Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (67 page)

Chatsworth laughed. “Maddi, will you kindly stop tossing my words of encouragement for everyone else, right back at me?”

“Why? They seemed rational and well thought out to us. Why don’t they sound that way to you?”

“They do, but I still worry about what the Krall reaction will be. Admiral Mauss had a hard lesson at Rhama. We have a different withdrawal plan, so we won’t be blazing a trail they can follow back to an inhabited system, and we have an ambush set for any that do follow. However, there are surely more weapons or tactics they copied from other enemies, things hoarded over their long history of wars, which can still hurt us in ways we are not prepared to counter.”

“I suppose, but your idea to leave stealthed observers here may mean we’ll have a second chance to hit them at K1 tomorrow. If they all race off to search for us, we can reload and come right back and hit them again with fewer defenders.”

“That was Mauss’ proposal, not mine. Having missile stockpiles waiting for each task force at empty systems might make that a brilliant idea. We’ll see.”

****

Jakob’s calm voice announced, “Five White Outs at approximately three hundred ten miles. All are clanships.” The influx was starting.

Mirikami sent an alert to the Kobani ships to make ready for the first Jumps. He wanted more arrivals for them to blend with. “First five have arrived, standby.”

The early arrivals all tended to cluster together, as if it were a race. Another twenty or so sent bursts of gammas while Mirikami was speaking. “First group, start Jumping.”

A quarter of his captains would move in at a ragged interval, covering nearly thirty seconds of time. Jakob was keeping count, but couldn’t separate Krall from Kobani arrivals. “Forty three White Outs of…” He was cut off.

“Jakob, keep count but wait for me to ask for the total.”

“Yes Sir.”

Maggi and Mauss were also on the Bridge, watching for any unusual patterns for the arriving Krall. The Kobani ships would divide their landings between four domes, which were presently close to the approaching limb of K1, which made it just after dawn on the planet. Since the Krall didn’t sleep, it wasn’t a waking hour for them at those domes, although it had been observed that warrior alertness was reduced then, perhaps because most other creatures of various worlds were less active right then.

Over three quarters of the initial arrivals streaked off in different directions than to those four domes where the Kobani were going. It wasn’t obvious which of those ships that went there were Kobani manned. They behaved exactly like the Krall pilots, sending only their landing codes, and manually adjusted their paths to avoid other ships rather than use autopilot.

However, because they would preferentially land as far from their assigned domes as practical, Kobani ship positions could be inferred by that. It meant that columns of equipment that would soon be moving out from the tarmacs for loading, would all be routed by the normally efficient Krall to the inner clanships first. Therefore, keeping their portals closed against the light drizzle this morning wouldn’t be peculiar. Half of the Kobani ships landed with one selected portal facing directly away from the nearest dome, so the stowed Shadows could ease out on stealth later, with little chance of notice as they parted the faint fog and drizzle by their slow passage on Normal Space drive. They arrived with tachyons in their traps, and had thruster fuel only as a reserve.

The Shadow pilots were instructed to first move to any clearings they could find in wooded areas, and settle below possible detectability. Although the dense jungle didn’t leave much open land, fallen giant trees made random openings in the canopy. The Shadow’s stealth was better than the Krall’s, but within a mile or two, at long wave radio frequencies, there was some slight reflections and emissions detectable if a clanship was watching for them here on the ground. It seemed unlikely any would know how to look or would bother to try anyway, not here in their own back yard, so to speak.

There were some single ships launching from parking areas near the central domes, flying to meet up with clanships with empty launch tubes, opened by their crews for any single ship seeking a berth for a ride to New Glasgow. The pilots ran back to the domes to ferry more single ships. Later, the clanship would be so loaded internally that access to the single ships would be difficult. Shuttle bays were already filled when the clanships arrived, so those heavier armed craft were seldom seen this morning. The Shadows might go after the small craft once the fighting started if they were airborne. Otherwise, the fast sleek space planes would range away from these crowded dome areas, and hit smaller isolated domes, parked clanships, and any infrastructure they encountered, such as fuel production sites, storage tanks, truck and tanker parks, and bridges.

Mauss, in charge of the Kobani force’s integration with the navy attack, was waiting for the majority of this second wave of Krall to land, and the Kobani ships to be in place around the outside perimeters of the four chosen domes. Mirikami would first signal to five of his ten orbiting stealthed ships to activate the AIs on their Jump missiles, named Novas by their navy designers. Their particular mode of attack had been inspired by Krall actions in previous battles.

