The Last Days of Lemuria, page 2
part #5 of Perry Rhodan Lemuria Series
Deafeningly loud, in a chopped, staccato rhythm.
Everything inside of Bardon froze. What he had feared all along had now happened.
The Beasts! shot through his mind. They've found us!
2
The shrill howling of the sirens continued as Thore Bardon rushed into the control center.
"Report!" he exclaimed to Palanker, who had already vacated the commander's chair and taken his place at the First Officer's console.
"Seventeen objects in Sector Four-Blue-D, distance just thirty light-seconds," Palanker replied in a toneless voice while Bardon sank into the commander's chair. "Velocity one-tenth light, on an intercept course. Objects identified as Beast super-battleships. Their shields and weapons systems are activated."
Bardon choked back a groan. Super-battleships. Titans with a diameter of 1700 meters, bristling with weaponry, and virtually invincible. Just one of those ships would be enough to annihilate his small squadron. Against seventeen ships of that type they didn't have the slightest chance.
"Enemy ships accelerating," Palanker added. "They will be in combat range in three minutes."
The cacophony of the sirens died away. On the main vidscreen, the seventeen hyperdetector echoes representing the Beast ships moved inexorably towards the group of echoes showing the small Lemurian squadron. With each passing second, death came ever closer, the failure of their mission, the end of all hope.
"Activate semispace field," Bardon ordered. His mouth was dry, his heart hammered in his chest.
"Defense shield activated," Palanker confirmed. "Output one-hundred percent."
"Weapon control station," Bardon said. "Status report."
"Impulse and thermobeam cannons ready to fire," Helot, the weapons officer, announced from her console at the rear of the control center. Her voice trembled with tension that she could suppress only with difficulty. "Disintegrators on line. Energy storage cells at seventy-six percent and rising. Upper and lower counterpole cannons loaded. One-hundred megaton warheads ready to fire. Space torpedoes with heavy fusion loads armed and ready to fire."
The weapons officer's matter-of-fact report reassured Bardon a little. The IBODAN was not defenseless. The impulse, thermal, and disintegrator cannons would not help them much against the enemy. However, the space torpedoes and counterpole cannons could set up a wall of fire with fusion explosions between them and the attacking Beast ships and slow their approach.
Gaining time.
But of course they would be not be able to stop the Beasts.
Bardon felt the desperation rising within him. Could this really be the end? With their goal so close? He thought of his wife, of the darkness of the grave that would enclose her forever if he failed.
With the press of a button he activated the hypercom transmitter on the encrypted combat frequency. "Commander to squadron," he said, his voice raw with tension. "Status report."
The status reports from the squadron's other four ships resounded from the loudspeaker. The OLATH and the HORDAMON were ready for battle. The weapons systems of the GORGARTH and the PALPADIUM though had been heavily damaged in their last encounter with the Beasts and still had not been repaired.
Three heavy cruisers, Bardon thought, against seventeen super-battleships. We're finished.
As though paralyzed he stared at the main vidscreen, at the relentlessly approaching points of light. He sensed the bridge crew looking at him from behind and knew that his officers were awaiting decisions.
But what could they do? Fighting was not an option. And fleeing ...
"Evasive maneuver M-Nine," he ordered tersely. "Maximum acceleration."
The combat-control positronic that took over and synchronized the squadron's navigation during a battle carried out his command without a moment's hesitation. The impulse engines in the ship's equatorial ring roared into life. Their muffled rumbling grew into a loud, rapid pounding that sounded like the beat of a gigantic heart filling the entire cruiser. With flaming engine exhaust ports, the small Lemurian squadron sped away from the oncoming Beast ships, but the enemy reacted within a few seconds and accelerated in turn.
And the enemy had better technology.
"Combat range in two minutes thirty," Palanker announced expressionlessly.
Bardon pressed one of the intercom buttons. A small monitor window appeared in the lower right corner of the main vidscreen. It showed the tired, gray face of Guras, the Chief Engineer, with the engine room in the background. She knew what he wanted from her.
