Koban 6: Conflict and Empire Page 5

  Thad then ordered the three target drones to move out from behind the spreading wreckage of the docks and damaged ships. “Alyson, Ethan, and Carson, micro Jump your ships out to where the Crusher has a clear view, and launch missiles right at it, or at any other target it can also see, that it needs to defend. Draw its fire. I think we can be damn sure it’s Captain is pissed off enough now.” He grinned.

  Ethan had the drone with pure Sulfur Hexafluoride for internal atmosphere, which was the densest gas being used. Alyson’s drone was filled with a mix of Carbon Dioxide and fifty percent Sulfur Hexafluoride, as the next most dense, and Carson’s test ship held Carbon Dioxide and twenty percent Xenon. All of these were denser than the range of gases found on habitable planets. They’d know in moments if the Decoherence bombs were able to survive their appearance in a medium as dense as these gases, but which were far less dense than inside a solid or even a liquid.

  They launched their last salvo of missiles the moment they made their White Outs. One of the newly revealed target drones was hit within several seconds, and hit multiple times in rapid succession, proving how potent the delivery method was of those matter disintegration warheads.

  Carson, in rapid Comtap communications, said, “Crap, they’re peppering the hell out of my drone. I think there were nine hits in two seconds. Oops, four more. Damn, I lost Trap fields, my Jump engine, and if I’d carried reaction mass fuel, it would be an orange fireball. One of them has vaporized part of both binary fuel tanks. The overpressure of bulkheads and decks turning into gas has sprung leaks along most of the patched seams of the hull, and it’s losing atmosphere. I think the huge pressure increase could have killed or disabled any crew aboard that wasn’t in body armor. Ahh, nuts. I lost my link to the AI. My ship is lost. Somebody please put some missiles into it.” They didn’t want drones left even partly intact.

  Alyson had said nothing yet, because her drone, considered the second most vulnerable, used a slightly higher gas density than Carson’s craft, and it hadn’t been hit by Decoherence bombs, which would suddenly rotate out of Tachyon Space. Then that situation abruptly ended, not only for her drone, but for Ethan’s drone as well.

  “Hey!” Alyson said. Sounding like someone had just snatched her credit chit. “They hit my drone just outside the hull at several places, and I’m venting atmosphere through huge holes.”

  “Uh, on my ship too.” Ethan admitted. “Nothing hit inside, but they must be taking cookie cutter bites out of the hull. I’ve lost four Trap emitters and dumped both of my tachyons. I can’t Jump it away or use the Normal Space drive. It’s a sitting duck.”

  Alyson’s drone was quickly lost as well. “Darn. Lost my AI link. Now I can’t even ram them. Damn it.”

  Jorl shouted out in annoyance. “What the hell? I lost control of my drone. It didn’t seem like Decoherence bombs, it just stopped responding.”

  Carson had the answer. “I can see the debris on my console, where your drone was located. I think it was a missile hit. Perhaps you were watching the test ships and forgot to duck?”

  Jorl didn’t deny his distraction. “That’s just great! My Nova was being saved for the other four docks.”

  Thad had also been watching and thinking about the test ships. He grimaced and nodded his head, only in hindsight grasping a detail they had overlooked. They had miscalculated how the Thandol could use their weapon. Only those on the Bridge saw the expression and nod, and Ethan asked, “What did you just figure out Dad?”

  “That the two denser gases we used were successful in blocking those bombs from arriving internally in your drone, and Alyson’s.”

  Sarge grunted. “Please save our asses from more successes like that, OK? They took out all three drones in about ten seconds. How can you say the two denser gasses worked?”

  “Because that Crusher must have been unable to target the bombs inside the interiors of the last two drones, not without losing them to destructive intersects of their circuits with high density gas molecules. Therefore, they simply targeted the hulls from the vacuum side. That was dumb of us not to foresee that possibility. The gas defense is a failure, so let’s go make a mess out of the four smaller docks before we go home. Everyone prepare to micro Jump your drones to the other side of Meglor, but leave them ghosted until the Sneaky Bastard arrives in stealth, to assess the situation there. Sarge, launch your Nova into that big bastard and let’s Jump.”

