Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (15 page)

When a number of clanships he’d ordered aloft to guard and escort the supply ships down reported they were unable to launch, and the Krall commander in charge of the new arrivals had not communicated with his command bunker and didn’t reply to hails, his attitude dramatically changed. He had an alert broadcast to launch every clanship, and for every clan to safeguard their stocks of weapons and equipment, and prepare for a human assault. He ordered the circle of heavy plasma cannons to be ready to fire on the clanships over the continent if they displayed hostility.

The sub leader in command of the batteries had a question for Fistok. “How do I decide who the hostile force is if you send all of our clanships aloft to mix with them? If anyone fires beams or missiles, they will look hostile to our gunners. The smaller human squadron has just appeared farther out, well above the new arrivals, and their radar emissions show they are tracking and capable of attacking any of the clanships below them. I can fire on the heavy cruisers, and be sure they are the enemy, but at that long range they are at little risk of serious damage.”

In a frustrated snarl, Fistok told him, “Anything that fires at rising clanships or at the surface is also an enemy. Shoot at them.” He disconnected. He’d never heard of a battlefront where determining who the enemy was being so uncertain.

An avalanche of other strange reports arrived soon to his communications staff, from clan leaders in their bunkers, of events entirely within the most tightly defended center of the continent. There were sporadic attacks reported on warriors, clanships that couldn’t be entered or exited, because the doors were locked, or would not respond. More cases of body armor becoming inoperative, heavy transports that would not start, or in motion crashed because they could not be steered or stopped. Strangest of all, a number of just launched clanships had pilots, who had reported to their clan bunkers, that their craft had suddenly become uncontrollable.

One pilot reported that shortly after liftoff she had been fired upon by an anti-ship missile from one of the clanships she was rising to defend from the human cruiser squadron. The unusually fast and agile missile had evaded her weapons master’s laser fire and had struck them at midship, but it had failed to detonate. It was apparently disarmed by the warrior that fired it in error, although Krall don’t make such firing mistakes. It was thought to be an equipment failure of the missile, or in guidance and tracking.

Despite the lack of an explosion, the missile that glanced off the hull had somehow damaged their flight controls, because the pilot couldn’t change course or adjust thrust. Her weapons master was unable to return fire or even to target the clanship that had fired on them. They were passing through the newly arrived clanship fleet, on a trajectory towards the enemy cruisers, which inexplicably, so far, had also held their fire.

Clanship commanders from Fistok’s clan, of the craft he kept parked around his bunker for a fast reaction mobile defense, were claiming their vessels, in a brief period, had gradually become unresponsive, forming a ring of deactivated clanships completely around the bunker. It clearly had not happened all at once, because the communications network linking the craft had remained intact, and the pilots had exchanged reports as the problem spread.

Finally, the odd allegations by Photok began to sound more credible. He didn’t know where she was to ask her any follow up questions. Her clan sub leader on Poldark had relieved her of command of the ship she’d landed here.

Much of the supplies that clanship had brought were enroute to various clans on the two fronts where Fistok intended to renew assaults. Because Pendor had removed so many mini-tanks, single ships, and mobile laser carts, the new attacks would have to depend more heavily on warriors on foot. That necessitated them having ample replacement rifles and spare power packs stored nearby. Each of the portable fusion power charging stations sent with the supplies could accommodate sixteen depleted power packs at once, but it took nearly an hour to recharge the energy dense batteries to full power.

Warriors, in the fury of battle, could drain them of their power in as few as a hundred twenty eight firings, if they employed rapid-fire maximum energy plasma bolts for every shot. They always carried at least four spare power packs on equipment belts, but needed more fresh ones brought forward, along with the recharging stations, as they advanced.

It was while thinking of the resupply convoys, traveling north and east from where Photok had landed her ship, that helped the Gatlek plot the areas where the loss of equipment control was spreading the most rapidly. Using his mental battlespace map and arriving reports, he saw a pattern. Photok had landed about two miles east of the Gatlek’s bunker instead of near her clan’s bunker, far to the southeast. She claimed it was because she had wanted to convey her warning quickly and directly to the Gatlek.

There were two lengthening tentacles of reported equipment failures, one was shorter and stretched north, and a longer one that extended east, both radiating from near his bunker. Each affected corridor narrowed and twisted with the mountainous terrain where the arms passed through, which meant the affected areas followed the roads, where the supplies were moving. There was also a small, roughly two-mile wide circle surrounding this bunker of disabled clanships, with hundreds of other similar diameter regions about that same size, sprinkled all around the continent.

The pattern looked almost organic, like some widespread infection that only involved hardware. This was similar to what Photok described, but her description was in less detail due to her limited knowledge of events all around K1. He acted immediately to try to stop the contagion’s spread to the fronts where they faced the main enemy forces, and to keep it from reaching the heart of the invasion force. His command bunker.

The local problem surrounded the area near the hill above the buried bunker. He checked his personal plasma rifle, and it powered up when he activated the standby mode. It had not reached down here.

Communications were not affected anywhere, because even clanships that had lost flight control were able to use their radios. Commanders located above, in the ring beyond the hill, had made com set calls to report failed armor and clanships out there. That meant this new human weapon, which is what it must be, had not penetrated down here. Therefore, it wasn’t a wide area type weapon, because it started small, and spread slowly for a central point, apparently having a short range for the infection.

Except two fingers of the infection was tracing narrow corridors where the infected supplies were moving. They had been moving continuously for almost eighteen hours, with the trucks moving that entire time. Fusion powered vehicles, driven by warriors that never required rest, meant the small arms spreading the infection had almost reached their Novi Sad destination, to the east.

