Koban: Rise of the Kobani (88 page)

That was exactly where he wished he were now, so that he could participate in a mock combat session. The practice mission his leader of a hand of octets was going to conduct at first light at the main habitat dome.
Daylight was just reaching this dome, at least if that smoggy, gray brightening through the heavy, gray clouds and rain was any evidence.  He faced one more day of boring punitive duty after this one about to start, because the octet he commanded had failed to complete its mission successfully, in the previous exercise a hand of days ago.

Jagort
and his entire octet were sharing the dull task of monitoring the activity around the dome and factories for this night. Seven other less than maximum efficient octets were patrolling the rest of the large dome, to watch for any Prada that tried to leave their shift of work in the factories below, before their rotation permitted.

There were more workers than productivity required
right now, because a new transportation line from a more distant mountain range was not yet complete. Until the new ore supply could reach the foundry, parts production was less than that set by the joint council. The Prada would actually be happy when the work increased, but for now, they had less to do than normal, and wanted to return to their ridiculous family units early.

Jagort
, in a command center near the shipyards, was in a mood to kill a few of the early returning Prada as an object lesson, and as a form of entertainment. However, production was supposed to increase soon, and Prada laziness would disappear. If the Prada were unable to make up for the sixty-four days of reduced production as quickly as expected, and it was because a bored octet leader had killed some critical workers, he would stay on punitive duty longer.

It wasn’t easy to elicit a cry of startled surprise from a Krall. Jagort managed a strangled sounding snarl of futile warning to the empty air, as he observed and heard a warning chime and flashing indicator
s of multiple missile launches from one of the clanships, directed at the main habitat dome. He immediately activated a radio channel to the main habitat, as required, even though the warning would be redundant.

The snarled reply
was from a voice he knew well, Colwat, another octet leader, and he sounded exactly as Jagort would have spoken, if he had been on duty there.

“We see it stupid one!
Gethok departed to deliver two test pilots to the shipyard a short time ago, and a second clanship operated by a novice pilot in training is lifting here now. I ordered her to intercept the ship that fired on us. Tell Gethok to turn back here to avenge us. We will not be able to stop so many missiles.”

Colwat’s insulting reply would have been grounds for a challenge match, except that both warriors were aware that only Jagort would be alive in a few more seconds.
Twenty-five missiles, ten of them the larger more powerful ground target type would reach the main dome. As it happened, the pilot in training proved too inept to fire even a single weapon in defense of the dome, before her ship was blasted from the sky. The indication of laser and plasma fire on her craft still didn’t excuse such an inefficient novice reaction.

Jagort was not simply standing around, using a talon to scratch
the back portion of his lower torso. He had promptly tapped his shoulder com set to announce on a common frequency that the main dome was under massive attack, as were the clanships parked there. He lost his long-range feed on the incoming anti-ship missile tracks when the other dome and its sensors were destroyed, leaving a hole in his coverage.

He noted that the clanship
piloted by Gethok, which Colwat had mentioned, had come into view over the horizon. It was flying low for the sub orbital trip, and his sensors could track it now. Gethok had significantly higher status than Jagort, or the now likely dead Colwat. He listened to the report from Jagort, of two unknown clanships that had just arrived, and of one’s attack on the main dome.

When
the out-of-favor octet leader, serving punitive duty, passed along Colwat’s demand that Gethok immediately return to avenge the attack on the dome, he ignored him and told him what he would do instead.

“The ship that fired
on the dome is far enough behind ne that I was below the edge of the planet. It cannot see me and I cannot see it either. It does not know I am here. I have two experienced pilots with me and there is another clanship parked next to your dome. The two clanships that you reported arriving together would have an advantage in our fight. I will hurry to land and transfer a pilot for that other clanship. Together we can defend the honor of Mordo clan.”

On this
small miscalculation was Gethok and the other clanship lost. Captain Retief’s Slasher had surged ahead to seek him out, because he had overlooked the clues of his recent launch leaving a hot spot on a tarmac, and atmospheric contrails. He was caught committed to a breakneck landing of his own, as close to the second clanship as he could manage. The forces being exerted on Gethok and the two pilots with him, were too great for them to move to activate defensive weapons. One of the two hypervelocity missiles found him before he could complete his nearly amazing landing.

Jagort took small comfort in the demise of th
is particularly arrogant warrior, because he was delayed  in delivering his own second warning to the warriors in his dome. He’d seen his own fate approaching in the form of two more of the larger ground attack missiles. Not that he simply waited for them to arrive. He scrambled out of the watchstanders compartment at the top of the dome, enroute to the nearest stairwell, prepared to hurl himself down, trusting that his body would heal if he survived. Hurled he was, but not down. The blast behind him helped move him along. He impacted one of the transparent armored windows, leaving a large red splat before the concussion blew the window and his remains out over the tarmac. At least his day was over, and he wasn’t bored any longer.

****

Dillon expressed his first sense of relief. “We caught them flat footed. I’ve had this dreaded impression they were invulnerable.”

“Why?” Noreen was puzzled. “You and Tet caught them by surprise on your first combat team. They had no idea how different things would be, and they sent in an octet from a finger clan that had never seen a human, and was known for their brashness and aggressiveness. It meshed with the booby traps and remotely activated weapons we had built and
you left for them to trip over. Tet has surprised them again, by brashly attacking them where they couldn’t conceive we had the ability to do so, in a place they were sure we didn’t know existed. They had their pants down…, if Krall wore pants.”

