Koban: The Mark of Koban (54 page)

Gun 4 fired over their heads again,
demolishing another decorative structure along Avenue F, erasing the last
potential cover if a warrior tried to return in that direction. The bulk of the
Krall were now two or three blocks closer to the docks, many probably bunching
up behind the convenient heavy cover built down the center median of the two
extra wide streets. Avenue D and F had many statues, covered pedestrian
shelters with stone benches, small sturdy gift shops, food kiosks, and public
restrooms. All of them made of shades of polished granite or other stone, which
made for excellent cover from plasma rifle pulses or machine guns. The Krall were
taking full advantage.

As the gunners joined up with roughly a
hundred additional militia members, they infiltrated the rubble at the ends of
Avenue D and F for cover. E street, between them was actually only a relatively
narrow pedestrian walking area, with little cover for the Krall.

Just before Alf joined them, Nord reported
that both remaining plasma cannons had ceased responding to his control. For purposes
of offense, they now had to rely mainly on plasma rifles, grenades, and ten
50-caliber machine guns, mounted on armored cars. There was militia on the
docks, now only about four hundred fifty strong, behind the first barricades. Farther
behind them, there were at least a hundred thousand citizens with projectile
weapons, spread out at various barricades, and on floating manmade islands for
the fish processing plants. They still faced probably two hundred fifty Krall,
with some wounded warriors scattered in other parts of the city. At least several
dozen of the three hundred that managed to escape the clanship were already
dead. There was no count of human dead reported yet, and if an AI knew or had
an estimate, announcing it wasn’t something that would build confidence.

Henrik figured they had no more than five
minutes before they learned if their final strategy would save most of the
city’s residents, or if the Krall would overrun the militia and start killing
the unarmored citizens.

All the militia heard Hendricksen tell them to
standby for suppressive fire. The intent was to have roughly five hundred
plasma rifles firing from both ends of Avenues D and F, aimed along the open
sidewalks and the deliberately designed smooth fronts of stores and businesses,
where there was little cover, and no gaps between buildings.

****

Trudok had saved the raid’s success, despite
the inability to silence all four of the plasma cannons as quickly as he had
expected. In hindsight there should have been two octets sent to attack each
gun, not just one per gun. The humans would of
course
have strong
defenses prepared for those four critical elements of their ambush of the
Clanship, and a key defense of their nest. The margin for victory had been
almost
as narrow as a hand of warriors, finally able to silence the last two guns.

However, before the guns were destroyed, he
had discovered another way to assure Dorbo’s victory. Trudok had climbed to the
roof of a building to observe how the humans were preventing his warriors from
infiltrating the paths they needed to use. He had ordered them to follow the
long open paths through the nests buildings, which led to where his scouts had
discovered most of the humans hiding. From the roof, he saw that the big guns
blocked access to many of the paths, using the open areas that his warriors
must cross to kill them.

With both sides of the nest visible to him, he
recognized the weakness of this defense. The center paths were not exposed to
plasma cannon fire for the entire way. Instead, those center paths had nest
buildings to shield his warriors. The paths were defended by outposts on the
tops of buildings, using individual human operated plasma rifles and projectile
weapons. There was no way they could hold back warriors with so weak a force.
He directed all of his warriors to avoid the cannon fire this way, and as a
good leader did, he led the first charge of warriors to follow those protected paths.

The humans with armor were at the far end,
behind protective walls, with open lanes of fire on every path, but two of the
middle paths offered many places in their centers for warriors to find cover as
they moved closer. He led the way nearer to the humans, reaching a place where
the protective cover ended on his path. He paused there, and ordered his
warriors on this, and the similar path behind buildings to his right, to wait
for the bulk of the trailing fighters to join them.

His plan was to gather the mass of his
warriors to rush the human’s defenses all together. They would swarm over them
at those two points, and once behind their barricades, they could spread out to
engage them in the finest fighting a Krall could desire. One on one, close up.
It would be a marvelous slaughter of this tricky enemy. Then the unarmored
humans behind them would be easier to kill. Nevertheless, they would be very
satisfying kills after the Clan’s loses here. There would be time enough to
make many of them die slowly, for the trouble they caused, as much as for
cowardice.

Trudok was on the verge of ordering the mass
charge, the waiting novices aware of the spreading excitement of the
anticipated event. He had broadcast the order that all of them were to await
his command. Octet leaders at the rear were reporting to him from both of the
paths they were using. The bulk of the last of the clan’s warriors were about
to join the back of the pack. He wasn’t waiting for the slower warriors, or the
limping wounded.

Suddenly, as if in anticipation of his
command, there was a huge increase in fire from the humans. It was flashing
down each side of the paths, along the open areas by the nest buildings. It
only had the effect of clustering his warriors closer to the concealment the
humans had stupidly provided in the center, perfect for the Krall to use.

Let them run down their power pack
s
!
He thought. Many of the foolish humans would be switching to
a fresh pack when he ordered the charge. Then he heard a loud series of noises,
from well below his feet, and felt a vibration that increased, as he sensed he
was settling with respect to the nests to each side. In a flash of belated
insight, he ordered the charge his warriors were expecting.

Too late! Even as they leaped out into the
sleet of plasma and projectile fire, and started towards the enemy, the hard
ground beneath their feet dropped away, the heavy stone structures and objects
that had been shielding them were toppling over. They were collapsing, along
with the entire center of the two wide paths.

A roar of anger escaped Trudok’s lips, heard
and echoed by over two hundred of his clan mates.
It was a final trap from
these cowardly animals!

