Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (9 page)

“Thanks Maggi. Glad you ain’t hogging all the glory.”

“Happy to share. After all, I snagged this whole ship section.”

Reynolds looked inside to see what his prized captives looked like.

“Wait! Come back here, you petty little jackass. I ain’t cleaning them up!”

Mirikami had just heard the early results of the Meglor raid. He promptly called for a consultation with the scientists and engineers that were working on the next generation of Federation warships, and he told them there were empirical observations of enemy capabilities for them to consider. He faced the room full of the best minds in the Federation, humans, Torki, Raspani, and Prada, all gathered to hear what he’d learned.

“Friends, we not only tied Thandol trunks in knots at Meglor, literally, if Maggi’s brief report is accepted at face value, but we also hit the Ragnar pretty hard. The summary report from Thad says the Empire was completely unprepared for a surprise attack that deep in their territory, by so small a force.

“Not that the force was as small as I
thought
I was sending.” He made a wry face, accompanied by a shrug. “Even so, the damage they delivered was far greater than I would have predicted, and I believe that was more a product of the unorthodox tactics Thad and Sarge employed, Thandol lax security, and not anything new in the way of our technology.

“We already possessed larger shuttle sized Nova bombs, better electromagnetic stealth, and the means to remotely fly our ships under AI control, by using our instantaneous communications between Normal and Tachyon Space.” He sounded satisfied about the raid’s success, but there was a look of sadness in his expression. He didn’t keep them guessing as to why.

“Maggi has already communicated with their family, so I’m free to tell you that Bill Saber was killed, and his brother Fred will spend perhaps six months in and out of med labs, regrowing his left leg from mid-thigh down, and reattaching his left forearm and hand to the new elbow he’ll need to grow on his arm stump. A Crusher came extremely close to taking out the Sneaky Bastard with Decoherence bombs, despite our superior stealth.”

He shook his head. “Our attempt to prevent them from targeting the interior of our drone clanships proved to be a waste of time, and ultimately cost Bill Saber’s life. They simply retargeted their warheads to hit outside and next to the outer hulls of the gas filled drones, disintegrating semispherical bites. In another demonstration of a ship detection technique, which we also could have anticipated, that Crusher spotted Sarge’s
supposedly
invisible command ship via the Empire’s advanced mass detectors. Their gravitational mass detectors circumvented the only detection weakness we
thought
we had, via the long wave radio wave detections the Krall discovered, which could weakly see our ship outlines. Our people were watching for longwave radio signals, and detecting none, thought they couldn’t be seen. That will be another discussion topic for us today, but it can wait until later.

“The good news from the mission is that every one of the eight repair docks at Meglor was hit and severely damaged, and even better, we destroyed or badly damaged a couple of hundred ships, with nearly a third of those ships being Thandol built capital ships, and two of them were their super ships, the Crushers. We’ve now destroyed three of the eight Crushers they had, proving they are too vulnerable, too expensive, and too slow to mix it up with our much older designed Krall clanships.

“I think we can definitely assume they know of our vulnerability to the Debilitater ray, because they had gathered quite a few Stranglers there, probably for an upgrade to their projectors and defenses, and they were also converting a dozen or more Smashers into the Strangler class. They obviously intend to use them against us Kobani, and of course, Koban, if they find where we’re from.”

He nodded to Born, the head of the physics department. “Max, what can you tell us about progress on our new ship designs, when will production start, how will they change, and what about new functionality?”

The scientist stood. “We have the hull fabrication technique the Olt’kitapi used for the Dismantlers figured out, to embed millions of tiny tachyon trap field emitters in that flexible, self-healing flowing hull material, so we can generate contour fitting event horizons, as the Dismantlers can do, and like we found the Empire can do. Wister says the Prada factory managers here on Haven have two ship production lines, out of our four major product lines, capable of building all of the hull sections for our new warship hulls. One of the other two production lines will be dedicated to producing commercial vessels of the same shape and size, which on casual observation will look just like our warships. That will make anyone think twice about going after one of them, at least until they start loading or unloading cargo, proving they aren’t heavily armed. We’ll give them some defensive armament. All versions will land on their belly, with supports that will extend from the base for stability. Our command deck, or Bridge, is also at the center of the hulls, so front and rear is an arbitrary concept, although in space or on the ground, up and down is fixed, and internal gravity maintains the same orientation.

“The rounded end of the tube shape of the hulls makes forming smooth event horizons less complicated. The new ships can Jump directly from the surface of a planet, provided they land with a Jump energy tachyon already in one or more of their traps. By the way, we’ll employ three independent Trap fields for redundancy, since we don’t have reaction mass thrusters on these ships. We are working on a new arrival technique that even the cautious Olt’kitapi overlooked. Can’t say yet if it will work or not.

“Both our warships and commercial vessels will have the same stealth coatings, with radiation seals around airlocks and any external portals, to block potential leakage of Debilitater radiation into their interiors.”

He added a caveat, “The commercial vessel production line can be converted to warship production in under a month, since they use the same hull. What goes inside them requires a vastly different equipment configuration of course, a military grade AI system, and more weapons ports added to the hull.”

He explained what the fourth ship production line would produce. “On the final major production line, we’ll build scaled down tubular scout ships for military use, which can be used as diplomatic couriers, or for personal transport, with or without weapons. They can carry up to twenty people, luggage, and their food supplies, or fewer troops in armor with weapons and supplies. With reduced T-cubed travel times, inflight consumables and comfort isn’t a great need, for short one to three day trips in most cases.

