Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) (31 page)

The Cacas were
delivering troops to an assembly point.  Probably more than one, so they
couldn’t be hit with concentrated fire before they moved out.  From all
the Captain could tell from the plot they were somewhere in a three hundred
square kilometer area.  They might be able to bring down a kinetic on
them, but one powerful enough to take out that whole area would probably also
harm many of the civilians on this edge of the camp.  And a mass of
smaller weapons would have limited effectiveness.

“Launch some
drones,” ordered Cornelius after linking in with the NCO that was now the
reduced tank platoon commander.  The acknowledgement came back, and
moments later a pair of third of a meter wide discs rose up from the tanks,
oriented themselves, then headed out at four hundred kilometers an hour. 
In about a minute and a half they were slowing on the approach to the area that
Walborski was interested in, while another group of transports approached the
area.

A tank raised
its box launcher and sent off a missile, streaking out at Mach twenty and
homing in on one of the transports.  That aircraft must have detected the
launch, and it dove for the deck.  The missile lost lock and regained on
one of the transports that was flying away.  It streaked off after that
target, ignoring the decoys all the transports were now dropping and flying in
unerringly into one of the now empty transports, blasting it out of the sky.

The drones made
it to their target area, scanning ahead with light amplified visual sensors and
other passives.  Some Cacas and suits became visible, while the sounds of
many others moving in the background were apparent.  All of the Cacas were
in the heaviest battle armor they used, almost as deadly and well protected as
human heavy suits.  The drones held steady in the sky on full stealth,
boosting silently on their grabbers.  They were sending their information
back by whisker laser, and detection was unlikely.

“Send out an
active pulse from one of the drones,” ordered the Captain.  He wasn’t
getting the information he wanted, and drones were expendable.  Their
purpose was to gain information, not to survive.  One of the drones gave
out an active pulse of radar and lidar, and suddenly the ghost images of
several hundred Cacas appeared on the plot.

The Cacas opened
fire at that point, blowing that drone out of the air, crisscrossing beams that
caught two of the other three and blasted them away.  The last drone
backed off, using only its passive sensors, trying to keep track of the Cacas
that had been revealed by the active drone pulse.

More transports
came in, these landing five kilometers to the south of the first company. 
And they kept coming.  Obviously the Cacas were preparing for an attack in
force, and all they had facing them were soldiers in medium suits.

The dark clouds
of a storm continued to rush in from the east, lightning flashing through that
sky as the rumble of thunder followed behind.

*    
*      *

The General
cursed as he watched the plot that showed four unknown aircraft coming in from
above and to the rear.

“Can we evade
them?” he asked the pilot, looking through the rear port of the transport as if
he would be able to spot them better that way.

“We’re running
full ECM and stealth, my Lord,” shouted the Pilot, checking his board to make
some adjustments to those systems.  “I’m afraid they have a sensor lock on
us, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

The two gunships
turned away, angling up and around to come at the attacking fighters from the
front.  The General thought that a brave maneuver, and foolish as
well.  The gunships were ground support craft, and the diving fighters
were obvious air superiority craft.  But then again, what else could the
gunships do?  They were there to defend the transport, and flying along
beside it while providing the attackers more targets was not going to
accomplish that mission.

The gunships
fired, ripples of dual purpose missiles and a pair of particle beams
each.  The fighters dodged the particle beams and took out the missiles
with their own lasers and several counter missiles.  Two of the fighters
launched hypervelocity weapons that streaked in a fraction of a second toward
the gunships, blasting them out of the air with the kinetic energy they
propelled into the aircraft fuselages.

The fighters all
turned as one, dropping further down and moving into the rear.  One fired
a missile, streaking in on the stern of the transport.  The stern laser
reached out with the speed of computerized fire control, hitting the missile on
the right forward body and vaporizing just enough of that body to send the
weapon corkscrewing off target, to fly into the ground, raising a ball of fire.

The fighters
moved closer, almost like they were toying with the transport they could fly
circles around.  The General stared at them on the viewer, knowing that
they were his death, and there was only one way he could avoid it.

