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

Ad hoc meaning the on leave special ops troops,
and Jimmy’s people. 
“Thank
you, General,” she said, looking at the man’s grim face.

“We’re still hoping we can get to the last one
before it goes off,” said the General, the expression on his face showing he
really didn’t believe that would happen.  “We….”

The holo went blank for a moment, while warning
klaxons started sounding across the control room that fronted Yu’s office.  She
jumped up from her desk and ran into the room, her eyes darting around the
chamber at the multitude of stations with screens up, their operators staring
intently at the scenes being presented there.  Some of those scenes were from
sensors along the curve of the station, looking toward the area the Ca’cadasans
had taken.  A bright point had appeared there, toward the center of the width. 
Large pieces of hull flew from the area, heading toward the black hole.

They detonated the last bomb
, thought the
Scientist, staring at the large trivee scene that had appeared over the high
wall of the chamber.  The bright area expanded, moving kilometers to all sides
of the blast.  It kept growing, until it had encompassed a circle ten
kilometers on the underbelly of the station.  And another schematic showed the
internal damage, reaching out five more kilometers.  The schematic showed that
the central cable, a kilometer thick of hard but flexible carbon strands, had
been severed, over a kilometer if its length simply gone.

The station shuddered, the shock wave finally
reaching their area, and more warnings went off.  “We’re being pushed off our
optimal orbit,” called out one of the control room crew.

“Take control of the grabbers,” ordered the
supervisor, the best man they had for this job, called up as soon as the
emergency struck.  “We need to get this girl under control.”

Lucille looked up at another schematic, this
one against the wall over the entrance to her office.  It showed the circular
form of the station, and the black hole in the center, and two other circles. 
One was the optimal orbit of the station, the other the point of no return, the
point at which the station could no longer recover from a destabilization.  And
due to the push of the massive explosion, they were drifting that way.

*    
*     *

Cornelius really had no hope of making it back
to the station.  He was drifting toward the hole, not at the acceleration of
the bomb, which had the efforts of its antigrav units pulling it toward the
gravity well.  But he was picking up speed.

The big objects coming out of space,
silhouetted against the bulk of the
Donut
, looked like angels in his
eyes.  The two Marines grabbed him, one on each arm, and started to boost back
to the station.  A couple of seconds into the boost the heavy battle armor
suits closed in around him, cutting off his view of the station.

What the hell
, he thought, as a bright light shone
around the edges of the suits. 
The one we didn’t get,
he thought,
thankful for the protection of the heavy armor and their electromag fields.  A
couple of objects flew by at high velocity, really just streaks, and one of the
suits jerked as something slammed into it.  Nothing too bad, as both suits kept
boosting back to the station. 
And if it had hit me, I would definitely be
dead by now.

It took several minutes, well within
Walborski’s time frame for continued oxygenation from his nanobubbles.  Still,
he was feeling the effects of the vacuum on the rest of his body. 
But I’m
going to make it, Devera, honey
, he thought, seeing the approaching station
as the suited Marines turned until they were again beside him.

The airlock door closed behind him as he and
the Marines settled to the floor, and air hissed into the small chamber. 
Cornelius pulled in a deep breath, and almost vomited as the pain shot through
his lungs.

“Take is slow, Ranger,” said one of the Marines
over his suit speaker.  “The alveoli of your lungs have been damaged some by
the exposure to vacuum.  You’ll need to replenish the liquid layer in your
lungs in order to exchange gases again.”

Cornelius simply nodded, unable to speak, while
the inner door opened.  The Marines helped him in, while a Naval Medic ran up
and started to inject him with meds, nanites and nutrients.  They helped him to
a seated position on the floor, and the Medic handed him a vaporizer bottle and
told him to start inhaling the vaporized water.

“I thought we had lost you, LT,” said
Satrusalya, coming up and sitting next to him, a vaporizer in his hand as well.

“I have a confession to make,” said Cornelius
in a hacking voice.  “I’m still a cadet lieutenant at the Academy.”

“Well, you’re an officer to this Spacehead,
Ranger,” said Satrusalya, giving Cornelius his hand.  “I would serve with you
any day.”

“And the Emperor will sure be glad to see you
made it as well, Walborski,” said Jimmy Chung, walking up to the pair.

“You know the Emperor?” asked the now wide eyed
Commando.

