Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire Read online

  To the left and right, again, he thought. He had a premonition.

  “Toldrak, go left and see what is behind the consoles near the elevator. Kertda, check on the right side.”

  Both warriors moved the instant they heard his orders, at the same moment that Fistok, who was firing bolts under the elevator door, saw that the flickering light from a large video display at his commander’s console had suddenly stopped flickering. The screen he noticed was one he’d placed in an alternating display of the view from eight external cameras, placed around the bunker entrance, two of them inside the entrance and the rest were outside cameras. The alternating views had quit alternating. The light from the display was steady. From his shallow angle, so far down at the end of the bunker, he couldn’t see the screen images, but they were no longer following the sequence he’d set for that surveillance system.

  He called to Kertda, “What do you see on the right?”

  “Debris that fell from the ceiling when their beams struck.” Then in an excited tone. “Something black is moving behind the row of workstations. It could be a spy bot.

  “Shoot it!”

  He instantly raised his rifle and fired off a snap shot.

  “My Gatlek, the way it flew apart and burned, I think it was one of those pests we see all around this area. It was alive and not mechanical.”

  Fistok knew Kertda well, because he was from his own Hakdo clan, and he had called to him first because of that instinctive sense of connection. Toldrak was from Maldo, a small finger clan that was left behind on Poldark by Gatlek Pendor when the Great and Major clans left with him. Even if allied now with Hakdo clan because of Pendor’s action, Fistok naturally relied more heavily upon his own clan mates.

  That generally wise choice, to place your greatest trust in one of your own clan mate’s word and observations, led him to speak first to the second warrior he’d ordered away from the elevator firing line.

  “Toldrak, is there a small animal on your side?”

  “A local rodent is running this way; it came out from under one of the consoles.”

  “Kill it!”

  Serious outcomes often depend on small decisions. The Maldo warrior instantly raised his rifle and squeezed the trigger button. Instantly, the Gatlek knew he should have spoken to Toldrak first. The left side was where the first bush-tail had been thrown.

  Toldrak looked puzzled when his rifle failed to fire, and Fistok, with both his hearts trying to climb into his throat, instantly noticed that the steady stream of firing at the elevator had fallen silent.

  ****

  “Okey-dokey,” Reynolds said when the firing under the door stopped. “Let’s get down, and when I close the door, you pull the locking rod back.”

  The two men and the ripper, precariously gripping the narrow metal reinforcing ribs on the backside of the door, let go and dropped to the floor, which was covered in smoking cauterized remains of two very dead Krall. Pressing the button to reclose the door, it settled four inches and sealed them off from potential pistol fire. Which was less risky for their armor, but better if avoided.

  “Bend over Sarge.”

  “Right.” He went into a crouch, knees slightly bent, hands on his knees so Ethan could jump up and stand high enough to reach the small access panel in the ceiling. It easily slid open, and he reached inside and pulled on the handle of the inch thick steel rod. The rod had prevented the door from opening all the way, but its normal function was to hold up a fully opened door, preventing it from accidentally closing during routine maintenance.

  “How did you know about that locking rod and that it would do that? I’ve been in dome elevators of course, but I stopped using them after I had my Kobani mods. Most Kobani do and I know you avoid them.”

  “Sarge, you got your mods soon after you reached Koban. I had seventeen years of growing up in a dome, as practically a Normal with only clone mods. People used the elevators a lot in those years, and they sometimes needed maintenance, which is when Carson and I learned about them. We discovered that we could use the rods to prop open all eight elevators doors in a dome, and make people have to climb to the thirty-second floor to unlock them. It seemed a funny joke to us. We found they could also prevent the door from opening all the way, but you had to be inside to do that, and then you were trapped there.”

  “What the hell sort of dumb juvenile stunt was that, to even learn how to do it?” Reynolds demanded.

  “Six year old boys are huge fans of juvenile stunts. That’s when Carson and I did that. Came in handy, didn’t it?”

