Koban: Rise of the Kobani (94 page)

That turned out probably to be the case, because the clanship stayed suborbital, and flew the several thousand miles to the shipyard dome, which had just appeared over the horizon for the Mark.

Mirikami decided it was time to move down closer. “OK, staying this high makes for a longer orbital period, and I don't see anything unusual happening. Jakob.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Take us down to two hundred miles, and do it before we pass the shipyards this first time around.”

The ship rotated, and as thrusters fired, Mirikami gave the entire crew an update. “We don’t see any unusual activity and we’re dropping lower, as your monitors will show. A clanship just went to the dome at the shipyards, and…, I can see there was another one already parked there. We’ll not take them out on this pass because I want to see the whole planet at least once. Missile loaders stand by your launchers for reloads. If everything looks good, on the next pass over the main habitat, things will be a bit more interesting.”

Just as planned for CS2 and the Eight Ball raid, they would knock out all of the clanships on a single, fast, low orbit, and pound the main dome on the same pass. With the lighter warheads, more of the anti-ship missiles would be needed to cause heavy damage to a dome over four thousand feet across and six hundred feet high. For the smaller dome at the shipyard, where the Prada occupied the lower levels, blasting the top Krall-used levels was all they intended to do anyway.

When they passed the shipyards, they saw five Krall, the same number they saw enter the ship that just landed, make the standard run into the dome.

Mirikami, dwelling on how open the Krall star systems were to infiltration by trusted spacecraft, thought this month might be the last time such clanships would be able to arrive unexpectedly over a Krall planet, and not be challenged or required to transmit some sort of coded reply to an electronic interrogation. The clanships were capable of this, as the Torki had shown them, but the Krall had rarely used the feature except in cases of authorized interclan warfare. The clanships humans captured would be set up to operate this way when arriving at the Koban system in the future.

Ethan, still conducting ground surveillance, said. “In the shipyards, there are a half dozen hulls that are half-built or greater, sitting in the cradles, and three more that appear almost ready to fly. I zoomed in on some of the Prada workers, and they are wearing filter masks. The brown-gray haze at low altitudes is thick around the shipyards and foundries. As I look towards the horizon in any direction, I see the haze is everywhere. There’s no reason the mining and other industry couldn’t have been done with scrubbers and filters to keep the air and water cleaner.”

His father shrugged. “Planets have little value to Krall, you should know that. That’s why they rape, use, and abandon them. Here they simply moved the clan to another cleaner world, and left an outpost to protect their interests and to keep the slaves working.”

Mirikami was pulling at his lip. “There must be a swath of habitable but ruined worlds anywhere the Krall have been. Have you noticed how few domes, even old abandoned ones we have found on any of their worlds? We have only just started looking at worlds inside the space they control, but I’m seriously wondering how many of the Krall there are? The ones we Mind Tapped didn’t know, since there’s no census. They can breed like fleas, but they may be self-limiting in a sense, with their fixation on culling the weakest and breeding only the best.”

“Tet, Coldar said according to Torki Olt records of races they have beaten, they have killed hundreds of billions, if not trillions. It seems logical to think they could only do that with a large population of their own.”

“I thought so too, Thad, but look at what a few thousand of us are doing to them now, assuming that we
can
seriously slow their war with us.  It could be that they too have only had a spear point of warriors all along, and didn’t need much infrastructure or population to keep going. An army of ten billion super warriors is far more than the human race has, even with our trillion in population. The Hub’s military forces are still below forty-five million, and about half of them are support personnel, not soldiers.

“If humanity can hold out and keep building forces and we win, we will have a great deal of habitable space to move into, even if we share some of it with the Torki, and Prada. Perhaps even share with the Raspani if we can put them back on the road to intelligence.”

Thad sounded doubtful. “Places like this will need a lot of recuperation to be habitable again.”

Mirikami nodded. “This world and CS2 may be worse case situations. The Prada and Torki say some worlds the Krall left with nests that ran amok, and hatchlings and feral adults ate every animal they could reach until they can only eat themselves. When the last of them die off, the plant life would support an introduction of new herbivores and grazers, and then the predators that eat them. Terraforming has been done many times.” He paused, and put on a sly grin.

“But, let’s not count our worlds before the hatchlings are dead, shall we?”

“Tet, you’ve been taking pun lessons from Dillon!” Thad accused.

“Can’t help it. It rubs off on you.”

As the ship moved around the planet, there were numerous strip mines sighted, partly automated, with transportation links that required minimal Prada direct supervision. However, it pointed out a tragic problem for the rescue. They could not take the time to try to rescue all of the Prada, spread so wide. As they again orbited towards the main habitat dome, Jakob suddenly made an announcement of some concern to them.

“Two clanships have performed a White Out together, at two thousand miles from the planetary surface, almost four thousand miles behind us.”

Mirikami spoke quickly. “I think those must be ours. Our new captains won’t know how to use the friend-from-foe interrogation and reply capability. Are they transmitting anything?”

“Yes, one ship is sending an encrypted message, saying they each have air to ground missiles, and request direction from you.”

“Damn. There wasn’t any other way for them to ask me?  An encrypted message will be detected by the Krall. That might raise questions, particularly with three unknown and unexpected clanships arriving this close together. I should have waited for them and delivered instructions before the Jump.”

Thad let him know that their firing run was already programed. “I have all of the parked clanships, and the dome targeted. If our people have enough of the larger missiles, they can take out the dome for us. We need to hit those parked ships quickly, in any case. That’s where any return fire will originate.”

“Ethan, tell them both to move in fast and unload on the dome from two hundred miles. We’re well ahead of them.  I’m going to make the Krall think the Mark is landing. That will make us seem less likely to be up to no good.”

