Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) (5 page)

“And we’re going
to wear, these, things, into combat?” asked one of the soldiers.

“For a part of
the mission,” agreed Walborski, nodding.  “For more than half of it you
will be acting as Rangers, moving and fighting in the accustomed way.  But
for part of it you will be using this combat armor.  Believe me. 
Without the protection of body armor, you will not survive, and without the
equipment you will be carrying along, the people you’ve come to rescue will not
make it out.  So just settle down, do what you’re told, and when the time
comes you will know everything I do.  And hopefully quite a bit more.”

Cornelius looked
over the men, seeing looks of confusion, disapproval, even anger on many of the
faces.  Most of the men had come right out of infantry training and into
Ranger school.  The last time they had been exposed to the armored suits
was years, in some cases over a decade, in their past.  Even the ones who
had served tours in standard infantry units had not actually used a suit since
they transferred into Ranger training.  Their commanding officer was in
the same boat.

“The suits have
all been measured for your particular body size and shape,” he told his men,
looking over the armor and seeing a blinking cursor over the one that was
his.  “Follow the cursor to your armor and try it on.  Supposedly it
is fitted perfectly, but we all know how that goes.”

There was some
laughter as the men started moving around the room, headed for their own
suits.  Cornelius walked to his and backed into the suit.  He lacked
the skull outlet that all regular infantry carried to interface with their
suits.  Instead, the helmets would interface with the Rangers’ own implants
through close range carrier signals.  His suit closed up around him and
sealed, and he felt the mental connection coming up.

Instantly his
senses were coming through the suit sensors.  His own senses had been
augmented to the point where they were on par with any natural creature that
humans knew of.  But now he was seeing in not just the visible and near
sides of the electromagnetic spectrum, but also in radio waves, like a passive
radar.  Sounds were coming in beyond the range of sonar.  He moved
his arms in the suit, his own augmented reflexes making the movements much
faster than an ordinary trooper could have managed.

“OK,” he said
over the com.  “Everyone settled.”

The
acknowledgements started coming back, an overwhelming babble.  With a
thought he cut out the vocal feed and started counting the responses on his
HUD.  “We’re going to go for a little shake down run,” he announced,
smiling as he thought about all of the groans which must now be filling the
airwaves.  “So let’s get going, you mugs.”

All of the men
followed him out of the room and into the bright light of the F3 primary. 
Walborski looked at the temperature on his HUD, noting that it was as hot as
Sestius ever was, not quite up to the standard of Azure, but close.  But
the environmental controls on the suit were functioning to standard as well,
and it was comfortable within the armor.

Walborski
started off on the run, looking down the long path that led through the
training base.  He knew he was in as good of shape as any of these men,
but that most of them were still in his class.  Setting the pointer on the
HUD on a target thirty kilometers away, he set his pace at fast, his armored
feet slapping the hard surface of the road.

They went the
first couple of kilometers at a sedate ten kilometers an hour, catching the
catcalls and jeers of other special ops troops that were working or exercising
outside their barracks.  Other Rangers, by the battalion, Marine Force
Recon, Fleet Commandos, all proud men who thought they were better than the
others.  Some of them would be going on their missions without armor, and
were looking down on a unit that was now equipped with what the ordinary grunts
wore.  Some of them would soon find out that they also were going to be
wearing the suits.

“Let’s show
these mugs how to run,” he called over the com, then increased his pace,
hitting twenty kilometers per hour, up to thirty, then passing forty, still
under what they could hit without the suits.  A curve was coming up, and a
glance at the rear view of his HUD showed that most of the men were looking at
that curve, anticipating the change of direction.

Cornelius picked
up the pace, up to sixty kilometers an hour, running in a straight line, off of
the road at the curve.  There was a five meter tall fence straight ahead,
and Cornelius pushed the pace again, then took the last step and leapt into the
air, clearing the fence easily and landing lightly on his feet, despite the
weight of the armor.

“You’ve got the
target on your HUD,” said Cornelius over the com, sending them the data. 
“Last one there buys a round.”

That got them
going.  Immediately a couple of men passed the Captain, pushing their
suits for all they were worth.  Cornelius smiled, knowing what was ahead,
which would not show up on his soldiers’ HUD until they were very near.

“You OK, sir?,”
called out one of his platoon leaders as he passed, using his own command
circuit to override Cornelius’ com block.

“I’m fine,
Lieutenant,” he answered with a short laugh.  “Just getting old.”

