Koban: When Empires Collide Page 4

  Four survivors were in intact suits, but one of those apparently fell victim to additional Decoherence bombs, which were fired at the now visible debris field of partial Scouts. The survivors had pushed off from the wreckage of their ships, to get away from what they instantly recognized as tempting targets for the several dozen Smashers that were near one of the airless moons of a now nearly solid ice ball of a greatly contracted Neptune massed ice giant.

  Activating their suit stealth made them invisible to electromagnetic detection, but proximity to the wreckage and the vapor cloud from the disintegrated matter placed them at the center of the targeted area. It was one of the randomly emerging Decoherence bombs that vaporized a survivor.

  Condor and a crewmate were two of the survivors. After kicking away from the partial shell of their Scout, he transmitted to any survivors, “Use your suit’s reactionless thrusters, built into the Trap fields in the butt. It’s only a quarter pound of thrust, but aim yourself away from the debris. When you’re clear, one of the other Scouts can pick you up. I see puffs of gas appearing around me, so they’re still firing at anything they see drifting.”

  Grant was sounding confused and desperate. “Damn, Eddie, I’ll leave someone to pick you guys up, but unless we stop their firing, you three aren’t likely to get away. You can’t move fast enough. I don’t know how they spotted us, but they were sure laying for us. There’s thirty of them moving towards you from that moon. Eight of us should be able to drive them off or distract them. We need to keep on the move until we figure out what went wrong.”

  “We’re all headed in different directions, and I think Manfred was just a random hit because he was still too close to that piece of his ship. I don’t think they can see through our stealth because the three if us are still alive. You need to go get ‘em for us. We either make it or we don’t, but you can’t let the bastards get away without paying something.”

  “You got it.”

  Even with his suit optics showing their positions, the Smashers were invisible to his unaided eyes at a range of a couple thousand miles, and the desolate moon was faintly visible behind them, with the dark blot of the giant planet like a stain on the background stars. There was enough starlight that the suit optics could see the moon and planet, but not the ships, with their own stealth activated.

  Suddenly, five separate and brilliant blue-white plasma flares appeared against the face of the moon or the giant planet. Those were smashers whose fusion bottles had ruptured. Three more flares quickly followed them, and one of those was largely swallowed, as what was likely a larger event horizon pulled the debris into its voracious maw. Then nothing.

  “Shit, we only got eight before they Jumped.” Grant furnished the unasked explanation.

  “We’re scanning to see if we can spot them elsewhere in the system. Their piss poor stealth left them sitting ducks for us, but we only got some of them with our first shots before they Jumped.” Next, he wanted the survivors rescued.

  “Julie, move in to pick up our people, but be quick. They may have only ghosted, and could come right back, ready to fire at any rescue ships.”

  “Yes, Sir, she answered. “I’m next to Agular now, and I’ll have the other two in a few minutes.”

  Condor was the last to enter the airlock. “Chief, I don’t think they saw through our suit stealth. They fired a lot of shots at even small pieces of debris, proving they could see that. Manfred was drifting close to the largest piece of his Scout’s hull, but not close enough for him to push off, as the rest of us did. He couldn’t get far enough away before they shot at what they could see, and I don’t believe it was him they aimed at, or they’d have gotten us all.”

  “Then how did they see the Scouts, which have the same stealth coatings?”

  “Not sure. Ask the various AI’s if they detected long wave radio, which can detect us, but has poor resolution.”

  The answer came back immediately. “No long wave radio signals detected, and we always monitor for those frequencies. However, the AI’s agree that the Decoherence bombs started arriving in the seconds before we emerged, and came in a pattern that was centered on our formation. They saw our masses or our tachyon wave coming. Apparently, they have tachyon wave detectors that can see a Scout moving at T-cubed velocity. Mirikami said they didn’t appear to see his ships when he attacked them.”

