Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (32 page)

“Prepare for evasive,”
ordered Frazier as the small vessels approached.  The enemy fighters launched
missiles just a second before the humans launched their antifighter missiles. 
There was no dog fighting between the forces.  They were moving too fast for
that, and could not alter their vectors enough to make a difference.  Objects
streaked between the two forces that were closing at over point eight c. 
Lasers opened up as the range closed to light seconds.  Then the human fighters
were through the wall of Ca’cadasan’s, fighters turning on their axes’ and
firing at the retreating objects.

Three hundred human
fighters continued on, opening the gap with a hundred surviving Ca’cadasan
fighters.  Captain Jessica Frazier’s fighter was not among the survivors that
plunged into the formations of Ca’cadasan scouts.  Her children, her husband,
her Abyssinian cat, would wait for one who was not coming home.

The second wave of
human missiles hit the scout ships.  The missiles were easier targets this
time, moving at a mere point four three c.  They still achieved some direct
hits, annihilating three of the survivors.  Proximity hits destroyed another
two ships. Four relatively undamaged and seven damaged vessels came through the
barrage, preparing to face the reduced wave of manned fighters.

The human fighters
streaked past the scout ships, firing their lasers and other close in weapons. 
The ships were too well protected by electromag fields, too heavily armored
against projectiles, for the fighters to do more than sting them.  The fighters
were not so well protected. Hits by gigawatt lasers tore through weak
electromag fields and flashed hulls.  A couple of Ca’cadasan ships sustained
heavy damage when struck by out of control fighters.  Not a tactic favored by
humans, but effective nonetheless.

Less than a hundred
fighters passed the Ca’cadasan scout force, heading out system.  It would take
those most of the rest of the day to kill their velocity so they could return
to the inner system.  They were effectively out of the fight after losing six
hundred and fifty vessels and over three thousand crew.  But the Ca’cadasans
had been stung hard by the humans, and knew that the conquest would not be as
cheap as they had entertained when entering the system.

*     *     *

Pod Leader Klesshakendriakka’s
ship was among the heavily damaged.  He cursed under his breath as he checked
the data coming through his command circuit.  Four hours after the attack by
the human fighters and still only half of his acceleration units were online. 
A quarter would require a complete rebuild, which would take days to weeks. 
His ship would have to turn over now if he wanted to make the planet orbit. 
Three of his ships could make it in the original mission specified time, but
the other eight would not.

“The pod will stay
together,” he ordered the Captain who had appeared on his chair screen.  The Captain
had been in another pod, and had devolved to Klesshakendriakka’s command when
both of the other pod leaders had been killed, one along with his ship.  “I will
listen to no more arguments.”

“At our present vector
and accel we will not get to the planet much ahead of the battle force,” said
that officer.  “We will not accomplish our mission of scouting ahead.”

“And we will not
accomplish that mission by being destroyed out of hand,” said the pod leader in
a hard tone.  “Your three ships will not survive long in the inner system. 
Even with our damage, eleven ships are a stronger force than three.”

“I can see that point,
pod leader,” said the other Captain, scowling.  “But I still believe…”

“I do not care what you
believe,” growled the pod leader into the com.  Several of the bridge crew
looked over, some in alarm, others with a smirk, as they caught the argument
between the leaders.  “You will do as ordered.  We will stay together as a
group, with your ship and the other two undamaged vessels in the lead.  And you
will stay on a tight leash.  Do you understand me?”

“Yes sir,” growled the
angry subordinate, his eyes burning dangerously.  “Out.”

One I will have to
watch
,
thought the pod leader.  One who might call him out for a blood match at the
end of this mission, if both survived.

*     *     *

Courier ship HLC-12305
came out of hyper VII on the closest direct line approach from sector HQ. 
Which put her about four and a quarter light hours from Massadora base.  CPO
Lysander Popodopolis looked at his plot and didn’t like what he saw.

“Lot of radiation out
there, Chief,” said Melissa Jackson, watching her tactical board.  “Neutrons,
gamma, you name it.”

“Like someone’s
fighting a war,” said PO McMurty, the helm.

“Get us a link on the
planet so we can tight beam our information,” said Popodopolis.  The mission
came first.  Once they completed their vital task they could worry about what
the other information might mean to them.

“Found her right where
she’s supposed to be,” called out Jackson.  “Lot of other objects out there
moving around quickly.  Or there were,” she said with a shrug.

Yeah
, thought the CPO. 
We
never know what’s going on in real time unless it’s right on top of us.

“Get the transmission
aimed for transit to where she’ll be when it gets there,” he ordered.  Which
would entail calculating where she actually was right now, not over four hours
in the past, then projecting her location for more than four hours in the
future.

“Got her,” said Melissa
after a few moments.  “Laser aimed.  Wait a second.  We’ve got something
nearby.”

“What?” gasped
Popodopolis, his eyes going wide.

“I don’t know, but it’s
bigger than us and starting to radiate heat.  At about ten light seconds.”

“Send the message,” he
ordered, and Jackson hit her commit button.  “Get us out of here as soon as the
message is off,” he ordered McMurty.  “Evasive at maximum gee and into hyper
VII as soon as you can.”

“It’ll take us about
five minutes to have enough power to open a portal,” yelled the helmsman, his
fingers hovering over his board.

“Message away,” yelled
Melissa as she turned back to the courier commander.  McMurty started to push
his own commit.

