Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (16 page)

“I’ll get through, sir,”
said Crenshaw before her faceplate lowered.  “Don’t you worry.”

But that’s my job
, thought the Admiral,
feeling helpless now that he was cut off from having any input to the battle,
no matter how little.

*     *     *

“Orders, ma’am?” asked
the Chief who was running the helm, looking back at his commanding officer.

Jean d’Arc
was evading as best the
Chief could do with a ship that was more or less stuck in one place.  Lasers
and close in weapons were manned and firing at everything that came with their
firing arcs.  As she glanced at the plot she saw another squadron of Caca ship
attack craft come sweeping in, putting missiles into every ship they could
hit.  Those that were still in the process of construction or major refit were
easy targets, and most were hit by weapons that left them tumbling wrecks. 
Most flew off on odd tangents, some went into other ships in collisions that
caused minor damage to the intact ships, and in some cases continued the
breakup of the heavily damaged warships.

Mei and her task group
were now in the fight.  She had lost a couple of ships at the start, before
they had gotten their crews to battle stations.  Some more had been damaged
since, but trying to kill a ship that was powered up and moving was a
completely different proposition from hitting a bunch of helpless new
construction.  The Admiral grinned like a predator as half the Caca squadron
disappeared under the fire of her ship’s weapons.  A friendly fighter that had
been following too close, trying to move in for a kill, died as well, a victim
of the misnamed friendly fire.  Mei felt bad for the pilot, but at the moment
her task group was more important than a single fighter that might happen to
wander into the kill zone.

“Might I suggest that we
move out of the Central Dock area and give ourselves some room to maneuver,”
said the Tactical Officer.

Mei thought that over for
a moment, then rejected it.  They were where they needed to be.  Their present
position put them in major peril, but it also allowed them to engage the enemy
in the most efficient manner where the enemy was attacking.

“Make way, but keep us
near the outer region of the Docks,” ordered the Admiral.  She looked over at
her Tactical Officer.  “Engage the enemy, but also look out for concentrations
that we can head into.  Com.  Inform the rest of the squadron of our
intentions.  They are to do the same.  I don’t think they need stick with us,
though I would prefer that we stay in small groups at least.”

The Com Tech went about
getting the message out while Mei continued to study the plot.  More enemy
craft kept coming, seemingly out of nowhere, in endless numbers.

“Captain von Rittersdorf
is reporting that he and two of his squadron will be sticking with us, ma’am,”
said the Com Officer.

“Excellent,” said Mei
with a grin.   “No one I would rather have guarding our flank.”

“Any other orders to go
out, ma’am.”

“Find out where in the
hell these guys are coming from,” said Mei, her eyes flashing.  “There has to
be a launch vehicle somewhere.  I want to find it and kill it.”

*     *     *

Most of the attack wave
heading into Jewel was coming in on the dayside, on the hemisphere that was
always facing Central Docks and the planet New Terra.  The hemisphere of
Capitulum and many of the other megacities of the planet.  The attack craft
that were carrying ship killer missiles veered off from the planet and moved
into a launch position on the six orbital forts, five of which were in a
position to take them under fire.  The forts were launching their own
anti-fighter missiles, as well as some ship killer weapons that were tasked as
area kill devices.

Missiles streaked out
from the attack ships, heading for the quintet of forts that were in sight, as
well as a half dozen superfreighters and four liners in far orbit.  The forts
had the ability to defend themselves, the freighters not so much.  Heavy
warheads detonated several thousand kilometers above the atmosphere, doing
little more than shining momentary bright lights on the surface.  All six of
the superfreighters took hits, blasting their thirty million ton bulks with a
gigaton of force each.  The bulk freighters were mostly empty space, sturdy
enough for their task, but without the inherent toughness of warships.  Ten
million tons of ship and twenty million of cargo were scattered across space,
much of the bulk going into the atmosphere to burn up on the way in.  Some of
the larger pieces didn’t go up in vapor, and became the first offensive objects
to strike the planet.

The liners were a little
sturdier, if still unarmored, and they were also finished by single warheads
they couldn’t battle.  The missiles heading into the civilian traffic stations
above the planet fared much the same, though it took several hits to destroy
the three massive objects in orbit.  The weapons heading for the forts had a
harder task, as those structures were made for battle, a hundred and twenty
million tons of heavily armored mass each, with weapons aplenty.   Each was
targeted with from ten to nineteen missiles each, and only two weapons total
got through, to detonate on the hulls that were battleship tough.  As the flashes
cleared away the two forts were still in action, if at a reduced capacity. 
Return fire killed over a hundred of the Caca ships, and the survivors veered
off, letting the next wave have a crack at the forts.

