Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike

by Doug Dandridge

  The men, all four of them, hit he switch on their launchers that sent power into their systems. It was just a trickle of power, which might have been detected, but the chance was slight in the moments before they were deployed.

  “Fire,” yelled Cornelius.

  Both men in position pulled their triggers in that instant. Now the launchers would be very detectable by any systems the enemy had. The rockets were propelled out of their tubes by magnetic propulsion, the same as used in mag rail weapons. They shot out to twenty meters, then ignited their engines and rushed at their target, pulling hundreds of gravities of acceleration. In less than one tenth of a second they struck their targets, the towers. The warheads detonated, small nuclear devices of two hundred ton yield.

  The blasts sheared off the tops of both towers, killing whatever was in them. The Rangers hunkered down behind the rocks, all but the two rocket gunners, who rolled as fast as they could behind the rocks, while the one of the remaining two stood and leveled his launcher at the front of the fortress.

  As soon as he had his target in sight he fired his rocket at the heavy doors of the fort. The rocket flew slowly toward the door, programed to give the gunner time to get under cover, and no longer threatened by the anti-rocket weapons that had been in the now truncated towers. This was a one kiloton warhead, which blasted the heavy alloy door off its supports and into the fort.

  The last rocket gunner counted to ten, then raised up and put his warhead into the opening that was now revealed. It too went off in the thunderous blast, actually blowing out part of the door that had just been blasted in.

  “Now,” yelled Walborki, and the first squad jumped over the rocks and ran full speed toward the breached entrance. Nothing fired at them while they ran, and one team entered the fort to secure the entrance, while the other remained outside. Second squad started off, the LT with them, and made it halfway across the hundred meters without issue. That was when a particle beam reached out from the rooftop and hit one of the Rangers, vaporizing a large hole in his torso.

  The Rangers knew better than to stop, and accelerated toward the door. More beams struck out, most misses, one taking off the arm of a Ranger. Third squad opened fire on the roof, their liquid chemical propulsion rifles sending high velocity rounds at the partially hidden Cacas. Each Ranger also launched a grenade, while the two dedicated grenadiers fired bursts of full auto thirty millimeter on arching paths that brought them down on the roof.

  Walborski armed a hand grenade, then pitched it onto the roof at the same time as two other Rangers. All hunkered down for a moment, while the much more powerful explosives of the hand grenades detonated on the roof. Then they headed into the fort, leaving third squad to handle the remaining Cacas on the roof.

  There was very little resistance on the first floor, the mininuke having done its job. Most the Cacas, without armor while thinking they were secure, had been killed by the blast. Those who had survived were either badly wound from shrapnel, burned by fire or radiation, or dazed out of their minds. They were taken prisoner with ease.

  First squad worked their way down to the next level, where there was resistance, though not much. Second went up to secure the level above, then the rooftop, while third leap frogged first and went further down.

  In less than fifteen minutes the fort was theirs, for a total of six killed and eleven wounded. Light casualties for such an operation, as they had killed forty-six Cacas, and captured another thirty-one. The cost still bothered Cornelius, unlike the casualties of any other operation he had been in. These were his men, and he had expected to bring them all through. SFC SanJames must have known something. Or maybe it was just his experience.

  “Good job, Lieutenant,” he told Walborski, motioning for the man with the com to unpack it and turn it on, since there was now no threat of being detected. “I think you’re going to go far in this human’s army.”

  “I wish we could have done it with a lesser cost to ourselves,” he said, turning his haunted eyes on the Sergeant.

  “Oh, give it a break, sir,” said SanJames. “We are the pointy end of the stick. And we are expected to take our objective, to fulfill our mission. We are not expected to all return. Some of your people died today. People I know, Linz, Garcia, Bogart, the others. But we took the objective, one that personally scared the hell out of me. And we did it with casualties far lower than any reasonably intelligent person would expect.”

  “The Captain wants to talk with you, sir,” called out the man with the com set.

  “Give it here,” he told the man, taking the compact set from his hand. “What are your orders, sir?”

  “Just sit tight for now,” said the senior officer. “If they have any transport up there, prep it. The Cacas are on the ground, and more on the way. As soon as we know where they all are, we’ll assign targets. And Lieutenant, good job.”

  The com went off, and Walborski handed the set back to the man tasked to carry it. He had a smile on his face as he looked back at his Platoon Sergeant. Then we get back into the jungle, and the hunt is on.

  * * *

  MASSADARA SPACE. JANUARY 7TH, 1002.

  “Prepare to launch,” said the voice over the intercom. “All ships, prepare to launch. Five minutes and counting.”

  Captain Svetlana Komorov acknowledge the order, sitting back in the command chair on her fifteen hundred ton inertialess fighter. Her small bridge crew of one other officer and two ratings looked at each other with a bit of anxiety, normal before action, even though the next four or five hours would probably be pure boredom. She looked at the screen to the tiny engineering control compartment, where a Chief Petty Officer and a rating were monitoring the power source of the ship, its fusion reactor.

  “All offensive systems are ready,” said the Petty Officer who was also the weapon’s officer of the craft.

