Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (24 page)

But you would, you fascist
, thought Johnson, as
he watched the destroyer draw closer, both ships now communicating with each
other and making sure they matched courses and velocities so that boarding
could occur.

Ten minutes and some odd seconds later an
assault shuttle left the hangar of the destroyer and flew the short distance
between the ships. 
Enigma
did not have a hangar that could handle the
craft, so the shuttle linked to her by way of mating tube to one of the small
vessel’s airlocks.  As soon as the shuttle docked Prestor hit a panel on his
com panel.

Try to stop that
, he thought with a
smile, as his com system broadcast all the information he had collected in the
Congreeve system, including how he had been unlawfully detained, and how, on
the Emperor’s orders, a planetful of singular sentients had been endangered. 
His original plan had been to try and sneak into a system that hadn’t received
an alert about his fleeing the Imperial authorities at Congreeve.  A system
much like this one.  And to get a message through to some ships, possibly those
owned by one of his companies, and eventually get it on the hyperwave circuit
that still covered more systems than the wormhole net.  It took days to
transmit messages through the stations that stretched between star system,
versus the almost instantaneous transmission through the wormholes.  But it
also wasn’t monitored like the wormhole system, as information could pass the
outer relay of a star hours before it was actually seen by the major bodies of
that planetary system.

But now I just have to hope that every ship in
this system gets this message, and that someone moves it further up the line. 
Hopefully one of the news outlets I own.  They’ll transmit it to the public, no
matter what those bastards in the government try to do.

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” called
out the first armored Marine to burst onto the bridge, a heavy stunner in his
hand.

“What do you think I’m going to do?” asked
Johnson sarcastically, putting his hands up in the air.  “Fight a squad of
heavily armed Marines.”

A man in a naval officer’s armor followed
another pair of Marines onto the bridge, about all that it could handle.  “What
are you doing there?” asked the officer, pointing to the com board.  The
officer was silent for a moment, and Johnson was sure he was talking to his
ship.  And the ship was listening in on the signal he was sending out.

“Turn that com off,” said the officer to the
first Marine, pointing to the board.

The Marine reached out with a gauntleted hand
and pushed Johnson to the side, none too gently.  He reached over and hit a
couple of panels on the board, but nothing seemed to happen.

“Turn it off,” yelled the officer, and the
Marine brought down a hand with all the strength of the suit onto the panel,
smashing through.  Sparks flew for a second, and the board went dead.

“We’re taking you off this ship,” said the
officer, waving two of the Marines off the bridge, allowing two Spacers to move
in.  “You will give control of your vessel to these people, and then you will
be taken aboard the
Naginata.”

“And if I don’t think it’s in my best interest
to give you control of this ship?” asked Prester in a growl.

“Don’t make this any worse than it has to be,
Mr. Johnson,” said the officer, glaring at the trillionaire.  “If you don’t
give over control, we’ll have a frigate take her under tow with magnetic
grapples.  That might cause more damage than either of us would want.”

Prester nodded, then linked with the ship and
told it to give the access codes to the spacers.  After, he was hustled aboard
the shuttle and taken to the destroyer, where he was locked in the small brig.

It took several days to deliver him to the
station in orbit around the habitable planet, where he was again hustled
aboard, this time with his hands in restraints.  He was led to a lift and then
down a corridor, until he was deposited at the office of the Commodore in
charge.

“Mister Johnson,” said the Commodore, whose
nameplate over his desk said McCaffrey.  “You’ve caused a lot of problems for a
lot of people, including yourself.  I hope you’re happy.”

“You have no right to detain me,” said Johnson,
trying his best to appear fierce, and failing. “I’m a private citizen.”

“The charges against you could land you in
confinement for quite some time, Mr. Johnson,” continued the Commodore, as if
he hadn’t heard a thing that the trillionaire had said.  “Don’t you know that
we’re at war?  And that you were in a combat zone, and therefore subject to the
laws governing conduct within that zone, civilian or not?”

“And what are you planning to do to me?” asked
the deflated trillionaire, looking at the magnetic restraints on his hands.

“I would like to put you on a target drone and
give my boys and girls some weapons practice,” said the Commodore, glaring at
Johnson.  “But orders from the top have given me the parameters of my
responses.”

