There were twenty-one smaller blasts that eradicated Smashers, but it was the four Crushers that apparently drew a total of eighteen of the destructive weapons, because of humans overriding the AIs. There wouldn’t be any large pieces to fall on the planet from these expanding, hypervelocity spheres of shattered and small debris. They each had possessed three huge fusion generators, which as the densest matter to target with those bombs at their centers, were blasted open to add to the intense actinic plasma shooting out in jets, passing the slower clouds of fragments. Organic traces would be detectable only if spectral analysis were employed.
Uncounted dozens of neighboring Smashers were disabled from the high velocity blast debris, and hundreds of the thinly armored Guardians died with them. Unless they were prepared to Jump, hundreds more of the destroyer class craft would fall to the expanding fields of plasma and shrapnel. That same debris caused considerable damage to whichever face, or faces, of the better armored nearby Smashers were exposed to the blasts. Many eluded damage via micro Jumps, which had likely been previously programed in anticipation of the slashing attacks the Kobani usually employed.
The spectacle stunned even Mirikami, who initially focused on the four major blast glares. “Damn. Did anyone shoot at anything besides Crushers?” Of course, as the brightest glows dimmed, he saw they had hit many other targets.
Thad asked, “Think we got their attention?”
The answer came from Smashers positioned around the limbs of the planet, by AI’s that were not distracted by the destruction inflicted on friendly vessels. The mass detectors, which were speed of light systems, quickly identified mass centers where the larger Mark IIs were, and that was reinforced by their improved sensors that could detect their oval outlines. These weren’t clanships, that was obvious, and their internal voids were unknown, but launching multiple Decoherence bombs, spheres only a half foot across, was likely to find some point with only atmosphere in which to emerge.
The moment the warheads rotated into Normal Space, if they were not destroyed by intersecting with solid matter, they would trigger, and all matter within the radius of the fifth force they projected would instantly breakdown into their basic atomic constituents as all molecular bonds released.
Unfortunately, every warhead that found a Federation target worked exactly as designed. Unfortunately for the Thandol, that is.
Sarge was in a mid Comtap comment when his ship suddenly micro Jumped, and in the next thirty-two seconds, all thirty-eight other Mark IIs did too, and a hundred sixteen of the much harder to hit four hundred Scouts Jumped.
“Oops.” Sarge stated, as the universal expression of surprise that everyone that micro Jumped felt at the lack of forewarning. The Sneaky Bastard, one of the first ships the Thandol weapons found, emerged a hundred miles away from his former position, in the center of the formation. He was now near the outskirts.
“Did it work?” He asked.
Mirikami, his Mark emerging a few seconds behind the Bastard, was somewhere else away from the center. He pointed out the obvious. “You said Oops. Would your vaporized brain have Comtapped us if it hadn’t?”
Thad, who’s Ripper had also been an early Jumper, had a ready answer. “Impossible to say, Tet. He talks to us with an empty head all the time.”
Sarge was as polite as usual to his pal. “No, you dip shit clod. Did we take out the Smashers that hit us?”
As they considered his question, another forty-seven Scouts Jumped, some from the edges to the center of the formation, which was spread over a two-hundred-mile radius.
Mirikami was explaining what Reynolds should have realized, when the Mark was targeted again, and micro Jumped. He resumed after the second Jump. “Like I was saying, there are three launchers in a Smasher, and we don’t know where they are mounted, or how redundant the internal Smasher systems are. Those are large ships, and they may require three hits to knock out the launchers. One hit per launcher. We don’t know if three hits within them will disable the entire Smasher. We’ll know that answer soon.”
His sensors revealed a hundred or more wink-out and wink-on of Mark IIs and Scouts, as they dodged the increasing number of arriving Decoherence warheads. That was because Smashers with launchers located close to the blasts, had suffered confusion and panic and were now belatedly firing at the enemy to take their vengeance. Smashers with the same equipment were also micro Jumping from the far side of the planet, to join in the punishing barrage.