That elicited a
laugh from the other officer, who continued on at a fast pace.  Cornelius
watched as about half of this company passed him, then picked up the pace to
stay in the middle, looking at his map as they approached the first
obstacle.  He went ahead and dropped the com block, listening to the back
and forth between the men.  And then came the yells of surprise as they
reached the canyon.

Cornelius
laughed as he made his way through his men to reach the canyon that loomed like
a knife slash through the hills, trees growing up to the cut.

“What the hell’s
stopping you,” yelled Cornelius, running up to the slash and jumping in,
letting his suit fall until his sensors told him he was twenty meters from
touchdown.  His grabbers took over, slowing him to a hard but sustainable
touchdown.  As soon as he hit he jumped, taking off over the rocks at the
bottom and coming back down thirty meters further on, aiming for an open area
across the jumble.

The men started jumping
down, remembering what kind of capabilities they had in these suits.  The
Captain reached the other wall and went into a hard jump, soaring into the air,
cutting in his grabbers as soon as he reached the point where he was on the
verge of falling back, then up and over the lip of the canyon and into the
woods beyond.

“What a bunch of
slugs,” he yelled over the com, running through the thick woods, dodging trees,
for the most part, slamming into several with hits that would have stretched
him on the ground if he hadn’t been armored.  His audio sensors picked up
the sounds of the first group of his men hitting the top of the canyon and
running on, crashing through the brush like a bunch of dinosaurs.  If this
had been a combat situation, they would have let any enemy for tens of
kilometers know they were coming.

Ten kilometers
further was the river, three hundred meters across, deep and swift. 
Cornelius could have flown over it, but decided this obstacle called for
something different.  “No flying over the river, guys.  You have to
cross it otherwise.”  With that he dove in, engaging his grabber units to
pull him along underwater.  He hit forty kilometers per hour in seconds,
and crossed the river in half a minute, surfacing and coming out of the water just
as the first of his men jumped in.

Cornelius could
track them crossing the river by the wakes they were stirring up.  Some
forgot to use their grabbers, both slowing them and creating more of a
disturbance on the surface.  The Captain pulled a sonic stun grenade from
a suit pouch, activated it, and tossed it into the river.  Three seconds
later it went off, sending a shock wave out in all directions that rippled the
water.

Several suits
shot out of the water, their wearers remembering their grabbers under the
duress of sonic shock.  Walborski studied them carefully, too many rising
too far above the water, easy targets for whomever was waiting. 
We’ve
got a lot more training to do before I’ve got people who can fight in
armor. 
He knew they wouldn’t ever be as quiet or stealthy in armor,
despite its systems, as they would be when operating in their usual
fashion.  Still, his expectations were that they would be much better than
regular grunts.  And they would meet his expectations if he had to run
them into the ground.

After half of
his men made it across before he turned away and started through the woods
himself.  He had just attended a week of training in the suits, part of
the effort to let the teaching trickle down.  Even so, he was having
problems slipping the suit through the thick woods, something he normally
prided himself on, thanks to his work as a game guide on New Detroit. 
This was a more serious business than helping rich lords find their trophy
animal.   This was going to be life or death, and not just for them.

The last
obstacle was just ahead, and about thirty of the men had already hit it, and
been hit back.  Suits stood in frozen positions all up and down the bare
slope of the hill.  There were soldiers at the top of the hill, sighting down
their laser rifles, set on ultra-low power, taking sighted shots at every suit
they could see.  As the lasers hit the medium suits the training programs
kicked in, and the armor froze in place for exactly thirty seconds.

A few more
Rangers stepped onto the slope, coming out of the woods before they noted their
frozen fellows.  One ducked back into the woods, the other two stopped in
place, and a moment later there was another pair of statues standing on the
hill.

The Captain
engaged his stealth field, his suit fading into the background as its
electromag shield bent the light around it.  His own systems, set for
instructor mode, didn’t react the same way to any laser hits.  His HUD
told him when a laser contacted his field, but he didn’t freeze up the way the
others did.  When thirty seconds had passed the frozen suits started
coming back to life.  In most cases, as soon as the suit started to move
it froze up again as it was hit by another beam.  Cornelius walked up the
hill under his invisibility field, taking a couple of hits, only one a sure
strike at his suit, the other terminating with the suddenness of a sweep that
was aimed at something else.

Moments later
some blurs came out of the woods, showing up on the Captain’s sensors from
their infrared signature.  Most stayed low to the ground, taking advantage
of what cover and concealment there was, just as they had been trained. 
Most made it a third of the way, some even half way, before they were hit.

