His bride had given him a reprieve, shooting the Krall from behind as it charged down the hall. He wasted no time getting to the stairway in the corner of the bedroom, and awkwardly pulled the door closed behind him one handed. He could hold his left arm across his chest, but it was clumsy going down the narrow stairs. He was able to leap to the landing, then again down the last flight. Unlike a Krall normally moved, he was making a hell of a lot of noise. However, the warrior had learned exactly what apartment he’d been in when he took his failed shot. Henrik crashed through the door at the bottom, and raced towards the still open front door. He heard a crash above him as the warrior entered the apartment from the upstairs hallway.
As Henrik burst into the lower hall, he damn near shot his wife out of sheer surprise, seeing an armored form coming right at him. Agneta had beaten him down the stairs, and she was halfway up the hall to join him.
She was relieved to see he was still able to function and prepared to fight. “How’s the arm?”
“The suit has me feeling no pain. Let’s get moving and find an unlocked door to get out of the hall.” There was another crash behind him, from the direction of the stairwell door. Fortunately, the Krall was too thick in the chest to fit down the stairwell, and was bashing and blasting his way through the walls and floor. They stepped into another unlocked apartment.
“Eric, Greta, we can’t stop them and they’ll burn through pretty soon. Take your last shot and get down the rabbit hole.” The gun platforms all had a heavy armored set of floor hatches, opened manually from the inside. The slides led to ground level, with an exit tunnel into the inner corridors, or one went to the outside.
Eric opened the hatches as Greta fired and returned the gun to Nord’s control. Eric brought them up to date with bad news. “Guns 3 and 2 are down. Alf’s still firing his, but says the Krall disabled his outer defenses, just as they did here. His camera over the door was shot out, but another one up the corridor shows three warriors burning at his door. The worst news is that there are two warriors on second level balconies across the way. We have been unable to Link to Jarl or Elin, and we can’t see their suit icons either. Nord has not heard from them since just before you took your first shots. They never did that, and were supposed to shoot when Alf fired his cannon.
Henrik had been so focused on his own situation that he’d lost track of his other outside team. He sucked as a leader. He was an amateur militia member, not a trained professional soldier. The Krall octet on the west side had the advantage of hearing of the first ambushes Henrik had arranged. They were not stupid. They must have sent two warriors inside to catch Jarl and Elin from behind. They could be fooled by a particular trick once, but it wouldn’t work twice. It was time to own up to the gun loss to their boss.
“Commander Hendricksen, we are about to lose all four guns Sir. I’m sorry. I also believe we lost Jarl and Elin.”
It was almost fifteen seconds before Hendricksen answered. Henrik was afraid he’d too had been killed, and was about to Link to the second in command when he answered. “Henrik, I’m sorry about Jarl and Elin. Tell the other gunners thanks. They have done what we needed and held out just long enough. The majority of Krall have finally infiltrated onto D and F. They are using the cover there, moving down the centers against our sporadic fire, moving closer to the docks. Over a hundred of them on each avenue. Your people can help close the back door if you’re fast enough.”
“Thank you Sir. The others are Linked up and heard you. We’ll make our way over. Out”
Henrik’s next words were for his teams. “Leave the guns under Nord’s control for as long as they keep working. Rabbit out now! Eric, Greta, we’ll meet you on the outside. Alf, I’m so sorry, but you’ll be on your own for a short distance, but there will be other militia outside, waiting to seal off the exit on this end of D and F. Let’s meet there.”
Henrik and Agneta went all the way through the unlocked empty apartment they had found, reach another hall, went down a level, and cut over to an outside exit. There was no sign of the warrior that had been after Henrik. He couldn’t use his nose to follow their scent very effectively in his armor.
They linked up with Eric and Greta, just as Nord demonstrated that both guns 4 and 1 were still answering his control. Twin pulses lanced out from opposite sides to knock down structures that previously had furnished cover for the Krall to reach Avenues D and F in relative safety. Now those wrecked building would shelter the militia members that would try to block any Krall from retreating towards the city.
With powered armor to help, and painkillers to block the sensation from his burned elbow, Henrik asked Eric and Agneta to help him pull his left arm straight, breaking free the weld that held his left arm bent.
As they paused to do that, the former gunners also observed the total devastation of the buildings on the edge of the wide parks. They had only seen it via helmet visors, or on video monitors in the gun control rooms. The direct view offered a more vivid testament to the effectiveness of the plasma cannons in stopping the Krall there. The charred remains of at least fifteen Krall lay in the open areas on this side of the city, where some had foolishly thought thick tree trunks or a stone park bench provided cover from a plasma cannon. Those parks had been attractive additions to the downtown area, but their real function was to provide an open gap the Krall couldn’t cross. They had seldom lived to reach the streets the militia didn’t want them to use.
Gun 4 fired over their heads again, demolishing another decorative structure along Avenue F, erasing the last potential cover if a warrior tried to return in that direction. The bulk of the Krall were now two or three blocks closer to the docks, many probably bunching up behind the convenient heavy cover built down the center median of the two extra wide streets. Avenue D and F had many statues, covered pedestrian shelters with stone benches, small sturdy gift shops, food kiosks, and public restrooms. All of them made of shades of polished granite or other stone, which made for excellent cover from plasma rifle pulses or machine guns. The Krall were taking full advantage.
