Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  Thad, annoyed he hadn’t called for eight missiles, shook his head. “All of the heavy lasers ports were open simultaneously, but only two fired. I think they may have activated the automated defense system. That has been one of our edges, the use of computers versus their fast reactions. Even now that we personally are faster than they are, computers still act faster. They obviously have learned from their mistakes. I wish I had learned from our successes, and not stayed with the same basic attack plan. They laid a trap for us, expecting us to head down into the factory through the interior stairwells.”

  Dillon added his comment. “I don't think they were expecting the actual landing, or we wouldn’t have made it to atmosphere before they would have been after us. The ECM was a new trick that gave us a slight edge, but they’ll be ready to counter that with land lines soon.”

  “Yea, but that’s for the next raid. Let’s dig ourselves out and get away from this one first.”

  “Colonel?” it was Fred Saber.

  “Yes son?”

  “Do you want another four-ship to try to finish the job? Rich and I are out of missiles, but the clanship looks like it can still shoot back.”

  “What? Hell, my shuttle is covered up and I can’t see. Is the damn thing still standing? I figured it crashed and fell over.” He had not heard an explosion from the clanship’s reaction fuel, but the tanks didn’t always rupture.

  “Yes Sir. The laser ports are still open and from our external microphones, we picked up the faint high pitch ultrasonic whine of the magnetic coils of the plasma cannons, as they came on-line. The ceramic barrels are heating because I can see a faint IR glow behind those ports, which are still closed.” The TG2 senses were paying dividends. Now what to do?

  “No. There’s no point in firing anti-ship missiles from where we’re sitting. We’re all too close for a missile to arm and detonate if we fire. We would need more distance.”

  Thad, using his command override, selected a higher power narrow focus radio, by deploying a dish on one of the other shuttles not buried under the collapsed wall. “Noreen, you saw what happened.” It wasn’t a question. He knew she was watching as she came inbound from the moon. “Did the other orbiting clanship turn back?”

  “Not yet, but he did try to reply to that broadcast on the same frequency. I don’t think it knew where that came from, and it’s gone around the curvature of the planet. I’ll be down there before the next guardian rounds the southern pole. I can’t even see half of your ships under the crap lying over top of you.”

  “I’ll send teams out to uncover what they can. However, we’ll need you for transport of some of us, and then blow up the craft we leave behind. I want you to blow up that tough assed clanship on the tarmac for us. We have plenty of missiles, but they won’t arm and explode at this close range. If I send out a few four-ships to get some distance, that clanship will nail them when they move.”

  “Right, when I hit atmosphere in five minutes I’ll fire a salvo of five, with more to follow if he knocks those down. Keep your people on the far side of the dome. The explosion will make a big fireball of ragged parts.”

  “Will do.” Switching to his low power transmitter, he said, “Fred, Richard, don’t move your ships or that clanship will fire on you for certain. All eight of you climb out and run like hell for cover around the side of the dome. The Avenger will blast that clanship in five minutes, and then a fireball and parts are going to fly. Your suits will hide your movements. Go!”

  Both four-ship pilots had kept their three companions linked into the conversation. Without a word, the person in back activated the rear hatch on each craft, and they worked their way out of the tight confines of the reclined seats and into the outside debris. Each nervously checking the large deadly clanship as they made their exit, located only a quarter of a mile away with a clear view of their craft.

  ****

  Droktad now shared weapons control with Fangar. She would operate the Plasma cannons as soon as the plasma reservoirs finished heating. The ceramic barrels were already hot. Unaware of an incoming enemy clanship, they were not actively running a radar scan above them, and so didn’t have any missiles ready. Protecting the sky was what the orbital guardians were expected to be doing. He had not asked himself how these small craft had managed to elude that same protective coverage.

  At close range, with the known size of the jumbled support struts from the dome as comparison, the two small ships he could see near the north and south edges of the dome rubble pile were larger than a single ship, but they looked almost exactly like them. They were the source of the four missiles fired at them. A single ship didn’t carry two missiles, and these apparently carried only two each, or else he wouldn’t still be here, wondering who made them. Actually, the “who” wasn’t a valid question, because there was only one enemy he could suspect. It was more one of “how” they had made a larger version of a Krall slave built product. It wasn’t fully two times the volume of a single ship, most likely because a typical human was smaller than a warrior was. He guessed the ship would hold three to five humans, depending on internal equipment and weapons they brought.

  He intended to destroy both of them soon, but wanted any crew still inside to think that perhaps the crew or equipment on the clanship was disabled.

  It certainly would be out of service if this were a human ship and crew, he thought.

  Droktad was learning new things about the enemy. He intended to use patience to see what else these ships and their operators might do. If they showed the slightest sign of lifting, they would be smoking piles of metal in an instant. He had them both targeted for tracking, a talon tip ready to tap the firing command.

