Koban: Rise of the Kobani (10 page)

“We assumed they normally see out via a video feed to their suit helmets, the way our own sealed tanks work. However, there are four wide video screens below the turret ring, right at Krall eye height when seated in the little cup seat, and we have popped the tops off tanks in battle, where the warrior inside was
not
suited, or had the helmet removed. The screens are external video feeds of all four sides if a warrior isn’t wearing a helmet. There are four hand operated medium power lasers mounted on the body of the tank below the turret, two in front and one to each side, with a connection to the screens that may be part of their targeting systems, as well as views from the four small outside cameras. I’ll bet we can easily drive one of them if we can get inside and start them.”

“How
do
you get inside and start one?” Carson asked. He risked butting in, because he sensed what Mirikami was about to ask them to do.

“Standard keypad on the rear left opens a hatch that will pass a Krall in full armor. Without these neat quantum tattoo links you have, we had to cut our way in of course, through that extremely tough ceramic coating over the light alloy frame. Inside are simple touch controls on the power plants that would connect power to the tread drive motors and turret rotation systems. The fusion bottles are always on in standby mode. Until a butt hits the cup seat, shaped for their big butts naturally, we don’t think any motor or cannon control will function.”

Thad made a suggestion, pointing where he thought the captain was headed anyway. “We need to steal what we can before they use it against us. They obviously aren’t interested in us yet because they assume we are another clan, but when they do decide to check us out, we’ll be massively out gunned. Our guards at the canyon mouth haven’t seen any Krall activity. Because they are already positioned closest to Ethan and Richard, send them ahead now, and have Carson catch up and feed them Sarge’s tank operating instructions by Mind Tap. That will put twenty-four of our TGs in place, ready to drive away with everything parked in that valley. We need to act fast.”

Tet was pleased Thad had anticipated him. “Carson, grab Sarge’s hand as he thinks his way through what he knows of that equipment.” While they did that, Mirikami got another part of the plan started.

“Thad, Link to Conrad and send his unit ahead to join Ethan on the same direct route they used.”

Surprisingly, Carson was already asking what he was supposed to do next. Mirikami, shaking his head at what a TG1 could absorb so quickly, told him with a grin, “Link to Ethan and tell him what we will do, and follow Conrad’s unit to Ethan. You are in overall command. Don’t just stand there. Go!” He had hardly finished speaking when Carson was leaving widely spaced dust spurts as his feet slapped the ground at an amazing pace in the .94 g.

Directing a quickly weakening shout at his son’s rapidly retreating back, Dillon said, “Good luck…son…, be careful… Crap! He wasn’t even listening to me anyway. I could hear him talking to Ethan.”

Mirikami laughed. “After his teen years I’d think you’d be used to that by now.”

Thad, seeing disappointment on the faces of the TGs still with them, gave them something to do. “All of you. Take a position at the valley opening to replace the people that just left. We need to see our guys coming when they return, and perhaps provide them some cover fire, or reinforcements.”

That caused a rapid pounding of feet, kicking up dust as they raced one another like a herd of stallions, and three fillies, to get to the entrance of the canyon first.

Reynolds grinned at their instant reaction and looked over at Thad, an eyebrow raised quizzically. “Provide cover fire? The TGs coming back will be in tanks and armored trucks, with portable plasma cannons riding shotgun. These kids only have plasma rifles and hand guns.” He actually laughed at the jockeying for position, as some of the youngsters leaped up on boulders to gain a few steps on the others, taking the longer leap the height provided.

Thad smiled and nodded. “But did you see their faces? They went from abject despair when they didn’t get to steal tanks, to the thrill of possibly covering the returning thieves with their plunder, and the enemy chasing in hot pursuit.”

“There might actually
be
some pursuit,” Dillon offered, “if the Krall have any tanks or trucks not yet unloaded. Possibly parked in that closer valley or right beside the ship.”

