Thond shivered the fur pattern on his armor. “That’s my concern. We didn’t have a single track blown off by a mine that was rolled over. All of them penetrated one of the two forward compartments, near the tracks, destroying a drive motor, and the crewmember in that compartment. That’s odd.” He turned to examine the images from multiple data feeds to their combat AI system.
Hitok was busy directing his Pillager’s movements, to help them herd the small enemy armored units to where the Hoths might concentrate their fire and destroy them. His sensors didn’t reveal what was now stalking the Hoths.
****
Mirikami was envious of the freedom younger Kobani troopers had, to expose themselves to risks, which he was told in definite and harsh terminology from a higher authority, that he wasn’t allowed to accept for himself.
He continued his argument, appealing to that implacable higher authority. “Maggi, it’s safe. I can do that as well as anyone can.”
“Sure, and if a tank driver sneezes or suddenly changes direction, we’ll find our top commander and best strategist looking like a crushed can of tomatoes. I may not outrank you, but I damn well can make you regret trying to turn me into a young widow.”
He thoughtlessly reminded her, “You’re a hundred seventeen!” The instant he blurted that out, he knew it was a tactical mistake.
With cold radiating from her pretty, rejuvenated pixie-like features, she offered a reminder of her own. “With our indefinite Prada style lifespans, I’ll have centuries to make you regret that charming remark, my dear.”
Sarge, always helpful, made thoughtful suggestions, “Tet, why don’t you just take off your armor, drop your pants, step outside and moon the first Pillager you see? That’s the most merciful idea after that blunder. Or, would you like a friend to shoot you out of kindness?”
A cold glance from Maggi’s piercing blue eyes shut him up and erased his cheerful grin. He said, “I think I’ll go ask how many more of the limpet mines the PDF has. They were my idea so I really should do that. I’ll go right now in fact.” He left the PDF command center hurriedly.
Colonel Gaffigan, unaware how often such harmless heated sounding discussions occurred between the amazingly young looking petite diplomat and her equally youthful appearing husband, tried a diversion. “Captain Mirikami, there could have been mines placed under all of their tanks. Why didn’t you just blow them all up at the same time? Obviously, the Ragnar can’t detect them before driving over them. Why prolong the fight?”
Maggi, her demeanor immediately pleasant again, explained a strategy that had actually been her idea, and not her husband’s, although Sarge had proposed using the marine mines. “Colonel, we want to subvert the Ragnar to our side, not destroy them. They have great admiration for valor, and as a people, they literally couldn’t accept a crushing military defeat at our hands. They would prefer to die fighting. If they lost here, to what their Thandol masters consider to be a weak new subservient species, they would be unlikely to continue as an armed security force for the Empire.”
Forgetting how volatile the woman could be, Gaffigan got hot under his collar. “I don't give a damn about their future. I want Tanner’s to stay independent.”
She nodded. “We do too. For you and for ourselves. That’s why we left our worlds completely undefended and came here to help you. However, we know we can’t beat the entire massive Thandol navy alone. Hell, colonel, this one Rim World colony has a higher human population than does the entire Federation! Lucky for us, the Empire doesn’t know that.
“We also know the Empire can’t hold onto and control our worlds, and exact centuries of taxes and productivity from the Federation, without the use of ground forces like the Ragnar provide. But they can certainly destroy our cities and cripple our industries from space. For us Kobani, they can easily kill us with even weak level Debilitater radiation if we aren’t in shielded armor. Our civilians, and our combat forces for that matter, can’t live their entire lives in armor, wire mesh lined clothing, or inside faraday cages. We need help to win a war against the Empire, and it’s not certain if the PU will join with us before it’s too late for our own survival. Even with them helping, we can’t match the Thandol’s primary navy.
“Their Emperor has at least five times as many ships as the Federation does, which the Thandol directly control. Each of the three security forces of the empire has about two thirds as many ships as we Kobani do. You saw most of the Ragnar fleet strength overhead, which we were able to drive off only by using our entire fleet. But, as you’ve noticed, we don’t have the ground forces or equipment to kick their ass off your planet. Only the PU has that sort of capability. Your people did a remarkable job of deception and ambushing them, before they knew enough about us as an enemy. You showed them they could never afford to underestimate any humans, from anywhere.
“Now, we want to convince the Ragnar here to withdraw honorably, with what they have left of their force. From the two prisoners of theirs we captured previously in Empire space, we estimate this is only a fraction of the troops and ground assault forces the Ragnar have in reserves, spread around their security sector in the Empire.”
Gaffigan shook his head. “What the hell will letting them escape here do for us, or for you? They could reorganize and come back.”
She answered him frankly. “Possibly. Except, by showing them what we can do in a fight, and by building trust, we might convince them, and by extension the other two security forces who don’t like the Thandol either, to revolt against the Empire when we attack from the outside. Together, we might fragment the empire into three mutually antagonistic regions, and push the Thandol out of power. The three security forces have no love for each other, and I’m confident they would not unite against us, although they may fight internally, or against us individually.”
“Why would the Thandol’s allied forces do that on behalf of the Federation, or for Human Space? They don’t owe us loyalty, and gratitude doesn’t last long if we help them win. One or more of them would come after us eventually, I’d think.”
