Koban: When Empires Collide Read online

  “The Finth will need to dance damned fast, with frequent turns and micro Jumps. They will have some success on ground attacks, because there are no defenses at all on the surface. What they fire at down there will be hit, I’m afraid, and only one city currently has cloud cover and precipitation today. That will reduce enemy laser and plasma hits at that settlement.”

  Thad said, “Wister told me the Prada citizens here are mostly living in the forest trees at the edges of the cities they’ve been clearing and restoring. I think he fears the destruction of historical sites and clues to their lost past more than the risks to their still sparse population. We’ll do our best to keep the Finth so busy protecting their own musky asses that they won’t be able to do the damage they expect.”

  Mirikami agreed. “Nawella has organized the Prada living in the trees, and they pre-coated the trunks and undergrowth nearest the old cities with fire retardant. It seems unlikely the Finth will target trees deliberately, since they wouldn’t know where the Prada traditionally live.”

  Sarge broke in on the conversation, from his Scout with the Prada One Land defenders. “I hope the Prada have some resentment stored up, after letting the Krall use them so callously for so long. We’ll find out today if the little fur balls will fight.”

  “I suppose we will.” Tet sounded tentatively hopeful

  “Yep, I saw signs of that out here,” Thad added.

  They were metaphorically whistling in the dark, to keep bad thoughts at bay. The Prada were half expected to become bystanders in this fight, offering only a weak resistance to these vicious predators.

  ****

  Sissposs Mitrass, ranking Commander of all the Eaters assigned to the Stalkers of Sissbalt, was raging at the impertinence of the Dominant Flight Commander, Thisster.

  “That Beta pack weakling, he Jumped the entire fleet before our honor could be avenged against those hiding Federation carrion eaters.”

  The AI’s of the entire fleet had been linked to the flagship’s AI, to coordinate the simultaneous Jumps of such a sizable fleet assembly. Except, this Jump was to have been executed only after the now segmented pack groups had announced they were in proper position, with all weapons at the ready, and they had matched the Normal Space motion of the target planet before Jumping through Tachyon Space.

  Because of his position at the very front of Alpha pack’s newly designated individual task force, the explosions and loss of the ships of his pack, at his rear, had gone unnoticed on the bridge screens. The external view was oriented to show the galaxy to their front, and mainly displayed the distant cloud of stars of the Orion Spur, where the Federation worlds would be found.

  His first awareness that an attack was underway came long seconds after it had silently begun, hitting ships behind him in the formation. It was radio calls from Eaters that had been hit, or had witnessed the brilliant eruptions of glowing plasma from other ships that alerted him. His first act was to order his own ship’s weapons active, and for sensors to actively scan for alien targets. Only the Beta pack flagship was receiving automated reports from every fleet element, because that had been how the integrated forces were normally designed to report.

  The extent of losses, and how unbalanced they were distributed wasn’t apparent to Mitrass before the normal Universe blinked out, and his newly designated Alpha task force was rotated into Tachyon Space. He’d intended to have some level of control and coordination bestowed on himself, just for the Alpha pack ships, even if overall fleet strategy and target decisions would remain delegated to Thisster. He only knew that some Alpha pack ships, which should be under his local command, had been attacked and damaged, and before he could learn how many, how seriously hurt, and where the enemy was, his ability to respond and counterattack was taken from him.

  “I can’t even speak to my Alpha ship commanders, because we are in Jump status until we reach the enemy star system. I should have had a ship with a tachyon transmitter and receiver.” His anger caused him to overlook the fact that his other Alpha ships, lacking the required receivers, would be unable to receive his orders. He turned to his second in command.

  “Ensure all weapons systems are active, and prepared to fire at the enemy the instant we exit Tachyon Space. Our nose cannon already has a fully charged plasma chamber. Instruct Weapons Control that I want it fired as soon as the enemy planet is on our screens, and any city is sighted. I will yield ship orientation long enough for them to aim the cannon before we enter atmosphere. The first heavy plasm bolt will be ours.

