Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (84 page)

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 been 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.”

“Trevor, I admire your willingness to go back down there after escaping by the skin of your teeth. That was a hell of a trip up here for all of you. I’m willing to stay up here with others, to fly cover if anyone is willing to land. Just give me some of your damn missiles. I don’t want to risk another intersect to get so close they can’t shoot my ass off.”

“Speaking of your ass Macy, have you picked the pieces of that Thandol ship out of your butt yet? What about the two prisoners your crew pulled alive from the airtight compartments, which sheared off with you when you Jumped away?”

“I had to smack them around a bit to Mind Tap them. They didn’t think a small person like me should be trying to push them around. The big apes. What is about large bullies anyway and smaller people? They just naturally want to lord it over you. The Ragnar do seem to have more complex and normal thoughts than a Krall has. At least thoughts more complex than;
I want to kill you for status points, or I’ll cut off pieces while you watch.
They seem a bit smarter too.

“Assuming those two low ranking crew…” She paused. “Crew what? Not crewmen. Crew apes? They look sort of like Earth’s extinct mountain gorillas, only with longer and straighter legs, no skull crest and less massive jaws. They have some long canines, and both of them tried to bite me and pull my arms off, after thumping their chests and huffing at me. After I thumped my own chest, and demonstrated some of our Kobani capability, they seem to think several of their teeth will grow back, and they know their arms will eventually heal. If they keep trying to bite me, there is a limit to how often they get to try that. They’ll have to learn to suck juice through a straw the next time.

“Anyway, assuming those two are typical of their race, they’re a cut above the average Krall mentally, but still murderous and probably genocidal. I think we may even be able to learn to speak their language directly. I’ll bet they can make the sounds of our speech. They displayed quite a range of sounds just before trying to attack me, and after that, as they apparently complained about their arms and teeth, licking their busted lips.

“I easily understood what they were thinking, even without words. I was wrong about that one ship being the fleet’s flagship because it stayed out of the fight, and it was always so protected. I learned it carried some big wig Thandol from the Emperor’s court, sent along to watch what happened here.

“At least we know what the Ragnar look like now. Per the prisoner’s own thoughts, they believe they’re the strongest, baddest asses in the Empire, and they don’t like the Thandol. It’s only the Thandol’s greatly superior weapons, military power, and other advanced technology that keep them in check, I think.”

In afterthought she said, “Oh. I almost forgot. There was a dead, but higher-ranking Ragnar in a compartment opened to vacuum, with an embedded communicator in his head. It’s less sophisticated than our Comtaps, or even the Olts and mind enhancers, but it has circuitry that my AI thinks is for Tachyon Space long-range communications. It should contain some stored addresses to devices belonging to VIPs in the Ragnar hierarchy, or possibly to some of the Thandol. We might find a use for those links.”

“Well, enough of that for now. I need to commune with Tet for a bit, so if anyone wants to go down to any of the four colonies before reinforcements arrive, go ahead. We’ll have help in less than an hour.”

****

Two days later, after an assessment of the attack on Zanzibar, the damages suffered and the losses tallied for both sides, Mirikami was extremely worried.

“Macy, it was your people’s guts, those seat-of-the-pants space dogfight skills, and our stealth, which made all the difference here. If the enemy knew how deadly that Debilitater beam is against an exposed Kobani, they could have used those projectors against our ships. I don't know what the beam range is in a vacuum, but it would certainly be less attenuated and disbursed than in atmosphere.

“It could probably be scaled up for use in space. All they need to do is get a small percentage of that radiation onto our exposed skin, or through our clothing, and we’re toast.”

Dillon didn’t think the risk was so high. “Tet, the hulls of our ships are impervious to nearly any external radiation. I thought that was what the stealth coatings regulated. Any electromagnetic radiation, particularly the high frequencies that beam uses are reflected or absorbed without penetrating.”