Koban: Rise of the Kobani (14 page)

“If we do it together, yes.” He confirmed what he had seen at a distance. The human was using a Krall plasma rifle. Another lock encrypted weapon.

Carson slipped the strap from his shoulder and allowed the rifle to slide to the ground, as Hortak permitted his to fall from his hand. Carson backed away to allow the Krall to step clear of the jumble of the scoop and control rods. They stood face to face.

Almost face to face,
thought Carson,
he’s six inches taller. About seven feet. The bigger they are…,
he let the notion drop, and extended his right hand and stepped forward.

“The human custom is to shake hands, although a simple touch is enough in this case, if you will extend your hand.”

The Krall raised his left hand, rather than his right, which wasn’t the custom, but served just as well. As his hand came up Carson asked a question.

“We didn’t use your weapons very well did we? How should we have fought you, using them?”

Just before their hands touched, the Krall snorted his amusement. “I will not share that with a worthless animal. How did you learn to…,” their hands touched.

Hortak felt something, a mental flash of thought. He pictured the way the humans had operated the tanks and plasma batteries. He instantly thought of the ship rising to blast them with its four massively powerful plasma cannons, as the humans scattered like insects below.

“Instead of coming at you individually as we did, how would you have attacked another clanship on the ground?” Carson asked again. The Krall said nothing.

Looking at the Krall, he nodded to himself. “Have you ordered Tebrol to lift off yet?”

The Krall’s thoughts flashed to Tebrol, waiting only for the plasma chambers and barrels to be hot enough. Ready at any moment to lift when they were ready. “My clanship will not be needed to end your life, animal.” He hesitated a moment, something the human had said was scratching at his mind, calling for attention.

Carson yelled, not at the Krall but to several nearby Dragons with open hatches and six or seven plasma cannon cart drivers. “Guys, use massed fire, all cannons and tanks at the main thruster as it lifts off, and move in on it if it can’t lift. Go now.” Carson had been Linked to Ethan and Conrad the entire time, and within hearing of a number of cart drivers. He now motioned at the other plasma carts to follow the Dragons, shouting the same advice to those close enough to hear him.

****

The two lead Dragons accelerated, spewing gravel and dirt as they raced towards the valley opening. The other six drivers, now prepared, instantly made dusty rooster tails of their own as they surged after them. The fifteen plasma cannons pursued them at only a slightly slower pace.

As they rounded the edge of the valley opening, the Dragons drew immediate fire from the heavy lasers on the clanship. The white reflective ceramic shrugged off the beams by the drivers immediately twisting and turning, to prevent any one spot on their surfaces from cracking, from uneven thermal heating and cooling. In succession, as they had jointly Mind Tapped earlier, they fired a quick series of plasma bolts at the laser ports, which slammed shut each time the tanks fired. The eight tanks were able to maintain an initial rate of fire that kept the protective ports closed more than they were open, reducing the rate of return fire. The much heavier plasma cannons on the clanship did not open their ports, as proof that they were not quite ready to fire.

While the Dragon suppressive fire held the clanship lasers briefly at bay, the plasma cannons were able to clear the valley opening, to get face on to the ship with the exposed cart drivers able to stay behind the shields. Then they all concentrated their massed fire on the main thruster nozzle at the base of the ship. That was naturally designed to withstand tremendous heat, but as the dozens of plasma bolts increased the temperature on a small area of the less protected outer surface, the protective radiation absorbing coating flaked and popped off, revealing a more vulnerable metallic crystal structure beneath.

Using all available plasma reserves, the eight tanks and fifteen cannons burned through a dinner plate sized hole in the thruster nozzle.

If the ship tried to lift now, the unbalanced side thrust escaping through that open wound at its base would make the craft uncontrollable, even with attitude thrusters, located higher, to try to counter the vertical axis rotation. Belatedly, the pilot did try the main thruster, to sense how it would react. However, the blaze of hot gasses jetting sideways from the base must have convinced the operator to shut down.

They were not home free, because the laser ports, now that the ship was grounded and more vulnerable, were risking damage to those weapons by opening up longer for beams aimed at the carts. The replenishment time for plasma chambers on the carts had been anticipated.

Suddenly, the clanship’s plasma ports all swung open, drawing everyone’s attention as Dragons and carts shifted directions slightly, to throw off or delay the aiming and firing of the more dangerous weapons. Instead, it proved to be a ruse when only a heavy laser fired at the right front axle of Gamal Chadow’s cart, using a longer beam time than had been possible a moment earlier. The axle melted and sagged, forcing the cart to swerve right as that wheel snapped off.

Gamal leaped off the back of the cart as it spun to the right, using the shield and body of the cart as protection, staying in the shadow from the clanship’s three laser ports. He tumbled gracefully, moving to maintain the cover as the cart swung a full one hundred eighty degrees around. He took some scrapes as he slid lower to remain behind the shield, now actually on the scorched front side of his main protection. He had noticed another cart angling towards him to pick him up. The backside of the curved shield was protecting him just as effectively as it had previously, when facing the other way. All he had to do was to wait for his rescuer to arrive.

The Krall that was using another of the three heavy lasers knew of a different weakness of the carts. The fusion bottle was normally protected by the shield in front of it on the rotating turntable. The wrecked cart was now facing away from the ship. Gamal heard the sizzling as the casing around the fusion bottle container melted and the superconducting magnet coils were exposed. He really didn’t know much of anything about fusion bottles, except you never wanted to be near one if it lost containment.

Gamal knew he had to make a run for the oncoming cart, still a hundred feet away which had fired its one ready plasma bolt at the clanship, to force it to close the port of the first heavy laser that was seeking the human if he showed himself. The Krall always managed to switch the damn gun ports closed just as the TGs fired on them. They were slowing Krall return fire, but they were not knocking any of their weapons out.