"We aren't there yet," she said without any greeting, her voice breathless and harassed. "The hypertransformers have been repaired, but the semispace converters still have to be tested. And even if they function, the modulator banks could cause us problems." She exhaled with a hiss. "We need at least half an hour to get the semispace engines operational."
"But we don't have half an hour," Bardon replied. "We don't even have three minutes before the Beast ships reach combat range. We've got to get out of here."
Guras shrugged. Resignation made her face appear older than it was. "Going into semispace with untested converters is a terrible risk," she warned. "In the best case, we'll end up far off course. In the worst, the engines will explode and tear the ship apart."
"We don't have a choice," the commander said. "Prepare everything for semispace phase."
She sighed, looking at his stony expression. Of course she knew that he was right. The Beasts on board the enemy ships would not hesitate for a moment to open fire as soon as they were in range. They would not spare anyone and would not rest until the small squadron had been destroyed, with nothing left but a field of debris in the emptiness between the stars.
"As you command," the Chief Engineer said. "Semispace phase begins in five minutes."
"But five minutes ... " he protested.
" ... is the absolute minimum for prep time," she interrupted. "The energy storage banks still have to be charged. I'm sorry, but I can't accelerate the process."
"Understood," Bardon murmured and cut the connection to the engine room. His thoughts raced. In two and a half minutes they would be in range of the enemy's weapons. An eternity. Enough time for the Beasts to destroy the IBODAN and its sister ships with concentrated interval fire.
He swore under his breath, but his curses were lost in the roaring noise of the impulse engines. With a blow of his clenched fist he activated the hypercom transmitter again.
"Commander to all units," he said into the microphone. "Combat readiness. Weapons system synchronization via IBODAN fire control station. Initiate semispace phase. Jump into semispace in five minutes."
The confirmations came from the other ships over the encrypted battle frequency. The subcommanders' voices sounded depressed, and Bardon was not surprised. The men and women knew from painful experience what it meant to be exposed for even just two and a half minutes to the fire from these gigantic Beast ships.
The heavy cruisers' energy shields were too weak to withstand the enemy's interval cannons for very long.
We are going to die, Bardon thought with crystal clarity. This is the end. And with us will die any hope for the Imperium. Jercy, he thought again. I'm sorry. I tried to do what I could, but I am powerless against fate.
He stared at the main vidscreen.
The points of light representing the seventeen Beast ships were coming ever closer to the squadron.
Time, Bardon thought. We have to gain time.
"Combat range in one minute twenty seconds," Palanker announced. His voice still did not express any emotion. It was as though he had already resigned himself to the end.
Bardon clenched his teeth. No, he thought. We're still alive. And we won't give up without a fight.
"Fire control station," he said loudly to make himself heard above the engine noise. "Open fire from all counterpole-cannons. I want a thermonuclear curtain between us and the Beast ships."
"But we still aren't in combat range," protested Helot, the slender weapons officer. Droplets of sweat glistened on her forehead. "It's pointless. The fire won't have any effect ... "
Bardon silenced the woman with a grim look. "Fire!" he ordered sharply.
Helot obeyed. A moment later, new suns shone in the darkness of interstellar space. Fusion bombs with the explosive power of one-hundred megatons of TNT had been teleported by the counterpole cannons' Hyperdim projectors into five-dimensional reception fields, placed like a veil between the Beast fleet and the Lemurian squadron. When the bombs rematerialized, they exploded into blindingly brilliant fireballs that rapidly expanded, merged, and formed a massive wall of blazing heat and deadly radiation.
The Beast ships flew directly into the death zone. With each passing second they came closer to the thermonuclear wall of fire. Then they reached the outer edges of the radiation field. Tongues of flame licked at their black hulls, which were protected by flickering red force fields.
Bardon held his breath ...
The Beast ships' shields reacted and formed a black network of crack-like channels that absorbed the destructive energy of the fusion explosions and diverted it into hyperspace. Even so, Bardon had not expected to be able to penetrate the enemy's paratron fields with the counterpole cannons.