“General, what
are you doing?” asked the Pilot as the General hit the door release and the
hatch on the side of the transport slid open.  He didn’t answer, but
simply activated his full stealth package and jumped from the aircraft, letting
gravity and wind pressure pull him away from the transport.

He looked up to
see the transport explode, the deaths of the Pilot, Copilot and Flight Engineer
masked by the heavy concussion and fireball of the blast.  The fighters
flew over, the wind of their passage pulling the General up and toward them for
a moment before he continued his fall.

The General
continued his fall, watching the approaching ground, refusing to use any active
sensors that might give him away.  At the last moment he activated his
grabbers, killing his velocity a mere hundred meters up, then turning them off
again as he hit the canopy and crashed through branches and leaves.  He landed
on the hard ground, his suit taking up the impact.

Where in the
hell am I
? thought the General, looking around, then pulling up the
location on his inertial system.  Satisfied with where he was, he got to
the next order of business, and starting thinking about where he needed to go
to link up with some of his own forces.

*    
*     *

The Maurid
Leader set the device on top of the communications board and activated it.

“Hurry,” he told
the others.  The sounds of particle beams sounded through the thick door,
followed by an explosion.  He only had the pair out there now, and good as
they were, he was afraid they were not going to be able to hold out long.

The other two of
his group put devices on more of the board and activated them, slaving them to
the one the Leader had set.  The Leader pulled another device from his
harness and set it.

“You know we are
not going to get out of this alive,” he told his subordinates.

“We knew that
going in,” said the female.  “It’s for the race, and that’s all that
matters.”

And I hope
the humans are the deliverers were have been praying for
, thought the
Leader. 
Or we might bring retribution on our people for nothing.

The sounds
outside stopped, and the Leader knew that the Ca’cadasans would soon breach the
door.  “Take up your defensive positions
,
” he ordered, crouching
behind a heavy cabinet with his particle beam pistol in hand.

The others got
into their cover and held their weapons at the ready, pointing them at the
door.  The sounds of something doing something to the door came clear to
their sensitive ears.
  The sounds ceased, and the Leader knew
the explosion would be coming, now.

The blast pushed
the door in, tearing off the lock and one of the hinges.  The door flew
inward, catching on the one hinge and swinging against the wall with a
clang.  The roar of the explosive was deafening to the sensitive ears of
the hunters.  The odor of chemical explosives was overwhelming to their
noses.  The Leader’s eyesight was blurred for a moment, and his hands
wanted to betray him and drop his weapon to the floor.

The doorway only
allowed two Cacas through at a time, or one in battle armor.  That first
one came through, his eyes searching for targets.  He did what the Leader
was hoping, not shooting as he entered on risk of destroying the communications
equipment in the room.

Three particle
beams converged on the Caca soldier, all hitting within centimeters of each
other.  They burned through the armor in a second, converting the torso of
the Caca within to steam that blasted through the hole like a rocket,
propelling the dead soldier and his suit from the doorway.  A second Caca
tried to come through the same way, but this time he collapsed in the doorway
after he was killed.  The room was filling with foul smelling smoke and
steam from the particle beam kills, and all the Maurids were coughing and
gagging.

A pair of stun
grenades came flying into the room next.  The Leader tried to hit one of
them with a beam, missing and scarring the wall above the door.  The stun
grenades detonated with blinding flashes and thunderous noise, as well as a
cloud of nauseating vapor.  Another Caca pushed through the door, and this
time the beams from the Maurids all missed as the creatures tried to fight
through blindness, deafness and severe illness.  The Caca raised his own
rifle and burned half of one of the Maurids to ash and steam.  A second
sidled into the room at the back of the first, firing at another Maurid with a
magrail rifle and killing her instantly.  The first aimed at the Leader,
while the second stepped forward.

“The officer
will want this one alive,” said the second Caca.  “He will want to
interrogate him and see why he betrayed us.”

The Leader could
not see, but he heard enough to know that he did not want to be captured
alive.  He raised his pistol, held down the trigger, and stood up from his
crouch.  The Caca with the magrail fired at him, now in fear that the
crazed Maurid would kill them.  The magrail rifle spat a hypervelocity
pellet that hit the Leader in the torso, severing his spine and dropping him to
the floor.  As his vision faded he knew that the devices would soon go
off, as soon as his heart stopped beating.

