Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (95 page)

Maggi told him two Krall had started for the gaping hole in its side, another two had split to go to the two airlocks for the lower shuttle bays, and four were clambering towards the lower deck airlocks where he was now.

He nodded to himself. “Of course. They’re trying multiple ways to get inside.”

Just then, the four of the former rescue crew arrived at the hold. Mirikami split his people up. “Jorl, you have charge down here, cover these four airlocks, and send someone back up to make certain the two Krall can’t get inside via the blast damaged area. Fred you take shuttle bay airlock number one and I’ll cover number two.” They split up.

Maggi said, “I suppose I’ll need to help take out the two entering via the hole in the hull?”

“I know you could, but I don’t think they can gain entry. Pressure doors are closed, and Jorl will send someone back there to check.” He answered. “If our trapped people couldn’t get out of a sealed compartment, maybe the Krall can’t get inside from vacuum either, unless they brought explosives. Can Jakob target any of the Krall out on the hull of the other ship?”

“No, I asked. We’re too close, almost parallel alongside, and they know as well as we do that near a clanship’s tail, or right on our hull they’re safe from ship weapons.” That of course, was why they used a hatch near the Mark’s tail.

“Jason, eight other warriors may be coming your way. The smooth hull is open ground, but our better stealth is your advantage, even if you have no place for concealment. They can’t see lasers or microwave beams in a vacuum.” As he spoke, he was racing up the far stairwell to reach the third level hanger bay for shuttle bay two. His external speakers picked up a clanking sound above him. The airlock was cycling.

When he reached the airlock corridor, with the echo of the clanging he’d heard still reverberating, along with the sound of his own hurried leaps from stair landings, he saw the inside airlock door ajar. He paused a half second. The Krall may have heard him dashing up, but he couldn’t see him.

This shuttle bay was located on the side closest to the hatch the Krall had used on the other ship. The warrior had apparently beaten him inside. Activating his cushioned foot soles, he went quietly and invisibly past the half open airlock door, pressed near the opposite wall, in case the warrior suddenly fired from around the corner at the end of the corridor.

By link he asked, “Jakob, how long ago did the number two shuttle bay finish its airlock cycle?” He’d gotten here fast, so he’d thought the Krall should have still been in the corridor.

“It just finished its cycle, Sir. The outer door locking light came on seconds before you linked.”

Mirikami was visually stealthed, and moving silently now, but he’d made some noise coming up so fast, which would have alerted their intruder. Glancing back over his shoulder, he reached into a soft suit storage alcove he was next to, and detached a thruster adjustment tool from a utility belt. He tossed it close to the ceiling, passing over the top edge of the airlock door he’d just passed, so that it would fall ten feet in front of the gap of the partly open door.

The actinic flash of the plasma bolt, which Mirikami had expected, burned the tool in half before it reached halfway to the deck. Mirikami leaped and snatched the door open by its edge with his left hand, and grabbed at the dim IR glow of the cooling weapon’s muzzle with his right gauntlet. He pulled it to the right through the open door, and his left hand flashed into the dark opening, just behind where the trigger should be, and found the stealthed armored wrist he was seeking.

The metal on metal grip with the Krall’s armor gave him another bright idea. He sent the most powerful mental image he could think of. It had the momentary result he’d wanted, causing the warrior to freeze for just an instant. His right gauntlet had crushed the end of the plasma rifle as that shocking image infused the Krall’s mind. The startling distraction lasted while Mirikami’s right fist moved in a blur from the rifle’s crushed tip, to a point just inches below where he estimated the warrior’s eyes would be staring at the sudden destruction of its primary weapons muzzle. That was the wrong muzzle to worry about.

Mirikami had made a good estimate, and his armored fist smashed like a hydraulic piston into the stealthed, slightly protruding muzzle of the Krall’s helmet, shoving it into the yellow teeth and thin lips behind it. The crumpling spoiled the stealth effect on the front of the helmet, and shattered the visor above. Mirikami’s left hand then yanked the Krall’s right wrist forward, which turned his right side away from Mirikami, exposing his back. Deftly reaching behind the Krall with his right hand, he felt for and gripped the power pack at the back waist of the suit, and tore it free. The warrior flashed into complete visibility.