  “That’s pretty fast development for the Thandol. We assume they’ll work to increase monitor sensitivity, just as we’re doing with our detectors. Except this example would not appear to be just in development; it would have to be an operational system if it’s deployed way out here.”

  “Well, Mirikami thinks Scouts are so small they don’t make tachyon wakes much above the background noise level, and their mass is well below current mass detector sensitivity after they reach Normal Space. Besides, they had fired on us before we rotated to Normal Space, so it wasn’t mass detection.”

  “Hey.” Condor had a thought. “We came in all together. Twenty of us. How does that effect the tachyon wake profile? What’s our combined mass as we approached?”

  There was moment of stunned silence, then, “Oh, God, Eddie, I caused this. I used a standard navy formation. I’ve never commanded an action like this. Our clustered and combined masses made a detectible wake.”

  “Chief, none of us here have, and I’ve been a Kobani convert for years longer than you. I didn’t think of that either. Being Kobani doesn’t make you perfect, but believe me when I say you never forget a hard lesson learned. We all learned that today, and we’ll share that knowledge. For now, we have a mission to finish.”

  “They Jumped, and the moon base seems deserted. They anticipated a raid. What’s left to attack?”

  “Which of our Scouts has tachyon wake monitor capability?” Asked Condor.

  The Chief answered. “Mine does.”

  “Ask your AI which way they went. Let’s follow their asses.”

  In seconds, they had a course, and nine Scouts Jumped together, spreading out widely before the Jump, and coordinating with Comtap to stay with the lead Scout.

  ****

  “Commander Jistolra, how many Federation ships do you think we destroyed? My mass detectors saw only a diffuse dispersion after they arrived, and no well-defined individual ships.” The question came from the Sensor Division Lieutenant, who had first reported the advance tachyon wave of the approaching enemy. He was still basking in the praise he’d received when their ambush had worked better than anticipated.

  The thirty Smashers had been waiting for an attack on this base for twenty-nine cycles, having evacuated the major fleet elements based here thirty cycles ago. They had left thirty Smashers on continuous combat patrol, always ready to launch Decoherence bombs. Three monitor ships constantly rotated duty, to watch for the expected incoming attacks. Having found one base, it was assumed the Federation knew about all three, and would strike at them.

  “The bombs fully vaporized what must have been small ships, destroying those closest to the center of their formation. The volume of gas provides an estimate of size and numbers, as did the size of the partial hulls that were revealed when their stealth failed on the damaged craft. I estimate perhaps twenty were destroyed, and I assume there were fifty human crew aboard each.”

  He estimated on the high side, of course, for his own benefit. He’d lost eight Smashers, with more than two hundred crewmembers aboard each, before he quickly ordered the squadron to Jump for their new base.

  “We will send ships back to examine the area later. There may be parts of the destroyed ships we can salvage and study. For now, we have protected thousands of our ships that will soon be pounding human population centers into submission. For performing my duty today, I hope to be granted leadership for one of those attacks.”

  His optimistic assessment of what his reward would be was reasonable, assuming the status remained quo. Fate is fickle, and kindness an irrelevant concept.

  The twenty-two Smashers needed
but a cycle and a half to reach the newly established base, located at the edge of a modest star void, where Rogue 1 had been found. This was also an ancient and dead system, with a white dwarf star remnant, and three gas giants that had survived the red giant phase of their dying star when it had bloated to engulf and absorb the inner planets. The former planetary nebulae, formed from the star’s cast-off outer layers, was now extremely tenuous after the passage of hundreds of millions of years.

  The moons of the giant planets provided resources, and for now the Thandol had Jumped mobile docks here, and sent several orbital stations for habitats. This base was expected to become as elaborate as the repair docks that were destroyed at Meglor, but would be used only by the Thandol navy, and thus could remain a secret installation.

  While still inbound, Jistolra made his preliminary report to his superior, the base commander of Sector one’s new Fleet Staging area number one, transferring the sensor recordings of his just completed actions at Rogue 1. His ship was the first to dock of his squadron, at the main habitat orbital station where he would meet with the base commander and his intelligence staff.

