Koban: Rise of the Kobani (51 page)

Dillon made a double score. “These new ten are the first we ever actually
invited
to join us. They didn’t just fall in our lap as a helpless captive, always cheating Thad out of his poker money. Assuming, of course that his wife ever lets the poor slob have any.” He nailed the two of them at once.

Sarge wasn’t done just yet. “Yea, yea, yea. The spec ops guys have it easy. I’d have given my left arm to get to Koban. No, wait…, I did that!”

“Right. It would be nice if you used its replacement for something besides scratching your backside. How about helping stow the last of the cargo, and we’ll get ready to go. Our spec ops recruits are gathering their gear, and Trakenburg has stashed the Penetrator class ship in the crater, as the presumed vessel the ‘missing’ men used on the secret mission.

“Tet says Nabarone is back in his headquarters now. We want his authority handy, in case someone decides to shoot at us on the way out. We’ll lift with less oomph than the Krall usually use, making us a tempting target. Chief Haveram had it easy. He left like a civilized law abiding ship operator, on a criminal’s former smuggling ship.” The Falcon, loaded with consumer goods scarce at home had departed earlier. It too was planning on a devious return course to Koban, to thwart any potential follower.

“Tet picked one of the TG1 tachyon communication windows for our departure. Our wives may have left messages drifting in Tachyon Space for us. I’d like to know how they’re doing. I hope the hell my wife discovered the Morning Star planet is livable. Otherwise I’ll find one grouchy Lady waiting for me.”

Thinking of his own wife, Dillon wasn’t concerned. “I doubt Heavyside was any problem for Noreen. The TGs were going to pretend to be recruits to get into the main camp and find out what the future of spec ops is. We already know they will handle the training program on Heavyside easily. Frank said he’s pretty confidant some of their people were pushing for genetic engineering, which was previously rejected by the government. Now that Poldark is steadily going the way of Bollovstic, he hopes the PU will change their minds. It should be an uneventful visit to Heavyside.”

A few hours later, the Mark was ready. The Planetary Defense forces were specifically told to not fire on an obvious clanship launch, departing from well outside Krall controlled territory. Mirikami, waiting on the Bridge for the “all clear” was also making certain there were no stealthed clanships incoming on his sensors before they lifted. He intended to drill a rapid vertical turbulence trail through the atmosphere. Stealthed or not, that would make their track obvious and predictable, but it was what the defense forces were told to expect.

Nabarone’s voice came over the speaker, on the frequency they were instructed to monitor. He remained his wiseass self when he said, “Ok boys. On your Mark, get set, go!”

How original
, thought Mirikami. He had heard that same dumb pun at least a half dozen times from his own people. He hit the acceleration horn once, and tapped the launch control personally. Jakob could have done it all for him, but he felt like initiating the engines himself, maintaining the pretense that he didn’t largely let the AI do the routine drudgery of spaceflight. Hard acceleration was felt immediately, and velocity increased rapidly on the column of plasma behind them. Not a standard Krall max performance liftoff, but a lot more than human staffed ships generally employed.

As soon as they left atmosphere, Mirikami transmitted a double click on the frequency, confirming they were clear. He allowed Jakob to execute the Jump command, and they rotated out of Normal Space.

****

The commander of the Krall invasion forces on Poldark asked his aide to restate his allegation. Gatlek Pendor must have misinterpreted what his second in command had meant. “Kaldot, you say it is your belief, and that of my K’Tal’s, that this clanship launched today was the one we believed died a berserkers death?” Pendor was incredulous of his aide’s words. The implication was outlandish.

“That is our thought, Gatlek. With dependable evidence beyond the coincidence of location of the launching point. There was an audio recording available of the thruster sounds when that same clanship previously flew over the Dorbo clan warriors to attack the human forces, about twelve hands of days ago. That day, Dorbo was enjoying an unexpected strong assault and artillery bombardment from human forces, near the river and south of family nest areas that the humans live in, close to Novi Sad.

“That day, two of the attitude thrusters were misadjusted on that clanship, and caused what two K’Tals called a vibration at an ultrasonic frequency between the two. A harmonic is what both of them named the sound it made, of which I do not know the word’s meaning. I only know that it was a very loud and improper noise, and I was told that an adjustment should have been made to the side thrusters to remove the distracting sound from our ears.”

Impatient with an explanation he didn’t understand any better than did his aide, Pendor snapped, “Do you mean this sound was the same from the slow moving clanship that escaped today?”

“Gatlek, both K’Tal’s say the two recorded sound patterns are the same, even though the second time the sound was recorded from a greater distance, and therefore not as loud. They said it was not how loud that mattered. A sound pattern that repeated the same exact harmonic was the proof it was from the same source. They say it came from the same clanship that attacked the human forces like a berserker, and was destroyed by four seeker missiles.”

“You mean that it only appeared to be destroyed. It must have stayed in human controlled territory those many hands of days, hidden from us, and then was launched to space slowly, and the human defense forces did not try to destroy it.”

“That is our belief.”

“What has the Darpot clan told you of their destroyed clanship, and the missing sub leader? The forbidden interclan fight they reported to us days later apparently ended on the same day we thought a berserker pilot attacked the humans, and was destroyed. That was a false conclusion about it being a berserker.”

“Yes. They have found every member of the small crew of the heavy loaded supply ship, except for a sub leader in command named Hortak.

“As you were told previously, Gatlek, half of the clanship’s crew was killed near where another clanship’s landing blast pattern was found. They appeared to have died in an assault on that mystery ship, and their own ship was destroyed in a more successful attack, presumably from the crew of the unknown craft. Some of the Darpot clan’s dead crew was found inside their clanship. Another four hands, less one, were found dead in a valley with the bunker construction machines, which had apparently been ambushed. There were four hands of damaged machines in the valley, so one warrior apparently did not die there.

