Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

by Doug Dandridge

  “Then use them to screen your men,” said Zhukov with a nod to the one star. “I know they’re no damned good, but they can catch it so the first team can strike back. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said the Brigadier with a smile.

  “Now I want the rest of you to look over our plans and see which is the most likely,” said Zhukov. “Then figure out B and C and we’ll meet back here in an hour. Meanwhile, I’ll try to get on the com to the Countess and see what she thinks. Clear?”

  “Yes sir,” echoed the room. Before the words finished leaving their mouths he was out of his seat and headed for the door.

  I might be going into an unexpected campaign, he thought as his boots hit the hall. But I will not fail from lack of effort.

  * * *

  On the surface of Massadara the people swarmed like ants in a kicked over nest. Civilians ran to the shelters, trying to get their loved ones and few precious belongings underground where they might survive. Shuttles took off and landed as fast as they could cycle, bringing reserve personnel up to the orbital stations and noncombatants back from space. Ground units formed up at barracks, then scattered to their predetermined hiding places.

  “It still looks too conspicuous to me,” said the battery commander as he flew in the air car over the number three laser mount of the ground based defensive artillery.

  The other three mounts of the battery, at the points of a diamond shape five kilometers on a side, blended in with the terrain and vegetation to the point where only someone who knew where to look could find them. But number three, with patches of dying grass and parts where soil had washed away from the plasticrete outer covering, looked just like what it was. A weapons position that had not been well hidden. The laser dome was hidden by the foliage it would burn away on its first shot. But the fifty meter circle around that point made a good facsimile of a target bulls-eye.

  “Not much we can do about it now,” said the CPO of the battery. As they watched dump trucks came along and dropped piles of dirt over the crete, while dozers pushed them flat. “Maybe the hostiles won’t notice anything amiss. After all, they can’t be real familiar with us.”

  The Lt. Commander looked up as a flight of four atmospheric fighters flew over, a contrail behind each ship as they moved at high Mach in the upper atmosphere. He looked back down at the position and frowned.

  “I just hope it doesn’t draw fire to the other mounts before they go into action,” he said, looking down again.

  “Take us back to the control center,” he ordered the driver. At least he and the men he commanded would be under a half kilometer of earth and armor, where they might survive.

  * * *

  “We’ve been picking up the emissions from the capital ships for almost a half hour now, ma’am,” said the operations officer. “The smaller ships are just making their presence known.”

  “Thank you Commander,” said Vice Admiral The Countess Esmeralda Gonzalez, looking at the firming tactical plot in the system holo tank. The tank was zoomed into that small corner of the system, out beyond the hyper limit. There were over fifty of the smaller dots of the escorts, followed closely by the twenty-four larger dots of capital ships. And behind them were twenty dots of an intermediate class of ships. Troop transports? she wondered.

  The outer buoys had been tracking the destroyers for over an hour and sending their limited grav pulse information in-system. Now the emissions were readable into the life zone of the system, strong enough to overcome the dampening of the star’s gravity well.

  Still not clear enough to make a real time guess as to their intentions, she thought. If only they could have waited a few more years. Then we might have had enough wormholes to make instantaneous com a reality.

  “Ground force commander wants to talk with you, ma’am,” said the com officer.

  The Countess looked around the command center of the orbital defenses. The thirty naval personnel were going about their duties with quiet efficiency in the large chamber, monitoring communications and analyzing tactical displays. But she could feel the tension in the air. She wished she could promise all of them, and all of the other personnel under her command, that everything would be alright. But even here, in the most heavily guarded center section of the two hundred megaton fort she could guarantee nothing. Except that she would give them the best she had.

  “Put him on,” she said as she leaned forward in her chair. The tactical display changed view to a large chamber where people in Imperial Army uniforms did much the same as her people were doing.

  “Countess,” said Major General McKenzie Zhukov, smiling through the transmission. “My analysts feel those must be troop transports coming in behind the capital ships. They’ll probably translate after the battle in space is decided and move up to land their ground forces.”

  I think I figured that out myself, she thought, then shook her head. He couldn’t know that I knew that. He’s just offering up the information he has. It would be criminal not to. She looked at the decorations on his uniform, including an armor badge, infantry badge and heavy infantry badge. There was also an award for valor and several minor decorations. At least he has a lot of experience, she thought. That was better than the bureaucrat brigadier she had been saddled with before Zhukov’s arrival.

  “That’s our take on the matter too, General,” she said, looking at a side screen that had a top down view of the system, showing the estimated separation from the coming storm. “Good news bad news, huh.”

  “Yes ma’am,” agreed the man, nodding his head. “They probably aren’t going to blow the planet out from under us. But you can bet they’re going to try and dig us out of the ground.”

  “Are you ready?” she asked, knowing better than to ask if he could stop it.

