Exodus: Machine War 1 Supernova. (33 page)

“Six minutes,
twenty-three seconds,” called back CIC.

And they’re
on their own for about a minute and a half
, she thought. 
They should be
OK.  They have to be OK.

All
communications and tracking were occurring by graviton emission, allowing quick
exchange of information well above the speed of light.  But also limiting that
information.  It was hoped that the opponent was working with the same
limitations, but no one really knew.

“Missile
launch,” called out CIC, voice taut with tension.  “
Gjoa
has launched
her warning shot.  Closest approach to
Bogey One
in five minutes and
eleven seconds.”

The green arrow
of the hyperdrive missile separated from the icon of the light cruiser, headed
back at five thousand gravities.  It was actually slowing down in relation to
the firing ship as it fought the velocity that the vessel carried.  In relation
to the oncoming ships of
Bogey One
it was adding forty nine kilometers a
second.  By the time it reached its target it would be heading in at a closing
velocity of point nine nine light, with the addition of the velocity of the
approaching ships.

“We have missile
launches from
Bogey One
,” called out CIC.  “Multiple launches,
estimating fourteen missiles launched, four thousand two hundred gravities
acceleration.”

The new red
arrows appeared, on a heading toward the rear screening force.  It seemed like
a pretty feeble response to the shot at them, which the other force had
definitely misinterpreted.

“
Gjoa
estimated
the missiles are in the eight thousand ton range,” said the Com Officer,
listening in on the com between the cruiser and the flagship’s CIC.

“Those aren’t
missiles,” said Captain Timofeyavich over the com.  “Those are attack ships.”

And if I’m
right, they are truly unmanned
, thought the Commodore as the red arrows
crossed the path of the green arrow.

“
Gjoa
has
re-tasked her missile to attack,” reported CIC.  “Force launching first volley,
now.”

Twenty green
arrows appeared near to the Imperial ships, heading toward
Bogey One
at
five thousand gravities.  Fifteen seconds later the second volley went out,
nineteen, all that they had of the hyper capable missiles.  All they would be
able to fight the battle with at range.  After this, they would have to close
with the enemy and fight with beam weapons.  And that was an even scarier
proposition, considering this foe was a complete unknown, with unknowable
capabilities.

“Change of
orders,” announced the Commodore as she watched the arrows, which looked so
harmless on the plot, approach the other arrows they were intended to destroy. 
“All ships in forward force are to fire on
Bogey Two
as soon as they
enter range.”

She continued to
stare at the holo, waiting for weapons to enter the range of her ships, so she
could see what the enemy capabilities truly were.

*     *     *

The single
missile fired by the light cruiser
Gjoa
came in on its target at almost
point nine nine light.  Half blinded by particle acceleration, it still had a
clear enough view of that target to adjust course, aiming for a direct hit.  If
the Imperials didn’t know the capabilities of their opponents, neither did that
opponent know theirs.  The targeted vessel opened up with lasers and fast
firing projectile weapons, while her sisters tried to vector their own beam
weapons in on the fast moving missile, which saved its own surprise for last.

The missile’s
ECM came up on full power, blasting the space around it with a cacophony of
different frequencies, showing up on the sensors of the enemy ships as dozens
of objects that weren’t there.  It spoofed the fire control of the enemy
vessels, enough to let the missile get within a microsecond of the targeted
ship.  They still found the solution at the last moment, vectoring their beams
in to strike the missile, just a fraction of a second after the warhead
flowered the twenty submunitions it carried, sending them into the enemy ship
in an unstoppable shotgun blast.  Only five of the multiple warheads struck,
each with a mere twenty megatons of antimatter.  The rest detonated within
twenty kilometers of the ship, sending their heat and radiation sheeting into
the vessel.

Part of the ship
came out of the harsh bright light of the detonation, about half of its million
and a half ton bulk.  Nothing living could have survived the acceleration forces
involved, and it was amazing that enough hyperdrive capacity was still up and
running to keep it from falling out of hyper.  Emergency systems started
repairs as the vessel tumbled away.  It would not be back in this fight, but it
would be back, and every kilogram of machinery was vital to cause, now that the
old enemy was back.