Now it would be much easier to grasp limbs that could be clearly seen, snap them at the joints, and peel part of the suit off. That all happened in the next ten seconds. Well, striping off the helmet and one gauntlet was all that was actually peeled off, since that was all Mirikami required for this prisoner. The snarls of rage switched to ones of pain as the disabling progressed.

“Fred,” he linked. “I have a prisoner. We don’t need yours.”

“Uh…, OK Sir. That’s good, because he’s dead. I didn’t know you wanted one.”

Jorl came back with, “We have one dead one too, but the other three pulled back into the other airlocks behind the hatches when I shot the first one out. I killed power to the airlock pumps at the electrical panel. They can’t cycle back to vacuum now since the outer doors won’t open with pressure on the inside. They know they’re trapped, and Jakob reports they are talking on an encrypted frequency. They’ll probably try to come out at us all at once. Do you want another live one?”

“Probably not. Let me Mind Tap the one I have to decide.”

He removed a gauntlet and smacked a broken forearm aside as he grasped the exposed Krall’s hand from its backside, to avoid the talons with his bare hand.

In perfect low Krall, he spoke to him. “Surprised it was the Tor Gatrol snatching away your rifle when you nearly shot him?” He was amused by that powerful concept he’d sent, of a generic Krall voice that claimed to be the war leader. He snorted to demonstrate his amusement. His humor was short lived, when the aide flashed an annoyed though that he should have known Telour couldn’t be here on this ship. He was on Telda Ka when they left and could not have traveled here so soon.

On Comtap, he told to everyone, “Damn. Telour actually is the Tor Gatrol, and he’s behind all this. This is one of his aides that I caught.”

However, he wasn’t interested in Telour right now, since he was on K1. He needed information that would help them here, so he pressed the Krall for more information. “How many of you came in that ship?”

The answer was bad. On Comtap he relayed to the others, “There were 515 on the death ship…, I mean the Dismantler; the bastards call it a death ship. One of those over there is a soft Krall prisoner, and there’s a second aide to Telour with them, named Dolbor who’s in charge. The rest are dedicated guardians for just these ships, appointed from various clans. These are middle status and experienced warriors for this duty, with no novices.

“Let me ask him again about the prisoner. We might catch ourselves a soft Krall if they don’t kill him first.” He updated them as the answers came.

“The ship can’t Jump, but it can repair itself for that in a few hours. At least it can’t destroy any more planets. We left an important piece behind when we Jumped with it in tow.”

Jason suddenly interrupted. “Sir we have a man down. Thigh burn and suit penetration. We have a patch on the leak and the suit has injected nanites for pain and bleeding. Can we get him inside?”

“The two shuttle airlocks are open for you now if you can reach them, but three of the four lower ones have Krall trapped inside them. However, you still have those eight Krall to get past, two more are inside the damaged open hull, and almost five hundred more are inside the Dismantler and may be coming out anytime. You need to get back here, I think.”

“Only three left to get past out here Sir. We killed five of them. That’s how Tripper was winged. We tied monofilament utility line to our ankles, used our stealth for concealment and gently jumped up just above the curvature of the Dismantler to get shots at them, and then we pulled the shooters down. We can see them slightly in the distant sun light, despite their own stealth. They do learn though. They figured out how we were getting clear shots down at them from above the curvature. They took random plasma bolt potshots, and one was lucky for them, but not for Tripper. We’ve quit doing that.”

They suddenly had company. “We found ya.” Came via Comtap from Captain Will Horst, of the Hellion, Mirikami’s second in command for the group. Horst sent mental images of the Mark and the Dismantler lying side by side as a demonstration that he could see them. With the remaining five ships of the squadron, they had a lot more help. With five additional crews, and the survivors from the Mark, they had 132 Kobani to face nearly 500 Krall. At least the Kobani ship lasers could prevent the enemy from charging out in force to try to capture the Mark. However, that didn’t help them to secure the technology the Dismantler offered. It was probable the Krall would try to destroy the prize if it couldn’t Jump first.

