Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (23 page)

“Mgonda’s flank force is
in contact with the enemy in hyperspace,” called out another officer.

That was going to be a
very different battle.  The human force, all hyper VII ships, were heavily
outnumbered by the Caca force.  They were closing at near light speed, already
firing missiles at each other.  There was no way they could sneak missiles in,
since every weapon was producing the graviton emissions of an active
hyperdrive.  When they were close the Imperial ships with wormholes would start
to launch.  The Fleet vessels were starting to change their vector somewhat,
minimizing the time they would be within beam weapons range of the superior
force.

More alerts sounded. 
This was going to be a massive fight, across scores of systems.  All were in
the early stages.  In the past none would have any idea of the other battles
going on.  Now they were all linked and every group commander was aware of how
the larger action was playing out.

And unlike the vids or
movies, where every action occurred within minutes of a sighting, these battles
were actually boring to watch, especially through the preliminary stages.  With
the exception of the infrequent ambush, there were always hours between
detection and generating hits with missiles.  As someone in the past had said,
hours of boredom punctuated by moments of terror.

“Missile impact in five
minutes,” called out a voice over the intercom.

MCullom looked up at the
local plot.  This was no distant fight.  This was the attack aimed at the
Donut
. 
Five minutes meant they were about four and three quarters light minutes away,
and that the station would be firing every weapon it could bring to bear. 
These were the missiles that had broken through the swarm of destroyers and
fighters that had moved out to form a screen.

Unfortunately, the
station by its very size had some disadvantages compared to a ship, despite its
mass and the strength of its supporting members.  While it carried a large
number of weapons, a destroyer class laser projector every ten kilometers of
circumference, with cruiser and battleship class interspersed along the outer
hull, it still didn’t have the localized density of a warship.  It was hoped
the total number would be enough to stave off any attack.  Now they would find
out if that optimistic plan would work.

“We have three hundred
and sixty-eight missiles still on approach,” said the voice over the intercom,
coming from the command and control center of the station.  “They appear to
have much better penetration aides that the Cacas have displayed in the past.”

And that’s what we were
afraid of
,
thought the CNO with a grimace.  There had been intelligence suggesting that
the Cacas had bagged a number of human scientists when they overran New Moscow
and cut large swaths through the Empire and the Republic.  Of course the
scientists, who could be coerced into helping the Cacas, could give them much
greater insight into human technology.  And the Empire wouldn’t have a clue as
to how that insight helped them until the improvements were used in combat,
like now.  The same was true of the tech humans had captured from the Cacas,
though they were hindered by the fact that they didn’t have the Ca’cadasan
scientists to go along with it.

The station was putting
counter missiles into space, thousands, so many that the overloaded control
center was having problems aiming them.  And they were having problems locking
onto the now obviously oversized missiles.  Another deficiency that would have
to be addressed in the future, if there was one.

They built them bigger so
they could cram more countermeasures within
, thought McCullom as she watched missile
spawned subweapons explode in front of counter weapons and blot them from space. 
Surely they won’t be mounting those monsters in their warships.
  A
shiver of fear ran through her.  There was no telling what improvements they
might have made to their ships as well.  All of those meeting engagements going
on at the frontier might show that her fear was unfounded, or not.

Still, incoming missiles
were dropping off the plot.  Lasers started to blast away, their aiming systems
trying frantically to lock onto missiles coming in on ballistic paths, not
engaging their grabbers until the last second.  There were still hits, with
multiple lasers targeting each missile.

“Estimating that missiles
will hit this part of the station,” said one of the Techs in the Warroom,
pointing to the schematic of the huge structure.  It was rotating at a furious
rate in order to counterbalance the pull of the black hole.  Over twenty-five
million kilometers in circumference, the missiles would strike only a
relatively small area.  That was actually more worrisome, since localized
damage could lead to its destruction.

Because of the sheer size
of the structure, the far points were actually over forty-one seconds one-way
transmission time from each other.  Wormhole gates spaced every one hundred and
fifty thousand kilometers around the station not only allowed people to move
from place to place much faster than could be managed by the high speed tram
system, they insured that no spot on the
Donut
was more than a quarter
second one way communications range from the control center.  That allowed for
the coordination of systems such as the array of millions of grabber units that
kept the station in equilibrium around the black hole.