Mirikami was less concerned about what equipment the Krall might have left to them. “Based on what I know these ships can carry,” he waved at the Mark of Koban as they approached its ramp. “They
can’t
have very much left at the ship or in the other valley. The only reason they could risk parking this stuff unattended is that clans don’t steal from other clans when they are not in declared conflict with each other. In addition, they had to leave it unguarded because they must be shorthanded due to the cramped quarters caused by the heavy load of material they carried. The final offloading or shifting of smaller supplies, like body armor, ammunition, and communications gear, would be done from stowage areas on higher decks, now that the heavy equipment blockages below have been cleared away. Who else could possibly take their equipment? Certainly not humans! It’s the same complacent attitude they had on K1, and we now have the Avenger and Beagle as a result.

“Let’s check the lay of the land again, and decide what we will do with those weapons as soon as our TGs tell us they have control of them. We need to check the best route back here. We might not want them to bring them all the way back here if they can actually use them effectively in a fight.”

****

Trakenburg was pleased with the general’s response, and said so to his assistant.  “Nabarone was as good as his word, Jack. He has a spearhead attack aimed at a Krall equipment park, where Dragons, single ships, armored trucks, mobile artillery, and plasma cannons are parked when the Krall are deciding which clan gets to make the next attack. The Army is giving it hell tonight.”

Because no clan had sole use of the weapons and equipment, it wasn’t defended as stoutly as it would have been if exclusive to a particular clan. The attack was close enough to Novi Sad, on the north side of the city, that it was drawing warrior attention in that direction. The flashes of explosions and flames held an envious fascination for the Krall unable to participate. His men previously had reported that warriors spent considerable time looking at nearby battles they were not allowed to join. Particularly, every time there was a larger flash, followed belatedly by the sound of the explosion.

Trakenburg had once called this Krall reaction the lemming effect. They were instinctively drawn to sounds of combat. In this case, if their clan wasn’t involved, they were prohibited from going. Their focus on the action however, had been used before by his men to infiltrate through their relatively thin lines.

The process was preceded by a massive “stink bomb,” as the spec ops soldiers liked to describe the infusion of wind driven manufactured odor. It was hardly noticed by people. Bacteria had been found that produced prodigious amounts of gases that were a strong match to the smell of sweaty humans. The gas was collected, and occasionally used when the breeze was right, like tonight, to drift from a population center into the Krall ranks. An infiltration wasn’t conducted every time this happened, so as not to arouse suspicion, merely raising Krall disgust at the frequent “animal” prey smell they had to learn to ignore.

The Special Ops soldiers were wearing the latest in neutrally buoyant Chameleon Skin flexible armor over their
powered body sheaths, generically called Booster Suits. The sheaths were a custom-made, form-fitting, flexible carbon fiber artificial exomuscle, which boosted their native strength by a factor of roughly two times normal. Normal for their high gravity muscles, that is, which they developed in training on Heavyside.

They were using small rebreathers, because they used shallow creeks, drainage ditches, and sometimes sewers, to slip past the distracted water loathing Krall, who had their noses filled with what they considered a foul odor. The enemy was much better at guarding rivers, lakes, and places where sonar-like detection systems could locate possible human swimmers at a distance. A seal analog and muskrat-like analogs on Poldark had nearly been wiped out along the coastal areas of this continent, and in its broad navigable rivers. Accurate artillery fire and its concussions in water proved quickly fatal, to large fish, men, and beasts.

Prior to yielding the territory between the mountains and Novi Sad, small water trails  had been altered to pass not just near the tunnel exits of their old base, but to furnish a deeper route to emerge in pools below ground, inside pressurized grottos of side tunnels. There they could store supplies, swap out gear, and use the network of spider holes to emerge and perform sabotage, or simply to move deeper into Krall held ground.

