Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  “I hope they are too,” said Samantha. And not just for their sakes, though there is some of that sentiment as well. But they are powerful allies, and if the Cacas took them out, the fight becomes that much more difficult. “I’ll send you the news as soon as we get it.”

  “Please,” said Haruko, looking at something off the holo for a moment. “I have to run, Regent. Another of those infernal meetings I’m expected to preside at. But we must schedule a lunch, just the two of us.”

  “I would love that, Countess,” said Samantha, meaning every word. The woman was one of the few true friends she had. “If we ever get the time to do anything for ourselves.”

  The holo faded, and Samantha found herself once again going over the reports of her subordinates, the only way she could keep up with all the information that was flowing toward her from the lower levels of the government. I wish I could read the original reports myself, she thought, looking at a document on the progress of the Bolthole Project. Instead of something filtered through others. But that is the price of assuming a position of high power in an organization like an Empire.

  * * *

  ELYSIUM SPACE.

  What a flippin mess, thought Ambassador the Archduke Horatio Alexanderopolis, looking at the crater on the outskirts of the Brakakak city that lay a hundred kilometers north of the capital. The large piece of station, at least a couple of hundred thousand tons, had come through the atmosphere, propelled by the explosion of the enormously powerful warhead, and slammed into the ground. At least it didn’t hit the center of the city, thought the human, who had been the Ambassador to this Empire for over four decades, learning the language and customs of the majority avians like few other non-Brakakak.

  The damage was still horrific. Buildings into the city for more than two kilometers had collapsed, parks and open areas incinerated many kilometers further in. The strength of modern building materials underscored the fury of the strike. The buildings could have withstood a close blast by a megaton device with only surface scarring. To completely collapse them took quite the ground strike, on par with the most powerful of ship launched kinetic weapons.

  “How many?” he asked the Brakakak who sat beside him in the transport.

  “Three hundred thousand here,” answered High Lord Grarakakak, the leader of the Elysium Empire. “We estimate about a hundred thousand of them were children.”

  The Ambassador winced at that figure, knowing that the birdlike creatures loved their children more than anything. And were willing to go to any lengths to protect them.

  “The total across the world, including the station, is just under ten million,” continued the leader of the Empire, now sole ruler since they were at war. The soulful brown eyes of the avian looked into those of the human for some moments, before looking back out over the city. “We have evidence that the Knockermen were involved in getting the foul creatures onto our station. Somehow, they captured one of our light cruisers and used it to get the assault force onto the station. And while the Cacas were taking the wormhole gate and getting their force to your station, the Knockermen moved a device that must have been provided them by the big aliens to take out our space dock, and the ships in it.”

  “What are you going to do about the Knockermen now?” asked Horatio, almost afraid of the answer. He was hoping that this attack, much as he regretted it happening at all, would galvanize the Brakakak to fully commit to the war against the Ca’cadasans. Now it looked like they might be forced to concentrate on their internal problems once again.

  “Oh, they will pay for this,” said the grim faced High Lord. “You can count on that. They can count on that. But we must find the ones who are responsible. We are not barbarians, to simply go in and kill sentient beings indiscriminately. We will teach them a lesson, and punish the guilty, while protecting the innocent.”

  I was afraid of this, thought the human, looking away, back out of the transport at the devastation outside. Not even planned devastation, more of an accident than anything else. And now the angry Brakakak would put most of their effort into finding and punishing the rebels in their own Empire. “And what will you do with your fleet? Recall it?”

  “No,” hissed the angry avian, surprising the Ambassador. “These creatures who brought these weapons into our home system must also be punished. The fleet we have dispatched to aid your Empire will continue to their destination, and will continue on to whatever deployments your Admiralty decide upon. We will, in fact, send more ships to you, since whatever actions we will take against our internal rebels will involve mostly lighter vessels, cruisers on down, and ground forces. So we will send you more battleships.”

  “That, would be most welcome, Lord Brakakak.”

  “And what of your station?”

  “With the wormhole down, we won’t know until a message comes over the hyperwave link,” said the Ambassador, his anxiety level spiking as he thought about what might happen to their war effort without the wormhole generators.

  “Pray the Gods it is still intact,” said the High Lord, giving a very human head shake, such as he had learned from his time with the Ambassador. “But even if it is not, we are sure that you will find a way. Your people are most innovative, and they will come up with something.”

  Horatio looked over at his old friend. I hope you are right, High Lord. But I think we need that station, and if they brought some warheads onto the Donut like the one that destroyed your dock, I fear that it may be gone.

  * * *

  CAPITULUM, JEWEL.

  Countess Esmeralda Zhee slammed her fist against the arm of her chair once again, causing all the people in the room to flinch. She was the smallest person in the room, barely a meter and a half tall. With a different skin tone and finer features she could have been mistaken for a Malticoran. As a countess, she was not of the highest social rank in the chamber either. But she held political power well beyond that of anyone else in the gathering, due to over a century sitting in the Lords’ chamber, dealing and making connections. And now that damned Archduke has pulled half of my political following away from me. I will not stand for that.

