Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (31 page)

*     *     *

Jennifer Conway started
in her sleep when the earth shook beneath her bed.  She looked blearily at the
room as she tried to shake the sleep from her eyes, calling up the time on the
net.  She had only been asleep for an hour when whatever it was had awakened
her.  She dove deeper into the net as another tremor hit the bed and knick
knacks trembled on the shelves of the guest room.

“You all right, doc?”
called out a voice after a knock sounded on the door.

“Yes,” she replied just
before the net opened up to her mind after a slight delay.  “What’s happening?”

“We don’t know yet,”
said the man, popping the door open slightly.  It was one of the Montero
grandsons, his voice filled with worry.  “The ground started shaking is all I
know.”

The delay of the net
was very uncharacteristic.  The doc looked over its information with a catch in
her throat. 
All those people dead
, she thought as she looked over the
report of the orbital fortress destroyed.  Almost a thousand crew vaporized in
an instant.  And then the ground fall of the parts of a missile onto a,
luckily, sparsely inhabited continent.  But an entire ecosystem obliterated as
if the creatures that made it up had never evolved.

“We’re getting some
information on it now,” said the grandson, still standing behind the partially
opened door to shield her for modesty’s sake.

I’m sure I’m getting
more
,
she thought.  As an emergency responder she would of course have a higher level
of access than a freeholder.  And the information she was getting was not good.

The hospital is going
to be busy
,
she thought.  Modern buildings of course didn’t collapse from tremors.  They
had to take a direct hit or a near miss by something really powerful.  But
people still fell from high places, or had things fall on them.  There were
hundreds of reported injuries that would require medical attention.  And she,
one of only a score of fully trained physicians, was a thousand kilometers away
from the nearest major hospital.

“Get your grandfather
for me please,” she said as she pulled herself out of bed, her mind made up. 
“I need to tell him something.”

*     *     *

“So that’s what we have,
Colonel,” said Brigadier Klein on the holo.  Baggett and his staff officers
were sitting in their command bunker listening to the transmission that was
telling them the only effective orbital defense for the planet had been taken
out.  All that were left were the defense platforms on automatic.  And he
didn’t have a lot of faith in those.

“Any damage to us here
on the ground?” asked Baggett, looking into the face of the holographic image.

“Nothing on that
continent as far as ground defenses, no,” said the General.  “We still have the
full capabilities of our ground based assets, such as they are.  And the
orbital platforms are intact.  I understand they will take the enemy under fire
at the optimal range programmed into their AI’s.”

“No man in the loop for
them?” asked Baggett, raising an eyebrow.

“We still have override
control on them,” answered the Brigadier.  “But with a significant delay we
have to let them do their own fighting without ground based oversight.”

“Any estimate on the
arrival of our friends?”

“We’re missing the
sensors of the fort, of course,” said the ground force commander.  “But
infrared from the defense platforms put them at a three hundred gravity decel. 
Heading our way with an ETA for insertion of eight hours.  The heavies will get
here an hour behind them, with the troop transports following probably another
hour or two.”

“So we start getting
hit in eight hours,” said Baggett, looking at his staff and seeing the worried
expressions on their faces.  “Ground assault in ten to twelve hours.”

“That’s about it, Colonel,”
agreed the Commander.  “How are your forces?”

“All of the regulars
are where we want them to be,” said the Colonel.  “I have about eighty percent
of the militia still in place, with a twenty percent desertion rate.  I still
hope those bastards will fight when their families are at risk, putting some
pressure on the invaders.  But they’re not going to help the main effort.”

“Well, let them go do
their thing,” said the General.  “No use expending effort in trying to round
them up.  Just try to keep more from running.”

“Yes sir,” said
Baggett.  “That’s what I was planning to do anyway.  No use stirring up the
animosity of the militia that are sticking with us.”

“Good plan, Colonel,”
said Klein.  “Now let me get back to planning our last stand here.  Com me if
you need anything, and I’ll try to get it for you. Klein out.”

“So we wait,” said
Sergeant Major Zacharias, looking up at the tall Colonel.

“So we wait,” he
agreed.  “And keep the damned militia digging in and fortifying their
positions.”

“So maybe enough of
them survive to shoot back when the ground troops come in,” said the senior NCO
with a huff.

“So some of them
survive,” agreed the Colonel.  “And maybe get to kill some of the enemy before
they get snuffed out.”

Chapter 14

The expendability
factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and
expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population.  American
strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this
century's major wars.  In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were
civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War
90-95 per cent would be civilians.  Colin Ward,
Anarchy in Action

“OK,” said Captain
Jessica Frazier, looking at her tactical plot.  “Light them up and prepare to
fire.”

The com officer
transmitted the orders to the strike.  Orders they already knew were coming,
that were more a confirmation that the time had come.

The strike had coasted
for the last four hours at a velocity of over ninety-eight thousand KPS,
covering a billion four hundred million kilometers with cold engines while
subsisting on crystalline matrix batteries.  Total distance since launch was
over two billion kilometers.  The enemy scout ships, radiating hot on infrared,
were at eighty-four thousand KPS and had traveled one billion two hundred
million kilometers.  There was still a six hundred million kilometer separation
between the approaching forces, fifty-four minutes at their present
velocities.  But the strike force was about to change that equation.

Seven hundred and
forty-eight strike/superiority fighters and attack fighters ignited their
fusion reactors to full and leapt ahead at nine hundred gravities.  In
thirty-three minutes the enemy would pick up the infrared emissions and know
that they were coming.

