Exodus: Empires at War: Book 14: Rebellion.

by Doug Dandridge

  Cornelius timed his move to coincide with the rush of a trio of Maurids. The aliens were not armored, and any hit to their bodies with a particle beam was fatal. While the Cacas had to be hit in specific areas. That, or the beam had to maintain contact for over a second. One of the Maurids went down, his head converted to red steam, while the other pair snapped off shots that must have been misses. The general calculated the angle on the Caca from the beam, waited until he fired again, this a miss on a Maurid, then scooted his head and shoulders around the side of a barrier and lined up the shot. The easy stroke of a trigger and the angry red beam linked barrel with Caca head, burning through the light faceplate and incinerating the face beyond.

  One of the Maurids raised a thumb up in a very human gesture. Walborski returned one of his own, glad to have the aliens on his side. He had started this war hating the aliens, in service to the Cacas, when the only contact he had with them had been as belligerents. Since then he had seen the other side of them, and had come to like and respect them. He felt bad using these as basic meat shields to soak up enemy fire, but the Maurids seemed okay with that. They could tell they were in the presence of a superior warrior, one whose best use was to kill, not to absorb fire. And they were more than happy to set up those kills.

  Something exploded in the near distance, a loud crump, while a fireball rose into the sky. His Rangers were at work, setting charges on the aircraft they could get to. The craft were of no use to his people. Humans and Maurids couldn’t pilot them, made as they were for the larger forms of Cacas. Destroyed, they were no threat to his side, and the way they were taking them out there was no way the enemy would every get them back into service.

  One of the Maurids waved to him, then gestured to a pair of his compatriots. Walborski nodded, then readied himself. The three Maurids moved, almost blurs, coming out into the open and firing. One of the blurs went down, stopping in place and falling back with a large hole through its torso. Cornelius triangulated the beam, rose up over the barrier, and fired, taking down yet another Caca trooper.

  He dropped back down before the Cacas could return fire and looked over at the Maurids. The two were still there, and another, this one unarmed, came back up to take the weapon of their compatriot who had just been killed. It reminded the general of battles in Earth’s past that he had read about, particularly the second great war of the twentieth century, when forces didn’t always have enough weapons to go around.

  His people had initially brought along fifty thousand particle beam rifles, with spare proton packs and batteries, but he had over a million he could have armed. Thousands more weapons were coming through every day, but they needed to be moved and distributed, not always an easy task with the Cacas controlling the air and orbitals. The aircraft, what were left, were now patrolling with caution, and not doing as much as they could. The bombardment platforms in orbit were something the rebels couldn’t do anything about.

  The fight went on for some time, what seemed like an hour but only taking minutes, as the warriors pushed through the defenses a layer at a time. The Cacas might not have been the most skilled at ground warfare, but no one could doubt their courage. They fought hard. They died hard. The most important thing to Cornelius was that they died, and the rebels and their allies pushed through to get to the command and control center.

  The whole while the Hunter kept looking up to the sky, something crouching in the back of his mind screaming at him that death was coming from that star. He cursed himself for a fool. He would not see it coming. It would engulf this world without warning, and he would vanish as his body boiled away, along with that of every other living creature on the surface. Those on the night side would live a little longer. But within minutes the heat wave would be working its way around the circumference of the globe, an hour and everything on that side would also be dead.

  There was nothing to do but keep on forging ahead, and leave the fight in space to the Fleet. That was always the way it was with the ground pounders. They lived and died according to the performance of the Fleet, no matter what they did. But they might live if they won on the ground, while they were surely dead if they didn’t win.

  * * *

  “How much longer?” whined the Emperor, looking over the plot that seemed to be made up of unchanging glacial movements, ships crawling across the view.

  “Patience, Supreme Lord. The enemy is still moving into our basket.”

  “And you guarantee that the people aboard the projection platforms will do their jobs?”

  “I give you my word that they will,” said the Chief of Staff.

  “On your life, Supreme Admiral,” said the murderous youngster with a smile on his face.

  The chamber was silent for some moments, no one wanting to catch the attention of their monarch. That personage zoomed the view in on one of the platforms, sitting in plain sight near the star. The idea had been reworked so they didn’t need the number of crew that the ships had. And supposedly they had gotten more non-believers to crew them, on the promise of riches and advancement for their family. Not enough, and there were still some believers on those ships, a concern that had to be watched closely. There were very few non-believers who would actually volunteer for a suicide mission, but they did exist. Now, if only they would engage the hyperdrive generators when needed, all would go as planned.

  “Any indication that the humans know where our devices are?” asked Jressratta, rubbing his lower hands together.

  “Not a sign,” said another of the many admirals or generals in the chamber. “No grabber emissions. They have nothing in the neighborhood, and by the time they figure it out, it will be too late.”

  “Very good,” said the Emperor, staring at the image of the platform. “But can’t we hurry this up. I would like to eat an actual meal this day.”

