Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier.

by Doug Dandridge

  “There is nothing out here,” said the Ca’cadasan Weapons’ Officer with a sigh of relief, his eyes locked on the holos hovering above his board.

  “Stay alert,” warned the Captain, his lower hands gripping his chair arm, while his upper arms were crossed over his chest. “They have ships that can fade to almost undetectability. Somehow they solved the heat radiation problem with those small stealth ships, he thought, recalling the latest brief on the humans. But not their normal ships. A stealth ship couldn’t handle his vessel in a heads up fight, but it could get in a crippling blow from cover, if he didn’t know it was there.

  “We have a fix on some of their ships insystem,” said the Sensory Officer, the lowest ranking male on the bridge. “Or at least where they were three hours ago.”

  The tactical plot came alive, showing two vessels in orbit around the planet, gleaned from visual sensors. A couple of moments later the plot updated from graviton emission readings, showing two ships coming out toward them about twenty light minutes from the planet, while the two vessels they had initially plotted remained in orbit. And finally, a fifth ship was plotted in the far reaches of the system, on the other side of the star.

  “Preliminary identifications,” called out the Sensory Officer, looking over at the Weapons’ Officer. “The ships coming to meet us appear to be a scout capital and a very small escort. The two ships in orbit are commercial vessels of some type.”

  “What about that other ship?” asked the Captain, leaning forward in his chair, lower arms still gripping the chair rest, upper arms both pointing at the tactical plot.

  “It appears to be another very small escort,” said the Sensory Officer. “Nothing to worry about.” The officer looked back at the Captain. “Do you want me to do a complete visual sweep of the system?”

  The Captain thought about that for a moment. A complete visual scan would entail checking out every object in the system. Every planet, moon, asteroid and comet, including those in the Kuiper belt. Billions of objects, and still no guarantee they would see anything trying to hide. A waste of computer power.

  “No need,” said the Captain, giving a head motion of negation. “This is a minor system. What we see is what we get.” The Captain pointed his upper right index finger at the plot while his left upper hand scratched at one of his horns. “Put us on a least time profile to orbit. We’ll take those two ships out on the way in, then orbit the planet and kill the humans there.”

  There were feral grins and looks of triumph across the bridge as the Pilot put them on the ordered course.

  “We have missile tracks,” yelled out the Sensory Officer. “Ten missiles. No, twenty.”

  “Give them a couple of spreads, Weapons,” ordered the Captain, leaning forward in his seat to watch the red arrows blossoming on the plot. Another ten arrows appeared, and the Captain guessed that the enemy ships were flushing all of their missiles. Missiles were most effective at long range, where they could build to relativistic velocities, making them both harder to hit, and packing a devastating kinetic punch when they hit.

  Another moment passed, and numbers appeared under the vector arrows, indicating an acceleration of five thousand gravities, about what he expected.

  “Match them missile for missile,” ordered the Captain, sure he was carrying many more than the enemy scout capital ship was. According to his intelligence, they carried at most a hundred weapons, maybe half again as many, while his magazines held over nine hundred of the long range weapons, all much larger and much more capable than those their foe possessed. His missile defenses were also an order of magnitude more effective.

  His own missiles started appearing on the plot, twenty at a time, vector arrows showing an acceleration of eight thousand gravities. They would reach the enemy force well before the human missiles got to his. They will die a long time before they know the result of their attack. That thought was satisfying to the Captain in a manner he couldn’t explain. Except that maybe it was fitting to let them keep the hope that they might blow him out of space, just before they died.

  * * *

  The bulk of the comet was comforting, in a way. There was no way an enemy was going to see them through forty kilometers of ice and rock, unless they got a look around it with a drone. The drones that Joel Schumacher had sent into the tail were getting a delayed visual of the actions the ship couldn’t see. The bridge crew sat in silence as they watched the tactical plot that was tracking everything by graviton emissions through hyper VIII, giving them an almost instantaneous look at what was happening. It took the enemy missiles almost ten hours to engage the two human ships. Ten hours in which the crew of the frigate vicariously sweated out the tension that had to prevail aboard those two ships that were targets.

  The battle cruiser, of course, kept calling for them on the com, demanding to know where they were, and why they weren’t there to die with the other two ships. Cinda ordered no response, expecting any minute for someone on her crew to mutiny. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, because there was nothing she could do to prevent it, and then some fool would move them out of cover so they could be destroyed at a distance.

  The crew all watched in horrified fascination as the missiles approached on the plot. They had both ships on visual, but they were now a light hour away, and they were seeing what had happened over an hour ago. They also had the enemy missiles on visual, or as good a visual as they could get on objects streaking in at point nine light, maneuvering furiously to avoid counter fire.

  Cinda sweated along with everyone else, with the exception that she also had to endure the stares of her crew, or the furtive glances that displayed the same emotion. There were looks of shame, switching to anger, then relief, and back to shame. The looks of people who thought they should be doing something, but happy that they were not going to die with those they should be dying with.

