Koban: The Mark of Koban (31 page)

Finally
, Stanford
thought,
we’re doing something besides waiting for the Krall to strike.

****

Sixty seconds after her dreadnaught, Invincible,
made its White Out five hundred miles above K1’s northern pole, Vice Admiral
Mauss had one thought.

The Krall were waiting for us!

There were at least a hundred Clanships
already in orbit. Oddly, they clustered near the widely scattered six battleships,
with hundreds of single ships swarming in the space between them. Two battleships,
Gauntlet and Mace, had each lost one of their three fusion bottles within thirty
seconds of White Out. They were also venting small jets of air in multiple
places, apparently from minor breaches. The fusion bottle losses each eliminated
one third of their plasma beams, but the laser pods on the effected hull sections
could draw power from the operational bottles. It only required manual power switching
by the Drive Room crew. The fusion bottles were located deep in the bowels of
the ships, where design placed them for maximum protection. How did they lose
them without major external damage?

****

On the battleship Gauntlet, Captain Caruthers
was satisfied with the quick launch of their first complement of three hundred
missiles, all of them away in three volleys, from one hundred launch tubes,
twenty seconds apart. They were loading another hundred for a cleanup volley if
different targets presented themselves.

The threat board display, repeated in a corner
of her own monitor from the Combat Information Center (CIC), had surprisingly
shown more than a hundred Clanships already in orbit at three hundred miles, well
below the fleet. All of the Clanships clustered close to various battleship
positions. More hundreds were climbing out of atmosphere. These ships were
above the “engage” envelope selected for the network of smart missiles, because
the missiles expected their targets to be on the ground. The three volleys just
fired would pass by these Clanships, including the single ships they were
spewing into space around them. However, they could reprogram the fourth and
final one hundred-missile volley, and that would finish loading in five to six
minutes.

A shocker was radar returns that had revealed
dozens of small missiles already inside the optimum range of their point
defense system as they performed the White Out. The CIC officer had quickly released
fire control to the AI in her division. Belatedly, laser fire was picking off
some of the evasive little missiles still inbound.

It was a much greater shock when Caruthers’
command AI, “Joe,” informed her one missile had already hit them before radar even
detected it inbound. It couldn’t have covered the distance from the nearest
Clanship in the time since the Gauntlet emerged. Caruthers assumed the missiles
were part of a protective screen. Except, that seemed too bizarre to consider.
They would have fired at empty space, before the fleet emerged.

“Joe, what was the damage from that hit?” She
hadn’t felt any shock or vibration from an explosion. These weapons looked no
larger than aircraft launched air-to-air missiles. They couldn’t have much of a
warhead. Why use a peashooter on a battleship?

“Mam, the weapon did not explode on contact,
and it has passed completely through the ship and out the opposite side. I
det…” Caruthers interrupted the JO model AI.

“How can a missile that small pass
through
us? It should have crumpled on our armor if it didn’t explode.”

Joe answered in a bland voice that was
sometimes irritating to hear on a stress-filled warship. “That was also my
initial assessment, Mam. However, we are venting atmosphere on both sides, and
have compartment damage in a straight line with the projected path…” The bland
voice suddenly changed, sounding more emphatic, perhaps more like Caruthers
might have wished, but not in a reassuring way.

“Emergency! Fusion bottle number two has
vented plasma to space. Power to weapons in sections…”

“Stop.” Caruthers cut it off. She knew what
the power loss from that bottle meant.

She could hear her First Officer was already
Linked and speaking with Damage Control.

The Captain Linked and confirmed with her CIC
officer that power had manually been rerouted to the  center laser pods, and
that the effected plasma beam chambers received enough power to cool slowly, so
as not to crack the ceramic tubes inside the now dead magnetic focus coils.

Joe Linked with more bad news. “Mam, there is
another atmospheric hull breach, near where the previous missile made its exit.
I believe a second missile may have penetrated and is passing through internal compartments.
There have been several casualties.”

“Why didn’t the auto sealers prevent decompression?”

“Mam, the auto seal system is working. The casualties
were caused when the missile passed through crew members, not from pressure
loss.”

“Damn! Joe, how are they penetrating the hull
and bulkheads?”

“The method is unknown, but the results are
four point two inch diameter holes left in the wake of the missiles. The second
missile is considerably slower than was the previous penetrator, and is slowing
even more. It will probably reach fusion bottle one in thirteen seconds,
causing a….”

“Link to Drive Room audio.” Without waiting,
Caruthers shouted. “Get out of the Drive Room, another missile is boring
towards bottle one. Evacuate before it blows. Five seconds. Move! Move! Move!”

She knew her Engineering Officer, the Chief
Petty Officer, and several Drive Rats would now be physically close to bottle
one, checking on the damage delivered to adjacent bottle two. Even with the failsafe
venting fusion plasma to save the ship and Drive Room equipment from
catastrophe, it still might not be survivable for humans.

The hot com set mike picked up shouting and
the Chief’s voice screaming at his Rats to get through the hatch. A swishing or
hissing sound, followed instantly by screams and the start of a loud roar cut
off as the com set died.

“Emergency! Fusion bottle number two has
vented plasma to space. Power to weapons in sections…”

Captain Caruthers wasn’t listening. Her Drive
Room crew was possibly all dead, and bottle three powered only the stern
defensive lasers. Without the crew to switch power feeds manually, Gauntlet was
nearly defenseless as she was presently oriented, bow on to the enemy. The
Captain ordered her ship rapidly rotated to face away from K1, to offer defense
against the additional small inbound missiles. If the third bottle were lost, any
failure of their Traps and they’d lose Normal Space drive and be a sitting
duck, unable to run, Jump, or shoot back.

