Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (35 page)

They heard the triple thunderclap as the space planes roared by them at low level. They were climbing and turning away over the far ridge, separating for in-line passes by each of the three Shadows. Greeves looked out a window as he picked up a wounded man in a bear hug, who then continued fire over Greeves’ shoulder, down the stairwell as he was lifted.

The turbulent air behind the passing Shadow fighters distorted the image of the opposite walls of the ridge, almost three miles away, but the stealthed craft were visually nearly invisible. They used Trap fields for Normal Space drives, so they left no visible ion trail from thrusters.

Without hesitation, Spartan ordered everyone to head for level six, no stopping in between. “Level six, level six. Go. No stopping. All the sappers too, finished or not. Move up with us to level six. We have three Shadows about to strafe the lower floors. Let’s not be here when they do.”

The demolition men had initially started their work at level three, so they were all farther above them by now, but they had not finished placing charges on levels four and five. No matter, they were out of time, and the Krall were gradually cutting them down. Spartan saw he had lost four more of his men, based on icon count.

Kobani in armor, with helmet mounted energy beam weapons, were able to look down and fire while their hands were free to climb. That made use of the elevator shafts easier. However, with Krall now on level two and three, some were trying to fire their plasma rifles up the shafts without exposing themselves. The much faster reacting and more accurate Kobani shooters tended to discourage warriors from poking their heads into the shaft to see their targets, a usually fatal mistake when they tried. Some just poked their rifle through the openings for a quick shot without aiming, which was safer, but literally a potentially disarming event for them. An arm being shot and disabled was bad enough, but if their rifle was destroyed, they had to retreat to salvage a weapon from their dead. There were far more Krall dead in this attack than there were enemy bodies. That was
not
something they had ever encountered when fighting humans.

Their losses put them into a reckless berserkers rage, firing blind up the lift shafts. Not a terribly effective tactic. Nevertheless, two spec ops were hit by multiple random bolts while in the open shafts. One simply dropped quietly to the bottom, apparently already dead. The other man, stunned, was grabbed by another Kobani as his limp form brushed against him as he started to fall. That rescuer easily slung him up through the fifth floor elevator opening and followed him out, to carry him up to level six via the stairs. The landings between floors gave them better protection from shots from below anyway, so the elevator shafts were avoided after that.

As they collected themselves on the sixth floor, firing down through the narrow gaps between railings and steps, and tossing the few grenades they pulled from the waists of some of the wounded, they watched and waited to see what the Shadows could do to help them now.

Greeves called the flight leader. “Cobra 1, we’ve gathered everyone on level six, you should see our icons as you approach.”

“Colonel, I have a zoom image, and I see two suit icons on level one. Do you have wounded there?”

“Not that we can recover. We brought all the wounded we could find up with us. Those men are dead the slow way if the Krall check on them. You have a free fire zone below our level. How precise can you aim?”

“Beams are under AI control and dead on. The guns are aimed by us, and we’ll stay below level five. We’ve slowed, and are in line now, coming right at you. I hope the building structure can take all the damage. This is going to be harsh.”

“Hell, you may help us take this sucker down. That’s what we intend to do. Don’t hold back on our account.”

“Roger that. Hold onto your hats.”

The contrails showed as blurred circles in the sky, as the Shadows approached straight at them, moving only three hundred miles per hour to allow more time on target.

The first aircraft passed over the far ridge and snapped down so quickly into low-level flight, at mere feet above the terrain, that it almost appeared to have nosed into the ground.

The pilot, being Kobani, could handle far greater inertial forces and accelerations than a Normal human could endure. The airframe and wings had been ordered reinforced as well, over the objections of the engineers of the company that made them. It was pointless weight, they said, for a craft that no pilot could possible overstress enough need that strength.

Beams lanced out in front of the first Shadow, and flying so low the ravening beams passed through the building parallel to the floors, striking inner walls and furniture, to eventually burn spots on the cliff on the opposite side. The AI was flickering them precisely between the lower five floors, to burn through the thinner interior walls, and avoiding what the penetrating radar returns indicated were structural support beams.

The warriors, having heard the first pass down the valley, had been watching for the aircraft to return. They lined up behind the vertical steel beams of whatever level they were on, as protection from the lasers and plasma bolts, or laid horizontally between levels, where the cross beams would offer similar shielding. They fired their plasma rifles at the center of the swirl of turbulence, hoping to damage the obviously stealthed craft firing on them.

The Krall bolts were easily deflected off the slender and pointed nose of the craft. It had the same Torki made material coating of the Kobani body armor, with its quantum level spectrum control for making the surface highly reflective (or absorbent if that were needed) of nearly any energy level of impinging radiation, striking at any angle.

Cobra 1, observing the structural beams of the building using ground-penetrating radar, noted the return fire coming from behind the beams. Now he knew exactly where most of the Krall were located, as anticipated. The tungsten carbide coated depleted uranium slugs, fired from a forward mounted railgun under the nose, was a perfect weapon for the present situation. In fact, the gun had partly been designed with similar situations in mind. The Krall were master fighters and survivors. They were known to quickly, and instinctively, find the best available cover, as they always fired back at the enemy.

At three hundred miles per hour, he had barely thirty seconds to act, which for a Kobani was like a leisurely five minutes to anyone else. The pilot centered his targeting reticle on the largest central beam. He used his suit’s visor to link to the gun sight, and sent his firing command mentally. Three different times he did that, for single shots. He could have sent a
fusillade
of slugs, but he’d intentionally tried to keep the structure standing for the men he was trying to help. The three slugs maintained an amazingly tight cluster. The first punched right through the heavy steel beam, and damaged by the impact, it promptly tumbled and ripped through the body armor pressed close to its backside. In fact, it tore through the chests of four of the Krall that had assumed they were protected.

