Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (7 page)

When the PU Army finally invaded K1, there was no need to make it tougher for them to retake the human colony world by leaving the Krall with the ability to produce more and better conventional weapons than they used today. The Krall surely had stores of the older low-tech weapons and ammunition here, and on their production and clan worlds. Without clanships, those clan world weapons couldn’t get to K1. The same held for Poldark and New Dublin for that matter, when the Denial chips arrived there.

The lightening blitz on K1 had proven that getting in close to the enemy, spreading the Denial chips at close range in direct confrontation was how the Olt’kitapi had failed. They had been a pacifist species at heart, and despite high intelligence, didn’t have the thought processes of aggressive predators. Humans had them in spades, and Kobani would engage eagerly in the confrontations required, and they clearly had won that battle.

Now the rest of Carson’s information came into play, and Mirikami could make use of it to their advantage. He contacted Carol Slobovic. “Carol, is that pilot you captured still alive?” He’d left its fate to her discretion.

“You mean Phordot?” she asked, forgetting she’d not mentioned her captive’s name.

“If that was the blue suit you captured, then yes.”

“She’s the only surviving crew member, Sir, and that’s because I planned to take this clanship down to her clan’s dome and Tap her mind again.”

“I have a better use for her and you. Telour was visiting a small finger clan’s dome on the southern-most continent, belonging to the Tandal clan. He escaped in a cluster of nine clanships that made it off K1. We haven’t landed at that dome yet, and I want you go there, as soon as I have someone capture a clanship without using a Denial chip. Your prisoner is about to be much cleverer than you thought.”

“Huh? I mean, uh…, what Sir? She stammered. “She doesn’t seem any brighter than the average Krall to me.” She was clearly confused. Mirikami explained in a rapid exchange of thoughts and images.

“Oh. OK, she surely thinks she’s that smart.” She agreed. “Let me know when to deliver her.”

“I need to set the stage first. I’ll get back to you.” Then Mirikami went hunting for another captive Krall.

“Dillon, do you or any of your teams have a live blue suit?”

“Hi Tet. I have a brown suit K’Tal or two, from two Dorbo domes.”

“Thanks, but if I can find higher rank I’ll leave those K’Tal’s to your discretion.”

“Carson called me about Kobalt, and mentioned he had an aide of Telour’s.”

“I know about that one and I have a different use for him later today, besides, his back is broken. You might ask Carson to see if he knows where Telour may have gone when he escaped. I think I know, but his aide might know which star system. We’ll need a guide.”

“Aha. Do I detect some lip pulling strategy being developed?”

“Several plans cooking, and you and Carson are included in the main plan. I’ll get back to you.” He checked in with two more people he counted on quite often.

“Thad, are you and Sarge near each other?”

“We’re not far apart, Tet. We’re still at the two large Mordo domes. I’m on the western tarmac and Sarge is on the eastern one, or else he’s inside the dome shutting down their power. We have all their clanships grounded, but I lost seven people when one of the disabled ships found a way to rupture their internal fuel tanks, just as a team was about to board them. At least the explosion was fast and violent, they didn’t burn.”

“Damn, I’m sorry Thad. I hadn’t heard.”

“I haven’t reported casualties to Maggi yet. Without plasma weapons or functional body armor, the Krall are a relatively minor threat to us with only pistols. A few got to some of the Dragons and laser batteries before we could deny them access, but they fired on our full sized ships as they came in, instead of at our more vulnerable people on the ground. We had time to snipe them with Denial chips before we had other than minor damage and scorch marks. Do you have another mission for us?”

“I do. On a small equatorial continent, where they keep many of the Prada and Torki workers, they’ve been repairing damaged clanships. Surveillance from the Mark shows there are several ships that appear intact enough to Jump, but have some unrepaired hull damage. I don’t want any of them disabled with Denial chips, but I need at least two of them captured, and loaded with pallets of plasma rifles and power packs, all still functional. That means you can’t get a Denial chip close to them, or near the weapons I want loaded onto them. When you land there, secure the ships, and try to reassure the Prada and Torki they have nothing to fear from us. The Torki will be an easy sell, as soon as Coldar on the inbound medical ship contacts them through their Olts.”