At the Mark’s altitude, five hundred miles higher that his ten ships, Mirikami could detect only ghostly images of those that were on the same side of the planet as he was. Until the Krall learned what spectrum to search, they were unlikely to see even that weak return. However, a pair of his Kobani ships would be within two hundred miles of each of the five orbital defense platforms, each of which included a cluster of surrounding clanships that were their presumed protectors. The Krall would have no chance to see what was coming at them, and virtually no chance to hit or block it even if they knew it was on the way. Novas didn’t travel through Normal Space when their attacks began.

The arrival of clanships from New Dublin had dwindled to a trickle, and Jakob reported that eleven hundred twelve had arrived when Mirikami asked for the count. The hundred Kobani ships had already landed, and no alarm had been given.

Mauss, showing a grim but determined smile, nodded to Mirikami. “Let’s do it.”

He linked his Comtap to the one in the small case, and sent a one-way instant message to five of his ten ships in orbit, which would also be heard by every Kobani clanship captain. “Activate the AIs on the Novas, feed them your targeting data and ease them out of your portals then shut them fast.” In another needless reminder, he cautioned, “Wait until they’re clear of you by triple their event horizon radius, then send them off and look away from the targets.”

Without pause, he mentally activated the wider group link, to address all of the Kobani in the five task force groups. “Five Novas on the way, you Jump one minute after my mark in ten seconds.” He paused ten seconds. “Mark! Good hunting everyone.”

He looked at Mauss and Maggi. “If Operation Forestall hurts them as much as we hope, some lucky Hub world is about get an invasion reprieve.”

Telour snorted, amused when one of his aides told him of the massive congestion at the Tanga clan domes, with nearly four hundred clanships waiting to start loading, with only three quarters of the first eight hundred fully loaded. The complaints to the Joint Council representatives were mounting, coming mostly from the small clans that believed Tanga clan, as represented by Droktor, was keeping their warriors in highly congested and foul conditions. They were forced to send their own shuttles to clanships at other Tanga domes to acquire the replacement rations they consumed as they sat on the tarmacs for two days.

“Droktor must be furious at being helpless to end this confusion, which makes him appear inefficient even to his own clan mates. There were more clanships landing at the Tanga domes than I had directed. There were so many, that I appear to have gained support from a Major clan ally against Tanga. Only a Major or Great clan would have a hundred ships to divert there, yet none has approached me for a favored position in the invasion landing. A favor will be granted, if not an excessive demand. The number of ships at those four domes will slow the first wave of launchings by another day as the second wave loads, but it will be blamed on Tanga clan’s greed, at hoarding so much of the equipment.”

Gazing west from the apex of the Joint Council dome, Tanga’s domes were too far over the horizon to see. However, he’d observed the contrails of many clanships converging and descending in that vicinity in the upper atmosphere. In his mind, he was visualizing the scene around the domes as reported to him. The later arriving clanships at each dome were forced to land farther away from the mile wide tarmacs, because of the still parked early arriving clanships.

There were long lines of equipment remaining to be loaded, parked in the open tarmac areas that had to be avoided by the second wave of landing clanships. The self-propelled equipment was waiting to be driven up the ramps of the receiving ships. Trucks loaded with small arms and power packs, heavy plasma canons, smaller plasma cannon carts, mini-tanks, and yet more of the heavy armored transports would have to be hoisted up internally between decks, to higher levels for storage. The rains and drizzle in the last two days in the region around Tanga’s domes had made it necessary for the columns to split off into new routes to avoid the muddy conditions and ruts from earlier loadings. Had the first ships been able to launch and were now waiting in orbit, as Tanga had expected, the cleared out tarmacs would have made the loading process easier and faster for the second wave of landings. At this rate, the newest arrivals would need to launch before much of the first wave could go. Rations had to stay with troops on the tarmac until leaving for New Glasgow. The outer clanships would have to launch just to make room for some of the five hundred clanships, due here in another three days. Not all were intended to go to Tanga clan, but some of that five hundred belonged to that clan, and they would automatically land there.

The lack of the huge migration ships of the Torki told the tale of Krall loading inefficiency now, even aside from problems Telour deliberately caused for Tanga. Those behemoths, thirty times larger, could each hold twenty-five times the volume of a single clanship, and had internal spiral ramps for driving equipment directly up to higher decks for quick storage. It would be four or five orbits of the two new shipyard worlds before newly trained Torki and Prada slaves would be able to complete the construction of the first new migration ships. They first needed to build the new shipyards, repair or establish new transport lines for raw materials, and find new mining sites and build foundries.

