Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2

by Doug Dandridge

  The last to fall were the missiles of the human battle fleet, coming within seconds of the others. Only two hundred made it through the counter missiles. Of those a mere thirty-four came through the close in systems. Two more Ca’cada battleships were damaged, while a cruiser and two scout ships flared like miniature stars until their plasma had spread too far to sustain its fire.

  “Enemy task force is firing,” called out tactical as the Low Admiral thanked the gods the flagship had escaped unscathed. Thousands of red arrows blossomed on the holo tank, vector paths and velocities appearing underneath as data were gathered.

  “All ships fire at will,” ordered the Low Admiral, his voice a roar. “Obliterate them.”

  “They are firing energy weapons at us, my Lord,” said tactical. “Scout Graco-12 reporting that they are taking lasers in the Gamma range on their hull.”

  “Return fire with our own energy weapons as well,” ordered the Low Admiral. “Statistical probability targeting until we get within direct fire range.”

  Between the fleets was now played the game of laser tag, ships firing their energy weapons, as computers attempted to gauge the whereabouts of enemy ships still light minutes away. Frequencies were changed back and forth in an attempt to defeat electromagnetic fields, cold plasma shields and reflecting nanosurfaces. Minor damage was done here or there in the opposing fleets, as ships maneuvered at random to escape incoming beams. Missiles intersected beams by chance, containment fields rupturing under the heat of coherent light, small suns flaring in the blackness of space.

  The fleets closed the distance under the limitations of normal space. Missiles grew less effective as the range decreased, cutting down on their terminal velocity as distance closed. While the energy weapons grew in effectiveness.

  * * *

  “Launching long range counters,” called out the tactical officer. HIMS Archduchess Constance Leonardo bucked slightly as she cycled counter missiles into the fleet defense plan, while the main missile launchers continued to pump out offensive weapons. Six thousand vector arrows crowded the holo tank, starting to cluster some as they picked targets. Larger arrows showed groupings of successive waves of missiles, moving out from the enemy ships and headed toward the fleet. Waves of green arrows showed the offensive power of the human force moving toward the enemy. Successive waves were not as well organized as the earlier waves. The human ships were trying to get everything they had off before they became floating hulks, or clouds of plasma.

  “Returns coming in from sensors on the first strikes,” called out tactical. “Best guess estimates being correlated.”

  “ Dammit,” growled the Admiral as he watched the figures coming up on the repeater screen. Only one of their monster ships destroyed, with damage to a probable three others. One or two cruisers and maybe a half dozen destroyers. Less than a fifteenth of their firepower.

  “Well,” said Lamborgini, giving him a soft smile, “we only expected to distract them. Maybe sting them a little.”

  “Now we hope that our surprise is complete,” said the Admiral, nodding. “Though I don't think we'll be around to see it.”

  “Long range counters entering enemy missile envelop,” called out tactical. “Engaging.”

  Heinrich watched as enemy vector arrows dropped off the plot as the counter missiles attacked. Some were dropping off. Not enough. And the following waves were soon to come into the range of the longest counters, while the first wave was coming to the attention of the short range weapons.

  “Bannon and Ji both register as hits,” called out the tactical officer, after enemy missiles intersected the hulls of the two destroyers. The green icons blinked red for a moment and then faded. With them faded the lives of over six hundred men and women.

  “Lancaster hit by lasers,” continued the tactical officer, as another icon flashed red. This time the icon did not fade, but continued to blink from green to red. The ship was still in the fight, but had suffered near catastrophic damage from the lucky laser hit.

  The second wave of missiles entered the envelope of the destroyer and cruiser screen. Several of the battleship icons flashed red, all but one continuing to blink while that one faded out. At the same time two cruisers and a trio of destroyers blinked red and faded away.

  “Hits registered on one of the enemy battleships,” said the tactical officer.

  Heinrich watched the feed as four missiles blossomed into antimatter fire and radiation. They blotted out the long range view of the enemy vessel. As the fire receded the flag bridge crew cheered as the enemy ship came back into view. The front end of the ship had a chewed up look, damaged from the blasts of several multi gigaton warheads. The ship had a slow spin on it, as if it could no longer control its own motion.

  “Prepare for impact,” came the voice over the shipboard net. The holo tank misted over for a moment, red arrows disappearing from view. Some came back into view, while others became part of the fuzzy mass that the jamming had made of them.

  “We haven't seen that before,” said Lamborgini as the ship juked in several directions at once, overloading the compensators for a moment. She grunted as she was pushed back into her couch, then pulled up into her armor.

  “Didn't expect they would give all their capabilities away,” grunted Heinrich as he settled back into his couch.

  The ship bucked again, this time in one direction, then bucked upward. Klaxons began sounding through the flag bridge as lights dimmed, then emergency lights came on. The holo tank faded out completely.

  “We've been hit,” called out Lamborgini, looking at the dead repeater screens by their couches.

  “But how bad?” asked the Admiral, pounding an armored fist on his couch armrest. “Dammit. I need to know what's going on.”

