Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire

by Stephen W Bennett

  He also had remembered the deep depressions in the dirt of the landing area, from the support jacks of the human warships. He had asked for a search for those same shaped depressions in the grasslands, along the back track of those thirty missiles. He had ordered the Strangler to be prepared to launch a heavy volley of air to ground missiles if they were located, and to have their own defenses ready. Alas, there was nothing the detailed computer pattern search had found in the tall grasses to match that pattern of depressions.

  He ordered the Strangler to make an even lower and slower pass over that skeleton of a town, to increase the depth of radiation penetration. He wanted everyone dead at that site, like vermin trapped in their underground warrens.

  There proved to be an interesting byproduct from that decision. It helped him answer his most pressing question: Where were those ten damned enemy ships?

  With beam width narrowed, the jumble of radiation frequencies and intricate modulation patterns, which were used to induce currents in living nerves, was considerably more intense the closer the projector came to the target. Operators of the devices had noted an entertaining aspect of the radiation, which was effective over a wide range of living creatures. Applied to water, it triggered wild frenzies in aquatic lifeforms, causing spectacular frothy activity at the surface of the water, particularly with more conductive salt waters. The effect was slightly less in fresh water, but to a bored operator, like the operator today who had seen only a mere handful of writhing victims, any mass reaction was better than no reaction.

  The Ragnar operator swiveled the projector, and directed it down at the terrain the ship was about to traverse. They were going to cross a wide river, not far from the nearly empty looking town, which had been disappointingly devoid of the mass of victims he often beamed. He liked to watch them flip and flop around in waves, as he passed an invisible narrow beam over massed bodies. Today, the river at least would give him a visual image of the beam’s effects, of where it was pointed if tightly focused, observable by the fish and water animals it affected.

  Because the nerve effects lingered well after the focal point passed, activity at the water’s surface would last for a time. Besides, the town would show even less activity this time, because the surviving residents were reported to be hiding below ground. It would be no fun to watch at all when they reacted to his beam.

  Over water, Hagathon often tried to spell his name in the script of the Ragnar language. To see if he could finish it before the watery froth, a tracing of aquatic life in agony, would subside on the first character written before he finished the last character. It was more difficult to accomplish in less conductive fresh water. If he succeeded today, he would take a picture to present to the other operators, as evidence of his skill, precision, and speed of directing the tight beam.

  Using a pointed nail tip on one finger, he started tracing on the touch sensitive screen, which displayed the video image of the brown waters of the river. It was good his commander had been ordered to make a slow pass, giving Hagathon more time than on previous failed freshwater attempts. The lag time from beam passage to froth appearing, meant he had to concentrate on his fingernail and the screen’s surface to write legibly, and not on the image formed from froth and squirming life, which formed only after the beam had passed.

  He had just finished tracing a character in the middle of his name, vaguely aware of the background of foaming waters he’d already passed over, when he found he was unable to ignore a large bulge of water lifting at the center of the river. Multiple bulges of water, in fact. This ruined his name writing effort, but offered him the thrill of watching some large unknown animals reacting to the ray. He’d, on rare occasions, watched videos of giant whale-like animals leaping an unbelievable height from an ocean, twisting in the air as creatures of that mass would be unable to do if they were not in great pain. He was about to see more than one, as he realized there were six rising water mounds on his screen, and one more was forming off the edge of his screen, suggesting there were even more of them. This could be spectacular. He was recording of course.

  Instead of massive snouts appearing as the water mounds thinned and parted at the top, the water cascaded down to the sides revealing a wide hole into the depths of the brown river water, with the hole growing wider at the surface. All of the holes in the river that he could see were widening. No animals this large, or that closely packed, should be able to feed in a mere river, and they were apparently translucent, like giant jellyfish.

  Then suddenly, identifiable spots appeared above the holes, and he instantly knew that translucent was the wrong word, as was jellyfish. These non-creatures were invisible, as in stealthed, and recognizing opened weapons ports, he knew he was about to die.

  Dozens of ravening high power lasers tore into the armored belly of the Strangler passing overhead, accompanied by multiple star hot heavy plasma bolts, which at this close range punched right through the armor, making openings that the promptly redirected lasers exploited, to blast into the interior of the ship.

  He knew he only had moments to live, but he used his skill as a beam writer to punctuate his final work.

  Quickly dragging his nail tip, he directed the beam to the nearest hole in the water, tightened the focus more, and aimed the energy through an open weapons port of one plasma cannon, close to where he assumed the Bridge might be located. He didn’t live to see the results of his effort, when a laser found and cut the fuel line for the forward main reaction thruster. There was a jarring explosion and sudden attitude change as the nose dropped. Then the leading rounded tip of the flattened pyramid buried itself deep into the riverbank after a terrifying and stomach turning half a mile drop, with the mass of the ship crumpling in behind the tip. The ship abruptly erupted in a massive explosion as the main fusion generator’s magnetic containment field failed; releasing a cauterizing amount of plasma to the wound delivered to the planet.

