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

by Doug Dandridge

  She sat there looking at the plot, shaking her head, wishing she could change reality, and knowing that she couldn’t. “No. We stay put, and make our play for the only target that might make a difference.”

  The rest of the bridge crew sat there, none of them looking happy, but all nodding their heads in acknowledgement. They realize there is no other choice, she thought, feeling the same shame she knew they felt. Still doesn’t make it any easier to make it.

  * * *

  The minutes passed in silence, and then it was time for act two of the Battle of Compton.

  Here we go, thought Cinda, watching the enemy ship approach on the tactical plot, while a side screen showed an almost real time view of the massive vessel. She shifted a bit in her seat. She had never really liked the battle armor that naval personnel wore into combat. But if the compartment was evacuated and became vacuum, they would allow the crew to still function. And if battle damage had to be cleared, the powered armor suits gave them the strength to do so. It was the smart decision, and the one dictated by regulations, so she put up with the discomfort.

  The tactical plot showed the twenty missiles sitting in the tail of the comet, moving forward at the same velocity as the body whose ejecta was shielding them. The track of the battleship was closing on the plot, and the enemy ship was starting to enter the engagement envelope.

  “Helm,” she ordered after trying to swallow with a dry throat. “Take us into position.” She looked over at Jakardo. “It’s in your hands now, Tac.”

  Jakardo nodded and turned back to his board. Except for the Helmsman, the young Lieutenant was the only one with anything to do at this time. Everyone else was now just a spectator, sitting there in their own fear generated sweat. And then the frigate poked her side over the top of the comet, David into battle with Goliath.

  * * *

  “Is that comet any risk to us?” asked the Captain, leaning forward in his chair and studying the ice ball on the holo. It had a larger than usual tail, which gave it an almost menacing look. It has been thousands of years since we looked at the Galaxy with primitive superstition, thought the large carnivore with a snort through his snout. I do not fear you, ice ball.

  “No, my Lord,” said the Weapons’ Officer, pulling up a view of the comet on his own screen. “It’s larger than the norm for an insystem visitor, and this is an energetic star, so the tail is especially long and thick.”

  “What will be our closest approach to it?”

  “Closest approach will be one thousand two hundred kilometers,” said the Pilot. “No danger.” The officer looked back at the captain. “Do you want us to change our vector?”

  “No,” replied the Captain. “What’s our current velocity?”

  “Three thousand KPS,” answered the Helm Officer. “Grabbers are functioning normally, and we are a little over an hour from orbital insertion.”

  “And the planet? Any changes?”

  “The two ships are still in orbit,” said the Weapons’ Officer. “I’m surprised they haven’t tried to get away.”

  “No,” said the Captain, thinking about the small scout ship they had destroyed earlier at long range. “They had nowhere to run. I think the crews have evacuated to the planet. Not that such a course will help them, in the long run.”

  The Captain looked back at the holo of the comet. The tactical plot hanging in the air next to his chair showed the track of his ship and that of the small system body. The lines would come closest within the next half minute, then separate. Untidy to leave possible planet killers in orbit, he thought, realizing from the track that the planet was in no danger, from this pass at least.

  Another thought struck him, and he looked back over at the Tactical Officer. “What is the status of our shields?”

  “One quarter strength,” said the Weapons’ Officer. “Do you want me to…. My Lord, we’re taking light amp fire.”

  “From where?”

  “There,” yelled the officer as a view of a small escort ship came up over the top of the comet. “It’s firing both laser rings at us, and we’re receiving some particle beam fire. Nothing too severe. Shields are handling it.”

  “Lock all weapons on that ship and blow her out of space,” yelled the Captain, pointing his right index fingers at the holo.

  * * *

  As soon as she had weapons lock the frigate opened fire with everything she had. Her two laser rings both put out their most powerful bursts, a hundred megawatts of power each in single beams. Her lone particle beam accelerator was putting out a couple of kilograms a second through one of the projectors that branched off of it, concentrating that fire. The ship she was facing had twenty laser domes that could currently take her under fire, out of the forty she possessed, each producing a beam in the gigawatt range, while her multiple particle beam weapons could put out hundreds of kilograms of protons a second.

  Some modifications had been made to Joel Schumacher while she waited for the enemy ship to arrive. The crew, with the assistance of ship’s robots, had moved electromag projectors from one side of the ship to the other. Those augmented fields were raised, a thirty meter wide layer of cold plasma riding in that sheet of negative magnetism. Holes were opened in the field to allow weapons fire to go through, while the computers prepared to close them if necessary to reduce incoming beams.

  The behemoth they were fighting had massive electromag shields, even at one quarter strength, though they hadn’t had the time to inject cold plasma into the defensive screen. They were still strong enough to attenuate the beams of the frigate, bending them, spreading them, turning them from ravening points of energy to spotlights that did little more than pump heat into the hull. The particle beams, originally made of accelerated protons, were stripped of their charges at the ejector port of the weapon, turning them into neutrons which went through the electromag screens as if they weren’t there. Unfortunately, they didn’t do much to the ten meters of alloy and carbon fiber composite armor they struck, doing little more than scarring damage.