Frazier watched the
clock as the fighters added eight point eight two KPS per second to their
velocity.  Five minutes passed.  Ten.  Twenty.  It would still be another six
minutes before the enemy caught the first waves of infrared coming from her now
hot birds.  The group’s velocity at one hundred eight thousand KPS, point three
six c, she looked at her tactical/sensor/com officer.

“Fire first salvo,” she
ordered.  On her attack fighter the doors to the two belly compartments opened
up, as they opened on all of the other ships in the strike.  Four shapes
dropped down from the compartment, their internal engines warming up.  After a
two second drop, in which time they fell behind the launching ships about nine
kilometers, the missiles powered up their drives and sped forward at five
thousand gravities.  It would be twenty minutes before the enemy picked up the
heat signatures from the missiles, their first warning.

There were three target
groups ahead, a total of twenty-nine vessels.  Two hundred fifty-six of the large
Mark XII antiship missiles and one hundred and twenty ECM decoys left the
attack fighters.  Twelve hundred of the smaller Mark X missiles left the
smaller strike/superiority fighters.  Most of the Mark XII missiles were
targeted at the central group of enemy scouts, while the Mark X’s were evenly
spread between the groups.

The Mark X’s boosted
for twenty-five minutes, gaining seventy-three thousand KPS acceleration, and
cutting off with about two minutes of powered flight left in their batteries. 
The missiles were up to a velocity of one hundred eight-two thousand KPS, point
six one c.  And the fighters were coming in sixty-eight million kilometers
behind them, at point four six c.

*     *

“We have missiles
ahead,” called the tactical officer of the pod flag.  “Over a thousand of
them.  Velocity One eight KKPS.  Estimated masses between ten and fifteen
tons.”

“Attack fighter
missiles,” exclaimed the pod leader, looking at his plot.  “And there’s bound
to be fighters behind them.

“Signal the rest of the
pod,” he commanded, making a quick decision.  “Launch all on board fighters. 
They’re to hit the missiles with counter fire, then tear through to the
following fighters.”

“Aye sir,” came the
acknowledgement from the tactical officer, and the signal went out.

Each scout ship carried
a dozen of the fighters, much smaller than those used by the humans.  Massing a
hundred tons with a crew of two, they were meant more for close in defense and
short range strikes as compared to the human birds.  Within a minute there were
over fifty of the small vessels boosting from their mother ships at twelve
hundred gravities.  A minute later they were joined by more than fifty others. 
Each of the other two pods deployed about a hundred of the craft as well.

The fighters had about
a minute to engage the incoming missiles.  Missiles that were on random
avoidance and filling space with jamming and decoy signals.  The fighters
launched their own missiles, taking out hundreds of the missiles with hits and
proximity misses.  They targeted with lasers and took out about fifty more
missiles.  And a few unlucky fighters took out missiles by getting in the way
of the hypervelocity objects.

Then the still
considerable mass of missiles were through the fighters.  Over eight hundred of
them tracked the Ca’cadasan scout ships, trying to break through the jamming
and countermeasures the six hundred thousand ton vessels were putting out with
all of their power.  Countermissiles speared out from the scout ships, taking
out over two hundred of the human weapons.  Less than twenty seconds out close
in weapons opened up, sending waves of projectiles and coherent energy beams
into space.  The Ca’cadasan electronics warfare suites were better than the
humans, and broke through the jamming to find and destroy targets.  But human
technology was good enough for almost three hundred missiles to vector in for a
target run.

Ca’cadasan weapons
continued to fire as the missiles approached, taking out many at the last
second.  The vaporizing missiles sent streams of matter into the
electromagnetic shields of the enemy ships.  Some of the matter got through, to
hit the ultrahard hulls of warships.  Surface installations were obliterated. 
A few plasma spears thrust deep into vessels, killing crew and disrupting vital
systems.

Most of the missiles
could not achieve a solid enough lock to hit the ships.  Some did, and seven of
the scout ships were shattered when objects with a closing speed of over point
eight c struck through their hulls.  Miniature suns were born of those
collisions, which flared and died in seconds . Many other missiles went for
proximity kills, detonating one or five hundred MT warheads at closest
approach.  Another six of the Ca’cadasan warships were pummeled in that manner,
to become drifting hulks.  Only eight of the vessels in the three groups came
through with minor damage, joined by eight other vessels with varying amounts
of harm.

Twenty-six missiles
lost lock completely and went nowhere.  They would attempt to turn back onto
targets, but lacked the energy to kill their velocity.  They would eventually
coast out of the system and be lost.

*     *     *

“Missiles on target
now,” called out the tactical officer as his display indicated where the
missiles should be.  They were still two light minutes out and could not see if
their missiles had any success.  But they had to move now or waste the rest of
their load.

“Fire remaining
missiles,” ordered Frazier.  The fighters dropped another fourteen hundred
missiles.  These would not have the time to accelerate to the velocity of their
predecessors.  But if they caught a shattered scouting force they might finish
them.

Moments later the
tactical officer called out.  “We have incoming.  Over two hundred small
objects coming in to front.”

“How small?” yelled the
Captain.

“Smaller than us,” said
the tactical officer.  “About capital missile size.”

“Fighters?” she asked,
as the data firmed on the incoming.

“Accelerating at twelve
hundred gravities,” called out tactical.  “Probably not missiles.”