Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (8 page)

Instead of removing her from her temporary cell when they passed her compartment, she heard multiple faint ultrasonic whines as plasma rifles were activated as they strode right past the closed hatch. These were obviously Krall rifles, because the humans typically used a silent multi-beam weapon system built into their armor. She had already noted that the inoperative rifles they had taken from her, and her dead crew, activated normally for humans. She learned this the hard way, because they had left one where she could get her hands on it for one of her attempted surprise attacks.

She snatched up the weapon she had seen one of them deactivate, and pressed a talon on the recessed button but it remained dead. One of them whirled around in a blur and powerfully tore it from her hands as he kicked her in the abdomen, and then broke another one of her teeth with the rifle butt. He powered it on for her in a clear demonstration, aimed it at her head, then shut it down with a snort of humor and placed it farther away from her.

Afterwards, they insultingly ignored her, discussing in Standard what they would use her for with the Prada slaves after they had control of the small dome. The smallest one of them, her original captor, had then bodily carried her, despite her strenuous but futile resistance, to this compartment and locked her inside.

She’d heard a single lower portal whoosh open before they’d descended. The group clumped across the deck of the lower hold, then, her compartment suddenly went dark in visible light. From the silence after that, she knew they’d made their exit. She went to the still softly glowing warmth of the keypad for at least the sixteenth time, and tried yet another rapid code combination to try to get the hatch to open. As on previous attempts, she failed to find the new code. This time though, she realized they had powered down not only the light circuits, but had killed a completely different secondary circuit for the keypad power. She knew this because she felt no tactile feedback from key presses, as sensed when the panel had power.

With a flash of insight, she hoped they had made a mistake due to human unfamiliarity with a clanship. To prevent her from testing for random door codes, they may have used the main power disconnect to simultaneously disable the keypad and lights, instead of using the independent secondary circuits, leaving the keypad powered. She quickly pressed against the door panel at its base, and then pushed out and upward, and felt it shift slightly. Success!

This hatch opened on a narrow companionway, and rather than open out on hinges, it was powered and slid into a slot in the thick armored bulkhead.

In excited exhilaration, she pushed two toe talon tips under the small gap formed at the bottom, and then repeated the outward and upward press to lift the hatch a few millimeters again. She shoved the two toe talons deeper under the wider crack at the base to hold it up, and repeated the push and lift until she felt a slight click through the hatch surface. Then she pushed and pulled to the left and the hatch shifted almost a talon thickness sideways into the receiving slot. With the fingers of both hands, she gripped the hatch edge to push up and pull left with all her strength, and the hatch abruptly slid all the way left and dropped down into the locked and open position.

This emergency manual hatch release technique would never have worked with power applied to the hatch mechanism nor if there were a vacuum on one side and atmospheric pressure holding the door sealed against air loss. However, on a fully pressurized deck, with a complete power loss from battle damage, the manually operated slide bolts, one set on the inside and another one outside of the hatch, could keep the hatch from being slid open with this push and lift method. The hatch was designed to keep an intruder out of the compartment, or to hold a captive inside, if all power had failed. The humans obviously didn’t know this. They didn’t understand these ships as well as their rightful users.

Feeling very clever, Phordot didn’t waste her time climbing to higher decks to try to power on the fusion bottles with their key codes also reset. Instead, she moved towards the reflected outside light from around the far end of the narrow corridor’s corner, which came through the portal they had left open. She moved swift and quietly in the direction of the footsteps that she’d heard earlier. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why the humans had clumped around so loudly, when they hadn’t done so before on their normally padded armored soles. That was also unconsciously attributed to careless human animals, overconfident in their newly acquired strength, and a belief they had control of the situation.

She saw another clanship through the portal, with visible but minor hull damage high up, parked a short distance away. She’d overheard them say this was one of the repair station domes on Telda Ka. If this clanship wasn’t too badly damaged inside, it might even be flight worthy, assuming it had adequate reaction fuel for a launch. If not, it might have usable weapons for a final stand against this cursed enemy. Death in combat was honorable.

She leaped out and hit the tarmac at a full sprint. It only took seconds to cross and leap into the conveniently open portal of the nearby ship. She hooked the talons of one hand on the opening’s edge as she entered, swinging around and landing silently in a crouch, facing inwards. She had scanned the hold as she approached, and noted it was a clanship that had been loaded, ready for the New Glasgow invasion before it was damaged. There were secured pallets of cases of plasma rifles, spare power packs, and small fusion powered field rechargers for the power packs. The single open portal was angled away from the dome, so it couldn’t be seen by observers there. She’d not seen any figures on the tarmac as she ran, human or Krall, although if in armor with stealth active, she couldn’t see them anyway. She believed the humans would have raced to the dome if they intended to take control.

She moved around a pallet, away from the portal, and flipped open two catches on a top case of rifles. Lifting the lid slightly, she reached inside and grasped the closest rifle in its rack. As she lowered with it in a crouch, she expertly tapped a talon in the activation slot and experienced a visceral thrill as she heard the faint whine of the containment magnets powering up, the plasma chamber drawing power from the energy dense pack. She knew the heating chamber would have the first plasma bolt heated to firing temperature in seconds. She was
armed.

She removed a second rifle, activated it as well, but slung it by its strap across her back, tightening the adjustable buckle on her thick chest to hold it secure. She moved quickly back to the open portal, used a glance to make sure the area looked clear, and tapped the standard two-button code to close the portal. She cringed a bit at the whoosh, and the deadened thud as it seated against the padded and pressure sealing base and edges.

