Koban: The Mark of Koban (39 page)

That better explained the lack of firing from
the orbiting stealthed Clanships. They didn’t want to draw attention to their
approach to the manually controlled Eight Balls. Mauss had no idea how the
Krall would use them, but there were sixteen of them that she didn’t want to
see in action.

While she was preoccupied with the Eight
Balls, two more orbital platforms were totally destroyed, and three so damaged
that they were slowly tumbling in orbit, and firing sporadically only as plasma
ports came to bear on the fleet. Another fortuitous hit, from a Krall
perspective of course, was a plasma beam strike on the bow of a battlecruiser. 

That hit had killed the entire five-person
Bridge crew, forcing operational control to shift to the backup battle center
near the Drive Room. Other than a delay in matching the next fleet course
shift, the Golem was effectively operational. The deeply buried and protected
AI automatically repositioned the ship into its proper formation slot, and
returned decision control to the officers in the new command center.

Mauss was more than satisfied with battle
results thus far. They had lost only one destroyer and suffered damage to four
ships, none disabling, the Golem being the most serious but still in the fight.
In contrast, there was wreckage of six orbital defense platforms and perhaps a
hundred fifty Clanships destroyed, most of the latter hit while still in
atmosphere. They had entered stealth mode, but the disturbed air paths through
atmosphere had revealed them to the missile AI systems.

Radar and visual sightings also indicated multiple
hits on a large number of Krall habitat domes, manufacturing structures, and
additional destroyed grounded Clanships.  Many of the inbound missiles were
knocked out by Clanships parked around the domes, being used as antimissile
batteries. It looked as if the Krall ship losses from the previous attack on K1
had more than been made up in numbers. The computers and recon drones indicated
there were perhaps six thousand Clanships at K1 now, each roughly equivalent to
a heavy cruiser in size, yet mounting plasma cannons of a battleship’s power,
although only four per ship.

Three quarters of those Krall craft were just leaving
atmosphere, but they were not launching single ships as of yet. It was fortunate
that a hundred Clanships had not been up and waiting for the fleet when they
emerged this time. The fleet could have appeared with a swarm of Worms already inside
the formation. This was clearly a lesson learned well last time. Jump the fleet
from a closer point, thus preventing a warning to the Krall of the attack.

Josie reported another of the sixteen original
orbiting Clanships destroyed. It too had apparently docked at an Eight Ball.
Soon they would find out what those nearly indestructible dense little beasts could
do. They each had likely received a pilot before Mauss realized where the stealthed
Clanships had gone. Considering the durability of the balls, if the destroyed
Clanships docked with them had not yet transferred a pilot, they still be could
be boarded on the other side of the planet, out of the line of fire.

Two of those balls, which had been out of
sight in their polar orbits, were just coming into sight over the planet’s poles,
their orbits changed slightly. They were already under manual control.

Josie reminded her of the other new threat,
the launches from the orbiting defense platforms. “The large missiles that flew
out of the platform launch tubes appear to be modified single ships. They are
attempting to use radar to track our larger ships, and they alter course
towards them each time we maneuver the fleet. We are using jamming and decoy
targets, plus mimicking the radar returns of a larger ship with smaller drones
that fly parallel to our ships.”

“What of our defensive fire? How many have we
knocked out?”

“We have not managed to destroy or damage any
of the thirteen launched at us thus far Mam. They are not flying a complex
evasion pattern as single ships usually use, and I do not think there is a
Krall pilot aboard them. Their nose-on angle reduces the effectiveness of our
multi-spectrum lasers and plasma beams on the ultra-reflective single ship
hulls at the current range. We should do better when we have more side shots.”

“Even nose-on we ought to be able to hit and
hurt them, particularly if they are not dogging and twisting as usual. What
about missiles? There should have been extra from the last salvo to target some
of them.”

“Mam, these single ships are essentially
missiles themselves, and are taking no evasive action.  The first three of our missiles
to reach the nearest two of their missiles were apparently defective. They did
not explode, and did not continue on to other targets.”

“Wait. Show me the playback of the one we
missed twice.”

She watched as the glow of a main thruster of
an AI controlled missile approached the target, and suddenly the glow vanished
about a half mile in front of the target. A second vanishing exhaust glow
followed on the heels of the first. The enemy missile continued through the
points where the glows had vanished.

“Josie, query the missile AI’s to find out why
the proximity programming did not detonate the warhead when the target passed
them, and report on the thruster failures.”

“Mam that is why I assumed missile
malfunctions. The three AI’s do not respond on any frequencies, and radar does
not detect them or debris.”

“Our tracking doesn’t see the missiles behind
the targets, coasting?”

“No Mam. None of our radar feeds from any ship
can see them or any debris.”

“What about plasma beam splatter and laser
reflections off the noses of the enemy missiles? Any scatter detected from
those or from radar?” The closest of several were now a couple of hundred miles
out and closing fast. They needed to know how to hit them.

“Mam, our detection systems can only see them
on radar or by laser ranging from ships in the formation that are off to the
sides. There are no reflections from the front of the targets at all.”

Mauss was stumped. Why could they only be seen
from the sides? “Give me a zoom view from any ship along the projected track of
one of the missiles. I want to look straight down its nose.”

“Mam, there are no such views. These missiles
are not visible from a nose angle, only from a side angle.”

“Humor me. Give me the head on camera view
anyway, right now.” AI’s had little imagination.

The screen then showed a limb of the planet as
an offset backdrop to the scene, filling part of the right side, but there was
no missile or single ship seen. “Josie,
where
on the screen should the
image be if I
could
see it, in relation to the planet?”

