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

by Doug Dandridge

  Cornelius ran the half klick, through several more rooms that had been fought over, then two more that hadn’t been. In the second room he ran into the people the Marine had been talking about. Most were wearing the light body armor of Police Ops, with the IIA and IIB logos on their backs. Of the hundred men and women, twelve were not wearing any kind of armor but armored vests. And these moved with the grace that Walborski had come to associate with the augmented.

  “The Captain up the way said that you might need my help,” he told the short Asian man who appeared to be the leader.

  The man looked him over, his eyes paying attention to the uniform, stopping on the medal, then the Marine sniper rifle. “We definitely can use you, Ranger,” said the man. “I’m Senior Agent Jimmy Chung. And I would have to guess you are the famous friend of the Emperor.”

  “Fame is not always a good thing,” said Walborski. “Especially in the special ops community.”

  “Even worse in ours,” said Chung.

  His eyes unfocused for a moment, and the Ranger knew he was in link. “The other people will meet us at the rendezvous,” he told everyone. “Some more of my people, the augmented ones,” he told Cornelius. “And about a dozen of your people.”

  “Rangers?”

  “Mostly, though I understand there’s a pair of Naval Commandos as well.”

  “And they would be better at this kind of warfare than I am,” said Cornelius, eliciting a head shake from Chung.

  “With two decorations like that on your chest? I doubt it. Now, will you join us?”

  “Lead the way, Agent Chung. But can I ask you what all this is about. They can’t hope to take this big son of a bitch.”

  “We think they’re here to destroy this big son of a bitch,” said the serious faced Agent. “And I, for one, don’t plan on letting them.”

  * * *

  “There is absolutely no way to track the weapons, Director Yu. Not until they are set off.”

  “Shit,” said Yu, not liking the sound of that. “How about disarming them if we find them?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you anything there either, Director,” said Admiral Chrone. “It depends on how the Cacas fuse them. But if I were them, I would make sure they went off if tampered with in any way. It would be shielded, and have sensors that detected any kind of attempt at breaching the weapon.”

  “And why would they do that, Admiral?” asked Yu, not used to thinking in this way.

  “Because that’s the way I would fuse my weapons,” said the Admiral. “Which is why we do it that way.”

  But maybe I have something neither you nor they thought of. “OK, next question. If you were trying to destroy this station, how many weapons would you use, and where would you place them?”

  “One weapon could do it, if it was large enough. Say about ten terratons, about a hundred times larger than any weapon we can conceive of, and probably outside of the capabilities of the Cacas. So let’s say three minimum.” A holo of the station appeared above Yu’s desk, with the kilometer thick support cables highlighted. “I would try and take out three of the six support cables. That would weaken the ring enough at that point that collapse would be likely.”

  “Thank you, Admiral,” said Yu. “Now, I need to get this information to someone up the line that can actually use it.”

  “The Marines have already been given this intelligence,” said Chrone. “They’ll do everything they can to prevent the Cacas from placing those weapons.”

  But they may not be the best people to take out those peripheral positions, thought Yu, signing off the com with the Admiral. She linked in with Chung over the com link, letting him know what the Admiral had said, and what she thought could be done.

  * * *

  “We’ve taken the tram station, General,” came the voice of one of his battalion commanders over the com relay they had set up.

  The damn humans always seem to be so damned fast on the uptake, he thought. The station was now filled with jamming static, cutting off all Ca’cadasan long range communications, and only allowing them to talk by either hard line, which was almost impossible to install on an enemy station, or by relaying short range from suit to suit.

  “Is the way open?” asked the General, watching as the first weapon came through the wormhole. This place is just too damned big for us to take the old fashioned way. Both of the supports they needed to sever were forty nine kilometers, more or less, from this gate room. The upper and lower supports were only about twenty-five kilometers by lift, but he wasn’t sure that taking them out by themselves would snap the ring. I need to get two of those outer supports. But going fifty kilometers was not the same on the surface of a planet as within a structure. So we need those trams. And they had captured one. Now, if he could get a weapon on that one and on its way before the humans thought to put something in the way.

