Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  The looming night side glow of Poldark was below them, partly illuminated by dim reflected sunlight, coming from the large moon. An occasional atmospheric fire streak was visible far below, as debris from the recent space battle made a reentry, or perhaps it was from Krall warriors making their final return visits.

  Longstreet checked the distance to the Krall. It was less than sixty feet, and he had the exact timing worked out for their arrival. “OK. We’ll make the trip out to intercept it last two minutes eleven seconds. That should let us hit it slow enough avoid too hard of a push to overcome to get back, and its rotation will have its back turned to us. Sarge, I’ll try to go high, you take the middle. Big Bird you get the feet, unless you and I have to swap ends if the Krall alters its roll rate.” They had previously discussed how to grapple with the Krall in freefall.

  Only fractions of a second separated the gentle push-offs of the three armored figures, as each calculated the exact trajectory they needed to intercept the Krall in two minutes, eleven seconds. The target was fifty-seven feet away based on their helmet target ranging systems. Whoever was flying the ship had done an excellent job staying this close, and halting the ship’s rotation exactly as the open hatch centered on the warrior.

  As the three unstealthed humans slowly closed with their target, the target in turn watched them coming as she slowly rotated. She observed that this style of armor was different from what human ground forces on Poldark wore. She attributed the lack of active stealth on this design as armor intended only for use by their separate space forces. Space based soldiers didn’t need to blend into the terrain.

  They will wish they were invisible soon, she thought. I’ll let them get very close.

  The earlier pot shots at the cruiser had been merely a show of defiance, as a warning to leave her alone to die. Hothdat now saw an opportunity to take these humans with her, either to burn up, or to kill them by decompression. There were choices to be made. She could shoot at the weak spots of their elbow or knee joints to cause a leak, but that was not very sure. The alternative was to shoot their weaker joints when they were in her grasp, or grab them and force open their suits to the vacuum, or simply fling them away from their ship to flare across the sky and burn up when she did.

  The more personal touch was the one she preferred. Tearing open their helmets and watching as decompression made their eyes and tongues bulge out of their faces appealed to her the most. Unless of course they had energy weapons with them, which she couldn’t see.

  She had already fired five times from her eight-slug magazine of armor piercing rounds and had seen no reason to reload with another full magazine. She had a spare eight round magazine clipped to her suit’s left forearm, next to the wrist pistol. She couldn’t tell if her spare ammo pouch, originally attached to the back of her armor, had been ripped off when she was violently ejected into vacuum or not. She didn’t want to move now to check if it was there, thus clearly revealing that she was still conscious. She shifted slowly within her armor without moving her suit limbs, to be ready to shoot or grasp them when it was time. She had withdrawn her taloned fingers from the freezing cold metal gloves after the cruiser had seemed content to leave her alone.

  Obviously, the weaker humans wouldn’t come close to her if they believed she was conscious. She didn’t understand why the stupid animals would come after her anyway, dead or alive, but their mistake would provide her with three final kills.

  Watching closely, Crager detected a slight change in the figure’s rate of rotation. “The core body heat signature shows it’s probably still alive, and it could be unconscious if it just ran low on oxygen. However, I think it’s playing dead, waiting for us to get close. The roll just slowed slightly, so it’s moving.”

  Condor was puzzled. “Sarge, I’ve been watching too, and I didn’t see any limb movement at all.”

  “Not the armor limbs externally, Big Bird, but it may have shifted its hands back inside the cold gauntlets. It could conserve heat and energy if it pulled just the fingers out of a gauntlet, because the suit’s larger surface areas at fingers radiate more heat than the wrist and forearm. There’s a little bit of room for limb movement inside their suit sleeves and shoulders. However, for whatever reason it happened, the tumble slowed by a half second from when we started moving across, and that means some mass has moved away from its center of gravity. Just like a ballet dancer, extending arms or legs to slow her toe spin.”

