It was a smart idea. It didn’t serve him as well as he expected. As it happened, the navy ships didn’t need to be present when the next round of destruction began.
Telour didn’t have the proper information to help him recognize the purpose of the few hands of larger and slower missiles the human navy had launched, which oddly enough activated the new stealth mode first seen in use at Poldark, and apparently stayed outside the atmosphere to avoid revealing where they were by creating contrails and turbulence.
They seemingly were seeking no targets, which in fact, they were not. Why should they? Their targets were rushing up to meet them and they didn’t need to hit them or even shoot at them. While stealthed, they didn’t need navy protection so their potential protectors left the field of battle.
Unexpectedly, Telour saw all five of the human ship formations vanish on his sensors as he left atmosphere, performing a nearly perfectly coordinated entry into Tachyon Space. Telour snorted in ill humor. “They flee, before our first missiles or clanships reach them, the cowards. They knew their formation of flat rings of ships had too little protection as we rose to kill them. When I know where they went, I’ll send two thousand clanships after them, along with the five hundred twelve clanships still to arrive from New Dublin.”
He was willing to delay the invasion for this chase if it was necessary. The humans could have no idea where the fleet was headed, because all of the planning had been done on secure Telda Ka, not on Poldark, where infiltration and spy bots had been possible.
Depending on where the sections of the navy’s fleet fled, and for how long they fled, he could either continue with the invasion launch after completing the loading, or he could park the already loaded craft and pursue the enemy with the many unloaded clanships he had immediately available.
He watched the icons of the tracker ships wink out, as they also entered Jump Holes to follow close on the trail of the five human formations. The sheer concentrated mass of the tight human formations, and their recent entry into Tachyon Space would make their energy waves easy to track, even if they used Jumps through various intermediate systems to throw off followers. They were not far enough ahead to lose his hunters, as one or two ships might be able to do. If they split up the large formations after Jumping, he had ten trackers on their five trails.
Telour started transmitting orders to the sub leaders of various clans, to send their heavily loaded clanships back down to where they’d departed, and to keep the more maneuverable partially loaded or empty craft in orbit. He was angered as seven more explosions ended more of his clanships, as some of the final surviving smart missiles evaded defenses and managed to strike home. That destruction stung far more than the degree of loss they actually represented. That was because his fleet had not killed a single human ship in this brief, but extremely heavy hit and run attack. The navy had done too little damage to thwart the invasion, and they would now provoke a response they could not have imagined. The living ship would be here within two hands of days.
The seven detonations from the last of the missile salvoes suddenly increased in a crescendo of many fresh orange blossoms of fire, some of which he could see spread out above this hemisphere of the planet with his own eyes. More than a hundred clanships that he could actually see died unexpectedly, and relayed sensor reports told of other explosions below cloud layers, or that were far over the horizon. The reports of this destruction was automatically being relayed to all the clanships of the fleet.
Icons were vanishing in clusters of relatively close together ships, suggesting they had launched from the same domes. He couldn’t see an indication of the trails of the missiles he assumed was causing the destruction, and his sensors detected no ionization trails through atmosphere from any type of extreme high power energy weapons that could do this. There were explosions even on the ground, below cloud decks where clearly no missile or beam weapon traces were detected.
The unfamiliar stab of an emotion Telour had never experienced worked its way into both hearts in his chest. Did the humans have a new type of secret weapon? One that couldn’t be detected by clanship sensors, and was perhaps fired from ships in Tachyon Space after the humans fled. His reign as Tor Gatrol would be a short one if he couldn’t counter this new and unprecedented threat.
His observant pilot again offered a first clue, based on his noting which clans suffered the greatest losses, with what was shown by the shape and color of the icons that vanished from his sensors.
“My Tor, Tanga clan has lost the most ships, followed by Graka, Dorbo, and Maldo clans. Those Great clans are hardest hit, and the Major clans were also hit, but they lost fewer. Only the ships that are flagged as having finished loading equipment seem to be those that are killed. Of the empty ships, only two died, and they were killed by the last hands of enemy missiles.”
Telour instantly saw the battlefield above and on the planet in a new way, after his pilot spoke. There were dozens of ships still sitting on tarmacs that had not lifted, yet they had exploded. They were securing equipment after a partial loading when the attack had started. His examination of the four Tanga clan tarmacs, on high magnification from orbit, found other signs of smaller explosions than that of so many clanships. The smaller explosions were visible among equipment parked between ships, which although potentially damaging to nearby ships, were smaller explosions than what was needed to penetrate and destroy a tough hulled clanship. Therefore, it wasn’t only clanships being hit. However, why waste such a powerful weapon on easily replaced equipment, bypassing some of the more valuable clanships, partially loaded and motionless on the ground.
He quickly saw there were curiously wide spaced explosions among the long lines of parked mini-tanks, and in rows of two types of plasma cannons, one type the heavy orbital reaching cannons, and the other was those mounted on small carts.
