The four “bugs” clattered out of the garage area, Greeves in the lead, Reynolds in the middle. They were at the elevator in minutes, and found the lift waiting. All they needed do was open the mesh grid door. The width was fine, but the depth left no room to drive a ladybug in and turn sideways. Kobani strength proved to be the solution. They parked the first bug parallel to the opening, and manhandled the tracked vehicle sideways a foot at a time, with a quick jerk and lift. When it was in, they went to the tenth floor, the lift motor creaking with the effort.
Waiting for them at the top were two other Kobani. With Spartan and Mills joining them at the corners, they jointly lifted and shuffled the “bug” out of the lift. Sarge drove it out onto the landing pad, where a spec ops private took it from him, and moved it to a suitable firing position.
After bringing up a second ladybug, Spartan and Mills going down with them for faster loading speed, Thad asked Spartan about spreading this firepower more widely than just on the roof.
“Lieutenant, I saw two higher floors marked on the lift’s control panel. What’s up higher in this ridge? Tunnels are indicated, but no width shown.”
“Two levels of personnel tunnels run parallel to the rock face, with an occasional concealed observation window looking out over this valley. Cross tunnels lead to similar tunnels on the opposite face of this ridge. The stone is granite, so we didn’t cut as many here as we do in softer rock.”
“How wide are the tunnels?”
“Not enough to drive these bugs through. They are wide enough at the lift doors to move a ladybug out, but you can’t move one of these more than ten feet along the tunnel before it gets too narrow.”
“How thick is the rock to the outside?”
“A lot less than down here. We had about ten feet of tunnel from the lift to the open roof, here, so the walls up there are perhaps only two or three feet thick, where the sides slope in towards the lift. Ahh. I think I see what you’re thinking. Let me send up a couple of privates after we take the bugs up. The infrared suit beams and lasers can fracture the rock to make firing ports. The guns would bear down on the valley floor and the opposite ridge top. The two on the roof here could partly cover the ridge just above us.
“The ridge tops are how the Krall keep flanking the PU troops trying to hold them back. They started with at least ten thousand men facing two thousand warriors, and half the PU troops are dead, with an estimated loss of a couple of hundred Krall. They’ll be pushed around the curve two miles up the valley soon, and when some of those men see this hotel as shelter, they might run for their lives to get here. No more orderly retreating.”
“Then we had better get ready. How many Kobani do we have here?”
“Fifty two. You and Reynolds make the two. Think we can hold them?” He grunted. “I sure don't.” He offered that in a matter of fact tone.
Reynolds grinned. “We can certainly bleed them and slow them. Perhaps for long enough. I don't think they’ve ever been up against a Kobani force. We’ll have some Shadow fighters for support at some point, I’m told. Kobani pilots.”
Spartan nodded. “I heard the rumors. I hope I live to see them in action.”
Up on the roof of the lodge, with the beautiful valley laid out before them, the sound of a heavy artillery barrage arrived from beyond the curve of the highway. It was a continuous roll of thunder for several minutes, reverberating from the ancient glacier carved steeply sided walls. The mobile batteries had moved over to an adjacent valley, less than a mile from this one, where they could operate without enemy counterbattery fire. The Krall had brought no laser defense system with them in their haste to place warriors in position to block the human infantry. The Krall in the other passes, having landed farther away, were preparing fortifications near their clanships with half their force, while the remaining warriors were moving into the mountains to meet the enemy, to slow the larger force down. When the warriors from Novi Sad entered the mountains on the other side, they would overtake and crush the First Army and its half million troops.
The four guns were in place when Spartan passed word that the last heavy and lengthy artillery barrage had been to permit the battered and exhausted troops to gain some separation from the Krall. They were to use their trucks to race back to the lodge, to where they expected fresh troops to provide cover for the last mile.
Reynolds had been listening to some of the chatter over the assigned frequencies of the men now in full retreat. Not all made it to the trucks, and many trucks had been disabled by Krall plasma rifle fire from the heights. Armored men were apparently hanging from the sides, or sitting on the tops, only their powered armor keeping them going.
He could hear screaming and panic over the air, as trapped pockets of men were being swarmed over by the Krall, some of them cursing the packed trucks that had left without them.
He stepped over to Greeves, just finishing with a group Mind Tap of a number of spec ops troops, showing how to operate the ladybugs and to keep them fed with the metal rods for their plasma bolts. Two of the guns were now positioned in the cliffs well above the lodge.
Sarge said, “I don't think we can expect much fight from those men when they arrive.” He pointed down the valley.
The first trucks and ground cars were now visible, careening around the curve of the four-lane road in the center of the valley. The actinic flash of plasma bolts from the pursuing Krall were picking men off that clung to the tops and sides of vehicles. Considering the number of men on the trucks, there seemed to be much less shooting towards their rear. This indicated they were no longer a fighting force, and interested only in escape.
They had been told that nearly ten thousand men had been tasked with slowing down this two thousand Krall force. Looking at his visor display, Greeves’ suit AI had indicated the total number of soldiers in the sixty-three trucks at just over thirty two hundred sets of armor, based on the suit ID counts.
