Koban: The Mark of Koban (61 page)

Surprisingly, the human male spoke up, “I think I pissed her
off. Congratulations, you must be the new Gatlek. You should thank me for your
promotion. I killed your predecessor.” The human’s voice was nearly as deep as
a Krall’s.

He glared at the human because he spoke without invitation,
but respected his daring and defiance, despite his hopeless predicament. He
might be trying to provoke him, as he had pushed Toltak, to trigger his own
quick death via a typical novice Krall’s rage. Human warriors were familiar
with how the Krall conducted most interrogations, and how they usually ended.

“I accept your false congratulations because you were the
indirect cause of my coming here. However, my earned status qualified me to
receive this leader’s position, or some other equal role in our war. This
position on Poldark is more to my liking than many, because you have made the
war more interesting here.”

“How, by us killing more of you bastards?”

“Yes, because our Great Path requires efficient culling of
our poorest warriors. My understanding of your language has advanced in the
years of this war, and I’m sure you know that every Krall you have ever seen is
exactly
a bastard. Perhaps doubled, because we do not know our mothers
either.” He snorted.

“Glad I could make you laugh.” The man added sarcastically.

Pendor looked at the sergeant, as his clothing markings on
his good right arm indicated he was. This mid to low ranking human knew more of
the Krall than just a few words of low speech, because he understood Pendor’s
rank, and recognized his rare gesture of amusement. How the human knew these small
details about the Krall made him curious. That interested him, as much as the
report the humans had taken the dead body of the former invasion leader, after
an apparent attempt to capture him.

This human’s speech was more understandable than that of
prisoners he had questioned on the other world, where he had fought. “Your
words in your language, Standard, are clear to me. The humans on Bollovstic did
not speak your own language as well.”

The prisoner shrugged, and winced from the pain that caused.
“The Boll’s are…, make that
were
, an independent lot, and many of them
used the native languages of their old countries when at home, and spoke
Standard with a heavy accent. I don’t suppose it matters now what any of them
used to speak. You pricks let only a few thousand refugees escape.”

There was a series of heavy thumps heard, and the ceiling
and floor vibrated, which put Pendor’s curiosity on hold for a moment. That must
be the human artillery projectiles arcing over the mountain ridges. This was
such a simple and effective method of attack, but strangely it wasn’t one any
of the races the Krall had faced before had used. Their previous high tech foes
had used many types of
guided
munitions, but firing low-tech entirely ballistic
projectiles wasn’t something any of them had used, apparently as too primitive
and basic a technology. Dumb could be smart at times.

Pendor moved to the bunker’s control console to get a status
update, and to speak to various hand-of-hand sub-leaders. The room lacked
chairs, as usual for the Krall, so the one armed man sat on the floor, and he
watched the various external screens used by the Krall leader with intensity.

Initially, human artillery had also used smarter steerable projectiles,
but they soon learned that for some reason the Krall’s antimissile laser
defenses were more accurate in knocking down the smart guided weapons than the
“dumb” bombs.

When shells followed a pure ballistic path, atmospheric
currents, air density, and friction, all combined to subtly alter projectile
courses, and a higher percentage of them made it through the defenses. The
smarter munitions were better at countering random minor course changes and were
definitely more accurate, except that fewer reached their targets. Somehow, guided
precision made them better targets for the laser counter fire. The Krall used antimissile
tracking computers designed and programed by an alien race, which had
exclusively used smart weapons. The software didn’t appear to have as accurate
an algorithm to track the primitive style human artillery, at least not precisely
enough to hit them all.

Clearly, the Krall either didn’t understand the equipment well
enough, or were unable to change the programming. The human’s AI systems were
better at knocking down the Krall artillery, of the smart or dumb variety, and then
directed counter fire at their source.

