Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  “That has already been observed Mam. It was assumed to be an artifact of the camera because there is no distant massive gravitational mass to create that effect, known as an Einstein ring.”

  Shit again!

  “Josie, assume a closer small compact massive object, much like a Jump Hole that did not rotate into Tachyon Space. Could that small a diameter black hole object produce the same effect?”

  “The effect seen is compatible with an event horizon approximately two to four hundred feet in diameter, located about one half mile in front of the single ship.”

  “Fleet Link!” She didn’t have time to wait. Several of the objects were within a hundred miles of the edge of the fleet globe.

  “This is Admiral Mauss. The missiles launched from the platforms may have some sort of Jump Hole projected a half mile in front of them. Plasma and laser beams are swallowed, as are our missiles if met head on. If you can see them from the sides, fire anything you can bring to bear now at the closest three, before they get inside our outer formation. Fire at will.”

  It only required the human battle directors to issue the instructions to the AI’s, but this took seconds to describe, the retargeting took a second, shifting from the zone each ship was assigned to guard to one outside their designated area of responsibility. The inbound missiles were now traveling at many miles per second. The first two were quickly within the tenuously defined boundary of the formation’s mostly vacant globular surface.

  No one had assigned any ship which of the targets to hit, so the collective AI’s, following standard Navy safety protocols to avoid friendly fire incidents, all selected the trailing target as the “safest” at which to direct over a hundred plasma and laser beams. Some few beams were lost to the small event horizon in front, but the reflective single ship hull, despite its remarkable quantum controlled reflectivity was absolutely no match for the millions of gigawatts of energy aimed at its sides. It vanished in a well-dispersed vapor cloud as the event horizon collapsed in a flash of light and gamma rays as the tachyons held by the Trap field escaped.

  That was far more spectacular looking flash than the end of the destroyer that happened to be in front of the oncoming event horizon of the untouched lead missile. DS-31 was not the intended target, any more than the missiles and beams the small event horizon had “eaten” earlier were its targets. DS-31 just happened to be in the way as the missile sought a battleship or dreadnaught.

  The destroyer swiftly crumpled and shrunk towards the boundary of the event horizon in seconds, except for two slender jets of vaporized material that briefly formed and squirted away on opposite sides of the mini black hole. These “squirts” were merely the remnants of the ship and crew that didn’t fall directly into the hole. Like huge stellar mass black holes that eat too fast, this small one regurgitated the excess remnants along beams squeezed small by twisting magnetic field lines created by the stripped atoms of plasma in a small accretion disk.

  The plasma, directed at right angles to the brief accretion disk was itself dangerous if it struck another ship. It was partly composed of positrons, which were antimatter electrons. The jets did not strike another ship, and the “squirt” quickly ended as the remainder of the disk fell into the event horizon.

  Mauss saw what had happened, and realized that the two missiles within the formation were the greatest threat, with an impenetrable defense when they steered directly at their target.

  “Josie, fleet Link. Mauss here. Override the AI’s friendly fire restrictions and fire on those two ships manually. They will eat us alive if not stopped. Pick side shots and take them down. Mauss out.”

  Random shots started striking the missiles, but without a mass of accurate AI controlled fire, they were not as easy to kill. The fleet suddenly did a preprogramed random shift, which had the unfortunate effect of creating a sixty-mile per second closing velocity with battleship Mace, and the other missile, the one that had not killed DS-31.

  Mace’s Captain, Commander Dawkins, instantly recognized the situation and she broke formation, turning aside to avoid the onrushing missile, firing nearly recklessly as she tried to gain a better side shot. Gauntlet, a fellow survivor of the last fleet action fired as well. There were ablation gasses seen as the target’s reflective hull began to degrade, except the missile turned again towards Mace, negating the targeted battleship’s firepower as it “ate” the incoming energy.

  The Gauntlet now had only a tail shot, a smaller surface area as a target and Mace was nearly in line if they missed or simply grazed. They couldn’t just blaze away, needing to use some finesse and a slower rate of fire. They wanted to avoid hurting the battleship they were trying to save.

