She had given the AI multiple complex conditionals, and was wondering if the AI could juggle all of those variables fast enough. That thought was interrupted before it completed.
“Calculated, coordinated, and executing a fleet shift Mam.”
That is why we let AI’s do that for us, she reflected.
Mauss felt the familiar rapid twist of the Invincible rotating, and a harder push than before as the whole fleet duplicated the movement. She felt severe vertigo for a moment, but motion sickness was once again held at bay by the shots. If this action kept up for very long, she’d have to have the med teams administer a second dose.
“Josie, Fleet Link.” Without waiting, she started talking.
“Attention, this is Admiral Mauss. The Krall are using the Eight Balls as heavy rams to hit our ships. They have boosted speeds to eight or nine hundred miles per second. They are using short Jumps to loop back and make repeated high velocity passes through our formations. I am moving the fleet farther from our present position to try to avoid them. Their high speeds and extreme density make them lethal and nearly indestructible, but they have sacrificed quick turn mobility.
“I’ll try to get us some maneuver room and more time here at K1. We will resume attacks on surface targets and try to draw Clanships close enough to us that our combined fire will cause them losses. I see that Gauntlet has recovered Mace’s escape pods and those from DS-42 as well. Our new course will take us close to her, so Gauntlet can rejoin quickly. Watch for nearby White Outs of inbound Eight Balls, and of suicide Clanships. Allow the AI’s full rapid fire control, since humans are too slow to react. I’m also releasing friendly fire restrictions on the AI’s. We are far more likely to have ships killed by the Krall than by our own fire. The next faster course shifts will not wait for our missiles to clear the formation. They will simply have to adjust to miss us. Waiting on the course changes leaves our tracks predictable for too long. Mauss out.”
While she was speaking, two White Outs produced Eight Balls that passed through the volume the fleet had just vacated. They might not have a way to stop that blunt force weapon, but they could bob, weave, and duck the punches. Josie was moving the fleet towards K1’s southern hemisphere, and fresh ground targets. They had, per her weapons display, almost two thousand remaining medium to small missiles aboard the larger ships, and she preferred not carrying any bullets home this time.
****
Kanpardi calmly faced the enraged clan leaders of the joint council, meeting in the damaged council dome, the smell of smoke heavy in the air. He reminded them. “You were forewarned, by me, of the risk you chose to take. I suspect that some of your clan sub leaders, those that advised you to remove your clan’s ships from orbit, have now helped you move along the Great Path. Dying at the hands of our persistent new enemy would be the most efficient manner. The purge of weak and unprepared warriors proceeds swiftly today.”
Hardrol was particularly angry, because the defense platforms destroyed happened to be orbiting over lands Tanga clan controlled when the attack started. The heavy human missiles that made it past the wrecked platforms had stuck Tanga domes hardest, wiping out a major nursery of eggs from their most recent warrior couplings. Those future cubs would have been the results of breeding Tanga’s highest status novices from months of raids. They were to have been their first fruit of the new war. They would have to start over.
Tanga Clanships had also suffered heavier losses than other clans did, simply because they had to rise in atmosphere while facing an onslaught of missiles. The missiles appeared to use clever computer programs that located and destroyed stealthed Clanships by air disturbances, before they reached vacuum. That success was partly because Clanship pilots and commanders had grown too confident of their invisibility.
Hardrol wanted to shift the blame. “The Graka ships abandoned their guardianship of the platforms too quickly, permitting their premature destruction. That loss exposed my clan to a heavier attack.” Hardrol suspected Kanpardi had ordered that quick withdrawal as payback for his attempt to kill or replace him as Gatrol, at a previous council meeting.
Kanpardi was prepared. “I warned all of you that a single Clanship could not fully protect a platform, and had Graka followed Tanga clan’s example, there would have been no protection for them at all, clearly proving that you bear responsibility for your own losses Hardrol. The hammer balls required pilots, and only Graka Clanships were in orbit and able to provide them before human ships might have reached them, forcing us to fight just to control our own weapon.
“As I also predicted, the human ships arrived without a useful advance warning. Had my clan not sacrificed to protect us all, the damage would be greater. It is Graka clan’s pilots flying the hammer balls, and have tasted enemy blood. What to your pilots do Hardrol?”
Jastek, of clan Mordo, wasn’t interested in more of the perpetual bickering and infighting of old and powerful Tanga and Graka clans. “This attack will delay the start of larger and longer raids on human worlds. Fighting in space is not as efficient at producing stronger faster warriors. There are few opportunities to face our enemy physically that way. Your previous advice to limit the effects of another human raid on this base was valid. I am ready to listen more closely to your new proposals.
“We must convince humans that to be a worthy enemy they should meet us in combat on the surface of their worlds, not in the space above ours. How can you teach them this lesson Gatrol, to make them learn it and remember? Will you bring an Olt’kitapi ship here?”
“No,” he answered swiftly. “We have safer options before we take the step of activating the ancient Olt’kitapi craft. Just one of those ships vaporized our old home world. We have fewer of the soft Krall to operate them than in the past.” His distaste at describing those members of their race was palpable to all.