The Krall’s own return fire to destroy human gun batteries was
quite accurate and very prompt, so human ingenuity had built mobile batteries
on relatively high-speed all-terrain tracked vehicles, with multiple rapid
firing tubes on gyro-stabilized platforms. They used computer steered rocket
assist on the first ten percent of the projectile’s rise, to increase the range
and accuracy, but reverted to pure ballistics on the final climb and arc, usually
just before Krall detection equipment could see them. Even if only a couple of
dozen shells per hundred made it through the counter-fire lasers, the damage
delivered was worth the effort.

Pendor had learned that humans here on Poldark hadn’t
completely dispensed with smart artillery munitions, and only their delivery
was low-tech. There were considerable choices for what the shells did at the
target end, after short lives in flight. Some would activate a booster rocket
attachment, at low altitude, to increase final velocity for deeper penetration
and bunker busting. Others would airburst at roughly head height, to blast
thousands of depleted uranium pellets, cased in a hardened shell, to strike any
upright Krall nearby. Others scattered small grenade-like bombs, which waited
for an armored or unarmored Krall to pass near, and then exploded to spread
their smaller load of dangerous pellets.

A new shell version opened at low altitude to spew insect-like
mechanical spies, which flew to or climbed on, trees, buildings, armored Krall’s
suits, or entered their vehicles and ships, collecting data to send in a
compressed signal burst. Afterwards, they exploded like small grenades.

Both sides now used armored personnel carriers to send
troops to new battle zones because, even with body armor, the warrior or
soldier needed to get to the fight faster that they could run, and be safely
shielded from body armor defeating munitions in transit. Once closer to the
fight, they deployed to do as much damage as they could. Humans tried to match
the Krall physically, but even powered armor, controlled by men, could not come
close to the reaction time of a Krall warrior.

A test of purely mechanized AI controlled human armor (a
step towards a fully robot soldier) failed to meet expectations, despite
quicker response to an attack. The Krall had used electronic counter measures
to hamper an AI’s ability to control the suits remotely, and prevented a return
of intelligence on the enemy. Later, with onboard AI’s the suits could not receive
human instructions and battle plan changes. Both versions of AI battle suits
had another flaw the Krall were quick to exploit.

Warriors started strapping live captured civilians or
soldiers on the front and back of their own suits. When an AI controlled suit
faced a Krall with human shields, the computer software restrictions limited
their response. The AI’s had been programmed against killing humans, and could
be fooled by dead bodies attached to a Krall or to a vehicle, uncertain if the
people were still living. One fateful field decision, made in an urban setting,
had removed all restrictions on the AI’s actions. That fight, conducted in a
large city, had caused roughly as many collateral civilian deaths by AI as the
Krall had killed directly. A warrior would leap into a group of civilians and
deliberately draw fire, racking up status points.

In response to the artillery, Pendor ordered two hands of
the Krall equivalent of single-warrior light tanks to move to the ridgeline, to
destroy the mobile gun platforms if they returned. The small fast tanks carried
two fusion bottles, one for powering the electric motors, track system, and four
lasers. The other bottle powered the medium bore nine-inch plasma cannon. A
warrior wore armor inside the fifteen foot, low profile tank called a Little
Dragon by soldiers. A Krall controlled the machine from a sitting position, head
up inside the rotating gun turret, his helmet visor providing an external view.
If the tank became disabled, the warrior could dismount and fight with his
plasma rifle, and the usual assorted personal armament, per the warrior’s
preferences.

An armored man or woman, caught in the open by one of these
small tanks, had few options. Their suits had quick reacting IR temperature
control to blend with the local heat background, and active visual electromagnetic
camouflage that made you nearly invisible by looking like your surroundings,
but both worked well only if you quit moving. In most cases, if spotted while
still moving, you had better get to where a raging beam of star hot plasma
couldn’t burn your armored ass off in 2.4 seconds of exposure.