  Analyzing what his memory and internal clock told him, Condor could now confirm the slight slower rotation Crager had noticed. At least he did when he knew what to look for. “If it’s waiting for us to grab on to take action against us, it’ll shit in its suit when it finds it can’t break our grip.” He laughed.

  Longstreet cut him short. “It has a wrist gun, and I can see by the color of the yellow band on the spare magazine on its left forearm, that it has armor piercing rounds in that. If it has any of the same type rounds left loaded in the clip already in the gun, it can potentially puncture our suits. Not our helmets, chest or back plates, or the main sections of our limbs, but it’d certainly know to fire at our flexible joints. Stay alert.”

  The Krall waited until they were only two body lengths away to act. She realized the three of them, by lucky chance no doubt, would reach her just as her back would turn to present itself to them. She didn’t want to wait for them to come to grips if they would do it from behind. In armor and free fall, she didn’t have the full range of motion, flexibility, or gravity to give her a place to stand and pivot.

  She decided to use her gun now, despite the lower chance of puncture success if she couldn’t hold it close to a joint when firing. She raised her arm to aim at one of the figures, which action then forced her to recalculate her aiming point, because of the back reaction of her arm’s movement altering her slow tumble.

  She was startled by the instant response of the central of the three figures, the one she had decided to target. It had windmilled its arms and legs in a rapid motion that managed to shift the body to orient only the helmet and shoulder tops towards her, its arms at its sides as it slowly rotated on the long axis, head first at her. There were no joints exposed. It did this faster than she had been able to compensate her aim for her own change in tumble rate. She flexed and bent her wrist down anyway, with her thick cold fingers in the gauntlet curled inward to make a fist, closing the gun’s electrical trigger circuit. She fired a single round, saving the next two shots for the other targets with more wrist flexing.

  The slug hit the target at a point that would be where a human forehead should be under the helmet. The head had tilted slightly sideways just as her aim had steadied, and the slug struck at a glancing angle and deflected away, instead of generating the stunning straight-on impact she’d wanted. The range was short enough that the rocket-like ammunition had not accelerated to maximum velocity, yet it managed to create a small reduction in that particular slow moving attacker’s closing velocity.

  The other two figures had now also oriented themselves to point head first at her, with the heavy armored shoulders protecting the joints of lower limbs. She had aimed at the helmet because that appeared less thick than the shoulder armor, and there was the possibility the impact could hurt it even if it didn’t penetrate. Now none of the targets was exposing the weaker joints she’d been able to see just before she started to move. The two not slowed by the deflected slug would reach her in three seconds of drift, and they would be reaching her with her back largely towards them. Unless she did something to stay facing them.

  She tried an ammunition propulsion trick taught for fighting and maneuvering in free fall. She swiftly extracted and threw away the nearly empty magazine, leaving one of the two remaining rounds in the firing chamber. The small mass of the magazine and slug, thrown to counter her spin, barley altered the rotation. However, the counter thrust she intended was yet to come.

  She inserted one armored talon of her right hand firmly into the muzzle of the w
rist gun’s short barrel. Rotating her forearm, to aim the opening created by removing the magazine in the opposite direction of her body rotation, she flexed her wrist and curled her fingers to fire the chambered round.

  When the slug’s propulsion charge ignited, internal circuitry along the barrel ahead of the slug sensed the blockage, and the gun’s electronics instantly reacted. It triggered the front of the cylindrical round to ignite, and a small bit of material at the front tip, which normally fell away after firing, sent gas ahead in the barrel to try to blow the muzzle clear of what could have been removable water or muck. This action would reduce that round’s exit velocity, but then the next shot could exit freely.

  However, when the inserted armored talon refused to budge from the gas pressure, the remainder of the propulsion charge from the rear of the round was routed out of the open magazine slot. It was designed to trigger a magazine release lever and eject the magazine to relieve explosive pressure. In this case, it simply blew the hot gas into the vacuum. This was what Hothdat had intended. Her forward spin was rapidly countered. She promptly removed the talon tip to allow the now nearly spent round to push out of the muzzle, slow and harmless. Now she was facing towards her attackers just before they reached her.

