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

by Doug Dandridge

  A couple of the small missiles and five of the larger disappeared from the plot, destroyed in flight. The others continued in, until…

  “We have impact,” called out the Pilot.

  Komorov smiled, thinking of the overkill they had unleashed, enough firepower to take out several battleships. She frowned as she looked over her own command and saw that one of her ships had been destroyed. A small price to pay for the destruction of a warship, unless they were people you knew.

  Then the icon of the warship dropped off the plot, and the crew started to cheer.

  * * *

  “Impact in five seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer. “Three, two one…”

  “Exercise over,” said Admiral Chuntao Chan, the Director of Fleet Research and Development. The Admiral smiled as she thought about what she had just witnessed. Augusta was one of the newest ships in the Fleet, a prototype of one of the new class of missile defense light cruisers, optimized for tracking and destroying incoming weapons. And they didn’t have a chance against those attack ships, she thought. The attack ships had outrun the light of their initial deployment, and had struck without warning.

  “Admiral,” said the captain of the Augusta, Captain Clovis McGurk. “What the hell were those things?”

  “Our latest weapon against the Cacas,” said the slight woman, who was one of the best minds in the Empire. “Of course, you and your crew are sworn to secrecy. Not a word of this is to get out to anyone, military or civilian.”

  “And this is why you had us deploy to this nowhere system,” said the Captain, looking at the holo plot as all the simulators disappeared, leaving only the fast accelerating attack craft, the light cruiser, and the light carrier that was still executing its curving vector change.

  “Of course. We didn’t want too many eyes watching this test. And it went perfectly.”

  The Captain looked down for a moment, an embarrassed flush on his face.

  “Your crew did well, Captain,” said the Admiral, still smiling. “Very well. You have a great ship and a well-trained crew. But the game was rigged from the start.”

  Now let’s hope it comes as just as much a shock to the Cacas.

  * * *

  SECTOR IV SPACE.

  “Impact in five minutes,” called out the Tactical Officer, Lt. Commander Juan Gomez.

  And our missiles will reach the target in eight minutes, thought Commodore Mei Lei, looking at the vector arrows on the holo. At least that’s what it looks like from here, and probably there as well.

  “Order the escorts to unmask,” she told her Com Officer.

  Moments later the two light cruisers and four destroyers that had been attached to the hull of the Jean de Arc separated and boosted away into a protective pattern. All were new anti-missile ships, here for their practical real world test.

  Bad enough that I have to be saddled with one untested system. But two is way too much.

  The ships, which had been specially designed to screen capital ships from saturation missile attacks, started cycling their weapons, filling the tactical holo with the vector arrows of the counters. All were cycling their lasers as well, and the mass of incoming red arrows quickly started falling off the plot. They seem to be working quite well, she thought as her own ship shook slightly underfoot with the launch of her own counters.

  One hundred missiles were coming in, what the enemy battleship must have thought was sufficient to take out one human battle cruiser. They hadn’t counted on the other ships, but they could always rectify that mistake and send a truly overwhelming spread toward the battle cruiser. While the spread that Jean had sent the enemy’s way must have looked really pathetic. They might get some proximity hits, but a direct strike was unlikely in the extreme. Or so it seemed.

  “Our missiles are reaching final stage acceleration,” called out Gomez, as the figures below the forty missiles in her spread increased to sixteen thousand gravities acceleration. That was the first of her surprises. The missiles only boosted for thirty seconds at that acceleration, enough to bring them up to about their maximum safe velocity. And then the tactical holo blossomed with many new arrows.

  “The missiles are calving,” called out Gomez, looking back at the Commodore with a smile.

  Each of the one hundred and fifty ton missiles ejected twenty smaller weapons, each in the two ton range, that then oriented to the target. They accelerated at five thousand gravities toward the battleship, the same as their launching platforms, and spread out to gain some separation from their fellows. Warheads started to drop off the plot, and a few of the larger missiles, as the enemy battleship fired all of its counter weapons. Still, almost six hundred weapons made it through the enemy defensive fire and closed in on the ship. One second there were hundreds of icons on the plot, dominated by the larger symbol of the ship. Then, a hundred icons fell off, then a hundred more, then, all but a handful, including the battleship’s, until the handful were all that were left, coasting forward in empty space.

  “Yes,” yelled Gomez, pumping a fist in the air. “We got the bastard.”

  The Commodore smiled, then frowned as she looked over the damage report from her force. Nothing had been destroyed, but there had been damage to several ships, and casualties. Could have been worse, she thought, knowing that she would never get used to seeing people under her command die. And we proved a concept that could save many lives in the future.

  It took several hours before the visual of the action reached them. Mei sat in her conference room along with many of her officers, watching as the images came in through the ships’ sensory systems. The view was split into two parts. One showed the magnified image from the battle cruiser as the missiles closed. The images were a blur. The other was the take from several of the mother missiles, looking at the target they had come to destroy.