“I agree, but we’d gain more time to get ready for them. Anyway, the Thandol defeated the Ragnar thousands of years ago, and our Mind Taps of the prisoners reveal they still have a deep racial resentment of their masters. They want revenge, and to regain control of their own destiny. We want them as an ally of convenience against the greater threat, the Thandol.”
“How are you going to convince the other two security forces to cooperate with you? It sounds like you need them all on our side.”
She smiled. “One step at a time Colonel, one step at a time. The first step is to let the Ragnar get out of here without a politically destructive total defeat. I want to try to strike a balance, to let them save face, and retain as much strength as possible, which they will need when the time comes to revolt against the Empire. I have to engineer a truce, not their surrender.”
“A Truce! Well, I just sent a two hundred of my troops out in a hundred ladybugs, up against over three hundred sixty of those big frigging tanks, with barely ten thousand PDF soldiers against their hundred eighty thousand or so. I’m going to put the other hundred bugs you brought in service, as soon as we get them unloaded, and teach my people the basics of using them.
“I also appreciate the twenty thousand Kobani troops you brought along; I really do, but good luck getting the enemy to agree to a damned truce. I don't see them accepting one, not the way things are going, unless you wipe out the rest of their armor, their space planes, Stranglers, and those three hundred or so surviving landers. Then we have to figure out how to stop that hundred and eighty thousand soldiers in body armor. Even if we do that, Tanner’s has suffered a considerable loss of resources, and not a few lives. The death count will go up the longer we fight. I can’t keep our civilians ahead of them for much longer.
“Colonel, have you ever fought alongside a Kobani force?”
“No, I only heard the tall tales from a few troops that saw them in
action when they were fighting on Poldark and New Dublin.”
“Not all of those are fabrications. Today, you’ll get to see what genetically enhanced humans can do, wearing fancy schmancy alien designed stealthed armor, and how valuable Mind Taps can be.
****
The sharp-eyed Flight Leader of the three Hoths, flying between the oddly unique and colorful tall buildings of the human city, had spotted a small human plasma gun cart, just as it swerved around a corner of a large building after a slashing attack run. His console ground link indicated it had just fired on a Debilitater equipped Pillager. The main combat AI reported the armored unit’s transmitting antenna was destroyed, eliminating its most effective anti-personnel weapon. The human gun crew, although fully within the focused beam when the antenna was disabled, had obviously been shielded and unaffected by the radiation.
Captain Jastal issued rapid instructions. “Flight Leader to wings, follow me in trail. I saw where a mobile gun cart fled. I’ll use plasma, wing one use laser, wing two your railgun. I want blood and guts in our wake.”
The leader pulled farther ahead, and several blocks later signaled the turn and swooped left to pass between two high buildings that towered above them on either side, wing one close on his tail, with rookie wing two’s pilot lagging a bit, thus demonstrating why he held that lower wing number status. This strange city was actually easier to navigate at low altitudes than training in a Ragnar city would be, where there were many pedestrian crossovers between buildings at random levels. The surface boulevards at home were narrower between their closer set, slender, and uniformly dark shaded buildings.
The humans liked multi-height tall buildings, with varied colors and textures, differently shaped decorative details, and were set much wider apart than the Ragnar preferred to build. It was easier to navigate along their wider boulevards, but it was alien, exotically attractive, and a distracting place to fly. Despite seeming to like spacious wide gaps between their structures, humans appeared to shun the longer narrow walkways placed up high between the buildings, which the Ragnar found so exhilarating when they looked down. At least the Hoth pilots didn’t have to worry about as many unexpected obstructions in their paths, particularly above the fifth level of human buildings, as they turned at the wider and easier to make corners. They habitually kept their speed the same as in their training at home, close to three hundred miles per hour this low (in equivalent human units), so formation holding could stay tight.
The speeding flight was now four blocks beyond the cross street where the ladybug had turned the first corner. If that crew followed the newly learned attack and retreat patterns seen today, they would soon turn right, directly away from their last target, staying between Pillager columns. That helped them avoid possible bunker buster rounds, which could pass through the flimsy civilian construction.
The flight leader gave curt instructions as they approached the street where he expected to see their target headed towards them after their left turn. “Next left, accelerate and use down-step. Fire on acquisition. They shoot back fast.”
The down-step formation was merely a matter of wing one descending below the flight leader, and wing two lower than wing one and fly closer to the surface, providing all three Hoths with simultaneous clear firing lanes straight ahead. Presumably, the much slower ladybug would be continuing up the first block after its right turn, visible in all of their gun sights, caught between the tall buildings and in the open.
It made for another good kill zone, but they’d used all of their missiles on five other attempts on gun carts, killing four before one escaped. However, the enemy tri-barrel would be firing medium power plasma bolts back at them, and those gunners could quickly shift targets. From group experience gained today, they knew the driver also could fire a plasma rifle through a small forward port, less accurate and a slower firing rate but apparently visor aided, so that a bolt was automatically released precisely when a target was in-line after the trigger pull.
