Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2 (30 page)

BOOK: Exodus: Empires at War: Book 2
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“Six hundred gigatons,”
she said shaking her head.

“Ma’am.”

“That missile would
strike the surface with six hundred gigatons of energy,” she said.  “That’s
about one three hundred fiftieth of the dinosaur killer the records say struck
Earth millions of years ago.  Not enough to kill all life on the planet. 
Enough to cause considerable havoc.  Especially if it hits on the settled
continent.  Or in the ocean just off that continent.”

“So we won’t be moving
the station ma’am?”

“No son,” she said,
looking at the tactical display of four red arrows and two waves of a hundred
green arrows converging.  Three of the green arrows intersected two red and the
dots faded from the screen.  The two red arrows continued on as the remaining
forty-seven defensive missiles of the first wave flowed on.  Then the second
wave hit the two missiles and they faded away.

“I guess there wasn’t a
need, ma’am,” said the tactical officer as the remaining green arrows were sent
destruct signals and disappeared.

“Not this time,” she
agreed, looking into his eyes.  “Now I want your department to look at all the
data we gathered on those missiles.  I think the next time we face them it will
be at saturation levels.  And make sure the fire plan for Admiral Heinrich is
up to date.  I’m sure we’ll be firing offensive missiles well before we need
the defensive tubes.”

“Aye ma’am,” said the
young Commander, hurrying back to his station.  The rest of the command crew
looked away as she scanned the deck.

I’m sure that
saturation is going to come
, she thought,
unless Gunter can pull off a miracle.

*     *     *

“Commodore Chung should
be here in fifteen minutes,” said the com officer, taking off her headset and
looking back at the temporary commander of the fort.

“I don’t think we’ll be
here,” said Captain Laura Montenegro, watching the tactical display that showed
a mass of red arrows approaching the planet.

Forty missiles
traveling at point nine four c,
she thought. 
And we’re the only target
worth hitting, unless they’re trying to hit the planet as well.

“Fire counter
missiles,” she ordered.  The fort released all tubes, sending thirty counter
missiles toward the oncoming flood.  Another launch followed seconds later, and
then another.

“Fire off all of the
offensive missiles we can cycle,” she ordered.  They had already launched fifty
of their own fusion powered, fusion warhead missiles to seek out whatever they
could find coming in from the outer system.  She thought they might be able to
get another thirty out of the tubes before they were vapor.

“Set orbital batteries
for automatic,” she said to the frantic tactical officer.  “Override safety
protocols on my authority.  I want them taking anything entering their range
under fire.”

“What something friendly
comes calling,” called the tactical officer.

“I don’t think we need
to worry about that,” she answered, as she watched the first wave of her
counter missiles reach out toward the incoming enemy ship killers.  “We don’t
have anything in the system worth worrying about.”

“Commodore Chung?”

“Signal him my
intensions and suggest that he hide in the outer system,” she replied.  As she
spoke the fort sent out another salvo of counter missiles, bringing the total
to one hundred and twenty in space.

The red arrows reached
for them, as the time on target figures decreased with the ticking of the
clock.  The first salvo of counters would reach them when they were about ten
seconds from the fort.  The last when they were three seconds away.

She looked around the
control room, smelling the fear on the crewman.  Everyone was doing their jobs,
at the same time lost in their own thoughts of the death that was coming for
them.  The wave of green arrows that were the counter missiles reached out,
accelerating at eight thousand gravities.  Ten larger arrows followed the wave,
accelerating at five thousand gravities, the offensive missiles.

People watched and
waited with bated breath as the lines moved together.  They met, and a half
dozen green arrows intersected four of the red arrows, flaring and then fading
from the display. In the dark of space four brilliant dots flamed for a couple
of seconds and then were gone.

The second wave of
counter missiles met the incoming weapons.  Thirteen green arrows become one
with seven of the red arrows, blotting them from existence.  The third wave
only knocked out five of the incoming missiles, the fourth wave eight.  Leaving
sixteen missiles still closing on the orbital fort that was the primary target.

Close in defenses
kicked in by computer control before the fourth wave of counter missiles
reached their targets.  Fifty tubes on the outer side of the station spit out
short range interceptors at twenty thousand gravities.  They went through four
cycles of missiles, two hundred total, in the time they had.  Nine of the
hypervelocity incoming were taken out by the short rangers.  The station opened
up with lasers and automatic projectile weapons at three seconds out.  Missiles
dodged a dozen times a second, pulling hundreds of gravities with each
maneuver.  Some missiles pulled into beams or streams and were vaporized.  One
bore in straight, its brain hoping to fool the defenses with a constant path. 
Gigawatts of laser energy from a half dozen beams took it in the nose,
destroying it down to the warhead containment that exploded, sending tiny
pieces of missile on millions of vectors.

Three missiles made it
through the defensive fire.  One was hit a ten thousandth of a second out,
shredding the body of the missile.  Large multiton pieces struck the station,
blasting great holes into the body of the fort and killing most of the crew. 
The second missile came in whole, striking and detonating with thousands of
gigatons of kinetic energy and antimatter warhead.  The station blew out into a
cloud of vapor and debris.  Small sections, none more than a fraction of a ton,
were propelled into the atmosphere where they burned up from the friction. 
There were no survivors, none even having time to launch an escape pod.

The third missile flew
through the cloud of vapor and debris at point nine four c.  It broke up and it
fell into the cloud, the warhead section detonating from the impact that sent
antimatter against matter through the containment field.  Four large sections
went through a hundred kilometers of atmosphere like streaks of light, super
heating but still solid in the four ten thousandths of a second they moved through
the gas.