  ****

  “Falgrat!” Thond’s obscenity was less shocking than the loss of that Strangler, when the ten missing human warship rose out of the river, almost directly below the doomed ship.

  Commander Vastol had scans active, watching for missiles that might be launched at them from their three sides, with his own anti-missiles already sitting in launch tubes, defensive lasers and plasma cannons armed. Except, they expected that if an attack came, it would come from somewhere in the grasslands, probably when they reached the unfinished town they were again approaching.

  Of the ten human warships, nine of them continued to accelerate upward at a rate that burned off the stealth coating on the noses of the ships, as they screamed through the atmosphere at accelerations that Force Commander Thond believed should have killed their crews. This was accompanied by a simultaneous renewal of maximum effort attacks by every surviving human ship in orbit, and most of them happened to be near his flagship, because he was poised above the location where the Strangler had just died, watching. His ship took multiple penetrating hits from plasma bolts and searing burns from laser cannons, with nearly every hit taking out one of his ships weapons, or welding a port cover closed. He could see the weapon’s director status panel, with winks of lights changing colors as they lost their guns in one full sector, the one at the base of the Smasher, which could bear on the ships climbing from the planet. And, not so coincidentally, those same lost guns could no longer bear on the ships that had performed White Outs, which were doing the shooting from below them at extreme close range.

  He noted that they were focusing fire on all of the Smashers in this limited area, firing from below. They were protecting their comrades from the most potent long rage threats, represented by the better firing platforms of the Thandol ship design. Only with horror, he realized one of them was the ship bearing the Emperor’s Observer, and named the Empire’s Demand. He couldn’t release the Observer’s protective fifty Ravagers to dive down at the vulnerable nine human ships rising towards them, without risking the one ship of the fleet that
he couldn’t risk.

  One human ship had come in so close to that vital Smasher, on a micro-Jump, that proximity collision alarms had sounded, triggering internal airtight door to shut, and weapons ports to close, to preserve hull integrity and slow loss of atmosphere if bulkheads ruptured.

  The Emperor’s Observer was in a ship that now was not fighting back against its closest threat, and the Ravagers couldn’t blow the human ship apart with missiles without risking what they were there to protect. How did these falgrat’s from some alien hell know that this particular ship was so vital? That the Thandol built in those foolish proximity systems on all of their ships that shut weapon ports.

  He smacked his chest in fury as it struck him. Of course, fifty Ravagers were somewhere near it at all times. He’d though he’d made it less obvious, by holding most of them well out away from it, and shifting their positions constantly. The enemy had clearly noticed anyway. He was on the verge of ordering that ship’s commander to execute a dangerous Jump while another ship was so close, when the enemy solved the problem for him. That ship, and all of the other human ships Jumped instead.

  He nearly strangled on his rage and fear, when he instantly realized that this enemy ship did not have the technology to prevent gamma ray bursts, and thus did not have the thousands of small Trap antennas embedded in its hull, which the Thandol used to create a nearly form fitting event horizon. That enemy had just departed, taking with it a deep circular cut out of the center of the bottom of the Empire’s Demand, and it was now spewing atmosphere and bodies from opened compartments that had just been sheared open to space. He only prayed that the Observer, who normally would sit on the centrally located Bridge, didn’t go with them.

  He called the ship’s commander rather than the Observer, to test the waters first.

  “Commander Trafta, what do you need?”

  “A new Ragnar built ship would be nice, Force Commander.”

  Thond was instantly relieved, to a limited extent. There was no way Trafta would have been so light in his response if anything had happened to the Observer. “Are you able to navigate? Not jump of course.”

  “We actually still have a tachyon in our upper Trap. We can move, but without triple redundancy. The Emperor’s Observer is isolated behind an airtight door for now, but I doubt he knows that. He was having a snack in the Bridge dining hall, because the battle was growing tedious for him. From my aides with him, he seems unaware of what happened. If we assign him another Smasher, and can get him transferred to it carefully, he won’t know.

  He gets lost on this one, and always forgets its name. Send another Smasher to dock with us and we can extricate him by opening corridors to an airlock. This Court politician has never been on a warship, other than a Crusher with the Emperor’s Court of course.”

  “If so, and you exchange the two crews, he may not notice.”

  “Just the Bridge crew and his personal cabin attendants. All Ragnar look alike to him. We lost an estimated fifteen crew when those stinking human-droppings Jumped.” Trafta had apparently conjured up a new swear word. Thond liked the sound.

  “I’ll select the ship.”

  Now with his career saved, not to mention his life, he turned to his Force Lieutenant, who he’d hand signaled quietly to take over the ship’s operation while he checked on the Observer. He realized that he didn’t even know the Thandol’s full name. It would end with Farlol of course. He was related to the Emperor he supposed. He didn't notice a resemblance, but all Thandol looked alike to him anyway.

  “Grudfad, I’m sure you heard that we are switching the Observer to another ship. What happened while I was saving our Annexation mission from being given to the Finth?” Their rivals had argued hard for getting the Ragnar’s present mission.