“We didn’t see any advantage to not using the same stealth coating on all of those too, regardless of mission. The cost in materials, computer controls, and tachyon powered energy need is slight, compared to the total cost of construction. We estimate that old clanships can be phased out and salvaged over time, to defray the necessity of mining for as much metal as needed. We won’t allow Haven or Koban to be ravaged for materials, as the Krall did every world they controlled. There are asteroid mining companies in startup phase, modeled after those in Human Space, and partly automated. We have some equipment purchases lined up, via Chief Haveram, who found what we want via backroom deals, with Hub mining companies, who value profits over an arbitrary trade embargo.”

Tet had a question, “I already knew the capacity of the full sized ships matched what a clanship holds, but I haven’t been involved with these smaller craft. What else can they carry? Humans won’t be the only users.”

“As I said, one Scout class can carry up to twenty passengers if human, twenty-five if Prada, five comfortably if Torki, eight if Raspani, and about fifteen if Krall’tapi. T-cubed travel should greatly reduce the discomfort of being dry for the Torki for such short periods. There will be species specific, self-contained sanitary modules, such as a water mist and recovery system module for the Torki, and smaller versions for Scouts. The Raspani needed a larger volume in their kitchen module, for their low energy density grass based feed stocks.” With a slight look of discomfort, he added, “Plus, extra processing for all of their bulk wastes in the sanitation module.”

“We also will test the Scout class ships for the intensity of tachyon wakes they produce when at T-cubed speed. Our own tachyon wave detectors, and probably the Empire’s, sense the wakes, or the disruptions in the lowest energy bands of nearly infinite velocity tachyons, when massive objects pass through them. These low mass scout ships ought to produce less of a wake. They might not be detectable by us, or the Empire, even at higher levels of travel. At least not with the detectors that we have now. With a slight reduction in crews, there’s room for multiple one-meter radius Nova II’s inside a Scout class, provided we reserve a single safe space for the launch area, for the small Jump Hole they form. That would probably make it a ten-person combat ship, if humans were the crew. Nothing says twelve Prada, or a couple of Torki, three Raspani, or six Krall’tapi can’t fly something like that. They want to participate in the defense of the Federation, and with these craft they can learn how to fight without risking a full sized ship and a large crew.”

Mirikami agreed. “That’s something I’ll take to the full council even before production starts. I’m sure the other species will want to customize controls and specific features for their use.”

“They should be easy for any of our species to operate. There will be better AI’s in these small ships than on the standard shuttle models you bought from the PU navy for your recent drone tests. Chief Haveram has found another Hub world, Pittsburg II actually, who will build them for us. These are very good systems, like those used in our old clanships. Tet, you saving them from Dismantler destruction has made them willing to skirt the embargo that the PU’s House and Senate placed on us in trade with Hub worlds. The intent was to block our buying of technology from Hub Worlds unless we share our technology with them. Parliament was able to override President Strickland’s veto of that act, but Pittsburg II has conveniently created a loophole that allows a Hub licensed corporate entity to buy them, and then sell them to Rim worlds. Those independent governments are not bound by the PU embargo.”

“Max, will these small Scout ships be able to conduct long term missions? I’m thinking of sending them into Empire Space if they can do that without detection. Smaller crews of course, so they can carry extra provisions.”

“I suppose so. The courier versions and personal transports will have a configurable Smart Plastic interior, with seating for mixed species traveling together, and lockers containing the seat padding for each anatomy type. No pads for the Torki of course.” He smiled at hard-shelled Coldar, squatting next to him on a rigid carapace support.

“What about the military scout version? That’s the one I’m talking about.”

“The dedicated intense combat versions won’t have the same multi species configurable interior, because only a Kobani can fight with them effectively and expect to survive. If it carried fewer people, it has room for more consumables.”

“OK, such decisions will have to be made after some of the ships exist and we’ve used them, and we can probably get resupply in Empire space from species that I think are willing to secretly be our allies. But you touched on one of my questions. Will the new scouts allow Kobani to operate them closer to our physical limits? We removed the limits the Olt’kitapi installed on clanships, to prevent reckless or careless Krall from causing their own death and equipment damage, unless they did it deliberately. For example, they couldn’t Jump into a moon or a planet, or accelerate and turn as hard as we can tolerate. Even so, we found that even a clanship couldn’t produce forces, in some maneuvers, which exceeded our ability to endure the stress. In straight-line maximum acceleration yes, they could kill some of us. But maneuverability stress from rapid turns was less than what we could tolerate, and the ships physically couldn’t do what we wanted. Will the new Scout class perform better?”

“Not just the Scouts, Tet. The new full sized ships will too, with their ability to reach into third level Tachyon Space for the most energetic tachyons. They can outperform a clanship in every respect, using the superior inertial compensation available only at higher energy levels, because the clanships were not designed to use T-cubed energy tachyons. We’re only limited by what the Kobani inside the ship can physically endure, after the new inertial compensation is applied.

“Most of us can endure ten to eleven positive residual gravities applied from the back in a semi reclined position, and still remain conscious to send commands to an AI via our Comtaps. At eight or nine Gs, we can physically make limited controlled movements with flight or weapons controls. These are the
internal
residual G-forces of course, the uncompensated inertial effects. These are vastly lower stresses than the higher actual G-forces that are in effect outside of our spacecraft.

“Only the ship performance has increased, however, not our ability to endure greater residual forces inside. That stays the same, and we simply compensate better to retain the same physical capability we have now. Whatever accelerations you can tolerate today when in combat, it will feel the same to you inside the new ships.

“To outside onlookers, you’ll become a greater whirling dervish than before, one that can’t be matched by any other organically controlled spacecraft we expect to encounter. Don’t think for a second you will be able to outfly an AI controlled missile that doesn’t risk a blackout or brain damage. On first contact, if that AI performs calculations based on assumptions of your ship’s expected maneuver limits to keep those inside alive, you might escape a few times that way. At least until they adjust their software parameters, and blow your ass to bits.”