“Missile strike in thirty
seconds,” called out the voice over the intercom.  Over a hundred weapons were
still coming on, all of them now engaging their grabber units to ensure a hit. 
And among them were a half dozen even larger weapons that appeared as ghosts on
the sensor systems.

Fifteen weapons struck,
including five of the larger weapons.  Most exploded with a multigigaton blast
of kinetic energy, the gigaton of force that was the standard capital ship
warhead adding its destruction to the total.  Multiple kilometers of hull
vaporized at each hit, the fury of energy sweeping through the area and ripping
apart crew and equipment.  Blast doors fell into place, sometimes diverting the
fury, sometimes not.  Most of the hits were in lightly manned areas, parts of
the structure housing electromagnetic projectors or crystal matrix battery
packs.  Hundreds of these units were damaged or destroyed, negligible compared
to the total number.  Areas with significant organic habitation suffered
serious casualties.  But the very size of the structure limited what could be
done by standard missiles.  Several kilometer-wide structural braces absorbed the
blast with minor damage, while the even thicker supporting cables were never
touched.

Where the larger missiles
hit there was much more in the way of destruction.  These were Quarkium
devices, many times more powerful than antimatter warheads.  Each generated
hundreds of gigatons of fury, not at all a redundant addition.  Four detonated
just before impact, sending fury like a shotgun blast into the station and
through to the other side, fifty kilometers distant.  One hit the edge of an
inhabited sector, killing hundreds of thousands, while the others blasted
through electromag generators, each twenty times more massive than a Ca’cadasan
superbattleship.  One warhead was late on the detonation, and the missile
disintegrated on impact.  Unlike an antimatter warhead, a simple breach would
not set off a Quarkium device, so it only caused a little more damage than even
the standard antiship missiles, its larger mass imparting a bit more kinetic
energy to the mix.

The hits were all over
two million kilometers to spinward, information on the damage, visual and
through instruments, coming through almost instantly, despite a wormhole portal
being wiped from existence.  The vibrations of the blasts followed at the speed
of sound, about eleven thousand kilometers a second, taking about three minutes
to propagate through the alloys of the structural beams.

“Second wave will contact
in seven minutes, forty-eight seconds,” called out the voice over the intercom.

“Make sure you track
those larger missiles,” said McCullom in return, wondering just how they were
going to do that.  Enough of the larger warheads could cripple the station by
taking out a good percentage of the energy generating and storage units.  She
wasn’t sure how they were going to track these things.  There was only the hope
that someone would figure it out in time.  And the prayer that none of them
would hit one of the major support cables, or the worst case scenario, three or
more of the vital structural supports.

“The enemy ships are on a
course that will intersect the station in fifty-eight minutes, ma’am,” said the
officer over the intercom.

And why in the hell would
they do that?
thought
McCullom.  It made no sense to send in ships when they could keep sending in
missiles.  Ships were big targets, and any that got within a light minute of
the station were sure to take light amp hits.

“Keep a watch out for
their wormhole,” she ordered both her own people and those in the control
center.  That was another hopeless task.  If they dropped it behind they were sure
to stealth it, minimal energy, all heat pumped back through to the other side. 
Unless something came through the wormhole that was pushing out gravitons, or
was large enough that it could be seen visually, the odds were that they
wouldn’t find it.  And if they kept launching missiles through that were not
boosting and were already up to a high relativistic velocity, it would be just
about impossible.

*     *     *

“That took long enough,”
said the Fleet Captain who was the duty officer on the deck of the station
control center.

The low vibrations of the
explosions, felt from almost a million kilometers distant, came through the
deck. 
A minute and a half
, thought Lucille Yu as she monitored the
stability of the station.  Those blasts had been like enormous fusion engines,
pushing that section of the station closer to the black hole.  Pushed far
enough and even the grabber units wouldn’t be able to compensate, and a good
third of the station would disintegrate in the gravity field of the hole, while
the rest flew out into space.  They hadn’t been pushed that far, and the
automated systems were handling everything fine.  Still, everyone had felt
better having the only one aboard who had actually handled the system on manual
during such a crisis.

“How long till the next
strike?” asked Jimmy, standing beside her chair.

“Six minutes,” said
Lucille, looking at the plot that showed the station and its orientation to the
hole, as well as the vectors of the incoming missiles.  “And just our luck. 
This time we get to take the brunt of the attack on our aspect.”