  A slight movement of debris, several leaps from one of the small ships, instantly caught the stare of his red-pitted eyes. That wasn’t the first time his attention had been so drawn, of course. Pieces of wreckage were still settling on the dome, and wind would move lightweight pieces of fragments. However, being close to an object of intense interest, he zoomed one screen on the area where he’d seen the motion. There was a repeat of the movement, as a section of strut rotated down for a moment, then lifted again. Just beyond that location, some dust spilled from a nearly flat section of a wide piece of armored glass, splintered from the windows of the dome. There was a scuffmark in a layer of dust on the clear surface. The dust had probably settled there before his own ship crashed, and he just saw dust move.

  He selected one of the lower power lasers, and while it remained off, aimed it towards the scuffmark. As he was watching, the scuff widened and it was paired with a new mark, which appeared a half step to the right. He instantly fired the beam and then, with a talon tip on the targeting screen, made the red beam wander back and forth above the scuffmarks. Imagine his surprised pleasure when scorch marks appeared in the air not only over the section of glass, but in another area almost a leap farther beyond. Two different targets had been revealed, and they started moving very rapidly, in different directions, but the scorched parts remained visible to him.

  Droktad put more burn marks on the original target, playing the beam on it for longer. It suddenly seemed to twist and drop into the debris field of scrap metal and plastic, seen only as a few visible burnt marks that were not moving. He played the beam more thoroughly, with pinpoint accuracy all around the whitish and some black sections, which were quickly defined as the form of a biped, of roughly human form and scale, wearing some sort of armor.

  The animal had clearly been stealthed to the point of invisibility. Something Krall armor couldn’t fully do, and in his prior experience on Poldark and a hand of other raids, neither did human armor. He tapped the waiting firing command on the main console, and the two heavy lasers ravaged the two small ships. Even they were much more resistant to his beams, deflecting their energy far longer than a single ship would have survived. He now believed the reports of how effective the human raiders had become.

  He pulled back his view screen from its tight zoo
m to look for more of these stealthed humans, and noted with satisfaction that Fangar had watched him, and was already searching.

  “Until I damaged the coating on the armor I did not see them at all. Try different detection methods. I didn’t see them in infrared until the suit surface was damaged and burning hot.” Following his own advice, he studied the control range settings for the view screens, which he was aware of, but had never found cause to adjust beyond the visible light or infrared spectrums. He shifted towards ultra violet with no motion or human shapes observed. Fangar, to his annoyance and then reluctant satisfaction, apparently found them!

  “I have one.” She blasted it, with her now barely online plasma cannon, operating at minimal energy for that ship-to-ship weapon. He saw where the bolt struck and splattered, at an empty (to him) point in space near the edge of the sagging dome wall to the north. The flying limbs and head from the destroyed suit torso became visible, as the power source for the stealth technology was destroyed.

  He couldn’t wait to get such a shot. “How did you see it?” he demanded her to tell him.

  Fangar achieved a superior sounding attitude, without crossing the line to insolence. “I moved my talon down the screen scale to where I have looked at radiation from stars in the radio region. A signal frequency that is far below infrared. Closer to the waves we use for communications.” She was a K’Tal, so that perhaps explained her knowledge of what most warriors considered useless information.

  He noticed that as his talon tip reached the bottom of his current range scale of electromagnetic frequencies, that meaningless (to him anyway) Krall script numbers appeared beside his tip. When he reached the bottom, below infrared, the scale suddenly changed, with a red dot and the same number where he had been touching, now shifted to the top so he could drag down more. For the first time he realized there were more frequencies that the screens could select than he’d ever needed. There were a huge number of frequencies, and the numbers changed as his talon returned to the top and started down again. He could seek over a much larger frequency range.

  “At what number did you find them visible?”

  “They are seen in a range between…” and she provided two numbers, one a higher wavelength than the other.

  Droktad knew what the numbers were, but they had never had any importance to him. He moved his talon tip down rapidly and saw the number he wanted to reach counting down on the screen, as the lower frequencies were passed, and thus longer wavelengths were indicated. There was another legend at the top that said he was now in a specific radio frequency range. He didn’t care any more about that label than he did runny droppings from his cloaca. Except human armor could be detected in that range.

  When he looked at his targeting screen, now that it was set to the proper spectrum, he was dismayed to see it was very dark, with some movements indicated. He couldn’t see how he could direct his lasers accurately if he couldn’t see the target’s surroundings. He told the K’Tal so.

  Fangar, in a slightly condescending tone that he wanted to make her regret later, told him how to select and lock-in the upper and lower radio range, then return to visual light frequencies to overlay that signal on the visual light on screen. He did that, just as she confirmed the method when she blasted another suit he saw faintly and only partially outlined on her own screen.

  “That one was motionless and hiding behind a large strut.” She added with supreme satisfaction.

  It wasn’t hard to accomplish the frequency overlay, and he was quickly looking out at the area on this side of the wreckage in normal light on his screen, with presumably the radio wave data included. He didn’t see anything moving at first. Then, at the south end of the piles of jumbled material, he caught a ghostly outline moving quickly towards the edge of the dome wall curve. A human was making a dash for safety, where it would pass out of his view around the curve.

