Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire Read online

  Finally, the odd allegations by Photok began to sound more credible. He didn’t know where she was to ask her any follow up questions. Her clan sub leader on Poldark had relieved her of command of the ship she’d landed here.

  Much of the supplies that clanship had brought were enroute to various clans on the two fronts where Fistok intended to renew assaults. Because Pendor had removed so many mini-tanks, single ships, and mobile laser carts, the new attacks would have to depend more heavily on warriors on foot. That necessitated them having ample replacement rifles and spare power packs stored nearby. Each of the portable fusion power charging stations sent with the supplies could accommodate sixteen depleted power packs at once, but it took nearly an hour to recharge the energy dense batteries to full power.

  Warriors, in the fury of battle, could drain them of their power in as few as a hundred twenty eight firings, if they employed rapid-fire maximum energy plasma bolts for every shot. They always carried at least four spare power packs on equipment belts, but needed more fresh ones brought forward, along with the recharging stations, as they advanced.

  It was while thinking of the resupply convoys, traveling north and east from where Photok had landed her ship, that helped the Gatlek plot the areas where the loss of equipment control was spreading the most rapidly. Using his mental battlespace map and arriving reports, he saw a pattern. Photok had landed about two miles east of the Gatlek’s bunker instead of near her clan’s bunker, far to the southeast. She claimed it was because she had wanted to convey her warning quickly and directly to the Gatlek.

  There were two lengthening tentacles of reported equipment failures, one was shorter and stretched north, and a longer one that extended east, both radiating from near his bunker. Each affected corridor narrowed and twisted with the mountainous terrain where the arms passed through, which meant the affected areas followed the roads, where the supplies were moving. There was also a small, roughly two-mile wide circle surrounding this bunker of disabled clanships, with hundreds of other similar diameter regions about that same size, sprinkled all around the continent.

  The pattern looked almost organic, like some widespread infection that only involved hardware. This was similar to what Photok described, but her description was in less detail due to her limited knowledge of events all around K1. He acted immediately to try to stop the contagion’s spread to the fronts where they faced the main enemy forces, and to keep it from reaching the heart of the invasion force. His command bunker.

  The local problem surrounded the area near the hill above the buried bunker. He checked his personal plasma rifle, and it powered up when he activated the standby mode. It had not reached down here.

  Communications were not affected anywhere, because even clanships that had lost flight control were able to use their radios. Commanders located above, in the ring beyond the hill, had made com set calls to report failed armor and clanships out there. That meant this new human weapon, which is what it must be, had not penetrated down here. Therefore, it wasn’t a wide area type weapon, because it started small, and spread slowly for a central point, apparently having a short range for the infection.

  Except two fingers of the infection was tracing narrow corridors where the infected supplies were moving. They had been moving continuously for almost eighteen hours, with the trucks moving that entire time. Fusion powered vehicles, driven by warriors that never required rest, meant the small arms spreading the infection had almost reached their Novi Sad destination, to the east.

  He wondered about the shorter tentacle of the northbound route to Kovoso. He was unaware that the heavy armored transports were involved there, and when the Denial chips were activated, the transportation of the small arms stopped when the transports would no longer respond to control. The heavy transports had been sent north because the roads were better and straighter in that direction. To the east, higher mountains and curved and twisting roads were navigated better by smaller trucks, which didn’t use quantum-controlled circuits to activate.

  He issued orders that the supply trucks were to be halted, to both the north and east, and none of the small arms unloaded or moved. Analyzing this as a combat situation, where new enemy weapons had an unknown but short range, he needed information. He instructed warriors with operational plasma rifles to approach some of the supply trucks, and inform their sub leaders, who would stay back, when or if their plasma rifles, suits, or power packs deactivated.

  The bad news arrived quickly. At about ten leaps, any rifle, suit, or power pack deactivated all at the same time, as they neared a truck. They would not reactivate if moved farther back afterwards. That later information was learned the hard way, when a sub leader summoned a warrior to him to examine the failed equipment for himself. His suit and weapon powered down when the returning warrior came within ten leaps. Once infected, the equipment became new sources for the infection. Isolation or quarantine of the affected equipment was required. It wasn’t transmitted by a warrior with only a pistol, because that was tested as well.

  With a bit more foresight, Fistok might have made the intuitive leap of wondering why humans could still fly Krall clanships that had been infected. After all, some of those craft in orbit must have been captured at K1 after being infected. The humans had started their attack with far fewer craft than the four hundred here. From that, he might have reasoned out that it was only the Olt’kitapi quantum coded devices affected, and if the devices responded to humans after infection, then it must have something to do with the tattoos that were the keys to activating such devices. He could have deduced that only the Krall were being denied use of Olt’kitapi designed equipment.

  It probably wouldn’t have helped him to know how the infection spread, if all you could do was slow the spread, and couldn’t cure infected equipment. Fistok did his best.

  “Cordon off the hill above with warriors, with orders to keep sub leaders and warriors from an infected area from approaching within fifty leaps of this bunker. Inform the clan leaders in other bunkers of this strategy, and of why it’s needed. We can preserve much of our weaponry if we halt the spread of the problem, particularly along the fronts where we face the enemy directly. I want K’Tals to investigate and learn how this electronic interference works and how to counter and reverse its effect.”

