Koban: When Empires Collide Read online

  Alpha pack wasn’t seeing the same weapons or tactics used against them. No energy beams or missiles, and the enemy stayed hidden. A gravitational anomaly was harder to detect, and less easy to trace to the source that generated the small black holes that punched through their ships. Too often the source appeared to be one of their own heavy cruisers. Clearly there was a sensor problem.

  Losses to Alpha mounted, as if they were being preferentially attacked. It finally occurred to Mitrass that this was a logical tactic used by the Federation, to hit the lead element hardest, and the one with the greatest concentration of firepower that would be the most damaging to the planet. His ship commanders didn’t wait for an order from the Dominant Flight Commander to start evasive movements, and they linked their AI’s into a network, to coordinate their random turns to avoid collisions, and to permit micro Jumps without risk of intersecting with another of their ships.

  At the start of the Federation attack, Mitrass and the Bridge crew heard clanging sounds from the rear of the ship, and feared they had hit some debris and suffered damage. However, engineering and damage control reported no damage, alarms, or hull breeches. Despite that reassurance, he had his pilot initiate rotation and evasive actions in coordination with the other ships of Alpha pack.

  Sensors revealed nothing of the enemy ships near Alpha pack, but there were brief detections of compact high mass concentrations, which moved impossibly fast, suddenly appearing, and then vanishing suddenly, leaving punctured and damaged ships in their wakes. Behind Alpha group, there were detections of missile tracks, heavy lasers hits, and visible plasma bolts, originating from what seemed to be empty places in space, except when a weapons port was opened and briefly seen. These were clearly stealthed enemy ships that revealed where they were as they fired, and AI coordinated return fire sometimes found the stealthed attackers. The enemy was suffering loses there, even if the exchanges were lopsided in favor of the Federation.

  But no enemy ships, energy beams, missiles, or weapons ports were detected within or near Alpha pack’s formation. Yet, ships were dying, and some were deep within the formation, which had smoothed out the gaps from the missing ships that never made the Jump after the first ambush.

  Alpha was being attacked in a different fashion than the other groups, and it was deadlier, and more insidious. It appeared to match some of the reports relayed from the flagship, concerning the attack on docks at Home Den and New Den. The Dominant Flight Commander had not seen fit to share the details of an action that was so many thousands of light years away, and had terminated several days previously. It appeared that a similar type of mysterious weapon was being used against only the Alpha pack.

  Mitrass ordered the sensor teams to watch for any patterns in the attacks, feeding the details to the flagship’s AI, to seek correlations. It didn’t take long, not at the rate they were taking damage. Except the pattern made little sense to him or his second officer. His lead sensor technician, a young female who had risen through the ranks quickly, again proved her intelligence was a greater asset than her muscles and fangs.

  “The ships that are being hit are most often near one of only eight ships of our task force. Since our last exit, two thirds of the ships Alpha pack lost fell within a cylindrical volume around just those eight ships, which have not been attacked at all. It appears to be dangerous for other ships to get very near us.”

  “Us? You mean this ship?”

  “Yes Sire. We are one of those eight ships, and all are Eaters.”

  “If they have identified us somehow, and seven other ships, why leave us untouched and attack only those that happen to be near us?”

  “I have not yet found a pattern in that, Sire.”

  A flaring hull rupture from a Carnivore, passing directly above the top of the rotating flagship, was flagged on the technician’s sensor screen. “There was another ship hit, Sire. That makes five hit when other ships fly near us, and I know from observing the pattern, that this one, and at least three others, were directly above us when hit.”

  “We have been rotating and turning. What does that suggest to you? I know that our upper batteries are not firing on our own ships.”

  “I don’t know, Sire.”

  He snarled in frustration, and focused on the surface attack he was finally going to get to lead. “We are nearing the fringe of the atmosphere. We need to slow, and stabilize our rotations for wing and rudder control. I intend to hit a prominent target at the center of that city as we approach.

  He returned the sensor tech to her other assigned task. “Find me a ground target that appears to be important enough to destroy. A large building, or spaceport installation. Weapons section needs to aim our main cannon.”

  The reason the large Eaters had stubby wings and twin tails, was for atmospheric control when making a low pass at surface targets. The nose of the ship, and thus its powerful plasma cannon, had to be pointed directly at its target, however briefly, when the near light speed ball of dense plasma left the muzzle. After that, navigation control reverted to the pilot for evasions. The other weapons, lasers, smaller plasma cannons, and air to ground missiles, were free to fire at any time, but they had less range in atmosphere than the massive actinic ball of star material, which would rip through the air on its way to a target.

  The tug of powerful deceleration pressed them forward into their chest and body restraints, as the Normal Space drive slowed them prior to nosing their armored bow into the upper atmosphere. Mitrass released ship attitude control to the Weapons Control section, which had already begun firing the secondary weapons at any artificial looking surface targets. Sensors had noted the paucity of widespread targets, which were expected to be found on any developed world. It was as if the Prada had not lived here very long.

