Exodus: Empires at War: Book 12: Time Strike

by Doug Dandridge

“What is our best path out of the system that will avoid close contact?”

  The tactical officer stared at the admiral for a moment, and he knew what the male was thinking. In the past, Ca’cadasan forces would always engage, moving into close combat. That was the arrogance of his people, and it had hurt them. He would maneuver as if there was more out there, ships he had yet to be shown. Then he could still escape. And he could still bring them under missile fire while he maneuvered, while he was unleashing his secret weapon on them.

  “This course, my Lord,” said the helm officer, as a curving line appeared on the tactical plot, showing them changing vector until they exited the system about sixty degrees to spinward of the enemy entry. “And this is the course the enemy will probably take to try to catch us.”

  The human’s probable course also appeared on the holo. They could be within twenty light minutes by the time the Ca’cadasans reached the hyper barrier.

  “Show me the straight through the system path.”

  A new line appeared, showing them passing by the planet within ten light minutes, continuing past the star, then boosting out. They would still have to decelerate before they could jump, and the humans could continue boosting until they were right behind them.

  “We will follow the first course and angle out,” decided the high admiral. “Fire a spread of missiles at the enemy force within the system, and target some on the planet.”

  Again he got a look from the tactical officer that showed his disapproval, a slight expression that got past the mask that most Cacada wore around their superiors. It was against their religion to destroy life bearing planets. But in this case they might not be able to approach closer to take out settlements and industrial plants. The Emperor had decreed that this enemy must be defeated, at all costs, even against the religious traditions of the race.

  “And launch the advanced fighters. I want them to hit the enemy as soon as they enter normal space.”

  At that the tactical officer returned the predatory grin of his commander. Moments later the fighters appeared on the plot, scores, then hundreds, then a thousand. At two thousand tons they were larger than their human counterparts, and they had a higher top end pseudospeed as well, two and a half times light speed. They were an untested weapon, and had evidenced some problems in training, as they were still wildly inaccurate, and once they were in their negative matter bubbles they were cut off from the Universe, and had no way of telling if the enemy had adjusted their course. Still, they were a promising weapon, and since the humans had used theirs so well, it was hoped the Ca’cadasans could do at least as well with their own.

  The ship shook slightly as it released missiles, and the fighters disappeared from the plot as they raised their negative matter bubbles and sped off. Two thousand missiles now filled the plot, moving at eight thousand gravities acceleration toward the smaller enemy force and the planet they were near.

  * * *

  “Preparing to jump to normal space,” called out the fleet navigation officer.

  Lenkowski grimaced again. At one time he had been an easy translator, but over the years it had become more difficult, to the point where now he often felt like he was about to vomit as they moved from dimension to dimension.

  The lights dimmed for a second, and the view of red tinted space with the black dots of gravity wells disappeared from the viewer, to be replaced by the familiar dark of space interspersed with millions of bright pinpoints.

  Within seconds the enemy fleet was located and the human fleet adjusted their vectors slightly, boosting at five hundred gravities. The carrier force, twenty fleet carriers and eighteen of the lighter version, along with their three hundred escorts, started to decelerate, at the same time launching their fighters. It took several minutes to get all three thousand of the inertialess fighters into space, but as soon as they formed up they raised their negative matter fields and started off, heading toward the enemy fleet. Unlike their Caca counterparts, they were not completely cut off from the universe, thanks to their Klassekian com techs who could maintain contact with their siblings no matter what.

  “We’ve calculated the Caca course based on their acceleration and vector changes, sir,” said the fleet tactical officer.

  “Figure a firing solution and start sending wormhole missiles at the predicted interception point.”

  “There’s a flight of missiles heading for the decoy fleet and the planet, sir,” reported one of the tactical techs. “Two thousand missiles.”

  Lenkowski swore under his breath. They had thought the enemy would fire on the planet this time, but the admiral had been hoping they would be wrong. It was not much of a world, small oceans with simple multicellular life and desert landmasses that had yet to be colonized by the sealife. It was not a great loss, not as if a fertile world was in the crosshairs. But its life was still its own, distinctive, and soon to be extinct. He could order the warp fighters to intercept, but he needed them to destroy enemy ships. That was the mission here. To kill as many Cacas as possible, so they wouldn’t have to fight them again somewhere else.

  The admiral leaned back in his chair. He had done all he could for the moment. Now it was waiting time. The boring time. Most of the crew had jobs to keep them busy. He could only wait, until the moment of terror was again here.

  * * *

  “My Lord. You need to see this.”

  The high admiral stood up and walked over to the tactical station, where a smaller version of the tactical plot was displayed over the board. Some objects were highlight on that plot, a swarm of dots that were almost on top of each other. And they were moving quickly along the plot. Too quickly.

  “What by all the Gods are those?”

  “I don’t know, my Lord. We are picking them up on graviton emission, which is heavy for such small objects. And their apparent speed is over ten times that of light.”

