Exodus: Machine War: Book 1: Supernova.

by Doug Dandridge

  The attack craft mounted their own weapons, lasers, projectile weapons only useful out to about three hundred kilometers, their own missiles. They fired on the counter-missiles, blasting most of them out of space before they could close. Three got through, and two of the enemy weapons exploded in space as the one megaton warheads detonated in head on explosions. Laser took out five more of the enemy vessels, while particle beams, only effective out to two hundred thousand kilometers, killed two more. Which left four to come into attack range and strike at their targets. Two were direct hits, two near misses, and when the flares died two heavily damaged Imperial vessels, the cruiser and a destroyer, were all that were left. They lost acceleration, Gjoa down to less than a hundred gravities, while Xuanzang could barely make two hundred.

  * * *

  “Shit,” cursed Khrushchev as she saw her rear screen effectively cease to exist on the tactical. The enemy had also been hurt, but there were still eight coming on, and the two damaged ships were really in no shape to stop them.

  “New Potsdam. Mason, I want you to drop to the rear of the convoy and engage those ships at range as long as you have missiles. We’ll drop back to help as soon as we take care of Bogey Two. Good luck to you and your crew.”

  The Com Officer typed on his board, converting her commands to the grav pulses the heavy cruiser could read. After a few minutes he looked up. “Captain Mason acknowledges, and wishes us luck in return.”

  “Roebuck and Jeannette have engaged Bogey Two,” came the report from CIC. A few moments later he continued. “Destroyers are also firing missiles.”

  “When do we come within range?”

  “One minute and nine seconds,” responded CIC. “We will be able to add our fire to theirs on the third volley.”

  And unfortunately, all of those ships but Stewart will be out of hyper capable missiles, and she’ll only have two more volleys before she’s out. Damn, but we need the dual purpose missiles out here.

  “Enemy is firing, twelve of their attack ships, I mean missiles.”

  And we don’t know what we mean, thought the Commodore. But whatever they are, they can only seem to fire one at a time. Or maybe they only have one on each ship. Ten seconds later that was answered in the negative. “Enemy is firing another volley.” And ten seconds later a third was released. Twenty seconds after that Drake bucked slightly as she sent a volley of twenty hyperdrive missiles toward the enemy, followed a moment later by Endurance’s volley.

  The battle cruisers each carried four hundred missiles, about half of what a Fleet hyper VI scout capital ship carried. While seeming an impressive number, only forty of those carried a hyperdrive. By contrast, a Fleet heavy cruiser like New Potsdam carried six hundred of the slightly smaller cruiser missiles, and eighty of those were hyper capable, as many as both Command battle cruisers carried between them.

  Twenty seconds later the battle cruisers fired their second volley, and had shot themselves dry of capital class hyperdrive weapons. Greenville followed suit a minute later, and a minute after that the destroyers fired, letting off their two volleys.

  The missiles from the forward screen came in first, thirty-two cruiser and thirty two destroyer class weapons, followed by a second volley of eight missiles fired from Stewart in her third and fourth volleys.

  This time the enemy ships tried something different. Each released another volley of weapons, followed by two more. But only one was targeted on the Imperial vessels, this time on the Commodore’s group, while the others headed out on paths that would take them into the courses of the human missiles. All of those weapons were destroyed, taking over fifty of the human missiles with them, leaving a mere dozen to continue in to the attack. One enemy ship sustained heavy damage, while the rest came through the barrage combat effective, if not all completely unharmed. Stewart’s lone third and fourth volley came in with less than overwhelming numbers, and failed, with the exception of a single hit that blotted one of the million and a half ton vessels from space.

  The three enemy volleys, also combined into one wave, came screaming in at the human ships. Again the counters took out some, while close in weapons got some others. But this time the majority of the missiles hit targets, and the entire forward screen was destroyed.

  There was shock on the flag bridge as they watched the two cruisers and four destroyers drop from the plot. And the red arrows of nine weapons that could not find targets altered vectors and headed for the battle cruisers.

  * * *

  Four of the eight ships from Bogey One decelerated at twelve hundred gravities, aiming to match velocities and capture Gjoa. Xuanzang tried to defend her flag, firing her surviving laser ring at the closing vessels. She scored some hits, but achieved very limited results against the electromagnetic fields and armor of the enemy ships. They returned fire, and burned large holes through her hull, first crippling, then causing a containment breach in her antimatter stores which blew the ship into a cloud of plasma that catastrophically translated the moment it formed.

  Two of the ships stopped at a distance after matching velocities with the cruiser, while the other two closed to within fifty meters of the warship and started sending objects across through the linked hyperfields. Man sized objects, if not always quite manned shaped. They burned through the hull, fighting their way in against the resistance of Marines and armed Spacers. They lost half their numbers, and more came across the space, until they overwhelmed the resistance and entered the cruiser.

  Moments after the invaders started to swarm through the ship it blew, containment breach set off by its own crew when they realized what had got on board, and what their fate would be. Gjoa converted into plasma, taking her crew and every invader aboard into total annihilation. Blast, radiation and heavy pieces of the cruiser struck the two close in enemy ships, all but destroying them and sending their remains into a catastrophic translation as well, leaving only six vessels for Bogey One to continue after the convoy.

