Koban: When Empires Collide Page 16

  Thad contacted Mirikami an hour and a half later. “Sir, all the Stranglers we found, twenty-three of them, are now either particles in Tachyon Space, or useless scrap. My Scout crews gained experience using black holes, and the AI’s managed to maneuver them accurately, and we limited damage to other ships and docks. I’m certain they know we could have seriously damaged their entire fleet before they managed to Jump many of them out of the system. If there’s a defense against these black holes, I don’t know what it is.”

  “I don’t know either, Thad, but there is always a defense from any new weapon. Case in point. Just heard today that the PU sent twenty Scouts to Rogue 1, which apparently was abandoned after our raid on Rogue 2. However, thirty Smashers were posted nearby, having set an ambush, and were waiting for an attack from us. Due to PU inexperience avoiding Thandol detection, they all Jumped as a single compact group. The concentrated mass and simultaneous arrival negated a stealthy arrival. A cloud of Decoherence bombs hit them, centered on their exit coordinates. They lost eleven ships in the first second. To their credit, the other nine Scouts promptly spread out and killed eight Smashers before the Thandol fled.

  “Then the PU force followed them to their new base, and devastated the entire complex without another Scout being lost. Although, when attacking a sizable moon base, they encountered a problem with firing black holes into a deeper gravity well. It doesn’t work. The Trap fields release them before reaching the targets.

  “I’m waiting for an explanation from Max Born, about that, but it has me worried. Not just about how much a gravity well limits our black hole projectors, because they still used gravity rods to take out surface targets. But we clearly don’t understand enough about our newest weapon, and the Thandol certainly will have noticed it couldn’t hit that moon. They didn’t build a vast and old Empire by being stupid.”

  Chapter 5: Finth Team

  Carol disconnected from her Comtap link with Mirikami, then group linked to the other nine Scout captains, of the ten Scouts in her small command. They were already inside the Empire’s Security Sector 2, and only a couple of hours from arrival in the Home Den system, as it was called by the Finth.

  “People, Captain Mirikami just relayed Thad Greeves report of his group’s meeting with the Ragnar. The apes were less than enthusiastic with our proposals, to say the least. Thad’s Scout crew found themselves drawn into a death match demonstration of our basic combat skills, compared to that of the best fighters the Ragnar have. Only eight of his crew was involved with the actual fighting, because Thad kept his other ships stealthed, and two of his own crew in armor and stealthed. It resulted in eight dead Ragnar, and no losses by our side.

  “Tet left it up to me to decide how we’ll present ourselves to the Finth, and perhaps save some time by showing them who and what we are at the very outset. Unlike the Ragnar, they’ve never faced us in space or on the ground, and they’ll surely reject anything we tell them, or any claim we make. Unlike Thad’s group, we have ten rippers with us, so they may have some ideas to offer. The Finth are supposed to be pure carnivores, and love to hunt. Rippers might have a better understanding of them than we will. I’m looking for comments from you Scout captains, and you should talk it over with your teams and get back to me when I call back.”

  As with Greeves’ Scouts, they had ten crew per ship, nine Kobani and one ripper. Even with their stealth, and the new gravity projector weapons, ten small ships still seemed like an implausibly weak force against potentially three thousand enemy vessels, consisting largely of light to heavy cruisers. Yet, Scouts had become a proven and significant force, capable of executing devastating attacks on far greater numbers of Thandol and Ragnar naval forces.

  There was an underlying assumption there would be a substantial number of warships in the Finth home system. The goal, as with the Ragnar, was to leave the security forces intact, if possible, to wage war on the Thandol if they could be turned. If not, to leave them too crippled to mount major attacks on worlds in Federation or Human Space.

  Mirikami had cautioned her about the near disaster experienced by the twenty PU Scouts sent against Rogue 1. She informed him her squadron was already widely dispersed in space, and promised to conduct a reconnaissance before revealing their presence to the Finth.

