Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (75 page)

Except there were two curious things, even unusual, about the sensor detections of the tachyon trace for this Crusher. He wanted to report it, but if the matter was considered trivial or none of the civil authority’s business, he’d not be promoted to Sensor Specialist second class anytime soon.

This was Filpap’s sole task in the cumbersome civil heirarchy of government. Monitoring movements of the subservient species shipping traffic. A dull occupation, but necessary if the Empire was to regulate commerce, and extract every Imperial Sovereign in taxes from those that engaged in trade in the realm. The peasant races were notorious tax cheaters when they did business among themselves.

This was the only monitor station based on a Crusher, because the High Command wanted the Emperor’s personal transportation to have instant access to what the peasantry shipping was up to around him when he traveled. The Emperor’s ship sudden appearance in a visited system often stirred frantic transportation activity in the entire region. It was compared to activating the lights in a peasant home, and then watching as vermin scrambled to hide.

This particular Crusher’s trail had initiated only a hundred forty eight light years away. At third level velocity, it was nearly on the doorstep when it started moving towards Wendal. That led him to wonder why the giant ship had moved to that point so slowly, thus escaping his notice. Why had it stopped there? Crushers were in too high a demand to let one sit still like that, and they were constantly used to display the reach of the Emperor’s power in his widespread empire.

This one wasn’t listed in the schedule of returning ships, which always triggered the preparations for the rush of activity expected on arrival. Just the change of crews required a flurry of smaller transports to meet the ship, and a reassignment to visit a string of other worlds of subservient species that were deemed to need a reminder of why they should remain loyal subjects. The unannounced visits awed and intimidated the unarmed peasant species.

This unscheduled Crusher return suggested, to Filpap anyway, that this ship had been sent to the new region the Empire intended to annex. Except its back trail didn’t point in that direction, or to any star system. In a short time, it would become the third Crusher orbiting Wendal. The next ship to deploy, The Empire’s Tentacles, was not expected to leave for two days. The Emperor’s Pride, where the Sensor Specialist was proud to serve in such a unique monitor station, orbited Wendal most of the time, unless the Emperor had official travel to conduct. Such as to participate in some political event like a high status wedding, notable birth, or important funeral within an allied noble family, where he would demonstrate his solidarity with that family.

Filpap didn’t question that it was actually a Crusher, since no other ship in the empire would generate the same wide parallel tachyon trails, from the rounded corners of the huge ships. Enclosed within their hull conforming event horizon, they pushed low energy tachyons out of their way. This captain was a particular stickler for the perfect form of his trail. The leading tip of the tetrahedron was exactly centered in the face formed by the other three corners as it flew towards Wendal. The central cone of spreading tachyons was more pronounced than usual, perhaps because the alignment of the front tip was so precisely centered. Most Crusher captains were unconcerned about ship orientation, since it didn’t matter in the slightest to their speed of travel through Tachyon Space, and it took time they normally didn’t wish to waste by aligning the massive ships so precisely.

In the final analysis, he didn’t call his perpetually irritated Lord Monitor. His supervisor’s concerns were always focused on travel detected in the second level, where he wanted to catch trading violations by the local species near Wendal. They seem to think their privileged positions, near the current Emperor’s throne world, granted them some leeway from regulations and taxes. It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had been call. It’s unlikely in the extreme that Blitforn, a civil government functionary on a military craft, would have had the intestinal fortitude to call an alert to the Bridge watch stander. Let alone notify the off duty Captain at night, or bypass them both to notify the Weapons Control Center that an unscheduled Crusher was headed to Wendal, where all of them received servicing.

The Weapons Center would have been the only call that might have initiated defensive measures soon enough to matter. The Emperor’s Pride was in a state of low-level alert, sitting in a parking orbit of the throne world, in the heart of the empire. In essence, a complete absence of alert.

