Koban: The Mark of Koban (50 page)

As they talked, Nord achieved a task he had
been working on with just one of the batteries. The tough Clanship hull finally
burned through, and plasma beams struck the stored ammunition intended for the
next three days of slaughter. This caused a huge internal explosion and flames
to erupt through the open hatches, and even blew out some hull docking stations
were single ships could attach. This tactic might only work once against the
Krall, but it was working fine this time.

Henrik called Commander Hendricksen. “Sir, we
are going to leave Battery three and two under Nord’s control, to fire on
exposed Krall that go deeper into the city. Guns 1 and 4 will manually
concentrate on funneling the Krall down Avenue D and F, once the warriors
realize it’s a ghost town and head for the docks. Are your engineers ready for
that Sir?”

“They are, and we’ve had a few random warriors
work down this way. I’m sure they have reported to their octet leaders that
there are a mass of people behind prepared defenses on the docks and the
processing plants. If Nord will be running guns 2 and 3, what are you four team
members going to be doing?”

The militia was all-volunteer and considerable
autonomy was granted to the members, but the ‘boss’ wanted to know what his
critical plasma gun crews were planning. He could veto any ideas he considered
bad.

“Sir, Battery three has damage and can’t aim
low enough to cover our side of the city and it can’t force the Krall towards D
and F. Now that the ship is dead, the next step is to push the Krall where we
want them. That’s best done by manual control by guns 1 and 4 to selectively
fire so as to keep the most warriors moving down Dropsy and Flopsy, where we
want them. Some Krall will surely be trying to get into the gun platforms while
that happens. The four of us will cover the approaches to batteries one and four,
to keep them on-line and firing as long as possible.”

“Very well son.” He gave his official stamp of
approval. “But it’s risky giving up the protection of the double armored
control rooms.”

“Sir, you and the other militia don’t have
that protection. Besides, Krall plasma rifles have longer lasting power packs
than ours do, and concentrated fire will burn pinholes through both doors in
five or ten minutes. If plasma gets inside the control rooms, even a pinhole
penetration will force evacuation and gun failure. We four can at least slow
that down from outside.”

“Right. Well, good luck to all of you.”

“Thanks, luck to you too Sir.”

****

Trudok, the second highest status sub leader
on the raid, found he was now the highest ranked surviving leader of all of Dorbo
clan’s raiders on this cursed and cold human nest. The clan’s raid leader,
Blutor, and his K’Tal had both died defending the Clanship, which humans lured
into landing at the center of a trap. They had lost the ship, but not the
battle. By fighting to keep one hatch free of plasma fire, Blutor had managed
to save more than half of the warriors caught in the killing zone. He deserved
to die for his poor decision to land where he did, but he had preserved his
honor.

Because Krall sub leaders lead from the front,
the other high status warriors were among the first to step into the intensely
hot plasma beams the humans directed at the ship, and died.

Seeing what was happening, observing that
novices without experience were fearlessly ready to brave the beams in their
armor, Trudok took charge. He had ordered them to hold back and exit from the
only hatch not under fire. They had assumed that speed would take them through
the beams intact. This was true, but not safely.

Personal armor could endure the seconds needed
to clear the beams, but the residual star heat would pass through the
overheated armor to the body inside in another few seconds, roasting the
warrior alive. Inexperienced novices thought merely making it clear of the
beams, as they observed hands of warriors do, was all that was required. Experience
told Trudok that many of those warriors that passed through fast enough would
die, unless they immediately discarded their damaged armor when clear. This
placed them at a disadvantage when faced with human plasma rifles, and they
would likely suffer debilitating burns in most cases. Krall interclan battles
sometimes escalated to plasma cannon use.

He had preserved the bulk of the raid’s force,
but the novices had quickly spread out looking for individual combat
opportunities. A beam from one of the four plasma cannons would lance out when
a warrior stayed exposed too long, or chose a shelter that wasn’t heavy enough.
He commanded four octets to seek out the batteries from behind, and destroy
them.

The reports he was gathering from leaders of other
octets told him that they had found few humans in the main part of the nest. Where
had they gone?

Nearly forty burn-injured warriors had
survived exposure to the plasma beams, and now without armor they had sought
safer cover. They were among the first to enter the maze of corridors inside
the rock walls that hemmed this cluster of human nests so tightly. They
encountered many humans there, but discovered them armed with projectile
weapons. The injured warriors no longer had their heat damaged plasma rifles,
lost with their armor.

Each warrior that abandoned their suits had two
pistols, kept in armpit holsters inside the armor.  However, replacement
ammunition and rifles were no longer available with the explosion of the Clanship.
Pistols, knives, speed and agility were of limited use on massed humans with
automatic weapons. These humans used the projectiles that exploded next to a
warrior if it had missed a direct impact. The accumulated spray of fragments
gradually decreased the effectiveness of the unarmored novices even if they
stayed behind cover.

The kill ratio was down to four or five humans
for each warrior that fell in those walls. With so many armed humans, this
wasn’t as favorable a trading game as they were accustomed to having. Trudok
sent armored warriors into the tunnels to support those without armor, and to
discover how many humans were in there, or where the rest of them had retreated.
Humans were proving to be good opponents, but their first instinct to flee was
frustrating. You had to corner them to make them fight the hardest. Otherwise,
they chose clever trickery to win with less risk. That was cowardly!

Gatrol Kanpardi had said that within ten breeding cycles the
cleverness of their novices would show a noticeable increase. This was because
those that saw and avoided human traps, or created their own traps, were more
likely to earn status and live to breed. It was strange to think that their
prey altered the Krall’s steps along the Great Path, but the Gatrol claimed it
had always been so.

