Koban 6: Conflict and Empire

by Stephen W Bennett

  Grudfad bobbed his body in assent then broached a subject of personal importance. “Force Commander, will you be joining your Ragoons, to remind them you were once one of them, and show them why you are called Bone Breaker?”

  In truth, Force Lieutenant Commander Grudfad was far less interested in his superior perpetuating his outsized reputation as a very physical ground force warrior, than he was in becoming Acting Space Force Commander. Grudfad believed his future career depended on displaying his ability as a Space Force officer, something he believed he was better suited for than even Thond. His time spent in full command of the Space Force elements would elevate him above officers with whom he was competing, gaining in experience they couldn’t easily match.

  Thond, his ego stroked by his second in command, observed the furry shivers of delight, visible on the hairy shoulders of the Bridge crew who had heard Grudfad’s question. He knew his Space Force Bridge crew loved his dual reputation as a bold and brave leader of both the Space Force, and of the Ground Forces. He was one of only three such dual command Ragnar leaders in at least the last thousand years, and the most recent examples were centuries dead.

  “I do intend to see this enemy face to face. The human ships are too few to worry us, and they haven’t proven ready to fight us yet. Call Commander Hitok, of Pounder Group 1, and have him pull his own ship next to my flagship when we descend to meet him. Tell him I will join my old friend, Head Basher, and we’ll both show the young Ragoons how to intimidate an enemy.” He shivered his silver tipped fur, and thumped his chest twice before he rose to complete a formality.

  “Lieutenant Force Commander Grudfad, I offer to transfer command of the Space Force fleet elements to you. Do you accept?”

  Grudfad rose to face him. “I do, Force Commander Thond.” They brushed knuckles in a sort of fist bump, and a salute of acknowledgement, and the log would reflect the moment the combined command elements, Space Force and Ground Force, were divided. At least until Thond returned to his flagship.

  ****

  “Athena, those suspected troop ships over on this side are all moving towards lower orbits. And my AI thinks they’re clustering into two groups.” That was a Comtap link from Ardan O’Brian, leader of her fourth squadron, presently on the far side of Tanner’s from Christopoulos’ ship Hermes.

  “I see them doing the same on this side, Ardan, descending and clustering. If we both see two clusters forming, then I think they plan to establish four different landing areas. Standby.”

  She too made a change on the fly of her plans, altering the stealthy maneuvers she’d directed her eighty-six ships to initiate. She used a group Comtap link to announce the modified plan. “All ships, you have new targets, so cease the infiltration of their supply ships. We’ll now target the large, fat looking black and tan colored ships starting to descend. Instead of the enemy waiting for the space bombardment to weaken ground defenses, I think they’re landing troops near a couple of cities, and out of range of the orbital lasers, to attack those defenses on the surface. Questions or comments, from Squadron leaders only.”

  O’Brian, who had been first to observe the movement, had an additional observation. “Mam, the fifty Ravagers that were previously defending the supply ships are leaving them to join the troop ships, which makes sense to escort them down. It appears that only the lightly armed Shredders, and the eleven ravagers with damaged hulls will defend the supply ships. Can we attack both? Hitting the supplies as we descend?”

  Checking her own sensor displays, she considered several factors. “I see what you mean Captain O’Brian. However, their willingness to allow us to threaten those ships suggests something to me. That they’re less precious to the Ragnar than the troop ships, and I doubt half of the supply ships are even crewed by Ragnar. There are at least ten widely different design types among the five hundred or so present, and a big difference in hull paint schemes and markings on even similar ship designs. They don’t look uniform or military, and half of them have little similarity to the coloration, hull and engine designs of the military ships we know are Ragnar built. I think they might belong to other species under Thandol control, and may have have been forced to participate and carry supplies for the Ragnar.”

  O’Brian had at least one supporter for his idea. “Mam, this is Captain Hanover. Arden has a point. We can damage the supply ships without any loss of time as we pass by them, since the Shredders and just eleven replacement Ravagers can’t possibly knock out all of our missiles.”

  Christopoulos had a better counter argument, and it didn’t depend just on her authority to make the decision. “There’s a possibility half the ships are crewed by subservient species to the Empire, and they might become future allies against the Thandol if we don’t cause them harm. Besides, unless you know how to blow them up quietly, we’ll be alerting the enemy we’re returning to the fight. Getting those first easy shots at the troop ships isn’t going to be nearly as safe for us if they realize we’re on the attack.

  “The Ravagers used AI coordinated joint fire at Zanzibar, like we and the navy do, something the Krall never did. Every time one of our stealthed ships launched a missile or fired an energy beam, revealing our position, all of the nearest Ravagers fired close around where they were just seen. Our very first pass by these fat targets had better be our most destructive. Then we need to immediately micro Jump away, and plan our next attack.

  “Our two hundred reinforcements are still close to two and a half hours away, so let’s not get overconfident. Any other questions or comments?”

  There was none, so she dispensed with the tactic she’d intended to use for the attack just abandoned. That tactic involved careful positioning via Normal Space drives, getting between several nearby targets, waiting to shoot until everyone was in place. Unknowingly, she was avoiding the risk posed by the mass detectors she didn’t know the Ragnar had, which would reveal slow moving stealthed ships. As in every battle, luck played its part.

