Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (26 page)

Angel dug his gauntleted
fingers into the plasticrete and tugged with all the force the suit could
generate, using his grabbers to steady his armor as it moved back.   His suit
looked like a medium suit that had been augmented.  Actually its actuators were
more powerful than those used in the larger heavy suits, and he had little
trouble ripping ten tons of masonry out of the fallen rubble and depositing it
on the ledge behind him.  Another jerk and the wall was lighter by another ten
tons of masonry.  He checked the structure once again, made one more cut, and
pulled another chunk out, this time exposing the space within.

People looked out at
him.  He could see five, but his infrared system made out seven more.  Two of
the red figures were cooler than normal, the sign of losing body heat, an
indication that their metabolic processes had ceased.  It was also a sign that
they had not been dead that long, and were probably recoverable.  The only problem
with that being the search and rescue apparatus was heavily overloaded at this
moment.  By the time anyone got here to revive them, it would be too late.  And
though his suit had many capabilities, revival was not one of them.

“We need help,” said one
of the people he had just freed.

“I’m not search and
rescue.  Now that I’ve gotten you out, you need to wait until the proper
authorities come.”

“My wife and child need
help,” cried the man, grabbing Angel by the shoulders.  If he had meant to push
or pull the suit he was out of luck.  “Please.”  He turned and looked at the
two people lying on the floor.  One adult, and one infant.

How in the hell did you
rate a reproduction license?
thought Angel, looking into the distraught face
of the man.  As a core world, Jewel was already at the population limit. 
Actually well above what any other core world was allowed, being the capital. 
With a continuous flow of people on planet from elsewhere, children were rare
on this world.  So an infant was unexpected.  Angel linked into the net,
getting the location of the nearest intact hospital.

“I’ll take them to the
nearest hospital.  That’s all I can do.”

Angel picked up the woman
in one arm and cradled the infant in the other, backing out of the room until
he was again in the open.  He took one last look at the father, then boosted
into the air on his grabbers, accelerating at a low enough speed, a couple of
gravities, that he wouldn’t cause significant extra brain damage to the infant.

The hospital was ten kilometers
from the building.  One of the thirty-seven in the city, and one of the larger
ones at that, it was a miracle that it hadn’t been targeted.  Fourteen others
had been, or at least had been close enough to targets that they had taken
significant damage.  In less than a minute he was there, landing on one of the
platforms designated an ambulance landing pads.  There were four ambulance
aircars on the roof, one in the process of taking off.  He could see another in
the air at a distance.  Medical personnel were on the roof, unloading the
seriously injured from the remaining aircars.

“These two need immediate
stabilization,” he shouted at one of the teams, running over to them, laying
the mother on the roof, then putting the child on top of her.

“Wait,” shouted one of
the staff who had the look of a doctor.  “Who are they?  What happened to
them?”

But Angel was already in
the air, looking for someone else to help in this smashed city.  He turned his
audio sensors to maximum, trying to find those who needed his help the most. 
And thinking.  It was time he outgrew this selfish streak of his, and started
worrying about his species and his kingdom, and not just his own comfort.  He
hoped that Ekaterina Sergiov had survived this attack.  He was ready to take her
whole deal.  He knew he was only one man, and there wasn’t a lot one man could
do in a war this large.  But what he could do he would.

*     *     *

“Releasing holes, now,”
said Lucille Yu, manning the station that was linked to that operation in her
control center.

Admiral Mikal Kalashnikov
nodded, still not sure about this plan.  But they needed to do everything
possible to stop the enemy, and he was sure that throwing kitchen sinks
wouldn’t do the job.  But he still wasn’t sure that black holes would be much
better.

Unfortunately, only two
of the wormhole generators had been in the proper orientation to be of use. 
They were vital assets, but he would sacrifice them all if it would save the
station.  The generators could be replaced in a year, the station a century.