“Good to see you Will. Come in close and use your low power lasers to pick some Krall off the Dismantler hull, where Jason says they are hiding. He can show you where. I don’t want you to hit the ship itself. Send another ship to look for two of my crew, who were ejected into space by the explosion when we arrived. They were hurt and unconscious.”

In a more somber tone he added, “My icons show another two suits drifting out there, and both are dead. Please bring them all home.”

They had lost twelve Kobani on the Mark and another twenty-four died with Noreen’s squadron from the Kiwi, and they would surely have losses when they entered the Dismantler to take it over. They had just saved many billions here at Pittsburg II, and in Sol system, yet Mirikami wondered how that sacrifice would sit with the PU government, compared to the billions of people expected to die in the first two systems attacked.

That would be a future social and political battle. Right now, he wanted to organize teams to enter the Dismantler, to fight the Krall still inside her, and see if they could capture the soft Krall operator alive. The operator would surely have more answers about how this ship worked, and how it made planets explode.

With help arriving by several shuttles, Mirikami asked Fred to go to the Bridge with him. “Maggi, I’m going to leave Fred and the Krall prisoner on the Bridge, and leave some others aboard to dig out the vermin we have, and to recover our casualties in the depressurized compartments.”

Almost as if an afterthought, he added. “You can come with us if you want, along with most of the Kobani that just arrived. We’re going to get inside that Olt’kitapi ship and take it away from the dammed Krall. I’m hoping you can reason with the soft Krall they’re holding prisoner, assuming we can capture him alive. He is surely no friend to them.”

She made sure he understood her attitude. “You were going to catch hell if you tried to leave me here babysitting Jakob. You do know that, Right?”

The AI assumed the query at the end was directed to him. “Mam, I am capable of monitoring all ship systems and reporting to you or Captain Mirikami, where ever you are.”

“My point exactly! I’ll meet you on the stairs my dear. That will save your old legs some steps.” The hundred twelve year old had vaulted over the railing to the deck below before her thoughts even went out on Comtap.

****

Dolbor had sent two octets through the hatch to confirm the damage Huwayla reported the enemy clanship had suffered. She reported to Pildon that it was without tachyon or conventional thruster power. He didn’t know how she knew this, but he had to admit that he didn’t know most of the capabilities of the ancient ship. He’d realized he would have to defer to the sub leader of the guardians, who wasn’t really obeying him anyway, but had permitted him to send the scouting force out to investigate the disabled enemy ship because it was what he wanted.

There were only a hand of humans found outside their ship, and they appeared to be seeking a way into the Olt’kitapi ship. He was tempted to let them make that mistake, but when he broached the possibility of allowing them inside, to crush them with their superior numbers, the guardian sub leader had, in a none-to-subtle move, turned sideways to allow his plasma rifle to
coincidentally
point towards Dolbor’s midsection. The elite guardians had paid Tor Gatrol Telour due respect, but that obviously did not apply to the Tor’s selected staff.

The sub leader had been awarded the title of Gorth to add to his earned name, but in Dolbor’s mind that unique guardian leadership rank didn’t seem to grant him authority over one of the Tor’s Gatrol’s own aides. However, the Gorth of the guardians had over five hundred warriors in his command. Bithdol, the other aide, was the only warrior Dolbor could apparently command. He’d sent the lower status aide to enter the enemy clanship, and to report specifically to him.

Huwayla projected an external view of the enemy ship for them, next to a hatch she had guided them to, just as Pildon was ordered to request. From there, they knew when access was made into the enemy clanship by those they sent out. The guardian sent to the upper shuttle airlock on the image didn’t report to Dolbor, but he observed the sub leader, Gorth Bohdar, reply to a communication that must have come from that warrior as soon as he left their sight. The message was only for Bohdar, and couldn’t be overheard from inside his helmet. However, the fact the warrior immediately opened the outer airlock hatch told him something.