Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (78 page)

“Fine, so there might be about seventy thousand people that are now Kobani, and thirty thousand more have committed to the transformation. Golly gee, Tet, a hundred thousand of us versus a trillion of them just doesn’t seem like enough on our side, now does it? This fight isn’t shaping up to use us as the spear point for the PU’s vastly larger military force of Normals, this time. We’ll be on the front lines, alone.”

“Which means, Stewart, we’ll have to open up the Kobani mods to all comers in Human Space. They won’t have to become Federation residents, but they’ll have to come to us to receive the mods. Perhaps that will induce more of them to immigrate to the Federation, since they’ll become rebels back home. We can’t reveal the existence of the smaller Heavyside center, which is in Human Space and therefore within the PU’s purview to shut down. The military base there is going to wind down soon anyway, as they gradually eliminate the Krall that are still fighting on former invasion worlds. The PU won’t need to keep so many active duty spec ops, or so large an army for that matter. They don't even know about the Empire yet.

“I know we can get Nabarone to start a word-of-mouth recruiting effort in the army ranks. The Mind Tap mod will still be restricted to those we vet for mental stability, but that mod will be the hardest one to withhold, since everyone in Human Space knows about that ability. We can reserve it for actual immigrants to the Federation. It isn’t as if they can hide their intentions from us unless they block their thoughts. If they do that, they don’t get the mod.”

MacDougal wasn’t satisfied. “Why do you think the PU army will be fertile ground for accepting the mods? Those men and women came from all over Human Space, including Hub worlds. They’ll represent a cross section of old biases.”

“Stewart, do you remember who on Koban were the first and most eager to get the full set of mods after the Krall pulled out?”

“Of course. About 99.9% of everyone living in Prime City wanted them. About 20% of Hub City couples wanted just the clone mods, for having children. Only our kids, when they finally came along, wanted the full mods at age eighteen.”

“The reason Prime City went whole heartedly after the Koban mods, was that they were the people who had been confronted with the random chance of facing the Krall in combat for years, with about a 99.9% fatal outcome if they did. The Hub City residents were the newcomers, and they had never lived with that fear.”

“OK. I see your point. Those troops have faced that enemy, and many will recognize the value of our physical ability. Most of those soldiers will be motivated because they’ve seen the Kobani in action. Won’t their conversions have to wait for the war to wrap up, and their discharge?”

“The PU doesn’t
own
them, Stewart. They all are routinely rotated out of combat for Rest and Recreation, and receive two weeks of leave at least twice a year. We have the gene insertion process down to two weeks to install the mods and accelerate their start. Then they complete transformation outside of the med labs in another two weeks, with full muscle development and acclimatization lasting a couple more months, during which time they will have improved performance. We could equip migration ships with med labs and nanites aboard them, to use them as transformation wards. For example, we might send them to the Rim Worlds of K1 and Bollovstic, where the fighting continues.”

“How will you get the PU to accept us there?”

“Stewart, those two planets are not inside the Hub region, they were never New Colonies, and they don’t have a local government anymore. The PU has no legal basis for telling us we can’t go there. It’s cynical to say this, but they also don’t have a means to put pressure on the dead former residents to ask us to leave, so there’s no local outcry. I think we can reasonably claim that the residents would have wished to be Kobani rather than dead.

“Besides, we can also operate the same migration ships as free hospital wards for injured troops, keeping that service separate from the transformation wards. Those are big ships, so we can subdivide them. Poldark and New Dublin are New Colonies and part of the PU, so we would have to operate a free vacation trip for army candidates to visit those mobile wards. It’s less than an hour at T cube speeds to K1 or Bollovstic.”

Stewart nodded his acceptance, but was worried. “That might produce significant results in a few years Tet. What do we do in the meantime?”

“We try to keep the fighting with the Empire as much in space as we can. We have four thousand eight hundred ships, after returning some repaired clanships to service. If we maintain ten ships to stand watch near each of the ten new colonies, keep two thousand closer to home here, in case we’re discovered, we still have two thousand seven hundred ships to use as quick reaction forces, and for our shipping commitments with the Rim Worlds, and to guard the border closest to the Empire.”

