Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (40 page)

The last to fall were
the missiles of the human battle fleet, coming within seconds of the others. 
Only two hundred made it through the counter missiles.  Of those a mere
thirty-four came through the close in systems.  Two more Ca’cada battleships
were damaged, while a cruiser and two scout ships flared like miniature stars
until their plasma had spread too far to sustain its fire.

“Enemy task force is
firing,” called out tactical as the Low Admiral thanked the gods the flagship
had escaped unscathed.  Thousands of red arrows blossomed on the holo tank,
vector paths and velocities appearing underneath as data were gathered.

“All ships fire at
will,” ordered the Low Admiral, his voice a roar.  “Obliterate them.”

“They are firing energy
weapons at us, my Lord,” said tactical.  “Scout Graco-12 reporting that they
are taking lasers in the Gamma range on their hull.”

“Return fire with our
own energy weapons as well,” ordered the Low Admiral.  “Statistical probability
targeting until we get within direct fire range.”

Between the fleets was
now played the game of laser tag, ships firing their energy weapons, as
computers attempted to gauge the whereabouts of enemy ships still light minutes
away.  Frequencies were changed back and forth in an attempt to defeat
electromagnetic fields, cold plasma shields and reflecting nanosurfaces.  Minor
damage was done here or there in the opposing fleets, as ships maneuvered at
random to escape incoming beams.  Missiles intersected beams by chance,
containment fields rupturing under the heat of coherent light, small suns
flaring in the blackness of space.

The fleets closed the
distance under the limitations of normal space.  Missiles grew less effective
as the range decreased, cutting down on their terminal velocity as distance
closed.  While the energy weapons grew in effectiveness.

*     *     *

“Launching long range
counters,” called out the tactical officer. 
HIMS Archduchess Constance
Leonardo
bucked slightly as she cycled counter missiles into the fleet
defense plan, while the main missile launchers continued to pump out offensive
weapons.  Six thousand vector arrows crowded the holo tank, starting to cluster
some as they picked targets.  Larger arrows showed groupings of successive
waves of missiles, moving out from the enemy ships and headed toward the
fleet.  Waves of green arrows showed the offensive power of the human force
moving toward the enemy.  Successive waves were not as well organized as the
earlier waves.  The human ships were trying to get everything they had off
before they became floating hulks, or clouds of plasma.

“Returns coming in from
sensors on the first strikes,” called out tactical.  “Best guess estimates
being correlated.”

“ Dammit,” growled the Admiral
as he watched the figures coming up on the repeater screen. 
Only one of
their monster ships destroyed, with damage to a probable three others.  One or
two cruisers and maybe a half dozen destroyers.  Less than a fifteenth of their
firepower.

“Well,” said
Lamborgini, giving him a soft smile, “we only expected to distract them.  Maybe
sting them a little.”

“Now we hope that our
surprise is complete,” said the Admiral, nodding.  “Though I don't think we'll
be around to see it.”

“Long range counters
entering enemy missile envelop,” called out tactical.  “Engaging.”

Heinrich watched as
enemy vector arrows dropped off the plot as the counter missiles attacked. 
Some were dropping off.  Not enough.  And the following waves were soon to come
into the range of the longest counters, while the first wave was coming to the
attention of the short range weapons.

“
Bannon
and
Ji
both register as hits,” called out the tactical officer, after enemy missiles
intersected the hulls of the two destroyers.  The green icons blinked red for a
moment and then faded.  With them faded the lives of over six hundred men and
women.

“
Lancaster
hit
by lasers,” continued the tactical officer, as another icon flashed red.  This
time the icon did not fade, but continued to blink from green to red.  The ship
was still in the fight, but had suffered near catastrophic damage from the
lucky laser hit.

The second wave of
missiles entered the envelope of the destroyer and cruiser screen.  Several of
the battleship icons flashed red, all but one continuing to blink while that one
faded out.  At the same time two cruisers and a trio of destroyers blinked red
and faded away.

“Hits registered on one
of the enemy battleships,” said the tactical officer.

Heinrich watched the
feed as four missiles blossomed into antimatter fire and radiation.  They
blotted out the long range view of the enemy vessel.  As the fire receded the
flag bridge crew cheered as the enemy ship came back into view.  The front end
of the ship had a chewed up look, damaged from the blasts of several multi
gigaton warheads.  The ship had a slow spin on it, as if it could no longer
control its own motion.

“Prepare for impact,”
came the voice over the shipboard net.  The holo tank misted over for a moment,
red arrows disappearing from view.  Some came back into view, while others
became part of the fuzzy mass that the jamming had made of them.

“We haven't seen that
before,” said Lamborgini as the ship juked in several directions at once,
overloading the compensators for a moment.  She grunted as she was pushed back
into her couch, then pulled up into her armor.

“Didn't expect they
would give all their capabilities away,” grunted Heinrich as he settled back
into his couch.

The ship bucked again,
this time in one direction, then bucked upward.  Klaxons began sounding through
the flag bridge as lights dimmed, then emergency lights came on.  The holo tank
faded out completely.

“We've been hit,”
called out Lamborgini, looking at the dead repeater screens by their couches.

“But how bad?” asked
the Admiral, pounding an armored fist on his couch armrest.  “Dammit.  I need
to know what's going on.”

“Even if you can't do
anything about it?” asked the Flag Captain, looking squarely in the Admiral's
eyes.

“Especially if I can't
do anything about it,” said the Admiral, grimacing.  “Especially if I can't do
anything about it.”