  He hadn’t yet considered how the original infections had been delivered, because none of the “carriers” had been seen. Apparently, those who did see the invaders had all failed to live to report the event.

  He ordered feeds of all surface surveillance cameras at the bunker entrance sent to his command console. He watched as the cluster of warriors spread out to surround the base of the hill, and he recalled most of his sub leaders and K’Tals to brief them directly. When a group of sub leaders and warriors, obviously wishing to demonstrate their failed equipment had approached, his guards ordered them to keep their distance and they turned back. He wanted to confer with his aides and other clan sub leaders to devise a broader strategy, and a simple explanation for the warriors, and quarantine procedures for infected material.

  Once warned of the risks, he believed his warriors could avoid spreading the problem, and if they went on the offensive, they would make the enemy pay for using such a short-range weapon that left a fighting warrior alive, to improvise and still kill the enemy. Improved abstract thinking had not (yet) been bred into the new generations of Krall. The newer hatchlings were proving to be more innovative and adaptable, but better thinkers took much more time if you only relied on selective breeding and sheer numbers of hatchlings. The Krall were running out of that sort of time.

  When Fistok saw his guardians of the bunker entrance suddenly removing their helmets and checking their rifles, he knew the software infection had reached them. At about the same time, there were numerous descending anti-ship missiles, some of which reached their targets or passed close to a clanship launching, and there were no explosions. These missiles were fired from the new arrivals, making it abund
antly clear they were human controlled. The inability of the pilots and weapon masters to maneuver or fire back, was demonstration enough as to how the short-range software weapon was being extended by the enemy.

  If the software virus was being spread by missiles, how had the initial areas become infected? How had his warriors guarding the bunker, keeping it in quarantine, come under its influence? There was another mode of infection, which he wasn’t seeing.

  Then he did see something. Or rather, evidence of what he was not seeing. On camera, he saw puffs of dust, near where three of his door guardians had shed their armor to get to their pistols and grenades, which many warriors carried as personal weapons. When brilliant red laser beams and actinic blue-white plasma bolts speared into the wrists and hands of the warriors, it came from a point above where the dust had been kicked up.

  In the instant before the dropped grenades exploded in multiple flashes, a longer puff of dust spurted, when a stealthed human in armor had obviously dropped to avoid the fragments. The guards were not so lucky, since they had set timers for very short delays, and having their hands just burned off slowed their reaction time, as they started to dive away from the impending blasts at their feet. They were left mangled and dead.

  A sub leader was inside the blast doors, and had heard the explosions. He was trying to key the thick blast doors to open without success, and a K’Tal inside the elevator was likewise unable to operate or open its doors. It was a K’Tal’s sent to investigate the equipment failures. Fistok was glad they couldn’t open the blast doors or operate the elevator to send it back down. Clearly, those were both now infused with the software glitch that denied any Krall the use of that equipment. He didn’t want that elevator to descend and pass the infection into the bunker.

  He started issuing orders to move any weapons or body armor to the far wall, away from the elevator shaft. It was possible the enemy would be able to blast their way into the elevator shaft and try to infiltrate by that route. Judging the distance from the underground entry, he knew it was just over sixteen leaps from the back wall to the elevator exit, and the range of the infection was about ten leaps. They would retain use of their plasma weapons if the infected elevator were to descend with the short-range virus in its circuits. He ordered barricades erected for their cover near the back wall, where the twenty-two warriors in the bunker could incinerate anything that was behind the elevator door when it swept open.

  He couldn’t be certain if the level where it stopped would be where the command console was placed, although that was the most probable stop. Therefore, he sent five warriors up a level, and five to the lower level, with twelve on this level to fire the instant the door sprang up. There was nowhere to take cover in the elevator compartment, and even stealthed, a heavy stream of plasma bolts would kill anything inside, seen or not.

  He watched with resignation as he witnessed the keypad outside the blast doors being depressed. It was a simple code of eight digits, but there was only one attempt to gain entrance, and impossibly, it worked the first time. The sub leader inside had been warned to be ready, but when he leaped through the opening doors, pistol in hand, he was slammed powerfully against the door frame, where his back seemed to fold at an impossible angle. His gun flew from his hand from some unseen blow, and his body fell to the floor, obviously paralyzed from the waist down. That was a recoverable injury, but Fistok doubted he’d be granted the months to live for that to happen.

  He had already ordered one of his underlings to call for every warrior within proximity of the bunker to rush to its defense. When the blast door stood open for a time, he hoped the invisible intruder had decided not to try to descend. In fact, two other warriors arrived around the side of the hillside, but they were dispatched efficiently by laser beams to their exposed heads before they could fire a shot. The beams originated from near the floor, next to the sub leader. Astonishingly, there was an exposed human hand grasping a finger of the sub leader, who struggled ineffectively to pull his hand away.

  The human hand released the finger, and abruptly vanished as stealth was restored for the appendage. Fistok tensed, and issued a warning to his warriors as he prepared to retreat to the far wall, where his plasma rifle was safely placed out of range of the entry door. On the video screen, the keys on the wall panel beside the elevator illuminated as they were being pressed. He sent a com set message to the K’Tal trapped inside, warning him to be ready.