  Just before the armored cover to the main cannon port rumbled open, there was a metallic scraping sound from somewhere aft. The cannon’s port opened for its brief exposure to reentry stresses, and the sensor tech fed fresh targeting data to the ship commander for selection. He designated a sizable circular structure at the center of the still distant city. It was a city that looked surprisingly old and partly overgrown, with decay apparent. That was strange for an established and thriving society.

  The first of the upper wisps of atmosphere were being encountered, when a loud ringing noise came from aft. That was accompanied by strong shudders effecting the entire ship, not caused by atmosphere buffeting on the bow.

  The Weapons Control officer shouted at the pilot, “Restore my rudder control, I can’t slew the nose to my target.” Indeed, the view screens showed the bow had drifted a few degrees to the left of the target pip. The plasma bolt, if fired now, wouldn’t hit close to its target at the present two-hundred-mile range. The pilot shouted a reply. “We lost our left fin.”

  That had been the loud noise from aft, as the left rudder and vertical stabilizer tore away.

  Another loud tearing sound came from the right, at midship, and they lost the small ailerons on that stubby wing, causing the craft to roll towards that side.

  Mitrass analyzed what was about to happen, and screamed “Fire the cannon, now!”

  The ship, with a twenty-pound plasma bolt ready, launched it forward at an appreciable fraction of light velocity, and the craft and everyone inside was slammed with an instantaneous and harsh deceleration for less than a second.

  That effect was fully expected when this weapon fired, and the wild and futile shot left a bluish-white streak across the sky, seen on the external screens. The bolt failed to even hit the continental mass that ringed the planet, let alone the targeted city. It exploded its energy in the sea hundreds of miles from any shore, vaporizing and ionizing thousands of tons of water.

  Not that the Eater’s crew was interested, or even watching, as their ship met thicker atmosphere at an improper attitude, and yawing to the right. Leading surfaces rapidly overheating, with ionization and friction burning at the armored edges. Crystalized armor plates cracked
from the heat and stress, and were shed. There wouldn’t be another firing pass for this ship. It was going down. Or at least it would have.

  An unexpected event saved it from a catastrophic collision with the continent below. Or rather, a sizable event horizon did.

  Forming suddenly, directly in front of the Eater, the thirty-foot-wide black hole wasn’t nearly as wide as the Eater, but the intense gravitational forces made it fit. In well under a second the speeding vessel was crushed and pulled through the event horizon by the immense gravitational force. Then, before the dangerous gravitational effects could draw in and engulf more than a tenth cubic mile of atmosphere, the object rotated out of this Universe, to vanish into Tachyon Space, where the trap field was terminated, permitting its compressed matter contents to evaporate under the onslaught of tachyons.

  ****

  Mirikami was a bit displeased. “Alyson, tell Swinther, and the seven other Prada pilots of her squadron, that their staying attached to the Eaters until they started entering atmosphere could have cost the lives of tens of thousands of their fellow citizens on the ground.

  “That delay also nearly ended her life. She detached her Scout just seconds before the slipstream would have torn them free, and it is probable the tumbling and deceleration would have killed them, or rendered them unconscious. That turbulence is probably why the weapons controller, or the AI, was unable to puncture the fusion bottles. Or, if I check with that computer, the AI may have known how dangerous that would be for them so close to the plasma ruptures while inside the atmosphere. The black hole did hit a rudder and a wing, so the Finth couldn’t aim that monster cannon. I suppose if the AI had that level of control, its safety protocols may have deliberately avoided rupturing the fusion bottles.”

  “Tet, they were only trying to save lives on the ground by removing as many of the attackers as possible.”

  “Did you see what the Mark IIs did to stop the lead ships? I Jumped closer to take out several ships. Had any of the Prada stayed attached any longer, I ordered those large event horizons to be formed anyway, and the Scouts would have died with their enemies. We simply couldn’t let the Eaters crash to the surface if Swinther’s Scouts damaged them too much to fly. We intended to pluck them out of space before they were even in positions to fire, but we had to wait for the Scouts to get clear.

  “Ships of that size and speed, hitting a city, or just plowing into the ground, would cause as much destruction as a small thermonuclear bomb. The three large plasma bottles in each ship would rupture on impact, releasing deadly plasma into the environment, vaporizing vegetation, buildings, trees, and Prada. There could be a nuclear winter if enough smoke and dust were kicked into the atmosphere.

  “It actually would be less damaging to let an Eater take their single shot with those huge cannons, and then chase them around the sky to keep them from firing smaller weapons at the inhabited areas. We could always hit them again in orbit, before they came back for a new pass.”

  “But Sir, the other three groups have pulled up, and as individual units they Jumped to the outer system, where they are regrouping. Didn’t Swinther’s tactic help force that?”

  “I didn’t say it was no help, but the risk to One Land would have been greatly magnified if the eight ships they rode crashed, or even exploded deeper in the atmosphere. Swinther’s ships might have been able to attack other Eaters, already committed to entering the atmosphere. But I wanted the Mark IIs to send them to Tachyon Space before that. Now that the Finth have seen that trick, micro Jumps will make it hard to replicate. Event horizons that massive take longer to form, and we can’t maneuver them as fast as a ship can turn away if they watch for them. Swallowing entire ships was a stunt I expected to work, but possibly only one time.”

