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The New Lance fleet blasted into Normal Space a thousand miles from K1 with a great burst of gamma rays, and a preceding advance wave in Tachyon Space arriving just fourteen seconds ahead of them. Only nine of the paltry sixteen Graka clan ships protecting the orbital platforms were in a position to respond. They had each launched eight Worms apiece as the human fleet emerged. Only four of the Clanships were even within a few thousand miles of the edge of the human fleet, and just one was at the closest point possible, of one thousand one hundred miles.
The first of three heavy missile salvos started launching as the fleet was still emerging, spreading the launch out over a few second spread, followed in five seconds by the second launch, then the third in another five seconds. The fleet, as a single unit, turned twenty-three degrees port as soon as the last missile of the third launch cleared the globe, and they simultaneously applied a reverse thrust to slow their approach to the planet by point five miles per second. The fleet’s plasma beams flashed out, star heat directed towards the orbital platforms. Heavy lasers targeted the Worms, and the nine Clanships that had launched them.
The Clanships were primarily engaged in defensive fire to try to protect the platforms, which were finally ready to engage their massive plasma weapons. The Clanships had to jink back and forth to keep the impinging hundreds of lasers from staying focused long enough to damage their own plasma and laser firing ports. The nine Clanships were heavily out gunned, both by the number, and by quality of the heaviest attacking ships. However, their first duty was to keep the platforms alive and firing back as long as possible. Then they would defend themselves in order to fulfill their second role.
Several dozen of the inbound heavy missiles were exploded or had their steering damaged, but it was obvious most were going to get through. The closest Clanships had to switch from platform defense to self-defense, if only to survive to fend off the second and third salvos five seconds behind each other.
The nine platforms exposed to the fleet pulsed out their ravening near-light speed return beams, as their own thick hulls received blasts, with inches of armor vaporizing in foot wide traces. The targeting of individual human fleet elements was calculated by all nine defensive platforms, coordinating which targets each would strike, and how many beams per target. One hundred eighty beams, twenty per platform, fired together on the selected human ships. Except the human ships had altered course and speed several seconds before the beams were generated. The enemy beams, tens of times more powerful than even the dreadnaughts carried, blasted through the locations the human ships had occupied.
The majority of targets had been the destroyers and heavy cruisers, simply as the closer targets along the surface of the globe. They missed all of the designated targets, due to the slow reacting Malveran computers. However, as always the case in war, random bad luck was in play.
The surface area of the fleet’s globular formation was just over five thousand square miles, and was forty miles in diameter. With nearly sixty square miles of the globe surface to protect by each of the eighty-eight destroyers, the smaller warships had ample fire overlap to engage enemy ships even if a member of the screen were lost. The destroyers on the side of the globe nearest the platforms were unscathed because of the course change. Not so for one unlucky destroyer, and a battlecruiser, on the far side of the fleet. They happened to change to courses that intersected the path of two of the one hundred eighty beams.
Destroyer DS-42 simply blasted into two sections as the three-foot diameter beam vaporized its way through the slender hull seventy feet behind the control room, the motion of the ship and force of vaporizing material tearing the remaining three hundred feet of the aft section away from the front of the ship.
The battlecruiser, a much tougher ship, was hit a grazing blow, but it suffered a hull breach amidships, and lost a plasma port and adjacent heavy laser pod. This was not a significant reduction in firepower, and the breached compartments were automatically sealed.
However, the ease with which the beams generated that level of damage shocked Mauss, and made it clear that keeping the platforms off target was vital. “Josie, shorten the time between random course changes for the fleet.”
“Yes Mam. That will reduce the number of missile salvos per course change for optimum fire rates.”
“I understand. Inform the other Captains of this change.”
You can’t fire from a dead ship, Mauss thought, but didn’t say aloud.
The Admiral was pleased to see escape pods were coming from the command section of the destroyer, and that the aft section retained thruster propulsion. The Drive Room obviously had taken flight control. The aft section could collect the escape pods, but it wouldn’t be able to stay with the formation without a Normal Space drive. Some of the Trap emitters were gone.
The fleet’s next salvo, fifteen hundred missiles entirely destined for selected ground targets, executed its fourth launch. Then the fleet jointly made another, earlier than originally scheduled turn and speed change, before making the next launch, thus avoiding predictability.
The initial missile salvo was about to reach the closest platform and guardian Clanship, with fourteen missiles closing with each of them. The Clanship blasted one missile out of existence, then it entered stealth mode. The AI’s in two missiles immediately shifted trajectories to try to estimate where the Clanship may have gone next, but all of the remaining missiles chose the platform as their target.
The platform blazed out twenty more plasma beams towards the human fleet, ignoring the closer more dangerous targets simply because its system couldn’t adjust fast enough. Its last act of defiance was to try to launch missiles from the now open shield doors. The human analysts had suspected these were heavy-duty laser batteries, but they were launch tubes for what the Krall called the “Little Eaters.” Ten of the Eaters were moving up their tubes when multiple impacts of the human missiles struck the platform. The blasts rotated the structure so that the accelerating missiles struck the sides of the launch tubes and self-destructed.