  “Super slow motion,” ordered the Commodore, and the image both slowed and cleared. Several of the missiles exploded in space, one from a counter strike, one from a laser. A dozen of the smaller warheads also blew up. A moment later the first of the small warheads, a two megaton warhead encased in a two ton body traveling at point nine five light, struck the armored hull of the ship. There was a bright flash on the hull that moved inward as if a hot jet had pushed through the tough armor. A second point flashed on the hull, then a third, followed by a flurry that tore through the hull and into the interior. A moment later the hull flared from a hundred strikes, just before the trio of missiles that had made it through the counter-fire slammed in with a force that shattered the twenty-five million ton superbattleship.

  “Reverse,” ordered the Commodore, and the video went backwards in slow motion. “Stop.”

  “It looks like the smaller calves had already killed the ship,” said Gomez, pointing at the holo. “The hull is shredded, and there’s plasma erupting from the interior.”

  “If not destroyed, it was surely severely damaged,” said the Commodore, looking at a ship that was already a wreck. “Order the force back to hyperspace,” she told the Com Officer. “Let’s get back to base and tell them what happened. This proves the concept. Now, we just have to hope they can get us enough of these weapons to make a difference.

  Chapter Nine

  XENIA SPACE, NEW TERRAN REPUBLIC, SEPTEMBER 18TH, 1001.

  President Julia Graham sat at the table and looked up at the large red orb of Xenia’s star. I miss the light of a real sun, thought the President of the New Terran Republic. The light of a red star just seems, cold. She looked at the potted plants on the balcony. Most were genetically engineered Terran stock that thrived in this kind of light. Unfortunately, I’m not like them.

  The sound of waves hitting the rocks of the shore was a constant in the background. As were the cries of the gulls as they hunted those turbulent waters from the air. Graham lay back in her chair and closed her eyes, letting those sounds move her into a relaxed state.

  “Ma’am,” called out Kelsie Klein, one of her security staff. “Ma’am. We
have a situation.”

  Why does that phrase fill me with such trepidation, thought Julia. Because it never means anything good. She opened her eyes to see the Secret Service agent standing over her, a concerned look on her face.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am. But we’ve detected an enemy force moving toward us through hyper.”

  “Crap,” said Graham, sitting up in her chair, her mind awhirl with possibilities, most of them bad. “How many?”

  “At least thirty large vessels, and about sixty smaller ships.”

  “Damn,” growled the President, linking into the command and control net and getting a look for herself. The enemy ships were plotted in hyper VII, moving at almost point three light within that dimension and heading for the first hyperspace barrier to the small star’s system. And if they follow standard procedure, they will stair step their way in, jumping just before they hit each barrier.

  “We need to get you evacuated through the wormhole,” said Klein, looking over the low wall at the ocean, then up at the sky. “We don’t have enough here to stop them.”

  Graham looked out over the rolling waves of the turbulent ocean. The day was young, and it would be almost thirty hours before nightfall. Something in the water caught her eye, and she zoomed her focus in on a pod of dolphins cavorting in the waves. “I’m not leaving,” she said through clenched teeth.

  “We don’t have enough of a force to take on this enemy,” said the agent, putting a hand on the President’s shoulder. “If we stay here, they will kill us.”

  “And if we leave, they’ll kill this world,” said Graham, looking out over the ocean once again. “It’s terraformed with old Earth life.”

  “Genetically engineered for this environment,” said the agent.

  “But essentially Earth forms. And doomed, if we don’t defend them.”

  “There aren’t enough ships in the system to stop them, Madame President,” argued Klein. “If you try to make a stand, all you will accomplish is the deaths of more of our people.”

  Graham stared at her staffer for a moment. She had liked having a woman like Klein on the staff, someone who, though it really wasn’t her job, would call her on her bullshit. But there has to be a way. The wormhole possibly.

  As the capital system of the New Terran Republic, a wormhole link had been established months earlier. Recently it had been expanded into a ship gate, allowing the transport of military units between the two governments.

  “Get me the Emperor on the link,” she ordered over her com, as she took her seat and continued to watch the dolphins. I’ll be damned if I let those beautiful creatures die from a kinetic bombardment. We’ve already lost so much. But we won’t lose this world.

  “The Emperor is not available, Madame President,” came the voice from the com center. “But his Regent is.”

  A holo appeared over the table, the face of Samantha Ogden Lee looking out at the President. Some of their nobles are certainly incompetent. A good reason to not adopt their system of entitlement. But fortunately that doesn’t hold true for their Emperor and his cousin.

  “Greetings, Madame President,” said the Regent across the thousands of light years. “I understand you have a problem, and a request.”

  Graham quickly filled the Regent in on the problem she was facing. Samantha listened, nodding, then holding up a hand to stop the President in mid-sentence. “I’m not sure Parliament will let me send any more units from Home Fleet out of the Supersystem. And we have already sent so many ships to reinforce sector IV.”

  “But…”

  “Give me a few minutes, Madame President, and I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, if I might suggest positioning the gate behind your planet, out of the line of sight of the enemy.”

  The holo went blank, leaving the President with her thoughts and prayers. She took a moment to send instructions to the people controlling the gate, then ordered a link with the Admiral commanding the system force.