  The second weapon came through, and the engineers descended on it to set the timer. If the humans get their hands on these devices it will do them no good. They will detonate at any attempt to change their fusing. That would not do the mission any good if they were detonated outside the eight kilometers needed to ensure a separation of the cables. But the humans for a dozen kilometers in either direction would never know that it had been a failure.

  The third weapon came through, then the fourth, followed by more warriors. He only had eighteen hundred males on the Bird station now, and in another forty minutes they would all be here, giving him more mass to his assault.

  * * *

  CONGREEVE SPACE.

  Lenkowski grimaced again as the Anastasia Romanov shuddered from more beam hits. The particle beams imparted kinetic energy into the hull, shaking it, while the protons converted to heat and boiled away armor. The lasers simply vaporized metal to the point where the outgassing acted like a physical strike. And his flagship had been absorbing many of both kinds of strikes in the last few minutes.

  At first they had their way with the Ca’cadasan ships, which translated into normal space within fifteen light seconds of his force. The Ca’cadasans, as they had come to expect, were a little slow on the uptake after translating through the dimensions. Usually they were far enough away that the incapacitation didn’t mean much. This time, the humans had been able to make them pay for a good ten seconds of beam fire.

  Now the enemy ships were gaining the upper hand. The twelve Caca superbattleships were all more massive than his twenty thousand ton ship, and much more so than the fifteen million ton battleships he deployed. And four of their four million ton supercruisers outmassed one of his battleships as well, and each was more than twice the size of one of his heavy cruisers.

  “We’re taking a beating, sir,” yelled the Captain through the com.

  And what the hell do you expect me to do about it, thought the Admiral. There really wasn’t much, except. “All ships, jump into hyper I,” he yelled to the Com Officer. “On my mark.”

  The Com Officer nodded and worked her board, while the ship shook once again. He looked over at the Tactical Officer. “Coordinate fire after we jump. I want to close with them and hit them with everything we’ve got.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the Tactical Officer, turning his sweating face, visible with his visor up, back to his board.

  “And have all ships launch a spread of missiles right after we jump,” said the Admiral to the back of his officer.

  “On my command, jump,” yelled the Admiral, and they fell in the hole in space opened up before their ship. Not all the ships made it. One battleship remained behind, to absorb the fire of all the enemy ships until it exploded in space. A moment later the Ca’cadasan ships jumped after them, now nine light seconds away. The human ships had their way for an entire twenty seconds, hitting them with every beam weapon they had, losing half their proton beams before they reached the targets. They still did some damage, and the missiles claimed two of the Caca ships before the aliens regained their wits.

  As soon as the first beams stru
ck the human ships he ordered another jump. As the Caca ships followed it was a repeat performance.

  “We’re running low on power, sir,” said the Captain over the com.

  “How many more does she have in her?”

  “Three. Maybe four.”

  “Then we will jump three, maybe four, times, Captain,” he said as the Caca ships followed them back into normal space, right into a volley of missiles and a full strength blast of beam weapons.

  “Are the wormhole missiles ready yet?” yelled the Admiral to the Tactical Officer. Two of the ships had wormholes configured to weapons’ ports. But it took some coordination, with a weapon’s station more than a thousand light years away, to actually use them.

  “The station is reporting affirmative to that, Admiral. They are asking whether this volley will be in hyper or normal space?”

  “I think normal,” said Lenkowski. “Jump.”

  The Caca ships followed them again, and the Admiral had to admit that they were stubborn. The time on target strike was less than five minutes away, and they must know they had to finish these human ships quickly if they hoped to get away in hyper.

  “Jump back to normal space,” he told the ship’s Captain and the Com Officer. He turned to the Tactical Officer. “Fire on the enemy ships as soon as they appear. Battleships first, of course.”

