Exodus: Empires at War: Book 10: Search & Destroy

by Doug Dandridge

  “And how did your day go?” asked Sean, holding her close.

  “The same as always. Bored out of my mind.”

  Sean lay there for a moment, not saying anything, and she wondered if he was about to ask her about Sondra McCullom’s slip of the tongue. That was unfortunate, but she remembered the saying about two people being able to keep a secret if one were dead. She really should have kept it between her and her doctor, but sometimes she felt like she was going to burst if she couldn’t talk about it. Not that it was earth shattering, but she truly wanted to surprise Sean when the time came.

  “I understand that you really aren’t bonding to any of your ladies,” Sean said finally. “Not that I blame you. I found them a stuffy lot when I was growing up in the palace, and I doubt someone who has lived in the real world would find them any better. So how about you come spend some time with me.”

  “At your meetings? I‘m not sure I could handle a whole day of those things either.”

  “Not the whole day. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But we could spend some time together, and you can get an even better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

  “It’s a date,” said Jennifer, rubbing her hands over his shoulders. “And how are you feeling right now.”

  “I could be talked into it,” he said with a smile. “As long as it’s OK with the doctor.”

  “It’s OK with this doctor,” she said after a deep kiss. “Just be gentle. I wouldn’t want them to think something is going on.”

  “Them who”

  “Oh, the Secret Service,” she said, flushing that she had almost said the wrong thing.

  “They know better,” said Sean with a laugh. “After all, that’s a long wall I have to line them up on.” And with that the time for talking was past.

  Chapter Eight

  As soon as the fear approaches near, attack and destroy it.

  Chanakya

  NATION OF NEW EARTH SPACE. AUGUST 30TH, 1002

  “We’re picking up multiple graviton sources ahead,” called out the Tactical Officer, looking back at the chair where sat the Great Admiral.

  “How many?” asked Mgananawan, leaning forward in his chair. He knew this was the system they wanted. They had been tracking ships in hyper for the last couple of days, all on headings to and from this system. Now he would find out if his plan would work. He had a mighty force with him, hopefully enough to bring a major part of the Klavarta fleet to action, but not so strong as to scare them away. No, he wanted them to drive him out and chase him across their nation, until they fell into his trap.

  “Thousands, my Lord. Most are what have to be their small attack craft, but I am picking up hundreds of larger vessels.”

  And we can hope that for every one we are sensing, there are ten or twenty more hiding, he thought. Hoping to spring a trap on us.

  “Translation to normal space in eighteen minutes,” called out the Helm Officer.

  “And then we’ll see what we really have waiting for us,” said the Tactical Officer.

  The Great Admiral looked at the central holo tank, which showed his own force on the way to the target system, yet another unprepossessing red dwarf star that would otherwise be unremarkable and ignored. His own force was shown in its entirety. Three thousand battleships, the same number of cruisers, and six thousand scouts. Twelve thousand warships. He hadn’t brought along any support vessels. He was not planning on taking any planets, and support ships unable to defend themselves would just have gotten in the way.

  “Ships are dropping off the plot, my Lord. I think they have attained their desired vectors and are going into stealth mode.”

  Stealth was not really possible in space, unless something was done to either dump the heat in some way that was not detectable, or ships found some background they could hide in. The Admiral had heard that the humans of the power they were fighting on the other side of the Empire had methods involving the wormholes they used. But a ship could still power down, stop boosting through space, turn off all active sensors, and basically fade away for the short term.

  “Translation in fourteen minutes,” called out the Helm Officer.

  “Scouts are translating now, my Lord,” said the Com Officer. “We’re receiving their grav pulse transmissions.” The Com Officer watched his board for a moment, reading the translation of the pulse code. “They’re reporting that the system is as suspected. And no ambushes that they can detect.”

  “I still want all vessels ready for immediate action,” said the Great Admiral. “All weapons powered up and tubes loaded.”

  The Great Admiral thought that he really didn’t need to give that order, but was still feeling some anxiety at what he might find when all was revealed.

  * * *

  “Thirteen minutes until the main body reaches the hyper barrier, ma’am,” reported the Chief of Staff, another of the pilot class of Klavarta.

  “But they’ve already dropped a couple of hundred of their scouts further out so they could look in,” said the Klavarta Admiral, Regis Larista. “They’re learning. So it’s up to us to make sure this commander doesn’t get back to share his knowledge with the rest of them.”

  The Chief of Staff, Ngerita Olsaf, smiled back at her. “It will be the lesson of a lifetime for most of them,” he agreed.

  Larista looked over the system wide tactical plot, where the dispositions of all her forces were plotted. There were over six thousand of the larger cruiser class vessels that were their largest combat configuration. These were about the size of a large Imperial destroyer, in the four to five hundred thousand ton range. She only had eight of the command ships, over two million tons, but not really made for slugging it out with other large vessels. Most of her fleet consisted of one hundred thousand ton raiders, the Klavarta equivalent of Imperial destroyers, and tens of thousands of smaller forty to fifty thousand ton attack ships, swift and deadly. It was a great raiding force, but she wasn’t sure how well it would hold up in battle against the larger, more powerful Ca’cadasan vessels, especially in such numbers.