The Decoherence bomb launchers, even if online, would not have been able to target the small maneuvering target that appeared at the White Out coordinates. Instant-on lasers, masers, infrared beams, or intense microwaves would have had time to hit the target, but not the slower to activate powerful particle beam plasma cannons. It wasn’t there that long.

At the center of the four corners of the presumed arriving Crusher, which didn’t make an exit into Normal Space, a smaller massed ship apparently triggered gamma rays in a White Out. However, the ship was never visible. A smaller object it left behind was clearly detected when the other ship promptly reentered a Jump Hole. The apparent Crusher then appeared to streak away in the direction from which it came. The Sensor Specialist quickly established the mind enhancer link to his boss, using an urgent access level that should awaken him, or interrupt any other link he might be engaged with at the time.

“What is it…, Specialist?” Blitforn, just wakened, clearly couldn’t even think of the name of the low-level sensor specialist he’d put on duty for this evening.

“My Lord, an unscheduled Crusher just arrived, but instead of conducting a normal exit in a standard parking orbit, there was a sudden gamma ray White Out burst of a smaller ship, appearing too close to the surface and well into the prohibited level above the palace. It then quickly reentered a Jump Hole, and according to trail traces, the Crusher is moving back along its original approach path.”

Blitforn was fully awake now, and feared some sort of internal revolt against the throne. “I’ll call Weapons Control, while you start a full sensor scan near the White Out, make it available ship wide. The Palace defenses will be active because of the gamma rays.”

His boss abruptly disconnected to make his link to Weapons.

Filpap started a sensor scan of the White Out region, barely two thousand miles away, and quickly detected a moving object that was changing direction and velocity in a random manner. The object was a fraction of the ship’s size the energy of the gamma rays suggest had emerged. If that was a missile set to attack the Palace, it didn’t display a linear track down towards that or towards any other target. Instead, it appeared to be evading an attack, although none had been initiated on the object. Not yet, anyway.

His computer flagged a signal coming from the object that his sensors had revealed. The readout indicated a frequency reserved for military communications. He tapped the icon with a tentacle, and the computer promptly fed the broadcast to his mind enhancer. It was a spoken message in Thandol. From the mode of grammar used, it was a female speaking!

What manner of foolishness was this, using an official frequency, in a prohibited area over the Palace, broadcasting from an unauthorized object? This thing soon would be a patch of ionized vapor, when the Weapons Control Center saw the sensor feed he had made available. 

Then he listened to the message, apparently intercepted near the end of the transmission. It quickly started again, the words saying it was repetition number four. The computer would have the first three iterations recorded, but if this were a formal delivery, as the number implied, all three of the previous messages would be the same except for the number at the start of each. This might be the last transmission, so he wanted to hear what was said now, without waiting for a playback, despite his outrage at the insulting manner of delivery.

This was being broadcast as a strong Omni-directional signal, so it was being received down on the planet. Just the thought of the offensive modulation reaching and penetrating the Emperor’s palace was enough to make him tremble in anger. He wouldn’t let his mind even think about the invisible, defiling radio energy reaching and touching the Emperor himself.

He also couldn’t believe the insufferable tone of the offensively delivered message, or the threat it implied.

“This is repetition four of this warning. The Thandol Empire must stay outside the boundaries of the Galactic Federation. We claim all of the stars formerly controlled by the Krall, including the volume the Olt’kitapi lost to them. Surviving members of any species that fled from the Krall plague are welcome to return to any world they once inhabited, to join us as equal members of our federation of species. We claim these stars by right of our conquest of the Krall. Today, we will exact a penalty from the Thandol Empire for sending a Crusher to attack and kill peaceful colonists. Be grateful we show you greater mercy than we showed to the Krall. You will not be warned again.”

Per Thandol protocol that should have been the end of the message, but the sender deviated from the formality of four identical messages, to add a uniquely human expression.

“Attention Thandol in the Crusher. Check if you can bend your trunks around to stroke your ass goodbye.”
Apparently, there was no Thandol equivalent of the word “kiss” for an accurate translation.

