Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (20 page)

Intellectually he knew
that she would be alright.  Emotionally, it was a different matter altogether. 
Emotionally he was as stressed as he had ever been on a battlefield.  This was
the love of his life.  He had lost one wife in the past, and didn’t want to
have to lose another.

“You’ll be just fine,
honey,” he said, more for his own peace of mind than anything else.  He lifted
the bag, weighing almost twice what his wife weighed on her own, without
problem, his augmented muscles more than up to the task.  Locking he car, he
leaned against the vehicle, getting himself back together, wondering how much
longer it would take Rebecca to get Junior to the parking area.  Just after
that thought entered his mind he heard a scream and a yell, and knew that
something was wrong.  In an instant he was running flat out to the edge of the
parking area, and the path to the camping area where they had hoped to spend a
holiday weekend having a good time.

Chapter Fourteen

However beautiful the strategy, you should
occasionally look at the results. Winston Churchill

“Doggy,” said Junior in a
happy voice.

“What are you talking
about?” replied Rebecca, turning to look back at the child who should have been
walking on his short legs behind her.  What she saw brought her to a complete
stop, hands going to her mouth to stifle a cry.

Jewel was a class III
threat planet, the same as Old Earth.  Not the most dangerous of worlds. 
Azure, the world she had grown up on, was a class I, the most dangerous
category, while Sestius, the planet Cornelius had told her about was a II,
leaning toward a I.  Class IIIs still had their share of dangerous life, and
the wolves were among the most dangerous of all.  They were not really wolves
of course, though they did have a passing resemblance to the Old Earth
canines.  They were long and lean, with projecting snouts full of a double row
of sharp teeth.  The paws actually had razor sharp retractable claws, an
addition that put them more in the class of the big cats as a threat.  And they
hunted in packs.  Normally they were kept out of the recreation areas by the
use of sonic fences.  Their presence here meant that those fences had gone
down.

One was about three
meters from Junior, sniffing, teeth exposed.  They knew what humans smelled
like.  They knew they were bad business altogether, but this one must have
decided that a small human might be a good kill.  Junior was looking at the
wolf with the open expression of a child who had found a new playmate, with no
idea of the danger he was in.  The wolf went down on its haunches, ready for a
spring that would bring its jaws to close around the throat of the small human.

Rebecca had lost her
brother, Ben, on Azure, shot down by the Cacas.  She was not about to lose her
step brother.  The monomolecular blade swished from its sheath as she ran
forward, an angry cry on her lips.  The wolf turned at her cry, trying to bring
its body around to face the new threat.  Rebecca swung her knife before the
beast could complete its turn, slicing the weapon in at the left haunch and
dragging the blade through to the left shoulder, where it exploded outward in a
spray of blood.

The wolf hissed in pain,
more like a cat than a canine, and tried to turn back on its attacker, who had
stopped next to the toddler.  Before it could complete the turn it fell over
onto its left side, the damaged muscles no longer able to hold it up.  It lay
there, mewing in pain, then letting out a howl that was answered immediately
from close by.

Rebecca grabbed Junior by
the shoulder and pushed him behind her, just before five more of the wolves,
the rest of the pack, came bursting out of the brush.  They stared at their
wounded comrade for a moment, then up at the human with the knife guarding the
smaller child.  She stared at the wolves, knowing there was no chance she would
be able to handle all of them.  There was a tree behind her that she might be
able to climb, though the claws on the paws of the beasts indicated that they
might be able to climb as well.  And there was no way she was going to abandon
her brother.

Two of the hissing beasts
hunched down, getting ready to spring into an attack, and Rebecca was sure that
this was the end of her life.  She might be able to slash one with her knife,
but not both of them, and the rest of the pack was maneuvering into position to
rush in as a second wave.

A loud roar sounded from
the path behind the pack, and all of the creatures turned to face the new
threat.  Cornelius came running at them, moving faster than anything the beasts
had ever seen.  Rebecca stifled a cheer, not wanting to distract her father,
who was moving as fast as she had ever seen him.  She had forgotten how fast
the augmented could move, and he was faster than most.