  He let his Smasher captains work with the overworked traffic control center as to where his other arriving ships would dock. The new base was a busy hub of activity, trying to organize the merging of fleet elements from Rogue 1 with Thandol fleet elements being transferred from more public planetary docks.

  The Thandol were preparing two sizable fleets to follow up on attacks after their three security forces completed their initial bombardments. A third fleet, the largest, was being assembled for defense of important Thandol star systems, and as a deterrence against opportunistic and rebellious actions by the mobilized fleets of their security forces.

  Commander Jistolra entered the headquarters station VIP receiving area adjacent to the multiple airlocks that permitted personnel and supplies easy access to his ship. He had just braced himself in the tube shuttle car that would transport him to the base commander’s headquarters. The startup jolt was stronger than expected, and he first thought it was a rare malfunction, until the shrieking bugling tone of an alarm sounded. It was accompanied by additional shudders, and a loud whistling tone that any spacer feared hearing. It was the sound of atmosphere rapidly screaming towards a large breach, howling its way into vacuum.

  His Vice Captain reached him on a priority channel of his memcache. “Commander Jistolra, the ship has been hit, a fusion bottle ruptured, and we have been torn free of the airlocks and the station is open to space. Take shelter. It must be…”

  The transmission ended abruptly, and through the rear window of the shuttle car, he saw many Thandol waiting on the boarding ramp skidding along the deck in a maelstrom of wind, where they were unable to hold tight enough to fixed objects to prevent being ripped free. Rapid decompression triggered condensation of moisture as the pressure plummeted, but that was brief.

  A wall along the shuttle’s boarding ramp ruptured outward due to the pressure difference, and beyond that, as the suddenly clear view revealed, Thandol bodies, loose equipment and decorations, and unidentifiable objects, were tumbling into vacuum.

  The voluminous bodies of the doomed Thandol swelled, and their abdomens burst, as internal pressures sought equilibrium with the vacuum around them. What was left of his ship was crumpling inwards in jerky fits and starts as sturdy hull support members futilely, and only momentarily, fought the immense gravitational forces swallowing the large vessel.

  Jistolra also felt that tug, and as artificial gravity failed in this section of the station, he drifted to the rear of the car, in what felt like down, now. The car suddenly started a freefall towards where his proud ship was succumbing to the force of a four-foot diameter event horizon pulling everything in, creating a brilliant accretion disk from the immense friction between metal and atmospheric station gasses swirling at near light speed, just before crossing the relentless event horizon. There were blindingly bright, flickering dual plasma jets spewing away from the black hole, matching the axis of the accretion disk, intensifying each time the black hole was fed more matter in bulk. Powerful magnetic forces diverted some of the ionized matter around the curve of the event horizon, and into the jets, where that material escaped.

  He thought he was about to join his ship and crew, and the other swallowed and spaghettified Thandol bodies and debris which had been pulled from the station. The shuttle car started accelerating rapidly to meet its doom, when abruptly, the black hole rotated out of Normal Space and vanished, leaving him on a trajectory into space. Providing him with a survivor’s view that he’d rather not recall later.

  ****

  Chief Grant wasn’t in a mood to hold back before they started the attack. On a group link to all nine Scouts, he made their goals clear. “We lost eleven Scouts and forty-one people. The preliminary AI count reports there might be as many as four thousand ships here, for a hundred to one payback for our people. Spread out, and try not to let any ships escape. I just took out the command ship of the Smasher squadron that ambushed us.

  “The other twenty-two Smashers have either docked elsewhere, or seem to be under remote local traffic control for auto docking. Concentrate on those Smashers first, because they have full crews and might be able to Jump to safety. Then wipe out every dammed dock or warship of any class you see.”

