Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (5 page)

“Fire in the hole,” yelled Satrusalya, prepping
another of the grenades.  All of the men got low, using the bodies and
equipment of the Cacas as cover.  The Commando threw the grenade down the hall
like a football, the weapon swishing through the air from the strength of his
arm.  He ducked down just before a particle beam burned through the air where
he had been standing, then more beams pierced the air, from their angles aimed
at the grenade.

Another thunderous explosion, flames reaching
up the corridor and almost getting to the men.

“Move out,” yelled Cornelius, jumping to his
feet and starting up the corridor, his rifle at the ready.

“We have movement behind,” called out Sergeant
Pasco, waving them down.

“It’s Owusu, sir,” yelled out the big
Specialist, jogging down the hall with his rocket launcher, a dozen figures in
police style tac op clothing running with him.  “I’ve got company.”

“Follow us,” said Cornelius, turning back and
sprinting down the corridor, depending on the augmented troops and agents to
keep up with him.

Because of his speed of action he caught the
next layer of Cacas off guard, just setting up to cover the corridor after
losing contact with the males further down that the humans had wiped out. 
There were only six of them, and thirty beam and high speed projectile weapons
took them out before they could react.

“Follow me,” yelled Cornelius, continuing on,
jumping the bodies, knowing that the speed of their assault could take the
objective, as long as they didn’t let caution slow them down. 
We’re going
to do this
, he thought, his running speed up to fifty kilometers per hour,
faster than the best unaugmented athlete.  
We’re going to do this.

A particle beam speared out, hitting Sergeant
Pasco dead center, while another flew past Cornelius and struck someone further
back.

“Open fire,” yelled the Lieutenant, firing his
particle beam from the hip.  “Give them hell.”  At the end of the last word he
went into a warbling call he had heard in a movie, something called a rebel
yell.

Everyone with him fired as fast as they could,
sending particle beams and grenades down the hall.  Hypersonic rounds cracked
by Cornelius’ head, making him flinch a bit, forcing him to run straight so the
firing lanes would stay open.

Another flare of particle beam fire came down
the hall, cutting down two of the Secret Service Agents.  That was the last
fire the enemy got off as they were overwhelmed by a charge from another era of
warfare, that only worked because of its shock value.

Cornelius hurdled the last of the Cacas who had
deployed before the room.  As he sailed over their bodies, he became the focus
of a half dozen aliens in a fair sized storage room.  They were standing around
a large mechanism that could only be a bomb, and three of them were turning his
direction with rifles coming to shoulders.

“Die, you fucking assholes,” yelled Cornelius
at the top of his lungs as he swung his particle beam into one of the aliens,
exulting in the kill as the proton stream ate a hole through its faceplate.  He
was sure it would be his last kill, as two more weapons were tracking his way,
and even with his advanced reflexes, he couldn’t take out both of them before a
proton beam tore through him.

Angry red lines swung by, and it took him a
moment to realize that they weren’t coming from the enemy weapons, but were
actually hitting the Cacas, who fell backwards as multiple beams tore through
both of them.

Cornelius landed lightly on his feet, breathing
hard, still not sure that he was alive.  The other people streamed into the
room and fanned out, making sure the space was clear of Cacas, then securing
every entrance in.

“Good job, Lieutenant,” said a wide eyed Agent
Chung, walking up and patting Cornelius on the back.  “And just let me say, you
are one crazy son of a bitch.  I’m glad you’re on our side.”

Cornelius nodded his head, still trying to
catch his breath, the fear from what he had done finally catching up with him. 
His arms were shaking, and he felt like his legs were going to give out under
him any moment.

“I’d follow you into hell any day, sir,” said
PO Satrusalya, walking up, a smile of relief on his own face.

“You just did,” said Cornelius, swaying a
moment.

The Petty Officer was at his side in a moment,
giving him a supporting shoulder and a look of understanding.

“Is he going to be alright?” asked Chung.