  “I have a division of light infantry, a brigade of armor and a brigade of heavy infantry,” he said. “I’ve spread them around the ground with an eye for surviving any kind of bombardment they might bring down on us. And I’ve put the mobile ground defense artillery units where they can surprise the hostiles, and maybe hurt them during their landing.”

  “Militia?”

  “I’ve tried to get them under cover and dispersed as well,” said the General, a frown on his face. “Some of their commanders will not listen to reason and insist on holding the cities. And I don’t have time to arrest them and try to make their troops do what I want them to. They’ll just have to do as well as they can, and maybe they’ll be a bit of a distraction.”

  “What about civilians? Are they protected?”

  “We’re trying to move most of them into the wilderness camps,” said the General, the frown turning into a scowl. “Some of the fools insist on going into the under city shelters though, and I’m not going to fight with them if they want to be trapped like rodents in the ground.”

  “Like you will be General?” she said with a smile. The planetary command center was buried under ten kilometers of rock and a hundred meters of armor. But she knew it was still a target.

  “No ma’am, Countess,” said the man, his New Texas drawl coming to the forefront. “I plan to evacuate when they are an hour out from bombardment range. I believe I can fight the battle better out there with my men than trapped in here. We’ll keep this bunker powered up, and maybe draw some fire as a diversion.”

  “Sounds like a good plan, General,” she said, nodding her head. “I’m sorry you had this burden put on you. The Lt. General that is supposed to command the system should be here later today. But I’m afraid he will not be here in time.”

  “No problem, Countess,” said the man, smiling. “When I made general’s rank I was told there might be days like this. I can just pray to God that we all make it through.”

  “Then pray for me, General,” she replied, smiling. “To whatever God you see fit. Gonzalez out.”

  “Hyper translations,” called a voice over the com systems. “Multiple translation emissions at the hyper limit.”

  Chapt
er 10

  I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated. Poul Anderson.

  Pod Leader Klesshakendriakka looked at the tactical display while he fought off the nausea of translation. The display was constantly changing as new information came in from the leading ships of the pod of scouts. Solid red triangles indicated known enemy installations. Hollow triangles gave the locations of probables. As the huge hexaped watched two of the hollow triangles blinked and turned solid, numbers appearing under them, a probable turned to a known.

  “The system is alive with emissions,” said the Subcommander who was in charge of the pod’s tactical systems. “I have electromagnetics across the spectrum. From the third planet, two asteroid belts and several of the outer moons. And a large number of what have to be space vessels.”

  “What about orbiting the planet?” growled the pod leader, looking at that living world on the holo viewer. “That is our primary concern. Not the damned moons or belts.”

  “There are three large energy emissions in orbit,” said the Subcommander, returning his stare as one of the upper nobility were wont to, not fearing the wrath of a military superior but social inferior. “Probably fortresses. The scopes have located and cataloged them by visible spectrum. There also may be a couple of civilian docks as well.”

  The tactical display changed to an orbiting platform. The pod leader did not know what the structures on the outside of the platform signified, but was sure that some were weapons systems. And some of the holes in the structure had to be missile tubes. The platform itself was very large, and to lend it scale there was a large warship in the foreground. Of course this vid was showing what had been going on near the station almost four hours before, the light from that time period just reaching this area at the hyper limit.

  “We also have a number of large vessels in orbit,” said the Subcommander, pointing out what the pod leader already knew. “And some, from their vectors, must have left the vicinity of the planet and are heading out in our direction. So they must have started scrambling as soon as our hyper emissions were detected.”

  “And the information is over four hours old,” growled the pod leader, returning to his earlier thought. “Conditions could have changed drastically since those light waves left the vicinity of the planet. By the hells they must have changed somewhat. They must have known we were coming for two or three hours before we popped out of hyper.” And that’s one of the big tactical problems, thought the pod leader, and not one that we’re likely to solve any time in the near future. No way to sneak up on anyone from hyper. And it takes too damned long to make a trip in from interstellar into a system in sublight.

  “We know that they have probably not manufactured additional fortifications,” said the Subcommander, showing his teeth in a grin. “And they have probably not miraculously teleported more warships into the system.”

  What a sarcastic ass, thought the pod leader, glaring at the Subcommander. He gave a head shake of resignation. “Pulse all active sensors at the inner system. Full sweep, since they already know that we’re here.”

  “Need I remind the pod leader that this will tell them what we are when they receive those sensor pulses.”

  “And need I remind you that light waves will have told them that by that time,” replied the pod leader. “No matter our stealth capabilities.

  “Ship master,” called the pod leader to another male sitting at a panel to his front. “Move us into the system toward the planet. Two hundred and seventy gravities. And signal the rest of the Pod to keep formation.

  “We will go in and fight for our information,” he said to the Subcommander. “So that the group leader will have the best data to judge by.

  “Prepare to fire long range on those orbital targets,” the pod leader ordered the Subcommander. “Let’s stir this hive up a little and see how they react.”

