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

by Doug Dandridge

  At first only about a sixteenth of the energy reached the cold plasma field, which did yeoman’s work in deflecting and absorbing it. As the Fenri ship got closer more of its energy was able to reach the field, getting to the point where it was burning through with ease, more than half of its power hitting the plasma and superheating it.

  And all the time the cruiser was firing back with its two stern laser rings, not near as powerful as those of the battle cruiser, but still capable of doing damage.

  * * *

  Vincenzo shook as powerful lasers vaporized sections of the stern hull, while the heat exchange shattered and blew more of the armor away. The cold plasma field only held up for seconds before it was flaring away from the electromagnetic shield that was supposed to hold it in place. It fired back with all it had, and for all the damage it was doing to the battle cruiser it might as well have been throwing balls of ice.

  “They’re tearing apart the stern of the ship,” yelled out the Chief from damage control. The ship shook again, in a slightly different manner. “They just ripped a channel through the side of the hull. We’ve lost two of the emitters in D ring.”

  “Fire plasma torpedoes,” yelled out the Captain, looking at his Tactical Officer. “Just do it, and fire them as fast as they’ll load. Then make sure all the stern tubes are loaded.”

  The Tactical Officer nodded and got to work. And instant later a pair of plasma torpedoes erupted from the stern tubes, blasting past the outer sections that were melting under the attention of the enemy lasers. They hadn’t a hope of reaching the enemy ship before they fell out of hyper, but they did serve the purpose of intercepting some of the incoming laser energy. A moment later the missiles left the stern tubes, accelerated at thousands of gravities through the magnetic accelerators. They too were already starting to translate as they left the hyperfield, but still carried close enough to detonate within a thousand kilometers of the enemy ship, sending loads of heat and radiation into the enemy hull.

  One of the battle cruiser’s laser rings and a particle beam ring went offline, along with two stern and a midline grabber unit. The ship also lost targeting lock for a few moments, enough to give the Vincenzo a short break. The heavy cruiser continued to fire, taking out some of the emitters of the second stern laser ring and another midline grabber unit, as well damaging the upper hyperdrive array.

  Vincenzo continued to rock from the fire the battle cruiser was still able to put into her after the pause. It passed the cruiser, within a few seconds taking its forward weapons out of the action, leaving only the damaged stern units to continue to fire. Fifteen seconds later the battle cruiser was out of effective range and stopped firing. Papillion kept waiting for the larger ship to launch missiles at him. He was sure from the information they had received over the wormhole com that the Fenri ship still had some, but they seemed to think better of wasting them on a ship they were leaving behind.

  “Damage report,” ordered the Captain. The schematic came up next to his chair, changing from second to second as the computer systems fed in information, often augmented by the crew on the spot. The schematic hiccupped once, a sign that the central computer or the data feeds, or both, had sustained damage.

  What he saw of the red on the ship almost broke his heart. Only two emitters were functioning on the C ring, while the D ring was totally destroyed. The accelerator ring that fed the particle beam nozzles was also gone in several places, and the unit was a complete no go. Only one missile tube from the midline back was still operational, but all the missile feeds were out. The stern plasma torpedoes were gone, and the rear of the ship was almost gone from the far end to three hundred meters in. The rear central capsule, one of the three on the ship, was blasted out as if a warhead had gone off inside the heavily armored compartment. CIC had been in that section, and the Captain was unable to form a contact with any of the people who normally worked it, including his Exec. Both rear hangars had sustained damage, opening them from the rear to space and wrecking the outer hatches.

  The only good news, outside of the ship still being around and not having dropped back to normal space, was that the stern missile magazines had not breached, and the damage hadn’t gotten to the main engineering section and the matter antimatter reactors that were housed there. The ship would live, as would the sixty-one percent of the crew still alive. But Vincenzo was basically out of the fight.

  The enemy battle cruiser had also sustained damage, though not to the human ship’s extent. The most important of that damage was to the propulsion system. The ship was still able to coast along at it initial speed of over point nine light, but it would not be changing vector, including deceleration, at anywhere near the rate of the ships chasing it.

  Still, thought the Captain, glaring at the pair of enemy ships on the plot. A hell of a way to kill two heavy cruisers, just to slow them down. He looked at the other chasing units on the plot. Go get them, and give them hell.

  * * *

  The Lord of Millions scowled as he looked at the visual of the heavy cruiser as it fell behind his ship. He had hoped they would destroy it in passing, while sustaining little or no damage to his ship. Unfortunately, neither had happened. The cruiser was still there, though he doubted it would take any further action in this battle. And his ship had lost a small but significant amount of laser power, and was reduced to four hundred and twenty-three gravities maximum acceleration, down from four hundred and seventy. Most of the ships still in on the chase could decel at over five hundred gravities, and it would be a losing proposition to try and outmaneuver them.