Another group of Caca
craft sent the first wave of kinetic penetrators into the planet below.  Each
was a rod of dense metal massing about a hundred tons, small grabber units
accelerating it well beyond the reach of gravity alone.  Most were aimed at the
capital city, the primary target, some at specific locations, others at random
areas in order to cause chaos.  Several hundred penetrators were launched, and
over fifty of them hit the debris that remained of the freighters and liners,
either vaporizing on impact or damaged to the point where their original
trajectories were only a wish.

Forty squadrons of the
smaller fighters, the first wave, lanced into the atmosphere as the first of
the pinpoints of light that were the kinetics striking flared.  Five hundred
and sixty fighters, they diverged on individual squadron paths and started on a
search for targets of opportunity.  Into the heaviest defensive fire in the New
Terran Empire.

*     *     *

I got you, you son of a
bitch
,
thought Visserman as she pulled her fighter into an approaching angle on the
flight of Caca craft.  Her Peregrine responded to her practiced touch like it
was a part of her, and as soon as the indicator lit she triggered her twin
particle beams at maximum intensity, walking the lines of hyper-velocity
protons into the hull of one of the enemy fighters.  Alloy blew out, the
cockpit flared, and the craft dropped dead from the sky in a tumble that was
soon superheating from the uneven friction of an uncontrolled reentry.

The Chief Warrant pulled
her fighter around, killing her velocity in an instant, then pulling down at
maximum acceleration into the atmosphere, lining up on the rear of another Caca
bird.  Particle beams still in need of some cooling, she took aim this time
with her nose laser, hitting the tail of the Caca fighter with the megawatt
range weapon and burning off one of its stern grabber units.  The Caca fighter
veered, whether from the action of the pilot or the unbalancing of its thrust
due to the loss of the grabber she couldn’t tell.  Since her finely honed
reflexes moved her with it, she really didn’t care, and she hit it again with a
laser, this time burning through the hull along the port side, pumping enough
heat into the craft to blow it out of the air.

The other two ships in
the flight now took note of her, pulling up and around.  That made her task a
little more difficult, since these two would now try to kill her as a team. 
But it was also keeping with her mission, as this pair would not be able to
search for targets if they were trying to deal with her.  As she pulled her
fighter on its side and banked away she saw a couple of flashes from the
ground, kinetics hitting the city below.  She cursed again, dodging away from
nearest fighter that tried to line her up, staying as close as she could so she
didn’t have to worry about their missiles.  She also didn’t want to get in a
missile duel at this time.  She doubted she would have a chance to rearm, and
she had a feeling she would need her long range sting later on in this fight.

Chapter Twelve

Whether people be of high or low birth, rich or
poor, old or young, enlightened or confused, they are all alike in that they
will one day die. Yamamoto Tsunetomo

“Jesus Christ,” screamed
Margo as the ground shook under their feet.

“They’re hitting the
city,” said Tomas, looking up at the ceiling as if he could get information on
what was going on overhead.

The ground shook again
and again as multiple kinetics came down.  The lift continued to smoothly move
them to the lower levels of the building.  Unfortunately, everyone else in the
building was also trying to get down and out, and he had to keep overriding the
system that wanted to stop on each floor to let more people on.

“Should you be doing
that?” asked Margo.

“If we want to get to the
bottom of the damned building I do,” answered Tomas, wondering if he should cut
her free as well.  He thought about it a moment and decided against it.  Just
earlier this day he had thought of her as the love of his life, and he needed
to do whatever he could to keep her alive if he wasn’t going to live the rest
of his life thinking of himself as a bastard.  As long as he could keep her
from getting him killed.

The building shook again,
this time a much deeper shock, and the actual lift car shuddered to a stop.  A
rumble sounded outside, and the light blinked for a moment, then came back with
a lower intensity.

“I think this is where we
need to think about getting off,” said Tomas, hitting the emergency door
override code.  The door slid partially open, revealing that they were actually
between floors.

“How did you know how to
do that?”

“I’m a survivor, honey. 
I make it my business to know how to work things.  Now, we need to get off this
thing.”  He looked at the door and saw that the opening for the lower floor was
too narrow to get his own body through, though Margo might be able to.  But
then they would be separated by a floor, and there was no telling what shape
the stairs were in.

The building shook again,
this time from a shock wave that had to be much further away.

“Here, you climb up
through that opening,” he told the woman.  “I’ll give you a boost, then I’ll
follow.”

Margo nodded and started
through the opening with the assist of Tomas boosting her foot.  As soon as she
was through he climbed after her, having to squirm a bit to get his heftier
body through the opening.  He was almost afraid that someone would be waiting
on the lift landing.  At a time like this he couldn’t trust anyone.  It was a
relief to find only Margo there, and to see that she had enough sense to have
her Defender in her hand.

