Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  “You don’t think the Krall will be using your old base themselves?”

  Sarge shook his head. “They never have before, not even when they push us out of a small field command post. They know we have miniature spy bots, disguised as insects and small animals, which we leave behind in areas we abandon. They learned the hard way that we ‘cowardly’ sneaky humans sometimes mine our underground lairs, to blow up and bury their red, scaly, colored asses under millions of tons of rock. They make underground bunkers for their own use, and stay out of ours.”

  “It’s safe for us to use that old base ourselves?” Mirikami asked.

  “Probably. We have to check it out first, but it had long tunnels leading away from its center under the foothills in all directions, which would let us surface miles from where the ship is hidden.”

  “Won’t our own people going inside trigger the booby traps?” Noreen was asking what was on Marlyn’s mind as well. Both of their sons, Carson and Ethan, and husbands, Dillon and Thad, were part of Mirikami’s landing party.

  “Nope. They use life-form discrimination detectors Ladies.” He answered, and then he grinned. “Fancy pants words for saying they can tell the difference between Krall and humans, or even from animals that might enter the tunnels. At some point, if a mined but still occupied base was being overrun by Krall, a seriously detrimental ratio of enemy to human is reached in different sections. Those areas would blow first, where the most Krall are located, and there could be collateral losses of our people trapped there or captured. However, remember that the Krall don’t let prisoners live to a peaceful ripe old age anyway.”

  Tet wanted details of the tunnels. “How far away could those tunnels take us? Into or even behind the Poldark lines?”

  Reynolds seemed to think for a moment. “I don’t think they would go that far. At the rate we were losing ground, I’d expect the Krall to have pushed our forces back a dozen miles from where the longest tunnel I recall came to the surface. I never used all of the tunnels personally, so I can’t be sure. It was a forward post for the spec ops troops, and our ambush teams came along when the Krall were on the doorstep. We tried to suck their lead elements into artillery ambushes or mine fields.” He paused to think for a moment.

  “You know…, I said we leave spy bots behind, so there could be some crawling on the walls inside. We might get one or two of them to report seeing humans in the tunnels, to set up some sort of remote meeting. I don’t know how good they are at talking back to us if they report seeing humans. I wasn’t part of the ‘spook’ division, and the Krall wouldn’t make for good conversationalists, so the spy bots might provide only a one way street to the listeners.”

  Tet nodded. “OK. In any case, I like the proximity to the Poldark lines, and the ship should have good cover. Frankly, I’m not worried about the Krall questioning our ship being there, since they already control the area. They’ll assume we are some clan of raiders on our own business, at least if the ship is only seen from a distance. The PU Army, however, will shoot first at a clanship, and ask no questions at all. How wide is that canyon compared to this ship? How much room will I have to set down?”

  Reynolds closed his eyes a moment to visualize the canyon the last time he’d seen it, with Dragon mini tanks chasing his team. “It’s roughly twice as wide as the ship for most of its length, and actually opens up a bit near the back wall at the end of the box canyon.” Reynolds could only fly a shuttle, so a large vertical landing ship, like the Mark of Koban, was outside his expertise as a pilot.

  Mirikami pulled at his lip. “I’ll have to slow and hover over the canyon for a moment to get centered. Unless the wind is high that day, I should be able to counter any side drift. I don’t want to still be evading missiles or chase planes when I go vertical and settle. The long-range sensors show that Navy Carrier you said was usually here. It’s standing off and parked out by the inner gas giant, orbiting one of its moons. How many of its fighters do you think would be in the inner system?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “I was a dirt pounder. I know that sometimes the one or two man fighters would come in for cover and air support if our forces were being hit in the rear by single ships. It took a four or five to one advantage to take on one of their single ships, and our pilots stayed well away from the Dragons and front lines, since those portable plasma cannons can knock them down from five or even ten miles away.

  “Our pilots and planes are far and away more maneuverable than a single ship in atmosphere, since they have wings, and a single ship is a simple tube that farts propellant to turn or accelerate. It also as Normal Space drives with tachyon Traps, usually for operation in space. It is much faster and has heavier armament than our space planes, but a Krall pilot isn’t as good as our people, once they leave orbit and hit air, even if a Krall can take much greater acceleration.

  “The atmosphere is a big drag, literally, on their effectiveness as air attack fighters or bombers. Our smart missiles are better, because they aren’t as easily spoofed by electronic counter measures, and they don’t cause collateral damage for our side if they can’t score a hit. Naturally, the Krall don’t give a shit about what happens if they miss. However, I don’t think you will have any fighters try to close with us. The lasers or plasma cannons of a clanship can vaporize them, and its own tough hull and stealth make it hard for them to hit or damage. They won’t know that we aren’t trying to kill them, and they’ll stay away.

  “However, our planes and ground Batteries can fire some long-range missiles, if they can get targeting information from the Turb AI. Our safest course is to descend over Krall territory where the planes can’t fly and the ground launchers are at extreme range and then we can approach the canyon at tree top level from there.”

  “What sort of AI?” Marlyn asked. “Tub did you say?”