  “Battles don’t always advance according to a timetable, Supreme Lord,” cautioned the Chief of Staff in a calming voice. “Remember, the enemy has his own plans, and is not interested in furthering ours.”

  “I know that, you fool,” roared the Emperor, slamming two fists down on the table and knocking over a couple of mugs of strong drink. “I am not a child. I have trained in strategy and tactics, so there is nothing you can teach me.”

  All of the males looked away from the young fool who knew next to nothing about the military and how things worked. All wished that the father was still alive and in charge. The elder Jresstratta would actually haved listened to his advisors, and would make decisions based on thought, not impulsive emotion. They would still probably be losing under the direction of the father, who was already losing at the time of his death. But there would still be a chance under Jresstratta IVs informed leadership.

  “I will be back in a couple of hours,” said the Emperor, getting up from his throne like chair. “Make sure the final act doesn’t kick off before I get back.”

  The senior staff exchanged knowing looks as the young male walked out of the chamber. They really didn’t care where he was going, only that he was leaving their presence. As far as all of them were concerned, he could stay away, but no one would voice that opinion. They couldn’t be that lucky, of course.

  * * *

  “We’re down to point zero five light, sir,” called out the helm.

  “Very good,” said Suttler, looking back over the plot. All of his ships were represented on that plot. They weren’t the real plots. Every ship was pulling only a couple of gravities, and weren’t giving off enough gravitons for even their sisters to pick up. They were representations of the best predicted positions by inertial navigation. They really didn’t have to be that accurate, since the ships were far enough from each other that collisions were basically impossible. The positions of everything else was also well plotted, so they were safe enough on that front.

  The tracks of the stealth ships were diverging, all pushing gently into individual courses. About half were well ahead of the others, a gap that had been growing throughout the vo
yage. Some would swing around the star and start back out, needing time to decel and come back in. They still couldn’t push their grabbers too hard, so it would take time to come back.. And if they still hadn’t located the targets by that time and had to swing around again? They would be forced into orbits of the star that avoided collisions with anything in orbit with them. Hopefully they would still be in attack positions when the time came and the targeting became clear. Unfortunately, there would be some times when there were too many ships in some regions and none in others. It would be so much easier if they could just lock onto the targets on the first pass and get it over with.

  Hell, it takes an hour for them to stir up the star enough for it to blast off, doesn’t it? he thought. Of course that was for the full out event. If it was interrupted early what would happen? Would the star settle down after shedding some prominences? Or would it still eject matter, and if so how much?

  It was maddening. He had been on missions where the target wasn’t visible at first, but those came with no time constraints. Or there were time limits, and the targets were clear, like the strike they had done on the Caca battle station in Imperial space. And the more time that went by, the greater the chance his command would be spotted. There were no ships nearby, at least none they were aware of. But they could launch from a distance and send enough missiles in to take out some of his ships even without a clear target.

  “Any sign of our targets,” he asked, sending the question back to his exec, in the combat information center and spending all of his time going over passive returns.

  “No, sir. And I have something troubling to report.”

  “Give it.”

  “We’re absorbing a lot of radiation from the star. It’s starting to radiate from our hulls, and much more and we will be spotted.”

  “Can’t we pull the heat away through our wormhole?”

  “You would think so, sir. Unfortunately, the cooling system is configured to pull heat from our reactors and the grabbers, and that is why the superconductor fluid runs concentrate on those areas. The runs to the hull are sparse, and I think the engineers never envisioned a situation where one of this class would have to operate so close to a star.”

  “Great. So, what do we do about it?”

  “Nothing, sir. We’ll just have to live with the heat radiation. There’s no way to reroute the superconducting fluid without a lot of work. More than we have time for.”

  “Contact Fleet and let them know about our new difficulty. Make sure they know we’re confident we can continue the mission.” He wasn’t completely sure about that last, but what else could he tell them? Suttler looked at the plot, zooming out and picking up the Fleet groups moving into the system.

  Of course they would continue the mission. They had no choice, unless they wanted to order the incoming ships to push their grabbers at max and try to vector out of the system. A quick thought showed their most likely vectors, along with their entry into what they thought was the globe of total destruction. There was no way they would get out before the enemy detonated the outer shell of the star.

  “And keep trying to find those targets.”

  “Still nothing but those antimatter sats, sir. Unless they’ve got some stealth technology we haven’t heard of, they’re not here yet.”

  Unless they’re hanging out inside that rocky world, thought Bryce, zooming in on the planet and staring at the surface, hoping to find an opening that would show where the enemy ships would come out. The planet was small but dense, with a third of a standard gravity on the surface. A warship could definitely be sitting underneath that surface, lying in a cradle, ready to lift on grabbers and move out into an orbit of the star. Suttler ran a program, looking at how fast the ships could move into their proper position at five hundred gravities. He came up with twenty odd minutes, but there was also no telling if they couldn’t push the ships harder than five hundred gravities. With inertia tubes, fluid filled containers that would allow crew to handle thirty additional gravities, they could cut a couple of minutes off of that. Without crew they could get up to seven or even eight hundred gravities, getting the deployment down to less than ten minutes.