  “There really is not a whole lot we can do,” said Duke Walther Konig, frowning. “I know none of us want to admit it, but there it is.”

  Zhee looked from face to face, seeing no hope in any of them. It’s not that we’re not patriots, thought the Countess, who had dueled politically with three Emperors, including this new upstart. We are the greatest of patriots, working for the good of the Empire, trying to bring the most competent leadership to the rule of the realm. Our own.

  “I am not willing to accept that there is nothing we can do,” said Zhee, scowling at her last supporters. “This Emperor is going to lose this war, and none of us, the entire species, can afford that loss.”

  “He just won a great victory,” said Konig, glaring at Zhee. “I’ve studied what I have been able to gather from the reports coming back from that battle. Sean did not always make the best of decisions, but his generalship was competent. And, seeing as how he is so young, I am sure he will only improve.”

  “If we are still around by that time,” screamed Zhee, pointing her finger at the Duke. “Now, are you on my side, or theirs.”

  Konig smiled and stood up, looking around the table. His gaze fell last on Zhee. “And you think you would make a better leader than Sean?” he said with a laugh. “You, who have no military experience. Who have no claim to the loyalty of the military, who you treat as idiotic servants who need to kiss your ass. I’m through with you, Zhee.”

  “I’ll break you, your Grace,” said Zhee, standing up to her full height, something which was not intimidating in the least. “I’ll make sure that you are thrown out of the Lords.”

  “I have a hereditary seat, Countess,” said the Duke with a barking laugh. “It will remain in my family for life. Now, have fun sitting around playing your power games. I will be talking with the people who actually have the best interests of the Empire at he
art. And not a bunch of elitist fools who only care about themselves.” The Duke gave the room a nasty gesture with his hand and walked from the chamber.

  Zhee stared after the man, realizing that she had lost yet another powerful supporter. She was stunned for a moment, before her personality asserted itself, and she only felt hatred toward everything and everyone who stood in her way. I will get back at them. At all of them, no matter what it takes, or how long.

  Chapter Six

  Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.

  Curtis LeMay

  FENRI SPACE. NOVEMBER 26TH, 1001.

  Brigadier General Samuel Baggett winced as he watched another kinetic warhead come down, this one a strike to one of the refugee camps they had established to protect the former slaves of the Fenri. Some of those slaves had told him that such would happen, that the Fenri, having their property taken from them, would now want to destroy that property. But the humans and their allies hadn’t really believed it. And now millions of those slaves had died, with over a billion more at risk.

  And we really don’t have any way to protect them, thought the soldier, looking at a feed from the area. It was heartbreaking, to see so many sentient beings of all ages lying dead on the ground, not counting the thousands who must have been vaporized by the strike. We didn’t have bunkers to put them in, and the few remaining Fenri underground shelters had filled up too fast. Dammit, we needed our own bunkers for our people.

  He felt responsible for what was happening to these people. They had not asked for the New Terran Empire to come in and make them the targets of their former masters. They had freed the slaves as more of an afterthought of taking the planet. But in freeing them, they had become responsible for them.

  “Assault shuttles are on approach,” came a call over the com net.

  Baggett closed his eyes for a moment, dismissing all concerns for collateral damage. I’ve got a job to do.

  The enemy had come into orbit several hours before, fighting the few shore batteries the Lt. Gerneral Nowitski had allocated to challenge them. It had not been enough. The humans hadn’t really expected it to make much of a difference. The enemy had taken out the orbital defense satellites at range, what few had been left, in an uneven exchange of fire, then closed to far orbit to start pounding the planet with kinetics. Fifteen laser batteries and a dozen missile platforms had fired on them, getting a couple of hits that did some damage, before being taken out from space. The problem was, even though the planet was now covered with electronic warfare jamming that made it almost impossible for space based sensors to look through, and holographic projections to spoof visual, once a weapon fired on orbital platforms, it could be targeted and hit.

  The refugee camps had just been too damned big to hide, and the holographic projectors had been in too short supply to cover all of them completely. It may have seemed cruel to not cover them, but the mission came first, and the cover and concealment of the soldiers was a mission priority.

  Now hundreds of shuttles were flying from the Fenri ships, carrying loads of troops. Accompanying them were hundreds more craft, orbital to atmosphere fighters and ground attack ships that would try to protect the shuttles, then try to gain air superiority and support the troops.

  Baggett looked at the scene on his HUD, then assigned the ground batteries he wanted to engage them with. The order went out, weapons were given missions, and the guns and missiles opened fire.

  High in the atmosphere, dozens of craft exploded, spilling armored troopers into the sky. Not all the hits were to troop carriers, and more than a dozen fighters and attack ships were destroyed as well, raining down their pieces from the sky in fiery trails. The human weapons got off another shot, or sometimes two, before lasers and particle beam strikes came down from above, taking most of them out. The shore guns had all been set on remote control, their crews not on board, so there were few human casualties. Not all of the guns were targeted and destroyed, and several survived to get off more shots. The first wave of the enemy suffered over ten percent casualties, but the survivors came on, and more came in a second wave.