Phordot promptly changed the standard opening code of that portal to a more complex one, often used by her clan for interclan wars. She next entered an auxiliary command code that set every keypad onboard to now respond only to the same eight-digit clan code. Now no one could get inside from any external airlock using the standard door code. This was a feature normally permitted only during times of declared interclan warfare, and that measure had to be approved by the Joint Council, at least on any clan’s war material that was generally considered communal Krall property. She knew she wouldn’t receive any censure or status loss for the unapproved measure in this case.

In the now closed lower hold, she detected the scent of humans, but nothing fresher than an hour or more. She raced at full speed, hampered only slightly by the finger fractures she’d received at the time of her initial capture. She paused at the thruster-engine deck level, and verified there was enough reaction mass in the binary fuel tanks for at least a launch and landing, possibly even two. Her next concern was if the upper hull damage she’d seen included any Trap field emitters.

She wanted tachyons to power her plasma cannons for faster recycling than with fusion power, as well as to increase power to her heavy lasers. Yet, having an inertialess Normal Space drive available, once she could activate Trap fields after leaving the gravity well, would give her maneuverability and a high acceleration that the low levels of reaction mass fuel made impractical. It also meant she would have Jump capability, but leaving K1 wasn’t on her agenda if she could fight the invaders right here.

Her agenda changed the moment she leaped onto the command deck and saw the partly disassembled control console, which the Prada workers had left behind when the human’s invasion started. At first glance, she despaired that her efforts had come to nothing to use this clanship, but one of the four control stations was still operational, and it came online as soon as she gave it power.

A rapid check of the weapons systems and the missile inventory revealed fresh disappointments. The four plasma cannon chambers were fully offline, possibly caused by the burn through on the hull she’d see from outside, but the lasers would function. There were no missiles listed as being aboard, which considering how heavily she’d seen the ship loaded with small arms pallets as she climbed to the command deck, probably meant even the missile compartments were packed with rifles and power packs, leaving no room for missile crews to work. This must have been a clanship assigned to a minor clan for the invasion force, with too low a status to demand a portion of the more desirable heavy war equipment to transport.

She reassessed what she could accomplish with this flight operational but effectively toothless clanship. Lasers alone against the ship she had just escaped from might be able to destroy it, if she was given enough time. Except another human controlled ship on the far side of the dome surely had plasma cannons, possibly preheated, and perhaps missiles that could arm in the mile distance between them. There was no way to tell if anyone were left inside that other ship. Her ability to launch before they knew she was free might be a short time, and once that was known, they had ships with missiles in orbit that could intercept her if they knew she was lifting.

A suicide attack was something she considered, rising a half a mile and then diving into either one of the human ships here. The drawback to that tactic was there was no certainty there were any enemy aboard either ship. The discussion she heard, after she was knocked down after her second attempt to attack one of them from behind, came to mind.

When they finished subduing K1, which was almost complete, they were planning a few days of consolidating their newly captured clanships into a larger fleet, and then would Jump from K1 to Poldark, to attack the roughly five hundred outnumbered clanships there.

She knew from supply runs there, and to New Dublin, that most of the clanships at the invaded planets would normally be on the ground, used as mobile area defense installations that could also be used for orbital attacks or defense, or to support renewed ground assaults. If parked, most of them would be located inside their defensive perimeter of heavy plasma batteries. The previously destroyed batteries of that ring had been replaced after the partial force withdrawal from that planet, but the humans she overheard bragged they had used small arms fire with special electronics inside, to disable clanships somehow, and the heavy war equipment. The clans fighting at Poldark would not expect that mode of light attack, and would ignore it, as they had mistakenly done here at K1. They needed to be warned.

Whatever the humans had done here, the clans at Poldark were unaware of the risk they faced by coming into close contact with the enemy, as they preferred to do. Fighting at a standoff distance would improve their chances if they knew about the risk in advance. It was settled in her mind. Her duty was to go to Poldark and alert the Gatlek of the threat coming their way in another few days, and then he could send warning to New Dublin. They would be ready with new tactics.

****

Mirikami clapped his hands in satisfaction, as the clanship launched at maximum thruster acceleration, and passed the two-mile mark. “There she goes. I was afraid for a moment she might decide to try to ram one of us. We had missiles and plasma cannons ready, and the transmitter code for the device we put inside the control console, but we don’t have very many Krall accessible clanships left on K1 to use this way. I’m glad it’s on its way.”

Maggi said, “I’ll link to Henry again, and tell him to warn his Planetary Defense Forces to allow a lone clanship through next week, and make a token effort to knock it down. Should I tell him that Thad and Sarge will Jump for Poldark later today with a four hundred ship fleet, right after their own blue suit makes his
miraculous
escape to New Dublin?”

“Yes, do that, and give him the various spec ops activation codes Joe had his boys set up on their remote devices. Ask him to coordinate with Admiral Foxworthy too, so she can make certain Phordot also slips past the heavy cruiser squadron next week. I’d hate to have the navy get lucky and knock out the only supply clanship Henry ever wanted to let land safely. With Admiral Bledso resigning, and President Medford selecting a political ally as Chairfem of the Joint Chiefs, Foxworthy might be wary of cooperating with any Kobani operation.”

“He doesn’t have to let her know this is our operation.” Maggi suggested.

Mirikami shook his head. “We’ll want her support after the landing, and when Thad arrives. I think she’s sympathetic to us. She had to be a Bledso protégé to get command of the Poldark squadron, and she won’t be happy that her boss was forced out over politics. If we let her in on the operation she can plan ahead, she can make her squadron look good against the Krall by participating.” 

“Navy personnel can’t board the clanships, Tet. Even if they’re disabled.”

“No, that’ll still be our jobs. Nevertheless, we can furnish the navy with Denial chips for striped down anti-ship missiles, like those we used. Not all of the small arms going to Poldark and New Dublin have uninfected chips, you know. Thad’s group will be taking loads of infected power packs with their chips ready for salvage.”