  “Sire,” his number two said, “I saw several bolts fired past us just before we rotated out of Normal Space, perhaps at enemy ships we could not see. Their chambers will not be ready to fire another bolt when we exit.” None of them was aware that those ships would not be following them.

  A disadvantage of the enormous energy an Eater put into each plasma bolt, launched from the large bore of their nose cannon, was the minutes of recharge time for the oversized heated magnetic confinement chamber. The large plasma bolts, created from nearly twenty pounds of feed stock, however, were deadlier than any fired from other shipborne plasma cannons in the Empire, including those from the giant Crushers of the Thandol. Its raw power thrilled the Finth love of dominance.

  “The calculated Jump coordinates should cause us to exit at a half diameter from the Prada world. Our velocity was not yet matched to the orbit of the world around its star, so our Normal Space drive will need to adjust our speed when we emerge. Order all crew to secure for uncompensated acceleration.”

  They now had barely a minute to wait. It went slowly, but the minutes after that one passed far too swiftly for his liking.

  ****

  “Here the bastards come,” was Sarge’s wholly unnecessary pronouncement.

  Two thousand eight hundred eleven Finth warships winked into existence, just over three thousand miles below the planet, moving from galactic south, producing no gamma rays to reveal their emergence. Nevertheless, the ghostly images of their partially detected stealthed hulls revealed the nearly twelve-mile clumpy length of their elongated formation to the waiting Federation craft.

  The leading group of ships, of the four clusters Greeves had described, held four hundred eleven warships; two hundred seventy-three Eater class heavy cruisers, with a hundred thirty-eight Carnivore class light cruisers.

  Oddly, that lead formation seemed misshapen. It had what resembled a sizable “bite” removed from one side. That nibble was courtesy of the first strike delivered by the Federation Scouts, who had hit it from that side.

  The waiting Federation ships already shared the orbital velocity of One Land, but the hastily Jumped Finth fleet did not. The Finth ships, when they emerged in Normal Space, were moving retrograde, away from the spot in space occupied by the Prada world, which was orbiting nearly in the opposite direction. They needed to chase the planet, gaining twenty-six miles per second in Normal Space just to return to their original thirty-one hundred miles from the surface.

  There was no point in firing at the planet at that range, and the flagship AI commanded every ship to accelerate, using their Normal Space drives to reverse their track, and close with the target world. The velocity mismatch caused almost as many problems as Alpha clan’s disruption of the original formation, and the rushed Jump caused by the Federation ambush.

  This wasn’t going quite as well as planned back at Home Den. They should have emerged with a high velocity towards the planet, but they had been forced to Jump before that was accomplished in Normal Space. Now they were being exposed to fire from an enemy force for a longer period before they would be in position to shoot at surface targets. An enemy force which they had not expected, because one had not been reported by the Thandol reconnaissance. And this was supposedly a surprise attack!

  The Feds weren’t as prepared as they thought they were either. The gathered intercept fleet wasn’t aware that the Finth had not followed standard Jump procedures, to match their real space velocities wit
h their moving target’s motion. Thus, the Finth fleet flew through one formation of the gathered opposing ships in the first seconds of their arrival.

  The forty Prada Scouts, poised to attack the Finth where the AI’s tracking their advance tachyon wave predicted they would likely emerge, were suddenly mixed in among the enemy ships, flashing by them too fast for the pilots to select a target for their weapons director. The Prada pilots of the agile Scouts, with superior inertial compensation for the occupants, acted to match the miles per second velocity differential, which was aided by the Finth’s own action to reverse course to close with the receding planet. In a confluence of coincidences, the Prada craft quickly found themselves inside a formation of enemy ships, a rich target environment, where they were matching speeds with the enemy.

