Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  The Krall believed they had the relative leisure of waiting for the planet’s defenses to wear down over the remainder of this first week, and they could preserve their most valuable resources for the destruction of the inner cities. That resource was the clanships themselves, and their reserved loads of heavy ground attack missiles. They had the bigger missiles already loaded in every launch rack, in eager anticipation of the destruction to come.

  Newly promoted Admiral Jon Willfem, commanding TF 1, intended to take on four of the Krall orbital formations with fifty each of his ships. He’d noted that there were roughly ninety clanships per formation that were feeding attacking clanships against whichever of the eight targeted cities they were closest to as they passed over them at a thousand miles. There was anywhere from twenty to twenty-five clanships descending towards a city for an attack, or were climbing back to orbit at any given time.

  There were generally another four enemy craft gathered at one of the eight clanships designated as fuel tenders, which had additional internal storage bladders for reaction mass. Each of the attached clanships was replacing the binary fuel, since the majority of clanships had not suffered fuel tank punctures. Those clanships that could use thrusters had better low altitude avoidance of return laser and plasma fire, and this helped the pilot roll his hull and maneuver to distribute the heat of incoming energy beams. Four of these fuel tenders were in the selected formations Willfem would strike, where his people would find five clanships in close proximity. He had special welcoming gifts for those.

  With twenty clanships always on attack runs, and twenty more involved with refueling, there were about fifty of each formation that were simply watching the active raiders, awaiting their turn to attack again.

  Willfem intended to use a variation of the K1 attacks. His task force, composed of four separate fifty-ship groups, would White Out behind the four Krall formations assigned to him, and come out firing roughly ten miles from the rear of each enemy concentration. Leave the “gifts” they brought, ready to launch under AI control, then use their secondary tachyon Traps to Jump, just as soon as they fired their missile salvoes.

  Admiral Freida Ahlberg, the first admiral from recent New Colony Fjord, had adopted a similar strategy after conferring with Willfem. However, she decided a bit of a morale boost for the ground defenders was in order. She was sending four ships, each one designated to White Out just above atmosphere over four of the chains of twenty or so clanships, engaged in low level firing at surface targets. Her reasoning was the enemy would not be looking above them, and would be intensely focused on what they were trying to destroy on the ground.

  The tasks assigned to the four parts of each of the two task forces had been decided by the overall commanders, assigning which ships went where. All that remained was a brief stop in the outer reaches of the Alders system, two hours of light time away from the planet, so they could inform the captains of every ship what they would do and which of the attack elements they would join. There were no Comtaps on each individual ship this trip. The two commanders assigned ships to each of their temporary sub divisions, explaining what they would do, and when and where they would draw back to wait for the patrol boat observer’s new report. Then commanders asked for a quick update from the patrol boat, made a few minor disposition changes, and TF1 and TF 5 made the short Jump inwards to say hello.

  ****

  Pradop was the Graka clan sub leader who the Tor Gatrol had appointed from his own staff to lead the Alders raid. This was a more favorable task than riding on the living ship, since Pradop didn’t expect it to return. No matter how many status points he might earn there, he was a warrior that wanted to flaunt his rank while living. Four systems attacked by a single living ship would be, he thought, too many to be able to complete the mission before the ship quit responding. The vessel might just vanish into Tachyon Space as some of the early ships used had done.

  There could also be a million or more deaths on this planet, and as leader of the raid, he would gain a sizable share of status points. He personally had just completed a run on the second largest human nest, taking out another heavy laser battery, which added to his status score. It was enjoyable combat, and had the sort of risk he understood and had personal control over. He tethered to a refueling clanship to top off his tanks before joining with another group of ships, about to attack the largest human nest as their orbit took them closer. That city would come into view over the horizon of the planet shortly. As Raid leader, he could move to whichever formation that was about to strike a target that he wished to join.

  The multiple sensor warnings of over eight White Outs of many human massed ships signaled this raid had just become more complex, and potentially more enjoyable if he could damage units of the human navy.

  The nearly simultaneous alerts of hundreds of missile launches, coming from the rear of his present formation, showed he needed to break away from the fuel tender. He was alone on the command deck, with some of his crew eating below, but the range was great enough that he had plenty of time to prepare. The fuel tender was near the front of the formation and the attack was from the rear. He didn’t have any launchers loaded with their few anti-ship missiles, and his lasers and plasma cannons didn’t bear on the enemy to his rear. The enemy ships that had emerged far ahead to attack another formation, or behind a formation well to his left side, were almost zero probability kills at his distance. He needed to flip his ship to defend against the rear attack, and tearing away the two fuel lines was necessary.

