Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (34 page)

“Watch out for the rest
of the convoy,” he ordered, while his ship moved into the system and he wished
for a change in the laws of physics.

“We have a
translation,” called out the navigator.  “Consistent with an Imperial battle
cruiser.  Three light minutes out.”

“The enemy?” he asked.

“Almost on top of
them.  More translations,” continued the officer.  “Two destroyers and four
freighters.  A light minute further out from the flag.”

“Transmit our
information through hyper generator,” he ordered the com tech.  “Give them
everything we have.”

“Orders,” said Lasardo,
glancing back.

“Purely defensive for
now,” said the Captain.  “We’ll hope the commodore can take care of them for
us.”

*     *     *

“Target them and fire,”
yelled the Captain as the enemy ship’s proximity registered on the plot.  The
ship was four light seconds away, and had been as caught off guard by the
battle cruiser coming into n-space as they had been by her being so close on
their entry.  But the enemy scout ship was already engaging a target, all of
her sensors and weapons systems locked on, and the battle cruiser wasn’t.

The battle cruiser was
pointed at the enemy scout and pulling point one c, thirty thousand KPS.  The
ship engaged her ether paddle drive, the grabbers, piling on two point nine
four KPS of accel every second.  The
Jean de Arc
turned at an angle to
bring all of her laser rings to bear, being able to boost in any direction no
matter the orientation of the ship.  The ship initiated all standard attack
patterns without excessive commands, the sign of a well drilled crew.

The nanomaterial of the
laser rings allowed the photons out into the beams of the attack pattern.  A
and C rings fired single beams of x-ray energy at the estimated location of the
target.  B and D rings each fired three beams that flared out for where the
target might be if it had headed in any of those directions, then swinging in
to the center to converge on where the vessel would be if not evading.  The
target was still in the process of trying to decide how to evade as the beams
struck.  Terrawatts of energy poured through the electromag screen of the enemy
ship, striking across the hull, vaporizing alloys and carbon armor, pushing
heat into internal systems that shattered them, setting crew aflame to burn to
ash.  The enemy ship bucked as atmosphere was vented to space, pushing the
vessel like chemical rockets.

The ship adapted, as
warships were built to do.  A liquid layer in the armor flowed into holes and
solidified.  The nanomaterial of the outer skin adapted to the frequency of the
incoming lasers and changed their arrangement, becoming almost totally
reflective to the x-rays.  The incoming lasers changed as well, sliding down to
ultraviolet and defeating the reflectivity of the skin.  B and D ring beams
swept in, burning swathes through the skin until they intersected with the
beams from the A and C rings, doubling their power.

The Ca’cadasan ship
lost dozens of her smaller grabber units, four laser domes, and a half dozen
missile tubes.  Two missiles coming out of their tubes detonated under the
attention of coherent light, their two hundred megaton warheads going off a
couple of kilometers from the hull and sending heat and radiation back into the
ship.  Dozens of close in defense systems and another six grabber units failed
under the assault of this energy.

“Take her missiles
under fire with the lasers,” ordered Captain Mei Lei, watching the enemy ship
buck and spew flaming atmosphere.  “Hit the ship with a short salvo of
missiles.”

Six missiles left their
tubes, heading at five thousand gravities toward their target, adding to the
substantial velocity imparted to them by the moving battle cruiser.

The enemy missiles were
on target toward the human destroyer.  Their sensors were locked onto the ship,
expectantly waiting, as much as a machine could, for defensive fire and
countermeasures from their target.  They had not gone into evasive mode yet, as
they were still too far away to be effectively targeted.  Even beams of light
from the enemy ship would not reach them for several minutes, well after they
started evasive maneuvers.

The combined beams of
all four laser rings targeted one of the missiles, unerringly hitting it and
tracking for the fraction of a second it needed to put terajoules of heat into
the missile.  The missile exploded as containment systems failed, milliseconds
after the outer skin began to boil away.  Antimatter touched matter and the
missile turned into a pinpoint flare of ultimate bright.

One after the other the
lasers tracked on the other five missiles of the second wave, destroying them. 
The ship then went after the first wave, further away and harder targets. 
Three still fell to the lasers, gone before they could come near to threatening
McArthur
.  The final three kicked in evasive maneuvers, whether from
transmitted command from their launch platform or because their simple
electronic brains had finally decided that something was up, the humans would
never know.  The final three missiles were overwhelmed by the
McArthur’
s
defensive fire, blasted into plasma on the outer rim of the system.

Ten seconds after
launch the battle cruiser’s missiles were engaged by what was left of the enemy
scout ship’s defensive systems.  Three missiles were still killed.  At twenty
seconds the missiles detonated to attempt proximity kills, the ship having
maneuvered enough to make a direct hit improbable.  One missile went off two
kilometers from the bow, flooding the already damaged ship with heat and
radiation.  The other two went off within five hundred meters of each other,
three kilometers off the stern.  Hull alloy vaporized and atmosphere gushed
through new holes as the ship shook from the blast effects.

“I’ve always wanted to
try this,” said Captain Mei Lei as her ship came to within a hundred thousand
kilometers of the crippled enemy.  “Charge plasma torpedo.”

“Yes ma’am,” said the
tactical officer, a twinkle in his eye.

Plasma torpedoes were
really an ancient idea whose time had gone.  Kept on ships more for a sense of
tradition than anything else, they could be devastating at close quarters.  But
close quarters were not seen much in modern warfare.  In the secondary fusion
reactors near the bow of the battle cruiser the ten tons of gas was heated to
over a million degrees in seconds.  The mass was then ejected through the
single bow tube of the battle cruiser, which only carried one to reduce her
mass for other things.  Held in a magnetic field by a carrier packet that rode
along outside, the mass exited the ship at point two c and headed toward the
target.  The packet was only intended to hold the mass together for five
seconds.  It took two to reach the target.