  The high admiral felt a shiver run down his spine. A moment before he had been celebrating how he was going to surprise the humans, and here they were, pulling something new out of the hat. He didn’t know what they were, but with that speed they had to be dangerous.

  “Is there anything we can do about them?” he asked the tactical officer, not able to think of anything himself.

  “Not until they come within range of our weapons. I don’t think we will be able to engage them at long range with missiles.”

  The high admiral had to agree. Anything moving that fast could outrun anything they could send at it. The question now was how maneuverable they were, and how long it took them to accelerate up to their present speed? And was that as fast as they could go, or were they only showing a bit of their capabilities? The high admiral doubted they had any more reserve speed. At least he prayed that they didn’t, or this could become a very short fight.

  * * *

  Captain Jarkko Kulmala was in love with his new ship. Actually in love with all of the vessels in his augmented wing, one hundred and seventy warp fighters, twelve of the fourteen ship squadrons, along with his two ship command section. They were one of two wings in this battle, now flying together, though they would soon separate. Unlike the inertialess fighters, they could see the universe outside of their warp bubble. They could mark the movements of their enemies. And now was the time.

  “Change vector to designated attack course, now.”

  The vector arrows changed on the tactical plot, showing his wing now moving at a right angle to the other one. The fighter itself was not moving, it was warping space around it. So it could change directions in a heartbeat, a shift that would have crushed the crew of any conventional spaceship.

  “Range to enemy, forty-one light minutes,” called out the navigator. “ETA, four minutes, eight seconds.”

  * * *

  “Enemy craft have changed vectors, my Lord. They are coming directly at us. ETA, four minutes.”

  “How did they do that?” exclaimed the high admiral, storming over to the tactical station. He looked at the line tha
t showed the course of the enemy craft and their vector change, a ninety degree angle with no loss of speed. “That’s impossible.” But not if they’re doing it, he thought. They had originally called the inertialess fighters impossible, until it became apparent that not only were they possible, they were real. As these appeared to be real, unless they were some kind of trick meant to panic his people.

  We’ll find out in three minutes, he thought. Either the enemy ships would prove to be an illusion, a trick. Or they would turn out to be painfully real.

  * * *

  “Firing, now,” called out the weapons chief, the man who had control of the missiles.

  The wing was spread out so they wouldn’t waste missiles, sending too many into too few targets. The enemy force was large enough that there shouldn’t have been any misses, but it didn’t always work that way.

  Every ship dropped two of their four missiles. The weapons dropped from their bays on the fighters, riding within the warp field while they erected their own field, then moved through the field of the launching vessel. They moved for a couple of seconds, then dropped out of warp to get a look at the targets. A quick look gave each a target lock, after which they went back into warp and sped toward their victims. Moments later they struck, as the fighters flew over the enemy fleet, moving too fast for any defensive weapons to target them. The fighters flew on for a minute, getting ten light minutes away, then cutting their warp drives. A quick turn in space while their sensors got a hard fix on the enemy and they raised their warp fields again, twisting space as they moved it, making it collapse and moving them closer to the enemy at the pseudospeed of ten lights. They would strike again in one minute, and then move off to reload at their actual full speed, twenty lights, so they could come back and hit them again.

  * * *

  “They’re…”

  Before the tactical officer could say another word they had already hit. The objects had appeared on the plot for about a second, then disappeared, to turn into graviton producing streaks that covered light seconds in almost no time. Then they were gone again, along with the over a hundred Ca’cadasan warships which disappeared from the plot. Distress signals came from several score more as they lost acceleration and started to fall behind.

  The tactical officer looked back from his station in shock, the same shock the high admiral felt. At least now he knew they were real, and that they carried a heavy sting.

  “Ships that were destroyed were cruisers and escorts, my Lord. All of the battleships survived their hits, though most sustained severe damage.”

  The high admiral thought about that. If the objects had been carrying momentum they would have blasted every ship they hit out of existence. But physics said that they couldn’t be carrying that much kinetic energy, more energy than was in the universe if one were to believe the scientists. So they were moving faster than light by some other means. But they still hit with enough force, enough power in their warheads, to kill ships.

  “They’ve turned around and are coming back, my Lord,” shouted the tactical officer.

  “How? Don’t they have to decelerate?”

  Obviously not, as the plot showed the fighters dropping off for several seconds, then heading back their way at the same speed they had been carrying when they stopped. They came in on another attack, again each launching two missiles that performed the same. And the high admiral’s fleet lost another hundred warships, while more started to fall behind. This time one of the enemy craft disappeared, exploding in space just above the fleet, a victim to some piece of ejecta that had flown off one of the Ca’cadasan ships during the first attack.

  The craft next seemed to bank ninety degrees at ten times light speed and sped off at twenty times c, heading for the hyper barrier ahead of the Ca’cadasan fleet.

  The high admiral stared at the plot in disbelief. One hundred and seventy craft, small by all indications, had taken out over two hundred of his ships, while damaging almost a hundred more. Those damaged ships were not able to accelerate along with the rest of his force, and were not changing vectors at the same rate. If he left them behind they were probably doomed, but if he slowed for them he might be dooming the rest of the fleet. Especially with whatever those fighters were possibly returning. And there was still the other wing of them, moving ahead of his force, but sure to change vectors at any moment and come at him.