Moments later
the five devices on the com board detonated, small antimatter bombs that
totally demolished the entire communications chamber, killing the two Cacas,
even damaging the superconducting cables that ran under the chamber.  The
Ca’cadasans had captured the com room that contained the equipment that they
needed to link their units through the jamming.  But it would be days
before they had replaced the equipment.

Chapter  Twenty-one

Our pleasures were simple - they
included survival.

Dwight D. Eisenhower.

CAPITULUM, JEWEL, AND TRANSIT
POINTS, APRIL 8
^TH
, 1002.

“I need to be
there,” said Sean over the com to Jennifer as he walked through the corridor to
the gate room of the Hexagon.

“You are not
going to go into that war zone,” yelled Jennifer, her face in his mind through
the com link.  “Do you hear me?”

“I am not going
into the war zone,” he replied.  “No, ma’am.  I am going to one of
the assembly systems, though.  I want to see the refugees with my own
eyes.”

“Will that
really do any good?  Can’t you let your people handle this?  Let someone
else deal with the shit this war is generating?”

“I need to be
there,” said Sean, glancing at the woman walking beside him, his Chief of
Detail, Karillia Sverdlov.  The small woman walked alongside the Emperor,
her eyes constantly in motion, while her eyes had the half focused look of
someone in link.  Four of her detail walked ahead, twenty meters down the
corridor, while another five followed behind.  Sean knew there were other
agents of the detail who had already gone ahead, and more that would follow a
little later.  “Don’t you understand.  These people will be coming
through those gates scared and disoriented.  And they will need someone to
reassure them that their nation will live again.  I really can’t think of
anyone better suited to give them that reassurance.”

“Just don’t do
anything stupid, and come back to me.”

“When have I
done anything stupid?”

“You mean like
allowing yourself to be captured by terrorists and shape shifters so you could pull
off a one man rescue of a commoner,” she said with a mental laugh that came
over the link.

“And what
else?  And don’t you dare answer that.”

They came to the
doorway to the gate chamber, newly fortified after the attack on the
Donut.
 
One of the walls of the corridor facing the door had firing ports, and the
Emperor knew those positions were manned.  A fire team of Marines in heavy
armor stood guarding the door, along with a Fleet duty officer and a rating
with the scanner.

The young rating
ran the scanner over everyone in the party, looking embarrassed as she did the
same to the Emperor.  But regulations were regulations.  The scan
included the newest strategy for detecting shifters, communicating with the
nanites already within their systems to get a deep DNA profile.

“They’re clear,
sir,” said the rating, and the officer saluted, then motioned for the Marine
sergeant in charge of that detail to open the heavy hatch into the gate
room.  The door slid open, and the one gate in that chamber was revealed,
its mirror surface shining under the bright lights of the room.  Three
more armored marines stood in the room, along with three ratings and an officer
behind a control panel that could be used to call up myriad defensive systems,
or shut the gate down entirely.

The Emperor
looked with approval on the setup.  Not that they had to go through such a
setup for security, but that it was in place, since it was now necessary for
the protection of the Empire.  This may eyes, including the people who
were watching from other rooms, this much firepower, assured that no one was
just going to sneak on by to cause trouble.  Since similar security was in
place on the other end of the hole, he expected that nothing would be pushed
through the portal that wasn’t supposed to be.

Sean returned
the salute of the officer, who, as the leader of the detail, was the only one
who was required to turn his attention from the task at hand.  The rest
continued to focus their attention on their charge, the wormhole gate.

“You’re cleared
to transit, your Majesty,” said the officer.  Sean nodded with a smile,
watching as the first quartet of his security detail went though.  A
moment later Karillia looked up at the much taller man.

“We can go
through now, your Majesty,” she said, gesturing to the portal.