  “Turb, for turbulence detection. The PDC fills the air with microwaves, and a grid of ground detectors sense the refraction from atmospheric disturbances that the AI examines. There is a lot of turbulence that is natural, from storms and such, particularly over windy mountain ranges. However, none is long and vertically tubular at high altitudes, as when a Krall craft penetrates fast, nor does nature often form horizontal tubes at lower altitudes, as we’d make during high-speed horizontal travel. Those are most likely a fast moving clanship or single ship making a penetration, and if there is no corresponding hard radar or laser reflection, then it’s targeted as a stealthed enemy.”

  “Is it accurate?” Noreen wanted to know.

  “Fairly accurate, but the Krall don’t fly a nice straight line, and there is a slight lag in detection as the atmosphere reacts to a ship’s passing, so the ship may have changed direction by the time the Turb AI has a targeting solution. Before I was captured, one case that was initially touted as a destroyed clanship proved not to be, when no debris was found. Investigation and recordings revealed the Army had successfully killed a funnel cloud, by heat disruption with lasers and plasma cannons.”

  He laughed. “It was an expensive triumph for violent weather control however.”

  Mirikami chuckled with him for a moment. “I think we will try a more sedate entry, and attract a lot less attention.”

  Reynolds had a cautionary warning. “If the sky is clear there is a chance the ripple effect can show us up, and then you don’t have velocity to get you out of harm’s way as quickly.”

  Noreen was exasperated. “Damn it. Our sons and husbands, and our friends will be aboard the Mark! You included, you big negative sounding goof! Isn’t there any simple way to sneak in quietly? What the hell is the ripple effect?”

  He smiled, and explained. “Take a perfectly clear glass sphere and tie it to a thin string and hang it from a ceiling. Then push it to send it oscillating around a normal room filled with lights, furniture, and objects on the walls. The sphere is almost perfectly transparent, but unless it’s motionless, you can see it easily because of how it affects the light passing through it from the other side as
it moves. A stealthed ship is somewhat like that. The armor I wore in combat had active camouflage, and blended me in with the background, even matching the surrounding temperature for a low infrared contrast. Nevertheless, if I moved very much, or too fast, I became faintly noticeable. That’s the ripple effect.”

  Mirikami tried to ease their worries. “Ladies, I’m hoping to find a major storm system with high cloud tops and lots of turbulence, and try to sink into that for screening as long as I can.”

  “Right over the canyon you plan to use? How long will you have to sit and wait for a storm like that?” Marlyn wondered.

  Mirikami shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to do it over the destination point anyway. I have two-thirds of a large continent where the Krall are located to find a suitable storm. It’s spring in the northern hemisphere. There should be frequent thunder storms, right Sarge?” He knew Reynolds would agree, because not only was it an accurate statement, but because that was something they had discussed while in Jump transit.

  Reynolds tried to reassure them. “There are afternoon storms over coastal regions every day and some big ones in the central area of the continent of Macedonia often located somewhere along that mountain chain where we want to land. There was one storm building there when we arrived, but it will have dissipated before we are ready to make the entry. There’ll be others.”

  ****

  “Gatlek Pendor,” Kaldot called to his superior. “The three clanships you inquired about have not left orbit. They are maintaining stealth and formation, and no clan has announced them as theirs. However, because of their action to move away, I do not think they carry the expected supplies from Telda Ka.” They were waiting for replacement Dragon mini-tanks, and automated laser defenses against the annoying human artillery. These were being shipped from their base world, named K1 by the humans.

  New warriors to participate in the war arrived loosely, as various clans chose to send them. Except for small, brief raids on other human worlds, they were not permitted to take independent action on Poldark without coordination with the Gatlek, and were subject to his orders when they attacked any designated target or fought along any front. Until then they were free to land, to become acclimated to the local gravity, climate, and terrain, and to train their warriors here.

  Pendor answered his Mordo clan mate and aid, “Advise me of what they do after they decide to land, Kaldot. They may be waiting for more of their clan to arrive. I have no interest in them if they did not bring the weapons I requested.”

  Pendor had only found it necessary to conduct two punitive raids against uncooperative clanship commanders, whom had refused to coordinate with him, or had deliberately not obeyed his orders. They had been removed forcibly, and in the standard Krall tradition, fatally. For one thing, rampaging over the humans was “wasteful” of their potential as worthy enemies. For another, that worthy enemy was adept at making a strategic withdrawal, allowing a foolish clan sub leader to pursue beyond his logistics train, only to be flanked and cut off, subject to annihilation by a physically weaker enemy. This was an inefficient method of culling warriors because smarter and better fighters died with the poor sub leader.

  Pendor had no complaint about such a sub leader being eliminated from the gene pool more efficiently, if he or she was being too brash or stupid to contribute to the new genetic reorganization. Tor Gatrol Kanpardi had set a higher goal for racial improvement on the Great Path, and it had been approved by the joint clan council. A poor sub leader was expendable, but competent warriors compelled to follow him might be wasted as a result. Too many useful genes could be lost as young breeders, having greater potential than their over aggressive slow-to-learn higher status leader, died with him.