“He’s going to be fine,” said the Commando. 
“Just a bit of adrenaline rebound.”

Cornelius took a couple of clearing breaths and
straightened up, looking at the weapon.

“So, sir,” said Satrusalya, following the
officer’s gaze.  “What are we going to do about that thing.”

“I don’t have a clue,” said Walborski with a
grimace.  “Unless someone can come up with an idea, I guess we get to see what
the center of a hundred gig explosions looks like.”

Chapter
Two

Once we have a war
there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things
than any that can ever happen in war.

Ernest Hemingway

CONGREEVE SPACE. 
NOVEMBER 21, 1001.

“We’ve received word from the
Donut
,
your Majesty,” came the voice of Rear Admiral Kelso, the Emperor’s
Flag
Captain.
   “They’ve disarmed two of the devices the Cacas have brought
aboard.   The other two….”

“Thank you, Admiral,” said Sean Ogden Lee
Romanov, Sean the First, Emperor of the New Terran Empire. 
And those other
two could still possibly destroy the station, and our hopes of winning this
war.

The Emperor paced the deck of his flag bridge,
no longer needing to be ensconced in the holo control room that had been
developed for his use as battle commander.  Most of the stations on this bridge
were unmanned, the crew having been dismissed for relaxation, food and sleep,
recovery after the rigors of battle.  Many aboard the
Augustine I,
the
twenty-seven million ton vessel that was the first of her class, had not
survived the battle.  This deep into the mass of the ship there had been few
casualties.  Unfortunately, many of the battle stations were close to the
surface of the ship, where the weapons, defensive screen projectors and the
engine components responsible for normal and hyperspace travel were housed. 
Where the crew that manned and repaired them were needed.  And that area of the
ship, the outer skin, the armor, laser rings and particle beams, was a mess. 
Over a thousand men and women had died in the battle, to add to the numbers of
over a thousand other ships that had either been destroyed or sustained major
damage.

My battle
, he thought, shaking his head.  It had
been a good battle plan, luring the enemy fleet here for an engagement on his
terms.  But, like most plans, it had not survived contact with the enemy.  They
had still ravaged the enemy fleet.  Less than one in five of the Caca ships that
had entered the system had left it.  But he had also lost almost half of the
fleet he had brought into the battle.  His Admirals were all telling him what a
great victory it had been.  But in his gut, his emotions, it didn’t feel like
any kind of victory at all.

Snap out of it, Sean
, he told himself,
walking up to the tactical holo and ordering it by link to switch to an
expanded view of the half of the Empire that was involved in the war, some of
it up close and personal, some more peripherally, or engaged with another
enemy. 
We don’t have time for me to second guess everything that goes
wrong.  We hammered the bastards here, and, by God, we’re going to do it again
in the very near future.

He looked at the holo, studying what it showed
him about his dispositions.  One spot that stood out like a festering sore was
the incursion into Fenri Space.  That incursion had gone well at first, and
they had really hurt that enemy, taking away some of their most important
border worlds and causing severe damage to the Fenri fleet.  But that had
changed, as the Fenri had reacted with unexpected force, the Fleet had
retreated, and now he had six Imperial Army divisions trapped in their space.

“I want a staff meeting called, immediately,”
he told Kelso over the link.  “We need to discuss strategy, and issue orders,
now.”

“How about twenty minutes, in the flag
conference room, your Majesty,” said the head of his staff.

“Do it.  I’ll expect everyone involved to have
some general idea of the strategic situation, so we can hit the ground
running.”  Sean severed the link and went back to studying the plot, bringing
up his military dispositions and committing them to his implant memory. 
We
might just be able to do this
, he thought, juggling the pros and cons in
his mind. 
We just might be able to knock those little assholes out of this
war, or at least make them wish they had never gotten involved.

*    
*     *

“You sure you want to do that, your Majesty?”
asked Grand Fleet Admiral Gabriel
Len
Lenkowski, sitting in on the
conference by holo projection through the wormhole com.  “With another
operation coming up in the near future?”

