Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (39 page)

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 of 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.”

“We need any edge we can get. They have to let us have this.”

“Admiral, they offered it free this time, and will sell you the use of as much of the substance you want, if you compensate them fairly. You won’t get their technology for some time. They don’t even want money. They want to be allowed to buy weapon systems and supplies from the same companies that the army and navy use. Just like they bought the space planes they modified to call Shadows.”

“Henry, I don’t have the authority to do that, but I can certainly take the proposal back to the Hub with me, and let the politicians decide. If our scientists can’t duplicate the technology, you know damn well the Rimmers will get their price. The small numbers of the Rimmers involved here made a disproportionate difference in the outcome. Very effective people. I’ll be sure and mention that.”

When she says Rimmers
, thought Nabarone with amusement,
she doesn’t know she’s actually describing Kobani, and is saying this to one of them.
He’d be interested in knowing if her favorable impression of them would alter, if she knew how they had achieved their capabilities.

****

As Telour warned Pendor before this meeting today on K1, the Tor Gatrol was displeased. Somehow, Pendor needed to retain his position as the Gatlek for the new invasion. Telour had conspired with him to grant him this role, in trade for his cooperation to help him replace Kanpardi. They both had considerable status to gain, or lose.

As it happened, the Tor Gatrol was a bit
more
than displeased when Pendor was alone with him. Kanpardi snarled, “You allowed two hundred seventy eight of the clanships I gave you to be lost, simply while leaving Poldark, and now you want me to advise the Joint Council to replace your losses?”

“My Tor, I was following your command to withdraw enough forces to establish a new invasion front. The humans appeared to have been anticipating the event. They demonstrated preplanning, as if they knew not only what we would do, but when we would move.”

Still furious, Kanpardi demanded, “How would you explain this security breach, where the humans learn of a plan that Telour told you in private, and only you on Poldark knew the details? When you informed the leaders of major clans of my orders, did you use unencrypted radio communications? The quantum keys we use are unbreakable. Races more advanced than human could not decipher our messages in the past. Even the Olt’kitapi, who was the most advanced species in quantum sciences, used the same secure methods of encryption.”

“My Tor, all our radio messages were encrypted, and the keys are changed regularly. However, I did not use radio to inform the major clan leaders or any of my staff of their honored roll in a new invasion. I summoned them to my bunker, and explained it muzzle to muzzle, just as Telour advised me to do. They were ordered not to discuss the plan outside their highest sub leaders already on Poldark, to prevent the minor clans from learning of the partial withdrawal and new invasion. As evidence that this secrecy was maintained, the small clans did not learn of the withdrawal before the fleet lifted, even though they share the encryption keys we use. They were surprised and angry. There was no communications leak.”

Kanpardi sounded less angry and more inquisitive now, and puzzled. “Yet the humans knew they needed only to retreat with their armies until your fleet departed. Before the presumably
surprise
assaults even started they had infiltrated stealthed troops, and planted explosives along a section of the perimeter around your inner defensive circle. They detonated them exactly as your own ship lifted, allowing their low altitude cruise missiles to enter. In space, they fired railguns at exactly where your ships would leave atmosphere, and many clearly fired before you started to launch, coordinating the arrival times from many different gun platforms.” He paused in thought.

“This is much like we did to them on their first fleet attack here on Telda Ka, when we sensed their larger ships coming to attack what they call K1, through the advance ripples in Tachyon Space. We were waiting where their largest ships arrived. Our departing fleet would not produce advance tachyon waves before any of our thousands of clanships Jumped. That obviously is not how they knew.” He was thinking aloud, analyzing the facts and possibilities.

“Next, they Jumped a full squadron of heavy cruisers directly into your fleet’s midst, equipped with an advanced stealth system similar to ours, firing all weapons as they emerged, at targets identified seconds earlier by exploding railgun slugs that had just swept through your formation. The cruisers then quickly fled before suffering a tenth of the damage done to our ships, despite your overwhelming numbers. I wish my selected leaders and their advisors had planned as well as these mere animals.” That derogatory reference, a near insult actually, could only be directed to the Gatlek and his staff.

Pendor had thought about what he would say to the hard questions he knew he would be asked. He had prepared his unlikely defense. “I do not believe it was a failure of any communications protocol, my Tor. It must have been the result of information taken from an unsuspecting member of my staff, or from a major clan’s sub leader after the secret was passed to them in person. It would have been done using a new drug the humans have, and which I reported to you more than one orbit ago. It is said to force a warrior to enter the pretend death a human experiences nightly, and speak when unconscious, just as captive humans sometimes do.”