  Alyson passed on some fresh information. “Carson and Ethan, in the Wanderer, were leading the thousand clanships you assigned to them. They just Jumped close to the gas giant where the Finth fled. The enemy appears to be reforming a single integrated fleet. The group that led the attack have now lost over five hundred of their eight hundred ships, and an outsized percentage of the heavy cruisers were with them.”

  Mirikami nodded, in an unseen gesture for Alyson. “They won’t blindly dive in like that first attack again, trying to bull their way through. That probably works when they attack planets of the subservient Empire species, but not us. They may try diverting some of our forces with Carnivores, while they Jump Eaters to the edge of atmosphere directly above the cities, for quick heavy plasma bolt strikes, and then Jump away. Or try something we haven’t thought about.”

  She had been in Comtap link with other flight leaders when Mirikami and the Mark had joined the four ships forming the large Black holes, convincing the follow-on Finth packs to pull back, to come up with a less costly strategy. “Thad and Sarge say if they persist in returning to the attack, despite losses in the poorly organized first pass, they can render the five cities the Prada have started restoring into rubble. That would be worse than what the millennia of neglect caused. That would break the Prada’s heart and spirit, after discovering their original home, seeing examples of their former culture, and starting to learn their lost language.”

  “We’ll be here for them through that,” he reminded her. Although he had a grudging admission to make. “If the Empire sends more fleets against our other worlds, with perhaps four or five fleets this same size, we can’t be everywhere at once. I’d like to convince the Finth to go home.”

  Alyson thought they were considering a withdrawal. “We hit them harder than they hit us, by a large margin. Perhaps they’re talking over breaking off their assault.”

  “I don’t think so,” he replied. “That apparently isn’t part of their psychological makeup. Unfortunately, from the Mind Tap Jorl performed on an Eater commander, which he and his crew captured, they are rather like the Krall in one respect. They are nearly incapable of backing down in the face of threats or intimidation. They either have to be thoroughly defeated, or provided another biological built-in imperative to alter the focus of their natural aggression.”

  “Sir, I don’t want to sound negative, but I don’t think we can come close to wiping them out, not with the other parts of our fleet dispersed around other worlds. One Land won’t be captured, but there may not be anything left for the Prada to restore.”

  He nodded. “We can only make it costly for them, and for us for that matter. That’s why I’m going to try to change their focus. Carol Slobovic encountered their relentless aggression characteristic, triggered when she landed on Home Den to talk to them, and they promptly attacked, refusing to have a discussion. Our mere presence, uninvited on Home Den, was an affront to them they could not accept.

  “She later Mind Tapped two Finth they captured, and she may have a better grasp of what motivates them than what I obtained from the arrogant minds of our Thandol prisoners.”

  “What did Carol say? I noticed her squadron has also Jumped out near Carson, ready to resume an attack if they seem intent on hitting One Land again. The Finth still have over two thousand six hundred ships. They destroyed thirty-two clanships, and eleven more Prada Scouts that couldn’t maneuver fast enough. I don’t think we can tolerate anywhere nearly the level of losses the Empire can endure.”

  “No, we can’t take many losses,” he agreed, “not even at a twelve to one exchange, like today. Reckless attacks haven’t worked for them, which is something the Thandol and Ragnar have learned, and we’re still teaching the Finth. They will learn the lessons, build more ships, and fight more cautiously. They can out-build us on ships by a large margin. We don’t know if the PU is going to get into the fight soon enough to save our bacon. Their production capability and manpower would make it a closer fight.”

  “Well,” Alyson said, dispirited, “the PU isn’t with us yet, so we have to keep trading punches, it looks like.”

  “Maybe not. After Carol exchanged Mind Tap data from Jorl about his prisoner, she proposed something tha
t she thinks could work, provided she understands Finth priorities well enough. It’s worth a try.

  “I’m going to let her talk to the Finth in that pidgin version of Thandol, which is the only common language we have with them. Unless they possibly understand Fotrol, the Ragnar language. If the phrasing of her threat works, they might leave for home.”

  “You just said they don’t back away from threats.”

  “Not to them personally. She won’t make that error this time.”

  ****

  “Dominant Flight Commander, the enemy force that followed us have unstealthed their ships, and are transmitting to us in Thandol.”

  Thisster was startled by the report from his communications officer. “That confirms they know little of us, if they cannot translate into Slithan.” He conveniently forgot that he knew nothing about what languages were spoken in the Federation. They hadn’t come here to talk anyway. You show weakness to an enemy if you came to talk first, thus exposing your throat to attack. If you then threaten an enemy from that position of weakness, you invite an attack. If they dared threaten him and his fleet, he would leap at their exposed throats.

  “If they are not surrendering, I don’t care what they have to say. I’ll listen when they beg us to stop killing them.” Another convenient bit of amnesia, since this enemy had kicked the shit out of them so far, with far fewer losses on their part.

  “The one speaking says they followed our fleet from Den Home, and New Den, and they provided the coordinates of our star, using the Thandol system of navigation. They are accurate.”

  “That means nothing. We are not in hiding. Many species in the Empire know where our three stars are located.”