Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) (53 page)

“Yes, Commander …” The weapons officer’s voice trailed off, and he half stood in shock. “The hewmans are launching.…” That was obvious to everyone, and even the commander came out of his seat in surprise.

That the hewmans could target them so early was something he hadn’t expected. His surprise wasn’t so much that they had launched missiles at him, since his shields could handle the onslaught; it was where the missiles were coming from, and their size. He watched in amazement as one after the other, each of the blunt-nosed ships in the ring formation fired a missile almost as large at the ship itself. What the hewmans hoped to accomplish by firing a ten-hand count of five missiles at him, he had no idea.

* * * * * *

The warning light and sirens started flashing, screaming loud enough to wake the dead, and people in the vast cavern looked around to make sure everyone was clear of the massive conveyer system. A minute later, the conveyer started and the autoloader began pushing the one hundred and fifty-foot missiles into the equally massive housing of the firing chamber. The conveyer system was originally designed to handle large parts used in shipbuilding, and quickly modified and enlarged to handle the ordnance. To anyone from the twenty-first century the firing chamber looked like nothing more than the firing chamber of a giant six-gun, rotating on a central axle. Every thirty seconds the cylinder rotated, bringing the missile into position in the firing chamber while sealing itself against vacuum and any backblast before firing. After it fired, an empty chamber gradually rotated up, and the autoloader would push another missile off the loading conveyer and into the empty chamber. For all intents and purposes, and to anyone, including the spies who looked inside, it would appear the missiles were aimed at the a long steel tube just a few inches from the deadly nose. What they couldn’t see was the ring gate embedded in the rock half a mile down the mass-driver tubes. By the time the missile reached the end and exited out through the ring gate, it was traveling at better than 2,800 feet per second.

A second warning light flashed, and the weapons control officer pressed a button as his board lit up with a green go light and he sent another welcome greeting to the oncoming lizard fleet. One of the maintenance crew stood looking at the firing chamber, a puzzled look on his face behind the vac suit facemask.

“Maloski! What the hell are you gawking at?” the maintenance chief growled as he walked up.

“Chief, explain something to me,” he answered.

“What! You need me to tell you how to fuck a girl?” He chuckled.

“Shit no, I know how to do that already. Your sister taught me,” the maintenance man said with a laugh.

“Good, at least she taught you something beside what that piss-assed training school taught you. She teach you to use your dong for something besides stirring your tea with?”

“Nar. I figured that one out all by myself.”

“So what else is bothering you?”

“Well, we’re five hundred feet under the Ural Mountains, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, as far as I can see, that nuclear missile is pointed at that long tube that goes horizontally through the solid rock for half a mile, then ends. How’s it supposed to go anywhere?” The chief could hear a note of fear in the young man’s voice, even over the radio.

“Don’t you worry, son. They know what they’re doing up there.” At least he bloody well hoped they did. If one of the warheads went off in here … well they’d never know it, so he shrugged philosophically instead.

“And besides that, these are chemical rocket motors.”

“They are hypervelocity missiles to be correct.” He eyed the younger man.

“That’s just it. They can burn for what, thirty to forty-five minutes at the most.”

“Correct.”

“And the lizard fleet is about three light minutes from Earth.”

“I take it there’s a point to all this?” he asked, his eyes automatically watching the conveyer for problems.

“Well, yeah. If they do have some way to launch these into space from here, which I doubt, how do they expect these missiles to reach the enemy at that distance?” he said, pointing his thumb at a forty-foot missile as it moved past.

“That, my son, is the wonder of modern physics.”

“Not very helpful, Chief.”

“I know, but I don’t understand it all myself. It has something to do with what’s inside the firing chamber, but don’t ask me what, I don’t know.”

At sixteen different sites located around the world, similar thoughts were occurring. Each underground facility began pumping ordnance out of their firing chambers into the mass-driver tubes as fast as the conveyer system permitted, and few, with the except of the weapons officer in his reinforced launch station above the firing chamber, knew what was really happening.

* * * * * *

The alien fleet commander was also asking himself a similar question, but he was more concerned with how the relativity small blunt-nosed ships were spewing out missiles at such an incredible rate. They were coming at him nonstop, and not in a straight line. The moment the missiles exited the ship, most took off at odd tangents. He understood the answer moments later as the first ones arrived, hitting his fleet on the flanks instead of straight on as expected. Without orders, many of the flanking ships turned to present the strongest part of each one’s shield toward the oncoming salvo. They never got a chance to turn back into formation, since the salvo kept coming in a seemingly never-ending stream. This caused other ships to turn to face the ever-increasing number of missiles coming from the side, gradually weakening the shield in the center and degrading its overall efficiency. The fleet commander wasn’t particularly worried, until the main fleet elements began firing as well. This was three times the amount he could fire, and with his weakened shields, it was going to be impossible to stop them all.

“Counter-missile engagement. Fire at will!” he growled, his crest rising and his neck flap turning the deep blue of fear. “Inform the lord commander of our situation.”