  The battleship returned fire. The only thing that saved the frigate was the understandable reaction of the enemy’s crew, only firing what they thought would be enough weaponry to destroy the tiny ship, despite the orders of the Captain.

  Before the beams struck the frigate sent the signal to the missiles she had deployed in the tail, along with the other platforms stationed there. Twenty missiles, eight sensor probes, and ten repair robots turned on their grabber units and jumped out of the tail, darting for the enemy ship. Each of the missiles was capable of accelerating at five thousand gravities for twelve hours. Instead, they had been jury rigged to pull ten thousand gravities for ten seconds, as long as their internal systems could stand the load of inertia, and more than they needed. The probes could only pull a couple of thousand gravities, and had been set to become jamming and spoofing platforms. The robots could pull even fewer gees, and were there mainly to just add more clutter, and hopefully spoil a killing shot.

  It took five seconds for the missiles to close the one thousand two hundred kilometers to the relatively slow moving target, traveling in a mass of dodging targets, using every penetration aid known to the Fleet. They weathered the ill prepared defensive fire, most of them, and struck.

  * * *

  Lt. Commander Cinda Klerk stared in wide eyed panic at the Goliath they were battling. Everything her ship was putting out was striking the monster, and she saw that it was having absolutely no effect. The Joel Schumacher shuddered as lasers struck her hull, tearing through the cold plasma field with some spread. Gigawatt lasers could still do a lot of damage hitting as expanded spotlights, and damage klaxons sounded through the ship.

  “We’re venting atmosphere,” yelled the Chief Petty Officer in charge of damage control over the com link. “Multiple locations.”

  The ship bucked again, hull breaches turning into atmosphere jets. Casualty figures started coming through the link, and Cinda winced as she looked at the names of people sh
e saw every day. A side holo showed a representation of the ship, blinking red showing the damage. The stern laser ring was off line, as was one of the bow grabbers.

  The ship shuddered in a different manner as she was struck by particle beams, protons ripping deep into her hull through the weak electromag field. “Get us out of here,” yelled the Captain to her Helmsman. “Behind the comet.”

  The man acknowledged and sent the command, and the frigate started to drop back behind the ice ball. That was his last action in this life.

  The three meter wide particle beam ripped through the ship, past eighty centimeters of armor and hull, into the ship’s machinery, penetrating the thick skin of the central capsule and through the bulkhead of the bridge. The helm and navigation stations were in the path of the angry red beam. One moment Lt. Romanov and Ensign Garibaldi were at their boards, sitting in their armor in the most protected part of the ship. The next they were gone, converted to vapor where they sat, while the beam continued through the opposite bulkhead.

  Cinda stared in horror as two officers she worked with on a daily basis were converted to superheated steam and ash. The remains and the molten metal were immediately pulled from the chamber as all of the atmosphere evacuated. The Captain saw the rest of the crew staring through their suit armor faceplates at the place where their crewmates had sat, and she realized they would all be dead without the armor they wore.

  “Auxiliary control,” she shouted into the link. “Get us behind the comet, and keep it between us and the enemy.” She received the acknowledgement from the petty officers at that station and turned her own attention back to the tactical plot, just before all bridge systems winked out.

  “Everyone to CIC,” she shouted to the rest of the surviving bridge crew over the link. Without power the bridge hatch refused to open. The Com Officer pulled open the emergency crank, pushed an extension of his gloved hand into the opening, and engaged the mechanism. The door slid open, a little slower than it would have with its own motors, revealing a corridor that had been splattered with pieces of melted bulkhead.

  “Where’s the nearest working lift?” she called out to damage control over the link.

  “There are none, Ma’am,” replied the Chief, his voice tense with tension. “The corridor you are in is blocked about fifty meters around the next curve.”

  “Grab the damage control equipment in that locker,” said Cinda to her Tactical Officer, motioning toward the small marked door on the side of the corridor.

  Jakardo nodded and ran to the locker, pulling it open and removing the pack.

  “We’re going to try to make it to the CIC,” she told the rest of her people. I’ve got to get to a place where I can do something to affect this fight. She was linked into the Combat Information Center, which was now functioning as an auxiliary bridge, and could see everything they saw through the link into the occipital cortex of her brain. But it wasn’t the same as being there.

  A moment later they were at the blockage, and Cinda wondered if she hadn’t made another mistake not trying to go around. A thick structural beam was protruding from the bulkhead and forming an obstacle they couldn’t get through. Jakardo didn’t hesitate. He opened the pack and pulled out the nozzle of the emergency laser that was attached to a power unit in the case. He flipped it to cutting and engaged the beam, sending sparks flying as he started to slice through the tough alloy.

  Cinda, linked into Damage Control, saw that many other such small battles were going on all over her ship. People trapped, or trying to rescue crewmates, or get systems online that had been smashed in the couple of seconds she had engaged the enemy battleship.

  She glanced at the take from the tactical, at the strike at the battleship, and almost cheered in triumph.

  “We have another problem, Ma’am,” came the voice of the Exec over the link, and that feeling of triumph died as quickly as it had birthed.

