Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  That low velocity tactic now worked against the rescuers of the crews on ships left without any power for drives or thruster control. The Trap emitters on the missing hull segments had dumped their tachyons even faster than the explosive decompression vented atmosphere. They had limited fusion bottle power, and no thrust or gravity control.

  Their velocity was far below that required to remain in orbit. Each formation, from the moment of White Out, had been “falling” towards their targets from an altitude below three hundred miles, but drifting along laterally with the planetary rotation. They had certainly intended to Jump away long before they touched the first fringes of atmosphere, and in fact would have done so before penetrating the gravity well so deep that a Jump Hole might be unstable. Therefore, a freefall state hadn’t mattered to them then. Now it did, and they were running out of time.

  The surviving crews of the damaged ships were enclosed in their pressurized acceleration suits, but the suits were clamped in place and filled with jell in the event high accelerations were applied. Many of the crewmembers would step into a vacuum if they opened the seals now. In hindsight, wearing soft suits for a vacuum exit sounded brilliant, despite the soupy jell that filled the larger suits. For crew in pressure, the viscous fluid was being pumped into its holding tanks, using suit battery power, but the lack of gravity made the task progress slowly and incompletely.

  On ships where the Comtap specialists had survived, their armor had sealed like a space suit, and they immediately raced around the crippled ships, releasing the clamps on the acceleration suits of the crew they found in vacuum, informing the men and women via contact audio, helmet to helmet, what was happening. The released suits were then towed, weightless, to convenient places where they hoped to meet with rescuers, said to be on the way.

  There were sizable sections of the hulls missing on these ships, along with sections of the compartments once inside that hull. Tragically, partial acceleration suits were encountered with no purpose to be served by looking inside or opening them. There was only time for the living.

  Some places where the Kobani secured the big suits were near the cut edge of a deck, open to space and in freefall. That seemed precarious to the helpless navy personnel, but they were assured this would be faster for getting them off the ship. Frequently, internal compartments had sealed automatically, and the Kobani simply allowed those people to climb out and don their soft suits stored close by. They weren’t given time to wash or even scrape at the jell clinging to their skin and body suits. Once in soft suits, they helped move other acceleration suits caught in vacuum to the rescue spots selected by the Kobani.

  When a heavy cruiser approached to take on survivors, the Kobani always distained the slow process of sending over lines for a secure transfer. In every case, they instructed the other ship to come close and open their main hanger bays, then hold their position. The experience of Captain Longstreet’s team in getting back inside a heavy cruiser over Poldark was now a form of entertainment, shared between Mind Tappers.

  The Kobani would hoist an acceleration suit to their shoulder, brace their feet against a bulkhead or deck plate, and look across the gap to the other ship. The heavy suits were weightless but still had considerable mass and contained extremely apprehensive people. With casual ease, the suits were tossed with considerable speed and unerring accuracy at an opened hatch. The suits traveled about two hundred feet, with a stabilizing spin imparted before release, which kept the suits oriented feet first, with the passenger unable to see their destination. They all passed through dead center of the open hanger bays of the rescue ships.

  The most frightening moment for them came when artificial gravity suddenly dropped the now dizzy occupant to the deck, and they skidded across the hanger. Once inside, they were dragged clear by a waiting navy crewmember in a soft suit that quickly shoved them against a bulkhead in the airless compartment. They had to hurry, because two more survivors would already be on their spinning way. The survivor recovery went considerably faster than the navy had anticipated, or could have managed using standard rescue procedures. The last person to leave each drifting ship was a Kobani, usually carrying someone with them.

  The men and women on the damaged ships focused on saving themselves, as did the people who worked to rescue them. They were seldom aware of what was happening that permitted the operations to proceed so smoothly and rapidly. This happened at a cost.

