“Kap can selectively disarm or self-destruct any missiles that chase after our own people. We have to do it before they close with the ship they’re headed for. We can’t wait if we’re going to do this.” Maggi knew, from past conversations with her younger friend, that it was to avoid making decisions like this that Marlyn had wanted to be an explorer. However, the luxury of safe choices was for other missions.
Marlyn stood up. “Kap, give me high magnification of that clanship on my front view screen, with a destination designator on the main screen when I tap the navigation display. I want see where we should make the exit. I’ll try to get in his six o’clock position.”
She obviously planned to use Krall manual piloting techniques.
“Mam, if you specify the distance behind the clanship you prefer as an intended White Out point, I will place a designator on your view screen, and move it as the target does.” Kap just reminded her why they used AI’s, rather than follow the reckless Krall examples.
“What is the recommended range for optimal target acquisition and tracking for a self-seek missile?” She was embarrassed, but adaptable.
“Recommended minimum distance is just over two miles from the target, which is a much greater distance than the half mile of uncertainty of such a short Jump. To ensure missile lock and arming after launch, that only requires a half mile of missile flight time.”
“Kap, place the exit point one mile behind them, and show me on the screen.” A red pip appeared behind the clanship, and the zoom backed out so they could see both.
“Kap, select four anti-ship missiles spaced evenly around the ship, and launch them all as we pop back into Normal Space.”
“Ready, Mam.”
“Alyson, Jorl, open all your gun ports, and fire any weapons that bear as we exit.”
They leaned forward to tap at their own consoles, and kept their hands near for firing commands. Kap could do this as well, but they trusted their decisions better as to what part of the clanship to selectively strike first.
“Kap, Jump.”
Even with their enhanced nervous system and eyes, they didn’t see the galactic sky wink out and back, it happened so rapidly. The quadruple vibration of the four launches was felt, but that was a few hundredths of a second after they had happened. The orientation of the planet below had instantly shifted, and they found themselves one mile nearly directly behind the clanship.
Alyson immediately fired a finely aimed plasma cannon shot, which at near light velocity hit the cover port of the plasma cannon she could see on this side. Jorl, a thousandth of a second behind her fired two heavy laser pulses at as many enemy laser port covers. Their intent was to try to heat fuse them closed. The Krall would have sensor warnings of the four missile launches, as they each used active scans to find a target, but there would be no warning from the cannons or lasers before they hit.
The Krall reaction was still swift, because using a magnified view screen of the clanship, they saw one of the laser ports Jorl had hit manage to slide open. The other two ports remained closed, unable to fire on a missile that was inbound, coming from a position the one opened port could not fire at anyway.
The Krall pilot made a fine effort, as the attitude thrusters pivoted his ship hard, to allow open gun portal to bear on that missile, as well sight weapons on them. The hypervelocity missile was a small target, and it was unlikely to be hit by manual firing before its acceleration pushed it into their near side. Tracking showed a second missile had also selected the clanship, and was turning to intercept from farther away as it curved back.
Knowing what the Krall pilot was doing to gain a firing angle, Marlyn tapped for a short burst of Krall crippling thrust forward, and a hard sideways attitude thrust to bring their bow around to point at their enemy, creating a somewhat slimmer silhouette. The Krall laser gunner got off a beam just as Jorl put two of his beams on that now more visible gun port.
The Krall gunner had aimed where the Beagle was expected to be, but his target had shifted enough that when the speed of light beam was triggered by the warrior (a laser was something they could not dodge), it was aimed at a spot they had just vacated. He didn’t get another shot with that weapon, because the portal opening suddenly glowed red and vapors and melted droplets sprayed into space. The beams themselves were invisible, but their effects were not.
Alyson was prepared to fire two plasma bolts at the already open cannon portal, rotating around on the clanship and coming into view, trying to come to bear on the Beagle. That was when the first missile spoiled the Krall’s plan. The silent bright flash on the side of the nearly diamond-hard hull coating was evidence that a missile had stuck. If it worked as designed, the front part of the warhead, with its molten metal penetrator stream had opened a six-inch wide hole in the hull, and entering through that maelstrom of molten material was the bulk of the ultra-high explosive main charge.
A less bright explosion followed, because it happened inside, but the volume of debris and hull plating flying from the side of the clanship was impressive. The reaction of the ship to the explosive ejection of material halted its pivoting, or slowed it was more accurate, because the pilot had maintained the side thrust at the top, despite the major damage. This ship would never land on a planet, but it could still fight.
Alyson saw a blue bolt of ionized plasma from the cannon port she wanted to hit. However, the plasma wasn’t directed at the Beagle since the weapon couldn’t bear on them yet. She realized they must have detected the second missile arcing around as it sought its target. They missed hitting the fast agile missile, now up to a truly high velocity. On the zoomed in screen, Kap projected that it would impact near the bow, just below the command deck.
The angle for her to fire on that plasma port improved over the next second, as its plasma chamber would be recycling for a last effort to hit the now straight on missile. This was a better opportunity than they had on the first effort, to hit the missile as it was curving.
