Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (38 page)

Each of the clanships had a full load of anti-ship missiles, and three quarters of their laser and plasma defense systems would be under ship computer control, as distasteful as that was to any ship commander. That was how the slow reacting human crews were forced to fight all of the time. Merely directing the Artificial Intelligences where to concentrate their efforts.

Pendor and his command deck crew, with two backup members present in the event of losses, gripped the posts mounted next to their consoles, for the extra stability they provided if maneuvering was required before reaching a safe Jump altitude. Significant maneuvering would not be a recommended activity, not with the atmosphere to be so crowded with other lifting ships.

The first forty-eight ships to launch were specifically tasked with providing a cap, or perhaps better characterized as a blanket of missiles and plasma fire, aimed at any human threat seen. The ever present rail guns were primary targets, despite being kept in geostationary orbits much higher over Krall held territory, to avoid their being easily destroyed by the ring of space capable cannons in the Krall’s defensive ring. Their slugs were aids to detecting the stealthed clanships in space, after they switched to reactionless Normal Space drives. In atmosphere, their wake turbulence, ion trails, and fiery thrusters gave them away.

When a railguns relatively ineffective slug struck an invisible stealthed clanship, it broadcast the precise location of the hit and the unseen target’s direction of movement. Then missiles and energy weapon batteries instantly targeted the area around a hit with heavy concentrated fire. 

A troubling aspect of the fighting the last two days was that many of the human space planes had been as difficult to detect as Krall single ships were. There was apparently a new class of them flying here, which had displayed superior detection capability for finding single ships, and in atmospheric combat had outperformed any of the Krall single ship pilots.

Clanship and single ship stealth coatings were similar, but the smaller ships were of a later technology the Krall had stolen from the Raspani, and their stealth was actually superior to the older Olt’kitapi design for clanships. Those space plane fighters had somehow seen single ships, and with actual wings for aerial dog fighting, could outturn and out climb the single ship pilots. However, even if they could detect the clanships, they didn’t have the firepower to go talon-to-talon with the far larger and more heavily armored and armed craft.

“Send the vanguard now,” Pendor ordered.

Scattered widely within the sixty-mile diameter circle filled with clanships, the twelve hands of the ships in the protective vanguard blasted skyward at maximum acceleration. When they left atmosphere, they were not going to enter a Jump Hole as was normal for the Krall, they would linger and fight off any incoming attacks for all three waves of departures. This was a tactic the humans would never have seen the Krall use, because it was new to them as well.

No sooner than those ships were above two miles, Pendor sent the signal for the full launch of the first wave of nearly a thousand clanships. Some would take advantage of the ion trails of the previous clanships, to provide them a degree of concealment in atmosphere. Pendor’s pilot shifted course slightly, to fly directly up the trail left by a vanguard ship that had been deliberately parked next to them when it lifted.

As the vicious acceleration tested their legs and ability to hold onto the stability posts, they simultaneously entered the concealing ion trail they would follow, and suffered a corresponding reduction in sensor ability to observe the region around them as they lifted. As a result, Pendor had to rely on a radioed report from an unlaunched ship on the perimeter, that there had been a series of explosions on the southern rim of their defensive ring. The heavy plasma batteries there had been destroyed.

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.