Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (33 page)

They were now fifteen
hours from the station, over three light hours distant and moving at their
maximum safe velocity of point nine five light.  That put them sixty-one light
hours from the hyper I barrier, a little over sixty-one and a fifth standard
hours.  In ship’s time that would come to eighteen hours.  That was if they
wanted to cruise through the barrier point at their maximum speed.  Instead,
they would start decelerating at three light hours from the barrier, reaching
it at point three light, their maximum translation speed.  And adding another
eight standard hours onto their travel time.

More impossible fighters
left their warp and moved into the attack.  Again they caused no harm, but the
close in weapons and laser batteries took out three of the twenty-one craft
before they could jump back into the warp.

How many are they going
to sacrifice?
thought the High Admiral.  The humans were showing insane courage.  Their fleet
was still on his tail, and as he watched they launched another spread of
missiles at his force.  It would take over thirty hours for the missiles to
close to attack range, and they would be closing at a mere point zero two
light.  This would put them in laser engagement range for thirty-three minutes,
and they would be easy targets while crossing that light minute.

“How does it look ahead?”
he asked his Tactical Officer, looking at the plot.  This system was like no
other he had ever been in.  Most systems extended from two to four light hours
from the primary before navigable hyperspace was reached.  Sixty-four light
hours.  And nothing in it but the primary, except for the objects built by
intelligent beings.

And all of those objects
are still behind us
,
he thought as he growled deep in his throat.

“We are picking up
nothing ahead of us, my Lord,” replied the Tactical Officer.  “But, this system
is different.  I can’t make sense of some of our readings.”

The High Admiral gave a
head motion of acceptance.  Their graviton readings were, strange.  The huge
point source, infinite mass in infinitesimal space, spinning, was sending out
graviton pulses that masked other sources.  Things that were close, other
ships, missiles, were still detectable.  Objects at distances over four light
hours were problematic.

“The enemy ships will be
less than a light hour behind by the time we reach the barrier,” said the
Navigation Officer.

Which meant they might be
able to get some missiles into his force at a dangerous closing speed.  But
then he would be through the barrier, and they would still have to decelerate. 
Or they could choose to start to decelerate so they could jump after his ships
as soon as they reached the barrier.  In which case they would never get a good
shot in normal space.  Either way, the advantage was his.

“What is the nearest
system to us on the heading we will be on when we leave this desolation?”

“One of the systems orbiting
this black hole, my Lord,” replied the officer, looking at a holo hanging over
his board.  “Umber.  A K class star twenty-three light hours beyond the
barrier.  Three inhabited planets.”

“And there is sure to be
a system fleet there, my Lord,” said the Tactical Officer.  “They will not let
us near any of the inhabited planets.”

“Then we will smash
whatever infrastructure we might find in the outer system, then head on to
another target,” said the High Admiral. 
And with luck we will be able to do
that to several systems before they bring us to battle.

*     *     *

“We are on an intercept
course, your Grace,” said the Navigator, looking back at the Admiral. 
“Coasting along.  As long as they don’t change course, we will intercept in
twelve hours standard time.”

Mei Lei nodded, wiping
her hair before climbing back into her shipboard skinsuit.  Her ships had all
boosted for the required time with the crews in the tanks, allowing the vessels
to accelerate at an additional thirty gravities.  They were now up to a
velocity of point nine light, and were on a course that would bring them across
the path of the enemy just ahead, able to put missiles down their throat.

And now, if only we had
more missiles
,
thought the Scout Force Commander.  That was their one lack.  They were going
in for a refit back at Central Docks when the attack came, and most of their
missiles had been offloaded, with the others to follow the next day.  And they
had only been able to load a few more on the vessels before they went through
the gate to here.  Her flagship only had thirty-three aboard.  Her whole force
less than five hundred.  They had full proton packs, and of course the lasers
were always at full power as long as the ships had reactors.  But nothing had
the impact on space combat that missiles did, and without wormholes aboard,
what they had was all they would ever have for this fight.

“Let system command know
our position,” the Admiral told her Klassekian Com Tech, who could
instantaneously transmit the information to one of her birth siblings.  That
sibling was not in this system, but was stationed in another system on the
frontier, the area from which the scout force had been dispatched.  From there
the transmission would go through a wormhole to the
Donut
, and to the
system command.  A round trip of thousands of light years, all in a moment.

“Message from command,”
said the Com Tech.  “They have another surprise waiting for the enemy.  They’re
hoping that it will help us.”

And I wonder what that is
, thought the Admiral.

Chapter  Twenty-four

A good plan violently executed now is better than
a perfect plan executed next week. George S. Patton

“Jumping, now,” called
out the Helmsman of the flagship.

Sean braced himself for
the nausea of the translation from hyper to normal space.  He had always been
an easy translator, but he was tired, mentally and physically.  And that made
the normal stress of translation even more difficult.

He took one last glance
at the plot that showed an enemy force heading toward them in normal space at
point five light.  The Cacas were retreating from one of his groups, not yet
down to translation speed.  And his force was going to jump right into the
middle of them before they could get away.

They know we’re coming
, he thought with a
grin. 
And a fat lot of good that will do them.

