Koban 6: Conflict and Empire

by Stephen W Bennett

  Chapter 11: No-see-ums and Rogues

  All five Scouts made their exits within thirty minutes of Mirikami’s arrival, because he had taken the most direct route. If the Thandol detected them on the way and reacted, he intended to take the risk and warn the others while they were in Jump status.

  At over five light-seconds from Wendal, seeing a startle reaction at the planet wouldn’t come instantly. Had the empire’s monitors detected the incoming five T-cubed tachyon traces over the last two days, headed towards the Emperor’s throne world, there might have been a massive welcoming committee already in space, watching for any unexpected arrivals.

  Instead, everything seemed completely normal, with the expected busy comings and goings of the capitol of an interstellar empire. There was a mix of mostly commercial traffic, ships of various designs representing different species, and a few itinerant military ships, some Ragnar, and based on size and combat suitable designs, there were two of what must be Finth and Thack Delos warships. There was a much larger Thandol navy presence than they saw on their only previous visit.

  The conservative minded Thandol leadership hadn’t apparently figured out that a stunningly massive Crusher was a sitting duck for faster and more maneuverable and stealthy Federation ships, which could either wear it down, or gut it with a single Nova bomb. Perhaps the High Command had figured it out, but the Emperor probably demanded another Crusher, the Emperor’s Foot, to be made available as his personal transport. That was despite their telling him that he might become an unfortunate collateral target for Federation weapons, if he happened to be aboard.

  Aside from a Crusher’s surprising vulnerability, the Thandol subscribed to the notion that their massive naval dominance made them too invincible to challenge in space. In actuality, it was their ability to pound the worlds of a suppressed species, which kept their enemies under control. The navy could also crush the worlds of the three security species, even if their smaller combat ships could outfight the Thandol, ship for ship. The Imperial Navy’s numbers advantage guaranteed certain victory. The High Command ensured that frequent inspections of their security forces effectively restricted construction of their T-cubed capable fleets to the permitted numbers, and that they didn't develop unauthorized weapons.

  Mirikami acknowledged what the other four arrivals realized. “They don’t know we’re here.

  “Let’s move in and mix with the local traffic, to learn what we can. Our masses are so low that their mass detectors should have trouble separating us from the thousand or so ships landing, departing, or entering orbit. Particularly if we stay close to larger ships.

  “Keep your gravity guns loaded, in case we suddenly need to defend ourselves, but don’t do anything to attract attention. We want to reserve our first use of these guns for wherever they’re gathering their fleet, planning the next attack on Tanner’s World.”

  Carson asked, “You don’t think the Ragnar admitted what they did?”

  “Maggi and I don't think so. The two of us will scout out ways we can infiltrate down to the palace on a future trip, and spot the private quarters for the Emperor, so we can leave the parasite eggs once we have them.”

  “What will the rest of us do here?” Sarge asked. “Besides prove we could sneak in unnoticed?”

  “Scope out their defenses and identify targets for future attacks if our political plans fall apart. We want the Imperial Court to self-destruct, if we can make the Emperor paranoid enough. If not, we’ll help them along. We obviously didn’t have time when we were here previously to study this planet. There may be other ways we can cause problems here, which don’t point to the Federation as the cause.”

  “Damn,” Reynolds complained. “That isn’t much fun. When do we get to blow some crap up?”

  Maggi had his answer. “I asked the Hothor to send a vacationing royal court kitchen assistant back here this week, carrying one of our Prada com sets. The set is one we gave to the Olt’kitapi, for talking with the Dismantlers, and they made it a donation to him. The Hothor told us that the noble Thandol are careless in conversations around their servants, treating them like the furniture, speaking the proper high-level grammar, as if that keeps the hired help from understanding the incomplete translations. We think we’ll get some information on which star system is being used for the staging area, just to give you some shit to blow up, you whiny jackass.”

