Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (72 page)

“No!”

Which was exactly the answer Thad expected. “Then take a nap or make a sandwich. Stop pacing around and checking targeting every thirty seconds. The damn targets are parked for cripes sake. I’ll tell you if any of them move, OK?”

“This is the first ambush where I feel like I’m the one in position to be ambushed. Never had to wait this long to spring the surprise. I thought we’d be shooting at them by now, and getting out of Dodge.”

“Dodging what.”

“Not a what, leaving a place. Dodge City.”

“That’s not a Krall sounding name for these domes. They don’t use names anyway.”

Sarge shook his head in dismay. “Maggi is right. You have no knowledge of Earth history whatsoever. Dodge was a western town where gunslingers used hang out and get into shootouts. You got out of Dodge when your side was outnumbered.”

Further nervous byplay was interrupted when their Comtaps picked up Mirikami’s voice again.

“OK, you restless Kobani. The Navy will briefly White Out and send some more hell towards the Krall. They’ll fire their hundred Novas at clanships, and our five ships in orbit will launch their last Novas a half minute before the navy comes back at 0835 HST. You’ll see at least three of their hits flash overhead from where you are, and that’s your signal. Don’t wait on the navy to appear, launch your fifty Shadows and start firing on the ships parked around the four domes. Switch on your IFFs, since your cover will be blown anyway, and lift off. There will be heavy ground attack missiles coming down on the domes from the navy, and if you knock out enough of the defenders, more of them will get through. You’re free to attack targets of opportunity, but your main goal is to kill what you can, then get the hell out of Dodge and join us in orbit.”

Thad’s head dipped, and his shoulders slumped as he heard Sarge’s snicker from behind him. “Proves nothing,” he muttered. “The poor man’s married to that Old West throwback.”

Every available launch tube had their missile racks full, and there were Kobani below, ready to move replacements stacks of five missile “magazines,” or stacks, into the auto loaders down in the missile storage lockers. The launch tubes and racks were designed to shove a six-foot missile into the tube from a stack, seal the tube breach, open an airlock system and use the escaping air pressure and a powerful magnetic push to send the missile at a considerable velocity along a thirty-foot tube. A missile ignited its propellant when it was about twenty feet from the ship, and the warhead needed just over a half mile of travel to arm itself. All five of the first missiles from a tube could salvo in less than twenty seconds. The ready stack was automatically moved into position within ten seconds for another salvo of five. After that, the main rack would require a fresh stack to be loaded from a lift system from a storage locker, and a second stack placed in the ready rack above it. In flight, the reloading task in the storage locker, to make new stacks, was more difficult because of ship maneuvering despite inertial compensation. The sixteen launchers for anti-ship missiles could potentially send a hundred sixty missiles against an enemy in roughly fifty seconds. After that, reloading often depended on several minutes of flight stability.

On the ground, the human controlled ships only had about a quarter of their launch tubes that could bear on the Krall ships parked closer to the domes. A bit of Mind Tap training from a couple of captains that had practiced the maneuver, provided a practical method of launching from all sixteen tubes before reaching orbit. It required a dance-like pirouette as the ship rose. With nearly eighteen hundred clanships on the four tarmacs, and two hundred fully loaded ones returning to these domes, ample targets were available.

Thad, acting as captain of the yet unnamed and recently captured clanship, had sixteen Kobani crew below, one stationed in each missile storage locker for reload duty. It seemed unlikely there would be much time to finish a full reload, but Thad wanted to get his first salvo of one hundred sixty missiles on their way before reaching orbit, and then load more. He would handle the flying, Sarge would target the missiles, and two young Kobani on the Bridge were sharing duty on the four heavy lasers and four plasma cannons, providing a combination of assault and defensive capability. The automated defense system could take control if needed, but the operators could fire on targets of opportunity in the meantime. A similar crew of twenty was placed on each of the one hundred Kobani crewed ships, plus the fifty Shadows and their single pilot on half the ships. This meant there were two thousand fifty Kobani in the planet, and most had never participated in space combat, although all had participated in raids. They all felt confident they knew what to expect.

Mind Taps are a beautiful thing,
Thad thought, also for the umpteenth time.

****

The urgent sensor detection information was forwarded to Telour by a mid status aide, Demteg. She had been made the point of contact for the sixty-four clanship commanders who were tasked with finding the stealthed missiles on their sensor arrays.

