Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire Page 9

  “Hell, even if rats don’t eat and spread all of them, if we do the airbursts high enough, on trajectories that will pass over good targets that the Krall think we’ve overshot, we can scatter chips where they will cover a lot of clans and their equipment. I’m moving up the schedule for my assaults anywhere we can spread these chips. Every ammo dump we capture gives us more Denial chips.” His sense of euphoria was palpable, and grizzly in its expression.

  “God. I may get to enjoy this hideous damn war when it’s finally the Krall bodies that start to pile up.”

  ****

  Approaching the mass White Out, Thad questioned his friend. “You sure you want to go down in a four ship Sarge?” Thad had assumed he would operate one of the weapons consoles with him, in their low orbit version of a Combat Air Patrol. “We don’t want a single clanship to get aloft if we can stop them.”

  “Thad, I hired on with the PU Army to be a devious kind of ground pounder. I’d like to see this rat trick work this time, up close. With an opportunity to finally push the bastards back, instead of managing somehow to live through another rout of our troops, where they overrun our lines. I want to see our rippers wade through some of them. I’ll be down there to look after Ethan and Kit. They might decide to do something rash.”

  “Hell, that’s your specialty. They’ll be pulling your bacon out of the fire.”

  “Maybe, but I want to be down there.”

  “Fine, leave me up here with an expanded navy squadron as backup that can’t tell most of our ships from the damned Krall. Only fifty of my captains have IFF equipment installed, and my Ripper is new so it isn’t equipped. Tet sent most of the IFF equipped ships to New Dublin, because that squadron has never worked with us. I may get friendly navy fire up my ass. You could watch my backside.”

  “Quit whining. Foxworthy knows what she’s doing. She promised to fire only Denial anti-ship missiles at clanships rising towards your formation. You’ll have the missiles equipped with actual warheads if needed. I’ve seen you in combat, and you ain’t all that careful. The navy has more to fear from you shooting their asses off.”

  “Get below you jackass, we White Out in ten minutes. Watch out for my boy and Kit, and be careful. Wish I could land with you.” The last remark revealed the true nature of his complaint. He wanted to be part of the ground assault, and had to play at being a paper admiral because Tet had put him in charge.

  The four hundred Kobani ships performed their Comtap coordinated White Outs, barely above two hundred miles, spread over the Krall occupied continent. They had maneuvered prior to the Jump to emerge with a matching velocity with Poldark. They arrived with only Krall standard style stealth active for the large ships. Each ship promptly spewed their better stealthed four-ships and single-ships, which descended towards the central Krall defensive perimeter. The Kobani ships, only fifty of which had the new stealth systems, tried to look like typical Krall clanships, to gain any time delay they could for their more secretive small craft to get away undetected.

  Ten minutes after they sprang into existence over Poldark, the sixty-five heavy cruisers of Foxworthy’s reinforced squadron appeared another five hundred miles above them, making their Jump from the other side of Poldark.

  “Welcome home Admiral Greeves.” Foxworthy sent. She’d been kept informed of the exact timing of the arrival by Nabarone’s staff, who she believed had a Kobani Comtap specialist with them. That was true in a sense, for Nabarone’s staff, but they let her think Chief Haveram had left a Kobani behind.

  “Thanks Admiral. I wish you’d call me Colonel, a rank I’m more comfortable holding. Admiral sounds…, forgive me if this sounds offensive, I don't mean it that way, but it’s too lofty a title for a simple army man like me. This temporary fleet command is the result of special circumstances.”

  “Well,” she chuckled at his discomfort. “I could also call you Captain, since you command from the bridge of your own ship.”

  “Good Lord. That would confuse me more Mam. By the way my ship’s called the Ripper, in case you hear that name from one of my other captains.”

  “See? You call them captains.”

  “Most all of them were really Spacers before we captured these ships, and a few of them were actual captains of commercial vessels, even if that was over twenty years ago. By the way, we just released at least eight hundred small craft to descend on Poldark. I’m sure even stealthed like typical Krall clanships that we show up on your low frequency radar systems, but I doubt that our small boats do.”

