Scorched Earth: (The Human Chronicles Saga Book #16) (15 page)

Chapter 16

“Thanks to the datapad so graciously provided by Overlord Andis lo Pindoc on Worak-nin, this is what we know of the Juireans strongholds between here and Juir.” Adam pointed at the graphic display on the video screen he’d set up in the supply bay of the
Vengeance
, the largest open space on the ship—if it wasn’t for the small shuttlecraft packed inside.

“Over the past three weeks we’ve hit enemy concentrations at Hannon VI, Westolia, Burnis and Cap’o’licon Three, if I pronounced that right. The only major base left in the Frontier is Woken. After that we enter the main part of the Expansion with another nine major centers before we reach Juir, and each one of them bigger than any in the Frontier. We’ll hit Woken on our way out of Kidis.”

“Sir, won’t they be expecting that?” Travis asked.

“Hopefully. The purpose of a scorched earth campaign is not only to destroy enemy assets along a line of advance, but to also provide a path for trailing forces to follow. Woken is at the entrance to the Frontier. If the mane-heads pull enough resources from the rest of Kidis—which we’ve noticed them doing at all our other attack locations—our guys can pour in and have our backs. I’m sure our recent raids haven’t gone unnoticed.”

“It might be a good time to open communications with Hollingsworth,” Riyad offered. “I know you’ve been ignoring his calls, but a little coordination is called for at this point.”

Adam had placed a restriction on links coming from the Union. They were outlaws and he didn’t want to have to justify his actions to anyone. It had been a little over a month since they absconded with the Mark VII. Perhaps Riyad was right. Now was the time to mend fences.

“I’ll take it under consideration, Mister Tarazi, but for now, let’s prepare for a strafing of Woken. We’ll be there in eighteen hours. This will be the biggest target we’ve hit to date, and it’s a good bet it’s been fortified even more. Our success there may be limited, but we can’t leave it unmolested. After that, we’re in the main part of the galaxy, an area most of us are more familiar with. We might even find a few friends along the way.”

Chapter 17

When the
Vengeance
popped into space near the planet Woken, the crew was expecting a substantial Juirean presence. As the unofficial capital of the Frontier, it was the first major planet when entering the Kidis arm. The system would be a logical staging area for the Juireans as they allocated their forces to the newly annexed territory. In addition, Adam’s trail of death led to Woken. The mane-heads would have seen this and made preparations.

Even so, what they saw on their screens was ridiculous.

“Initial scan shows over three hundred starships, Class-3 and above,” Lt. Commander Paulson reported a little breathlessly. “Either they’re preparing for an invasion, or that’s one hell of a welcoming committee.”

“Incoming, Captain!” Travis shouted. “They fired the moment we materialized; some kind of automatic response, I would guess.”

“I’m jumping,” Adam said, and the
Vengeance
disappeared.

“We were expecting they’d be expecting us,” Riyad said. His smile was forced.

“Updated count: four hundred plus ships,” Paulson reported.

“Well, what to do?” Adam leaned back in his seat and began thinking aloud. “I’d really hate to leave that many enemy ships clustered in one place. However, if they’re looking for our jump signature, we’ll have to go in conventionally. With that many ships moving around, we just might be able to slip in under cover of all the other gravity sigs. Fortunately, well-dampeners don’t affect the jump-drive, not completely. We can still jump almost a light. If they spot us, we can always bug out pretty fast.”

“Not unless we’re hit, sir,” Travis pointed out dryly.

“Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen. All right, I’m going to hop over a little closer and then go to straight gravity-drive. It’ll take longer to get on station but it shouldn’t trigger any automatic response of flash cannon fire. Hopefully.”

********

Adam had been right about the sheer number of starships in the system providing cover. The problem came with trying to navigate through so many competing gravity sources. It took him four hours to thread his way in-system to where the target-rich environment was more to his liking.

After their first appearance, the fleet was in an agitated state; disorganized would be a better word for it. A third of the ships had descended on their previous entry point, leaving virtually no maneuvering room for anyone, the Juireans included. The other vessels had scattered, attempting to anticipate their next entry point. When the
Vengeance
didn’t materialize, the Juirean commanders became confused, and the deployment of their ships showed it.

“Pogo, what if we cut the recycle time to only four seconds, knowing that some of the boards will have to be replaced eventually?”

“That will be the case. I realize we have ninety-six replacements, but we still have three months left on our mission.”

“But we could take out a huge chunk of these four hundred ships.”

“You’re in command. I will do as you instruct.”

“Is that a wise move?” Riyad asked.

“We’ll see. If we start burning through boards I’ll reevaluate. Travis, get back to the engine room and be ready to snap in new boards as the old ones burn out. Riyad, you have sentry duty. Let me know what’s around us.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s make our presence known.”

Adam steered the
Vengeance
to the edge of the cluster of ships still milling around their original entry point. There were over fifty of them within a million miles of their location. He punched the small gravity-well and set off on a course right through the middle of the pack. Even if they were fired upon, a lot of the bolts would continue along their straight-line trajectories and possibly impact the other Juirean ships in the cluster, creating a form of circular firing squad.

“They’re taking notice,” said Riyad.

“Fire at will, Tom.”

Light filled the exterior viewports as the graphic on the main screen displayed the first four-beam burst. Adam thought that by reducing the recycle time by half, it would make the sequence of fire-recharge seem quicker. It didn’t. Even with cutting the total cycle time to eight seconds, it was still a lifetime between flashes.

