Koban: Rise of the Kobani (21 page)

Thad craned his neck to see at an angle through the rock opening. They were nearly one mile from the clanship, and the three Dragons were five hundred feet lower that they were and roughly a half-mile away, and only partially visible. “I can see tanned skin alright. I saw one boy’s bare back, an uncovered leg on another, and on the far side by the cliff, I think I see white underwear on a figure that stepped around the front of the tank. Sarge, can you see any better?”

“About the same as you. I’m only five feet
to your right, and I have a lousy angle. … Wait, one of the boys climbed on the front of his tank. He’s in his drawers for sure.”

Longstreet shook his head. “Are you sure they aren’t simply too hot in the tanks? We think the Krall like warmer climates, so perhaps the Dragons are hot inside, despite the cloudy sky, and light rain earlier.”

“We are all heat adapted, Captain, and this is a cool day back home in the summer. They shouldn’t be any more uncomfortable than I am, and I’m not sweating.”

Longstreet noted that was true, and mentally filed the remark for later. He had observed that neither man had broken a sweat, while the spec ops troops had glistening foreheads. It wasn’t a dripping sweat day, but the climb and quick pace should have had more of an effect on these two men. This implied a hotter home world, and heat adaptation, and probably more gravity than Poldark offered. Although, Reynolds was only six months removed from a life on this planet. He should be at least winded, and he wasn’t.

“Damn. Clever kids,” Reynolds blurted. “Thad, remember my advice to cover the cannon muzzles? What do you think our pants-off wonder kids are doing right now?”

“By God you’re right. I can’t tell who is who from here, but that boy has torn his pants in half. They found a way to follow your advice, Sarge. I doubt the Krall will see their next shots coming. Perhaps they can shut the big guns down in a few minutes. I wish I could hear what they’ve been talking about.”

Thad heard a throat clearing behind him, followed by a hesitant offer from Longstreet. “Colonel Greeves, when I was farther down the corridor checking two other observation points, Colonel Trakenburg Linked with me. He informed me that I am now authorized to cooperate and assist you, if it doesn’t compromise my teams or my mission. My teams are safe, and you were my mission. I can provide you Link capability to your people out there or at least to those close to us right now. Your old model transducers have less than a third the range of ours.

“It was suggested to me that I should try to arrange ‘trades’ of information when we grant assistance. Colonel, I’d love to know what those boys without pants have to do with the Krall not seeing them when they drive out to shoot at their ship.” He half smiled.

Thad laughed. “Captain, my former rank is from a militia that no longer exists, and I’m not officially a colonel at home, I’m just Thad or Greeves. I prefer Thad.

“The trick they are trying to pull off isn’t to make them invisible, it’s to hide the flash the Krall see before they fire at the clanship. Our TGs discovered today that Krall infrared vision detects a flicker of light an instant before a plasma weapon fires, giving their fast reactions a chance to duck, or in this case, switch their gun ports closed. That boy on the other side of the valley just slipped one pant leg over the cannon muzzle. We hope the Krall won’t see the advanced warning when he next fires at the ship. I assume the other boys are doing the same thing.”

“I can tell you that they were told to use their clothes as flash shields by someone named Carson. We didn’t know what that meant. He’s in the adjacent valley preparing to drive some heavy Krall transports out to fire on the clanship. My men and I all have IR vision embeds, but we never saw the advance flash you describe. How do you see them?”

“I don’t see them actually. None of us can because we have no IR capability at all. We learned that detail from a captive Krall, the commander of that clanship in fact. Carson took him prisoner after a firefight with them on construction tractors of some type. He wounded him, them administered a neurotoxin that paralyzes them but leaves them wake and able to hear us. He told Carson about the pre flash.” Hiding how they got that info from a Krall could be tricky, but they needed their trust right now.

Longstreet shook his head in amazement. “We will definitely watch for that pre flash. It may be too faint for our eye sensors, or happen too fast to register for us, but that’s only a matter of technology. I truly want to get hold of a drug that paralyzes one of those bastards. I met you people an hour and a half ago, and I already see you as a gold mine.”

