Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (13 page)

He tried to sound begrudging, to maintain his usual pretense when dealing with Maggi, but offered her a sincere complement. “Good work, I guess.”

****

President MacDougal offered an apology, but not for himself. “Aldry, Rafe, I know you wanted Tet at this kuttlefish briefing, but the Sneaky Bastard has just returned. Tet needed to be there with Fred Saber’s parents, for his transfer to the hospital.

“Fred was roused from his induced med lab sleep just before arrival, and he used Comtap to link to Tet. He asked if Tet could escort his parents to meet the ship, and to help reassure his anxious parents that Bill didn’t feel any pain when the bomb hit, and that Fred will recover. Tet will visit with you later.”

“We understand, Stewart. Rafe and I didn’t even know about the mission before last night, let alone that it was returning with a casualty and prisoners. However, Thad’s mission report was shared with all of the technology teams on R&D this morning. We have biological and gene results to share, but not anything that will produce as quick an application for the war effort as what the hardware people have.”

Rafe added, “When Tet’s free, if he drops by we can brief him, although he may be satisfied with the overview you can provide after you leave.”

“Good. In that case, let me hear what you’ve learned. I too heard Thad’s report, and it’s clear the Empire intends to increase its number of Stranglers, which means they learned how effective the Debilitaters were against us Kobani.

“Thad’s mission set that plan back considerably, but they have two other massive repair stations in their other security sectors, and they have shipyards for new production. We can’t possibly stop them from placing Debilitaters on as many ships as they want. We need to know if there’s a way to make us impervious to that radiation. Is there?”

“Wow. No pressure there, Mr. President.” Aldry, frowned, but took the anticipated question in stride.

They and their team had immediately grasped the implication of the clustering of Stranglers at Meglor. And what the numerous conversions of older Smashers into the Strangler class meant. The Empire intended to send fleets of Debilitater equipped ships into Federation Space, seeking worlds where the Kobani lived.

She didn’t sugar coat things. “We hope we can genetically engineer an effective resistance for ourselves to Debilitater radiation, or perhaps a functional tolerance is a better term.”

MacDougal raised his eyebrows, in an expression evoking a question and his concern. “What do you mean by
functional tolerance
? That doesn’t sound like a
yes, we can do it
sort of answer.”

“Because we don’t think we can say, yes, we can do it. We think we can produce partially what we desire, but it will not be pain free under the ray’s effects.”

“I don’t know if that will be enough.”

“We don’t either,” Rafe acknowledged, “but let me describe an analogy to you.

“Picture a group of people on a beach, in swimwear, and they suddenly experienced a sudden onset of moderate to severe sunburn. There’s shelter nearby, do you think they could run for that cover?”

“Sure. That would hurt, but it wouldn’t be completely debilitating. Is that how you envision our resistance to that ray, if you succeed? That isn’t what we hoped for.”

“No, but it isn’t death either.” Rafe rebutted. “However, could you envision exposed people fighting back, despite the discomfort? Mind you, unlike real sunburn, the pain effectively vanishes when shaded by shielding more substantial than clothing, and it doesn’t have a lasting effect, or increased damage with time of exposure. You might not want to continue your volley ball game, but you could get behind a sheltering wall and shoot at the source of radiation.”

“That’s what you meant by functional tolerance. Partial protection, but still able to function, without long lasting effects. Is that what you mean?”

Aldry held her hands up to the sides, and shrugged. “It’s what we think, based on our preliminary genetic studies. We don’t have any live animal subjects to modify yet, and no Debilitater ray to test on them.”

MacDougal mused, “I wonder if we can capture a functional Debilitater projector?”

Rafe said, “We have some Kobani analogue animals to test if you do, provided we can develop the multipart virus modifications for them, and nanites to deliver the carbon nanotubes.”

“That sounded like a lot of conditionals, Rafe. Who do you plan to test this with?”

“Not who, exactly. Our Koban pigs, from our initial gene mod experiments. They have continued to breed, and we have hundreds of the fast suckers over by Prime City, on Koban.”

“OK, but how does this partial protection work? Doesn’t the radiation go all the way through us, like radio waves?”