“OK. How soon do you need us there?”

“In an hour will be fine. I need to get Joe Longstreet and his spec ops pals busy rigging some timers or remote triggers, and a Raspani or Torki to tell us how to use those with Denial chips. That requires the medical ship to land there first. I’ll get back to you.”

“Understood. I’ll ask Sarge to take a shuttle over to join me and we’ll leave his ship here for our people to use.”

Next, he found Longstreet. “Joe, are you busy?”

“Hey Tet, not anymore. It’s mostly make-work now, since our snipers, rippers, and flying spy bots have disabled everything around the three domes assigned to us. Our rippers circled under all of the clanships parked at the outer perimeters, the fly bots went inside the domes and shut down fusion power and locked a few doors, and our snipers on the roofs shutdown all the clanships closer to the domes.”

“Any casualties?”

“Only among the Krall, unless you count a blister on a busy sniper’s trigger finger. Perhaps a thousand dead lizards.”

“Joe, I asked your men to avoid mixing it up with them if you could. That was an extra risk.”

“Gee, you should have told the rippers. They were tearing them new assholes anytime they saw one. Sometimes literally. My snipers and I stayed busy picking off any Krall we spotted outside with pistols, afraid they’d be firing at the cats. I guess we didn’t need to be too worried. Other than a graze or two, the Krall couldn’t hit them worth a shit. Man, can those big cats twist and change direction, and I think they rattle and scare the warriors a hell of lot more than any of us do. I guess ‘cause we don’t eat them, or roar our pleasure when we kill one. The freaking noise was awesome.

“The cats are damned sneaky too. Any warrior with a shot at one coming towards them is dead meat. There would always be one or two coming in from the side or behind the shooter. Hell, I shot one blue suit just before the flanking ripper, which I didn’t see coming, could take it down. The look that cat gave me, exactly back along my firing lane to my stealthed and concealed position, positively gave me shivers. Stealthed or not, it looked directly at me. I could see its eyes boring into me through my scope, and it was clearly pissed that I took its kill. I understand from Dillon that I can expect to find something dead stowed in my bunk, or cat piss in my armor sometime in the near future. They apparently get even for slights or insults, and have a wicked sense of humor.

“That they do, Joe. I also told them via frills with the experienced pride hunt masters to kill the enemy only when it was necessary to defend themselves or others. They were supposed to pass that along to the younger pride members. I showed an image of a warrior shooting at them as an example that justified attacking the Krall. I see now I didn’t present a clear mental image of their trying to stay concealed, where they wouldn’t be seen in the first place. I suspect they set up situations where one of them exposed themselves just to draw fire, so the pride mate already in position had a valid reason to kill the shooter.”

“Uh…” Joe seemed to consider his next words. “They might have seen some of us doing that. When you asked us not to get too involved with knocking off individual Krall, a few of us…, well most of us really, found it hard to resist shooting them when they charged at us with pistols and a few rifles blazing. We might
possibly
have baited them a little bit, by switching off stealth from time to time so they spotted us.”

Then he got defensive of their attitude. “After decades of the bastards swarming over our people, and showing zero mercy, it’s easy to understand why.”

Mirikami did understand. “Don’t get your drawers all bunched into your crack, Joe. I actually intend to draw some of the people you just mentioned into the fighting here on K1. Want to know my plan, and help to set it up for me?”

“That sounds like a polite invitation, but I know you mean it for real, so I think I’ll take this as more than a courtesy call. What can we do to spread the chaos?”

Mirikami explained.

“Sure, we always have some timers and remote trigger devices with us, and more Denial chips than we can use now. Not as many trigger devices as we brought on our first recon mission here, but If you’ll only have two clanships and their load of weapons, we won’t need very many. One per ship actually, but I think you want to deliver multiple surprises with different delays and triggers. Right?”

“You got it. Grab four or five human made shuttles to transport everything you’ll need, since they don’t use Denial chip keypads, and seek out some plasma rifles and spare power packs that are still suitable for Krall use. Keep rippers away, because their chip collars would disable every single weapon. Fly the rifles to the repair domes I told you about, and coordinate with Thad and Sarge, because they’ll be obtaining the two Trojan horses.”