Walborski
listened in as the company began to shake out into its individual platoons and
squads, plans made, orders given and received.  Men started to move in
groups, making their approaches under stealth, some quickly moving in and out
of sight while others came up the sides or back of the hill, moving slowly,
taking advantage of all the cover.

The first man to
make it up and tried to grab one of the infantrymen and drag him from his
position.  The suit blocked him from that action, so he started picking up
small rocks and tossing them at the grunt.  This was enough distraction
that some more men made it up through that soldier’s field of fire.  That
opened the floodgates, as soldiers got in the way of the men in their firing
positions, taking the beams and freezing in place.  Cornelius smiled as he
watched the action.  His men had figured out the situation, and were
gaming it for all it was worth.

In five minutes
everyone was crowded together on the top of the hill, their objective. 
All knew that if this had been real most of them would have been killed, but
they had satisfied the requirements of the exercise.   The smile
still on his face, the company commander walked to the top of the hill.

“So,” he said,
looking around at the suits that seemed all the same, the name of the wearer
appearing over them on his HUD.  “who was the last man up the hill?
 Who owes us all a drink?”

“You were the
last, sir,” called out First Sergeant Fujardo, laughing.  “You owe us a
round of drinks.”

Cornelius cursed
under his breath, just loud enough for it to be heard over the com. 
Inside he was feeling fulfilled.  His plan had worked.  Buying a
round of drinks would have hit any of his people hard in the wallet.  Him,
not so much.  He was wealthy, and the multiple rounds he had planned to
buy wouldn’t cause him any difficulty.  And it was all to the benefit of
their morale, building unit cohesion.

“OK, everyone,”
he said.  “On the road this time, to the club.  And good job.”

Chapter Three

Man's nature is not essentially
evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must
never despair of human nature.

Mahatma Gandhi

NEW MOSCOW SPACE, FEBRUARY 25
^TH
,
1002.

“Nothing
detected in the system,” called out the Tactical Officer, looking back at the
Pod Leader.

“Helm.  Put
us on a least time profile for the habitable planet,” ordered the Pod Leader,
looking at the tactical holo that showed the six supercruisers of his
command.   If this had been a defended system, he would have felt
some trepidation in bringing such a weak force, a mere twenty-four million tons
of warships.  One enemy battleship squadron could blow them out of space,
though they would have done some damage to the human force as well.  Which
would be a slight consolation for their own deaths.

“We are picking
up signals from the planet,” called out the Com Officer, as the central holo
focused in on the blue and white globe that was in orbit around the K class
star.

This had once
been a developing world in the Kingdom of New Moscow, the home to a hundred million
people.  The Ca’cadasan fleet had come here early in the conquest, blown
all of its defenses out of space, and killed the majority of the human
population, dropping kinetics from space and following up with an infantry
landing. Then they had left the system, and probably a million survivors,
behind.  The plan had been to come back when the race was ready to
colonize the system, and the humans could provide rations for the nascent
colony.

Now it looked
like that wasn’t going to happen, and the plan had changed.  Command
wanted this system cleaned, all human life wiped out.  Since it had a
native ecosystem, that left out the option of simply bombarding the planet
until it was lifeless.  There would still be a bombardment, and then a landing.

The Pod Leader
hated this kind of mission.  He sat his command chair and scratched at the
base of a horn, his singular nervous habit.  He had a shortage of Marines
to start with, and was sure he would lose some more before all was said and
done.  Orders were orders, and he would not leave this system until he was
sure all the humans had been eliminated, since the next occupier was sure to be
human as well.  And leaving humans to be rescued was a future victory for
the New Terran Empire.

“Keep scanning
for enemy vessels,” he ordered his Sensor Officer, pointing a pair of right
index fingers at the male.  “I don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”

The Sensory
Officer acknowledged, and the force forged into the system, a day and a half
out from the planet.

A sleep cycle and
three meals later they were sliding into orbit, all sensors now focused on the
planet, picking up any electronic emissions and heat traces that might be human
made.  There were few of the former, and many more of the latter than
expected.  Targeting systems locked the targets, and the first of the
kinetics dropped from its launching ship and sped to the surface.  Seconds
after launch a brief streak of fire appeared in the atmosphere, followed by an
eye hurting pinpoint of light blossoming on the ground, the one megaton kinetic
hitting what was supposed to be a human encampment of considerable size.