  The Anastasia Romanov jumped back into normal space, and the Admiral leaned forward in his chair, waiting for the enemy to follow. Predictably, the circles opened in the space ahead, showing the red of hyperspace and the centered forms of Caca ships.

  “Fire,” yelled the Tactical Officer to two firing rooms on two ships. The wormholes started spitting out missiles on both ships, this time in a pattern that allowed them to target individual vessels close in, one per second for thirty seconds, each with an initial velocity of point nine light.

  The enemy ships came out of hyper five light seconds away. The first missile hit in six, blasting a Ca’cadasan superbattleship apart. The other eleven went up in the next seven seconds as they all sustained hits, some more than once.

  After the missile volley had been spent there were only a trio of supercruisers and a dozen scouts left in the enemy force. None survived the beam strikes that followed.

  “Send signals to all missiles in the strike,” he ordered the Flag Tactical Officer. “Course corrections to join the strike against the enemy outer system force. No use wasting them.”

  “Admiral,” yelled the Com Officer, looking over her shoulder. ‘We’ve reestablished connection with the Emperor’s ship.”

  “Then connect me to his Majesty,” ordered the Admiral. It didn’t take long to make the connection, and when he did, he had something else to worry about.

  * * *

  “Range, twenty light seconds,” shouted out Kelso over the com.

  I already know that, thought Sean, staring at the holo that showed the massive enemy fleet, now at a stop and starting their acceleration in the opposite direction. We’ll still close with them, for the next several minutes. Then they will start pulling away from us.

  “Launch time from ship gate, nine seconds,” called out the Flag Tactical Officer. The gate in question was now visible from around the planet, and was starting on the final curve that would aim it toward the enemy ships. And the enemy ships saw it too, and had launched a large spread of missiles at it.

  If they damage the frame, the gate might collapse, thought Sean, sending an order through the gate that he hoped might be implemented in time. If not, it could affect his plans most drastically.

  His own antimissile destroyers and cruisers were letting loose with every counter missile in their cell launchers. They were taking out missiles by the hundreds, but thousands were still coming their way. Right now.

  “All ships,” shouted out Sean, watching the missiles close. “Plasma torps. Fire.”

  Augustine I bucked underfoot as she released a quartet of battleship sized plasma torpedoes. Her sister ships launched at the same time, as did every ship in the group, sending hundreds of globs of superheated plasma into space. These torpedoes were not traveling at the speeds most such weapons flew. At a mere thirty thousand kilometers an hour, eight point three three kilometers a second, they moved in almost a leisurely manner to a position a hundred thousand kilometers in front of the human fleet, then detonated, filling the space ahead with a thin layer of superheated plasma.

  The plasma had several effects on the missiles. Some few hit especially dense pockets and detonated from the contact. Others lost grabber units and veered off of their targets. The most common effect was the erosion of sensor heads, causing many of the weapons to lose their locks. And hundreds came through intact, not the most advantageous of outcomes for the human ships.

  All ships fired beam weapons and close range counters, as well as their many automatic projectile weapons, at the closing enemy missiles. It was a fearsome defense, and not many missiles made it through. Of those that did, only a few made direct hits, most of the others going for proximity detonations.

  Sean breathed a sigh as he saw the missiles that had been damaged, and were speeding by the fleet, were not going to hit the planet, which had moved enough in its orbit to put it in a position no longer in the line of fire. And at the same moment the arrows of missiles started appearing out of the gate, which still had not completed its slow turn.

  Those missiles, set to look for Caca ships as soon as they exited the portal, had no targets in their flight paths. Their sensors did pick up the retreating Ca’cadasan fleet, a target hard to miss due to its size, and they started to curve their vectors around to hit that target. A long drawn out process that would result in them actually hitting the enemy force from the rear, almost thirty minutes in the future. These missiles had been fired over an hour before in the Supersystem, and there was really nothing the force in the Congreeve system could do about their time of arrival, or orientation.