  “We’re picking up signals consistent with their inertialess fighters, my Lord. Estimating several thousand.”

  Which meant there were a lot of them out there as well, thousands. They could track them after a fashion, at least knowing that they were there and their general whereabouts. The closer they got the better the fix, though it would never be what a tactical officer would call solid. They could hurt them when they dropped down to launch, but they would also hurt his fleet.

  And I wonder how you will like it when our fighters do the same thing to you? thought the admiral. He frowned a moment later. He had no way of knowing if his fighters would make an accurate strike, while obviously the humans knew what they could do.

  * * *

  “First warp fighter strike has gone in. Estimating over two hundred of their ships destroyed, almost a hundred damaged. One fighter lost due to debris collision.”

  Lenkowski nodded. So far the warp fighters had proven very hard to kill, though from what he understood, a number had been taken out on their first ever attack on the Fenri front. But even in that case the return had been more than worth the cost. He didn’t doubt that these Cacas would figure out how to hurt them as well, but the pounding they would give the enemy would be worth the cost.

  “Sir. First warp fighter wing is reporting tracks of inertialess fighters on a general heading toward us.”

  “And don’t tell me. They aren’t ours.”

  “No, sir. Slightly different resonances.”

  The inertialess fighters had at first appeared to be an unstoppable weapon, especially when paired with Klassekian com techs. They couldn’t be tracked, and were only vulnerable when they dropped their negative matter field just before they launched missiles. Then they could be punished by walls of fire. Eventually the Cacas had learned how to track them. Each fighter gave off a faint hint of gravitons that at first seemed to disappear into the background. Once one knew they were there, they could be detected. They were still impossible to get a firm fix on from a distance, but the closer they got, the closer the track. He had to believe that the Cacas hadn’t solved the communications problem, since they couldn’t have enough wormholes to give every one of their craft one, and they weren’t thought to have any aliens in their empire with the abilities of the Klassekians, else they would have already deployed them.

  “Change our vector a bit, navigator. No use making an intercept easy for them.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Second warp fighter wing reporting they are about to change vector and attack. Countdown, sixty seconds.”

  That was what Len was waiting for. His job here was to kill as many Caca ships as possible, while losing as few of his as he could. He could bring more firepower against them in the normal space of the system. Since most of his ships were hyper VI, if he had to chase them in hyper the advantage would swing their way, and his chasing force was likely to find themselves becoming the prey. The more he could damage inside the system, the less would be able to escape them.

  “First wave of wormhole launched missiles will be crossing their path in thirty-four minutes, sir.”

  “Estimated intercept on ship launched missiles?”

  “At present time, three hours and forty-three minutes. Thirty-seven minutes before they hit the barrier.”

  “Order all ships to fire eight volleys of missiles.”

  “Think that will be enough, sir?” asked the fleet tactical officer, running the numbers. “I estimate that a swarm of that magnitude will destroy or damage half of their ships, but will leave an equal number to get away.”

  “That’s enough
for now, tactical,” said Len, seeing from the man’s expression that he was wondering. There was method to his madness, and he preferred to surprise the tactical officer when the time came.

  Minutes later came the response he thought would be coming.

  “Enemy launching missiles, sir. They are targeting us with all of them.”

  “Very good, tactical. Now we wait.”

  Chapter Nine

  An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo

  “I believe they are using some kind of warp drive,” said the second ranking male in the fleet. “They are not really traveling faster than light, but are compressing and expanding space on a narrow path ahead of and behind them. We have known of this technology for thousands of years.”

  “Then why haven’t we developed it?” asked the high admiral.

  “We did, my Lord. Back in the dark days when we were first rising to strike at the race that had enslaved us. It gave us a great advantage over their slower than light craft. But it was expensive in both exotic matter and energy, much more so than the subspace drive we eventually developed. And much less effective for travel between systems than even the lower dimensions of hyper.”

  “So this is something we could develop again in minimum time.”

  “Assuredly, Admiral. We could have craft like these in months.”

  “Make sure all of this information is getting to command,” ordered the admiral, looking at his com officer. His ship had a wormhole, and everything they did, saw or heard would eventually get back to higher command. But it didn’t hurt to make sure this essential information made it back first, before something could happen to ship or wormhole.

  “What can we do about them? How can we hurt them?” He really didn’t think there was any way to stop them, at least not with what they had. But it caused his hackles to rise that he couldn’t at least hurt them while they were eviscerating his command.

  “Their warp field will shred any smaller bits of matter that enter them,” said the assistant commander. “When they hit something large enough, like one of our ships, they encounter too much matter for the field to shred, and it collapses. But not before they blast through the hull and armor. What we need to do is put enough matter in front of them to make them try to avoid it. But at the closure rate they possess, that might be easier said than done.”