Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (5 page)

Three Novas now had declared assignments, and three more would go to some portion of the four repair docks in view on this side of the planet. The other six would be fired at the four docks around the curve of the planet. They would have to wait for the Bastard and drones to micro Jump there, to bring those docks into direct view. The small AIs used on the drone clanships, as Sarge had noted in an earlier complaint, “Can’t walk and chew at the same time.”

The large amount of sensor data a clanship could generate, and that a Comtap and Kobani could receive and process, exceeded what those AI’s could receive and transmit while they were simultaneously targeting and firing weapons. All of the drone clanships were firing plasma bolts and heavy lasers at anything that moved, or looked like a promising target. That included less glamorous targets than warships, which were well armored against such weapons. They were striking infrastructure, such as space tugs, mobile repair platforms, personnel transports and habitats, and the heavy lifters from the planet below, where large structural components for the repairs were built and lifted to the docks. There were vital massive Jump engines and huge completed weapons pods, all shipped in from industries around the Empire and stored on the docks, awaiting installation on a variety of warship types.

This target would only be a soft one this first time, just as Wendal had been, and they could do more to slow the Empire’s preparation for a large-scale war, here and now, than after hostilities escalated and they were more alert. A large Federation force of thousands of ships, or even as low as a few hundred, would have flagged itself as an obvious threat while still days away from Meglor, and it would have been met by a massive and significant defense. At this stage, the conflict was a sparring match, with each side feeling the other out, seeking vulnerabilities and testing strengths. The Kobani had found one of the soft underbellies in the Empire, and they were here to gut it.

Alyson ended up with the privilege of launching the first Nova II in combat, because her drone had emerged so close to its target. She ordered the AI to use the coordinates of a mass concentration that might be a collection of fusion power plants, possibly a Jump engine, or the armor shell around the Crusher’s Bridge. In any case, the mass of a half-ton of metal emerging from Tachyon Space within other solid metal would result in an explosion equivalent to a tactical nuke.

Her excited squeal of delight, as the ripple ‘of explosive forces worked their way out from the center of the equilateral giant ship, sounded grossly at
variance
with the massive death and violence she’d just inflicted on the enemy. Her husband would be hearing about her exploit for years.

Oh, Joy!
Was Carson’s sarcastic thought, as his relatively puny missiles started exploding inside the docked Stranglers. Even if he and Ethan were justified in claiming the Stranglers were a greater risk to Koban, their destruction was visually less spectacular.

To make it worse, Ethan had won at Rock, Paper, Scissors, and his Nova was erupting within the center of the same miles long dock, where a cluster of fusion power plants had been detected, providing a good high mass intersect target.

Even Maggie’s Nova had hit home, within mass concentration of her assigned dock, and it was blasting away multiple tumbling Smashers, some of which had trajectories that might take them down to the fringes of the atmosphere, where drag would finish the destruction. The craft had far more than enough mass to survive the reentry, and they would cause massive damage if they struck anything of value on the surface of the heavily industrialized planet.

Sergey had negotiated with Carol, and they had traded which docks they would hit, so he launched his Nova at the fourth dock on this side of Meglor, where smaller or midsized Thandol craft were docked, some of which appeared to be military cargo transports. Worth the destruction effort, but Carol had wanted a chance at the Ragnar ships when they micro Jumped near them. He wore a broad smile, but neither of them revealed what was offered to him to take the less prestigious target. The damaged Ragnar ships were a much-desired set of targets, and they would only partly be Carol’s to destroy. She’d have to split them with Thad, Bill and Fred Saber, Jorl, and with Bradley, who was Ethan’s younger brother.

Carson had yet to launch his Nova at this first stop in the attack, and Thad reminded him to get busy. “Carson, I need your Nova gone, so we can move the three test drones out to where that Crusher can see them. It’s started to move, to get a better view of us.”

A quick study of what was a good target, and he selected the end of the largest repair dock, which was still intact, where only missiles had hit docked ships. They constituted worthy targets, but somehow seemed less satisfying than what the others had hit. He launched.