Thad slid a hand into a pocket and pulled out a small vial of pale amber liquid. “Then please accept this gold nugget. That is a concentrated sample of the Krall paralyzing drug, Captain. A single drop, on skin or tongue numbs one
of them for perhaps four hours or more. They can breathe, move their eyes, defecate, but that’s about all. Long term, you have to feed them by a tube down the throat to keep them alive. That same drop will kill most humans.”

They had not tested it that way, but they thought a TG’s nervous system would survive a single drop.

“Saying ‘be careful’ is an understatement, Captain.” He handed him the inch long unbreakable sealed tube he generally carried in his pocket.

Longstreet promptly reciprocated. He reached into a slit gap in his flexible Chameleon Skin scaled armor and then withdrew his hand. “Try your Link now, Sir. I am obligated to inform you that I will be able to hear what is said, and that it is likely being repeated back to my headquarters group.”

“I understand, Captain. I’m not concerned.

“Jakob, can you hear me?” He waited a couple of seconds to see if Jakob could receive from here. No reply, so he continued, using the shorter-range local transducer-to-transducer communications. “Link to Carson. This is Uncle Thad. Can you hear me Carson?”

“Yes Sir,” was the surprised sounding reply. “Dad didn’t say or know you were coming out here. Captain Mirikami said he thought you, Sarge, and the whole group had gone down a tunnel to Novi Sad, without making a final com check.”

“Well I didn’t know I was coming this way either, but that’s a story for later. Sarge and I are actually in a position to observe the clanship. There are small tunnels running under and through many of these ridges and valleys. We are in small observation rooms inside the ridge wall, on the opposite side from the ship. We are roughly a mile from the clanship and the valley end where the Dragons must have entered. We can see three of the Dragons, and they just placed pant legs on the barrels. I hear that may be your idea.”

“Yes Sir. We couldn’t find any material we could safely take out to them, so their clothes were the only option left. I cut off some tough seat fabric with great difficulty, and we cut the blue suit off our now naked Krall commander. I let Carol Slobovic and Andreana D'Alema peek at him after they begged me. No one ever told us the Krall genitals and excretory orifices are as concealed as their ultrasonic ears. The girls somehow thought laughing at him would hurt his feelings. They must have been thinking of boys.” He paused, as if realizing he’d strayed off track by that amusing thought.

“Anyway, we tied the fabric and suit pieces over the double plasma cannon muzzles on top of the transports. The other two transports in the first valley, holding our reinforcements, have covered their cannons and are on the way to join us.”

“You have done well, lad, and I hope it works. However, clearing this ship is going to be more dangerous. It won’t be a surprise this time, as it was on K1, and we
know
there are warriors aboard this time. They’ll be waiting for you. How are you planning to coordinate the simultaneous attack on the guns? Are you in contact with Ethan and Conrad?”

“Yes Sir. Conrad, from where you said you’re located, is against the opposite wall behind a rock outcrop I believe. Ethan is just around the edge of the canyon wall from the valley where I’m located. He plans to take shots at the clanship if they try to fire on the two arriving transports. The trucks have heavy armor anyway, so they should be safe. Do you want to talk to Ethan? He’ll be coordinating the action, since he will be in position to see all of us as soon as he pulls out into the open.”

“No. I don’t want him to think his dad is looking over his shoulder. Might make him nervous, or worse, ready to show off. I only plan to watch, unless I see anything you need to know about.”

“OK Sir. We should be ready in about five minutes. Talk later. Out.”

Ending the head tilt of a Link conversation, Thad smiled at Longstreet.

“Thanks, Captain. I feel better, even if I can’t really do anything to help.”

“You’re welcome, Sir. Did I understand correctly? Carson is your nephew, and your son, Ethan is in one of the Dragons?”

“Ethan is my actual son and Carson is the oldest son of my best friend, Dillon Martin, who flew that Krall shuttle you saw. He came out to join the kids.