The Commodore called up a holo over his desk
that showed
Enigma
.  “Naval Intelligence thinks that what you have
developed here is a nearly perfect spy ship.  Capable of sneaking into a system
through subspace, which almost no one scans for in this day and age.  The only
thing missing is a wormhole heat sink.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

“We want the names of the people who developed
this vessel.  All of them, so we can pick their brains and make ships like
this.”

“And
Enigma?
  Do I get her back?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Johnson,” said the
Commodore, shaking his head.  “Consider her a donation to the war effort, to go
along with your other donations.”

“What donations are those?” asked the
trillionaire with a bit of trepidation.

“The fines that will be levied against you,”
said the Commodore with a predatory smile.  “I think the figure mentioned was a
hundred billion, to be taken in manufacturing capability of need to the
Empire.”

“You can’t do that?”

“We can and we will.  Unless you want to find
yourself confined to Purgatory for a couple of decades.”

“Put that way, I guess I can part with some of
my wealth.  It’s only money, after all.” 
And the news I broadcast will
still hurt them.  There’s really nothing they can do to stop it from spreading.

“Oh, and that broadcast you made from your ship
before we captured you,” said the Commodore as Johnson was being led from the
office.  “I just want you to know that the Emperor already told everyone about
his error in staging the battle in the Congreeve system, and the way it
endangered the Mucanoids that lived there.  And you know what?  Nothing like a
victory to gain the positive attention of people.”  The Commodore laughed at
the expression on Johnson’s face as he was led out, while Johnson thought over
the proposition that he was not so smart after all.

Chapter
Fifteen

Vote for the man who promises
least; he'll be the least disappointing.

Bernard
Baruch

SAURON SPACE.  DECEMBER
11
^TH
, 1001.

Marc Dawson looked at the engineering control
panel once again, marveling over the fact that it was his. 
I never dreamed
I would have this much power under my control
, he thought, looking at the
holo of the power bars to the six matter antimatter reactors the ship carried. 
All were running at peak power, putting out more than twice the energy of a
fifteen million ton battleship. 
Augustine I
, now wearing the moniker
superheavy battleship, was almost twice the size of the standard model, and
generated two point two times the energy.  And most of that energy could be
funneled into the laser rings and particle beams, giving the ship more than
twice the punch of the smaller ship, even without the addition of her wormhole
fed weapons.

“Preparing for jump to hyper,” called out the
voice over the com, letting him know that the bridge was expecting the energy
they needed.

Augustine
was still undergoing repairs from the
battle of Congreeve, though all of her major systems were working at full
capacity.  The outer armor had been repaired as well, and a new coating of
nanofiber had been added, making her much more resistant to beam weapons. 
There were still a lot of repairs going on under the skin, but nothing that
couldn’t be continued while the ship tested her main systems.

“Jumping to hyper I,” called out the Helmsman
over com.

The MAM reactors spiked slightly, more power
being fed to the hyperdrive projectors as they converted energy to gravitons
and opened a hole between the dimensions.  There was a moment’s nausea, then
the graphs dropped slightly as the hyperdrive throttled back to the energy
needed to remain in hyper I, less than half that needed to enter.

“Jumping to hyper II,” called out the Helmsman.
They were operating far outside of any gravity well, and all dimensions of
hyper were open to them here.  The captain was just testing all systems by
performing one jump after another.  Again the graphs moved up, to over four
times their peak during the previous jump.  The system still had major capacity
left over, even at the rates the reactors were working.

The ship continued up through the levels of
hyper, until it reached hyper VII, at which point the reactors were working at
ninety-five percent of capacity, dropping down to sixty after completing the
jump.  The ship started to accelerate after that jump, reaching its safe
capacity of four hundred and ninety-five gravities, pulling as many gees as it
could while grabbing for more velocity.

