Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) (19 page)

The cold plasma
shield was at full strength, laser rings fully charged, particle beam
accelerators pushing their loads of protons or antiprotons up to their maximum
velocity, missile tubes were loaded.  Targeting information was flowing in
through the com net, preparing them for the battlefield.  There was a
feeling of fear permeating the bridge, but it was overwhelmed by the emotions
of eagerness and anger.

The nose of the
fifteen million ton battleship touched the mirrored surface of the wormhole
traveling at two and three quarters kilometers per second.  Transit took
less than a second for the two and a half kilometer long capital ship. 
The battleship popped out of the gate at the same time as two Imperial
superbattleships.  Moments later the second of the New Muscovite ships
came through, a former Imperial mothball ship now called
Czarina Ekaterina
,
crewed by refugee spacers.

“Target that
supercruiser with all beam weapons,” ordered Schmidt, pointing to one of the
close icons.  “All missile tubes are to fire a volley at that farther
force.”

Sevastopol
shook
from a pair of particle beam hits from one of the supercruisers, its own beam
weapons ripping through the hull of the smaller ship.  One of the
superbattleships joined in, blasting away at that one supercruiser, while four
more restored battleships with New Muscovite crews came through the gates and
added their fire to the mix.

“Com for you
from the Commodore,” called out the Com Officer.

Schmidt nodded,
and the holo came alive with the image of Commodore Sheila Stepanowski, aboard
Ekaterina. 
“Vladimir.  That fort will have a firing arc on the gates in six
minutes.”

“I see that,
Commodore,” agreed the Captain, switching his side holo to a schematic view of
the enemy fortress, which was using its own grabbers to boost outward and around
the planet at a least time approach to a firing solution on the gates.  It
was in the process of launching the small Ca’cadasan space fighters, scores at
a time.  And it was spitting out missiles that moved onto a curving orbit
that would take them to the gates in less than a minute.

 “We will
attack that fortress, Captain,” ordered Stepanowski, her eyes narrowing. 
“If it is not stopped, we will be.  Move your ship as close as you can to
that fortress, taking out every missile and fighter that you can on the way in,
and engage the fortress.  We will follow and support you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he
replied, looking out over the bridge.  “You heard the lady, people. 
Helm, put us on a heading toward that fortress, least time.  Tactical,
assign all secondary weapons to missile defense and knocking down
fighters.  Missile tubes are to fire at enemy ships until we have line of
sight on the fortress.  All beam weapons, fire on the fortress as soon as
we can target it.”

Acknowledgements
came back and the bridge crew rushed to set the orders into motion. 
Schmidt looked over the holo, noting that all of the battleships, twelve of
them, were moving on a course that would take them to the direct confrontation
with the fortress, while four more battleships popped through the gates and
moved into positions to protect those portals.

Sevastopol
shook
as a missile from the fortress exploded a kilometer off the port side, hit by
the lasers as it swept by on its way toward the gates.  Fighters swarmed
over the ship, firing low yield missiles at the big ship.  The battleship
started launching its own squadrons of short range fighters, sending the small
ships out into a swarming dogfight where they had no protection other than
their speed and maneuverability.

“We’ll have a
firing solution in fifty-three seconds,” called out the Tactical Officer. 
The main viewer showed the massive station from a composite of other
feeds.  The brilliant flashes of warheads detonating from hundreds to
scores of kilometers away flared in the viewer as the station’s defenses took
out incoming missiles.

And they’ll
have a firing solution at the same moment
, thought the Captain, watching as
the schematic showed the line of sight developing around the curvature of the
planet.  The battleship turned to its side, presenting its largest aspect
to the fortress, allowing all of its beams weapons to come into play at the
same time.

“Firing,” yelled
out the Tactical Officer as line of sight developed.  The four laser rings
put out their maximum strength x-ray beams, pentawatts of energy hitting almost
instantly, while a quartet of particle beams struck a picosecond later. 
Half of each beam was bounced or deflected from the fortress’ electromagnetic
field, the half reaching the armor burning its way deep into the nanocarbon
reinforced alloy.  A second later the return fire hit
Sevastopol,
and
the ship shook from the transfer impact of its lasers.

Warning klaxons
sounded, a laser ring went offline, as did one of the side grabbers, and
several sections of hull were breached.  The ship kept its weapons firing
full strength at the fortress, locked into a duel that could only lead to its
own destruction.  The Captain was beginning to think they had only come
back to home space to die here, when the first of the Imperial Superbattleships
moved into line of sight and added its own more powerful beam weapons to a
battle.