The second
target was selected, and another ship launched, repeating the performance on a
second camp, while the force prioritized targets and sequenced the next
launches. 
This shouldn’t take long
, thought the Pod Leader,
watching the probe projected view from the surface as it followed a mushroom
cloud climbing into the atmosphere.

“We’re picking
up a transmission, my Lord,” hissed the surprised Com Officer. 
“Pinpointing, now.”

“We’re picking
up twenty-four point sources on the surface,” shouted the Sensor Officer over
the other male.

“What the hell
are they?” asked the Pod Leader, watching as the sources appeared along the
breadth of the equatorial continent.  Before the Sensor Officer could
answer, he knew.

*    
*     *

“Fire,” yelled
Brigadier General Margo Tumboni over the com, watching the plot that was
showing the six enemy ships in orbit around the world.  The Imperial Army
officer had worried for a moment that the enemy vessels wouldn’t all come close
enough to engage with her thirty-six shore guns.  Fortunately, the enemy
had come in as fat and arrogant as normal, and now they were about to pay for
it.

The signal went
out by fiber optic cable from the underground command bunker, reaching the
transmission station on a mountain fifty kilometers away in microseconds. 
The signal went out from there, and, as prearranged in the fire plan,
twenty-four of the one thousand ton portable guns brought up all their systems,
a process that took less than two seconds.  While the defensive fields
were stabilizing the targeting systems locked on to the nearest targets, and
the guns fired.

Each weapon
system carried a powerful gigawatt range laser, and particle beam capable of
sending out protons at point one light, and a two hundred millimeter mag rail
cannon.  All basically fired within twenty milliseconds of each other,
locked firmly onto a single target.  In this case, three of the orbiting
supercruisers, eight guns on each vessel.

First to hit
were the lasers, striking the cold plasma fields of the warships, weakening and
disrupting the defensive outer screen.  An instant later the particles
beams struck, putting twenty kilograms of protons into each gun’s target. 
About fifty percent of each beam sliced through the electromagnetic field,
striking hulls, cutting deep into the armor and surface machinery, tearing
along the length of the ship.  Eight of them to a ship, they destroyed
between twenty and fifty percent of the surface installations on the bottoms of
each supercruiser.

The magrail
cannon rocked the huge gun back on its stabilizers, sending the two hundred
kilogram supermetal penetrator, with its ten megaton antimatter core, into the
ships at point zero three light.  While not that great a velocity in terms
of space combat, it still covered the twelve thousand kilometers to the target
in one point three seconds.  The penetrator punched through the electromag
screen as if it wasn’t there and dug deep into the armor just before the
antimatter warhead detonated.

Each gun got off
a second shot of each onboard weapon before the ships could respond.  What
they left were two vessels among the three targets, both with severe damage,
still combat capable, but at only fifty to sixty percent capability.  One
had converted to plasma from a lucky hit, showering the surface below with fast
moving debris and radiation.

The guns powered
down, all except for their propulsion systems, which moved them away from their
firing positions as fast as possible.  Shoot and scoot, it sometimes gave
the gun a chance to relocate and engage again.  Nine of the guns went up
seconds after they started to move, four more a moment later.

That was when
the twelve guns which hadn’t shot before brought up their systems and fired on
the three ships that had yet to be engaged.  They also got off two shots
before scooting, and four of them didn’t make it.  But while they were
being hit the eleven remaining guns of the first group came back online and fired
again.

*    
*     *

“Destroy all of
them,” yelled the Pod Leader, shaking a pair of right fists at the holo. 
“By all the Gods, kill them all.”

“We’re picking
up graviton emissions from the vicinity of the planet’s moon,” called out the
Sensor Officer, while the ship bucked from the release of a kinetic weapon and
all surviving laser domes fired.

“Show me,”
ordered the panicked Pod Leader, wondering what kind of a trap he had stuck his
copulating member into.

The holo changed
over to a planet-moon system view, showing ten vector arrows that were coming
around the other side of the satellite.  All were accelerating in the five
hundred gravity range, and a second later the mass figures came up underneath.

“One is in the
one and a half million ton range, two in the just under million ton, and seven
in the two hundred thousand ton range.”

So, they faced
one of their heavy cruisers, two lights and seven of their scout ships
.
 
Less than six million tons, what would have been an easy kill for his force
before they had been chewed up by the shore batteries, that were still firing
on his ships.

“Get us out of
here,” he yelled at the Helm Officer.  “Maximum acceleration.”