Mauss, seeing the first platform spread apart in a spray of bright flashes and debris, knew now that those particular weapons were not impregnable. Its final blast of plasma beams had not struck any ship, thanks to the fleet’s second shift. The first Clanship to enter stealth mode was matched by others going stealth, as missiles and beams sought them out.
However, the Krall ships didn’t appear able to fire when cloaked, perhaps they were blind when invisible. The beneficial effect was that the missiles targeted on them continued safely on towards the planet or the platforms. Clanships were now appearing on radar, still deep in atmosphere, but rising. They would be targets for those missiles if they passed close enough, otherwise domes and manufacturing sites were alternate targets.
The fleet shifted course again, as other platforms fired plasma beams that missed. They not only were slow to retarget, the cycle time between pulses was slow, perhaps because of the tremendous energy required to heat and focus the plasma for each powerful burst. The human ships fired less powerful pulses, but fired many more to accumulate more damage on the platforms. As a result, the fleet was taking relatively little damage from the heavy plasma, giving better than they received.
The next missile launches targeted surface targets and rising Clanships.
Captain Codry Linked into Mauss. “Mam, we’ve detected launches from the other eight platforms, just ahead of our missile impacts.”
“Are those more Worms?” Only two Worms had survived to reach any ship, a destroyer and a battlecruiser. Reactive armor destroyed both from the sides, as their intangible quantum beams bored into the armored magnetic decoy pods on the hulls of the two ships. The fleet picked off most Worms using improved close range point defense systems. In addition, the constant shifting of the fleet wasted much of the limited thruster fuel of those Worms that penetrated the defensive globe.
“Josie says the new missiles are larger than Worms, and look exa
ctly like a single ship, and have Normal Space drives as well as thrusters. Our tracking, and where their own radars appear to focus, indicates they are seeking the dreadnaughts and the battleships. They shifted course just after we did, still aimed at the center of our formation.”
Mauss issued a fleet response order for the new threats. “Josie, have the fleet heavily target the new missiles launched from the platforms, use both missiles and beams, please. We don’t want them to get close.”
These were something newer than just a single ship, and obviously powerful and dangerous if only because they came looking for the strongest ships in the fleet.
Speaking of dangerous and powerful, what was happening with the Eight balls? Mauss selected the weapons and targeting summary display, and looked at the results of the multiple missile hits and plasma strikes on ten of the dense targets that were in orbits still on this side of the planet.
“Josie, I don’t see an indication of damage or destruction of any of the Eight Balls we hit.”
“There is no indication they were damaged Mam. Other than minor orbital deflections from missile hits, they all appear just as they did when we arrived. I have a close up image from a destroyer nearest the one passing below our formation now. Do you wish to see that?”
“Yes. Give me full magnification, main screen.”
The image of the black ball half-filled the screen, with the planet and cloud cover passing below the object as the camera followed. Suddenly the image was lost as the fleet executed another course and speed shift, but returned quickly under AI control of the destroyer’s camera.
“Josie, can you clean up the image, to remove the distracting background of the planet?”
Even before the AI answered, the Eight Ball appeared on screen, gleaming from reflected but distorted sun and starlight, framed against a pale artificial background that provided excellent contrast. This was a better view than seen from the previous more distant reconnaissance drone pictures. The ball looked perfect, no scars or even blemishes.
“Josie, the weapons report says we hit this particular ball with six missiles, and dozens of plasma and laser strikes. Am I seeing the correct ball on screen?” It looked pristine.
“Yes Mam. All of the other visible balls appear undamaged as well. One anomaly was a debris field surrounding, and expanding from a ball that has since passed around the limb of the planet. The ball appeared unmarked.”
“What sort of debris field?”
“Mam, it was consistent with the remains of a Clanship. The replay of the destruction indicates a Clanship was probably in stealth mode before hit by accident, and apparently was next to the ball. This was an apparent collateral destruction event.”
Shit! Mauss cursed to herself. That’s where they went!
“Josie, have the destroyers concentrate their laser and plasma beams on the Eight Balls and the areas close around them. The stealth Clanships are docking with the balls to transfer a pilot. Pass that information to the entire fleet to watch for movement of those objects.”
That better explained the lack of firing from the orbiting stealthed Clanships. They didn’t want to draw attention to their approach to the manually controlled Eight Balls. Mauss had no idea how the Krall would use them, but there were sixteen of them that she didn’t want to see in action.
While she was preoccupied with the Eight Balls, two more orbital platforms were totally destroyed, and three so damaged that they were slowly tumbling in orbit, and firing sporadically only as plasma ports came to bear on the fleet. Another fortuitous hit, from a Krall perspective of course, was a plasma beam strike on the bow of a battlecruiser.
That hit had killed the entire five-person Bridge crew, forcing operational control to shift to the backup battle center near the Drive Room. Other than a delay in matching the next fleet course shift, the Golem was effectively operational. The deeply buried and protected AI automatically repositioned the ship into its proper formation slot, and returned decision control to the officers in the new command center.