An active tank defense was a hand held eighteen-inch long,
two-inch diameter rocket launcher tube, nicknamed Dragon Killers, or DKs. Each
soldier carried a half dozen or more, and the suit’s targeting system and power
stability made accurate aiming possible. The ceramic sloping sides of the Krall
mini-tanks would deflect these small weapons, and shrug off light to moderate
laser and plasma beams, and 50 Caliber machine guns. However, at the narrow boundary
between the sloping rotating turret and sloping tank body was a weakness. It
was possible to “blow the lid off” if you hit that narrow one-inch high gap,
and occasionally that was enough to kill the Krall driver.

On a screen showing the bunker’s underground parking area,
the sergeant saw eight mini-tanks race out towards a high ridge several miles
away. He hoped it was another trap for them. The previous Gatlek had led a similar
group of sixteen Dragons into a trap, costing that worthy his life.

Sergeant Reynolds knew about that Krall leader’s mistake,
because he had been part of the bait that drew him chasing after what he
believed was thirty injured soldiers, apparently receiving emergency medical
evacuation. The Dragons had pursued three personnel carriers into a dead end
valley. The vehicles each transported ten busted up empty suits, all of which
broadcasted false medical alerts, as if for seriously injured soldiers. There
actually was only a driver aboard each halftrack. They drove down a concealed ramp
and out of sight below a steep rocky natural wall at the end of the box canyon,
clearing the way for an ambush.

Killing wounded soldiers was a favored Krall pastime, and
thirty of them so injured that they required emergency evacuation was a
tempting target. Half of the Dragons never made it out of the canyon. Reynolds
and his two fellow drivers had leaped from their parked halftracks and doubled
back to a smaller tunnel, which emerged as a shaft in a rocky outcrop the
pursuing Dragons had to pass. This was a former human bunker complex, which had
been abandoned as the enemy expanded their front.

The three drivers had two DK’s apiece ready, and fired on
the lead mini-tanks in a maneuver descriptively called a “poop, shoot, and
scoot.” A move where the armored soldier squatted to present as small a target
as possible, fired one or two DK’s, then ducked for cover.

The closest tank, driven by that foolish lead-from-the-front
Gatlek, had its “lid popped” by Reynolds.  Not that the good sergeant knew the
rank of his target at the time. Blowing turrets off four of the small tanks,
the men immediately jumped back down the shaft as plasma bolts struck the rocks
shielding them. Reynolds had called for the waiting artillery bombardment
before the three drivers had even climbed up behind the rocks.

The first inbound high explosive shells, the dozen or so able
to evade the Krall laser intercepts, were exploding on and among the Dragons as
the three men slid down the shaft. The Gatlek had survived his turret’s violent
removal, but not the shell that was self-directed once it reached fifty feet
overhead, flying straight into his tank’s open cavity as he called for
reinforcements on his suit radio.

The other three opened Dragons died the same way, and
another four had one or both tracks blown off.  On three Dragons that were
still mobile, the ceramic coating on the turrets had cracked, from concussion
impacts.

Once cracked, the turret often wouldn’t rotate around the
precision grove where it mated tightly with the tank body, leaving the main gun
stuck where it happened to be pointing. After that, the driver couldn’t
properly aim the cannon, not without turning the entire tank. As the
bombardment continued, the warrior now in charge ordered the eight mobile
Dragons to withdraw, and told the drivers of the four de-tracked disabled tanks
to exit, and get in between the retreating tanks, using them as shields. Those
four Krall died when the next inbound shells, as prearranged, were very low
altitude airburst shells. They spewed thousands of pellets, to riddle the
exposed warrior’s armor.

The three bait drivers drove their halftracks back up to the
surface, where Reynolds and his two corporals confirmed the eight Krall left
behind were all dead. “Confirmation” consisting of plasma bursts through the
faceplates.

There was one much more elaborate suit than normal, badly
damaged, with external electronics and a larger com system package on the dead Krall
in the Dragon the sergeant had ‘popped.’ The different equipment looked like it
could be of interest to the intelligence people, so the sergeant threw the entire
suited body into his halftrack. The three men then made a left turn as they
departed the valley mouth, away from the eight retreating Dragons, which were
still receiving intermittent artillery fire to keep them moving away.