  “I want everyone to set up two micro Jumps. The first one exits close to a specific troop ship, and please let your AI’s coordinate that to avoid duplication, and we’ll all Jump in at the same time. Fire your missiles and beams, and then immediately Jump to hell back to your previous orbit. Get your coordinates set, and wait for my signal to go…, in about two minutes.”

  It was just under two minutes in coming. “When I say the word go, we all Jump. Ready…, Go!”

  The Eighty-six Kobani ships exited within one or two miles of their selected targets, and all hell broke loose within the Ragnar fleet. An equivalent number of the fat bodied troop ships took a brief pounding from multiple missiles strikes, and were savagely raked with heavy lasers and powerful plasma bolts, all within a deadly two-second interval. Then, the invisible attackers were gone, before most of the escorting Ravagers, and badly out of position Shredders even returned fire. When they did fire, it passed through the points in space where the Kobani had just departed. The Shredders, in their classical disposition, were positioned around their fleet, to defend against missiles and diving attacks on the ships they defended. That was what less insane species did when they fought, not choosing to risk a fatal intersect and a powerful detonation, if they struck an enemy spacecraft. The Shredders didn’t fire into the volume they were protecting, because that risked friendlies, and that was where the enemy appeared.

  The AI controlled energy beams from the more aggressive Ravagers, were able to touch only a couple of the human craft before they Jumped, but that was a matter of luck. The Kobani vessels had a high Normal Space velocity from their previous orbits for the two seconds they were firing. The miles-per-second velocity differential carried them rapidly away from their initial firing points, so the hits they suffered were random and isolated, and the two ships involved only suffered marred stealth coatings on one side.

  It was vastly different for the enemy ships. Fifty-nine of the extremely heavily armored landers suffered one or two penetrating missile hits that made i
t past the Pounder’s own defenses or that of their escorts. Eight of them lost steerage for a short time and drifted, sixteen of them suffered up to five hits, causing secondary explosions internally, and they were lost. The troops and crews inside the surviving damaged ships were protected from the sudden vacuum, because Ragoons and ship crews alike wore sealed body armor on combat landings, a precaution against precisely this circumstance. All but three of the damaged landers were subsequently deemed capable of conducting an atmospheric entry, but only after some temporary repairs. A slower entry on a Normal Space drive was certainly possible, even with holes in their hulls, but not advised if under fire. They’d be easy targets for heavier atmospheric anti-ship missiles, and probably for some of the laser batteries if they didn’t stay away from the cities.

  All of the Kobani ships returned to five thousand mile orbits, to observe their destructive effects. Christopoulos promptly made a radio call to Tanner’s Planetary Defense Center. “Colonel Gaffigan, this is Commander Christopoulos. Right about now might be a good time to activate those orbital rail guns. I assume you saw those four hundred big landing craft starting their descents. We just hit twenty percent of them in a flash raid that isn’t likely to work a second time.”

  “Commander, I’m still getting reports on the damage you caused them. Hell, we can’t see you at all on our sensors, but I thought you were waiting for more help to arrive. I’m grateful for as many as you damaged or destroyed. But if even twenty-five of the four hundred got through, I think we’d be outnumbered. By asking returning war vets to fill out our ranks and using our spare suits, I only have ten thousand one hundred six armored personnel for the entire frigging planet. I sent a hundred to each of eight cities with laser defenses, but I kept most of them, ninety-three hundred, here at Ludlum, the capitol and largest city by far. I expect that to be a prime target.

  “We’ll certainly activate the rail guns soon, but I doubt if they’ll be able to kill any of those big armored suckers. The enemy will go after them just as soon as they open up. So far they’ve ignored them, perhaps because they’ve never seen anything like them and don’t realize something so compact is a weapon. We’ll probably program them to go after the lighter Ravager escorts instead. Those will be trying to shoot down our heavy atmospheric missiles. The larger warheads definitely can bring down a lander. They killed tough clanships on Poldark, whenever one was able to catch them.”

  “Colonel, I’m guessing there must be at least four hundred Ragnar soldiers on each lander, and I’d bet they brought armored vehicles with them. You’re facing at least a hundred sixty thousand in four groups if they can get down.”

  “Commander, I don’t know how big a Ragnar ape-man is, but even if they’re the size of a Krall, I’d bet that five or six hundred could fit in one of those tubs. If they also have tanks aboard, then the lower number. They brought about two hundred thousand, and you killed perhaps fifteen thousand. With tanks, they could roll over us in a sort of blitzkrieg attack. Their men could then follow behind the armor. Or should I say their apes?” He chuckled sourly.

  “Same old shit,” he complained. “Krall or apes. Too many too fast.” Gaffigan had fought the Krall on Poldark for two years, as an officer in the PU army. He’d faced bad odds before.

  She reminded him of something he’d not experienced with the Krall. “I know you saw they brought those triangular Stranglers with them. Their Debilitaters will be devastating on your civilians if they can get close to the cities safely. What about your people in body armor? Our armor leaked, so we modified it to protect us better.”