  “We can still hit the enemy cruiser with missiles,” said the Master of Battle.

  “Don’t bother,” ordered the leader. They were down to twenty-eight hyperdrive capable missiles, with no way to resupply. We’re not out of this yet, and we may need another strike at one of those forces.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

  William Shakespeare

  “Missile impact in five minutes, twenty-three seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer, the warning going out through the ship. Everyone who didn’t have other duties at the moment, which included damage control, watched the plot that showed fifty-four missiles still decelerating on a course that would bring them through formation Alpha. Closing speed would be a mere point four-one light, fairly easy targets for modern defensive systems. Still, the possibility of hits was there, and no one knew which of the three light cruisers or six destroyers of the force would have a run of bad luck. And bad luck meant disaster.

  “What about our missiles?” asked Winston of one of his crew.

  “They’re going to come in even slower in comparison, since they can’t travel faster than light, and the enemy is going point nine two light. They’ll be sitting ducks.”

  Wonderful, thought the Petty Officer, shaking his head. So we basically threw our long range offensive weapons away, and are about to be hammered by theirs.

  “Impact in two minutes,” called out the voice over the com, and Nagawa wondered where the three minutes of his life had gone. Dear God, he prayed, just let me get through this and I promise I’ll be a better person.

  Luckily, the forward damage control room was in the bow central capsule, the partition that contained crew quarters and amenities, and was protected by an extra meter of armor. They might not have been as protected as the bridge, but they were still better off than those eighty odd crew who had important jobs outside the capsules. People manning the missile rooms, laser control chambers and other vital combat areas.

  Winston monitored the incoming through his implant as the fifty-four missiles came in. The counter missiles of the combined force took out twenty-three of them before they entered laser range. Laser rings picked up at one light minute and in, close in autoweapons at extremely close range. The destroyer Jonathan Carter was the first to eat a missile, mostly vaporized, with only a few large pieces thr
own outward to quickly disappear from hyper. The light cruiser Tandridge took one moments later, with a very similar result. Thirteen missiles detonated in close proximity to ships, sending heat and radiation into hulls, destroying surface installations and machinery.

  Scranton detonated an incoming missile a hundred kilometers from contact with the hull. The missile converted to plasma that started almost immediately to fall out of space. But at the speed the plasma was travelling it only took nanoseconds to hit the bow of the cruiser. Electromag fields shuttled three quarters of the plasma aside, but the quarter that made it through hit with the force of a shotgun blast, knocking out everything from the bow to the forward most laser ring.

  Collins ate the radiation of two near misses that took out a forward grabber and destroyed most of the nanosystems that controlled the emergency eject hatch over one of the antimatter reactors. Until the area was reseeded with nanites, it would remain a solid piece of alloy, unable to open into a hatch. A microsecond later a piece of the lower hyperdrive array of the Carter struck the same spot, blasting through the meter thick hull and armor and striking hard into the upper area of the starboard side reactor.

  “Damage control parties to the bow,” came the call over the com system. “Prepare for search and rescue operations.”

  Nagawa released his straps and stood up from his couch, looking over to see some of his crew grabbing heavy equipment from lockers. Now they would go outside of the central capsule, but there would be no more missiles for the moment. Minutes later they were exiting the central capsule and on their way through an outer passage toward the bow.

  * * *

  “We’re going to lose the starboard reactor, Captain,” cried the Chief Engineer in a voice on the verge of panic.

  “Can you shut her down?” asked Zhukov.

  “Not a chance, sir. All of the control runs have been damaged. Some have been completely destroyed, and you’re talking at least two hours to reroute them. And Captain, the reactor is about to enter runaway. We’re estimating breach in less than fifteen minutes.”

  “Then get ready to eject when it reaches the point of no return. Don’t even wait for my command.”

  “We can’t eject, sir. Not at the moment. The nanosystems of the hull that make the hatch are fried. We have to cut it open.”

  “Shit,” whispered Zhukov. “Get everyone you need on that. That’s our number one priority until we can get that reactor off the ship.”

  “I can’t guarantee that the reactor will wait for us, sir.”

  “Just do what you can, Engineer. Our lives are in your hands.”

  With that, he let the officer go. There was enough in the Chief Engineer’s hands as it was without wasting time.

  * * *

  “Change of plans, Nagawa,” came the voice of Senior Chief Kongbo over the com. “I need you to gather up all the heavy cutting equipment you can lay your hands on and to egress the ship.”

  “Egress the ship,” cried Winston, choking back the are you crazy that he wanted to add.

  “We don’t have time for discussion, Nagawa,” growled the Senior Chief. “We’re moments away from a reactor breach, and we need to open up the hull. So get moving.”

  I thought we had a system to eject a reactor, thought Winston as he directed his people to get into armor augmentation packs that would give them much more strength. The packs were not all that useful in much of the ship as they restricted movement. But outside they could make a difference.

