Koban: When Empires Collide Page 29

  Caldwell summarized. “They are not exactly honorable in their demands, but if you negotiate and reach an agreement, they honor theirs, and you had better honor your part, or else.”

  “Well, the other party had better stick with the deal, but, we don’t know how rigid the Thack Delos really are, what their honor actually requires, or even if it’s a matter of what we call honor. That’s because we don’t have a precedent when what I’m about to describe was ever tried. Will they negotiate with a new party to alter a deal they already had with someone else?

  “I’d think the new party would at least have to pay off the obligation owed to the TD, or owed by them to the other party, and then honor the new deal with them. But who knows? It’s never been done, as far as the Thandol prisoners know.”

  “Thanks, Maggi. Tell Tet I’ll be in touch after I brief the governor.”

  Chapter 8: The Thack Delos

  Chief Negotiator for this fleet mission, Stendal Gelander, accepted a critical observation of his profession, spoken by Contract Implementer Jentor Desh, in charge of the fleet.

  “I agree, Implementer, we should not have set the future payments from the Thandol at the agreed levels before we gathered all the facts. Such as those concerning the Empire’s and the other two Security forces interactions with the recently discovered Federation, which we know so little about. Master Negotiator Falstor shares in that responsibility, and of our ignorance, along with the Board of Adjustors. Other Chief Negotiators, such as myself, were not included in their discussions, so I do not have all the facts they considered.

  “Nevertheless, we all know the Thandol cannot be trusted for accuracy in matters of payment, or of promised value of things offered in trade. I am concerned that we have set our payments too low for the risk and expenses to come. However, the Ragnar and Finth do not trust the Thandol either, and yet they rushed to perform the obligations they eagerly accepted. That seemed supportive of great value to be found in annexing the region of space claimed by the mysterious Federation.

  “The other two Security forces may now regret their hasty acceptance of the new agreements. They are known to value power exerted over new species as part of their payments, and perhaps they have not been able to exert the power anticipated over the Federation. There are suggestions in intercepted communications that there have been unexpectedly high expenses in executing their contracts.”

  Desh noted the difficulty of discovering what the Ragnar and Finth had learned about implementing the new negotiations. “They would never willingly share unfavorable experiences with us, not wanting us to obtain a better agreement with the Thandol, based on their own results, particularly if they had not profited from their first negotiations with this Federation.”

  What the Chief Negotiator and the Contract Implementer considered to be essentially a contract negotiation, and its execution after agreeing to terms, was what other species would call warfare.

  Many races, for obscure reasons to the Thack Delos, considered political power and social position worthy of acquiring, nearly as much as obtaining material property that you could physically possess, and use. Political Power and Social Position, considered to be real things by other races, were intangible objects, yet somehow, they held value to most species. Things that they treated as having physical worth, to be included in negotiations with the Thandol, or with other races.

  Other species frequently accepted less in material payments, in exchange for what the Thack Delos thought were falsely valued intangibles. The Thandol, Finth, and Ragnar, traded in these immaterial commodities, and fought wars, killed, and suppressed subservient species for them. The Ragnar and Finth accepted offers of these intangibles from the Thandol, to maintain power over other subservient species, and thus rise in social and political eminence within the structure of the Empire. In turn, they received a smaller portion of what was of material value in their other payments and exchanges with the Empire.

  To the Thack Delos, those were stupid, and low profit agreements! They demanded entirely material payments, and used that edge in wealth to conduct “contract negotiations” in the sector they agreed to regulate for their own benefit, and for the majority Thandol shareholder.

  Not that it mattered to them, but their cold implementation of their agreements with the Thandol engendered fear and hatred from the species they dominated. They gained no social advantages or political power in the Empire, but they didn’t miss what was worthless to them.

  Gelander offered an observation. “The other two security forces have each recently displayed evidence that they encountered contract implementation expenses well beyond their expectations. Perhaps because they accepted too quickly the Emperor’s promise of undefined shares in the taxes they would collect, and the power to be gained over poorly known new species.

  “I worry,” he continued, “that in our wish to gain a fair share of the profits, that our Board of Adjustors, and Master Negotiator, did not allow enough time for our Contract Investigators to report on their findings about contract implementation problems by the Ragnar and Finth. Based on the tachyon traces from a rapid evacuation of a large Thandol naval base, which we had not suspected existed in our sector, the Thandol may have miscalculated the value of their new enterprise, and difficulty in its implementation.”

  By Contract Investigators, he meant spying by Thack Delos specialists, who couldn’t quickly infiltrate at level one travel speeds, to observe the known fleet assembly and repair areas of their competitors. They had no allies among other species who were willing to help them, or even to work with them for fair compensation.

  The Thack Delos were always perplexed that payments offered to subservient species seldom purchased agreements for their help, which could benefit them both. They always paid their bills, yet the contracts were rejected. The aliens expressed illogical emotional responses that bore little relationship to past enforcement of contracts, which their own people had failed to honor to the Thack Delos, and there consequently had been understandable penalty deaths administered. They ignored the new opportunity to earn a profit, so information from investigators was always slow to return.