That attracted
the attention of the fortress, which was now forced split its fire. 
Moments later the second superbattleship and
Ekaterina
moved into firing
position, adding their fire, and eight more ships were on the plot, moving into
the battle.

*    
*     *

“Command. 
What is going on?” yelled Great Admiral H’rastarawaa over the com as the
warning klaxons sounded.

“My Lord. 
We are under attack.”

“By what?”
yelled out the Great Admiral in shock.  He was two light hours within a
system, and the only enemy that was he knew of was coming at them from that
distant barrier.

“My Lord. 
Unknown ships just appeared out of nowhere and took out our defensive satellite
net.”

“Unknown
ships?  What by all the Gods are you talking about.”  The Great
Admiral looked over at the tactical holo, noting the thirty or so red icons
that were blinking on the display, smaller vector arrows moving away from them
at ten thousand gravities.  Even as he watched a hundred vector arrows,
larger than those of the missiles, popped into existence.  Seconds later
smaller vector arrows separated from them, and many of his ships in orbit
blinked and then faded from the display.

Their
stealthy ships
, he thought of the first group of vessels, but he hadn’t a
clue what that second set of ships was.

Four more icons
appeared as vector arrows, these very large vessels with ridiculously low
velocity figures below their icons.  There was no way they were stealth
vessels, and they couldn’t have just appeared there, at such a slow
speed.  Even as he watched two things happened.  Vector arrows
appeared from the four icons, heading out to his other close ships, while four
more of the large icons appeared.

The Great
Admiral reached out and touched one of the icons, and the holo zoomed in on the
object, showing one of the human capital ships.  But his eyes went
immediately to the shining object behind it, which another capital ship popped
out of. 
It’s one of their wormholes
, he thought, zooming out the
holo until he could see four of the gates as tiny dots.  He reconnected to
the fortress com system an instant later.

“I want this
station moved toward those wormhole gates.  Launch fighters and missiles,
objective the gates as well.”

“But, my Lord,”
said the Fortress Commander, appearing on the com holo.  “I have ordered
propulsion to keep us distant of those warships.”

“You are to move
closer.  I want to be able to hit those ships and those gates with beam
weapons.”

“I don’t think
we will last very long, my Lord,” said the Fortress Commander.  “Shouldn’t
we wait on the near ships to get closer, or the force on the way out to launch
missiles and head back.”

“They are
bringing battleships across in those gates, you fool,” growled the Great
Admiral.  “If we wait, they will have a blasted fleet in orbit, and they
will destroy us at their leisure.  Now follow my orders.”

The Fortress
Commander acknowledged and dropped off the com.  The Great Admiral felt
the slightest of shudders as the massive station launched its first volley of
missiles, and seventy vector arrows appeared, accelerating around to drop down
slightly and move around the curve of the planet.  The fighters had not
appeared yet, but they would take time for their crews to arrive and launch
them.

“Send a grav
pulse to High Admiral Lisantr’nana,” ordered the Great Admiral to the Com
Section.  “I want him to turn around and come back to the planet.  I
want…”

The station
shook again, this time in a different manner than it had during launch of its
own missiles.  Vector arrows showed on the tactical holo, disappearing as
they were hit by counter fire.  The station shook heavily as one got
through, and the lights dimmed in the Great Admiral’s quarters for just a moment.

“I’m sorry, my
Lord, but that last missile was a hit, and it took out our grav pulse
communicator.”

“Then send a com
to our other ships.  One of them can contact him.”

“Yes, my Lord,”
said the Com Officer.

“And then get me
the Ground Commander.  I want to know what’s going on down there.” 
The Great Admiral looked at the tactical holo again, this time feeling more
confused than ever.  The only reason for this kind of assault was to free
the captives on the planet, otherwise they just would have come in from a
standard approach, and saved this little surprise for some other time. 
But there seemed to be no assault ships, no transports, and no shuttles
launching to land troops.  Which meant they had either screwed up royally,
or they had something else planned.  But what?

*    
*     *

Fleet Admiral
Kelvin’s stomach turned as his flagship translated back into normal
space.  Fortunately, he had never had much trouble with translation, and
it only took a moment to get his wits about him.  Immediately he looked
over at the tactical holo that showed the disposition of his fleet, half
already in normal space, the other half still in hyper, getting ready to
translate down.