One of the beasts jumped
at the Ranger.  Cornelius, his own knife gripped in his right hand, swung with
his left and connected with the chest of the wolf, flinging the creature tens
meters through the air to smack into the trunk of a tree, rebounding to lie
motionless on the ground.  The next beast met the knife blade, impaling itself
through the heart before the Ranger flung it away as well.  A third beast died
a moment later, and that was enough for the pack.  It recognized the superior
killer, and was not willing to risk its continued existence on continuing the
attack.

“Are you all right?”
asked Cornelius as he stood over the children, sheathing his blade.

“We are now,” replied
Rebecca, sheathing her own blade and picking up the now crying Junior, who had
finally figured out that it hadn’t been play time.

Cornelius looked down at
the animal she had attacked, now bled out on the ground.

“Thank you,” he said in a
soft voice as he placed a hand on her head.

“I wasn’t about to let
them have Junior,” said Rebecca with a slight smile.  “And how is Devera?” she
asked, the smile leaving her face.

“I got her into cryo,” he
said, reaching for Junior.  “She’ll be OK, I think.   Let me carry him, and
we’ll get back to the car.”

“And then back to the
city?” she asked, feeling concerned about not being there, and afraid of going
back.

“There’s nothing we can
do there,” said Cornelius, shaking his head.  “I think we’ll head low and slow
toward the west coast, to one of the smaller towns there.  It’ll have a
hospital, and someplace we can shelter.”

“And the Cacas?”

“Again, nothing we can do
about them, now.  But in the future, I’ll try to make their lives as difficult
as possible.”

Rebecca nodded as she
walked behind her father.  She was determined that she would make life as
difficult for them as she could as well when the time came.

*     *     *

“We’ve got as many people
as we could spare into the forward missile control rooms,” said the Tactical
Officer.

“Very well,” said Mei,
nodding.  “Launch as soon as you’re able.”

Her task group was moving
toward the freighter that was thought to be the carrier of the Caca wormhole
gate.  Unfortunately, that freighter was not the target that lay ahead. 
Instead, it was the eight supercruisers that were arrayed in a defensive shield
in front of that supposedly weak ship.  She still outmassed them, with the six
battle cruisers, fourteen light cruisers and sixteen destroys she had been able
to rally to her from her command.  At the moment her ships were trading beams
with each other, while the Cacas were adding missiles to the mix.

Yes, we outmass them
, thought the Admiral
with a frown on her face.  But they were severely undercrewed.  Due to lessons
learned with robots, disastrous lessons, all warships were built with multiple
safeguards in place that could only be circumvented by organic sentient control. 
Warheads could be placed on the bodies of missiles, but only when people with
the proper clearances in the missile mating control rooms authorized the
procedure.  Missiles could be loaded into tubes, when authorized by organic
sentients in the missile loading rooms.  The missiles could be fired from the
bridge, after the other steps had been taken.  There was a reason warships
carried large crews, and not just for damage control.

“Launching first volley,”
called out the Tactical Officer as the ship shook slightly from accelerating
the missiles from their tubes.  As soon as they left the tubes they were
accelerating at fifteen thousand gravities, well above their sustained rate. 
But at this engagement range there was no need for any kind of sustained
acceleration.  Not with a range of fifteen thousand kilometers and closing.

Enemy missiles came in,
blotted from space in bright flashes of gigaton explosions.  The Imperial
missiles really did no better.  The weapons were travelling at too slow a
velocity to be effective, and were really doing little else than absorbing
enemy beam fire.  If that was all they would do, Mei would take it.  At least
those beam weapons weren’t hitting her ships.

One of the enemy ships
shook as a concentration of lasers struck her hull, followed by a fast moving
antimatter particle beam.  The task group, as per orders, now concentrated on
that wounded ship, quickly reducing her to slag.  At the same time the enemy
concentrated on a pair of light cruisers and a destroyer, turning them into
spinning hulks.  At this rate the Imperials would definitely win this
engagement, but there was no telling what might come next out of the enemy
wormhole.