  “Inertial navigation system online,” said the Pilot, looking back at his commander. He would have much more responsibility than the other pilots of the wing, as his commander, who was also the wing commander, would have the entire wing to think about. “All drive systems nominal.”

  “Engineer. Anything to report on the reactor?”

  “Reactor at fifty percent, ma’am,” said the Chief, looking out of the viewer. “Testing now.”

  The power dials on the reactor, visible from the bridge, went up to ninety percent, then peaked at one hundred, before dropping back to fifty.

  “Reactor is nominal,” said the Chief. “Negative matter containment at one hundred percent.”

  And that’s all we can do here in the hangar, thought the Captain. They would have to wait until they launched before they could test the electromag systems, which were integral both to their particle shielding and the negative matter bubble needed for their inertialess drive.

  “Launch in one minute,” called out the controller from the ship’s aviation control center.

  “We’ve finished uploading the targeting data, ma’am,” called out the Pilot.

  Svetlana nodded, looking at that data herself. The Akagi had been in normal space for eight hours, accelerating toward the star until she had built up to point eight light. With the turbulence in hyper they were not picking up the graviton emissions of any ships within the Massadara system. Of course, theirs were not being picked up either, which was a two edged sword. Fortunately for the attackers, them, they knew where to look for the enemy ships, while the enemy had no idea where they would be coming from, or that they were even there.

  The ships had been scanning the space ahead with their visual sensors, picking up any sign of an object, no matter how faint, and matching it with the known bodies in the system. And they had found most of the enemy, if not all. They were gathered in two groups, one well within the system, near the habitable planet. The other just a half light hour in from the hyper barrier. There might have been other ships in the system, but probably not in any large groups.

  I think we have their measure, she thought, looking over
the groups. Her wing had been tasked to hit the inner group. The other wings from the two accompanying carriers were targeted on the outer group. Neither attack was thought to be enough to take them out. But they would cause damage, and confusion, and the odds of the missile launching ships destroying those groups would increase exponentially.

  “First Division checking in,” called the commander of that half of the wing. “All ready.”

  “Second Division. All ships are ready.”

  “Acknowledging,” she said, watching as the clock in her implant ticked down, until.

  “All fighters, launch, launch, launch.”

  The oversized doors to the hangars were already open, and the first layer of ships lifted off the deck and boosted out at twenty gravities. As soon as they were clear the next layer lifted and followed. It only took three minutes for all of the vessels to leave both hangars, where they altered their vectors onto the heading toward their target.

  “OK, people,” said Komorov over the com, not really worrying about the enemy listening in on their signal. They would outrun the light of their com lasers, which were not aimed into the system in the first place. “Form up into the attack pattern. Then we’ll make sure we have the most up to date data and bubble up.”

  It took about a minute for the ships to all get into place, First Division on the port, Second on the starboard, while Komorov and her command group, hers and two escorts, took the center. She really wasn’t sure why she needed escorts. There really wasn’t anything they could do to protect her if someone shot at her ship.

  “On my command, raise bubbles and boost for the target,” she said into the com. “Raise bubbles, now.” On the ninety fighters, electromag shields ramped up to full power, while the twin negative matter containment tanks released their materials through magnetic conduits that ran into the field that englobed the ship. A moment later all of the ships were cut off from the normal Universe, all radiation, including gravitons, excluded from their space.

  “Boosting ahead, now,” said the Pilot, taking his cue from the program that every ship was running that would time their trip to the attack. “One thousand gravities. Two thousand gravities. Five thousand. Ten thousand. Fifteen thousand. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. All systems nominal. Velocity, point eight c. Time to light speed, three point four minutes.”

  And time on target, after we achieve our maximum velocity of two c, five and a half hours. Now there was basically nothing to do for the next five plus hours. The crew would look after the ship. She pulled up the information they had on the enemy ships, their systems and her own weapons, studying information she already knew by heart, just in case there was something in there she had missed previously. She might not find much, but anything that could get her and her people through the shit would be worthwhile.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE CONUNDRUM SPACE.

  “What does the objective look like, Commodore?” came the voice of Grand Fleet Admiral Len Lenkowski over the wormhole com.

  “No change, Admiral,” replied Commodore Bryce Suttler, looking at his tactical plot which showed the Conundrum system, with the visual plots of all enemy ships. Sure made it harder to track them, thought the Stealth/Attack Ship commander. Graviton emissions were just about unreadable at this time, thanks to the supernova. So everything was visual, which left something to be desired. First off, it was not near real time, like graviton tracking. Second, it was easy to lose individual ships at a distance, especially when they were sitting dead in space and not putting out huge amounts of waste heat.

  The Cacas had received reinforcements the day before, not unexpected, and not what the Cacas had been expecting. They had been expecting many more, but the Republic came through and took quite a few of them out. For some reason the outer Caca force had moved further out, closer to the barrier, as it they were planning something. And there had been some ships that had left the system some days before, or so it seemed. Even with the interference, he had been able to visually confirm that they had jumped to hyper I. But from there, because of that same interference, he had no idea. Not that they were really able to do anything out there, not as few as they had been.