  “Good.” Sarge acknowledged. Then whined, “I want another chance to prove I’m a better shot than you.”

  As the five Scouts spread out, cautiously approaching Wendal, three large objects in a low orbit looked like ragged pieces of a Crusher.

  Ethan hadn’t been on the first raid, and asked about the wreckage. “Are those large corner pieces from the Crusher you blew up, Uncle Tet?”

  “They must be. They haven’t finished their orbital housekeeping, I guess.”

  “I zoomed in on them,” Ethan said. “It appears there are crews removing parts. Odd place to do their scrap recovery, right over the capitol world.”

  Mirikami offered his opinion. “The Ragnar didn’t know about our Jump Hole towing technique, because they were about to leave some damaged Pounders behind at Tanner’s. The Ragnar probably knew what the Thandol knew about the method, which is nothing. It does present a significant risk of cutting the towed object in half if you misjudge. Even the Krall didn’t use towing, but certainly not out of caution. Not until my old AI, Jake, proposed it to save the Flight of Fancy and many of her passengers.

  “In this case, it looks like the Thandol left the quarter to half mile sized pieces of scrap where they ended up, to be dismantled in place.”

  Carson had a comment, and a question. “The three pieces we see are in awfully low orbits, barely above the fringe of the atmosphere. There were four corners on that ship, wasn’t there Uncle Tet?”

  “Yes. What are you getting at?”

  “Three of them are relatively close together in equatorial orbits. Why isn’t the fourth corner with those three? There’s a large and recent scar on the planet, along the equator. Might it have entered the atmosphere?”

  Mirikami thought back, reviewing the brief few seconds he’d had to set target coordinates for his Nova bomb. “The Crusher was oriented with one tip pointed at the planet, where they were using that corner for shuttle docking, for trips to and from the planet. I suppose the blast may have sent it lower, where drag brought it down. Why?”

  “Wouldn’t it be a shame if the other three pieces encountered atmospheric drag, and came down the same way? How about if we help that along?”

  There came a supportive comment from his father, Dillon. “Clever idea son. If those pieces crashed along those orbits, they would damage parts of their most concentrated industrial region. They’ve organized this planet with their population centers at temperate latitudes, and manufacturing near the cold poles and hot equator. That would do some damage to their local business plan.”

  Alyson added a cautionary note, since she’d just realized her husband’s plan. “It requires us to use our gravity projectors to move them to a slightly lower orbit, to cause the drag. They probably have orbital tugs that pushed them to where they are now, close together, so it would have to happen suddenly enough that they couldn’t boost them higher in time to prevent deorbit.”

  Mirikami tossed some cold water on moving the huge pieces lower in that fashion. “People, they know orbital mechanics as well as we do, and they or their AI’s would detect that all three independent sections moved at about the same time. The inference could lead them to guess how it might have been done, because the Olt’kitapi had that technology. They might then make the connection to us, as someone that potentially stole the technology. An accurate assessment, actually, and we don’t want to give that secret away too soon.”

  He had an afterthought. “We won’t keep it secret long anyway, if we find where the fleet is that they plan to send to Tanner’s World. However, if we obviously use gravity control here and no
w, they could warn them to be on the alert for the effect, and avoid low orbits, for example.

  “Although…,” he trailed off, and his friends imagined him pulling at his lower lip in thought. Their patient wait was rewarded.

  “Those three big pieces are orbiting just higher than the upper wisps of atmosphere, and obviously they believe there’s time to complete dismantling them before increasing drag starts to pull them down. Atmospherics are fickle things, and I’ve experienced cases where the top height of a planetary atmosphere rose due to various causes. A geomagnetic storm, a major atmospheric storm, even a flare of solar radiation can influence the atmosphere to expand by many miles, even between day and night sides. The lowest short-term orbit is part of data provided to arrivals by most competent orbital control systems. I assume a busy place like this knows that altitude precisely. They probably placed those pieces about that high while being salvaged.”

