There was no need for Pendor to order the clanship commanders still on the ground to prepare for their own defense. It would have been an insult to do so. It seemed the humans were better prepared for this operation than expected. However, the direction of the coming attack was now known. From the south. That knowledge of where the attack would originate wasn’t terribly useful in the first second or two, because a hundred cruise missiles flew through the still expanding debris, after exiting from the low foothills a short distance away from the newly created perimeter gap.
Fifteen third wave clanships, still loading warriors who had helped load equipment for the second wave launches, exploded in the characteristic orange and black fireballs of fully fueled ships. Even in armor, the lifetime of a warrior that couldn’t get out of the flames in less than a minute was measured in roasting seconds of agony, when the suit’s cooling system overloaded.
The clanships in the interior were firing every plasma cannon and laser that could bear on the inbound missiles. Several dozen of them were knocked down, but nearly sixty of them eliminated the random clanships they had sought. Oddly, sensors indicated that four of the tracked missiles apparently failed to explode, which was highly unusual for the normally adequate designs of their human enemy’s equipment.
Suddenly, Pendor learned from transmissions from clanships on the opposite side of the mass of ships still on the ground, that radio transmissions had suddenly cut off in the southern quarter of the defensive perimeter. These attackers were using the same sort of communications blockage as the raiders on the Krall factory worlds had used. The unexploded four missiles were actually carrying Electronic Counter Measures.
The Krall’s previous experience with these ECM devices had prompted them to provide hardwired communications between the various clan bunkers, and to their forward posts near the fronts. However, there certainly wasn’t any hardwire strung between the parked clanships waiting to launch. Now there was a second wave of one hundred missiles inbound he was told, even as his ship left the atmosphere. He considered what the impact on his mission would be if all hundred missiles were successful, and each destroyed clanships mostly full of replaceable warriors. Unlikely, but it was a consideration.
Tor Gatrol Kanpardi, and even Til Gatrol Telour, would consider losing nearly two hundred invasion fleet clanships a significant loss, even if only about six percent of this fleet. At least replacement warriors were never in short supply. There were several million warriors in reserve at their base on K1. He made an instant decision as to which clanships he could least afford to lose.
“Launch all clanships loaded with equipment next. Do it now, immediately.” With radio communications disrupted to perhaps a quarter of his waiting two thousand clanships, some of those loaded with supplies in the southern section would still launch in the third wave as preplanned. The equipment in those ships was actually more valuable than were his warriors. Therefore, preserving as many that carried equipment as possible was a priority. This damned Worthy Enemy was becoming a painful injury in the cloaca.
Preserving material over warriors was a viewpoint he had not appreciated before, when Telour had explained Kanpardi’s reasoning for pulling stored supplies from Poldark. Now that that the success of his own invasion plans required this equipment, and he knew there were ample warriors available elsewhere, he suddenly embraced the same attitude. He doubted warriors with low breeding status would agree. Those males and females with higher status would have had their seed or unfertilized eggs already preserved, as did he, so that their proven strong genetic line would continue.
He spoke to his pilot. “Delay our Jump to K1, there may be more orders required from me if the humans have more tricks to use. Stay with the vanguard clanships.” The rendezvous point for the fleet was K1, where they had always intended to take on more small arms and their power packs, and now he might need more warriors to carry those weapons.
The elements of the first wave, which had launched right behind him, were also nearly clear of the atmosphere. The forty-eight vanguard clanships had preemptively launched numerous anti-ship missiles in the general direction of Poldark’s moon, where the thirty heavy cruisers often lurked. They fired plasma and laser beams at the hundreds of railguns in higher orbits. The railguns had all turned to face away, and their thick back shields were absorbing the energy, and only a few suddenly drifted out of control or exploded.
At least when they were facing away from the planet in that self-defense mode, they couldn’t launch their tens of thousands of depleted uranium slugs, with the locater transmitters in them. As it turned out, when the Krall vanguard’s radar signals had time to search the space above the occupied continent, they discovered the humans didn’t need to fire any more slugs.
At least several hundred thousand slugs were already enroute towards the area over the center of the continent, directly above where the Krall defensive circle was located. They had obviously fired them when the vanguard ships were just igniting their thrusters, or even slightly before then. That was because the heavy slugs were three quarters of the way there as the vanguard ships broke atmosphere. It was too late to counter the railguns.
The surface missile attack, as Pendor’s ship launched, obviously wasn’t a fluke of luck or good guesswork on the enemy’s part either.
An impressive array of locater slugs was converging on the fringe of atmosphere where his fleet would have to make their exit. The slugs might do some minor damage to the hulls and some to equipment or warriors as they penetrated, but the likelihood of serious damage directly from those random hits wasn’t what worried Pendor when he was told of them. Again, humans knew what the Krall were planning. How were they going to make use of the information they would gather from the inevitable lucky slug hits on nearly invisible clanships?
Both ground and space based enemy plasma and laser batteries could cost him some ships, as could anti-ship missiles if those were already on the way. However, there was no sign of the dangerous small killer missiles that could lock onto a clanship, which would have given themselves away with their ion trails and launch thrusters. They seldom were fired at long range, since they were more easily thwarted when seen coming.