“Hell,” said Grand Fleet Admiral Duke Taelis
Mgonda, also sitting in by com holo.  “We’ve got the tech to pull it off. 
Might as well use it while we can.”

The unspoken statement in there was that they
might not be able to count on the
Donut
in the future, with that future
still up in the air.  They might only have the wormholes they now possessed
into the foreseeable future.

“And your opinion on the matter, Sondra?” asked
the Emperor of Grand High Admiral McCollum, the Chief of Naval Operations.

“I say hit those sorry shits with everything we
have, your Majesty,” said the woman, sitting in a chair almost a thousand light
years away, on the capital planet of Jewel.  “From what I understand, the
window for the supernova really doesn’t start for another month, so if we give
them two weeks of hell, we can still be ready for the kickoff of
Bagration.  
It will be tight, but it would be nice to secure that flank.  In the long
run, I think it will help with our concentration of forces.”

“Mary?”

Captain Mary Innocent, Sean’s Staff
Intelligence Officer, looked up from her flat screen with a look of
concentration on her face.  “I concur, your Majesty,” said the woman with a
slight strained smile.  “With a few reservations.  We can’t really be sure when
the supernova event is going to kick off.  We have research vessels near to the
star, but something like this has never before happened in the Empire.”

“And by that, you mean two supergiants
spiraling into one?” asked McCollum.

“Exactly, ma’am.  I think we need a real expert
on scene to observe the star.  A theoretical astrophysicist who specializes in
supernova events.  And I think I have just the man.”

The holo came up over the table, showing a
middle aged man with a pleasant expression on his face.  Intelligent eyes
looked out of the holo as it rotated to show everyone at the table his face.

“Dr. Larry Southard, of the University of New
Detroit, on the planet of that name.  Specializing in Mathematical models of
stellar decay, including novas, supernovas, and even hypernovas.  Over a
hundred and forty peer reviewed papers in the field, a stint in Exploration
Command, and considered the foremost expert on the phenomenon.  I think we need
a man like this eyeballing the star as it goes through its final stages, so we
have the best possible judgment on when it’s going to blow.”

“Get him,” said Sean, nodding.  “No matter what
it takes.  If he won’t be reasonable, call up his reserve commission.  But get
him on a research ship orbiting that star.  I want to know to the second when
it is going off, as soon as he can figure it out.”

Bagration
depended on that star going supernova. 
When a large object like a blue supergiant blew up, it not only sent huge waves
of photons from across the electromagnetic spectrum out at the speed of light,
photons of gamma rays, xrays, visible light and the searing heat that
accompanied those masses of photons.  They also sent most of the star’s mass as
superhot particles, at high speed, though not at anywhere near the speed of
light.  And, of course, the gravitons that had been coming out of the mass of
the star, telling the Universe that it was there, continued to move at light
speed into the space surrounding the expanding mass.  They changed in quality
and quantity as the mass expanded from a high gravity source to a much more
dispersed source of matter.

Gravitons also travelled through hyperspace,
moving at light speed across the more compact expanse of the other dimensions. 
In hyper VIII they were moving at a pseudospeed of over one hundred and sixty
times the speed of light.  And there would be millions of times more of them
released by the explosion than was normal for the extant stellar body.  They
reverberated through all levels of hyper, transmitting the thunderous roar of
the explosion, as it were, through hyper, for hundreds of light years in each
direction, and swamping the
sounds
given off by the graviton emissions
of smaller objects, such as star ships.  For weeks at a time ships would be
very hard to detect, if not simply impossible.  And the star in question was
the combination of two very large supergiants that had spiraled together,
leading to an unprecedented explosion.

And hopefully, we’ll be around long enough to
shield the planets within killing range of that monster
, thought the Emperor. 
Because any supernova was deadly to the planetary systems around them, and a
monster even more so.  Everything fifty light years and out was at risk from
deadly particle radiation.  Fortunately, the closest inhabited system was about
eight light years away, giving the Empire over ten years to put up the particle
shielding the one habitable planet needed to keep its life in the state of
living.