That was a welcome development, both to the Thandol, thirsty for revenge, and for the Kobani, who were counting on that reaction. Only one thirst would be satisfied.
****
Trindal was furious, but not only at the enemy, who again did the unexpected. He had tried and failed to convince the Emperor to not recall the other three Crushers, to join the one Farlol insisted stay at Wendal, orbiting repeatedly over the palace complex for his protection or evacuation. There was no place for the showy behemoths in a planetary defense against an enemy fleet. Their best use was in pounding and impressing a planet that had already been deprived of an effective military capability.
Now they were gone, and had taken ships with them that he’d used to screen them from conventional attack. Multiple Federation weapons, already proven to be as indefensible as a Decoherence bomb, had emerged within the mass of their cores, blasting them apart in a wasteful demonstration of ruthless and brutal overkill. Ironically, that was something the Thandol normally appreciated.
Now he would pounce on the enemy’s mistake, because they had remained close together, out where they were clear of conventional weapons, and surely intended to launch more of their destructive intersect weapons. They clearly believed their stealth protected them. When they fired their gravity projectiles at his Smashers, and sent black holes at them, they would learn that those would often fail to strike a target, or in the case of a black hole, wouldn’t even reach their targets, hidden behind gravitational shields. He had initiated the frequent micro Jumps of his ships, employing turns and velocity changes to complicate enemy use of the intersect bombs, making their use more difficult.
He noted the Federation ships had finally initiated their micro Jump tactic, hoping to avoid the tens of thousands of incoming Decoherence warheads, which were accurately targeted on craft that were not as concealed as they believed. These were inexpensive, small warheads to produce, rapidly launched through Tachyon Space to emerge in their thousands among enemy ship formations. For the smaller ships, a single hit should remove them from action. The unfamiliar larger ships were less certain, but no vessel could survive many hits that vaporized large spherical portions of their interior, or of their hulls for near misses.
It was proving to be a complex task to determine how many of the larger ships had been damaged, because they had enough internal volume, and unknown systems redundancy, to know how much their operational efficiency had been degraded. The initial signs were encouraging, because not a single additional Smasher erupted in the flash of an intercept from a Federation warhead. However, he had received confusing damage reports of Smasher captains that described apparent launcher failures, and of communications problems contacting the crews at those stations.
The launchers were of high reliability, and virtually automated in operation, provided the racks of replacement Decoherence warheads were brought from the armory before the ready munitions stored near the launcher were depleted. A Smasher typically carried a hundred thousand warheads per launcher, but in expectation of attacking Federation worlds, or of defending their own planets, the armory for each launcher was fully stocked, holding a half million of the small spheres each. The Emperor had authorized lavish use of the warheads, but except for preventing additional explosive destruction of Smashers, the enemy numbers did not appear to have appreciably diminished.
Just as Trindal was about to order additional Smashers to shift to the side of the planet where the enemy was, to reduce enemy numbers before their reinforcements arrived, the entire Fed
eration formation executed a group Jump. He thought it was a retreat, but they had only relocated, almost to the opposite side of Wendal, still maintaining that same stand-off separation. Well, they weren’t the only force that used micro Jumps. He ordered all Smashers with Decoherence launchers to relocate to face them.
That was when the problems previously reported revealed itself to be far more than a few failed launchers. Nearly eleven hundred Smashers, per his AI, failed to relocate, and of the few captains that reported why, it was because the central launcher of their ships, the one mounted closest to the Bridge was the only one still operational. Those located next to the Jump Drives or Trap field generators were gone. Gone, as if a warhead had activated prior to the launcher electrically activating them, as they were sent on their journey. Many ships had lost two launchers, and the vital equipment placed deep in the Smasher where they were colocated, as protection from enemy missiles and energy beams. Emergency transmissions from other Smashers reported that the Bridge and Bridge crews were gone.
