Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (44 page)

Now Mel was intrigued, based only on the half of the conversation he could hear. Cal appeared to be speaking with a Torki via its Olt and his Comtap. That meant that since they were in Jump status, the Torki had to be aboard the ship, apparently as a stowaway. How in hell a five-foot wide, purple and yellow giant crab could sneak aboard and not be seen by the AI or the troops he didn’t know.

Suddenly, Cal’s conversation grew less interesting when Mel received his own questions, from what seemed like several Torki, one of which spoke in the clicks, clacks, and scritches of its native language. One of them, speaking Standard, managed to get the other two Torki to stay quiet, and it gave its name.

“I am Githram, and we are on the clanship that has a human named Captain Greeves as the pilot. We have departed Philodor, and we heard two messages on our Olts, sent to humans named Alyson and Carson, but not addresses properly. We were not trying to overhear, but you sent the communication without a recipient designated. All four of us received your messages just after we left Philodor. You must be close to us or we could not hear you.”

Two human voices, standing on stairway number four on the Mark of Koban, with the same degree of incredulity, said nearly simultaneously, “Philodor?”

Cal felt like tapping his head to clear up a bad connection. How was he linking to a Torki located on the Beagle? He’d now shared words with several different Torki, and clearly so had Mel he discovered, when he touched his hand for a quick Mind Tap.

Cal asked, “Bitdar, has the Beagle entered a Jump Hole?” There was no answer.

Mel tried using the name he’d heard. “Githram, can you still receive me?” Also no answer.

Breakfast forgotten, the two men compared a flashing series of Tap messages, sharing everything they each had received.

Cal summarized, “The entire group, apparently four different Torki, received both of our messages. I sent one to Alyson, and you targeted Carson. These four Torki each heard us both. I don’t know how our flash messages would reach aliens that we don’t even know. We can't even broadcast to any other Tapper on a ship if we don’t know them. Only those we target and know personally. These crabs obviously heard us via their Olts, but they have to be out of range of our Comtap chips.”

Mel offered an observation. “The one named Githram said we sent our first messages without a recipient designated. That’s what we do when we want to speak to a specific Torki or Raspani, designate them as a recipient when using our new chips. We think of the individual we mean to reach. We mentally did that for Alyson and Carson for a Mind Tap, but our Comtap chips don’t know who they are since they don’t have a chip to address. Our devices might only know that they are on the Beagle. Perhaps that made everyone on the ship open to what we sent.”

Cal shook his head. “Marlyn was only taking a single Torki with her, one Raspani and one Prada. All four of the Torki we heard came from Philodor, and we don’t know them or their chip addresses.”

“Cal, we are both so flustered that we keep treating this as a normal link with Olts. They are much more than a hundred light years away, and this wasn’t a flash receipt of a static message, as we normally have. It was a live, interactive conversation!”

“Damn, you’re right. Let’s get back to the Bridge and Tap this to Tet and Dillon. They’ll never understand what we mean if we try to explain this by voice link on transducer.”

They had leaped back up only a single deck when they each heard the voice of Bitdar return. “Human Cal and human Mel. I am chosen to be the speaker for this exchange. I apologize for our not answering your calls to us a short time ago. We have been explaining this strange long-range Olt connection to Captain Greeves. She has requested that either of you relay her words, to a human named Captain Mirikami.”

Mel, as the former senior Steward, a position that no longer had legitimate standing, nevertheless took the lead out of past habit. “Please tell Captain Greeves we are already on the way to the Bridge to meet with Captain Mirikami.”

Without realizing it, he mirrored Marlyn’s feelings when he added. “It’s going to be great to see
him
surprised for once!”

Thad and Sarge approached Noreen in Prime City’s Great Hall, where she was eating lunch with some of her crew. “Chief Haveram and the Falcon just returned,” he informed her.

“He made contact before he landed at Hub City’s dome to offload. We know where Pendor took his fleet after it departed Poldark. I mean besides the stopover at K1 for replacement clanships and warriors. A fast courier from Earth reached Poldark just before the Falcon Jumped home, to report that New Dublin had been invaded two weeks ago. The Chief relayed the news as soon as he made his White Out.”

Noreen was surprised at the unexpected Krall target. “Wow. That’s a quarter of the way around Human Space from Poldark. I’d have guessed they would hit another Rim world or New Colony close to Poldark. Such as New Australia, or Khartoum’s Destiny. I doubt there was much in the way of ground forces at Dublin, or any navy presence there. This is out of character from the Krall’s other three invasions, and I don't recall hearing of any recent raids on Dublin.”

“Sarge and I talked about it on the walk over from The Flight of Fancy. We think this is part of a new strategy by Kanpardi. To prove that despite our attacks on their war production worlds, they still have the resources to reach and hit any of our worlds they want. New Dublin only had one of the standard ten thousand strong PU army Quick Response units, which would be spread among cities around the planet to repel raiders.

