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

by Doug Dandridge

  “The Fenri ships just went into emergency deceleration, sir,” said the Sensor Chief from her station.

  “What the hell?” asked the Exec.

  “We have missile launch,” called out the Sensor Chief.

  The Tactical Officer turned to his board, his eyes wide as he watched two icons separate from the Fenri battle cruiser and turn onto a heading for their ship. Seconds later they opened holes in hyperspace and jumped up to VII, less than two light seconds away and coming in at thirty thousand gravities.

  “Launch counter missiles,” yelled Zhukov.

  “Launching counters,” replied the Tactical Officer, hitting the lock on and commit panels on his board. “Powering up lasers.”

  The counter missiles slashed out, aiming for the incoming missiles, which dodged away at thirty thousand gravities on their oversized grabber units. Of the thirty counters launched, all were clear misses. Lasers started to lock on as the counter missile launchers reloaded. The first volley of lasers missed.

  “They’re moving too fast,” yelled out the Tactical Officer.

  The missiles were like nothing the Imperial Fleet had ever seen. Fast, agile, with grabbers that looked like huge wings stopping just short of the hyperfield. They were impossible weapons that could not be made in mass, using three times the supermetals of an Imperial hyper VII capable missile. Imperial research and development would be very interested in them, if the destroyer survived long enough for their Com Tech to send the information back.

  “Helm, prepare to jump to normal space.”

  “Impact in seven seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer.

  “Powering up jump,” yelled the Helm, while the missiles drove in. One disappeared from the plot with a flare of brilliance, taken out by a laser. “Jumping.”

  The hole in space opened, and the ship slid through microseconds before the missile would have intersected with them. The nausea passed, and all breathed a sigh of relief that they still existed.

  “How fast can you get us back into hyper VII?” Zhukov asked the Chief Petty Officer who was the first line helmsman on the destroyer.

  “I can have us powered up in nine minutes, sir.”

  “Then get us back up there as fast as you can, Chief. And this time, I want us far enough back where they can’t catch us off guard again.”

  Chapter Eleven

  You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. Buddha

  Winston punched in the code on the keypad while a Marine held up the body of an engineering officer, another trooper holding the woman’s thumb to the biometric pad. Come on, thought Nagawa as he punched in the last number. The light blinked green twice, then stayed on, and the door started to slide open, revealing a room filled with machinery and instrument panels.

  “The main control room is two levels up,’ said Nagawa, pointing to a flight of stairs across the chamber.

  “Secure the room,” said Mishara to his Marines.

  A pair in heavy suits sped into the room, their sensors taking in every nook and cranny. Another heavy suit followed, then a fire team of five Marines in medium shipboard armor.

  “Clear,” called out the NCO in charge of the team over the com.

  “You stay with me, PO,” said the Fleet Officer. “Let’s get this done.”

  The party moved to the steps, the members spreading out and making sure nothing was left behind. Two of the Marine heavy suits led the way up the stairs, actually floating upward without making contact with the steps themselves. The Marine fire team followed, then Mishara and Nagata, then the rest of the group, leaving a couple of troopers behind.

  The next level up was also unoccupied, and the second Marine fire team spread out through the area to make sure that they weren’t leaving something behind that might hit them in the rear. Nagata couldn’t believe that they were going to come up on the engineering control room without any kind of resistance.

  “Look out,” yelled one of the Marines ahead, just before a couple of truncated screams came over the com. The Marine fire team ahead jumped off the stairs, rocketing away from the plasma ball that was flying down the stairway.

  Nagawa froze in place, staring at the ravening ball of plasma that was going to burn him out of his suit. A gauntlet hit him in the back shoulder and pushed him off the stairs and out of the way.

  “Shut down that reactor,” shouted the voice of Mishara over the com, just before his voice was cut off.

  Nagawa turned in the air, seeing the officer who had saved his life turned into a melting torch of metal and flesh. The ball of plasma continued on down the stairs, melting the steps, then hitting the landing to the stairs below and burning through.

  The PO couldn’t believe he was still alive, and also couldn’t understand why the officer hadn’t jumped himself out of the way, but had instead saved an Engineering Mate PO First. He hung in the air, the worst thing he could do, while everyone else was on the move.

  “PO Nagawa,” yelled one of the Marine NCOs. “Get under cover. Now.”

  The Marine fire team and the two remaining heavy suits were still floating in the air, firing everything they had at the now revealed plasma cannon. Heavy particle beams, strings of grenades, even a hyper-velocity missile. The plasma cannon got off one more shot, this time rotating the barrel to take a single one of the heavy suits under fire. The Marine in that suit was good, waiting for the last moment, then jetting away at his maximum acceleration just before the cannon fired.

  That was the last shot the cannon got off before the concussion of heavy explosions rocked the landing above and pieces of machinery, along with the armored body of a Fenri, came falling down the stairs.

  “Hit them,” yelled the Gunnery Sergeant who was in charge of the Marines. The heavy suits and the medium armored fire team rocketed up behind a spray of fire. Some shots came back, not many, and not for long, as the Marines overran the next landing and headed up to the central level of the engineering spaces.

