Koban: The Mark of Koban (38 page)

If Parkoda had come right out and demanded the
right to fight Kanpardi, the Krall equivalent to a general or admiral would be
free to defend his honor without any risk to his leadership position. He ran
the risk of dying in the fight of course, but a Krall never expected to lose. However,
if Kanpardi did die, Tanga clan would try to nominate one of their own to become
the next Gatrol.

If Kanpardi were provoked enough into
making
the challenge himself, he would have to step down first as Gatrol, leaving the
same leadership vacuum, which Tanga clan would try to exploit. There was a
possible advantage for Tanga clan either way if a challenge arose.

Kanpardi was too intelligent to let this
shallow Tanga clan ploy derail his and his clan’s rise in status. He would maintain
his place in the histories simply by avoiding a rash move. Parkoda was apparently
too dense to understand that even if he won the fight he hoped to provoke, his personal
climb in status would end because the joint council would never name him as
Gatrol over all the Krall. Naturally, if he lost the fight his status hopes became
irrelevant. Tanga clan clearly considered Parkoda’s future superfluous.

Kanpardi made a generous offer on his clan’s
behalf that heightened his clan’s level of respect. “I will release your ships,
and those of the other clans that do not wish to defend the sixteen orbital
stations that protect our base. Graka clan will guard them from our enemies,
even though it reduces our own raiders. We do not think our sixteen Clanships are
too great a price to pay to guard the Great Path.”

Hardrol and the other clan leaders were more
than willing to let Graka clan waste ships on what they considered pointless
guard duty.

****

The New Lance fleet blasted into Normal Space
a thousand miles from K1 with a great burst of gamma rays, and a preceding
advance wave in Tachyon Space arriving just fourteen seconds ahead of them. Only
nine of the paltry sixteen Graka clan ships protecting the orbital platforms were
in a position to respond. They had each launched eight Worms apiece as the
human fleet emerged. Only four of the Clanships were even within a few thousand
miles of the edge of the human fleet, and just one was at the closest point
possible, of one thousand one hundred miles.

The first of three heavy missile salvos
started launching as the fleet was still emerging, spreading the launch out
over a few second spread, followed in five seconds by the second launch, then
the third in another five seconds. The fleet, as a single unit, turned
twenty-three degrees port as soon as the last missile of the third launch
cleared the globe, and they simultaneously applied a reverse thrust to slow
their approach to the planet by point five miles per second. The fleet’s plasma
beams flashed out, star heat directed towards the orbital platforms. Heavy
lasers targeted the Worms, and the nine Clanships that had launched them.

The Clanships were primarily engaged in
defensive fire to try to protect the platforms, which were finally ready to
engage their massive plasma weapons. The Clanships had to jink back and forth
to keep the impinging hundreds of lasers from staying focused long enough to
damage their own plasma and laser firing ports. The nine Clanships were heavily
out gunned, both by the number, and by quality of the heaviest attacking ships.
However, their first duty was to keep the platforms alive and firing back as
long as possible. Then they would defend themselves in order to fulfill their
second role.

Several dozen of the inbound heavy missiles were
exploded or had their steering damaged, but it was obvious most were going to
get through. The closest Clanships had to switch from platform defense to
self-defense, if only to survive to fend off the second and third salvos five
seconds behind each other.

The nine platforms exposed to the fleet pulsed
out their ravening near-light speed return beams, as their own thick hulls received
blasts, with inches of armor vaporizing in foot wide traces. The targeting of
individual human fleet elements was calculated by all nine defensive platforms,
coordinating which targets each would strike, and how many beams per target. One
hundred eighty beams, twenty per platform, fired together on the selected human
ships. Except the human ships had altered course and speed several seconds
before the beams were generated. The enemy beams, tens of times more powerful
than even the dreadnaughts carried, blasted through the locations the human
ships had occupied.

The majority of targets had been the
destroyers and heavy cruisers, simply as the closer targets along the surface
of the globe. They missed all of the designated targets, due to the slow
reacting Malveran computers. However, as always the case in war, random bad
luck was in play.

The surface area of the fleet’s globular
formation was just over five thousand square miles, and was forty miles in
diameter.  With nearly sixty square miles of the globe surface to protect by
each of the eighty-eight destroyers, the smaller warships had ample fire
overlap to engage enemy ships even if a member of the screen were lost. The
destroyers on the side of the globe nearest the platforms were unscathed
because of the course change. Not so for one unlucky destroyer, and a
battlecruiser, on the far side of the fleet. They happened to change to courses
that intersected the path of two of the one hundred eighty beams.

Destroyer DS-42 simply blasted into two
sections as the three-foot diameter beam vaporized its way through the slender
hull seventy feet behind the control room, the motion of the ship and force of
vaporizing material tearing the remaining three hundred feet of the aft section
away from the front of the ship.

The battlecruiser, a much tougher ship, was
hit a grazing blow, but it suffered a hull breach amidships, and lost a plasma
port and adjacent heavy laser pod. This was not a significant reduction in
firepower, and the breached compartments were automatically sealed.

However, the ease with which the beams generated
that level of damage shocked Mauss, and made it clear that keeping the
platforms off target was vital. “Josie, shorten the time between random course
changes for the fleet.”

“Yes Mam. That will reduce the number of
missile salvos per course change for optimum fire rates.”

“I understand. Inform the other Captains of
this change.”

You can’t fire from a dead ship,
Mauss thought, but didn’t say aloud.