  Some icons dropped off the plot, missiles hit, their destroyed drives no longer producing gravitons. But not enough. A hundred missiles were coming in at the two human warships, and they had only picked off a dozen at long range.

  “They’re gone,” said the Sensory Officer with a cracking voice as the icons representing the human vessels dropped off the plot, along with most of the enemy missiles. About thirty of them continued on, without targets. They would continue on through the system, without the energy to decelerate, to become wanderers in interstellar space for the next twenty thousand years, after which time they would leave the galaxy.

  Almost four thousand men and women had died in those few instants. People out here serving the empire to the best of their ability, many with families back in the safety of the Core worlds. Some with families out here on the frontier. Never to return to any of them.

  Forty minutes later they caught the first visuals of the missile attack. There were some bright flairs of light here and there in space, missiles being hit with light amp weapons or counter missiles, or those same defensive weapons going off on close misses. Cinda sat with clenched fists, hoping that the holo would show enough missiles being blown apart for the human ships to survive, and knowing that it was pure fantasy, since the ships were already gone.

  Cinda didn’t want to watch the visual of the end fifteen minutes later, but she couldn’t force her eyes away. She watched as the missiles came in, a dozen more taken out by close in counter missiles, some more blotted from existence by lasers and autocannon. The first strikes were not direct hits. Missiles that missed went for proximity kills, detonating gigaton range antimatter warheads that sent waves of heat and radiation into the hulls of the two ships. The eight million ton battle cruiser weathered that storm. The eighty-five thousand ton frigate spouted gas from multiple hull ruptures before her own reactors went critical, and she flared into a miniature sun for several seconds before the plasma spread into space and the ship was gone.

  Moments later two missiles hit the battle cruiser, their kinetic energy making the antimatter warheads redundant as they shattered the capital s
hip. Its own stores of antimatter breached containment and propelled the plasma into a swiftly spreading cloud.

  The bridge crew stared in disbelief. Someone cried. No one knew who. They were too busy staring at the holo. Cinda stood up from her seat and forced herself to walk with steady steps toward the hatch, while her mind tried to force her to stagger in shock.

  “I’ll be in my cabin,” she told the crew after turning to them for a moment. The hatch closed behind her, and she felt the first tear bead in her eye. They were freely flowing by the time she reached her quarters and threw herself onto her bed.

  There was nothing we could have done, she thought, laying back and staring at the ceiling. We would have just died with them, and the enemy would still be on their way to kill the people on that planet. Fifty thousand more deaths, and I still can’t do anything about it. She had thought about trying to lay missiles in the path of the enemy ship, like mines. But they would most likely be detected before they could do any harm. There was nothing her small ship had that could make a difference. No matter what they tried.

  Cinda wanted to save those people. They were civilians, innocents, just regular people out here on the frontier, trying to make a better life. Away from the protection of the Core and developing worlds, with their orbital forts and system fleets.

  But I’ve only got one frigate, with twenty destroyer class missiles. Even if I fired my whole spread at them, they would blast them out of space without even trying. She kept playing the problem over and over again in her mind. Any missiles she sent at them would be detected well before they got to target. And a ship that was designed to handle spreads from other capital ships, hundreds of weapons at a time, would have no problem taking out her paltry twenty weapons. Even at long range and maximum velocity, just like they had taken out all the weapons from the battle cruiser and frigate. There was just no way to do it. Unless. The thought seemed to come out of nowhere, a gestalt.

  Cinda was out of her bed and into the seat of her desk in a second. She linked in with the system and the comp holo sprung to life over her desk. She stared at the holo for a moment, then ordered the system to show her the track of the comet, and the incoming course of the Ca’cadasan battleship. It could work, she thought, getting up from her desk. It seems like a crazy, wishful thinking, plan, but maybe all we have. “All senior bridge officers and division chiefs are to report to the briefing room, immediately,” she said into the com link, heading for her quarter’s hatch.

  * * *

  The twenty-five million ton ship shuddered slightly as it released a half dozen missiles through its accelerator tubes. It would take about fourteen hours to close, but the remaining small escort ship was doomed.

  “Time till orbital insertion, twenty-eight hours, twelve minutes,” said the Pilot, his lower hands playing over his board.

  “Weapons’,” said the three meter tall Captain, sitting on his raised chair, looking over the crew who sat at lower stations. “Are there any orbital defenses in place above that planet?”

  “None that we can detect, my Lord,” said the Weapons’ Officer. “There might be some shore batteries on the ground, but this is not a heavily populated planet.”

  “Not from our sensor readings, my Lord,” chimed in the Sensory Officer. “Preliminary scans indicate little industrial activity, probably a very low population planet, with a newly planted colony.”

  “We could just hit them with some missiles,” said the Weapons’ Officer quietly, looking back at his captain.

  “No,” growled the senior officer. “We are not here to kill the ecosystems of planets. Only the humans that infest them. We will go into orbit and blast their settlements out of existence with kinetics, then send down ground troops to root out whoever is left.” He looked pointedly at the Weapons’ Officer. “And I can assume they don’t have much of a ground force presence either.”