He waited until the raging inferno had swallowed the Beast ships, then exclaimed, "Evasive Maneuver M-Three!"
The roaring of the impulse engines immediately increased to an ear-numbing thunder as the IBODAN's combat-control positronic reacted in nanoseconds. It channeled all the energy of the ship's fusion power plant into the sublight drive's converter banks. The abrupt change in course briefly overwhelmed the G-absorbers. A gigantic fist seemed to press Bardon into his seat. The acceleration pressure forced all the air out of his lungs, and red spots danced in front of his eyes.
He blurrily saw that the rest of the ships in the squadron had joined in the course change and were speeding away from the Beast ships' vector at a right angle.
On the main vidscreen, the glaring fire of the fusion explosions was already abating. The outlines of the Beast ships—spheres with flattened tops and bottoms with the engines located centrally in the lower section—emerged from the incandescence of the wall of fire.
They were undamaged.
As expected, their paratron shields had withstood the destructive power of the fusion bombs.
However, while they were flying through the inferno, their detection systems had been blind. The Lemurian squadron's sudden course change, which the Beasts had noticed too late, had gained it valuable seconds. Seconds that could make the difference between life and death, the fate of the mission, and the fate of the Great Tamanium.
But the Beasts were already changing course and accelerating.
"Combat range in one minute and thirty seconds," Palanker said.
They had won ten seconds. That was something. It was a brief period of time, but in a space battle it could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
The Beast ships came closer. Relentlessly, inexorably. Bardon clutched his chair's armrests. His fingers bored deep into the dark plastic covering. He glanced at the status display and noted with satisfaction that most of the indicator diodes for the primary ship's systems were shining green. Despite the damage on the starboard side, the IBODAN was maneuverable and ready for battle.
"Wedge formation," he commanded. "The intact ships take the outside, the GORGARTH and the PALPADIUM the center."
The combat-control positronic immediately carried out the order. A few brief thrusts from the steering jets were enough to change the positions of the five heavy cruisers in a graceful, precisely choreographed ballet. Flashes of energy flared between the red glowing semispace fields as the individual ships' energy shields overlapped and formed a closed bubble.
Time ticked away.
Onward went the speeding chase.
The Lemurian ships' impulse engines operated at full capacity, but they were too weak to escape the technologically superior enemy.
"Combat range in thirty seconds," Bardon heard Palanker report tonelessly. "Commencing semispace phase in two minutes and fifty seconds."
Bardon pressed his lips together in a bloodless line. "Fire control station," he said hoarsely. "As soon as the enemy is in combat range, open fire with all weapons systems."
"Understood." The weapons officer nodded.
On the main vidscreen, the seventeen light points of the Beast ships slowly seemed to merge into the Lemurian squadron.
"Combat range in ten seconds!" Palanker's expressionless voice now sounded urgent. "The enemy is activating its weapons systems. Extreme energy readings—may Lahamu stand by us!"
"And Lahmu protect us," Bardon added in a murmur, as though calling on the goddess of battles and the god of war could improve their chances. He had never believed in the old gods, but now he wished that they actually existed and could give them the strength they needed to come through this ordeal.
Suddenly space seemed to light up. Multicolored flashes shot out of the impulse cannons, blazed through the darkness of space, and struck the red-glowing semispace bubble that surrounded the Lemurian squadron. Explosions of light danced along the force field. Dark rents appeared where the energy structure beneath the concentrated impulse fire had weakened and threatened to fail.
"Evasive Maneuver M-Two," Bardon ordered.
The little group of ships peeled away, and the glowing exhaust of the impulse engines mixed with the incandescence of the enemy beam fire. A glance at the status display told Bardon that the output of the shield had fallen to eighty percent. And the enemy hadn't even used its devastating interval cannons yet.