He wondered about the shorter tentacle of the northbound route to Kovoso. He was unaware that the heavy armored transports were involved there, and when the Denial chips were activated, the transportation of the small arms stopped when the transports would no longer respond to control. The heavy transports had been sent north because the roads were better and straighter in that direction. To the east, higher mountains and curved and twisting roads were navigated better by smaller trucks, which didn’t use quantum-controlled circuits to activate.

He issued orders that the supply trucks were to be halted, to both the north and east, and none of the small arms unloaded or moved. Analyzing this as a combat situation, where new enemy weapons had an unknown but short range, he needed information. He instructed warriors with operational plasma rifles to approach some of the supply trucks, and inform their sub leaders, who would stay back, when or if their plasma rifles, suits, or power packs deactivated.

The bad news arrived quickly. At about ten leaps, any rifle, suit, or power pack deactivated all at the same time, as they neared a truck. They would not reactivate if moved farther back afterwards. That later information was learned the hard way, when a sub leader summoned a warrior to him to examine the failed equipment for himself. His suit and weapon powered down when the returning warrior came within ten leaps. Once infected, the equipment became new sources for the infection. Isolation or quarantine of the affected equipment was required. It wasn’t transmitted by a warrior with only a pistol, because that was tested as well.

With a bit more foresight, Fistok might have made the intuitive leap of wondering why humans could still fly Krall clanships that had been infected. After all, some of those craft in orbit must have been captured at K1 after being infected. The humans had started their attack with far fewer craft than the four hundred here. From that, he might have reasoned out that it was only the Olt’kitapi quantum coded devices affected, and if the devices responded to humans after infection, then it must have something to do with the tattoos that were the keys to activating such devices. He could have deduced that only the Krall were being denied use of Olt’kitapi designed equipment.

It probably wouldn’t have helped him to know how the infection spread, if all you could do was slow the spread, and couldn’t cure infected equipment. Fistok did his best.

“Cordon off the hill above with warriors, with orders to keep sub leaders and warriors from an infected area from approaching within fifty leaps of this bunker. Inform the clan leaders in other bunkers of this strategy, and of why it’s needed. We can preserve much of our weaponry if we halt the spread of the problem, particularly along the fronts where we face the enemy directly. I want K’Tals to investigate and learn how this electronic interference works and how to counter and reverse its effect.”

He hadn’t yet considered how the original infections had been delivered, because none of the “carriers” had been seen. Apparently, those who did see the invaders had all failed to live to report the event.

He ordered feeds of all surface surveillance cameras at the bunker entrance sent to his command console. He watched as the cluster of warriors spread out to surround the base of the hill, and he recalled most of his sub leaders and K’Tals to brief them directly. When a group of sub leaders and warriors, obviously wishing to demonstrate their failed equipment had approached, his guards ordered them to keep their distance and they turned back. He wanted to confer with his aides and other clan sub leaders to devise a broader strategy, and a simple explanation for the warriors, and quarantine procedures for infected material.

Once warned of the risks, he believed his warriors could avoid spreading the problem, and if they went on the offensive, they would make the enemy pay for using such a short-range weapon that left a fighting warrior alive, to improvise and still kill the enemy. Improved abstract thinking had not (yet) been bred into the new generations of Krall. The newer hatchlings were proving to be more innovative and adaptable, but better thinkers took much more time if you only relied on selective breeding and sheer numbers of hatchlings. The Krall were running out of that sort of time.

When Fistok saw his guardians of the bunker entrance suddenly removing their helmets and checking their rifles, he knew the software infection had reached them. At about the same time, there were numerous descending anti-ship missiles, some of which reached their targets or passed close to a clanship launching, and there were no explosions. These missiles were fired from the new arrivals, making it abundantly clear they were human controlled. The inability of the pilots and weapon masters to maneuver or fire back, was demonstration enough as to how the short-range software weapon was being extended by the enemy.

If the software virus was being spread by missiles, how had the initial areas become infected? How had his warriors guarding the bunker, keeping it in quarantine, come under its influence? There was another mode of infection, which he wasn’t seeing.

Then he did see something. Or rather, evidence of what he was not seeing. On camera, he saw puffs of dust, near where three of his door guardians had shed their armor to get to their pistols and grenades, which many warriors carried as personal weapons. When brilliant red laser beams and actinic blue-white plasma bolts speared into the wrists and hands of the warriors, it came from a point above where the dust had been kicked up.

In the instant before the dropped grenades exploded in multiple flashes, a longer puff of dust spurted, when a stealthed human in armor had obviously dropped to avoid the fragments. The guards were not so lucky, since they had set timers for very short delays, and having their hands just burned off slowed their reaction time, as they started to dive away from the impending blasts at their feet. They were left mangled and dead.

A sub leader was inside the blast doors, and had heard the explosions. He was trying to key the thick blast doors to open without success, and a K’Tal inside the elevator was likewise unable to operate or open its doors. It was a K’Tal’s sent to investigate the equipment failures. Fistok was glad they couldn’t open the blast doors or operate the elevator to send it back down. Clearly, those were both now infused with the software glitch that denied any Krall the use of that equipment. He didn’t want that elevator to descend and pass the infection into the bunker.

He started issuing orders to move any weapons or body armor to the far wall, away from the elevator shaft. It was possible the enemy would be able to blast their way into the elevator shaft and try to infiltrate by that route. Judging the distance from the underground entry, he knew it was just over sixteen leaps from the back wall to the elevator exit, and the range of the infection was about ten leaps. They would retain use of their plasma weapons if the infected elevator were to descend with the short-range virus in its circuits. He ordered barricades erected for their cover near the back wall, where the twenty-two warriors in the bunker could incinerate anything that was behind the elevator door when it swept open.