The Admiral was pleased to see escape pods were
coming from the command section of the destroyer, and that the aft section
retained thruster propulsion. The Drive Room obviously had taken flight
control.  The aft section could collect the escape pods, but it wouldn’t be
able to stay with the formation without a Normal Space drive. Some of the Trap
emitters were gone.

The fleet’s next salvo, fifteen hundred
missiles entirely destined for selected ground targets, executed its fourth
launch. Then the fleet jointly made another, earlier than originally scheduled
turn and speed change, before making the next launch, thus avoiding
predictability.

The initial missile salvo was about to reach
the closest platform and guardian Clanship, with fourteen missiles closing with
each of them. The Clanship blasted one missile out of existence, then it entered
stealth mode. The AI’s in two missiles immediately shifted trajectories to try
to estimate where the Clanship may have gone next, but all of the remaining
missiles chose the platform as their target.

The platform blazed out twenty more plasma
beams towards the human fleet, ignoring the closer more dangerous targets
simply because its system couldn’t adjust fast enough. Its last act of defiance
was to try to launch missiles from the now open shield doors. The human
analysts had suspected these were heavy-duty laser batteries, but they were
launch tubes for what the Krall called the “Little Eaters.” Ten of the Eaters were
moving up their tubes when multiple impacts of the human missiles struck the
platform. The blasts rotated the structure so that the accelerating missiles
struck the sides of the launch tubes and self-destructed.

Mauss, seeing the first platform spread apart
in a spray of bright flashes and debris, knew now that those particular weapons
were not impregnable. Its final blast of plasma beams had not struck any ship,
thanks to the fleet’s second shift. The first Clanship to enter stealth mode
was matched by others going stealth, as missiles and beams sought them out.

However, the Krall ships didn’t appear able to
fire when cloaked, perhaps they were blind when invisible. The beneficial
effect was that the missiles targeted on them continued safely on towards the
planet or the platforms. Clanships were now appearing on radar, still deep in
atmosphere, but rising. They would be targets for those missiles if they passed
close enough, otherwise domes and manufacturing sites were alternate targets.

The fleet shifted course again, as other
platforms fired plasma beams that missed. They not only were slow to retarget,
the cycle time between pulses was slow, perhaps because of the tremendous
energy required to heat and focus the plasma for each powerful burst. The human
ships fired less powerful pulses, but fired many more to accumulate more damage
on the platforms. As a result, the fleet was taking relatively little damage
from the heavy plasma, giving better than they received.

The next missile launches targeted surface
targets and rising Clanships.

Captain Codry Linked into Mauss. “Mam, we’ve
detected launches from the other eight platforms, just ahead of our missile
impacts.”

“Are those more Worms?” Only two Worms had survived
to reach any ship, a destroyer and a battlecruiser. Reactive armor destroyed both
from the sides, as their intangible quantum beams bored into the armored
magnetic decoy pods on the hulls of the two ships. The fleet picked off most Worms
using improved close range point defense systems. In addition, the constant
shifting of the fleet wasted much of the limited thruster fuel of those Worms
that penetrated the defensive globe.

“Josie says the new missiles are larger than
Worms, and look exactly like a single ship, and have Normal Space drives as
well as thrusters. Our tracking, and where their own radars appear to focus,
indicates they are seeking the dreadnaughts and the battleships. They shifted
course just after we did, still aimed at the center of our formation.”

Mauss issued a fleet response order for the
new threats. “Josie, have the fleet heavily target the new missiles launched from
the platforms, use both missiles and beams, please. We don’t want them to get
close.”

These were something newer than just a single
ship, and obviously powerful and dangerous if only because they came looking
for the strongest ships in the fleet.

Speaking of dangerous and powerful, what was
happening with the Eight balls? Mauss selected the weapons and targeting
summary display, and looked at the results of the multiple missile hits and
plasma strikes on ten of the dense targets that were in orbits still on this
side of the planet.

“Josie, I don’t see an indication of damage or
destruction of any of the Eight Balls we hit.”

“There is no indication they were damaged Mam.
Other than minor orbital deflections from missile hits, they all appear just as
they did when we arrived. I have a close up image from a destroyer nearest the
one passing below our formation now. Do you wish to see that?”

“Yes. Give me full magnification, main
screen.”

The image of the black ball half-filled the
screen, with the planet and cloud cover passing below the object as the camera
followed. Suddenly the image was lost as the fleet executed another course and
speed shift, but returned quickly under AI control of the destroyer’s camera.

“Josie, can you clean up the image, to remove
the distracting background of the planet?”

Even before the AI answered, the Eight Ball
appeared on screen, gleaming from reflected but distorted sun and starlight,
framed against a pale artificial background that provided excellent contrast.
This was a better view than seen from the previous more distant reconnaissance
drone pictures. The ball looked perfect, no scars or even blemishes.

“Josie, the weapons report says we hit this particular
ball with six missiles, and dozens of plasma and laser strikes. Am I seeing the
correct ball on screen?” It looked pristine.

“Yes Mam. All of the other visible balls
appear undamaged as well. One anomaly was a debris field surrounding, and
expanding from a ball that has since passed around the limb of the planet. The
ball appeared unmarked.”

“What sort of debris field?”

“Mam, it was consistent with the remains of a
Clanship. The replay of the destruction indicates a Clanship was probably in
stealth mode before hit by accident, and apparently was next to the ball. This
was an apparent collateral destruction event.”

Shit!
Mauss cursed
to herself.
That’s where they went!

“Josie, have the destroyers concentrate their
laser and plasma beams on the Eight Balls and the areas close around them. The
stealth Clanships are docking with the balls to transfer a pilot. Pass that
information to the entire fleet to watch for movement of those objects.”