Like every weapon except the rail gun projectiles, the time of travel for energy weapons was speed of light for laser, and microscopically slower for a plasma bolt. Even a rail gun slug, fired from a half-mile distance, arrived faster than most organisms could react.
The Hoth, like most space planes that were also designed for atmospheric combat, had stubby sweptback wings, an armored and reflective slender nose, which was as much for deflecting energy beams as for aerodynamics. The Ragnar used a triple Tachyon Trap system, because they always launched from space, outside of a deep gravity well, and carried three tachyons with them for redundancy, providing energy to their reactionless Normal Space Drive, weapons, and system and sensor power. They had no reaction mass or thrusters at all, and if low on energy, they had to climb out of the gravity well to use their traps to snare new tachyons, or land and be humiliated when a support tug recovered them.
Flight Leader Captain Jastal sharply snapped his left wing down for aerodynamic assistance on the final left turn, but the Normal Space Drive did most of the work, his flight suit helping keep him conscious and mentally sharp as the g forces pressed him into his seat, greatful he didn’t need to use his limbs for this computer controlled maneuver. He instantly sighted his prey, moving up the roadway three blocks ahead. His below the nose plasma cannon had very limited movement for aiming capability, in order to maintain a smooth slipstream, and relied on a flight control system to align the nose for most of the targeting, which is why we was in a shallow and accelerating descent towards the target. He knew his trailing wing mates would be nearly in-line with him, but lower as they rolled out of their turns.
He visually shifted his airframe to place the targeting pip over the enemy gun cart, and authorized automatic firing when that happened. The gun cart’s tri-barrel was already firing as he rolled out to wings level, as if the gunner had expected this attack. The enemy cart was swerving hard to its left, skidding on its tracks, away from the flight’s turns, forcing the Flight Leader to compensate back to his right. Actinic blue bolts were streaming towards him, but they shifted lower as they fired at one or both of his wing mates below and behind him. A smaller dimmer bolt unexpectedly glanced off the Hoth’s nose, apparently from the cart driver’s lower powered plasma rifle. The brilliant spray of sparks as the bolt fragmented across his canopy startled him, and he was slow to complete his shift right to realign his pip. Wing one’s computer aimed laser found the target first, but wing two’s slugs, their rear infrared tracer lights showing their path to his visor, were off to the side of the gun cart, aimed nearly down the center of the street where the cart had just been. Jastal could tell the first rounds would miss. A sloppy beginning, for him and his rookie.
Then, as wing one’s mirror directed laser locked on and followed the gun cart’s movements, the situation became confusing, and suddenly turned bad.
From a point at the center of the street, well behind the enemy gun cart, which was now careening towards a plazsteel multi-door entry into the building on its left, appeared a fuzzy swirl of motion in the air, close to the ground. It was a pair of tight vortices, with parallel horizontal axes that extended well behind the leading swirls, which was approaching rapidly.
That momentary distraction ended when Jastal saw the flash of fresh bolts from the gun cart, but they weren’t directed at his flight. The enemy gunner had blasted apart the ground floor entrance doors to the skyscraper, to create an escape route from the open street. Not about to let this target evade destruction, the flight leader shifted slightly right to place his targeting pip where wing one’s laser was burning and heating the side of the lightly armored gun cart. The energy beam’s target point created an easy lock-on for the infrared flight control targeting system, quickly swinging the airframe slightly for an optimum plasma cannon shot. Unlike the laser, he’d only need one hit for his powerful bolt to penetrate the armor.
Just as the pip was swinging onto the hot spot, with an automatic fire command previously enabled, Jastal felt a vio
lent shudder and a saw a flash to his left, and his Hoth slewed sharply right as the stubby left wing ceased its aerodynamic drag on that side. His bolt still fired, but it struck the building in front of the gun cart as the Hoth pivoted right, even as the automatic flight system used the Normal Space drive to turn away from a collision against the same building.
Jastal glanced to the side to see that his entire left wing was gone. He thus never saw the following depleted uranium, tungsten tipped rail gun projectiles coming, which punched through his narrow tapered windscreen, tearing through his chest. That contact started a tumbling action of the projectiles that shredded his Normal Space drive and ripped off part of his tail assembly from the inside. His Hoth became a deadly airborne collection of metal and ceramic, still headed towards the gun cart, which escaped through the blasted entryway just before the space plane ruined some of the display windows of the ground floor department store.
Wing two, his target lost for the automatic tracker system as the cart vanished, was dazzled by the disintegration of the Flight Leader’s Hoth ahead and above him, and barely avoided the debris as he dipped under the separating tail assembly. Eyes directed upward, he didn’t notice the swift passage of the twin vortices just below his own Hoth. Wing 2, flying below and behind him, was only twenty feet above the street, his attention still focused on correcting aim with his railgun. The building walls would easily yield to his heavy high velocity projectiles, and he could yet kill the target that his more experienced flight mates had missed. Wing two, above him, initially blocked his view of the fate of the Flight Leader, and the nearly head on vortices were less apparent to him, without the advantage of height to see their motion along the street. They were relatively level points of translucent air turbulence from his vantage point, and he wasn’t looking that direction anyway.
Koban 6: Conflict and Empire Page 28