  For good or ill, the corporate decision of the Board of Adjustors was about to be tested, and Gelander was present to evaluate how effective the aliens would be at resisting the contract, a hostile takeover, which the Thack Delos had agreed to conduct for the Emperor.

  He noted the fleet was moments from its exit from Tachyon Space. He offered an age-old platitude. “Implementer Desh, may your expenses be far less than your profit.”

  A passionless statement, for describing the killing and destruction to be levied on the lives and property of their targets, including whatever resources they expended on their resistance to the negotiations of the Thack Delos. That was to be measured against the costs to the Thack Delos to earn their profits with as little loss to themselves as possible. The Thandol had placed no restrictions on their methods, since the Emperor would allow the Thack Delos to claim the polluted wreckage of the world they would leave in their wake, when they eventually returned. Punishing the enemy was the most important goal for the Thandol right now.

  The Contract Implementer, observing the data displayed by the ship’s AI at his console, spoke to his weapons division, as would be happening aboard all the Exterminators of the fleet, per the synchronized time coordination prior to initiating their Jump, and the Implementation Plan previously decided.

  “Prepare the first salvo after exit. Launch on emergence.”

  ****

  “Commander Billsworth, a patrol boat just reported the TD fleet is relatively compact, and is still inbound from galactic north. ETA in just over seven minutes, unless they exit early for a long-range view.” The young communications officer said this aloud, out of habit, rather than use her new Comtap link. Her Bridge station was adjacent to the Task Force commander’s console, making verbal, but unrecorded, communications tempting.

  “Thank you, lieutenant. I’d l
ike to know their exit point rather than arrival time. You’d earn a promotion if you could give me that, and deliver it via Comtap please, to record it for my justification for promoting you.” He smiled at the impossible task he’d posed for the junior officer.

  At T-cubed speeds, about two hundred fifty-four lightyears per hour, even a few seconds wrong on their exit time was a sizable distance. A time inaccuracy could place the enemy too far away for positioning either of the two navy task forces for a prompt intercept. Instead, what they did was derive an estimate, frankly an educated guess, of the probable distance from the known target the attacker would likely select for their exit point, when rotating from Tachyon Space. Then the opposing forces would sit on either side of that distance in advance, in the direction from which the enemy would arrive, in a hoped-for surrounding ambush.

  Billsworth, senior of the two commanders, and in charge of Task Force 1, was poised five thousand miles from New Glasgow, to the galactic north. Commander Chenowith, heading Task Force 2, was poised at one thousand miles from the planet, also to galactic north. They believed the inbound fleet would probably exit between them. From Federation reports, the cautious Thandol always emerged between those two ranges, normally closer to the upper range to observe the target world first. The Ragnar had arrived closer to the shorter range at New Zanzibar and Tanner’s World, and the Finth were first ambushed thousands of lightyears below the galactic plane when they paused to reorganize, and then again when they arrived at three thousand two hundred miles from One land.

  The closer the waiting fleet was to the emerging fleet, and the advance tachyon wave predicting when their arrival was imminent, the navy should have the advantage of firing first. The PU navy, in their caution when attacking the Krall at K1, had also chosen White Outs closer to five thousand miles.

  The Federation Kobani and the reckless Krall were two exceptions, often emerging between two hundred to five hundred miles from a planet, closer to the upper atmosphere. That was attributed to their faster reaction times, and consequently a willingness to accept higher risks. That wasn’t a trait displayed so far by any empire fleet, who generally fought considerably less aggressive, physically inferior species.

  As it happened, the orbital plane of this solar system was tilted nearly edge-on to the approaching fleet, so both TF 1 and TF 2 were practically aligned with the planet’s equator on its day side. The system’s sun was nearly between them and the incoming attackers. Not that the star itself posed an obstacle to the arriving Thack Delos ships. They were traveling in Tachyon Space, of course, and there were no dense or massive objects to avoid until they rotated to Normal Space. However, it would seem to the inner most navy task force that the enemy would be diving out of the glare of the sun if their guesses were right. That might matter if the classic air combat tactic applied to space warfare and Jump travel.

  It didn’t, as was demonstrated seven minutes, and six seconds later.

  ****

  Commander Chenowith’s order came instantly, aware that the same sensor scans were presented on screens in his Weapons Division, the Fleet Combat Center, his pilot’s navigation console, and that TF 2’s primary AI would have anticipated the micro Jump they all needed to execute. “Fire rear batteries and anti-ship missiles. Rotate and micro Jump to close with the rear of their formation.”

  The enemy fleet had bypassed both task forces with a close-in exit.

  Through his open link to Commander Billsworth, he knew TF 1’s primary AI was calculating a micro Jump to within two hundred miles of New Glasgow, to place them below the enemy fleet, who had emerged in a thick and wide disk formation, with their heavy cruisers positioned on the side closest to the planet.

  TF 1’s micro Jump was coordinated with the AIs on each of its one thousand ships, of course, so Chenowith’s subsequent group Comtap warning to them covered the seconds before their micro Jump, through the nanoseconds of the five thousand three hundred-mile Jump itself.

