Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (52 page)

Again, it was like a repetition of the previous attacks the Federation had conducted in Empire Space. Massive damage done while using few attackers, and employing stealth, or deception to get close to relatively undefended military targets, and employing unusual tactics and weapons. They seemed to always chose targets that were presumed safe because of where they were located, or in the case of Rogue 2, at base so secret that it wasn’t even known to their security species, the Finth in this region.

Fendrel, even without the benefit of the hindsight that would eventually evolve, already knew there wasn’t many of the enemy, and they had run out of ammunition, or their weapons had a limited number of repeat shots possible, like a plasma cannon after the ceramic barrels cracked and needed replacing.

He linked fleet wide again. “I call on every ship in orbit, or that can reach orbit. I believe the enemy has ceased firing at parked ships only because they are unable to do so anymore. They have done significant damage, but five hundred destroyed warships are but a tenth of this great fleet’s strength. What they are attempting to do now, by crashing our two Crushers in a controlled fashion, is to damage or destroy thousands of our parked ships.

“It is too late to alter the track of Farlol Ascendant, which will impact near the white dome. However, I order you to continue firing missiles and plasma cannons into Detab’s Victory from the north side, to shift him to the south, away from his present track to strike the gold dome and our ships parked there. Both of our Crushers are doomed, and have already suffered severe damage. We cannot save them, but we can thwart the enemy by saving as many of our other ships as possible, and those of our people trapped in the gold dome. To those operating the additional ships that have just lifted, I order you to join with the rest of us in deflecting the weapon they have made of that great ship.”

Renewed explosions tore into another side of the Victory, as it rolled like a wounded animal, trying to escape its tormentors.  It presented a new face to the weapons that were ravaging it, and they pushed it slowly on a more southerly track. It was almost enough.

As the humongous craft neared the surface, one corner struck the plain ten miles from the south side of the gold dome, but he would obviously smash through some of the ships clustered farther south of the dome. A tremendous spray of ancient gray regolith spread ahead and to the sides of that corner as it dragged, like some vast plow turning over the soil.

That pressure applied incredible stresses to the structure, and hull plates and structural members bent, then tore free. The vessel’s slow roll turned into a ponderous tumble, as the pyramid’s corner dug deeper, finally meeting the unyielding underlying bedrock. The stress fractured the rigid thick trusses that formed the edge framework, and one face swung down quickly, to smash into the plain nearly face down on that side.

The entire structure of the enormous ship shifted, twisted, and shattered, as a vast spray of dust, rock, and structural material from the ship flew ahead and to the sides, with some sections of the internal modularity of the ship’s construction tearing free of their neighbors. It was still miles from the southern edge of the hundreds of ships on the dome’s south side. However, it was apparent that the debris, some thrown higher as the tumble accelerated, was spreading wider, and huge sections would rip into and shatter many of the parked ships, and fragments would even strike the southern side of the two-mile-wide dome.

There was no atmosphere to keep the dust suspended very long, but it also didn’t hinder it’s rise, as the five miles per second velocity of millions of tons of metal smashed into the surface, vaporizing some of the planetary rock, along with the structural steel of the deepest penetrating bulkheads and decks. This was nearly as violent as would happen with an asteroid impact, although this collision was at a considerably lower velocity than most of those were. 

The huge spray of surface impact debris flew ahead of the heavier material, covering the ships and dome with the light surface dust and small rocks, concealing view of the destruction as the shattered ship and fractured bedrock smashed their way through any opposition.

Fendrel couldn’t see how widespread the damage was below his shuttle yet, and might not for long minutes as the high flung dust settled. The images from the few Smashers on the opposite side of the planet, who had made a heroic but futile effort to divert the Ascendant, revealed the shallow impact angle of that instrument of destruction had been accurately targeted. It struck the surface no further than a half ship length from the outer edge of the targeted plain, which was covered with parked ships, and it would sweep through the center of their clustering.

Over a thousand ships vanished under the onslaught of dust, which spread over them and concealed them ahead of the advancing destruction. The white dome was struck by more and larger debris that was the gold dome, and that would increase the lives taken there.

Fendrel had a self-serving thought.
If Shanthot has survived, he will have to explain this military disaster to the Emperor, not me.

****

Sarge summed it up nicely, with an odd sounding complement to Mirikami. “Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve made.”

“Thanks. I try.”

“What do we destroy next? They still have at least three thousand ships here.”

“Nothing worth the risk.” Tet told him. “Our Grav gun magazines are empty, although we do have twenty anti-ship missiles left between the five of us. They can’t do a lot of damage compared to what we’ve already done, and they’ll reveal our locations, and how few of us there are if we launch them.

“There’s nearly a thousand of their ships aloft now, and they’re so gun shy that they’ve fire wildly at even the scraps that were blown off the Crushers. We’re in Scouts, not heavy cruisers. We might not withstand a heavy laser or plasma bolt hit, should they accidentally connect during random return fire, directed towards where we were when we fired. I’m sending you four home, and as we told you previously, Maggi and I are going to visit the Hothor and Olt’kitapi.”  

Noreen asked, “What were you going to do there? I don’t recall you saying.”

Maggi, who had planned the visit, answered. “I have ideas to share with them about how to disrupt the Imperial Court with false rumors. They have thousands of Hothor employed on Wendal, or by other noble families on other Thandol planets. There are dozens of extended and powerful Thandol family herds that are not part of the Farlol line.

“The Hothor also know which other species have similar employment placements, and which ones might be willing to share the risks of planting evidence of a coup in the making. I have one hundred additional Prada com sets to give them, and a few dozen subversive seeming files that could implicate influential Thandol, who might plausibly wish to replace the Emperor, or support someone else who wants the throne.