  She extended her arms towards the figure closing with her head. They would learn what it was like to meet a Krall wearing powered armor, with over double the mass of any one of them.

  Indeed they did. However, the real lesson was hers.

  Longstreet whipped his arms up ahead of him and grasped her two wrists as she reached for him, holding them in vicelike grips, forcing her long arms as wide apart as his shorter human arms could manage. This was despite her own strength and power assist from the shoulders and elbows of her armor.

  Corporal Condor did the same at her ankles, and Hothdat was quickly stretched spread eagle in an “X” posture that she found she was unable to prevent. She realized she could bend at the waist, but her hands and feet were held wide apart as if anchored in ferrocrete, her taloned finger and toes opening and closing, grasping in frustration. She started to bend at the waist to try to bring her hands and feet close together, to grapple with the enemy.

  That was when Crager finally arrived, the glancing shot having done no damage, and he encircled her waist with his left arm and swung smoothly around to her back, where he locked his legs over the top of her thighs, and wrapped arms around her chest. He pulled back and applied force to straighten her at the waist, and prevented her from folding her body forward.

  “Got the waist,” he announced on radio.

  Longstreet, still holding the wrists apart, did a graceful upside down motion over the Krall’s head and then slammed the arms together at the wrist. Before the Krall could react, he let go a wrist with his right hand and used it to grasp one finger of each gauntlet to hold them together as if welded. He continued his flip, rotated to face the same way as the Krall and positioned behind the clamped arms, then placed his feet on its shoulders, pushing up to hold the arms extended.

  Even through the filtering layers of armor, he sensed the mental fury of this female sub leader. Wrapping his left arm around both of hers just at the elbows, she was left with both arms pinned together over her head, with her presumed helpless opponent now standing on her shoulders. Longstreet let go the fingers with his right hand and looked down to give Crager a thumbs up signal.

  “Got the arms.”

  “Hey, Big Bird,” Crager said, unable to sense the Krall thoughts and gender because he didn’t have the Mind Tap gene mod as of yet. “Unless you plan to bugger this thing, get out from between his legs and get on the back side. Shove a knee up his ass to hold the legs straight down if you need leverage, but aim your own ass towards the feet for thrust. We need to get started back to the cruiser. We’re running out of time.”

  Condor, who did have the Tap mod, said, “He’s a she Sarge.” He made the move, and finally the three had the warrior with her arms extended overhead, legs clamped together and stretched down. All three men were clinging to its backside, their thrust vectors, which actually originated from the Trap fields embedded in the butts of their armor, were aimed down the Krall’s length in the direction of its feet. It looked as if it were about to fly with the three of them riding along. Not a bad analogy, really.

  Except the four of them were gradually rotating head over heels. They were unable to keep the captive pointed at the cruiser. They had to end the tumbling or they would never get to where they wanted to go.

  Their gentle inertial thrust; comically directed from their backsides, first needed to coordinate to counter the rotation, and only then start to reverse the still increasing drift away from the cruiser. The three of them had enough momentum when they struck the Krall that all of them were slowly moving farther from the ship by the second. They were over eighty feet away before they had the tumble halted and the Krall’s hands aimed steady at the cruiser.

  They were over a hundred feet out when their three thrust vectors finally countered the drift away, and they gradually started closing the distance. Longstreet did an estimate of the time remaining before the first tenuous atmosphere might be felt.

  “Men, with the low combined thrust we have, and the first pressure of the upper atmosphere coming within perhaps the next twelve to thirteen minutes, I don't think we can get back into the hold before our thrust will be overwhelmed by drag.”

  Condor knew what that meant. “Damn it Sir, are we gonna have to kick this piece of crap loose just so we can get back? I can sense her thoughts a little. The last one we’ll receive will be gloating that she escaped capture. She knows we’re moving too slow.”

