Exodus: Empires at War: Book 7: Counter Strike (37 page)

“Yes, my Lord,” echoed the Com Officer and Helm
Officer in unison.

“Time to orbital insertion of the scouts?” he
asked the Tactical Officer.

“Approximately three hours, my Lord.”

The High Admiral looked at his Com Officer. 
“Order the rest of the force to come to a rest five light minutes from the
planet.  We will come in after the scouts have cleared the way.”

“What if they have ships on the other side of
the planet, my Lord?” asked the Tactical Officer.  “Waiting for us.”

“Then the scouts will find them while they
orbit.  And we will come in and destroy them.  Any other indications that there
might be ships in orbit.”

“No, my Lord,” answered the Tactical Officer. 
“We are still picking up some anomalies, but nothing we can pinpoint.”

In three hours the two pods of scouts, twenty
of the five hundred thousand ton vessels in all, slid into orbit around the
planet.  They held at ten thousand kilometers above the surface, and completed
six orbits before they started dropping kinetic weapons on the cities that
looked totally deserted below.  Bright pinpricks flared on the dayside,
brighter on the night.  And still no reaction.

“It looks like the planet was inhabited, my
Lord,” said the Tactical Officer, playing back the scenes of the surface as
transmitted by the scouts.   Several very large cities, and hundreds of
smaller, were scattered across the world, along with many thousands of villages
and almost countless single habitations.  And still no sign of life.  A dozen
KE weapons landed on one of the cities, blasting large sections of it to
rubble, and still nothing.

“Move the rest of the ships in,” said the High
Admiral.  “Start landing the ground warriors as soon as we are in orbit.  I
will want a thorough search of this world while we demolish the empty cities. 
They are down there, and we are going to get them.”

An hour later the entire force was in orbit,
from five thousand kilometers to as far out as twenty-five thousand.  Shuttles
were scorching their way in through the atmosphere, delivering a platoon of
armored ground warriors each per trip.  And still no sign of the humans.

This is infuriating
, thought the High
Admiral, staring at a holo of the globe that was blossoming pin points of
blinding light as the kinetic weapons continued to fall.

“Sir,” called out the Tactical Officer, a look
of alarm on his face.  “We’re picking up power readings.  Heat spikes,
electromagnetic fields.”

“Where, fool?” growled Jarkastarin, glaring at
his officer.  “Can we get a fix to target them?”

“Everywhere, my Lord,” said the wide eyed
officer.  “And they will be easy enough to target, if we have anything left to
target them with.”

The High Admiral stared in disbelief as the
planet bloomed first with energy spikes, then disappeared under a wave of
generated static.  He was about to give the order to boost away, to leave the
orbit of the planet, to get them far enough out that they could lob high
relativistic missiles in at the world.  As he opened his mouth to shout orders
the flagship shook and shuddered under the strike of a powerful particle beam.

Moments later high velocity missiles started to
rise from the surface, pulling hundreds of gravities through the atmosphere,
then pushing ten thousand gees after they had left the gas envelope behind.

*    
*     *

The common wisdom of space warfare was that
ships had the advantage over planets in all respects.  Planets could be armed
enough to make a conquest more expensive, but they could not beat an invasion
fleet.  But that presupposed that said fleet would take out the orbital
defenses from range, then target what shore defenses they could locate on the
way in.

The planet would, meanwhile, try to obscure the
sensors of the opposing ships to give their weapons a little more time, always
saving some to shoot at the landing shuttles when they made their inevitable
appearance.  This didn’t take into account that the enemy ships might not find
out about the defenses until they were all in orbit of the planet, and within
range of all of the weapons.

This was an Imperial Army show.  Thirty two
brigades of mobile shore artillery had been transferred to the planet through
the wormhole that had been brought there recently.  Ninety-six battalions, two
hundred and eighty-eight batteries.  Each battery had ten of the one thousand
ton mobile shore defense guns.  About a third of the battalions were made up of
hypervelocity projectile cannon, with secondary laser weapons.  Another third
carried heavy particle beams, while the last third were equipped with high
power lasers.  Eight hundred and eighty-eight guns, all fired at once,
concentrating their firepower on the most appropriate targets among the enemy
ships.

The high velocity cannon fired one hundred
kilogram penetrators with nuclear warheads at point two c.  The rounds tore
through the atmosphere as almost instantaneous streaks of fire that hit the
enemy ships in low orbit, punching through electromag fields as if they didn’t
exist, penetrating several meters of armor before their warheads detonated. 
The guns were specifically designed to take out ships in medium to low orbit,
ones that would not be able to react in time to weapons the fields couldn’t
repel, and the outer layer of their armor couldn’t withstand.

The twenty scouts ships in low planetary orbit
were taken out in an instant, each struck by scores of one megaton warheads. 
Half shattered, leaving swarms of debris flying around the world.  The other
half was killed just as well as if they had been blown apart, all of their
grabber systems taken out, adrift with no functional weapons systems, doomed to
eventually fall back into the atmosphere.

The next layer of ships, scouts and a number of
supercruisers, were also targeted.  The first salvo toward them all hit the
ships that were not prepared for their fire.  The second volley had similar
results, if not quite as spectacular.  By the third volley the ships were
taking out about half of the rounds with counter fire, lasers, particle beams
and close in defensive projectile weapons.  Hundreds of rounds disappeared in
bright pinpoints of nuclear fire, while the others continued on to strike their
targets, which didn’t have time to maneuver out of the way.

The cannon immediately lifted on their own
grabbers, using the shielding of the planetary defensive jamming to move to new
locations.  Over ninety percent of them made it.  Ten percent took either
severe damage from close misses, or were totally destroyed, their locations
plotted from the trajectories of their shells.  As soon as they had located new
positions, they reacquired the closest targets and opened fire again.