“OK, people.  Let’s get those hulls rolling.  I
want the Fenri to feel our wrath, then switch back in time to hit the Cacas.”

“I hope we have enough to accomplish both
missions,” said Len, his eyes narrowing.  “If we get bogged down in the Fenri
Empire, we might have problems with disengagement.”

“Then I want to minimize those problems, Len. 
That’s why you’re going to command that operation.  Anyone got a good name for
it?”

“How about
Surigoa
,” suggested Duke
Mgonda, referring to a naval battle in old Earth’s World War 2, in which the
United States defeated the Japanese last gasp in the Philippines in one of four
separate actions.

Sean took a second to check his link to look
over the reference, then nodded his head.  “
Surigoa
it is, your Grace. 
And I think we can commit some of our newest tech to hitting the bastards,
though we’ll still be light on wormholes.”  The problem being, as all present
knew, that they still couldn’t reliably move a wormhole equipped ship through
another wormhole.  Meaning that they still lost over sixty percent of the
unmanned test ships in trials, and no one wanted to suggest sending a manned
warship, even a destroyer, much less a battleship, through such a high risk
transit.

“So we’re a go on Operation Surigoa,” said
Sean, looking at the nodding heads of all gathered.  “And Bagration as soon as
we have the window.  So now all we have to is finalize our dispositions for the
operation, and get them where they need to be.” 
As if that will be easy
,
he thought with a smile.

*    
*     *

 “It was a pleasure having you aboard, your
Grace,” said Rear Admiral Kelso, taking the Archduke’s hand in his own.

His Grace Percival Marconi, leader of the
Opposition Party of Parliament, smiled.  “I wish I could say that it was
enjoyable, Admiral.  But it was most informative.  Especially seeing that young
man in action during the heat of battle.  I have a much better appreciation of
the hardships we face, and the potentials for success.”

“Glad to hear it, your Grace,” said the
Admiral, returning the smile.

And I’ve got some butt to kick in my own party
when I get home
,
thought Marconi, looking at the mirrored surface of the wormhole that would
take him to the Central Docks, the
Donut
still not a safe destination. 
Especially
Countess Zhee, if she tries to pull some kind of power play.
  Marconi was a
power to be reckoned with in the Lords, and he had many friends in all of the
triple houses of the Parliament.  At the moment he was feeling slightly ashamed
at his efforts to obstruct Sean, and Augustine before him. 
But I acted in
good faith,
he thought, looking at the wormhole, waiting for the green
light to proceed. 
Good faith, and mistaken beliefs.  Now it’s up to me to
make amends for my actions, and swing the full support of the Lords to this
Emperor’s side.

The light turned green, and the naval rating
who was the watchdog for transport waved him on.  The wormhole system could
absorb quite a bit of the difference in velocity of the sending and
transmitting stations.  Quite a bit didn’t mean anything above point two c. 
With missiles and particle beams that was fine.  The military wanted them to
come out at high velocity.  With people, not so much, as slamming into a wall
at point zero one c was still enough to completely pulp the body into a thin
aerial mist.

“You just fight the war, Admiral,” said the
Archduke, turning before he walked through the mirror.  “And we’ll get you what
you need.”  With that, he stepped through the wormhole, and into the
disorienting stretching of time that its travel entailed.

*     
*      *

FENRI SPACE.  NOVEMBER
22
^ND
, 1001.

“There goes the last of our orbital defenses,”
said Lt. General Jonah Nowitski, the commander of XXXXI Heavy Corps, of which
Brigadier General Samuel Baggett’s Three Eighty Fourth Heavy Infantry Division
was part.

Baggett looked at the holo above the tactical
table of his HQ bunker, seeing the last of the defense satellites the Fleet had
left in orbit blinking for a moment before fading.  The icons approaching the
planet were still there, though the orbital satellites had scored some hits
while that Fenri fleet was on final approach.