And still the reactors are only at eighty-one
percent capacity
,
thought the Chief Engineer, checking all systems on multiple holo displays. 
The reactors were now producing enormous amounts of heat, like small stars
radiating in their magnetic bubbles within each containment capsule.  The heat
radiated into the magnetothermodynamic generators that converted it directly to
electrical power, with very little waste.  What waste there was transferred through
superconductor cables to the radiating surfaces of the skin, where supermetals,
the most efficient heat radiators known, pushed it into the vacuum of space. 
Before the discovery of the artificial produced elements, heat buildup was a
big problem on large ships.  Now it was just another problem solved.

“Powering up weapons systems and electromag
field,” called out the Tactical Officer over the com.  A moment later the power
graphs on the reactors went up again, to ninety-nine percent capacity, while new
holos appeared showing the power status of the thousands of electromag field
generators, and the charging of the laser rings by their multiple emitters.

“Everything appears to be holding together,”
announced Dawson to the Captain.  “All systems are go.”

“Very well,” said Captain Javier Montoya from
his bridge station. “We’ll maintain current power configuration for the next
hour, and see how she holds up.”

“Yes, sir,” acknowledged Dawson, looking over
at some other screens that showed his men and women manning their own stations,
monitoring all aspects of the engineering section, making sure that no problem
was ignored while it was still small, and possibly becoming big.

He checked on the sections working near the
reactors themselves, each crew member wrapped in heavy suits of augmented
shipboard armor. 
Everyone is working well
, he thought, happy at the
teamwork his people had achieved.

An hour later they powered down the peripheral
systems, lasers, all of the electromag screening save that needed to protect
from charged particle radiation.  They started on a curving decel profile that
turned them while they stopped, then started them on a path back to the system.

“Good job, Engineer,” said the Captain to
Dawson as they reentered normal space at the hyper I barrier.  “The performance
of your division was to my complete satisfaction today.”

And hopefully it will be when we enter combat
as well
,
thought the Chief Engineer, patting the hard surface of the disengaged panel. 
But
you won’t fail us, will you girl?

*    
*     *

CONUNDRUM SPACE.

Commodore Bryce Suttler looked through the holo
viewer at the system he had basically been ejected from.  The enemy had
persisted in their search, and it had been a close call for several of his
vessels.  On his orders they had all repaired to points ten light hours from
the star, well outside the system’s hyper VII barrier.  The space out there was
vast enough to hide just about anything, especially ships that radiated almost
no infrared.

They still had a good view of the system, with
the ability to keep tabs on the enemy fleet.  Even if everything was ten hours
after the fact. 
At least we can still get almost instant notice of hyper
translations
, he thought.

“There’s that convoy we were told about,” said
Lieutenant SG Walter Ngovic, the
Seastag’s
tactical officer.  “Too bad
we can’t put some missiles into them.”

“Yep,” said Bryce, staring at the icons that
had appeared on the plot. “But they might as well be across the Galaxy for all
we can do about it.” 
Except send acknowledgement back to Fleet that the
Caca convoy they knew was coming here, that they had tracked for the last
twenty light years, did, in fact, make it here.  What a bunch of bullshit.

“We’re getting a transmission from
headquarters,” called out the Com officer.

“Eyes only?”

“No, sir.”

“Then put it up on the holo.”

The face and upper body of Vice Admiral Sheila
Mtwambe, the commander of all stealth/attack forces in Sector IV, which meant
most of them at this time, appeared in the holo.

“Suttler.  We have a tasking order for you.”

“Yes, ma’am. What’s the mission?”

“You are to relocate your ships to these spots
outside the system, then reconfigure your wormholes to cargo gates.”

“For what kind of cargo, ma’am?” asked the
curious officer with a thrill, pretty sure he already knew what was coming.

“These,” said the Admiral, and her form left
the holo, to be replaced by what looked like a small version of their own ship.

Not really our ship
, thought the
Commodore, leaning forward in his chair to look at the thing he guessed was a
weapon.  It had the same flattened surfaces as
Seastag,
angled to
reflect active sensor probes away from the transmitting ship, the same flat
black, light absorbing material.  It looked like a missile of some type, but
the grabber fins were tiny as compared to any missile he had even seen.

“Something new from R & D?” he asked.  The
woman appeared on the holo once again, the missile in the background, with
people around it to give it scale.  It appeared to be the same size as a
standard missile, like those carried by the stealth/attacks.