  “We’ve got them on the run,” called the fire team leader.

  “Don’t let them get sealed into the control room,” yelled Nagawa over the com, finally overcoming his shock and realizing that he had been saved for the purpose of getting into that room and stopping the Fenri from blowing the ship out of existence.

  “You heard the man, Marines,” yelled the Gunnery Sergeant, leading the rest of the Marines in a flight up the steps. “Run them down.”

  The level above echoed with the angry buzzing of particle beams and the popping explosions of grenades, the cries of victory and pain over the com, the shaking of the floor as heavy armored suits fell. Nagawa started up after them, then was warned back.

  “Hold on, Nagawa,” ordered the Gunny. “Let us make sure they’re cleared out first.”

  The shooting and explosions had stopped by then, but that didn’t mean there weren’t Fenri up there.

  “Clear,” called out the Gunny. “Nagawa. Come on up and make sure they didn’t set this thing to blow.”

  Winston cleared the stairs and was looking at the door to the control room across thirty meters of engineering spaces. To either side of the thick hatch into the control room were the curving walls of the twin reactor chambers. There really didn’t seem to be much curve to those walls, until one realized just how large those outer chambers were. A liner like this had two chambers, each seventy meters across, with four meter thick walls. Inside were the fifty meter wide reactor vessels, with their five meter thick walls and the forty meter circular reaction chambers. Even to someone who was used to working with those reactors the sight of them was awe inspiring. Powering the multi-megaton vessel, capable of propelling it into hyperspace, each reactor generated more power than the entire pre-space-age Earth. And either one could be overloaded to the point of blasting through all the protective walls and converting the huge ship to plasma.

  “Look out,” yelled one of the Marines, and the angry insect sound of particle beams flooded the room.


  “Where the hell did they come from?” yelled the Gunny.

  Winston picked up the four Fenri who came running out of the access tube, firing at the Marines and running for the control room. A fifth Fenri stopped at the entrance of the access tube and provided covering fire for his comrades. Most of the Marines concentrated on that one, since he represented the greatest threat to their survival. Nagawa’s concentration was totally on the four heading into the control room, since they were the ones that could destroy the ship.

  A pair of Marines stood in the hatchway to the control room, firing their particle beams at the oncoming Fenri. They shot two down before they went down under the fire of the two remaining. Those Fenri jumped over the falling bodies of the Marines, one turning to take the other Marines under fire.

  Nagawa was not a Marine, and had only had rudimentary shipboard combat training. He did know that he needed to stop the Fenri from overloading the reactor, and if he didn’t act fast, it would be too late.

  He realized his mistake as soon as he took a couple of running steps into the open. He should have floated on his grabbers and made the trip in half the time. Instead, he was a slow moving object that attracted the attention of both Fenri that were still firing into the chamber. One, the Fenri covering the chamber, shot at him and missed, just before a string of launched grenades blasted apart the torso of the suit. The second fired and scored a glancing hit, the heat penetrating the armor of Winston’s arm and causing him to cry out in pain. His lucky shot caught the Fenri in the face plate, making the alien duck down and yell out. The Gunny took care of that Fenri before he could recover with a long range shot.

  Nagawa was into the control room just in time to see the Fenri finish imputing the overload instructions. Merchant Marine and passengers ships didn’t have self-destruct mechanisms like warships, where there was a major fear of technology falling into enemy hands. They were made to be as safe and foolproof as possible, and to make the reactor overload took minutes of safety bypasses. The Fenri had already set up those bypasses, needing only the final code to make the reactor load more antimatter than it could handle. That would still take a few minutes, but the Fenri shot the control panel with his rifle to make it impossible to reverse the process.

  “Too late,” yelled the Fenri in Anglo, bringing its rifle around.

  “Not quite,” said Winston as he shot the creature through the head.

  The Fenri fell to the floor as the ship’s computer started blaring out a warning that the reactors were going to overload, at the same time another voice counted down the time left.

  “Shit,” said the Gunny from the hatchway. “We’re fucked.”

  “Not yet,” said Winston, holding up a hand to motion the Gunny away. “Emergency engineering override Omega Epsilon Delta Three Three Three,” he said the air, hoping that this engineering crew had not decided to reset the shipyard default code loaded into the ship’s computers of this class of vessel.

  “Override acknowledged” said the ship’s computer, and a holo screen sprung to life in the air in front of Nagawa.

  The holo showed a reactor schematic, and Nagawa went to work on it as soon as it was firmed up. His hands flew over the schematic, closing valves, inserting commands, feeding energy into conduits to lead it away from the reactor. And all the time the countdown kept announcing how much time they had to live.

  “Is this going to work?” asked the Gunny.

  “Ask me when I’m done,” said the furious Engineer. And I don’t go asking you if you have a proper sight picture when you’re shooting at Fenri, he thought, making the final adjustments, then hitting the execute key.

  “Overload aborted,” announced the computer voice. “Overload aborted.”

  Winston let out the breath he had been holding. He had done it, not just saving his life, but the lives of his teammates and thousands of civilians.