  The Prada pilots selected targets, the weapons directors sent their previously formed black holes at them, and discovered the hazards of operating in debris fields of their own creation, and of how dangerous it was to be so close to a combative enemy that fired towards any invisible source of nearby mass. It wasn’t the Scout’s mass being detected, but the black holes were originating relatively close to the gravity projectors that generated them. There were many near misses from lasers and smaller plasma cannons, making the environment extremely dangerous for small unarmored ships. Random chance was going to strike at any moment, and they needed to either micro Jump away to gain the safety of distance, or find another solution to continue their attacks.

  Each squadron of ten Prada craft had an elder captain in charge of their group actions, and one of them, named Swinther, was a more imaginative pilot than most Prada. From her up-close observation of one of the massive Eaters as it passed close to her, she noticed the thick armor, stubby atmospheric winglets on the sides, and a pair of vertical tail fins. She was on the verge of a micro Jump to get away from debris spurting from a half dozen other Finth ships, but hated to pull so far away from the targets she most wanted to destroy. The Finth were starting to take evasive action, so she acted quickly.

  With a flash of insight, she did something that might seem improbable to even a Kobani. She found a place to shelter her small fragile craft from most debris, and assured that she would remain within the enemy formation, where targets were plentiful. She matched velocity with the Eater, and flew between its tail fins from the rear. The Scout was behaving like a Tick Bird, which she had observed often on Haven, before moving to One land. She touched a seldom used console docking switch, just as the Scout contacted the metallic crystal surface of the enemy hull. The magnetic plates under the stealth coating activated, and held them securely attached.

  Like Tick Birds, which sit on the rumps of Water Hogs, the hippo analogues living in Haven rivers, she was along for the ride. The size mismatch was much the same, although, instead of eating parasites and benefiting the host, her Scout became an invisible parasite that attacked the neighbors of her host.

  The high fins to either side, and the swelling bulk of the Eater’s hull ahead, would shield her fragile craft from most debris. She designated a target for her weapons controller, who formed a fresh black hole nearby, and plunged it into the body of Carnivore flying parallel to them.

  As that enemy ship spewed its plasma guts, she passed her knowledge to the other Prada pilots, and spoke to a Kobani who had been teaching her how to fly a Scout the past few weeks.

  “Alyson, this is Swinther. Let me tell you what I did.”

  ****

  “Alyson, you want me to do what?” Mirikami didn’t understand her urgent request in the slightest. “Why do you want us to hold our fire on the lead heavy cruisers?”

  “Not all of them, Sir. You need to have your AI flag the ones that I identify for you. They have eight Prada Scouts literally sitting on their tails. Don’t risk hitting them with missiles, beams or black holes. At least temporarily.”

  She sent him highlighted sensor images of the eight enemy icons she had electronically marked. Which he then fed to Jake for distribution to the rest of the Federation ships. The clanships in the fleet were focusing their attacks on the other three clusters of Finth ships anyway.

  The Prada had been granted their request of meeting the lead attackers, with Kobani Scouts ready to take on the entire fight at the front if the Prada got into trouble.

  Six of the Mark II class ships were poised ahead, just outside atmosphere, stealthed of course, waiting for the Finth ships to slow down as they ripped into the Thermosphere and Mesosphere, where they would be forced to greatly decelerate, using their Normal Space drives.

  The more powerful gravity projectors on the Mark IIs would be able to send larger black holes deeper into the gravity well, to pick off the slowing ships.

  Mirikami, sounding somewhat annoyed, asked, “If the Scouts are on their trail, why don’t they just shoot them and pull away?”

  “Not on their trail, Sir. They are literally sitting on their tails. Magnetically attached with docking plates. Eight of them. And they appear to be turning that lead cluster of Finth ships into their personal shooting gallery.”

  Mirikami shook his head. “I wish I understand what you are talking about, and why they did that. Send me a mental picture.”

