Koban: When Empires Collide

by Stephen W Bennett

  It was a frequently repeated technological Return to Sender, which sent a D-bomb back to the parent Smasher and one of its three launchers. When the warhead again rotated into Normal Space, the stasis field vanished in a burst of gamma rays, and the march of time resumed. Those gammas might have been highly hazardous to any living Thandol near the launcher, except they were converted into a puff of atomized and expanding particles by the warhead’s activation.

  The frequent and fully automated micro Jumping was somewhat disorienting to the human crews, who were mostly along for the ride, except when they needed to launch Nova bombs at selected targets, to continue to encourage the Thandol to shoot at them. They intended to become more involved personally in the combat, but only after the remainder of their forces arrived. By then, at the current rate of attrition, there wouldn’t be very many operational D-launcher equipped Smashers to worry about, and they comprised roughly a third of the entire Thandol fleet.

  Suddenly, the personal part of the conflict was nearly stuck up their asses. Only Kobani reaction time and high acceleration limits on their ships enabled them to dodge the barrage of missiles and energy beams unleashed, when suddenly, two thousand enemy ships, both Smashers and Guardians, micro Jumped into their loose formation.

  This was so uncharacteristic of the Thandol that Mirikami hadn’t discussed how to confront such an aggressive tactic. Thanks to memory matrix and previous Mind Taps with older and more experienced Kobani captains, he didn’t need to. This had been a Krall tactic, and in seconds every Kobani captain implemented the tried and tested Jump, shoot, and Jump and shoot again tactic, which they had perfected against the Krall. No missiles found them, because they were too slow moving and they had poor tracking on the Kobani craft, despite Thandol ship sensors knowing where they were by outline. Fortunately, that technological advancement had not come in time for retrofitting tens of thousands of existing anti-ship missiles, to counter this unexpected assault on Wendal.

  However, enemy plasma bolts and heavy lasers lashed at hulls of slower to evade ships, temporarily damaging their stealth, at least until the flowing hull material healed the damage. Perfectly functioning stealth was less vital now, because the Thandol had learned how to image human ships well enough to aim beams at their silhouettes.

  The Thandol’s own bodies were a weakness they couldn’t circumvent, because it was difficult to maneuver their ships sharply enough to compete with a Kobani pilot, or to allow their AIs to do it for them, to capitalize on the surprise attack after the first few seconds. These were lessons they could have learned in advance, had they not allowed their egos to get in the way, by failing to fully consult with their security forces, who had gained that experience the hard way, in fleet combat with Kobani.

  An elephantine body that reacted poorly to fee fall or inversion, and the imperfect internal inertial compensation inside their ships, meant they were ill equipped to withstand the twists and turns of what amounted to a raging dog fight in space. That physical limitation is what had driven the Thandol to use T-cubed travel, Decoherence bomb technology, massive firepower, and multiple fleets containing many large ships, to pound their enemy’s fleets and planets into submission. They didn’t engage in the art of fencing, when wielding a massive club worked best for their physiology.

  When the stand-off and pound-your-opponent strategy failed today, in the face of the enemy’s superior new technology that avoided the D-bombs, Trindal sought another option. His thinking was guided by the limits noted of human use of gravity weapons revealed in the PU Scout attack at Rouge 1. There, the black holes they used as unstoppable missiles on the thirty Smashers, couldn’t even touch the surface installations of the planet sized, but abandoned massive moon base. High Commander Trindal entertained the belief that they could get close enough to “stomp” their opponents today, by using localized powerful gravity fields to disrupt the Trap fields that contained the tachyons used to produce weaponized small black holes.

  Using Jump capable shuttles and patrol boats, Thandol scientists had experimented with having them generate a planetary mass equivalent gravity field around themselves, without employing the mass to create the event horizon needed to rotate into Tachyon Space, as would happen if they were about to Jump. They then remotely flew the shuttles into the gravity wells of moons, and eventually of dead rocky planets. When the local gravity field reached close to the magnitude at the surface of that planetary moon base at Rogue 1, the test gravity fields lost tachyon confinement of their Trap fields, as they approached the surface of the airless test worlds.