  “What are you thinking, Tet?” He had Thad’s interest.

  “Rather than use our gravity projectors to move three distinct massive objects down into the upper atmosphere, why not use all of our projectors together, employing weaker and wider fields, to attract the atmosphere up to meet them? Once they hit a thicker region of atmosphere, they’ll lose some of their orbital velocity to drag, and will naturally settle into lower orbits, which will expose them to even greater drag, and slow them more. That should avoid the suspicious effect of three separately applied forces to dense masses. A single mild event, which gently raised the upper atmosphere might go unnoticed, or be considered a strange atmospheric anomaly. In any case, a single more natural seeming effect will act to slow all three objects simultaneously.”

  Carson jumped on that idea eagerly. “How far do we have to raise the top of the atmosphere to do that?”

  Mirikami was happy to give him a task. “You just said you knew where the top of the atmosphere is, and how low the debris orbits are. Ask your AI for the distance between them, and have it calculate the coefficient of drag for their broad cross sections. Find out how high the atmosphere needs to rise to drop them out of orbit. It has to happen faster than they can get their space tugs in place, to try to push them higher. In fact, all of you can work on this, and ask your AIs to consider any details that I forgot to mention.”

  The task was taken on as a competition. A relatively short time later, Noreen was the first to announce her results.

  “Got it! They’re now orbiting at close to a circular hundred thirty miles, which is above, but uncomfortably close to the Karman line, which for this low gravity planet is nearly eighty miles high. The Karman line is the point where air density greatly increases the drag forces. They experience drag all the time where they are, but at a rate so low that they have at least a year or more to complete the salvage operations.

  “We need to bulge the thin upper atmosphere for perhaps twenty minutes ahead of them in their orbit, raising the Karman line briefly. That temporary drag will slow them enough to drop down close to the normal Karman line in about thirty hours. They’ll slow much faster after they hit that eighty-mile mark, slowing continuously for each orbit. I doubt if reentry could be reversed after that. I had already done a mass check on the pieces, wondering how much damage a gravity gun rod might do to an intact Crusher if we hit it at a corner. I discovered these three pieces are far less massive than they appear based on size. The salvagers apparently left the outer hull intact, probably as protection for workers, from all the small debris caused by the original explosion at that altitude. The big cross sections of the flat sides will cause them to deorbit faster than if they still had the extra internal mass to retain momentum.”

  Mirikami was the first express his surprise. “Noreen, that sounds plausible, but how did your Scout AI finish that computation so quickly?”

  Carson laughed. “Mom, did you cheat, or just give us a wild guess? My AI says it needs more time and more data. I hadn’t thought about doing a mass check at all.”

  She sounded smug. “If you call my sending the information to the Avenger by Comtap, to let Karl use its military grade processor and software do the work, then yes, I cheated. Why would I wait for a Scout’s limited AI to plod through the computations when I have a better one on my ship back home?”

  “Touché.” Mirikami conceded for them all.

  Dillon, having Noreen’s data as reference, said, “We would have to gently draw up the thin atmosphere just in front of them. It could be confined to a small region that constantly rises ahead of them in their orbit. The atmosphere would sink back down behind them as they pass. With roughly twenty minutes of this treatment, the calculation suggests they’ll descend slightly, and experience enough drag at their new lower altitude to continue a natural orbital decay for a bit longer than a day. Each time they pass over the sunlit side, where the warming atmosphere has expanded slightly, that will increase the drag. I don’t think their entire fleet of space tugs could save all three sections, and possibly none of them if they don’t focus on just one.”

  “We’ll do it,” Mirikami decided. “But only after we do full reconnaissance orbits, and get detailed images of the large Imperial Palace complex. I’m looking for a clear place a Scout can land direct from orbit, where the sound of the exit pop might not be noticed, and the stealthed boat won’t be bumped into by a passerby. My goal is for Maggi and I to use our armor to get to the grow-pads for the grasses the Emperor and his guests dine on, to spread the parasite eggs. We also have to get in and out of the Scout without anyone noticing the brief gap in stealth.