The little vessel
rocked as the high frequency laser hit them.  Gigawatts of energy struck
through the weak electromag field and into the hull of the vessel.  Light was
converted to heat and kinetic force.  Popodopolis had a moment to realize he
was dead as the temperature went from warm to hot to superhot.  His fire
resistant uniform flamed at the same instant as his skin.  He opened his mouth
to scream.  Superheated air entered his throat and lungs.  The bridge exploded
with the rest of the vessel, blowing out into space with flaming air and other
combustibles.  A fraction of a second later the flames were blown out by the
antimatter explosion that turned the debris field into the plasma of a very
temporary star.

*     *     *

“They’re radiating,”
called the tactical officer as she stared at her board.

“Are they making any
moves toward us?” asked Commander Bryce Suttler, leaning forward in his chair.

“No sir,” said the
tactical officer.  “I don’t think they know we’re here.  Range three point six
million kilometers.”

About eleven light
seconds
,
he thought, smiling.  In any other ship, including the older stealth/attack
vessels, they would have been made long before this. 
Seastag
was
something entirely different.  Even running her stealth electromag, bending
light to become invisible in all spectrums, she radiated about as much heat as
a small buoy sitting dead in space.  Her skin was made of the best insulators
known to human science.  They reflected enough heat back into the ship to make
her an unsurvivable oven, if not for the wormhole.

The wormhole sat in the
engine spaces, a mere fifty centimeter hole to another part of space.  This
part inside a special satellite in orbit around the black hole of the capital
supersystem.  A satellite whose only purpose was to accept the heat of the
stealth/attack ships into her one degree above absolute zero absorbing field. 
The superconducting cable from the
Seastag
pulled almost all of
the excess heat from the ship, plunged through the wormhole, and gave the heat
up to a limitless heat sink.  Making the ship an infrared hole in space.

“Damn,” cursed the
tactical officer.  “That courier is transmitting.  They just went off the heat
scale at their nose.”

Sending their message
before moving into the system
, thought Suttler. 
Must be important.

“What’s our boy doing?”
he asked of the six hundred thousand ton enemy vessel.

“Nothing yet,” said the
tactical officer. 
Seastag
was moving silently at a couple of gravities,
trying to set up the shot to do the most damage possible.  “Dammit, they’re
firing,” called out the tactical officer.

Or they fired
, thought Suttler,
eleven
seconds ago.

“Fire,” yelled the Commander. 
The crew set into motion the prearranged attack plan, aiming at where the ship
would be when the weapons impacted.

The ship didn’t carry
its lasers in rings like most warships that needed all around fire capability. 
Instead the centrally mounted forward laser put out two terawatts of coherent
energy in a single beam.  To the sides of the beam were particle beams weapons
that fired antiprotons at point nine five c.  The beams were set to hit a
hundred meters to either side of the laser at the range to the target, with a
twenty-five meter radius spread.  The four forward mounted tubes fired missiles
that were as advanced as the ship firing them.  Made for short range work, the
missiles accelerated at ten thousand gravities and could go for ten minutes
before running out of power.

The first the enemy
ship knew it was being fired on was when the laser beam arrived.  The scout had
been trying to be stealthy itself, and so only had its invisibility electromag
up.  The X-ray laser hit the skin of the vessel, erupting superheated matter
into space at it poured energy into the hull.  Pouring energy into a single
point for three seconds, it moved up the spectrum to gamma rays to defeat the
electromag reflecting skin of the ship, and swept from bow to stern and a rate
of twenty meters per second.  The point of impact spewed alloy and atmosphere
into space where the beam had punched through.

Antimatter particle
beams arrived about nine seconds after the laser started its work on the hull. 
The ship could see them coming on sensors, but was still unprepared and had not
initiated random dodging maneuvers.  For three seconds the antimatter raged
over the hull, kilograms converting kilograms of matter to energy bursts that
ruptured hull and spewed heat and radiation into the ship.  As the enemy ship
began to raise its electromag shields to defeat the charged particles the beam
changed to uncharged neutrons, the stealth/attack switching its particle beam
to a function that stripped the charge off of the antiprotons as they left the
accelerator cannon.  While not as deadly at the antimatter, they penetrated the
electromag screens as if they didn’t exist, and imparted their considerable
kinetic energy into the enemy ship.

Within four seconds of
the uncharged particle assault the enemy ship began evasive maneuvers.  Now it
was a matter of luck for beams to strike.  Anticipating this the stealth/attack
had gone to random fraction of a second bursts that targeted the area around
the ship.  There were a few lucky hits, but not much further damage.  Still the
alien scout was heavily damaged, with much of its sensor and close in weapon
defenses stripped.  It tried to fire on the almost invisible ship that had
struck it so hard, bracketing the area with lasers and firing a salvo of
missiles.

Seastag
faded back into the
background radiation of the universe, powering down her reactors and creeping
away at ten gravities on batteries.  A couple of laser bursts came near, one
close enough to slide around the ship’s light bending invisibility field.

The four missiles bored
in on the enemy ship, accelerating at ninety-eight kilometers per second per
second.  At fifteen seconds out each of the missiles dropped its first decoy, a
ton of quantum matrix batteries, grabber units and transmitters.  The decoys
accelerated at the same rate as the missiles while moving in a random pattern. 
The transmitters blared out as much static as possible in every frequency
except for the missiles’ active sensor band.  The band changed every five
seconds, both on the missiles and the decoys.

Seastag
slipped into the
background of static as she released her own decoys, which whipped out to
several thousand kilometers and began to mimic a stealthy ship moving away. 
But not as stealthy as
Seastag
.  The enemy released a volley of her own
missiles, which moved back and forth in a search sweep as they moved out.  Some
picked up the decoys and drove toward them.  Others didn’t pick up anything and
moved outward at eight thousand gravities to eventually die in the space
between the stars.