The hard, cold lump in Bardon's stomach area seemed to have changed into ice. He heard somebody cry out a quick prayer as the weapons officer opened fire from all the squadron's counterpole cannons. Again the characteristic reception fields formed in the empty space between the heavy cruisers and the Beast ships. Again the one-hundred-megaton bombs materialized and exploded like miniature supernovas. The fireballs swallowed the Beast ships, but the black channels of the paratron shields appeared in the incandescence and diverted the destructive energies into hyperspace.
Undamaged, the enormous Beast ships emerged from the death zone.
"Evasive Maneuver M-Thirteen," Bardon exclaimed, shouting to be heard over the noise of the impulse engines running at full load.
The fusion reactors and converter banks in the belly of the IBODAN roared and made the entire ship reverberate as the concentrated energy production was directed into the guidance engines. Again the Lemurian squadron made an abrupt course change that strained the ships' structure to the utmost, and again the Beasts followed with only a few seconds' hesitation.
"Semispace phase in two minutes," Palanker announced tersely when the evasive maneuver was complete and the roaring of the machines abated.
The counterpole cannons fired again. More balls of flame flared up in space and were absorbed by the enemy's flickering shields. When the Beast ships shot out of the explosion cloud, the weapons officer activated the impulse and thermal cannons and fired a salvo of space torpedoes. The torpedoes detonated and seemed to set all of space on fire, but not even that massive curtain of flame could stop the enemy.
Two of the Beast ships lurched through space with flickering paratron fields as the torpedo explosions died away, but Bardon's wild hope of doing at least a little damage vanished in the next moment. The paratron fields stabilized and the two Beast ships returned to their former intercept course.
Then the enemy opened fire from the interval cannons.
The five-dimensional impact front that raced through space was invisible until it struck the Lemurian squadron's collective semispace field. Suddenly, pale streaks ran along the red shining energy shield, grew in a fraction of a second, united and increased in strength. Bright discharges flashed like spears through space. Gaping rips appeared in the red field and rapidly spread out in a zigzag pattern.
The alarm sounded on board the IBODAN.
"Semispace field overloaded," Palanker exclaimed. "It's collapsing, Commander! The blasted field is collapsing!"
A gigantic fist seemed to slam into the IBODAN. Bardon was violently shaken in his chair and he clung to the armrests to keep from being thrown against the control console. An explosion thundered in the depths of the ship. Then a second. The status display showed rows of red warning lights. Terrified screams shrilled through the control center.
On the main vidscreen, the heavy cruiser GORGARTH was caught by the invisible, five-dimensional impact front of the interval discharge and squeezed like an empty food can. It vanished in a multicolored explosion. The expanding fireball scorched its sister ships and made them reel. Pieces of debris struck the super-hardened steel of the hull armor at high speed and vaporized in small after-explosions.
"Evasive Maneuver M-Eleven!" Bardon exclaimed.
At a steep angle, the IBODAN broke off from its former vector. It distanced itself at a high velocity from the hot, brilliantly shining cloud that just a few seconds before had been a starship with several hundred crew members on board. The OLATH and the HORDAMON followed, synchronized by the combat-control positronic. But the PALPADIUM fell behind. The Beasts' concentrated interval fire had blown away part of its equatorial-ring engines and punched deep holes into its hull. Glistening wisps of vapor were appearing from the ruptures as the air inside escaped. Tongues of flame licked from the partially destroyed ring.
Then the next interval salvo struck.
The PALPADIUM exploded.
Bardon gasped. Two ships lost! he thought. So many lives destroyed ...
From the depths of the ship sounded the howling of the storage cell bank that was pumping energy into the collapsed shield. A reddish veil formed around the IBODAN and grew stronger.
"Semispace field reactivated," Palanker called. "Output at nineteen percent and increasing."
A quick glance at the status display told Bardon that the impact of the interval blast had not damaged any of the ship's life-critical systems. Then he looked up again at the main vidscreen. The Beast ships had fallen back a little, but now they were passing through the debris cloud of the two destroyed heavy cruisers with flickering paratron shields. They resumed their pursuit of the remaining members of the squadron with increasing acceleration.