  “We killed one of the climbing human ships before they were high enough to Jump. I think they had their ships set on automatic and launched empty, or else they were already dead. Our medical division doesn’t think the human physiology can stand what we can tolerate for acceleration. Those ships climbed at a rate that burned off their stealth coating, and would have crushed their internal organs. They cleared atmosphere far too quickly to have anyone aboard still alive. They lost another of the ten, apparently by some action by the Strangler, right at the start. We didn’t see them do anything to it, but one of their ships simply stopped rising and fell back into the stream on its side.”

  “Did they lose any others?”

  “No. Only…,” he hesitated.

  “What?”

  “We lost three more Ravagers, two Smashers, and all four of the Stranglers.”

  “Falgrat sucking human-droppings!” The new swear word helped.

  He had lost twenty-one warships, to eleven Federation craft, but only eight of theirs were even warships.

  “Where are they now?”

  “They all Jumped the same instant as those ships lifting from the planet. We have not received their gamma rays yet, so they may have left the system.”

  “I would not gamble on that, and risk landing our troops to destroy their pitiful little colony towns. We killed many of their civilians. They may give up this world for colonization. We have to find their more populated worlds, and bring a truly large fleet with us, and plan to stay. Then we will see how well they fight.”

  The Lieutenant thought the enemy had done well already. They had fought their way out of an ambush for certain, but didn’t say that. “They coordinate extremely well and navigate precisely, Force Commander. Every one of their ships Jumped almost suicidally close to our Smashers on that last action, and all at the same instant. Very much like the Krall are said to do, or rather were said to do. These humans are very dangerous in a fight. They were outnumbered ten to one and we lost ships two to one.”

  “Worse.” Thond admitted reluctantly. “Closer to three to one for ships in their favor. The crab ship and the two unarmed freighters were never threats and had no defenses.”

  He thought of ways to make the best of this battle.

  “If we get close up pictures of the dead bodies, and bombard their other more built up settlements, we can make it appear the damage here was great. The Emperor’s Observer wasn’t very observant.”

  Whatever else they intended to do at Zanzibar Redoux, a planet who’s name they still didn’t know, was deferred to a later, greater invasion in the future. The commander of the sensor division linked to them both, via their embedded com systems.

  “Force Commander, forgive the interruption, I have urgent tachyon monitor information of possible enemy reinforcements to report.”

  “How far away, and how many?”

  “These are all in third level travel, and detected in four sizable groups from four directions. The groups are so tightly bunched we cannot separate them into individual ships. Although, the mass of each group is significantly less than our combined mass. There are four of those equal masses. If they consist of more of the same type ships we fought here today, their numbers will nearly equal ours.”

  “I asked also for distance, or arrival time, if you can deduce that.”

  “Their times will be somewhat staggered. Two groups are closer. If they are the size of those we fought today, about the size of Ravagers, they are fast, and will be here in a tenth rotation. The other two groups are less than another tenth rotation behind.

  That time was based on Ragnar time units, but it was less than the length of time of the battle they had just fought. Thond was in no position to engage that many fresh enemy ships at this time. He needed to analyze this fight, and learn how to make the Stranglers more survivable. The Debilitater’s had proven effective on humans, but not if you lost the ships that carried them.

  “Force Lieutenant, recall all of our ships. If any others are like the damaged Smasher, they will need to be towed back for repair. Prepare to Jump to the Empire ship repair yard at Meglor system. Were there any survivors of the ships lost on the planet?” He knew that any in space would already have be
en retrieved.

  “No Force Commander, those ships were lost at altitudes too high, and no escape pods were detected.”

  “If there are any intact ship sections on the planet or in orbit, I want them obliterated with missiles. Try not to leave any equipment the enemy can study for information about us. I wish I could recover the ship of theirs that fell into the river.”

  In an hour, the Ragnar fleet was gone.

  No sooner than the enemy fleet Jumped, a stealthed Kobani ship uncloaked, and informed the other ships. Immediately, the forty-one remaining ships did White Outs from their ghosting positions in Tachyon Space to join them.

  Gundarfem, who had been in Comtap link with the inbound four hundred ships, now second-guessed her decision to have appeared to flee the system.

  “We hurt them, and killed those damn ships with the super Jazzers. When I had us pretend to turn tail and run, I wanted them to lick their wounds and still be here when our fresh help arrived. I wanted the bastards really hurt, but those of us in orbit were out of missiles, and couldn’t do that safely. I know you eight ships that made it off planet had half of your original loads left, but by the time we could have transferred them in space to the rest of us, the cavalry would be here anyway. Trevor, none of your eight ships are fit to go into combat, not with your stealth gone. That was our biggest advantage over them today. Aside from our speed and dogfight skills.”

  Trevor said, “We exposed ourselves to stop that second pass over New Mombasa, but I want to go down now and recover our people, if they survived, and see if we have anyone alive in the Dauntless. I don't know why they fell back into the river. Their Comtaps still don’t respond to us. They may not be dead, however. We think most of the colonists in the culverts are alive, since they have a few com sets, but they’re isolated from different groups in the storm drains that aren’t connected. They won’t go above ground until they know the empire isn’t coming back.”