  That distance into the sample gravity wells established the minimum planetary mass required, which could disrupt whatever Trap field method the Federation used to send a black hole down to a planet for a destructive attack. The solution, they reasoned, for protecting any ship from those same black holes as weapons, was to generate a gravity field around each ship of slightly greater than that strength.

  Trindal had deduced that the sole purpose of the human strategy, with the small formation, was to stand off and decimate their Decoherence equipped Smashers. He didn’t know how they were doing that, but those ships represented a vital part of the Thandol naval force, and with them taken out of the fight before the full enemy force arrived, he knew the humans intended to make the main battle a “dog fight.”

  With Smasher and Guardian AI’s programed to generate an external gravity field of the appropriate mass equivalent, and compensated it internally on the ships to prevent incapacitating their crews, the Thandol felt prepared to engage in that same sort of combat.

  They had studied the combat records from Smasher’s loaned to the Ragnar in their early space battles with humans, at a colony planet the humans called Zanzibar. That had been a battle of position by the human ships, of a jab and move style of space combat. Here, that tactic would seem to favor the numerous small Scouts more than it did the larger Mark IIs, all of which apparently had gravity weapons.

  Trindal dispatched a thousand Smashers to attack the larger human ships, and a thousand otherwise useless but more agile Guardians to attack the much smaller enemy ships, micro Jumping directly into the enemy formation, with a secondary Trap field of their three available, used to maintain a planetary strength gravity well close around themselves. That would affect their own missile launches, but because of the stealth the enemy used, missiles couldn’t track them effectively anyway. It might, however, prevent the small black holes from reaching them before suddenly evaporating, as their tachyons were released from the Trap fields.

  A Smasher mounted multiple energy beam weapons to attack the larger human ships, and those would surely be more powerful than any used by the small Scouts. Even the Guardians outgunned the Scouts, provided the enemy gravity weapons were excluded. The Thandol counted on the low numbers of the Federation ships to give the Smashers and Guardians the advantage over them, and the individual surrounding gravity fields to shield them from enemy black holes.

  When it happened, four hundred twenty Kobani ships, maneuvering in their deliberate “target gallery” formation, found themselves matched against a thousand Smashers and a thousand Guardians, which was clearly a risky proposition at close range. Nevertheless, Mirikami instantly expected the kill ratio to strongly favor the Federation. The Thandol were trying to use their history of thousands of years of sheer numbers being used to crush their opponents. Only there was no home planet to threaten today, to force an enemy to withdraw to preserve their homes and families. Seventy five percent of the Thandol navy was here, or enroute to Wendal, recalled by an Emperor so rattled by his own frailty, that his empire was less important than his personal survival.

  Now that D-bomb avoidance was removed from the combat equation, the five previously damaged Mark II’s quickly micro Jumped to rejoin the formation, to engage in up-close combat.

  Because the Federation’s strongest figurative “jab” was an unblockable small black hole formed by a gravity projector, the damaged Mark IIs shoul
d be deadly, even with just one projector. The undamaged ships had two such projectors, and if you weren’t shooting from long range, using two projectors to direct a single black hole in a non-linear trail that didn’t lead back to your ship, wasn’t needed. The Mark IIs and Scouts could each form two event horizons and send them faster than a missile could move, in separate straight lines at the closest enemy ships, followed by a micro Jump to safety.

  The Mark IIs also had hundreds of anti-ship missiles which could track Thandol ships, although the Scouts only carried four of them. A Scout’s two medium power lasers would be damaging against a lightly armored Guardian, but couldn’t penetrate deep into a Smasher. Their best use against the larger ships would be to disable a firing port for a plasma cannon or heavy laser. With Thandol ship’s weak stealth, any of the Kobani ships could do that accurately, and the Plasma cannons of Mark IIs were as powerful as their clanship cousins.