The wave of
missiles came in next, using both their greater acceleration and the enemy’s
own velocity to get to them before the enemy weapons, which were playing catch
up to the human ships.  The first volley had held back its acceleration just a
bit, while the second volley had pushed it just a little harder than max for
twenty seconds, before both volleys, now combined into one wave of thirty-nine
missiles, coasted for another twenty seconds before going back into full boost.

Fifteen of the
missiles were the larger cruiser version, the other twenty-four destroyer
weapons with lesser ECM capabilities and smaller warheads.  The destroyer
weapons came in as the decoys, more or less, sending out signals intended to
make them easier to track, at first, while the cruiser weapons hid behind their
wall of static.  The enemy ships had learned from the first missile something
of the capabilities of these weapons.  They took out twenty-one of the
destroyer class missiles on approach, turning them into bright pinpoints of
light that faded almost immediately as their matter fell out of hyper, followed
more slowly by the released photons.  Three destroyer class missiles made it to
final approach, only to be blotted out just before they got into effective
detonation range.  Of the fifteen cruiser missiles, six were killed as they
moved into attack range, three more just before they got into final release
range, and six released their multiple warheads.  Half of those were killed
before they could strike, though most did some damage on detonation, sending
enough particles and energetic photons into the ships to cause significant
surface damage.  The other fifty-nine hit their targets, sending the shock of
the blast wave and the hellish fury of heat and radiation through the enemy
hulls.

When the blasts
cleared, there were still eight intact enemy vessels heading for the rear
screening force.  Four others had been blotted from existence, while one fell
behind, trailing debris and barely keeping itself in hyper.  A minute later it
fell back to normal space in a catastrophic translation, probably destroyed,
but if not, at least out of the battle.

Now it was the
turn of the enemy weapons.  They were not really missiles, though they had been
fired with no thought of their survival.  More like kamikaze attack ships,
though they lacked the crews that would have been necessary to make them true
suicide vessels.  They now approached at a closing speed of point four-two
light, easy enough for the Imperial ships to track.  As they entered range the
Imperial ships starting launching their limited store of hyper capable
counter-missiles, cycling them through their launchers on the theory that if
they didn’t stop these weapons, it wouldn’t matter if they had any left over
for the next wave.

The attack craft
mounted their own weapons, lasers, projectile weapons only useful out to about
three hundred kilometers, their own missiles.  They fired on the
counter-missiles, blasting most of them out of space before they could close. 
Three got through, and two of the enemy weapons exploded in space as the one
megaton warheads detonated in head on explosions.  Laser took out five more of
the enemy vessels, while particle beams, only effective out to two hundred
thousand kilometers, killed two more.  Which left four to come into attack
range and strike at their targets.  Two were direct hits, two near misses, and
when the flares died two heavily damaged Imperial vessels, the cruiser and a
destroyer, were all that were left.  They lost acceleration,
Gjoa
down
to less than a hundred gravities, while
Xuanzang
could barely make two
hundred.

*     *     *

“Shit,” cursed
Khrushchev as she saw her rear screen effectively cease to exist on the
tactical.  The enemy had also been hurt, but there were still eight coming on,
and the two damaged ships were really in no shape to stop them.

“
New Potsdam.
 
Mason, I want you to drop to the rear of the convoy and engage those ships at
range as long as you have missiles.  We’ll drop back to help as soon as we take
care of
Bogey Two.
  Good luck to you and your crew.”

The Com Officer
typed on his board, converting her commands to the grav pulses the heavy
cruiser could read.  After a few minutes he looked up.  “Captain Mason
acknowledges, and wishes us luck in return.”

“
Roebuck
and
Jeannette
have engaged
Bogey Two
,” came the report from CIC.  A
few moments later he continued.  “Destroyers are also firing missiles.”

“When do we come
within range?”