Alyson surely ruined the gunner’s day when she blasted the plasma cannon opening with both of her bolts. Two seconds later, a second bright flash and then hull plates flew from the bulkhead of the deck immediately below the command level. That top deck did not have a decompression seal for the stairwells between those two decks. The pilot and gunners experienced the explosive overpressure, followed by rapid decompression. They were doomed if not in armor, which was unlikely for a flight up to orbit just to see what a fellow clanship was doing.
“Missile fired!” was Kap’s warning, letting them know that the last act of the clanship was to try to avenge its own destruction. Unlike the Beagle, which had full stacks of missiles in all of its launchers on this raid, Krall ships normally didn’t leave them loaded while sitting on the ground, as this ship had been, not expecting to find an enemy out here. They must have sent a warrior to load at least one rack, the closest launch bay being three decks below the command level, where it would be below the blast and decompression doors. A warrior there could have survived the hit that disabled or killed the crew above, and had launched a missile.
Marlyn realized if she applied emergency thrust, they would only close the distance, because their bow was aimed at the broken clanship. If the missile was on self-seek, they were the most probable nearby target.
On the captain’s view screen, Kap displayed a computer track and prediction for the missile. It had been launched away from them, but like their second missile, it was curving around, obviously locked onto them.
Jorl recognized that manual firing in this case wasn’t required for a human to select the best of several targets. There was only one. “Kap, take laser control and fire on the missile.”
Instantly, the two invisible beams being fired were displayed on the view screen as representative of where they were focused. As soon as the intersecting lines met on the target icon, the missile activated its mirror finish, and twisted and turned to prevent any hot spot from burning through too quickly. The range was already so short that the sec
onds needed for laser penetration weren’t available. The missile also happened to be inside the coverage area of the two plasma cannons that Alyson had just fired at the ship it came from. Her recycle time for those two cannons needed more seconds than they had. The enemy was either dead or dying. They would likely not see the results on the Beagle, but they had struck back effectively.
To TG2’s, with superconducting thinking processes, the passage of two seconds before the impact was like watching a slow death coming. There was no way for thrusters or Normal Space drive to outrun a nearby hypervelocity missile as they overcame their massive inertia. Even dead or dying, the Krall could be dangerously fatal.
Maggi blinked and started slightly as the view screen picture suddenly changed, with no missile track shown. Had the missile exploded early, or the lasers gotten through? “Huh? What happened?”
“You didn’t think I was just going to sit there and let them screw up my pretty ship did you? Close your mouth, and try to look smarter than that young face and blonde hair suggests.”
“Marlyn! I mean, Captain, you Jumped!” Alyson shouted, almost in disbelief.
Giving her the of course look, Marlyn said, “I saw no reason to wait around, did you? I held onto the rest of that Jump tac energy because I was leery of getting so damn close to them to make our own shots count. That caution was right. Next time we go in, shoot at their asses, and we get out right away.”
Jorl asked the obvious question that seemed to elude the other swift thinkers. “What’s that missile going to do now? It’ll seek a migration ship.”
Marlyn agreed. “Right, let’s Jump back and shoot it out of the sky.”
They returned, with several hundred miles of buffer for time to take defensive action, discovering the missile had turned to seek a migration ship in a lower orbit. The new target wasn’t one of theirs, and Marlyn decided to let it hit its new target. They didn’t plan to leave it for Krall use anyway. She asked Kap about the other two missiles they had fired, and had left them in the AI’s trusty digital and metaphorical hands. She had been so focused on self-preservation that those two had faded to unimportance.
“I placed their warheads on safe, Mam, and switched off their engines and seeker mode when both targeted migration ships. They have escape velocity from Toborkiti. Do you wish us to chase them for reuse? They are traveling in nearly opposite directions.”
“Do they have fuel to reach some of the orbiting ships we don’t have crews aboard?”
“Yes, if you do not delay very long to retarget them.”
“Do that, Kap. However, choose ships that are as far from those we have in our control as possible, and in low orbits. They will be waiting for Jump tacs for some time, and I don't want them in the middle of a debris field.”
Next, she told Maggi to broadcast to all the captured ships to prepare to Jump as soon as they were able, to the nearby rendezvous system. Then, to ensure they would get the time they needed, she had Kap take the Beagle to a lower orbit, and head for the main habitat dome for the Krall detachment based there.
The dome had been at the horizon when the first ship lifted, and the quick combat had taken place after the two ships would have been over their horizon. They probably didn’t know that things had turned out poorly for their clan mates. She wanted to be the first to deliver the bad news, actually sent via more bad news in the way of “parting gifts,” unknowingly repeating the same action that Mirikami had taken. She left no clanships untouched on the planet, and put several missiles into the habitat dome. The domes near the two shipyards received a single missile to the top center, presumably where the Krall monitors stayed. She didn’t want to inflict damage too severe, if fires could spread to an underground factory filled with Prada workers.