  This species was completely new to them, and all they had learned about them came second hand, mostly from the two Thandol prisoners, and less so from the former low ranking Ragnar prisoners. The Hothor, living in Security Sector one, had seen Finth at Wendal, and at former Thandol capitols of now dead emperors, but they had never interacted with that species or been formally introduced. The Thandol didn’t encourage such meetings between subservient species, since that might promote collaboration.

  The Thandol images of the Finth belied their less than impressive origins, evolving from a wolverine-like carnivore, once resembling a slender small bear, and now were a large bipedal wolf-faced species. The first thing residents of Koban and Haven stated, when shown just the facial images of the Finth, pulled from memcaches of the two Thandol prisoners, was “werewolves.”

  Not the lycanthropic humans of Earth mythology. They meant the large, four-legged wolf-analogue packs native to Haven. The hairy head crest, exposed fangs, pointed ears, extended muzzles with exposed teeth, and the frightening yellow eyes were a close match for the slightly smaller Haven predators. Factor in the over two-meter average height, heavy shoulder muscles, powerful arms, and long legs evolved for running down fleet prey, and you had an intimidating intelligent predator. One that was physically capable of eating an opponent, and sometimes willing to demonstrate precisely that. They were happy to induce fear in the subservient species they dominated and abused, on behalf of the Thandol. They actively cultivated this image, which made their task of tax collections easier, and kept the weaker species in line.

  Their slightly oily fur, variously shaded red, brown, black, or a rare white or beige, was hydrophobic, keeping them dry in rain, and frost resistant on their preferred cool worlds, orbiting smaller red stars. Like alien mustelids of similar animals on other worlds, they had scent glands for marking their territory, and for sexual signaling between the males and their equally fierce looking females. The females were nearly the same size as the males, and they were considered the better and smarter hunters, less instinct driven, more thoughtful.

  The Thandol, true to their male dominated culture and biases, refused to deal with the Finth females, but, as they did with the Ragnar, they tolerated the alien females in their combat packs. Accepting taxes, extracted from a subservient species even if collected by females, wasn’t cause for concern by the greedy despotic rulers.

  When the squadron made its exit in the Finth home system, they divided into two five ship units as decided enroute, with five Scouts widely distributed around Home Den, and the other five around New Den, the second occupied planet of the system, which the Finth had made more habitable, over millennia.

  There was no sign they had been seen, and no sudden burst of communications. As agreed, they started passive reconnaissance of both inhabited planets, and three moons.

  A cycle and a half later, they had an overview of the Finth’s home system, and many of their military resources. Or rather, the forces they had facilities for, but which wasn’t there.

  Sergey spoke first. “The second planet, New Den, even after they terraformed it, isn’t the most habitable planet I’ve heard about. Technically, I supposed the term shouldn’t be terraformed, perhaps it would be called denaformed. I think they wanted to make it like Home Den, but it’s not a terrific job. Not half as good as Earth did with Mars. It’s so close to their red sun, on the inner edge of the habitable zone, it must be too hot for their comfort. I mean, Home Den is on the outer edge of the habitable zone, and the Finth are adapted for the colder climate.” He shrugged.

  “Anyway, that may be why they turned it into a military-industrial complex. The planet is closer to an asteroid belt, located between it a
nd Home Den, and they moved twenty-six metal rich rocks into wide orbits around New Den. Even its original moon has been extensively mined and tunneled.”

  Carol made an obvious assumption. A wrong one. “That must be where they have the bulk of their fleet. There’s only one ship yard on Home Den, and it appears dedicated to building commercial shipping. The four big orbital stations here have only a few handfuls of warships docked at them. Most of those are the damned Thandol built Stranglers.”

  “Nope. Afraid not Carol. There were less than a hundred ships on or around New Den. Seventy-eight were their Stalker troopships, a few Carnivore class light cruisers that are undergoing weapon upgrades or replacements, and six more Stranglers. There is only one Eater class heavy cruiser, which appeared to have undergone a serious bow collision and is being rebuilt. There were eight small carriers, for which we don’t know the ship class name, and they have a combined twenty-four Predators, Jump capable fighter bombers, each with room for three Finth crew. Their noses are protruding from open docking stations, ready for quick launches.