Sean walked
through, once again experiencing the feeling of disorientation, the seeming to
be stretched across time and space, to be everywhere at once.  The next he
was aware he was stepping onto the floor of the gate room in Central Docks,
another high security area.  There was an entire squad of Marines in this
chamber, and three of the mirrored portals, the one leading back to the
Hexagon, and two to elsewhere.

They went
through the same procedure and appeared in a much larger room, this one a long,
wide hallway with gate portals across every side on two levels.  Only the
lower level gates were active, thirty to a side.  Each had a pair of
Marines standing to their fronts, while another squad stood in a central
location as a reaction force.  Naval oversight of this chamber was housed
in a chamber that overlooked the room high on one of the end bulkheads.

“Welcome to the
Donut
,
you Majesty,” said the Commander in charge of this chamber, walking quickly
toward Sean as she rendered a hand salute.  “We have an escort to the
chamber that contains your egress portal.”

Sean smiled back
as he returned the salute, his eyes running over this chamber and all the
people in it.  As he watched for a short minute he saw over fifty people
transit out of the room, while forty came through from the other ends of their
portals.  The chamber was a buzzing beehive of deployment and
redeployment, and his security detail was taking great interest in everything
that moved.

“Lieutenant Pah
will lead you to your next embarkation point,” said the Commander, as a small
Asian man stepped forward with a pair of armed ratings.

The Commander
looked like she wanted to say something, but hesitated.

“Did you want to
ask me something, Commander?” asked Sean, raising an eyebrow.

“Not really
ask,” said the officer, an embarrassed look on her face.  “I, just wanted
to tell you how proud the Fleet is to be serving under you, your Majesty. 
We are so glad that you are the one in charge.”

Sean nodded,
feeling the heat of embarrassment flushing his own face.  He turned away
and followed the younger officer down the length of the chamber, heading for
the tram station that would take them the thousand kilometers to the gate room
he would need to transit to get to the next stop.

*    
*     *

Here they
come
, thought Commodore Bryce Suttler as he watched the missile storm on
the tactical plot.  Eighty-four hundred red vector arrows appeared on that
plot, screaming in from out system at point seven one light.  Not the
fastest possible attack speed, but the best the weapons had been able to
develop over a twenty plus light minute flight path.  Still, over eight
thousand weapons was a large attack wave, not one they were guaranteed to be
able to weather.

If only we
had all of the gates operating
, thought Suttler as he turned his attention
to what stood between the two remaining gates and the planet.  Normally
the ships would be worrying about themselves, trying to protect the capital
ships that were the striking power of the Fleet.  Now the priorities were
the gates, without which continued reinforcements couldn’t come through. 
And the planet, on which hundreds of millions of civilians still awaited
rescue.

In between them
and those missiles were a hundred and forty-three destroyers, about half of
them the new antimissile class, sixty-one cruisers, again about half the new
classes, and thirty-eight capital ships.  The four assault ships that had
made it through the gates were closer in to the planet.  They didn’t add
much to the missile defense screen, and had another purpose.  The twelve
older destroyers and three heavy cruisers were there to defend the assault
carriers, themselves priority targets.

“Range, thirteen
million five hundred thousand kilometers,” called out the Tactical
Officer.  “ETA, sixty three seconds.”

Of course the
range and ETA were to the ships on the edge of the screen, four hundred
thousand kilometers further out.  Which meant that any leakers would hit a
little under two second later.

“Screen is
firing counter missiles,” said Tactical, and the plot blossomed with thousands
of green arrows.  Seconds later, thousands more were added, until over
twenty thousand counter missiles were on the plot, accelerating at fifteen
thousand gravities toward the oncoming missile storm.  They could only
endure at that acceleration rate for minutes, but that was all they needed.

For centuries
counter missile doctrine called for accelerating the weapons through tubes to
give them the maximum boost, while attempting to vector them in for a close kill. 
The density of missile storms in this war had demanded a change in
doctrine.  The new doctrine was to put as many weapons into space as
possible, with no thought for maximum accuracy.  Mass proximity kills
would be the new standard, and the new ships carried their missiles in cells so
they could put the maximum into space in the shortest amount of time. 
Launch cells were not a new idea, but they were an idea whose time had come
again.