The translation nausea
hit, thankfully brief, and suddenly the massive ship was shaking from missile
launches and particle beam shots. 
Augustine
, an ironic name now the
Emperor thought on it, was now equipped with four wormholes.  They had
offloaded the others onto ships that had come through wormhole gates and didn’t
have their own.  Two were presently configured as missile launchers that were
spitting out thirty weapons each in thirty second streams, all travelling at
point nine five light.  The other two were attached to particle beam
accelerators in place back at the
Donut,
each capable of sending a
hundred kilograms per second of protons or antiprotons at just under one
hundredth thousandth of light speed.  They were the most devastating beam
weapons in known space, and at the moment they were ripping holes in the hulls
of two Caca superbattleships.  Four of her sisters were with her, firing the same
kind of weapons.

The Cacas fired back,
their beam weapons doing little against the thick armor of the super heavy
battleships.  There were some holes blasted through into the outer layers of
the ships, while most of the enemy missiles were blown out of space.  A few
hit, releasing a gigaton of explosive power, but adding little in the way of
kinetic energy.  That was still enough to cause significant damage to even a
ship of
Augustine’s
mass and armor, while it shattered destroyers and
light cruisers, and sent heavy cruisers into out of control spins. 
Augustine
shook from a pair of hits spaced three seconds apart, and damage klaxons
sounded throughout the vessel.

He knew his wife and his
counselors would continue to give him hell for leading from the front.  And he
knew he needed to be on the sharp edge of the battle, with the teeth of his
fleet, rending and tearing at his enemy.  It fed the rage within him, while
relieving the stress of this war and the way it was damaging his people and his
Empire.

For this battle the
wormhole weapons had been mounted on tracks just under the armor, accessing
through a series of portals running from bow to stern.  They didn’t really need
much within the ship, since the actual weapons were thousands of light years
distant.  They moved along their tracks to bring the most enemy ships under
fire, stopping at each portal to release some seconds of particle beam, or a
stream of missiles, before taking a few seconds to speed to the next portal,
where they repeated the process.  If the
Donut
had been lost this
strategy would not have been possible, at least for the beam weapons.

The fleets engaged in
passing, a total of a little under two minutes.  As they separated the missiles
continued to fly, though those from the Cacas were now trying to accelerate to
overcome the velocity of their launching ships, while the human vessels without
wormholes put out missiles that were catching up to the enemy at point five
light, not the best closing speed, but still dangerous.

Augustine
had taken damage, not
crippling, but enough to leave a thousand of her crew dead. 
Duke Mormont
,
one of her sisters, had gone up in a flare of plasma as thirteen warheads
struck and her antimatter stores breached.  Two destroyers that had guarded her
too closely went up with her.  One other ship would be spending time in a
shipyard before she was combat ready.

Seventy-three enemy
superbattleships had been destroyed, hit by high velocity missiles or punctured
by particle beams that breached their engineering spaces.  Forty-six of their
large cruisers and over a hundred of their scouts had joined them in death.  A
mere forty-one ships in total had made it away, and Sean’s forces would be
after them.  The five
Augustine
class ships had torn the guts out of a
strong enemy force.  And that force had been the last reserve the enemy had in
this part of the battle.

“Order our own reserves
into battle,” ordered the Emperor.  He had to hope that would be enough to
break the enemy.  At the moment he had no more ships to throw into the fray, at
least here.  And still no way to reinforce New Moscow with any of his ships,
not anything that would get there in time.  Only his allies could save that
system, if they were able.

*     *     *

D-5

“We’re at the barrier,
Ma’am,” said the Chief of Staff.

“Order all ships to
jump,” she said in a hushed voice.  She had led a fleet of over eighty thousand
ships into this system.  She was retreating with less than twenty thousand. 
Much less.

I should have been more
cautious
,
she thought. 
The President warned me, and I thought I was listening.  But
dammit, I wasn’t.

The battle had started
off so well.  They had the enemy ships where they wanted them, coming out to
meet the Klavarta force being led by the Imperial commander, the Gryphon
Admiral Mashara Ignoa.  Her force had come in on another vector into the
system.  Of course the enemy had been able to detect her before she jumped into
normal space, but they were already engaged and unable to do anything to stop
her.  Her force moved into the system, brushing aside the few pickets before
her, launching a swarm of missiles at the backside of the enemy force.  It
looked like it was going to be a slaughter, until the rest of the enemy ships
came out of hiding and launched in mass at her force.

And we hadn’t a clue they
were here.  Our scouts had no indication that they had so many ships, and no
sign of those ships entering the system.
  Wormholes had said the Imperial Admiral, just
before his ship had gone up in a ball of plasma, taking one of her own portals
with it.  The twelve ships that still had wormholes had given good account of
themselves, spitting out stream after stream of high relativistic weapons.  But
her main force was short on missiles, a problem the enemy didn’t seem to have.

The ships jumped, and she
felt the slight nausea her kind experienced during the transition.  The last
thing she had seen had been the mass of enemy ships heading for the barrier, on
her tail.  The other force, less than two thousand ships, had left the system
an hour before, another large enemy fleet coming after them.