“Yes Sir.”

“Jakob, make our flight path look more like a typical Krall pilot’s landing. You have enough recordings of what they usually look like.”

“I can try, Sir, but most Krall pilots like to come in vertically, fast, and apply hard thrust near the end. Should I go higher?”

“No, but boost speed, and then rotate and brake hard, as if we are landing. We will break off at twenty miles over the dome and climb out to orbit again.”

“Yes Sir.”

The thrust was immediate, and they leaped ahead.

“Thad, kill the dome launches by us of course. Fire on the tarmac ships when we reach twenty miles overhead and Jakob has rotated to return to orbit.”

“Will do.”

For the next minute, they accelerated at two hundred miles up, then the ship turned tail and applied hard thrust, wasting an excessive amount of fuel, exactly like Krall pilots did. They soon rotated to vertical, and started down at an altitude of fifty miles, nearly over the dome and tarmac.

“Captain,” Ethan called to him. “About a dozen Krall came out as we approached, but when we rotated tail first for landing, they must have caught sight of our thruster glow, slowing hard. They stopped and looked, and are going back into the dome. I think you will get a harsh reprimand for flying worse than the average Krall, Sir.”

Chuckling, despite feeling tense, he answered, “I hope the reprimand doesn’t include my weapons officer missing any of his designated targets.”

“We’ll know in less than a minute, Captain.” Thad answered. “My range finder says we are at twenty-five miles.” For an optimum firing angle, Thad needed to wait for the AI to increase thrust and lay the ship into a roughly forty-five degree angle as it started to climb from a twenty mile altitude. The short range and missile velocity meant there would be little arcing needed to turn them towards the targets, and there would be mere seconds before impact.

The ship jolted as all fifteen missiles launched from the same five, lower side launchers, in three rapid firings, only one second apart from five launch tubes.

Unnecessarily, Thad said, “Missiles away.”

In the next five seconds, the tarmac repeated the orange and black fiery spectacles that had blossomed on CS2 and the Eight Ball planet. The Mark of Koban was climbing and accelerating to enter a low and fast suborbital course to get to the shipyards as quickly as possible. There were two more clanships to reduce to scorched scrap metal as quickly as possible.

Ethan’s startled exclamation gave them a frightful heart stopping moment. “Holy crap! Look at that plot!”

Mirikami, strapped into his couch couldn’t see the console screen in front of Ethan very well. “Put it on a big screen.” He pointed to one.

A glance and he agreed with Ethan. “Jakob, how the hell many are there?”

“How many what, Sir?”

“Missiles!”

“Counting those we fired and have detonated?” AI’s could be so literal.

“No. The ones targeting the dome, damn it!”

“Oh. That would be eighty-eight, Sir. Forty-four from each of our fellow clanships.”

“Yee gods,” Thad muttered.

“Ethan, what did you tell those two captains?” Mirikami demanded.

Sheepishly, and more than a little defensive, he told him, “Exactly what you said to me, Sir.” With his TG2 memory he was absolutely certainly he’d heard him right.

Mirikami, his own TG2 memory just as sharp, suddenly turned red in the face.

Thad played his own memory back of the half listened to words.

He exploded into laughter. “They fired every single one they had on board.”

Mirikami, recovering his composure grimaced. “It was a figure of speech. I didn’t literally mean for them
to unload on the dome
! Ten rockets would have been plenty.”

The subsequent explosions rumbled, one after another, for what seemed like a full sixty seconds, lasting for the extended time it had taken the ships to launch that many missiles. Finely divided fragments of the structure fell back, only to be ripped again by additional high-powered explosions. The granulated debris finally settled into a smoking, sunken looking pit at the center, with the upper dome struts having flown out over the tarmac and escaped being pulverized.

Thad, amused by the results shouted out in declarative sentences. “Sir! Shipyards in sight. Two clanships on the tarmac! How many missiles for each, Sir? We only have eighty- five left, Sir!”

Mirikami gave him a sour look, and held up two fingers. Too embarrassed and annoyed to speak.

Continuing in his loud military speak, Thad asked, “Two missiles apiece, Sir? Seems like overkill, Sir!” Thad was enjoying this rare slip by the famously near infallible captain.

In a false threat, Mirikami answered, “If you fire four missiles, I’ll send you into that damned dome alone and unarmed.”

“Yes Sir. One missile each.” He fired them. As they streaked towards their targets, he added. “One unarmed Kobani against all those Krall? Seems terribly unfair to me. The Krall might complain.”  He and Ethan laughed, and finally Mirikami chuckled with them.

Before they passed over the second dome, with the fireballs still rising from the last two clanships on the planet, Thad put four anti-ship missiles into the upper levels. Their other two clanships passed above them as this was done, still in a two hundred mile high orbit, and requested instructions.

On the verge of forcing Thad to talk to them, Mirikami realized his two captains were former Drive Rats, and had not asked questions when the legendary Mirikami told them what to do. After all, they had Jumped into the teeth of things here with no knowledge of what they might face. They had volunteered to help steal the clanships, and then expected to fly only supply missions. Now they had a combat story to tell when they got back to Koban.

“Captains, I appreciate your help. I’d like to thank you by name if you would be so kind as to furnish them. Did the migration ships arrive before you Jumped here?”

“Sir, this is Francois Lebeau, and I have christened my ship the Pride of Gaul. The first migration ship did a White Out while we were enroute here. One of the other new ships did a short in-system Jump at the waypoint to send me a message in Tachyon Space. Carlos
Fuentes
, the captain of the Florence is a friend of mine and we were Drive Rats together.  We learned we were able to make the mental connection when we do Jumps. He thinks the other four migration ships will be there soon.”