  He could hear the hurried warnings on various clan frequencies he was monitoring, and realized the attacks came from so close that there would be unavoidable losses. He intended to avenge them, and observed his automatic defense system fire towards incoming missiles. There were none directed at him or the three clanships that had also torn free from the tender. He’d expected to have to defend their replacement fuel supplies from missiles, but none was targeted on the tankers that would be lumbering easy targets. That seemed like an inefficient mistake on part of the attackers, ignoring a cluster of targets that were slightly hindered in their response. Stupid humans.

  Then suddenly, all of the human ships winked out of this Universe. That was when he saw the first of a distant series of intense blue-white flashes, evidence that Jump intersects had just occurred. That was when he understood what was happening, and thought, I should have gone on the living ship raid.

  He had just applied max thrust when a Novae missile intersected with the fuel tender next to him, who despite Krall reflexes, barely flinched from the blinding flash before the blast front composed of atomized metallic sleet tore his hull apart. He didn’t have to endure his regret very long.

  ****

  Two hours later, the patrol boat gleefully reported the entire Krall force at Alders had Jumped. The patrol boat’s Tachyon Wave detector, when they followed for a short time, sensed they had actually departed, traveling in the direction of K1.

  Initially, the Krall had gathered their forces together in a two thousand mile orbit. Even with two hundred seven losses from their initial seven hundred sixty eight, they still outnumbered the four hundred enemy heavy cruisers by a hundred sixty one. A clanship piloted by a Krall was more than a match, one on one with a heavy cruiser, but they hadn’t brought many anti-ship missiles, expecting to be gone before the navy could get a force here to counter them.

  The raid came equipped only for ground attacks, and couldn’t send a significant force down against surface targets to weaken defenses while exposed to hit and run space attacks. They had lost two hundred and seven clanships on a raid where they had estimated they might lose thirty of them, perhaps 5% in the worst case. Instead, they had lost nearly 27%.They could have launched all of their heavy missiles at the cities before departing. However, the new raid leader knew that the navy with their anti-ship missiles, and the largely intact ground defenses could both fire on them as they did that, and they would have more clanship losses for a very limi
ted attack success of their own.

  With over half of the ground defenses still intact, launching missiles from too far out would result in most of the missiles being destroyed, and going down close would add to clanship losses from the navy and ground forces. As it was, a Maldo clan sub leader, now holding the highest status on the raid, decided that dead Pradop could absorb all of the lost status here today, and do so on behalf of his Graka clan, which had been lording it over the other Great clans since the battle at Telda Ka. Besides, he rationalized, even a twenty-five percent loss on a raid had always been an acceptable level for honor, where a raid commander was justified to withdraw and review the results.

  ****

  The damage to the Krall at New Glasgow was less severe, with only half as many attackers. However, the initial White Out missile launches by TF 4 did significant damage, where the Krall, a conservative thinking race, was using the identical attack strategy as employed at Alders. This strafing method of wearing down a foe was apparently a tactic described in their histories, and it had worked in similar large raids against previous species.

  Due to the lower number of heavy cruisers in TF 4, it was unable to engage all the eight formations orbiting New Glasgow. After the opening attack, the raid leader diverted half his force to guard against attacks, making the process risky for the humans. There were only five Novas with TF 4, and one of those missed it’s intended target, also a fuel tender, when the fast thinking pilot of the tanker pulled himself free of tethered clanships and had moved far enough that the White Out of the intended intersect found empty space. That region was quickly filled with energy beams. Without the interpenetrating masses intersecting upon the White Out, the Nova missile alone exploded with hardly a flash.

  One finger clan, with less influence for gaining the supplies they had wanted, had received less than full loads of ground attack heavy missiles. Therefore, they had brought along additional anti-ship missiles, just so they would have something more to launch at the planet when the final days of the raid were ending. Their flexibility managed to destroy three heavy cruisers, something they would learn the raiders at Alders had failed to do.

  The thirty Kobani ships arrived almost a day later, but they had been kept informed of the actions at New Glasgow. Individually, each Kobani captain received a more detailed set of images from the patrol boat observer. The exact location and identification of all forty-three of the Krall clanships that had fired the anti-ship missiles was noted by AIs. Each of the defensive screens around the eight Krall attack formations had some of those clanships with anti-ship missiles with them. The strafing runs had resumed, if at a slightly reduced level.

  The Kobani, with greater maneuverability and more stress tolerant, had greater confidence in the performance of their ships than did the navy. Each one of them selected a specific ship to target. Via Mind Taps, sharing all the various Kobani tactics tried at K1, they slashed into the screens of the enemy formations in individual White Outs, right behind their intended targets. Firing all four heavy lasers at the side of a main thruster, followed up with a well-placed plasma bolt, the bell of the thrusters was cracked, and additional bolts and lasers did serious damage to the same clanships. They launched anti-ship missiles at dozens of other attackers prepared only to strafe, and then Jumped away before more than a few energy beam hits touched any of them. They killed thirty-six clanships on their first pass, and half of those were the clanships with anti-ship missiles.