  A pair of long range missiles left the bow of the ship, accelerating at eight thousand gravities. Each of the other seven ships in the pod fired a pair as well. The sixteen missiles headed in system, tracking their targets by the four hour old emissions. Four of the missiles were hard coded to attack the orbital stations. The other twelve were coded to track on those stations and veer off on targets of opportunity as they presented themselves. If those targets were large enough to warrant an attack.

  And may first blood go to us, he thought, as his ships oriented to the planet and surged ahead. The two other pods of the scout force moved at angled vectors to their pod. Anticipation was high as the pack moved in for the kill.

  * * *

  The sixteen groups of forty-eight fighters had matched velocities and vectors by the time the Ca’cadasan scouts had translated at the edge of the system. Their sensors had given them a direction and basic distance to the alien ships as they had left hyper VII and entered N-space with the flood of energy they had released from a smooth transition. It was enough to get them started in the right direction. And the fighters had not had the problem of giving themselves away by hyper emissions.

  “Let’s get this show moving,” said Captain Jessica Frazier, seated in her command chair on the small bridge of an attack fighter. She was the senior flight officer in the system, in charge of the station based fighters. Normally she would command the fighters from a distance. But the distance was too great for any kind of control, and it was thought that she should be on the scene to make the decisions that might start, or prevent, a war. She thought the logic sound, even though she had thought her days of leading fighter groups from the front were over.

  The pilot nodded and punched in his commands on the flight board. The com officer sent the signal to the rest of the craft that set them in motion. Soon all of the fighters and attack craft were in motion toward their target.

  “Keep it down to seven hundred gravities,” she reminded pilot and com. “We don’t want to give our capabilities away too soon.”

  Both officers nodded. The Captain switched her attention back to the tactical display that she had in her head. Four groups of six hundred ton space fighters led the formation, in four V shaped groupings two light seconds apart, between two and three light seconds ahead of the main body. Each of the groups of forty-eight fighters were led by a pair of fighters configured for recon, with attached sensor pods and four probes in place of the internally carried antiship missiles. The other fighters carried said antiship missiles in their internal magazines.

  The other twelve groups followed, made up of mostly fighters, with eight squadrons of one thousand ton attack fighters carrying four of the more powerful Mark XII antiship missiles, as well as a pair of decoys. There were also eight attack birds configured as command and electronic warfare platforms, with more sensor, jamming and decoy equipment on board. Frazier’s bird was one of those.

  “Background static is increasing,” called out the sensor officer. “Everyone is trying to keep everyone else from getting a good look. We’re compensating so far.”

  “And adding our own static to the mix.” said Frazier. “And it’s going to get worse. Much worse, when all those transmissions overlap.”

  The seven hundred and sixty-eight fighters accelerated toward the targets. She knew that two squadrons of ten thousand ton fast attack craft, nineteen ships in all, were also heading toward the target on different vectors. They would provide a real punch if they could get their missiles through.

  “Keep us steady and on target,” she told her pilot, looking at tactical again. “We’ll just see how they react when they see us.”

  * * *

  A cloud had hung over courier ship HLC-12305 on the entire voyage out from Sector HQ. While not told the nature of their priority message, some of the crew had heard the news over the net before leaving the system. The Emperor and his two oldest sons were dead. They were on the way to the system where the third son’s ship was supposed to be. It didn’t take genius to guess what the priority message might
be. And it didn’t take a psychologist to figure that the message would not be welcomed by the young man it was intended for, out on the frontier of the Empire.

  CPO Lysander Popodopolis sat in the tiny bridge of the twelve thousand ton vessel, watching the interplay of shades of red on the viewer that looked out over the dimension of Hyper VII. The ship was decelerating to translation point. The pilot and navigator sat to his front checking their panels, while the com/sensor tech sat to his left looking over her instruments.

  Lysander looked over at the sensor tech as she made a sound in her throat.

  “Something interesting, Melissa?” he asked.

  “Maybe something, Chief,” she answered, looking back at him. “I’m getting a lot of grav waves coming into the sensors. Hyper VII to n-space translations all over the place.”

  “Can you identify who’s making them?”

  “I’m not sure, Chief. But the frequencies are like nothing I’ve ever seen. I’m running them through the comp right now to see if I can come up with a match.”

  Not that she’s got the skills of a chief tech on a destroyer, he thought, or she wouldn’t be here. He was sure she would be able to tell known from unknown though, especially with the help of the ship’s comp. He reached over and punched a panel on the arm of his chair.

  “This is an alert situation,” he called over the com. “Everybody get to your duty stations and be prepared for anything. We may be entering a hot zone.”

  He leaned back in his chair as the last bridge crewman came in, jumping into the tactical seat. It entered his mind to increase the decel to the max and come up short of the hyper limit. Then they could stay in VII and head back to sector. But he would never live it down if it turned out to be nothing but a training exercise in the system ahead. And he had a priority message deliver. And that meant at all costs.

  “Weapons ready,” said the tactical tech, looking up from his boards.