Pendor wished the enemy cruisers had made an attack run on his fleet. If the heavy cruisers had dived towards the lifting clanships, launching their anti-ship missiles, the surviving majority of the heavy ground batteries would have shot them ragged, not to mention the formidable return fire from clanships. Thirty heavy cruisers against three thousand clanships was a suicide mission for those crews. That was not something humans were noted for doing.
Pendor, who had observed human railgun use for over two years, noted that the clump of approaching railgun slugs was extremely compact. They had not fired long continuing bursts, as was typically done against previous launches of only a hand of clanships. Even the slugs fired from more distant gun platforms were timed to arrive with the slugs fired later from closer guns.
He would have expected a larger number, spread over a wider volume if they truly had anticipated what the Krall had planned. This time, with thousands of clanships lifting, it seemed halfhearted.
They might succeed in randomly locating dozens of the first clanships to achieve better stealth when they reached vacuum, and before they could reach a safe distance out of the gravity well to Jump. However, the longer range for human plasma and laser fire to reach the area over the Krall held territory would reduce the effectiveness of having accurate targeting data. Beam dispersal, and the atmospheric fringe would attenuate long rage beam weapons.
The humans should have used those vulnerable heavy cruisers to move in and fire anti-ship missiles and close-up plasma cannons from short range. Yet they were nowhere to be seen. Humans were too timid. He often wished this enemy would fight more boldly, and stop retreating all of the time.
His own ship was far above the atmospheric fringes when the cloud of projectiles passed well below them, and entered the swarm of rising
clanships. His sensors reported the sparkle of twenty-five or thirty small detonations, accompanied by the signal bursts of data the slugs transmitted to the listening human AIs. He anticipated a flurry of distant and thus less effective energy beams, seeking the freshly identified targets based on their current vectors.
His education on humans was proving to be an ongoing process. He discovered the basis for the human idiom “Be careful what you wish for.”
His wish was granted, as over thirty White Outs flashed their radiation in all directions from within the Krall fleet’s formation.
****
Admiral Foxworthy was on the bridge of her ship, in the forefront of her reinforced heavy cruiser squadron, prepared to enter a Jump Hole, on the opposite side of Poldark from the Krall held territory.
She transmitted to all of her captains. “As soon as the Planetary Defense AI transmits the coordinates of slug hits, we all Jump on my AI’s mark after it assigns your designated targets. Come out shooting, and one minute later, we Jump back here. If hit and hurt, Jump away sooner.”
The burst transmission she expected arrived, and Foxworthy’s command to her AI to “Go!” was redundant. They had already entered the Jump Hole.
The admiral, and every crewmember of each of the ships, was encased in gel-filled armor as protection from uncompensated accelerations, and secured at their battle stations. The ship’s main AI had navigation control, and the weapons control AIs had just been programed with targeting coordinates. The targets were initially protected by a rather bulky planet being in the way, and were located on the opposite side of Poldark, a situation being remedied by a short Jump. They were using a typical Krall tactic today on that same enemy.
Faster than a human could blink, the squadron emerged on the opposite side of Poldark, within the loose formation of clanships rising out of atmosphere. They could Jump into the gravity well this close to a planet, but the squadron needed to climb farther out of the gravity well to Jump away. Even as each ship fired its maximum number of twenty simultaneous anti-ship missiles, the plasma cannons were firing at the newly identified coordinates of clanships randomly struck by slugs. The cruiser’s lasers were being used as detectors, by sweeping the space around each ship at relatively low power, trying to identify any reflection or refraction anomalies that suggested other undetected clanships in stealth mode.
The Normal Space drives were already engaged, driving the cruisers up and away from the planet, firing at every identified target, and new ones that were being found as their lasers identified nearby distortions for them to target.
The Krall, not as fast as an AI, were nevertheless quick to react. The cruisers had the newer stealth coating technology that Nabarone’s technicians had provided to the PU cruisers, but this was its first test in combat. It was as good as Krall stealth or better, but so long as they kept firing at Krall targets of opportunity, their own locations were not in doubt. Each of the clanships that fired on them also lost its anonymity, which provided a “target rich” environment for the cruisers.
The cruisers had emerged exactly as the tail end of the cloud of railgun slugs passed through the first wave of Krall clanships. They were inside the Krall formation, firing before the Krall knew what was happening. The planetary and space based batteries of the Planetary Defense Command was also firing on each newly identified Krall ship, and trying to avoid any inadvertent hits of friendlies mixed in with them.
One of the clanships, badly damaged by an anti-ship missile that had knocked out its Jump capability, used its Normal Space drive to turn directly into a nearby cruiser, clearly defined by the origin of its energy beams and missiles. The cruiser’s main AI, detecting the oncoming ship on radar where its stealth coating was gone, tried a desperate surge in acceleration and a twisting turn to avoid the intended rammer. It was too close to the planet to execute a Jump, and the acceleration exceeded the safe limits the gel-filled suits could provide to the human crew.
