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

by Doug Dandridge

  “And the plasma torpedoes?”

  “All fusion reactors are running full blast, sir. I can give you four spreads of plasma from each launcher whenever you want.”

  “Very well.” Zhukov sat back in his chair, his eye straying over to the damage schematic, and the blinking red of the starboard reactor that could render all the other preparations moot at any second. Come on, he thought, get that damned opening cleared. The numbers on the schematic kept fluctuating, and he knew the Chief Engineer was playing the reactor like a musical instrument, controlling what feed valves he could to keep things damped down. The only problem was he didn’t control all the feeds, and the magnetic fields of both the reactor containment vessel and one of the storage tanks were fluctuating like hell. And when they dropped, that was it.

  * * *

  Sean watched from over a thousand light years away through the wonder of wormholes and quantum connected minds. It was looking like the Vincenzo was going to survive as they worked on the hyperdrive array. Five percent more capacity and they would be able to jump down to hyper V, which would require only a quarter of the energy to remain in as compared to VI, with a correspondingly lower energy needed to jump down to the next level, IV.

  Force Alpha was just about to come into laser range, and, based on the slow closing and passing speed, would lead to a battle lasting a half hour or more. He really didn’t like the odds of that battle, with a battle cruiser firing on seven vessels that were less than half its mass combined. Forces Charlie and Delta would be within range in a little over an hour, well after the present fight was through.

  “I wish I could order them to all break off,” whispered the Emperor. It was looking more and more like most of these people were going to die this day. But if they broke off the battle cruiser would continue to operate, and less than a day ahead were rich shipping lanes, and no way to warn the ships that plied them.

  “If we can slow the Fenri down, it will be worth it, your Majesty,” said McCullom, who had obviously heard what he had whispered. “These people gave their oaths to do whatever they must do to protect the Empire. And this is what we need them to do.”

  “Probably not what they envisioned when they joined,” said Jennifer, who had accompanied her husband for this viewing of the drama of a naval battle.

  The Empress sat back in a chair next to her husband, her distended belly forming a rest for her hands. Sean looked over at his glowing wife, eight months along in her pregnancy with his heir. Only two and a half more months to go and his heir, a son, would have arrived in the world, and the succession would be assured.

  “Are you sure you want to be here for this, your Majesty?” asked McCullom, concern on her face.

  “I want her to learn how to rule when I am not in the capitol,” said the Emperor. “And this is part of ruling an Empire at war.”

  The Emperor turned toward his wife, digesting his own thoughts for a moment before giving them to her. “No one joins the services with the intention of dying, my dear. All give the oath that they will give their lives if necessary. Then, for the most part, they put their names into a hat, hoping that their names are not drawn. For most of them, at least in normal times, that is true. But some are drawn, and they pay the price. In a war like this, more pay than is normal.”

  “It still seems unfair,” said Jennifer, a frown on her face.

  “In a fair universe we wouldn’t have the Cacas at our door,” said Sean, looking back at the holo plot.

  “They’ve entered firing range,” announced McCullom, as icons started blinking on the plot.

  * * *

  NATION OF NEW EARTH SPACE.

  “The rear guard is attacking, ma’am,” announced the Chief of Staff.

  “Thank you,” replied Admiral Regis Larista, staring at the tactical plot that showed the situation.

  The Klavarta force was about to be overwhelmed by the combined fleet of the Ca’cadasans. She had lost over two thirds of her fleet to the ambush, and had lost a significant proportion of what was left in a running battle. They had resorted to their historic tactic of splitting the force, splitting it over and over until there were literally hundreds of separate groups for the Cacas to chase. The Cacas had split their forces as well, though they stopped at the point where they would have sent weak groups out in pursuit. And they had gone after the ships they identified as important, Klavarta command ships and vessels from the New Terran Empire.

  And now here they were, on one of the largest of the Klavarta vessels, a two million ton command ship, accompanied by a couple of hundred smaller ships of her nation and a pair of Imperial battle cruisers. Ahead was a large nebula that had been well charted by her people, up to and including a number of large asteroid bodies moving within it. That information had been fed into the inertial guidance systems of every ship in the force, minus the thirty-six that comprised the rear guard.

  And now that rear guard was in the process of giving their lives to give the rest of the force the time to hide.

  They were tracking all of the rear guard and Caca ships moving toward them through their graviton emissions, near the edge of the tracking envelop against the background of the nebula, which was giving out its own low level but massive graviton masking. Suddenly some of the Klavarta icons disappeared, followed by some more, then the drop of a few of the Caca icons. The Klavarta ships had closed with the enemy and self-destructed, damaging a number of Caca ships, in a few cases destroying them or causing them to translate out of hyper.

  “All units are decelerating at maximum rate,” announced the Chief of Staff, monitoring the force status.

  For the Klavarta ships, that meant about five hundred and fifty gravities for the larger, up to eight hundred for the smaller. The Imperial battle cruisers were pulling five hundred and twenty-five gees, but they were able to translate at a higher velocity than the Klavarta. Every ship was going for its maximum translation speed so it could drop down to normal space and hide in the nebula.