  “Probably a few hundred of their militia,” said the Weapons’ Officer, giving a head shake of negation.

  “Then we will proceed according to doctrine,” said the Captain, looking at the planet in the holo. “Then two days back out and into hyper.”

  * * *

  “I don’t see how this can work,” said Lt. SG Jakardo, the Tactical Officer. “We’re depending too much on luck.”

  “I really don’t think we have anything else to depend on,” said the Captain, looking from face to disbelieving face. “Look. I refused to sacrifice all of you in what I saw as a forlorn hope. This may be just as forlorn, but I think we might just be able to pull this off.” And it certainly fits the letter of the Emperor’s order.

  “They’re still a battleship, ma’am,” said Lieutenant Romanov, the Navigation Officer. “They outmass us by a factor of over two hundred and fifty.”

  “Maybe if we just use the missiles,” said the Com Officer. “That would still give us a chance of getting away.”

  “We need to do everything we can to make sure we get a hit,” said Cinda, shaking her head. “If we only depend on the missiles, we are depending on robots to do the job. And I doubt we could get away anyway, if they still have any tracking or weapons ability.” She looked at the officers, most of whom were shaking their heads. “Look. This isn’t up for discussion. I wanted your input on the plan, but the decision is mine. Now, I’m depending on you to make it work.”

  The looks coming her way were still full of doubt, and she didn’t blame them. She worried for a moment that they might refuse, that she would have that mutiny she had feared on her hands. Not that I didn’t give them a great example to follow with my refusal to obey orders, even if I was in the right. “Look. If we don’t do something, all of those people on that planet are going to die. That’s a fact. I won’t slight the bravery of the captain of the New Kiev, or his people. But basically, the man was an idiot. He wasted his command for no purpose. There might not have been a plan that would have worked, but running a battle cruiser into the teeth of that Ca’cadasan monster was definitely not it. Now it’s up to us to save that planet, and I intend to do so. Anyone who doesn’t want to participate can get in a shuttle and sit this one out. Not that I think you’ll survive us by much.”

  The crew members looked at each other, some nodding, others shaking their heads, then nodding. “I think we’re with you, Captain,” said Frobisher, the senior officer of the group. “I really don’t see this plan doing much more than getting us killed. But I for one am not willing to let fifty thousand people die without a prayer. That isn’t what I swore my oaths for. So let’s get the bastards.”

  * * *

  “I’m picking up activity in the asteroid belt,” called out the Weapons’ Officer from his station, looking back over at the main holo.

  “What is it?” demanded the Captain, standing from his chair and stalking toward the central holo tank, upper arms crossed over his chest. He leaned against the rail with his lower hands and stared at the representation of the system.

  “It appears to be a small ship leaving the proximity of one of the rocks, a fair sized metallic specimen,” said the Sensory Officer, pulling up a close up of the vessel on the forward holo. The ship looked like a stout shuttle, the kind used in mining operations.

  “Is it any danger to us?”

  “I wouldn’t think so, my Lord,” answered Weapons’. “It might carry some mining lasers, but nothing that we need concern ourselves with.”

  “Launch a quartet of armed shuttles,” ordered the Captain after a moment’s thought. “I want that craft destroyed, and whatever station they came from, if there is one, also taken out.”

  “Four shuttles, my Lord?” asked the Weapons’ Officer, a questioning expression on his snout.

  “Two are to go to that location and take care of the observed problem. The other two can do a close in sweep of that belt, look for other possible hideaways, and rendezvous with us before we leave the system.”

  The Weapons’ Officer gave a head shake of acceptance, then turned to his board to transmit the o
rders to the shuttle crews.

  “And I want the rest of the shuttles and our fighters prepped for action. There’s no telling what else we might discover that we need to destroy.” Better to be thorough, even if it takes another half a day. It will be much more terrifying to the humans to come into a system devoid of life, giving them little to hope for when we come and visit their other systems.

  * * *

  “They’re launching shuttles, ma’am,” called out Jakardo. “Two, no, four of them.”

  “Heading?” Cinda stared at the plot that showed the icons of the enemy small craft. They were on an initial heading that could take them close to the comet. Please don’t be heading this way, she prayed, clenching her hands.

  “It looks like they’re starting to turn their vector,” said Schmidt, the Sensory Officer. “Heading appears to be out toward the belt.”

  “Why would they be heading there?” asked Garibaldi, looking over at Romanov.

  “Most likely they spotted some of the miners,” said Jakardo, scowling. “A shuttle, or possibly an energy spike from one of the stations. They’re going to investigate.”

  “There are several hundred people out there,” said Romanov, looking back at the Captain with a pleading expression. “We can’t let the damned bastards kill them.”

  “And there’s fifty thousand people ahead of that big bastard,” said Jakardo, giving the Navigator an ‘I can’t believe you’ stare.

  “There’s nothing we can do for those people in the belt,” said Cinda, feeling sick to her stomach for what she was about to order. “If we attack them, we tip our hand to that monster. And then we die for nothing. And the people on the planet die soon after.”