Konar, continuing his leap over the headless Finth, used his hind legs against the shoulders of the dead and falling corpse to use its mass to help launch himself at the second Finth, who appeared to have started to react to the noise and disturbance in the undergrowth to his left. A ripple along the length of his heavy plasma rifle was faintly visible to the ripper, and it pushed aside leaves as it was leveled to fire at whatever was out there. There was never a trigger pull.
Without touching the ground, Konar used what he’d learned on his first pounce. This time his left paw decapitated the Finth, smashing into the muzzle, batting the head and helmet to the right side, this time.
The ripper landed on the dead body, and he noticed that his rear quarters felt warm, and suddenly his chest also felt warm and wet. He’d been sprayed by the arterial blood from the two decapitations. Far from spoiling his camouflage, the iron rich blood splashes also blended with the color of the jungle plants. And smelled delicious.
The sounds of brush being crushed drew his eyes just ahead, where a narrow swath was being pressed down. It was next to where he’d deposited his last urine trace, and he instantly surmised that the third Finth had crouched or kneeled, to more closely sniff and examine the enemy trace left behind. Hearing or seeing the second attack, he had either seen the ripper, or saw his comrade go down. He suddenly rolled aside, crushing under brush to avoid the attack he expected, and to bring his weapon to bear on the back trail.
As he brought the rippling muzzle up, he pulled the trigger, and a blue-white plasma bolt tore from the barrel, centered on the red stained muscled body hurtling towards him with unbelievable speed.
It was also an unbelievably agile body. The star hot ions only singed the right-side fur of his attacker, because it twisted in a sinuous contortion, to bend its body way from his aiming point, a mere instant before the Finth sent the mental command through his memory enhancer to fire his weapon. He couldn’t have missed, but he did.
There was only a few hundredths of a second cycle time for his dual chambered assault weapon to fire again, but that was too long when confronted with a ripper that close. Konar reached for the visibly glowing muzzle as it was pointed towards him again, and the energetic swipe of his right paw hit the yellow glow, and tore the weapon easily from the Finth’s panic strengthened grip. The bent weapon went flying into the jungle, tearing the power cable from the electronics package on the back waist of his suit, which also shorted out the stealth system.
Konar now could see the pistol in a stealthed coated holster at the waist of the suit, and tore it away with a paw slap. There would be help coming for this warrior soon, so he couldn’t dwell here very long, but there was enough time for a frill.
With newly gained knowledge of the armor, he smacked repeatedly at the helmet, and popped open a seam on the chest, even as the Finth desperately tried to fend off his paws. Konar gaped his jaws and lowered his head over the helmet, the face of the Finth staring up in yellow eyed horror. However, all he did was forcefully pull the helmet off his head, to expose fur, face, and ears. Konar had heard that the ears had sensitive enough nerves for a good frill contact.
He his left paw, his extended claws providing a firmer grip, forced the Finth’s head to the side, and pushed its muzzle painfully against its right shoulder. The ripper lowered his head to put his frill against the exposed left ear, ignoring the muffled gibberish his prey was trying to speak.
Using his fob, he asked a question in Thandol about their fleet, expecting an answer via mental images. Instead he sensed total confusion, and fear. He asked again. More fear, and confusion. He’d managed to catch a live Finth that did not understand the Thandol language.
In a flash of insight, the ripper sent an image of a fleet of just the few types of Finth ships Konar knew about, and then showed images of the fleet shooting at humans, then shooting at Raspani, Torki, and finally at Prada. He had what he thought was the answer, but there were sounds of multiple Finth running through the jungle, getting closer.
The Scout captain above him, Captain Zafar, warned him. “There are eight Finth headed your way Konar, based on the trampled brush and faint images of their suits on our sensors. They’re running full out, and almost horizontal to the ground on all fours. Get away from there, or let us pick you up.
“I’ll go, but I have one thing to do.” Told they were running at full speed, he knew they would be on all fours, and thanks to Seiko’s observation he knew they couldn’t shoot on the run. He’d have a few extra seconds.
There was no time for a death frill as the prey’s life slowly drained, to feed the ripper’s desire for a “taste of fear.” That was something his kind had evolved to crave, increasing their desire to hunt, and coincidentally fed the pride better. There was no desire to eat this prey, but to kill and gain nothing was a sinful waste, so the information acquired took the place of meat. He did what was required.
He pulled away from the ear. The Finth, certainly familiar with killing captured prey, saw it coming, its widening yellow eye rolled to the side to see its captor. It issued a loud but strangled sounding scream, inarticulate with that massive paw pressing so painfully down on its muzzle. Konar opened his jaws and bit down with crushing force, his long upper incisors piercing through the top of the skull and tearing into the brain. That moment of terror was his only satisfaction, and then he pulled away, to disappear into the jungle. He passed the rushing inbound Finth in armor, who were unprepared to fire at the streak of motion that ran directly between two of them. Before they could stop, rise, and unsling their rifles, there was no longer a target.
Konar called Slobovic on the group channel. “Carol, the Finth were sent to attack the Prada. I could not learn which world, but the last Finth I killed knew it was a Prada colony.”