As the gunners joined up with roughly a hundred additional militia members, they infiltrated the rubble at the ends of Avenue D and F for cover. E street, between them was actually only a relatively narrow pedestrian walking area, with little cover for the Krall.
Just before Alf joined them, Nord reported that both remaining plasma cannons had ceased responding to his control. For purposes of offense, they now had to rely mainly on plasma rifles, grenades, and ten 50-caliber machine guns, mounted on armored cars. There was militia on the docks, now only about four hundred fifty strong, behind the first barricades. Farther behind them, there were at least a hundred thousand citizens with projectile weapons, spread out at various barricades, and on floating manmade islands for the fish processing plants. They still faced probably two hundred fifty Krall, with some wounded warriors scattered in other parts of the city. At least several dozen of the three hundred that managed to escape the clanship were already dead. There was no count of human dead reported yet, and if an AI knew or had an estimate, announcing it wasn’t something that would build confidence.
Henrik figured they had no more than five minutes before they learned if their final strategy would save most of the city’s residents, or if the Krall would overrun the militia and start killing the unarmored citizens.
All the militia heard Hendricksen tell them to standby for suppressive fire. The intent was to have roughly five hundred plasma rifles firing from both ends of Avenues D and F, aimed along the open sidewalks and the deliberately designed smooth fronts of stores and businesses, where there was little cover, and no gaps between buildings.
****
Trudok had saved the raid’s success, despite the inability to silence all four of the plasma cannons as quickly as he had expected. In hindsight there should have been two octets sent to attack each gun, not just one per gun. The humans would of course have strong defenses prepared for those four critical elements of the
ir ambush of the Clanship, and a key defense of their nest. The margin for victory had been almost as narrow as a hand of warriors, finally able to silence the last two guns.
However, before the guns were destroyed, he had discovered another way to assure Dorbo’s victory. Trudok had climbed to the roof of a building to observe how the humans were preventing his warriors from infiltrating the paths they needed to use. He had ordered them to follow the long open paths through the nests buildings, which led to where his scouts had discovered most of the humans hiding. From the roof, he saw that the big guns blocked access to many of the paths, using the open areas that his warriors must cross to kill them.
With both sides of the nest visible to him, he recognized the weakness of this defense. The center paths were not exposed to plasma cannon fire for the entire way. Instead, those center paths had nest buildings to shield his warriors. The paths were defended by outposts on the tops of buildings, using individual human operated plasma rifles and projectile weapons. There was no way they could hold back warriors with so weak a force. He directed all of his warriors to avoid the cannon fire this way, and as a good leader did, he led the first charge of warriors to follow those protected paths.
The humans with armor were at the far end, behind protective walls, with open lanes of fire on every path, but two of the middle paths offered many places in their centers for warriors to find cover as they moved closer. He led the way nearer to the humans, reaching a place where the protective cover ended on his path. He paused there, and ordered his warriors on this, and the similar path behind buildings to his right, to wait for the bulk of the trailing fighters to join them.
His plan was to gather the mass of his warriors to rush the human’s defenses all together. They would swarm over them at those two points, and once behind their barricades, they could spread out to engage them in the finest fighting a Krall could desire. One on one, close up. It would be a marvelous slaughter of this tricky enemy. Then the unarmored humans behind them would be easier to kill. Nevertheless, they would be very satisfying kills after the Clan’s loses here. There would be time enough to make many of them die slowly, for the trouble they caused, as much as for cowardice.
Trudok was on the verge of ordering the mass charge, the waiting novices aware of the spreading excitement of the anticipated event. He had broadcast the order that all of them were to await his command. Octet leaders at the rear were reporting to him from both of the paths they were using. The bulk of the last of the clan’s warriors were about to join the back of the pack. He wasn’t waiting for the slower warriors, or the limping wounded.
Suddenly, as if in anticipation of his command, there was a huge increase in fire from the humans. It was flashing down each side of the paths, along the open areas by the nest buildings. It only had the effect of clustering his warriors closer to the concealment the humans had stupidly provided in the center, perfect for the Krall to use.
Let them run down their power packs! He thought. Many of the foolish humans would be switching to a fresh pack when he ordered the charge. Then he heard a loud series of noises, from well below his feet, and felt a vibration that increased, as he sensed he was settling with respect to the nests to each side. In a flash of belated insight, he ordered the charge his warriors were expecting.
Too late! Even as they leaped out into the sleet of plasma and projectile fire, and started towards the enemy, the hard ground beneath their feet dropped away, the heavy stone structures and objects that had been shielding them were toppling over. They were collapsing, along with the entire center of the two wide paths.
A roar of anger escaped Trudok’s lips, heard and echoed by over two hundred of his clan mates. It was a final trap from these cowardly animals!
He was determined to fight and climb his way out of this still forming pit. He was certain most of his warriors would easily survive the fall, since they were atop the falling material.