“The new sub leader for the Darpot says the clanship was almost completely unloaded, but they are missing many small arms, and five mini-tanks. She also says the dead that were found where the other ship had landed were killed in strange ways.”

“What is strange about deaths from attacking a clanship with mini-tanks, three transports, and trucks? That is always a lost fight against heavy lasers and plasma cannons.”

“The dead were doubly killed, she said.”

“Did anyone order her to explain this ridiculous claim?”

“I did, Gatlek. She meant they died of plasma rifles shots, mostly to their heads, and had massive body damage from a clanships heavy weapons where they were found in and near the tanks, trucks and armored transports. They were shot again with powerful weapons after receiving fatal head and body wounds, from plasma rifles and our standard projectile pistols.”

Pendor snorted in amusement and confusion. “That is inefficient of the attackers to waste time and energy that way.”

Kaldot agreed. “I did not consider her claim seriously when first made. I do now, because of the flight of the ship and its apparent safety while in human territory. Then it launched unchallenged by the humans from their territory.”

Pendor was shrewd, and one of the rising new breed of Krall commanders. He didn’t like the unexplained aspect of this bizarre event. Nor the possible implications he could draw from them.

“The fight near the ship that escaped off-world was not real. Some of the Darpot equipment was taken, and the departed clanship, under control of many unbalanced warriors that defeated Darpot, seems to have done this and went to join the humans…,” he paused almost a second, a very long period of contemplation for a Krall of his high status.

“Impossible!” he was emphatic. “There are tales of disgraced Krall that suffered a mind or brain defect that have gone to join the enemy, but over our long history it is but a few hands of them only, and always acting alone. This theory requires many such insane traitorous warriors acting together. The soft Krall are securely contained, and do not have the means or the physical capability to defeat us talon to talon. They are old warriors of the time of the Olt’kitapi. We passed them on the Great Path a thousand breeding cycles ago.”

Kaldot was tentative. “Is the alternative that non Krall did this?”

The backlash he feared did not happen. Pendor considered this possibility for a moment, before making a conditional rejection.

“If it were not also impossible, I could consider that. That enemy would need to carry newly dead warriors, for activating the clanship and the weapons, as humans have sometimes done and replace them as the quantum locks detected death and refused them access. Where could they obtain so many dead for a long day of fighting? All but one Darpot corpse was counted.”

He quickly decided on a course of action that moved the problem from his talons. He could not solve the mystery, but he could report this matter to a leader that was famed for his new thinking, and for adapting to this changing type of war. Tor Gatrol Kanpardi, the overall commander of the war with humans would be informed of this strange event on the current invasion planet. Kanpardi was actively planning invasions of two other human worlds, as the next phase progressed to involve more clans and, pressure humans into more desperate resistance and effort.

****

Kanpardi was in a joint clan planning session on Telda Ka, when the urgent courier report from the Gatlek on Poldark arrived. He was relieved to have an excuse to leave the room full of bickering clan leaders. They were supposed to be preparing to open two new invasion fronts on human worlds, one a heavily populated and long settled colony, which had considerable industrial and technological capability on the planet. That world, the colony of Alders, would be the first real test of human ability to resist, when a world of very high value to them was threatened.

However, the council was not discussing what resources were needed to support three invasions, such as increased weapons production, expanding clanship building, or making more of any of the tools of war that were required.  Instead, for three days they had argued over the fighting roll that should be granted to each of dozens of finger clans. The smaller clans were demanding greater access to serious fighting. They were client clans that major clans had spawned in the last three thousand years, to increase the number of sympathetic voices supporting the parent clan’s interests in joint clan meetings.

Now came the time for the major clans to pay back those millennia of finger clan’s support, with status earning combat opportunities in new invasions. The obligation was heavy on the tips of all their talons. It blunted their ability to strike at the real problem Kanpardi saw. Logistics and supply, versus which small clans would receive significant rolls in new invasions, was moot when the equipment to give to them was limited.

Once out of the council room, he spoke only with his trusted Graka clan mate, Telour. Kanpardi voiced his dissatisfaction with the lack of efficiency the joint clan council displayed.

“Clans that recently fought thousands of years of restricted interclan warfare, have been deluded into believing there is no limit to the materials of war, which they now waste so quickly. In clan wars, we did not tolerate pointless material destruction for pleasure, and preserved more weapons and ships for repair and reuse.

“The humans, as worthy enemies should, do not grant that tolerance, and we have pilots and warriors that recklessly risk ships that belong to all Krall, as if they have no responsibility to bring them back for reuse. Their own wasted low status lives are not worth the price we pay when they do not return with the tools of war.”

Telour, slow to grasp just how annoyed his mentor was, commented, “The reckless dead do not earn status to reproduce, and their genes are removed from the Great Path. The new cycles of warriors are growing smarter, and learning to detect and avoid the devious ways that humans fight.”

Displaying his irritation, Kanpardi snapped back. “Humans are changing how they fight faster than our warriors are adjusting. We will win because we have the ability to destroy all of their worlds. However, to increase the culling of good fighters from weak we need more fronts in the war. We lose war material at the rate it is made. It is not easy to expand a war this way. The clans that have control of production worlds think replacing losses is enough. The only production increase was of clanships and single ships, after the humans attacked Telda Ka twice.

“If they attacked what they call K1 again, even stronger than before, the losses would limit us to fighting on Poldark for years. We would have to waste the invasion possibilities of several human worlds, by total destruction, as another lesson to them. A large war on three worlds will divert their fighters and material to prevent such an adventure. We need to build for those other invasions.”