The Juireans weren’t sitting on their hands. They unleased a devastating barrage of flash bolts of their own, adding even more light to that of Paulson’s laser bursts. The battlefield was lit up like a one big fireball of white. Adam closed the viewport shields to keep the flood of light from blinding them. The graphic on the screen told them all they needed to know.

The first pass took out nineteen Juirean ships and damaged another eight. Adam jumped before surveying what effect the plethora of mane-head cannon bolts was having on their own fleet. The threat computer had counted over eight hundred of the deadly balls of plasma being released before the jump. These would continue for up to thirty-five hundred miles before dissipating. With such a large number of warships converging on the path of the
Vengeance
, there would undoubtedly be friendly-fire casualties among the Juireans.

Now a little less than a light-year from Woken, Adam and his crew were able to relax. “Tell me about the boards?” Adam called out over the ship’s 1-MC.

“Six boards fried,” came the voice of Travis Morgan. “How many ships did we get?”

“Twenty-seven were hit, most out of commission. There’s still over three-hundred seventy-five. At this rate, it might be possible for us to take out most of the fleet, but we wouldn’t have too many boards left.”

“We’re going to have cut down our expectations,” said Riyad. “Go back to eight-second recycles and hit them along the fringes—”

“I’m picking up gravity sigs, Captain,” said Paulson.

Adam looked down at his screen. Tom was right. A massive wave of gravity interference was surging their way, not directly at them, but toward Woken. The signatures indicated Juirean warships.

“Something like another six hundred ships,” Tom said. “They’re coming from within the Frontier.”

“And I thought they’d already pulled all the units from the line they needed,” Adam said. “They’re really taking us seriously.”

“I know we’re a badass starship with a crew of superheroes, but this is ridiculous,” said Riyad. “Almost nine hundreds ships against only one.”

“This could be when we use our torpedoes. The closer they’re packed in, the more we can take out.”

“Don’t you have enough monuments in your honor? Now you want to win the war singlehandedly?”

“You guys can help; I’m not above sharing a
little
of the glory.”

“I don’t have any monuments dedicated to me!” Tom Paulson pointed out.

“Me, neither, sir,” came Travis’s voice over the bridge speakers.

Adam smiled. “Charge ‘em up, Pogo. They didn’t build the super-torpedoes to sit around looking pretty.”

********

They waited nine hours for the massive fleet of incoming starship to enter the Woken star system. The torpedoes had jump-drive technology—if they had the proper power charge behind them. It took all Pogo could muster to supply that energy, prepping six of the deadly weapons for transit. They would keep two in reserve.

The ship’s computer files provided more detail about what made these weapons so revolutionary. Besides the jump-drive—which at the time the torpedoes were built was an engine waiting for a power source—each of the forty-foot-long cylindrical weapons contained forty small nuclear warheads each. Even though small in size, their output was anything but. Using a combination of Formilian, and even Juirean technology, the warheads carried incredible firepower, measured at a hundred megatons each. This made the bombs nearly twice as powerful as any nuclear device ever detonated on Earth, prior to the arrival of the aliens. As impressive as that was, what made the torpedoes truly terrifying is how the warheads were distributed.

Each torpedo sent the forty warheads out to form a huge sphere in space. When all the nuclear cores exploded, a radioactive ball, half a million miles in diameter was created, with the effect of each warhead magnified by the lack of an atmosphere to contain much of their explosive force. As impressive as this was, the real magic happened inside the sphere.

Any starships caught there—and not yet impacted by the initial blasts—became trapped and unable to escape. The resulting electromagnetic pulse from the explosions created a massive field damper, preventing ships in or around the sphere from escaping on gravity-drive, and attempting to pass through the cloud meant running a gauntlet of deadly radioactivity. The trapped crews would be helpless and watch as the roiling fireball closed in from all directions, creating tremendous heat and pressure until their ships were consumed.

And the most terrifying aspect of this new weapon: it could be launched from up to two light-years away and appear smack dab in the middle of an assembled fleet.

Unfortunately for the crew of the
Vengeance
, they wouldn’t be witness to the first effects of their attack. The light from the blasts would take a year to reach the launch point, and it wouldn’t be safe to enter the impacted space for several hours after launch, not with the huge amount of dissipating radioactivity in the region.

So when Adam sent off each weapon to its designated entry point within the Woken star system, he was essentially shooting blind, hoping that at least some of the huge balls of nuclear fire would appear where they would do the most damage.

The
Vengeance would
pop in for a look, but not for at least five hours after the last torpedo was launched.

********

Four hours later the anticipation got the better of them, and Adam initiated a jump to the farthest reaches of the Woken system.

The first thing they noticed when they popped in was that communications were down throughout the area. The EMP was not only affecting gravity-well formation, but also CW and conventional comm channels. It also blocked their shipboard energy sensors. The speakers just cracked and popped as the
Vengeance
made a cautious eyeball survey of the system.

On the boards, the system appeared dead. The crew knew that couldn’t be possible. They only launched six torpedoes, each with an initial blast radius of half a million miles. Of course, the spheres would expand after that, but they would also weaken, reducing their deathly affects.

An hour later the
Vengeance
passed the huge outer gas giant planets that were common in nearly all stellar systems, on her way to the inner rocky worlds farther in.

The scanners were clearing, and it was now possible to pick up sporadic data from the surrounding ether. Strong signatures
were
coming in from unaffected starships, and the count was climbing, slowing topping three hundred as the
Vengeance
moved in closer. But then the number stabilized, as more frantic, open-channel comms were heard requesting status and condition from any vessels within earshot.