Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) (21 page)

They were fulfilling
the mission of keeping the Cacas from firing on the camp, and the firepower
differential was in the Imperial Army’s favor.  Baggett looked up at the
sky, wondering when their air support and reinforcements would come.  The
Imperials had about one hundred and twenty thousand troops, including his own
reserves on the other side of the wormholes.  The Cacas had over four
hundred thousand ground combat troops on this world, many dug into hardened
positions, many moving from bases into dispersion points.  And many of
those troops would be coming for his positions in the very near future, while
he was handicapped by having to keep the civilians under his care alive. 
The civilians who did not have the armored protection of his soldiers. 
And the ships up in space could not provide him fire support either while they
were still engaged in their own battle.

*    
*      *

“What the hells
is going on?” growled General Jawa'therista as he ran into the command bunker
control chamber, pulling on his harness.  He had been spending time with
the female he had been assigned to mate with, since the Emperor had decided
that he was worthy of passing his genotype down to even more progeny.  He
did not appreciate the interruption of his pleasure.

“We are under
attack, my Lord,” said the shocked looking officer, standing by the holo tank
that showed the surface of the world.  Separate side holos showed the
scenes from many of the camps, all of them showing what looked like human
combat suits battling his people.  A close look at a couple showed that
his people were not winning.

“Where are they
attacking from?” he asked the duty officer, who held a rank of brigade
commander.

“Everywhere, my
lord,” answered the officer, taking a deep breath and trying to calm
himself.  Several of the side holos disappeared into static.  One of
them firmed into a blurry picture, then faded back into static.  The
ground shook, and another holo popped up, showing the fireball of a mushroom
cloud rising off the ground.  The text below the view indicated that the
cloud was rising over what had been a planetary defense battery.

“They are
hitting us in space as well.”

But, how?
thought the General. 
How in the hell did they invade us without us
seeing them coming?  That’s impossible, isn’t it?

“We’re receiving
a com from the Great Admiral, my Lord,” called out one of the com techs.

“Send it to me,”
ordered the General, his mind still reeling in confusion as he tried to decide
what he should do.

“General,” said
H’rastarawaa as he appeared on the holo, his image scattering slightly in the
static the enemy jamming was causing.

“What are my
orders, my Lord?” he asked his superior.

“I want all of
the humans on the planet killed.”

“We are fighting
the humans now, my Lord.  As soon as I can get the troops in place I will
do my best to kill them.”

“I don’t mean
the soldiers, General,” growled the Great Admiral.  “They are here to free
those prisoners, the one we have been processing.  I want them dead. 
Use every means at your disposal to kill the human civilians that the human
soldiers are attempting to free.  Any that you have a good chance of
reacquiring, take.  We may be able to use them as hostages.”

“Yes, my
Lord.”  The General hesitated for a moment, then looked back at the Great
Admiral.  “Are we going to win, my Lord?”

“Don’t you worry
about that,” said the Great Admiral in what amounted to almost a scream. 
“Just follow your orders, and do your part, and at least the humans won’t win.”

The holo
blanked, while the ground shook again.  The General thought about the
Great Admiral’s use of words.  The humans would lose if the people they
came to save were destroyed.  Which didn’t mean any of the Ca’cadasans
would get out of the fire they were now in.

“Get me all brigade
commanders on the com,” he ordered the duty officer.  “I want all of their
forces on alert and ready to move.” 
I may not make it out of this, but
I can assure myself that the humans fail as well.

Chapter Seventeen

Soldiers are dreamers; when the
guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

Siegfried Sassoon.

NEW MOSCOW SPACE, MID MORNING.
APRIL 8
^TH
, 1002.

“First gate is
deployed,” called out the Fleet Tactical Officer.

Fleet Admiral
Jerry Kelvin looked over at the holo that showed the two battleships in that
pair,
Hood
and
King Robert The Bruce
, joined together by a four
kilometer wide, three kilometer high frame.  The frame itself was ten
meters in cross section, and made of the strongest alloys known to human
science.  Still, if the battleships were to pull apart with even minimal
force that frame would come apart like rotten wood.

The battleships
themselves, older models, had been modified to become predominantly defensive
platforms, structured to defend themselves and the structure in their
charge.  That structure now sported a mirrored surface, a wormhole,
leading back to one of the Fleet bases where the rest of his ships were
waiting.

“First ship
coming through, sir,” said the Tactical Officer Moments later.

The nose of a
ship poked through, moving at the velocity of point four light, grabbers
powered down.  It took the two and a half kilometer long warship an
immeasurable amount of time to transit the gate.  Its grabbers were
powered down, its electromagnetic field off, depending on its material
shielding to protect the crew, so it was basically an object smaller than most
asteroids and radiating just a little more energy.  Since the force was
moving at point two four light, the ship shot well ahead.  While from this
side it seemed like a simple and straight forward maneuver, from the other side
it had been a delicate and anxiety producing exercise in precision piloting.