“Mister President,” Sarge interjected. “I have a suggestion concerning manned border patrols.”

“You want to volunteer?” Thad suggested, with a grin. “I’m shocked.”

“No, I’ve figured out a way that no one needs to do that, wise guy.”

Before Thad could snap out a retort, Maggi reminded him of something, “Don’t dismiss him before you even hear his idea, lunk head. He saved your bacon at Novi Pazar Lodge on Poldark, when the Krall swarmed your butts.” Reynolds had rigged two ladybugs to detonate their own fusion bottles that time, pulling a mountainside down on the Krall.

“Continue, Sarge.” MacDougal was a longtime observer of the two friends perpetual heckling of one another.

More surprised at Maggi’s support than by the expected needling from Thad, Sarge restarted. “Right. Well, we have at least seven hundred or so navy patrol boats, which we kept after Medford forced us to evacuate our Comtap people from Human Space, after she tried to kidnap Tet. They usually just sit around on the tarmacs at the Xenos spaceport, or on Koban. They’re too small for cargo use, and all we do is use them like public taxis with Jump capability. Why not use them for border watching?”

MacDougal nodded. “I’ve borrowed them multiple times to travel between Haven and Koban, Sarge, but they’re awfully cramped for a long wait in a remote area like that. They can only do a T-squared Jump, so rotating observers and getting resupply is an issue at that distance. They’d take a month of travel one way just to go or return.”

“No Sir, I mean we should install a simple AI in the patrol boats, give them a Prada com set link to Instellarnet, and they can report back to us instantly. We have our own detectors for sensing the tachyon wake of a squadron of ships, similar to what the Krall used to trace human fleets. Can we place a detector like that on those boats, to watch for Empire ships entering our space? The Thandol watch their people’s movements, one ship at a time. If ours are sensitive enough, we should watch for Empire incursions with our own automated monitors.”

Maggi, looking at Thad’s abashed expression, taunted him, “A dumb ole sergeant once again makes a full bird Colonel look full bird brained.” Her mocking laughter didn’t convey the charm that her dimpled smile and blond curls suggested should flow from the small sprite she resembled. Instead, it emanated from the mind of a hundred fifteen-year-old imp, concealed within the young shell, who enjoyed embarrassing her close friends.

“I..., uh…,” Greeves stammered before Sarge helped slip Thad’s own foot into the open orifice.

“You want to volunteer? Why you certainly can. You might even set up the patrol boats, under my supervision of course. I wouldn't want the job screwed up by some clueless boob.”

As was often the case, Mirikami was force to move the discussion forward. “That idea will keep more combat capable ships free to intercept Empire incursions, or for raiding them if they make any new threats, or attack on us. Good suggestion Sarge.”

Next, Dillon was asked to report on the inquiries presented to the science teams, about refining the Novae missile weapon, and the possible vulnerability of their body armor to the Debilitater ray of the Thandol.

They also had asked if there was even a theoretical defense against the Decoherence warheads. The fifth force used by that weapon had a mode that was able to break down the quantum mechanical bonds of matter. Molecular atomic bonds broke, but not the strong nuclear bonds. The weapon was obviously related to the older narrow beam Q-rupter device invented by the Raspani. Both were cousins to the even more ancient Olt’kitapi Katusha, which embedded and detected the quantized and encrypted DNA keys of living creatures, which also had a narrow beam like a Katusha, and the characteristic short range.

The Thandol weapon’s warhead was delivered apparently in the same fashion as the Novae missiles, traveling through Tachyon Space, and rotating to Normal Space to emerge inside the target. There was a significant difference between the delivery methods, however.

The Novae became destructive simply because it was large and relatively massive, and emerged within the matter comprising the target. A powerful, uncontrolled explosive reaction occurred, which could release enough energy to approximate a nuclear reaction. The strength of the explosive effect was quite variable and unpredictable, and depended on how much of the arriving matter actually intersected with the target’s most dense matter. In the case of the Thandol Crusher ships, where their densest mass was concentrated at its geometric center, it was the ideal spot for a Novae strike. It had destroyed its target with a single hit. However, had the target been constructed more like a migration ship, nearly hollow and without any water stored internally, there would be a weaker intersect with dense matter, so a Novae would have considerably less destructive power. It would still be fatal to the target, but it would not produce the huge blast and collateral damage that the Crusher had caused to its brother ship in orbit.

