Warborg - Star Panther (34 page)

“Wench!” Martin hissed.

“Pig!” She spat back grabbing him around the neck. She sighed in contentment. “Even if I wasn’t on the rebound I think I could like you a little bit.”

“How little?” He asked and they both laughed remembering Byron’s embarrassment.

The Rhome task force gathered in the silence of space. Their numbers mute testament to the determination of their mission. The sudden effectiveness of their ancient enemy and the appearance of the demon ships made this necessary. A foe that had to be eliminated for their survival, it was the law, it was their mission.

A Koth surveillance ship sat cloaked in silence, a phantom hole in space. Its crew observed the Rhome gather, they noted every ship and the position it took with precision. They couldn’t see a pattern or purpose, but knew the humans would. Five days after locating the Rhome fleet it moved out in a single massive jump. The surveillance ship waited until they were sure they were alone and jumped away so their message wouldn’t be intercepted by the Rhome. They had already learned so much.

. . .

“That’s a pretty good sized fleet of ships, Stroke.” Briton commented to his Koth counterpart as he studied the communication data packet in a holotank. “I knew it was too quiet around here for the past couple weeks.”

“Ninety six sweepers, in our entire history I have no memory of that many in one group.” The Koth added quietly and then asked, “Can we handle them, Commander?”

Briton glanced at Stroke in the display and smiled. “A year ago we humans wouldn’t have been much more than cannon fodder against a group like this. Now they’re the secondary problem, getting to them is the first.” He highlighted a massive group of other Rhome ships around the sweepers. “These cruisers and missile ships are there to protect the sweepers from your ships if you knock the sweepers into normal space. There’s a several hundred of those.” A third group of ships trailing the main Rhome fleet lit up. “These are their fighter bases.” Briton stopped and scratched his head. “This can’t be right.” He looked at Stroke. “Are you sure there were no more ships in this fleet?”

“This is what the surveillance ship sent.” The Koth looked down at the holotank. “They watched the Rhome fleet depart. Why, is there a problem?” Stroke was a kaleidoscope of mixed colors that Briton recognized as confusion.

Briton nodded. “Except for the fighters themselves there’s no protection for their bases.”

Stroke gave a very human sigh matched with drab coloring. “Commander, why can’t we see these things?” The voice mirrored the frustration in his colors. “Now that you point it out it’s so obvious. We learned never to leave our rear unprotected when we fought you, how come we just can’t see it with them.” Stroke’s colors brightened up and he laughed. “If that were us, to put it in your terminology; you’d rip us a new asshole.” The Koth grew serious. “But is it something we can use?”

Briton grinned at Stroke. “That, my friend, is the first question any decent human strategist would ask. So now it’s your turn.” He tipped his head toward the Koth. “You keep telling us what great observers you are, here’s your chance to prove it. Tell me everything you know about Rhome fighters, their bases and how they use them.”

“Ahhh.” Stroke turned a fascinating rose tint, a faint aqua ring seeped up and down. “The whole enchilada or the short version?” He asked with a chuckle.

. . .

The Rhome approached the Koth enclave totally unaware that they were being shadowed by almost a thousand Koth fighters and just over a hundred missile cruisers. As predicted, the Rhome followed their normal pattern with the fighter bases dropping into normal space just short of the detection field where they would launch their fighters in support of the heavy war ships.

Briton studied the holotank as the Rhome fighter bases dropped into normal space. He looked up at Stroke. “From their history they’ll hold there and wait a few minutes for their big ships to clear the detection field before deploying the fighters.” ^We attack it one minute.^ Briton warned the warborg. He went back to studying the holotank as Stroke’s colors alternated from garish to subdued. Briton sighed.  “Go, Stroke.” ^Attack! Keep clear of the sweepers and good hunting.^

Stroke pulsed a fiery orange.

The two hundred plus lightly armed Rhome fighter bases instantly found themselves inundated by Koth warships. Each missile cruiser attacked a preselected target as the Koth fighters slashed in attacking the bases not covered by the missile cruisers with the intent to disable their FTL systems so the missile cruisers could finish them off. The fighters also were to eliminate any Rhome fighters that were able to launch.