“The Emperor pinned two Imperial Medals of
Heroism on this man himself,” said Chung.  “He may just get a third one for
this one.  As might you, Satrusalya.”

“I’ll put in the word myself,” said Cornelius. 
“What you did in that room took balls.”

“Says mister big testicles to me,” said
Satrusalya, with a laugh.  “But I’ll take it.”

*    
*     *

The blast of the one device, bigger than anything
ever seen in Imperial space not of natural origin, vaporized the cable along a
one kilometer length, as well as the outer hull for five kilometers in each
direction.  Five kilometers further on large pieces of that hull flew off into
space, to fall into the black hole within minutes.  Internal divisions, floors,
walls, bulkheads, were also vaporized for several kilometers into the station,
along with everything that was contained within those chambers.  Ten kilometers
further everything was smashed, machinery ripped apart, people pulped.   Some
of the blast moved through openings, tram tunnels, lift shafts, spreading the
fury in seemingly random directions.  In some sections, thirty kilometers from
the blast, all organic forms were vaporized, while across a bulkhead there was
no effect.  In several places the top of the station blew out.

The region affected was more than the area of
ten thousand battleships, an area almost beyond comprehension, though only a
tiny portion of the enormous station.  On the outer areas of the devastation
robots and emergency personnel went to work containing the damage.  In the area
of total devastation there was nothing to be done, and over ten thousand
sentient beings were gone, mostly Ca’cadasan commandos and human Marines.  And,
of course, the station had been pushed off kilter by a blast that none of the
designers had ever envisioned.

*    
*     *

“I think I’m going to lose her,” yelled out the
Tech that was supervising the grabber array on the
Donut
.  The station
was moving toward the point of no return, the section opposite the blast
shifting closer to the black hole, as the section nearest the explosion drifted
out under the impulse of the force of the weapon.

“How much power are you giving the grabbers,”
said Lucille, running over to the man’s station.

“One hundred percent,” said the Tech.  “All
they’ll handle.”

Lucille looked up at the schematic, cursing
under her breath.  She looked back at the sweating Tech.  “Give them one
hundred and ten percent.”

“That could burn them out,” argued the Tech.

“And if we hit the hole, it doesn’t matter if
the grabbers are intact or not.  Now give them everything you’ve got.” 
There’s
supposed to be some extra capacity built into the units
, she thought,
praying that it was true.

“Giving them one hundred and ten percent,” said
the Tech, his fingers striking the panels and overriding the system.  The power
meters on the system climbed past the blue columns that indicated normal power,
moving into the red zone that was the warning that too much was being asked of
the millions of units.

The station continued to move on its path to
disaster, everyone in the control chamber staring at the schematic.  There was
a shudder through the floor, not as sudden or strong as the one the explosion
had caused, but in some ways more powerful.  The fabric of the station
stressing and straining under the multiple forces pulling on her.

“I’m losing some of the grabbers,” yelled the
Tech.

“How many?” yelled Lucille, glancing at the
control panel.

“About point one percent,” said the man.  “With
more going every second.”

“Keep the power feed going,” said Lucille,
thinking of ordering another increase, weighing the odds in her mind.  “One
hundred and twenty percent,” she ordered.

“We’re going to lose more,” blurted out the
Tech, his fingers inputting the new orders.

We could lose several percent and still have an
increase in power
,
she thought,
but is it enough?

“I think it’s working,” yelled the Supervisor.

The column showing the percent of failed
grabbers was climbing, passing one percent, then to two, then speeding up and
hitting four.  The remaining grabbers were still pulling at space harder than
all of them would have at one hundred percent power.

And then the station barely moved away from the
point of no return.  Slowly at first, barely noticeable, then speeding up.

“Ease off a little of the grabber power when
she crosses the fifty percent line,” said Lucille, putting a hand on the Tech’s
shoulder.

More were overheating, but they would have to
pass ten percent before that was a problem.  They reached eight percent
overheated when the station hit the halfway line, and the Tech pulled the power
back to one hundred and ten percent, then to one hundred a few moments later.

“She’s going to make it,” shouted the Supervisor
in glee.  The station was speeding up, getting closer to the mark.

“Back them off to fifty percent,” said
Lucille.  “I don’t want her to rebound past optimal.

