Exodus: Empires at War: Book 15: All Quiet on the Second Front? by Dandridge Doug

Author:Dandridge, Doug [Dandridge, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Catbrother Publishing
Published: 2019-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats. Theodore Roosevelt

“We have graviton emissions to both flanks,” shouted out the sensor officer, still reeling from translation nausea, unable to think. “Hundreds of small craft.”

Mrastaram could hear the words, understand them, feel the flush of fear through his illness, but couldn't get his brain to work fast enough to fire off orders.

“Missiles in space,” shouted out the sensor officer, as easy a translator as existed in the Ca'cadasan species but still hit hard. “Missiles in space.”

And then they started arriving. The flagship, sitting in the middle of the fleet, was in no danger. The same could not be said for the flagship of Great Admiral Lokastar, sitting behind a thin screen of scouts on the right flank.

* * *

The Klavarta mines fired first, as specified in the tasking order. Tens of thousands of counter style missiles, smaller that the ship mounted variety at ten tons each, carrying fifty megaton fusion warheads, streaked out at twenty thousand gravities from their launching platform. All of the Caca ships had at least someone still cognizant on their bridges. Within seconds every ships started to boost, trying to move out of the kill zone. And highlighting themselves to the passive sensors of the missiles and the remaining platforms.

That was when the gamma ray laser platforms opened up. They only had one shot, each platform aiming for the nearest target, then detonating their built-in fusion warhead. The power of that warhead flowed into the laser rod, which converted to plasma as it pulsed a multi-terrawatt beam of coherent gamma radiation. Some of that was intercepted by the electromagnetic cold plasma fields of the target, but eighty percent made it through as a compact beam, slamming through the armor of the ships and deep into their guts. There were some misses, about five percent. The rest hit something. Damage klaxons went off on over a thousand ships, many of them hit with multiple shots. Some scouts exploded into plasma as their antimatter stores were breached. Supercruisers went off course as grabber units were shredded while others continued to pull. Even a couple of score superbattleships were hit. The latter ships were too massive to be killed by any kind of known light amp weapon, but some still suffered enough damage to reduce their combat capabilities by a half or more.

As soon as all of the laser mines flashed out of existence the mines of the Terran Empire fired, releasing one hundred ton capital ship missiles, carrying their one gigaton warheads at fifteen thousand gravities. More than seventy percent were tracked and destroyed by defensive fire that detonated their warheads too far from targets to do much damage. Against an enemy that hadn't been hit it would have been more, maybe a total loss. Two thousand warheads came in, over a hundred detonating right on target.

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