“Most of what I want to plant is in the form of digital files, although I have some subversive slogans written in Thandol script, recorded on an erasable crystal matrix they sometimes use for temporary private communications. We found some of the crystal tablets in the section of the Crusher I sheared off and took with me.

“Those can be left,
accidentally of course
, where allies of the present Emperor can find them. In addition, we have the memcache addresses of a large number of mid to high level military and political leaders. We’d have to ask the Hothor to use the Prada com sets at relatively close range, on the same planet that is, to send these files to their memcaches. We have unlimited range with our Comtaps and Prada com devices, when those operate in tachyon modulation mode, but Thandol memcaches only use radio, with a range that is considerably less than planetary distances in a typical solar system.

“The subversive files I’ve created were tested for their effect on our two Thandol officers. It produced the proper outraged reaction in those loyal Farlol the 84
th
supporters, and they would have reported those communications to higher authority, as I want to happen. I used their thoughts to improve the grammar and phrasing, to alter them to ensure they were subtle enough, with no clue as to who sent them. These are tentative solicitations for the individuals I’ll target, to inquire if they would accept future roles of greater importance, either within a new Imperial court, the military High Command, or if they would like to rise in power and influence within some department of government. These solicitations would imply the positions would only become available should the Imperial Throne become vacant, for any reason, in the near future.”

Dillion was puzzled. “How does this involve the Olt’kitapi, Maggi? If you give more of the com sets to the Hothor, you bypass the need to communicate with the Hothor by relay through the Olt’kitapi. Those isolated insect representatives of their species have been in hiding a long time, and they appear to have withdrawn from a leading role in guiding developing species, as they once did. I’d think you would want them to become more involved, not less.”

She sounded enthusiastic and excited with her reply. “That is changing, I think. At least according to the Dismantlers, who have furnished them with the full history of their once glorious past. They now wish to understand how our Comtaps work, and particularly how their own designs for Olts and mind enhancers do, because we do not experience the overwhelming emotional impact that they, and their Dismantlers suffer, when mass deaths of millions of intelligent minds occur, and they are responsible in any fashion.

“For the Olt’kitapi it was their deliberate destruction of the Krall home planet, when they tried to save their civilization from that bloody revolt. We know what happened to the Dismantlers, when the Krall tricked them into similar destructive acts.”

“How will they harden their conscience to those deaths?” Noreen wondered. “We aren’t even aware of the wave of tachyons they sensed, and I don’t honestly think most humans would die of grief over the deaths of every living Krall. Even if they pulled the trigger that caused it to happen.”

“They may have been too decent for their own good,” Maggi answered. “To ensure they could not act with an indifference to death, as did other species they encountered, they increased the sensitivity of their own mind enhancers, to sense tachyon disturbances related to the minds of intelligent and self-aware creatures. It was apparently increased to a level where they experienced a strong emotional sense of guilt, if they acted irresponsibly and killed others. I don’t mean if they killed one, or even hundreds, particularly if they intended no harm. They had wanted to restrict their baser instincts, and unknowingly left themselves exposed to extinction, when forced to act for self-preservation. They said they wish to remodel their emotional limits based on more successful examples of survival. Like us.”

It didn’t make sense to Thad. “If we, and other aggressive species are heartless bastards, and the Olt’kitapi have a moral conscience so strong it can trigger a fatal level of grief in them, how in hell can studying us and our Comtaps change that? I felt no damned guilt over humans killing billions of Krall warriors. They’d best not use us as a model, since the undeserved guilt will still kill them.”

“Tone it down killer, ape.” She teased. “The Dismantlers and Olt’kitapi think all they need do is find a level of tachyon sensitivity for their mind enhancers, which prevents them from casually committing genocide without regret, and allow their inborn decency to guide them other times. They certainly want to be less beastly than you or Sarge, to name our two most blood thirsty examples. Yet they have to be capable of fighting back with reasonable force, against those that want to kill or enslave them.”

“OK. Say they do that.”  He challenged. “Hiding under their camouflage canopy on Canji Dol, where I discovered them, it doesn’t seem necessary to me to reduce their exposure to guilt for killing in self-defense. Unless they step on a lot of smaller bugs in the woods, after they embed less sensitive mind enhancers.”

“Aren’t you in a charitable mood? How about if they become Federation citizens, and build that vast artificial habitat they were on the verge of starting, over twenty thousand years ago?”

“Really? How? They lost all of that knowledge, I thought. Did the Dismantlers have all of that data stored? If so, they’re damn fast learners.”

“Lunkhead. They can regain it the same way the mindless Raspani got their knowledge restored, you twit. The ancient Olt’kitapi died, not their mind enhancers. They don’t have the massive storage libraries of preserved living minds, as the Raspani created to hide themselves from the Krall, but they told me they have thousands of old mind enhancers. These were left behind, in the bodies of the dead adults which were aboard the intelligent ships that saved the immature Olt’kitapi, and brought them to the Hothor. With Torki and Raspani help, they can recover and copy the knowledge belonging to the various castes of their species, and transfer that to new mind enhancers, after they determine a safe sensitivity to tachyon waves, those triggered by deaths of intelligent beings.”

“Who they gonna kill to determine that?” Sarge asked, in a wise crack.

Maggi thought,
Sarge and Thad make for a good pairing. Equally sensitive, and typical males of the human species.

What she said however, was, “I’d offer you two as test subjects, but I did say deaths of
intelligent beings
.” She laughed lightly, then added.