Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  One thing was different to the ears of Reynolds and Greeves from their raids on Krall worlds, where they had usually met Krall not wearing armor. There was a lack of the usual screams of pain and rage of wounded warriors. That noise was absorbed by the heavy helmets they wore. That is, until there were a few bellows that rang out when warriors with head wounds or damaged helmets, were forced to remove them to see or communicate. The arrival of a slightly delayed final wave of smart rounds silenced those, when the bomblets homed in on exposed Krall body signatures.

  Greeves spoke to Spartan on his private command channel. “That was pretty refreshing. Do they have any more of those sabot rounds?”

  An answer didn’t come immediately. He crawled quickly, staying below the edge of the parapet of the roof, towards where he saw the lieutenant moving, and apparently engaged on another frequency, per the feedback his AI sent to Greeves. Before he reached the lieutenant Spartan replied, unaware that Greeves was so close behind him.

  “No. There are no more sabot rounds available, and they have to reach the main column outside of that canyon to get any more reloads of smart rounds. The mouth of the canyon is jammed with trucks, and troops on foot coming through. They can’t get to the ammo carriers until some are able to squeeze through.”

  As Spartan turned to look for Greeves, whom he thought was thirty feet away, the front of his helmet and his hands were covered in blood.

  “Damn, man, you’re hurt. Let me...,” Thad started.

  Spartan interrupted him. “Not me, Mills. He’s gone. Took a sabot through the wall and the top of his helmet.” Staff Sergeant Mills lay face down on Spartan’s other side, the back of his head gone, with his helmet laying where Spartan had removed it to check on his condition. There was grey matter and blood spattered inside the open helmet.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Were there any other casualties from the sabots?”

  “Fred here was the only fatality. I have a corporal down on level four that has a hole through his calf, which the nanites have sealed and stopped the bleeding. It missed the bone and he’s certainly able to shoot. When the pain-killers kick in he’ll be able to run and jump.”

  The steady sizzle and pop of outgoing and incoming plasma fire was sounding all around them. The lasers, microwave and infrared energy beams were all human generated, and those made no sound going outbound.

  “Colonel, you and Reynolds have the highest mounted gun sights, what did you see? Mills was monitoring our spy bots. Did we hurt the bastards much?”

  A quick query to his AI gave him an estimate of Krall losses, based on visual observations through various suit AIs and the four gun sights. “There are at least a hundred fifteen dead bodies exposed after the barrage, and more dead must be behind the rocks. My AI estimates that there were at least seventeen hundred fifty coming at us before the barrage, and the artillery may have taken down between six to ten percent of those.”

  “Shit.” Spartan said.

  “Exactly what we are deep in.” With part of his attention, Greeves triggered his tri-barrel on a moving warrior, and thought, a hundred and sixteen confirmed dead now.

  ****

  Gofdar was shocked. Whatever this new type of artillery shell was that the humans had fired first, it was very deadly. Their newest armor was easily penetrated by the projectiles it sprayed. His visor told him he had lost nearly thirty hands of warriors in the first seconds to those new shells, and another two hands to those wounded by them, and who exposed themselves to manual fire, or were killed by the subsequent self-guided thermite bombs they were too injured to knock away. A hundred thirty warriors lost in seconds, and another four hands worth with limited mobility or effectiveness due to loss of limbs, head wounds, or lost power in their armor.

  The fact that the barrage was shorter than usual, and there were only about four hands worth of the new shells was revealing. The enemy artillery had been unable to continue that attack. Without his having a defense system to destroy some of the shells, or to launch counter battery attacks, there was no other explanation for halting the use of this effective weapon. Now was the time to strike.

  He ordered every able bodied warrior to advance with all speed, and to take evasive movements only as needed. They had to cross through a burning wasteland to reach the uncharred ground, and then fight their way into the lower parts of the human nest. There would be high losses from this tactic, but the rewards great when they killed the small number of highly effective enemy that they faced. Then they could pin the main human army here until they were destroyed by the forces advancing from Novi Sad. The Gatlek would be forced to award a disproportionate number of status points to Gofdar and his warriors for this heroic effort.