The Special Ops men were not a match for a Krall warrior in a face-off, but they were far more capable than skilled, highly trained and superbly fit normal men
were. They had technologically enhanced senses, such as electronic aids for assisting hearing, vision, touch, and increased reaction times. A neural network had been surgically implanted along their limbs, to connect dozens of tiny sensors to a small processor located inside their chests. It held an abbreviated AI, which directly fed their brains with the sensory inputs, and controlled the powered assist from the exomuscle body sheaths they wore, which reinforce their own muscles. 

Sensory help for example, allowed their auditory nerves to “hear” the frequency down shifted Krall ultrasonic High language. They could hear when they were speaking near them. There even was limited translation capability, updated as the Krall vocabulary and grammar rules were learned.

They had refillable small chemical reservoirs placed around their bodies, which could release measured doses of drugs to spur their muscles to greater effort, add endurance, and increase alertness. The system would infuse extra oxygen in their blood streams to support the higher level of activity, intended for three hours of use, or four hours for a dangerous maximum physical effort. This could be accomplished via a manual command to the AI, or triggered automatically if the AI detected strenuous activity or stress levels that required a boost of energy.

Their “native” physical capability was greater than for normal physically fit men, even without the technological and chemical assistance. When not deployed in the field, they returned to Heavyside, a world on the far side of Human Space, where they lived and trained in 1.41 times Earth’s gravity.

Most of the men were recruited from the few colony worlds that already had slightly higher gravity than Earth. As of yet, there were no women in their ranks. Certainly not out of any bias against accepting them, not with Ladies still running the government and most of the military, including this super-secret program. The physical restriction was practical, because few women could meet the physical demands placed on the men, and thus far, none of the women that might qualify had volunteered when contacted.

Generically, the Special Operations group referred to themselves as Boosted Men, a term derived from the black carbon fiber Booster Suits, which acted as artificial muscle, worn similar to a diver’s wet suit. The material had originally been developed as an internal part of powered armor, where it was still used. It was too soft to resist even bullets, let alone a plasma rifle bolt. However, its lack of bulk, its strength enhancement, and superb flexibility had made it a natural choice for spec ops use.

The need for an equally flexible lightweight armor was found in Chameleon Skin, a metamaterials triumph that combined the stiff and heavy active armor’s ability to blend in with the background, and was bullet and medium power laser proof, and plasma beam resistant from Krall or human made rifles. It was horrifically expensive to make, and thus far, only a few small forces like spec ops had them.

With Heavyside high gravity conditioning, a Booster Suit, and a full suite of drug enhancements coursing in their veins, the implanted neural network increasing reaction time, a Boosted Man was three to four times as strong as an average physically fit man raised on Earth. The surgical neural network made them roughly 1.3 times quicker than normal in reaction time, although the real benefit was from the sensory improvements. A Krall was eight to ten times stronger than an Earth-born man and at least five times as fast.

The new sensors, aside from detecting ultrasonic sounds, and permitting sensitive touch for operating from inside layers of suit and light armor, had a microscopic projection system that could place AI controlled information directly on their retinas. The images appeared as translucent colored images they could see through, used for obtaining direct data from the AI, data relayed from another soldier, or an overlay obtained from a weapons targeting system.

It was the best that human technology had yet produced for the individual soldier, yet even if every trooper in the Planetary Union Army were equipped, conditioned, and trained the same way, the Krall would simply cull their endless supply of weakest warriors more efficiently. They still could win any battle they chose to win, at whatever rate they chose.

Trakenburg knew, as did Nabarone, that the war was slowly being lost at a rate set entirely by the Krall. They also knew that Poldark would be the next planet to fall if they could not stop or divert their methodical progress. A world lost, as had been Bollovstic's Republican Independency, Greater West Africa, Talbot, and three worlds that were more corporate holdings than full-fledged Rim colonies, Gribble’s Nook, Carson’s World, and Bonanza. Krall raids were increasing on potential new invasion targets, where the Krall were evidently testing different worlds for where the next best opposition force would be found.