Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (33 page)

****

Spartan, signing off after talking to the commander of the artillery unit located in the adjacent canyon, said, “The artillery barrage will start to land in two minutes, with one minute flight time. It won’t be as heavy and long as we need to hold them back. Using our visor detection capability for spotting clusters of targets will help them, but the Krall always keep moving.”

“Ya take’s whatcha can get.” Reynolds quipped, as he remotely fired his tri-barrel. “Gotcha!” He added, with fierce satisfaction as the three bolts flashed down towards a cluster of boulders, almost a mile away, downing two warriors.

Greeves had been linked to Nabarone’s war room for several minutes. “Major Caldwell says the Shadow fighters have launched. It’s only a single wing, so we won’t have many of them detailed to make strikes out here, and I don’t know when they’ll get here. They are spread thin, trying to support all eight armies. Nabarone is trying to get the navy to commit space planes from their two carriers parked in the outer system. Enemy single ships will be up in force as soon as they realize the nearly invisible Shadows are causing all the new damage they suffer. I hope our aircraft are as good as we expect. I know the Kobani pilots will be.”

Spartan nodded in acknowledgement of this new bit of news. “The artillery captain I spoke to said we should watch the first impacts closely. He had about twenty of the new sabot shells with new armor penetrators. I sent him the coordinates of the largest clusters of enemy I could find. Most of them are located behind five collections of large boulders, moved by the original road building work. He said they didn’t waste the new rounds on the waves of attacks earlier because no one could see the Krall well enough to tell them where the enemy targets were thickest.”

“What’s different about the new shells?” Greeves grunted as his tri-barrel missed the running, dodging Krall he’d spotted. The snicker from Reynolds told him his miss had been noted.

“At between two and six feet above ground, they blast apart a twenty inch high cylinder, containing two hundred tungsten-carbide sabot style slugs, stacked in a circular pattern, ten rings high twenty slugs per ring. Slugs are launched down a short rifled tube by the central blast wave, which destroys the cylinder and tubes behind them, forming added shrapnel. A plastic sheath spins the slugs passing through the rifled tubes, then the plastic sabots fall away as the now spinning, and nearly diamond hard slender slugs tear through nearly anything they hit. He told me they would punch completely through any part of the Krall’s new armor, and that we need to take cover ourselves. These slugs aren’t as dense as the depleted uranium pellets we have been using, but the sharp hardened tips, with spin stabilization and high velocity does the trick.”

“Are these also smart slugs? Self-directing or proximity detonated?”

“Not yet, but that is supposedly coming if these prove effective at penetrating the Krall suits. They’re dumb killers, so we have to keep our heads down and observe with spy bots in case any hit close to us. Up this high, and as far away as we are from the targeted area, I hope we don’t have to worry.”

The distant “whumps” of the mobile batteries firing in the next canyon was heard, announcing to all that the rounds were on their way. Because of the time delay for the sound to arrive on this side, that meant the shells had probably already reached or passed apogee, and were on their way down.

Spartan issued an order on a general push. “Everyone fire on the enemy one time now to pin them in place, and drop flat behind hard cover for incoming dumb rounds. After the first twenty blasts, the dumb rounds are done, and the remainder will be smart rounds, so fire at will after that.”

From each level of the battered, now windowless pastel blue and white colored resort, there was a dazzling spread of red and green lasers faintly seen in the smoky air, and the bright blue-white actinic plasma bolts lancing out towards their targets, none striking closer than a mile from the building. The flaming arc of burning brush thus created, served to define the closest the Krall had managed to infiltrate thus far.

Five seconds after they finished firing and dropped flat, the low-level blasts and concussions started, just as the Krall started to rise and move again. The blasts were simultaneously accompanied by a high pitch whining sound, as if thousands of angry bees had been released, often accompanied by a brittle crack when one of the slugs hit and shattered rock. In addition, a few of them hit the decorative pale blue and white ferrocrete of the resort’s outer walls and balconies. Those passed right through six-inch outer walls, the next wall, and sometimes several thinner walls after that, before spin stabilization was lost and they tumbled and stopped with a loud crack, against a final wall.

Reynolds looked up and poked an armored finger into a brand new half-inch hole, only a foot above his head. Then focused his attention on his visor image from his tri-barrel, and picked off three Krall in quick succession that exposed themselves as they sought better cover from the continuing barrage of smart munitions, or had to stand up to knock away thermite bomblets that had attached to joints or helmets. He shot one motionless Krall whose stealth had failed. He was probably already dead from a sabot penetration, but why not be sure?

With part of his attention, he saw Greeves doing the same, and was aware of the spec ops troops now picking off any exposed warrior, and they too shot some that clearly were seriously wounded, based on their slowness or twitching movements. There was no longer a thought of surrender or mercy when fighting the Krall, not from the human side. It had never been considered by the Krall.

Even the men spread out along the creek appeared to be taking their share of shots at the enemy, as the suit AIs of the Kobani armor fed them a target rich environment for almost a minute.

One thing was different to the ears of Reynolds and Greeves from their raids on Krall worlds, where they had usually met Krall not wearing armor. There was a lack of the usual screams of pain and rage of wounded warriors. That noise was absorbed by the heavy helmets they wore. That is, until there were a few bellows that rang out when warriors with head wounds or damaged helmets, were forced to remove them to see or communicate. The arrival of a slightly delayed final wave of smart rounds silenced those, when the bomblets homed in on exposed Krall body signatures.

Greeves spoke to Spartan on his private command channel. “That was pretty refreshing. Do they have any more of those sabot rounds?”