  Missiles continued to spew from the gate, each successive wave a little more on target, requiring a lesser vector change to reach the enemy. And then the gate locked into the proper orientation, facing the enemy fleet, and shooting out groups of missiles at over point nine light, aimed directly at the enemy force.

  “All wormhole ships,” called out Sean. “Missile barrage, now. All ships, give those bastards all the energy weapons you can feed them.”

  The acknowledgements came back immediately, and Augustine I and her sisters started launching missiles from their wormhole tubes. Each ship had four of the tubes, each connected to a wormhole that reached across space to one of the launch systems deployed in Supersystem space. Each system deployed fifty missiles in a two thousand kilometer accelerator tube that cycled the weapons from the wormhole on one end to the other at the beginning, building the weapons up to astounding velocities. The four launchers among each of the ships fired their missiles through the tubes, fifty missiles in less than one second from each tube. Two hundred missiles per ship, six hundred overall, all traveling at point nine three light toward the enemy fleet.

  The five wormhole equipped battleships in the force released another two hundred and fifty weapons, joining the swarm on the way to the enemy fleet, a mere thirty seconds flight time away. It was not an overwhelming swarm, not against a fleet that size. Still, these missiles were harder to engage at their velocity, and the enemy was not given the time to use their first layer of defense, the long term counters. One hundred and thirty-one missiles made it through the close in defense, and over half of them were direct hits, converting ships to plasma, the others doing damage to their targets. Some of that damage was serious enough to cause fifteen ships to lose acceleration capability, and they soon started to drop behind the rest of the fleet.

  Particle beams and lasers were constantly exchanged between the forces, the humans getting the worst of the fight, being outnumbered and outgunned. And then Augustine I and her sisters opened up with their twin wormhole particle beams. Each fired tons per second
of antimatter out of their twin nozzles, at the relativistic speed of point nine nine nine nine light, well beyond the capabilities of any ship based weapon. The beams struck enemy ships that were relatively closely bunched, ripping through electromagnetic fields of cold plasma with their high speeds, the first contact with the beam actually blasting the plasma out of the field, making it easy for the following material to come through and strike the hull. And strike they did, tearing explosive gouges through the armored hulls, with the combination of massive kinetic energy and antiprotons exploding on contact with the ordinary matter of the ship.

  Several ships were pushed into other paths by the explosive beams. A couple exploded as beams ate deep into their hulls to expose warheads and antimatter containers. It was a pinprick to the enemy fleet, but one that got their attention. Hundreds of ships, the tail of the Ca’cadasan formation, launched missiles at the large human ships, just before they were treated to a truly large swarm of missiles coming out of the ship gate at point nine light. And right after them a hundred antimissile destroyers and cruisers, deploying around the gate and taking the enemy missiles targeting that structure under fire.

  Ten thousand missiles had been planned for the strike through the ship gate. Due to it not being in place in time, only seven thousand missiles came flying in a coherent formation. It still ravaged the rear of the enemy fleet, destroying hundreds more vessels, and causing a hundred more to fall behind damaged.

  By that time the wormhole launchers on the three dreadnoughts had mated with new accelerator tubes back in Supersystem space, and they sent another six hundred relativistic velocity missiles at the enemy. By then the next enemy missile swarm had reached the dreadnoughts.

  Jennifer stifled a scream as she looked at the swarm of missiles coming in. Twenty seconds after that launch the wormhole launch tubes were speeding a new swarm of missiles, this time targeting the enemy weapons. Each hundred ton missile separated into a blast of smart pellets, each moving at the point nine light velocity of the missile that had been carrying it. Each pellet, massing a couple kilograms, targeted the nearest grabber source and bore in on its own units. Many hit the incoming missiles, their kinetic energy enough to destroy the weapon, at the same time as their one gram antimatter warheads exploded with a force of forty two kilotons. Those which didn’t hit exploded with a force that had to be very close to take out a missile. Nonetheless, a good number of the incoming missiles were destroyed, leaving about two thirds of their numbers still boring in.