  There were also the Imperial human forces, not a large percentage of her force, but a welcome reinforcement. Ten battleships, twelve battle cruisers and forty-three smaller vessels. And at the moment they were guarding her one ace in the hole.

  “It looks like they’re going to translate right where we want them to,” said the Chief of Staff.

  “From what the Imperials have said, they have run the same trap on the Monsters in their war,” said the Admiral, nodding her head. “One the advantages of the wormholes that I think the Monsters must underestimate. We learn the lessons of the war on the other front almost immediately, while it takes them almost a half year to get the information from one side of their Empire to the other.”

  Yes, the Ca’cadasan Empire was a massive enterprise, controlling a hundred thousand inhabited worlds, twenty trillion intelligent beings, and what had to be the most powerful fleet in the Galaxy. But they had also over extended in some respects, especially when it took so long to transmit information across their Empire.

  Right now all she could do was wait, not sure how this game was going to play out. Hopeful that she would win, and the Monsters would have placed their heads into the chopper. But nothing was guaranteed, and only the battle would actually determine the outcome. What was that saying the Imperials have? she thought. That’s why they play the game, and not just figure out how the teams match up on paper.

  * * *

  “Are you all right, Admiral?” asked Lt. Commander Winchell Jerry Chang, the human squadron’s adjutant.

  “Is it that obvious, Jerry?” asked Rear Admiral Marta Guderian, the commander of the small Imperial squadron that had been attached as support and liaison to the Klavart fleet.

  “Only to someone who knows you well, ma’am,” replied the Commander. “And as someone who knows you well, I think you will do just fine.”

  Marta nodded as she turned her attention back to the tactical plot. Thi
s wasn’t, of course, her first multiship command. She had last commanded a battleship squadron at the rank of commodore on the main front. But now she was in command of three squadrons each of battleships and battle cruisers, with their supporting force of cruisers and escorts. More ships and people than she had ever been responsible for.

  And the force rolling toward them out of hyper looked large enough to crush what the Klavarta had in this system. Or at least what was currently here.

  “Is everyone ready, Jerry?” she asked while still staring at the plot.

  “Everyone is ready,” said Chang with a smile. “Don’t worry. The boys and girls won’t let you down.”

  Then as long as I don’t let them down, everything will be great, she thought, still feeling the unease of coming battle.

  * * *

  “Jumping, now,” called out the Helm Officer.

  The opening appeared in front of the ship, a black hole sprinkled with the bright points of stars. The superbattleship slid through, and the wave of nausea hit. The Great Admiral was considered an easy translator among his people, and he was only incapacitated for fifteen seconds, fighting through the sickness for another ten seconds or so. His ship came through in the middle of the pack, half the fleet preceding him into the system. If there had been a trap laid, something that would be very effective against the Ca’cadasans in the state they arrived in, this would be the place.

  “Data coming in from other ships,” called out the Sensor Officer.

  The tactical plot began to fill in as the visual information came in from thousands of sensors on thousands of ships. It was old information from minutes to hours in the past, but most of the objects that appeared on the plot were the kind that weren’t going anywhere. Hundreds of objects, in orbit around the prime planet and the gas giant it was orbiting. Around another gas giant. In a string around the star itself, very close in. In the asteroid belt. Mining stations, antimatter production sats, factories, shipyards. It was obviously a major production facility of the Klavarta, and what they had hoped to find.

  The Great Admiral pointed at the prime planet, really a moon, while sending a command through his implant. The moon zoomed to his vision, but only to his. Everyone on the bridge could look at the whole plot, or zoom in on something as wanted. His view was of a living world, one of the small percentage that existed in the Galaxy around red dwarves. It was an arid world, with a couple of small oceans or large lakes, and what appeared to be scrub forests and grasslands around them for several hundred kilometers. The rest appeared to be desert, from scrublands to vast seas of dunes. There were some lights showing on the shores of the lakes, surface cities.

  In orbit around the world were numerous large structures that appeared to be factories, and more open facilities that were shipyards. The Great Admiral zoomed in on one of the open structures, to see a number of what appeared to be warships under construction. A Klavarta cruiser was undergoing a refit in one of the bays, which lent scale to the other ships. All appeared to be much larger than the cruiser, which was the largest vessel the Ca’cadasans had run into on this front before the coming of the other humans.

  Did this mean that the Klavarta, who, after all, were only genetically engineered humans, were changing their strategy to go toe to toe against their foes, instead of the raids that typified their normal strategy? Or would this be the beginning of a two prong strategy? That possibility was the most frightening, since they could then attack the Ca’cadasans both as raiders and through major offensives.

  “We’re picking up more enemy ships,” said the Tactical Officer. “Most seem to be in the raider class.”

  “Order the fleet to a vector on the prime moon,” ordered the Great Admiral. “But follow the planned course. I want us to be able to get out of here when we need to.”