“Range to enemy, fourteen
thousand kilometers,” called out the Tactical Officer.  “Velocity, six hundred
and twenty kilometers a second.”

All beam weapons were
hitting at what amounted to full strength, with minimal spread.  They would
become incrementally more powerful as the distance closed, but not enough to
really matter.  What would matter was that in less than twenty-four seconds
they would be close enough to throw things from the airlocks at the enemy.

A destroyer took a
missile hit, as unlikely as that seemed.  Unlikely didn’t mean impossible, and
what wasn’t impossible was sure to happen eventually.  A moment after the
destroyer went into a tumbling spin an Imperial missile hit one of the
supercruisers.  The more massive ship weathered the hit, which took out a half
dozen of her laser domes.

“The enemy wormhole is
continuing to spit out fighters,” said an officer from CIC who was running the
understrength analysis section.

And if they continue to
do that, we will be able to take out this screen and go for the wormhole. 
She would have a shot at
the freighter in less than twenty seconds.  Or she could try something else. 

“Once we break through
the Caca warships, I want us to swing in to point all our forward tubes into
the wormhole.  And then we’ll give them something to remember us by.”

*     *     *

“Sommerkorn
is reporting heavy damage
to her forward systems,” reported the Com Tech.

Von Rittersdorf looked
over at the holo that centered on another of the destroyers in his command. 
The ship was hanging bow down, all of her forward grabbers gone, multiple holes
through the hull in that area.  The ship had been hit by over dozen missiles,
twenty to fifty megaton weapons, that by themselves were not enough to take out
the destroyer.  Smartly targeted on a single area, they had done a good job on
her.

MacArthur
herself shook from a hit,
this one going in amidships and blowing through the hull.  Another holo came
into being, showing the red of damage on the destroyer.  The Captain hissed a
sigh of combined relief and concern.
 The damage was bad, and casualties
were reported by their lack of life signs, or the screaming of their implants
to show that they had been injured and were in need of help.  Due to being
undermanned, there were fewer casualties than there would have been.  But also,
because of being understrength, every casualty was felt even more.

“Order the commander of
Sommerkorn
to pull back into space,” ordered Maurice.  “I don’t want them falling into the
planet.”

“We have another wave of
enemy fighters coming in, sir.  Most of them are heading for
Sommerkorn.”

Of course they are,
thought von
Rittersdorf.  That was the wounded beast, and in killing her, they could drop
the ship into the city, causing great damage.

“Try to cover her as best
you can,” he told the Tactical Officer, well aware that his ship was getting
dangerously low on munitions for her close in defense batteries.  All of his
ships were, though they had killed well over a thousand enemy fighters in the
expenditure.

He watched the main
viewer as the hundreds of fighters swept in.  They started launching from over
a hundred kilometers out, their missiles taking off like streaks, many if not
most heading for the almost crippled destroyer.

MacArthur
and her sisters swept the
air with lasers, the beams moving back and forth, blasting missiles out of the
sky.  Many of the missiles had antimatter warheads in the ten to twenty megaton
range, detonating in blasts that threw hundreds of other missiles off course,
knocking some from the sky to fall into the city below, detonating among the
metropolis at random.  Those hitting in low rise areas spread out for a dozen
kilometers in each direction, destroying those few structures of low strength,
rolling over those of sturdier construction.  The warheads hitting within high
rise areas blew most of their power into the air, funneled by the tough
materials of the skyscrapers that were able to weather the overpressure.  It
was bad news for anyone out in the open, though those within the sturdier
structures were safe enough.

That was the main reason
the enemy had started off the attack with kinetic weapons, coming in at such
high velocity that they were able to penetrate even the toughest of
structures.  Some were still falling, but most had been used up, forcing the
fighters to use the weapons they carried for use against their own kind and
small craft.

“We’re out of port side
ammo,” called out the Tactical Officer.