  Their second pass was even briefer, and two Kobani ships were assigned per target, killing another fifteen of the enemy, firing a heavy salvo of missiles and energy beams without suffering a loss. The last Krall craft with anti-ship missiles were now drifting debris fields.

  The raid leader, mindful of Telour’s injunction to preserve clanships if possible, recognized the punishing blow planned for the planet was less than a tenth done, and could not be fully successful. Unlike at Alders, he ordered his clanship commanders to launch a heavy bombardment from five hundred miles, concentrated over the two largest cities, and then they Jumped for K1.

  Some of the still operational heavy plasma batteries around the cities, combined with navy missiles, cost the raid leader six more clanships. However, the onslaught of so many heavy missiles coming directly down on them was too massive for the defenders to stop all of them.

  There wasn’t anything the navy, a thousand miles out, could do to help. They physically couldn’t react quickly enough. However, trusting their IFF systems to prevent friendly fire by the AIs that controlled the ground defenses, the Kobani Jumped in close as the Krall left, and managed to take dozens of the missiles out. The ones that hit home caused considerable damage, with nearly mile high structures collapsing. The death toll for the four days of the attack would be in the hundred thousand range, but the larger buildings blasted at the very end had been evacuated in the first days, the worker and residents now in underground bunkers.

  Those two raids represented two firsts for humanity. No raiders, certainly not on this scale, had ever been driven away from a city let alone a planet, not until the Krall had completed what they came to do. The attacks were usually finished before any reaction force could arrive, due to the delay time for Jump travel to notify the PU military.

  However, it was difficult to take solace while looking at the smoking ruins of the centers of the two cities on New Glasgow. Nevertheless, the PU military could see this might be a turning point in the war. It was, but not the one they thought they saw.

  Chapter 18: Shattered Worlds

  Telour confidently walked away from the living ship, thinking that after this week, his insistence that these vessels be described as death ships would appear in the histories, a term attributed to him. He had just traveled to ten systems in four days, but the combined time of all Jump travel was less than eight hours total. He and his two aides, and the sixteen ship guardians on the command deck with them, spent most of the time looking at the current planetary orbits of the outer giant planets in each system, in relation to the settled inner worlds.

  Only one of the candidate systems was reversed from the usual habitable arrangement, with the only two gas giants present orbiting closer to the star, with the inhabited world placed well outside their orbits. That candidate system was rejected by Telour, although a K’Tal said it shouldn’t matter for what the Tor Gatrol intended. Telour persisted in thinking objects could only fall deeper into the gravity well of the star.

  He finally chose three stars systems in the Hub region of Human Space that had a gas or ice giant presently in an orbital location on nearly the opposite side of the star from the inhabited planet. The stars also lay along a relatively obvious line towards Earth’s sun. The planetary positions provided him with the time delays he had counted on in his proposal to the Joint Council. He wanted to stay with that idea, even though he effectively was the council for now, until a new one was formed. He could have changed his plan if he decided to do so, and answer to no one. However, he couldn’t change his original proposal significantly because the multiple systems he wanted to target required this delay strategy.

  At least until the last system. He didn’t need to visit that one because it didn’t matter where any of the large planets were in relationship to Earth. The closest or largest would do fine. Perhaps more than one could be used. The more destruction the better.

  With the targeted star systems identified, the soft Krall knew exactly what he would be instructing the ship to do. They had always visited each system by exiting well beyond the outermost planets, and used the navigation console to project a holographic layout of each system as it looked from their remote location. The known habitable planet was a mere speck in the display at that scale, which they never examined at all. They studied only the large outer planets for where they were in relation to that speck, and selected one of them to use in another week, when the ship returned without Telour aboard.

  Through orders given to the soft Krall, the living ship was told only
that a series of massive construction projects were under study, and the potential systems for the projects were being visited. The standard instruction to the ship, learned from hard experience by the Krall many thousands of years ago, was for the soft Krall to tell it not to monitor or to send any electromagnetic signals until instructed differently.

  That communications restriction needed to be applied before the ship even Jumped, because it moved so far so fast. It would not be allowed to detect the radiations emitted by the technological civilizations in each system.

  Such an instruction by itself would have raised a suspicion in the mind of any Krall, and probably for many species. However, these ships were machines that were built by a trusting species that had never thought to use them improperly. As intelligent and capable as the ships were, and alive to the extent they repaired themselves almost organically, they followed the instructions they received when they came from a trusted source. An adult Krall’tapi was such a trusted source for this ship, if the representative had an embedded quantum key, and that key reported a genetic pattern that was not designated an untrusted species. The Krall’tapi was easily distinguished from the other genetically related creatures that were aboard now. Those passengers also had an embedded quantum key from the builders, but their genetic pattern was specifically identified as untrusted, and no living ship would accept instructions or requests from them. They were permitted to go on board but not to instruct the ship’s operations.