Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  Weapons sensors were all set to scan the space above the landing clanships, so they were not looking behind, other than the pilot visually watching for an empty landing spot, which was the typical Krall pilot procedure. They assumed the perfectly visible clanships rising towards them from below were going after the enemy. They were correct, except for whom those ships considered the enemy. Missiles and plasma bolts into main thruster nozzles belatedly proved the fallacy of their assumptions.

  The one hundred Kobani ships quickly accounted for over seven hundred enemy ships before the few hundred clanships still surviving on the ground switched from automatic to manual weapons control, and radioed to the hundreds of descending craft that the enemy was also below them. Many of the descending ships were deviating to other domes for landing, and they had a better perspective of what happened at Tanga’s domes. However, they observed what appeared to be clanships firing on clanships, and there was no easy way from long range to prevent their anti-ship missiles from switching to a friendly target after launch. The Krall had never needed the human type IFF systems against any enemy, because no former enemy could operate Krall equipment. Of course, the clans never fought interclan space wars, since that negated individual warrior ability for selective breeding.

  Having finally found a truly worthy and flexible enemy, they were not exactly what the Krall had expected.

  Another advantage the Kobani ships had today was that although they were using reaction thrusters for launching from Tanga domes, it was merely part of their masquerade as typical clanship activity. They had retained tachyons in their primary and secondary Trap fields, caught while still in space, to power their energy hungry Normal Space drives. That drive power use, when activated, came at the expense of power for energy beam weapons. If you were going to use missiles as your primary weapons initially, it didn’t matter as much.

  They didn’t start out using Normal Space drive because that wasn’t the standard Krall method of operation. Polluting the atmosphere of a world didn’t matter to them as much as always having energy beam weapons at full power. When return plasma and laser fire started to increase from clanships that switched to manual fire, something the Kobani had expected to happen sooner, they kicked in their Normal Space drives to vectored their ships sideways and away from the domes, as they simultaneously cut their more easily followed thruster generated ion trails. The Kobani ships fired the final quarter of their original load of missiles at any targets of opportunity.

  The clock controlled when the Kobani activated their IFF systems, and they switched them on five seconds before 0835 HST, the scheduled time for the Return Ghost of the navy. Since they had now been identified by the Krall as enemies anyway, they spread laterally through the atmosphere, safe from potential navy fire, and they looked for more targets to hit. They skipped past a few small clan domes that were already on fire, some blasted mining sites and transport lines, and saw fences blown open around Raspani herds that clearly had just been hit, releasing them. Obviously, the Shadow fighters had already been here, spreading their own form of holiday cheer to the Krall.

  Right on schedule, the navy suddenly reappeared in the same five disc formations, over K1 at three thousand miles this time, stealth active, and each formation arrived with lateral motion, with a Normal Space drive thrust vector accelerating them at right angles away from the point where each had emerged. With no reaction mass trail to see, their sideways motion wasn’t immediately obvious from a distance. The poor resolution via low frequency radio waves wasn’t definitive, and impatient warriors wouldn’t wait anyway.

  This had been Mauss’ recommendation, relayed through Mirikami, to throw off Krall suicide targeting. The five task forces emerged in huge bursts of gamma rays, which showed they clearly held the same disc formations as before. However, not so obvious was that they were already moving and accelerating away from the entry coordinates. They had just learned that the Krall had discovered the Achilles heel of their new stealth system, and were testing its limits. However, in visible and infrared light, they were still invisible to Krall vision, which suicide pilots used at short range, and they would only be weakly outlined on Krall sensors in long wave radio frequencies. They knew this was so because the Kobani ships also had Krall type sensors, and they had previously verified the low quality of Krall detection ability if their newer stealth was penetrated.

  In their previous appearance, the navy had all been oriented nose down, moving for a time at the exact same velocity as the target points on the planet below them were moving. That wasn’t a stable orbit, but they had not planned to be there very long. They had stayed in that relationship while they fired several salvoes of missiles, then Jumped. This time, they were essentially drawing flies and scouting before Jumping.

  The flies in this case were sporadic suicide clanship Jumps into their presumed formations, which would have to be random exits by the Krall because they couldn’t see their targets by eye. Missile launches would be less effective, if they even tracked targets at all. Likewise, energy weapons would have poor target resolution because of the long wave lengths needed to find the enemy ships. They couldn’t specifically target a ship’s hull mounted laser and plasma pods until they made a visible flash when they fired. All they would detect is the general outline of the ship, and they would see the size scale. The older and larger ships would draw the most attention.

  This time, the navy expected to draw crowds quickly, because Mauss (based on Mirikami’s assurances) believed the Krall would be in a near berserker’s rage to hit back, and they had more ships above the safe Jump Hole creation altitude. This had been part of the planning, to use the Krall’s volatility and rage against them. They had suffered grievous losses compared to the humans today, unable to hit back effectively. Now the enemy was back to taunt them. Apparently sitting in the same vulnerable and hard to defend flat disc formations, and presumably coasting over their ground targets.