“We are called uncles to each other’s three children, our wives are aunts. Captain Mirikami and Sarge have the same uncle status. As a community, we have grown into a tight knit group, isolated on our remote world, all of us
presumed
dead by the Krall that left us to die. We’ve waited in fear for the damned Krall to possibly return and wipe us out if we were discovered.

“A clanship recently came to our world, unsuspecting and carrying just six warriors. Two of our TGs managed to take them out, with a bit of support from some allies, and we then had their ship. Once Tet, that’s Captain Mirikami’s nickname, approves our doing so, we’ll be talking more about ourselves, but never about where we live. A single slip to the Krall and our world is toast.”

Longstreet now understood their caution. “There must not be very many of you.”

Thad nodded. “I don’t know the last census exactly, but we are about thirty thousand I think, in two cities. About half of the older adults are Normals, just ordinary people like any Hub citizen. The other half of older adults are SGs, as Sarge and I are, and roughly half of the seven thousand younger children are also SGs. The other half of older children are TGs, with most of those kids younger even than the two hundred we brought with us. I
know
we haven’t explained what those terms mean yet, and I won’t try right now.

“However, numbers are not all there is to our potential effectiveness. There are not many of you Special Operations forces either, but I’ll bet you have a greater impact than your numbers imply. A force multiplier, as you might be described.

“We believe our TGs, with the right equipment and training can take the war to the Krall, in operations much as I suspect you conduct on human worlds. We believe only a force of TGs can successfully raid unsuspecting Krall manufacturing worlds, where they can take on and beat the warriors they’ll find. Then they can destroy the war manufacturing plants, operated by presumably unwilling alien slaves. We hope the lack of replacement weapons and clanships will end their war in Human Space. It’s a long shot, but the alternative is eventual extinction for the human race. We were privy to Krall history and their goals from before they started the war. They used to talk to us humans captives then, since they didn’t expect us to survive long. The government needs to know what we learned.”

Before Longstreet could ask him about the cryptic and extremely intriguing reference to allies, or their being on K1, Carson Linked to Thad and Sarge again.

“Colonel, Sarge, I told Ethan I had updated the new arrivals by Tap, and also my dad. We have everyone spread out and loaded in the four transports. My dad has the shuttle and a few TGs to help if we need to evacuate any wounded. As soon as Ethan coordinates with Conrad, we will all charge out and try to hold our fire until the Krall attempt to light us up. We need to get the transports closer, because of the shorter focal range on their tubes. Just so that you know, D1 is Ethan’s three Dragons, D2 is Conrad’s three, and I’m T1, with all four Transports. I’ll keep my Link to you open so you can listen in on us.”

“We copy you. Give them hell.”

Thad looked at Longstreet, grinned and shrugged. Carson wasn’t aware that all their Links were being monitored all of the time by someone, open Link or not.

Thad heard Ethan’s voice. “D2, when I give the mark, count ten seconds and then all of you race into the open, and zigzag towards the clanship, use your lasers first. D1 will be coming out with you. We can draw fire from the transports, since we haven’t tested them for plasma hits yet. Carson’s big blue boy informs him the front of a transport is as tough as the sides. The weakest points are the flexible links between sections, so they will drive straight at the ship until they get close enough for all of them to fire, at about a thousand feet. We can shoot plasma earlier, but try to save that first shot for an open port cover.
I’m
certainly not climbing out in my undies to pull another pant leg over my barrel out in the open. Ready, mark!”

The men in the observation post saw Conrad’s mini tank fire a laser across the valley, the apparent visual signal to his other two units to start their count. The watchers also started counting the seconds. Simultaneously on the count of ten, the three Dragons they could see rocked back, as their treads started churning, hidden under their ceramic skirts. They spewed dirt behind them and accelerated from behind their protection, and spun in tight turns towards the clanship. The Krall fire control gunners were quick to respond, and laser ports flew open and red beams lanced out to intercept the rapidly moving and turning Dragons. The tank plasma cannons were held steady on the ship, despite wild gyrations and speed adjustments, and they deliberately went up and down small hills, then briefly behind rocks, all to complicate the manual Krall gunnery.