Mauss was more than satisfied with battle results thus far. They had lost only one destroyer and suffered damage to four ships, none disabling, the Golem being the most serious but still in the fight. In contrast, there was wreckage of six orbital defense platforms and perhaps a hundred fifty Clanships destroyed, most of the latter hit while still in atmosphere. They had entered stealth mode, but the disturbed air paths through atmosphere had revealed them to the missile AI systems.
Radar and visual sightings also indicated multiple hits on a large number of Krall habitat domes, manufacturing structures, and additional destroyed grounded Clanships. Many of the inbound missiles were knocked out by Clanships parked around the domes, being used as antimissile batteries. It looked as if the Krall ship losses from the previous attack on K1 had more than been made up in numbers. The computers and recon drones indicated there were perhaps six thousand Clanships at K1 now, each roughly equivalent to a heavy cruiser in size, yet mounting plasma cannons of a battleship’s power, although only four per ship.
Three quarters of those Krall craft were just leaving atmosphere, but they were not launching single ships as of yet. It was fortunate that a hundred Clanships had not been up and waiting for the fleet when they emerged this time. The fleet could have appeared with a swarm of Worms already inside the formation. This was clearly a lesson learned well last time. Jump the fleet from a closer point, thus preventing a warning to the Krall of the attack.
Josie reported another of the sixteen original orbiting Clanships destroyed. It too had apparently docked at an Eight Ball. Soon they would find out what those nearly indestructible dense little beasts could do. They each had likely received a pilot before Mauss realized where the stealthed Clanships had gone. Considering the durability of the balls, if the destroyed Clanships docked with them had not yet transferred a pilot, they still be could be boarded on the other side of the planet, out of the line of fire.
Two of those balls, which had been out of sight in their polar orbits, were just coming into sight over the planet’s poles, their orbits changed slightly. They were already under manual control.
Josie reminded her of the other new threat, the launches from the orbiting defense platforms. “The large missiles that flew out of the platform launch tubes appear to be modified single ships. They are attempting to use radar to track our larger ships, and they alter course towards them each time we maneuver the fleet. We are using jamming and decoy targets, plus mimicking the radar returns of a larger ship with smaller drones that fly parallel to our ships.”
“What of our defensive fire? How many have we knocked out?”
“We have not managed to destroy or damage any of the thirteen launched at us thus far Mam. They are not flying a complex evasion pattern as single ships usually use, and I do not think there is a Krall pilot aboard them. Their nose-on angle reduces the effectiveness of our multi-spectrum lasers and plasma beams on the ultra-reflective single ship hulls at the current range. We should do better when we have more side shots.”
“Even nose-on we ought to be able to hit and hurt them, particularly if they are not dogging and twisting as usual. What about missiles? There should have been extra from the last salvo to target some of them.”
“Mam, these single ships are essentially missiles themselves, and are taking no evasive action. The first three of our missiles to reach the nearest two of their missiles were apparently defective. They did not explode, and did not continue on to other targets.”
“Wait. Show me the playback of the one we missed twice.”
She watched as the glow of a main thruster of an AI controlled missile approached the target, and suddenly the glow vanished about a half mile in front of the target. A second vanishing exhaust glow followed on the heels of the first. The enemy missile continued through the points where the glows had vanished.
“Josie, query the missile AI’s to find out why the proximity programming did not detonate the warhead when the t
arget passed them, and report on the thruster failures.”
“Mam that is why I assumed missile malfunctions. The three AI’s do not respond on any frequencies, and radar does not detect them or debris.”
“Our tracking doesn’t see the missiles behind the targets, coasting?”
“No Mam. None of our radar feeds from any ship can see them or any debris.”
“What about plasma beam splatter and laser reflections off the noses of the enemy missiles? Any scatter detected from those or from radar?” The closest of several were now a couple of hundred miles out and closing fast. They needed to know how to hit them.
“Mam, our detection systems can only see them on radar or by laser ranging from ships in the formation that are off to the sides. There are no reflections from the front of the targets at all.”
Mauss was stumped. Why could they only be seen from the sides? “Give me a zoom view from any ship along the projected track of one of the missiles. I want to look straight down its nose.”
“Mam, there are no such views. These missiles are not visible from a nose angle, only from a side angle.”
“Humor me. Give me the head on camera view anyway, right now.” AI’s had little imagination.
The screen then showed a limb of the planet as an offset backdrop to the scene, filling part of the right side, but there was no missile or single ship seen. “Josie, where on the screen should the image be if I could see it, in relation to the planet?”
“Just to the left of the planet’s limb, about six degrees, in the very center of the screen.”
That was the black background of space. Except…, where were the stars that should have been visible there? Mauss saw other stars farther off to the left side, and above and below screen center. Then she observed as a distant star, visible above the dark center, suddenly seemed to shift and spread, as if about to form a ring, then was gone.
“Josie, do you know about gravitational lensing? Observe the stars near the center of the dark areas around each missile from its nose. Check to see if stars near that start to shift or form a ring.”
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 28