  Sarge grimaced. “I never once thought of holding on to the reinforcing strip with finger tips and toes, or for Kit to do it with just her claws. I wasn’t sure if we could grab and hang on when we jumped off the two Krall. Then stay up there long enough that our delivery rats did their jobs. If they kept firing at the doors instead of at the bottom crack, they could have burned through at various points, assuming they ever figured out we weren’t standing on the floor or hiding behind their pals.”

  “You and dad always told me they don’t have friends, and that mess on the floor proves that. Besides, you said we could always close the door.”

  “And do what? Go back up and deal with that pack at the front door? I figured we could get some use out of the two bush-tails we had. One must have finally done the trick. Kit’s roar surely scared the hell out of them, but I wasn’t sure they’d run far enough away to infect them.”

  “Perhaps those shoots we risked under the door to scare them again paid off. I was afraid one of us would catch a random bolt in the face when we did that.”

  “Calculated risk. Enough chat, and time for another calculation. Get ready to rush them when I reopen the door. I’ll go right, you go left, and we’ll catch us a Gatlek. Hope I don’t get an arm blown off again when I catch this one. Once was enough.” He turned to Kit.

  He frilled her image of the typical layout of Krall bunkers. “Which way you gonna go? Left with Ethan or to the right with me?” She looked at him with fierce anticipation as she answered, eyes glowing.

  Reynolds nodded. “Of course. Charge straight up the damned middle. Why not? You both ready? Here goes the door.” He inserted a finger in the slot.

  ****

  It was midafternoon, and Nabarone was in no mood to delay. “Start the attacks now, on all eight fronts. To hell with waiting for dawn. The bastards don’t sleep anyway.”

  Nabarone had heard back from Thad, that the Gatlek’s own bunker had fallen, and the disarray within the rear of the Krall lines was spreading. Most of their clanships were grounded, and the heavy plasma batteries around the sixty-mile diameter central region were now being taken off line.

  That densely occupied central area of clanships and stockpiled heavy weapons had been hit hardest by the small ships and their teams. Now the orbital cap of Kobani ships could descend, to ensure no clanship that managed to lift would escape being disabled. Foxworthy’s squadron had destroyed several apparently fleeing clanships, which strangely did not try to evade or fight back.

  Noting this, Greeves had pleaded with her to allow one of his ships to pursue each of those craft with boarding teams, for capture. Amazed again by the Kobani ability to beat the Krall at their own games, she reluctantly agreed, provided they didn’t let them get beyond the orbit of Poldark’s moon before the interception. Her captains were hardly reluctant to kill a helpless clanship out of concern for a crew that would never surrender, or ever return the favor.

  None of this rout of the Krall would have been possible without the intervention of the Kobani, so granting the concession was reasonable, if a bit frustrating for her heavy cruisers, all too ready to pull the trigger on sure and easy enemy kills.

  When a clanship, in full thrust and lifting directly away from Poldark streaked through the Kobani fleet after being disabled, Greeves called Foxworthy.

  “Admiral, I have a gift for you. That clanship that just broke past us must have had a tachyon in its Tra
p field before launch. It’s disabled and can’t Jump, but with thrusters at max and Normal Space drive accelerating it as well, I don't want to risk an increasing velocity chase and a boarding operation. We sure can’t do that before it passes the moon’s orbit.

  “If anything went bad, we’d have a long ways to go for a complicated rescue operation. It’s all yours if you have crews eager to take target practice. Lasers and plasma beams light them up nicely.”

  “Thanks, Colonel. I have several captains that had family on Meadow or Bootstrap, and they’re ready for a little vengeance. It hardly seems sporting, though.”

  “It isn’t a sport Admiral, its war, and that pilot and any crew aboard would skin you alive for entertainment, and eat pieces of you raw if they were hungry. Some of them have probably done that on Poldark.”

  “Right you are. Dead meat coming up.” She disconnected.