The stricken ships couldn’t move, because they either had only half a Jump engine, had lost all their tachyons for powering the Normal Space drives, or the commander and Bridge crew had been vaporized. Trindal suspected a defect had rendered some warheads defective, by activating prematurely. But so many defects seemed beyond comprehension, after so many billions of them had been launched over many campaigns. There had been duds, but no premature activations.
As if to demonstrate that the change in location had provided the respite the enemy needed from the barrage of Decoherence bombs, another thirty-four Smashers suddenly erupted in fatal blossoms of debris, driven by intersects of Novae bombs, spewing fragments from their centers and plasma from ruptured fusion generators.
Regardless of the possible risk from defective warheads, he ordered every available launcher to fire on the enemy, and ordered any responding Smasher to Jump to where they could target the enemy formation. The disturbing AI tally of enemy ships provided him with very bad news. When they all arrived together on the other side of Wendal, that was adequate to prove that too many of their vessels remained operational, or at least still mobile. There were five of the larger ships that had not completed the shift, and fourteen of the harder to see smaller ships were missing. That meant four hundred twenty of the enemy were still in the fight, with barely more than a 4% reduction in strength. He had lost nearly fourteen percent of his own ships.
The enemy immediately began their random micro Jumps again as the barrage on them increased, changing position repeatedly, each ship doing so once or twice, with the larger ships doing so three or four times as often. Trindal, desperate to understand why so few of the enemy were confirmed hits or kills, he carefully composed simple bugle and trumpet phrases, when he queried his flagship AI for information.
A correlation he wasn’t even aware the AI maintained was offered, and which puzzled him. He wasn’t at all surprised the larger more easily detected enemy craft were targeted more frequently by the Smashers, but learning that their micro Jumps consistently happened precisely before a warhead was launched towards their location was troubling.
He asked the AI for details. “Is there any signal generated from the Smashers that could let them know the instant of the launch, so they know to Jump away in time?”
AI’s are literal, and rational, and it bugled in reply. “Sire, our sensors have never detected such signals, but an electromagnetic signal is possible in principle.”
Trindal was on the verge of ordering a study as the battle raged when the rational part of the AI’s reply was offered, and he stayed the order. “Sire, if there is such a signal, it would not matter. It is against the rules of physics per my database, for a velocity of light signal from a launcher to arrive at the target before the vastly faster arrival of the warhead, which is delivered via Tachyon Space. The generation of their Jump Holes are being initiated a very short time before the warheads are launched. It must be a coincidental pattern.”
It was frustrating. “Are there other unexplained correlations connected with the enemy ship Jumps? A pattern of our firing that tells them when they are about to be targeted?”
“Sire, there is another pattern, although it is much like the speed of light travel time limitation, which cannot be correlated with the Jumps of the targets and the warhead launch.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sire, I refer to the loss of continuous data feeds from some of the Smashers that unexpectedly ceased operation. This ship is the designated flagship, and I am equipped for continuous data exchange with every ship in the fleet. Those ships where the Bridge has apparently been disintegrated, instantly cease that data exchange when it happens. The time at which the transmission ceased, can be calculated based on the time of travel of the light speed signal to us. All those transmissions end after an identical small delay time, immediately after the warhead is launched. This is another faster than light effect, but delayed by that very small fixed interval after the target ship has already executed their Jump.”
“It can’t be an effect that was broadcast from the targeted ship?”
“No, Sire. Not unless it is sent instantaneously after that small fixed nanosecond delay I described. That would violate the speed of light constraint.”
The High Commander was frustrated. “It’s like our own ships are being targeted with Decoherence bombs, the instant we try to hit the enemy.”
“Sire, they would need to have duplicated our technology, to manufacture the warheads, and then design a launcher for them, and know precisely when to fire at our ships.”
“Exactly,” Trindal trumpeted in puzzlement. “They must also identify the right ship, out of thousands, and hit it immediately.” That sounded paranoid, even to his suspicious mind.
