Exodus: Empires at War: Book 11: Day of Infamy (Exodus: Empires at War.) (35 page)

“Estimated time until
they see us?” she asked.

“They will of course see
us once we launch,” said the Sensor Officer.  “But I’m thinking a minute or two
before that time.”

“And there is nothing
they can do about our being here at that time,” said the Tactical Officer with
a smile.

They want to strike out,
to kill the creatures who attacked the capital and this system,
she thought.   All well
and good, but the enemy could still hurt them.  She would probably lose ships
in this encounter.  She would surely lose people.  They all knew the score;
this was what they had signed on for.  But she still felt the crushing weight
of responsibility on her shoulders.

The tactical plot told
the story.  They were approaching the enemy at a thirty degree angle from the
front, their velocity point six light.  Everything was powered down as much as
possible.  No electromag fields; lasers and particle beams powered down. 
Particles had been sleeting through the ships for the last twenty hours, but
all of the crews were sheltering is the most protected parts of the vessels. 
They would be in the one light minute beam range of the enemy for a total of
three and a third minutes, coming and going.  Three and a third minutes of
trading close in beam fire, and the heavily armored Cacas would have the
advantages.

“Power up all weapons and
protective systems the moment we fire,” she ordered.  The lasers could feed off
the fully charged crystal matrix batteries, while the particle beams would take
about a half minute to spin up to full speed.  Electromagnetic fields would
take only a couple of seconds, while the cold plasma injected into the field
would take some more seconds to spread through that field.  They would only
need that protection on one side, so they could change out the plasma every
couple of seconds if necessary and still have enough for the engagement,
barely.

All of the ships had
started out with some missiles, those that hadn’t yet been offloaded and the
few they had been able to take aboard.  They had shifted them around during the
coast, using remote chemical thrusters to move the missiles outside the
protection of the ships and through the hard radiation of space.  Since the
ships weren’t accelerating, it was the same as moving them between vessels that
were standing still, except for the velocity generated radiation.  Now each of
the battle cruisers carried at least thirty-five capital ship missiles, three
of them thirty-six.  The light cruisers in the forward force had twenty-seven
or eight missiles, while the destroyers had an average of twelve.  The ships in
the rearward force were without missiles.  That wasn’t their purpose.

“Missile launch in three
minutes,” said the Tactical Officer.

That was according to
SOP, but it still had driven the Admiral crazy throughout her career.  She
could read the timer herself, as could everyone else on the bridge.  But regs
called for the Tactical Officer to keep everyone informed.  She checked the digital
timer herself, the one at the top of the tactical plot.  It read two minutes
and forty-eight seconds, and one ticked off was she watched.  When it hit zero
the battle would officially be joined.

*     *     *

“I have objects coming in
from thirty degrees from the port bow, five degrees above the ecliptic,” called
out the Sensor Officer.  “At least twenty of them.”

“Natural objects?”

“I think not, my Lord. 
They’re closing at high relativistic speed.”

“Then why haven’t we
picked them up before now?” asked the High Admiral, his anger rising at the
fact that the officer hadn’t spotted them before they had gotten so close.

“They must be powered
down, my Lord,” said the anxious officer.  “Grabbers, weapons, even their
electromag fields.”

Which means they risk considerable
radiation,
thought the High Admiral, a shiver of fear running down his spine.  They wanted
him and his ships that badly.

“When will they be within
beam weapons range?”

“In about three minutes,
my Lord.”

The High Admiral stared
at the approaching ships, wondering why they hadn’t fired yet.  Possibly they
didn’t have missiles, but that would not be the way to bet.  So their commander
had something else in mind.  Time ticked down, until the enemy was right on the
edge of effective energy weapons range.

“They’re firing missiles,
my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer.

“The ship grabbers have
come online, my Lord,” reported the Sensor Officer.  “We have eight of their
scout capital ships, seven of their large escorts and eight of their small
escorts.”

“How many missiles?”
shouted the High Admiral, his anger again getting the best of him.

“Two hundred an
eighty-three of their capital missiles, my Lord.  Three hundred and one lighter
missiles.”

Almost six hundred
missiles, coming in at point six light, accelerating at eight thousand
gravities.  They wouldn’t add much to their velocity total on the way in, but
they would be dodging and evading the whole time, keeping his lasers busy.  And
then he knew the enemy commander’s plan, and he had to admit that it was
brilliant.  He might be able to still win the battle due to his larger ships,
and the fact that the enemy missiles wouldn’t be carrying their maximum kinetic
energy.  But either way, he was going to be hurt, badly.

*     *     *

“Missiles away, ma’am,”
called out the Tactical Officer as the ship shook slightly from the launch of
her forward tubes.

“Powering up grabbers,”
reported the Helm, starting the ship in its evolution to bring the port tubes
to bear, followed by the stern and starboard.  The ship would remain in an
orientation to bring all of her laser rings to bear, falling across the front
of the enemy while the helm tried his best to present an unpredictable target. 
All well and good, for about half of their run.  The middle part would see them
taking fire no matter what.

“They’re engaging
missiles, ma’am,” said the Tactical Officer while he was setting up his fire
plan, something he would be adjusting throughout the entire run.

Mei let out a grunt as
she watched missiles disappear from the plot, nailed by lasers.  The closer the
missiles came, the better the Caca targeting.  Still, it kept them from
concentrating on the human warships that now slid into beam weapons range.

“Opening fire, now,”
called out the Tactical Officer.  The four laser rings each put out a quartet
of beams, bracketing one of the Caca ships and making sure that at least one or
more would score a hit.  The Cacas were forced to put all of their fire on the
missiles in the hope of stopping them.