  Baggett tasked the next battalion of guns, tank like lasers, particle beams and projectile weapon projectors, and even more mobile missile batteries. They also took out two and a half times their number in enemy craft before being targeted and destroyed.

  And that’s it, thought the Brigadier, looking at the casualty figures for his antiair assets scroll across his HUD, and seeing no functional weapons. Now all we have left are suit fired weapons, and they aren’t going to do anything to aircraft at altitude.

  “All soldiers, prepare for close assault,” he ordered as the shuttles came lower. His suit comp, much more advanced than those of most of his subordinates, started tracking the paths of the shuttles in his area, with the help of data being sent down by Corps. The comp crunched the data and assigned probabilities to landing zones. Baggett examined the probabilities and made his guesses depending on them, then sent the information to his brigade and battalion commanders.

  The shuttles dropped lower to the ground and streaked at less than a thousand meters altitude toward the flat areas where they would disgorge their troops. Vehicle and suit mounted antiaircraft weapons opened fire, taking one shot and moving, shoot and scoot. Most of the shots were misses, but several craft in each attack formation went down trailing smoke.

  Baggett grunted in satisfaction as twelve of the fifteen assault zones that his comp had suggested, and that he had approved, turned out to be accurate sites, while three others that had been considered low probability turned out to be targets.

  “They’re coming in,” he called into the com. “All units are weapons hot. Give them hell.”

  The shuttles dropped their troops over the landing zones, the small forms of armored Fenri falling on grabbers out of the aircraft and lowering themselves to the ground. Particle beams and hyper velocity rockets reached into the air to swat many of the enemy down. The Fenri fired back, engaging the humans at a major disadvantage, out in the open, while the Terran troops shot from cover. Hundreds of Fenri dropped heavily from the sky in smashed and broken suits, while more were released, including the first mecha of the invasion, five meter tall suits piloted by Fenri, their version of light attack vehicles.

  Fenri reached the ground, as they had been bound to given their numbers. The ones on the ground started to assault the human positions around them, not making much headway, but at least distracting the humans from firing on the dropping infantry, allowing more of them to make it to the ground and feed the assault.

  “Tank battalion,” yelled Baggett into the com, as his infantry closed with the enemy to engage in very close combat. “Prepare to assault with task groups on these axes, at points alpha, delta, gamma, omega and epsilon.” He looked at the areas he had specified, wishing he had enough tanks to hit all the landing zones, and realizing that he did not. We’ll just crush the ones we can, and work from there, he thought.

  * * *

  Lt. Jay Cummings checked out the terrain on the holographic plotting system of his Mark IV King Tyrannosaur. The one thousand ton monster was at one hundred percent operating capacity, and was thus the most dangerous war machine on the surface of the planet. With over a meter of the toughest carbon alloy known to the human race, and destroyer class electromag projectors, it was almost impossible to kill by anything not specifically made to do so. Unfortunately, there were things on and above the battlefield that were made to destroy vehicles such as this.

  “All weapons go,” said the gunner, in his own turret compartment to the right of the officer’s.

  Cummings looked at the schematic, satisfied that the main magrail cannon and its two coaxial particle beams were all goes. A quick look showed that the laser crosses on both sides of the turret, primarily defensive weapons, were also charged and ready.

  “We ready, Moesta?”
he asked the Staff Sergeant who was his second in command, and the one who would fight the tank if he were killed.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be, LT,” said the woman from her compartment at the back of the turret. “Cold plasma is fully injected into the electromag field.”

  “Tank Charlie Two,” said Cummings into the com. “Ready to rock?”

  “You’ve got that right, LT,” said the commander of the only other tank in the reduced platoon, which was missing its third unit, destroyed in an earlier battle. “Let’s hit these bastards.”

  “Wait for the signal from company,” cautioned the Lieutenant, looking at the tactical plot and seeing the other four tanks of the reduced company on the holo. They had started out with ten of the monsters, and Cummings was pretty sure that they would have even fewer after this action, no matter the outcome.

  “All units, let’s roll,” came the call of the Captain over the com.

  “That’s it,” yelled Cummings, feeling the combined rush of fear and excitement raise his adrenaline levels through the roof. “You heard the man, second platoon. Let’s roll.”

  Acknowledgements came from the other six crew members, then the commander of the second tank. The driver started them forward, using the company commander’s vehicle as his guide. The Tyrannosaur accelerated ahead, reaching a hundred kilometers an hour within seconds. That was only half speed, but it was all they needed for this mission.

  “We’re being targeted,” called out Moesta. “I think we can expect some KE rounds.”

  “Evasive maneuvers,” called out the CO.

  At that command all of the vehicles went into seemingly random paths. Adjusting their velocity, slowing down, speeding up, turning from side to side. Their jamming systems went to full out, adding to the interference that was already spoofing enemy sensors. Smoke ejectors added their mix to the atmosphere, meshing with the holographic projections that hid everything underneath from visual.