  * * *

  The Captain cursed as the tiny enemy ship disappeared behind the great ice ball to his front. A score of lasers and a dozen particle beams struck the comet, burning through the halo and into the ice and rock that were now in the way of the enemy ship. There was no way they were going to burn through that much material in time to engage that ship. Cowards, he thought, dismissing the bravery it had taken for a ship that size to engage his battleship in close combat, when it would have been better served to stay in hiding.

  “We have missile tracks,” yelled out the Weapons’ Officer, his four hands working furiously, hitting the panels on his board.

  “Where?” asked the Captain, his horned head turning toward that officer. That was the last word he would ever utter.

  * * *

  Frigates carried destroyer class missiles, fifty tons of grabber units and crystal matrix batteries, with two hundred megaton warheads. But where a destroyer would carry about sixty of the missiles, most frigates only had magazine space for twenty. It was still enough firepower to devastate a continent, enough to take out a frigate class pirate, but not enough to overwhelm the defenses of a capital ship.

  The missiles had a flight time of five seconds from standing start to impact, a distance of one thousand, two hundred kilometers. At ten thousand gravities they built up to a velocity of four hundred and ninety kilometers a second, an insufficient speed to accomplish much in the way of penetration against the ten meter thick armored hull of the Goliath.

  The ship’s defenses were not ready for the attack from the stern side. Still, in the couple of seconds they had to engage, they took out nine of the missiles. They also targeted and destroyed all of the slower probes and repairbots that had been sent their way. Something that accomplished nothing but the wasting of their firepower on things that couldn’t hurt them, just as the human captain had planned.

  Seven missiles hit the stern side of the ship. Again, their velocity was negligible, not enough to penetrate the armor of the vessel. The two hundred meg warheads were something else entirely. Each blasted into the hull, their antimatter warheads acting like shape charges, blowing holes tens of meters wide and injecting superheated plasma into the interior of the ship. Hundreds of Ca’cadasan crew died in an instant. Internal machinery was vaporized, and corridors filled with that hellish vapor, making it a living hell for a couple of nanoseconds. Given time, the blasts would have dissipated within the massive structure of the vessel. There was no time.

  Hangars, landing spaces for shuttles, fighters and even small hyper capable vessels, had been left open to space, only their cold plasma fields separating them from vacuum. When readied for battle the hangars would have been protected by eight meter thick doors, which had been left open so that the shuttles and fighters could be quickly launched. The brains of four of the missiles located the opening, something they had been programmed to seek and hit. Two missiles hit the hull of the ship along with the other seven of their brethren that had struck the stern, just missing the opening. The other two streaked through the opening, into the hangar, and detonated with four hundred megatons of fury.

  Even that would not have killed the massive ship. Two courier vessels in the hangar, twenty thousand ton hyperdrive messengers, added their antimatter stores to the blast, which vaporized several holes through the armored deck and into the missile magazine below. Scores of warheads went off, their antimatter breaching containment and setting off still more missiles.

  That was more than even the massive ship could handle, and microseconds after the human missiles detonated the vessel was expanding plasma and particles, a miniature sun that only died when its constituent matter had spread far enough to cool. The thinning blast wave hit the comet, pushing it away while hundreds of thousands of tons of ice flared into vapor.

  Just before the ship exploded a quartet of Ca’cadasan missiles sped from their launch tubes, the last strike of the ship, initiated by the alert Weapons’ Officer as his last act.

  Those missiles, two hundred ton capital ship killers all, left the forward tubes, through one th
ousand meters of magnetic accelerator at thirty thousand gravities. They also carried the momentum of the ship, point zero one light. The missiles didn’t accelerate from this point, they decelerated, trying to kill that momentum so they could head back and look for the target they had been programed to seek, an enemy ship in hiding near the comet. Their computer brains set them into a series of changing vector corrections, curving them through space, taking off some velocity here, adding more there, until they were shooting around the comet and scanning for the target. That target was not hard to locate, radiating the heat of a small star against the background of the cold body of the comet. The missiles made the final vector correction and pushed all of their acceleration into a straight line, heading for the damaged frigate.

  * * *

  Cinda blanched as she looked at the profiles of the incoming missiles. Time till impact, forty-five seconds, said the ship’s computer in her mind. Cinda looked at the schematic of the ship and her heart sank further. One laser ring out, half the counter missile tubes on the least damaged side of the ship gone. Hangar deck wrecked, and over half of the life pods destroyed or out of action.

  “All crew who can make it off, abandon ship,” she called out over the com. “The rest of you, man your stations and fight the ship.”

  She wondered how many would just run for it, no matter her orders. She was gratified to see the acknowledgements coming back that let her know most of the crew were staying at their stations. She wasn’t sure it would make any difference, but there was always the chance.

  “We’re through,” yelled Jakardo over the com.

  The Captain turned to see the beam now lying on the floor of the corridor, a couple of bridge crew making their way over. Cinda pushed ahead and jumped over the obstacle next, then ran down the corridor. The artificial gravity was fluctuating, her steps throwing her into the ceiling at times, pushing her hard into the floor at others.