But we should have known the Fenri would come at us again. And again. Their territorial imperative is triggered by us holding what they considered theirs by right of conquest.
“We are estimating five hundred capital ships and over a thousand cruisers and escorts,” continued the voice on the net. “All ships prepare for action. Repeat, all ships prepare for action.”
Baggett had a pretty good idea of the Imperial order of battle, and they had nowhere near that many ships in the fleet still involved in this operation. Of course, they had some tech advantages over the Fenri.
“This is the Admiral speaking,” came the voice of the Fleet Commander over the net. “Fleet Headquarters has denied our request for wormhole missile support. All assets are tasked for other operations. Repeat, wormhole missile support is not available.”
And there goes one of our biggest advantages. There were only a dozen ships in the force equipped with wormholes. But those ships could put out thousands of missiles over time at up to point nine five light, a big advantage in a stand up fight.
“What are we supposed to do against that force, Admiral?” came the voice of one of the task force commanders.
“Fight them, Commodore. What else do you think? Hit them with long range missile fire, then close with them and destroy them with beam weapons.
Sounds really easy, doesn’t it, thought the Brigadier with a grimace. He knew that the Fleet actual believed that bullshit of closing with the enemy, no matter the cost. He really wanted them to be successful, because if they failed, the heavy infantry corps left on the planet was truly screwed. They could put up a good fight, and probably bleed whatever force the enemy tried to land, but the result was already foregone. The Fenri would land as many troops as they needed to take the planet back.
“I have ordered the scout force to follow them the entire way,” said the Admiral. “They will come in behind the enemy, and add their fire to ours.”
Which gives us another what, twelve battle cruisers and some smaller ships? That won’t be much of a help. Why couldn’t my unit have gotten an assignment to the major front, and not this sideshow? Baggett slammed his fist onto the table with a crack, then shook his head, realizing that there was nothing he could do about the naval situation. So he would do what he could with what he had. The Brigadier pulled a map of his area up, looking for the best place to have his men dig in to fight a landing. The ships raining kinetics down would complicate things. He thought back to Sestius, where he had faced a similar situation against the Cacas. And maybe I can hurt the Fenri just as much.
* * *
ELYSIUM SPACE.
“A slip has come available on the station,” said the Knockerman who was the Captain of the vessel. “We will be docking within the hour.”
“That’s great news,” shouted the General. He had been worried now for over a day that something would go wrong. All it would take was for a Brakakak patrol ship to ask to board. The Captain would be unable to refuse, since such action would bring serious repercussions. Like more ships surrounding them, then a search party coming aboard anyway. Then there would be no way that they could hide the identity of their real captain, a Knockerman, when no members of that race were in charge of any Elysium warships. And it would be impossible to hide the six thousand males he had crammed aboard this ship. They were actually overtaxing the life support system to the point where the scent of their own kind was driving the Cacada aboard mad. And any alien that came aboard would notice that scent in the air in an instant.
“I will prepare my men for battle,” said the General, getting up and leaving his small quarters, sending out the call to his troops.
As soon as he walked out of the area where he and his officers had been quartered, he had become aware of the focus of his men. Males were moving with a purpose, putting on their battle armor, checking weapons, then going to their assembly points. There were not many of those that could accommodate large units. The two hangars, the gymnasium, the main marine training deck. That took care of four of his nine battalions. Most of the units could not be assembled in their entirety.
The most difficult thing will be getting them off this ship quickly, thought the General, continuing to walk down the corridor until he came to the guarded door where his special weapons were stored. The guards saluted and let him to the door, where he imputed the codes that unlocked it. The thick door that had guarded a Brakakak arsenal opened, and the General walked in, hunched over as usual so his horns wouldn’t scrape on the ceiling. I wish I could walk a normal deck once more before I die, he thought, looking at the five devices sitting on their antigrav pallets. I’m afraid I’m going to have to live in the surroundings of midgets for the rest of my life, as short as that will be.
A half hour later he was on the bridge of the ship, for the last time, watching as the huge doors that led into the station vessel hangar opened. He could see the many other ships inside, crowding their slips, suited beings on the outside of many running torches and other devices over the hull. And all wasted effort, he thought. The price of getting the Knockermen to get them here was one of the devices. Four would have to do. By the Gods, he thought, two will probably do the job.
When they were through the opening the light cruiser veered to the right and made its way around the hangar. The General thought this was an impressive structure, maybe not of a class with his own people’s mobile stations, or the really big industrial ones at home. Still, it represented a lot of time, effort and materials, as did the ships that were docked here.
The ship stopped and made one last turn, then moved forward slowly into the one slip that was open before them. It came to the end and tapped the wall in a light thump that could be heard throughout the ship. A second later a thump came through the bottom as it touched down on the floor of the slip. Then came the multiple clangs as the docking clamps locked into place.
“Get ready,” ordered the General over the local com. “As soon as the docking tubes link we’ll have company aboard. They must be eliminated, quickly.”