  Crager, from his perch behind the Krall’s waist had noticed what resembled a fanny pack. He fumbled one handed inside, permitting the struggles of the Krall to bend its waist a bit. “I found two more magazines, and there’s still one clipped on her forearm.”

  Condor missed the implication. “So what, Sarge? We gonna shoot it full of holes with its own gun to save it from burning alive? Hell, I’d rather it die painfully that way.”

  “Corporal,” interjected Longstreet. “You would do well to consider the words of wisdom from a man like sergeant Crager. I just unclipped the wrist gun Bill. Here you go.” Longstreet passed the weapon down the Krall’s body to Crager.

  Condor repeated his complaint. “I still don’t see why we don’t just use her mass to kick off hard and get back to the ship. Let her burn alive.”

  Crager shook his head, as he looked down over the Krall’s rump at Condor. “Big Bird, if you don’t start learning tricks from the enemy, you are going to stay a lowly corporal, and everyone’ll start calling you Big Bird Brain. Watch.”

  Crager inserted a magazine, chambered a round, removed the magazine and gave it back to Longstreet who had a fee hand, put an armored thumb over the open muzzle, and pressed the contact that activated the gun’s electrical trigger. Directing the open magazine receiver directly away from the heavy cruiser, there was a noticeable slight push towards the ship as the propellant was expelled. He shook the depleted slug out of the barrel, flinging it also away from the ship, for an added microscopic push.

  Longstreet passed the magazine back to Crager, who repeated the operation, and did that thirteen times. Before Crager could finish using the second magazine, the hot wrong-way gases finally eroded away the gun’s receiver and trigger circuits so badly that he couldn’t chamber and activate any more rounds. Except by that time, they were only twenty feet from the open hatch and moving at a comfortable clip, even if they still had a bit of a side drift and rotation. They would have at least five or six minutes to spare.

  The four figures fell gracelessly to the deck as soon as they passed through the open hatch’s gravitational threshold. However, they had no difficulty manhandling the wriggling Krall, pinning the arms to its sides holding the legs together, carrying it like a thick log into the shuttle’s open and waiting outer airlock hatch. They were fully aware that
the Bridge must be watching all of this, and would be wondering how just the three of them managed to subdue a Krall that was clearly trying to oppose them.

  When the Krall was safely out of sight and subdued with the Death Lime extract, Longstreet stepped out and called Danforth.

  “Captain Danforth, we have our prisoner. It was almost dead when we got there. Thanks for your assistance.”

  The return answer was quick. “We’re using the Normal Space drive to lift us higher captain. You were cutting it awfully close, time wise. Before you picked up speed on the return, I estimated we had less than five minutes to recover you.”

  “Yes Mam. It didn’t go quite as smooth as we expected, and we had to improvise.”

  As he spoke, Crager also cycled through the shuttle’s air lock, the hold still being in vacuum.

  Revealing that the Bridge was indeed observing them, Danforth asked incredulously, “You left only one man watching that Krall? It has air to breath now, and it’ll revive.”

  “Uh…,” Longstreet paused to see the nod from Crager, who was monitoring the same frequency. “She’s been pulled out of her armor, and something that knocks them out was administered.”

  “Really? I didn’t know there was such a drug. That was a female you said? They all look the same I thought.” Longstreet had let the gender slip.

  “The drug’s classified Mam. Please don’t spread that around. And yes, we can tell by the odor it was a female when we removed the armor.” At least a Kobani, with a ripper’s sense of smell could tell the difference, and he assumed navy personnel had never even had a chance to compare smells between Krall genders. They obviously didn’t know anyone could sense a Krall’s thoughts.

  “I understand captain. I had wondered how you and your men were going to get back to the ship when you didn’t use any retractable lines, or have jet packs. Clever to use the Krall’s own weapon and ammunition to improvise your push back to the ship. I suppose our initial report told you she had a pistol and ammunition. But if that wasn’t your primary return method when you started up here, what did you intend to use?”