  Condor was at the weapons console of the ship that had rescued him, and had already swept a foot-wide event horizon through three Smashers that had just docked. The smaller mass black holes could be moved faster, and could be reversed or redirected more easily. He could return to completely engulf disabled ships later, with a more massive and wider event horizon. No point in leaving spare parts behind for easier repairs.

  He did have one question, although the preferred answer was clear in his mind. However, Chief Grant was in overall command. “Chief, this is a military base. Are the docks and habitats authorized targets?”

  The answer was immediate. “Leave nothing intact for reuse. We shouldn’t try to kill every single Thandol here, but if they’re on a valid target, they’ll take their chances. The squadron leader’s ship was docked at the largest orbital station, which I think is their base headquarters. I’m eliminating that next. Let any escape pods get away.”

  Before Condor even acknowledged Grant’s orders, the other seven Scouts had vanquished the other eighteen Smashers they had followed to the base, just as quickly as they could maneuver their small event horizons, and were now disabling every warship they could find.

  Smashers and Stranglers, undocking to flee or fight, suddenly flared plasma from ruptured fusion generators at their centers, or imploded if a larger event horizon tore into them and pulled everything inwards. There seldom were many escape pods from such ships, which was more due to their not having full crews. When the repair docks, habitats, and orbital stations were attacked, thousands of escape pods spewed from those, because of the advanced warning that an attack was imminent.

  Dozens of ships did manage to escape by Jumps, although most of those were the initially ignored Shredder class, which despite their larger size when compared to equivalent former PU navy ships, were functionally what the navy once called destroyers. The Krall, and then the Kobani, had made that class of ship redundant when used to screen larger fleet elements from standoff attacks by another fleet.

  Kobani rarely, if ever, stood-off and fought from a distance. They used their seat-of-the-pants flight skills, faster reactions, and physical strength to absorb greater uncompensated inertial forces to enter enemy fleet formations, and fought them at close range, micro Jumping away to strike at another location. This way, they bypassed the screening purpose served by destroyers, which were tactical holdovers from an ancient era of two-dimensional sea warfare, conducted on the surface of planets. The PU attackers left those smaller craft, their docks, service modules, and habitats, as the last ones to be destroyed. They had the highest survival rates of any other part of the expansive base, which orbi
ted a nearly terrestrial planet sized dead and airless moon of another frozen gas giant.

  There were relatively few Stompers or Stranglers at the base. The Thandol seldom employed ground troops, and most Stranglers had been loaned out to their security forces.

  “Big Bird, Hannibal reports his AI found surface installations on this big moon. I want you to help him knock them out.”

  “Who’s that again, Chief?”

  “He’s spec ops in my squadron. How could you not know him? Oh, right. I suppose you don’t personally know all hundred thousand plus men in all your units. His full name is Hannibal Hickok, you may have heard of him as Wild Bill, his nickname. It looks like the Thandol were planning to mine ore here, refine it, and build ship structural components where they had the raw materials. It could have become a full shipyard.

  “While the rest of us demolish the support ships and supply stores in orbit, you and Wild Bill will eliminate the ground installations.”

  “OK. My visor icon shows where he is. I’ll drop down and join him. I’m curious to see how effective a small black hole is on surface installations.”

  After a micro Jump, he was adjacent to the Scout of the spec ops captain, bearing a nickname he did recall hearing mentioned previously.

  “Hey, Wild Bill, what have you found? Grant asked us to work with you to create some rubble piles.”

  “Hi, and welcome. Let me Comtap you what we’ve found.” The coordinates and images came to Condor and his crew mates.

  “Four different installations, I see. Two for mining, and two ore processing foundries and manufacturing sites nearby. There are habitat domes at all four sites, but I don’t think we need to hit those. I think this base will soon be just as abandoned as Rogue 1 was, now that they know we know where the base is located. Those surviving low-rank pachyderms can serve as eye witnesses to what we can do to them. Which installations do you want me to hit?”