  Outnumbered nearly five to one, Mirikami still thought their evasiveness and gravity projectors gave them a strong combat edge. Then came a shocking revelation.

  Their first-choice weapons, projected black holes that could not be disabled by any beam or missile, nor blocked by any armor, weren’t hitting a single target. The Thandol weren’t micro Jumping away in advance, in fact they made far fewer evasive micro Jumps than Federation craft.

  The event horizons the Scouts and Marks formed simply vanished in a flash of gamma rays before punching through any enemy ship, including the presumably defenseless Guardians. It was fortunate that ingrained Kobani combat reflexes dictated continuous movement, and a micro Jump the moment the black hole was delivered, or was shockingly evaporated in this fight. This proved to be a smart survival tactic.

  The targeted ships, either Smashers or Guardians, promptly fired either plasma bolts or lasers along the linear backtrail of the deadly little objects, which their mass detectors had traced out for them, and somewhere in the background was a moving shadowy Federation target that was ill defined for hitting specific weapons ports, but adequate to hit the ship. It wouldn’t take long for enemy AIs to start coordinating return fire, to send more energy beams through probable locations for the enemy warships. A Mark II would be able to withstand multiple such hits, but an unarmored Scout might not survive the first plasma bolt, or two heavy laser hits.

  To eliminate the linear backtrail, dual projector ships resumed using both to project a single black hole off to the side, and move it in a curving trajectory towards the target. Return fire came nowhere near the ship generating the event horizon, but more frustratingly, the event horizons still came nowhere near striking the intended targets.

  Thad Greeves was the one to notice that his midsized black holes, intended to puncture a Guardian, evaporated much closer to the target that did the larger ones sent at a Smasher. Against the far larger target, he was using a more massive object with a wider event horizon, to sweep through the enemy ship with a single killing pass. That event horizon evaporated considerably farther away from the target.

  He used the general link, so everyone would hear. “Tet, the larger the black hole, the farther way they vanish from the targets.”

  “Really? Let me ask Jake for an analysis. I haven’t hit a single target yet either. They appear to have found a counter for our best weapon. Everybody, use missiles and energy beams, and keep your butts moving and Jumping.”

  There was a surge of nine explosions from missile hits by Federation ships, because the Thandol stealth was so ineffective. Nevertheless, their laser defenses were picking off most of the incoming missiles. Guardians died in larger numbers, due to their lighter armor. They were not primary targets often, however, because they didn’t represent as powerful a weapons platform as did a Smasher.

  Jake’s analysis came quickly. “Sir, there appears to be strong gravity fields close around each Thandol vessel. Their presence is reveled not only by the range at which larger event horizons lose tachyon containment of the projected Trap fields, but by analysis of curving anti-missile tracks when the enemy launches at us, or as ours drive inbound from our ships. There is also a small but negligible refraction of laser and plasma bolts.”

  Mirikami was dismayed. He’d apparently let his force get enveloped by the enemy without retaining the advantage he’d assumed they held. “So, we can’t hit them because the Trap fields holding the high-energy tachyons lose confinement?”

  “Yes, Sir. For the size of event horizons which you have been using.”

  Mirikami caught the inference immediately. “What radius of a black hole would the Traps be able to maintain tachyon containment, and still reach the enemy ships?”

  “Perhaps half the size of the one foot diameter you have been using on Guardians. That would be the size of your hand, or smaller. This is an estimate for the larger projectors on a Mark II class ship. Those of a Scout simply do not have the power to maintain the containment all the way to the target.”

  Instantly switching to the group link, Mirikami modified their mode of attack. “All Mark II’s reduce the generated black hole radius to six inches or less. The enemy has placed planetary mass gravity wells around themselves, to disrupt our projected Trap fields. Jake says only the Mark IIs have projector power to hold tachyon containment all the way to the target.