The second slug nearly passed through the same hole and was deflected slightly, but did not tumble. Not at first. It punched more or less cleanly through the same four warriors, who had not yet had time to fall more than a few millimeters. It also passed through the next three warriors, the slug accumulating more damage from impacts before it too was deformed and started to tumble. This deflected projectile only ripped off an armored arm near the shoulder of the next warrior in line as it spun and whined through the building.

The third slug passed cleanly through the two inch wide hole in the steel, and drilled its way through the same seven front warriors, and five more before it was deflected enough to miss the next ten Krall pressed close together. Those front-most Krall died before they knew they were hit, because it happened so quickly. Those that were only wounded, because a torso perforation for a Krall was usually survivable, suddenly knew that clustering behind a steel beam was a remarkably bad idea, at least when a railgun was firing a diamond hard, extremely dense slug at you.

Firing more slugs would have risked severing that main structural support member at the third floor level, with all of the weight of the seven floors above pressing down. He’d warned Greeves that there was a risk to the entire building. Cobra 2 and 3 had been told to aim at different support elements on different levels.

As Cobra 1 lifted sharply to rise over the ridge behind Novi Pazar Lodge, he radioed to Cobra 3 that his AI should be instructed to seek out and target the several hundred warriors spread out over the ground in front of the building. Most already seemed dead, but with their suit stealth active, it was difficult to know. The Krall were highly unlikely to be playing dead if they could still fight, and several dozen had fired on him as he flew above them, moving at a slow enough speed that they would find it a leisurely pass, slow enough so that he deliberately invited their fire.

Cobra 2 had stayed far enough behind number 1 to allow him to make a faster approach, quickly overtaking the leader crossing the valley, thus reducing the increased fire to which he naturally expected to be exposed, by now better-informed Krall, thanks to their first unpleasant experience with Shadow fighters. This gap gave the Krall time to start to shift positions in the building, away from standing behind supports. The AI found a richer target field for its approach, but because it was a bit higher, the bottom two floors were better shielded from his energy beams.

Cobra 3’s run killed, and in many cases double killed, the over three hundred sets of Krall armor faintly outlined by films of soot and dust. In several dozen cases, better targets were identified from plasma fire aimed at his faster moving Shadow. The origin points of those bolts were nearly all eliminated, because an AI thinks much faster than even a Kobani, and a thousand times faster than a Krall can pull back behind their cover.

Like Cobra 2, his railgun slugs found a handful of Krall lying flat on the floors behind some of the steel pillars, apparently thinking fewer smaller targets behind the heavy beams would make them safer. He demonstrated eleven times that even a low profile single target was more than inviting enough to these pilots. The energy beams also picked off fifteen scrambling warriors, but most of them had retreated to the bottom floors, or moved to the backside of the resort, close to the cliff, making them more difficult and concealed targets.

Heartened by the results, Greaves asked, “Cobra 1, can you make a couple more of those passes?”

“Colonel that had been our plan. However, two other of our flights took out three more clanships blocking the pass exits, and strafed clumps of warriors moving into the mountains towards you. They must have told Gatlek Pendor we have our aerial cover active, and a swarm of single ships has lifted. They’re headed for all eight major fronts. We’ve been ordered towards Novi Sad Sir. Sorry.”

“Thanks for your help Cobra flight. I owe you a drink. We still have our fallback plan to try, and you have improved the odds of it working. Good hunting.”

The three fighters completed a circle overhead as they formed up again, and made a final high pass over them as they streaked west, leaving a sonic boom to chase them through the mountains, as they went to meet the swarm of single ships.

“Lieutenant, did your men get enough of the charges planted do you think? The Krall also heard our air cover leave. We need to keep as many of these warriors as we can from reaching the ridge top. You have any plan better than the one I proposed?”

“No Sir. My men haven’t had time to place any charges on level seven, and they only did half of level five’s support beams before we were pushed out. They managed better on this one, level six. Thanks to the extra time those Shadows gave us.

“Colonel, I think we may only be outnumbered by thirty to one now.” Spartan wore a lopsided grin, invisible inside his helmet. “Can I suggest we jump only sixty-feet rather than seventy? With each of us sharing some of the wounded?”

“Sure, level seven was only a best guess. I hadn’t factored in so many wounded so it’s tougher moving up a level now. We can’t be sure how many floors will come down when the charges blow.”

Spartan nodded and made his decision, broadcasting to the entire unit. “We’re jumping from level six. At least two men per wounded to cushion them. Everyone move to the east balconies, sappers have your actuators ready. You will trigger the floors as we pass them on the way down. Ten seconds from now.”

They could hear the Krall thundering up the lower level steps, firing ahead of their progress. A spy bot showed the forefront of the enraged hoard on level four, a few already reaching level five.

The wounded were supported between two men each, and several seriously injured troopers had three helpers. At ten feet per level, they had sixty feet to drop to reach the ground. They had chosen the side with the smoothest and most evenly landscaped, boulder free surface.

“On my mark.” Spartan paused only a second, as he fired on the first dusty Krall helmet he saw peek over the stair lip. “Jump!”

Every surviving spec ops trooper, with Greeves and Reynolds helping support a wounded man between them, made a running leap over the low balcony walls, and jumped at least thirty feet out into space from the sixth floor.

No sooner had their heads dropped below the floor the first charges on the sixth level were manually triggered. Debris from the explosives blasted out horizontally just above them, and obscured the fact to arriving Krall that their enemy had left the building, rather than again having retreated up to the next level.