She coordinated with Castle, her First
Officer. “Bo, the Drive Room crew may be gone. We have only aft point defense.
I plan to launch the stern tube missiles as we move away. These Goddamned Krall
missiles are like worms. They bore right through us as if we were a rotten
apple, apparently seeking the fusion bottles. We may have to request permission
to Jump.”

Bo nodded his understanding. “Mam, Joe filled
me in as you spoke to Nav and CIC. The first missiles clearly came from the
Clanships, but the new entry is on the opposite side, with no enemy in sight
there. Joe says the first missile pass slowed as it penetrated, and this entry
is very much slower. I think it may be the same missile having turned back.
Worm’s a good description. We can’t risk another hit from one of them.”

Caruthers looked grim. “We’ll stay as long as
we can fight. The whole fleet’s being hit hard.”

****

Mauss was trying to absorb the rapidly
evolving battle. The good news was the entire fleet had launched their three
volleys of missiles, the bad news was they were targeted on many ships that were
either already airborne or would be soon.

Mauss checked with Captain Codry, commanding and
fighting her flagship, and was satisfied with her quick response. She had
ordered weapons control to retarget Invincible’s hundreds of missiles to seek
Clanships in or out of atmosphere. Mauss passed that recommendation to the full
fleet.

The point defenses of the large ships had so
far kept most of the single ships at bay, and several dozen were drifting and
dead. The Clanships were standing off one or two hundred miles, avoiding close
combat. They had apparently released approximately ten small missiles apiece towards
the battleships. However, looking at the separation from the Clanships compared
to how close the missiles already were to her ships when identified, Mauss
realized with a shock that the launches were made even before the fleet made
it’s coordinated White Outs!

 
How did they know where the hell we would
be?

Many of the speeding missiles were inside the
optimum defense range of all six battleships, though several dozen flashed and
vanished from laser or plasma beam hits.

Mauss was actually concerned that the Krall
had launched so
few
of them, and they were small, no more than four or
five feet long, per her sensor readings. It implied they had considerably more
capability than their numbers and sizes implied. The early damage to Gauntlet
and Mace might be possible examples if these missiles had caused that. Damage
control teams reported four-inch holes that went completely through the fusion bottle
casings, and only the new failsafe’s had vented the plasma to space without catastrophic
explosions. Automatic blowout sealers had controlled the minor air venting,
which was also through four-inch diameter holes.

Suddenly a heavy cruiser flared in a searing
flash of brilliant white light, about a third of the way around the planet from
Invincible. It was simply gone in an immense ball of gas. A radio report from
the other side of the planet relayed the news that two light cruisers had been
destroyed, one killed in a bright flash like that of the heavy cruiser. The
other appeared to have exploded internally when a fusion bottle ruptured. The
older ships didn’t have failsafe plasma vents, but bottle ruptures were extremely
rare. Before a fusion bottle was exposed to direct enemy fire, you would expect
massive hull damage.

Two Clanships, close to one of the damaged battleships,
flashed brightly as missiles destroyed them. However, the Clanships revealed
they had effective laser defenses, which used much more energetic beams than a human
made fusion bottle should be able to power.

Clanships lasers were even delivering damage
to the point defenses of the battleships and scouring their thickly armored
hulls with extremely accurate fire. On the heels of hits that eliminated
multiple laser defense pods on sections of hulls, one of the small missiles would
bore in for what appeared to be an anticlimactic impact. There would be
outgassing, but no explosion.

The true nature of the damage these missiles
caused required several more strikes, and subsequent losses of fusion bottles,
before the fleet suspected and shared the information. Somehow, the four-foot
long three-inch diameter missiles were passing entirely through their targets.
They were also homing in on the fusion bottles. When ships already struck
experienced additional penetrations without the ship detecting new inbound
missiles, it was apparent that the little horrors could make repeated passes
through the same ship. They left a perfectly round four-inch hole through
virtually anything they encountered on their way, including crew.

The older light cruisers were particularly
vulnerable. Rising Clanships, many surviving the gauntlet of fleet missiles by
virtue of their highly effective laser defenses and sheer numbers, were launching
more of the small penetrating missiles. A light cruiser would flare every few
minutes, when a fatal fusion bottle penetration happened. 

The destroyers were also on the defensive from
swarms of single ships that were flashing by them in nearly suicidal close passes,
somehow opening their Trap fields and releasing their tachyons. Then other
single ships would use lasers to knock out some of the field emitters for their
Traps while the Normal Space drive was down.  If they could still generate a
Trap field they could reclose them and quickly capture another particle.
However, each time the Traps were opened, they briefly lost their Normal Space
drive, leaving them vulnerable to other single ships to hit their emitters.  The
Krall had effectively knocked fifteen destroyers out of the fight. Not killed, and
they could still shoot, but they couldn’t escape by Jumping or powering their
Normal Space drives with tachyon energy.

Five of the battleships were down to one
fusion bottle, and a sixth, the Gauntlet, had all three knocked out and
resembled Swiss cheese. Mauss had to order the Gauntlet’s Captain to Jump away
before she lost her ship. That first departure apparently triggered greater urgency
on part of the Krall to exact a greater toll from the humans.  Although Mauss
couldn’t see how they did it, the result was devastating.

Three of the struggling battleships instantly
vaporized in searing blue-white flashes of expanding gas. As did five heavy
cruisers in rapid succession. There was a corresponding loss of Clanships, but there
was no way Operation Deep Lance could trade ships for ships. They had lost over
thirty-five percent of the task force in thirty minutes, nine of them capital
ships.