Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (38 page)

“Now, sir,” said the
gunny, his hand on the butt of a sonic stunner that was holstered at his side.

“We’ll take care of it
sir,” said CPO Gorbachev, giving him a tight smile.  “We’ll make you proud.”

Sean nodded his head
and ordered the couch to release his suit with a thought.  The Corporal moved
aside as he came up to the Sergeant, who led him from the chamber as the Corporal
fell in behind.

They entered the lift
and Sean turned toward the doors as they closed.  He stared ahead without a
word.  The Captain’s word was law on the ship.  And the Marine professionals
were bound to obey that word, no matter the protests of a junior officer.  No
matter his family.  So he would not accomplish anything by protesting to them. 
Threatening them.  Attempting to bribe them.

“Missile impact in six
minutes,” came the voice over the net with infuriating projected calm.  The Prince
called the tactical plot up in his mind as the lift moved downward fifty
meters, reoriented, and sped away along the central conduit of the ship.

In his mind he was
watching the red arrows moving closer.  And the green arrows reaching out to
them.  The first dozen of those arrows were within fifteen seconds of the
incoming war birds when they showered space with a cascade of energy.  Blinding
the incoming missiles on all frequencies, throwing off their targeting systems. 
The red arrows bore on ahead, toward the target that they could no longer see,
but which was entrenched in their inertial systems.

As the enemy missiles
passed the jammers they reacquired the battleship and plunged ahead.  That was
when the first wave of offensive missiles reached them and detonated in space. 
Not interceptors, they had still been targeted on the incoming missiles, and
had done their best to find them and kill them.  They turned to bright
expanding dots on the display, and four of the red arrows disappeared.  A
second wave of missiles, these from the destroyer, detonated two light seconds
behind them and took another three missiles off the board.

The lift came to a stop
in the center of the amidships central capsule and the doors opened.  The
hallways were completely empty of crew, everyone gone to their duty stations. 
The Gunnery Sergeant gestured toward a door set into the bulkhead across from
the lift.  There were a pair of Marine guards stationed outside the door,
sitting in acceleration couches within recesses and holding shipboard rifles in
their armor gloved hands.  The gunny stopped in front of them and gave them a
code word.

“In you go, Lieutenant,”
said the Marine as the heavy doors to the bridge opened.

Sean gave him an angry
look that seemed to slide off the man, not a bit of concern showing in the Marine
NCO’s eyes. 
With a hundred missiles coming in I’m probably the last thing
he needs to be concerned about
, thought the Prince as he walked in the
door.

“Missile impact in five
minutes,” came the calm voice over the net.

All of the bridge
stations were manned with space armored officers and crew.  Despite the
environmental control most of them were sweating, and Sean could feel the fear
in the room.  The same fear that was twisting at his guts as the enemy missiles
bore in.  But everyone was going about their duties efficiently, training
taking charge in the stress of the moment.

The Captain gestured
the Prince over and waved at one of the two empty acceleration couches on either
side of his chair.  The extra chairs for the XO and a visitor.  He was the
visitor to the bridge, and the XO would be down in the Combat Information
Center (CIC) in another capsule of the ship.  Both the heads of the ship,
primary and auxiliary, in the most protected portions of the heavy vessel.

Sean fell back in the
seat and felt the latches attach to his armor, holding him in place.  The Captain
was subvocalizing orders and did not look like he would brook a disturbance at
this time, so Sean held his tongue and looked around the large chamber.

“Prepare for emergency
military boost,” came a calm voice over the com.  “Emergency boost in ten
seconds.”

The Marines had already
scrambled from the room, heading for their emergency stations. Their armor would
move them through the increased gravity of the boost even if they felt like
they were about to fall.  It was still safer to be in a couch.

Sean looked up at the
ceiling overhead, the meter thick chunk of alloy containing wire runs and pipes
that fed the bridge.  He thought of the outer skin of the ship, ten meters of
ceramic, carbon fiber and hard alloy armor, with a meter thick layer of
nanoliquid between the two sections.  The nanoliquid would fill and seal any
holes punched through that strong mass.  Then there were tanks of liquid,
stores, and two hundred meters of whatever else the ship might have before the
five meter thick armored skin of the central capsule.  Then hundreds of meters
of ship before the bridge, located in almost the exact center of the capsule,
just above the central umbilical.  A lot to punch through to get to this
protected spot.  And something that was all too likely to happen if they were
pounded by those following missiles.

Just then all thoughts
fled as a giant hand seemed to push him back into his couch.  The ship went to
two hundred and sixty gees, five above the capacity of the inertial
compensators, and the crew felt as if they were on the surface of a superheavy
planet.  Sean forced his lungs to work, as his armor pulled outward with his
breaths to increase the force that his poor muscles were trying to exert.  He
gritted his teeth as his vision started to blur.  Then his implanted systems
came online and forced the blood flow through his veins, feeding his brain the
needed oxygen.

“It’s a pure bitch,”
came the voice of the Captain through his com circuit on a one on one link.  “I
hate it.  But every little bit of accel might make the difference.”

Sean tried to nod his
head but it wouldn’t move.  He looked at the tactical in his mind’s eye again,
seeing the ninety three remaining missiles meeting the first wave of
interceptors.  On one view arrow met arrow and seven of the red arrows
disappeared.  In real space view seven bright points blossomed as fast moving
matter met fast moving matter, and antimatter containment breached.  And
eighty-six red arrows continued to gain on them.

More objects appeared
on the plot as decoys were released that would attempt to mimic the signals and
sensor profile of the battleship.  Each boosted away at the same accel as the
battleship and tried to lure missiles toward them.  Some succeeded for a while,
pulling a couple of dozen missiles off the kill track.  Of those about ten lost
lock permanently, while the others reacquired after a few moments of continued
seeking.