“If the need arises for the powerful old ships, increased breeding of those reluctant operators would be required, to give us hostages that matter to them. They must be controlled, to prevent their turning the ships against us, or from escaping.”
Hardrol made a grunt of derision. “As Krall they should do whatever our race requires of them.”
Kanpardi snorted and lifted his muzzle in dark humor. “They are exactly what the Olt’kitapi made them, what would have been made of us all under their plans for our race. The soft ones are useful, if only as a reminder of what we escaped. However, they are also the only Krall that the ships will allow to control them. If a true warrior could make the ships work for us, to obey us, we would not need the soft ones.
“For now, we have not fully used all of our weapons we have brought, nor have we attacked the human ships strongly. I waited to order a strong attack until we saw their response to the little eaters and the hammer balls. They now know how to kill eaters from the side or behind, and their defense for the hammers is to move away before they return each time. I will now put warriors in the single ships with the eaters on the nose, to directly control them, and I will slow the hammers so they can turn to strike human ships more easily.”
Jastek had a concern. “If you slow the hammers, the humans may learn their weakness. The disguised portal on the rear is a soft spot. A lucky heavy beam hit could burn through and kill the operator, and we lose that weapon. Hammers are difficult for the Torki slaves to make for us, and it takes very long. If the balls fly even faster than now, the human computers will not find the soft spots with only a short time for plasma bursts. The operators should just change the White Out points more often so they can follow the human fleet. Enough passes through their formation will kill even their biggest ships.”
“No challenge is intended Jastek, although I think you may not know the histories of how to use the old Botolian hammer weapons. They are very hard to damage, but if they fly much faster and strike a great mass, like the large human ships here, their binding energy can be broken and they will explode. A single human ship is not worth the cost of a hammer.”
; Kapdol, the speaker for the Dolbrin minor clan asked, “What is your plan, Gatrol? What do you want us to do?”
“We now must inflict enough damage on the human fleet to make them flee. They will return to their base, or some point of safety for repairs. All of their ships arrived here from one place, different than they arrived on the last raid, when they came from many locations. We know this because they all arrived with the same closely spaced advance waves, which gave us no time to prepare. They will probably all leave together, or perhaps stagger the departures, with the most massive class of ships leaving last, as they did before. However, all ships make waves in Tachyon Space coming and going, and one large ship, or many smaller ships together will make large waves. We must unleash our warriors.”
****
Mauss flinched as another destroyer, at the top edge of the formation, vanished in a ball of blazing gas as an Eight Ball slammed into its stern at just below eight hundred miles per second. It wasn’t entirely a lucky hit, even though the fleet had just made another large relocation move. With practice, the Krall pilots of the balls were making better guesses of where to make their White Out on the return Jump. If they had human computers or AI’s to use they would be able to make more passes through the center of the formation, sometimes striking the capitol ships. Invincible had had a narrow escape; an Eight Ball flashed by her within a half mile as they ineffectively fired on it for all of the half second it was in range.
She had ordered a salvo of five hundred ten missiles before the last fleet shift. Perhaps one in five survived the barrage of defensive fire from the intervening Clanships. They had sent most of the missiles at ground targets in the southern hemisphere. However, two Clanships flashed into incandesce as they passed through the swarm of hundreds. One explosion appeared to have been the result of a chance concentration of “friendly fire” from nearby Clanships.
It was curious that the Krall had not coordinated a full on attack yet, instead sending four to eight ships in grazing firing runs, rather like Indians attacking a circle of wagons in the old archived pre-space westerns. There was damage on both sides, and a trade of one destroyer and a heavy cruiser for four Clanships wasn’t so severe a loss that Mauss was ready to leave. The screening destroyers had suffered the most damage, followed by the heavy cruisers, the next closest to the formation’s edge.
They had been here almost two hours, a far better showing than the previous fiasco. Josie Linked in to deliver Mauss an update on enemy disposition.
“Mam, a transmission from the planet appears to have triggered a change in Clanship movements. We don’t know what was said, but the milling around appears to be organizing. The shield doors on the surviving ten orbital platforms have opened again. Our recon drones on the planet’s far side already report launches of black hole generators from those platforms. There are also single ships launching from Clanships, the first ones we have seen today, except for the computer piloted black hole missiles. It appears they are preparing for a large assault.”
“That it does. Fleet Link, please.”
“Ready, Mam.”
“Attention, the Krall appear to be getting ready for a massed attack. Black Hole generators have already left platforms on the other side of K1, and the shield doors are open on those we can see on this side. There are single ships launching and Clanships are organizing into a loose formation. My status board shows all fleet elements are reporting a Trap holding onto Jump energy for a quick withdrawal. Confirm that information, and be prepared if I issue the order to Jump to Rhama. We have given more damage than we have received, particularly when we count ground targets. I want to retain that advantage. Retarget all remaining missiles for Clanships, and for side shots at the black hole missiles. We are shifting to place more distance between us and the massing Clanships, and to duck the next pass of Eight Balls. Admiral Mauss out.”
