projectors on each ship, while the battle cruisers engaged their grabbers at full power to compensate for the recoil. All three eight point five million ton ships actually lost forward velocity in the classic action-reaction formula.

  Jean de Arc’s twin particle beams ripped into the side of one of the battleships, antimatter exploding as it powered into the material of the hull. The enemy ships hadn’t deployed cold plasma fields, and their electromag fields were not at full strength. Huge pieces of hull blew off into space and translated away, while the beam dug deeper into the vessel. There were seven seconds of firing time for each beam, which was about what the opening distance and the time the material of the beam could exist in hyperspace would allow anyway.

  Smaller explosions sparked on the surface of many more enemy ships, and Mei knew that more deadly interior explosions were also rocking those vessels. All of the warships carried quantum teleportation devices, and were taking their best shot at sending more of the deadly substance into the enemy vessels. The loss of weapons fire and targeting of many of those vessels showed that the strategy was working.

  Two battle cruisers and a heavy cruiser were gushing atmosphere, and one of the battle cruisers blew up in a flash and disappeared. Several destroyers were also taking a pounding while they continued to take the nearest enemy ships under fire. Enemy missiles were closing at relatively slow velocity, most to be taken out by defensive fire, though several got through to blast gigatons of explosive power into the hulls of light vessels. The defensive fire of the Ca’cadasan ships was proving too much for the human missiles, which, with a few exceptions, were being blown out of space.

  At seven seconds the particle beam fired died, and the Commodore sweated for the thirty seconds it took to move the wormhole at the other end to access the next weapons system. Two savaged enemy battleships continued on, one so badly damaged that it was not able to alter its vector of velocity. And one ship flashed into catastrophic translation, gone.

  “First missile due in twelve seconds,” stated the Com Officer, as the Tactical Officer gave a thumbs up to the Commodore, indicated that the hole had been mated at the other end.

  “Light them up, Tac,” ordered the Commodore. The officer smiled back, looked back to his board, and started sending firing solutions to the first missiles to come through.

  * * *

  “We have significant damage across the ship,” said the Tactical Officer, looking back at his commander. “But we are out of any possible material beam weapon range.”

  We can only hope, thought the Task Force Leader, wondering what other tricks the enemy might have hidden under their cloak. “I want the rest of the force to open the distance. We will pound them with missiles at range, and see what good that beam weapon does them.”

  “We have missile tracks,” yelled out the Sensory Officer.

  The Tactical Officer turned his attention back to his board. “Multiple missile tracks coming from the ships that just jumped into hyper,” called out the officer. He gave a head shake of negation, then looked back at the Task Force Leader with disbelieving eyes.

  “Well. What’s their closing speed?”

  “Point eight eight light, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, again giving a head shake of negation.

  “That’s impossible,” growled the Leader, mimicking the same head shake. “There’s no way they could have accelerated them to that velocity. Not having just launched them.”

  “Yet, they are there, my Lord,” said the Sensory Officer, looking at him with the same disbelieving gaze.

  “Order the force to defend this vessel at all costs,” said the Commander, a shiver of fear running through his body. He could see the accusing looks in the expressions of the bridge crew at his order. They think me a coward, he thought, also seeing the little bit of relief in all of those gazes. I don’t care. As long as I get home to report on these new weapons. And then he only had time to watch the tactical holo, which showed scores of missiles heading for his command, and many more appearing every second.

  * * *

  The Commodore felt the ship bucking slightly underneath as she jettisoned missiles at the enemy. That enemy was well out of particle beam range, though the human force was still hitting them with all the laser weapons they could muster. Hundreds of missiles were heading into the enemy task force, most with too slow closing speeds that made them easy targets for the defensive weapons. Then the holo blossomed with scores of green arrows, with almost impossible vector numbers underneath.

  Back in Supersystem space a dozen specially built battle stations were doing their work. Each station had a particle beam accelerator which was a circle ten kilometers in diameter, over thirty in circumference, larger than any known ship could carry. Those stations that were linked to the Commodore’s three specially equipped battle cruisers had emptied their accelerators, and were now injecting more antiprotons into the acceleration fields, making them ready for their next use.

  Each station also had two thousand kilometers of straight accelerator shoots, made up of sections of hyperdrive missile tubes. Unlike most missile accelerator tubes, these overly long ones had a wormhole on each end, two sides of the same portal. Fifty missiles had spent over an hour in each of those tubes, being pulled and pushed along by the magnetic fields of the accelerators, building up velocity, disappearing into the hole at the end of the tube and reappearing at the beginning to start the process again, building up velocit
ies to relativistic levels. The missiles were up to point nine nine light, massing over seven times what they massed at rest. At firing time the terminal wormhole was collapsed to a point in an instant, then pulled out of the way by magnetic suction in three one millionths of a second, allowing the missiles to move past it without going back to the beginning. That had been the largest barrier to making the system work, but with great minds working on a weapon that needed to become workable, it had been done.

  The system had some drawbacks. For one, it was very expensive to build, and took a valuable wormhole that could be used for something else. For another, the system could not be put into use without notice. It took time to build up velocity, at least an hour. And lastly, the weapon was not really that much more effective against long range targets as compared to normal ship launched missiles. But at close range it was deadly.

  The missiles erupted from the firing ships, fifty per tube, three hundred overall, moving at unheard of velocities for a close in engagement. All engaged their hyperfield generators on exit from the ship tubes, accepted their targeting information, and were headed toward the enemy vessels.

  The enemy force was now almost fully occupied with swatting the slower moving missiles launched by the rest of the human group. Their own missiles were beginning to strike at the human ships. Here a pair of converted merchant ships exploded as gigaton range warheads were detonated against their hulls. There a light cruiser was spun away by a hit, then translated catastrophically back to normal space. A destroyer in the convoy escort died, and the Commodore was happy to see that it wasn’t von Rittersdorf’s ship. Then the worst happened, as two battle cruisers, one of them one of her three specials, were blasted from space.

  And then the high velocity missiles were there. Two hundred were still blasted from space before they could reach a target, a testimony to the defensive firepower and targeting of the Ca’cadasan warships. Then the hits came, as the missiles, with relatively light warheads in the hundred megaton range, transferred twenty times that force in kinetic energy into the enemy ships.