Looking up at the
markings over the lifts he cursed.  They were on the hundred and eleventh
floor, much lower than his apartment, but still a long walk down the stairs.  A
lift harness was going to be his next large purchase, but the plan to get one
in the future did him no good at this point.

“I guess we need to start
walking down,” said Margo as the building shook once again.

“One second,” said Tomas,
moving to the end of the hall where a large glasssteel window overlooked the
city.  “I want to see what in the hell is waiting for us when we get down
there.”

The window looked down on
the river at an angle, all the way out to the bay and Peal Island, the home of
the Fleet Academy.  The air was filled with haze, making it difficult to see in
the distance, but he had no trouble seeing the mushroom cloud that was rising
from the center of the island.

“Are they hitting us with
nukes?” asked Margo, coming up beside him.

“Probably kinetics,” he
answered, pointing to a deep crater on the other side of the river that was
starting to fill with water.

“What the hell was down
there?”

“Probably a shelter,” he
answered.  “The kinetic penetrated down, and probably took out the whole
thing.”

“Those poor people.”

Tomas nodded.  It was a
chance going down in those things, but there were thousands of them, and the
odds that a kinetic would hit the one you were in were pretty remote.  He
looked over at the huge archology that had stood on the other side of the river
from them, which was now a crumbled wreck bowed in the middle where the kinetic
had struck.  A megascraper nearby was sheared in half, one side of its tough
structure still reaching for the sky, the other side gone.

Something flared in the
distance and another cloud started its rise.  Moments later the ground shook
again.  Bright lines shone through the clouds of dust, while other streaks
appeared momentarily and something high up in the atmosphere flashed fire and
died.

“Well, we’re fighting back
at least,” he said, pointing toward another flash.  “I just hope it will be
enough.”

He looked back at Margo,
who was still staring in horror at the city that was the center of the Empire. 
It was a huge megalopolis, and only a small portion had been impacted as of
yet.  Which didn’t mean it wouldn’t get the shit pounded out of it before all
was said and done.

“Enough looking,” he
finally said.  “We need to get out of here.”

“What happens if the
building gets hit before we get out?” she asked.

“Don’t think about that,”
he told her as he led the way to the stairs.  Because if that happened, the
odds were they would never even know what killed them.

*     *     *

“OK, everyone,” yelled
out Grand High Admiral Sondra McCullom over the noise of the War Room.  “Everyone
evacuate the building.   Head to the garage and get an aircar out of here, or
to the basement and jump to the
Donut.”

“We have a battle going
on at the front, ma’am,” called out chief tactical officer, a Vice Admiral.

“And you won’t be
directing any battle if they drop the Hexagon on our heads,” replied McCullom
as another tremor went through the floor.  The Hexagon was probably the most
heavily armored building in the city, but it wouldn’t withstand a high impact
penetrator dropping onto the roof.  One wouldn’t collapse the whole structure,
but with bad luck it could come right through the ceiling of the War Room and
kill every valuable officer and enlisted spacer in the chamber.  And she was
pretty sure this would be a primary target.

“Why aren’t they using
antimatter warheads?” asked on the Techs, getting up from her station and
looking at the nearest exit.

That was the question,
thought MCullom.  The
Cacas, however they got here, were using high yield warheads up above the
atmosphere.  If they dropped a gigaton into the center of Capitulum, it would
be really bad.  A quick check of the databanks showed just how bad.  The
fireball would be over fifteen kilometers across.  Even the supertough
structures of the city would be vaporized in that region.  Another five or six
kilometers out and most of the structures would be heavily damaged, leading to
some collapse.  In a prespace city that region of almost total collapse would
reach out up to thirty kilometers from ground zero.  With modern materials
there would be some damage, even to those structures, but nothing penetrating. 
Basic stone and wood structures, of which there were still many examples even
in this city, would be totally destroyed out to seventy-five kilometers, though
the modern buildings wouldn’t even be touched, and the massive archologies and
high-rises would shadow most buildings down range of them.  One of the worst
affects would be from thermal and radiation damage.  People in the open out to
thirty kilometers would simply be gone, even if they were partially shaded by
buildings.  Citizens out to two hundred kilometers could suffer third degree
burns and major radiation sickness.  Under normal circumstances all of those
people could be saved and repaired.  In a city that was well smashed that could
be a problem.

They could actually do
much more damage by dropping a gigaton’s worth of ten megaton warheads, or the
equivalent in kinetics.  Though she really couldn’t understand why they just
didn’t saturate the city with gigaton range warheads.

