Koban 6: Conflict and Empire

by Stephen W Bennett

  The first suspicious indications on Grifdan’s screen was from both radar and visual spectrums, with a trace of infrared. It looked like a dark gray spray of hundreds of fingers shooting into the sky, with the city’s skyline outlined in front of them. They were followed by billowing clouds of lighter gray rising behind the same buildings, on the right side of the city on the bluff. It was dust and mist, which rose slower than the first sky stabbing shards. It looked as if there had been a massive explosion on the far side of the town.

  He felt a sharp vibration transmitted through the ground, transmitted through the tank’s rumbling treads, and saw a sweeping set of small ripples form in a swiftly passing shock wave along the river’s surface, with loose rocks on the hillsides and riverbanks rolling down as they were dislodged.

  That relatively mild, artificial seismic event wasn’t registered by the AI’s, since they didn’t have software or sensors to monitor for that. However, traveling slower than the ground shock wave that had just passed them, the sounds of the multiple blasts that caused the sprays of debris reached them next. The audible source of the explosion, along with the now falling chunks of debris, proved that indeed, there had been a massive blast on the opposite side of the city on the bluff.

  Declaring the obvious to his leader, Kardor called him on the link to shout shrilly, “Commander, something blew up on the far side of the city. Did they just destroy the spaceport we need?”

  “No. Select an overhead image on your viewer. The spaceport is well away from that explosion. The blasts happened close that long lake, which they use for water transport by barges, bringing in crops from farms all along that long body of water. The picture we have is a day old orbital image of the city and that lake. I’ve sent a drone higher in that direction, to see what they just did.”

  “Sire, I’ve called for my final five units to join me immediately. My two guard Legions are in position on the next hill to cover your column. Are you going to advance or wait?”

  “I’m coming now, but I’ll maintain my column in Legion sized units, to advance faster than sending individual Pillagers can. I’ll leave the two guard Legions on the hill here until last, for added protection. I don't know what the enemy just destroyed, but it can’t be to our advantage. It’s possible, as you suggested, they might decide to damage the spaceport facilities next. Only, that isn’t as valuable to us as it originally was. I think the Spears will be home, and we won’t have ships landing here anytime soon. Not even if Space Force Commander Grudfad leaves them behind, hiding in the outer system. The enemy fleet would never let them through to reach us.”

  As he instructed his half of the column on what he wanted them to do, he thought about changed priorities.

  “Our Pounders can land up on the bluff after our Ragoons load the new supplies onto them. At least they can land there after we take the city and kill those laser batteries. The Hoths, protecting the Pounders and supporting our infantry, can land vertically on any road, so we don’t need the spaceport for them.”

  Then he had an afterthought. “Although, the Stranglers need a safe place to land for servicing and supply. They need wide sturdy paved areas.” He dismissed that concern for now. “The humans can’t do enough damage to the entire tarmac to keep them from sitting down on it somewhere. I’m moving my first Legion forward now, be ready to cover us.”

  His driver immediately started forward, advancing the throttle to reach full speed before they came around the end of the hill that shielded them from the city. That would minimize the length of exposure time from any attack from the top of the bluff. The nineteen Pillagers of his Legion followed him, with only an AI controlled single tank interval between each one, moving at a breakneck pace. The nearly silent electric motors, powered by an even quieter fusion bottle for power, didn’t mean they were completely noiseless. Their stronger than steel composite treads, designed for gripping nearly any surface, still screeched when slammed into acceleration as they slipped briefly on the road’s surface.

  The next Legion behind them allowed only a five Pillager gap to form, before they too leaped into action to follow at speed. They were ready to meet this enemy, and to get into action against more than the damned birds, livestock, fish, and empty buildings they had encountered all day. The explosion on the other side of the city proved there were still humans there.

  Grifdan thought, they can’t evacuate and flee from me indefinitely. He was right.

  Rumbling and vibrations from the heavy tanks, moving fast on pavement, was transmitted and felt though the crew’s body armor. The sound was filtered out by their helmets. Each Pillager commander buttoned up inside the turret when they were exposed to potential fire this close to the city, and most donned their helmets to avoid the rumble sounds when they clattered along the pavement at top speed.

  Grifdan was still inside the turret, and he was looking over the driver’s shoulder, at one external view screen that displayed the scene on their right side, towards the river, waiting for the view of part of the city’s edge to be obscured by the next hill on that side of the river. He could see the multiple tracks left by the two Legions that had driven up the slope of the grassy hill on the other side of the river. He couldn’t see the tanks because they’d entered some sort of orchard that covered the crest of the hill, but he knew they were near the top, watching for any new activity from the city.

  The pall of gray dust from the explosions was still visible, but being blown away from them by the prevailing winds. His handheld viewer was linked directly to a drone’s camera, the one he’d ordered to climb and fly towards where the blasts had occurred. That point was at least two miles on the opposite side of the center of the city, which placed it four miles from their position. Its camera was looking up along the river, where the descending rapids came around a final bend, and spilled into the first wider pool of calmer water below the bluffs.