Two light seconds later, the commander received the information, but unlike his subordinate, Chokuk didn’t let his emotions show. He felt the shock of the information as much as the fleet commander, but he’d schooled himself not to let anything show, clamping down with an iron will.

“Inform the first fleet commander to proceed as planned. The hewmans cannot keep up this level of engagement for long.” At least in his heart he hoped not; otherwise he too was in serious trouble.

“A thought, Lord Commander.”

“Yes, holy one.” Not bothering with the required pleasantries, even though he feared the one who spoke. He didn’t have time.

“I would advise that you bend all your will to discovering how the hewmans manage to expend so much ordnance in so short a time and continue to do so,” he intoned in a soft voice.

“Yes, holy one. I will do as you ask,” he said, bowing his head slightly.

* * * * * *

“We have weapons lock, skipper,” the weapons officer called.

“Order all ring ships to commence firing at will,” Scott ordered, seeing the battle board immediately light up with multiple missile tracks, all heading outward. “Weapons! Let see how Sergeant Mack’s new beach ball works.”

As the designated operations officer of the mass-driver system, Sandra Madonna looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. “Aye-aye, skipper,” she answered brightly, and keyed her board to bring the mass driver on line. The board showed all lights in the green, and she started the loading sequence.

“First round loaded, outer doors open, and the launch tube is at vacuum, ready to fire, sir!”

“Fire away, Lieutenant.”

Sandra Madonna stabbed the launch button with glee and sent two five-ton, depleted uranium/boron balls screaming into space at better than zero-point-four light speed.

There was little to see, since by the time the ball traveled the length of the ship and exited, it was traveling too fast for the human eye to follow. The sensors, however, did, and everyone watched the two bright red and green icons shoot across the battle board at incredible speed. Sergeant Mack and his weapons research team had outdone themselves this time, adding a six-point grav drive and a targeting system to the balls, so in essence the ball could, within reason, steer itself to the target once launched. The twin balls curved across the intervening distance and impacted the shield of the enemy battleship in a spectacular fireworks display of displaced energy. It didn’t crack the shield, but neither Sergeant Mack nor Scott expected it to. What they did expect, and got, was a serious degradation of the shield, as the test on Pluto had shown. How much degradation, and how long it would take the enemy shield to regenerate, they didn’t know.

“What do you have, Ops?” Scot queried.

“From what the sensors can pick up, we dented their shield. It looks as if it went down by at least ten percent,” Kenny Odell answered.

“Regeneration time.”

“Twenty-eight-point-six seconds, skipper.”

“So, set your launch for fifteen seconds apart, Sandra. That should give us time to recharge the capacitors and the coils to cool,” Scott ordered in a calm voice.

Pumping that much energy into the coils to drive the beach ball down and out the tube at better than zero-point-four light, even if they were superconductors, heated them up. The design team estimated the maximum sustained firing rate at one every ten seconds for a maximum of ten minutes before the automatic shutdown sequence cut in due to overheating. From Scott’s point of view, that was sufficient for his need.

“That it will, sir. Launch sequence set, loading. Doors open and the tube is air free.”

“Set on auto launch, and fire when ready.”

“Aye-aye, sir!” Sandra stabbed the button and held it down. Not that she needed to, it just felt so damn good doing it.

* * * * * *

The enemy fleet commander knew something had impacted his shields, but he had no idea what. The energy displacement was massive, and he could see the look of alarm on his shield officer’s face when he looked around at him.

“Commander. Whatever hit us degraded the shields by ten units,” the officer said, his crest fluttering up and down.

“Increase power to the shield, young one.” It would still take time for the capacitors to come back up to full power, no matter how much power they pumped into them. The thrice-dammed hewmans had come up with another weapon Chokuk wasn’t prepared for, may the Dark Spirit take their souls and eat them. His only hope was that they didn’t have any more of the cursed weapons. It was a forlorn dream.

“Commander …” the youngling stuttered, his neck flap showing the dark blue of fear. “The hewmans have launched something else at us … and … and they’re continuing to fire.”

“Order all weapons to fire the moment the hewman fleet is within range, and keep firing no matter what. Launch all counter measures.” It was the only thing Chokuk could do in the face of such an overwhelming onslaught. The question was, did he have sufficient offensive and defensive ordnance to destroy the hewman fleet? His gut already told him the answer: he did not.

* * * * * *

Brock paced back and forth across the floor of the command bunker, his eyes flicking from screen to screen as he watched the third alien fleet approach Earth. He unclamped his teeth on what was laughingly called a cigar and took it out of his mouth to survey the soggy end with distaste, sighing. It seemed that producing anything resembling a good cigar was beyond the capabilities of this age, and he despaired for the future of mankind. If they couldn’t produce something as simple as a good smoke, how in hell did they expect him to defeat a bunch of fucking lizards?

“Status report,” he growled.

He could look and see for himself, but wanted his command staff to get into the habit of relaying critical information. They were all newbies, and from his point of view didn’t know squat about anything. They were all supposedly “
trained
.” He’d made sure of that himself, but there was a distinct difference between training and actual combat. Who would freeze at a critical point, and who would react, or act the right way? All was unknown at this point, and he wished Scott was here to take over.