  “To me, everything over here at New Den looks half shutdown. There are too many workers servicing the number of repair jobs currently underway, and they don’t have enough to do. If their warships aren’t on Home Den, or at those orbital stations, are there any big moon bases over there, Carol?”

  That prompted Jason Seiko to contribute his report. “I checked the two moons of Home Den, and there are bases on both, and as I told Carol, there are over a dozen large inhabited domes with civil traffic operating between them and the planet, and a lot of service and maintenance ships on the tarmacs, and a few older ships undergoing salvage. There are so many maintenance ships that it looks like they normally service a sizable fleet. Like you suggested, the bulk of their fleet may have left here recently.”

  There was a question from another Scout captain. “What if much of their fleet is based around Den 3 and Den 4? We could go after those, if it comes to a fight.” The Finth apparently weren’t keen on flowery names for colonies.

  Fred Saber had asked that question. This was his first mission since the attack on the repair docks at Meglor, and his left leg and elbow were now fully regrown, after months spent in a med lab.

  Carol summed up the frustration they felt. “If we can’t convince the Finth leadership to accept our proposal, to not attack the Federation in exchange for our weakening the Thandol navy, they certainly won’t join a revolt. If they refuse to revolt or stand down, no matter what we do to the Thandol, we want to damage their fleet immediately. Only it isn’t here.

  “After we talk to them, and show what we ourselves can do, and what our Scouts and advanced weapons will do, they could use long-range tachyon communications to order any parts of their fleet to scatter, or to go on the attack. Shit!”

  Her new husband, Sergey, wanted to soften what she apparently saw as a failed mission before they even started. This was the first mission she’d been asked to lead. “Carol, President MacDougal, Tet, and Maggi, were committed to the Federation holding discussions with the Thandol security forces first. They always knew the Finth might pretend to go along, then after we leave, attack us anyway and warn the Thandol.

  “They didn’t know if any of the security forces would cooperate with us. Hating the Thandol may not be enough motivation to revolt. Their self-interest will dictate what they do, and they’ve had thousands of years of examples of what the Thandol can and will do to their opponents. We can only do what we were sent here to do. Demonstrate our capabilities, offer them our deal, and punish them if they reject us outright.”

  Sabre added his opinion. “We were told our mission is to act as soldier-diplomats, not negotiate a diplomatic solution. At least we should be able to discover what they really think. Aside from our Mind Taps, we did bring rippers, who tend to get the truth out of any species they frill.”

  “That’s true,” She agreed. We can always do what Thad’s squadron did, destroy all the Stranglers in this system as a demonstration of our surgical strike capability. I’m sure they were told to hold them in reserve, for later invasion landings. They couldn’t contribute to an orbital assault if that was their attack orders. We heard the Emperor had ordered the security forces to execute hit-and-run space bombardments for their first operations.”

  Muriel Seong, another of Carol’s Scout captains, and on her first mission, tentatively joined the discussion, with a stunningly obvious question. “None of their main fleet elements are here, and I don’t suppose they’d base all of them at their two other colony systems. Do you think the fleet already left for an attack?”

  It cleared Carol’s self-doubt and procrastination. “Damn good question, Muriel.”

  She made up her mind. “We need to go down now, no advanced request for a meeting, or waiting around in orbit for their answer. They don’t have much in the way of warships in the system here that can attack us, and I’ll leave two Scouts in orbit to watch over us. They’ll be hesitant to go after us from space anyway, because I’m going to put our butts down inside their damned military heart, announce who we are, and force them to talk to us.”

  She thought of additional details, taking a full Kobani mental second, more than enough time for the few forces she had.

