Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  Reynolds looked back as they sprinted for the cover of the creek bed. The sixth level had sagged to the top of level five, which had unexpectedly held the weight. The fifth floor had partially sagged on only one side onto the fourth floor, but there was no general collapse as they’d hoped to trigger. There had been too little time to rig enough demolition charges.

  Experts, who demolished buildings as a profession, always weakened selected support members before trying to bring the whole structure down. Perhaps they should have allowed the Shadows to shoot up the building a bit more on their strafing passes.

  “Thad, take this guy. The damned building is still standing.” He lifted the unconscious man he had slung over his shoulder and offered him to Greeves. Thad, without a burden, had periodically looked back and sent high powered, yet invisible, microwave beams towards any movement he saw at the edges of the clouds of dust, still billowing from the battered ramparts of the lodge. Spartan had cautioned everyone against use of traceable lasers and plasma bolts, at least until the Krall definitely knew they were out of the building and exposed.

  Accepting the limp armored form, Thad asked, “Whatcha thinking of doing Sarge? You gonna go back and kick down some walls?”

  “No, I’ll take cover here by these rocks and wait. Perhaps until I see warriors on the roof and starting up the cliff face for the ridge top. It’s time to see if I can bail your ass out, after your clever stunt to trap the Krall in a falling building didn’t work.”

  Greeves could see the ghostly image on his visor of his friend slipping into one of the piles of rocks that had concealed the Krall earlier. “Sarge, we can pick them off from the creek just as well. If they dust off their armor while they have a spare moment, you can’t see them any better from these rocks than from a mile away. Besides, the main valley is open now, so our troops don’t all have to fit down that small canyon.”

  “I doubt the Krall know that yet. Anyway, they can still make a great deal of trouble for the columns that have already been routed through the northern pass. I want them to head for the roof of the lodge and up the cliff. The more of them in the upper half of the building the better. I have to wait here, because I can’t remotely control the tri-barrels from out by the center of the valley. That’s beyond their designed one mile control range.”

  “Sarge, even with the limit pins out, the ability to shot almost straight down won’t help because the gun mounts aren’t close enough to the outer cliff face. All you can hit is the rock floor or your own cart if you fire straight down.” He knew Reynolds had someone remove the down-limit pins from the mounts, so the guns could be fully depressed.

  “Ye of little imagination. I just might bring the house down for you yet.” With that cryptic remark, Sarge went silent and dropped out of sight between two large boulders.

  Their luck held, and no bolts from the half-ruined lodge flew in their direction. Jumping from the sixth floor, a height too high for the Krall to attempt, even in their powered armor, had left the warriors believing the weaker humans must have continued their retreat to higher floors under the cover of the obscuring dust and debris. The stairwells and elevator openings for the collapsed level six still permitted access for warriors, who continued their upward pursuit.

  ****

  Gofdar was determined to destroy the remainder of this small, extremely troublesome group of humans, who had cost him so many warrior losses. One cowardly trait that even these better fighters displayed proved to be typical of human behavior. Falling back when the Krall attacked fiercely.

  Retreat had been a pattern the Krall had seen this entire day, from every human force they had faced on the planet. However, these highly effective fighters had nowhere to go now, when they reached the top floor of this nest. He wanted to be in the forefront of that desperate fight, and then he wanted to find the humans that had operated the heavy guns up inside the cliff, who had nearly taken his life. They would not die quickly.

  The blasts inside the building triggered on levels six and down through level three, had left his force of warriors covered in dust, but largely unharmed. He had lost barely more than a hand, although there were two hands or more of armored warriors temporarily trapped on a half collapsed level, who would work their way free when he assigned warriors to assist in cutting through the debris. He recognized that this action was actually a failed trap, because the staggered explosions had been intended to collapse the building down on Gofdar’s entire remaining force.

  In a flash of admiration for a worthy foe, he realized if the full nest had fallen, it could have been a fatal strategy for them as well. It was fortunate his warriors had not given them time to complete their demolition placement work. It was vital to maintain the same relentless pressure now, and close with them before they could weaken the nest even more.

  “Do not give them time to plant explosives. Attack!” This order, broadcast to every com set, was hardly needed to stimulate his nearly berserk warriors to greater effort. However, it made him sound and feel as if he was directing the action, which he would have been unable to halt had he chosen to try.

  He was only the seventh warrior to reach the rooftop landing pad, and the first lucky three lay dead at the top of the stairs. They had been burned down as they arrived, and their flesh was smoldering inside the large holes burned through the upper parts of their suits. However, there was none of the ripples visible here from human stealthed armor, or even traces of plasma or laser fire. The prey must have left through the open large doors, built into the side of the cliff from the roof.

  The three dead had been killed only seconds before Gofdar arrived behind them. It took a more powerful bolt than the humans fired from their suit mounted beams. There were two gun carts parked at the edge of the roof, the damnable weapons humans called ladybugs.