Each of the two
generators, a matched pair, were accelerating on a vector that approached the
enemy fleet at an angle, the best that could be done.  The Admiral would have
preferred a straight on approach, but the generators had been orbiting the
central black hole, and the laws of physics dictated that the angled approach
was the only one possible.  Each carried eight of the micro-black holes used to
rip apart space.  Each was a highly charged mass of several billion tons, held
in a massive electromagnetic field in a cup of pure supermetal alloy.  Each of
the holes was radiating at several hundred thousand degrees, the heat absorbed
through a superconducting system and offloaded through a wormhole heat sink. 
That radiation was caused by the mass loss inherent in the nature of small
black holes, hundreds of tons a day.  It wouldn’t take long for the holes to
lose mass in increasing measures as their own bulk shrunk, until they reached a
point where they exploded in a furious multi-gigaton blast.  Regular feeding of
an equal amount of ions to the loss kept them stable.  They would only last a
couple of months without that feeding, and would self-destruct well before they
became wandering hazards to navigation outside the hyper barrier.

The huge generators came
apart as the separation charges blew.  Moments later the multiple arms of each
generator pod reared back, then moved forward, cutting their electromagnetic
fields at the end of the arc and sending sixteen micro-black holes toward the
enemy force.  Each was moving at slightly above the velocity of their
containers at time of launch, about point zero one light.  That was as fast as
they would ever go, lacking any kind of ability to accelerate on their own. 
The containers themselves started to decelerate so that they wouldn’t catch and
overtake the projectiles they had just released.

The weapons were on their
way.  Weapons with no guidance systems, no means to adjust vectors.  Unlikely
to actually hit a target, but capable of destroying that target if they did. 
Admiral Kalashnikov watched their track on the plot for a moment, then turned
his attention to other matters of the defense.  There was nothing more he could
do about this attack, which would either accomplish something, or not.

Chapter Nineteen

Desperate affairs require desperate measures.
Horatio Nelson

From a distance the
slender ribbon around the distortion in space looked fragile.  In the cosmic
scheme of things it was, but the hundred kilometer wide, fifty kilometer deep
construct was probably the toughest object in known space.  It needed all of
the toughness at the moment as the Ca’cadasans tried to destroy it.

From the distance all
seemed well, the bright pinpoints of nuclear and antimatter blasts looking like
briefly lived sparklers in the darkness.  Some larger pinpoints showed, the
gigaton shipkillers, and the larger terraton quarkium warheads, by themselves
not enough to destroy it, but paving the way for something that could.

Several hundred Caca
fighters continued to circle the station, hitting every weapon position they
could target, while thousands of space superiority fighters kept up the chase,
blasting them out of existence when given the opportunity.  Their attacks were
also mere pinpricks, but every defensive weapon position they took out was
another that couldn’t target the other weapons that were targeting the station.

Two thousand missiles of
the third wave sped toward the station, on their way to weaken it further. 
Three hundred multi-pentaton blasts erupted in space around them, not well
aimed, making up for their poor targeting with the fury of their blasts. 
Hundreds of missiles were caught up in the blasts, blown away, or thrown off
course at the point where there wasn’t enough time to get back on track.  Moments
later two and a half wings of intertialess fighters appeared from out of
nowhere, heading toward the station at point three light, the missiles catching
up, heading toward the station at point nine light, a point six c closing speed
with the fighters.  The fighters had twelve seconds to fire at the missiles as
they came in, putting laser and particle beam shots into the weapons.  As the
missiles passed they had a further nine seconds to fire before they had to
raise their negative matter bubbles and boost away on a course that would avoid
collision with the station and the black hole.  Only a hundred and
seventy-three missiles made it past the fighters, including all forty-three of
the larger tougher quarkium weapons.  Forty-one hit, including twenty-two of
the quarkium warheads, the most at this point.

*     *     *

“They hit us hard with
that volley, ma’am,” said the Aide, looking down at his seated Admiral.

“Time for us to leave,”
said McCullom, getting up from her seat and looking across the large chamber,
where most of her staff had already left their stations.  She felt like a shit
for abandoning the station, right after abandoning the capital city.  But she
knew in both cases it was the right decision.  They weren’t here to fight for
the defense of the station, but to coordinate the fleet across all of the
battlespaces that was the war.  If the station went they would lose much of
their communications capabilities, but there would still be enough, with the
offsite wormholes and Klassekian com techs who had been evacuated earlier.