An even closer spacing was seen in the ranks of the few hundred unloaded armored heavy transports, which took longer to load and store their double segments. This damage was all to equipment that hadn’t been moved for loading, due to the congestion on the Tanga ramps. The pattern his battlefield sense detected was only apparent among the lines of waiting equipment, and not for the destroyed clanships. There was a gap of nineteen mini-tanks and nineteen plasma cannons between the points of explosions for those. The gap was only nine vehicles between the larger heavy transports. These were sets of decimal numbers, which fit into the human numbering system much better than a random pattern, or in the Krall octal system.
He didn’t believe this mysterious weapon would have bypassed hitting a choice target of a clanship, and instead strike every twentieth mini-tank or cannon cart, or every tenth heavy transport. This was literally the ten digit hands of human sabotage at work, and they had spaced and revealed their handiwork using their own counting system. Some of those pieces of equipment happened to be loaded onto clanships when they exploded, which led to the loss of the clanship if several of them detonated inside simultaneously.
How or when humans had planted the explosives he had no idea, but that didn’t require the development and fielding of an entirely new type of technology, and a weapon system never seen before. It would have needed to be perfected in the short time since they had tried and failed to halt the fleet leaving Poldark, where they clearly had known that launch was coming.
A large bundle of explosives was implied by the force involved. Having such charges placed in or on so many pieces of equipment, it seemed that they should have been seen or explosives smelled when warriors drove each of them onto the clanships. A timer mechanism on the explosives would not have worked as they did today, because they couldn’t know when Telour would recall the clanships from New Dublin to be loaded. It had to be a remotely triggered event, because they all went off at the same time, when the damage could be maximized.
He had multiple things to do, and his pilot had shown unusual intelligence. “Pilot, you are promoted to my staff. What is your name and clan?”
“Your ship was selected at random, Frakod, but it was a fortunate choice. I grant you authorization to speak for me as you organize an investigation. The humans have placed explosive devices on our unguarded war material at some time while it sat on our tarmacs. They detonated them after being loaded and we launched. In my name, order all mini-tanks, plasma cannon carts, and heavy transports searched for anything unusual that could be a bomb. Inspect what destroyed the isolated equipment on the tarmacs. Send every loaded clanships to land at the nearest clan dome immediately, before we lose more of them to internal explosions. Not all of the damaged clanships that were airborne were destroyed, and some have reached low orbit. I must know what happened inside of those. Assign clanships with empty holds to dock with them to transfer usable equipment, and send K’Tals to learn if orbital repairs are possible, or if we must use the damaged clanships for parts.”
He ignored the acknowledgement, convinced that he had a competent warrior following his bidding. He had already turned to use a hand signal, gathering his other staff close, to explain what he now knew, and to plan his next actions since the fighting had ended here.
There had been nearly six hundred clanships destroyed, and he needed to revise the invasion plans to account for those losses, and to implement a new plan and schedule before the Joint Council could be reformed. Many council representatives had died from the comet-like blast, and for probably the next hand of weeks Telour and his aides could act as the sole decision makers for all of the Krall. Even damaged as his fleet had been, he could still mount an invasion force as strong as the one he’d given to Pendor. He also wanted to attack the human fleet, no matter where it went, and he would use the Olt’kitapi living ship, when it arrived, in any manner he decided, without a Joint Council to interfere. At least he could if he acted quickly and decisively. Something he was noted for, even among impulsive Krall.
However, internally he cursed the humans, who refused to do what he expected of animals, even if they were the worthy enemy they had sought for thousands of years.
Hothkar, the third highest status aide on his staff spoke cautiously, uncertain how Telour would react to the news he’d just received. “Tor Gatrol, the tracker ships have reemerged, here in the Telda Ka system.”
He had been wise to be cautious. He narrowly avoided the raking talons that swiped through the space his muzzle had just vacated as he drew back. “My Tor,” he rushed, “the sub leaders say there are no wave fronts to follow.”
Telour’s red pupils blazed with fury when he shouted, “They Jumped! There must be five trails in Tachyon Space.” It was fortunate that none of those sub leaders that had failed to follow the humans were here, because Telour barely restrained himself from attacking his aide, who was merely the messenger.
He gathered his thoughts in an instant, knowing this had to be a datum of some importance that he needed to understand. “How did they explain this?”
“None of them can say. It was as if the enemy never Jumped, despite what we saw. The detectors found no energy wave fronts moving far away from us. Only echoes of ripples spreading in all directions from their five entry points.”
Telour spun to examine the sensors showing the closest spaces where two of the enemy formations had been. The Krall missiles that had homed on their selected targets had passed through long ago, now low on propellant, or empty, and awaiting recovery by some small clan with low status. The single ships and clanships that had risen to meet the enemy had now moved into orbits over Telda Ka. Some had already been ordered by his aides to seek out the oddly recalcitrant large missiles the human fleet had fired, which had not attacked them, and had entered the new human stealth mode when they were in low orbit. The odd missiles had not Jumped, he felt certain of that. They were slightly smaller than a single ship, and could not have Jump capability, although they might have small tachyon Traps, as did a single ship.
