Annihilation: Love Conquers All (40 page)

“Thank you, Danielle,” Atlas replied.

Admiral Dorg watched his fleet go through their maneuvers and was pleased with their performance. He had taken additional time to work the Glod ships into the fleet network. He kept the Glod ships together in a separate unit because they just didn’t play well with others. “Enough of this,” Dorg thought. “We are as ready as we will ever be. Let’s get this done.” Then he said over his com channel, “Form up. Prepare to jump to the human system in sixty sems. Subfleet leaders, set your jump coordinates for a simultaneous jump. Make sure you keep your spacing after emergence from star drive. The ships assigned to record this battle will jump in right behind the fleet and maintain separation from the fleet action. They will open the feed to Cainth, Glod, and Alliance headquarters upon arrival in system.” Admiral Dorg sat and waited for the countdown to finish.

Finally, Admiral Dorg ordered, “On my command, execute jump into the human home system. Execute!”

The Alliance fleet broke out of star drive and immediately had the Earth fleet on their sensors. The huge fleet turned and moved forward. Meanwhile, just inside the orbit of Neptune, five Alliance ships broke out of star drive and moved into the system, recording the approaching battle. On Cainth, Glod, and state leaders Sten’s office, the interested leaders watched on their different worlds the movement of their fleet toward the small fleet of Earth ships. “Is that all they have?” Terl thought, but then he settled in with the rest of the clan leaders to see what was going to happen.

The Earth ships went to full power, moved toward the incoming fleet, and split up and scattered as they approached the Alliance formations. Forty of the Earth ships were blown up before they reached the first Alliance ship. Then the Alliance fleet fell on the Earth ships like an avalanche. The Earth ships were being blown out of existence faster than anyone thought possible.

Two Cainth cruisers bore down on an Earth battleship and saw the missiles that the ship launched coming at them. The energy weapons of the Earth ship were having no effect, and the missiles were exploding harmlessly on their screens. They split and passed the Earth ship on opposite sides and fired their energy beams into the flanks of the big ship. It tore in half and then exploded, scattering debris out from the center of destruction. The two ships turned, and each selected an Earth destroyer and changed course to chase them down. Ship Leader Kerlt ordered, “Hit the screen with primary lasers just as our missiles arrive.” He watched his screen and saw the small ship explode and whirl away. “I thought these humans were supposed to have up-to-date technology. These ships are as bad as the Grendap. We could have done this with less than half our ships. This should be over quickly, and then we can finish the planet.”

“Have you got them, Bobby?” Kosiev asked Captain Bobby Johnson.

“Yes sir. There are five of them, and I’ve assigned two ships to each. We’re jumping in ten seconds.”

On Cainth and Glod the leaders were watching the live feed and had begun cheering their fleet’s success. The Earth ships were almost totally destroyed, and it didn’t appear that the Alliance had lost any ships in the conflict. But suddenly, the screen went blank. The cheering stopped and the leaders looked at each other. “Get a communication channel to the fleet and find out what happened to our feed,” Terl ordered.

“We can’t get through, Clan Leader,” the communication leader said.

Terl yelled, “Get another ship ready to jump to that system and find out what’s going on. Do it now!”

Ten of Earth’s empire battleships powered up their systems and jumped to the five Alliance ships recording the action. As soon as they entered normal space, both Earth ships fired their primary beams into the cruisers and vaporized them instantly, giving them no chance to send a warning. Captain Bobby Johnson commed Admiral Kosiev and said, “The slate has been cleaned. Beginning communication disruption. Good luck and good hunting, sir.” Captain Johnson then ordered his ten ships to spread out along the coordinates where the cruisers had entered the system and to prepare for any new ships that might be sent to investigate. “Power down and be ready to jump if any Alliance ship jumps in,” he ordered.