In a communication Maggi made to Coldar and Wister on one of the migration ships, she apologized for the Beagle not attempting a rescue of their people on the ground there. There were two known Torki lodges, and the Prada must have at least one factory under either or both small domes at the costal shipyards.
She explained that the Beagle had risked being damaged or disabled in the fight, and the next mission was too vital to the human first-strike plans. If the mission to destroy Eight Balls, and the production facilities went well, one or two migration ships, with adequate space remaining, could return here to Toborkiti with one or two of their fighting ships for protection, and pick up the workers.
Coldar, when she told him how the older ships in orbit were to be destroyed, was confident that the workers below would be safe from Krall abuse, and they would be needed to increase production of replacement migration ships. There were two vessels already under assembly, visible in the huge support cradles in different stages of construction. Coldar said one ship looked to be within a half orbit of completion.
He told Maggi that the Olts belonging to the Torki in orbit, using the new capability discovered after they had experienced her Mind Tap, had a greater communication range and should be able to reach the Torki Olts on the surface, at least to send data. There was no reply yet from the more limited range of those groundside Olts, which apparently had not spontaneously opened the new library of data and ability as those on Haven had done. The data sent down explained the new Olt capability. If the data had actually been received, it was possible the Olts might soon undergo the change anyway. If not, a Mind Tap from one of the Kobani should unlock the new library of data for them, as it had on Haven.
Marlyn waited the almost two hours it required for the unluckiest of the fifteen migration ships to trap a tachyon of adequate energy, and Jump for the target system. The Beagle then put a missile in many of the higher orbit ships, which potentially could be revived with the least refurbishment. Plasma bolts and lasers targeted the hulls, propulsion systems, and Trap emitters of the oldest ships, thus destroying their maneuverability and making them useless in the short term while saving anti-ship missiles. Then she Jumped to join her prizes.
Her communications specialists sent the news into Tachyon Space that the migration ships were obtained, and that six would be dispatched towards CS1, six for CS2, and three for the Eight Ball production world. The captured clanships would return to Koban or Haven for supplies, and then Jump ahead to overtake the slow migration ships. They would meet them at the previously coordinated star systems, for initial supply transfers. There were enough migration ships to provide redundancy if there were technical problems with any of the older ones.
In return, they received word that the Avenger had passed through an intermediate star system the day before to leave the message, while enroute to the CS2 system. Noreen would wait at an uninhabited system short of her destination to wait for the migration ships.
There was no new message from Mirikami on the Mark, but he was in transit to his next waypoint. He would learn of the success of the migration ship capture when he made his next intermediate Jump. He too would wait at an empty star system closer to CS1, waiting for the migration ships to catch up.
The pieces were coming together for a coordinated set of attacks, and their loss of one of the supply clanships had been unexpected and tragic, but was included in the contingency planning, for taking more ships than required to provide redundancy. The additional migration ships were good news because it would speed the loading of refugees.
With only a thousand TG2s on each of the three raiding ships, there was no hope, or intent, to take possession of any part of the domes, factories, or orbital stations and hold them for very long. They were counting on Krall overconfidence by relying on a handful of warriors controlling their slave labor at the production sites, and most of those warriors staying in the small observer dome facilities near the shipyards.
The main Krall habitat domes were built well away from the polluted factory and mining areas. A heavy missile barrage on the way in to knock out any parked clanships and to make hits on the domes, to try to take out clan sub leaders, would disrupt and delay the Krall reply. They hoped.
; The Mark of Koban and the Avenger would leave their raiders on the ground, and get airborne again to defend against any clanship that might have been missed, and to attack the slower shuttles the Krall would still have available.
The time of greatest risk to the rescue mission, would be the extended period of landing and loading the migration ships, and getting them back into space. The intent was to have them hold onto a tachyon in Trap field, with enough energy to execute a Jump as soon as the ship reached low orbit. The Torki, a safety conscious race, operated three independent Trap field systems on their ships versus the two that both humans and Krall used. They couldn’t Trap a tachyon while in a gravity well, but like the Flight of Fancy had done for twenty- three years, they could hold onto any they caught out in space, before they landed on a planet. They then could form a stable event horizon shortly after reaching three hundred miles, and Jump to safety.
It was hoped the captured clanships would already be well enough armed that they could provide some orbital cover for the migration ships if needed. If not, there was a limited supply of anti-ship missiles on Haven, which the Prada were now making. Most had been loaded onto the three raiders. However, some of those newly produced missiles could be loaded when the supply ships picked up provisions on Haven. There would be little time for that if they were Jumping back to CS1, the most distant point in the raids.
Mirikami, anxious to reach his next planned White Out system, wanted to confirm the plan was working out for the rescue. If that part of the complex mission failed to come together, they were committed to complete the raids, even if the Krall exterminated the workers, which they couldn’t move to another factory world and didn’t need where they were.
He wasn’t certain if their new alien friendships would remain intact if the collateral damage to their people was as horrendous as the Krall were certainly willing to apply. The balls were all in motion, now they had to keep juggling.
Chapter 18: Three Strikes and Out
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 67