  “Right.” He sent a launch command to the AI, Grumpy, and told it to execute the ship’s micro Jump immediately after the Nova’s launch. That’s when things suddenly got very confused, and turned deadly.

  All of the crew was wearing their body armor, but they had left their helmets attached to clips behind their suit’s neck opening or at their waist, for quick access if needed. With their ship’s stealth, they knew they were invisible to the electromagnetic sensors of the Empire, as had been proven at Zanzibar 2. That was a poor decision.

  The sudden slamming of between-deck pressure seals, at multiple staircase openings and two elevator columns wasn’t due to air loss from a hull breach; it was caused by a rapid pressure increase. The airtight seals came too late to prevent all of the overpressure from propagating throughout most of the ship.

  The ears of those on the Bridge experienced what could be classed as moderately painful barotrauma, because of their greater distance from the cause, and much of the accompanying temperature and pressure increase was prevented at the bow of the ship by the fast action of the lower level’s airtight seals. Those people located twenty decks lower suffered considerable ear pain, and lungs and gastrointestinal tracts were involved in the pressure shock they received through the suit openings at their necks. The temperature suddenly went up as rapidly as the pressure, but not to a dangerous level. This pressure increase was due to a volume of decking, bulkheads, and normal atmosphere, suddenly being converted into atomized gasses, which demanded the right to expand, which was instantly granted by the gas laws of physics. The rapid pressure and temperature jump wasn’t enough to be life threatening, but it was painful.

  A single Decoherence warhead had appeared in the relative low-pressure void of ordinary atmosphere, found between two decks spaced fifteen feet apart, and located equal distance between bulkheads in an empty equipment storage area. The one hundred twenty-one-foot range of the fifth force, when radiated in all directions, encompassed a spherical volume of two hundred forty-two feet in diameter.

  That force, when modulated and applied in a particular way, altered the quantum probability of molecular orbitals continuing to hold atoms together in covalent bonds. This resulted in the breaking of most of those bonds, allowing the electrostatic interactions and the quantum nature of electrons to take effect. Fortunately, the fifth force didn’t hold sway over the binding of the strong nuclear forces, or else an expanding sphere of radiant energy might have eventually been visible as an intense and brief flash of light in the next stellar system, after a suitable number of years.

  The soft pop of a warhead, heard when experienced in an open atmosphere on a planet, was not so soft when contained as it was inside the Sneaky Bastard. All the material within that sphere of disintegration, which extended through nearly 16 decks, and laterally included various bulkheads of compartments on each deck, plus the assorted equipment, stowed gear, missiles and launchers nearby. That material abruptly expanded into the lower pressure of their surroundings.

  Included in that gas was what formerly had been organic compounds, most from one person, and part from another. The one with merely parts missing, screamed, but he only had a right hand to press to the pain in his right ear, and with no left leg to support him, he would have fallen into the sudden chasm had not the great rush of gasses pushed him away. He fell to his right side, as blood started to gush from above where the left elbow had been, and nearly the entire left leg from mid-thigh down was gone.

  Fred Saber had been half sitting on a missile rack at the edge of the boundary of the warhead’s
effect, his left leg and elbow had been propped on equipment. He oddly didn’t feel a great deal of pain from the incredibly precise line of the weapon’s effect. The pain that elicited his scream, experienced and heard by all via the group Comtap link, wasn’t a reflection of his physical pain, but rather the emotion he experienced when he saw where the missile bay next to his had been. His brother Bill had been stationed there.

  No further Decoherence bombs rotated out of Tachyon Space within the Sneaky Bastard, because it had Jumped. Although, unknown to the crew, dozens more had emerged where it had been, just after Grumpy, efficiently following instructions, had taken the ship to the other side of Meglor after launching the Nova II bomb.