“For a major invasion, the PU Army has prepositioned several million troopers among a half dozen planets on the side of the Hub area closest to where they anticipated a new attack. The government, basically, predicted the next strike would be on the Rim and not very far from Poldark. They had hundreds of ships available to ferry troops and material to wherever they struck, to try to make establishing a foothold difficult for the Krall. They now have lost a critical month because of the need to shift their reserve forces twice as far as expected.”

Thad shook his head in confusion. “Bollovstic, Greater West Africa, and Poldark were all within a hundred twenty light years of each other. Like you, I’d have bet on another world in the same sector to be their most obvious target, and easiest to supply. Even when we have been prepared to meet them, the Krall have never avoided a head on confrontation with our strongest forces. As you said, Noreen, this seems different. Kanpardi is thinking outside the box compared to how they’ve behaved in the past. I wonder if Tet had any suspicions they’d do something this different. He’s been good at anticipating them.”

Noreen shook her head. “If Tet had suspected something like this, he’d have found a way to pass along the information to the Hub military, perhaps through Nabarone again. He wouldn’t be off looking at K1, scouting for a raid on their stockpiled supplies if he’d had an idea where the fleet that came off Poldark was going next. I think Kanpardi has stolen a page from our playbook, and finally did the unexpected. He’s getting crafty. I hope it isn’t catching on with any other Krall war leaders.”

****

Gatlek Pendor didn’t feel particularly crafty right now. He wasn’t pleased that the Tor Gatrol had come to look over his shoulder at how the invasion was going. Admittedly, there had been a few glitches in establishing the landing zone, despite the small size of the enemy forces to oppose him, and the apparent total surprise of their arrival.

The humans had simply been lucky, he told Kanpardi. He didn’t think it was his choice of landing site, which had helped the human’s small force to initially bottle up his warriors as they fought to get their equipment landed and deployed. How was he to know that he would need his defense shield so quickly after landing? The scouting images of six months ago had also not shown this valley to be so mired in mud. He had been confident that his warrior’s assault capability would quickly knock the unprepared humans right off their talon-less, blunt toed feet with days of landing.

The need for time to assemble mini-tanks, armored transports, and to distribute body armor from central supply ships to his newest warriors from K1, which were the first he chose to land, had drawn a surprising level of intense fire from the lighter human force, within an hour of touchdown. His K’Tal, working without adequate protection or defensive counter fire, had proven surprisingly slow at completing their assembly tasks, what with mortars, artillery, plasma bolts, lasers, and rail gun slugs putting holes in them and their partly assembled equipment. How was Pendor expected to have anticipated this level of response from their prey?

Thinking it was wise to rest his experienced warriors, just removed from intense combat as they left Poldark, Pendor had sent down his newest warriors collected from K1. The majority of those fresh warriors were eager but relatively untested near novices, with only limited raider experience.

They didn’t even have their own custom fitted body armor with them. They landed with nothing but uniforms, plasma rifles, ammunition, and Krall speed and instincts to keep them safe until they reached the ships packed with body armor. At those ships, they waited while the K’Tal helped them fit the new armor to them individually. Under constant fire from nearby ridges. The experienced troops Pendor was “resting” in orbit had just come from the battlefield, and they were prepared to immediately step back onto one.

The human troops, situated on the heights above the valley, quickly saw where the “bare” warriors were congregating, and directed extra firepower there. That would only delay the time when they knew the hundreds of thousands of Krall still to come, would sweep them back from their present vantage points. They intended to delay them, and make them pay while they could.

The wide flat valley Pendor selected for his landing, surrounded by high ridges on three sides, seemed a good defensive position to Pendor from his scouting reports. Of course, he’d thought it would be his warriors holding the heights and firing down on the human forces and cities.

There were two large human nest areas, on opposite sides of the surrounding ridges and in striking distance for his warriors he had decided, when he chose this spot. It was surely only pure chance the enemy had so many troops close, and ready to quickly move them onto those ridge tops, to fire down on his K’Tal as they worked to assemble his strike force’s equipment.

He had expected to use the firepower of his grounded clanships to keep the enemy at bay, without giving a thought as to how to disburse them in the valley when they landed. Allowing the sub leaders of different clans to cluster their own ships close to one another caused those in the inner areas of those groups to be partially blocked from directing the maximum plasma and laser fire on the higher terrain all around them.

The single ships he’d brought with him for air cover, the very ones he had struggled to preserve from the highly effective Shadow fighters on Poldark, were still in their slots on clanships in orbit. They could have been down here harassing the armored human troops on their exposed ridge tops. The delay in arrival of Krall airpower only helped the humans to hold out days longer, while distant PU reinforcements were started towards New Dublin, along with newly emboldened Naval forces. A carrier group was dispatched, the navy now more willing to mix it up with the Krall single ships after their moderate successes at Poldark.

It was only the steady arrival of additional clanships, with previously armored and experienced warriors, which had provided enough return fire to permit columns of mini-tanks to finally leave the floor of the valley, and start their fight to take the ridges. Eventually, the defensive lasers and counter battery systems were set up, and they began to project a protective umbrella over the landing zone and clanships. The offensive force was finally taking shape and moving out, almost a week late.