“Just to the left of the planet’s limb, about
six degrees, in the very center of the screen.”

That was the black background of space.
Except…, where were the stars that
should
have been visible there? Mauss
saw other stars farther off to the left side, and above and below screen
center. Then she observed as a distant star, visible above the dark center,
suddenly seemed to shift and spread, as if about to form a ring, then was gone.

“Josie, do you know about gravitational
lensing? Observe the stars near the center of the dark areas around each
missile from its nose. Check to see if stars near that start to shift or form a
ring.”

“That has already been observed Mam. It was
assumed to be an artifact of the camera because there is no distant massive
gravitational mass to create that effect, known as an Einstein ring.”

Shit again!

“Josie, assume a closer small compact massive
object, much like a Jump Hole that did not rotate into Tachyon Space. Could
that small a diameter black hole object produce the same effect?”

“The effect seen is compatible with an event
horizon approximately two to four hundred feet in diameter, located about one
half mile in front of the single ship.”

“Fleet Link!” She didn’t have time to wait.
Several of the objects were within a hundred miles of the edge of the fleet
globe.

“This is Admiral Mauss. The missiles launched
from the platforms may have some sort of Jump Hole projected a half mile in
front of them. Plasma and laser beams are swallowed, as are our missiles if met
head on. If you can see them from the sides, fire anything you can bring to
bear now at the closest three, before they get inside our outer formation. Fire
at will.”

It only required the human battle directors to
issue the instructions to the AI’s, but this took seconds to describe, the retargeting
took a second, shifting from the zone each ship was assigned to guard to one
outside their designated area of responsibility. The inbound missiles were now
traveling at many miles per second. The first two were quickly within the
tenuously defined boundary of the formation’s mostly vacant globular surface.

No one had assigned any ship
which
of
the targets to hit, so the collective AI’s, following standard Navy safety protocols
to avoid friendly fire incidents, all selected the trailing target as the
“safest” at which to direct over a hundred plasma and laser beams. Some few
beams were lost to the small event horizon in front, but the reflective single
ship hull, despite its remarkable quantum controlled reflectivity was
absolutely no match for the millions of gigawatts of energy aimed at its sides.
It vanished in a well-dispersed vapor cloud as the event horizon collapsed in a
flash of light and gamma rays as the tachyons held by the Trap field escaped.

That was far more spectacular looking flash than
the end of the destroyer that happened to be in front of the oncoming event
horizon of the untouched lead missile. DS-31 was not the intended target, any more
than the missiles and beams the small event horizon had “eaten” earlier were its
targets. DS-31 just happened to be in the way as the missile sought a
battleship or dreadnaught.

The destroyer swiftly crumpled and shrunk
towards the boundary of the event horizon in seconds, except for two slender jets
of vaporized material that briefly formed and squirted away on opposite sides
of the mini black hole. These “squirts” were merely the remnants of the ship
and crew that didn’t fall directly into the hole. Like huge stellar mass black
holes that eat too fast, this small one regurgitated the excess remnants along
beams squeezed small by twisting magnetic field lines created by the stripped
atoms of plasma in a small accretion disk.

The plasma, directed at right angles to the
brief accretion disk was itself dangerous if it struck another ship. It was
partly composed of positrons, which were antimatter electrons. The jets did not
strike another ship, and the “squirt” quickly ended as the remainder of the
disk fell into the event horizon.

Mauss saw what had happened, and realized that
the two missiles within the formation were the greatest threat, with an
impenetrable defense when they steered directly at their target.

“Josie, fleet Link. Mauss here. Override the
AI’s friendly fire restrictions and fire on those two ships manually. They will
eat us alive if not stopped. Pick side shots and take them down. Mauss out.”

Random shots started striking the missiles,
but without a mass of accurate AI controlled fire, they were not as easy to
kill. The fleet suddenly did a preprogramed random shift, which had the
unfortunate effect of creating a sixty-mile per second closing velocity with
battleship Mace, and the other missile, the one that had not killed DS-31. 

Mace’s Captain, Commander Dawkins, instantly
recognized the situation and she broke formation, turning aside to avoid the onrushing
missile, firing nearly recklessly as she tried to gain a better side shot.
Gauntlet, a fellow survivor of the last fleet action fired as well. There were
ablation gasses seen as the target’s reflective hull began to degrade, except
the missile turned again towards Mace, negating the targeted battleship’s
firepower as it “ate” the incoming energy.

The Gauntlet now had only a tail shot, a
smaller surface area as a target and Mace was nearly in line if they missed or simply
grazed. They couldn’t just blaze away, needing to use some finesse and a slower
rate of fire. They wanted to avoid hurting the battleship they were trying to
save.

Dawkins diverted a lot of her secondary tachyon
energy into Mace’s Normal Space drive, sacrificing the energy reserved for powering
the plasma cannons, which were useless with an event horizon closing with them
in front of the intended target.

Mace, its huge mass slow to respond,
nevertheless surged ahead at eighty-four gravities acceleration in Normal Space,
the internal uncompensated effects pushing her crew deep into their couches.
However, the far lighter single ship matched that acceleration easily, as
whatever Krall computer it used for automated steering sensed the nearby
energetic Trap fields of Mace.

It activated the field projector that could reach
into Tachyon Space to touch other Trap fields, and inverted the Mace’s
secondary Trap field. This happened just as the big ship was widening the angle
for its heavy lasers to strike from the side. The stored tachyons in the
secondary field were suddenly dumped, killing the surge of acceleration.