Constance the
Great
was centered in the holo, his flagship. 
Constance
was
one of the new super heavy battleships, and as far as the Empire knew, the most
powerful ship in space, with more firepower than even the Ca’cadasan
superbattleships.  She massed twenty-seven million tons, and carried four
wormholes, two connected to particle beam accelerators, two to missile
accelerators, to augment her normal weaponry.  Because of that she
couldn’t use a wormhole gate herself.  In fact, every ship in his command
that carried a wormhole, less the stealth/attacks, was with him at this time.

He checked for
the location of the eight special ships, all blinking a slightly brighter
green.  All were standard hyper VI battleships, and all had been equipped
with the force multipliers.  Two of the pairs were in close proximity and
were moving toward their teammates as he watched.  The other pair?

“Crap,” he said
under his breath.  One pair was at twelve light seconds apart, the other
sixteen.  Both of those pairs would take fifteen to twenty minutes to
link, time which would be wasted.  He expanded the holo and saw that the
enemy force, picked up by its graviton emissions, was on its way toward
him.  He was heavily outnumbered as things stood, and they would swamp him
with missiles in as little as a couple of hours.

The first of the
pairs drew within range, matching velocities to perfection, since anything else
would spell disaster.  Control was assumed by one of the ships for both
vessels, its computer balancing the pull of their grabbers to keep the ships
locked in the planned arrangement.  Hooked up, the half frames on their
hulls extended until they had made contact.  Another couple of adjustments
and the arms on one half frame slid into the other.  Spacers exited the
ships in armor and checked the connection.  It took some more time, but it
was better to waste time than have the frame come apart at the wrong moment.

As soon as the
spacers were out of the way the small silver dot was moved to the center of the
frame encased in its smaller transport frame.  With a rush of negative
matter that was pulled outward by the powerful magnetic field of the main
frame, the silver dot expanded in seconds until it filled the frame, and a
wormhole ship gate was now in place, falling into the system at point two
light, the same as the transporting vessels.

It would still
take some minutes for the ships on the other side to build up the addtional
velocity so they could come through the hole and not fall back in immediately
after entering the system.  They would cut back on their grabbers before
they came through, and hopefully the enemy wouldn’t even know they were there
until some number of them had made it.

Chapter Sixteen

Soldiers, when committed to a
task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and
courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been
done.

John Keegan.

PLANET NEW MOSCOW, EARLY MORNING,
APRIL 8
^TH
, 1002.

“What the hell
are we waiting for?” asked the sniper, peering through his scope at his first
target.  The scope was still unpowered, but was still a moderately
powerful magnifying instrument despite that.

“Calm down,
Schmidt,” ordered Walborski, staring at the compound through his own
glasses.  “We can’t kick this thing off on our own.”

Something flared
in the sky, high up, where it had to be above the atmosphere.  Cornelius
recognized it as a massive explosion in vacuum as seen from a distance. 
He looked back down in his glasses and saw several of the Cacas looking up as
well.  They knew something was going on, but were probably still confused
as to what it was.

“Power up,” came
a voice over the command net that hadn’t been up an instant before.  The
enemy would probably pick it up in seconds, but the jamming that came up at the
same time ruined their chances of getting any information from it.

Cornelius
ordered his armor to power up on his implant, and in less than a second all
systems were up and running, while the diagnostic program took another second
to report back that all was a go.  His faceplate HUD came up, and he saw
that all the suits in his company were now online.  The com frequencies
were filled with static, except for the swiftly rotating frequencies the
Imperial military was now communicating on.

The Captain felt
a wave of confusion from the information overload his suit was feeding to
him.  Not only through his heads up display, which was limited in its
ability to show information by the need of the faceplate to also show the real
world around him.  Also through direct feed into his visual and audial centers. 
He was getting a feed from every single one of the men in his company, with
emphasis on his officers and senior NCOs.  And information passed down
from battalion and regiment, who were filtering the feeds of the wakening
net.  A regular infantry officer who had come up through the suits would
have had specialized training in handling this information tsunami, along with
the experience to pick and choose what was important while ignoring the
rest.  Cornelius and his officers had the benefit of two months of training
with the suits, and no combat experience.

Cornelius was
still struggling with the information, getting some control, when the first
stage kicked off.

“Fire,”
whispered the command over his link to the battalion net.

“Fire,” shouted
Cornelius over his company net, and as far as the Cacas were concerned all hell
broke loose.

The particle
beam weapon in the sniper’s hand, powered up at the same time as his suit, spat
a bright red beam at his target, one of the guard towers around the camp. 
The beam ripped through the tower walls and into the suited Caca within,
carbonizing half the large body under the armor.  As soon as he had
serviced that target the sniper moved his weapon in search of targets on the
ground, while his spotter scanned with a wider aperture for Cacas in need of
killing.