  “Even if you can't do anything about it?” asked the Flag Captain, looking squarely in the Admiral's eyes.

  “Especially if I can't do anything about it,” said the Admiral, grimacing. “Especially if I can't do anything about it.”

  The lights came back on and the emergency lamps went out. A second later the holo tank came back to life as the secondary feeds from the ship's sensors and com circuits routed through. The ship bucked again from a near miss, then sections of the holo faded out as radiation overloaded part of the ship's sensory skin. The holo remaining showed that most of the screening ships had been swept away, and most of the battleships were blinking with damage, even as a pair of the dots faded away.

  “Dammit,” yelled the Admiral as a temporary sun blossomed among his fleet on the repeater screen. “How much are we hurting them?”

  “No way of telling sir,” said the tactical officer from the other side of the holo tank, his face a mask of concentration as he tried to force his systems to pierce the new and improved jamming the enemy was putting out. “We've got to be hurting them some. But I don't know if it will be enough.”

  Leonardo bucked again as energies struck, klaxons sounding while damage control reacted.

  “B ring has been heavily damaged,” called out the tactical officer. “Port forward missile batteries have been destroyed.”

  Something slammed into the ship and lights dimmed yet again. Heinrich looked up at the ceiling of the flag bridge, which was buried in the center of the heavily armored central capsule. He could imagine the destruction to the areas of the ship outside of these refuges. Where about a third of the crew would be working at their battle stations or on damage control parties. And more would be leaving the three central capsules as the battle raged, replacing casualties and forming new damage control parties.

  “Damn,” cursed Heinrich yet again. “I wish we knew what was happening to those sons of a bitches out there.”

  The ship bucked once again, and the holo tank went out again.

  * * *

  “Their ships are tough,” said the tactical officer, staring into the holo of the enemy fleet. Those ships were being pounded by the missiles and beam weapons of the Ca'cadasan ships. The jamming was th
rowing off their targeting and defensive systems. But they were weathering the storm better than any vessels the Ca’cadasans had encountered in known memory.

  “The humans have advanced since we last met,” said the Low Admiral, sitting on his throne like chair while his flagship bucked under him. “Twice as many ships and they would probably come out of this fight the victor. But they do not have twice as many ships, do they?”

  “No, my Lord,” said the tactical officer, bowing his head. “They do not, unless they hide them well.”

  “I do not think they would allow us to defeat them in detail if they could help it,” agreed the Low Admiral. “And I think our electronics capabilities have caught them off guard.”

  Three of the enemy battleships flared on the holo, then faded away as they were destroyed, two by missiles, one by the massed beam fire from the Ca’cadasan ships. Only a few of the human screening force were left in place, and another of those flared under fire and disappeared.

  “Hit them with everything we have,” ordered the Low Admiral, waving a hand at the holo. “Hold nothing back until they are no longer in our path.”

  The flagship bucked as the ship fired off another volley of missiles, then shook from the near misses of a pair of enemy weapons. The Low Admiral sat in his chair, showing the nonchalance of a professional naval officer; while he watched the ships of the enemy fleet die one by one.

  * * *

  “I love you, Gunter,” whispered Flag Captain Myra Lamborgini. She lay back in her couch, her breathing heavy as her lungs fought the gravity overload that was getting past the flagship's compensators.

  “Incoming missiles,” shouted the tactical officer.

  Gunter Heinrich looked down at his repeater screen and realized that the HIMS Archduchess Constance Leonardo was a wreck. Over half of her grabber units were off line, which was the polite way of saying destroyed. She had only a couple of functioning counter missile batteries, not enough to cover the entire area around her. Her X and Y laser rings were still functioning, barely, with over half their emitter batteries gone, while A and B rings were complete trash. Two thirds of the electromagnetic field projectors were offline, meaning that most of the hull was uncovered with any kind of beam protection, while those areas that still had some coverage were not covered well.

  They built her tough, thought the Admiral. The ship had absorbed enough firepower to ravage the surface of a planet. That she still functioned at all and had living crewmen was a compliment to her designers and builders. I just wish I knew how many of the bastards we took with us.

  The ship quivered as if struck by a megaton hammer. Delicate equipment sparked for a moment, until the automatic repair systems took over, shunting power around areas that were damaged while nanobots started to rebuild the areas of greatest concern. Heinrich grunted in pain as his internal organs slammed into his skeleton. His skin and muscle compressed against the padding of his armor. Then the vector of force changed directions and he felt his spine crack.

  At least Thomasina will not be feeling this, he thought, remembering that his beloved dog was in stasis in his cabin, as was the protocol for pets kept aboard ship before going into battle. Too bad the same can't be said of Myra and myself.

  “I love you too,” he whispered over the private circuit. “I wish I could have done better.”

  “You did all that you could,” she replied.

  He could hear the physical pain in her voice, realizing that she too had internal damage. Like probably everyone else on the ship.

  “I wish I could have done more,” he said. Then the ship shook again and consciousness left his body.