  Bradley and Maggi were the first to reach Fred, and Maggi promptly sent Bradley to activate one of four med labs they had aboard, setting it for emergency trauma treatment. She leaped up two decks, through a gaping opening, to reach a kitchen level where food was sometimes prepared when a larger complement was aboard There she grabbed up rolls of paper products, and a Smart Cloth tablecloth. She’d been in Comtap link with Sergey and Carol, the next closest crew, and they arrived just as she swung down through the hole in the decks to join them.

  They used the paper towels by the handfuls to apply pressure to the gaping wounds, to stem blood loss, and lifted Fred’s now unconscious form onto the tablecloth, to use it as a makeshift stretcher. Bradley was back from the med lab in minutes.

  Throughout the process, Maggi had kept the Bridge informed of what had happened, and told them to continue the mission if able. Thad had promptly told them that Bill was the only person missing, and Fred the only one injured. The mission was continuing, and the damaged elements of the Ragnar fleet from Zanzibar would be hit next. Thad redistributed control of the remaining seven drone clanships, reporting that another one had been destroyed. The fourth drone lost was Maggi’s, because she’d been busy helping Fred, and it had largely completed its mission anyway, having only a single salvo of missiles remaining, and the less effective laser and plasma cannons.

  Maggi said, “We’re stripping off Fred’s suit, and we’ll place him in the med lab in a moment. We have pressure on the left arm where he lost that above the elbow, and on the middle of his left thigh, where his leg vanished. Sergey picked up the left forearm and hand from below the elbow, where it was severed. That can be saved and reattached to save regrowth time. It’s been placed in a cooler compartment in another med lab. Fred’s med lad is using tourniquets to stop the bleeding until it sutures arteries and bleeders, and a large number of trauma nanites have been injected. He’ll be kept under, but even from his unconscious mind, a Mind Tap clearly revealed he was aware that his brother was gone.”

  She changed subjects. “What are we doing at the other docks?”

  “Here is what I’m seeing.” Thad opened up an image link via his Comtap, so the four working to save Fred could see what was happening, as reported by the ships sensors on Bridge displays.

  Carol had questions. “Sarge, how did that Crusher see us to hit us? Has it moved to where it can do it again?”

  “No idea how they saw us, since we haven’t detected long wave radio transmissions, and that low resolution detection method isn’t very precise even when it’s used. Thankfully, that Crusher is too busy to chase us right now. I think it could likely continue the fight, since just before we Jumped, the last images demonstrate my Nova didn’t destroy the sucker. My bomb must have made its exit mostly in a void, outside of a lot of solid metal. Exactly the opposite of the areas the Crusher tries to target with their disintegration bombs. The explosion didn’t come close to breaking it apart, but it must be in damage control mode right now.

  “It may have a design feature like PU dreadnaughts and battleships, with a redundant Bridge and weapons station away from the core of the ship. If so, it isn’t done fighting yet. But it will be before we’re finished, provided it doesn’t Jump and run away. I don't think they’ll risk sending a Crusher against Federation ships or worlds ever again. They may have had their fill of our Novas for those monster sized ships.”

  ****

  Captain Butala Halder, of the Emperor’s Trumpet, wasn’t on the Bridge when the urgent alert reached him from his Vice-Captain, reporting that eleven enemy ships had just made exits from Tachyon Space at Meglor, and they were using the huge Thandol docks as shields from the Trumpet’s weapons. He was in the nobility’s grazing area, enjoying a variety of fresh tender grass, and golden sugar spear shoots, with some of his lower ranking noble peers.

  He was a competent leader, however, and reacted instantly. “VC Candar, recall any available crews of the ships that are still at the docks, and order the ship AI’s to switch all of their weapon systems online for them, to be ready to fire before they arrive. Move us around the docks to where we can target the enemy. The Decoherence launchers don’t need to wait for us to get around the obstructing docks, the warheads travel through Tachyon Space. Fire them when you have the enemy’s lowest-mass-density coordinates.”