  Clanships promptly started winking out as they entered event horizons from all around K1, and nearly simultaneously, dozens of White Outs appeared right where a disk formation had just been detected as it emerged. No brilliant flashes, from random and lucky intersections with enemy ships occurred at any of the five locations. The pilots and K’Tals quickly used the new scanner settings, but didn’t find the enemy surrounding them as they expected.

  However, it was easy to spot the direction in which the enemy formations had just moved, and they were close. They fired a number of anti-ship missiles their way just for effect, and a barrage of plasma bolts and laser beams lanced out at the target outlines, as the clanships applied their own considerably higher accelerations to close with the navy craft.

  Mysteriously, a hand or more of the clanships erupted in flames as they pursued each formation. They discovered the hard way that the cursed navy had left stealthed metal seeking proximity mines in their wake as they’d moved away. The three or four minor hull strikes the random Krall energy weapons caused in two enemy formations were obviously non-fatal for those individual human ships, and it only damaged their stealth capability in a single hull section, concealed when the ships rotated to present undamaged hull surfaces to the enemy giving chase. However, that was hardly a cause for celebration. Particularly when on cue, every human ship winked out again as they Jumped together.

  Safely back in Tachyon Space, Chatsworth reviewed the images the ships of her five formations had relayed to her in the four minutes they were in Normal Space. The clanships that had reached orbit were more widely dispersed now, thanks to the D-Rams spreading them out earlier. There was a spreading debris field at roughly a five hundred miles altitude, which were impressive in density, but didn’t wrap around the planet as of yet. The Krall had been staying mostly clear of that stratum of low orbits, passing through them quickly to reduce exposure time to collisions with debris. She noted there were hundreds of balls of fire spaced around the four domes she had been told belonged to Tanga clan, where the Kobani had landed. O
bviously, they had started shooting on schedule. There also were multiple streaks of falling flames well above those same domes, as testaments of additional airborne destruction. She saw the IFF signals of the Kobani ships, and noted they were now well clear of the fat targets of those four domes and moving farther away rapidly.

  One extended volume of space that was presently clear of the clusters of low orbital debris was over those four domes, since the initial clanship and D-Ram wreckage had moved on in their two different orbits. This was an equatorial orbit for clanships and polar orbits for the D-Ram fragments, with some scatter in between. It would be perhaps ninety or more minutes before the first of it returned to this location, when the debris field finished its first full orbit. She wanted those four Tanga clan domes as targets for Task Force 1, which included her flagship the Sword. Rank hath privileges.

  Based on current Krall clanship clustering, and other debris patterns, there were two other more or less vacant lower orbitals where two of her task forces could also briefly appear, launch missiles at those domes then Jump. There were only a few dozen clanships parked near any of the domes to provide missile protection. She made her selections, informed the commander of Task Force 1, who also happened to be captain of her flagship, Captain Boise, and decided on assignments for the two other task force commanders deciding which domes would be their targets.

  Her selections for the other two commanders were based solely on the damage to ships two of her groups had just received, as reported by the AIs on those ships, rendering their stealth vulnerable, and thus that of the entire Task Force until they were pulled out of formation. She would isolate those damaged ships later, when she had more time, but not now.

  She used her personal Comtap specialist to pass her orders to Mirikami for relay, to ensure coordination went to ships in or out of Tachyon Space.

  ****

  Telour had calmed his rage. The battle had become more personal, now that he believed the attack on the seven clanships that had escaped the council dome was intended specifically to kill him. Not that the enemy knew which of those ships he was in, or even for certain that he had escaped in any of them. He nearly had not escaped the dome’s destruction. However, a clever enemy might expect the top leader of the Krall war effort to have instant resources available, and would be a more intelligent and responsive leader than average. That’s what his ego told him, and in this case, he was correct.

  A Tor Gatrol would logically be at the council dome when an invasion fleet was being prepared, so the humans tried to take out the dome early in the attack. Then they tried again to attack escaped clanships in orbit, in case he had been in any of the seven clanships that avoided the destruction. The human’s artificial minds in their craft had obviously been able to track those ships, and then they struck at them again.

  Just as when he’d engaged in death match challenges in his past, he was now calm and rational. As a young warrior, he’d provoke his opponent into rash moves, and try to anticipate, based on observing his challenger’s reactions, what he might do if presented with a potential advantage. Then make that seeming advantage appear for them.

  The New Glasgow invasion was effectively ended for now, but that had never been his plan. It was a carryover from Kanpardi, which he’d been unable to deflect from the minds of the now dead Joint Council. His personal need now was to find a way to punish the human fleet enough that he could drive them away. If they were a Krall force, they might fight to the very last ship, to inflict so much damage on Telda Ka that no invasion could happen anywhere. Except, humans seldom fought that way unless trapped. They didn’t know he had little interest in the invasion, but he was certainly interested in preserving his status, and maintaining his ability to punish this enemy greater than even he had originally considered necessary. He would use his lack of interest in preserving the invasion force to drive them away. That was his immediate goal for today.