An answer didn’t come immediately. He crawled quickly, staying below the edge of the parapet of the roof, towards where he saw the lieutenant moving, and apparently engaged on another frequency, per the feedback his AI sent to Greeves. Before he reached the lieutenant Spartan replied, unaware that Greeves was so close behind him.

“No. There are no more sabot rounds available, and they have to reach the main column outside of that canyon to get any more reloads of smart rounds. The mouth of the canyon is jammed with trucks, and troops on foot coming through. They can’t get to the ammo carriers until some are able to squeeze through.”

As Spartan turned to look for Greeves, whom he thought was thirty feet away, the front of his helmet and his hands were covered in blood.

“Damn, man, you’re hurt. Let me...,” Thad started.

Spartan interrupted him. “Not me, Mills. He’s gone. Took a sabot through the wall and the top of his helmet.” Staff Sergeant Mills lay face down on Spartan’s other side, the back of his head gone, with his helmet laying where Spartan had removed it to check on his condition. There was grey matter and blood spattered inside the open helmet.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Were there any other casualties from the sabots?”

“Fred here was the only fatality. I have a corporal down on level four that has a hole through his calf, which the nanites have sealed and stopped the bleeding. It missed the bone and he’s certainly able to shoot. When the pain-killers kick in he’ll be able to run and jump.”

The steady sizzle and pop of outgoing and incoming plasma fire was sounding all around them. The lasers, microwave and infrared energy beams were all human generated, and those made no sound going outbound.

“Colonel, you and Reynolds have the highest mounted gun sights, what did you see? Mills was monitoring our spy bots. Did we hurt the bastards much?”

A quick query to his AI gave him an estimate of Krall losses, based on visual observations through various suit AIs and the four gun sights. “There are at least a hundred fifteen dead bodies exposed after the barrage, and more dead must be behind the rocks. My AI estimates that there were at least seventeen hundred fifty coming at us before the barrage, and the artillery may have taken down between six to ten percent of those.”

“Shit.” Spartan said.

“Exactly what we are deep in.” With part of his attention, Greeves triggered his tri-barrel on a moving warrior, and thought,
a hundred and sixteen confirmed dead now.

****

Gofdar was shocked. Whatever this new type of artillery shell was that the humans had fired first, it was very deadly. Their newest armor was easily penetrated by the projectiles it sprayed. His visor told him he had lost nearly thirty hands of warriors in the first seconds to those new shells, and another two hands to those wounded by them, and who exposed themselves to manual fire, or were killed by the subsequent self-guided thermite bombs they were too injured to knock away. A hundred thirty warriors lost in seconds, and another four hands worth with limited mobility or effectiveness due to loss of limbs, head wounds, or lost power in their armor.

The fact that the barrage was shorter than usual, and there were only about four hands worth of the new shells was revealing. The enemy artillery had been unable to continue that attack. Without his having a defense system to destroy some of the shells, or to launch counter battery attacks, there was no other explanation for halting the use of this effective weapon. Now was the time to strike.

He ordered every able bodied warrior to advance with all speed, and to take evasive movements only as needed. They had to cross through a burning wasteland to reach the uncharred ground, and then fight their way into the lower parts of the human nest. There would be high losses from this tactic, but the rewards great when they killed the small number of highly effective enemy that they faced. Then they could pin the main human army here until they were destroyed by the forces advancing from Novi Sad. The Gatlek would be forced to award a disproportionate number of status points to Gofdar and his warriors for this heroic effort.

****

“Well, here they come.” Reynolds said unnecessarily. “Any we can’t kill as they cross in the open, we get to shake hands with.” He wasn’t going to let himself be taken prisoner this time. Not that he’d surrendered the first time he was captured, he thought with a wry grin.

Greeves was thinking. “Lieutenant, you mentioned you had explosives. A lot?”

“Yes. This building is right above our hub, where we stored supplies.”

“Have you ever jumped down from seventy feet in armor?”

“No. Why?”

“No time like the present to try.” He explained his idea.

Hearing what was intended, and not to be left out of supporting the plan, Reynolds linked to the two spec ops troopers that had kept the two tri-barrels on the ladybugs above them loaded. “Leave the rear clam shells wide open and pull the lower limit pins on the gun mounts, so I can fully depress them. Then get down here fast to help repel boarders. We won’t be needing reloads for those guns after they get inside and we can’t see them.”

Greeves, watching the men Spartan had sent off to set charges, overheard Reynolds issue those instructions. “You think you can shoot down on them right on the rooftop? I hope we don’t allow them to reach this high.”

“Me too. I want to be able to aim almost straight down anyway. Are we going down to the lower floors now? I assume at least down to level seven.”

“Yep. I’m thinking we all get down to level one and work back up to seven, if we can fight them off that long. I wasn’t sure you were listening.”

“I always listen when you come up with some fool stunt where I might have to bail your ass out.”

They looked out at the mass of warriors that had risen out of concealment and were running at top speed to reach the building almost a mile away, running through the sleet of fire from the now fifty-one defenders. The four tri-barrels were taking one or two down with every burst, and despite the hail of return plasma bolts, the defenders in position to fire from the ramparts picked more exposed warriors off with rapid fire and precision. Many of the men were leaping down stairwells in a reckless rush to reach lower levels, to fend off the hoard coming for them. They used their superb sense of timing and balance, combined with their strength, to avoid hitting or interfering with one another as they poured down from landing to landing. They sent the lifts to the top level, to leave the shafts empty and open to them on lower floors, and jammed the lift doors open at each floor.

Nearly the entire complement, other than the five men assigned demolition placement, descended to the ground floor well before the first Krall were within several hundred feet of the building. Two men were killed by the thousands of random incoming shots, which passed through now empty window frames.