Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (83 page)

After that however, the beam intensity grew so great that those unfortunate enough to still be above ground, were no longer capable of any coordinated or controlled movements. Their voices became so ragged from hoarse screams that the sounds were diminishing. They continued to twitch even after they appeared to lose consciousness. When the Strangler was only several miles away, the force of their muscle spasms, for those that had not torn their muscle attachments from ligaments and bones, was so violent that they sometimes snapped an arm or dislocated a joint.

This was observed from orbit with horror and revulsion, and the torture was repeated at every colony town, although the ship at New Mombasa was flying lower. For the Kobani, their attention was largely focused on how their own people had unexpectedly been the most adversely effected.

The mental contacts were terrible for those not directly in the radiation, but nothing compared to what Kasiem had felt, or those below ground were starting to feel. Kasiem’s presumably dead body was still jerking violently, his bones were too tough to break, but some joints appeared dislocated, from the odd angles of limbs.

The Kobani below ground had been forced to pull as far back as possible from the storm drains. Those openings leaked the destructive nerve scrambling radiation, and they had scrambled over anyone they needed to knock out of their way to do so. As the Debilitater projector passed over New Mombasa at roughly a mile height, everyone gave each Kobani ample room, more for their own self-preservation than an act of kindness, to avoid the life threatening uncontrolled powerful spasms.

The colonists themselves were mildly affected eight feet below ground, but the Kobani were completely incapacitated. The fully exposed Normals from the freight crews also appeared to be dead, receiving the full force of the radiation. Due to their constant movements, it was difficult to be certain. Their movements were reminiscent of salted frog legs frying in a skillet. Uncontrolled spasms of dead muscles twitching, as nerves fired randomly.

Once the Debilitater carrying ship was well past the town limits, it crossed the river and descended to half its previous altitude. Then it slowly started turning back for another pass. The enemy wasn’t going to be content with merely punishing on this raid; they wanted everyone dead, at least at this site, suffering as much pain as possible in the process. They were not making a second pass like this at the other three towns.

Gundarfem cut Caudwell loose. “Trevon, this isn’t a hit and run, not at your site anyway. I don't think they intend to leave anyone at your site alive, because that’s where our ships were spotted on the ground. If all of you agree to do it, kill that son of a bitch and make a run for orbit. We definitely underestimated that frigging super Jazzer. We’ll do our best to cover you as you climb.”

“Thanks Macy. What about our people in the culverts?”

Mirikami stepped in to absolve Macy from the responsibility that he was certain she was prepared to accept. “Trevon, they’ll have to accept the same fate that awaits the other colonists today. If they can hold out for a half-day longer, we’ll have another four hundred ships at Zanzibar, pulled from guarding our other colonies that are close enough to help. If that ship and the other three Debilitater projectors are taken out, the survival rate for thousands of colonists will go up, I’m certain.

“At least a thousand additional ships are enroute from all around the Federation, but most of us won’t be there for a bit over a full day. I’m with them, and we left an hour ago. Good luck son. You, Macy, and all the rest of you there; Stay alive and give them hell.”

****

Thond was finally feeling he was gaining the upper hand with this raid. The four colony settlements were effectively subdued, if not destroyed yet, although he continued to lose ships. Twelve of them now, versus only four of the hard to hit Federation ships. His losses included four of the escorts he sent down with the Stranglers. He knew he couldn’t risk troop landings as long as he didn’t have complete control of the space above the planet. The humans could pick off his ground forces from space or even their Ravagers when they were unable to maneuver fast or Jump. He was forced to keep fifty of his ships near the Smasher that carried the Emperor’s Observer, to ensure he stayed safe. His loss would be impossible to explain.

From the pass of the Strangler over the newest colony town, he now had detailed images of the area where the human warships had been, and of the layout of the town that they had started building. There still was no sign of those ten ships, and they wisely had made no move to save the hapless cargo hauler. The low power lasers had managed to fry that crew alive before they were high enough to trap tachyons, or perhaps they had elected to commit suicide. The ship had suddenly nosed over to fall back and crash, but due to drift, it fell into the sea rather that where it had departed. The other eight supply ships were empty now, most of their crews visibly dead near the edge of the dirt landing area, having fallen there after they fled.

One of his image analysts promptly contacted him with information he had requested, even as the Strangler finished its pass. Where had the newest colony’s population gone? They hadn’t had time to board the missing ships. His analysts found traces of dirt and damaged grass that ran parallel to the freshly formed streets, which suggested that something was buried. They may have gone underground, and if so, they may have had enough soil overhead to shield them from effects of the radiation.

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.