  “I guess we’ll find out. We used your people’s suggested do-it-yourself solution. We don’t have the Q-carbon deposition process to seal the joints, and couldn’t restore the damaged stealth coating anyway, not with the manufacturing equipment we have. We never built our own body armor.

  “Instead, we have fine mesh copper screening, made into radiation proof long johns, booties, gloves, and partial facemasks. We converted an automated tarpaulin factory to produce the mesh as long as we had fine copper thread to feed it. We first made panels of aluminum mesh, but that proved too brittle, and it cracked at our joints when flexed even a few times. It’s the leaks at joints we need to prevent.”

  Christopoulos was curious. “What the hell are long johns?”

  “It’s cold weather whole body underwear. We have bad winters here, and those fabric undergarments are common outdoor recreation gear. We stitch copper mesh onto and over them, and add mesh covered gloves and socks. It makes an uncomfortable stiff garment, and some folks don’t even wear a uniform over them since copper transfers heat fast, and it gets warm in the suits. We kept the sheets of aluminum mesh we made, and use them on walls of shelters for groups of civilians, but there wasn’t time to make many of those Faraday cages. Anyway, sitting in a shielded room isn’t going to keep them from coming to get you, and we’re told we aren’t as susceptible to the Debilitater rays as you Kobani are.”

  “Colonel, the pain induced is dependent on range and intensity. If unprotected and you catch a high dose narrow beam inside of three to five miles, you’ll probably die without shielding. We can’t let the transmission get within fifteen miles of our nervous systems. We now know we’ll have to help you drive off ground forces, not just those in space, like we originally thought. You need to focus on missiles and those heavy lasers knocking out the Stranglers, and your PDF troops somehow need to stop their tanks. Up here, I’ll go after what we can to reduce their pressure on your space defenses.

  “Sir, I can tell you the PU army said they were sending troops, but I can’t say how quickly they can get here, or if the navy even has authorization to get involved and land them. They expected to have a few more months to bring them in. There are already two thousand Kobani ships coming, so we could probably make a hole in the Ragnar fleet large enough to get Nabarone’s landers on the ground, if they moved fast. If not, we can transfer his troops to our ships a couple of thousand at a time. If the PU isn’t committed yet, then it’s just you and us against their troops.”

  “Combat tested PU troops would help us greatly. Do you know if they have anti-tank weapons with them? Probably not, because the Krall they’ve been mopping up no longer have operational Dragons. We don’t have many of those small Dragon poppers, because Krall raiders never used them here.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know how they’re equipped, or if they’re even coming. This all happened too fast. When more of our fleet gathers, even without PU navy help, we should be able to keep the Ravagers and their Shredders occupied. That would deny the ground troops some of the support they’d have otherwise. Unless the Thandol sends in one of their massive fleets to help the Ragnar. All bets are off in that case.”

  “Gee. You’re just a fountain of good news, aren’t you?”

  “I do my best to cheer up you poor miserable ground pounders.”

  “Misery loves company. Come on down and shoot something any time you’ve a mind to help.”

  “I’ll take that under consideration. For now, whatever we kill in orbit can’t shoot at your butts down there. Good luck, Colonel.”

  “Good hunting to you too, Commander.”

  ****

  Thond, finally making his way to the Pounder’s Bridge, detouring around internal destruction, passing through an improvised internal airlock, he switched on his suit’s external speakers and offered a bit of friendly advice for his old combat companion.

  “Krintar Hitok, you need to get our hairy asses down on the ground fast, at least if you expect to live to bash another head before these falgrats destroy all of your Pounders.”

  Thond was shocked at how close this ship, Hitok’s command vessel, had come to being destroyed. His shuttle was still in the landing bay when fate delivered the unexpected attack at a brief, but key moment of vulnerability.

  The close proximity of the Pounder to the flagship was all that had prevented their complete destruction. The flagship, obviously central
for fleet operations, had data feeds to its AI from every warship in the fleet. The enemy’s exits from Tachyon Space went undetected without gamma ray bursts, and their superior stealth kept them that way, since the mass detectors were slower to spot them. At least until they launched missiles and fired energy beams. Detections of missile launches and beams firing at several nearby Pounders arrived at the flagship a half second before Hitok’s Pounder came under fire. It was just enough time, and a lucky break that the enemy ship coming after that particular lander was fractionally late starting its attack. The Pounder’s own AI normally controlled its automatic defenses, but they were on manual control while Thond’s shuttle approached. Live crews couldn’t match an AI’s response time, but in combat they also damn well wouldn’t shoot at the Force Commander’s incoming shuttle in error.

  Three of five incoming missiles were destroyed by the flagship’s AI, with rapid response by its energy beams, and the two surviving missiles penetrated well away from the Bridge, engines, and fusion plants. The thick, high-density armor of a Pounder limited some of the external hull damage. However, the warhead blasts inside, after the hypervelocity missiles penetrated, was devastating to the troops nearby, even enclosed in their sealed body armor. Nearly one hundred of the five hundred Ragoons wouldn’t be joining the fight on the ground, and one of two Debilitater units mounted on a Pillager base lost its antenna, so it would serve only as a mobile medium power battle laser now.