Thad then ordered the three target drones to move out from behind the spreading wreckage of the docks and damaged ships. “Alyson, Ethan, and Carson, micro Jump your ships out to where the Crusher has a clear view, and launch missiles right at it, or at any other target it can also see, that it needs to defend. Draw its fire. I think we can be damn sure it’s Captain is pissed off enough now.” He grinned.

Ethan had the drone with pure Sulfur Hexafluoride for internal atmosphere, which was the densest gas being used. Alyson’s drone was filled with a mix of Carbon Dioxide and fifty percent Sulfur Hexafluoride, as the next most dense, and Carson’s test ship held Carbon Dioxide and twenty percent Xenon. All of these were denser than the range of gases found on habitable planets. They’d know in moments if the Decoherence bombs were able to survive their appearance in a medium as dense as these gases, but which were far less dense than inside a solid or even a liquid.

They launched their last salvo of missiles the moment they made their White Outs. One of the newly revealed target drones was hit within several seconds, and hit multiple times in rapid succession, proving how potent the delivery method was of those matter disintegration warheads.

Carson, in rapid Comtap communications, said, “Crap, they’re peppering the hell out of my drone. I think there were nine hits in two seconds. Oops, four more. Damn, I lost Trap fields, my Jump engine, and if I’d carried reaction mass fuel, it would be an orange fireball. One of them has vaporized part of both binary fuel tanks. The overpressure of bulkheads and decks turning into gas has sprung leaks along most of the patched seams of the hull, and it’s losing atmosphere. I think the huge pressure increase could have killed or disabled any crew aboard that wasn’t in body armor. Ahh, nuts. I lost my link to the AI. My ship is lost. Somebody please put some missiles into it.” They didn’t want drones left even partly intact.

Alyson had said nothing yet, because her drone, considered the second most vulnerable, used a slightly higher gas density than Carson’s craft, and it hadn’t been hit by Decoherence bombs, which would suddenly rotate out of Tachyon Space. Then that situation abruptly ended, not only for her drone, but for Ethan’s drone as well.

“Hey!” Alyson said. Sounding like someone had just snatched her credit chit. “They hit my drone just outside the hull at several places, and I’m venting atmosphere through huge holes.”

“Uh, on my ship too.” Ethan admitted. “Nothing hit inside, but they must be taking cookie cutter bites out of the hull. I’ve lost four Trap emitters and dumped both of my tachyons. I can’t Jump it away or use the Normal Space drive. It’s a sitting duck.”

Alyson’s drone was quickly lost as well. “Darn. Lost my AI link. Now I can’t even ram them. Damn it.”

Jorl shouted out in annoyance. “What the hell? I lost control of my drone. It didn’t seem like Decoherence bombs, it just stopped responding.”

Carson had the answer. “I can see the debris on my console, where your drone was located. I think it was a missile hit. Perhaps you were watching the test ships and forgot to duck?”

Jorl didn’t deny his distraction. “That’s just great! My Nova was being saved for the other four docks.”

Thad had also been watching and thinking about the test ships. He grimaced and nodded his head, only in hindsight grasping a detail they had overlooked. They had miscalculated how the Thandol could use their weapon. Only those on the Bridge saw the expression and nod, and Ethan asked, “What did you just figure out Dad?”

“That the two denser gases we used were successful in blocking those bombs from arriving internally in your drone, and Alyson’s.”

Sarge grunted. “Please save our asses from more successes like that, OK? They took out all three drones in about ten seconds. How can you say the two denser gasses worked?” 

“Because that Crusher must have been unable to target the bombs
inside
the interiors of the last two drones, not without losing them to destructive intersects of their circuits with high density gas molecules. Therefore, they simply targeted the hulls from the vacuum side. That was dumb of us not to foresee that possibility. The gas defense is a failure, so let’s go make a mess out of the four smaller docks before we go home. Everyone prepare to micro Jump your drones to the other side of Meglor, but leave them ghosted until the Sneaky Bastard arrives in stealth, to assess the situation there. Sarge, launch your Nova into that big bastard and let’s Jump.”

