Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (29 page)

“They are putting out
so much static and garbage it’s very difficult to tell what is going on,” said
the Subcommander.  “Their invisibility fields and holographs are very good. 
Probably better than ours.”

“Yes,” agreed the pod
leader with a snarl.  “They seem to be a level of difficulty above what we have
encountered before.  But they are still inferior to us in most respects.”

May the God make it so
, thought the pod
leader as he tried to make the tactical display give up its secrets by force of
will.

“Send to battle group
commander what information we have,” said the pod leader to his subordinate. 
“Caution him that we believe there is a strike on its way from the inner
system.  We’re not sure what it comprises, but it seems to be big.”

“Aye Lord,” said the
com officer.

The pod leader leaned
back in his chair, stretching both sets of arms.  It was his command’s duty to
find out the information that the battle group needed to permit forcing the
enemy into an engagement to the advantage of the group.  And he had a feeling
that they would need all the advantages they could gather against this foe.

*     *     *

“We have incoming
missiles,” called out the tactical officer of the
HIMS Archduchess Constance
Leonardo
.  Captain Maria Steinman looked up from the communiqué she was
working on and glanced at the tactical that showed twelve objects quickly
approaching.  Three seemed to be locked on to targets while the others were
still veering back and forth as if seeking a kill.

“What’s coming?” she
called out to tactical as she looked over the group disposition.  All of the
ships were in travel formation and starting to accelerate toward the point
chosen for the engagement, based on preliminary data.

“Twelve capital ship
missiles,” called out the tactical officer.  “Velocity point nine four c. 
Coming in from the port bow of the formation at thirty degrees from our
vector.  Estimated range fifty million kilometers.”

The Captain knew that
the figures quoted were based on the computer’s estimate of the missiles’
position.  And that was based on the travel time of the return signal versus
the estimated velocity of the missiles.  So it was about two point nine minutes
till they reached the outer periphery of the group.

“Order fleet to
standard missile engagement,” she said to tactical.  “I’ll kick it up to the Admiral
and get his confirmation.”

“This will give our
position away,” said the tactical officer.  “Especially when there are gigaton
warheads going off nearby.”

“Better that than being
given away by warships exploding,” she said, cutting of the argument.  She
instead sent out a call to the group commander that was answered immediately.

“Of course, Captain,”
confirmed Admiral Sir Gunter Heinrich from his flag bridge.  “Do whatever is
necessary to defend the fleet.  We’ll send the information through fleet circuit
to the forts and tell them there is a quartet heading their way.”

“Thank you sir,” said
the Captain.  “We’ll get the defenses up and knock them down.”

The circuit went dead
and the Captain switched her attention back to the tactical plot where a
quartet of destroyers were leaping ahead at three hundred gravities.  The
smaller vessels were attempting to get between the capital ships and the
capital ship killers, bringing their close in weapons to where they might do
some good.

Be hell if they get in
the way of one of those killers
, she thought.  But it would be hell if one of
the battleships, battle cruisers or heavy cruisers got hit too.  And that would
be a hell of a bigger reduction of their fire power than having a tin can taken
out.

Long range missiles
were better weapons at long range than they were at shorter engagement ranges.  They
moved much faster after building up velocity over many minutes to an hour,
which made them more difficult to track.  They carried a hell of a lot of
kinetic energy, normally many times the destructive power of their warheads. 
And they carried countermeasures that made them deadly by the time their
targets acquired them.  They were too much for a human mind to track and
engage, even when linked to computers.  So the computers were given their
orders and did their best without human interference to kill the missiles that
were trying to kill their ships.

The tactical display
blossomed with green arrows, as the destroyers and the next layer of vessels,
the cruisers, fired a salvo of intermediate range interceptor missiles.  At
eight thousand gravities the sixty-four counter missiles accelerated at
seventy-eight kilometers per second.  Their target acquisition systems painted
space ahead of them, picking up the ghosted images of the incoming missiles,
whose own systems jammed and projected false information to draw the pursuers
off.  About half the missiles fell for the false information, losing lock. 
Some regained, then lost again.  As they neared their targets only about a dozen
had a firm lock.  The rest detonated at their best guess closest approach,
flooding a small section of space with radiation and debris.

The incoming missiles
released decoys that boosted away at thousands of gees, beaming out the sensor
frequencies of the incoming missiles, attempting to spoof the sensors of the
counter missiles.  The missiles themselves absorbed as much of the sensor
frequencies as they could, then rebroadcast at intervals intended to fool the
interceptors as to the missiles’ range and velocity.  At the same time they
moved in erratic, almost random patterns.  One of the interceptors broke
through the jamming and false sensor images to detonate within thirty
kilometers of its target, its twenty megaton warhead sending a blast of radiation
and debris into the missile.  At the closing velocities two of the wave of
penetrators hit the nose of the missile, converting to a heat jet that blasted
into the incoming projectile and exploded its warhead.  Two of the other
interceptors exploded within hundreds of kilometers.  They didn’t hit the
incoming missiles with any penetrators, but their radiation and smaller
particles were enough to destroy the sensor heads and motivational computers,
sending the inert missiles on ballistic trajectories that would miss the fleet,
and eventually take them out of the system without causing any damage.

The second wave of
counter missiles had much the same result, destroying two of the incoming
outright and disabling the targeting systems on two more.  The ships of the
group were able to track their ballistic course and move out of the way.  The
five remaining missiles continued to bore in, coming within the engagement envelope
of the short range interceptors.

