Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (74 page)

“The other two navy appearances were deliberate hit and run operations, slated for an exit time chosen before they ever entered Normal Space. The Krall weren’t ready for us the first time, the second time, fifteen minutes ago, was a simple scouting mission, staged partly to see the situation, and to draw the Krall up after them into higher orbits. I don't think this next extended exposure is safe, especially after we’ve inflicted massive damages with few losses. The Krall will not sit back and wait to see if they’ll Jump away again so quickly.”

Mirikami nodded. “I didn’t want to overstep my bounds here, admiral, so I held back my opinion. I’m relieved to see you share my misgivings. I don’t know who the highest status Krall leader now in charge at K1 is, but they’re proving flexible and decisive. When that seventh clanship figured out we were stalking it while stealthed, they made good their escape and reacted instantly to counter the threat with overwhelming force. A sub leader probably couldn’t command that level of response.

“I believe that clanship held a ranking clan leader, or someone of even higher status, and they instantly sent a mob of clanships that killed the Pride of Gaul, and nearly got the Avenger. That clanship then made a series of random Jumps, along with other clanships doing the same thing in the system, so we couldn’t know which one of them holds that leader. Rather a clever and subtle move for the normally brash Krall belligerence of
here I am, come get me if you dare
.”

“Is it Telour, you think?” Maggi asked. “He wasn’t a very cautious warrior the last we saw him, and he was bold and brash enough to probably have killed Kanpardi to get the high status position he wanted. That assumes he did get it, since we don’t know what the council vote was.”

Mirikami shrugged. “He’s had half a Krall lifetime to learn new tricks, and if he achieved what he wanted, selected as the Tor Gatrol, he’d have no higher ambition than to hold onto that high status, the top three-name rank that the Krall recognize. That might mean staying alive to enjoy his power. He might be a bit more cautious with his own skin now. He would damn well sacrifice anything to keep that status, and that worries me. I don't see any offensive or defensive moves under way right now, and they know we haven’t left. They’re waiting.”

“For what?’ Mauss asked.

“I fear we’ll find out.” Mirikami responded.

****

Telour was worried, although he projected complete confidence. He might only have one chance to make this human style trick work. “Do the pilots all have the highest energy tachyons they can capture in their secondary Traps?”

His aide extended his left arm, talons out, in a respectful salute. “They report they are ready my Tor. The enemy would need to act even more the frightened cowards than they have today, if they are to evade your ambush. It is good you attack them with an honorable assault for Path and Clan. Their losses may match ours if they think they are safe and take the bait.”

With a disdainful snarl, Telour dismissed his aide’s overly optimistic prediction, and he saw little difference between what he planned and what humans often did. “With the sacrifice of these three hundred clanships and their brave pilots, our fleet will have been reduced by over one half today. Killing
every
ship the human navy brought here would not equal what they have cost us. If these warriors succeed, they will forever live in our histories as the greatest that have ever been asked to die for Path and Clan.” He didn’t mention that the Tor that set this trap would rise even higher in status.

He asked a superficial question, intended merely to demonstrate that he was a leader of all of the Krall. “Their seed or eggs are well protected?” That was a crucial element, to make this act acceptable to the new Joint Council, whenever that was reformed.

“My Tor, we had many more volunteers than you requested, and we accepted only those warriors that said their future hatchlings were already assured if they fell in combat. This act will elevate their status greatly.”

“Good. The excess warriors were transferred to different clanships?”

“Not for a few hands of Tanga clanships. Some of their warriors refused to leave. They know they have lost more than any other clan has today, and that their domes are predicted by you to be a primary human target.”

Telour was personally indifferent to Tanga losses, but said loudly enough that he would be heard by others, “Add their names to the list for Tanga clan to honor.” If Tanga clan recovered enough status, they could preserve any of their bloodlines they wanted.

Now he had to wait for the slow to act humans to make their move. He had pulled more ships into higher orbits, closer to the three thousand mile range where the humans had last appeared. This left even more tempting gaps below at three hundred miles, particularly above the three sets of domes where waiting war material was still parked, and there were only a few clanships near them for defense against missiles. There were factories below the four Tanga domes, and one below a Maldo dome. He had divided the clanship volunteers into three units of one hundred each, or sixty-four in the human system, and told them how he wanted them to distribute their attacks, and select their possible intersect points early.

It was a shorter wait than he expected. Three of the same disc shaped formations of two hundred ships each, suddenly burst into existence, almost exactly where Telour had predicted, over the most vulnerable domes.

As on their very first White Out, the navy ships emerged shooting. At three hundred miles, plasma cannon bolts were effective through the partly clear skies, although their lasers were more diffused and attenuated. Their heavy ground target missiles were on their way, providing their own navigation, but the navy’s energy beams were trying to knock out weapons ports on the parked clanships, which were fighting back with everything they had to save the domes. The navy’s energy beams were taking a toll, and the defenders were steadily losing some of their defensive weapons ports. The enemy ships were so near at only three hundred miles, and firing so frequently, that that the defenders could sight their weapons by eye at the nearly stationary stealthed enemy on their zoomed visual light sensitive screens. The enemy was obviously using Normal Space drives to stay directly above their targets on the rotating planet, prepared to maximize the destruction of Krall productivity on K1.

As Telour had directed, any clanship within sight of the three task force formations fired plasma bolts and lasers at their general stealthed locations, but they were shooting down from a thousand mile range or greater, and having relatively little effect. However, they didn’t dive at the enemy, or jump inward. There appeared to be a fierce firefight underway, which wasn’t actually hurting the navy ships much. They didn’t Jump, as Telour had feared they might do if hit too hard too soon.