  “I’ll make one up, since I’m not close enough to see it myself, and the Prada don’t have Comtaps or Mind Tap. Swinther described it for me.”

  An image arrived. “Oh. Most of a squadron landed on the back ends of some of the Eaters? Why?”

  Alyson explained how the squadron got merged with the Finth in the first place, and that two Prada Scouts were probably lost to collision with debris in the close contact combat.

  Impressed, he asked, “They’ve been hitting ships from there? All those lead ships are twisting and turning, as they close with One Land. But I see they have stayed clustered for mutual defense from the missiles they expected, which are only being fired at the trailing three waves. I saw many of the event horizon hits on their forward group, and I assumed the Prada had improved their piloting and shooting skills, or that your squadron had taken over.”

  “Oh, we’ve taken our shots, at the rear of the clump, but all the kills at the center and front came from the Prada, particularly Swinther’s surviving eight Scouts. I’m proud of them.”

  “If the Finth figure out where they are, somebody’s going to shoot at them.”

  “That wouldn’t be easy. They still have stealth, and even if the Finth spot them somehow, they would have to fire at their own ships. Swinther says the tailfins shield them from the sides, and the body of the Eater from the bottom and front, deflecting debris away. Anytime one of the eight Scouts have a target they can see, they punch a hole through it. They lost only two scouts in her squadron so far, probably from impacts with debris, and she and her other seven Scouts have killed nineteen Carnivores and seven Eaters. And will kill the eight they ride before they leave.”

  “That was incredibly clever, but those lead ships will enter atmosphere in about five minutes. I saw some Finth heavy plasma bolts fired at the only cleared city on this hemisphere that doesn’t have cloud cover. Air turbulence will sweep away the Scouts. Warn them to detach before hitting atmosphere. Shoot the asses off those ships as they pull away, then micro Jump clear of that formation. The waiting Mark II’s have some larger surprises waiting.”

  ****

  “What are the slimy gut worms using on us? Only Alpha is being hit so hard by these mystery weapons.” When they had exited into Normal Space Mitrass had been stunned by what his sensors revealed of the disaster that had struck his Alpha pack task force. He’d uttered incoherent scream-hisses in his anger.

  Not only did his displays record the massive loses that only his Alpha pack task force had suffered prior to the forced Jump, but because they exited without first matching the needed destination velocity, his ship’s navigation, and that of every ship in the fleet, had been command overridden again by the flagship AI, to accomplish the velocity matching necessary to overtake the Prada planet
. His fully charged plasma cannon could have at least taken a soul satisfying shot at the Prada world, even if too far away for accuracy. With his ship forced to turn and accelerate with all the others, he couldn’t aim at the planet at all, and was pressed painfully into his couch, the lump of his sidearm pressing into his hip bone.

  That indignity, and personal complaint quickly vanished, when several more ships of Alpha pack were destroyed, and a few of them spewed fragments, with the pieces striking trailing ships that accelerated into the wreckage, unable to turn away. The heavy armor of the Eaters could resist the impacts, but a few Carnivores took damage to weapons ports, and suffered some hull punctures.

  The reports that other pack task forces, behind Alpha, were also being attacked wasn’t his problem or concern. No pack had been hit as severely as his group. Nevertheless, the avalanche of complaints from every group swayed the Dominant Flight Commander, and Thisster released them from navigation control by the Flagship’s AI. It wasn’t as if each ship commander couldn’t see the need for them to close with their target, but they had to be free to fight and evade the attackers as they did this.

  After that, the other packs reported periodic kills of enemy ships, despite their superior stealth. Every time the enemy performed what seemed like a very risky micro Jump into a Finth formation, then fired a laser, plasma bolt, or missile, their open weapons ports and energy beams revealed them briefly. AI coordinated fire found some of the Federation ships, and destroyed or damaged them before they could turn or micro Jump away. It was still a lopsided fight in favor of the Federation, but the enemy was predominantly using clanships against the other packs.