The battleship
coasted, gaining distance from the force every second.  The fleet was
still boosting at five hundred gravities, and would eventually catch up, while
the newly come ships were unknowns, not even there as far as the enemy was
concerned.

Ten seconds
after it came out of the hole a second battleship flew through, and coasted
away.  Within five minutes there were fourteen battleships added to his
order of battle.  At that time the second gate was opened, and a series of
cruisers, heavy and light, started coming through.  Those were the ships
that had been approaching the gate at the time it had opened.  The
battleships that had been originally first in line had to shoot past the gate
on that side, decelerating so they could eventually come back and transit the
gate later.  The gate opening had missed the time table, and now some of
those ships might miss the battle.  The fleet could change its maneuvering
at a later part of the mission.  And it would still be another five
minutes before even the closest of the far pairs would  be joined.

“Headquarters is
reporting they are sending capital ships over to Gate 3,” reported the Fleet
Com Officer.  Gate 3 was the second gate to open, the one now punching out
cruisers.

Kelvin nodded,
wondering if they would get enough ships through in time to weather the first
missile storm.  He looked at the tactical holo and thought he probably
would.  But the margin was getting closer every minute.  And every
delay, every misstep in sending the ships through, was an increase of the odds
against them.  And the fate of the group that was fighting for its life
near the planet depended on that enemy not coming back in force.

*    
*     *

Sevastopol
shook
again as a particle beam ate into her forward hull.  Damage klaxons
sounded throughout the ship.  They had been going off for the last five
minutes, since the battleship had first exchanged fire with the huge orbital
fort of the Ca’cadasans.  The fort that outmassed them by a factor of
eight to one.

“We’re getting
pounded, sir,” called out the Chief Engineer from the main reactor control
room.  “One of those beams just punched into one of our reserve fusion
reactors.”

Captain Vladimir
Schmidt looked over the damage schematic of his ship, pulled up on a side
holo.  It was a mass of blinking red.  He paid particular attention
to engineering.  The matter antimatter reactors were absolutely the best
protected machinery on the ship, below ten meters of composite hull armor, then
sheltered behind their own armored bulkheads.  That armored capsule
included the storage area for the antimatter that powered the ship, which also
had more redundant armor protection.  There was a very good reason for
having all that protection in place.  Matter antimatter reactions were
essentially the total conversion of material to energy, giving the ship the
most efficient source of power known to the science of the time.  It was
also highly dangerous, and the breach of massive amounts of antimatter could
reduce his ship to a fast moving cloud of plasma in an instant.

“Electromagnetic
projectors are at fifty percent over that section of engineering,” called out
the Tactical Officer, who was balancing a score of duties at the moment, taking
the information from his tactical crews and trying to allot resources to fight
the ship in the most manner possible.  “Suggest rolling the ship.”

“Do it,” yelled
the Captain as the ship shook from another hit.

The Helmsman
powered the grabbers to spin the ship around its long axis, turning a different
portion of the hull toward the enemy.  The ship was broadside to the
enemy, allowing the use of all of its energy weapons on the same target, but
also presenting more of the surface of the ship to enemy fire.  It was a
tradeoff, but still a better design that the laser dome energy weapons system
of the Cacas.  The fort was bristling with lasers and particle beams, but
could only bring a little over sixty percent of its weapons to bear on any
single target.

Sevastopol
fired
a spread of missiles, ten weapons leaving their launch tubes at almost three
hundred kilometers an hour, cutting in their own boost of five thousand
gravities as soon as they were free of the ship.  The range to the target
was seven thousand kilometers, twelve seconds flight time.  Due to that
flight time, the missiles were only approaching at a little over eight hundred
kilometers a second, standing still as far as the targeting systems of the
combatants were concerned.

The first
missile was hit by defensive fire only three seconds out of the tubes,
detonating with a force of a gigaton, sending more radiation and heat into the
launching vessel than the target.  The second was hit at four seconds, the
next at six, until only two missiles got within two thousand kilometers of the
enemy, where they were detonated by the station’s lasers.  They still
caused some hull damage from the flood of radiation and heat, but not much.

The station sent
its own spread of missiles in return, concentrating all of its fire on
Sevastopol
to the exclusion of the other five ships that were engaging the fort. 
Fifty missiles came in at eight thousand gravities, nine seconds flight time.

Tactical tried
their best, and the ship knocked down twenty-one of the missiles as they came
in.  The other battleships took out another twenty-three, firing every defensive
weapon they possessed in an integrated missile defense network.  Close in
weapons hit the remaining six at close range, saving the ship from a direct
hit.  Still, they took out most of the electromagnetic projectors on the
bow side of the ship facing the station, as well as one of the forward laser
rings.