The Thandol had a means of launching their smaller warheads via Jumps that originated from inside the Crusher, apparently hundreds of them per minute, either from multiple Jump drive launchers, which seemed the most plausible method, or via some improbable machinegun-like rapid-fire effect from a single launcher. The exact physical size of the warhead wasn’t known, but like the circuits of a Q-rupter, the beam generating chips didn’t have to be any larger than a human fingernail. Even intersects with matter in the target by a mass so small would produce a small explosion, and surely would destroy the warhead before it had a chance of generating the disintegration beam. There had been no indication of any intersects at Paradise, despite at least a thousand warheads used there.

This meant the Thandol had a targeting system that sought out low-density voids in the target, a ship or structure, where it would encounter only air. Yet the small warheads were somehow able to endure intersecting with atmosphere, which still contained a low density of matter. That seemed improbable luck for so many hits, since air had sufficient density that some of the warhead circuits should have failed.

Then Dillon presented some good news, and some bad news. “The PU navy had only converted an existing Jump capable shuttle sized drone to become the Novae. They used the drone’s AI for navigation control, but the physical size and the complex AI are a bit of overkill. If we use a simpler AI, and a smaller Jump drive, each of them placed inside a smaller dense spherical casing, and we would be able to launch them from inside the holds of our ships without opening our portals and giving up our stealth. They say they can put all of that inside a one-meter diameter steel sphere.

“By using multiple mass detectors, at nose, tail, and center of our ships, we can get a better triangulated fix on the densest mass concentrations within nearby enemy ships, and use those coordinates for our launches. Naturally, forming an internal event horizon inside the ship’s hold will take a foot or so of added volume with it for each launch, but by suspending the spheres with cables, that will prevent us sending anything along with them other than air and part of the support cable.”

He grinned. “Since they aren’t coming back, we don’t have to worry about shielding against the gamma rays as they White Out, which is the least of the worries for those at the receiving end.”

“Any timeline on production of the new Novae bomb?” Mirikami asked.

A headshake. “I caught flak from Max, Coldar, and Blue, when I asked that very question. They haven’t even designed the thing yet, and don’t want to be rushed.”

Mirikami waved a hand, “Don’t worry, I’ll speak to them. The Thandol may put pressure on us that we can’t control. What’s the bad news?”

“I saved the worst for last, but it isn’t entirely bad. We tested our armor against Jazzers, fired at close range, and there is some minor leakage at every joint, particularly when the beam incident angle is optimum to leak through microscopic but airtight gaps.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“The experts say we can even reduce the leakage to our body by wearing wire shielded clothing under our suits, particularly at the joints.”

“That might chafe, but we can implement that solution rather quickly.”

“Even that solution leaves some unanswered questions. We don’t know the frequency spectrum of the actual radiation to study the neurological effect, or if the frequency they use is much higher with shorter wavelength, and thus can leak through easier than a Jazzer does. There’s uncertainty on what impact it’ll have on us if a suit does leak slightly.

“I think our real problem is what do we do to protect our non-combat people? We can’t put every civilian, and I particularly include our children, in suits and mesh clothing all of the time. The Thandol consider this a non-lethal crowd control weapon, and the Hothor say the security forces all have them, and use them freely if called upon to subdue resistance on a subject planet. At close enough range it’s fatal to most species, but we’re tougher than most species.”

Mirikami considered their options. “It doesn’t seem like armored Kobani have much to worry them about the Debilitater, but it could be a weapon of choice if they attack any place populated with our civilians and alien allies. We need to provide them with shelters, perhaps a room at home enclosed with conductive mesh, for them to jump inside if there is an aerial attack, or possibly just a mesh pulled over the roofs of buildings will work. I’m assuming the beam becomes less effective after reflection from the ground or from other structures. A Jazzer beam won’t scramble your nerves effectively via reflection, but it’s a short-range low power weapon anyway. So that’s all I have for now.”