Telour was no longer too angry to think clearly. “The enemy did not want us to find those devices for study or destruction. Find out what they did during the attack.”
From wide spectrum communications recordings, two of his staff quickly learned that all of the objects had apparently been the sources of a briefly transmitted simple series of strong pulses, at a frequency and pattern most often encountered when it was used by specific human military ground forces. Those forces called themselves special operations teams or commando units, and were small units within the main human army, similar to small clans, but they were normally not part of navy forces.
The small human combat teams were the kind known for setting demolition charges, and who performed sabotage. Like the sabotage that had happened on Poldark to their heavy plasma batteries. Their explosive devices were often activated remotely by signals similar to that detected from these missile-like objects. Telour felt confident he knew now how they had been used. They remotely triggered multiple hidden explosive devices in the loaded equipment, resulting in the destruction of so many clanships from the inside. The enemy fleet had left them behind when they fled, to activate their typically devious method of fighting.
He explained his reasoning to his aides. Each was equally outraged by the trickery, and by the enemy’s refusal to face them in combat, displaying no bravery or honor whatsoever.
Hothkar, in a cloaca kissing statement designed to placate his angry superior, said, “The cowards crawled away before they could face your retaliation, my Tor. They did it so quietly that their frightened steps in Tachyon Space could not be heard.”
Not well versed in physics, this non-K’Tal’s illogical remark, about the human navy making quiet steps in Tachyon Space, was intended only to prove that he was clearly backing his leader’s explanation. Telour heard the words, and the odd expression instantly triggered a thought that the enemy had done no such thing as sneak away. He believed he knew how there might be no trail to follow. His thinking was interrupted by Frakod’s timely report of multiple White Outs.
“The enemy returns to fight my Tor. Many White Outs and their ships approach very fast, from the direction of the northern pole.”
Telour quickly saw on the sensors that the many hands of objects were too few and too small in mass to be the heavy cruisers of the human navy, the mainline ships now favored over the massive battleships and dreadnaughts. He had just anticipated the return of the human fleet, but this wasn’t what he expected. Regardless, the threat required immediate action, because the objects had appeared roughly ten thousand miles out, with such high velocity that they were an imminent threat to anything in orbit. They had so high a velocity that he had no time to transmit a useful warning that could be acted upon in an effective manner.
At two thousand miles per second, the nearly sixty medium sized ships streaked inbound, in a wide ring centered around the planet’s axis, first appearing above the northern hemisphere. The fast approaching midsized ships provided barely five seconds for pilots and ship commanders to react, but the laws of inertia prevented a clanship from moving very far in reaction in that time, even with internal inertial compensation protecting the occupants.
Nevertheless, this was still a great deal of time for a warrior to anticipate what needed to be done, and more so for their automated defenses. Clanships were able to activate their defenses, and all of them fired on the fast approaching targets. That fire ultimately proved inadequate, even though some of the incoming high velocity craft were split into parts.
Multiple bright impacts flashed in low orbit, as clanships that had docked with damaged craft for unloading all vanished in a spray of shattered debris. Cones of high velocity fragments struck and damaged a number of other clanships, located downrange of the eight impacts that Telour observed on this side of the planet. Surprised transmissions, relayed from orbiting clanships beyond the horizon, proved the attack had found targets there as well.
The intense white initial flash of the metal vaporizi
ng impacts changed to orange, as clanship thruster propellant and oxidizer merged in gaseous clouds near the points of collision. Even in a vacuum, the fuel and oxidizer burned if mixed, although in smaller fireballs and for a shorter time.
The dazzling explosions in space had drawn all eyes for a moment. Telour knew that barely a quarter of the objects had struck targets, but because they preferentially struck docked pairs or triplets, fragments of forty-two shattered clanships now filled low level orbits with their spreading debris fields. The velocity of the incoming ships had been too great to have much ability to change course significantly to evade them, a clanship not prepared to Jump couldn’t get very far from the track of one of these self-guided high velocity suicide craft. A frozen sensor image provided enough detail to reveal what had attacked them. These were the ships humans called destroyers, and they had finally found a better use for them than as sacrificial missile catchers.
Those destroyers that missed impacts vanished into space beyond the southern axis of the planet. However, none of them could be seen from the radar or laser ranging data, displayed on Telour’s console. Even at their high velocity, radar would have had little trouble detecting the dwindling targets. They had Jumped.
Telour didn’t need Frakod’s warning this time, when dozens of new White Outs occurred, at barely five thousand miles this time, spaced again in a wide ring around the northern axis, which allowed them to pass down all sides of Telda Ka. There was only half the time for reaction, although automated defenses on the now forewarned clanships lanced out with heavy laser beams, and the searing star heat of their plasma cannon bolts. There were hits on many of the objects, only forty four of them on this pass, and three were seen to fragment as they were struck multiple times. Those shattered destroyers still combined to destroy or severely damage seven clanships, when their tumbling debris passed through their crowded target field. There was a surprising amount of massive material in the fragments. Their gamma ray White Out spectrums revealed they were much more massive than were the original craft.
Koban 4: Shattered Worlds Page 57