Counters went in
the kill.  Thousands detonated in moments, killing a thousand
missiles.  Thousands more detonated over the next ten seconds, and less
than four thousand missiles made it through.  The second wave of counters
struck out at those leakers, taking out another thousand.

The lasers on
all of the ships now went into action, firing at missiles that were fifteen
light seconds away.  Most were still misses, but laser rings pumped out a
cumulative thousands of shots a second.  Two thousand made it through, to
run into the line of plasma torpedoes that lay in wait.  That took out
another five hundred, and fourteen hundred came on at eight light seconds,
eleven seconds flight time.

The ships let
loose with everything they had, lasers, particle beams, tube launched counter
missiles, tens of thousands of fast firing projectile weapons.  More
missiles detonated, flaring suns bright against the star fields.  Four
hundred made it through, seeking for the targets they had been programed to
kill, the capital ships of the enemy.  First they had to get through the
screens, and the destroyers and cruisers boosted to interpose themselves
between missiles and targets while firing everything they possessed.  Some
caught damage from friendly fire as projectiles came ripping in after missing
targets.  That was a price the Fleet was willing to pay, pinpricks of
damage to prevent ship killers from making it through.

Two hundred made
it through the final barrage, and thirty-eight screening ships died in blasts
of fury that converted them to plasma, while fifty more sustained damage from
near hits.  Thirty-seven missiles made it through the screen and started
seeking the battleships, which put up their own final defensive fire. 
That fire was almost good enough.  Almost.  And only three battleships
were destroyed, another half dozen damaged.

Suttler leaned
back in his chair with a sigh of relief.  They had weathered the storm
much better than he had thought they would.   That thought brought
the associated guilt.  They had lost over eighteen thousand spacers and
Marines.  Men and women who had wanted to live, and not become the numbers
necessary to safeguard the invasion force.  He knew the important thing
was that the gates survived, and the assault ships.  More ships would come
through the gate, including the vessels needed to resupply those ships which
had almost shot themselves dry of counter missiles.

I can’t wait
to get off this damned gate duty
, was his next thought.  He much
preferred the task of stalking enemy ships from stealth, his own ship his only
responsibility.  Well, soon this task would be over, and he could be back
about it.

*    
*     *

NEW MOSCOW SPACE.

Fleet Admiral
Jerry Kelvin stared at the plot that showed thirty thousand enemy missiles
heading his way.  It would take another hour for those missiles to reach
his force, but he was almost ready to pull the first of his mind screws on that
enemy.

“Send out the
grav pulse,” he ordered his Com Officer.  “And bring our fleet to five
hundred gravities acceleration.”

The pulse went
out, the coded transmission that told all the ships what to do.  His own
force, the one the enemy already knew about, increased its acceleration to the
maximum of its own battleships, some of them near the edge of their safety
margin.  And the other ships, the ones that had been shooting from the
gate for the last couple of hours, started their own deceleration, changing
their vectors depending on how far out they were from the main force.  It
would take just under an hour for those ships to join formation with the main
force.

Kelvin could
wish that he had the other ships that were supposed to come through the gates,
the ones that had missed their windows.  It would take those ships more
than four hours at this point to decelerate to a stop and start on their way
back to the gate, another more than six hour trip.  They would not
participate in this battle, though they might be useful in the next. 
When
they can be here to die along with the rest of us when that large Caca force
gets here.

All of his ships
were now present on the tactical plot, all boosting along at their required
rates, all now radiating heat at a prodigious rate.  The enemy would be
seeing the graviton emissions immediately, and their heat emissions hours after
that.

He switched the
plot to one that showed everything known to several days travel out. 
Grand Fleet Admiral Lenkowski’s force appeared on that plot, as well as the
much smaller force from the Republic.  And, closer than both, the massive
fleet of the enemy, the one being tracked by ships in normal space and
transmitted through the wormhole net.   That was the force he had to
worry about.  That was the one he would be forced to engage days before
Lenkowski’s reached this system.  The Republic force would arrive in time
to add its weight of fire to that fight.  And Lenkowski’s would appear
well after his combined force was rubble in space.