  I could head toward that planet, using its bulk to shade us from the star, and wait. That was tempting, if he was correct. They could just wait there and blast the Caca ships out of space as soon as they appeared. Unless they appeared someplace else, and the Imperial ships were out of position. They still might be able to engage most of the targets, but not all of them. Crap, this was starting to hurt his mind.

  The admiral knew his capabilities and limitations. He was a better than average stealth/attack ship commander, a decent tactician, but working puzzles had never been his forte’. Maybe they should have sent someone else to command this squadron, he thought, doubting that he was going to make this work.

  If he fought the enemy ships and didn’t have stealth to his advantage, what were his chances against twelve Caca capital ships. Not good was all he could think. He checked the internal sensors and saw that they would be easily discovered within an hour. Then it would be his fragile ships against the heavily armored vessels that would have been his prey.

  Dammit, he thought, slamming his hand into the arm of his command chair. That’s no way for a flag rnnk commander to think. There was still time, and he wasn’t the only one looking at the problem. He had the striking power to take out the enemy ships, if used properly. And if the enemy acted in time to give him a chance.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. Frederick Douglass

  “I’m almost out of protons, General,” called out one of the nearer Rangers.

  “More should be coming up,” called back Cornelius, ducking under a shot that seared his eyebrows.

  He hoped that was true. His people, few of them that there were, needed to stay in the fight. The Maurids who had been trained soldiers were good, if not quite as good as the Rangers. Unfortunately, many of them weren’t trained soldiers. Most of those on the planet had been rounded up in the first sweep by the Cacas, who had records on all the residents. Those they didn’t get had run as soon as the roundup had started. A couple of hundred of those who weren’t skilled in combat were drafted into service in support. That was all very good in theory, but it seemed to be breaking down.

  “I think they’re falling back,” called out another Ranger, rising up and firing over the obstacle he was covering behind, then falling back minus a head.

  Cornelius cursed. It was all well and good to fight according to the rules of close combat, never looking over objects, only around the sides. Sometimes the terrain didn’t allow for that, and people had to take the shots they could get. He had lost several men who had looked over instead of around, and he had seen many more Maurids go down after making that mistake.

  “Ammo coming up,” called out a Maurid in heavily accented Terranglo. The being crawled up and started handed out the proton packs and batteries, slapping them into every hand reaching out for one, then moving on.

  “I wonder if he understood what he was saying?” asked a Ranger sergeant, Xi by name.

  There was no telling. Some of the Maurids had been taught just enough Terranglo to let the humans know what they wanted, or what they were bringing. The general really didn’t care, as long as they kept bringing up what was needed.

  To his right a pair of Maurids went down while they were shifting positions. More fire came in, and the general started to think that the Cacas were not falling back after all. He looked around the side of the partial wall that was his current cover, then took a couple of quick shots before sliding back.

  “Are we really accomplishing anything here, General,” asked the Ranger sergeant who had questioned the linguistic faculties of the Maurids. “I mean, if the star blows, we’re just wasting our time, aren’t we?”

  Cornelius looked up at the sky and the bright point of light up there. He wasn’t sure
if it had gotten brighter. In fact, he wasn’t sure what the star would look like just before the photon storm arrived to strip the flesh from his bones, just before it ashed the bones as well.

  “If it blows, we’re going to die,” said Walborski, looking into the Xi’s eyes. “If it doesn’t blow, we’ll need to kill all of these Cacas. So let’s just hope the Fleet does its job, and we get to do the job on these bastards.”

  “And it doesn’t scare you that the star might blow up any second?”

  “Hell yes it scares me, but no more than the possibility that I might have my head blown off in this fight. It’s all the same. Dead is dead. So I’ll live and fight while I’m able.”

  Cornelius looked up again, wondering if the star was bearing down on them with more heat. He had lied slightly when he had told Sergeant Xi that it didn’t matter to him. There was something he could do about his being killed by the Cacas. There was nothing he could do about the star, or about the actions the Fleet was taking to stop it from going off. Still, he thought it better to kill Cacas while he could, on the hope that Kallfer wasn’t going to go sub-supernova and kill them all.

  * * *

  “There’s another one of them, Lord,” said the sensor officer, looking over at the low admiral, Phlirassaa, commanding the projection force.

  “What is that so far. Ten?”

  “Yes. I’m betting there are some more of them, lord” said the lower ranking male. “Should we fire?”

  “No. I think not. Not yet. We’ll wait until more of them appear. But target them, passive only, and be prepared to fire when the time comes.”

  The other male gave a head motion of acknowledgement and went back to working his sensors. The rest of the bridge crew, who had been watching the exchange, went back to doing what they had been tasked to do, working their stations.