“Does the sun burn you on the inside, Sir? It’s a matter of frequency. Aldry will explain, since she’s had a bit more physics education than I have.”

She picked up the narrative. “High energy radiation, like x-rays and gamma rays are ionizing radiation, and can penetrate and damage DNA inside of cells. Radio and microwaves are at a lower energy of the electromagnetic spectrum, and are non-ionizing radiation. Less dangerous to our DNA. The shorter wavelengths of microwaves are less penetrating, and like visible light and infrared, heat the moisture in the skin, but don’t penetrate deep into muscles.

“The Debilitater radiation is a combination of millimeter range frequencies, in what we term a microwave spectrum, with pulse, frequency, and amplitude modulations that manage to stimulate the top layers of tissue, skin if you will, and engender strong electrical impulses into small nerve endings. The size of the ends of our Meissner and Merkel disks, which are receptor nerve organs for the sense of touch, have receptive field areas of about five-millimeter square, which are highly sensitive to the Debilitater rays.”

She piled more onto the heap. “Then we also have nociceptors that respond to heat and noxious chemicals, and that pain is more difficult to localize and is difficult to tolerate. It has a slightly different sized receptive field, but also is within the wavelength of radiation the Debilitater can use to painfully stimulate those receptors.”

MacDougal looked at Rafe helplessly. “Shit. I liked your sunburn analogy better. At least I could understand what in hell you were talking about. How does a damned kuttlefish figure into all of this?”

Aldry shook her head, relenting. “Back to you Rafe.”

“OK, Mr. President. I hope you gathered that there are two sizes of nerve ending receptor fields, and both are messed with by the Debilitater ray frequency mix. Here’s where the kuttlefish genes come into play.

“The kuttlefish have two different sized small gaps in the dual nanotube layers of film we found they have, which are used for exposing the animal’s nerve endings so they can sense and touch the outer world. The gaps form around the end of the nerves, and for their predators, those two gap settings happen to have very specific spacing. One small gap is ideal for hiding their electrical nerve activity from being detected by a predator’s sensory system, and the other spacing is perfect for protection from the electrical shock frequencies generated by their predators if they’re found anyway.

“Here’s how this works for the kuttlefish. The predator’s detection signals have a certain frequency range, and the shock pulses have another frequency range. One gap is scaled
less than a half wavelength
of one frequency, the other gap is
less than a half wavelength
of the other frequency. What this means is that neither frequency passes through the combined gaps to reach the kuttlefish’s nerves below. The predators cannot sense kuttlefish electrical nerve activity, and if they happen to bump into them by accident, their disabling shocks are delivered at a frequency that is not passed through the other gap in the other nanotube field. They are shielded.”

“So we’ll be hidden from detection by the enemy, and protected if found by accident?”

Suppressing his sigh, Rafe said, “No, Sir, we won’t be hidden from detection. The Debilitater rays will always encounter us, because they don’t see us in the sense of a detection system. In our case, we want to be able to block, or perhaps the better word is shield specific frequencies from reaching our nerves. The precise frequencies that would painfully stimulate our superconducting nerve endings. The blockage can’t be perfect, because the frequencies can vary, so that the ray can work on different species. That’s why we’ll probably still feel some effects, but much less than without the nanotube films.”

“Mostly protected then, and you think that will be sufficient?”

“In theory yes. That’s what we’ll need to test. We also anticipate that the enemy will try to vary the frequency of the radiation mix, as they surely must do for various different species. For them it might be as simple as turning a knob by an operator, or letting a computer do it for them. We don’t want to be locked into genetically shielding ourselves from two precise frequencies, which the enemy can change slightly.”

“How do you plan to guard against that?”

Aldry grinned. “Goose bumps, Sir.” She was happy to have an analogy handy that MacDougal could easily understand. “We’ll stretch or relax the carbon nanotube films, adjusting their nerve opening gaps, using the arrector pili muscles around our body hairs, which make your hairs to stand up or lie down. It’s an autonomic reflex in Normals, controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. We Kobani already have the ability to control this reaction manually, as one of our very first clone mods, for helping control our response to heat or cold. We can stretch or relax our skin at will, and that will alter the nanotube films embedded in our skin tissue, altering the gaps and adjusting for the frequencies we need to block. We would naturally seek the least level of pain when exposed to a Debilitater ray.”