“I guess.
Anyway, Carson has already started his teams down the stairs into the factory production complex under us. Yil is following a corridor towards the section where the stamp mills, foundries, and smelters are located, and Fred’s teams are headed for the hull assembly site, and weapons mounting stations. The only Prada they’ve seen have run from their voices, back into the labyrinth of the factory levels. Calling to them in low Krall has no effect, not when it came from an invisible person. Yil said he had to make himself visible to get any response at all, which then was running away in fear.”

Noreen had been following the progress of the fighting in the dome. 
“The teams inside have been killing Krall on sight. There appears to have been between fifty or sixty survivors that either were not on the top levels, or made it down ahead of the missiles. They encountered three that had donned their armor. It appears that we stay invisible to their visors, but we see them as ghost-like images, just like we see our own people with our helmets.”

“How have the Prada in their housing areas been handling the fighting? Without a forest to live i
n, they don’t have any trees to climb to get out of harm’s way.”

Noreen grimaced.
“They don’t dare come out of their compartments. The larger rooms were subdivided to hold multiple families. We have more living in the dome here than we expected. I hope that means there are fewer in the factories.

“
The Krall, unable to see
our people
, killed a few of the Prada that dared expose themselves in hallways. I called for the migration ships to start down. The two coming to load the Torki will be out over the water, and won’t have Krall to bother them. The Olts will let the Torki on the ships communicate with those in the lodges.” She reminded him of that unnecessarily, because she felt nervous that the plan was on track.

“
It’s the Prada here that will be hard to convince to come out. They don’t know who or what we are, they understandably fear us, and the damned Krall shoot them on sight when they move, since they can’t see us. We need those elder Prada to talk to them.”

“
Hon, I was busy talking with the factory teams and didn’t hear you make that call to the rescue ships. How many migration ships are landing total? Not all five of them, right?”

“No, only four. One is staying in high orbit
as backup, and I called for two to land here by the dome, on opposite sides, to speed the loading of Prada. Their population will outnumber the Torki by a factor of four or five. Presumably, fifteen to twenty thousand if the number of workers per factory stayed at close to three or four thousand, and then we add in their normally small families. We’ll have room to spare using two of those big ships, if we can just get them enough food. Two of the clanships Jumped to Haven as soon as I released them to go. We didn’t have any more targets for them after they shot down six shuttles, and we’ll need a lot more of those nasty looking grub worms.” She shivered, much as a Prada did when a human bit into a rare piece of rhinolo steak.

He
was down in the “catacombs,” as Carson continued to think of the factory levels he was prowling, directly below the dome. He had seen and “greeted” three Krall. One managed to shoot him in the back, before he whipped around and put a plasma bolt through his screaming mouth. The Krall’s plasma bolt had hit him in the center of his back, but at a glancing angle, which at first thought made Carson question the notoriously deadly aim of a warrior. It had deflected from his armor, and another TG2 confirmed there was nothing more than a faint scorch mark left behind.

“Yolanda, I was stealthed. Even if
the bolt was to the center of my back and not my helmet, how did he even spot me?”

She looked b
ack to where the dead Krall lay and noted steamy vapor jetting from an outlet valve of a press, which used heat and pressure to shape a hull or deck plate, and then used water to cool it down. “I think you walked through that stream of vapor. He saw the outline of your torso, and fired at the center of mass. If he’d used his head, and shot where yours is, we might not be having this conversation.” The grin wasn’t seen, but her tone certainly implied one was attached to her remark.

“Thanks.” He offered her a high five. Her visor saw his ghostly move and she reciprocated.

“No problem. Alyson asked us to keep you from doing anything stupidly heroic today. Shot in the ass isn’t heroic, so this doesn’t count.”

“It was
in the back…, not my…” he trailed off, because she had turned and walked away. He wondered how Alyson was doing.

He selected a team channel and cautioned everyone to be alert for ways they could
still be seen, such as the steam jet he’d passed through. Then he checked with the other team leaders, and passed that tidbit along. The catacomb thought he’d had earlier wasn’t very accurate. It was actually well lit down here, with thirty-foot ceilings, except where a larger piece of machinery needed greater height. The entire place was set up for Prada to climb over the machinery, using ropes and aerial walkways, similar to how they did it in the forest villages. They were trying to keep working as the intermittent fighting went on around them, as faithful servants of the “Rulers.”

However, the Prada couldn’t help but observe the mysterious plasma bolts that suddenly flared into existence from a point in space when
ever a Krall appeared nearby.

Sometimes, it was a red or green laser, which briefly flashed in the humid air. Those
beams also originated from a point in space, and then came again from a new point located a short distance away. The sound of faint footsteps might be heard between the shots. It didn’t require a leap of genius to know there were nearly invisible and aggressive intruders inside the factory. The intruders were behaving aggressively toward the Rulers only, and the Krall often fought clan-to-clan. The Krall that the workers
could
see, the particular clan of that “wiser” species they served, chose to kill some of the Prada today, for a reason their servants couldn’t understand.

Carson’s teams were placing their tamper proof explosives on the machinery Wister and other Prada on Haven had identified as critical for producing
complex and vital clanship components. Such as thruster engines and fuel control modules, Jump Drive components, weapons consoles and weapons, and other parts that made a clanship more than an armored shell.

If the flooding with
corrosive seawater proved successful, some of the planted explosives would be redundant. Other items, like giant presses, might be salvaged after the salt water was pumped out, so they were to be explosively converted to scrap.