  ****

  “Well, here they come.” Reynolds said unnecessarily. “Any we can’t kill as they cross in the open, we get to shake hands with.” He wasn’t going to let himself be taken prisoner this time. Not that he’d surrendered the first time he was captured, he thought with a wry grin.

  Greeves was thinking. “Lieutenant, you mentioned you had explosives. A lot?”

  “Yes. This building is right above our hub, where we stored supplies.”

  “Have you ever jumped down from seventy feet in armor?”

  “No. Why?”

  “No time like the present to try.” He explained his idea.

  Hearing what was intended, and not to be left out of supporting the plan, Reynolds linked to the two spec ops troopers that had kept the two tri-barrels on the ladybugs above them loaded. “Leave the rear clam shells wide open and pull the lower limit pins on the gun mounts, so I can fully depress them. Then get down here fast to help repel boarders. We won’t be needing reloads for those guns after they get inside and we can’t see them.”

  Greeves, watching the men Spartan had sent off to set charges, overheard Reynolds issue those instructions. “You think you can shoot down on them right on the rooftop? I hope we don’t allow them to reach this high.”

  “Me too. I want to be able to aim almost straight down anyway. Are we going down to the lower floors now? I assume at least down to level seven.”

  “Yep. I’m thinking we all get down to level one and work back up to seven, if we can fight them off that long. I wasn’t sure you were listening.”

  “I always listen when you come up with some fool stunt where I might have to bail your ass out.”

  They looked out at the mass of warriors that had risen out of concealment and were running at top speed to reach the building almost a mile away, running through the sleet of fire from the now fifty-one defenders. The four tri-barrels were taking one or two down with every burst, and despite the hail of return plasma bolts, the defenders in position to fire from the ramparts picked more exposed warriors off with rapid fire and precision. Many of the men were leaping down stairwells in a reckless rush to reach lower levels, to fend off the hoard coming for them. They used their superb sense of timing and balance, combined with their strength, to avoid hitting or interfering with one another as they poured down from landing to landing. They sent the lifts to the top level, to leave the shafts empty and open to them on lower floors, and jammed the lift doors open at each floor.

  Nearly the entire complement, other than the five men assigned demolition placement, descended to the ground floor well before the first Krall were within several hundred feet of the building. Two men were killed by the thousands of random incoming shots, which passed through now empty window frames.

  The fire directed out at the enemy almost literally couldn’t miss hitting some warrior or other, no matter how energetically the Krall twisted, turned and ducked. The Kobani armor was virtually invisible to the Krall, located as they were inside the darkened resort, with no background ripple to reveal their movement. However, at roughly one thousand five hundred versus just over forty Kobani involved in active shooting, the roughly thirty five to one ratio inevitably took its toll.

  Krall dropped in the front wave continuously, but Koban
i also started to go down, some wounded and still firing back, others just went down for good.

  Reynolds was pleased to see through his tri-barrel’s gun sight, that the men in the creek were taking down warriors from the rear of the pack, despite not being able to see them via the targeting data from the Kobani suit AIs. The Krall were converging on the resort, making a random shot towards the pack much more likely to find one of them. Those at the creek certainly knew that if the men in the resort died, the Krall would return for them next.

  Many of the men switched to infrared and microwave energy beams in the increasingly hazy and smoky air, because those beams were harder to trace to their origin in the smoky gloom. A laser or plasma beam showed exactly where you had just been, and a spread of thirty or more return bolts had a better chance of finding you even when you moved.

  The trade in lives heavily favored the Kobani, as at least three hundred warriors failed to reach the resort. Not all were killed, of course, because warriors were too tough to expire that quickly. However, they weren’t going to contribute to the close-in fighting.