The octets he sent to seek the deadly plasma
cannons were fighting their way through tunnels and up ramps. The humans they
faced were not trained or armored, but some had large armor piercing
projectiles, which came from single-use small shoulder fired tubes. Against the
heavy breast and back plates of Krall armor, they were rarely fully effective.
However, if they struck an arm or leg joint, or glanced off a helmet, they
could remove the limb, or stun the warrior for several minutes. In that case,
the warrior might survive to return to the fight, but was obviously less
effective.

The octets were closing in on the magnetic
signature their sensors detected from each pulse fired, even from inside the
rock walls. Soon they would silence the plasma cannons that had nearly ended
the raid before it started. He was determined that their recovery ship would
not have to face these hidden weapons.

The raiders here were from clan Dorbo, but the
three single ship launchers were from an allied finger clan, the Maldo. After
ejecting their loads of single ships, they had withdrawn and Jumped nearly to
the tenuous cloud of icy bodies beyond the outer gas planets. They would wait
there and return in two days. He could call on them to bring their shuttles to
recover his warriors. His problem was that if he sent a recall request now, at
the speed of light the signal would not reach them for nearly two days anyway.
He had to win this battle first; something he was determined to do anyway,
despite the shame of the large early loses.

****

Henrik and Agneta chose alcoves cut into the
granite walls of the slidewalk corridor, located across from the heavy door to
Battery number four, and twenty feet above the floor of the 3 story high residential
section along that main avenue. These were actually balconies of currently evacuated
apartments, with a nine-inch thick, waist high granite-railing wall they could
use for concealment.

Henrik checked in with his friends. “Eric,
Greta, Agneta and I are perched on two balconies across from your door, a level
above the corridor floor. We each have a good field of view, some cover, and a
path of retreat up to the next level.” The apartments occupied two levels, with
bedrooms placed another level higher, accessed by internal stairs. Both levels
had doors leading out to smaller passageways deeper into the complex. So they
could move to different balconies and apartments if forced to shift positions.

Eric answered. “Agneta, you better keep that
pretty head down. I see your helmet sticking up over that wall.” He had angled
a recessed remote camera in the corridor wall to see her.

“Can you see my tongue sticking out at your
door camera, smarty pants?”

“Nope. Can you see my ass picture from in
here?” He sent her helmet visor’s screen an image of his wife’s armored
posterior, standing by the manual gun controls.

“Gee, that looks too smart and petite to be
something as big and dumb as your ass, Eric.”

They heard Greta laugh as she heard the
zinger. They were staying “hot mike” most of the time, for rapid coordination.

Jarl chimed in. “I guess we need some Krall to
attack before we waste our best insults on each other. By the way, Elin and I
are across from Alf’s door. I think we’ll go up a level, like you did Henrik,
the apartments over here are all single level, but do have granite balconies.”

Alf had a suggestion. “I saw you and Elin as
you came up the corridor on my camera, and after Eric sent that picture of
Greta’s butt, it gave me an idea of how you can keep from being seen by the
Krall too early. How about we send your helmets our door camera views of the
corridors so you can stay concealed until you need to shoot?”

Henrik saw a problem. “Nice idea Alf, except
how do you plan to do that? Point your helmet cam at the door monitor while you
fire the cannons blind?”

Nord, monitoring the conversation, had a
solution before Alf replied. “Sir, I am currently using street and building
cameras to locate Krall to shoot at outside. I can request the city AI for
access to indoor cameras, and I already have a Link to the Battery door
cameras. I can furnish each of you full time corridor surveillance from many
locations, individually tailored to each person’s view request.”

“Damn. How come we didn’t know you could do
that?” Henrik was astonished.

“I was not asked about this, but it is within
the mission parameters of things I am authorized to use.”

Elin asked the AI, “What else do you have to
offer us that we may not know you can provide?” Before the others could speak
up, Nord began to list them.

“I can control traffic signals to expedite
militia traffic, I can appropriate communications…”

“Stop!” came from multiple voices.

Her husband’s exasperation voiced everyone’s
thought. “Elin! Is this the
first
time you’ve
ever
spoken to an
AI?”

“Sorry, I was just so surprised a simple idea
like that was never brought up in planning.”

Henrik needed to put this discussion off to
another time. “OK. Let’s use it now, discuss it later. Nord, I want two images
divided on my left side visor, in see-through mode. Top half, the door camera
aimed at warriors approaching in this corridor. Bottom half, any cameras that
show them as they enter the corridor and then follow them here. Everyone else,
use a private channel with Nord to set up your choices, mine were just an
example.”

The teams split off to private Links to speak
individually with Nord, then came back to the customary group Link.

Henrik already knew there were sixteen
warriors inside his east wall, moving in two groups through various lower
corridors, all coming from the same general direction. They apparently couldn’t
read the signs in Standard, and they didn’t understand the maze of ramps and
stairs that were clearly marked. They were all running swiftly below the main
slidewalk corridor, and had passed an up ramp that would have taken them nearer
Battery number three, Henrik’s own gun. That gun was on its own with only Nord
to operate it. He heard a ripping pulse as it fired, the sound passing through
the walls with no clear direction to the echoing sound’s source.

Apparently, it was clear to one Krall, because
an armored warrior in the lead suddenly glanced at an instrument attached to
his forearm. It looked stiffly upwards, bending back to do so. Then looked back
down the smaller corridor towards the up ramp they had passed. All sixteen
warriors rapidly reversed their steps, moving in that fast smooth pace they
always used, even when in armor.