He watched the two docking tubes extend to touch the hull. Both were large, enough to move heavy equipment through the tubes and into the ship. But not large enough to push his entire brigade through. He switched the view for a second to the two hangars, both crowded with battle suited males, ready to move.
The Knockermen had assured him that they had allies aboard the station. Not Knockermen. They wouldn’t be trusted. But there were many other species in the Empire, and some of those members were not happy with the Brakakak, or their alliance with the humans. And they don’t have to know that their compliance with our attack will lead to their adding their atoms to an expanding plasma cloud.
The docking tubes connected with the hatches of the cruiser and locked with a clunk. The doors to the ship slid open at the same time as those of the tubes, and ten Brakakak engineers marched on board through each of them, scanning instruments in the hands of the enlisted personnel, the supervising officer carrying a small flat comp.
On both tube entries the officers looked around in confusion, as there was no greeting party to meet them. A moment later they were greeted by weapons fire, the red beams of particle rifles cutting them down, filling the air with steam made up of flesh and blood, while no longer whole bodies fell to the floor.
One Brakakak was still alive, and he looked up in shock as one of the three meter tall warriors walked hunched over into the entry, weapon aimed down. A quick beam and the avian no longer had a head.
“All warriors. The assault is on. Move out.”
The doors to the docking tubes flew open once again, and Cacada crowded forward in a rush. A rush that slowed considerably as the Cacada were unable to maneuver in the crowded area.
“As soon as the warriors already in the tube take out the door at the other end, destroy the tube,” he ordered his two battalion commanders on that operation over the com. “Send the rest of the males out through the hatches and the emergency hatches, so t
hey can get into that station faster.”
The vids of the hangars showed the large doors sliding open, then warriors flying out in a rush on grabbers. They spread out, heading for the docking tubes of adjacent ships and cutting them off at the wall to the station, then cutting open the doors leading inward. Other males cut open other hatches, and the spurt of gas at each showed that the interior was being breached.
“Prepare to move the weapons to the station,” he ordered over the com, then turned to see the Knockerman Captain come up behind him in his species’ version of combat armor.
“We are ready to move out through the hangar,” said the Captain.
“You should have already been moving,” said the General, pointing a pair of right index fingers at the being. “Now get moving, or I will have you and your people shot.”
The Knockerman looked angry, but was not angry enough to continue a confrontation with an angry armored Cacada male. He turned and moved away as fast as his form could carry him, which was not very fast at all.
Idiots, thought the General, looking at the back of the retreating creature, then turning his attention back to the matter at hand. His first males were on the station. From here they were to fan out and destroy everything in their path, anything that looked like a power or com conduit, any aliens they ran into. He looked at the schematic and saw what they had to get through. He would have preferred infiltration, but didn’t see how he could have gotten thousands of males through the kilometer of station they needed to penetrate to get to the gate. It wasn’t like his troops were inconspicuous, and even with stealth systems they would have looked like very large ripples in the air.
There’s no way the damned delicate bird things can stop us, he thought, looking at the map of corridors and lifts. They can’t stop us. And with that he headed for the hangar that would be his exit, and the weapons he had brought to kill the biggest human advantage in this war.
* * *
“Welcome to Elysium,” said Ambassador the Archduke Horatio Alexanderopolis, shaking the hand of the new IIA Chief of Mission. “Good trip?”
“That first step is something, your Grace” said the young man who was taking the place of his old Chief, who had been transferred back to Jewel. “But it went really quickly, I guess.”
Horatio nodded his head. Wormhole travel was always disorienting. Or at least that was what he had heard. He had tried the gate when it first opened, on a quick visit to friends in the capital he hadn’t seen in decades. He had been offered a trip to his planet, the one his title made him hereditary leader of. Since he hadn’t been there in thirty years, and had basically put his oldest son in charge, he had turned it down. But those two trips through the wormhole were something he thought he would never get used to. It was like living an eternity in an instant. I’m surprised more people don’t go mad.
There had been cases of that very thing. There were still some congenitally defective people, despite the human improvement project of centuries before, and the wormhole gate sent them over the edge. I wonder when we’ll find an alien species that can’t take gate travel at all?
“And how is your Brakakak?” asked the Ambassador. He had asked for an agent with that ability. But even with modern psycholearning techniques, it was a difficult language to learn.
“Fluent in my understanding,” said Senior Agent Paxton. “Not so much on my pronunciation.”
“It is a difficult language to enunciate,” said Horatio in flawless Brakakak. “It is more important in your line that you can understand it”
“That, was amazing,” said the Agent. “I’ve always heard that it is impossible for a human to speak the language fluently.”
“No,” said Horatio with a smile. “Just forty years of practice. And a lot of determination. Now, let me lead you to our shuttle.”
“I really appreciate you meeting me, Ambassador,” said the Agent as they walked down the corridor toward the tram to the shuttle hangar. “You could have sent someone up here instead.”