  There was a pause as she checked. “No, we don’t see them at all, Admir…, I mean Colonel. General Nabarone told us you’d launch them. Presumably the Krall can’t see them either.”

  “We hope not. They didn’t at K1. We sent several thousand of them down there, and they were right on top of them before they knew we were coming.”

  “You really took down the whole planet?” She asked in an incredulous tone. She’d seen the Kobani fight with their ships, but this was unbelievable.

  “Not the whole planet Mam. We disabled most of their clanships, much of their heavy war material, right on down to plasma rifles, body armor, and simple door keypads. Anything that uses the quantum-coded keypads that only let Krall use them. There are a hell of a lot of pissed off Krall on the surface that we never came near. Obviously, we brought some of the newly captured ships with us. We captured roughly two thousand two hundred at K1, and we started the attack there with only a hundred seventeen. They don’t have as large a fleet left to them now, and about a third of it is right here, where we hope to disable them.”

  “Mirikami went against KI with only a hundred seventeen ships? Pretty damned gutsy or overconfident.”

  “Definitely not overconfident. We were damned desperate though, because Telour had discovered our home world, and we only intercepted and stopped the ships he sent to scout us because we discovered we had some unexpected technology at our disposal. Tet knew Telour would send much of his fleet after us when his scout ships failed to return, so we had to strike first, before they expected us.”

  “Excuse me? You just happened to discover you had some new technology that disables Krall clanships and equipment. How does something like that happen?”

  “It’s actually a kind of software list of species that are not allowed to use things designed by the Olt’kitapi. I think Tet has mentioned that ancient race’s role in the Krall’s early development. Anyway, the list to deny Krall use of such equipment was passed like a virus to one of our own clanships when we met and intercepted one of the Olt’kitapi ships. The one that tore apart the gas giants at Meadow and Bootstrap. Afterwards, all of our ships were changed the same way, so the Krall cannot operate them but we can. We didn’t notice at first, because the list shared between those chips does not exclude our DNA pattern. That’s the source of the action of Denial chips, as we’ve started calling them. It’s how the Olt’kitapi intended to clip the wings of the Krall, but they were ineffective at war and were wiped out, letting these barbarians free to rape the galaxy.”

  “Huh,” was her numb acknowledgement of a potentially war winning bit of serendipity. She snapped out of her daze when she received a report from her weapons officer.

  “Colonel. While we were talking, six of my cruisers fired those doctored missiles at three clanships that were already on station well above you. We were told how to strip the missiles down, and Nabarone provided us the new ECM circuits, as he called them, which must be another name for the Denial chips your people gave him. I have to tell you, firing those without warheads made me nervous. The three clanship targets are still intact, but after their initial laser attempts to knock out our smart missiles or acceleration to avoid them, they’ve simply continued on their way, inert as can be. No other reaction. I’d expected them to launch everything they had at us, and at you.

  “Yesterday, we had one of my cruisers lightly damaged by Plasma cannons when the clanship we were supposed to allow through suddenly arrived.
We weren’t fired on by that craft, but the bolts came from one of the defensive clanships they now keep aloft, constantly moving and Jumping around. The joint attack on K1, your ships and ours, has made them more conservative about protecting their clanships. As Mirikami figured out, logistics was their Achilles heel, and now the Denial chips will cut their hamstrings. If crippled enough we can win this thing.”

  Thad assured her, “When this week is over, Admiral, you may never have to worry about a Krall fleet again. We sent the same number of ships to New Dublin. They haven’t arrived yet, but we’re telling them how things are going here. They may have it easier because of lessons learned here.”

  “Well, right now you and I do have to worry. The PDC’s sensors report multiple Krall launches, and satellite images show crews around most of their clanships. I don’t know why they took so long to react to your arrival, but we’re going to be busy for a time. I might have to pull my cruisers back a bit. We simply can’t risk getting in close to fight like I saw you do at K1.”