“Right.” He sent a launch command to the AI, Grumpy, and told it to execute the ship’s micro Jump immediately after the Nova’s launch. That’s when things suddenly got very confused, and turned deadly.

All of the crew was wearing their body armor, but they had left their helmets attached to clips behind their suit’s neck opening or at their waist, for quick access if needed. With their ship’s stealth, they knew they were invisible to the electromagnetic sensors of the Empire, as had been proven at Zanzibar 2. That was a poor decision.

The sudden slamming of between-deck pressure seals, at multiple staircase openings and two elevator columns wasn’t due to air loss from a hull breach; it was caused by a rapid pressure increase. The airtight seals came too late to prevent all of the overpressure from propagating throughout most of the ship.

The ears of those on the Bridge experienced what could be classed as moderately painful barotrauma, because of their greater distance from the cause, and much of the accompanying temperature and pressure increase was prevented at the bow of the ship by the fast action of the lower level’s airtight seals. Those people located twenty decks lower suffered considerable ear pain, and lungs and gastrointestinal tracts were involved in the pressure shock they received through the suit openings at their necks. The temperature suddenly went up as rapidly as the pressure, but not to a dangerous level. This pressure increase was due to a volume of decking, bulkheads, and normal atmosphere, suddenly being converted into atomized gasses, which demanded the
right to expand
, which was instantly granted by the gas laws of physics. The rapid pressure and temperature jump wasn’t enough to be life threatening, but it was painful.

A single Decoherence warhead had appeared in the relative low-pressure void of ordinary atmosphere, found between two decks spaced fifteen feet apart, and located equal distance between bulkheads in an empty equipment storage area. The one hundred twenty-one-foot range of the fifth force, when radiated in all directions, encompassed a spherical volume of two hundred forty-two feet in diameter.

That force, when modulated and applied in a particular way, altered the quantum probability of molecular orbitals continuing to hold atoms together in covalent bonds. This resulted in the breaking of most of those bonds, allowing the electrostatic interactions and the quantum nature of electrons to take effect. Fortunately, the fifth force didn’t hold sway over the binding of the strong nuclear forces, or else an expanding sphere of radiant energy might have eventually been visible as an intense and brief flash of light in the next stellar system, after a suitable number of years.

The soft pop of a warhead, heard when experienced in an open atmosphere on a planet, was not so soft when contained as it was inside the Sneaky Bastard. All the material within that sphere of disintegration, which extended through nearly 16 decks, and laterally included various bulkheads of compartments on each deck, plus the assorted equipment, stowed gear, missiles and launchers nearby. That material abruptly expanded into the lower pressure of their surroundings.

Included in that gas was what formerly had been organic compounds, most from one person, and part from another. The one with merely parts missing, screamed, but he only had a right hand to press to the pain in his right ear, and with no left leg to support him, he would have fallen into the sudden chasm had not the great rush of gasses pushed him away. He fell to his right side, as blood started to gush from above where the left elbow had been, and nearly the entire left leg from mid-thigh down was gone.

Fred Saber had been half sitting on a missile rack at the edge of the boundary of the warhead’s effect, his left leg and elbow had been propped on equipment. He oddly didn’t feel a great deal of pain from the incredibly precise line of the weapon’s effect. The pain that elicited his scream, experienced and heard by all via the group Comtap link, wasn’t a reflection of his physical pain, but rather the emotion he experienced when he saw where the missile bay next to his had been. His brother Bill had been stationed there.

No further Decoherence bombs rotated out of Tachyon Space within the Sneaky Bastard, because it had Jumped. Although, unknown to the crew, dozens more had emerged where it had been, just after Grumpy, efficiently following instructions, had taken the ship to the other side of Meglor after launching the Nova II bomb.