  “We’re experiencing turbulence from the gravity waves in the nebula, sir,” said one of the bridge techs to the Chief of Staff, While the ship shook around them.

  “How bad will it get” asked Larista, visions of her ship coming apart around her running through her mind.

  “Not much worse, ma’am,” answered the Tech. “It will be a harder ride for the larger ships. The humans, and of course, the Monsters.”

  “We can always hope it’s too much for the Monsters,” said the Chief of Staff with a smile.

  I doubt it will be, thought the Admiral, wondering how she was going to face her President after having led almost half the total fleet into an ambush. They had fought hard, and had destroyed a lot of the ships of the Monsters. But her own force had been all but destroyed, and only quick action and some suggestions from the Imperial force that had fought alongside hers had allowed any of it to survive.

  “Some of the smaller ships are translating down,” said the Sensor Tech.

  The Admiral looked on the plot to see that indeed about fifty of the small attack ships, forty thousand tons and capable of great bursts of acceleration, were now in normal space. And all were accelerating like bats out of hell, trying to put out the most massive graviton signatures they were capable of. They would hopefully attract the attention of some of the Monsters’ ships, and would power down and hide in the nebula if any translated down after them.

  “Monster ships are drawing closer,” called out the Sensor Tech.

  “Can they hit us with missiles?”

  “Probably not at this range,” said the Chief of Staff, shaking his head. “The nebula gas will cause erosion of their seeker heads after a short flight, and then they will just fly off after nothing, until enough erosion occurs that they will simply detonate in the middle of nowhere.”

  That still seemed strange to the Admiral, even raised in space as she had been. Outside this ship was a very good vacuum, but not the perfect vacuum of interstellar space, since it was the home o
f a gas and dust cloud.

  Time went by, as it always did, and as the ship slowed so did the time dilation that always accompanied them in high relativistic motion. And the Caca ships kept getting closer, not so worried about trying to translate down now, only seeming to have the intention of catching and destroying their prey.

  “They’re launching missiles,” called out the Sensor Tech.

  “Can they reach us?” asked the Admiral.

  “I believe so, ma’am. Impact in twelve minutes.”

  “Time to translation?”

  “Eleven minutes, forty-one seconds, ma’am.”

  It was going to be close, especially since in the nebula the tracking wasn’t perfectly accurate. The Imperial battle cruisers, which, with their alien com tech, were her only contact back to the fleet, were still falling ahead, still trying to lose enough velocity to translate.

  “Give them a spread of missiles,” ordered the Admiral, looking at the plot and trying to decide the best way to do this. “Set them to detonate in five minutes after launch.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied the Tactical Officer, setting the missile commands through his board. “We have four dual purpose left in the tubes. Will that be enough.”

  “It will have to be,” said Larista, nodding. At least all of her missiles had been the Imperial dual purpose, such as their allies used. Her ship had used up most of hers in battle, but fortunately she had decided to hold a few in reserve, for just such a moment.

  “Firing,” said the Tactical Officer, and the ship shook slightly from accelerating the missiles through the stern tubes. The icons appeared on the plot, decelerating at five thousand gravities and falling behind the ships, which were also decelerating.

  Larista counted down the time on her implant, not taking her eyes off the plot. The enemy missiles were coming on, while hers fell back. She doubted the enemy was too worried about a mere quartet of missiles heading their way, and were probably wondering what she was up to. When the timer got to one minute, the missiles from both sides were nearing each other, and the Admiral thought they might have timed it right.

  The enemy missiles were only seconds from crossing the path of hers when the Klavarta weapons detonated in space. They were closely spaced, about ten kilometers apart, and they sent up a fifty kilometer wide wall of radiation and heat that lived in hyperspace for a mere two seconds. It was still enough to catch a half dozen of the enemy missiles, sending enough heat and radiation into them to degrade their seeker heads and send them off course. Hopefully it would also interfere with the sensor reads of the ships far behind the missiles.

  “Translation velocity in forty-five seconds,” called out the Helm.

  “Missile impact in fifty-four seconds,” said the Tactical Officer.

  And we’re going to make it, thought the Admiral, when the message came through that one of the ships was having problems with its hyperdrive.

  Larista stared at the ship on the plot, a three hundred thousand ton vessel that served the Klavarta as a cruiser. There were over three hundred members of the various subspecies of Klavarta aboard that ship, and unless they could get their hyperdrive’s jump function online in less than thirty seconds they were doomed, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Translating, now,” called out the Helm, and the hole in space opened in front of the command ship. They slid through with the slight nausea that even the pilots, who were engineered to be the almost perfect space dwellers, felt.

  Forty-three of the destroyer and cruiser class vessels translated at the same time as the command ship, sliding back into what normally would have been familiar black space with bright stars. Except this was well into a nebula, and most of space was made up of plasma and dust glowing from the light of the stars within or on the edge of the stellar formation. The cruiser with hyperdrive malfunction did not come through, and moments later its icon, along with that of three Caca missiles, disappeared from the plot, no longer producing gravitons.