Admiral Dorg sat in his command chair on board the Alliance flagship War Weapon and watched as his fleet was totally destroying the humans’ ships. He heard his bridge crew cheering, but he couldn’t help thinking, “This is too easy. This fleet couldn’t have defeated our ships at the Human Colony World.” Then he said, “Communications, put a picture of one of those human ships that was just destroyed on my display.” A picture of a small ship suddenly appeared on his console. He looked at it for a minute and then pulled up a picture of the small human ship that had killed two heavy cruisers. He put it next to the ship that had just been destroyed; they looked nothing alike. His internal alarms went off at full blast; he stood and yelled, “Order the fleet back into formation!” His crew stopped cheering and looked at him like he was crazy. “Do it now. We’re being set up for a trap!” His crew hesitated for just a moment while looking at each other and then started issuing orders, but that small hesitation proved fatal; the human fleet ripped into the Alliance ships like a tsunami.

Kosiev received Captain Johnson’s report of the destruction of the recording cruisers and then opened his main fleet channel. “On my command, power up your screens, charge your weapons, and attack your assigned coordinates. Remember you are to hold your section of the front and destroy anything in it or anything that tries to move through it. Ready, execute!”

The seven squadrons were evenly spaced when they hit the Alliance fleet. Within five seconds of hitting the Alliance fleet’s front, 350 Alliance ships were destroyed. Five seconds later, 350 more had died. The Earth fleet then turned and began moving up and down the Alliance line, destroying any ship they encountered.

Captain Elizabeth Franklin on the Earth destroyer Yellow Stone had targeted a Cainth cruiser that she had seen attack and destroy one of the old destroyers. She accelerated straight at the cruiser and began taking fire from its primary beams and missiles. “Weapons, prepare two needles and fire when eight hundred yards out,” she commanded.

On board the Cainth cruiser ship, Leader Kerlt saw the Earth ship bearing down on him at an incredible speed. None of his weapons were having any effect, and he wasn’t fast enough to outrun it. He watched and thought, “Maybe we won’t get to the planet quite as fast as I thought.” The small human ship hit his ship with two small beams, and then he watched as his ship blew up around him.

The two needles went through the cruiser’s screen and shot four hundred hornets inside the screen. The four hundred hornets were each programmed to hit a section of the ship, starting at the front. Explosions walked the entire length of the cruiser, and the last one hit a fusion reactor and blew the remains of the ship into subatomic dust. By the time the explosion was over, the Yellow Stone had killed his partner cruiser and was moving in on a Cainth destroyer. Yellow Stone blew it up with its beams and didn’t waste a needle. Then two dreadnoughts hit the Yellow Stone with 1,200 primary beams and exploded the small ship, but not before it had shot four needles into the closer dreadnought. Sixteen hundred hornets walked explosions the length of the dreadnought, exploding the entire surface into rubble. Six hornets made it through the surface into the missile magazines and everything was blown away from the center of the explosion.

Admiral Dorg sat in his command chair and watched his worst nightmare become a reality. He lost half his fleet within ten minutes of contact with the Earth fleet. Now the battle had broken down into ship-to-ship fighting. Those small Earth ships had some kind of beam weapon that was devastating. He saw one of the Earth battleships explode when ten dreadnoughts surrounded it and attacked it together. Before it blew up, the Earth ship killed four of the dreadnoughts with those strange thin beams and those terrible seven-hundred-foot-wide primary beams. The power of those small ships was unbelievable. “Ten to one and we lose four,” Dorg thought. “Have the dreadnoughts target the larger human ships,” he ordered. “Hunt them with packs of fifteen dreadnoughts for each of their ships.” Then he thought, “Maybe we can recover and win this thing.”

“Sir, we’ve lost the Johannesburg,” Lieutenant Kelley said.

“Assign her escorts to another ship. Kelley, give me a ship count,” Kosiev said while looking at his display.

“We’ve lost forty, sir, eight of them empire class.”

“Keep me informed, Lieutenant.”