  Dawkins diverted a lot of her secondary tachyon energy into Mace’s Normal Space drive, sacrificing the energy reserved for powering the plasma cannons, which were useless with an event horizon closing with them in front of the intended target.

  Mace, its huge mass slow to respond, nevertheless surged ahead at eighty-four gravities acceleration in Normal Space, the internal uncompensated effects pushing her crew deep into their couches. However, the far lighter single ship matched that acceleration easily, as whatever Krall computer it used for automated steering sensed the nearby energetic Trap fields of Mace.

  It activated the field projector that could reach into Tachyon Space to touch other Trap fields, and inverted the Mace’s secondary Trap field. This happened just as the big ship was widening the angle for its heavy lasers to strike from the side. The stored tachyons in the secondary field were suddenly dumped, killing the surge of acceleration.

  Scientists had not learned how to generate this inversion trick yet, or to block its application. However, the standard solution was to cycle your Traps off and back on, and quickly trap another of the plentiful and energetic T-squared tachyons in the higher level Tachyon Space. It was a fast process, but fast is relative. Fifteen to thirty seconds when you only have ten or fifteen seconds to live is too slow. Captain Dawkins had her still intact primary Trap already charged with Jump energy. She chose to save the ship and ordered the AI to Jump.

  The last moment decision would have worked if the smaller ship’s computer had not altered the focal point of the Jump Hole generator mounted on its bow. Instead of a two hundred foot diameter horizon at a half mile, it extended the focus to form a four-foot diameter black hole at twenty-five miles, and the closing velocity brought the little killer just close enough to Mace to start tearing at the aft end of the battleship. The mini black hole swallowed another field projector on the big ship, killing the primary Trap, along with devouring part of the hull and penetrating aft compartments. Crewmembers spilled into vacuum, but reached the small event horizon sooner than they could die of sudden decompression.

  The infalling material had some angular momentum, so naturally formed an accretion disk in a tiny fraction of a second, tearing matter apart down to individual atoms and ultimately, stripped even those to fundamental particles. Some of that shredded material came from people that were still living seconds earlier. Fortunately, the deaths were mercifully quick.

  The ravening four-foot wide little monstrosity was insatiable. Even with the attractive gravitational force dropping with the square of the distance, one sixteenth as strong at four feet as it was a foot from the singularity hidden within the event horizon, the overall force of attraction was huge near the bizarre object. As the generator’s focus shifted, the black hole moved with the relative movement of the missile and the battleship, it very quickly ate its way completely through Mace, tearing apart two of the four giant main thruster engines, spilling their volatile reaction mass. That triggered a massive chemical explosion of the self-oxidizing fuel from the small but intensely hot plasma jets from the sputtering accretion disk.

  The missile itself finally passed behind the Mace, the small black hole now projected far from its victim. The onboard computer adjusted the focal point back to just a half-mile ahead, and the two hundred foot diameter even
t horizon again protecting it from the front. It turned towards the dreadnought Indomitable.

  Gauntlet was no longer directly behind the missile, and its combined plasma and lasers ended that particular reign of terror with another flash of a vaporizing hull, and the collapse and gamma ray evaporation of the small event horizon. Captain Caruthers of Gauntlet, reporting numerous escape pods leaving Mace requested permission to recover survivors before rejoining the fleet for the next course shift.

  Mauss granted that act of mercy, and told Caruthers she could also try to recover the survivors of DS-42, now nearly a thousand miles from the fleet formation, but under no current threat.

  Ships firing from the side had destroyed a number of other black hole generating missiles launched from the nearest orbital platforms. So long as you didn’t stay directly in front of them, you could counter them with conventional firepower.