  * * *

  Khrushchev cringed as she watched the last two icons of her following screen disappear from the plot, along with a pair of enemy ships. The screen had accomplished its mission, inflicting much greater damage on the enemy, trading one point four million tons of warships for over eight million tons of the enemy. They had fought in the best tradition of the Fleet, never giving up. And at the moment all of that rang hollow in the Commodore, as she thought of the men and women who had given their lives to protect the innocent. Men and women who had their own plans for the future, families, some already in existence, careers beyond their time in the service. All gone, as if they had never been.

  Not as if they had never been, thought the Commodore as she watched the icons of the first enemy weapons come at her ships. Not ever that.

  And they had learned something when the enemy weapons had turned toward her battle cruisers. The enemy weapons out ranged hers in hyper, and now the first nine of those long ranged weapons were about to enter attack range of her largest warships. She would soon find out how the big ships’ defenses stacked up to the offensive capabilities of those weapons. I wonder if we would fare better if we still mounted plasma torpedoes, like Fleet ships.

  Those weapons were really considered obsolete, though Fleet vessels still mounted them as backups. But Exploration Command vessels no longer mounted them, freeing up space to sensors and labs. She had heard that they were still proving useful in the war with the Ca’cadasans, especially in a missile defense role in hyper. And she would not get the chance to try out that doctrine here.

  There seemed to be no need, as the counter missiles of the battle cruisers, something they did carry in similar quantities to Fleet vessels, even the hyper variant, reached out and destroyed all but one of the enemy weapons, while the laser armament of two capital ships took care of the remaining singleton.

  Her own volleys had damaged another two enemy ships, but they seemed to be learning, and she had wasted all of her long range fire power for little result. The enemy had
again fired some of their weapons in a counter-missile role, at which they proved to be very effective. Greenville continued to launch all of her volleys while she had them, putting a total of forty hyper capable missiles in space. But they were coming in as five separate waves, each too weak to overwhelm the enemy defenses.

  The second wave of enemy weapons came in, this time a double volley of twenty-four, just minutes behind that first strike at the battle cruisers. Again the defenses held, though one of the destroyers was hit hard by a weapon detonating just off its port bow, and Endurance took some damage from a pair of near misses, while Greenville sustained heavy damage from a very near miss. Otherwise, they weathered the storm, and watched as one last volley came in, to be defeated once again.

  “Bogey Two is increasing acceleration, on a heading straight down our throats,” called out CIC.

  “Perhaps they’re out of weapons,” suggested Captain Timofeyavich. “Each launched forty thousand tons of weapons from a slightly more than one and a half million ton platform.”

  “That would make sense,” agreed the Commodore, hoping her ships would fare as well in the knife fight that seemed to be developing. “But keep our missile defenses ready, just in case they didn’t get the memo.”

  The captains of all five ships acknowledged their orders, and were now in charge of implementing those commands. The Commodore’s job was to assign the tasks to her commanders, while theirs was to fight their ships. The fire of the command was integrated into a single whole, but there was some latitude in how they allotted that fire, or protected their own ships.

  Which a closing speed of point nine six light, the ships would only be in effective laser range, less than a light minute, for about one hundred and twenty-two seconds on approach, pass and recession. Both forces fired on each other as soon as they were about a minute out of that range, the humans firing several seconds before the enemy. The beams reached across space to where they expected their targets to be. Both battle cruisers now presented their broadsides to the oncoming vessels so they could bring all of their laser rings into action.

  Five enemy ships came right into the beams of the pentawatt lasers, their energy focused through powerful gravity lenses that minimized their spread. Electromagnetic fields attenuated the beams, but not enough. More of a factor was the tendency of photons to drop out of hyper, so that only a quarter of their power reached to that distance. Each second more of those highly energetic photons reached target, causing more damage. As soon as the beams struck the enemy ships started evasive maneuvers, boosting up and down, side to side, causing the majority of the beams to miss. The human ships had already started theirs when they had fired, and the enemy never got the first flush of victory that normally started any beam weapon duel. They still got some hits, just not as many.

  As the ships drew closer the power of the beams on contact increased, their targeting solutions improved, and the evasives lost their effectiveness. The Imperial battle cruisers, with their greater mass and generating power, as well as their lower surface to volume ratio, deployed the stronger armor and electromagnetic fields. With their mass they could handle more energy absorbed into their forms, and seemed to have all the advantages. Their beams struck the harder, and one of the enemy ships blew as something inside reacted poorly from the penetration of an X-ray laser.

  At ten light seconds distance more lasers were hitting from both sides than missed. The ships were constantly shifting frequencies, attempting to get their beams past the nanoweave skins of the vessels, which changed their reflective qualities to meet the beams. Almost always a losing battle, as the beams changed to random frequencies each second, blasting past that reflective layer.