  There were now at least a dozen dead Kobani, with nearly that many fighting wounded. There were five stairwells, and four elevator shafts for the Kobani to use to retreat to the second floor. Leaping ten feet vertically was trivial in Poldark’s gravity for Kobani, or even the heavier Krall. A Kobani could make thirty feet in their lighter unpowered armor, a Krall only fifteen to twenty feet in their heavy powered armor.

  The first of the Krall were trying to fight their way through the shattered windows and doors, gradually making their way inside the building, as they even used their own dead and severely wounded, carried as shields.

  Spartan sent his first fallback cue on the general push. “Second floor. Second floor. Go!”

  On that mark, every man able to do so fired all beam weapons at the closest Krall, specifically targeting their plasma rifles, spare power packs, and helmets, and tossed two grenades. One with an eight-second delay, set for high explosive, the other half had flash-heat settings set at three seconds. The latter were designed to overdrive the Krall helmet filters briefly, with bright lights, heat flares, and dense smoke. For a few seconds they wouldn’t see their prey.

  That was the few seconds they needed to pick up their wounded, and leap with them up the stairs, or through the now open and empty elevator shafts to the next level. More grenades were dropped by the last Kobani in line, with various short timers, to keep the Krall guessing. The depleted uranium pellets in these couldn’t do as much damage to the heavier armor as had the sabots, but random hits could disable or penetrate a joint, damage a rifle or power pack, and after the sabots that had ravaged them, some warriors might dive for cover, delaying their pursuit.

  Spartan, who was well aware of the supply denial strategy used against the Krall in the main assaults on the cities, had noted that some of the warriors were scavenging rifles and spare power packs from the dead. Stealth mode made it difficult to see the warriors in detail, but a dropped rifle lost stealth capability, and suddenly they would go invisible again when recovered.

  He passed this to his men. “An unarmed Krall is nearly as good as a dead Krall. They are low on spare weapons and power packs.” They concentrated on “killing” the easier to eliminate weapons. Most warriors had originally carried two rifles, one slung as a spare, with a sizable “fanny” pack of spare power modules when they left the clanship. Others had a forearm mounted short barrel plasma gun as a backup. However, those too needed power packs. There were no supplies for them closer than the clanship now, other than taking them off their own dead.

  The Torki designed Kobani armor never ran out of power, not with the miniature Trap Fields they used. They only lost power if a plasma bolt hit the Trap emitters or power distribution system. They were attempting to reduce the Krall’s standoff offensive capability by disarming as many as they could. However, their sheer numbers could still overwhelm the thirty-seven fully effectives that Spartan’s AI now reported.

  He sent a dozen men with the non-mobile wounded up another level, leaving him with twenty-five men on level two to try to hold roughly twelve hundred Krall down on the ground floor a bit longer. That plan only worked to choke off the Krall rush for as long as it took for their heavy firing down the five stairs and four elevator shafts, to convince warriors still outside to take an alternate route to the enemy. They started leaping directly up to the second floor balconies by the dozens.

  Three unarmed Krall, with no plasma weapons, leaped directly at a single spec ops trooper at a stair top as he swung around to the sounds they made as they thumped down. He sent two lasers and a plasma bolt into the front of the rippled silhouette of the helmet of the only one with a forearm plasma gun. There was a small amount of dirt and soot on all their armor, making them semi visible. He hadn’t known if the warrior with a forearm weapon had a charged power pack or not, so he killed him first. His shooting served to reveal his position to a certainty for the other two warriors. At least so far as knowing where his head was. That’s where his energy beams originated. The shooter’s body was still stealthed, and his limb positions were not visible.

  The two warriors, triumphant at finally closing with one of these challenging enemy soldiers, lost their enthusiasm in short order. The much smaller human, invisible hands free because his weapons were built into his helmet, saw a slightly grimy translucent left arm of the closest Krall swing towards him. He ducked under, reached up and grasped the arm, pivoted under the limb and around to the back, placing that warrior’s torso between him and the second set of ripples flying through the air.