  Mauss noted that radar reported more of the same type missiles coming towards the fleet from the more distant orbital platforms. Those platforms were in orbits too remote to offer significant plasma beam threats. This was because the charged particles in the plasma, initially focused into a tight tube, gradually dispersed with distance as the same-charge particles repelled each other. After a couple of thousand miles, even a powerful beam was a reduced risk for any ship but the lightly armored destroyers.

  Repeated missile salvos had knocked down at least another two hundred Clanships in atmosphere, but now there were over a thousand in vacuum, some of them stealthed, with more coming. They were spreading out to come after the fleet in the typical Krall warrior mode. Every Clanship commander was out to make a personal kill. There appeared to be relatively little coordination between them, although there was encrypted conversation between some of them. Except for small clusters of ships, apparently working with their own clans, there were no large group attacks taking shape.

  Mauss was willing to trade blows with them for a time, since thus far operation New Lance had hit K1 much harder than the Krall had hit the fleet in return. However, she didn’t intend to let hundreds of Clanships get into her formation for suicide micro Jumps. The fleet made another course change, and promptly launched another lighter salvo from their most heavy ships, the destroyers and heavy cruisers having used all of their smaller stores of missiles.

  They shifted course again as soon as that missile flight cleared the edge of the globe. The prompt shift was fortunate, because several Clanships suddenly did White Outs very close to where Invincible and two battleships would have been. It appeared that kamikaze short jumps were starting. The Invincible and Indomitable promptly fired on two of the closer Clanships, the AI’s coordinating heaviest fire on one target nearly midway between them. It fought back furiously, scouring their armor with its more powerful plasma beams, but it didn’t last long, receiving four times the firepower it could muster itself. The fleet’s new reactive armor overlays not only protected the capitol ships from Worm missiles, it countered the Krall heavier plasma beams better. The trapped Clanship launched a clutch of eight Worms at Invincible, just before its hull armor ruptured near the bow, probably killing the pilot and commander instantly.

  Captain Codry now focused Invincible’s fire on the Worms, while Indomitable finished off the Clanship. The other two Clanships were taking damage, but bore in together on the closest battleship to them, the Archer. Two battlecruisers joined Archer in pouring in fire on the two Krall ships.

  The Clanships twisted and shifted course and speed, and maintained a stream of fire on Archer, ignoring the two battlecruisers. One of the Clanships received damage to its Trap field projectors and lost tachyon power for normal Space drive, falling behind with reduced acceleration when it had to rely on thruster power alone. It only had full use of lasers, since it apparently lost plasma cannon power. As it continued slower towards Archer, it focused on the bow in an obvious effort to disable the Bridge.

  Archer simply responded by rotating the ship, to dissipate the incoming heat over more of its hull armor. The AI had no difficulty coordinating the return fire from plasma ports and laser pods, as they would bear on the two Clanships.

  It appeared that the lead Clanship might be intending to ram, and Archer and one of the battlecruisers concentrated all of their fire on that target. That was enough firepower to terminate the status seeking of that particular Krall commander, when his vessel became a bright spreading ball of gas. The third slower Clanship soon followed it into a lovely blossom of death.

  The fleet promptly shifted direction, and soon two more Clanships did White Outs inside the formation at its new edge. They emerged relatively close together, and combined to launch sixteen Worms at two destroyers and a heavy cruiser that the destroyers were helping screen. The Krall focused laser and plasma fire on the two destroyers, which found themselves hard pressed to fend off six Worms each. The four Worms tracking for the heavy cruiser briefly kept it busy with point defense. Two Worms reached one destroyer, and one survived to reach the other. The heavy cruiser killed its four easily.

  The Clanships made small Jumps away from the human ships, as if to watch the destruction of the destroyers. If so, they must have been disappointed. The reactive armor and decoy magnetic bottles kept the Worms from penetrating and breaching the real, and shielded fusion bottles.

  Mauss noted that only one of the last missile salvos managed to kill a Clanship, the other several hundred being blasted before they reached the mass of now nearly two thousand swirling ships. They were staying directly between the fleet and the planet, apparently protecting the surface because of the damage earlier missiles had inflicted.