It was a forlorn hope. 
Eight of the capital ship missiles made it through, four of them striking one
Caca ship, two another, while the two singletons hit a third and fourth
superbattleship.

The superbattleship hit
by four missiles was hammered, huge breaches opened in the hull as the ship
went spinning off.  Most of the crew were dead from the overload of the
inertial compensators as four one gigaton warheads propelled the ship off in
the opposite direct.  A moment later one of the antimatter containers aboard
breached, and the chain reaction turned the vessel into an expanding ball of
plasma.  The ship hit by two survived, though most of its weapons systems went
offline.  The ships hit by single missiles mostly shrugged off the hits, though
they did lose grabber units and laser domes.

Forty-one of the smaller
missiles, not prioritized in the same manner as the capital ship weapons, made
it through.  The ship that had been hit twice took nine hits from the smaller
weapons.  It came out the exploding flares of the nine two hundred megaton
warheads with a slight spin and heavy damage to the hull.  One previously
untouched ship attracted twenty-three of the smaller missiles, and suffered the
same fate as its sister that had taken the four capital missile hits.  And then
there were four, two still in good shape, one with moderate damage, and one
barely limping along.

The lasers from the human
force hit, at maximum range and on the spread fire plan doing little damage. 
Still, the cumulative effect on pumping heat into the enemy ships while taking
out surface installations added up.  The human ships were able to get fifteen
seconds of unanswered fire in thanks to the missiles, but then the Cacas struck
back with a vengeance.

Ships started taking hits
from Caca lasers.  They were still on evasive, and the Cacas were forced to
fire spreads to insure hits.  A couple of battle cruisers were hit, one of the
light cruisers, three destroyers.  The smaller vessels sustained hull
penetrations, small, but still damaging.  The battle cruisers had enough armor
to shrug off most of the laser hits for the moment.

As the forces closed both
sides started narrowing their spreads as the travel time of the beams
decreased.  Both sides started to fire with the devastating particle beams. 
And both sustained mounting damage.

First kill in the knife
fight went to the Cacas, as a destroyer flared into plasma as a particle beam
dug deep into its guts and antimatter breached.  A light cruiser died next, not
totally destroyed, but rendered mostly lifeless and without power.  Then
another destroyer, tumbling off into the night with its systems wrecked.  Two
Cacas concentrated on a battle cruiser, and soon a fourth wreck was added to
the total.

“How are we doing?” the
Admiral asked her Tactical Officer as she watched a fifth ship go tumbling
away.

“We’ve taken out half the
gabbers on one of the ships, and wrecked the upper hyperdrive array on
another.  Estimating total enemy beam weapons now at sixty-four percent.”

Which was great, except
all of that laser dome damage was along one side, and the superbattleships were
rotating to align their still intact sides with the ships they were fighting.

“And what about our
ships?”

“We’re taking a pounding,
ma’am,” said the Tactical Officer with a grimace.  The battle cruiser shook
with his words, struck by a particle beam that blasted through hull and armor
to take out four of the emitters on a laser ring.

Any time now, Maurice
, she thought, watching
as more damage indicators came up on the schematics of her ships.

*     *     *

“Open fire, now,” ordered
Captain the Duke Maurice von Rittersdorf.  The Cacas had not reacted when he
got within beam range, either not picking him up or too busy with the Duchess’
force.  He held his fire for twenty seconds, letting the range fall.  But now
was the time.

Dot MacArthur
shook slightly as she
unloaded both of her particle beams onto the closest Caca ship, the powerful
streams of protons hitting its upper hyperdrive array and eating large runnels
into the structure.  At the same time her lasers hit the same array toward the
front, burning into the forward field projectors.

All of his ships had
designated targets, and every Caca ship got its share of attention.  They
started firing back, which took some of the pressure off the Duchess’ force and
onto his.

“We’ve just gotten hit
hard in the stern,” called out the voice of the Chief in charge of damage
control.

“Any damage to our
weapons systems?” asked the Captain.

“No, sir.”

“Then we’re good to go.” 
He looked over at the Tactical Officer.  “Keep pouring it on.  I don’t want one
of these sons of bitches getting out of this fight hyper capable.”

*     *     *

“Enemy ships are now
leaving effective beam range,” said the Tactical Officer, looking up at the
High Admiral who stood glaring over his shoulder.  The male did not look happy,
nor did he have a right to.

“Status of the
hyperdrive?” asked the Admiral into the com.

“We can at best make
hyper III, my Lord,” said the Chief Engineer.

Which made them the
fastest ship in the force, what remained of it.  He still had three ships,
though the term really didn’t apply to two of them, which were more hulks than
anything else.  Neither of them could even get into hyper.  They were doomed. 
And with only hyper III in her future the same could be said of his ship.

The enemy had been hurt
as well.  They had lost two of their scout capital ships, as well as seven
smaller vessels.  Much less than the tonnage of one of his ships.  It had been
a decisive victory for the humans.  It had been a decisive defeat for his side
in all respects.  They had failed to take out the station, and now they would
not be able to set a raider force on their shipping.

“Orders, my Lord?”

“We will stay with the
other ships, and fight the other human force when it comes up on us,” he said.

“We may still be able to
escape into hyper, my Lord,” replied the Tactical Officer.

The High Admiral gave a
head motion of negation and sat in his chair. 
We are doomed.  And we stand
a better chance of taking more of their ships with us if we stay together.
 
He said a prayer to the Gods, that the souls of his crews would be accepted
into the presence of the great warriors of the past.  He wasn’t sure that would
happen, since they had failed their Emperor, but he could always hope.