Schmidt cringed
as the casualty figures came across his link.  There had been over a
thousand fatalities, most of them completely destroyed, some of the low
percentage of recoverable not able to be recovered at this time.  The
clocks of those people’s continued existence was ticking away, and there was
little he could do about it.  There were also more than two thousand
injured, many seriously, to the point where their suits were putting them into
cryostasis to keep them intact until they could get medical care.  Search
and rescue groups would of course be trying their best, but since most of the
casualties were outside of the protected central capsules of the ship, it was
hazardous to even make the attempt of getting at them.

Sevastopol
shook
again, and the Captain was starting to think he might have to order abandon
ship. 
No, by God
, he thought, an eye still on the damage
schematic. 
We came here to free our capital, and save our
people. 
His ship could still fight, and he was determined that it
would.

Another missile
detonated off the stern, a mere kilometer away, and kicked the ship in an end
over end tumble along with a spin.  The Helmsman fought the motion,
bringing the grabbers in to counter the motion, bringing
Sevastopol
back
onto an even keel.

“Laser rings C
and D have both lost emitters,” yelled the Tactical Officer over the
klaxons.  “Rings are at seventy five percent capacity.”

One of the other
battleships took a direct missile hit, the gigaton warhead detonating against
the hull and vaporizing its way deep into the ship.  The capital ship went
into a spin for a few moments as it flew away from the blast, then broke across
the middle into two large pieces that spun off on their own courses.

Schmidt stared
at the wrecked vessel in horror, his fear warring with relief that the
battleship had been an Imperial vessel, and not one from the small New Moscow
fleet.  He fought the guilt at that relief, then pushed the thought from
his mind.  There were more important things to think of at the moment.

The station
itself was taking a beating.  There was scarring all over the hull, gashes
caused by beams, pitting from missile fragments.  Several of the lasers
domes were dead, melted or smashed, while a particle beam projector had been
swallowed up by a large crater.  The view was blurry, looking through the
cold plasma field of the fortress.  That damage was visible was a sign of
its serious nature.

The battleships
were all heavily damaged as well.  The super battleship
Enterprise,
an
Imperial vessel, was the most intact, both because it had entered the fight
relatively late, and because of its more powerful defensive systems.  That
ended as a volley of missiles targeted the ship, and a half dozen got through
the defensive net to detonate close to the vessel.  Two of the laser
rings, those on the stern, died, their nanomaterial skin ruptured in several
places, the internal glow dying.

“Com from the
Commodore,” called out the Com Officer.

“Put her on.”

The face of
Commodore Sheila Stepanowski appeared on the holo to the right front of the
Captain.  Her face was streaked with sweat, her eyes wide, and the bridge
behind her shuddered as
Czarina Ekaterina
shook from a hit.

“We’re getting
pounded here,” she told the Captain.  “If we keep doing what we’re doing,
that thing will still be up here ruling the orbitals while we’re nothing more
than debris.”

Schmidt
nodded.  He was sure that the ships coming through the gate could
eventually take care of this monster, but there was also the close enemy force,
which was now only ten light seconds away from the gates.  Those ships
were throwing everything they had at those portals, realizing that if they
could shut them down the could win the battle of the orbit.  And that if
they didn’t shut them down, they were doomed as well.  The force the two
battleships were a part of could do nothing to aid in that part of the
fight.  They were on the other side of the planet from the gates, blocked
by the mass of the world.  The important part was that they were also
keeping the fort out of the action.

“I’m having my
Tactical Officer send a firing plan to your Tac,” she continued.  “We’re
going to bust through that cold plasma field and hit them with every antiproton
beam we have.  Then we’ll follow it up with missiles.”

“Yes, ma’am,”
replied the Captain as he pulled up a schematic that showed what they knew
about the state of the enemy fort.  The targeting information sent over
from the commander’s ship pointed to one spot on the fort.  The cold
plasma field was strong at that point, as it was everywhere.  They could
blast through the field, but it was self-repairing, and more cold plasma was
being injected into the field every time it was depleted.  They were still
getting through, just as the fort was getting through the fields of the
ships.  But the beams were being attenuated enough that the damage was
being reduced by half.

“Firing,” called
out the Tactical Officer.  The ship shuddered slightly as the lasers were
fired and missiles were released.  Seconds later the particle beams fired,
sending their positively charged antiprotons toward the same target area as the
lasers were striking.

The lasers of
seven capital ships, two superbattleships and five battleships, flashed
instantaneously across six thousand kilometers of space.  All hit a small
area, about twenty meters across, of the cold plasma field.  The beams
slashed through the field and hit a similarly small area, burning into the
hull, causing a large breach.  The cold plasma was superheated and
radiated heat in all directions, including back into the station.

Now the particle
beams ripped through the weakened defensive field and into the hull of the
fort, flashing into energy as the antiprotons interacted with the matter of the
station.  A large portion of the hull, fifty meters across, flashed into
superheated plasma, while thirty meters farther around the circumference the
armor crumpled and exploded outward in millions of pieces.  The following
antiprotons hit the hole and flew into the station, blasting apart chambers,
corridors and the bodies of Cacas.  The missiles, sixty weapons launched
from all of the ships, followed close behind, aiming for the same point.