“My Tor, a detection of multiple stealthed space craft is being reported by two clanships. The original detection was of a brief failure of enemy stealth, when an opening in two of their hulls took place. The portals reclosed and they returned to full stealth, as it was reported at Poldark. However, with a known location to use, the two commanders were able to continue to follow the ships with radio wave reflections and by a shadow effect from Telda Ka’s own radiation.”

“What altitude above the planet?” Telour snapped, “How large are they? The missiles we were seeking are too small to have large portals.” He waited impatiently for her to inquire and to be answered. He anticipated the last pass of the ramming destroyers to appear at any moment, unaware they were not returning.

Demteg, despite Krall limited facial expressions, appeared surprised and confused when she addressed the Tor without using his title. “My leader, they are shaped like clanships. They say they see more than two, but only when they look down at Telda Ka, from higher than our own orbit. Two different hidden ships are close our own, and others are placed just above many of our orbiting clanships.”

Telour pounced on the discovery. “Obtain the exact sensor frequencies used and share it with our pilot and navigator, and then with the rest of the fleet. The thieves of our clanships are hidden among us.”

The pilot’s K’Tal, whose name Telour had not bothered to ask, listened and adjusted one sensor suite as Demteg repeated what she was told. In less than a minute, his eyes snapped over to look directly at Frakod, rather than to Telour or his aide.

“One ship is close behind us, another to the side.” He simply pointed through the deck and bulkheads in the physical directions. “They must know who we carry.” He obviously thought those tracking them knew the Tor Gatrol was aboard.

Frakod, as was typical for any Krall pilot, had set his Trap fields for Jump tachyons as soon as he was above a hundred fifty miles, where a planet’s gravity was weak enough that a stable tachyon Trap could be safely formed. After that, he had set his flight console to program for a quick micro Jump, assuming they might need to avoid a close pass from an incoming ramming destroyer, or to engage one of the human fleet elements if they returned. All he needed do was to tap the expanded views of the nearby volume of space, as displayed for three dimensions on his subdivided main console screen, to select a point in near space as a destination. Without hesitation or prior coordination, he almost instantly tapped a random combination of three space coordinates, and a fourth talon tip activated the Jump.

“Merde! He Jumped!” Captain Lebeau, of the Pride of Gaul, had been waiting for the imminent flashes of Nova missile impacts to launch his own conventional missiles at the now vanished clanship. He used Comtap. “Noreen, can you see if he did a White Out close by?” He was hoping they could pursue.

Noreen was just as frustrated. “Francois, I checked with Karl. My AI didn’t detect any White Out on this side of the planet. I’m checking with Captain Mirikami to see what Jakob saw.” She knew the Mark was almost halfway around the planet.”

Like the majority of the stolen Kobani ships, the Pride of Gaul had no AI installed, since they took time to purchase and install, and the customized flexible interface for a clanship’s control and navigation systems drew curious questions when the first three were bought through Poldark. Buying another hundred or more would have invited serious navy scrutiny at a time when they wanted to keep a low profile. Now they needed the AIs for their ability to scan all of near space, and for monitoring multiple Krall scan and transmission frequencies.

As proof of how imminent the destruction of that clanship had been from their missiles, several brilliant flashes suddenly lit this hemisphere of K1 when the Novas struck. A subdued flash, reflected through the atmosphere from just over the horizon, proved another clanship containing probable clan leaders had ceased to exist there.

Mirikami, calling for reports, quickly confirmed that six of the specifically tracked clanships had been destroyed. Of the two targeted with conventional missiles, only one was killed, and the seventh had Jumped mere seconds before it too would have been killed.

He replied privately to Noreen. “There was a single White Out with a clanship’s mass signature that was simultaneous with the other one’s Jump. It must be the same clanship, and it’s out about three thousand miles, over the northwestern hemisphere on my side. 

“Its broadcasting, all encrypted of course, but it’s using multiple standard clan frequencies. I think it must be warning them about us. He was the only one to Jump, so he may have figured out there are differently stealthed ships out here observing...” he cut off suddenly and paused what he’d been saying.

“Jakob has detected long wave active radio broadcasts coming from that clanship, and I have another one starting from a second clanship in this same hemisphere. I think they’ve found the low frequency weak point in our stealth system. Watch out, he must have detected you and the Gaul before he Jumped, just using ambient radio waves. Get away from there now! Our ships on the ground are about to lift and they’ll be launching missiles as they do. The navy does a Return Ghost in less than a minute. I need to warn them. You two move! Mirikami out.”