There were other worries he needed to address more than this conundrum. “How long before the next two enemy forces arrive?”
The AI informed him that half the time between the first group’s arrival and the enemy reinforcements reaching Wendal had elapsed.
“How many more of our fleet elements have arrived? How strong are we compared to their force?”
“Three thousand sixty-four Smashers arrived, and two hundred nine Guardians, Sire. Our forces, despite the losses suffered, will be double their combined strength.”
Trindal trumpeted in disgust. “The Guardians are nearly useless in this longer-range battle. We either start killing or disabling more of their ships, or the loss ratio will grow unsustainable for us.”
Allowing the enemy to stand off and draw his fire had not been productive. He decided to alter what his far more numerous fleet had been doing up until now.
Chapter 11: Countering Counter Measures
On a group link to every ship, Mirikami was compelled to issue the most difficult order he’d ever uttered.
“People, we’re hurting them bad, but we’ve also been hurt. Wanting to help our damaged brother and sister ships is natural, but that is too costly to the mission. Therefore, I order that no one is to attempt a rescue operation of any ship that has been hit. They’ll need to escape on their own. We must keep hitting the enemy fleet because they’ve already replaced the serious losses we’ve caused, and more Smashers are on the way and a third of those will have D-launch capability. We have a chance today to truly cripple the combined Thandol fleets.
“A Mark II has greater redundancy than a Scout, and all five of those damaged ships made their escape. But if a Scout blunders into a drifting D-bomb after a micro Jump, they lose too much hull and too many embedded Trap field antennas. They can’t form a Jump Hole or hold onto tachyons for the Normal Space drive. They’re left adrift, without stealth, and always draw a barrage of D-bombs. Two Scouts died trying to rescue the crew of one.
“Scarsdale and his crew bravely used their Mark II to save that same disabled Scout, which he towed to safety. That was when a D-bomb targeting that Scout nearly got them. The Magic moved close enough to the Scout to inclu
de it inside an expanded Jump Hole. The Magic lost use of one gravity projector and two crew members as a result, and is out of this phase of the battle.
“That was a brave crew, and I’ll recognize them when this is over. The two surviving women of the Scout’s crew I’m sure are grateful. But now the Magic and four other Mark IIs are out of the fight, and thirteen Scouts out of fourteen hit were lost with all hands. We led the advance attack using these type ships for good reason. We can’t afford to increase the risk of having them lost or disabled.
“Nineteen of us are out of the fight, but the four hundred thirty-nine we started with managed to destroy or disable two thousand three hundred nine Smashers, most of them ones with Decoherence launchers. Add in the four Crushers, and at least two hundred flimsy Guardians hit by their debris, and our small force is tearing them new assholes. We MUST take out more of the D-launcher Smashers before the other two groups arrive. We have the only ships that can send D-bombs back to the launcher’s coordinates, to selectively kill those ships. However, as our lost or damaged ships prove, we can’t dodge indefinitely.”
Even while he made that Comtap transmission, the Mark micro Jumped once, just ahead of an incoming Decoherence bomb that would have destroyed its Bridge. Or in some sense, it had done so, because that destruction caused the reflected low power tachyon wave that propagated instantly from the congruent (or was it tangential) time reversed Universe. The tachyon reflection wave returned just before the D-bomb arrived, and the ship micro Jumped to prevent that destruction, thus canceling out, or neutralizing, the wave announcing the avoided destruction.
The next step, after the evasion Jump, was the key to turning a great defense into a good offence. The AI placed a stasis field around where the D-bomb would arrive. Caught, as it rotated out of tachyon space, the frozen time applied to that small volume prevented the warhead’s detonation. Then, the stasis field was rotated back into Tachyon Space and sent to the triangulated coordinates of origin, as determined by the three polarized waves that had signaled its imminent arrival.
Koban: When Empires Collide Page 39