The Novae missile, its coordinates previously set, entered a small Jump Hole, and nearly simultaneously made its exit. Right in the heart of the Emperor’s Pride, where the Jump Drives, back up fusion generators, Bridge, and Weapons Control Center, were densely clustered for protection during space battles. It required nearly a second for the blast wave to travel the distance out to the corner extremities. The monitor station, being located in one tip, provided a third class Sensor Specialist a brief opportunity to realize his next promotion wasn’t coming.

Chapter 16: A Federation at War

It wasn’t easy for the military High Commander to face his Emperor. He had rushed to his Emperor’s aid the instant he learned of his distress that his personal ship had been destroyed within his direct gaze. Farlol had been awakened by the alarms and by his Imperial Palace guards, when a White Out occurred directly above his palace. His head of security was frantic to get him down to the shelters below the palace, but Farlol refused to go without having his customary morning snack.

He insisted on waddling out into his adjacent breakfast grazing garden, to personally select and pick the “perfect length” tender yellow shoots of golden sugar spears. He complained that he’d “fasted” all of five hours before his normal seven hours of sleep was interrupted two hours early. His security chief promised that fresh stalks would be cut and brought to him.

Imperial obstinacy took charge, as he said, “I would miss consuming the moist rich soil that clings to the roots, which help me with my difficult digestion problems.”

It seemed his Imperial dung was persistently and overly dry. Apparently, to the point that his personal sense of safety was secondary to the state of his poop.

He soon was using booth trunks to pull shoots, and alternated shoving moist and freshly watered shoots into his forward jutting V shaped lips, head tilted back slightly to catch the fragments of dark loamy soil clinging to the roots, which he desired for aiding his digestion. His eyes happened to be gazing up at the passing triangle “star” of his personal Crusher in its orbit, when suddenly it flared into blinding incandescence.

Sometime during the subsequent trumpeting and bugling cries that he and his security team made, amid the pounding of hurried footpads, the Imperial Bowels overcame whatever reluctance had previously hindered their proper functioning. He left a lumpy trail of steaming royal waste along his path, as he was rushed blindly past his sleeping and mating stands, and into a heavy-duty elevator. He and his surrounding security guards plummeted down into the armored depths of the palace. When he slipped on some additional mess as he exited, his eyes now recovered from the brief glare blindness, he demanded to know who had soiled his elevator and his Imperial feet.

At a glance, and the smallest of tendril tip gestures from the head of security, the lowest ranking member of the Palace Guard present, took a “bullet” for his sovereign and his Empire, and accepted the poop blame. He’d be removed from the prestigious security team, of course, but there was a fund maintained that provided compensation for such unfortunate victims of fickle Imperial volatility.

When the High Commander first rushed into the Emperor’s sleeping quarters, he saw the odorous trail leading to the elevator, and quickly located Farlol in a subterranean royal cleaning station, where warm water and pleasantly scented disinfectants had washed away the soiled remains on his feet and posterior.

The High Commander offered some assurances. “Your Imperial Highness, we will be able to salvage the Empire’s Tentacles which was damaged by debris, but that Crusher will be out of service for a minimum of two orbits. If you intend to retain a Crusher here for personal transport, you will have only six to use for internal displays of your power, or for deployment to combat Federation ships and worlds in our new territory. We have no defense against the destructive weapon they used once it is launched, any more than there is a defense against our delivery system for the Decoherence bombs. Both type warheads are delivered via travel through Tachyon Space, and at such a short range, the arrival is effectively instantaneous.”

“How did they approach so close to Wendal? Were monitors not watching?”

The soft, calm questions didn’t fool Trindal. There was risk here today, and he answered carefully.

“They traveled at untraceable level one speed for part of the distance covered. We will examine monitor records along the route they must have followed. They surely used the second and third levels for greater speed for part of their journey. At the second level, they could easily blend in with the common shipping traffic of our subservient species. Nevertheless, we may be able to find tracks that do not connect between pairs of inhabited planets within the empire, as local shipping would do.