Clanship building was the higher priority now and faster. Over two hundred of the far tougher and smaller craft were close to completion, built on scattered clan worlds that were scaling up production. Their construction could ramp up faster than that of the Torki ships, because Prada workers, using the Olt’kitapi designed underground factory machinery, could manufacture and assemble nearly all of the parts for a clanship, with the Torki providing the quantum navigation, computation, weapons control, and security lock components. However, for migration ships, with no Olt’kitapi designed factory for making those, the slower moving Torki were required to fabricate all of the migration ship sections, with the nimble Prada doing the final assembly work.

This damage to the Krall war machine had been more severe than Kanpardi or Telour had recognized at the time. The Krall had used migration ships for so long, and reused the old ones, that movement of armies and equipment had been easy and trouble free for fifteen thousand years. Logistics had suddenly become very difficult, and the Krall had to relearn how to do it properly.

Telour was standing under the clear armored glass at the top of the giant council dome when an intense actinic blue-white flash, apparently near the eastern horizon behind him, cast his own deeply dark shadow across the floor of the dome. His instant reaction was to spin and seek the source of the threat, but he also knew that had it been close, it might be too late to go to cover. He knew instinctively not to look directly at the explosion too early, in order to protect his vision. A second flash, nearly overhead, started him racing towards the nearest stairwell, leaping down levels faster than even the high-speed elevators would have carried him, had he chosen to wait. Stairs also didn’t require power if an Electromagnetic Pulse disrupted the power feeds from the fusion generators of the dome.

He tapped his shoulder com set as he ran down the stairs, contacting a sub leader in the command center of the council dome. “Fadrop, two large orbital explosions are not accidents. Were they nuclear?”

“My Tor, not nuclear. There were more than two explosions. Global sensors report all five of the defense platforms are now expanding gas clouds, along with the clanships that were docked with them, or were too close. The platform passing above us emitted a gamma ray signature that suggests there was a White Out of a low mass object. Small ships appear to have merged with the orbital platforms as they made their exit from Tachyon Space.”

“Alert clan leaders here, humans are attacking. They used our Jump intersect attack method against the platforms. Order a clanship to be ready for me for an immediate launch. Select one close to the north entrance, where I will be soon. Order all clanships on Telda Ka to reach orbit as soon as possible, and to prepare for missile attacks. Additional human ships will arrive at any moment. The clanships in orbit should launch anti-ship missiles now. Aim them where they estimate the enemy fleet will perform White Outs, likely above the domes where we have much of our invasion fleet. I will launch and join them.”

He was halfway down the sixty-four levels of the huge council dome now, his aides in trail close behind him. They too were in communication with various aspects of Telda Ka’s defensive and offensive command structure. His aide from the command section that was in charge of the orbital defenses called for his urgent attention.

“Tor Gatrol, five formations of human ships have appeared over five dome clusters where the fleet is loading. They emerged very close to the planet with instant missile launches at ground targets. Those missiles have entered atmosphere, and are targeting our main loading areas.

The aide’s next words were redundant. Every clanship commander would have automatically done this. “Laser defenses have been activated and clanships that were loaded are lifting. Unloaded clanships lifted immediately and have fired defensive missiles. Partly loaded clanships will launch when equipment is secured. All clans have placed lasers and plasma cannons on automatic control, as previously directed.”

Telour snarled. “The humans had us under observation. They planned this long ago and knew we would gather our fleet for loading. They know of the invasion and choose the time we would be most vulnerable to an attack. Loaded clanships are their true targets, not the domes. Instruct unloaded clanships to fight for Path and Clan, to defend any loaded ships that cannot launch. They should Jump to intersect the enemy’s giant ships first, where their highest leaders sit.”

He was authorizing suicide attacks to hit the humans at their most vital points, targeting the largest ships as they had done previously. That tactic had caused the most disruption to the enemy’s formations in the two previous assaults.

He leaped into the hold of a clanship he was told was waiting for him, mere minutes after he’d sighted the first explosion. His fast reaction and the high altitude of the approaching doom was all that preserved the lives of the Tor Gatrol and his staff. The portals slammed down before he could reach the nearest stairs. The clanship lifted abruptly, with only a hasty speaker warning from the pilot to hold onto anything. He told them a huge blazing ball of fire was descending towards the council dome.

