Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (28 page)

“Why now? They have let us make orderly retreats before.”

Reynolds shook his head. “I was in some of those retreats, Sir, and they were closer to routs. We made it out only because the Krall held back, saving us for another fight. I was always afraid they’d put a force of warriors where we’d be trapped between them. It was something they could do with clanships, but never did. They were pacing the fight for their purposes. This time they intend to punish as well as withdraw some of their larger clans. You keep dodging back from the blows, avoiding severe punishment.”

“They didn’t launch clanships towards the other seven fronts. Just the Novi Sad push.” Caldwell noted.

Greeves shrugged. “The botched river crossings cost them more supplies there, and the better roads out of the largest city allowed your fall back, and their advance to go farther and in less time than elsewhere. They are more extended and exposed east of Novi Sad than anywhere else. Now you have the mountainous terrain of the Malen'kiy Urals to help you, to make it harder for them to come to grips with the First Army. What would happen if you couldn’t get those half million men out through the passes on the other side of that range of mountains? You don’t know exactly what day the Krall will start their pull out and these eight clanships full of warriors could stay behind anyway, to hold the First Army trapped in that old mountain range, and help dig them out.”

“We have dozens of infiltration tunnels through the Urals and its ridges, just like we had prepared in the Sredna Gora mountain range, west of Novi Sad where you and Mirikami first landed. We can eventually move most of our men out that way if these clanships block the passes, assuming we get the time. However, I’m contacting Turb control to send seekers after those clanships. They’ll expose themselves if they climb to get up over the peaks to the other side. I’ll also advise Henry of the situation.” 

Caldwell moved to a com panel to call for seeker missile launches, and to inform Nabarone on the changes in Krall movement.

Greeves, looking at the plots and force dispositions on the screens devoted to the Novi Sad battle, saw a way he and Reynolds could become more than remote observers.

“Sarge, why don’t we test our armor against the Krall’s newer stuff? I see where we can get into the mountains from some feeder tunnels, similar to what was dug around that abandoned spec ops base where we first landed on Poldark. I see a black ops hub indicated in the mountains, and the tunnels radiate from that on all sides.”

“Sure. I haven’t played rock rat for over a year, and I have some payback to make for the arm I had to regrow.”

When Caldwell turned back to them, they explained what they wanted to do.

“OK. I can give your suits the Identification Friend from Foe codes to authorize you to be there, and give you the right to request assistance, provided any field commander you are dealing with is able to lend you help. There are spec ops in those mountains with full mods like yours, but as usual, Henry and I don’t know exactly what sort of mischief they are up to, only that it will help us and hurt the Krall.”

“Thanks Howard, we’ll mostly stay out of your people’s way, and try to link up with a spec ops unit.”

“Fine. Get your feet wet, but understand that if the Krall can block the mountain passes you will be entirely on your own. In your IFF code, I’ll list you as a full colonel, and both of you as attached to Nabarone’s Headquarters staff. Don’t expect any pay or uniform allowance.”

“Understood. We’ll pick up our armor from our billets, and borrow a shuttle and pilot if that’s OK.”

“Of course. I didn’t expect you to walk.”

****

Gofdar, the Mordo clan sub leader that Gatlek Pendor had assigned this mission, had mixed feelings. He was eager to lead two hands of clanships, each loaded with two thousand twenty four experienced and elevated status warriors, to attack the rear and flanks of many times their number of enemy. However, he might miss the launch of the new invasion fleet to the yet unnamed new human world. It was known only that it would be what humans called a Hub world, heavily populated, and largely unprepared for an invasion.

The number of early and easy kills on such a world could increase your status rapidly, but an experienced warrior, like Gofdar, relished combat with armed and resisting human forces, like those they had engaged here on Poldark. These soldiers would know there could be no surrender or retreat, and no escape when Gofdar’s clanships blocked their mountain pass exits. It would be fight and die. Not fight
or
die, since not dying wasn’t to be an option for them. The Gatlek wanted as complete a slaughter as possible of this part of the largest army, of the eight armies presently engaged with them.

The quality of a few hands of kills was often more satisfying than mere quantity, such as sixty-four kills of panicked untrained humans, old and young. Humans with weapons and armor always fought to the best of their limited ability when trapped.

Gofdar recalled at least two hands of such fights in his two full orbits spent on this world. One such favorite fight had been when the octet he led (before his later promotions) stumbled on ten unusual humans with soft flexible armor that hid them well. Under that flexible stealth armor, they all had worn black suits that made them much stronger than the typical human.

Anticipating being discovered, they were ready. They knew Krall armor’s weak points, and fired their weapons without hesitation, and more accurately than most soldiers did, hitting the joints and faceplates of the older style armor. He lost two of his octet outright, with another three wounded, one of them himself. He suffered a facial wound when his faceplate shattered from a bullet intended to enter his left eye. The human that shot at him lacked only the speed needed to drive his blade home through the opened helmet, when his projectile weapon emptied. Gofdar caught the hand and removed the weapon, a mere finger’s thickness from his muzzle. He killed his attacker with a slash that nearly decapitated him, sorry an instant later for his impetuous instinctive move. He would have offered a knife fight without armor, had he thought of that in time.

The sub leader still carried that ultra-sharp blade. He had used it to good effect on several captured humans, and twice in death challenges from warriors from other clans. He hoped he could face another ten humans like that today. If he had to miss the invasion force launch, he was certainly going to lead his warriors into this fight.

His eight ships were going to land in the larger passages leading away from the higher peaks, and block the main routes out of the far side of the low mountain range, where the bulk of the human force from Novi Sad was headed. He didn’t know how close to exiting the mountains the human army was, because Gofdar left before there was any surveillance to tell him. He had simply sent his ships to the ends of the eight mountain passes most likely to be used for the retreat.