“Trojan what?”

“Sorry. I mean the clean clanships we’ll use. As Maggi would say, you need to study ancient Earth history. Some ideas never go out of fashion. Let me know when you’ve gathered everything you need at the repair domes.”

“Will do.”

Maggi, having been collecting casualty reports, had kept one ear open to her husband’s side of the preceding conversations. “I was puzzled about what you were up to for a time, but your lip pulling lasted so long that I knew you had several different things you were juggling. After you talked to Joe, I know two of them. Care to tell me the other one?”

“Of course. Did you pack enough clothes for a longer trip? About a month one way?”

“I can do laundry. I take it we’re going after Telour.”

“Yep. I knew you would’ve figured out where he was likely to go, once he realized we had him beaten here.”

“He has a head start.”

“Not to his final destination, he doesn’t. He’ll have to make a stop when he’s close, which will take at least a couple of days. We don’t need to make that stop.”

“Oh. You’re right. It’ll be glitzy to see his reaction when he finds out. We’ll want to record that.”

“Glitzy indeed, if not outright fabuli.” Mirikami agreed with a grin, using another of the handful of words very young Kobani kids had once invented, expecting to confound their elders when they spoke their private and supposedly
secret
slang.

Chapter 2: Divide and Conquer

Maggi was talking to the ship just entering atmosphere and about to land. “Carol stay about a thousand feet from the clanship parked about a quarter mile out from the west side of the dome, but please stay well away from the dome too. We don’t want your ship too close to either one to avoid the Denial list transfer. The Mark is the ship on the east side of the dome, a couple of thousand feet out.”

“Roger, Maggi. Phordot was allowed to overhear that we were landing at a repair dome to finish its capture, and to speak with the Prada workers, so she knows where we’ll be. I doubt when she makes her break that she’ll want to run for the dome. That ship with open portals should be her preferred destination. The vacuum seal hatches for upper decks will all be locked and the supposed power shutdown will only be on the lower decks.”

“Who’s staying aboard?”

“Sergey will be on the Bridge. He’ll watch Phordot, and if he sees her try to move towards the higher decks, he’ll make some noise to force her to head lower. She knows any of us can whip her ass bare handed. We left her unsecured in a compartment with several of us casually talking about landing here, seemingly paying her little attention. She tried to jump one us twice from behind while we used Comtap to make sure we all knew when she tensed to spring. She got slapped down hard both times, and I’m sure she gained more respect for us.”

“OK. I can see you now by eyeball from an open portal on the Mark. If your prisoner acts quickly enough, Thad and Sarge can bring their ship down in a half hour or less. The other damaged clanship parked near the Mark is for their prisoner to steal.”

Carol’s captured craft settled quietly on Normal Space drive, a safe distance from the designated damaged clanship. As soon as it was down, nine of the ten Kobani boarding team made ample noise as they descended past the prisoner’s locked storage compartment, assuring that it knew they were leaving. They killed the power to the lower decks before they made their exit, plunging the Krall and lower compartments into darkness, at least in visible light. The Krall had IR vision that would serve it adequately, using the residual heat in the bulkheads, and the added warmth retained for a time in the electrical circuits just killed.

After the bump of the landing and the gravity field altered slightly, the hum died from the Normal Space drive. Phordot promptly heard the clattering of multiple armored feet on stairs and metal decks coming nearer, and assumed one or more of her captors would open her chamber where she had been locked away. She assumed they intended to use her in some fashion, perhaps to order the Prada to follow human instructions after they had control of the dome. There normally were a few low status warriors at these domes, recently out of novice training, and these humans had said they’d kill them if they failed to surrender.

The idea of young Krall warriors surrendering to humans was preposterous, so they would need a captive higher status Krall to pass along their orders to the Prada. They expected Phordot’s blue suit to engender quick obedience from loyal Prada elders, which is why they brought her along. She would honorably refuse, of course, forcing them to kill her.