  “Eight of us will pop out over Pack Central, their military government’s capitol city. They have a huge six-sided military headquarters structure called Pack Command, which serves as both their military and government center. That has a huge central court yard, filled with some sort of dense garden. The landers will be my ship, Medlov, Sabre, and Seiko. The other four Scout captains will be Filho, Sandoval, Zafar, and Huang, and you will simultaneously arrive with us, but you will remain stealthed and airborne over the headquarters building. That building houses their entire government, their military command and civil government, with all their leaders and subordinates. From space, they won’t just blast away at us at its center.

  “Seong, you and Cardoza will hold positions at one hundred and at five hundred miles respectively, over the city of Pack Central. We’ll stay linked on this common Comtap channel, but everyone stays quiet unless you have something important to communicate. If you have anything intended for a specific person, open a private link to them, keeping the common channel chatter to a minimum.”

  Next, she addressed the convoluted communications they’d be forced to use. “Just like when we first met the Ragnar, we’ll have to speak to them using the simplified Thandol vocabulary for subservient species, translated from Standard. At least until we acquire or build a data base of the Finth’s language. If they already have a translation between Fotrol, the Ragnar language, and their own, our AI’s can work on a translation between Standard and Slithan. Assuming the word the Thandol use is the proper name for what the Finth speak.

  “For all we know, the Thandol word might mean shit-speak. Slithan has a lot of deep sounding sibilants, and the samples we found recorded in the Thandol memcaches made them sound like a pack of baritone snakes ready to strike. They are said to speak in aggressive tones, using harsh and threatening words. Seems to be a common trait of dominant species, such as the Krall, Ragnar, and now the Finth. Not that the Thandol are very polite.”

  She sent them a grinning mental image. “If they get too frigging belligerent with us, we’ll just knock some of their damned teeth out.” Showing how polite and courteous she expected to be with them herself.

  It only took a couple of minutes for the Scouts, spread out at New Den and the three moons, to gather over Home Den, above Pack Central.

  “Of the four Scouts that land, one crewman stays inside each, we all stay in armor, rippers excluded of course. The rest will exit, three from each crew stays stealthed even if the rest go visible, and I’ll broadcast on the standard Thandol hailing frequency, which Maggi pulled from our two Thandol prisoners. Don’t make an offensive move unless they do, but we aren’t here to be passive. If they shoot, we shoot back. Don’t kill the shooter unless you have n
o option. Try invisible microwave or infrared before a laser, and use plasma bolts as a last resort.

  “We now know the Scouts can’t use gravity guns this deep in the well. But stealthed, our four covering ships can launch missiles, and fire lasers at any threat. The Finth will likely try to talk, at least at first. The four rippers of the landing parties should get to cover before any possible shooting starts. We’ll make this up as we go. We Jump in one minute.”

  ****

  The Pack Leader of the current Alpha clan, Fissloss Slassler, was looking at the near cloudless orange sky out of the broad windows of the Office of the Dominant One, located along the northern wall, looking out above the great court yard of Pack Command, on the prestigious top floor of the fifty-story edifice. Then down at the deep red of the thick jungle and forest maintained in the vast courtyard below, which was used as a hunting preserve for Finth with moderate to high rank, or who paid a high fee.

  He was angry, and lamenting the demands of leadership, which by tradition kept him at Home Den, precisely when the fleet had its first serious foe to fight in living memory, having departed last night.

  The bright morning was of little comfort, and forced to stay home with him were the Beta, Gamma, and Delta Hunters of his own Alpha clan. They too were restricted from leaving Home Den, any time the Thandol ordered most of the Finth fleet into service.

  The Hunters of the Forests, the millions of Finth ground troops, also remained on Home Den and New Den this time, because this was a fleet action, and Sky Hunters would be the first to taste the blood of a new enemy of the Empire. Those that stayed behind were promised they would get to fight later, when the invasions began, and large parts of the fleet would then remain in the home system for its protection.

  The Alpha pack leaders were kept home on a pointless technicality, based on an ancient betrayal, to defend against past treachery by the Thandol. Something that was exceptionally unlikely against any security force during a new period of expansion, as announced by the Emperor.