  When the Olt’kitapi living ship arrived, his new and greater goal would soon be realized. Humanity would lose more than the two heavily populated Hub worlds he’d first intended. They would lose something more important to them as a species. They would get to watch as a steady path of destruction was laid, leading directly and inexorably to Earth.

  When he received reports that a hundred clanships had launched from the outskirts of the four Tanga clan domes, and they were firing on the loaded craft on the tarmacs, he combined this with the knowledge of the stealthed ships they had discovered in orbit. The extra clanships he’d though were from some clan that wanted Tanga clan to look bad, were infiltrators, arriving right under their muzzles with the rest of the fleet, using the mass arrivals as cover.

  Somehow, probably weeks ago, they had landed small forces of their troopers in that new stealthed armor, going to the domes where unguarded equipment was stored in the open. That was when they planted some sort of device on many of them. Then they departed to wait for another invasion to be planned. Another invasion would be the only reasonable purpose of having so much war material stockpiled on Telda Ka. Kanpardi had ordered this build up, and the humans noticed and understood what it meant. Telour decided he could lay the blame on the dead Tor for the sabotage.

  From what Frakod had passed along to him concerning the investigation of the explosions, the internal explosions on clanships were probably caused by fusion bottle ruptures. None of the clanships loaded with only warriors, rations, or small arms were destroyed when the detonation signal was sent. There had been mini-tanks and plasma cannons loaded in multiples, on clanships that carried such equipment. That meant three or four fusion bottles may have ruptured at the same time, on multiple decks, assuring destruction from the plasma released. Fewer of the heavy transports were loaded per ship, so every fifth one of those was sabotaged, with the same result.

  Today, humans had sent their stolen clanships back to K1 with the recall of the invasion fleet. That was where the extra clanships at Tanga domes came from. He didn’t understand how they had obtained so many of them, but he couldn’t deny the evidence. However, the good news was that except for a new type of stealth, which could now be circumvented, he was unaware of any other new technology that was used to conduct this attack.

  He hadn’t deduced the existence of Comtaps, of course, but that was something more subtle than an obvious combat advantage like stealth. Few Krall would consider undetectable communications to be worth more than encrypted signals were, and not as valuable as a weapon in their hands.

  Telour watched, without taking other than standard offensive actions, as the five navy formations returned briefly, then Jumped away again. He considered afterwards what the humans had gained from such brief appearances. Besides the small number of clanships that hit mines when they chased after them, that is. Those were flown by what were likely berserker pilots and commanders, obeying the edict to kill and die for Path and Clan.

  This was per his earlier instructions, but he might use that now in a controlled way, to gain an advantage by channeling the senseless rage.

  Using his battle space sense to view the disposition of his forces on and above the planet, he considered what the humans would think was vulnerable and worth destruction. As he did this, he saw openings in the defense of the planet, which offered an opportunity for an enemy that considered property valuable.

  In this case, the Tanga clan domes still stood, some of the equipment was still parked there, and Tanga’s few dozen surviving parked clanships were collectively worth little to Telour if there would be no new invasion. He obviously didn’t factor in the lives of Tanga warriors and sub leaders in the domes and clanships, and certainly not that of the Prada in the underground factories. No Krall of any rival clan would have done that either, in Telour’s position. The notion passed through his mind that Kanpardi might have thought differently, but he brushed it away. That was why Kanpardi was dead and Telour was in charge.

  If Tanga were further crippled and greatly reduced in status today, they would not rise t
o be his or Graka clan’s rival for at least a full breeding cycle, if ever again. Humans had just become a tool for gaining clan supremacy for him, and he would break that tool after it was used.

  He issued his instructions to the various clanships, told them where to move and where to be prepared to go next, and to wait for his signal to attack. He knew it would come soon, while he held the window of false opportunity open for them.

  ****

  “Well, she’ll have her selected targets in her virtual gun sights in a minute.” Mirikami had just transmitted Chatsworth’s orders to her Task Force commanders. Three of them would White Out together at the set time. Mirikami pulled at his lip, a slight frown showing.

  Mauss hadn’t said anything either, but Maggi had seen her lips tighten as Tet had told her what Chatsworth had planned. From Tet’s description of the plan, Maggi though he sounded less than enthusiastic, and his frown and lip tug proved that was so.

  She asked of no one in particular, “How long will it take to wipe out those domes? The factories under the Tanga domes are filled with Prada. I hate to see them hurt, even if these workers still consider the Krall the Lords of the Universe, and they work tirelessly for them.”

  Mauss fielded the open question. “It isn’t just killing Prada that bothers me, although so many of them are now our allies and that’s regretful. Wars have killed far more innocent civilians than these willing enemy workers. For me, the problem is the tactic, where three of our task forces continue hitting at various surface targets until the Krall respond strongly, and then they’ll Jump, when the Fleet Admiral orders them to do so.