  “I see them Mam. If you focus on any that get by us, we’ll try to keep most of them out of orbit, and I hope held too low for them to Jump.”

  Things got very busy and often downright chaotic after that transmission.

  Chapter 3: Catching a Virus

  Reynolds found it hard to do as Thad had asked of him. Look after his son and keep him safe. “Ethan, you’re going to fall out of that damned hatch if I have to maneuver suddenly. I’ve been trying to keep the open hatch turned away from the ships blindly scanning us from below, but we’re so low now that I can’t do that. Some of them will see that open hole in our stealth, using normal scan mode.” The little four-ship held only Reynolds, Ethan, and Kit, plus a tub full of grease coated Denial chips they wanted find ways to disburse.

  “Sarge, I’ve disabled each of the clanships within a mile of the hill top landing point you selected. They won’t be shooting at us.”

  “If they were the only clanships able to shoot at us that’d be great, kid. But it ain’t like the beams from more distant clanships are limited to a mile ya know. Shut the hatch until I get us down.”

  He heard the hatch slide shut, noticeable more by the reduction of wind noise than from the quiet motors. Ethan had asked to open the hatch when they were about ten thousand feet up. He wanted to use the height advantage to fire slugs with Denial chips close to the parked clanships they spotted around their selected landing point. By Ethan’s tally, he’d clipped the wings of over a dozen clanships that were gathered close to a rounded rocky mound. The moderate sized hilltop had offered good cover for their little craft, within a jumble of large craggy rocks and underbrush on its crown, and it would give them height for additional sniping.

  Reynolds flew laterally towards the hillock, now that their revealing open door had shut to restore full stealth. The tachyon powered Normal Space drive made a slight hum, discernable only within the craft. They would be able to gently, and silently, ease down between the scattered boulders and scrub trees, with perhaps some rustling of branches. It appeared to be a breezy day, so there should be some of those rustling branch and leaf sounds produced naturally.

  Reynolds issued a caution. “Before you open the hatch again, adjust and activate Kit’s Chameleon Skin. She might bolt out before you can stop her, like you said she did on K1.”

  The deep throaty rumble and cold stare from intense, almost glowing blue eyes, told Reynolds the comment didn’t please her. He was questioning her stalking and hunting ability.

  Ethan heard her growl and looked back at his cat sibling. “She didn’t have one of these suits at K1. Speed and terror was her best defense there.”

  What Kit was wearing was an older style spec ops camouflage, called Chameleon Skin. It was lightweight, flexible stealth armor, fastened and draped over her large body to render her invisible. Except for her head, which Ethan would cover for her before they made their exit. The hoodie of the suit, fashioned by Joe Longstreet, was modified for ripper use while they were in transit to Poldark. The ghillie style suits were seldom used by speck ops now, not since they had received superior form fitting hard suits, with better stealth.

  Their recent experience on K1, with several wounded or grazed cats proved that sheer speed and agility wasn’t always enough when there were too many Krall for them to distract, using typical ripper cunning and stalking methods. The suit’s flexible small flat links of metal and ceramic fabric had once been called Dragon Skin. When the design incorporated powered stealth coatings, the name changed.

  The suits were designed for easy field repair or modification, so that panels of the suits could be replaced, or in the case of the larger ripper bodies, more of them added around the edges to cover their huge frames. Without the use of a military visor, or the AI furnished eye implants of spec ops to have an external vison system, a small stealth compromise was made for the hoods. Some links around each eye had been removed. To ensure the eyeholes remained in position, organic adhesives had been placed over the brows and top of cat’s heads, to make the hoods adhere with the peep holes fixed firmly in place. The cats didn’t like having their ears constantly pressed down, but they certainly weren’t deafened because sound passed through the loose overlapping links.