They had already lost close to six thousand men and the Krall perhaps two hundred thirty or forty warriors. This was a much higher kill ratio than the PU Army had suffered in recent months of fighting. Probably half the men had died because they were disorganized, tired, and demoralized at being cut off from their escape route.
He made a prediction. “Sarge, some of those trucks won’t even stop when they reach the lodge turn off from the road. If the first trucks go past us, they may all continue on, no matter what their officers tell the drivers. The fifty-two of us aren’t going to hold back that many Krall. They’ll bypass us if need be.”
Sarge gave his opinion. “The Krall don’t have enough warriors to defeat the main column, even if they do get by us.”
“No, but they don’t need to defeat them. Just jam them up while their warriors out of Novi Sad catch up to the bottleneck. They probably have enough warriors to block the point where the four traffic columns on the main road will have to turn north, out of this valley. That small two lane gorge road would be easy to choke off, if half a dozen trucks are destroyed to block the road and they prevent them from clearing them away.”
“Then the First Army looks screwed.”
“We can’t let those trucks out there pass us by. They may not want to fight anymore, but if we stop them, they have to fight or die, so they’ll fight like hell.”
Sarge shook his head. “You gonna run out there and play traffic cop? I’ve seen disorganized routs before, in the first days of the war. Some of those troops will shoot their own officers if they try to order them to stop now.”
Instead of answering Reynolds, he had his suit link Spartan into their discussion.
“Lieutenant, I think those soldiers coming our way are too panicked for many of them to think straight. Reynolds and I believe most of them will blow right on by us, and we can’t hold the Krall ourselves. How about if we convince them to stay and fight?”
“How do you propose we do that? I don't want to shoot at our own side.”
“We won’t shoot at them. We blow up tha
t bridge over the creek bed.” He pointed.
Meandering through the valley was a deeply eroded creek, which in the spring carried snowmelt water down the valley in a torrent. It was scoured deep, and wide enough that there were bridges several places along the valley road, as the now nearly dry waterway snaked its way through. One of those bridges was a quarter mile after the turnoff drive to the lodge for the trucks.
“We have the explosives, but…” He looked at the vanguard of the fleeing trucks, now less than three miles up the road. They didn’t have time to plant the charges.
“Lieutenant, we have four ladybugs, and our suit weapons. Shoot out the center supports under the bridge.”
It didn’t take Kobani fast thought processes to see the solution would work. Spartan switched to a unit frequency. “Attention. We need to knock out that bridge on the main road. All guns, aim at the center supports. Fire!”
Suit energy beams were fastest to respond, but the four ladybug tri-barrels were only seconds behind them. The air from the lodge and cliff sides was suddenly filled with hundreds of plasma bolts, red and green lasers, and an unknown number of infrared and microwave beams. The latter beams weren’t invisible to the suit visors; it was just that the path of superheated atmosphere to the bridge made them impossible to isolate.
In ten seconds the Lieutenant shouted, “Cease fire!”
All four lanes of the roadway, and the pedestrian walkways were tumbling into the ten-foot deep rocky creek bottom. The debris would dam the present one foot depth of the cold flowing stream for a short while, until it found a way around the rubble. There wasn’t any way around for the approaching trucks.
Someone in the trucks used an emergency frequency to contact whoever they had seen firing. The color of the energy beams, and their origin from the direction of the lodge made it obvious it wasn’t from any Krall that had gotten ahead of them.
“Who’s doing that firing? What were you shooting at?” There was no hint of proper com protocol.
Thad, using suit conduction contact, touched Spartan’s gauntlet. There was an instantaneous Mind Tap, explaining that Thad would accept any heat for the objections about to be expressed at his suggested actions. With the lieutenant’s approval, Greeves answered.
As he’d flashed to the spec ops officer, he was going to try a bluff, and use his past on Poldark as influence.
“This is Colonel Thaddeus Greeves, sent here by General Nabarone. We have closed this road to the Krall. They intend to shut off the First Army’s withdrawal through the northern passes. We are not going to let that happen. Here is my digital authorization from General Nabarone’s Headquarters.” His AI transmitted the electronic document, with the appropriate confirmation code that could be verified. He was authorized to “request” assistance from local field commanders.
After checking with his AI, Greeves noted the highest surviving ranking officer was a Major Krackov, whose suit ID showed was wounded and unconscious, and located in a truck at the rear of the oncoming pack.
The panicked voice had come from a sergeant by the name of Vince Jacoby, per his suit’s ID icon, and he appeared to be driving the lead truck. Greeves had no way of knowing why the handful of officers in other trucks, also near the rear, had not spoken out yet. Perhaps they were under some “compulsion” not to speak, and only managed to catch the last of the transportation before it left them behind to die.
“Sergeant, if you have wounded you can bring them here to the Lodge for treatment. The bridge is out. Park your trucks along the edge of the creek banks as additional cover. Your able-bodied men can shelter in the rocks along the creek. My force here will use our plasma cannons and high ground to pick off any Krall that attempt to flank you, and keep the ridge tops clear. We’ll be receiving air cover shortly.” He sincerely hoped that last part was true.