  Suttler looked over at the other holo, which showed the approaching Imperial fleet. His sensors were, of course, not picking them up. And so neither was the enemy. Instead, he was getting the fleet’s own track from the wormhole com of the flagship. And it was an awesome sight, even if it was not the entire thing.

  Hundreds of ships moved through hyper VI on their way in, still far from the first barrier. To the side of them was another formation of hundreds of vessels. And behind them were more, and even more behind those formations. The Commodore knew the assigned order of battle, and it was still awesome.

  “Our first ships are getting ready to drop down to V,” said the Grand Fleet Admiral over the com. “Let me know what you detect.”

  Suttler nodded and pointed at Ngovic, letting the Tactical Officer know he was up. He glanced back at the tactical holo, noting that the formations were stretched out, one ship after another, each a light second back from the vessel ahead. It took three seconds to jump, and at their current velocity of point two light, they would be jumping one after the other at five seconds intervals, which would keep them from making the overwhelming noise of hundreds of simultaneous translations.

  “First ship jumping now,” said Lenkowski. “A destroyer.”

  Ngovic looked up and shook his head. “Nothing Admiral,” said Suttler. “We’re picking up no trace of translation.”

  Another destroyer jumped, then a third. Normally this would be setting off every alarm in the system, but the sensitive pickups on the Seastag were not showing a trace.

  “This one’s a light cruiser,” said Lenkowski as the next ship jumped.

  “Still not a trace, sir.”

  “Heavy cruiser up next.”

  That ship jumped without a trace. As did the next ship, a battle cruiser. After twenty more vessels it was the turn of a battleship, then a superbattleship. And finally, the last test, a superheavy battleship, twenty-seven million tons of warship. And if this doesn’t set off the detectors, nothing will, thought Suttler as the huge vessel jumped.

  “We are registering a slight indication of gravitons,” said Ngovic, looking over at this commander.

  “That registered a bit, Admiral.”

  “Enough for them to detect us insystem?”

  “No, sir,” said Ngovic, running the trace through his system. “I doubt they will pick anything up in the system.”

  And the jumps down to lower levels should generate even less noise, thought Suttler, looking at the Admiral. “Looking good, Admiral. I think you’re going to get in clean.”

  “Thank you, Commodore,” said Lenkowski. “Now, I’ll turn you over to one of the com techs. Keep monitoring.”

  The holo went blank, coming back to life over the Tactical Officer’s board. Suttler continued to watch the procession of ships on the holo, one after the other jumping, until all were in V. Minutes later the front of the line started to jump to IV. When they were through the next line was jumping to V, a perfectly choreographed dance where no two ships were changing dimensions at the same time, minimizing their signature, slipping through under the hyper interference of the supernova.

  * * *

  “We’re jumping into normal space, your Majesty,” said Kelso over the com.

  “Thank you, Admiral,” said Sean, looking at his own tactical holo. His command room was itself the holo, and he was standing within it, looking at all of his units as they arrayed themselves in normal space outside the Conundrum system. There were still two lines of ships, a Margravi detachment and part of the Elysium fleet, coming in behind them, one still in I, the other in II.

  He switched the holo to a real time visual of the system, a composite of the feeds from every wormhole equipped ship in the fleet. The bright point of the star was ahead, the dots of planets ranging out. There were some glints near the pla
net, more toward the outer system just inside the hyper I barrier. Sean zoomed in on the glints, which revealed themselves to be large formations of Ca’cadasan ships. Of course, he was seeing the outer group as they were six hours ago, the inner group over two and a half hours later still. Supposedly, they were still in position, not knowing that an enemy fleet had just appeared outside their system. At least, according to Lenkowski, there had been no appreciable translation signal. All of the ships were in stealth mode at the moment, their skins set to absorb all photons impacting on them, their grabbers propelling them inward at a sedate twenty gravities. At that rate they were producing very little heat, most of it projected into space behind them, where there were no observers. The enemy would have to know exactly where they were, then use their most intense light gathering visual sensors on a slow track to actually see them. And the odds against that were merely astronomical.

  Sean zoomed in on his own task group. His heavy cruiser, the Manila, was surrounded by a trio of specialized missile defense light cruisers and a dozen of the same kind of destroyer. They were tucked in close to a task force of hyper VII carriers, which, unfortunately, had not been able to use the higher dimension for travel. That’s one we didn’t see coming, he thought. They had lost some ships that had tried to translate down from VII, and there were still half a hundred vessels trapped in that dimension. It had been an expensive lesson, and he was glad that his fleet hadn’t been traversing VII at the time the star had exploded, or they would have been trapped for two weeks, or longer.

  The carriers were starting to launch their inertialess fighters, which would sweep in just ahead of the missile storm to strike at the enemy, hopefully causing a lot of confusion. The main fleet, in six different formations, were now launching their missiles, the weapons moving in at five hundred gravities to avoid detection. The inertialess fighters would continue in at fifty gravities, waiting until they got much closer to the system before they raised their bubbles and moved at full acceleration.