The short range
interceptors were nothing more than one hundred kiloton bars with a sensor
cluster on the nose, crystalline batteries and grabber units.  The batteries
became the warheads if needed.  They were accelerated out of the tubes of the
destroyers at twenty thousand gravities, switching on their own drives and
piling on velocity at twelve thousand gravities.  With luck they would hit
their randomly evading targets.  They had about ten seconds to boost and
acquire.  There were no direct hits, but several proximity bursts took out two
more of the missiles.

Laser rings on the two
closest destroyers searched and tracked targets.  The closer the missiles came,
the more accurate the light speed weapons became.  Mostly because they were
targeting objects that could move from side to side before the beams arrived. 
Each destroyer put out four beams from each of its four rings, sweeping them
across the sky in a pattern that hoped to catch the missiles with enough energy
to detonate their warheads.  One missile was seared by several beams, but not
enough energy was imparted to do sufficient damage.  One was caught straight on
for a thousandth of a second.  Enough time for the fifty gigawatts of a second
beam to pump fifty megawatts of its energy into the nose of the missile.  The
missile’s own electromag field shed some of the energy, while its reflective
skin shed some more.  But the thirty megawatts that did get through was enough
to blast into the nose and rupture the containment vessel of the antimatter
warhead.  With a bright flare of light the missile disintegrated.

The last two missiles
locked onto the closest destroyer and bored in, weaving around in a semi-random
pattern, avoiding the beams.  At two seconds out the close in weapons fired on
best guess best hope trajectories.  Hundreds of guns on the hulls of the
destroyers fired tens of thousands of rounds each second.  The fifty millimeter
projectiles were accelerated out of the guns at a hundred thousand gravities,
then kicked in their own short range drives at twenty thousand gravities. 
Their simple warheads burst at closest approach of the fast moving objects.

One missile took a
dozen direct hits and scores of near miss bursts.  The missile flew apart as
the warhead detonated a hundred thousand kilometers from the destroyer
Katie
McPoole
.  About a ton of debris struck the destroyer in the nose, tearing
off fifty meters of the length of the ship and killing a dozen crew.  The rest
of the missile flew out into billions of fragments that scattered across the
side of the fleet.  One piece penetrated the A ring of the light cruiser
Augustus
and disabled two of its emitters.  Another hit the superstructure of the battle
cruiser
Remke
and put a hole through the outer skin, killing six crew
and injuring another dozen.

The second missile took
one direct hit behind the warhead section, along with several near misses.  The
missile swerved sideways and struck along its length into the midsection of the
McPoole
, in the process of coming apart in the thousandth of a second
between being struck and striking the destroyer.  Almost six thousand gigatons
of kinetic energy transferred into the two hundred thousand ton warship.  Made
of the toughest alloys the Empire could devise, with carbon nanofibers and a
nanoliquid shock absorber between layers of armor, it was not enough.  The
escort vessel shattered from the force that transmitted through it.  Every
bulkhead, every panel, every deck plate warped and broke loose. Three hundred
and eighty naval personnel and Marines were pulped, their battle armor suits
crushed, as they were flung at thousands of gravities into the hard remains of
the breaking up ship.  The five hundred megaton warhead of the missile was more
of an afterthought that heated to vapor some of the ship that was already
flying into pieces.

Within milliseconds the
containment fields on all of the antimatter on the ship failed.  The tons of
the volatile substance stored in reactor fuel cells, missile warheads and other
key parts of the vessel contacted the matter of their containers.  Gigatons of
explosive force pushed the ejecta away from the ship with increased speed.  A
small star birthed for several seconds, then faded.  It caused minor damage to
several of the ships in the fleet, whose hardened armored skins were proof
against particles massing in the milligrams and less that impacted their hulls.

“They’re gone,” cried
the helm, staring at the viewer that showed the shielded image of the
explosion.

“And the enemy knows
something of our position,” said the Captain.  “Not much, but more than they
did.”

“The whole crew of that
ship is dead ma’am,” said the helm, looking back over his shoulder at her with
shock on his face.

“And there are liable
to be a whole lot more joining them,” she said in a quiet voice.  “Before this
day is over.  And they might include us.  They gave their lives to protect the
striking power of the force.”

“Captain,” came a voice
over her link as the Admiral contacted her privately.  “Maintain course to the
agreed upon point.  Then stop us dead in space and prepare to execute the
plan.”

“Yes sir,” she said,
hoping that his plan would at least make their deaths meaningful.

Chapter 13

Battles, in these ages,
are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human
individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an
artificial manner.  Thomas Carlyle

“Missiles coming in,
ma’am,” called out the voice of the fort’s tactical officer.  Vice Admiral The
Countess Esmeralda Gonzalez had just received the message about the missiles
from the fighter strike that was still heading out to meet the enemy.  Less
than ten seconds later and they were picking them up on active sensors.  Four
of the bastards.  Not that many, and definitely not enough to saturate the
fortress’ defenses.  But at point nine four c hit on the planet could kill a
million or more citizens, depending on where it landed.

“Fire long range
interceptors,” she ordered, “and prepare close in systems to engage.”

As she said the words
the station fired fifty of the long range interceptors at the incoming
missiles, followed by another fifty just seconds later.

“Prepare to move the
station, ma’am?” asked the tactical officer in a hopeful tone.

Nobody wanted a large
missile hitting them at a substantial fraction of light speed.  And the station
could, in an emergency, dodge at a little over five gravities.  But the station
commander was thinking of the planet, and what a hypervelocity strike could do
to the people on the surface.