  “I want three Scouts to test this computation anyway. That’s Marciano, Stillwell, and Keetch. The rest of you Scouts switch to gravity rods now, and terminate steering when the guidance black hole evaporates and do a micro Jump. The rod will keep right on going. Make certain Your AIs coordinate with all of ours, so we don’t pass in front of your rods track. It’s gotten crowded out here. Whatever we learn now, we’ll pass on to Mauss and Foxworthy. They arrive in about eight minutes.”

  In well under a minute, thirty-nine Mark IIs demonstrated the same number of Smashers could be destroyed or disabled by being turned into cosmic Swiss cheese. Two Mark IIs, with single gravity projectors and only a linear delivery of their five-inch event horizons possible, demonstrated that staying behind the backtrail of their black holes made them ideal targets for massed Thandol plasma bolt and laser fire. They were blown apart in under thirty seconds of that barrage.

  It was doubly tragic for one Mark II. The heroes of the Magic, and the two women of the Scout crew they’d rescued were gone in a final act of heroism.

  In an understated order, Mirikami told the remaining three damaged Mark IIs with single gravity projectors, to concentrate on attacking isolated Guardians, and do it at close range to decrease the length of the back trail. That could be done in a single pass of the black hole to destroy or disable the smaller vessels, and then execute a micro Jump.

  The three test Scouts confirmed that they could not deliver even one inch black holes to their targets, and had launched gravity rods. Even as that report was delivered, three hundred eighty-one, gravity launched dense metal rods fired by the other Scouts, tore through Smashers and Guardians at one quarter the velocity of light, spewing residue out the opposite sides. Ridiculously small brilliant spears of plasma coming out the small entry holes, with a larger cone of debris erupting from the opposite side of the smaller guardians.

  A few missed targets had turned away in time or micro Jumped, but in under two minutes of the initiation of the surprise Thandol attack, they had lost another four hundred nineteen warships, a disproportionate number of them being Smashers, because most of the Scout captains refused to shoot at the lesser threat Guardian targets. There were five hundred ninety-three Smashers remaining of the thousand sent to destroy the far smaller enemy formation, and only two of the Mark IIs and three Scouts had been taken out of the fight.

  The number of Smashers went down again in a matter of seconds, because Kobani don’t waste time, and the Mark II’s perforated additional Smashers, and Gravity rods were launched by the hundreds from Scouts.

  By the time Trindal recalled his remaining ships, mostly Guardians by then, to join the main body of the Thandol fleet, he knew the bulk of th
e enemy fleet’s arrival was imminent. He knew his forces still greatly outnumbered the ships about to arrive, and he didn’t think the enemy was coming to conquer and occupy Wendal.

  Regardless of the outcome of the defense of Wendal, which was only a single Thandol occupied planet of the several hundred in the empire, he knew as High Commander of the entire Empire, that he would not obey the mad Emperor’s order. Farlol had just ordered to come to Wendal, for a pointless sacrifice, the remaining six thousand ships of the Sector one and Sector two fleets, waiting on the borders of those security sectors. Those warships, and any that survived here, would be needed to constitute the backbone of a fleet that he would require for defending the Thandol inhabited worlds from their own Security forces, and from the Federation. The Security forces would likely revolt and go on the offensive as soon as the reduction in Thandol naval power became apparent.

  If the Thandol fleet remained double the size of individual Security force fleets, they would probably decide to fight one another over control of the worlds in what had been their security sectors, trying to establish smaller empires of their own. They would avoid fighting a stronger Thandol force, and the Thandol would then rebuild, and eventually take their empire back.

  There was a serious drawback to Trindal’s hurried plan. It could work, unless the Federation, and this claim of a separate Planetary Union of humans, decided to fight them for the pieces of the divided empire.

  Trindal, who would claim the throne for himself, would need as many loyal noble families as he could recruit. He had started organizing the evacuation of the noble families he wanted as his base, to go to whichever planet he established as his throne world. He would rebuild his fleets on the backs of the nearby subservient species, and when he next faced this berserker human species, he would make them his new security force after they were defeated. Egos of his magnitude had required over twenty-five thousand years to cultivate and perfect, and a minor setback like the loss of a vast empire couldn’t diminish his.