Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (50 page)

The third Crusher, the Emperor’s Trunk, was tasked with the dull job of playing taxi for the Emperor, for his relatively rare off-planet excursions, those visits reduced after the Federation had become so aggressive and active in Empire space.

Like every Crusher, it could project tachyon wake monitoring Traps fields, which were sensitive enough to detect wakes in the sea of tachyons when those were disturbed by massive enough objects traveling in a Jump Hole. At least they could detect them at the higher energy levels of Tachyon Space, called T-squared and T-cubed by humans, and described as Level 2, or Level 3, by the Thandol. The Emperor’s Trunk hadn’t detected five unexpected arrivals at Wendal, which deflected suspicion of Federation involvement there. However, it didn’t mean the developing disaster wasn’t broadcast to Thandol worlds and bases throughout the Empire.

Thandol instant long-range communications required the tachyon modulating transmitters and receivers to be in Tachyon Space to function. At every Thandol planet or base, there were two or more equipped ships in a Jump Hole at all times. The broadcast of the events at Wendal couldn’t be received by either Crusher at Rogue 2, sitting in parking orbits. Regardless, the day’s designated two communication ships received the news, and one of them was chosen, and promptly rotated into Normal Space to broadcast the alarming news to the base.

Captain Fendrel immediately ordered his shuttle pilot to return to the ship, which still held his full crew complement, awaiting permission of the Fleet Commander to go ashore. It wasn’t because of any concern of his about a possible attack on the secret base; it was because Fendrel understood Imperial politics and public relations.

It was extremely likely that the Emperor would advance the date of their attack on the Federation, so positive sounding news of that action could soon replace the lingering negative impressions of the disaster happening on Wendal.

This fleet had only been waiting for the two Crushers to arrive, to develop the plans to rehearse the series of complex actions involved in a massive naval bombardment of an entire planet. The dry fire attacks would be simulated here at Rogue 2, using recorded observations of the target planet made by the monitor ship that had discovered the human world. Using that record, as a basis for the live maneuvers, they would start their practice in a few cycles by using computer simulation of the locations of the observed cities.

Their three security forces did assaults like this more often than did the Imperial navy itself. Therefore, to avoid looking inept they would practice here in isolation, performing live what normally were entirely computer experiences, simulated for their Captains and Commanders. Crusher crews, in particular, spent a great deal of time conducting ceremonial appearances, intimidating planets that seldom opposed them, resulting in situations where they conducted rapid dry fire practice more often before a visitation.

The first raids on Federation colonies, by the Emperor's Trumpet, had been preceded by a quarter orbit for practice drills for that Crusher, to hone the targeting skills for the Decoherence launcher crews. Anticipating the Emperor’s response, Fendrel wanted to be ready to start well before that pampered second cousin left his ongoing welcoming party in the gold dome.

Turning back just short of landing might have saved him and his fellow officers, but only provided them with an excellent view of a military disaster in progress, not to mention an end to their prestigious service on rapidly declining Crusher numbers. That elite service soon would consist of only three ships, of the eight that had projected the Empire’s might for so long.

Shockingly, they suddenly saw an eye searing flash erupt from one side of their ship, a slender jet of
incandescent
gas that speared out from the center of that vast equilateral triangle of hull surface, which was roughly a mile long per side. The impression was that something internally had exploded, and had emerged at that small pinpoint.

It would soon be recognized as the point of entry for some sort of small projectile, traveling at an incomprehensible velocity. A narrow, but widening incandescent cone of plasma and molten material blasted through the center of the ship, but a small part of the blast emerged at the entry point in a blowback, comprised of vaporized decking, bulkheads, equipment, and organic traces of crew. It was a limited blowback, because most of the gaseous and molten material acquired momentum from the projectile, which was eventually estimated to have been moving at nearly two thousand miles per second.

The cone of destruction reached and penetrated the Bridge armor, vaporizing the officers that were still involved with parking orbit stand-down procedures.

Although the jet of material didn’t penetrate any of the containment vessels of the three fusion generators inside the Bridge, it rendered them inoperable junk. Some remnants of the destruction and molten material found their way beyond the Bridge, and passed through bulkheads to exit the hull on the opposite side, where two different triangular planes of the hull met at another mile-long line.

A Nova bomb intersect at the center would have been more destructive, fragmenting the vessel, but for a small Scout, you would be hard pressed to produce more of a bang for the Fed credit spent. And it left the disabled ship to be used as a one-piece gravity guided bludgeon. A task that began even as explosions erupted at the four domes, and as a number of ships parked on the airless plains next to them, appeared to vomit their interiors across the airless plains.

Those in Fendrel’s shuttle made futile calls to Farlol Ascendant’s various Bridge stations, and then listened helplessly as calls for assistance came from hundreds of individuals located in the four ruptured domes, and from dozens of the surviving skeleton crews aboard the ships being hit, one after another.

“Sire.” Fendrel’s Weapons Officer called to him. “Our ship is descending. It must be attempting to land. Someone in the Alternate Combat Center has control.”

Fendrel immediately looked back to his ship, and it was already lower than the shuttle, which had reversed and had been climbing towards the Crusher. “If so, it would have to be Lieutenant Jorlty, but I can’t believe he regained control this quickly. Rerouting power would take more time than this, and the damage to the core must have severely damaged the Normal Space drive. Besides, even without damage, our ship can’t take the stress of its own weight on any face of the hull. No one can land a Crusher.”

Nevertheless, it continued to descend, and it fell behind them as it slowed and they did not. Fendrel tried to contact the Bridge crew of Detab’s Victory, with as much success as he’d had with his own ship. No reply.