  “Sire the launchers are already online but we can’t yet get usable mass detection targeting coordinates for them, or use radar for missile guidance with the docks blocking us. I ordered the helm to move us even before I called you, and we’re headed to where we will be able to see them via line-of-sight very soon. I have all missile bays, lasers, and plasma cannons armed for use.”

  The Vice-Captain now sounded nervous. “The enemy made their White Outs much closer to the docks than the safe margins we allow for ships without gamma ray suppression. The mass of the docks, and the many ships attached to them, are distorting our gravitational mass detection measurements of the voids within the targets. We can’t even identify the precise location of the ships, let alone where the internal low-density voids are located. If the warheads emerge inside them, and their trigger circuits are damaged on exit, the enemy will have a sample of an undetonated warhead to study.”

  Captain Halder hadn’t realized how close the enemy ships had emerged to the docks, placing those obstacles between themselves and the only full time active protection for this planet, the Crusher. The Emperor’s Trumpet was positioned in a normal parking orbit for a ship its size, and until today, there had never been cause to worry about an attack on the docks. Just as there had never been a concern for a sneak attack on Wendal. The Empire had grown too complacent with their tight control over their own people and subservient species.

  “I’m on my way to the Bridge, keep me informed of your actions.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  He was in an elite grazing area, where fresh forage was grown. The large compartment providing users with a sun-filtered view of the outside universe, the planet and docks in this case. It was located near one of the huge pyramid’s corners. He had a hurried walk to reach a nearby transport hub station, in order to travel deeper into the vast ship, to reach the centrally located and armored Bridge.

  The battle might be over before I arrive, he thought. With so few ships, this had to be a small smash and flee raid by the Federation. That was quite prescient of him, if a bit short sighted.

  He saw two bright actinic flashes flare from two separate, multiple miles long docks, which was quickly dampened by the active filtering of the transparent hull segment, which suggested something had been used on the scale of a small nuclear weapon. He broke into a lumbering run, seldom seen in a high rank noble, and never for this extremely formal Captain.

  There were lesser flashes observed, where laser and plasma beams struck ships undergoing repair or refurbishment, and more fragile dock infrastructure was being hit. He soon saw smaller flashes and debris sprays, from what had to be the slower missiles reaching their targets, which were the docked warships. Meglor was completely unprepared for an attack like this, located so deep inside Empire territory.

  Rushing along a wide corridor to the closest transport hub, Halder’s trunks and tentacles were brusquely waving, and he startled every Thandol into getting out of his way eve
n before they saw his insignia of rank. He didn’t socialize with these lower ranks, and of course never ate with them, so he wasn’t identifiable on sight.

  He needed more information from his Vice-Captain. “Candar how is it that we didn’t see these eleven unknown ships coming? They’re obviously from the Federation, and they didn’t spend the many months required to travel here in the undetectable first level of Tachyon Space. They would have needed to depart even before their attack at Wendal.”

  “Sire, they masqueraded as three Smashers, in formation in third level travel, and our monitors observed their back trail past many star systems, originating deep in the Thack Delos security sector. They appeared to be like many similar past arrivals, warships coming here for repairs or refurbishment. It is similar to the penetration method used at Wendal, but for three Smashers this time, not a Crusher scale deception.”

  It was clever mimicry, but Halder didn’t feel the slightest hint of respect for their ingenuity and daring. He wanted them destroyed, and traced back to where they really originated. His quick mind suddenly caught an anomaly in the report.

  “What happened to the twelfth ship? Where is it?”

  “Sire? We detected only eleven White Outs, and reports from four dock control stations confirm that there are only eleven attackers.”

  “They needed four ships to mimic each Smasher trail. Find the missing one immediately. It may be the flagship for this attack group, and it could be holding station in Tachyon Space.”

  “Yes, Sire.” He buggled his acknowledgement in an uncertain mix of tones from his left trunk. The Vice-Captain wasn’t an expert on the Tachyon Space monitoring craft that traced ship movements in the Empire, but he knew the ships they detected all had to be moving, in order to create a detectable tachyon wake.