  Proving yet again that the speed of light couldn’t be beaten in a foot race, Droktad claimed his own second victim, as he burned the suit in half at the waist, and it became fully visible in normal light as it fell. The superimposed radio images were mere ghostly outlines, which one had to look at carefully to see them against the richer, color-filled surroundings on his screen. He appreciated the detection that Fangar had made of the hiding human he’d just seen her kill. However, he would still give her some unpleasant duty for her disrespectful tone to her sub leader, a moment ago.

  They had found and killed four humans, but more could have been held within those two destroyed ships and now would be hiding out there on the cluttered tarmac. There were certainly more of them on the other side of the dome. They had helped destroy the dome he was charged with guarding. He’d seen the shape of more of their ships on the other side before his clanship was shot down. He desperately wanted to kill more of these cursed attackers before the guard clanships figured out what was happening, and finally arrived to finish the task. He knew he faced some unpleasant duty of his own when his sub leader confronted him. This might be his last opportunity to kill humans for a long time.

  With a grunt of satisfaction, he detected the shape of a foot, and the top of another human’s helmet, making a fast peek over a particularly massive support node with multiple broken struts protruding. There were two targets there. If he had control of the plasma cannons, he could take them out with a single shot, but he wasn’t giving this shot to Fangar.

  The heavy lasers would take longer to get through the node, but two of them could be brought to bear at the same time. He was joyfully (for a normally somber Krall disposition) sighting not only the heavy lasers on the node to flush them out, but setting up two smaller lasers to personally sever the lower legs when they started to run. He’d then kill them slowly, a talon length at a time, by burning off small segments as they squirmed. It had been a year since he’d had human prey to enjoy.

  His snort of amusement drew Fangar’s attention, and she knew he had found a choice target. Envy and sadism vied to keep her looking for her own targets, or to relish the slow death he assumed her leader’s snort implied. He tapped the console to trigger the two heavy lasers, centered on the thick and massive support node. It would only require a short time to generate enough heat to force the two humans to run for other cover. He would be waiting.

  As it happened, the wait became the remainder of his life! Five undetected anti-ship missiles ended his and Fangar’s hunting pleasure, in an orange and black fireball. One missile happened to blast the command deck level off the top of the clanship, sending it cartwheeling vertically into the sky. This gave them a few seconds, on backup battery power to their screens, to watch as they flipped over, to drop back into the rising orange flames. It was a terrible thing to behold.

  ****

  To Fred, and Jason, hiding with him behind the node, it was a beautiful thing to behold.

  They knew they were doomed when the heavy lasers proved they had somehow been seen and targeted. There was no safe retreat from where they crouched. The node, initially the best heavy cover Fred could find when the shooting started picking their companions off, had turned suddenly into a death trap. Now it had become their safe haven again, as flames washed past them, along with flying pieces of clanship.

  They looked up as the wind drifted the rising column of black smoke to the northwest, and they could see the Avenger settling tail first, towards the east side of the tarmac. She would be closer to most of the spec ops troops that now needed transportation.

  Fred’s visor had reported the grim details to him as two of his own team died and their icons went red. Then he heard from Colonel Greeves about icons that he didn’t have displayed, from Richard Yang’s team. Richard was a victim of the first plasma bolt fired, caught completely in the open, trusting to his stealth capability for protection. Another bolt had caught another member of Richard’s team. The first troop killed, his own teammate Astrid Brandauer, seemed to have been an unlucky case of making her presence known by moving some debris or kicking
up dust. At least according to Jason’s account.

  She was following behind Jason, and both he and Astrid were hit by what seemed to be random low power laser hits, which damaged a portion of their suit’s stealth coating. Jason, in the lead, managed to escape, but Astrid was singled out for an agonizing, scream filled burning death. She had called for help, but when the beam found her continuously, her radio was left transmitting. It was horrible to hear before she mercifully fell unconscious or, he hoped for her sake, she was dead. The damned Krall had continued to burn the surface of her suit, which retained power and stealth for the undamaged sections. That apparently exploratory burning to see what they had caught, prodded them into somehow finding a way to detect their suits. That was because, in the next three minutes their shooting became extremely precise, rather than a random detection of side effects such as debris movement.

  He would pass this information on when they had their after action debriefing, assuming any of them lived to do that. They had to get off this dirt ball before the orbiting clanships caught them on the ground. Jason was limping, but the suit had countered the pain from the burn on his left calf. He helped him hurry around the dome to reach the others. Some of them needed digging out, and some ships would be left behind to self-detonate, he’d heard Colonel Greeves say.

  “Hang on everyone,” Dillon warned unnecessarily. He was trying to use a combination of reaction thrusters and Normal Space drive to lift the shuttle enough so that some handy broken struts could be placed under the portion of sidewall that had sagged over the top of five shuttles and a greater number of four-ships. The smaller ships were free of the wall, but in their hollow, they had nowhere to go to get out from under the obstacle. Dillon, in concert with the other five trapped shuttles, was hoping to lift the still continuously connected hundred feet of wall high enough, so that multiple teams of TG2s could brace it with pieces from the dome, and hold it up long enough for the trapped ships to fly out from under it. The troops on foot had to brave the turbulence of the reactions thrusters, as well as doge falling pieces of the structure.