  He and the four surviving warriors instantly fired on both tri barrels, and their bolts struck the now strangely silent gun barrels, ensuring they were too damaged to fire again.

  The unknown truth was that these weapons, abandoned here when the Kobani raced down to the lower levels, had used up the last of their preloaded ammunition fuel rods some time ago. The rods were vaporized and incrementally consumed to create those powerful triple plasma bolts. Even as the Krall fought for entry on the ground floor, these guns had fallen silent. They were left unmanned because there was no need to reload them if there were no longer any warriors to target below the building.

  The four Krall crouched and raced to the sides of the gun carts, positioned where they would be safe from a weapon that could not aim down that low and that close to its sides. Two warriors per cart, using brute force and assisted by powered armor, they reached under and lifted one side, tipping them onto their sides, the gun mounts protruding out of the top of the clamshells resting against the parapet, above the ten-story drop.

  Gofdar called for more warriors to help shove them over the side of the building. He’d lost enough octets to these weapons, and the sound of their crash and crumpling on the ground below was pleasing to his ears. He’d realized as they shoved them over the side, that they contained no crews. His infrared vision told him that the barrels were too cool to have fired so recently. Those two guns had not killed the first three warriors to arrive on the rooftop.

  That left only the two higher guns that could have done this. He looked up the side of the cliff, and saw the two crude improvised firing ports as he raced to reach the rock wall below them, where they couldn’t possibly target him that close below them. Perhaps they were reloading, or had not wanted to draw attention. Perhaps those two gun crews were also now in retreat. He ordered all of the warriors to use their suit’s antistatic dust repel system to make their suits cleaner, and then they brushed and wiped at any dirt that remained. The antistatic system couldn’t be used when stealth was active. Now they needed to climb the exposed rock face, and stealth was their best protection from snipers.

  The upper emplacement was the gun that Gofdar knew had nearly ki
lled him previously. He could still see heat radiating out of the higher opening, which meant that was where the shots had originated that killed the first three warriors to reach the top. He had again been a potentially helpless target on the roof, without even being aware of the threat, and had survived due to luck yet again. The humans obviously had tunnels bored into these cliffs, as they did many places in mountainous terrain on Poldark. Their warrens were usually mined to explode if entered by the Krall, unless there were living humans still present to be protected.

  There had to be perhaps twenty or thirty humans in the tunnels right now. That must be where these fighters had retreated, he reasoned, carrying their wounded, since none but their dead had been found. He sent five octets after them. His personal goal was to scale the craggy cliff face to reach the improvised gun ports, safe from any shots from that source when he was so close to the wall under them.

  The rooftop was crowded with warriors now, looking up where they knew they needed to go, and some looked out over the valley, where the other humans remained clustered in that small stream bed. Gofdar chose the personal path he could follow, which would keep his story in the histories of the clans that advanced along the Great Path. He would lead forty of his octets up the outside of the cliff to the ridge top, while the octets in the tunnels used their sense of smell to trace the humans to their den. He would ensure that the main human army had no escape path through the adjacent canyon. When his warriors caught up with the humans in the tunnels, surely hampered by foolishly carrying their wounded as they always did, they would be killed or captured. He requested some live prisoners, if possible, for slow interrogation.

  If the tunnels had sensors that recognized there were no longer any living humans present, and contained only Krall, he might lose those forty warriors if the tunnels were destroyed. His remaining seven hundred twenty seven warriors not going with him would be sent to wipe out the cowardly humans on the valley floor, after first salvaging all of the weapons and power packs they could find, taking them from their own dead. His force of two thousand twenty four had dwindled to eleven hundred and twenty seven, per his visor count.

  This was an honorable attrition rate, worthy of high status awards when earned in fierce fighting against a force with so many more than their own numbers. The one fact he would conceal in his report to his clan leader, and to the Gatlek, was that a disproportionate number of his losses had happened against only about fifty of the enemy in this building, where half of this enemy appeared to have survived, thus far. He hoped they would be found.

  He started up the cliff, after wisely permitting a full octet to precede him, awarding them what he termed was an honor, which he said was due to their fighting skill today. If there were any long range sniping at the first to start the climb, he’d have a bit of warning this time. He was conscious now of how important his role today could be in the history told of how he had led the forces that trapped a large human army, leaving them ripe for destruction. He believed he would earn a second name for this action, and he wanted to be alive to relish that accomplishment. His seed was already frozen, and ready for reproducing his line, but he wanted rewards that he could enjoy personally.

  He instructed the octet leader to stop to examine the lower gun emplacement for occupation, although he was sure the crew of that gun must have departed, because there was no heat from that opening from a recently fired heavy weapon. Only the higher gun had fired in the last few minutes. He would check that upper gun, just to catch the scent of the crew, so he would remember them if they were taken alive.

  The octet ahead of him safely reached the first gun position, and swarmed inside the obviously improvised and crudely made firing port. The leader reported there was a scent of a single recently departed human, with others having been around the gun perhaps several hours ago.