Lucille looked over at
the Captain for a moment after she made sure that the station was returning to
trim.  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t let them land too many more punches
on my station, Captain.  We need this thing to be in good enough shape to keep
putting out wormholes.”

“We’re doing our best
ma’am,” said the Captain, as many of the scores of people sitting at stations
within the chamber turned to look at the Director with disbelieving expressions
on their faces.  “There are no guarantees when the missiles are flying.”

“And why are their ships
heading for us?” she asked, pointing to the main tactical plot.  “They can’t
possibly think they can destroy the station with those ships in a close in
fight.”  Lucille was not a military expert, but she had learned enough about
warships and their weapons systems during her time running the Empire’s only
wormhole generating facility.  The battleships would be armed with missiles,
much like the ones that were already heading their way.  Those weapons were
best if fired from a distance.  Sure, the ships would be coming in at almost
point six light, but the missiles would be travelling faster still if launched
from where they already were.  They had powerful laser batteries, and could
carve holes through the lightly armored hull of the station, while the station
burned them with dozens of times the laser power.  They could also more than
match all of the battleships with particle beams, including both antimatter and
negative matter.

“The Admiral has already
apprised us of their approach, ma’am.”

“They must think they
have some way of destroying the station, Captain.  You mustn’t let them get
into close proximity of my station.”

“We’re working on a
response.”

“I think I have one,”
Lucille said under her breath as she tapped into the satellite control
network.  Everything associated with wormhole production and ship fitting was
safely out of the way.  But some of those assets had been designed to be last
ditch weapons.  And now it was time to move a couple of them into place.

Chapter Sixteen

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The
greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands
in slaughter. Winston Churchill

Sirens sounded across the
city, through the air and through the implants of the inhabitants.  The
warbling sound had a different quality to it, one which most of those hearing
it could recognize, having been played during the infrequent drills that had
been conducted by civil defense.  The signal through the implants of the
citizens left no doubts.  All was clear.  The attack was over.

“Well, at least we didn’t
have far to climb,” said Margo, squinting her eyes against the heavy stinging
smoke in the air, then looking over at her companion.

Tomas Gijardo nodded,
feeling the tears running down his cheeks.  Both wore respirator masks over
their mouths and nostrils, but their eyes were uncovered.  The smoke stung, but
Tomas was not sure if that was why his tears were flowing.  He was crying
inside as well, seeing the damage to the city he had been born and raised in.

“We were lucky,” he said,
turning toward Margo, putting a hand under her chin and tilting her face up.  He
leaned down and kissed her, the rush of surviving a disaster of such magnitude
a sexual charge.  “And no one I would rather go through Armageddon with.”

Other people were
starting to come to the surface from the shallow storage room the two had found
shelter in.  One large gate opened in the side of a building, the first lifts
coming up from the deep shelter below.  Dazed people walked through the gate,
while others exited further down the street.  Overhead the emergency vehicles
began to appear, ambulances, search and rescue vehicles.  There was no telling
how many people were trapped in collapsed buildings.  Looking down the street
at some of those structures, Tomas wouldn’t have given much for the survival of
whomever had been inside them when they came down.

“I wonder how bad it is?”
asked Margo, holding onto Tomas as they stepped over some low rubble and onto
the street.

“It looks bad enough
here,” said Tomas, though he could imagine that it was much worse in some other
places.  With a thought he tapped into the carrier wave of the all clear
announcement and started to download the local news.  “Here,” he said, sending
the signal over to her implant.  He moved her gently to the side, away from the
traffic that was starting to flood the street, as she was caught up in the same
scenes of destruction that he was watching through the direct feed to his
occipital lobe.

“Oh my God,” exclaimed
Margo as a view of the city from up high came over the cast.  There were
hundreds of smoking pits in the downtown section, many with the rubble of
crumbled mega and skyscrapers piled up to one side.  Kinetics had come down
there, the best weapons for taking out modern high strength buildings.  The
Cathedral was gone, only one partial tower remaining.  Nearby Parliament had
done better, somewhat.  About half the building remained.  The Imperial Zoo had
taken a near miss, meaning that most of the animals had probably survived.  The
Botanical Gardens had not been as fortunate, taking what looked like a direct
strike by a nuke.

