Koban: Conflict and Empire by Stephen W Bennett

Author:Stephen W Bennett [Bennett, Stephen W]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stephen W Bennett
Published: 2016-08-19T21:00:00+00:00

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“How many are there, and how soon will they arrive?” The acting Space Force Commander sounded annoyed with the sensor specialist who’d linked to him. Messengers carrying bad news were seldom appreciated.

Grudfad had initially responded with even greater snappish irritation, to what he assumed would be another useless gravity target report from his sensor division. Up until now, their inertial mass detections of stealthed enemy ships had repeatedly arrived too late for coordinating fire control or fleet disposition. This was a slippery and elusive foe.

The sensor division had a different type of detection to report this time. More enemy ships were coming. “Sire, they are too tightly clustered to isolate traces for individual ships, but the advance tachyon waves our traps detected suggests a combined mass roughly equivalent to the last fleet of enemy ships to arrive.”

“Another two thousand?” He grunted in disbelief. He’d have considered another two hundred to be bad news. The technician gave him a time-to-arrival that didn’t leave Grudfad long to plan a response either.

Not that I can create any practical plan to fight twice as many of these berserkers, he thought sourly. He knew what he had to do, and he linked to Thond to tell him.

“Sire, a second fleet of enemy ships is inbound for this world. The advance tachyon wave reveals that it represents a mass equivalent to their previous reinforcement fleet, which consisted of 2,000 of their Ravager equivalent warships.”

Thond replied to him gruffly, displaying less respect than his Acting Space Force Commander thought he deserved. “Lieutenant, they’ve proven to be a very deceptive foe. That new force might consist mainly of those giant ships the crabs build, which are not combat craft, and a just a few of them could be loaded with water, to emulate the mass you infer is present. The enemy wants you to retreat. Do you even know if they have two thousand more captured clanships to send? That would mean they have significantly more warships equivalent to our Ravagers than we have. Where have they been for the other raids?” He knew exactly where Grudfad was leading.

“No, Sire,” his second in command admitted. “We can’t confirm what class of ships these are, but we have not seen any other type of Federation warship. Sending the giant crab ships wouldn’t fool us after the White Out. Not even if they possess the same advanced stealth systems, and can prevent a gamma ray burst. Their large mass concentration would register quickly on our Thandol sensors. We can’t accuse this enemy of being stupid, and they certainly know we are not.”

Thond, to give himself a moment to think, avoided the real subject of Grudfad’s call with a brief diversion. “The additional Hoths have joined our four infantry groups. Did the Spears evade damage as we hoped?”

“They Jumped in and out, nearly as fast as do the Federation ships when they attack us. The enemy reacted by Jumping near to where they had been, but they were too late to launch an attack on them.

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