  ****

  Before the two other task forces could engage the Krall from the high orbit side, Mirikami and the nine Kobani ships that had been in orbit Jumped to join the other defenders of the rescue operations. He split them up to send three ships to two of the groups, and Mirikami joined the three Kobani ships that reinforced the remnants of Task Force 1, the one where Chatsworth’s flagship had been a member. TF 1 had been hit hardest, with only eighty-two survivors, and that group had the highest number of damaged ships to be evacuated.

  Obviously, a navy force attacking from low orbit above the Tanga domes had been expected by the Krall, and this particular formation had received the most well prepared counterattack. Mirikami’s instant thought as he looked at his screens when the Mark completed its White Out, was that he had somehow beaten the Krall to this position. Except, the Krall had known what was about to happen, and should have been ready to pounce on the weakened and disoriented enemy. That only meant they expected other human ships to rush in to rescue their comrades. There was zero possibility they were being indecisive. They wanted more of the human ships in the same three regions before they struck again.

  Mirikami leaned over to touch Mauss’ hand to get her attention, and for the first time used Mind Tap to save time, using full emotional content and images for clarity, to support his mental words.

  “Admiral, the Krall are holding back to let the rest of the fleet come to the rescue. Keep the other Task Forces above a thousand miles and fire anti-ship missiles at all three groups as soon as possible. Every friendly ship has IFF active, and you’ll only hit their clanships. They want you clustered tightly down here, to pick enough of you off until you’re forced to Jump, leaving the stranded crews behind. They won’t find it so easy to fight my people, who will Jump here in a minute or two.”

  The admiral’s eyes widened when he started, but her nod and a shrewd expression told him she had suspected the Kobani had more capability than they were openly advertising. Fast on the uptake, instead of speaking she thought back, “Let me change my orders. Good luck. We need you people to get out of this damn mess quicker.”

  She turned away to amend her orders to Task Forces 2 and 5, now telling them to shorten their Jumps, to stand off above the debris fields and fire down on the Krall from there.

  Using Comtap, Mirikami didn’t need to touch Maggi’s hand, and the exchange went far faster with another Kobani. He gave her his plan, for her to share with the two Kobani groups that were racing to support the other two rescue missions. Even with rapid thought processes, two minds working together shaved seconds off the effort.

  He was going to organize his people, and give the Krall a taste of what micro Jumps could really do when done by a Kobani in a space dogfight. He’d sent Noreen to run the defense of the remnants of Task Force 3, and Marlyn to Task Force 4.

  They were his most experienced captains, participants in multiple fights against clanships. Despite Mind Taps, those with live experience in combat had a slight edge in reaction times, and displayed a superior ability to find new solution for old or new problems.

  Thad was captain of an unnamed ship joining Mirikami, Dillon would be with Noreen’s group, and Carson’s ship would join Marlyn. He considered them innovative thinkers, and they would complement the abilities of the flight leaders. He expected to lean on Thad more that he might otherwise, because the Mark of Koban, which Mirikami hadn’t expected to be in the thick of a fight, was handicapped by the need to protect Mauss.

  “Golda, I hate to do this to you, getting covered in that mess of je
ll, but please step into the acceleration suit next to you as quickly as possible. I’ll link Jakob to your com system so you can direct the task forces. The maneuvers will get violent for a Normal.” What he didn’t say was that without her aboard they would be highly stressful for a Kobani, and fatal for a Normal like her.

  The surviving heavy cruisers of the three task forces formed themselves into a milling constantly moving globe of AI controlled movement, a sphere surrounding the downward drifting disabled ships. They made frequent random course shifts and velocity changes as Mauss directed their AIs to copy those used in Operation New Lance. This would help avoid making predictable targets for enemy intersecting Jumps, with navy weapons kept on automatic and AI controlled. They maintained at least five miles between ships most of the time. That was expected to discourage other Jump and grab attacks that might catch two or more navy ships at once. Mauss didn’t think the Krall leader really wanted to trade ship for ship anymore, not with the losses they had already suffered.

