Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (19 page)

The Torki bobbed its body in agreement. “That is much like our experience when we transfer data between Olts. It is there like an old memory when we seek it, but not before, and we did not learn it over an extended time.”

Almost unnoticed Alex Born had finished his procedure several minutes ago, and was sensing the new communication flow around him. He was eager to sample a particular information transfer. “Grass, I would like to request a transfer of data concerning the theoretical reasons for the short-range limits for certain quantum effects, such as the Q-rupters and Katushas exhibit. There must be a common principle involved.”

This complex technical request nearly caused the other three volunteers heads to spin, and Maggi rolled her eyes as she stood out of sight, behind Born.

The Raspani, an approving posture suggested by its stance, cautioned Born, “The transfer time will be very much longer than the data Captain Joe received from Coldar.”

Longstreet interjected, “It’s just Joe, not Captain Joe.”

Proving that both Grass and Alex Born had picked up a few idioms from Maggi, they responded simultaneously with the same archaic word.

“Whatever.”

Greeves and Reynolds were in Nabarone’s War Room, watching them implement the plans for the “Fighting Withdrawal,” as the anticipated Krall offensive appeared to be on the verge of starting.

Major Caldwell described part of the plan, “The civil evacuations are finished, thanks to the advanced planning to move them back early and gradually. The roads, rails, and airways won’t be clogged with refugees, so our forces will be able to pull back quickly as needed. We’ve planted mines and explosives to do as much damage as we can without risking our troops. We even set the automatic home timers in thousands of residences and apartment buildings, to keep lights switching off and on, and to power some human shaped figures placed in front of windows, to draw warriors to the supposed kills.”

Greeves and Reynolds, both natives of Poldark, had the same question.

“Where did you find artificial human figures?” Thad asked.

“Well, vaguely human shaped, mostly.” Caldwell laughed. “We stripped stores, people’s attics, garages, and basements of Christmas figures. Some are complex computer animated displays, some are simple inflated Smart Plastic shells that play songs or music, and wouldn’t fool a person into thinking they were live humans, even at a distance. How many automated Wise Men have you been fooled into thinking were real people in a Nativity scene? Have you ever thought a singing snowman was plausible? Poldark’s Christian heritage is almost as commercial as Earth’s. We expect Santa Claus to place a lot of Krall on his naughty list.”

“Your purpose in doing this is nefarious, I presume?” prompted Sarge.

“Of course. For example, at Novi Sad we have Krall sensitive proximity charges in about a third of the first block of houses near the river where the Krall need to cross, and in all of the tall apartment buildings. For the high rises, animated figures are placed at upper floor windows, to draw multiple warriors up to them.”

“Sarge,” Thad quipped, “I’m sure your former stock of inflatable lady friends will finally achieve their own climax.”

“Very funny, grease man,” he answered, playing off Greeves last name, using a nickname he’d learned Thad once had, and disliked.

Not rising to the taunt, Thad had another question for Caldwell. “The dummies won’t fool them long, and I was told your retreats will be faster than in past Krall attacks. We weren’t in on your planning after we left, what’s the deal Howard? Using delay tactics or just giving away territory?”

“More than that. The Krall will suffer some early losses, proving we have fought back, but we intend to conduct a fighting retreat to conserve our forces for the counter attacks when they start their own partial pullback. If we didn’t expect that withdrawal, we wouldn’t give up the ground so easily. We think we can take most of it back.”

“Where
is
Henry, if the Krall assaults are about to begin? We assumed he was here when we landed this morning.”

“Both you and Tet said he needed to suck up to his Lady bosses. I used to do some of that for him as his navy liaison. He’s off planet right now, watching what’s about to unfold with Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Bledso, on the Invincible, the dreadnaught flagship of the fleet elements in the outer system. Bledso wanted to be here, to use this to show the president her involvement beyond purely naval matters. She wants to be Chairfem of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when the present Chairfem retires. If the assaults don’t happen as predicted, Henry might have to do more than eat his words to keep his job.