“Isn’t there a limit to how much adjustment we could make that way?”

“Of course, Sir. But the technicians we consulted also say that the effective frequencies for the Debilitater rays are limited to which specific frequencies can directly stimulate our nerves. If they go much higher, or lower, the pain generation effect will be lost.” 

“Oh my word.”

“What, Sir?”

“I just realized I need to try to explain this to Tet. I have to tell him a genetic modification will give us protection, although the rays might feel like sunburns, provided we form goose pimples. Then I’ll tell him not to worry about it; we’ll test it on pigs, so run right out and provoke the Thandol.” 

Force Commander Thond was astounded at how incompetent the Thandol had been in defending the docks at Meglor. His own ships had managed to perform better, despite the Thandol requirements to leave only a token set of technical staff aboard each ship. The Ragnar had always circumvented this autocratic nonsense by seeing to it that the technical staff they left aboard had been cross-trained from experienced combat personnel. But there weren’t enough of them to fight their ships effectively.

Not that the Ragnar had ever anticipated an attack like this from an outside force. Instead, their policy was based on a quiet opposition to the Thandol rule over them, a step that made them feel less vulnerable if they ever found themselves caught between the current Emperor’s family, and a coup by a usurping noble family. Those were rare, but had happened numerous times over a long history, and until the Thandol sorted out who was giving the orders, the Ragnar would pull back all their ships to defend their three core star systems, and stay carefully neutral.

Despite his anger at the fiasco at Meglor, he commended Lieutenant Commander Grudfad. “Even with so few crew members per ship, you preserved dozens of our ships that might have fallen prey to the enemy if they had stayed attached to the docks. Sadly, the Smashers we were assigned held only Thandol station staff, thus nearly all of them were lost or damaged badly. At least some of them can still be made into Stranglers.” He pant-hooted, and shivered his graying fur in irritation.

“By ignoring the Thandol dock regulations and taking command of our ships, you saved many of them, and permitted our small crews to fight back. That may be why the humans elected to engage in suicide missions at the end, although with fanatics like that, it’s hard to be certain what they might do.

“After we replace the Stranglers lost at the major docks, and we find the Federation’s more populated worlds, I’ll teach humans what pain really is, and they’ll gladly accept death as a release.”

“Sire, I have news on that front. It was something overheard by one of our people, a technician down on the surface of Meglor, of a loud chastisement of a monitor station Thandol agent, who explained to a superior how the human ships arrived without a warning.”

Grudfad shivered in anger. “The monitor station agents on duty when the attack began were aboard the Empire’s Trumpet, so they are not available for well-deserved executions for dereliction of duty.”

Then he described what the low ranking Ragnar had overheard. “Based on duplicate records from other monitors, the agent described what the trails looked like as the humans arrived, apparently coming from deep within the Empire, the opposite direction from the Federation. It’s apparent they used a variation of the previous warning attack at Wendal, but mimicked three Smashers in formation, rather than a Crusher. Smasher arrivals are a common occurrence here.” He paused for effect.

“That is when our technician overheard information of real value. After a discussion of how this would not be allowed to happen again, the lowly agent attempted to put his superior in a better mood. He described a secret Thandol communication he’d heard, through their monitor ship network when he was last on duty, two cycles earlier. It was a report of a tachyon wake trace of a Federation ship’s level three track. This incoming trace ended at the same Federation colony world that our fleet attacked. However, it came from a completely different direction than their reinforcement ships had arrived, which we believed indicated they came from the heart of Federation Space, in the center of the former Krall territory. It seems that was a wrong assumption.”

Thond suddenly lost his bristly appearance, his fur no longer standing out in an instinctive display, designed to make a Ragnar appear larger when angry. Grudfad now had his rapt attention, suspecting his subordinate was onto something important.