Then in a far more unexpected and much more unpleasant surprise, he did not experience a jarring halt at the bottom of a trench. Instead, he heard extremely loud sounds of splashing water. In an instant, he was engulfed by a gush of frigid dark water. He continued to fall, but at a slower rate, deeper into the turbulent dirty watery depths. He reached bottom in a few more seconds. His armor, airtight when needed and watertight as well, had automatically sealed. He could breathe indefinitely with the powered rebreather equipment to scrub his air when it grew stale.
However, it was unlikely many of his warriors could climb to the surface on the sides before the humans stood over them to pick them off from the edges of the path as they emerged. He had noted the sides close to the nest buildings did not fall with the center area. That was the reason for the heavy fire over those areas, just before the collapse. It was to keep the stable ground clear of his warriors.
Unsure how well his signal would spread, he ordered all of his warriors to walk or crawl along the bottom, forward to the end of the watery trench, towards the humans at the barricades. They would form a chain of warriors to climb out, and all come up in one place. They should be able to hold the humans back long enough to get a significant force out of the trap.
Then he heard splashing overhead. A lot of splashing. Something hard and solid bumped him a glancing blow on his armored shoulder. He activated a helmet light, which did little to penetrate the silt filed water, but it was quite revealing as he bent over to look around his feet.
Lying amid the jumble of paving stones, and slabs of the structure he had hidden behind, was a human hand bomb. The kind that used a delayed explosion. It wasn’t a good day after all.
****
Henrik picked up another belt of grenades from the boxes in the back of the armored cars. He, Agneta, Alf, Eric and Greta were running along the cracked sidewalks of Avenue D, arming and tossing them into “Dropsy” pit. The heavy thumping sounds, flashes of light from the bottom, and eruption of bubbles and gas were a mild seeming testament to the savage destruction the grenades were causing at the bottom of this watery mass Krall grave. All along Avenue F, “Flopsy” pit was also receiving its share of Krall killing splashes.
Henrik paused midway down the three-block stretch of caved in street. He removed two grenades from another new belt, and looked at his wife and friends. “For Jarl and Elin.” He waited until the others held two grenades each.
“For lost comrades, never forgotten.” He thumbed his two grenades to activate them, and lightly tossed them to the center of the churning turbid water ten feet below. Eight more grenades splashed at different places. The resultant rapid series of thumps, flashes, and eruption of water wasn’t enough to ease the pain, but real grieving and a celebration of the lives lost would come later.
New Oslo needed extensive repairs, but had the necessary surviving citizens to get it done. It would be decided later if the old canals under Avenues D and F would be dug out and the water covered again, or completely filled in as had once been proposed by city planners. The narrow fiord offered little room for the city to expand, and the old canals had furnished sheltered docking for the smaller fishing fleets of the early colony years.
As the town grew, it built up towards, and over the water and into the rocky cliff sidewalls. Eventually, they needed to make better use the area around the old canals. The growing Krall threat had convinced Fjord to prepare for larger raids. That raid had been several years in coming, but the planning had been well worth the inconvenience of roofing over the canals to create two large central avenues. It was time for New Oslo, at least, to consider the next plan.
16. Sweet and Sour Sixteen (Koban)
“Maggi, I wouldn’t have backed or voted for you if I thought you’d actually get enough support for this inane law to pass.” Mirikami was highly annoyed with the recently elected mayor of Prime City.
Mayor Fisher had a suitably dignified rebuttal prepared. “Splurrpp!” The official sound made when air passes over a mayor’s tongue when it protrudes between moist lips.
Dillon agreed with the sentiment, even without a legal translation. “Tet, I believe she has also eloquently countered whatever new argument you may have belatedly considered.” He was grinning from ear to ear. Happy for once to be on Maggi’s side, and safe from a sudden groin or head slap.
In turn, Tet had a grumpy but effective reply for Dillon. “I don’t need to give you a fresh counter argument, Doctor Dead Man Walking. All I have to do is wait for Noreen to remove and feed your ass to wolfbats. She’s going to be less than happy with you and with Thad for that matter, for supporting this law. After Marlyn helps her mangle the two of you adolescent boneheads, there will be two less living supporters of this nutty law at the next referendum. It barely passed this time.”
Maggi snickered. “Think you can turn out more voters for your side next time? We had nearly a hundred percent participate this time.”
“No, I’ll try to change some votes. It may be cynical of me, but I’ll see if I can capitalize on my ‘Hero of Testing Day’ reputation to convince people to sign a new petition to increase the age from sixteen to eighteen in the next vote. I’ll admit, in hindsight, holding out for age twenty one was unrealistic.”
Maggi smiled sweetly. Always a sign you were losing a debate with her. “You forget Tetsuo. Under the new law just voted on and passed, our three hundred twelve impacted teenagers, the sixteen and seventeen year olds, now get to vote on gene mod issues that apply to them. To many of those kids you now are ‘Commander Tyrant,’ who wanted to push back their right to decide their own fates. How do you expect to sway their three hundred twelve new votes? Perhaps offer each a pet wolfbat?” She chuckled at that irony. Mirikami himself had encouraged wolfbat “bonding,” and every kid now had one that came for food when called by a code signal on an ultrasonic whistle.
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 39