It took several more minutes for the station to
slide into that optimal orbit, and only then did Lucille allow herself to feel
the relief that they had saved the situation from falling into disaster.

“Setting grabbers for automatic station
keeping,” said the Tech, pushing several control panels, as the klaxons and
flashing lights died.

“How many of these do I have to go through?”
whispered Lucille.  She turned to the Supervisor.  “Get repair crews to work on
the damaged cable and hull sections.  I want us at one hundred percent
integrity as soon as possible.” 
Which will probably take a couple of
months, but we can be operational again in twenty-four.

“Lucille,” said a voice over her internal com
link.  “Are you alright?”

“God, but it’s good to hear your voice, Jimmy
Chung,” she said over the link, a smile stretching her face.  “I thought maybe
I had lost you.  Was getting rid of that bomb your doing?”

“I wish I could claim that it was me,” said the
Agent, his voice sounding as weary as she had ever heard it.  “No, it was our
legendary warrior.  The man’s a machine.”

“Walborski, again,” said Lucille, not really
surprised at the answer.  “Did, did he make it?”

“I don’t know how,” said Jimmy after a short
chuckle.  “I don’t think he knows how to die.  If he doesn’t get another medal
out of this, I don’t know if anyone would ever deserve one again.”

“Director Yu,” said a voice interrupting on the
com.  “Priority call for you.  It’s the Emperor.”

“I’ve got to take that call, Jimmy.  But I
can’t wait to hear your tale.”  She cut the link and picked up the other call,
anxious to give the man who ruled the Empire the good news.

Chapter
Four

War involves in its
progress such a train of unforeseen circumstances that no human wisdom can
calculate the end; it has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.

Thomas
Paine

CONGREEVE SPACE. 
NOVEMBER 22
^ND
, 1001

Thank god
, thought Sean, after he had gotten off
the com with Director Yu. 
If we had lost that station, I don’t know what we
would have done.  We have to increase security on that thing, and fast.

Sean got up from his chair, where he had been
sitting, waiting anxiously for the news to come, good or bad. 
What the hell
am I going to do with that boy?
was his next thought, a smile on his face. 
I’ve already given him two of our highest award for bravery, and I have a
feeling that he will be earning more.  The day the Cacas killed his wife was
the day they birthed one of their worst nightmares.

He thought for a moment, a difficult thing to
do with his fatigue. 
A knighthood in is his immediate future.  He can’t
refuse that.  And at least a Golden Sun
.  That was the second ranked medal
in the Empire, and Sean thought Cornelius would probably gather several of them
as well before he was through.

“I’m turning in,” Sean spoke into the chamber’s
com system.  “Do not disturb, unless it’s something vital.” 
I have to
delegate some of this stuff.  Like Jennifer said, I have the best people
possible in their positions, so it’s about time I used them.  And Len should be
on his way in the next couple of hours.  If anyone can handle the situation
with the Fenri Empire, it’s him.

With that last thought the exhausted monarch
left the room, ignoring the bodyguards that fell in around him, and made his
way to the nearest lift, looking forward to being able to close his eyes.  And
hoping he didn’t have another dream to disrupt his serenity.

*    
*     *

Jennifer had been exhausted after the battle,
even though she had done nothing physical, other than staying awake and
supporting Sean.  But emotionally she had been overtaxed.  Not that she was not
used to stress, just a different kind.  She had fought for people’s lives in
the rare situations where medicine actually had trouble preserving life, which
didn’t happen all that much in civilian life.  The child she had saved from the
ravenous fungus that had attacked him on Sestius,
for example.  Most
often even a catastrophic mistake by a surgeon could be rectified by putting
the patient into cryo, and later fixing the damage.  And that was when nanites
couldn’t just be injected into the damaged area and put to work.

Military decisions were completely different,
as she had learned.  Ships that had been converted to plasma and small pieces,
along with their crews, could not be placed in cryo.  They could not be
rebuilt.  She had watched as those ships had been destroyed following the
orders of her fiancé, and she had been able to tell from his expression that he
felt every one of those deaths, knowing that they could not be avoided, and
still feeling responsible for them.

She was having a nightmare about that battle,
seeing Sean calling out orders to his people, trying to avert the disaster
heading his way.  That disaster was in the form of hundreds of Ca’cadasan
ships, driving through their fire, accelerating, launching swarms of missiles
as they closed into beam weapon’s range.  And Sean was trying to come up with a
solution, something to save his ship, and his love, his eyes looking over at
her as he grimaced at the fate that awaited them both.