  The Admiral bowed her head and said a quick prayer to the Universe for the lives of her people that had just been extinguished. They had joined the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, who had gone into the dark before them under her command. She didn’t have much time for observing the rituals of her people. Right now there was only time for the living.

  All of her ships were in normal space now, only the two Imperial battle cruisers still decelerating in hyper, and they were moments away from their own maximum jump velocity. And the Ca’cadasan ships were almost on them.

  “All ships,” said the Admiral, the catch words that told her Com Tech she wanted this command to go out to every vessel in the group. “Prepare for missile launch. I am imputing commands, now.”

  The Admiral had a tactical holo opened to her front, pointing at the icons of each of her ships on another holo, then dragging to their assigned target onto the main plot. It took the experienced officer, who had come up through tactical before commanding her first ship, seconds to assign the targets.

  “All ships, acknowledge when you have your targeting information locked.”

  Visuals showed the ships plowing through the gas of the nebula, still decelerating at a current velocity of point two four light. Each were forming spectacular bow waves that spread for hundreds of thousands of kilometers as the electromagnetic field enclosed vessels compressed the gas. Lighting flared along the waves as static electricity built up from the movement.

  The acknowledgements came through, quickly for some, a little slower for others, but all within the parameters set by the fleet. As soon as the last targeting solution came in the Admiral gave the order.

  “Fire.”

  Each ship fired off an entire spread of missiles, each on an individual track that brought them into a globular arrangement around the force. Fifteen seconds after launch the Imperial battle cruisers translated back into normal space, followed by a launch from those ships. Fort-eight seconds after that the first of the Ca’cadasan ships came down, immediately pulsing their active sensors to try to locate their targets within the nebula. Said targets had by now cut their grabbers back to nothing, coasting along with only vital systems powered up. They were still giving off considerable heat, and would do so for some time, until they had cooled down. Which meant they needed some other heat sources to take attention from them.

  Those heat sources started to blossom all around the Klavarta ships, from two hundred thousand to a million kilometers from the force. From two hundred megatons to a gigaton of matter antimatter blasts ripped through the near nebula, forming balls of superhot plasma that moved out from the center of each explosion. Gas heated for tens of thousands of kilometers around each blast, and the stored up static electricity in the cloud was released. Lightning flared, arcing for millions of kilometers in each direction in displays that dwarfed any other discharges seen in nature. Ten seconds later another wave of explosions moved out, hundreds of thousands of kilometers further away, repeating the same pattern. Now the space for well over a million kilometers out from the ships was a roiling mass of gas, superheated pockets of plasma, and static discharge.

  * * *

  “Find them,” shouted Great Admiral Mgananawan K’lantariana, glaring at the tactical plot as he slammed his lower fists into his chair arms, using the motion to push himself to his feet. The plot was full of many short lived shapes, growing for minutes, then shrinking. There were hundreds of heat sources, from tens of thousands to millions of degrees.

  “Our sensors are not able to find them, my Lord,” said the cringing Sensor Officer. “There’s too much background interference. Not only the natural interference of the nebula, but all of the other energies they have imparted to the gas and dust.”

  The Great Admiral growled, stalking toward the holo as if he would attack the projection. He had followed this group because it had the largest of the Klavarta ships, as well as two of the human empire scout capitals. These seemed to be the ships of the leader of the Klavarta
fleet, and if he could take them out, the victory would be complete.

  And now they’ve foxed me, he thought through the building rage. The Great Admiral turned back toward his Sensor Officer, pointing a pair of right index fingers at the male.

  “Use every active sensor we have. Send out probes. Do everything you can, but find them.”

  With that last order the Great Admiral stalked from the bridge, slamming a fist into the wall by the hatch before he left.

  The bridge crew looked at each other, no one sure what to do. All they knew was that the male who had control of their lives, or deaths, had ordered something done, and they needed to do it. Even if it was impossible.

  * * *

  “They are actively searching, ma’am,” said the Chief of Staff, looking at the plot that showed the Monsters’ vessels, each radiating on multiple ranges of the spectrum. “All they are likely to do is to continue to give us their positions.”

  “No chance of finding us?” asked Admiral Larista.

  “Oh, there’s a chance,” said the smiling Chief of Staff. “They could run one of their big, ungainly ships into one of ours by accident, I guess. But on active sensors? Not a chance. The gas of this nebula absorbs all of the lidar they put out, and radar is having to deal with all of the static generated interference.”

  Both of the high ranking officers stood side by side looking at the plot. There were a couple of Ca’cadasan ships that were close enough that the risk of that collision was a possibility, no matter how remote. Most were working paths that were leading the away from the Klavarta, and the Imperial battle cruisers as well. They could search on those paths until hell froze over and they wouldn’t find anything.

  “How long do you think they will stay here looking for us?” asked the Admiral.

  “No more than a couple of days,” replied the Chief of Staff. “Their commander, cut off from the rest of his fleet, will begin to get impatient.”