The lights came back on
and the emergency lamps went out.  A second later the holo tank came back to
life as the secondary feeds from the ship's sensors and com circuits routed
through.  The ship bucked again from a near miss, then sections of the holo
faded out as radiation overloaded part of the ship's sensory skin.  The holo
remaining showed that most of the screening ships had been swept away, and most
of the battleships were blinking with damage, even as a pair of the dots faded
away.

“Dammit,” yelled the Admiral
as a temporary sun blossomed among his fleet on the repeater screen.  “How much
are we hurting them?”

“No way of telling
sir,” said the tactical officer from the other side of the holo tank, his face
a mask of concentration as he tried to force his systems to pierce the new and
improved jamming the enemy was putting out.  “We've got to be hurting them
some.  But I don't know if it will be enough.”

Leonardo
bucked again as
energies struck, klaxons sounding while damage control reacted.

“B ring has been
heavily damaged,” called out the tactical officer.  “Port forward missile
batteries have been destroyed.”

Something slammed into
the ship and lights dimmed yet again.  Heinrich looked up at the ceiling of the
flag bridge, which was buried in the center of the heavily armored central
capsule.  He could imagine the destruction to the areas of the ship outside of
these refuges.  Where about a third of the crew would be working at their
battle stations or on damage control parties.  And more would be leaving the
three central capsules as the battle raged, replacing casualties and forming
new damage control parties.

“Damn,” cursed Heinrich
yet again.  “I wish we knew what was happening to those sons of a bitches out
there.”

The ship bucked once
again, and the holo tank went out again.

*     *     *

“Their ships are
tough,” said the tactical officer, staring into the holo of the enemy fleet. 
Those ships were being pounded by the missiles and beam weapons of the
Ca'cadasan ships.  The jamming was throwing off their targeting and defensive
systems.  But they were weathering the storm better than any vessels the Ca’cadasans
had encountered in known memory.

“The humans have
advanced since we last met,” said the Low Admiral, sitting on his throne like
chair while his flagship bucked under him.  “Twice as many ships and they would
probably come out of this fight the victor.  But they do not have twice as many
ships, do they?”

“No, my Lord,” said the
tactical officer, bowing his head.  “They do not, unless they hide them well.”

“I do not think they
would allow us to defeat them in detail if they could help it,” agreed the Low Admiral. 
“And I think our electronics capabilities have caught them off guard.”

Three of the enemy
battleships flared on the holo, then faded away as they were destroyed, two by
missiles, one by the massed beam fire from the Ca’cadasan ships.  Only a few of
the human screening force were left in place, and another of those flared under
fire and disappeared.

“Hit them with
everything we have,” ordered the Low Admiral, waving a hand at the holo.  “Hold
nothing back until they are no longer in our path.”

The flagship bucked as
the ship fired off another volley of missiles, then shook from the near misses
of a pair of enemy weapons.  The Low Admiral sat in his chair, showing the
nonchalance of a professional naval officer; while he watched the ships of the
enemy fleet die one by one.

*     *     *

“I love you, Gunter,”
whispered Flag Captain Myra Lamborgini.  She lay back in her couch, her
breathing heavy as her lungs fought the gravity overload that was getting past
the flagship's compensators.

“Incoming missiles,”
shouted the tactical officer.

Gunter Heinrich looked
down at his repeater screen and realized that the
HIMS Archduchess Constance
Leonardo
was a wreck.  Over half of her grabber units were off line, which
was the polite way of saying destroyed.  She had only a couple of functioning
counter missile batteries, not enough to cover the entire area around her.  Her
X and Y laser rings were still functioning, barely, with over half their
emitter batteries gone, while A and B rings were complete trash.  Two thirds of
the electromagnetic field projectors were offline, meaning that most of the
hull was uncovered with any kind of beam protection, while those areas that
still had some coverage were not covered well.

They built her tough
, thought the Admiral. 
The ship had absorbed enough firepower to ravage the surface of a planet.  That
she still functioned at all and had living crewmen was a compliment to her
designers and builders
.  I just wish I knew how many of the bastards we took
with us.

The ship quivered as if
struck by a megaton hammer.  Delicate equipment sparked for a moment, until the
automatic repair systems took over, shunting power around areas that were
damaged while nanobots started to rebuild the areas of greatest concern. 
Heinrich grunted in pain as his internal organs slammed into his skeleton.  His
skin and muscle compressed against the padding of his armor.  Then the vector
of force changed directions and he felt his spine crack.

At least Thomasina will
not be feeling this
,
he thought, remembering that his beloved dog was in stasis in his cabin, as was
the protocol for pets kept aboard ship before going into battle. 
Too bad
the same can't be said of Myra and myself.

“I love you too,” he
whispered over the private circuit.  “I wish I could have done better.”

“You did all that you
could,” she replied.

He could hear the
physical pain in her voice, realizing that she too had internal damage.  Like
probably everyone else on the ship.

“I wish I could have
done more,” he said.  Then the ship shook again and consciousness left his
body.

The first missile hit
the stern of the ship, which was pointed toward the oncoming enemy so the laser
rings could come to bear.  At point three c, it was not traveling very fast as
far as missiles were concerned.  It still imparted a considerable amount of
kinetic energy, transferred from the multiton missile into the fifteen megaton
battleship.  The angle of the strike sent the ship into a fast spin, just
before the antimatter warhead detonated, sending waves of heat, and radiation
into the split hull of the ship.

The second missile hit
amidships, penetrating the side armor and exploding into the vessel.  The blast
burned into the ship, cutting through the central capsule and incinerating the
contents, the crew who were sheltered in that last sanctuary.

The Admiral, his Flag Captain,
and all the members of the fleet command staff, mercifully unconscious, flashed
to plasma in an instant.