Captain Al Downing flew his destroyer out of the path of one of the Alliance dreadnoughts and was immediately hit by eighty of its primary beams. His screen went quickly into the red. Fifty missiles then started impacting his screens. He twisted and turned his ship but couldn’t escape the beams that were locked onto his ship. He saw an Earth cruiser directly ahead and diverted to go through its screen. His screen was approaching light blue when he went through the cruiser’s screen and emerged with his screen back in the yellow. He turned back on the dreadnought that had now started firing on the cruiser. As he passed the dreadnought he fired four needles into it. The dreadnought had reacquired the destroyer and had begun hitting it again with its primary beams. The four needles penetrated the dreadnought’s five screens, and two punctured all the way into its hull. Each needle contained four hundred hornets, and half of them had entered the punctured hull of the dreadnought and were destroying everything they touched. It blew up so quickly that one moment it was there firing its weapons, and the next there was nothing but a bright light and debris scattering in all directions. Captain Downing’s destroyer was then attacked by two Alliance cruisers that were firing every weapon at the small ship. Once again its screen moved into red. He turned to run through the cruisers’ screen again when the surviving Earth cruiser exploded in front of him. He fired his remaining four needles into the two Alliance cruisers just before his ship was blown out of existence. The needles punched into the two Alliance cruisers and the hornets blew them apart piecemeal. They each started exploding at the front, and the explosions walked the length of both ships. Everywhere, ships were dying.

The Washington was surrounded by five dreadnoughts. Kosiev sat in his command chair and watched Commodore Mikado fight his ship. The Washington’s screen was red, but before entered dangerous territory, Mikado fired his primary beams and needles until the excess energy was released. Two of the dreadnoughts were cut in half by the Washington’s primary beams, and the remaining three were punctured by two needles each. Two of the three had their surfaces blown apart by the little missiles and lost the ability to fight. The third dreadnought appeared to just stop in space and hang there, doing nothing. Its screens had failed and none of its weapons were firing. Then it started drifting. The Washington continued moving through the Alliance fleet, drawing Alliance dreadnoughts like a bright light attracting moths.

Admiral Dorg looked at his display and was sick. The Earth ships had destroyed 1,500 of his ships, and the remaining five hundred were going fast. According to his best count, he had only been able to kill 140 of the Earth ships. At the current rate, he would see his last ship destroyed in less than twenty minutes. He now knew that he was right to worry about this race. His ships were no match for theirs. He had seen enough, and knew that if he waited until the numbers of the Earth ships equaled his, then no one could escape. Their only chance was to scatter and run to the jump point. Some ships would escape. The Alliance and the clan leaders had to be warned about this race. “Order the fleet to scatter and run for the star drive limit. Spread out as much as possible and jump back to the Cainth system.”

Kosiev saw the Alliance fleet suddenly turn and accelerate toward the star drive limit. “Well, we hoped we could prevent anyone getting information of our capabilities,” he thought, but he looked at his display and knew there was no way his remaining 208 ships could chase down more than twice their number before some of them jumped to safety. “Order all ships to pick a target and destroy it before they can jump. Have the ten ships in the outer system jump into the limit and destroy whatever ships they can target.”

The ten Empire ships near Uranus powered up, jumped to Jupiter’s orbit, and waited for the Alliance ships to come to them. Captain Johnson’s sensor officer looked up and reported, “Sir, an Alliance dreadnought just jumped in with six escorts in the outer system.”

“Well, we can’t have all the luck,” Captain Johnson replied. “They’re bound to have something eventually happen in their favor. Pick a target weapons and let’s go hunting. Let’s give them something to see back at good ole Cainth headquarters.”

The Dreadnought Mass Destruction jumped into the human system and began recording. It immediately saw the remaining Alliance ships fleeing and being chased by the remainder of the human fleet. The clan leaders on Cainth watched the feed and saw those small Earth ships chase down the fleeing Alliance ships and blow them apart. There was no cheering; the air was somber. They watched as one of those small battleships caught a Glod dreadnought and blew it in half with two hellish energy beams. The Glod were known for the superiority of their warships. That dreadnought didn’t have any effect on the ship that destroyed it. Then they saw several Alliance ships cross the star drive limit and jump to safety. Terl, watching his feed from the human system, saw Admiral Dorg’s ship approaching the star drive limit as one of those small battleships bore down on it. The Earth ship fired its energy beams, but the Admiral’s ship disappeared just as the beams tore through the space his ship had just occupied. Terl was numb. According to the sensors of Mass Destruction, only 178 ships had been able to jump to safety. The humans had destroyed 1,800 Alliance ships, including 40 percent of Cainth’s total warships. Terl thought, “Admiral Dorg was right about these humans; they are a race to be feared. Now we know what happened to our ships at the colony world.” Then a small thought wormed its way into his consciousness: “They know where we live.”