Noreen applied Normal Space drive acceleration at its near maximum thrust, but she couldn’t Jump yet. She needed to warn Lebeau by Comtap to get away. “Francois, run! The Krall found the radio spectrum to penetrate our stealth. Jump now! They’ll be coming for us.”

Even as the pressure shoved her deep into her acceleration couch, Karl, on automatic, fired all four plasma cannons and heavy lasers at a ragged series of White Outs that flared around them. A Jump Hole’s event horizon was powering up from the main tachyon Trap, but it required precious half second to form. Ethan, sitting across from Noreen’s command position on the Bridge, struggled to move his hand to the weapons console repeater panel on his armrest while fighting the extreme acceleration. He pressed and felt vibrations through the deck and hull that told him he’d been successful.

Through gritted teeth, as he bore down on abdominal muscles to stay conscious, he used his Comtap to inform the crew and Noreen of the missile launches. “All tubes away.”

These were the anti-ship missiles intended for the original target, but any clanship would do now.

The Avenger winked out of this Universe, but not before the light from the exploding Pride of Gaul reached her external sensors. The sight of her loss on the main screen followed Noreen into Tachyon Space, then, with a flicker of the screens, they were back in Normal Space. Karl had performed the preprogramed micro Jump, moving them out to roughly five thousand miles from the planet and over the pole, giving them a view of the north half of K1.

Noreen backed off the acceleration almost too quickly, causing dizziness from the sudden release of strain. “Francois didn’t make it.” She was stunned by the realization.

“Karl, display the area around our previous position, main screen.”

At the velocity of light in Normal Space, the explosions were still occurring and expanding. The time of travel for that light was far less than the seconds it took her to give the order. The Avenger itself had covered that distance through Tachyon Space in a tiny fraction of even the microscopic interval that light required. Ethan’s action had made the Krall pay a price for the death of the Pride of Gaul. Of the sixty-four clanships that had appeared close around their former positions, at least four were now globes of spreading debris, and two others appeared to have suffered damage. The Krall had arrived for their ambush unprepared for missiles launched even before they had completed their White Outs. Sadly, Noreen and Ethan knew the seventh and central expanding debris field was their sister ship.

Noreen felt cold as ice as she watched those clanships micro Jump again, and appear closer to the planet, pursuing some of the other ten Kobani ships in low orbits. With the greater warning the Kobani had now, the Krall didn’t come close to catching any of them. Random White Outs appeared around the planet as the Kobani avoided the ambush attempts, and the Krall chased after them. “Karl, take us down to a two thousand mile orbit at one third max acceleration, and activate our IFF for the navy. They’ll be here in ten seconds or so.”

“Yes Mam.”

“Good shooting Ethan. That was fast thinking. They anticipated complete surprise and never expected missile launches. Two more seconds and Francois would have gotten away as well. Those two damaged clanships were closer to his position than to ours. I think his plasma and lasers may have done that. At least I hope so.”

“I do too Captain.” He wasn’t looking for any credit. He hoped his friends in the Gaul’s missile rooms hadn’t suffered. Violent explosions like that probably meant they had not.

Karl drew their attention to a glow forming on the planet below in a small region. “The area surrounding the four Tanga clan domes has started to blaze.”

****

Sarge was buoyant with glee. “Man we caught them with their missiles around their ankles. I think all their sensors were focused on the flashes from orbit, where they figured their next threats would come from. I haven’t seen a single missile launch from any of them.”

Their ship had completed its third ninety-degree rotation as it fired their third salvo of missiles, at what Thad had just referred to as “sitting ducks.” They were over three miles up and not really accelerating hard. There had been ample enemy laser fire and some from the slower cycling heavy plasma batteries, which had scored thousands of hits on the roughly twelve thousand combined anti-ship missiles the Kobani fleet had launched thus far. Few shots were aimed at the Kobani clanships. It appeared that the Krall automatic defense systems considered the rising clanships to be “friendly,” and only targeted the incoming missiles. Those were launched from such short range and in such numbers that nearly a third of the first salvo lived to reach their nearest targets. After that, the huge volume of flames and smoke made hitting incoming missiles difficult when they suddenly broke through flames and billowing black smoke, nearly on top of the stationary clanships.

Even the clanships descending to land, as Telour had ordered them to do, were focused on the action above them, as they received the radioed information from Telour that superbly stealthed enemy ships had been hiding among them in orbit. Their experienced sensor system K’Tals were setting portions of their own clanship quantum level controlled skins for emitting the long wave radio signals they were told could reveal the stealthed human craft via low definition reflections. The detail in the images would be poor at these long wave frequencies, and their anti-ship missiles might not even be able to track them on that frequency.