  The door whipped up, as it did on all standard elevators, and the K’Tal was instantly shot and killed. Fistok expected the elevator to descend, so he prepared for that and backed away from the monitor, picking up his weapon. However, he saw more dust spurts created in front of the blast doors, but nothing was happening in the elevator. In the distance, the camera and microphone registered the sight and sound of the stampede of raging screaming warriors, running at top speed toward the bunker door, stretching in a front as wide as the camera could detect.

  Shortly after that, he saw the body of the still living sub leader pulled into the elevator with the dead K’Tal, immediately after the blast doors were closed. The mass of berserk warriors slammed into the outer doors, as the elevator door came down. There was a slight delay, before the invisible occupants of the elevator placed the bodies of the two Krall in a stack against the inside of the door. They were apparently intended to provide shelter for what he assumed to be two or three humans in the elevator, when the door whipped up as it arrived at the bunker level. Fistok raced to a position behind the barricade, as the other two levels were also warned that the elevator was about to descend.

  Tough as they were physically, the two Krall bodies wouldn’t last more than a few seconds under concentrated plasma bolt fire, which was about to turn them into fly ash and scorched meat. Too bad the wounded sub leader had to die this way, but it was an honorable combat death. The increasing pitch of air whistling around the sides of the dropping elevator car told the waiting ambushers that their prey was on the way.

  The pneumatic sounds of the braking system told them the car was slowing its drop, and exactly when it stopped, the heavy door would whip up to expose the entire interior. Invisible or not, behind flesh shields or not, they were doomed. It was justice that the two Krall being used as shields were not wearing their body armor. Humans, having disabled the armor with their software virus, caused the warriors to discard the suits. That armor would have given them perhaps two minutes of survival time, and a chance to shoot back.

  As the car halted, the exact instant the door started its rise, twelve plasma rifles simultaneously fired their bolts, directed under the narrow opening as it appeared, and promptly fired their next volley six inches higher, just to maintain a continuous and high rate of fire as the opening enlarged.

  The second volley unexpectedly splattered its bolts on the base of the metal door, and something black shot out from under the left side gap, vanishing behind a long console of combat and communication stations that formed one side of a wide pathway leading away from the elevator. Fistok, his eyes dazzled by the bolts and from the flash of those that had splattered into starbursts of star hot particles, thought it might have been a grenade. It was a reasonable assumption, but wrong, and not his greatest concern anyway, because a grenade exploding behind that sturdy console represented no threat to them. His concern was reserved for the stunned recognition that the door was not opening, at least not beyond the initial four inches, where it clanged loudly to a halt. They resumed firing at the gap that was available, but they had to fire over their barricade and down at the base of the door, preventing them from seeing what was farther back in the elevator compartment.

  Two sub leaders, without hesitation, threw themselves over the barrier to land prone and completely exposed, and started firing under the base of the door. One of them shouted, over the cracking sounds of the dozens of bolts traveling down the wide corridor, that he could see the smoking ruin of the bodies of the two Krall. Bolts deflecting from the floor were striking
them, but the two warriors firing from floor level could hit them directly.

  One yelled back, “My Gatlek, the enemy must be standing on the bodies of our warriors, but they will lose that elevation when the corpses disintegrate.”

  Fistok issued an order to eliminate the meat platform faster, just behind the somehow blocked door. “Shoot near the center, to burn away their support sooner.”

  As all twelve rifle’s bolts concentrated towards the center third of the gap, another dark object flew out from under the bottom right side of the elevator door this time. It too slid behind a console, on the other side of the passage.

  Fistok realized there had been no explosion from the first presumed grenade, and his eyes had better adjusted to the intensity of the plasma bolts this time. The dark object didn’t look like a grenade. It was longer and more irregular shaped, and all of the newer grenades used by the PU army were silvery colored.

  He was about to order two warriors to move, one left and the other right, to look down the backside aisles of the two long rows of consoles, when a frighteningly loud roar of a large animal’s challenge was heard from under the elevator door’s four-inch gap, reverberating and echoing within the sealed bunker.

  “What in a demon’s nightmare is behind that door?” One of the black suited warriors asked nervously, of no one in particular.

  The firing paused almost a second, while the nerve jangling raw sound poured from under the elevator door. Just before the beast’s challenge started to lower in intensity, there were bursts of red and green laser fire, and blue flashes of plasma bolts from under each side of the elevator door.

  They instantly fired back at both sides now, with the two warriors on the floor still firing at the burning wrecks of the dead Krall bodies. Those bodies were already cut into smoking pieces, where the limbs had separated. Fistok didn’t understand how the return fire was so badly aimed. Humans didn’t display the skill of a Krall in combat, but none of those shots even traveled down the wide passage between the combat consoles towards their attackers. The two sub leaders on the floor in front of the barricade were completely exposed. Even poorly aimed shots could have struck them, or at least come close. Instead, they were angled off to the left and right sides, directed at upward angles that struck the ceiling close to the elevator, above the consoles.