  The Kobani ships, only 36 or 37 craft placed in each flight quickly formed a shield between the descending Krall and the lower defensive spheres of navy ships.

  Many of the Krall pilots or their clanship commanders, held to traces of berserker’s rage. They were closing to engage what they expected to be easy pickings, against enemy held clanships, which couldn’t possibly match Krall strength, stamina, and reaction speed at navigation and weapons consoles. Most clanship pilots had flown by instinct for their entire adult life, as warriors specifically promoted for their exceptional flight skills. They had repeatedly engaged the PU navy, planetary defense missiles, rail guns and beam weapons at Poldark. The great majority of time they had emerged untouched. There were no ground-based threats against them here at all, only fragile humans that needed AIs to think and act for them.

  These humans, operating stolen clanships, offered a particularly meaty treat because they would have only manual navigation control of those craft, which they couldn’t possibly use to maximum capability because their minds and bodies were too weak and slow.

  Mirikami was counting on that overconfident and mistaken belief. Dozens of emotionally out of control warrior pilots had accelerated ahead of the rest of the pack, to earn the glory of raking their metaphorical talons through the imagined intestines of these first kills, destroying the humans that had dared use Krall tools against their rightful users.

  The incoming attackers knew where the human operated clanships were located, because they were all using the new low frequency radio detection methods. However, the low detail and poor target resolution made energy beam shots less precise at long range, and missile tracking on them had proven worthless, at least until the missile guidance systems were modified for lower frequency use. For now, they intended to close with the enemy quickly, and fight them up close. That proved to be a wish better in conception than when granted.

  In groups, as decided among the individual Kobani flight leaders, the first squadron of nine Kobani ships each picked out a close oncoming clanship, one that was only several hundred miles out. When they micro Jumped, they emerged at points their targets had just passed. As they made the White Out, they quickly flipped end for end, and fired all plasma cannons and heavy lasers at the rear thruster nozzle of their selected target, which was quickly pulling away from them, but only a few miles distant.

  Mirikami led the first squadron of ships from his flight. There was no need to wait to see the effect after they fired their weapons. At that short range, with all eight of the heaviest beam weapons focused on a single point, one side of the bell mouth of the main thruster, the sudden local temperature increase and the impact of multiple plasma bolts cracked them. The cracks instantly widened or pieces were blasted away by the enormous exhaust pressures, and this caused a sideways vector of hot ultrahigh velocity gasses. This promptly turned the clanships sharply off course and into a tumble. The smaller attitude thrusters, instantly activated, were unable to counter the ships from flipping end over end until the main engine automatically shut down. The crews inside, if not killed, were severely battered and plastered against some bulkhead, which had suddenly become the deck.

  The nine Kobani ships had promptly reversed the calculation for their micro Jump, and were back near their starting points before their nine victims, now pin wheels in space, even knew what had happened to them. Their clan mates, several hundred miles behind the most reckless and over eager warriors, saw exactly what happened. They would be ready to defend against this tactic, and would instantly fire on any target that suddenly did a White Out behind a companion ship.

  Eighteen Kobani ships from each flight prepared to Jump next, but they first rotated their ships slowly, and each released four objects from ports on their sides, attached by cables that acted as tethers. They swiftly swung them out to over several hundred feet at the ends of the cables. When the ships entered their larger than required Jump Holes, the tethered objects went along for the ride. These three sets of eighteen ships completely bypassed the next leaders of the charging pack, and very briefly flashed into existence in the center of clusters of hundreds of clanships. They then executed their return Jump so quickly, in a few thousandths of a second, that the nearest Krall to them at first thought they hadn’t fired a shot.

  What wasn’t apparent was the much smaller Jump Holes created for the return, and the suddenly severed tethers of the two hundred and sixteen attached objects. Those had remained behind, located beyond the deliberately smaller event horizons of the return Jump Holes.