  His driver was backing down from the bone rattling speed, as the next low hill shielded them from view from the city. That’s when Kardor called him, again shouting in a panic on the link. “Quick, get to high ground, Sire. The Pillagers on the hill can see it coming. We all need to climb higher. Now!”

  “See what coming?”

  “Water Sire,” he screamed, “spilling out of the banks, pouring over the top of hills.”

  Grifdan glanced at the drone’s camera image on his hand viewer, just as a turbulent white foaming torrent of water roared down and around the sloping bend of rapids, engulfing the tamer white water and picking up speed. There was a vast surging wall of water behind the leading initial flow, which hugely increased the volume of water, filling the narrow head of the valley, filling it from side to side. The wild crashing waves swept along uprooted trees, and smashed structures, torn from the farms it had just swept away.

  His driver, in an act of self-preservation hadn’t needed an order. He gunned the engines and spun the Pillager into a screeching hard left, to angle for the nearest slope they could climb.

  Grifdan watched the wild raging torrent on the viewer, still gaining momentum as it roared down the slope from the highlands, ripping through the ancient cut in the bluff below where the city was built. That cut, and the valley below it, had been created by an uncontrolled river that had once etched the land in the seasons of heavy rains, for a million or more years. It’s stored and dammed waters now set free again.

  Until it had been tamed by the colonists on Tanner’s World, to guard against the ravages of the rainy season, they had dammed the stream at a narrow canyon the water had cut through the ancient rock layers above the bluff. That had created a large deep reservoir to use for navigation on the lake it created, and provided flood control for a verdant valley in the lowlands. The huge blast they’d just observed had been the destruction of that dam. It had taken time for the released water to cover the miles from the dam, through the old canyon to reach the lowlands, picking up speed and fury the entire way.

  As he watched, the wall of foamy, debr
is filled water overpowered the curve where the more obedient rapids were flowing, surging over the hills to either side, carrying away another orchard, like the one where the two Legions that had guarded his advance were poised to attack the supposedly helpless city.

  The water’s depth continued to build as the momentum of the vast reservoir was drained down into the once protected valley. There had never been a natural torrent here like this one, because nature had never built a dam. This was a deliberate, human made disaster. Some of the blocky hard chunks being pushed along by the water could be pieces of the shattered damn. They were much larger than a Pillager

  Group 2’s Commander knew that soon there would be another three hundred seventy pieces of debris swept along with the force of water. Sealed and water tight, assuming their crews even survived the pummeling tumbles, they all would die buried in mud, in whatever haphazard position the uncaring waters left them.

  He knew the humans had waited to blow the dam until he was in the narrow upper part of the valley, close to the base of the highlands. They wanted him to follow the roads parallel to the winding lower river, staying away from the high bridges. They surely had examined simulations of potential disaster scenarios, and realized at this location, before the water could spread wider in the valley below and leaving islands of hilltop safety, there were no hills high enough this close to avoid inundation. Not if the water was released all at once.

  They had sacrificed hundreds of years of local colony development, just to wipe his armored Group from existence, using what they had available and improvising.

  This is an insane species, he thought. The Krall should have left them alone, and so should have we.

  He watched the onrushing waters, and ignored the increasingly shrill voice of Kador’s pointless warnings to climb higher.

  ****

  Hitok, a half continent away from Group 2, listened with Thond in disbelief, as Grudfad told them the fate of Grifdan’s armored command. The two of them were in a mobile headquarters unit, installed on the largest class of a Pillager chassis. The flagship, along with the rest of the battered fleet was preparing to Jump for home.

  He sounded apologetic, and humbled. “You have the supplies I promised. The enemy, for their own inscrutable reasons, let the ships through unmolested. I could not have forced them to do so. I have lost Ravagers almost five to one against their losses since their second fleet arrived, and nearly all of our Shredders have been damaged or destroyed. I perhaps stayed here too long, to protect your supply ships, which they ignored anyway.

  “The flagship AI says the newest arriving enemy ships used our supply ships as cover for conducting landings of their own. With their better stealth, it isn’t certain how many, but the AI thinks they slipped in a quarter of their reinforcements in four groups, penetrating alongside the civil ships, descending near where the four Pounder Groups landed. It can’t tell me what they did after that. At least the Pounder captains and infantry units haven’t reported being attacked, so they seem to have gone elsewhere.”

  Thond replied, stoically. “Then, it appears that Commander Hitok and I must conquer this planet with his one Ground Force Armored Group and infantry support, and with my control of nearly a hundred thirty-five thousand Ragoons in the other three infantry sections, several hundred flight worthy Pounders, and eight hundred eighty Hoths. And we have supplies that are scattered haphazardly between the four landing zones on two continents, because the supply ships were not sorted and assigned sites based on our needs.”

  Grudfad was defensive, “Sire, there was no time to organize the unwilling captains of the subservient species, to send them where logistics said they were needed. We thought most of them were doomed by even making the attempt.”

  Thond replied calmly and formally. “Acting Space Force Commander, I was merely listing the factual disposition of our resources, not offering a criticism of your command. In light of the situation here, preserving the fleet is my paramount concern, as it obviously is yours. Commander Hitok and I will continue the fight here as best we can, while you take the fleet home for repairs, and particularly home defense, if the Emperor proves to be annoyed enough to attack us.”

