Theogony 3: Terra Stands Alone
Read Theogony 3: Terra Stands Alone Online
Authors: Chris Kennedy
Terra Stands Alone
Book Three of The Theogony
By
Chris Kennedy
PUBLISHED BY: Chris Kennedy
Copyright
©
2014 Chris Kennedy
All Rights Reserved
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Chris Kennedy at:
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License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only
and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
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I would like to thank Linda, Jennie and Jimmy, who took the time to critically read this work and make it better. I would also like to thank my mother, without whose steadfast belief in me, I would not be where I am today. Thank you. This book is dedicated to my wife and children, who sacrificed their time with me so that I could write it.
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Cover art by Genesis Graphic Design
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Author’s Notes
Note: When more than one race refers to a planet or star in Janissaries, the same name is used by both races in order to prevent confusion. Also on the topic of planet naming, the normal convention for planets is to take the name of the parent star and add a lower case letter (i.e., Tau Ceti ‘b’). The first planet discovered in a system is usually given the designation ‘b’ and later planets are given subsequent letters as they are found. In order to prevent confusion in Janissaries, the closest planet to the star in a star system is given the letter ‘a’, with the rest of the planets given subsequent letters in order of their proximity to the star.
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You can ask me for anything
, except time.
― Napoleon Bonaparte
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Terran Government Headquarters, Lake Pedam, Nigeria
, December 10, 2020
The
president watched as the battlecruiser emerged from the stargate. Within seconds, light flared as the first of the antimatter mines guarding the stargate detonated alongside it. Designed for stargate penetration, the ship’s shields absorbed the blast, and its lasers began firing as the battlecruiser’s crew tried to fight its way clear.
Unlike the static minefields of old,
though, this minefield was mobile; each of the 50 pound devices had a motor that gave the mine a final burst of speed toward its target. As the inner layer of mines attacked the warship, the next layer moved inward, filling in the spaces of the mines that had detonated or been destroyed. Flashes showed that some of the ship’s lasers found their targets, but space is big. The mines, comparatively, were
very
small, and the asymmetric nature of the threat made them extremely difficult to counter. The battlecruiser was caught in a web of mines and a second mine exploded. A third mine exploded seconds later, overloading the warship’s shields with its 215 megaton blast.
A second battlecruiser emerged from the stargate in time to see
a fourth mine detonate alongside the first battlecruiser, engulfing its engines in the explosion. 30 anti-ship missiles, launched from canisters at point blank range, followed closely after the explosion. Powerless, the ship’s crew was unable to defend itself, and the missiles hit the center of the ship from opposite sides, ripping it in half.
The second battlecruiser was unable to go to
the first ship’s aid, as the second warship’s emergence had triggered the next layer of mines. Its crew tried to avoid the fate of the first ship and successfully eliminated over 30 of the mines as they approached. Unfortunately for the crew, the minefield numbered in the tens of thousands, and it was not long before one got close enough to activate. Again, the first detonation was absorbed by the ship’s shields. The second and third mines exploded nearly simultaneously, their blasts overlapping to knock out the battlecruiser’s shields. The ship’s crew tried to make it back to the safety of the stargate by flipping the ship end over end, but the ship’s path was blocked by the emergence of the battleship that followed the battlecruisers into the Solar System.
Over 1.5 miles long and massing over 4 million tons, the battleship was better prepared for the minefield
; it had an improved tracking system that could find and target the mines. It also had over 150 lasers and gamma ray lasers (grasers) of various sizes with which to defend itself. As the crew identified the missile canisters for what they were, counter-missiles leapt out from missile ports to preemptively target them. Working in concert, the battleship’s crew methodically tried to cut its way out of the minefield.
P
rogrammed to target the aft end of a ship, one of the mines reached the back of the second battlecruiser, and power on the ship died as its engines were destroyed in a massive explosion. Another mine struck the front of the ship, vaporizing a 45 feet long section of its hull and splitting a large seam down the starboard side. Fluids, people and equipment were sucked out of the ship as it tumbled out of control. Worried that the ship might make it past the minefield, the defenders launched five more missiles from the periphery in a coup de grace that destroyed it.
Although several mines exploded
alongside the battleship, none succeeded in breaching its shields. Seeing that the battleship might make it through their defenses, the Solar System’s guardians activated all of their manual defenses, and anti-ship missiles began launching at the invader from all sides. Each canister only held one missile, but the defenders had over 1,000 of the large canisters, and they launched 250 missiles at the battleship. From a range of only a million miles, the battleship’s crew only had seconds to intercept the missiles accelerating at over 100,000 times the force of gravity (100,000 G’s).
Counter-missile
missiles leapt from ports all around the battleship, and counter-missile lasers retargeted on the incoming ship killers, but there wasn’t time to stop them all. 87 missiles from the first volley made it through the ship’s defenses. Almost half of these spent themselves on the battleship’s redundant shields, but the battleship’s shields finally failed, and the Terran missiles tore gaping holes down its sides.
Seeing that they were incapable of stopping all of the weapons arrayed against them, the battleship’s crew
rotated the ship to retreat to the safety of the stargate. Flashes of light could be seen down the length of the battleship as another volley of 250 anti-ship missiles struck home, killing its defenses and its defenders. As the ship accelerated back toward the stargate, one of the missiles hit the aft end of the ship, knocking out one of its four engines.
T
he battleship neared the safety of the stargate, but two more mines were in its path and detonated alongside it. One hit the middle of the craft, taking a 100’ bite out of its side. The other mine functioned as intended and struck the back of the ship, where it knocked out two more of the warship’s engines and caused the fourth to go out of line. Already screaming at maximum power, the remaining engine skewed the ship as the off-center thrust spun the ship in a circle. Its crew and the system’s defenders watched in horror as the massive ship hit the stargate sideways, and an invisible knife cut the ship in half. The aft end of the ship entered the stargate and went through, while the front half spun off to the side of the stargate, unpowered and out of control.
The general
in charge of the briefing turned off the recording. “As you can see, Mrs. President,” he said, “we were successful in stopping the Drakuls from entering the system; however, it looks like part of their ship made it back to the other side of the stargate. They are going to know that there is a civilization on this side, and they will probably come through next time in much greater force. If they do, we are going to be in trouble... just stopping those three ships used up over half of the defenses we prepositioned at the gate.”
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