  The first missile hit the stern of the ship, which was pointed toward the oncoming enemy so the laser rings could come to bear. At point three c, it was not traveling very fast as far as missiles were concerned. It still imparted a considerable amount of kinetic energy, transferred from the multiton missile into the fifteen megaton battleship. The angle of the strike sent the ship into a fast spin, just before the antimatter warhead detonated, sending waves of heat, and radiation into the split hull of the ship.

  The second missile hit amidships, penetrating the side armor and exploding into the vessel. The blast burned into the ship, cutting through the central capsule and incinerating the contents, the crew who were sheltered in that last sanctuary.

  The Admiral, his Flag Captain, and all the members of the fleet command staff, mercifully unconscious, flashed to plasma in an instant.

  The few dozen crewmen who were still alive didn't have enough time for thought as every containment vessel on the ship failed under the hundreds of gigatons of force that had pummeled them. Several hundred warheads, the containment pods attached to the main reactors, and the fuel that was stored for a future that would not come, tons of the oppositely charge material, contacted matter and released additional hundreds of gigatons of energy.

  HIMS Archduchess Constance Leonardo converted to plasma in an instant, blasting outward with the energy of a miniature star. A star that radiated for mere seconds before its plasma had spread out far enough for the light to dim.

  Three other battleships survived to see the flagship's destruction. They and the four remaining escorts were destroyed soon after.

  Chapter 18

  For centuries we have looked for the ultimate weapon, the device that will make all enemies fear to attack us. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have always had that weapon. It is men and women like yourselves, willing to put their lives on the line, that is the ultimate weapon.

  Grand High Admiral Hiraku Yamaguchi in an address to the graduating class of Peal Island Naval Academy.

  Low Admiral Hrissnammartanama cursed as he looked over the damage figures of his fleet. He knew it could have been much worse, and in fact was very light considering. But no commander wanted to see damage to their own forces.

  Two of his twenty battleships were complete wrecks, one totally destroyed, the other a floating hulk. Three were too badly damaged to risk another engagement, while four, including the flagship, had sustained light damage. He had also lost four cruisers with another five damaged, and eight scouts had been taken from his order of battle. Which meant he still had two thirds of his initial firepower to throw at the planet.

  The enemy still had the cruiser force that had hit them from the flank, though he was sure his return fire had at least damaged some of them. And the ships that had carried the fighters. Those fighters had boosted over his formation and were on a heading out of the system. His forces on the perimeter of the system would take care of them, or they would end up being of no consequence.

  “Detach a battleship and four cruisers after their cruiser force,” he ordered his tactical officer, who began to relay the orders to the fleet.

  “What about the ship they sent away before the battle?” asked the tactical officer, looking over at his Admiral. “They must have been important to remove from the enemy's order of battle.”

  “Order two of the cruisers and a quartet of scouts to go after them,” ordered the Admiral. “Also send signals to our outer system cordon to not allow that ship to pass. I don’t want them escaping into hyper and getting whatever it is they want to protect back to their space.”

  The tactical officer shook his head in assent and turned to send those orders as well.

  * * *

  On Sergiov, Lieutenant SG Sean Ogden Lee Romanov watched on the repeat of his viewer that was appearing in his link as the human fleet was destroyed by the enemy. He knew that the action was in the past, having occurred at least fifteen minutes before, but still winced as heavy warheads exploded within the fleet, taking ships and thousands of fellow fleet officers and crew into oblivion.

  In the hollow pit of his stomach he felt his betrayal of the fleet and of all the men and women who had just died. Not that our staying would have accomplished anything, he told himself, watching the plot of the enemy fleet that was still on course for orbital insertion on the planet. Their presence would
at most have resulted in the death of another enemy battleship. Probably not that much, more likely the destruction of a scout ship or a cruiser.

  He thumped his hand against the side of the acceleration tank, needing to feel the pain of the blow to force the condemnation from his mind. He did not need to drop into a pit of despair at this moment. If what he had been told was true he was now the reigning Emperor of the Terran Empire. At time of war, against the threat they had all feared might someday come.

  That thought almost sent him down another tunnel of despair. His father and mother, dead. His elder brothers, ahead of him in the succession, dead. It had never been planned for him to take the throne. He had planned for a naval career, maybe retiring as a Captain or minor Admiral. Maybe an ambassadorship or some other government office. Then becoming the favorite uncle of the next set of heirs, sitting them on his knee and telling them lies about his adventures in the big bad galaxy.

  No, he screamed in his mind as he watched a replay of the destruction of the fleet. This is not supposed to be happening. I am not the proper material to make an Emperor. I am not what my people need at this time. They need someone with the confidence to rule. I'm not even that good a junior naval officer.

  Sean felt the tears come to his eyes, dripping into the glasses he wore in the acceleration tank. A fat lot of good he would be to the human race, when he could not even control his own emotions. When all he could do was wallow in a pity pot that threatened to become the focus of his existence for years to come.