“The monitor ship had remained on the outskirts of that colony system, where it had approached slowly so as not to be detected by them, since they presumably have their own monitors. They waited, and two cycles after that arrival, the same ship, based on its matching mass, departed. It promptly Jumped in the direction from which it had arrived. What was remarkable is that it both arrived and departed in level three, and did not stay in level one for several days coming and going, where it couldn’t be traced. We know the humans do this, as do our own merchant ships and smugglers, to avoid being tracked. Federation ships have done this even at the few worlds where we already know they have colonies. They obviously don't want to provide pointers to their main worlds for us to follow.

“This monitor commander, showing more initiative that is customary for a low level Thandol officer, left his assigned station and navigated in the same direction in level three, and followed that ship for more than a full cycle. They were rewarded when there were multiple detections of many other second level ship traces, and a few third level traces, most of which occurred at a single nexus in Tachyon Space, with fainter traces suggesting other worlds nearby. That only can mean a more heavily populated Federation world, where they enter and leave Tachyon Space without regard to the possibility of being monitored.

“The Normal Space coordinates of this nexus was instantly broadcast on the monitor network throughout the Empire several cycles ago. That ship, to maintain its anonymity, did not approach closer than fifty light years, and turned back at level one, to avoid detection. The Thandol don’t know that our technician heard this conversation, and because they didn’t share the information with you when you met with them on your arrival today, they intended to keep this world’s location to themselves. I’m not sure why.”

With a thoughtful heavy huff of air, looking off into the distance, Thond needed only a brief moment to reach a conclusion. “The Emperor wants the Thandol fleet to exact his personal vengeance for the attack at Wendal, and this Federation world’s location was learned before the attack here even happened. This second attack will only increase the Emperor’s desire for only his navy to exact the revenge.

“I know these cautious flat-footers. They’ll twiddle their tentacles for a long time after the disaster here, and then will secretly gather a massive force of Smashers and other ships from the other two security sectors, and then pound this discovered planet into ruin, as an example. They won’t want any of their security forces to know of the shift of the Thandol fleet elements they will use, so it will be done slowly, and only they possess the monitor stations, which keeps their ship movements secret.”

Grudfad didn’t bother to ask why Thond believed the Thandol wouldn’t discuss their fleet movements with their lesser security forces. Every Ragnar knew why.

Thond continued to ruminate. “With roughly twenty thousand warships of all classes, and five remaining Crushers, they only need to pull a little over a thousand ships from each of the three security sectors. They can do that with just their Smashers, and probably a few hundred Stampedes, if they decide to take along larger and more impressive ships than Smashers. They love to impress an opponent, so they might decide to use some of the remaining Crushers as well.”

He thrust out a lower thick lip in consideration. “On second thought, High Command may not risk any more Crushers against these humans in a fleet battle, unless the Emperor pushes them to do so. The Federation has proven to the Thandol what we have long known; those giant ships are too big, too ponderous, and too expensive to be practical, and they are overly vulnerable to agile attackers. They’re only good for intimidating or punishing a subservient species on rebellious servant worlds, which essentially have few defenses from their attacks anyway. The Thandol only worry about us, the Thack Delos and the Finth. So long as they enforce a ten to one advantage of their ships versus each of our individual strengths, we can’t possibly win a fight with them. They have better than a three to one advantage if we were all combined. Besides, they know that none of us trusts the other two species very much.”

“Sire, is there a way we can take advantage of this information we have?”

Thond quickly hunched his massive shoulders once, to indicate his willingness to take action, or commit to an attack. A Ragnar gesture equivalent to saying yes. “The Thandol will take a half an orbit or more, to prepare for a large honor based attack, and as usual in a matter of Thandol pride, do it without asking any of their security forces to participate. Without knowing more about how humans fight in surface battles, I don't think they would risk landing their own mostly ceremonial troops, to take control of the cities of the planet. Instead, they’ll smash the cities and industries, demolish everything with Decoherence bombs, missiles, plasma and laser cannons, and then leave it in flames. Landing troops would take another quarter orbit of planning, and that would have to include us, since they don't have true combat ground forces. We have less than a half orbit in which to act first.”

He tilted his head sideways on its thick neck, considering his options. “As Force Commander for this annexation, I can select any Federation world I chose to attack, and I want a mainly human inhabited world. Their other citizen species do not seem particularly aggressive or warlike. I would have to request additional Thandol Smashers if I want those weapons platforms, but not if I use only our own ships. I can attack first if we can learn the coordinates of where this Human world is.”