“
T’kakash
will not be able to keep up,” said the Navigator, talking about the most
damaged of the ships.

“They will just
have to do as well as they can,” said the Pod Leader, changing the holo to look
at the entire system, wondering what else might be waiting for them.  He
looked over at the tactical officer as the ship shook again from another ground
launched penetrator.  “Engage those ships.”

The Pod clawed
its way from orbit, heading out at five hundred gravities, one of the ships
falling behind at its slower acceleration rate of less than three hundred
gravities.  The enemy ships moved into sight as his own vessels fired a
volley of missiles their way, a hundred weapons accelerating at eight thousand
gravities.  A moment later the human ships let loose with their own
volley, one hundred and six missiles accelerating at an incredible ten thousand
gravities, a rate these Ca’cadasans had never before seen.

Both forces
fired second and third volleys, each pushing toward the enemy in separate waves
that were fifteen seconds apart.  Due to the range the missiles could not
build up to a deadly closing speed, and most were killed by defensive beam
weapons before they had covered half the distance.  Both forces exchanged
lasers and particle beams in a close in knife fight.  At this point the
Ca’cadasans still had the advantage.  They still had the majority of their
beam weapons, and their ships had the greater mass, better able to handle the
transfer energy.

Two of the
supercruisers were battered by the energy from protons and photons.  A light
cruiser and two destroyers shuddered as transfer energy blasted armor and
pieces of hull from their bodies.  And then the surviving missiles came
in.

Of the
twenty-one missiles remaining of the human first wave, eighteen were blown out
of space before they could strike.  Two detonated within attack range,
their heat and radiation pouring into three of the supercruisers.  One
hit, a hundred megaton warhead detonating directly on the stern of the
Ca’cadasan ship.  The kinetic energy was negligible, but the antimatter
warhead was anything but, and the heavily damaged ship spun away, its
acceleration falling to almost nothing.

Fifteen enemy
missiles made it to within attack range, eleven of them falling victim to close
in weapons.  Two were proximity strikes, sending waves of heat and
radiation into a human light cruiser and four destroyers.  Two of the
destroyers of that group were hit head on by two hundred megaton warheads that
shattered both vessels, sending large chunks of ship out on diverging paths.

When the
exchange of missiles ended, two of the supercruisers were still heading out,
with two cripples falling behind to be swarmed by the six surviving human
ships.  The Pod Leader stared at the holo, happy to have escaped with his
life, sure he would get free of the system to report this trap back to his
commanders.

“We’re picking
up graviton emissions,” called out the Sensor Officer, switching the holo to a
far view.  “Two vessels, in the fifteen million ton range.”

That was two of
the enemy battleships, and there was no way they were going to win that
fight.  Even as he watched, forty vector arrows left the icons of the
enemy vessels.  And these were distant enough at a light hour for them to
achieve a significant attack speed.

*    
*      *

“Good job, Commodore,”
said Rear Admiral Benji Yamamoto, looking at the face of the large woman whose
force had weathered the close in fight with the Cacas.  “I don’t think
we’ll see any of the bastards back here.”

“We can
certainly hope so,” said Commodore Susan Smith of the New Moscow Navy. 
Her ships had been among the few hundred that had made it out, escorting liners
and freighters full of refugees, people who would someday want to return to
this space.  But her thoughts ran more to the point of believing that the
barring of this space to the Cacas would not be a sure thing until their Empire
was utterly defeated.

“You go ahead
and take all of your ships back to base,” ordered the Admiral, mentioning the
system where the repair ships, tankers and missile colliers were located. 
“Get them back into shape.  We’ll keep a watch here.”

Smith nodded,
looking at a side holo that showed the planet, which still had thirteen of the
large shore guns on the surface.  That, and three battleships, should be
enough to keep the million or so survivors on the world unmolested.  The
Cacas were in retreat in this part of the kingdom, and no one really expected
them to make a recovery for a year or so.  And by that time, the Empire
planned to take the offensive to them once again, and not give them back the
momentum.

*    
*     *

CAPITULUM, JEWEL, FEBRUARY 28
^TH
,
1002.

“So that’s
settled then?” asked the Baron Emile von Hausser Schmidt, the leader of the
Majority Party of the Lords.  He looked the question at Archduke Percival
Marconi, former leader of the Opposition Party, whose voting block was now
solidly in Schmidt’s, and the Emperor’s, camp.

“As far as I’m
concerned, the Emperor’s appropriation request can be passed without comment,”
said the Archduke, nodding back at the Baron.