  Enough beams were hitting to blast considerable transfer energy into the ships. The toughest armor either side could make blew into pieces as beams sliced through and into the interiors of the ships. On the battle cruisers hundreds of armored crew withered and died as beams penetrated their hulls. Most died instantly as that transfer energy blasted their suits apart. Some, the unfortunate, were in a position where their suits almost protected them, and they died, quickly or slowly, from being roasted alive in their armor.

  Greenville exploded, the victim of several beams that blasted deep into her engineering spaces and caused antimatter to breach containment. One second the eight hundred and fifty thousand ton light cruiser was battling away. The next it was a cloud of plasma that flew swiftly in all directions, disappearing in translation before it could hit any of its companion ships.

  Another enemy ship exploded a few seconds before the forces passed. The Imperial ships had figured out the pattern of the enemy evasives, which didn’t seem to be as effective as their own, repeating every twelve point three four seconds, and the hit rate increased for several seconds before the enemy changed their patterns. Two more enemy ships suffered blasts that ripped out of their hulls and sent them spinning off on different paths, still pursued by the lasers of the human vessels. One of the destroyers, that most damaged previously, detonated in an antimatter breach, sending heat and radiation at random into vessels both friend and foe. The battle cruisers took a pounding, shuddering from multiple hits and the reaction of mass blasted free, or atmosphere venting. All of it fell out of hyper as they left the hyperfield of the owning vessel, including still living crew, a few of which found themselves floating in normal space, light years from the nearest star with no hope of rescue.

  Four enemy vessels passed through the formation of the two battle cruisers and the lone destroyer, all still firing their lasers, as well as particle beams that could, for a few seconds, hit the human ships, ripping further holes in the armored hulls of the Imperial vessels. Turnabout being fair play, the battle cruisers opened up with their own, more powerful particle beams, sending antiprotons into the enemy hulls to explode with the fury of mutual annihilation. The seconds passed where the matter could exist long enough to reach the target, but only one of the enemy ships made it through, streaming particles, clearly heavily damaged.

  “We’re not picking up enough atmosphere from those ships,” called out CIC, who was getting his information from the sensor division of the battle cruiser.

  “That’s because they don’t breathe,” said Khrushchev, sure of what she was now facing. “No asphyxiation, no hunger, no fear. And that will be what we will be fighting out here.” She shivered a bit, remembering the stories she had been told as a child, and what she had studied as an adult. She wasn’t sure if they were the same machines, those developed by her culture. It didn’t really matter. They would not allow organic life to live, and so they could not be allowed to survive.

  Endurance was almost a complete wreck, streaming atmosphere from thousands of holes and gashes through the hull, only two of her grabber units working and sufficient hyperdrive capability to stay in hyperspace, but not translate out. Drake was still battle worthy, barely, with one working laser ring and three quarters of her particle beams. Mihn Quan, the lone surviving destroyer, was the most intact of all the vessels, with only minor damage. Unfortunately, she was also the weakest of the remaining ships, even Endurance still possessing more firepower.

  Mihn Quan was decelerating at maximum while continuing to put all of her laser power onto the remaining enemy ship, which was still on course toward the convoy. Drake was decelerating at four hundred gravities, her current maximum, turned so that her final laser ring could target that ship. Endurance was decelerating at a mere fifty-four gravities, all she was capable of, and really was of no more use to the convoy.

  “What’s the situation with New Potsdam?” she shot the question to CIC, whose job was to monitor the entire tactical situation. She was looking at her own tactical plot, which showed six red arrows still heading into the convoy from that vector, and two sets of eight green arrows each heading their way.

  “New Potsdam has shot her entire hyper missile load at the enemy,” returned the officer who was her connection to CIC. “She reports two kills, and the
last sixteen missiles are two and three minutes from contact respectively.”

  At that moment the tactical plot blossomed with six more red arrows, all heading toward the convoy at just over four thousand gravities, which seemed to be their acceleration limit.

  At the last second Khrushchev stopped herself from ordering a warning sent to the heavy cruiser. Mason knows they’re there, and he’ll react when it’s time to. Mihn Quan was still firing on the enemy, which was still on a course for the convoy, obviously hoping to get within beam weapon range of the ships, if a word like hope could be used with the thing controlling it. She was still scoring hits, and as she watched a laser from the enemy vessel hit the destroyer and blasted some of her side armor out into hyper, to translate away.

  “I want that ship surrounded with fire,” she barked into the intercom. “Full power, x-rays. Let’s see if we can get them to jump right into the frying pan.”

  The acknowledgement came back, and Drake fired six beams from her final operative ring, each spearing through space about a light second from the enemy ship, forming the spokes of a wheel sixty degrees from each other. As soon as they were streaming past the ship the Drake swung them in. One of the beams hit the enemy ship, which tried to dodge away, running into another one, until three beams made contact, each blasting through armor and into the hull. The enemy ship must have decided then to swing through one of the beams and escape the cage. That would have been a good decision, except the beam she swung into shot right through a gash in the hull and blew out the entire side of the vessel. It spun in space for a few moments, then exploded into plasma.