Kanpardi was highly critical of Pendor’s poorly planned landing strategy. “You and your staff, with advice from high status sub leaders of major clans, had several months to decide what you would do here. Our scouting missions had provided topographical maps and enemy dispositions for you to study of this entire world. Yet you landed between the two largest cities on the planet, sandwiched in a flood plain valley between the two largest human reactions forces on this lightly defended world. They were based in the two human nests, located on the rivers that always flood this valley in the rainy season, which just ended. Had you been able to Jump here directly from Poldark, your landing area would have been under water when you arrived. I suppose your need to pause at K1, for replacements, was part of your plan?” He snarled.

“You now have to fight mud and marshland, as well as the humans that are positioned above you on dry ground. Your major clan sub leaders must be pleased you have made the task of culling their weakest warriors so easy.” The Tor’s sarcasm was filtered through clenched dagger shaped teeth.

Landing this powerful force somewhere more isolated, as had been done on Greater West Africa, Bollovstic, and Poldark, would have let sub leaders organize their columns, and initiate advances on lightly defended human city-nests, without having to do this under constant attack initially, and slogging through muck. As Gatlek, Pendor was expected to work independently with his staff and clan leaders, and plan the assigned invasion. Kanpardi saw that was a tradition that needed to change. They needed oversight by the Joint Council at the least, for future attacks on a worthy enemy.

Pendor had obviously learned nothing from the success his dead predecessor had achieved on Poldark. The original Poldark Gatlek had been personally reckless and foolish in exposing himself to being ambushed and killed, but he’d planned his invasion landing much better.

That Poldark invasion leader had been carefully selected by Kanpardi, and Pendor was Telour’s selection. It called into question Telour’s judge of what constituted good leadership. The Tor Gatrol was unaware it was Pendor’s willingness to support Telour’s own personal ambitions that had made him the ideal foil for Telour. Kanpardi’s ambitious second in command had more on his mind than two new invasions, something he did not support until the humans were made to pay for their audacity in attacking Krall worlds.

Pendor, stung by the war leader’s criticism, as much for its accuracy as its delivery in front of his staff underlings, pushed him to act sooner than he’d anticipated. Pendor suddenly suggested the Tor Gatrol observe directly how his warriors were effectively pushing the enemy off the heights, which had provided them a slight tactical advantage thus far.

“My Tor, I have sent a large column of mini-tanks and armored transports to flank and surround a human strong point along a ridge, where they have been able to fire down at our clanships as they unloaded equipment. If you use my personal shuttle and K’Tal pilot, my clanship is close and ready to launch the shuttle. You can fly out to observe how efficiently we will either trap them, or force the humans to retreat.”

Take the offer,
Pendor willed via his thoughts, to try to make it happen. The fates were good to him this time.

Kanpardi shivered his left shoulder in partial negation. “I have my own pilot, and she will fly your shuttle for me. Have it flown to your bunker roof. Do you expect me to tread through the mud that surrounds us just to reach your clanship? This poorly placed command post will fill with water if the rains return to fill the rivers.”

Pendor passed the order to have his shuttle launch from his clanship, and hoped this would be the last insult he’d have to endure from this superior.

No sooner had Kanpardi lifted from the bunker roof, than Pendor briefly left the command center and confirmed from his private quarters, that the radio signal from the human device he’d brought from Poldark was active. It was concealed in a secure storage compartment of his shuttle. He placed the remote actuator in a small pouch on his weapons belt, and returned to the command center to watch as his personal shuttle flew to observe the tank column. He’d certainly miss that well-armed and efficiently functioning new piece of fighting equipment.

At his main console, he brought up a tactical display on the wall of the valley where Kanpardi was going, the images derived from cameras on the mini-tanks and on the armored transports loaded with warriors, and some from helmet cameras of octet leaders. The Krall were exchanging plasma cannon fire with the humans concealed above them as they advanced rapidly along the base of the ridge. The column of over two hundred Dragons, as the humans called the mini-tanks, were forcing the humans to keep their heads down with accurate fire. The shorter barrel double plasma batteries on the tops of the armored transports were not as accurate, and the bolts fired were less intense, but they also kept the humans ducking and moving.

The original plan was to loop around the end of the ridge and behind the defenders into the adjacent valley, and attack the troopers from two sides, cutting off their retreat. Pendor knew that before that happened, the humans would withdraw across the next small valley to another ridge, and the process would repeat until they ran out of ridges.

However, he had a change in plans that would make the humans happy today. They had moved at least ten mobile artillery batteries into the valley on the backside of the current ridge they held, and those would soon withdraw to the next valley over, to cover the retreat of the fighters on this ridge when they had to pull out. The artillery fire was less effective against rapidly moving, turning and shifting Dragons, and the armored transports were relatively impervious. There were no exposed warriors to bombard at all. Pendor was about to give them more enticing targets.