  “We’re ready to boost for the wormhole and leave,” said the dark haired woman who was the force commander. “We’re waiting on your shuttles to take you and your staff aboard, Madame President.”

  “I’m not leaving. And neither are you.”

  “I, don’t understand, Ma’am.”

  “We are not giving up this system,” she said, monitoring the tactical plot on her implant. The enemy ships were down to hyper IV, driving for III barrier.

  “Ma’am,” said the Admiral in a hushed voice. “We don’t have enough to hold this system. The only thing we’ll accomplish is losing our entire force here, and they’ll still take the planet.”

  “We are not leaving, Admiral. And that is an order from your Commander in Chief.”

  “Yes, ma’am. What do you want me to do when they come out of hyper?” Implicit in that question was what was the Admiral was to tell the crews she was most probably leading into a hopeless battle.

  “I’m trying to get you some help. Just bring everything in close to the planet, and be prepared to defend us from missile attack. Graham out.”

  The President sat at the table for a few minutes, sipping a drink that one of her servants had brought her. Klein had been joined by several other agents, and she wondered if maybe they might try and restrain her as a crazy person, before forcing her onto a shuttle and evacuating her from the system.

  She didn’t know if that was a realistic concern or not, but she was saved from the possibility by the holo coming back to life, the face of the Imperial Regent looking at her with a smile on her face.

  “I’ve some help heading your way.”

  “Home Fleet?”

  “No. But something that will serve just as well. The first ship should be coming through any second.”

  “Ma’am,” came the voice of the Admiral over the com. “We have a battleship coming through the gate.

  “Whose is it?” asked Graham, looking back at the face of the smiling Regent.

  “I, really don’t believe it,” was all the Admiral could say, as the image of the ship coming through the gate came over the link, followed by another one.

  The ships were shaped a bit differently than the warships of the three human governments, which were all based on a similar plan. These were pointed at nose and stern, unlike the flattened snouts of human warships. Where human ships used mostly rounded surfaces, these had flat, angled hull sections.

  “Those are Crakista ships,” called out one of the NTR captains.

  “I really don’t care if they’re ships from hell,” said the Admiral. “That they’re here is all that counts.”

  “There are forty-two of the Crakista battleships coming through,” said the Regent over the holo. “They will be followed by ninety-four support ships, cruisers and destroyers. And I am talking with the Admiral in charge of a New Moscow task force we were refurbishing.”

  “Refurbishing. Does that mean they’re not combat ready?”

  “Oh, they’re mostly combat ready,” said the President with a smile. “We’re only sending those that are capable of combat. Some still aren’t able to enter hyperspace, and most still need some repairs to their internal amenities. But all are capable of fighting.”

  “We’ll take em,” said the Admiral in charge of the system defense force.

  Graham did some quick calculations in her head, then called up the Admiral on a side holo. “You realize that the Crakista admiral will outrank you, probably by two grades. Are you willing to serve under a lizard.”

  “Hell, I’d serve under a housecat, if they brought that much firepower to the party.”

  The President had to smile again as she watched yet another Crakista battleship come sliding out of the wormhole. The Crakista were a very logical race, not ruled by emotions. They were intelligent, in fact, one of the smarter races in the Perseus Arm. What they lacked was imagination. They copied human innovation, which meant they were normally some years behind in tech. So, logically, they built their ships to a larger standard t
han human ships, just to equal the same effectiveness.

  A signal came through the com, and with a thought she switched the holo from her own naval commander to the incoming transmission. She was not surprised to see the reptilian face looking out at her from the three dimensional holo. The face did look much like a Terran reptile, with noticeable differences. A single large nostril dominated the end of the snout, while human like brown eyes looked out at the world. The face was a brilliant, almost neon green, and covered in tiny scales, while the upper body was covered in the Crakista version of battle armor.

  “Greetings, Madame President,” said the creature, Graham couldn’t tell if it was male or female, in a pleasant if flat voice. “We are here for you to command.”

  “I assume, Admiral, that you will want to take charge, given your rank.”

  “That would be preferable, but not necessary. We are here to serve. The only stipulation is that our force must be commanded by one of our kind, but we will fight within the force structure of another.”

  “You will have command, Admiral, what should we call you?”

  “I am Admiral,” the word that followed sounded like the hissing of a snake. “It would probably be better to just call me Admiral Commanding Crakista Force One.”

  “Yes,” said Graham, almost saying sir, before realizing that she didn’t know what sex the being was. “Excuse me for asking, but are you male or female?”

  “In this context it makes no difference,” said the being. “Use whichever honorific you prefer.”

  “I have already told my system commander to place himself under your command. He is awaiting your instructions.”

  “That is satisfactory. Now, Madam President, I must see to my dispositions.” The holo went blank, leaving the President to stare at an empty tabletop.

  Minutes later the last of the Crakista battleships was through the hole, and all the vessels were behind the planet in reference to the incoming Ca’cadasans. The smaller ships started coming through, cruisers first, then the destroyers. After fifteen minutes of transiting the first of the Moscovite battleships came through.