The particle beam equipped batteries took aim
at both the ships in medium orbit and many of those further out.  The beams,
traveling at point six light, packed a punch, though not in the same range as
the hypervelocity projectile cannon.  They still ravaged the hulls of the
target ships, eating holes in the outer armor, burning through grabbers,
knocking out laser rings.  The electromag fields attenuated them somewhat, but
at this range the beams held together well, and achieved about eighty percent
of mass on target.  The guns fired for ten seconds, keeping their protons on
target, then ceased fire as the projectors started to overheat.  The guns
lifted at this time and moved to new positions, sustaining about the same
casualty rates as the projectile batteries.

Lasers concentrated on the furthest vehicles
out.  They were not as effective against ships with strong electromagnetic
fields as the other weapon types.  But they still did some damage.  And while
all the batteries were firing, prepositioned missiles rose from the surface and
headed for the enemy ships.

*    
*     *

“Get us out of here,” yelled the High Admiral,
feeling his flagship shudder underneath as particle beams struck.  The ships in
low and medium orbit were dropping off the plot at an alarming rate, or losing
power and all acceleration.  “Order all the force to move away from the
planet.” 
We’ll move out of their range, or at least the range of their
shore batteries, and lob missiles at them until this duplicitous world is dead.

The ship shuddered again, two different
motions, that of being hit by streams of fast moving protons, and the shift
caused by launching counter missiles.  The force was getting some intercepts,
but the volume of fire and the close range was not allowing enough.  The High
Admiral looked on a side viewer to see one of his battleships hit by a missile,
actinic fire blurring the view of the hull for a moment.  It was not a large
warhead, none of the missiles seemed to carry the gigaton range weapons that
warships employed.  While in the low megaton range, they were still enough to
cause considerable damage, even to the tough supercruisers and battleships. 
Enough damage to allow other missiles to strike, until enough had hit to take
the ships out of action.

The Ca’cadasan ships pulled away at their
maximum safe acceleration, pushing crews heavily into their couches as they
accelerated at well over five hundred gravities.  It wasn’t fast enough to take
them away from their killers, as the shore batteries continued their tactic of
fire and move, shoot and scoot.  The High Admiral railed as his force died
around him.  Until they had finally got out of effective range of the weapons,
five light seconds away.  Naval weaponry would still be effective at this
range, but not the smaller weapons of mobile shore guns, firing through an
atmosphere.

“Report,” said the High Admiral, looking over
at his Tactical Officer.

“Twenty-three ships made it away from the
planet,” said that male, turning a frightened eye toward his commander. 
“Thirty-four still remain in orbit of the planet, unable to boost.”

“Where they will die,” whispered the High
Admiral.  He watched on the viewer as one of those ships exploded, hit by more
of the nuclear tipped shells.  Missiles were ignoring those close in vessels
now.  Another exploded, and bright flashes ran over the hulls of some more. 
I
will avenge you
, he thought, now watching as the planet launched missiles
reached for his remaining force.  His ships were now cycling missiles at a
prodigious rate, their laser rings sending off beam after beam, knocking most
of the enemy weapons out of space.

There were some hits, several dozen.  The small
warheads really didn’t do much damage, but to ships that were already in dire
straits and trying to get away, it was enough.  One battleship had taken so
much that a strike by one small megaton warhead hurt enough to cause an
antimatter breach aboard, and the twenty-five million ton vessel went up in a
flare of spreading plasma.

“Take us to a light hour out, and we’ll make
them pay,” he told the Helm Officer.

“We’re picking up incoming objects,” called out
the Tactical Officer.  “Over two thousand of them.  Accelerating in at over ten
thousand gravities.”

“Where in the hells are they coming from?”

“It looks like that moon over there,” said the
Tactical Officer in alarm, as the main holo switched to a view of said body, an
eight hundred kilometer diameter rock sitting in orbit four  million kilometers
from the planet.  Along their path of retreat.  And it was firing missiles from
surface batteries that were on an intercept course with the force.

“Turn our vector,” shouted the High Admiral. 
Two
thousand missiles.  And what kind?  The same as were fired from the planet?  Or
ship killers?

“We’re picking up ships coming from that moon,
my Lord,” called out the Tactical Officer, his tone one of panic.

The Admiral leaned forward in his chair to take
in the view of the central holo, a close up of the edge of that rock, and what
looked to be a hundred vector arrows coming around it.  The kind of vector
arrows that indicated ships.

“They’re calling for our surrender, my Lord,”
called out the Com Officer.

“No,” growled the High Admiral.  He glared at
the Com Officer, until a flash at the corner of his eye attracted his
attention.  He turned back to one of the holos in time to see another of his
battleships explode.

“Get us out of this.  We can’t let these vermin
take us.  You can’t let these vermin destroy me.”

“There is no way out, my Lord,” said the
Tactical Officer, his expression changing from fear to disgust.  “We have two
choices.  We can surrender, in which case the humans will take us prisoner, and
our fate will be in their hands.  Or we can continue to resist against a force
that we cannot defeat, and we can die.”

The High Admiral stared with wide eyes at the
holo, then back to his Tactical Officer.

“They have called for our surrender again, my
Lord,” said the Com Officer.  “They want an answer.”

“Missile impact in three minutes,” called out
the Tactical Officer.  “Orders, my Lord?”

The High Admiral sat in his chair, staring at
the holo with wide eyes, a low growl in his throat.

“Order the force to surrender,” the Tactical
Officer said to the Com Officer.

“You cannot give that command,” said the Com
Officer.  “Only the High Admiral can command while he is alive.”