It was a slaughter of indecent magnitude. The effectiveness of the attack was proven when half of the Rhome fighter bases were obliterated in barrages of missiles in less than a second. The human Commander had made it perfectly clear, they had to not only destroy the bases, but every fighter as well. The remaining bases were blasted by the swarming fighters mercilessly, within a few heartbeats none of them had any FTL capability and were sitting ducks being decimated by the missile cruisers. Thirty seconds after the order to attack there were no more Rhome bases and the handful of Rhome fighters that did manage to launch were obliterated the instant they cleared their bays.

Even as the Rhome fighter bases were being eliminated a barrage of FTL killing interceptors detonated, not among the sweepers, but mixed in with the other heavy warships covering them. All but a handful of the heavy Rhome warships were forced into normal space and left far behind by the still racing sweeper ships. A split second later a massive barrage of the interceptors hit the sweepers and they were forced into normal space, with no heavy warships to protect them from the hundreds Koth heavy cruisers that materialized just outside their main weapon’s range a tick later.

Three groups of warborg had already arrived at the enclave. Two hundred gunfighters along with just over six hundred warborg fighters swarmed in on the trapped Rhome heavy warships. The Rhome tried futilely to defend themselves against the swarming, micro-jumping warborg. The Rhome warships FTL capabilities were pecked to pieces by the rampaging warborg fighters, preventing their escape from being savaged by the gunfighters. That battle was over before the Koth that destroyed the fighter bases could get there to assist. Those Rhome ships didn’t survive long enough to see all the sweepers they were supposed to protect decimated by Koth heavy weapons.

A single Rhome missile cruiser escaped both interceptor barrages and its commander looked on in horror as the entire fleet they left behind was shredded. The instruments indicated that this ship was the sole survivor of the largest fleet assembled in many lifetimes. It dawned on him that his ship was the only one left in the area, all their ships had gathered for this final victory to sweep away this group of ancient enemies. The swarm of ancient enemy and demon ships drove home the thought that there was nothing he could do here, except join the dead. The concept that they were not fighting the ancient enemy seeped through the arrogance of accepted superiority. They had been joined by the ones foretold by the law, the demon ships were the new enemy.  Contrary to the law he altered course to escape instead of attacking, determined to warn of this new threat. As his ship entered the detection barrier, he recognized his error in judgment, before he could react his ship was forced into normal space. His last thought, through the shock of shattered arrogance when a demon ship appeared for an instant, was that he too had failed. There would be no warning . . . could it be that they were not worthy to battle this new enemy. The blackness of the void embraced him.

. . .

Briton sighed again as he studied the holotank. “I guess that’s that.”

Stroke sat in silence, subdued colors slowly swirling with an occasional brighter spot appearing then fading. “Commander . . . we cannot believe, or understand what just happened. The battle is over?”

“Yes, Stroke, the fighting is done.” Briton scanned a display on his office wall. “They traded their entire fleet of almost a thousand heavy warships, let alone who knows how many fighters, for twelve warborg strike fighters, nine light fighters, two gunfighters and three of your heavy cruisers.” Briton turned to his counterpart. “Your destroying the fighters was critical, if they had managed to deploy them in large numbers I can easily picture our loses being a hundred times that much.” He could tell from Stroke’s colors the Koth didn’t understand why the fighters would have made such a difference. “Stroke, if their fighters would have entered the battle the warborg would have been forced to divert some of their attention to defend against them, probably allowing many of the cruisers to regain their FTL capability and aid the sweepers, giving them more time to recover.”

Strokes colors were a swirling collage of pastels that slowly brightened. “We did as you requested, not really understanding your determination on the complete destruction of the fighters. Now I see the pattern. Incredible, Commander.”

Briton smiled. “The Rhome got sloppy, just a couple dozen cruisers left behind to protect the fighter bases and this would have been a bloodbath for both sides. Such a simple, basic change in their strategy . . .” Briton sighed and rubbed his forehead.