Mirikami and Mauss watched for less than thirty seconds before they realized the lack of a closing attack meant this was a trap. Mauss started to speak even as Mirikami sent a warning via Comtap. “Get out. It’s a trap. They’re waiting for you.” This time, even an instant warning could not be relayed quickly enough to the sole decision maker, Fleet Admiral Chatsworth.

Telour, confident that the three flights of clanship volunteers had had time to select target areas spaced properly around the three disc formations, he sent the command to attack.

“For Path and Clan, kill our enemy now.”

Using the lower power level tachyons in their primary traps, three sets of sixty-four clanships (three hundred in the Krall number system) performed micro Jumps into the human formations, arriving there within a minute of the appearance of the enemy. There were actually two direct intersects from the three thousand mile Jumps, as evidenced by the blue-white flashes of incandescence that blasted vaporized material from the location of two battleships near the center of two different formations.

Those two hits were surely not accidents by the pilots that had selected those targets, but the other White Outs were definitely closer to the distribution Telour had planned. A hundred and ninety event horizons were formed by the surviving clanships that had suddenly appeared within the navy formations. Each Jump Hole, nearly five miles in diameter, formed gigantic and massive event horizons, entirely enclosing any nearby human ships, and slicing through the hulls of any ships at the periphery.

The Krall had been told to space their Jump destinations evenly throughout each of the compact two hundred ship formations. The huge energy level tachyons they had tuned their Traps for had waited to capture the mass-energy equivalents of small stars, which were normally of little benefit for Jumps, and took an excessive time to capture if you were in a hurry. In this case, the huge Jump Holes, obeying the laws of physics employed, instantly rotated the volume contained within their horizons into Tachyon Space. They naturally took along the clanships that made them, and pulled with them the human ships, or the portions of them that had been netted.

Once inside Tachyon Space, the Krall pilots quickly cut the power to their Trap fields, permitting them to open. When the matter from our Universe lost its closed curves of protection from the event horizon, the energy equivalent of their mass, obeying different laws of physics here, was instantly converted into various energy level tachyons. Those all raced away at huge multiples of the velocity of light, leaving enormous wakes of energy spreading away from those coordinates in the geometry of Tachyon Space.

Remote and advanced civilizations instantly noted what appeared to be a signal for a smaller than normal hypernovae, which consisted of multiple energy bursts. Most unusual, and it hardly seemed natural.

Fifty-three percent of the six hundred navy ships either vanished outright, or were sheared open to the vacuum of space in an instant. Two hundred ninety four of them were simply gone, over twenty nine thousand six hundred lives lost. Forty-four ships were sliced open to various degrees, and the untouched two hundred sixty-two surviving but stunned heavy cruisers crews, all positioned near the edges of the discs, found the number of survivors was divided relatively evenly between the three formations. Eighty-six heavy cruisers in one, ninety-two for another, and eighty-four in the third.

The largest capitols ships, all placed near the formation centers, had been the preferred targets by a number of status conscious Krall, and were selected more often. This was despite Telour’s target area assignments to his pilots, because he intended to spread their exit points more evenly. Had they listened to him, they might have destroyed up to seventy five percent of the three task forces, instead of producing an overkill zone near the centers of each enemy formation.

Maggi, on realizing what had happened, sucked in her breath, followed by a painful slow groan. Roughly three hundred of those just lost would be Kobani. She knew she had met, if only briefly, all of them at the earlier briefings, coming mostly from spec ops ranks. However, there would be others gone she had known for over twenty years. Perhaps many she may have played with when they were children in Prime City.

The surviving cruisers regrouped and moved to recover crews from damaged ships if they could, and since there were more rescuers than there were victim ships, most stood by to defend the others, prepared to Jump away from the conventional onslaught they expected next. Initially the task of reorganizing was slowed by the loss of the Fleet Admiral, and of the three Task Force commanders and all of their respective staffs. Unlike the Krall who acted more independently, humans in the military sought to restore a chain of command.

Mauss and Mirikami, in different measures and by unspoken agreement, stepped in to fill that need, taking action to save what they could and to try to hold the Krall at bay.

****

Mirikami knew, from a quick sensor assessment, that there were a combined 841 human fighting assets remaining at K1, if he included the Shadows. That was pitted against approximately one thousand eight hundred clanships, where perhaps a third of those clanships were hampered by being heavily loaded with equipment and thus lacking maneuvering ability, and were sitting on K1. They probably had inadequate crews for full missile reloads, and most had already fired what had been in their racks.

Telour was making a similar assessment, although his count of human ships was less certain. He wasn’t sure how many stolen clanships were in the system, and he didn’t know about the Shadows. Many of his clanships were still sitting on the ground, where they’d been ordered to stay, and others had returned there. That left Telour with roughly twelve hundred normal performance capable clanships currently off planet. Although he realized many were carrying high numbers of warriors, who could contribute nothing to a fight unless a boarding opportunity presented itself.

He badly wanted the other five hundred twelve clanships from New Dublin, slated to arrive in nearly three days, but this fight wouldn’t last more than another hour he estimated, before the navy would retreat. He had many thousands of single ships, but those had mostly been docked internally for transport, and the clanships that carried them also had heavy equipment loads that prevented access. They were on the ground anyway, and there were few warriors aboard to fly them. Besides, they were too light to take on the new generation of human heavy cruisers, and the PU navy had stopped using the lightweight unarmored destroyers, except as rams. He’d had no reports yet of the Shadow fighter strikes on Telda Ka. Even if he knew there were fifty of them down there, he’d not be very concerned. A planet was a big place for so few to threaten.