****

Mirikami cursed. “Damn it, I should have had that migration ship Jump inward sooner. It already had enough Normal Space velocity built up. It needed to White Out thirty seconds sooner. I saw ships leaving the council dome.”

Seven clanships were observed blasting away from the council dome in a nearly horizontal plane, using what must have been the maximum tolerable acceleration for the Krall aboard them. These seven escapes happened just as the giant migration ship, roughly fifteen hundred sixty feet in diameter, having thirty times the total volume of a clanship, started to flare brightly with the heat of atmospheric friction at thirty miles altitude. At over a thousand miles per second, the AI controlled ship, filled with nearly eight point three million tons of ice, covered the distance from its thousand mile high White Out to the thicker lower atmosphere swiftly. However, the old Torki built hulk had a less efficient tachyon trap, and was never designed for high-speed travel in Normal Space. Not that its overstuffed interior would have let it accelerate hard in any case. The overmatched Normal Space drive also didn’t deliver it quite on target.

When the massive bulk reached thicker atmosphere, at about five miles altitude, the extreme heat and unbelievable ram pressure on the artificial comet reached the limits of the structure, and it exploded with a violence rivaling a large thermonuclear weapon from Earth’s dark past. The searing hot blast wave raged downward and utterly crushed the council dome, smashing the wreckage more than thirty feet into the surface of the planet. It ripped limbs from the trees standing nearest the eastern edge of the three-mile wide tarmac, leaving a few vertical bare and blazing trunks standing, looking like burnt match sticks where they were located directly beneath the pressure wave. All vegetation, animals, and Krall flesh alike, was flash ignited for a radius of four or five miles.

Farther away, when the descending searing blast wave deflected out to the sides as it reached the ground, more distant trees and wreckage all flew or pointed away from ground zero, the point directly under the airburst. The migration ship had not been perfectly centered on the dome, offset by perhaps a half mile. However, there clearly would be no survivors in the now subsurface dome fragments, with flames rising from its wreckage. There wouldn’t be any Krall alive in the one hundred nine parked clanships either, which were slammed into the now broken and crumbled tarmac. The clanship’s thruster fuel contributed insignificantly to the destruction, when their fuel and oxidizer tanks ruptured. There were brief streaks of orange flame jetting away for a second, following along with the supersonic winds.

The fusion bottles that powered the dome and those within the clanships were of sturdy enough designs that they didn’t rupture from the high pressure. After all, they were expected to contain star hot, high-pressure plasmas internally. Otherwise, had they failed there would have been multiple smaller craters when they gave way and instantly released their magnetically confined thermonuclear hot plasmas. That plasma would still be vented when the power for magnetic confinement was lost, which was a violent enough high temperature event, particularly if released in the confined volume of a clanship. However, nothing remained around them to be destroyed. The surrounding region was devastated for a twenty-mile radius, with severe wind damage out for at least another ten miles.

The Krall’s worthy enemy had obeyed the prohibitions against use of nuclear weapons, sticking exactly to the type weapons the Krall had themselves demonstrated were acceptable. No radioactive material was released, although the immense mushroom cloud looked as if there had been.

Maggi too was disappointed by the tardy arrival of the massive high velocity missile filled with ice. However, she felt considerable satisfaction at observing the destruction the view screens provided below the towering mushroom cloud. “The bastards deserved much worse than a Tunguska-like airburst event over a single dome. They should have received an impact like the one they gave my home world, Rhama.”

This idea had been her proposal, and the Oort cloud cometary ice that filled every void in the huge ship had turned the migration ship into a bomb. Being a Torki designed ship, the electrical equipment could tolerate water immersion and humidity if any of the ices melted or sublimated before the impact. Nevertheless, mass was mass, and solid ice or a combination of ice and a small core of water, the aerial concussion was devastating.

Mauss, who lived with a constant pain in her soul after witnessing the devastation of Rhama by a Krall Eight Ball, laid a hand on Maggi’s shoulder. “We could have let you deliver more of these here, but we are just as vulnerable to a similar attack. I convinced Fleet Admiral Chatsworth to approve this one impact, because it was a single kinetic energy weapon, similar to the single one they used on us, but much less destructive. At least it won’t be mistaken for a nuclear weapon. They could have done this to us anytime they chose, so it’s a case of reciprocation. Neither Chatsworth nor I think the Krall will consider this a fair trade, but it was their idea first.”