  For several thousand recent years, the clans had no powerful alien race to fight, and so they fought only among themselves, in a process that naturally selected for the strongest and fastest warriors, at the expense of the most innovative warriors. In their homogenous society, there were fewer non-standard thinkers. The lack of a recent smart, adaptable foe had created a need for this new breeding focus, to meet the challenge presented by the human prey. The fact that the most recent races they had faced were inherently unwarlike, and were slow to adjust or offer serious challenge to Krall warriors, had resulted in a dearth of warriors suited for meeting the crafty methods humans used to fight them. Poor competition led to poor competitors. Fortunately, the egg laying Krall could far out-produce the slower reproducing humans, with their mere one or two live births per year. The clans poured a nearly inexhaustible supply of warriors into the fight against them.

  Even as physically weak as humans were, and with lower technology than many past races, they were forcing the Krall to find better future leaders and warriors, which were then selectively bred. It would be at least a hundred years before enough of the resulting wave of smarter more adaptable cubs reached maturity, to dominate the war effort. However, it would happen, as it had always happened over the past twenty-two thousand years.

  The new heavy metal and rare earth food supplements, based on a Koban environmental model, were finding their way into the tissues of their newest cubs. Eventually, randomly, some of those elements would be incorporated into the nervous system, building the forerunner of the organic super conductor nerves the Krall also sought, as present naturally in all higher animals on Koban. It was hoped that this major step along the Great Path of self-directed evolution could be achieved before the human foe was fully eradicated. They would be a fine test for the new class of warriors that should be produced.

  ****

  Over the next several days, Mirikami watched for a weather development that he could use to his advantage. Several sizable storms with high cloud tops formed near coastal areas, but those were too far from the mountain range where the Mark of Koban could be more easily hidden, and would require a longer low altitude flight to the mountains. In those three days, there were six clanship arrivals and four departures, all of which successfully ran the gauntlet of Poldark defenses. They each used a high-speed penetration or exit method, which dared the humans to shoot them down. Twice the air defenses came close to succeeding for the arrivals.

  After watching Mirikami conduct a careful review of the high-speed penetrations, Sarge asked him, “Rethinking the slow approach?”

  “No. On the contrary, I don’t think we could have made it down safely the way the Krall came in. I had Jakob analyze the evasive turns they executed, and the internal g’s they withstood would probably have rendered any of us Second Generation people unconscious after the second or third sharp turn. Avoiding having to do that is the only option I see. The multiple missiles fired at them came too close for comfort if we can’t dodge like the Krall.”

  “We can’t risk not being able to do those turns if we are spotted.” Thad warned. “We have to drop out of a thunderstorm at some point, and head for the canyon. Perhaps I need to try to contact Nabarone by radio. Get him to send someone to meet us off planet.”

  “No, part of our sales pitch is to show him our TGs can outperform the Krall. Seeing them perform is believing in them, so I think we need to risk the landing for a face-to-face meeting with Nabarone. However, I think we may be able to take advantage of the capabilities of our TG1’s in a pinch. Jakob, Link me to Chief Haveram.”

  “Yes Sir.” The smaller subset of the Flight of Fancy’s Jake AI software, running in older hardware, had been modified to function with the crew’s embedded transducers.

  “Chief, I need you to install another two acceleration couches on the Bridge, right next to mine.”

  “Captain, we have one in storage as a spare, but the other one will have to be one of those currently installed in either the Jump Drive Room or the Engine Room.” Haveram had planned to use the one in the Engine Room for the Poldark landing.

  “Not a problem, Chief. We aren’t going to Jump anywhere soon, and so far, we haven’t needed anyone to stand watch over those gages. The Krall ships are a lot mor
e automatic than ours, so take the couch from the Jump Drive Room.” The chief had been switching from one area to the other to monitor the equipment, depending on their use of the tachyon powered drive or the reaction thrusters. Both monitoring jobs seemed pointless on the former clanship.

  ****

  After several days waiting, they finally had a sizable front moving across the mountain range close to the tropics, with a wall of thunderstorms constantly developing along its front. Leaving final instructions for Marlyn and Noreen, and letting them make their goodbyes to their husbands and sons in private, Mirikami edged away from the Avenger and Beagle, drifting down towards the planet.

  Mirikami initially intended to use the Normal Space drive, powered by tachyon energy, and settle more slowly into atmosphere than a normal space craft would do. At a sufficiently low altitude, about thirty-five thousand feet, they would be near the highest cloud tops of mature anvil top thunderstorms, and could switch to weaker but more precisely controlled manual thruster power, and descend down to the most turbulent and thus most concealing levels of the cumulonimbus clouds. Then, staying above the mountain peaks, vector along the line of storms to the northeast until they were almost over the destination mountain range. The next step was to carefully drop below the cloud base, behind the peaks on the Krall controlled side, and use the mountains to screen them from the PDC radar and sensors on the other side for as long as possible. From there they could travel horizontally, using passes and staying clear of the mountain peaks visually, until near the part of the range where Reynolds had found the box canyon for them. Mirikami wanted to avoid using any active radar or laser scans because that would negate the stealth approach.