The TG bunched his legs under him like a track star in a sprint, ready for a burst of speed. He pushed off and started his desperate run and dodge effort. Too late! The second laser completed its task. The blue-white flash of the ruptured fusion bottle’s escaping plasma registered an instant before the heat touched his superconductor nerves. In a searing blaze of rapidly transmitted pain, he was gone, a carbonized part of the expanding cloud of dissipating plasma.

****

Hortak realized what had briefly eluded and bothered him when the human in front of him ordered those that had stolen his mini-tanks and cannons to attack his clanship before it lifted.
He had said the name Tebrol.

“I did not tell you the warrior’s name that is in charge on my clanship is Tebrol.” Then the words the human had uttered right after that angered him even more, thinking they were an insulting explanation of battle strategy. It again redirected his attention for a moment.

“You dare to instruct me on how to fight a clanship with my own weapons?” He suddenly noticed shouts, and a mass movement of the other humans, racing out of the valley mouth into the open, where the ship could fire on them. He realized there was no need for Tebrol to try to fly and fight at the same time, if she were alone on the command deck. She could fire more effectively on the exposed humans where the ship now stood, if he could stop her from launching.

As he broke contact with the human’s hand, he reached to tap his com button on his right shoulder, deploying his inner ears to use high Krall, knowing the human would not hear. He sensed a blur of movement, and as his talon tip pressed down on the button quadrant that would activate ship communications, he pressed instead into the bandolier strap over his shoulder. He had performed this action tens of thousands of times, it was impossible that he would miss the button.

“Looking for this?” The human quickly stepped back a couple of paces, and held open his left hand. In it was the com button that had been clipped to the Krall’s shoulder strap.

He didn’t actually see the human snatch it from his shoulder, but he’d felt a gust of air and had heard a sound almost like a soft crack.

Carson easily crushed the metallic item in his hand, and tossed it over his shoulder. “You want to go over to join your warrior friend? I said I’d fight you both at once. I don’t need
him
alive however. I’m not all that certain I need you either, though you could prove useful to us.”

He saw, before he heard, the first series of actinic flashes from the open area at the end of the valley. The sizzle crack of superheated air, falling back into the vacuum created by eight Dragons bolts fired close together, followed immediately by the flickering flash and cracks of fifteen plasma batteries. That told him the fight against the clanship had started.

“Thanks for the fighting tips. The plasma batteries also will be blasting at your ship’s thruster continuously.” The words were hardly out of his mouth, when a second string of flashes and cracks announced the rapid firing of the second barrel of the plasma batteries. “OK. So they weren’t all spread out for constant firing. I’ll bet it was still impressive.”

There was a double scarlet flash, accompanied by an explosion at the valley mouth. Carson didn’t look, seeing the predatory glare of Hortak, ready for him to be distracted. However, a Link from Ethan brought a grimace and the first feeling of loss.

“A laser caught Gamal’s front wheel, cutting the axel, causing him to swerve. The second beam caught his fusion bottle behind the shield and opened the plasma chamber.” There was a barely perceptible pause. “He’s gone.”

Hortak looked over Carson’s shoulder for a fraction of a second, and he knew it wasn’t the right viewing angle for the action at the mouth of the valley. Diving to his right Carson drew in a midair body twist with his left hand, and glanced rearwards to see the other warrior shifting aim with the plasma rifle. He fired two fast snap shots as the longer weapon took an additional couple hundredths of a second to adjust aim. He simultaneously drew his right weapon, and without looking fired three rounds towards the center of
mass, where Hortak had been as he dove. He fired three more rounds rearwards at Gentot as he continued his roll, and was looking up towards Hortak, who had been hit all three times, simply not believing a human could move that fast and out draw him. Gentot had the human covered all along from the rear, and yet failed to shoot him in the legs.

Carson knew three shots to the chest could not immediately bring any Krall down, but his next two shots broke both of Hortak’s wrists, and the Krall dropped both pistols he had just pulled in a cross-chest holster arrangement.

Carson had time for a flicker of criticism. T
hat was a
d
umb ass holster setup. He’d naturally have a slower draw.

Looking rearwards, Carson was in time to see the plasma rifle fire a bolt at him, even as Gentok’s head was spraying gore to one side, from an impact through his right eye socket. A searing pain shot along Carson’s left thigh as the bolt passed along the surface of his pants, blistering the skin, setting the Koban grown natural fiber on fire.

Ignoring the pain, out of necessity, his racing thoughts were of Hortak, wounded and disarmed but mobile, with feet armed with built in sharpened talons. He rolled another turn away, onto his back as the crunch of a heavy foot missed his head by a hair. Actually, a slashing talon cut a lock of black hair free. He fired both pistols into each kneecap, then continued to roll away, as the nearly four hundred pounds of collapsing seven feet of Krall thudded to the rocky ground, nearly muzzle first, as he tried and failed to bite his irritatingly competent enemy.

The rolling had put out the small flames on his pants, but dirt and grit were ground into the ruptured and open blisters along his thigh, exposed by the burned away upper pant leg. It looked nearly as bad as it felt, but not quite. Carson was unable to hold back the shouts of pain, disguised as curses, as his eyes watered.

He was far enough from Hortak that the bastard was no longer an immediate threat. Killing him would feel good, but what he wanted was for this particular enemy to live on as a reluctant source of information. Something he knew was worse than dying for them.

He realized he didn’t know what was happening concerning the enemy clanship. He tried to Link to Mirikami, or anyone on the Mark, but at the bottom of the valley, the signal attenuation was too great at this distance. He called Ethan, reluctant to distract him in a battle.