“I always meet my new people,” said the Ambassador. “That used to mean going up to the liner and meeting them after a two month voyage. Now I get to meet them after they had breakfast in the capital. Changing Galaxy, but still worthy of our personal attention.”
The lights dimmed in the corridor for a moment, followed by flashing purple light, the kind that caught the attention of the avians, and a screech like that made by a predatory raptor.
“What?” asked the Agent, turning and looking up and down the corridor, his hand under his jacket and grasping for his handgun.
“That’s an alert,” said the Ambassador, watching Brakakak and other beings running up and down the corridor. Many of the avians were armed, most with pistols, very few in armor.
“What’s going on?” the Ambassador yelled at a Brakakak, one with the tabs of a Naval officer on his jacket. “What’s the emergency?”
“The station has been invaded,” yelled out the avian, turning his head as he continued down the corridor. “We think it is Ca’cadasans.”
“What the bloody hell,” said the Ambassador. “How in the hell could they be here?”
“All nonessential personnel are to report to shuttles for transport off the station,” came a voice in Brakakak over the intercom. “All military personnel are to report to their duty stations, armed.”
“What are we to do, your Grace?” ased the Agent, holding his mag pistol by his side.
“First off, put that away,” said Horatio, pointing toward the gun.
“I have a permit to carry this, even in Elysium, due to diplomatic allowances,” said the man.
“And you’re an alien on a station under attack by unknown aliens. Not all Elysiums are familiar with humans. So put it away.”
The Agent nodded, thumbed his gun to off, and slid it back in its holster.
“And now we get to the shuttle hangar and get the hell off this station,” said the Ambassador. “The Brakakak are well armed, and it is their job to defend this station.”
“What if the Cacas get to the wormhole gate?”
“Then our people on the Donut can fight them. I really doubt they’ll be able to do much. Even a large antimatter weapon won’t take it out, or destroy the wormhole generating apparatus. So the best thing we can do is get out of the way.”
Paxton nodded, and the Ambassador led him in the opposite direction from the running avians, toward the shuttle hangar where the diplomatic bird was parked.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CONGREEVE SPACE. NOVEMBER 19TH, 1001.
The Great Admiral thought everything was going his way. The enemy battle fleet had been hammered from a distance. There were still some operational ships in that force, maybe a hundred of them, but none had escaped damage. The Ca’cadasan force had taken some hits. He had lost two battleships and a dozen smaller ships, as well as damage, mostly minor, to over a hundred. But the exchange had been totally in his favor.
“The merchant ships are starting to decelerate,” called out the Tactical Officer. “They should be on a heading for the planet in two hours.”
They’ve seen what waits for them. “What about the Emperor’s squadron?”
“They too are starting to decelerate. We are not sure of their heading at this time.”
“I want their Emperor captured, if possible,” growled the Great Admiral. “Order the closest units on blockade to head in. I want those ships boxed in.”
The Com Officer turned around and started to send the signals by hyperdrive pulse. It would not make it through the inner system, the gravity well of the star would become too disruptive, blocking the graviton emissions. They would travel to the ships at points around the outer system that could intercept them, then relayed.
“Those three big commercial ships have not moved,” said the Tactical Officer, pointing to the enormous spherical vessels on the holo.
“They must have figured it was a lost cause trying to escape with them,” said the Helm Officer.
“I cannot believe that it was so easy,” said the Tactical Officer. “This isn’t like the humans.”
No, thought the Great Admiral. It is not. Did we just catch them on a bad day? When their minds were turned off?
They were now twelve hours into the system, boosting at five hundred gravities, velocity point nine c. In another couple of minutes they would go into coast mode for about an hour, then start decelerating toward the planet. They were committed to the planet, or to a flyby at whatever velocity they were at when they changed their minds, plus the acceleration they added on at that point. Either way, they were going into the system, with no quick way out.
But we have them. So why do I feel such a sense of unease? What am I missing?
“What the hell are those,” yelled out the Tactical Officer, and the Great Admiral knew that whatever the humans were up to, it was making its appearance now.
* * *
“Bubble drop in one minute,” called out the pilot.
And we have no choice in the matter, thought Captain Svetlana Komorov, looking at the tactical plot, which represented what they thought the system would look like at this moment. Actually, I do have a choice. I can still accelerate, or decelerate, or just coast. As long as I don’t drop that bubble unless I’m at the same velocity as when we went into it. But then, I don’t accomplish anything.
“All weapons powered up and ready,” said the Weapon’s Tech, looking over at the Captain. His face was pinched with nervous tension. The same tension that all of them felt.
We’ve been through this before, thought the Captain. We’ve done this transition, and launched into an attack as soon we were back in the real world. But she knew it wasn’t the same. Those had all been simulated attacks, against ships that weren’t out to burn them from space. This time it was kill or be killed.
“Bubble drop in fifteen seconds.”
Exodus: Empires at War: Book 06 - The Day of Battle Page 33