This blocking tactic was one the Krall used sometimes in interclan wars and against previous alien races, but had not been used against humans because they normally stayed to defend any of their territory. This was the first time they had yielded so swiftly.

The Tor Gatrol wanted massive human casualties from the human warrior class, as penalty for human raids on Krall worlds. The next two invasions of human worlds were also to be demonstrations of how futile that effort had been, by not slowing the course of the war.

“Seekers have been launched, my leader.” That was spoken by his weapons master. His pilot, seeing the same sensor data had instantly started evasive maneuvers, jolting the crew on the bridge as they held to the support posts at their stations. The pilot lowered their altitude to below the higher peaks, as they threaded their way through mountain passes toward the intended landing point. All eight clanships were on their own for now, responsible for their own defense and evasion, ordered to reach the eastern ends of the canyons, to block them.

These seeker missiles would initially home on the detectable atmospheric turbulence trails that formed in the wake of stealthed, fast moving craft. Once close enough, the seekers could follow the plasma trail of thrusters, unless the clanship was using tachyon power to operate their Normal Space reactionless drive. That untraceable gravity drive wasn’t an option for this flotilla to use. That was because the clanships had all originated deep in Poldark’s gravity well, where the large trap fields needed for gravity control were unable to form properly, or maintain the required curvature to capture high-energy tachyons to tap for gravity and inertial control. The seeker missiles, if they closed in on the turbulence tracks, would “sniff” the ions in the plasma trails, and follow the radar invisible ships to their shielded tailpipes.

Firing a clanship’s defensive lasers, plasma beams, or anti-missiles at the seekers would serve to better identify their stealthed locations, both to human ground weapons and to space borne ship batteries that might be in position to target them. At the speed of light, those beams would surely hit them because maneuvering was useless. High velocity turns was one way to stay a step ahead of the prediction logic of enemy fire control when they couldn’t see you, but that was not as effective if the ship were hemmed in by high terrain. One alternative was to land early and out of position, another was to try to take out the incoming missiles at the last possible moment, risking some proximity blast damage before a rushed landing.

Gofdar ordered his weapons master and pilot to do the latter. He had selected the wider, more vital central pass for his own clanship to blockade, and setting an example for precision and efficiency was important to him. He wanted to be positioned perfectly for the force aboard his craft to meet and stop the enemy. It was their misfortune, and two seekers using the wider mountain pass to their advantage, that caused him to fall short of his landing target, and he met the enemy sooner than he’d expected.

“Two seekers locked.” Was the weapons master’s terse remark, as he fired the two lasers that could bear on the closer missile, and the one plasma cannon that could target the other one, along with two hypervelocity anti-missiles. The two seeker warhead explosions were closer than the Weapons Master planned, due to the pilot being forced to make a turn around a cliff outcrop that briefly blocked his targeting. The seekers closed rapidly, just as agile as the clanship in this situation.

There was a loud clang of multiple impacts on the aft part of the hull as the large warheads scoured the clanship when they detonated, mere yards short and above the bell housing of the main thruster. The pilot had a moment when he thought the thruster housing had split, or a piece had blown off, because the blast wave shoved the back of the craft down slightly, as if thrust were escaping laterally, pushing the tail down. He was able to correct with attitude thrusters, and those on the command deck decided there was no serious damage. So naturally, that was when the serious damage arrived.

The two warhead’s detonations not only had located the clanship’s position along the canyon, but the shrapnel had chipped and scoured part of the aft stealth coating on the side exposed to the sky. The pilot, in his effort to compensate for the brief nose up thrust vector, which threatened to lift them above the ridge tops, hadn’t rotated the clanship to position hypothetically unstealthed hull surface away from space born radar.

Some of Admiral Foxworthy’s heavy cruisers were almost overhead in orbit, called in response to the Krall clanship launches, and linked to the PDC’s detection grid. The location of the seeker detonation tracking signals, combined with reception of a weak fast moving reflection in the same vicinity was enough. The ship’s AI was already released to react and fire faster than a human could command, and it fired two heavy plasma beams on the suspected clanship target. It scored two hits. Not fatal, due to some atmospheric attenuation, but serious enough to farther damage the clanship’s hull and disable two attitude thrusters.

The pilot reacted instantly and brilliantly this time. He triggered target decoys, and flipped the clanship end for end in the narrow confines of the canyon. This served multiple purposes. The reversal removed the now radar reflective hull segments from view from space, provided a wicked thrust reversal to slow their passage along the canyon, and placed undamaged attitude thrusters where he could use them to go vertical, to drop for a hurried landing.

The follow up plasma beams from the heavy cruiser passed through the space the clanship would have occupied a mere two seconds later if it had not flipped, and the beams took out both of the target decoys. They obligingly spewed out highly radar reflective debris, and made a fireball by exploding containers of thruster fuel. The fireball and smoke furnished another benefit for the clanship, because it briefly obscured the near crash landing, as the landing jacks barely absorbed the impact as all thrusters shut down.

Gofdar stabbed a talon to open only one of the four bottom hatches, the one facing the closer cliff wall. He used his com set to order every warrior away from the ship except the weapons master. He didn’t need to explain to that warrior why he had to stay aboard. The clanship’s weapons were of value to hold onto this valley if the enemy didn’t spot and destroy the grounded craft from orbit. As soon as every warrior was out, the hatch would be closed, to recover as much stealth capability as possible. The open hatch was less visible on radar when it faced a rock wall.

The pilot preceded Gofdar over the railing of the command deck, ignoring the stairwell in haste. The eighteen-foot drop was trivial in Poldark’s gravity, and they raced down through the other decks and out the open portal in less than fifteen seconds. Gofdar slapped the keypad to close the hatch as he leaped clear.