  Several heavy cruisers started the chase, but couldn’t match the rate of acceleration of the clanship, so they Jumped ahead of its track, where they could wait for it to pass them. They each took turns firing single laser cannons at a time at a fast and accelerating target, then jumped ahead again, repeating the firing exercise until one of them managed to blow up their practice skeet target. It looked more like a sport than war after all. Humans that had been directly involved with fighting the Krall had learned to be ruthless with an enemy that never showed mercy.

  ****

  The artillery bombardment had started on each of the eight fronts the Krall had established from the earliest months of the invasion. The Krall had shifted directions, to advance toward whatever town was largest and closest along the original direction of a front. That pseudopod of force then spread laterally, to engulf the territory to the sides, until linking up with the adjacent fronts around the continent. Then the bulges of the initial assaults eventually spread to look more smooth and continuous on a field map. New pushes then started along each of the original eight fronts, not always simultaneous, with the attack being coordinated by the Gatlek with whichever clan or clans that had been granted the rights to conduct the fighting, and the previous warriors had been rotated out for breeding, and replaced by another clan.

  The PU Army had established eight armies to concentrate resistance wherever the Krall forces were most concentrated. Any attempt by an army to send a force to attack what was perceived to be a weakness between these “fronts” had them quickly obliterated. The Krall allowed the clans located there to employ their unrestricted combat capability, and they pinched off the advance to surround and cutoff the penetrating force, killing them down to the last man and woman.

  Along the eight fronts, an assault would push the humans back, and just when it seemed the resistance was about to collapse and be overrun, the Krall quit advancing and allowed the enemy to recover, resupply, and rebuild their lines.

  Except for the counter attacks after the enemy withdrew forces, and their supply lines were in disarray and too far behind the overextended fronts, the PU had never pushed the enemy out of territory they had taken. This broad and suddenly prepared attack was risky for the lack of planning available to put it into motion. Nonetheless, a general buildup of the eight armies had been conducted, anticipating the Krall would resume their past pattern of sporadic attacks at each front.

  The greatest rush had been in preparing mortar and artillery shells, loaded with newly infected Denial chips, salvaged from Krall small arms often carelessly and wastefully left behind if damaged, or from lightly guarded depots near the fronts. After all, humans couldn’t use them, and they were too heavy for them to use very long as a personal weapon even if they could.

  Many of the shells being used were purpose built to deliver spy bots, which could scurry about in enemy territory to gather intelligence. Some of the shells fired today still carried spy bots, but now they had a denial chip in them, or glued to some surface. Others were simply fused as aerial bursts, with a small charge, to disburse Denial chips over known concentrations of weapons stockpiles, or warrior forces. A large number of the little chips had been attached to simple four-cornered cloth or plastic squares, two inches per side, to act as small parachutes. It was hoped the winds would carry some of them farther from where the bursts released them.

  Each chip, and there were tens of thousands of them being used along each front, had the potential of disabling anything from a single rifle power pack, body armor, or laser defense battery, to a Dragon, laser cart battery, armored transport, or even a clanship not yet infected. If there was a clan bunker that previous spy bots had detected, shells could be aimed there if they were not too deep inside Krall territory. The bonus was when there were many devices within the radius of a single chip, such as a supply dump.

  The Denial list spread was enhanced when a vehicle, such as a standard truck driven by a warrior carrying a rifle, and they all did, was infected and it subsequently drove past many other devices and warriors. The spy bots could be programed or remotely directed to creep to where there was any heavy equipment, and thereby disable a heavy plasma cannon, or clanship. Today, some of them were fired near where there were known laser defense systems for artillery. Disabling those meant many more normal high explosive shells, or smart munitions would penetrate their normally effective defenses, and take a much higher toll than usual.

