Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (51 page)

All of the equipment was oriented facing away from the central domes in long columns, ready to be driven forward to meet the arriving clanships, which had to act as Krall transports now. In the absence of the huge Torki Migration ships, it would take days longer to load the steady stream of smaller clanships needed, than if they had use of the huge Torki designed ships the humans had either captured or destroyed. The clanships had large lower holds, but to carry the maximum amount per ship, the equipment had to be hoisted internally to higher decks through openings that could be slid aside in deck plating on two sides of the central column of the traditional propulsion system engine. The large transports were preloaded with ammunition and small arms, and could be separated into three modules that could be hoisted to higher decks for transit. The mini tanks would be driven in sets of four, onto lift plates at each side of the main hold, and lifted up to the higher decks for storage.

Mirikami had learned that they were not transporting a compact starter factory for assembly by Prada workers, because it would have to be dismantled even more for loading into a clanship. There would be no on-planet repairs or replacement parts for damaged equipment, at least not for the first planetary orbit of the target planet. That meant there would be no Prada or Torki slave labor long to concern human forces when attacking any of the enemy ships. That was a relief for Mirikami, to avoid the guilt and recriminations for the ancillary tasks he had his scouts performing.

The large number of clanships needed to move this material wasn’t observed, apparently still being employed for supporting and supplying the invasion on New Dublin. That invasion had been under way for less than a month, but most of those ships should be returning to K1 soon.

Mirikami had Jakob, his AI, start sending the recognition code for entering orbit at Telda Ka, as soon as they had openly arrived. Had he tried to approach after secreting his gamma ray burst behind some outer moon or planet, there was the risk a clanship might be posted there, just to detect that typically human form of sneakiness. He also had the landing codes for several clans, taken from Hothdat’s mind. They had made their White Out well below the surviving orbital defense platforms, placed in roughly five hundred mile high orbits. Nabarone told him the navy said those were not staffed full time by the Krall, and could be activated remotely from the ground for unauthorized ships that failed to send recognition codes.

Mirikami had the AI detach a number of self-propelled small satellites, with their own stealth, and then he took the Mark directly down into the middle atmosphere, and rotated to horizontal flight at roughly fifty miles. Jakob used the ship’s visual sensors to record the ranks of equipment arrayed around the four Tanga clan domes, like petals on killer flowers. He initiated the code that would authorize them to land at Skodol clan’s dome, located on another landmass. The domes below would receive this code, and would expect the ship to fly off towards the horizon. A rather typical example of the seat-of-the-pants style of Krall flying.

Skodol was a former finger clan of Hothdat’s Dorbo clan, and still a minor clan that would have little role in any invasion’s early stages. Mirikami’s entry plan had made certain that the Skodol dome was nowhere close to the domes below, which were occupied by major clans. Such clans had the status to earn control of such valuable resources.

Sending the landing code for Skodol’s only dome on K1 was a diversion, to allow them to see the stockpiles of equipment around the domes directly below, and then move east over a wide ocean to the shores of the next continent, where the dome lay that they were advertising their intent to land.

As their very visible flaming thrusters took them over the horizon, above a fifteen hundred mile stretch of sea and out of sight of any land mass, they cut the visible thruster trail that left ions in its wake, and activated the reactionless Normal Space drive. Next, they descended to a few thousand feet and activated the stealth system, and slowed to a hover on gravity and inertial force control. This ate up considerable tachyon derived power, but they weren’t expecting to fight or to have to make a sudden long Jump. Two Krall made shuttles with the newer style stealth system were safely launched while low over the water, and they flew back towards the four domes where the equipment just seen was parked.

Unlike the original Krall stealth systems, which other clanships could detect even at a distance of thousands of miles, the Kobani systems, redesigned by the Torki and Raspani, became invisible anywhere beyond several miles from any clanship. Even then, a clanship would need to search with much longer wavelengths of radiation than were needed to detect human ships, or their own craft. Long before the transmitted landing code could be received at the Skodol dome, the signal was shut off. Now they would change direction and pause in isolated areas to launch four-ships.

The Mark, or any ship for that matter, lost some degree of stealth if it opened hatches or ports to launch shuttles or four man ships. These smaller craft were also equipped with the new stealth coating, and could approach the target sites in relative safety if long wave radiation wasn’t detected as they neared. If the latter radiation were detected, in what humans called low frequency radio waves, it would indicate the Krall were seeking targets using that form of stealth. They had brought only one human made shuttle for landing on Poldark, and it was tied down in the large lower hold. It also had stealth, but if it were somehow seen visually, heard, or detected by sensors, its characteristics offered proof too strong to ignore that humans were on K1. A glimpse of a Krall design ship could be dismissed as another clan nosing around, perhaps as a training exercise.

Using this method, scout teams could be dispersed to investigate multiple locations furnished by Hothdat’s information, and the Mark could move on to repeat the dispersion process at other isolated sites. It was a quieter form of disbursing forces than the Krall used for their raiders, having launched those against human worlds for two decades.

Finally, having disbursed all of the smaller ships, the Mark flew undetected to within nine miles of a large multi-clan use dome where, according to Hothdat, Joint Council meetings were held. The Mark’s own passive sensors were watching for the longer wave radio signals that might indicate the Krall were actively scanning for the newest human stealth systems on ships. Thus far, only human body armor had been detected by the Krall using this radio wave method, and humans in armor weren’t considered much of a threat. The stolen clanships that had delivered those human warriors to raided Krall production worlds had been no better stealthed than were Krall ships, at that time. There, they had snuck in by hiding behind moons and gas giants, as they concealed their gamma ray flash White Outs. Those approaches into the K1 system were all being watched.