Within three
seconds of the command to engage going out every tower on the perimeter of the
camp was destroyed by the two battalions in assault formation around it. 
Over five hundred guards joined them, while hyper velocity missiles flew out to
spear the doors of the barracks and garages at the guard camp.  With the
destruction of the doors the easy way to the surface was gone, though selected
rangers kept them in their sights in case some made it out later.

Engineers
launched a number of platforms while the Rangers were taking care of the
guards.  Fifty discs shot into the sky, gaining altitude before turning on
and connecting to the net, providing wide coverage com and sensor
capabilities.  Another six hundred smaller discs rose a couple meters
above the ground and shot into the minefield, their sensors locating the mines
so the remotes could land near them and neutralize the deadly weapons.

The Rangers
continued to fire at targets as they presented themselves, and most of the
Cacas were so confused that they wandered into line of sight of a
soldier.  But not all, and the Rangers knew there would still be Cacas in
the camp among the populace.  And that they needed to be neutralized,
fast, before they could start taking out too many of the civilians, or decide
that they needed to round up hostages to surround themselves with.  There
was, however, something missing from the assault.

“The gate is
open,” called out the Regimental Commander, and Cornelius looked over to the
large gully where the frame of the wormhole had been erected to see the barrel
and front of a heavy tank poking through.  The one thousand ton monster
sped through the hole on its grabbers, followed by another, then a third. 
The tanks ran out onto the plain, providing targets for the Cacas that most
would be ill equipped to deal with.  As soon as the entire platoon was in
place they started forward in a shallow v.

“Rangers,”
yelled Walborski over the com.  “Follow me.”  He jumped up in his
armor and engaged the grabbers, speeding to the outer side of the tanks, where
his company was stationed to prevent Caca reinforcements from hitting that
flank.

Fire started
coming in, automated positions that had placed to take out escapees now turning
to strike at the incoming enemy.  These were light weapons, made to kill
unarmored civilians, and any hits they did generate did nothing to the medium
battle armor suits, and less than nothing to the tanks.  Suits and tanks
moved rapidly, a hundred kilometers an hour.  Unfortunately, the mass of
civilians in the camp were obscuring what targets were left.  The
battalion and their armor support stopped at the fence line, engineers taking
down the barrier so the civilians could be extricated.

*    
*     *

“Power up,” came
the command over the awakening net into her implant.  Captain Stella
Artois opened her eyes, which she had closed to try to get away from the almost
panic she was feeling from being trapped in her suit, which was trapped in the
underground cavern.  With a thought she brought the suit computer online,
then ordered all systems to the on position.  Her HUD came up, as well as
the direct feed into her implant, and she became aware of every one of her
suited engineers, as well as the engineering robots each controlled.  Her
own pair of robots came online and reported in as ready and able to operate
according to their maximum capabilities.

With another
thought she powered up the small recon robots that were waiting just below the
surface.  They pushed their way through the last layer of earth and broke
free, floating into the air on antigrav and feeding their information back into
the net.

Stella
immediately made the decisions that she was paid to make, picking out the
optimal pathways upward, assigning her people to each task, her brain working a
hundred times faster than normal through the link with her suit comp. 
Seconds later the digging robots started tunneling up through the soft dirt,
making a three meter wide hole a meter a second.  In ten seconds the first
of the bots broke the surface, their operators right on their tails.  The
bots jumped into the air to make room for the troops to follow, calling out on
their speakers for the refugees to back off and move away from the holes, which
were all situated in the walkways of the area between the tents.

Most the Cacas
within the huge compound were caught off guard.  The sounds of the attack
on the outside of the camp were just reaching them, along with the confused
babble over the com net, which was partially drowned out by jamming
static.  Add to that the bright points in the sky that could only be signs
of some kind of impossible space battle, and the average male didn’t know what
to think.  They didn’t know what was going on.  When the robots,
about twice the size of a human in heavy battle armor, came popping out of the
ground and rose into the air, many males stood there staring in shock at
something that couldn’t possibly be there.  The few hundred within sight
of the robots who did react fired on them.