And from what her staff
had told her in their analysis of the enemy attack, something really big was
about to hit the station.  Probably wormhole through wormhole big, something
that would dwarf any of the warheads. 
We needed to have a contingency plan
for something like this
, she thought, grabbing her comp pad. 
Some way
to get our most important assets off the station.
  Unfortunately, almost
all of the active wormhole gates were placed in semi-permanent settings.  They
would take hours to remove from those placings, not to consider the time it
would consume to move them to a dock, get them aboard a ship, and away.  The
only other way she could think of doing it better would compromise security and
increase the chances of an accident doing the same thing to the portals.

“I’m tired of this shit,”
exclaimed one of the junior Captains, walking to her front.  “We’re acting like
a bunch of cowards.”

She didn’t even know the
officer’s name, something she should have chided herself about, especially
since he was just below flag rank.  But she probably had two hundred captains
on her staff, and five or six hundred commanders.  They also moved, new ones
coming in all the time while others rotated out.  Probably wishing for a ship
command, where he could stand and fight.  But his remark hit home, and Sondra
found herself rounding on the officer.

“When you have a ship
command, you can stand and fight all you want, Captain,” she growled at the
officer, seeing the panic growing in his eyes.  “As long as the situation
requires it.  Right now, we are in the shit, and chances are we are going to
lose this station.  Now, if you want to stay and man a battery, you have my permission,
Captain.  Otherwise, you will get your ass through the portal and we will
continue to do the jobs we have been assigned.  Understand?”

Her nose was almost
touching that of the other officer, who was probably thinking that his career
was over.  She decided to take a little pity on the man.  “I wish there was
something I could do here as well.  I could stay here and die, which would be
the coward’s way out.  Or I could leave and continue to do my duty, knowing
that we failed to protect our most valuable asset on my watch.  Now, if you
really wish to stay, I’ll let you.  But you can probably accomplish more if you
come with us.”

The young Captain nodded
his head, closing his eyes for a moment.  She put a hand on his shoulder and
motioned him toward the chamber exit.  The man walked away quickly, and
McCullom motioned for her Aide to go.

The vibrations from one
of the larger hits came through the deck, over three minutes from the time of
the explosion.  The Aide picked up the secure briefcase and led the way from
the room.  There was a wormhole portal room only eight hundred meters down the
corridor from the war room.  Marine guards hustled them past a crowd of people,
military and civilian, trying to get off the station.  The military were
probably all nonessential personnel or those passing through the station at the
wrong time.  Their implants would alert those checking the evacuation if they
were someone in dereliction of duty, so it was doubtful that too many would
try.

“Ma’am,” said the Aide,
his eyes unfocused for a moment in the sign of link.  “Director Yu wants to
speak to you.  She says it’s important.”

McCullom nodded as she
accepted the link from the Director, not sure what could be so important at
this moment. 
I need to order her off the station as well
, she thought,
and
all of her staff.  They might just be the minds we need to salvage something
from this disaster.

“Dr. Yu.  I need for you
and your people to evacuate the station in case of the worst.”

“I think they’re going to
trying and pull and wormhole through wormhole event on us, Admiral.”

“I believe you are
correct, Director.  Which is why we need to get you off.  I think there’s a
very good chance we will stop them, but if we don’t, we will need you and your
people.”

“I think I have a way to
stop them, Admiral.  We ran the simulations and it looks like it would work.”

“What would work?  And
why aren’t you talking to the station commander about this plan?”

“I wasn’t able to get
through to him, Admiral,” said the Director in an exasperated tone.  “We’re
having communication problems.  Or he’s got too many other things on his mind. 
All I know is his com link is no longer accessable by me or my people.””

Like trying to save the
station,
thought McCullom of the Admiral being off the com, stopping and stepping out of
the way of the others trying to get through the portal.  “We’re doing
everything we can to stop that damned ship from closing on the station,
Director, but war, unlike science, is not an exact art.  If we can’t get rid of
the screening ships, I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do to stop it, unless
you have some kind of superweapon up your sleeve.”

“We can use another
wormhole to suck them up at the moment they are transiting the second hole
through their own.  I know it’s a long shot, and the simulations said as much,
but it might be our only chance.”