  No one goes outside, he thought. Not in hyper. He knew that was a lie as soon as he thought it. Other people had been out working on the hull. He just thought he would never have to be one of them. Since the lock was only large enough for two of them at a time in the bulked up suits, which were just a bit smaller than Marine heavy combat armor, Winston cycled out with one of the Marines.

  After he was sure his boots were adhering to the hull with their magnetic grapple function, he looked up, his breath catching in his throat. Through the rippling electromagnetic field, and the further blurring of the hyperdrive field above that, was the frightening spectacle of hyperspace. A red background scattered with the black dots of gravity wells that interrupted its continuity. It was space that meant death to all life from his Universe. Anything not protected by a hyperdrive field was immediately ejected back to normal space. Most times that object came through in pieces, from small bits down to individual atoms. Sometimes the object survived with various degrees of damage.

  “We need to get moving, PO,” called out one of the crew from the second cycle.

  “Right,” said Nagawa, taking a short step forward.

  “Not like that, PO. Like this.”

  Winston looked on in horror while five of his people released their holds on the ship’s hull and flew along just above the curve of the vessel.

  You’ve got to f’ing kidding me, thought Winston as his people boosted ahead, flying for several hundred meters and disappearing around the middle bulge of the ship. Winston found himself alone, still almost paralyzed as his eyes looked out on hyperspace.

  “Nagawa,” shouted Kongbo on the com. “Get your ass moving.” There was a slight burst of static on the line, and Winston noticed that his personal line was on. “Look,” said Kongbo over the private line, which was encrypted so that only the two of them would know what was said. “I know it’s frightening out there. I’ve been there. I also know you’re no coward. Not after what you did on the liner. So I need you to get ahold of yourself and move to the work area. If we don’t get that opening free, we’re all dead. Understand?”

  “I understand, Chief.” His feet were actually shaking in his boots as he released the grapples, then raised his suit on grabbers and started ahead. His eyes were locked on the hull, making sure that he did not drift upward. Around the bulge, then down the other end, his crew and another coming into sight, already working with cutting lasers to open up a way for the reactor to come out.

  He landed near the work site, trying to get his breathing back under control. All of his people were already at work, and he felt a tinge of shame that he had let his fears stop him from pitching in. He deployed his own cutting head and went to work, sending a ten centimeter wide beam into the hull along the cutting line that the other team had already laid out.

  “This isn’t going to last long,” he said over the open com as he watched the power meter for his laser begin to drop as sparks flew from the hull under his cutting beam.

  “We got that,” said one of the people on the other crew.

  Nagawa looked up to see two pairs of spacers dragging cables and heavy cutters out from a hatch, while other people carried the other ends of the cables to energy feeder ports. In moments the heavy cutters were going to work, while those with suit cutters hooked up to feeders coming off the cables and recharged.

  “How’s it coming out there?” came the voice of the Chief Engineer over the com.

  Winston looked over the area, surprised at how fast time had been going by. He estimated that they were a third of the way through. And they were only twenty minutes to getting within firing range of the enemy.

  “We’re a third of the way through,” he told the Chief Engineer.

  “Go faster, Spacer. Unless you want to be part of the expanding plasma cloud dropping back into normal space.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As soon as I think this reactor and its storage container are going to blow, I’m going to push the eject button, no matter how far you are along.”

  The com went dead, leaving Nagawa speechless for a moment. “All right, you people. We need to hurry.”

  Acknowledgements came back, but the spacers were already working as fast and hard as they could. They hit the fifty percent mark, and Nagawa began to despair that they would finish in time. He cursed the whole idea of nanotech class skin on warships. It seemed like a good thing overall, since it left no weak points in the armor to be exploited. Now they were running head on into the weakness of th
e concept. And the clock was ticking.

  * * *

  “The second enemy force will be within range in three minutes,” said the Master of Battle, looking back at her commanding officer.

  “Take out the cruisers first,” said the Lord of Millions. “They have the most powerful lasers.”

  “They are arrayed where we will have to go through the destroyers to get to the cruisers, my Lord.”

  The Fenri force master sat and thought for a moment, then looked up. “Then target what you have the best chance of destroying, and work your way down the list. Do you think you will need to use any of our hyper capable missiles?”

  “I don’t think so, my Lord. These are only light escort vessels after all.”

  * * *

  “We’re starting to pick up some coherent light hitting the hull, sir,” called out the Tactical Officer.

  “Shift the hull around so that the crew outside are not exposed,” ordered Zhukov to the Helmsman. “But make sure that the reactor core is on a trajectory away from the force.” The last thing he wanted to do was to send a gigaton class blast into the center of the formation.

  “We’re still a minute away from actual laser range,” said the Tactical Officer.

  “Weapons status?”

  “Three of the laser rings are at full power. One is at half strength. Both particle beam projectors are spun up and ready.”