“To back Bledso in having Henry fired, if he proves to be a ‘chicken little’ and the sky doesn’t fall, is Lieutenant General Cadifem, Henry’s immediate superior. The Invincible is poised just behind our moon, where the general is within communications range if we need a command decision to alter our plans. There’s no need for him to stand in this room physically, while the assault unfolds halfway around the planet. By being with them, he can pepper his commentary with items that boost his prescience in predicting the Krall action.”

With Mirikami’s predictions still holding sway, Nabarone was earning capitol with the Lady Generals and the Lady Admirals ranked above him. It was against his nature, but as suggested, he was taking the credit when he presented evidence for both an upcoming enemy offensive, and the clues there would be a subsequent withdrawal by some Krall forces from Poldark. He warned them that the withdrawal would be for initiating an invasion on another human planet. His early predictions seemed more plausible when the atypical pattern of enemy behavior was pointed out to his superiors, in detail. Once the unexpected Krall behavior was suspected, the evidence was there.

The gradual gathering of clan forces closer to every strong opposing human position, with massed truckloads of light weapons and supplies, suggested multiple lightning fast offenses. However, a clue to this action being only a diversion was described to them by Nabarone, when he pointed out that the assaults were not being backed by much of the heavier equipment, which would be needed if they intended actually to hold all of the new territory taken, against human counter attacks. The waiting empty clanships were another clue.

There were few of the heavy plasma batteries close to the eight major fronts, which were normally used to blast attacking human ships and space planes out of orbit. However, there was a massing of the highly mobile light plasma battery carts, and numerous armored transports to move warriors and ammunition safely through artillery barrages faster. The bulk of their heaviest assault weapons and half of all their mini-tanks were being pulled back close to the periphery of a thirty-mile radius circle of heavy plasma cannons and lasers placed at the center of the conquered territory, which had massive orbital strike capability. Virtually all of the empty clanships were now parked within that strong defensive circle, which was ready to protect their mass departure.

The Krall were not adept at subtly, preferring the “I’m about to attack, so try to stop me” mode of offense. They probably believed that placing a third to half of all their major combat material just outside the central defensive ring, near their empty clanships, didn’t look suspicious. It certainly wasn’t suggestive to the average warriors and sub leaders, who had no notion that a partial withdrawal was being planned. The Krall only pulled significant forces from a planet once the enemy was crushed.

Even the ordinary warriors knew this attack wasn’t designed to crush opposition on all of Poldark, but was for the purposes of punishing humanity for attacking Krall planets. That was the truth, but only in small part.

The clan sub leaders for this offense already had received specified limits of how far they would be allowed to push back the human armies, but within that limit they could inflict as much damage and death as they wished. There would be no designed pauses, to allow the enemy to regroup and preserve forces for later warrior culling. The humans would simply have to replace higher losses from their armies this time. No human captives needed to be taken alive for painful information extraction. It was always a distasteful task for any warrior to capture rather than to kill an opponent, and
any human of any age
was an opponent. 

Small to midsized clans were being granted the unusual honor of placement at the forefront of every attacking force. Actually, that was so the major clans, those that had earned the right to participate in the new invasion of the next human world, could quickly disengage from battle and race to board the waiting clanships.

Kanpardi had ordered that the “disengage” command be phrased as a
charge
, not a withdrawal. A charge designed to rapidly and efficiently form a new invasion task force, to conduct a glory filled historic new invasion, against a
much
more heavily populated human world. They would be told this would be a difficult, risk-filled action with much fighting. The fact that the unsuspecting world had only a light defending force, due to its presumed secure location closer to the Hub worlds, actually meant there initially would be considerable human slaughter. There would be relatively little culling of warriors at the start of the invasion, at least until humans shifted additional fighting forces to the chosen planet.

Caldwell suddenly stiffened, as he studied the visual graphics on the large monitors of each of the eight major fronts the Krall had established over time. There were a significant number of midsized cities on the outer portions of the invaded largest continent, which did not face increased enemy forces. Apparently, this was because once the Krall reached the number eight at the largest cities that this suited their natural bias for that number.

