Free Koban by Stephen W Bennett

the alarm silent and studied
the readouts and red telltale messages that were beginning to appear on his console.
Noreen started calling up data from the Drive Room monitors.
    Dillon glanced at the external view screens, they were restored
but the drifting star field indicated the ship was making a slow roll. The red and
blue tracers were gone. Checking the tracking display at Mirikami's console, he
saw the first two red target symbols had passed the Flight of Fancy, and were moving
away. “They missed us!”
    Mirikami looked up, a puzzled expression on his face. “I don't
think they missed. They just didn't do what I expected, which was to blow us apart.
We should have boosted for a full minute, but we lost all power from our Trap fields.
One or both fusion bottles are always on line, and number one kicked in automatically
for gravity control. That three-second surge barely moved us out of harm’s way,
but there wasn't any detonation. They apparently fired something at us as they passed,
and knocked out all of the Trap field projectors around our hull. Every projector
shows zero field curvature. I'm damned if I know how they did that kind of precision
shooting at that velocity!”
    Assimilating data as it was summarized on her screen, Noreen
had to contradict him. “Captain, the power monitors don't indicate that any of the
projectors are actually gone. They are all drawing energy from the fusion generator
now. The secondary field simply contains no tachyons. That's why we lost thrust.
    “Then there's still a chance!” Mirikami cried. He was nearly
shouting as he called the Drive Room. “Nan, Is the main Trap still on tune for a
Jump tac? The lead two missiles have passed and the main body is at least twelve
minutes away and slowing.”
    A man's face appeared on the screen, it was Chief Haveram. “Ms.
Willfem is already checking on it now, Sir. The secondary field is up, but it seems
to have dumped all its particles.”
    “Damn the secondary field!” Mirikami snapped, “We still have
a pretty good chance to catch a Jump tac in the next twelve minutes if our primary
is still tuned correctly. Check it!”
    There was the sound of another voice approaching the audio pickup.
A young woman's face replaced the Chief. She looked dejected. “Captain, both the
primary and secondary Traps have broken down somehow. We show them tuned to their
respective energy levels, but the field monitors indicate they have zero curvature
now. The fields must have collapsed.”
    Noreen signaled with her hand, catching the Captain's attention.
She pointed to a string of characters on her own display.
    “Can't be,” Mirikami said, hope still present, “we're still feeding
them a lot of power from the reactor, so the fields have to be there. The field
monitors must have been damaged instead of the projectors. They did something to us when they passed. Get me a video damage report of the hull, and make sure
that primary field stays on frequency!”
    “I was already on it Sir. I'm checking out the control console
for the field strength monitors now.” Speaking off to the side, “Chief! You, Gundarfem
and Yin-Lee, do a fast eyeball check on the projectors and hull. See if the field
samplers were hit, the projectors may be damaged too since the energy to them is
going somewhere.” There was the sound of running feet.
    For the moment all that could be done was being done. Rather
than distract his engineer from her work, Mirikami asked for a status report inside
of five minutes and left the circuit open. “Let's find out what Jake recorded when
those two birds passed us.” Mirikami selected the voice Link. “Jake, what did the
two missiles do to us as they passed?”
    The precise voice responded instantly. “We received focused bursts
of N wave energy from each of them in turn as they passed.”
    Mirikami shook his head in a gesture lost on the computer. “Their
own Trap fields couldn't hurt us, particularly by pushing on our Trap