The room started to clear
out, people heading for one of the two evacuation points.  McCullom had already
decided on her path.  The
Donut
had its own War Room, fully manned,
ready to take over all of the datalinks from the battle going on at the Front. 
Sure, the
Donut
was also at risk, currently under attack, but it would
be hours before any enemy weapons got close enough to do any damage to the
structure, whose very bulk made it as damage resistant as any object known to
humanity.  It would take thousands of hits by gigaton range warheads in a
compact area to break it apart.  There was always the risk of the quark
warheads the Cacas had used in the last attack on the
Donut.

“We need to go, ma’am,”
said Captain Xiun, her aide.

The building shook again,
then an air blast erupted over the city, something carrying some antimatter
warheads breached under ground fire.  The Admiral followed her Aide and the
security detail to the lift.  Fortunately, the War Room was under the ground
level of the building, only ten floors up from the subbasement that housed the
secure wormhole room.  The closest garage was twenty floors up, seventeen from
ground level.  As long as the lifts were working it was much less than a
minute’s ride.  If they went down, all of the very fit military personnel would
be able to navigate the stairs quickly.

“In here, ma’am,” said
her Aide as he waved the heavily armored Marines aside.

McCullom stopped in place
for a moment, conflicted about leaving the building, her post, even though it
wasn’t necessary for any of them to stay here.  She turned for a moment toward
the Marine Sergeant in charge of security.

“Get every Marine in the
building suited up who has one,” she told the anxious NCO.   “Then evacuate the
building and report to the local authorities.  They’re sure to need you.”

“But the security of this
portal?”

“I don’t think we have to
worry about that at this time.  And we can secure it at the other end just as
well.  Now go.”

As she was talking more
of the personnel in the building ran into the room and through the portal,
until there was a stream of them.

“Hold up,” shouted
Captain Xiun, stopping he exodus for a moment.  “We need to get you out of
here, ma’am.”

McCullom nodded, then
followed the first of her security detail through the portal, feeling the
confusion once again of transiting spacetime instantaneously.  It was a
sensation she was sure she would never get used to, but it got her from here to
there faster than anything else.

“Ma’am,” said a man in a
Marine Brigadier’s uniform.  “We’re receiving a message from the Emperor.  He
wants to talk to the ranking person available, which I’m guessing would be
you.”

McCullom moved away from
the wormhole, not wanting to block the way of the others coming through.  Xiun
started giving orders, sending the techs and officers to the tram station that
would take them to the auxiliary War Room and its ancillaries.

“Your Majesty,” said
McCullom as soon as she was linked in.

“Admiral.  I’ve been
apprised of the situation, so don’t bother to go into those details.  What I
want to know is if you have any information about the Empress and the
children?”

“Last I had heard, sir,
they were on their way out of town with her security detail.”

“Not to the palace?”

“I don’t think so, your Majesty. 
The detail asked for air clearance all the way to the Imperial Retreat.  I
know, because I issued the clearance myself.”

“Thank god,” said Sean,
his voice breaking.

There was a hesitation
for a moment, and McCullom wondered what must be going through the Emperor’s
mind.  No matter the outcome, this would be a black day for the Empire he led.

“What are your plans?” he
finally said.

She linked into the
structure’s tactical net and got a look at what was going on through the
wormhole links.  “We still have the wormhole gate going through to the Central
Dock area.  I’m not sure why they haven’t taken that out yet.  But we can still
shift forces at this time.”

“Don’t do anything to
weaken the defenses of the
Donut
,” cautioned the Emperor.  “If you can,
transfer some ships from the other Supersystem worlds into the space around
Jewel.  But if we have to lose one, I would rather it was the capital.”

“Are you sure, your
Majesty?”

“Hell no, I’m not sure. 
The one thing I am sure of is that if we lose the
Donut
, we lose the
war.”

“Will you be coming back
from the Front, your Majesty?”

“It will take seven hours
for the ship I am on to get down to a safe transfer velocity,” said the
Emperor.  “And we would have to leave the fleet to do so, since I am not about
to stop all of these warships in space while we have a priority target ahead of
us.”

McCullom nodded, then
grunted her acknowledgement as she realized the Emperor would not see the head
nod over a link com.  She understood the problem.  Missiles could transit over
a wormhole at just about any velocity, since they were robust enough to handle
the stresses.  Ships could also transit at a high velocity, if not as great as
unmanned missiles.  A person was another matter.  The wormhole could absorb
maybe a tenth of the speed of light differential between origin and target. 
Anything over and the person would come through traveling at too high a
velocity to survive, and would most likely be splattered against the nearest
surface.