When his shuttle pilot said “Look,” and used a tentacle to point through their windscreen towards the limb of the planet, Fendrel saw the other Crusher had appeared around its edge. It was lower than he would have expected. That meant it was also descending. A sparkling cloud of faint light trailed behind the other ship, reflected from a myriad of small objects and venting atmosphere. The tumbling particles were picking up the band of light from the Milky Way’s glowing core. That evidence revealed why the other ship wasn’t responding either. It was from a spray of its lifeblood, the debris from the impact it had suffered, with the pieces following along its original orbit. That Crusher was also inexplicably descending.

One of his crew, a helmsman, noted that the rates of descents of both Crushers indicated the ships were under power. However, their lack of response to radio calls, and absence of external ship lights when in a parking orbit at a Thandol base, implied dead ships.

Then, there was a sudden spray of larger objects from their ship, and despite the distance, it was happening at the other Crusher. It was like pollen from flowers that had spent their bloom, and were spreading their hope for life. The life pods were carrying away those aboard that could escape. The automatic emergency transmitters formed a network, that grew as each pod linked to the others.

Data started arriving, from escape pods of both Crushers, informing potential rescuers how many were in each pod, their life signs, injuries, and specifics of food and water, and thruster fuel. These pods did not have tachyon traps and thus used reaction mass thrusters. They would typically congregate and attempt to dock, as they shared resources and power. They did not have the capability to land on a planet, even one without an atmosphere.

There were no more explosions at the domes, but ships on the plains continued to spew atmosphere and glowing ejecta as they were apparently struck by some sort of unseen weapon. A weapon that displayed characteristics of ultra-high velocity inertial impacts. Even plasma bolts, which possessed some inertia and were visible even in airless vacuum, looked like a cyanic blue-white streak as they traveled at a large percentage of the velocity of light. Their star hot bolts couldn’t blast completely through a Smasher or a Strangler, as was apparently happening to the ships hit on the surface. That obviously was the same sort of weapon that hit both Crushers.

Dozens of Smashers were starting to lift, and those would surely be doing so with low ranking watch standers in command, with too few crew to staff every position, either on the Bridge, in the Engineering Division, or on Weapons. There was little alternative, because at least a hundred ships had been hit, and sitting motionless on the plains suggested eventual death. The enemy had not revealed themselves visually, which was what marked them as Federation craft as certainly as if they had broadcast that fact. The relative low rate of fire suggested there were not many of the enemy, but there didn’t have to be, not if the targets were motionless and unable to fire back.

There were no obvious targets to fire on, but Fendrel had two officers at the shuttle’s medium power lasers, and one was heating the plasma chamber for the small plasma cannon. In the meantime, as the only high ranking officer able to see what was happening, and was not trapped in a dome venting atmosphere or sealed inside a building.

He ordered the ships lifting to activate all sensors, activate mass detectors, and for those equipped, to launch Decoherence bombs at any unseen mass concentrations. The growing fleet at Rogue 2 had been equipped with, and were practicing using improved mass detectors. After Meglor, they had analyzed the gravity recordings of the positions where enemy ships had fired missiles, lasers, and plasma cannons. They had been stealthed, but no more invisible than were their own craft, which were faintly detectable to their electromagnetic sensors.

There had been suggestions that the Federation might have a more advanced stealth system, one that the Thandol had not yet encountered, but that a rumor claimed the Ragnar knew about and had not shared that intelligence. So, out of typical Thandol caution, the mass detectors received an upgrade. Software was installed that could identify a Federation’s clanship by where it’s massive Jump Engines were with respect to the heavy casings for its fusion bottles, and from the large bell shaped thruster nozzle at one end. A pattern of these faint mass distributions, matching those of a clanship, could be used to provide coordinates to the launchers. They could then accurately Jump the Decoherence warheads into internal voids, where the thumb sized warheads could avoid a minor intersect, and thus survive to activate their circuits and gut the enemy craft and their crews.

Fendrel was the first to notice the pattern of destruction down on the surface. Not only had there been no further shots aimed at the domes, but the ships being targeted fell into distinct groups, based on their types.

The first two ships struck were the Crushers, of course, and he believed the eight hits on the domes were purely done for the purpose of preventing the captains and crews in them from donning their bulky pressure suits and streaming out to their ships. They were forced to take shelter in the automatically sealed and pressurized buildings, equipped with airlocks, as the domes lost their air. The most frequent ship targets were the Stranglers, and most of those hit were parked at the periphery of the plains around the domes.

The Smashers, those also parked at the edges were hit hard, and after the Stranglers on the edges had been destroyed, more of the Smashers were being hit.

What was ignored, unless damaged by debris that might blast out of the opposite side of a struck ship, were the Guardians. None of the few Stompers had been hit, nor the support and supply ships either. It was only the most effective combat ships that the Federation was killing. But Fendrel wasn’t the only one to note a pattern, as the first of the Smashers that escaped the carnage reached orbit, along with a smattering of fifteen Guardians, and three Stranglers.

The shuttle pilot asked what seemed an odd question, at least on first hearing by Fendrel. He asked him to explain, since he saw destruction of hundreds of fleet elements around all four domes.

“Sire, at the gold and white domes, only the ships farthest from the domes have been hit. At the yellow and tan domes, most of the Smashers and Stranglers being destroyed are clustered close together, closer to the domes. The Guardians at the edges are completely safe. Why are they sparing the largest ships closest to the gold and white domes?”

A fear gripped Fendrel as he saw the pattern of untouched ships. He’d noted that his own crippled Crusher had vanished around the limb of the planet, as the shuttle used its Normal Space drive to hold its position, because he had summoned many of the lifting Smashers and Guardians to form around him, with some others moving around to scan for gravitational targets. If he located the hidden enemy fleet, he would order micro Jumps to close with them, with the ships firing Decoherence bombs at any mass detections.