The view panned to the
east, toward the hundred thousand square kilometers of low rise development. 
Some the damage there had been done by kinetics as well, but there were patches
of swept clean areas that were the sign of explosive warheads detonating above
them.  A few buildings, tougher than the rest, had survived the blasts.

Now the view panned
west.  Constance the Great spaceport had been cratered in a score of places,
while warheads had taken out one whole side of the field’s infrastructure.  The
main terminal in the area had survived with some damage.  The thousands of
manors overlooking the city on the western hills had come through mostly
intact, maybe ten percent of them destroyed, more damaged.  And Tomas felt his
breath sucking in without thought as the image of the Imperial Palace came into
the view.  The true center of power in the Empire, it had been a symbol
recognizable by all citizens for generations.  One whole wing was gone, a deep
crater taking its place.  That was the wing used by the Emperor, his family,
and those who took care of him.  The other wing was damaged by a near miss,
part of the crater taking a bite out of the north section.  The center section,
the part where most of the formal functions involving the Emperor took place,
had survived mostly intact, though the large shallow dome over the middle was
holed in several places.

“It could have been
worse,” said Margo, shaking her head.

We’re only seeing what
went on here
,
thought Tomas, holding her close. 
It’s probably worse than we imagine.

*     *     *

“Bring us to yellow
alert,” ordered Admiral Hoshi Nakama, trying to pull his eyes away from the
tactical plot and failing.  There were no more red icons on that plot.  As far
as they knew, all of the enemy fighters and warships had been taken care of. 
If any had survived, they must have put down on one of the inhabited worlds. 
What they weren’t doing was still smashing imperial vessels and shipbuilding
infrastructure.

“Are you sure, sir?”
asked Captain Crenshaw, standing in her battle armor near the tactical station.

“I think yellow is
sufficient,” stated the Admiral, though he could understand where the Captain
was coming from.  They had been hit, hard.  The station itself had been heavily
damaged, losing over a third of its facilities, and sustaining several hundred
thousand highly skilled casualties.  Fifty-three ships had been damaged to the
point where it would be better to just recycle their materials and start over. 
Many more were damaged to the point where they would be facing months of
reconstruction to get back to where they had been at the start of this day. 
And scores of bays were now sealed, hatches distorted by impact or welded into
place.  More time and effort would have to be spent to open up those bays, then
reseal them so they were become functional workspaces once again.

Hundreds of other vessels
had been destroyed either in free floating docks, or where they had sat in
space, waiting for the final touches before their shakedown cruises.  Altogether
the fleet had lost hundreds of capital ships, the primary targets of the
attackers, and at least as many cruisers and escorts.  Tens of thousands of
crew and shipbuilding engineers had been killed.  And again more than a hundred
free floating docks had been destroyed, more resources lost.

“We can’t keep everyone
at the highest alert status,” continued the Admiral.  “We need to continue all
rescue efforts while maintaining the watch.  Any word on what’s happening on
Jewel?”

“From what we’re hearing,”
said one of the Com Officers, turning to look back at the Admiral, “they got
hit hard.  At least a hundred million casualties, including the heir.”

Nakama opened his mouth
to speak, and found that he had nothing to say.  He wasn’t sure what was worse,
the idea that over a hundred million people had died, or that the fact that one
baby was killed seemed more painful.  But that baby was destined to become the
future Emperor.

“And the
Donut
is
still under attack,” continued the Com Officer.  “It has sustained an
undetermined amount of damage.”

And the Fleet is involved
in a battle with the Caca fleet at the edge of our space
, thought the Admiral. 
The
Emperor must be going crazy.

“Admiral.  Admiral Mei is
on the com.”

“Put her through.”

The face of the tiny woman
who had commanded the scout group through the battle appeared on the holo, an
anxious expression on her face.  “Admiral Nakama.  We have started
interrogating the Captain of the freighter we captured.  We need to warn the
Donut
that something really bad is coming their way.”

*     *     *

“You’re cleared for
landing, Chief,” said the voice of the traffic controller of the field.

“Thanks,” said Visserman,
the only words she felt like saying at the moment.  She was exhausted,
physically and emotionally.  She had wanted to see action, and had become an
ace in a day, accounting for nine enemy fighters.  She had never wanted that
action to occur in the skies of the capital planet.  The nine fighters she had
shot down had a significant effect on the battle.  But it had not prevented the
deaths of over a hundred million people, as well the destruction of much of the
city.