Grudfad squatted, the Ragnar equivalent to a human bow, and extended his hand, a small object in his palm. “Sire, our technician had the foresight to record what he was hearing when he realized the nature of the conversation in the adjacent compartment. The galactic coordinates were spoken by the monitor agent to his superior, so all we need do is run this recording through our Thandol translation software.”

“Promote that technician.”

“I did, Sire.”

“Then do it again, and offer him a combat role on the bombardment and invasion you and I will be planning. We will only use thirty cycles to get ready, to prevent the Thandol from detecting that we are planning to steal their honor target. We can’t even scout that target in advance at that distance, because Thandol monitors would detect our ships when they had to travel in third level to make the round trip quickly enough. The Federation may also have tracking monitors, and we don’t want them warned either.

He thumped his chest once. “I want to be standing on that falgrat world of human droppings, taking possession of its bloody remains before the Thandol have even decided when they will attack.”

“Commander, the Emperor wouldn’t permit us to attack a world that he wants punished by his own navy as matter of Thandol honor. He’ll be angry when he learns we struck first. What will you say to him?”

“That the Thandol shouldn’t hide their own attack plans from the ally they assigned to fight the Federation on their behalf. They granted me the personal task of this annexation, and I was given considerable autonomy on behalf of the Empire to subdue any of the Federation planets. I will say I exercised the authority they gave me. This is the first established and most populated Federation world found, and I can claim we found it independently, by use of our own scout ships. It also isn’t where the Thandol suggested the Federation’s older worlds were located.

“Perhaps the human population didn’t originate within the heart of the territory they took away from the Krall. We’ve apparently been looking for their main worlds in the wrong volume of space.”

“Sire, the Thandol surely won’t let us have use of as many Smashers as we had for our last attack, to replace what was lost then, and more just lost here. We know they can spare those ships, but they’ll not want to reduce their patrol forces so much that we would notice how many ships will have been diverted for their own major attack.”

“That’s true, but I don't want replacement Smashers. I won’t use those weapons platforms for two reasons. Asking for them now might give our plans away, and our Ravagers proved able to fight much better against the fast, agile human warships than could the Smashers. I certainly wouldn’t want to pit even lighter Thandol ships against those human ships, although I think I could safely ask for some of them.

“For some reason, the human ships they sent to Meglor didn’t demonstrate the superior stealth we encountered previously. We would lose too many crewmates for little gain by using smaller Thandol warships, which might be given to us without raising questions.

“By following the Empire’s previously ordered directions with this plan, I know they will have no justification for a punitive attack on Tantor, or on either of our colony worlds. I won't need to leave a defense force against improbable Thandol treachery, and I expect to bring most of the fleet home before they learn where we went.”

He pulled logistics information from his embedded chip, which the Ragnar called a memory assistant, and then continued. “By using home defense reserves we can deploy over two thousand Ravagers, depending on how many of them at Meglor can be made operational again quickly enough. We have six hundred Shredders to use as missile defense screens for the fleet. I think we should take all four hundred of our Pounders based on Tantor, for landing armored troops, packing in at least sixteen hundred Pillagers for armored support on the ground, four per Pounder. Four hundred of the Pillagers will carry bunker busters, eight hundred with plasma and laser cannons, and four hundred will have lighter lasers and Debilitater projectors to face down enemy soldiers we meet on the ground, not to mention their civilians. I intend to take direct control of the largest cities we find, so I’ll take all eight of our Spears, each one loaded with sixty Hoths internally and fifty attached externally, for air cover and ground assault. The fifty Hoths that can’t fit inside the carriers will be ground based, after we have taken enough territory to build landing fields and support facilities. We’ll try to capture two large spaceports intact for the carriers and our supply ships, provided we don’t have to destroy the installations in the process. That’s a hundred ten Hoths per Spear, for eight hundred eighty. We’ll have to remove some maintenance equipment, parts, and ammunition reserves from the Spears to make room for so many spaceplanes, pilots, and support personnel, so those other things will have to travel on our supply ships.”