  Without power through the electrical cables to continue to suppress thruster ignition, the now released anti-ship missiles, warheads jury rigged to arm on ignition, suddenly accelerated and sought non-IFF equipped targets. Not so coincidentally, those all proved to be the nearest Krall clanships.

  Warriors, standing alert at weapons consoles, watchful of their sensors, had rapidly triggered manual energy beam fire at what the automated defenses would have considered a “friendly” clanship. However, because of the aiming required and activation time, they were too late to score any hits on an enemy that vanished so quickly. The powerful beams fired were a greater threat to clanships that just happened to be down range of the departed targets. Several glancing hits occurred, provoking angry exchanges.

  The now always activated automated defense systems on clanships, which would have taken control of the weapons from the warriors, had received no sensor warnings of radar guidance for missile launches. That’s because the high frequency burst of radar targeting data never took place. The automatic systems failed to detect that a missile assault was underway before the majority of the weapons were too close for effective beam targeting. This was a new technique, which the Kobani had experimented with, and the results as they looked back at the nearly one hundred hits, proved its worth.

  The third flight of nine from each group was preparing to try yet another type stunt, when dozens of enemy clanships suddenly started popping out of Tachyon Space all around them. Clearly, the charge at them with guns blazing concept had been abandoned in favor of a get in close now and mix it up tactic.

  Mirikami had known that the Krall were waiting for additional human ships to go help defend the rescuers. However, it wasn’t surprising they would Jump in close sooner if they continued to suffer these Kobani sniping attacks.

  Accordingly, Mirikami had designated that someone would stand ready at a secondary navigation console for when that happened. For the nine ships about to Jump into the center of another Krall formation, there was an alternate programed Jump destination. All of the Kobani ships had a similar Jump like that preprogramed.

  The instant the White Outs started popping among them, the superfast reactions of the designated Kobani on each ship triggered the backup Jump, performing a global scatter for each group. This took them three hundred miles away, in a circular plane centered on the area they had just vacated. A few hundred miles below them, the navy defenders in each of the defensive globe
s had been told by Mauss to watch for this move. Their AIs promptly launched several hundred anti-ship missiles towards the former location of the Kobani ships, even as clanships continued to emerge there.

  In another coordinated move by the navy, TF 3 and 4 launched missiles at the same regions, and fired others at the larger mass of Krall ships moving in for the final kills.

  As soon as the Kobani ships had made their exits several hundred miles away, they also launched missiles back at their old positions. If firing those missiles were all they planned to do, most of the clanships would survive and simply continue onward, to attack the navy rescue ships.

  Much as Telour had held his forces back to allow the navy to go to the rescue of their comrades, thus putting more ships in his three target zones, Mirikami did something similar.

  In a completely unexpected and reckless seeming move, the Kobani Jumped right back into the centers of their now heavily targeted volumes of space. Navy missiles were streaking in from above and below, and their own missiles from the sides.

  Fifty or sixty clanships had penetrated each of the former Kobani shield formations, but as they arrived, their human enemy appeared to be fleeing again. The Krall pilots had started to turn their attention on the lower down navy ships, which the humans in stolen clanships had suddenly abandoned. The rapid return of the Kobani ships surprised and initially pleased the Krall pilots, eager for this fight.

  Except the rapid fire from, and agile twisting and huge accelerations of the human powered ships, exceeded the built-in limits for the Krall clanships. The Olt’kitapi built-in acceleration and performance limiters had been removed for the Kobani and their ships were free to stress the operators to the greater limits of their bodies and faster reactions. The Krall were taking hundreds of quick laser and plasma bolt hits, but they were not accumulating as much damage as could have been accomplished, and many of them could have been disabled or destroyed. Too great an early success would have caused fewer Krall to join this dogfight. Once engaged, the Krall were forced to focus on the enemy right up in their muzzles. Clanships kept arriving, struggling to hit these impossibly fast moving craft. With enough numbers, they knew they would eventually prevail.