“And how would you suck
up a massive explosion through a wormhole?” said McCullom, trying to visualize
such a thing and failing.  “It’s already in the best vacuum we know of.”  The
Admiral knew that was not strictly true.  There was still matter in that
vacuum, in very small quantities, but there.  Even in intergalactic space.  The
best research labs could produce an almost absolutely perfect vacuum, but only
in small volumes, and even that kind of a void wouldn’t be enough to suck up
such an energy surge.

“We don’t use a vacuum. 
We use the hole.”

“The hole?”  McCullom
still wasn’t sure what the woman was talking about.  She had already mentioned
the wormhole.

“The black hole, Admiral.
 The damned thing could eat a supernova.”

“And you think you can
channel the energy from the explosion into the black hole?  What happens if
three wormholes intersect?”

“I don’t know that,
Admiral, but I doubt it would be any larger than one passing through another. 
Most of the energy comes from the conversion of the matter involved, the ship
transiting, or containing the hole being transited by the other.  Or it could
add up to something a thousand times greater.  Not that it would matter if even
a wormhole through wormhole explosion occurred next to the
Donut.
”

The Admiral thought about
that for a moment.  The blast of an eight to ten million ton merchant ship
converted to energy in the wormhole through wormhole incident would be enough
to blast through a significant portion of the ring.  All it really had to do
was sever it, and the structure would come apart, some of it falling into the
black hole, the rest flying out of the system.  Some of the wormhole portals
might actually survive such an event.  But the means of generating more would
be gone.  It was risking Dr. Yu if she let the woman stay for a chance of
saving the station.  If they didn’t stop the enemy bomb ship she would die. 
But it would be worth the risk if it saved the station.

“Here,” said Yu, and a
moment later the data of her plan came across the link in a burst, the salient
features already at the front of the Admiral’s mind.  The rest would be there
to digest when she had the time.  But from what she saw, there might be a
chance.

“Try your plan, Dr. Yu. 
I will forward authorization to the station commander.  If it doesn’t work..”

“Yes?”

“Try to get yourself
through a wormhole and off the station before it’s gone. The Emperor will have
my ass if anything happens to you.”

“I will do my best,
Admiral.”

And we both know that
there isn’t a chance in Hell you’ll be able to get off.

McCullom nodded to her
Aide, then headed through the portal, a feeling of relief battling with the
guilt of leaving this station to its fate.

“We’re setting up,
Admiral,” said one of the staff officers as she stepped out of the portal,
fighting off the disorientation that came with wormhole transit.  “We have some
links into a wormhole network that don’t go through the
Donut
, and some
Klassekians to take up the slack.”

“Let’s see what we can do
to help coordinate the battle,” she said, heading toward the lift that would
take her to this backup war-room.  Moments later she walked into the large
chamber, her eyes roaming to take in the scene.

“Let’s get to work,
people,” she said to the hundreds still standing around, most in shock from the
pair of bombardments and evacuations they had just gone through.  “We’ve just
been hit hard, now let’s get to work and figure out how to kick some ass in
return.”

*     *     *

“We have permission,”
said Yu, looking up at Jimmy.  “And I wish you would go ahead and get your ass
off this thing.  There’s no need for you to be here.”

“You’re here, so here I
stay,” said the Head of Station Security.  “And besides, this is my duty
station until I am relieved.”

“And if I got word that
you were relieved of those duties?”

“I would still stay here,
love.”

Lucille shook her head,
then got to work.  There was no more time for banter, now it was time to see if
her harebrained scheme could save the station.  She searched through the
station inventory to make sure they had what they needed, and in a place where
it could be employed in time.

“I need this wormhole
taken from its shipping container,” she told her staff over the com link.  “One
end needs to be mated to a self-expanding gate, then mate it with a boosting
pack and put it out on through an outer hatch when you get the order.”

“And the other side,
Director?” asked the spokesman for the staff.

“Move it to the inner
side and get ready to put it out the hatch with a boost pack.  And I need this
done within twelve minutes.”

“I’m not sure we can do
it in that time frame, ma’am.”