The first report from one of Telour’s aides said one stealthed ship had been killed, and that not very many of them had been detected so far, perhaps only two or three hands of such ships. The one that escaped the ambush, via an in-system micro Jump, had a gamma ray signature virtually identical to any clanship. Clearly, these were clanships, which had been stolen by humans. How that was done, bypassing their quantum locks, Telour had no clue.

However, with so few found here, it might be possible to fill the volume of space around one of them with concentrated plasma and laser fire from a hundred clanships, as had just happened. Eventually that would burn through portions of the stealth coating and reveal the enemy for missile tracking, if energy beams were not enough.

Weapons sensors were all set to scan the space above the landing clanships, so they were not looking behind, other than the pilot visually watching for an empty landing spot, which was the typical Krall pilot procedure. They assumed the perfectly visible clanships rising towards them from below were going after the enemy. They were correct, except for whom those ships considered the enemy. Missiles and plasma bolts into main thruster nozzles belatedly proved the fallacy of their assumptions.

The one hundred Kobani ships quickly accounted for over seven hundred enemy ships before the few hundred clanships still surviving on the ground switched from automatic to manual weapons control, and radioed to the hundreds of descending craft that the enemy was also below them. Many of the descending ships were deviating to other domes for landing, and they had a better perspective of what happened at Tanga’s domes. However, they observed what appeared to be clanships firing on clanships, and there was no easy way from long range to prevent their anti-ship missiles from switching to a friendly target after launch. The Krall had never needed the human type IFF systems against any enemy, because no former enemy could operate Krall equipment. Of course, the clans never fought interclan space wars, since that negated individual warrior ability for selective breeding.

Having finally found a truly worthy and flexible enemy, they were not exactly what the Krall had expected.

Another advantage the Kobani ships had today was that although they were using reaction thrusters for launching from Tanga domes, it was merely part of their masquerade as typical clanship activity. They had retained tachyons in their primary and secondary Trap fields, caught while still in space, to power their energy hungry Normal Space drives. That drive power use, when activated, came at the expense of power for energy beam weapons. If you were going to use missiles as your primary weapons initially, it didn’t matter as much.

They didn’t start out using Normal Space drive because that wasn’t the standard Krall method of operation. Polluting the atmosphere of a world didn’t matter to them as much as always having energy beam weapons at full power. When return plasma and laser fire started to increase from clanships that switched to manual fire, something the Kobani had expected to happen sooner, they kicked in their Normal Space drives to vectored their ships sideways and away from the domes, as they simultaneously cut their more easily followed thruster generated ion trails. The Kobani ships fired the final quarter of their original load of missiles at any targets of opportunity.

The clock controlled when the Kobani activated their IFF systems, and they switched them on five seconds before 0835 HST, the scheduled time for the Return Ghost of the navy. Since they had now been identified by the Krall as enemies anyway, they spread laterally through the atmosphere, safe from potential navy fire, and they looked for more targets to hit. They skipped past a few small clan domes that were already on fire, some blasted mining sites and transport lines, and saw fences blown open around Raspani herds that clearly had just been hit, releasing them. Obviously, the Shadow fighters had already been here, spreading their own form of holiday cheer to the Krall.

Right on schedule, the navy suddenly reappeared in the same five disc formations, over K1 at three thousand miles this time, stealth active, and each formation arrived with lateral motion, with a Normal Space drive thrust vector accelerating them at right angles away from the point where each had emerged. With no reaction mass trail to see, their sideways motion wasn’t immediately obvious from a distance. The poor resolution via low frequency radio waves wasn’t definitive, and impatient warriors wouldn’t wait anyway.

This had been Mauss’ recommendation, relayed through Mirikami, to throw off Krall suicide targeting. The five task forces emerged in huge bursts of gamma rays, which showed they clearly held the same disc formations as before. However, not so obvious was that they were already moving and accelerating away from the entry coordinates. They had just learned that the Krall had discovered the Achilles heel of their new stealth system, and were testing its limits. However, in visible and infrared light, they were still invisible to Krall vision, which suicide pilots used at short range, and they would only be weakly outlined on Krall sensors in long wave radio frequencies. They knew this was so because the Kobani ships also had Krall type sensors, and they had previously verified the low quality of Krall detection ability if their newer stealth was penetrated.