  He grinned, “We obviously can’t advertise our departure with a thunderous Jump back to orbit. We’ll take the leisurely and scenic Normal Space drive route, even avoiding turbulence.”

  Alyson offered an objection. “I think Carson and I make a better pair for that future mission. Our Secretary of Defense, slash Fleet Admiral, and the Federation’s Ambassador at Large, shouldn’t be risking their butts in enemy territory this way.”

  Aware that others would echo that sentiment, Mirikami stopped it cold. “We don’t have a small child to leave orphaned, as you and Carson do. Besides, Maggi can use the visit to explore the living area near the Emperor a bit, and to see how the noble and royal Thandol live. We intend to conduct a partly psychological war on them, and the two people organizing that war need to know more about how the upper crust Thandol nobles live and think.”

  Then Maggi revealed what was probably the true reason. “The two of us never get to have any fun in the field. If we screw this up and get our butt’s caught in a crack, we can fight them off as well as any of you can. I don’t see how they could stop us from reaching a stealthed Scout. If they do, we’ll hide or run until someone pops a Scout down to rescue our clumsy asses and recovers or destroys our ship. The Empire doesn’t have detectors that can see through our stealth, at least not yet. We’re doing it, so live with it! That means you too, Sarge.”

  The silence was as eloquent as it was rare.

  Mirikami broke the awkwardly quiet moment with cheerful banter. “OK, people, let’s go tippy toe once around Wendal.”

  The five small ships followed separate paths around the heavily developed planet, recording what was seen in permanent orbit and on the surface. Not a thorough recon, but good enough for now. Three of them managed to cross over the thirty miles wide palace complex, with elaborate and expansive gardens, lush browsing areas, and elaborate security around the walls, and restrictions on traffic passing over at low orbitals.

  There were several elaborate and presumably luxurious living areas, at least for an elephant-like browsing species. One, at the highest levels near the center of the large complex, seemed to be the most often used. It featured multiple large rectangular plots of a golden haze of knee high grass, waving gently in the breezes. This was presumably the highly prized golden sugar spears, and was reserved for the Emperor, royal nobles of the Imperial Court, or special guests of the Emperor.

  Maggi told Tet, “If golden sugar
spears are restricted to consumption by royalty, it’s the cultural equivalent to royal jelly for Earth honey bees. That’s a nutritious secretion fed to selected bee larva, causing them to develop into new queens. Having a plot of that royal grass give a totalitarian Emperor a case of the royal shits, is a small measure of justice.”

  She was going to enjoy contaminating those plots with the fast maturing, hard to eliminate intestinal parasites. “Let the lords of the Thandol empire reap some of what they sow, when those lords are displeased with their unwilling peons.”

  Maggi had learned from the Hothor that several of the plots were always in the process of being replanted, and rich new soil was dug for each one, by low class Thandol, which alien servants saw haul to the palace compound. The plots were worked only by those same trusted, wrinkled and elderly looking Thandol gardeners, who earned that honor over a lifetime of work.

  Manual labor was normally reserved for alien workers, which were not permitted above the first level inside palace grounds. Where the plots were located was likely near where the exalted Farlol the 84th lived. Per the rough diagram the Hothor had provided, the throne room was ten levels below these open grazing areas, and the throne room itself was several levels above ground level.

  “I’ve found an isolated roof where a scout can land, and is inaccessible to foot traffic, where any one of us could easily get down and back up. From there we could infiltrate to the grazing plots. I’m less certain we could do that while the emperor is in residence, with increased patrolling and unknown security precautions surrounding him. There could be pressure sensors in floors and walls, for example. He’d likely need to be away, with most of his security guards with him, and less attention paid to the empty quarters. I saw a lot of Thandol in fancy uniforms, moving all around that area right now, so he may be home.