“We call it, the Viper,” said the Admiral,
nodding.  “It strikes from the dark, without warning.  It’s been under
development for the last three years, originally as a weapon against Lasharan
incursions.  It was to be placed near inhabited planets, activated when enemy
ships drew near, then launched into its attack profile.  The first the Lasharan
ship would know it’s there would be when it went into final attack acceleration
within ten thousand kilometers of the target.

“Those grabbers look a little small for much
acceleration,” said Suttler, bringing up the original view of the weapon on a
side holo.

“They generate ten thousand gravities, same as
your standard attack missiles,” said the Admiral, referring to the weapons
carried by the stealth/attack, used for short range high acceleration attacks. 
“But only for that very last ten thousand kilometers.  The heat generated is
enough to burn off the grabbers in a little over twelve thousand kilometers, so
they can’t accel very far off their optimal attack pattern”

“Amazing.”

“You are to load one hundred missiles each for
the six of your craft, pushing them into space as soon as they arrive to make
room for more.  And from there, you are to program all the missiles for a long,
slow run into the system, looking for Caca targets.”

“You really think we’ll get any of them with
these things?” asked Bryce, liking the idea in theory, wondering about it in
practice.

“I don’t know, Commodore.  I kind of wondered
that myself.  Their success depends on their getting in really close to ships
with very good sensor suites.  And the first one that strikes an enemy ship
will cause the others to ramp up their efforts at detecting them.  But if we
have to spend six hundred expensive missiles to damage one even more valuable
ship, as well as making the Cacas more paranoid, they will have served their
purpose.”

“And why do you want them released from those
specified points?”

“That doesn’t really have anything to do with
the attack by these missiles,” said the Admiral with a cold smile.  “You are
also to download three hundred mines, to emplace in those areas.  From there
you will monitor incoming and outgoing enemy ships. And you will keep us
apprised of those comings and goings.  On our command, you will launch the
missiles from the mines at ships moving toward them in hyper.”

“And just what kind of ships are we looking
for?”

“Just send us the intel, Commodore,” said the
Admiral.  “And we will decide when we attack them.”

Which means she really doesn’t know what
they’re looking for themselves.  Wonderful.

“No problem, Admiral.  We’re here to serve.”

“Good man, Suttler.  And I understand you wish
to stay on deployment, despite your promotion to true flag rank.  Most unusual,
but appreciated.  It’s nice to have someone who thinks outside the box at the
pointy end.  And also someone who knows how to follow orders, without being
completely idiotic about it.”

Bryce nodded and smiled, realizing that her
comment needed no reply.  After all, while they were Fleet, they were also
considered some of the elite of that Fleet.  Not to be sacrificed for no
reason, depended upon to give a return for the investment of their lives.

“Mtwambe out,” said the Admiral, and the holo
died.

“Helm, get us to those coordinates, slow and
easy.  We don’t want to be spotted.  Com, send those orders to the other ships
as well.”  The crewmembers went about their duties, leaving Suttler to settle
back into his chair and think, sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse.

*    
*     *

“We need to get back on the offensive,” growled
High Admiral Kellissaran Jarkastarin,
red eyes glaring across the table
at the Great Admiral.

I wish I had sent you and your force off to the
nether regions before calling this meeting
, thought Great Admiral Miierrowanasa
M’tinisasitow, glaring at the slightly younger male who was his military
inferior, and, unfortunately, his social superior.  He looked around the table
at his gathered high admirals, the males who ran the conquest fleet at his
command.  Up until a couple of weeks prior, his had been the largest conquest
fleet in the history of the Empire.  The only larger was the one fighting on
the other side of the Empire, and that was not a conquest fleet.  That was an
armada, trying to take down the greatest threat the Empire had ever
encountered. 
The kind of force we need here.

“We are too weakened from the human offensive
to go on the attack,” said one of the other High Admirals, he whom the Great
Admiral saw as his voice of reason, even if other males called him a coward to
his back.  That he had killed scores of strong males in fair fights was one
reason they would not say such to his face.

“We only advance the goals of the Empire in the
attack,” shouted out a third male.  “We are here to destroy these people, to
grind them into dust, to be forgotten by the Galaxy.  We do not do this by
sitting here in this system.”