Koban: Rise of the Kobani (91 page)

The shocker was what happened just before the assault force apparently landed (they had not seen them land, but the
faint sounds on the hull proved they were outside). One of the attacking ships had destroyed four of the hammers, which had required multiple orbits each to produce, one at a time. It had also inexplicably destroyed the gravity projectors that made forming the hammers possible. The most valuable thing remaining for Stodok clan to protect was their Torki workers, who they believed had the knowledge to rebuild the projectors (even if that was denied), and resume production. There also were still four hands of completed hammers stored in orbits around the three outer gas giants, and their moons.

It was obvious that their enemy
wanted the Torki alive, or else they could simply have fired missiles into the station. Now they were making the mistake of trying to take control of the facility, and they did not have a large enough force to do that. He had an octal
six hundred
warriors that had just spent a week practicing movements, and simulated combat up here. His warriors knew this station intimately. The normal complement of warriors posted here was two hands and rarely more than four hands, if there was an overlap for the day when duties were rotated. This miscalculation by the enemy would be the death of every warrior that burned their way into this station. They expected to meet only eight defenders, up to sixteen maximum. They were about to be hit by three hundred and eighty-four.

Two external cameras
at the main docking station had observed two pressure domes being placed on the outer hull, part way around the curve of the station. The cameras did not reveal who was moving them, probably due to the curvature. They were of a type new to Therdak and his octet leaders, but their purpose was clear. Similar to when a single ship’s pilot burned a hole in another ship’s hull during a boarding operation, the opening was sealed to avoid air loss. These boarders were using a sort of rigid dome of a tent that could hold more than a single Krall. However, only a limited number of attackers would fit inside one of them. Probably, a crowded octet of warriors at most. One octet at each of the six points of entry, counted by the external sounds of attachment, suggested the boarders numbered about forty-eight warriors.

Therdak had
already invoked the phrase “for Path and clan,” to express that no quarter was to be given, and no yielding to a superior force was acceptable. It was this same phrase, used too often in past interclan conflicts, which had brought the clan to such a low state, and loss of status. However, this time there really was no alternative, and all of his warriors knew this.

When the boarders were killed, h
e intended to exit through the openings they had made, to swarm and capture the enemy ship, which was loosely tethered to the station with its portals still open. They had to prevent that clanship from pulling away and firing on the station, and it was their only way down to the planet anyway, unless they waited for shuttles to come up and ferry them an octet at a time.

His warriors were
naturally all in armor, and some were waiting inside the six darkened compartments where the enemy had given away their intentions by the slight noises they made on the bulkheads. Clearly, they had not spent time practicing in the zero gravity outside, learning to move quietly. Burning through the hull would be the last successful thing they accomplished today. His massed warriors would kill them as they tried to enter, and then swarm out to take the ship, something they could never have anticipated.

The thermite,
as it ignited, imprinted a glowing heat signature ring that Therdak and his warriors could see on the inside walls. He was standing just outside the largest compartment being breached. The enemy obviously knew where the larger compartments were located, and probably had intended to slip in multiple warriors before surging out into the corridors to attack what they believed would be few opponents. He wanted the surprise for the intruders to be complete. He offered a reminder that shouldn’t be needed with these warriors.

“
Make certain you have already activated your energy packs, the enemy will hear them when you charge the plasma chambers and be warned of the ambush.” He snarled as he heard two packs whine as they came on.
Perhaps those two will die in the fighting
, he thought.
It would save me the trouble of killing them later.

He had thirty-two
warriors already inside this single storage compartment, and similar ambushes were set at the other five locations, prepared to fire from both sides into the openings, now being outlined in Infrared heat on the bulkhead. The burn-through seemed a bit slow, but perhaps it was their eagerness to do battle with a treacherous clan that made it seem slower. In any case, soon their charred corpses would be all that remained of the enemy.

There
was
a risk of depressurization, if his warriors punctured the air seal the enemy would be using outside, but his warriors were as protected as the enemy would be for vacuum combat. Even if pressure doors locked them inside the compartments by air loss, they would outnumber the enemy, blocking their advance. The cowardly crabs, which they needed alive, had been herded into central pressurized compartments, to preserve them for use after the fighting ended.

The sparks started to fly as various hot spots started to burn through. The spark color was different
from the material used on single ship boarding operations, and the opening was forming far slower than good tactics called for. The defenders had ample time to gather their forces to repel these inefficient invaders. They would learn the fatal errors of poor planning.

****

Sarge, checking the timer displayed on his visor, readied his thumb again, and warned the boarding teams to be ready to go. “Three seconds, and the breeching charges go.”

Time up, and
Sarge pressed the second contact on his remote, and six shaped explosive charges, placed on the center of each circle of hull section that should have nearly burned through by now, were triggered. The exploding breech charges flung the two-inch thick plates inward, against the internal atmospheric pressure. The vacuum of the rigid tent frames was instantly filled by a portion of the escaping air, and several vents in the tents permitted even some of that to escape. The venting would continue for a second or two before closing, to make certain the pressure loss inside caused the compartment doors to automatically seal.

Sarge pressed the third actuator, and said calmly on the general push frequency, “Let’s go people. We have Krall to kill.”