  “What do we need to do now, PO?” asked the Gunny.

  “I need to stay here and make sure this system is running up to specs,” said Winston, switching the main controls over to another station. “You need to assign some people to keep this room secure. It wouldn’t do to have more of the little furry bastards come in here and start the whole thing going again.”

  “You got it,” agreed the Gunny. “Sergeant Grant. You and your team keep the PO company. The rest of us are going to continue sweeping the ship.”

  The Gunny clapped an armored gauntlet to Winston’s armored shoulder. “And good job, PO. I think you’ll be up for an award for this day’s work.”

  “Hell, Gunny. I got all the reward I want. We’re still alive.”

  * * *

  “Good luck, Star of Zambez,” said Captain Pasce over the com to the liner they were leaving behind.

  “I really wish I could talk you into escorting us, Captain,” said the former First Officer, now acting captain of the ship.

  “We need to stay on that bastard that took you in the first place,” said Pasce, trying to keep the aggravation from his voice. He had already told this woman that his mission required them to stay on the tail of the battle cruiser. Yet she kept asking for the cruiser to escort them, when she wasn’t demanding it.

  The expression on her face told him that she was finally accepting the inevitability of his position, not something she could ignore while the cruiser was generating vector away from her ship.

  “Well, thank you for freeing us from those little bastards, Captain.”

  “I think if you head directly to the nearest developing system you’ll be OK, Captain. As far as we know there are no more Fenri within range of you.” A developing world would have the defenses to fight, and most probably destroy, a two ship raiding party, while defending itself from their long range missile attack.

  “I hope you’re right, Captain Pasce. Because if we run into another one, we’re all dead.”

  “Preparing to jump into VII, sir,” said the Chief Petty Officer manning the helm.

  “We’re jumping into VII, Captain Murray,” he told the woman on the other end of the com laser. Without waiting for her reply he gave the order, and Scranton opened the hole between the dimensions and slid through, leaving the liner moving in the other direction in the lower dimension.

  “Follow the buoys, and catch us up to the Collins,” he ordered the Helm. And I hope they didn’t run into anything they couldn’t handle, he thought, still wondering what the Fenri plan was. It made no sense to leave some of their people behind on a civilian ship, when they could have just used their lasers to blow it out of space. The only thing that made sense was that they were using the liner as part of a multi-pronged trap. One prong had been apparent as soon as they sent the assault team over to the liner. The enemy had hoped they would remain alongside so they could detonate the liner’s reactors and take the cruiser with them. At the very least they would damage the warship to the point where they couldn’t continue their part of the pursuit. Pasce had seen through that plan and moved away as soon as he had released his assault group, and only after moving into hyperfield linkage at the last moment.

  And if they had been destroyed, it still left the destroyer. So they had to have had a plan to take them out as well. That was his fear, and he sat on it the entire way, through multiple waypoints of buoys. And then the destroyer itself was on the sensors, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Match course and velocity with the Collins,” he ordered, noting that the destroyer was hanging back from the Fenri ships a little farther than before. “And don’t get any closer than the Collins until we know what happened here.”

  Moments later the grav pulse signal came back to the cruiser, letting them know what happened, while he had his own Com Tech send their story to the destroyer. It wasn’t long until they were within laser com range, and the details could be filled in.

  * * *

  The Lord of Millions, Granis Feneris, glared at the plot and his followers once more, trying to come up with a plan that would rid him of the
se unwelcome tails. The liner and the hyper VII missiles his weapons’ crews had cobbled together had seemed like the best opportunity to rid himself of the inconvenience, while destroying a pair of human warships at the same time. But it had failed, and now they were bound to be more cautious.

  That caution was already showing in the way they were now following. They were a couple of light minutes back in VI, which meant over thirty light seconds in VII. Even if he was able to get a missile going toward them at the maximum translation speed of his tech, point two eight light, it would take them more than two minutes to reach the target. And the humans had already proven they could translate quick enough to avoid the missiles.

  “What do you want us to do, my Lord?” asked the Bridge Manager. His eyes were wide and alert, showing that he wanted to be able to do something. Near him hovered the Master of Battle, the same expression on her face.

  But they have no more idea than I do on how to get rid of them, thought the commander of the team. We should have only sent out hyper VII ships. The only problem was that hyper VII was a new technology for the Fenri, and they had only been building ships capable of reaching that dimension for the last couple of years. Ninety-five percent of their ships at the beginning of hostilities were still VIs, and most of the VIIs had been destroyed in action.

  “We will continue on and hit the targets we can,” he finally said to his second in command and chief combat officer. “Hopefully some more merchant or passenger ships will appear. If not, we will continue on to this star here, where we should find another of their frontier planets.”

  “And when they vector more ships to our location?” asked the Master of Battle.

  “Then we will fulfill our oath to the Emperor and die gloriously in his name, taking as many of the enemy with us as we can.”

  It would do nothing to save their own Empire, which was sure to be overrun by the humans in the very near future. But it would add to the expense of their conquest, and would contribute to the pride of his species, that they had gone down fighting.