The mass of superheated
plasma hit the side of the ship like a tidal wave.  The gas burned into the
hull like acid, turning alloy, ceramics and carbon armor into vapor.  The
plasma washed through the openings in the hull made by lasers and missiles,
jetting in and destroying everything in its path.  Most of the crew died from
the influx of heat well before the plasma actually entered their compartments. 
Systems failed throughout the ship, and the ship died as its antimatter reactor
went into shutdown with volatile antiprotons still in the feed.

The ship, glowing from
heat saturation, blew outward as softened superstructure buckled under the
antimatter blast.  The temporary star threw debris that was mostly vapor into
space.  And then it was gone with all the beings who had plied space with her.

“Tight beam
McArthur
,”
ordered the Captain to the com tech.  “Tell her to stay put and we’ll match
velocities with her.  Then we’ll see what information we can gather from this
in system row.”

“What about the convoy,
ma’am?” said Jackson, her exec, over the circuit from CIC.

“The troop transports
can get away in hyper VI with their escorts,” she answered.  “Now about the
freighters…”

“Freighters and their
escorts have translated into the system, ma’am,” said the sensor tech, looking
nervously at her Captain.

“Those freighters will
take two hundred million kilometers to come to a stop,” she said, pointing at
her plot of the system.  “And they’re not survivable.”  She looked at Jackson
in the CIC screen as if challenging him to object.

“You’re right,
skipper,” he acknowledged, nodding his head.  “They’re wrecks no matter what.”

“Order the destroyers
to pick up the crews from those ships and set them for self-destruct,” she told
the com tech.  “They can use missile warheads if they can’t get the ship’s
fusion reactors to blow.  Then they can translate back to hyper, make contact
with the rest of the convoy, and get the hell out of here.”

“And us, Captain?” said
Jackson over the com.

“We perform the primary
mission of these wonderful ships the Emperor has placed in our trust,” she said
with a tight smile.  “We probe, gather information, and hopefully get it back
to the Fleet.  And possibly ourselves with it.”

*     *     *

“Are they running from
us?” asked the young Lord who manned the tactical station.

“No puppy,” said Low Admiral
Hrisshammartanama, glaring at the tactical plot that took up the center of the
command bridge.  “Do they not teach you anything at the training hutch?”

The officer tried to
turn a fierce glare toward the older Lord.  But his eyes dropped quickly from
the burning gaze of an officer that could order his life ended in an instant. 
No matter the young Lordling’s family ties.

“I do not understand?”
he finally said.

“Explain it to him,
subofficer,” the Low Admiral ordered one of the bridge NCOs.

“My Lord,” said the
subofficer, his nose twitching in nervousness at being the one ordered to tell
a lord in front of his peers that which he should have known.  He licked his
lips and continued under the gaze of the Admiral.  “The enemy force is not
running from us.  Instead they have set up a situation where they will try to
match velocities with us as we decelerate toward the planet they defend.  That
way, my Lord, they may attempt to keep us engaged in close combat for the
greatest length of time.”

“So they can be destroyed
by us,” grunted the young Lord, looking around the bridge.

“That may be the
outcome,” said the subofficer.  “Not the one they are hoping for.  They hope to
do considerable damage to our force while they are in range.”

“Why do we not accelerate,
then,” said the young Lord, “so we might thwart their plan?”

“They might wish us to
do that as well, my Lord,” said the subofficer, nodding.

“And then, pup,”
growled the Admiral, “they will have accomplished part of their mission.  We
would not be able to insert into planetary orbit, but would have to swing by
the planet and come back.  Giving them more time to organize their ground
defenses.”

“But they cannot win,”
argued the young Lord.  “Why would they sacrifice themselves in an unwinable
fight?”

“They are a brave
species,” said the subofficer.  “From all we can tell from their maneuvers so
far, it is acceptable for them to lose their lives if it causes us
difficulties.”

“They intend to make us
pay a price,” said the Admiral.  “How much of one remains to be seen.  But pay
it we will to take this system away from them.”

*     *     *

Vice Admiral The
Countess Esmeralda Gonzalez’ face went white as she read the eyes only
transmission that had just been delivered to her by the cryptology officer.  He
had looked nervously on while she read the paper flimsy he had hand delivered
. 
Wondering what my reaction would be
, she thought, as she turned reddening
eyes toward him.

The entire Imperial
family
,
she thought as the shock continued through her system. 
And a war starting
on our borders
.  Coincidence?  She wasn’t sure, but it could send the Empire’s
response curve into a crash.  And the heir to the throne was about to meet that
new enemy in combat that could very well prove fatal for him.

“Copy a message for Admiral
Heinrich,” she ordered the crypto officer.  “Send this same message and append it
with my recommendation that he gets the Prince to safety by any means
possible.  For his eyes only.”

The crypto officer
nodded as he jotted the message down on a flimsy pad.  He looked up at the Admiral
as if he wanted to say something, but couldn’t seem to find the words.  He gave
a quick salute and hurried from the control center.

If we can get an
Emperor seated maybe we can avoid some of the paralysis of shock,
she thought, looking
into the space shown by the main viewer. 
And at least avoid any of the
idiot cousins that Parliament might want to foist on us. 
She linked to the
net and ran over what it had on the heir. 
Not a spectacular career, but
competent.  And if he’ll listen to the military he should do fine
.

“Two hours to launch,
my lady,” called out her tac officer from his station.