“One minute and
nine seconds,” responded CIC.  “We will be able to add our fire to theirs on
the third volley.”

And
unfortunately, all of those ships but
Stewart
will be out of hyper
capable missiles, and she’ll only have two more volleys before she’s out.  Damn,
but we need the dual purpose missiles out here.

“Enemy is
firing, twelve of their attack ships, I mean missiles.”

And we don’t
know what we mean,
thought the Commodore. 
But whatever they are, they
can only seem to fire one at a time.  Or maybe they only have one on each
ship. 
Ten seconds later that was answered in the negative.  “Enemy is
firing another volley.”  And ten seconds later a third was released.  Twenty
seconds after that
Drake
bucked slightly as she sent a volley of twenty
hyperdrive missiles toward the enemy, followed a moment later by
Endurance’s
volley
.

The battle
cruisers each carried four hundred missiles, about half of what a Fleet hyper
VI scout capital ship carried.  While seeming an impressive number, only forty
of those carried a hyperdrive.  By contrast, a Fleet heavy cruiser like
New
Potsdam
carried six hundred of the slightly smaller cruiser missiles, and
eighty of those were hyper capable, as many as both Command battle cruisers
carried between them.

Twenty seconds
later the battle cruisers fired their second volley, and had shot themselves
dry of capital class hyperdrive weapons. 
Greenville
followed suit a
minute later, and a minute after that the destroyers fired, letting off their
two volleys.

The missiles
from the forward screen came in first, thirty-two cruiser and thirty two
destroyer class weapons, followed by a second volley of eight missiles fired
from
Stewart
in her third and fourth volleys.

This time the
enemy ships tried something different.  Each released another volley of
weapons, followed by two more.  But only one was targeted on the Imperial
vessels, this time on the Commodore’s group, while the others headed out on
paths that would take them into the courses of the human missiles.  All of
those weapons were destroyed, taking over fifty of the human missiles with
them, leaving a mere dozen to continue in to the attack.  One enemy ship
sustained heavy damage, while the rest came through the barrage combat
effective, if not all completely unharmed. 
Stewart’s
lone third and
fourth volley came in with less than overwhelming numbers, and failed, with the
exception of a single hit that blotted one of the million and a half ton
vessels from space.

The three enemy
volleys, also combined into one wave, came screaming in at the human ships. 
Again the counters took out some, while close in weapons got some others.  But
this time the majority of the missiles hit targets, and the entire forward
screen was destroyed.

There was shock
on the flag bridge as they watched the two cruisers and four destroyers drop
from the plot.  And the red arrows of nine weapons that could not find targets
altered vectors and headed for the battle cruisers.

*     *     *

Four of the
eight ships from
Bogey One
decelerated at twelve hundred gravities, aiming
to match velocities and capture
Gjoa.  Xuanzang
tried to defend her
flag, firing her surviving laser ring at the closing vessels.  She scored some
hits, but achieved very limited results against the electromagnetic fields and
armor of the enemy ships.  They returned fire, and burned large holes through
her hull, first crippling, then causing a containment breach in her antimatter
stores which blew the ship into a cloud of plasma that catastrophically
translated the moment it formed.

Two of the ships
stopped at a distance after matching velocities with the cruiser, while the
other two closed to within fifty meters of the warship and started sending
objects across through the linked hyperfields.  Man sized objects, if not
always quite manned shaped.  They burned through the hull, fighting their way
in against the resistance of Marines and armed Spacers.  They lost half their
numbers, and more came across the space, until they overwhelmed the resistance
and entered the cruiser.

Moments after
the invaders started to swarm through the ship it blew, containment breach set
off by its own crew when they realized what had got on board, and what their
fate would be. 
Gjoa
converted into plasma, taking her crew and every
invader aboard into total annihilation.  Blast, radiation and heavy pieces of
the cruiser struck the two close in enemy ships, all but destroying them and
sending their remains into a catastrophic translation as well, leaving only six
vessels for
Bogey One
to continue after the convoy.