There was a momentary pause from Jacoby. “Sir, we were planning to join up with the main column. The Krall have hurt us bad and they’re right behind us. We can’t hold them.”
“Alone you couldn’t, but we’re here to support you now. You had better dismount quickly when you reach the collapsed bridge ahead. We need to start picking off those damned lizards before they get too close.” Mention of the collapsed bridge again was for those inside the trucks that might not know the road was closed ahead.
He had continued to use the emergency frequency, to make certain that every trooper in the trucks heard what was going on, and knew what they had to do to stay alive. There was no way Jacoby was in charge of anything but the panicked retreat in that first truck.
“We can’t really see the enemy sir. Their new armor has better stealth than our suits.”
Greeves saw he needed to counter this defeatist attitude, to restore some semblance of hope to men that were not only running but also now found themselves trapped.
“We have some newer armor, with visors with improved detection systems. We can see the Krall suits. I’ll arrange for some of our AIs to furnish your visors with Krall locations, to help you sight in on them.”
This wasn’t bullshit, because the Torki designed suits of the Kobani did this with their own suits all the time. The trick for a suit AI would be to translate the view from any Kobani suit into a target designation on the standard PU armor visors down on the valley floor.
He sent a thought to his suit’s AI, and then sent every man in the trucks a demonstration transmission to their visor targeting systems.
“What you see in the bottom right corner of your visors right now is the image of the fallen bridge, which I am looking at right now. This image is from my suit. If there were a Krall at that red dot in the center, all you would need to do is shoot at that spot.”
The demonstration also served to confirm the bridge was actually down.
“I’ll have our AIs keep track of each of you and the enemy warriors we can see from our higher vantage point, and present your visors with red dots at their locations when you look that way. Your weapons, if the gun sights are linked to your suits as they normally should be, can overlay its target bezel on that dot and you’re good to go.”
“Sir, we’ve never fought that way before. It won’t work.” Jacoby was going to be a hard sell, and his poor attitude would be infectious.
“Sergeant Jacoby, I told you my name was Colonel Thaddeus Greeves. I assume you’ve heard of the guerrilla training camp named for me. The technique I’m telling you about is one of the methods of sharing information between newer sets of armor like me and the men with me have, and the standard armor you men were issued. From our vantage point, we can send you targeting information on an enemy that you can’t see. For a change, you will see them, and from where you’re hiding, they won’t see you. It will work, because we’ve used this method before.”
In the heat of battle, with the Kobani moving around, there surely would not be continuous enemy target location data fed to each of those men. However, if you sometimes knew there was an enemy passing between those two rocks, or concealed by that bush, you would have to shoot fast. Then do the usual quick duck and move to avoid any return fire. There should be an increased number of hits on the Krall this way. Regardless, these men were going to have to fight, and this method offered them some new hope.
The lead trucks slowed, moving along the sides of the creek off the road, the drivers obviously seeking some way past the bridge and across the drop off. However, the rough terrain, and steep sided rock faces of the creek bed near the bridge made that unlikely. The sturdy rocky foundation had been why the bridge was built there, to avoid a washout when heavy snows melted. The men needed to get out and set up what was going to be their final defensive position today, one way or another.
Two of the trucks near the rear of the pack of sixty-three turned into the lodge drive. The suit monitors showed most of those inside were wounded, with eight or nine having expired after being loaded. These were probably the last vehicles to pull out, trying to carry as many wounded as possible. Those lead trucks
, which avoided coming to the lodge, likely held more men with guilty consciences, who were not willing to face higher authority.
Greeves didn’t have time to be concerned with that problem. He had set them up for this last stand as coldly as a Krall might have. Fight or die. Except he would be here fighting with them. There was no way he was going down any of those tunnels to escape, and leave those men behind to cover his retreat. His visor saw the first of the rippling movements of the stealthed Krall suits as they started down the center of the road at the curve.
Time to start whittling them down, he thought. He remotely activated the two ladybugs, emplaced above them in the cliff face.
“Hey Sarge, You take control of the higher gun, I’ll use the lower. You probably need the range advantage.”
The response was just as polite as he’d expected.
Chapter 6: Thirty Five to One
The Krall can move fast on foot, but they couldn’t run as fast as the trucks that had raced away from them as they overwhelmed the last of the collapsing enemy line. Besides, the warriors had status points to earn against the desperate fighting of those that had been left behind. Those final two hundred or so humans traded their lives at a much more favorable ratio than they had been doing just two hours ago. Those that stayed to the last, when the Krall were finally able to close with them, fought well. Perhaps only three or four of them died for each warrior they killed.
Good fighting, Gofdar thought. This was what a worthy enemy was like when you had them trapped. Not every status point was equal he noted, not for the first time, and killing a dozen lightly armed animals did not feel nearly as valued. The last human he’d claimed here had just killed his own pilot with a remarkable double head shot, using a rifle in each hand. That same human also came close to welding the sub leader’s left knee joint in place, with fast and accurate plasma shots when he’d carelessly exposed the thinner shielding of the back of his leg to the man, after he dove and rolled behind a rock for cover. It still burned.
Koban 4: Shattered Worlds Page 25