He was determined to fight and climb his way
out of this still forming pit. He was certain most of his warriors would easily
survive the fall, since they were atop the falling material.

Then in a far more unexpected and much more
unpleasant surprise, he did not experience a jarring halt at the bottom of a
trench. Instead, he heard extremely loud sounds of splashing water. In an
instant, he was engulfed by a gush of frigid dark water. He continued to fall,
but at a slower rate, deeper into the turbulent dirty watery depths. He reached
bottom in a few more seconds. His armor, airtight when needed and watertight as
well, had automatically sealed. He could breathe indefinitely with the powered rebreather
equipment to scrub his air when it grew stale.

However, it was unlikely many of his warriors
could climb to the surface on the sides before the humans stood over them to
pick them off from the edges of the path as they emerged. He had noted the
sides close to the nest buildings did not fall with the center area. That was
the reason for the heavy fire over those areas, just before the collapse. It
was to keep the stable ground clear of his warriors.

Unsure how well his signal would spread, he
ordered all of his warriors to walk or crawl along the bottom, forward to the
end of the watery trench, towards the humans at the barricades. They would form
a chain of warriors to climb out, and all come up in one place. They should be
able to hold the humans back long enough to get a significant force out of the
trap.

Then he heard splashing overhead. A lot of
splashing. Something hard and solid bumped him a glancing blow on his armored
shoulder. He activated a helmet light, which did little to penetrate the silt
filed water, but it was quite revealing as he bent over to look around his
feet.

 Lying amid the jumble of paving stones, and
slabs of the structure he had hidden behind, was a human hand bomb. The kind
that used a delayed explosion. It wasn’t a good day after all.

****

Henrik picked up another belt of grenades from
the boxes in the back of the armored cars. He, Agneta, Alf, Eric and Greta were
running along the cracked sidewalks of Avenue D, arming and tossing them into
“Dropsy” pit. The heavy thumping sounds, flashes of light from the bottom, and
eruption of bubbles and gas were a mild seeming testament to the savage
destruction the grenades were causing at the bottom of this watery mass Krall
grave. All along Avenue F, “Flopsy” pit was also receiving its share of Krall
killing splashes.

Henrik paused midway down the three-block
stretch of caved in street. He removed two grenades from another new belt, and
looked at his wife and friends. “For Jarl and Elin.” He waited until the others
held two grenades each.

“For lost comrades, never forgotten.” He
thumbed his two grenades to activate them, and lightly tossed them to the
center of the churning turbid water ten feet below. Eight more grenades
splashed at different places. The resultant rapid series of thumps, flashes,
and eruption of water wasn’t enough to ease the pain, but real grieving and a
celebration of the lives lost would come later.

New Oslo needed extensive repairs, but had the
necessary surviving citizens to get it done. It would be decided later if the
old canals under Avenues D and F would be dug out and the water covered again,
or completely filled in as had once been proposed by city planners. The narrow
fiord offered little room for the city to expand, and the old canals had
furnished sheltered docking for the smaller fishing fleets of the early colony
years.

As the town grew, it built up towards, and
over the water and into the rocky cliff sidewalls. Eventually, they needed to make
better use the area around the old canals. The growing Krall threat had
convinced Fjord to prepare for larger raids. That raid had been several years
in coming, but the planning had been well worth the inconvenience of roofing
over the canals to create two large central avenues. It was time for New Oslo,
at least, to consider the next plan.

“Maggi, I wouldn’t have backed or voted for
you if I thought you’d actually get enough support for this inane law to pass.”
Mirikami was highly annoyed with the recently elected mayor of Prime City.

Mayor Fisher had a suitably dignified rebuttal
prepared. “Splurrpp!” The official sound made when air passes over a mayor’s
tongue when it protrudes between moist lips.

Dillon agreed with the sentiment, even without
a legal translation. “Tet, I believe she has also eloquently countered whatever
new argument you may have belatedly considered.” He was grinning from ear to
ear. Happy for once to be on Maggi’s side, and safe from a sudden groin or head
slap.

In turn, Tet had a grumpy but effective reply
for Dillon. “I don’t
need
to give
you
a fresh counter argument,
Doctor Dead Man Walking. All I have to do is wait for Noreen to remove and feed
your ass to wolfbats. She’s going to be less than happy with you and with Thad
for that matter, for supporting this law. After Marlyn helps her mangle the two
of you adolescent boneheads, there will be two less living supporters of this
nutty law at the next referendum. It
barely
passed this time.”

Maggi snickered. “Think you can turn out more
voters for your side next time? We had nearly a hundred percent participate
this time.”

“No, I’ll try to
change
some votes. It
may be cynical of me, but I’ll see if I can capitalize on my ‘Hero of Testing
Day’ reputation to convince people to sign a new petition to increase the age from
sixteen to eighteen in the next vote. I’ll admit, in hindsight, holding out for
age twenty one was unrealistic.”

Maggi smiled sweetly. Always a sign you were
losing a debate with her. “You forget Tetsuo. Under the new law just voted on
and passed, our three hundred twelve impacted teenagers, the sixteen and
seventeen year olds, now get to vote on gene mod issues that apply to them. To many
of those kids you now are ‘Commander Tyrant,’ who wanted to push back their
right to decide their own fates. How do you expect to sway
their
three hundred
twelve new votes? Perhaps offer each a pet wolfbat?” She chuckled at that
irony. Mirikami himself had encouraged wolfbat “bonding,” and every kid now had
one that came for food when called by a code signal on an ultrasonic whistle.

“Come on, Tet, you are a terrific strategist
and leader, but a poor politician.”