The Joint Council was still absorbing the details of the Poldark withdrawal, studying how their clanship fleet was attacked by Shadows, Starfires, and Foxworthy’s heavy cruisers, all of which had employed this same new stealth system. Only the cruise missiles had arrived unstealthed. However, the new human stealth effectiveness wasn’t blatantly obvious because of the way it had been used, where the human enemy was firing at a rich field of Krall targets almost continuously, which revealed their positions on clanship sensors anyway.

Some clanship commanders and single ship pilots were questioning why they had not seen the enemy coming, and afterwards how they had departed and vanished so suddenly, when they broke off an attack. However, the Krall histories were full of stories where they encountered incremental improvements in an enemy’s technology and tactics in a long war, and the Krall always adjusted after the fact, once the changes were reported to be widespread.

They had additional technology and new types of battlefield weapons they could employ. Twenty five thousand years of fighting and victory left the winner with plenty of options to try.

Right now, there was considerably more being discussed at the council dome than the human response on Poldark. This withdrawal misstep was considered a glitch in an unprecedented force redeployment that many clan leaders had questioned doing in the first place. Tor Gatrol Kanpardi, who had sponsored that controversial plan, was now dead. Interclan politics was the highest priority right now, and that drama, unknown to Mirikami and his scouts, was still playing out today.

As the Mark settled behind a jungle-overgrown remnant of a sizable former human city, Accra II, the former capitol of the Greater West Africa colony, it was unable to detect any active scans at low radio frequencies. Although, the standard Krall scans that would detect stealthed PU Navy ships were continuously active, and were probably performed automatically, coming from various clanships of the major clans that were represented here.

The abandoned buildings of the human city had been preserved by the Krall for possible use by their slave race, the Prada. However, those loyal slaves had considered themselves as “servants,” a part of the Krall Empire. They balked at using housing structures that were so alien, and belonged to an enemy of the Rulers. Because they were not ordered to stay there to live, they built the nearby dome and simultaneously moved closer to it, into forest villages they built. That had been the pattern all over K1 decades ago. However, once the major construction was over, and the later repairs from the two human attacks had been repaired, the Prada, and a small contingent of Torki, were relocated to a smaller continent of K1, to produce small weapons and conduct Clanship repairs, isolated from the other Krall occupied landmasses. Their Krall overlords didn’t particularly like having their weak faithful workers so close, where they offended their senses and fouled the air with their furry odor, or lived in cool, dank tunnels that smelled of unpleasant seawater.

The Prada could be quickly ferried to any location, as needed for maintenance, and in isolation, they produced small war materials such as plasma rifles, power packs, and body armor that were used up rapidly. They did this in underground factories on that single, increasingly polluted continent. Even the modest Torki population on that coastline was enough to meet the needs of building new quantum code locks for weapons, and restoring stealth coatings on ships, or for coating body armor.

Only the nearly mindless Raspani herds were given free run of the two main equatorial continents, with wide plains and grasses that could support them. They had actually flourished where they had no native predators that relished their alien flesh. The strange foliage was suitable for them, if supplemented with an essential fern-like plant they ate from their original home world.

The original human settlers had introduced domestic animals, which had been gene modified hundreds of years ago, before the Gene War, to make plant life on this world suitable for their digestion. However, the Krall didn’t like the taste of that meat as much as Raspani meat, and as in most things, the Krall tended to stay with what they knew and liked. They slaughtered the local animals wantonly when they had an opportunity, mostly for entertainment, which helped the Raspani herds to expand. There were already far more of the Raspani than the Krall needed for food.

Humans had noted many times that the Krall appeared to be a species caught in a rut. They lived in the same type domes on every planet, flew the same clanships, drove the same basic trucks, used the same weapons, as called for to match their enemy, ate the same things, and fought repetitive wars. Other than improving their own bodies very slowly, they made no progress as a civilization. They were a spreading blight that replaced thriving species with their own aggressive, deadly sameness.

That nourishing green fern the Raspani needed for nutrition, and the less desired red pepper plant (which the Krall forced them to eat for flavoring), both grew very well here, and the poor creatures actually spread the green fern’s growth by planting new shoots themselves. The herds had spread widely in twenty-two years, and were in the millions if populations on the two largest continents were considered. They made for pleasant hunts for bored warriors seeking fresh raw meat, taken by talon and teeth.

At the large council dome, a mile wide, one-quarter mile high structure, there was a three-mile diameter tarmac for holding thousands of clanships, for sizable assemblies when various clans wanted to “pack the house” with their noisy supporters on divisive matters of clan status and warfare related decisions. There were under a thousand clanships present now, meaning that only the highest status leaders of the major clans were present. They needed to select a new Tor Gatrol. Only major clans had the status to present their own candidates, or they might ally with other clans that supported a candidate that best expressed what the majority wanted to hear.

The net result of this preoccupation with clan politics meant most Krall present anywhere near this dome today were either inside watching or participating in discussions, or listening to them and watching on command deck screens in their clanships.

As tempting as it was for Mirikami to take possession of dozens of the probably unguarded outlying clanships, that action would trigger intense planetary wide surveillance, right before a hoped for large-scale attack by the navy might take place. The theft would have to wait, if it happened at all.

Parked safely out of sight of the Krall dome, the eight people remaining on the Mark were standing just below the Bridge level, leaving the AI on watch. Mirikami intended to lead a small force closer to the dome and the parked clanships, but he was facing objections from Dillon. All eight of them were already in armor, helmets off.