“I’m beginning to understand something, Commander.” Stroke was an intense swirl. “There’s a saying among our kind that I think fits. It translates something like this: If you only use a blade to cut soft things you never notice when the blade gets dull.” His color faded slightly. “We Koth have always been soft, Commander, and the Rhome never realized they were getting dull.”

Briton nodded with a sad smile. “I suspect you’re right, Stroke. I also suspect they’ll be sharpening that blade as time goes on. But for the moment, it’s over.”

“But it was all over so quickly.” Stroke still sounded and looked slightly stunned. “They were all destroyed.”

Briton nodded. “One survived the initial battle and tried to escape, a gunfighter nailed him in the barrier when an interceptor knocked him into normal space.”

Stroke’s colors swirled wildly. “A Rhome chose to retreat instead of attack. Never in memory has that happened.”

“I suspect he meant to contact his forces.” Briton shook his head. “Why he didn’t just transmit from inside the enclave we’ll never know.” Briton gave a tired smile. “In fact none of the Rhome transmitted a thing. To their people the fleet will have simply ceased to exist.” He rubbed his face. “That’s it for me. I’m going to go take a nap or something to unwind.”

“Very well, Commander. And thank you.” Stroke hesitated. “It’s been interesting, very interesting.” Stroke faded from the display.

. . .

The buzzing of the vidphone awoke Commander Briton, he blinked his eyes and stretched in his easy chair. He turned down the volume on the classical music he had dozed off to. “Briton here.”

Doctor Swain appeared in the vidphone. “Oh, sorry to wake you Commander.”

“It’s not a problem, Doctor. What can I do for you?” Briton smiled, shaking out the rest of the sogginess.

“I just wanted to inform you we recovered all but one of your people intact.” Swain heaved a deep sad sigh. “The last one was a direct hit on the canister. Never knew what hit him.”

Briton bowed his head momentarily. “It happens Doc, I’m surprised we don’t lose more.”

“There’s one other thing, Commander.” Swain hesitated not know where to start. “The Koth have contacted me directly. A while back they had the opportunity to examine a deceased cyborg.”

Briton frowned for a moment, then nodded. “Ahh yes, the late Major Lynch, he was the original squadron leader of the warborg the Koth hijacked. Killed by the Rhome, as I remember.”

“That fits.” Swain nodded. “Anyway they approached me about the process of converting a bio into a cyborg.”

Briton raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think they were capable of becoming cyborgs.”

“They’re not.” Swain smiled. “But their technology is incredible, Commander. They are sure they can remove a human brain very unintrusively.” Swain took a deep breath. “To the point where it could be put back later with no loss of function. Also they have a process to put the body in a form of stasis while the brain is in a cyborg.”

Briton bolted upright. “You mean to tell me they have a process where someone could volunteer to become a cyborg
temporarily
!”

Swain nodded. “That’s about the size of it. And get this, during the removal they can map the neurology eliminating the isolation and early disorientation. As far as I can tell a new cyborg would be able to go directly into final calibration and pretty much join the community immediately.”

Briton paused, studying Doctor Swain. He squinted at Swain. “You’re telling me this, because . . .?”

Swain looked at the ceiling. “I have a volunteer.” He answered quietly, then asked. “You remember Leena?”

Briton smiled, then frowned slightly. “Yes, I remember her well. Why does she want to volunteer? In fact why is she even here, she’s a bio pilot?”

Swain shook his head with a sigh. “A few months back her ship took a hit and she lost a hand. And for some reason, that’s beyond me, I’ve never been able to get a prosthetic to function right.” The frustration in Swain’s voice was obvious. “So she’s been grounded since then just doing odd jobs around the base.”

“Hmmm, Reese never said a word.” Briton pondered. “I know he still talks to her once in a while.”

Swain looked a little sheepish. “She asked us not to tell you, she figured you might ship her out or discharge her.”

“What, ohh Doc you know me better than that.” Briton smiled.