The remains all struck
within a hundred kilometers of each other.  Fortunately for the humans on the
planet the point of impact was the relatively uninhabited northern continent of
the planet, an Australia sized island of forests and grasslands.  Unfortunately
for the few humans who did live on the continent the strike was not survivable
unless they had been near enough to a shelter.

The twenty ton piece
struck fifty kilometers in from the west coast of the continent, generating a
force of four hundred gigatons, blasting out a one hundred kilometer crater and
punching through the planetary crust.  The western edge of the crater would
have immediately begun filling with water, except for the six ton section that
hit with two hundred gigatons of energy, vaporizing water as it gouged out a
fifty kilometer crater and setting fluid in motion that would form five hundred
meter tall waves when it hit the continent six thousand kilometers to the
west.  Two other one ton sections hit within the forming crater of the largest
piece, adding their forty gigatons of energy to the mix.  The mushroom cloud
from the impact reached to the top of the atmosphere and spread.  The wall of
heat washed over the continent, incinerating everything within two thousand kilometers
of the impact.  The blast wave followed close behind, swirling the ash of the
skeletons of trees and knocking over what hadn’t been totally crisped.

Hundreds of kilometers
from the impact the thirty ton predator crouched.  The matriarch of the pack,
she watched the herd of herbivores as other pack members crept into position. 
The sky to the west brightened with a flash as the herd stirred with a low
moaning sound.  The matriarch rose on her haunches, turning toward the light
with a nervous growl.  The ground bucked beneath her feet and she fell over on
her side.  As she struggled to her feet she gave a howl of alarm to the pack,
signaling for them to run and hide.  Too late, as the wave of heat washed over
her, setting her fur aflame.  Before the howl of agony could leave her mouth
she was turned into an ash caricature of herself.  An ashen statue that was
scattered by the blast wave that followed quickly behind the heat.

The eighty ton adult
herbivores scrambled to their feet as the sky flashed.  Mothers looked for
calves as the herd started to run away from the flash, lowing into the night. 
The shock wave through the ground knocked many off their feet, while others
struggled on.  Not that it did the ones that retained their feet any good, as
the entire herd was burned to ash at the same instant as the predators who had
stalked them.

An hour later the elder
son of McGurky Freehold, who had ridden out the disaster with the few members
of his family who had made it to shelter, came out of the ground.  He stared
open mouthed at the devastation. There was no vegetation in sight, only the
swirling ash that was the remains of trees and meadows.  Most of the outbuildings
were gone, and the manor house of the freehold was scorched on its outer walls
and leaning at a severe angle.  He looked to the west and saw the red fountains
of magma arching tens of kilometers into the sky, hundreds of kilometers away. 
The man looked at that reddened sky and shook his fist, tears coming to his
eyes.

The entire planet
shuddered from the earthquakes that would move through the crust for hours,
setting off aftershocks that would continue for days after the event.  Those on
the coast of the continent to the east, who saw the streaks of light followed
by the burning trails of the remains of the fort, knew what had happened.  While
they grabbed their belongings and prepared to leave the danger zone for seismic
waves the first tremors hit, knocking people off their feet and objects from
shelves.  In an earlier time the shocks would have toppled buildings as they
opened crevasses through the soil and rock.  Walls swayed and rocked as windows
compressed and expanded.  When the first tremors passed the buildings stood,
their carbon fiber construction up to the test of massive quakes.  The
residents decided not to chance their sturdy construction to crushing walls of
water, and left the coast in a flood of air cars.

*     *     *

“What the hell was
that?” yelled Cornelius Walborski as the ground moved beneath his feet.

“Stay away from the
shelves,” called out Sergeant McFadden, his squad leader.  “Or keep your damned
helmets on your heads so nothing hits you there.”

“What’s going on, Sergeant?”
said Walborski after another shock hit the shelter where the squad was gathered
to rest.

“They took out the
orbital fort,” growled the NCO, trying to look fierce and only succeeding in
looking as scared as the rest of the squad.  “Hit it with long range missiles
and blew it out of the sky.”

Cornelius knew that the
Sergeant had served a ten year basic enlistment in the Imperial Marines, and so
probably knew things he didn’t.  But he still couldn’t imagine missiles taking
out the huge bulk of an orbital fort.

“How big were their
warheads?” he asked, still trying to grasp the power needed to blow up the huge
station he had seen under construction in orbit on coming to the planet.

“From a hundred megatons
to a gigaton,” said the Sergeant, looking over at the Private.

“Is that enough to
destroy a fort?”

“Probably not,” agreed
the NCO.  “Maybe the gigaton range could do it.  But those forts are built as
sturdy as battleships, with a lot more mass.  It was most likely a kinetic hit,
the missile coming in at near light speed.  And one that missed the station and
hit the planet instead.  Those could generate thousands of gigatons.”

“Why even put a warhead
on them then?” asked Walborski, trying to get his head around that much
destructive power.  “That seems like a piddling amount of energy compared to
what it generated just from momentum.”

“They don’t always get
to pile on that much velocity,” said the Sergeant.  “Especially in ship to
ship.  Or they’re fired at objects moving away.  Or they don’t get a hard hit,
and have to detonate close enough to do some damage.”

“You think they’re
going to hit us with more missiles, Sergeant?” asked another of the privates,
fiddling with his rifle, which now seemed to all of them a pitiful weapon
compared to what they were talking about.

“Not much we could do
about it if they did,” said McGurty . “But I think they’ll land and take this
world away from us.  At least I hope so.”

“Why do you hope that,
Sergeant?” asked Walborski, confused.  “It’s not like we’re going to stop them
from coming here and killing us.”

“That’s true,” said the
NCO with a feral grin.  “But if I’m going to die I want to take as many of them
with me as I can.”

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Exodus: Empires At War: Book 2
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