Once we’re in hyper,
we’ll have no trouble outrunning them
, she thought, looking at the plot, trying to see
something that might give her idea of how to turn this around, and failing. 
Unless
they have something else hidden from us out there in deep space.
  She
thought about that again.  She might not be able to outrun all of their ships. 
As long as they could stay within sensor range, they could follow.  And she
would lose more ships.

She couldn’t even talk
with command at this point.  The human battlecruiser that had been her liaison
had also been lost, and with it her instantaneous com.  There were still some
ships with either the wormholes or the quantum entangled aliens aboard, but
none within hyperspace com reach of her vessel.  She might send some code
through grav pulse to a ship that could transmit to base, but she couldn’t have
the conversation that she wanted.  In another way, it was good that she
couldn’t have that conversation, since most of what she had to say were
apologies for the ships and crews she had lost.

“What course, Ma’am? 
Back to forward base.”

“Hells no,” growled the
Admiral.  “We would just be leading their fleet back to another target they
could destroy.”

She pulled up the holo
plot of this bordering section of the Nation, looking for a destination that
she could use to her advantage.  Nothing jumped out at her, nothing that solved
all of her problems.  She could resort to the age old Klavarta tactic of run
and scatter.  That was sure to get some of her ships away from the pursuit. 
And what if the enemy didn’t break up their forces to chase her ships?  They
could forge into the Nation to hit targets of opportunity, while her force was
too scattered to do anything about it.

This star
, she thought, zooming
the holo in on one nondescript K class star.  Not a major system, but still
important enough, with a fleet base and system defenses.  Two weeks travel
time, long enough to gather some reserves and have them meet her force.  Enough
to win a battle against the Monsters?  Maybe, or not.  But enough to hurt their
force badly enough to halt any offensive action against the Nation?  Maybe.

“Send a code transmission
to all ships, to be repeated,” she ordered her Com Officer.  “All ships are to
head to this system at best speed, but they are cautioned to not break from the
fleet.  Any ships with instantaneous com are to report my intentions back to
command, and to request that all reserve ships they can muster meet us there. 
Preferably well before the enemy gets within sensor range of the system.”

The Com Officer nodded
and went to work to send the long message out in the digital code that was the
limit of grav pulse communication.  It took a good couple of minutes to send
out the code, which was followed by several minutes of every ship within range
repeating the message.  They moved out from there, until every ship in the
fleet knew what they were to do.

Now, all we have to do is
stay ahead of the enemy force and lead them into the trap
, she thought.  Easy, if
this commander could fall for the same ruse he had pulled on her.

*     *     *

“We have won the battle,
Supreme Lord,” reported the Great Admiral, looking into the face of the Supreme
Emperor of the Ca’cadasan Empire, Jresstratta IV.  “The enemy is fleeing in
disarray.”

“And your estimates of
their losses, Great Admiral?” asked the Emperor.

The Great Admiral had
ambivalent feelings about the wormhole technology.  True, it gave him the
ability to reinforce quickly, if the ships were available.  It gave him access
to the latest intelligence reports and analysis.  It also allowed those in the
capital to look over his shoulder, to scrutinize his every decision.  He
wondered how the humans dealt with that, or if it didn’t bother them to be
micromanaged to such an extent. 
The way they show initiative in action,
they must have found a way to deal with it.

“I believe we have gutted
their primary offensive arm, Supreme Lord.  We have destroyed at least three
quarters of that fleet.  Maybe more.  And are in pursuit of the remainder.”

“And who is leading this
pursuit?”

“I am, Supreme Lord.”

“No, Great Admiral.  You
will not.  You are one of my best tacticians, and I will not see you killed in
a useless act of bravado.  You will remain at the base and direct the entire
front.”

“But, Supreme Lord…”

“You will do as I say,
Great Admiral.  Put one of your wormholes on the flagship of your largest
force, and advise that commander from the base.  But you will not put your life
at risk by leading from the front.  Understood?”

“Yes, Supreme Lord.”  The
Great Admiral did not like the order, though he understood it.  The Great
Admiral was enough of a realist to know that he was more intelligent than most
of his species.  He was an asset to his species, and their military.  He
recognized that the Emperor knew that as well, and Jresstratta IV was also one
of the rare intellectuals in the Empire, who would not sacrifice a rare
commander just so that male could prove his courage.

“And thank you for your
good news,” continued the Emperor.  “We need such as this time.”

“The other attacks didn’t
go so well?”

“We have no idea how the
attack on their wormhole generating station went.  All communication was lost
about the time the bomb ship detonated.  Which could mean anything.  What
didn’t happen, Great Admiral, was the sudden cessation of their wormhole
weapons in the battle at their front, as we thought would happen.  Make of that
what you will.”

The Great Admiral felt a
feeling of dread in his chest. 
We didn’t take it out.  Somehow, they foiled
that attack. 
That had been a major hope in the planning of the attack, and
the timing of it.  Prisoners had revealed that most of the wormholes, including
their miraculous weapons, led back to the station.  If the station was
destroyed, so would be their wormhole missile launching systems and particle
beams.