  She was wondering why the Krall Clanships were behaving more standoffish than on the previous raid here, when suddenly a battlecruiser on the side of the formation farthest from K1 exploded, destroyed in an intense blue-white fireball. There were no escape pods from its complete destruction. A few seconds after that blast there was another explosion of a destroyer on the opposite side of the formation, it was a smaller intense blue-white flash. No escape pods.

  Mauss checked her threat displays again, since she had seen nothing coming at them. What the hell where they using?

  Josie Linked in, and provided Mauss with the explanation.

  “Mam, two Eight Balls made White Outs near our formation, one struck and shattered a battlecruiser, the other shattered a destroyer, then each Eight Ball performed another Jump as soon after they passed out of our formation. The impacts with battlecruiser Rambler and DS-22 apparently did not damage the balls seriously, because both were able to perform a Jump.”

  “Eight Balls did that with actual collisions and survived?” Despite her best intentions she had lost track of the dense objects, assuming the fleet’s AI’s and weapons officers would advise her if they were moving on the fleet. “Why weren’t we warned of their approach to the fleet when they moved?”

  “Mam, all of the Eight Balls we could see on this side of K1 were monitored, and observed to follow headings directly away from the fleet’s position. Then each one entered a Jump Hole, still accelerating away. The consensus of the AI’s, and also of the officers in our combat centers were that they were fleeing the battle to avoid destruction, or capture.”

  “Where did these two come from then? Radar didn’t see them coming?”

  “Mam, one performed a White Out less than eighty three miles from the edge of the formation, the other just over one hundred and twenty two miles. Both were traveling at nearly nine hundred miles per second. There was too little time for an aural warning. They reached the fleet formation in roughly a tenth of a second. Each completed a pass through our forty mile diameter globe in approximately four hundredths of a second.”

  “Was that too fast to fire on them?” She demanded, more than asked.

  “No Mam. All AI’s detected the gamma rays, and nineteen ships were in a position to direct plasma and laser fire towards them, before they closed the distance. That massed fire had no effect. Shooting halted as they
penetrated the globe’s formation due to concern over friendly fire situations. I have just shifted the fleet early, to try to counter possible targeting by other Eight Balls and Clanships.”

  “How did the balls get up to those speeds and turn back on us so…” Josie interrupted Mauss’ question. “White Out.”

  Mauss expected destruction of another ship, but there was no sign of an explosion on her monitors. Before she could ask what happened, Josie apologized.

  “I’m sorry I spoke over you Mam, I assumed you wished to be warned of the last Eight Ball’s passage.”

  “Yes, I did. What happened? I didn’t see it on my screen.”

  “It shifted course a small amount, but did not have time to intersect with any fleet elements. The velocity was less this time, at seven hundred ninety four miles per second. It came from a different direction, nearly at right angles to the other two. I have made an analysis of the three paths followed, and note that all three courses correspond exactly with the departure paths of three of the Eight Balls that we assumed were fleeing the fight.”

  “OK, so how does that relate to these three coming at us from the opposite sides, at blazing speeds?”

  “Mam, I believe the balls continued to accelerate with their Normal Space drives at the same rate we observed after they Jumped the first time, on a course directly away from us. They must have made an exit somewhere nearby and continued to build velocity in Normal Space. Then they did another Jump, calculated to emerge on the opposite of the fleet on the same course, making a pass through our formation. When they return to Normal Space they retain that high velocity, just as our fleet retained its velocity to match K1’s motion before we Jumped here.”

  Mauss understood the simplicity of the new attack. “Then they are simply acting as high velocity ultra-dense battering rams, using some degree of steering to try to hit us as they pass through our formation. There are thirteen more of them coming, and these three will be back. Josie, calculate the possible return paths for the other balls and try to move the fleet out of their paths, immediate action! Oh…, and avoid the pack of Clanships if possible, and see if that move will help us recover the Gauntlet. She is out there alone right now.”