“OK. I’ll send that to Haven. There are only three Prada colonies underway, and one so new that they have not established a permanent base. If the Finth cross the border, our monitors will sense their movements.”
“Not if they go out of the galactic plane to get there.” Seiko pointed out. “The Ragnar went around our monitors to reach Tanner’s World.”
“Well, it will be Mirikami’s decision what we do. President MacDougal will order whatever Tet suggests. We’ll continue the fight here until told otherwise.”
Sergey’s led his eight Kobani, with Kandy scouting, through the jungle behind another twenty Finth, which had come from a different wall portal. Six groups of sixty warriors had poured into the two-mile diameter reserve, each dividing into three parties of twenty each, and often dividing a couple of times after that.
He spread his people out ahead of an onrushing platoon of Finth. They appeared to be headed for the general area where his Scout had landed. On his command, Kandy provided the distraction he’d asked her to make, while keeping the unarmored, and unstealthed ripper out of the line of fire. She uttered a magnificent roar, which reverberated from the wall just behind her, the one where this group had originated.
Every single Finth paused for an instant, and looked behind them for the origin of that frightening and unfamiliar sound, thus nine of the twenty never saw what killed them, as multiple plasma bolts and lasers blew off the heads of the closest warriors to the Kobani.
Another nine died as they turned back to their ambushers, and fired off bolts and beams that were aimed only in the general direction of the source of that assault. The shooters had dropped prone after the first volley, fired again, and rolled away from those positions before the two surviving Finth fired at two of the just vacated positions. They disintegrated in a splatter of singed armor and burned body parts, as all nine Kobani targeted them with combinations of plasma bolts and lasers.
Similar carnage happened to some of the other groups, but none fell for the roaring distraction again, and two stealthed Kobani were killed when they were hit before they could move from a firing position after a beam or bolt from them revealed where they were. Two other Kobani were wounded by random fir
e at movements a Finth saw in the undergrowth. Kandy was seriously wounded in her left rear leg when an apparent random plasma bolt was fired into her place of concealment. Stealthed Scouts fired on Finth groups exposed on paths, before they landed to recover the two dead and three wounded. Each Scout carried one med lab.
When the original Finth force was reduced just over a third of their original numbers, they started a general withdrawal. They had not found any of the ships seen landing, and decided that the aerial firing came from the same ships, now airborne and stealthed. That was when the Kobani started to pull back to their own Scouts.
Carol had communicated with Mirikami, and was waiting for their next instructions. In the meantime, she decided that since it was too late to prevent the Finth from launching an attack, the leaders would have to pay for their bad intentions, using the eight Scouts at Pack Command. They started firing their plasma cannons and lasers at the building, and when several armored columns started moving in their direction from the surrounding city, they hit the lead elements with missiles. The Finth had fast medium tanks, which the Thandol told them were called Crawlers, armed with a range of weapons much like the Ragnar used, including the Thandol mobile Debilitaters.
Suddenly, Seong called Slobovic. “Carol, twenty-one Carnivore light cruisers, and four Eater class heavy cruisers have just made Jump exits over Pack Central. Cardoza and I will engage them with our gravity projectors, but they’re coming from all directions, and moving in evasive patterns, executing random micro Jumps. They were apparently scattered all around the system. If they spot any of you firing down there, in atmosphere, they might target one of you before we can take them all out.
“To our sensors, your Scouts show up visually every time you shoot, so they can see you too. You know we don’t have shit for armor on these ships.” A not so subtle warning of how vulnerable the other eight Scouts were if they continued to reveal their locations down there.
The warning was enough for Carol. “All Scouts in atmosphere, execute immediate Jumps to orbit, and join Seong and Cardoza. Activate your gravity projectors to take out the ships that just arrived, then we’ll eliminate their orbital repair stations and docks. Avoid firing on orbital habitats, and the domes on the moons. Filho, take your four Scouts and Jump to New Den, and attack orbital targets there. You have gravity gun rods to hit ships sitting on tarmacs on the moons. We’ll do the same here.”
With that, Carol’s little flotilla commenced to teach the Finth what sort of Hell could be unleashed on them. Provided the Federation survived the attacks being directed at them, with their sparse forces spread so thin. There were few new Mark IIs finished, with their heavier firepower, more powerful gravity projectors, and better hull armor. The Scouts had discovered only this week that they couldn’t attack surface targets with black holes down in the deeper gravity wells of large moons, let alone planets.
The main Federation offensive against Thandol military targets, located on the surface of Empire worlds or large moons, would seemingly need to be conducted via clanship attacks, and by attacks by the Planetary Union’s navy cruisers. That is unless the Mark IIs projectors could do that. Using only missile technology, the Federation’s attacks would be more vulnerable to enemy counter measures. If they then needed to holdback those older missile equipped ships as defenders of their own planets, there wouldn’t be much offensive capability to dissuade the Empire from attacking them with their far more numerous warships.
The ten Scouts, dividing the limited number of space accessible targets between them, managed to do considerable damage in the hour before Mirikami had their new orders.