  Counting the number of ships they were opposing, that need might never arise. He had to hope that there were more ships hidden in the system. The point of this operation was not to defeat the enemy fleet in this system, though from looking at the industry here that would not be a bust in and of itself. Destroying this system would be a major blow to the Klavarta, but not as severe as destroying half their extant fleet.

  The Great Admiral did not leave his seat for the next four hours as the fleet forged into the system. More ships appeared on the plot, until there were over thirty thousand of the Klavarta vessels, most in the small raider class. The Admiral was still waiting for more ships to come into the mix, giving him the opening he needed to lure them from the system.

  “I’m concerned, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer. “I would have thought they would have launched on us by now.”

  “Let’s see if we can get them to move a little more quickly,” ordered the Great Admiral. “Order all ships to target the structures in this system. Set up a fire plan to hit all targets, then have each ship give them a volley.”

  The Tactical Officer gave a nod of agreement, then went to work at his board, setting targeting priorities and sending the information over to the Com Officer. The firing plans went out to groups with generalized targeting, which was then parsed by the group tactical officer, who assigned targets to the individual squadrons, where the process was continued until each ship had its priority targets.

  It took several minutes, and a launch time was set at the same time as the targeting. When the time came all of the ships launched, twelve thousand of them, firing a hundred and eighty thousand missiles. The icons appeared on the plot as a flood, separating out as they moved away from their launching vessels and spread through space. They forged ahead at eight thousand gravities acceleration. And as he had hoped, it stirred the hornets’ nest.

  * * *

  “The Monster ships are firing,” yelled the Chief of Staff, staring at the plot for a moment, then turning his wide eyed look back to the Admiral.

  “Targeting?” asked Larista, turning to look at the plot.

  “Unknown at this time. But from the general vectors, I would say they are aiming at industrial targets.”

  “Move our ships out into the open,” said the Admiral. She noticed the disapproving look on her subordinate’s face. “You don’t approve?”

  “I think they fired to get a response out of us, ma’am. It might be a good idea to not let them see our hand. After all, those missiles are all at least several hours from their targets.”

  “Good point.” The Admiral continued to stare at the plot, thinking through the possibilities. Finally she made her decision. “Since they are now unable to avoid action, I think we can go ahead and close the trap.”

  “As you command,” said the Chief of Staff, his tone still showing his disapproval.

  Too bad, thought the Admiral. This is my command, and my choice, so we will do things my way. “Send out the order.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The Chief of Staff nodded to the Com Officer, who started sending out the grav pulse code that told the waiting force which plan to follow. As soon as those commands were received the ships in the system started firing.

  The vessels of the Klavarta were too far apart, separated into groups of from a hundred to a thousand ships, for them to be able to shoot to some integrated fire plan. Each group of ships just locked onto the nearest enemy group and let off a volley. Soon space was filled with hundreds of thousands of incoming and outgoing missiles. The Ca’cacadasan weapons were all larger, from one to two hundred tons, depending on their launch vessel, and all accelerating at eight thousand gravities. Klavarta weapons were all smaller, from twenty ton missiles launched by raiders up to seventy ton missiles launched by cruisers. The human ships held their fire, as they held their boost. They were to be an ace in the hole if needed.

  And so the battle is joined, thought the Klavarta Admiral, staring at the plot. In the next couple of hours it would begin to develop, and she would know what moves she needed to make.

  * * *

  “That got a reaction, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, pointing to the plot, whic
h was now blossoming missile icons by the hundreds of thousands. And ships, coming from behind planets and moons, or moving from a standing position, firing up their grabber units and boosting at maximum acceleration.

  “There’s another one, my Lord,” called out a Tactical Subofficer, one of many that were manning this, the flag bridge of the entire fleet.

  A large blinking dot appeared on the plot, almost a light hour behind and to spinward of the Ca’cadasan force. A zoom showed a force of thousands of raiders, surrounding a couple of hundred cruisers. Moments later vector arrows appeared with acceleration figures under each icon. Zooming back coalesced the force into a single icon, now with a predicted course line that showed the unit was on a heading to cut off the Ca’cadasan retreat.

  “A very large force has just appeared by the prime moon,” called out another Subofficer.

  “Show me,” ordered the Great Admiral, walking over to the other side of the holo.

  The view zoomed in, showing a great mirrored surface ten kilometers on a side. Several thousand raiders were already through and boosting, while behind them, three or four at a time, cruisers were appearing.

  “One of the wormholes of the other human Empire,” said the Tactical Officer. “They could bring unlimited forces through that structure.”

  The Great Admiral grunted as he watched scores of cruisers come through, then grunted again as the first of the large vessels came through. These were all in the seven to eight million ton range, much like the scout capital ships of the Imperials, but of a different design. That they were a heavy class of warship was a given, but the capabilities were a definite unknown.

  “Put more fire on that gate,” ordered the Great Admiral, pointing at the wormhole. “Then go to full offensive fire.” He looked over at his Navigation Officer. “Work out our best vector for getting the fleet out of here with minimal losses.”