There were red pinpoints, each of which represented two hands of octets of Krall warriors, with different red symbols for the types of equipment used to support them. A small red beetle shape represented Dragon units a small red lightning bolt for plasma batteries, a bent worm-like symbol was for a group of the articulated armored troop carriers, and so forth.

There were eight large clusters of differently and multicolored pinpoints and equipment shapes for human forces, adjacent to each cluster of red, which easily outnumbered the red pinpoints. If the Krall’s fighting ability wasn’t known to an observer, it would appear the human forces had them surrounded and were poised to crush them. In reality, the five to one advantage in numbers could only slow the Krall, if they wanted to advance.

Thad and Sarge had been told that the multicolored symbols represented company or platoon level strength, depending on the military branch represented. Army, Marine, Rangers, or special ops forces could be depicted in other tints of base colors if requested. The colors represented each one of the eight human armies that faced the brunt of the Krall attacks, with some intermingling of colors and forces where they overlapped.

What had drawn Caldwell’s attention was the previously motionless graphics at the leading edge of the Krall lines. They had suddenly acquired vector arrows, indicating speed, and direction, which was all pointed towards the various human force pinpoints.

“It’s started.” He told them unnecessarily. “Now our artillery starts. We mostly held it back because they were in revetments where they gathered, and largely under covered positions. Their stationary counter battery fire systems would also have been more accurate before they started moving those units. Our AIs are still better than their computers at randomizing our mobile batteries when they fire on the move. However, they do counter any rocket attacks the most effectively. That’s why we generally stay with low trajectory ballistic projectiles, to avoid their most effective defensive laser fire.

“Many of our newest antipersonnel munitions release self-guided projectiles that seek weak spots in their body armor. Unfortunately, they changed to better and much heavier powered armor a few months ago, so elbow, knee, wrist and ankle joints are the primary points we program to hit now. A thermite projectile can melt and spot-weld a joint if it’s not knocked away quickly. If a joint freezes up, novice warriors sometimes foolishly detach that sleeve or leg section for freedom of movement. With the next wave of shells, we create a bunch of slower, one armed or one leg hopping Krall novices, which are still dangerous, but not nearly as much. We have new munition designs under test for penetrating this armor, but it hasn’t been deployed here in quantity yet.”

“You can’t blow their heads off through the faceplates? It’s what we were doing a year ago.” Sarge wondered.

“They don’t have a face plate now. The helmet is similar to that of your Torki designed armor, with an internal view screen, and it is even thicker than yours is. Their firing accuracy is still very good, and they mostly use the same hand held plasma rifles, with some equipped with forearm mounted short barrel versions, for close-in fighting. They don’t have your armor’s small Trap Fields for tachyon power, however, and they need frequent power pack swaps in a heated fight. They have finally copied our grenades, and they carry perhaps eight to sixteen each. They are electronically simpler than our models, with fewer booby trap options than ours have, such as no proximity detector to sense a human target. A Krall doesn’t have the disposition to lay a trap and wait anyway. Some of the sadistic shits pull off a captured man’s helmet, and shove a grenade down inside and watch him go.”

Thad thought a moment. “We’ll be facing these new suits soon. I’d like to test our equipment against theirs, and bring several relatively undamaged suits home for the Torki and Raspani to study.”

“Raspani? I thought they had been bred to a near animal state.” Caldwell was curious.

“We found millions of ancient normal Raspani minds that were in hiding, recorded on a special chip, located on one of the worlds that we raided. The Torki slaves there had saved the chip, embedded inside a Raspani skull. It’s normally an electronic mental assistance device, similar to what the Torki use, but this one was expanded to hold personalities of several million minds. Clusters of those minds are gradually being transferred to new chips, placed in the brains of non-sentient Raspani. We hope to have some technological advances from their scientists and engineers to share with you in the near future. Even better than what we gave you from the Torki and Prada.”

Caldwell shook his head at the ever-changing universe the Kobani were finding. “You keep acquiring some strange allies. Well, about samples of the armor. I’ll ask a spec ops team to bring you one of the new Krall suits. We have some of your full gene mod boys using your style stealth, located behind enemy lines now.”