****

Therdak had positioned his warriors away from the expected inward blast of the hull sections, standing off to the sides. They were instructed to hold fire until the enemy started through the breeches. The instant drop in press
ure was anticipated, as air rushed out to fill the containment domes the enemy was using. However, the domes apparently were not sealed properly, because the air pressure registered on his visor continued to drop rapidly. The automatic doors slammed shut, sealing his warriors inside with the outnumbered enemy, who would be pouring through the breech and into a hail of plasma bolts.

Through the
thick door panel, Therdak heard the sizzle-crack of multiple plasma bolts being fired as his warriors sprang their ambush. The enemy must be coming through the opening, dying as they did so.

There was a puzzling momentary pause
in firing, before a series of rapid, loud explosions caused the door panel in front of him to not only bulge outwards slightly, but it and the corridor wall panels rang with the sound of metallic hail. He noted that the heavy pressure door had small bumps randomly scattered around its surface, and the sounds of plasma rifles couldn’t be heard.

An insightful octet leader, at the second door along the corridor, shouted out the answer. “Fragment explosion!”

“The enemy sacrificed themselves as well?” Therdak couldn’t believe the invading warriors would die without trying to fight their way through. He promptly received a rush of reports from the sub leaders he’d sent to the other five compartments. They had heard the same self-destructive explosion by the invaders, and the now unresponsive warriors inside with them must be dead.

The enemy, outnumbered, had apparently blown themselves up with the ambushers, rather than die in honorable combat. Such cowardice
and dishonor was inexplicable, more so than a clan attacking them when the council had forbidden such acts. The raid had a logical goal, even if the act were forbidden. The mass suicides, when honorable deaths were available, were foreign to a Krall’s way of thinking. Why did they choose to die that way?

There
was no time for indecision. The compartment door here was jammed shut, and it would require long minutes to open anyway with a vacuum on the other side. The same must be true at the other five sites. His six assault forces, poised in the outer corridors to join those in the compartments, couldn’t swarm out through the breeches just opened, to overrun the clanship as he had planned.

He gave his orders to all six groups. “Move to the nearest cargo dock and go out that way, we have to reach the clanship before it pulls away.” It wasn’t much of a chance but it was the fastest option left to him. As it happened, it wasn’t an option at all.

Therdak tapped his com set shoulder button, and called ahead to the hand of warriors he’d left watching each of the six locked and coded docking station doors. “Start the cycle to open the large airlocks. We need to get as many warriors as possible outside quickly, to capture the enemy clanship.”

There was no acknowledgement. He suddenly questioned why the boarding points had all been located in equal distances between the six cargo docking stations. The plasma bolts he heard fired from around the wide curve of the circular corridor gave him the clue he’d been missing. The clumsily implemented burn-through points were a diversion, used to pull the most forces away from the normal entrances,
which Krall boarding tactics always avoided anyway.

Somehow, they had entered and killed his door guards by surprise
. The enemy still couldn’t know how many were in the unexpectedly large force on this station, though he probably had lost close to a hundred ninety warriors inside those death trap compartments. He still had two hundred warriors to defend Stodok honor. They would wipe this foul clan from the station. In combat, the Krall were nearly always optimistic.

****

“How the hell many of them are up here?” Sarge wondered aloud, to himself since he had not
thought
to the suit to transmit to any of his squad leaders.

He had no way of knowing yet that they had killed far more warriors in each breeched compartment than they had expected to be posted on the entire orbital station. That serendipitous slaughter was courtesy of his Poldark experiences, of luring the enemy into poking their noses where they were sure they were safe. He’d packed ten modern “smart” grenades in each of six plastic buckets, one per breech point. These were some he’d had Tet obtain through General Nabarone. He’d had no idea what he might do with them, but having them was sure to spark his imagination. They had.

Each bucket of ten grenades was radio slaved to a “master” igniter grenade, and the bucket was attached by cable to a plate quick-glued to the bulkhead they were burning open. The breech charge blew in the circular section of hull, the bucket followed on the attached cable spilling the grenades. The master grenade in each bucket had a pin that was pulled as the bucket left the pressure tent. The nine other slave grenades were set for different but close intervals to detonate after the master grenade was activated. The compartments were suddenly filled with thousands of ricocheting depleted uranium pellets for several seconds. A simple and effective way to clear an area of enemy combatants, and no human had to be there.

Afterwards, when the assault teams discovered that all six large airlocks had four guards apiece, he realized that the number was already far more than the Torki had estimated would be here. He damn well wasn’t going to trust their estimates any farther.

The airlock guards were more than mildly surprised when the coded locks failed to prevent the sudden opening of the smaller personnel entry doors, off to the side of the large cargo airlocks. The station was a refurbished holdover from the Botolians, which was where they made their own, much smaller, collapsed matter spheres, for firing from a linear magnetic accelerator at attacking Krall ships. No ordinary armor could stand up to the Balls, and if heavier armor did, the Ball fractured and exploded with the power of a tactical nuke.

The quantum-encrypted locks for the outer doors had been added by the Torki at Krall insistence. The Torki, from data contained in the Olts, explained how to
disconnect
the locks, which used unbreakable quantum codes on the Botolian doors. The dead race had not used complex locks on either their airlocks or external personnel doors for themselves, and they were simple mechanical releases, once the added-on complex Krall devices were physically disconnected. The Torki had done what they were ordered to do, place an encrypted mechanism on the mechanical latch system. For thousands of years the locks had served the Krall purpose, to lock out unauthorized and unimaginative Krall.