A hand on her back woke her from the nightmare,
her breath hissing in at the start that the touch evoked.  She started to turn,
ready to fight whatever it was that was coming at her out of the night.

“Easy,” said a gentle voice in her ear.  “It’s
just me.  You’re having a bad dream.”

Sean climbed into the bed and pressed his body
against hers.  She dismissed the dream from her mind as she concentrated on the
warmth and scent of the man now next to her.  With a shifting of her body she
turned around to face her lover, her arms going around his body, feeling the
hard muscle of his chest against hers, and corded strength of his back.

“How can you go through that?” she asked,
looking into his eyes and seeing the pain that still resided there.  “How can
any of your people hold up to that.”

“Because someone has to,” said Sean with a head
shake.  “If we don’t, then who will.”

“You could stay in the capital, and let your
senior officers handle the battles for you,” she said, tightening her grip
around him, feeling that if she didn’t hold tight he would simply fade away. 
“You know, like most Emperors.”

“I can’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. 
“I know, I have the wormhole coms to stay in touch.  I could give orders from
complete safety, but I won’t.  That would be unfair to the men and women I
order into danger.”

“I can’t go through that again,” said Jennifer,
tears spilling from her eyes.  “I’m not strong enough to watch so many die, and
not be able to do anything about it.”

“You’re stronger than you think,” said Sean
after kissing the tears from her cheeks.  “But you really have nothing to do
but observe, and that’s cruelty, plain and simple.”  Sean took in a deep
breath, releasing it as if trying to clear tension from his body.  “I don’t
want you to come on the next operation,” he said, almost blurting out the
words.  “I know you want to be with me.  But as you said,” Sean said hurriedly,
“this is pure torture to you.  And it would make me feel better if you were
safe.”

Jennifer lay there for a moment, her hands
caressing the back of her lover, while his own fingers gently played across her
upper arms and shoulders. 
I don’t want to be away from your side.  But I’m
really accomplishing nothing by being aboard ship.  Except to satisfy my own
urges.  And is that fair to all the other serving men and women in this fleet,
who are separated from their own loved ones?.

“I will agree to stay on Jewel with two
conditions,” she finally said, putting a finger to Sean’s lips.  “And by stay
on Jewel, I mean most of the time.  You will still need me to be your
ambassador across the core worlds.  Which, with the wormhole gates, shouldn’t
be too much of a hardship.”  Especially with her predilection for extreme
nausea during hyper translation.  Not that wormhole travel was pleasant, with
its stretching of subjective time during transit.  Just less unpleasant than
ship travel.

“And what are your two conditions?”

“One,” she said, tapping him on the lips with
her right index finger.  “You stay on board the biggest, baddest ship in the
fleet, and surround yourself with bunches of other ships.  After all, you wouldn’t
expect Len or Taelis to lead from the front during a battle.”

“I wouldn’t,” he started to say.

“Oh yes, you would,” she stopped him in
mid-sentence.  “You have the mindset of a Medieval king, wanting to lead from
the front so you can hit your opponent over the head with your mace, or sword,
or some other silly ancient weapon.  And they stopped doing that crap when
firearms made the battlefield too dangerous for royalty.  I’ve read my history,
mister, so don’t tell me that doesn’t go through that anachronistic mind of
yours.”

“But,
Augustine
is a heavy warship.  I
need her firepower at the decision point of the battle.”

“Then take another ship for your flag, you
idiot,” she said in exasperation.  “Maybe a battle cruiser that could flee if
necessary, though I’d feel better if you chose a standard battleship.  And
don’t tell me that sets a bad precedent.  Most fleet commanders through history
have stayed away from enemy fire, when possible.  At least those who grew up
with any kind of tech.  So, promise me you’ll make the smart play, and stay out
of close in combat.”

Sean thought for a moment, then nodded his
head.  “OK, I can do that.”

“And don’t think you can just lie to me and do
what you want,” she said, a pouting expression on her face.  “I have my sources. 
And with wormhole com, I can find out where you are.”

“OK, I give up.  I was thinking that, but I
won’t try to fool you.”

“Good.  Play games with me, and you will lose.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sean said with a laugh.  “And
what’s the second condition?”