“Carol, I conferred with the council members I could find that were on Xenos, and Comtapped others that were off planet. They advised the President to call back your squad and Thad’s. The Prada recently took delivery of ten Scouts, configured for their use. But that means they can’t conduct maneuvers that would produce accelerations that exceed a Prada’s ability to remain conscious. They wouldn’t be good at space dog fighting in any case.
“I’m caught in a numbers game. Between your flotilla, and Thad’s, and the ten that haven’t even reached the Thack Delos, I don’t have very many Scouts to send to cover the three Prada colonies. We delivered fifty to the PU, and they want to keep those for their own protection. Besides, they lost eleven of them at Rogue 1.”
“Tet, what about the larger Mark IIs? They have larger gravity projectors.”
“Yes, but we’ve not tested the Mark IIs in combat, not after the cheaper and faster to build Scouts performed so well. That was why we diverted more production lines to the Scouts. We only have three Mark IIs completed, and two more nearly finished. They can form larger black holes at greater projected ranges, but they can’t do it any faster than a Scout can. I’ll be testing to see if they can hit a planet’s surface with black holes.
“Regardless, with thousands of enemy ships to fight, we need more ships of our own. I’m sending five hundred clanships to One Land, the Prada’s original home world. I was also asked to send more clanships for protecting all the other colonies. Five are human, two Torki, two Raspani, and the Krall’tapi world. I can’t leave Koban and Haven bare either. Fifteen potential target worlds, fifty or sixty Scouts and three Mark IIs to use their gravity weapons, and damned if I didn’t send thirty of our Scouts deep into the Empire. That means the five thousand old clanships can place only three hundred over some smaller colonies.
“The Thandol still have over twenty thousand of their own warships, and each security force has three thousand, to thirty-five hundred warships. We only know of one probable target, a Prada world, and even then, we aren’t sure which of their three colonies the Finth are targeting. I’m ending your mission, and possibly the one headed for the Thack Delos. Come back, we need you here.”
“Yes, Sir. What is our destination?” She thought she knew, and was correct.
“You’re going to One Land to help the Prada. If the Finth fleet left yesterday, and are taking the long way around to avoid being detected, your direct route can get there at about the same time, possibly ahead of them. The five hundred clanships will be there tonight, to back up the ten Prada Scouts. I have asked Thad to go to the second Prada colony, nearer to the Empire’s border, and the Thack Delos team, led by Athena Christopoulos, who fought at Tanner’s World, might be turning back, I haven’t decided if they will. The Finth wouldn’t reach the newest small Prada colony for three days, if that one is the target. The three hundred clanships will be on their own there at first, if it’s hit, but it has the lowest Prada population, and they can flee or hide.”
“Sir, we’ll Jump within minutes. If we need to change destinations, we’ll be prepared with alternate coordinates calculated.”
“Excellent, Carol. We need to be as fluid as possible. I have no idea who or where the Empire will attack next.”
Chapter 6: The Empire Strikes Back
Emperor Farlol wasn’t in a mood to talk, even mentally by radio using his memcache, because his head hurt as much as his mouth, throat, and both trunks. Projectile vomiting a short time ago, through his trunks, had burned them with stomach acid for their entire lengths. But his throat, mouth, and tongue, were so raw from his entire week of unrelieved suffering, that he couldn’t tolerate another batch of stomach bile making its exit by mouth. It had required effort and muscle pressure to compress his ribs, to boost that vile material to high enough pressure to take the more constricted pathways through the higher located and more narrow passageways of his two trunks.
This contraction had raised his blood pressure, and triggered a severe headache. Considering the large size of a Thandol’s skull, this was no small matter. He could barely think coherently, and now he couldn’t even bugle and trumpet coherently because of the swelling of those inner membranes. His memcache was his only alternative means to communicate, and he was tempted to order his second group of physicians executed, as he had his first team of three Imperial Physicians.
It had been twelve cycles since he’d been able to keep any grass, fruit, or grains down for more than a quarter cycle. The parasites living in his intestinal walls were persistent and tenacious. The drugs prescribed to kill them were somewhat toxic, and the waste products and dead worms were toxic, yet triggered a ravenous hunger in their victims, because they were unable to absorb enough nutrients from what they ate. The intravenous fluids he was given provided the nutrients, but the hormonal balance triggered by normal digestion was disrupted, and was the cause of his increased food craving. It was vicious cycle, because consuming food aided the parasites reproduction.
His original doctors had told him to abstain from all foods, and let the intravenous fluids sustain him while the drugs killed the parasites and let them naturally purge from his system within ten cycles. They had no solution for his increased cravings for food other than telling him to use his willpower to resist eating. He’d then ordered them cut off from food as well.
The doctors had started self-medicating, and treating later victims as soon as the infection was confirmed for dozens of nobles and consorts in the Palace. Thus, others outside the inner palace either didn’t contract the infection, or suffer as severely, and its further spread was prevented. Not being permitted to eat, if the Emperor couldn’t, didn’t help them at all, and they needed to stay mobile to attend to his every need. The intravenous infusions were less effective when Farlol ignored their advice.
Koban: When Empires Collide Page 20