  In near instantaneous decision-making, the trooper used the second warrior’s leap and momentum to push the one whose arm he held, sideways and down, as he placed a right knee in his victims back as the body dropped. He wrenched savagely back with both hands on the left forearm and bicep, and snapped the shoulder joint inside the armor. When he heard the sound of a scream of pain, he also knew he’d sprung open the suit’s shoulder joint, else he would not have hear that “music” through his external speakers.

  He added a flip of his body over the downed Krall and did a midair twist as he passed over him, wrenching the armor’s sleeve fully from the shoulder, and down along the broken limb, revealing a six-inch length of red grey flesh below suit’s shoulder. An opening! The stealth of that detached piece of armor failed, revealing the silvery metal of the left limb.

  Stomping down with both feet as he came over the top of his first opponent, where he knew the semi visible second warrior must have hit the floor, he felt his feet slam down on the other suit’s back plate. He now knew where both of them were for the second he needed to act. Recalling the stories of Krall “games” with Normal human soldiers, he snapped his last grenade from its waist compartment in a blur of motion and thumbed the actuator in that same motion. He sent a thought to his AI to set the timing and type of detonation he wanted from the device. His hand flashed down and shoved it under the armpit of the arm he still held, down into the suit at the open shoulder joint.

  He felt the Krall under him finally react to his presence on his back. These three warriors slow reaction speed was the first close and direct physical contact with the enemy the young spec ops private had ever experienced. He had not felt as physically powerful when he shot them, since no living creature had time to dodge away from a well-aimed energy beam. He had noticed that they reacted slower to a near miss than he’d expected, or to a wounding hit, allowing him and his fellow Kobani to shoot them again before they reached cover or could even fire back.

  He was surprised at how much weaker they were than he expected. Normal humans he knew were slow thinking and reacting, and woefully weak, but he never felt so almighty when around them. Probably, because they didn’t hate him nor did they want him or his family dead for simply being alive.

  His mother had died in the first raid of the war, on the world where his mother had worked as a City Manager, on Gribbl
e’s Nook. He was in preschool care, and his mother was apparently trying to protect her city. He couldn’t remember her, and he never knew his contracted father. He’d hated the Krall for his entire life, reinforced by the feelings of the aunt that raised him, who never got over the hideous way her sister was butchered.

  He quickly felt with a foot where the back of the helmet was, and looked at that spot and fired his plasma bolt at close range, medium power, as the warrior tried to rise. The entire attack had taken no more than five seconds real time. The eruption of fire from the open arm joint and violent twitching of his previous victim drew his attention. He didn’t need to keep looking at the Krall he was standing over, killing him slowly as his plasma bolts burned a way through the helmet at reduced power. He’d instructed his suit’s AI to continue to shoot at the same spot, which quickly darkened as its stealth coating burned away. He was free to glance at a side image inside his visor.

  He watched the image of thermite driven flames erupt from the other squirming Krall’s shoulder joint, as the upper arm charred and burned free. His learning to like the feeling of power as he killed this hated enemy had a downside.

  He learned a final combat lesson.

  It was to behave differently than the Krall you despised, don’t enjoy killing your enemy so much that you watch them die for pleasure. He hadn’t sensed the ripples of leaping warriors passing over the edge of the balcony behind him. The lower power setting on his plasma beam, locked on automatic to kill the warrior under his feet more slowly, made him a perfect target as he watched the other Krall burn to death. Four plasma beams ended the distracted young Kobani’s feeling of personal pleasure at killing his enemy.

  You don’t always live and learn.

  The amount of time spent defending the second level was considerably less than Spartan had expected, due to the Krall avoiding the fight at the stairwells and elevator shafts. Not a single warrior lived to reach the second floor via those routes, but they started pouring over the outside balconies by directly jumping there. Four more Kobani were lost, and the four remote tri-barrel operators no longer had targets worth the distraction while fighting Krall almost in their face. Immobile Krall away from the building were no immediate threat, and those were the only targets for the heavier guns.