  “The TDs have launched missiles, both anti-ship and ground attack.” TF 2 was executing its own micro Jump when the acknowledgement arrived from Billsworth.

  “We see ‘em. Hope our stealth is as good as we think. Those missiles are about to pass through our formation. We need to fire at the heavy missiles before they reach atmosphere, which will reveal us to the anti-ship missiles and energy beams anyway. I’m using our Scouts to distract them.”

  All forty Scouts had micro Jumped, as originally planned, to the approximate center of the newly emerged enemy formation, where their distributed mass made them individually undetectable, and where their small sized black holes might be lost among the masses of the enemy ships. The smaller holes could also be maneuvered more easily.

  Choosing targets of opportunity, the Scouts generated their head sized event horizons, directing them at the centers of the two sizes of cruisers of the TD fleet, ignoring the smaller Egg Layers, each with their six oval Infiltrator ships commonly called eggs.

  Quickly, a mix of Exterminators and Marauders started spewing plasma from damaged fusion bottles, but there were fewer of them, and far less explosively than the Scout crews anticipated. The main AI’s of each of the two PU Task Forces confirmed the enemy feet consisted of three thousand nine ships of two cruiser classes, with a thousand one hundred ninety-three of them being the Exterminator heavies, one thousand eight hundred sixteen were the lighter Marauders, with a hundred seventy-nine Egg layers, forming a fleet of three thousand one hundred eighty-eight warships.

  Of the combined forty enemy ships targeted, the Scout’s AI’s reported that thirteen heavy cruisers were struck, and twenty-seven light cruisers as well. Yet only four Exterminators showed signs of serious plasma eruptions, while only seven light cruisers showed they had lost fusion containment. The damaged ships appeared to retain significant power, and most of then promptly executed micro Jumps, even as they launched additional anti-ship missiles. They retained combat capability, a result at odds with previous PU Scout experience with hits on Thandol Smashers, and which the Federation reported for equivalent classed of Ragnar and Finth ships. The TD ships seems to be more resistant to the same mode of Scout attacks.

  The response of the stricken ships, launching anti-ship missiles, was exceeded by anti-ship missile launches from the other ships of the enemy fleet, proving they had suffered some level of degradation. The entire enemy formation suddenly bloomed with their small missiles flying in all directions, with many staying within their formation, although thousands were shooting out of the sides and edges of their thick disk formation. The missiles didn’t seem to be tracking towards specific targets, suggesting the PU stealth was as reliable as had been hoped.

  Hope springs eternal, but can be dashed in a moment.

  The ships in TF 1 commenced firing energy beams at the planet-bound heavy missiles, and they also launched anti-ship missiles at the main body of enemy ships, which had stealth that PU missile sensors could partly penetrate. Some of the enemy ships micro Jumped, in what appeared to be designed patterns, staying within their large formation, but leaving the initial tracking of incoming navy missiles off-target, and forced to seek new targets. TF 2 was firing energy beams and anti-ship missiles at the opposite side of the TD formation.

  Every PU ship, except the Scouts, promptly micro Jumped each time they fired weapons, never staying where the enemy had just seen them. The Scouts, moving among the enemy formation in random patterns, felt confident their positions remained concealed, because their gravity projector generated black holes that did not reveal their own locations.

  All that changed in an instant, when a signal from the TD flagship triggered a quarter of their own anti-ship missiles to simultaneously detonate.

  Nearly one thousand small yield tactical nuclear fission warheads detonated simultaneously, spread around the outside and within the TD formation, with none detonating dangerously close to any of the Thack Delos ships. That was due to a friendly-craft proximity protection system, which prevented that fr
om happening.

  A sleet of radioactive actinide isotopes from the warheads, gamma and X-rays, alpha and beta particles, neutrons, and short half-life nuclides, were created by the small warheads and sheaths of material placed around them, which suddenly filled the volume of space in and around the enemy formation.

  “Holy shit!” Billsworth blurted, as the detonations saturated many of the PUs passive electromagnetic sensors for long seconds. They had not been using radar or lidar, because those radiation sources would reveal the ship using them. “Are these frigging maniacs suicidal?”

  He ordered a pull-back, via micro Jumps of Task Force 1, barely after their first energy beams found some targets among the heavy ground attack missiles, enemy ships, and before PU anti-ship missiles had closed the gap.

  Had it not been for their Comtaps using tachyon modulation, a radio broadcast in the bursts of electromagnetic pulses and static would have proven futile and lost in the clutter for vital seconds. As it was, a half dozen Scouts, within the confines of the enemy formation, staying clear of enemy ships in the voids between them, died from coincidental blasts by missiles that happened to detonate within a few thousand feet of them, as those sought an empty volume before activation. The quantum controlled stealth coatings of any Scout could react quickly enough to reflect the harmful electromagnetic radiation, and many charged particles were diverted around the hulls or stopped at the surface by magnetic and electrostatic fields. However, despite the dense matrix of the thin stealth coatings, high velocity, electrically neutral neutrons penetrated in a significant, and potentially deadly flux.