I should have been able
to do more
,
thought Debra as she brought the fighter in for a soft touchdown, just away
from the hardened hangar outside which stood a Fleet rating, waving her in with
paddles.  Her own base had been heavily damaged; she wasn’t even sure if her
own mechanic had survived, and the nearest operating field was on Peal Island,
which had escaped with light damage, only a couple of kinetic hits that had
fallen on unoccupied class buildings and dorms.

The fighter touched down
on the tarmac, while a small tractor came from the hangar to hook up and pull
her under cover.  Visserman sat in the cockpit, her mind continuing to replay the
fight over the skies, the last scene in her mind the Imperial aircar going down
after taking the blast of a particle beam.  She had taken that enemy out, too
late.  And had later heard that one of the Imperial family had been aboard the
aircar that she had been too late to save.  She didn’t know which member of the
family it was.  That really didn’t matter, since any member killed on her
watch, while she was supposed to be protecting them, was more than she could
tolerate.

“We’ll make sure
everything’s working in your ship and rearm her, ma’am,” said the rating, with
the rank tabs of a Petty Officer First on his uniform.  Probably used to
servicing the training craft that cadets would take up as part of their
coursework at the Academy.  “Why don’t you go over to the pilot’s ready room
and get some food?  They’ll have a cot for you as well, if you want some rest.”

“Any word on the enemy?”
she asked, wondering if there was something on the net that hadn’t been
communicated to her.

“Nothing in local space. 
They captured the ship that had the wormhole on board.  And things are still up
in the air at the
Donut.
”

“Wait,” exclaimed Debra,
turning in her tracks.  “Wormhole?  The damned Cacas have wormholes?”

“It seems so, ma’am.  At
least a couple of them.  One here, one in
Donut
space.”

The Cacas have wormholes,
she thought in
disbelief. 
And they’re threatening the source of ours.

“Nothing we can do about
it here, ma’am,” said the Petty Officer, walking around the outside of her ship
and giving it a once over.  “All we can do is get everything ready in case they
come back.”

What could she do?  She
was an atmospheric fighter pilot, and the action was now in another system, and
in a place where the only atmosphere was within the containers intelligent
beings put into that space.  Her ship could move through vacuum, but no one was
ever going to mistake it for a spaceship.

“Thanks, PO.  I’ll go and
get some of that grub.”

The walk across the
tarmac wasn’t long enough for her to process all of her thoughts.  She didn’t
feel much like eating, but knew that she needed to put some fuel in her body. 
The cot didn’t look very comfortable, and she wasn’t sure she could quiet her
mind enough to actually sleep.  That thought was still on the edge of her
awareness when darkness closed in on her.

*     *     *

“The
Donut
is
reported heavy damage and casualties, sir,” said the Com Tech from her station.

Sean looked away from the
plot where he had been watching the battle unfolding across thousands of cubic
light years of space.  As far as he knew, he was the first leader ever to be
able to follow the events of a complete campaign in real time.  Every one of
his forces had at least a dozen ships equipped with wormholes, tapped into the
net.  His flagship, an Augustine class super heavy battleship, had eight of the
portals installed, giving her unprecedented com capabilities, as well as other
things.

“What kind of damage? 
And try to get some idea of the casualties.”

He had already heard a
report from the Capital System, and it had been enough to raise his rage and
anxiety to their maximum limits.  He still wasn’t sure how he was keeping
everything under control.  Losing a son and heir would have been enough to push
most people into losing it.  Losing over a hundred million citizens of his
capital city would have been enough as well.  Both?

One of the holos floating
in the air around the Monarch changed, showing the view of a Ca’cadasan
superbattleship coming apart under the particle beam barrage of another
Augustine class ship, the protons, accelerated through a massive accelerator on
the
Donut
, moving much faster than any ship generated beam could.  The
protons blasted through the armored hull like it was made of plastic, ripping
into the interior and setting off multiple breaches of internal antimatter. 
The twenty-five million ton ship was gone in a flash.  The screen switched
views, this time showing an Imperial heavy cruiser in the process of eating a
high relativistic missile, the one point six million ton ship and over a
thousand crew gone in an instant.