A second wave of
interceptors contacted the incoming, taking out eleven of the remaining
seventy-four, leaving sixty three coming in at over point five c.  A third wave
of interceptors hit six more, leaving fifty-seven screaming in silently through
space.

Close range
interceptors started cycling from the ships as fast as they could launch,
putting multiple hundreds of the small missiles in space.  Box cells on the
hull released another hundred interceptors.  Fifty-seven missiles became
forty-eight, then forty-two, then thirty-seven.  And then they were within the
close range envelope and boring in on the battleship, which had terminated all
forward boost and was getting ready for the end game.  The ships began to
swerve and jerk in random directions as they released another wave of decoys. 
Everything from large terawatt lasers to fifty millimeter cannon filled the
space behind the ships as they attempted to bring the swiftly maneuvering
missiles into their firing arcs.  A dozen missiles exploded, then five more,
two colliding with each other in their maneuvering.  Twenty missiles continued
in, three more picked off by close in weapons.

Then the destroyer made
the ultimate sacrifice, as it was supposed to.  Sean felt his mouth form a scream
his lungs could not support as the two hundred thousand ton ship pushed at over
three hundred gees into the path of several of the missiles.  One hit the bow,
followed a ten thousandth of a second by one to the stern.  The ship vaporized
in an instant in a blinding flare, which expanded again as the antimatter
breached containment.  Six closely following missiles were caught in the
expanding cloud of debris and pummeled, their own velocity breaking them apart
through the cloud in a series of bright flares.

Nine missiles made it
through the thinning barrier, locked onto the battleship.  Close in weapons
fired a furious cloud of metal, knocking out three more that detonated close
enough to put heat and radiation into the outer skin of the ship.  Six closed on
the ship, four sure to make contact and shatter the capital ship and its
precious cargo.

The
Sergiov
jinked in three directions within a millisecond at two hundred and eighty
gravities.  Sean felt his stomach turn and the beginning fuzzy daze of a concussion
as his brain rattled around in his skull.  But three of the sure hits were
thrown off the strike.  They detonated at closest approach, two within a
hundred meters of the battleship.  Sections of the thick hull were breached by
heat and radiation, alloys vaporizing and gassing into space.  Atmosphere
followed the gaseous metals, until the nanoliquid within the hull filled the
openings and hardened.  The two outliers also went off, adding their radiation
from ten and thirty kilometers respectively.

The last missile was
hit by several rounds from close in weapons and an ejecting plate of hull metal
in the last ditch defensive system.  That missile broke up and detonated within
milliseconds, sending a wave of material particles into the hull at point five c. 
Several of the larger particles penetrated the hull and projected deep into the
ship, and the vessel shuddered under the impact.

Klaxons sounded as the
damage reports came in over the net.  One hundred sixty-four killed.  Another
fifty-two injured.  Several grabber units put out of action, as well as many
close in weapons and a half dozen counter missile tubes.  The most serious was
the damage to the port stern missile magazine, which was now jammed beyond
immediate repair.  The missiles could be shifted to other magazines as space
became available.  And fortunately none of the warheads had been damaged within
their shielded compartment, or that side of the ship might have been a total
wreck.

“Nothing else
approaching,” called the tac officer over the circuit.  “We got them all.”

“Or they about got us,”
said Captain Ngano, a slight smile on his face.

Sean saw the smile,
thought about the dead crew, and was within an instant of yelling at the man.
Then he caught a look at the Captain’s eyes and realized that the man was in
pain at the loss of crew.  And at the loss of the escorting destroyer and all
aboard her.  And that the smile was the relief that any human might feel at
still being alive.

“I am sorry, my Prince,”
said the man, looking straight into Sean’s eyes with a look of sorrow. Sorrow
at something else.  “I will explain as soon as we are back to emergency boost.

“Slow the ship to
normal acceleration,” ordered the Captain.  He switched to the all ship circuit
and talked into the com.  “All crew.  Prepare to reenter the tanks.  Emergency
boost in five minutes.

“Get ready, your Majesty,”
said the Captain as he sat up from his couch.  The tanks were in the process of
rising up from the floor, and the bridge crew was hurrying to get out of their
armor.  “I’ll jack into your personal circuit once we are boosting.  Then I’ll
explain it to you.”

Sean nodded his head as
he stood up and moved to an empty cubby. 
Explain what to me?
he thought
as he let the cubby pull the armor from him.  He had a bad feeling.  Whatever
it was he wasn’t going to like it. 
And ‘your Majesty’
, he thought with
a grimace.  The Captain had always gone out of his way to not put a tag of
birth on his young officer.  It must be very bad indeed.

Chapter 17

No Captain can do very
wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.  

Horatio Nelson.

“Fire,” said Vice Admiral
The Countess Esmeralda Gonzalez into her com circuit.  The station bucked with
a series of quick vibrations as it flushed its missile tubes.  Ten seconds
later it flushed again.  Then again.  The three waves of green arrows appeared
on the plot, along with the arrows from the other fortress.  Three hundred of
the large missiles, each three hundred tons with their own self-contained
fusion reactors, carrying five hundred megaton fusion warheads, were on their
way.  The forts would continue to fire, wave after wave, until their magazines
were emptied.

They should be up to
terminal velocity by the time they get where they need to be
, she thought.  They
were also bigger targets than capital ship missiles, carrying fusion warheads
instead of the smaller antimatter variety.  But since nobody wanted several teratons
of antimatter warheads this near a planet, where an exploding station could
drop them to the surface, the safer fusion warheads were what the forts
carried.