  Besides, as they informed their spec ops instructors by frilling them, in their natural low belly crawl mode of sneaking up on prey, their ears were held pinned back anyway. The slightly curved and flattened battery packs for the suits stealth system was strapped and snugged around the ripper’s abdomen, rather than around a human’s lower back. It left them able to crawl or run unimpeded. With no need to power hand carried weapons, the power pack would last a considerable time for stealth only. There was a radio for them, and ear buds were placed in the hoods near the ears, not inside. The cats couldn’t tolerate the buds when inserted. They discovered ripper hearing was so sensitive that verbal information could be passed to the cats. Unfortunately, all the rippers could send back to their human cohorts were expressive growls or roars. This technology was a work in progress.

  The Chamskin, as they had been called by the snipers that sometimes still wore them, could be draped to hang open underneath, rather than enclosing the body when walking upright. This gave the cats the full use of their powerful legs and long retractable claws. But those were only their secondary weapons.

  A quick toss of the neck would throw the draped hoodie to the top and back of the head and neck, revealing their primary weapon. Those massive jaws, capable of gaping wide enough to enclose half of a Krall’s thick chest, and exposing the nearly steel hard carbon fiber reinforced fangs, which could puncture and tear through the armored hides of a rhinolo, their normal primary prey.

  A Krall’s inbred physiology might not allow them to bleed to death, but having a twelve to fifteen inch diameter hunk of flesh and bone torn out was more than a bit debilitating. Particularly if it included their head, or a disembowelment.

  Ethan pulled the hood over and pressed it firmly around the eyeholes to ensure there would be no shifting. He could sense Kit’s eager thoughts through the conductive mesh, and of course, he didn’t have his gauntlets on yet. He reached under the draping material, and made direct contact with her frill. He also felt the neck collar, with the Denial chip attached, similar to the one he had around his own neck. They exchanged hunter’s thoughts of the stalking and action to come, and with their confidence so high, wishing each other good fortune in the coming hunt would seem superfluous. There was more “game” here than they could possibly catch. He activated Kit’s stealth, and as she shimmered nearly out of sight, he verified the draping fully covered her, and that all panels were working. The floating pupils of her two eager blue eyes were all he could see.

  As before on K1, the goal today was more like counting coup, as Longstreet had explained, a tradition among brave and ancient warriors on the plains of North America. Disabling clanships, Dragons, weapons dumps, armored transports, lasers and plasma batteries was what they
wanted to count here, more than Krall kills. There would be some of those, but they wouldn’t go out of their way to kill in this fight. Ethan and Kit had soured on the thrill of killing members of this genocidal species. It wasn’t what their mother would have wanted of them, to become like their enemy.

  Ethan felt the ship rock as it settled to the ground, and Reynolds rose from the pilot seat. “We have old basalt extrusions all around us. I think this hump is an old eroded cinder cone of an extinct volcano. I saw a ring-like range of low hills of an old caldera when we got lower. There isn’t anything up here but rock and low trees and shrubs. When you open the hatch, let’s get out fast and close it behind us. There are seven other singe or four-ships within five miles of us if we need to link up with them, or if we have to help one another.”

  Ethan hit the hatch switch and the three of them poured through the opening in two seconds, with Reynolds closing the hatch as he left. In a crouch, Kit rushed to a gap in the rocks where she could scan the area on her chosen third of the terrain. Ethan, his .50 cal rifle, silencer equipped, went to the top of a rock overlooking his third of their surroundings, trusting to his suit and his weapon’s stealth coating to make him invisible.

  Reynolds, the same type rifle, did the same on his third share of the terrain, but went to a sharp drop off that gave him the view of his area, as well as a better look at the base of this roughly two hundred foot high hummock. He was surprised, and initially alarmed, to see at least ten sets of blue tinged armor below, surrounded by as many K’Tals in brown tinted armor, and at least what had to be a hundred Krall in basic armor, which made them black suits. There were five grey shaded sets of armor, which meant they were unit commanders of four octets or greater. He first thought they were preparing to direct an assault up the hill at the newly arrived intruders. Then he chastised himself because their stealth was off, which was how he could see the tints of the suits. They were not on the offensive, yet.