  The gun was found powered on, pointed listlessly down at the back of the empty driver’s compartment. The gunner had left the rear clamshell standing fully open, as if the operator had fled in a panic. That sense of hurried evacuation was reinforced when the octet leader noted that there were three nearly depleted plasma feed rods inserted, ready for firing additional bolts, with many more reload rods in the racks. The gunner had run away before taking those final few shots at his advancing enemy. This was the first break in the discipline Gofdar had noted in this otherwise effective small force of fighters.

  Down below, in the nest, the enemy had retreated only in the face of relentless pressure of his warriors. This individual had abandoned his post up here before there was any direct pressure. It was out of character it seemed, compared to the actions of the other fighters.

  Gofdar was the first to peer into the cavity where the higher gun was placed, and saw again the familiar shape of a ladybug. Somehow, they had brought it up here, and physically carried it close to the cliff face from that small space in front of the lift’s door. A hole had been battered through the rock to provide an opening for a firing position. He looked out over the valley, to where he saw the exact spot where he and his octet leaders had first come under fire from this very gun.

  He manually opened a ventilator port on his helmet to scent the air. He’d noted that this gun cart too had its clamshell open, that there were three nearly depleted ammunition rods inserted, ready for one or two more bolts to fire per barrel. He looked down at the roof below and realized how easy it would have been for that gunner to kill him as he followed the three warriors just ahead of him. It was almost insulting, as if fate had twice deemed Gofdar an unworthy target for this gunner.

  He had noted that with the clamshell open as it was, this gun too was pointed down at a sharp angle, directly towards a hump at the back of the driver’s compartment. He saw a series of lights flicker on the gun’s command console, and sensed a pulse of heat from the lasers at the base of the gun mount as they vaporized the tips of the ammunition feeder rods, followed by a hissing sound as plasma was magnetically routed to feed the tri barrel’s plasma chambers. Recalling what his octet leader below had just relayed to him, he realized each gun was positioned exactly the same way, aimed down in the same manner.

  That sound he heard was fate, and it wasn’t passing up its third chance to eliminate him. This gun was preparing to fire, but not at him. He briefly wondered, as he moved far too slowly to make a difference, what he would have received for his second name.

  ****

  Greeves was exasperated. “Sarge, if you won’t shoot them off the wall from where you’re concealed, why don’t you want us to pick any of them off from here? They’re hard to see, but we can kill a few of them. What the hell do you mean wait another fifteen seconds?”

  “Stop bugging me, Thad. I’m watching them, or at least I see some of the lose rocks fall and a few plants pushed aside. When they reach the second tri-barrel, I’ll take care of them all for you. Now stop distracting me. I said I’d bail your ass out from that harebrained scheme of jumping out of the building as it blows up. The jumping part is all that worked, you dummy. However, I’ll fix it for you.”

  “Who’re you calling a dummy? I’m out here in the creek with fire support, while you’re alone in that pile of rocks, which the Krall are going to swarm all over in another ten minutes or so.”

  “You’re safe? There will be perhaps eight hundred to a thousand Krall pouring out of that building after us when they figure out where we went. You won’t be safe until I make you safe…,” He paused as he watched something on his visor.

  “Ah. Here we go. Lights out sub leader.”

  “What do you…,” Thad didn’t finish his question. His mouth was simply left hanging open as his visor system automatically adjusted to protect his eyes.

  A brilliant pair of flashes lanced straight out from the cliff side before two fireballs erupted, and matching huge dust plumes expanded and merged right behind them. It took only a few seconds for the double blast waves to reach them. An expanding spray of dust and rocks obscured that entire section of the rid
ge above the lodge. The thunder lasted longer than expected for the blast. However, it finally ended before the reflection of the sound returned from the far wall of the valley, three miles away. The cause of the extended thunder became obvious as the dust thinned.

  A large section of the cliff above the lodge had fractured and slid free, falling onto the lodge below. The entire structure, already weakened, had totally collapsed as the tens of thousands of tons of rock slammed the upper levels onto the lower ones, and buried most of the building. The collective weight of the rock face was far more than the ferrocrete and steel structure alone, and both had combined to crush the Krall assault.

  There would be isolated Krall survivors, of course, but not in numbers that they couldn’t be easily eliminated now.

  Spartan was first to speak. “How the hell did you get the rest of our explosives up to the ladybugs? There was no time, and no one to move that many tons so quickly.”

  “Hell lieutenant, why would I go to all that bother when all I had to do was read the ladybug safety manual? Hey, Thad. Let me tax your underused brain for moment. I’m sorry if that will cause you undue pain.” He laughed cheerfully.

  With a sigh, Greeves knew he was going to hear about this forever. “Go on.”

  “I asked for the limit pins to be removed from the gun mounts, as you recall. What was the purpose of those pins? You received the same downloaded user’s manual that I did.”

  “To prevent some knuckleheaded gunner like you from accidentally putting a bolt down through the back of the driver’s head.”