“I want to get married.  Not sometime in the
indefinite future, but now.  Well, not on this ship, but as soon as we can get
back to Jewel.  And then I want to get pregnant, with your child.  You have a
succession to think of, you know, and the sooner you have an heir, the better,
especially with your insisting on putting your Imperial ass into the hot
zones.”

Sean was silent for a moment, and Jennifer
worried for a moment that she might have pushed him too far.

“We can be married in a week,” he said with a
smile.  “That’s kind of rushing things, but since we have the wormholes in
place through most of the Core Worlds, I think we can get our guests to and
from the ceremony on time.”

“That would be wonderful,” said Jennifer, with
a thought through her implants disabling the sterilization protocols on the
nanites in her ovaries. 
But I’m not fertile, yet
, she thought,
monitoring the state of her reproductive system in disappointment. 
Of
course they will make alterations to my child
, she thought, something that
had caused her some trepidation in the past.  But, since talking with the
geneticists, she was now of the opinion that most of her genetic contribution
would remain.  It would be her child.

“Now,” she said, kissing him on the lips and
maintaining the connection till she was almost out of breath in her passion. 
“I know we can’t conceive a child until we’re home, so the geneticists can have
a go at the zygote.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t practice.  If you’re up to
it.”  From the feeling of him against her, she was sure he was.

*    
*     *

SECTOR III PACE,
OUTSIDE OF FENRI SPACE.  NOVEMBER 24
^TH
, 1001.

Len Lenkowski still didn’t like traveling by
wormhole, though he had to admit that it had a lot of advantages.  The
Donut
was over a week’s travel time from his ship by hyper VII, and
Anastasia
Romanov
was only a hyper VI ship, which would have taken a month to make
the same trip.  That didn’t include the sixty light hours of normal space they
would have had to traverse within the gravity well of the hole, a trip of at
least ninety hours travel time.  Instead, he had been able to take one step and
cover those multiple hundreds of light years.  But the disorientation was
unnerving, to say the least.

“Welcome aboard, Admiral,” said the full
Captain that had been sent to greet him, saluting the six star flag officer who
had once had another star on his collar before his demotion to a combat
command.  She was a petite woman with Asian features, red hair, and green eyes.

“Thank you, Captain?”

“Hyori Gae, sir.  I’m a native of New Seoul.”

“And you are?”

“Admiral Kelvin’s Flag Captain, sir.  I was
sent to escort you to the Admiral’s flagship,
King Edward II.
”

Lenkowski nodded, remembering the man that he
had recommended himself to command the expeditionary force into Fenri space. 
And
what a joy it must be for a Fleet Admiral to have to greet the man who is there
to take away his operational command.  At least he will still retain a task
group command within the fleet.

“What kind of ship is
King Ed?
” he asked
the pretty woman on the way out of the wormhole chamber to a tram.  The Admiral
stopped for a moment, and looked around at the station.

“She’s a superbattleship,” said the Captain. 
“Hyper VI.  And no sir, none of the action occurred near here, from what I
heard.  The bombs were set about five thousand kilometers to spinward.”

This thing has twenty-five million kilometers
of circumference, and we have barely begun to use it
, he thought as a tram
decelerated into the station and its doors slid open.  He followed the Captain
into the tram and took a seat.  Another man started to get on, and Gae held up
a hand to keep the Marine from entering.

“I thought you might want to ask me questions
about our dispositions, sir,” explained the Captain after the door closed and
the tram started on its way.

“I already have a pretty good idea what you
have,” he told the Captain.  “There will, of course, be more coming once you
get your end of the ship gate erected.  But we will need to move the wormholes
around, at least some of them.  The ships coming through the gates won’t have
any, and some of them will be designated flagships of new task forces.”

The Captain nodded her head and activated a
flat comp she pulled from her belt pouch.  As the Admiral talked, she made
notations, then repeated his orders back to him to make sure she had gotten him
correct.

She’s a very efficient officer,
he thought as the tram
accelerated for some minutes, then coasted for ten before it decelerated into
another station. 
Maybe I should preempt her for my own staff
.  He
thought that over for a minute before dismissing the idea.  His own staff would
be following along in a couple of hours, and it wasn’t fair to take away
Admiral Kelvin’s command, flagship and flag captain.