  He became bit sarcastic. “If the High Command can talk the Emperor into a relief mission, perhaps in another orbit or so their planning will be complete, and the remnants holding out here, if any, can be brought home.”

  Grudfad sounded earnest as he said, “Force Commander, I will do what I can to organize a relief mission, or resupply for you at a minimum. One that will arrive in time to be of benefit to you. I offer you my life-vow.” He was prepared for an honor suicide if he broke his word.

  “I did not think otherwise of you my young friend, and your honor and intentions are not in doubt. However, you have not fought enough campaigns for the Thandol to have experienced their indifference towards us, as have I. True, we are one of their security forces, but that doesn’t mean they hold us in any higher regard as a people, than they do the other subservient species of the Empire. So long as we perform the regulatory and punishment duties they prefer to avoid themselves, and we collect their taxes for them, we are granted a share of the funds, we have greater freedom and a degree of dominion over the other species in this sector of the Empire.

  “On this world, I acted outside the boundaries of what I knew they would approve, by using an extension of authority that they had not foreseen I would use. If successful, they would accept the results, and excuse my audacity. Then, they would redefine my freedom to act without prior approval in the future.

  “The Thandol think we have no more ambition than the less aggressive species we help them dominate. This will serve to remind them they are wrong. That is why I tell you that it is to our people’s advantage to preserve the fleet, to keep intact the force that the Thandol think is most vital to them. Our Ground Forces are not as important to them. In hindsight, I should have recognized the human victory over the Krall had to be more than the luck of finding the weak point the Olt’kitapi intended to use to stop the barbarians. I should have allowed the Thandol the misfortune of discovering how this Federation’s most aggressive species accomplished that feat. The Emperor’s weakening, at the hands of this foe, would have made us relatively stronger.

  “Should the Thandol defeat the Federation, I foresee them offering humans a role as a fourth security force in this annexed region. They have often spoken of the greater stability four footpads provide, and with only three security forces, they have long feared the Empire was unbalanced. Offering a security role to humanity would deny us the share of power and new taxes that we believed was possible in this huge new region. Delay no longer. Jump for Tantor now, and return later to win a share of this new territory for our people.”

  “Yes, Sire. Good luck.” And within minutes, in mid battle, the fleet was suddenly gone.

  ****

  Mirikami wasn’t surprised. “Well, I expected a withdrawal. Although, I thought they might try to slip out their troops and landers before their fleet left. We would have bled their fleet heavily while they made the attempt. I suppose that’s why they saved what is really their most effective force. The landers would have been decimated if they attempted to climb without having first crippled the nearest PDF defenses, and then passing through our domination of orbital space. It was a rational decision on the part of their commander. I assume he left with the fleet.”

  Maggi, more a political thinker, considered the implications. “I think letting the supply ships through makes them feel they’re in a stronger position than before. It helps us by showing we can be merciful, and they have some strength to use in trading with us when we start to negotiate. Right now, they feel stronger with those supplies in hand, with over eight hundred fifty space planes, several hundred armored landers, and one nearly intact tank force. They surely believe they have four armies pitted against negligible ground forces, and think they can still prevail at those four cities. If their history is like ours, they
know air power has never won a ground war on its own, and we’ve seen they understand a blitzkrieg style of ground warfare. However, if they get their troops into towns or cities, like Fort Bradford here, it will be hard to dig them out.”

  “They won’t take over Fort Bradford, even with their armored units.” Sarge said with assurance. “There’ll be a force of nearly thirty thousand troops here by tomorrow, two thirds of ‘em Kobani. The PDF shuttles are bringing in the local troops they had dispersed at other cities, which will bring them up to just over ten thousand. Our people landed with us.”

  Maggi wasn’t so certain. “The Ragnar have about forty-five thousand infantry moving this way on commandeered trucks, escorted by several hundred space planes, and I think Thad said about eighty-four landers are flying low with them, providing them with aerial plasma, laser, and missile defenses. With at least twenty Stranglers, each with their own similar defenses. They aren’t exactly wide open to attack from orbit.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want us to have to fight them off if we could negotiate instead.”

  Tet had a better understanding of what Sarge was trying to achieve. He’d decided to let the former Poldark infantryman try out another of his schemes. to keep the destruction down, while convincing the enemy they needed to negotiate.

  “Maggi, Sarge has a plan, and he discussed it with Gaffigan, Thad and me. We think it’s worth a try, to gain a military advantage that the Ragnar will see and respect.”

  “Tet, I heard Colonel Gaffigan say the ladybugs are no match for any of the Ragnar tanks in a shootout, except for those units with Debilitaters transmitters. And even they carry lasers that can take out a ladybug. We don't know how well even our modified body armor will hold up against the Debilitaters, and the PDF troops have copper screen undies for their only protection, as do some of our own people. General Nabarone can’t talk Admiral Foxworthy into delivering his troops here yet. Not without President Strickland’s approval. I don't think we look strong enough to the Ragnar to force them into negotiating their surrender.”