  The first troops to move in behind the Denial chip delivery at Kovoso did so under the cover of a conventional artillery barrage. Ladybug drivers and gunners had the nervous honor of being the first to test the initial effect of the barrage and the mysterious Denial chips they’d just heard about. Scary to do this in the middle of the day. The bug squads wanted to wait for early morning, but they were told to go now. “Orders is orders,” their squad commander told them. Since he was in Bug 1, they couldn’t gripe too loud.

  Deke Sabo spoke to his gunner. “Saul, there are more dead Krall in the streets than I’ve seen before after a barrage. The smart munitions didn’t find all of them wearing armor or under cover, and they didn’t seem to get the usual early warning that shells were on the way directly at them. I see one over there that wore the body portion, but without a helmet. In a barrage, that marked him as a prime target for a mini bomb.”

  Suddenly a motion detector indicated movement to their front, at just under a thousand yards, more than two objects, close together. The smoke and dust of the just lifted barrage sharply reduced visibility, even in the overcast muted daylight, so the driver switched on a sonic scanner. These were relatively new, operating in an audio range just below the high Krall speech frequencies, and at the upper range of low Krall speech and hearing. Not all Krall could detect the initial steady base frequency transmission, which used azimuth and Doppler to measure direction and closing or opening distance to moving objects.

  Usually the targets were visible to the driver’s eye, or on the gunner’s targeting monitor, fed from the three barreled plasma cannon’s camera, to the inside of the closed clamshell. With dust and smoke from fires to lower visibility like now, visible and infrared was obscured, so there were alternatives. Once the tri-barrel of the gun was aimed at a potential moving target, a quick audio pulse could obtain a precise range and elevation, but a Krall was more likely to hear the pulse and dive for cover. The radar based motion detector was normally adequate for range, even if it didn’t have a feed to the gunner’s monitor. Besides, with plasma bolts from a ladybug, the range for nearly light speed plasma bolts, properly aimed, was seldom of concern when you were shooting at surface targets less than a few miles away.

  The minimum target size for motion reporting was set for a stronger return than from small animals, and all animals larger than cats and small dogs were routinely killed by the Krall, either for an exotic food experience, or most commonly for target practice and pleasure. Smaller animals were killed too if seen, though they could hide more easily, and they wouldn’t be confused with a human or larger sized target by a ladybug team.

  All this meant that there were two
or more Krall moving towards them less than a thousand yards away. “Be ready for a double tap on the tri-barrel, and I’ll swerve left behind the corner of the building just ahead. We’ll see the flash of return plasma fire if they have operational rifles. Sarge said the chips they dropped here first, or the two we carry are supposed to knock out their rifles at about a hundred twenty feet, but I’m damn well not risking my life to let them get that frigging close. With pistols or bare hands, they can still get to us. Tracks are no good if they flip us on our side and pound the hinges off the doors.”

  Saul looked at the motion scanner’s pip fed to his visor for the azimuth, and directed the gun’s pip to match that, and adjusted elevation for a flat chest high trajectory. “Ready to fire. Let me know just before you reach the corner.” They wanted to dodge any return fire immediately after they gave away their position in the murk. Multiple plasma rifles at that close range could score lucky hits.

  “Now Saul.”

  The gunner used his helmet’s remote trigger capability to fire off two full cycles from the rotating tri-barrel, sending six bolts down range in under a second. Then he was forced to lean right, fighting the hard left turn Deke made at the corner. The bug nearly lifted its left treads from the pavement, and they skidded slightly, with a metal on concrete screech. Then the bug settled and accelerated to get farther from the intersection, and they turned left again at the next street to move farther from the Krall. Deke half-expected bolts to hit them from behind if the warriors, knowing ladybug tactics, raced to the parallel streets on either side of the one they had fired from, hoping to hit the open gun ports on the front of the driver’s compartment if he continued moving closer to them. Deke was no newbie, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to close the gap, but he did have his own rifle protruding through the armored slit where a windscreen would be on a car. He used a front camera fed to his visor to steer, and there was a small monitor on the dash if his helmet were removed.