Unfortunately,
the Cacas within the compound were equipped with light armor and weaponry, all
it was thought they needed for controlling the unarmed humans.  What
shots, mostly moderate velocity pellets, that did hit the robots bounced from
their armored hides.  The robots were not authorized to fire back, for
fear that they would slaughter the human captives while killing some of the
Cacas.  The first Caca died as one of the civilians, a member of the
underground operating in the camp, fired a slow moving short range shape charge
round into a Ca’cadasan soldier.  The chemically powered weapon, made of
non-metallic carbon fibers, had been almost impossible to detect.  Within
seconds over three hundred Cacas across the camp were killed, holes blown through
their armor and into their flesh.

The robots,
three hundred and sixty of them, two for each controlling engineer, fanned out
over the compound, activating their electromagnetic field generators and
placing a weak shield over the camp.  Now lasers came on line, and rocket
launchers rose into place over the backs of the robots, while tracking systems
looked for weapons that the enemy might fire into the camp from above.

“Up,” yelled
Captain Artois as she watched the first company of the armored Rangers rise up
through the holes.  Her own people moved into position, clumsily. 
Each heavy battle armor suit massed a half ton, and every engineer carried a
two ton device with them.  As the last of the Rangers rose to the surface,
her force started the rise behind them.

The scene that
greeted her eyes was one of almost total chaos.  Three of the Ranger
companies were in the air, heading outward in all directions, several firing
down at targets below as they moved.  The other company was on the ground,
trying to organize the civilians and get them to the holes in preparation for
evacuation.  She checked her link and made sure that all of the drop units
were engaged, so that everyone who stepped into one of the holes would float to
the bottom, and not fall the fourteen meters straight down.

“Everyone spread
out and get those units in place,” she ordered, moving her own suit to a point
only a score of meters from the hole she had come up from.  “The sooner we
get them in place, the sooner we can protect these people.”

Acknowledgements
came back, and she moved her own unit into place after shooing away some
children away who seemed to be paralyzed in place just where she wanted to
go.  The kids scattered, and she landed with her unit, separated it from
her suit, and activated the two tons of electronics and crystal matrix
batteries.  Several dishes rose from the unit, and it started to hum,
projecting another electromagnetic field underneath that being deployed by the
robots.  After that she stood back, checking in with the rest of her
people to make sure everything was going according to plan.

The first of the
specialized anti-air suits rose out of the ground, the forerunners to the
entire company that would be deployed to the camp.  These suites were
fifty percent larger than the heavy suits the engineers were equipped with,
with a large boxy construction on the back.  Each trooper carried a heavy
particle beam rifle that could use the suit’s targeting systems to hit aerial
targets.  The boxy construction on the back carried a dozen hypervelocity
anti-air missiles.  The gunners boosted into the air and headed for
positions from which they could cover all the air approaches to the
camps.  One landed twenty meters away from the Captain and activated his
defensive suite.

Now all we have
to do is weather the Caca attack that will come at us eventually
, thought
the Captain. 
That, and evacuate fifteen or twenty million people from
this target.

*    
*     *

Cat looked up at
the sky as she noticed the people around her staring upwards.  She had
been trying to lay low, hoping that the Cacas wouldn’t be looking for
her.  That was a forlorn hope, and she knew it.  She had been picked
for harvest for some reason, and she had escaped, for the moment.  The
Cacas couldn’t afford to let any resistance be successful, lest the populace
gain some hope and resistance grow.  They knew that resistance really
couldn’t get the civilians their freedom, but harvesting parties could be
overwhelmed by numbers and males killed.

Dropping the
units at the perimeter before had been an extreme risk, but one she had been
willing to take to strike back.  Now that her mission was completed, she
had decided to try and fade back into the population.  There was no use in
getting killed for no purpose.

The child saw
the small dot of brilliant fire in the sky, a point that was too painful to
look at for any period of time.  Around it other pinpoints sprung into
existence, and people were pointing and talking excitedly.  Cat looked at
the crowd, wondering what the hell it all meant, when she saw a trio of Cacas,
two looking at the sky, one directly at her.

She readied
herself for death.  There was no way she could get to her feet and run
before they brought their weapons to bear.  The sadness of not living
another day overwhelmed her fear, and she felt as if she didn’t have the
strength to resist.

The one looking
at her raised his weapon, and she closed her eyes, not  wanting to see her
death coming.  Suddenly there was shouting, both humans and Cacas, and she
opened her eyes to see what looked like a human in a huge combat suit rising
from the camp a hundred meters away.  She then noticed that the ground was
shaking, and realized it had been for a few moments.  More of the robots
rose into the sky, and the Cacas from all over the camp started firing on
them.  Everything they hit the robots with bounced from their armor, but
the robots didn’t shoot back.  Instead, they rose high into the air and
moved out in all directions, only a few staying within sight.