Something else seemed off kilter. Mauss thought for a moment before it came to her. It wasn’t something she saw, it was something that wasn’t happening. “Josie, when was the last Eight Ball White Out?”
The sixteen balls had been making repeated loops, shifting their reentry points to try to guess where the human fleet would be. One would pop out every two or three minutes, most of them close to where the fleet would have been before a random course change. The ball pilots were heading away when they Jumped, and had to select some place behind them as a micro Jump destination for the next return pass.
“Mam, that pattern appears to have changed. Based on previous repetition there should have been four or five White Outs since the one that destroyed DS-12. There have been none at all, not even any that missed us completely.”
“Alert the combat centers of this. The enemy may be holding them back for a mass set of Clanship micro jumps into our formation. Shift fleet course now.”
Fifteen seconds later, a hundred Clanships winked out and did instant White Outs, but only half were within the loose globe of fast moving human ships, which had suddenly shifted their vector. A Clanship managed to emerge in part of the space occupied by the battlecruiser Mauler. The Krall were probably not bent on a suicide mission, but to the former crew of Mauler, now a brilliant ball of tens of thousands of tons of vaporized metal and traces of organics, the intent was irrelevant.
The firefight was fierce and conducted at much closer range than had been the case earlier. Single ships, launched from some of the Clanships, charged at the outer destroyer screen, a few of the similar looking black hole generating ships hidden in their numbers.
The release of fire control to the AI’s, with no restrictions for friendly fire risks, made rapid concentrated and coordinated fire from the human ships very effective, despite the heavier plasma and laser beams of the Clanships. Five Clanships quickly flared out of existence, sandwiched as they were between large capitol ships, but two battlecruisers took considerable damage and casualties as they received poundings by a happenstance concentration of nine Clanships around them.
A destroyer suddenly crumpled and vanished with a dying flash, as a small black hole pulled it into the maw of ultimate darkness. Its death accompanied by small jets of escaping plasma, which visibly squirted thousands of miles at relativistic velocities.
Then a Clanship dove towards the dreadnaught Indomitable, as if trying to ram the huge ship. Mauss watched on screen as it received help from two other Clanships, taking out laser pods and plasma ports that fired on the inbound Krall ship.
The invincible was only ten miles away, and fired laser and plasma beams to help defend Indomitable. The Krall pilot was distributing the energy input by rapid spinning. The closing velocity was small compared to that of an Eight Ball, and the Indomitable out-massed the Clanship by a factor of five or six. A collision would certainly destroy the Clanship, but would not inflict severe enough damage to disable the heavily armored thick-hulled dreadnaught.
It finally turned as if to skim past the larger ship. However, it did something completely unexpected as it drew within a quarter mile. It Jumped, forming a monstrous sized event horizon. It took an enormous semicircular bite out of the Indomitable at midship, nearly three quarters through the ship. It had captured a tachyon of immense energy, and used it to form a far larger Jump Hole event horizon than it needed for its own size, and when the volume it enclosed rotated into Tachyon Space, everything within the radius of the overlarge sphere went along.
The cut was precise, down to the atomic level, sheering open the interior of the dreadnaught, spilling atmosphere, fluids, and people into vacuum. One and a half of her four fusion bottles went with the missing mass. The suddenly released plasma in the opened half bottle could not vent through the now missing failsafe system, and instead vaporized the remaining doomed Drive Room crew and the equipment that regulated the other two intact bottles. The ship went dark.
In a reversal of fate, the Bridge was intact, but the “safe” backup command center and personnel were gone, dumped into Tachyon Space. In an instant, a mundane seeming Ju
mp revealed itself as a potential close-up weapon of terrible destructive power.
Mauss had instantly directed other fleet elements to come to the aid of survivors of Indomitable. She didn’t have much time to rescue them because her decision was firm. They were withdrawing as soon as they had picked up the crew. She couldn’t pull in fleet elements for long without making them better targets, and the rescue force would be stationary targets if there were suicide prone Krall that saw them.
If she ordered the fleet to Jump now, the many hundreds of survivors from Indomitable would be lost. She had never forgotten the image of single ships boarding disabled destroyers as she left K1 at the end of the last battle. The decision to delay retreat this time saved several hundred from Indomitable in the next thirty minutes of maximum fire from the entire fleet, blasting away with missiles and beams at any Krall that came near. However, that delay was punished, when it resulted in the trade of sixty lives on a destroyer, as another Jumping Clanship cleaved it in half, with single ships attacking the stern section that remained behind.
There was no time to search individual compartments for possible trapped crew on Indomitable, but as far as they knew, there was no one left alive. On Mauss’ command, the AI’s coordinated the simultaneous Jumps of the fleet.
The ships of New Lance winked out of Normal Space, leaving the milling Krall ships behind. They now had five days of travel back to Rhama. There was time to care for the wounded, and repair some of the internal damage to their ships. They could also reflect on the first significant damage humanity had inflicted on the Krall. The Navy would be riding high in the public’s and the Administration’s eyes after this strategic success.
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 30