They were all unconscious when the clanship struck them, at a closing velocity of tens of miles per second. They literally never knew what hit them. The clanship, loaded with over two thousand warriors, all knew what was happening, as the hull ruptured and spewed them into space. The impact, explosive fireball, and spinning fragments killed the majority of them, but a few “lucky” temporary survivors were able to observe the swirl of combat action from inside their armor, once it automatically stabilized their tumbling. It was a level of alert observation those warriors would maintain for almost a full day, before they fell back to Poldark. None of them had achieved escape velocity, and both the living and dead Krall made brilliant glowing streaks across the evening sky the next day. Very pretty.
Pendor watched in shock as so many of his precious cargo ships vanished in fireballs. As before, the loss of warriors was regrettable, but not a resource in short supply. His sensors informed him, as the cruisers winked out at the same altitude as his clanships did, that only four of the enemy ships were destroyed of the thirty, while he had lost another forty-one. The later launches, already underway, were going to have to run the gauntlet of energy beams and missiles, but unless the humans had another hand of a hand of cruiser squadrons, most of his fleet would reach K1 intact. He estimated that he might lose as much as ten percent of his invasion fleet, before the invasion even started.
That amounted to three hundred clanships, fully loaded, against only four human cruisers killed, and a handful of unmanned gun platforms and two orbital batteries. This operation was ordered by Kanpardi, so Pendor would only be held responsible if the invasion went badly.
He spoke out for the first time, after his ship entered the Jump Hole. “Kanpardi ordered this operation as a means to punish humans for attacking our worlds. Do any of you think that lesson was learned by them this week?” In a show of disrespect, he’d omitted the title of Tor Gatrol.
It was a redundant question. There was no way the ground assault of the last several days had achieved a lasting gain of territory, or had produced the massive number of human deaths desired. The partial withdrawal, intended to divert resources from stockpiles on Poldark to use in another invasion by this fleet, would require supplementation now from material and warriors on K1. That material in turn, was partly intended for mounting a second new invasion. Material losses were delaying their plans, interfering with their walk along the Great Path.
Telour was completely right. Kanpardi was preserving the devastating Olt’kitapi ships when they should be used to inflict real damage to entire human worlds, to force them to comply with Krall demands. Telour was the war leader that the Krall needed now.
****
“Henry that was a spectacular example of anticipating a more powerful enemy’s moves, and applying the hurt to them when they did what you expected.” Admiral Bledso was nearly gushing in her praise.
General Cadifem resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. Nabarone had done very well, but there had been some narrow escapes from disaster on the ground. She thought the real source of Bledso’s enthusiasm was the successful surprise attack by the heavy cruisers, under Admiral Foxworthy, against at least a thousand clanships. She had been afraid that they could lose the entire squadron by Jumping right into the hornet’s nest that way. The four ships lost had cost Foxworthy dearly, but was tempered by the destruction of at least forty enemy clanships by her squadron. Some of their hits were being claimed by ground and orbital batteries, and credit would be sorted out in a later review. Regardless, it was the Navy’s best trade of punches with the Krall in space since Admiral Mauss hit K1 the second time, over twenty years ago.
Politics had forced the navy to be largely bystanders in the resulting ground oriented war, after Rhama was nearly destroyed. According to Nabarone, there could be no more Eight Ball attacks, because human raiders from some Rim world group had destroyed the orbital station where they were manufactured, and had wiped out the small stockpile of completed weapons. There was Tri-Vid recordings of that action, and scenes o
f the slave labor aliens being rescued.
Nabarone’s explanation, that a shortage of war material was the only reasonable explanation for the Krall to risk so much by removing them from Poldark, appeared borne out by events. It would have worked without a hitch, if Nabarone had not figured out what the clanship build up here had implied. That insight seemed suspect to Cadifem, since pig headed Henry Nabarone had seldom been so predictive in the past.
She had to admit that in the last few days, he seemed to be a different man. He thought faster, recalled details that most commanders needed their aides or AIs to recall for them, and he looked healthy. He had lost weight while he was healing from his broken leg, and moved more…, she hated to use the word graceful in describing anything to do with the boorish man. He limped at times, but occasionally seemed to have healed just fine.
Bledso was passing along a request from Foxworthy. “Henry, we’d like your Rim contacts to provide the same stealth coating for our Starfires as they have on the Shadows they flew. The spray-on temporary stealth for the cruisers helped them, but in the scrum they were in, it wasn’t as useful when they had to shoot constantly, revealing their locations. Can’t the navy buy some of those canisters of coating material they used? You know we’ll be looking at the stuff on the cruisers, and taking Starfires apart to see how it all works after they’re coated.”
“Admiral, I explained before that the Rimmer scientists claim they don’t yet fully understand the technology, and the alien Prada and Torki that gave us some help on that naturally have different languages. It will take time. You’ve had captured single ships and damaged clanships for a long time. You have never figured out how the stealth works from those examples.”
Koban 4: Shattered Worlds Page 31
