Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (21 page)

“Instead, we have fine mesh copper screening, made into radiation proof long johns, booties, gloves, and partial facemasks. We converted an automated tarpaulin factory to produce the mesh as long as we had fine copper thread to feed it. We first made panels of aluminum mesh, but that proved too brittle, and it cracked at our joints when flexed even a few times. It’s the leaks at joints we need to prevent.”

Christopoulos was curious. “What the hell are long johns?”

“It’s cold weather whole body underwear. We have bad winters here, and those fabric undergarments are common outdoor recreation gear. We stitch copper mesh onto and over them, and add mesh covered gloves and socks. It makes an uncomfortable stiff garment, and some folks don’t even wear a uniform over them since copper transfers heat fast, and it gets warm in the suits. We kept the sheets of aluminum mesh we made, and use them on walls of shelters for groups of civilians, but there wasn’t time to make many of those Faraday cages. Anyway, sitting in a shielded room isn’t going to keep them from coming to get you, and we’re told we aren’t as susceptible to the Debilitater rays as you Kobani are.”

“Colonel, the pain induced is dependent on range and intensity. If unprotected and you catch a high dose narrow beam inside of three to five miles, you’ll probably die without shielding. We can’t let the transmission get within fifteen miles of our nervous systems. We now know we’ll have to help you drive off ground forces, not just those in space, like we originally thought. You need to focus on missiles and those heavy lasers knocking out the Stranglers, and your PDF troops somehow need to stop their tanks. Up here, I’ll go after what we can to reduce their pressure on your space defenses.

“Sir, I can tell you the PU army said they were sending troops, but I can’t say how quickly they can get here, or if the navy even has authorization to get involved and land them. They expected to have a few more months to bring them in. There are already two thousand Kobani ships coming, so we could probably make a hole in the Ragnar fleet large enough to get Nabarone’s landers on the ground, if they moved fast. If not, we can transfer his troops to our ships a couple of thousand at a time. If the PU isn’t committed yet, then it’s just you and us against their troops.”

“Combat tested PU troops would help us greatly. Do you know if they have anti-tank weapons with them? Probably not, because the Krall they’ve been mopping up no longer have operational Dragons. We don’t have many of those small Dragon poppers, because Krall raiders never used them here.”

“Sorry, I don’t know how they’re equipped, or if they’re even coming. This all happened too fast. When more of our fleet gathers, even without PU navy help, we should be able to keep the Ravagers and their Shredders occupied. That would deny the ground troops some of the support they’d have otherwise. Unless the Thandol sends in one of their massive fleets to help the Ragnar. All bets are off in that case.”

“Gee. You’re just a fountain of good news, aren’t you?”

“I do my best to cheer up you poor miserable ground pounders.”

“Misery loves company. Come on down and shoot something any time you’ve a mind to help.”

“I’ll take that under consideration. For now, whatever we kill in orbit can’t shoot at your butts down there. Good luck, Colonel.”

“Good hunting to you too, Commander.”

****

Thond, finally making his way to the Pounder’s Bridge, detouring around internal destruction, passing through an improvised internal airlock, he switched on his suit’s external speakers and offered a bit of friendly advice for his old combat companion.

“Krintar Hitok, you need to get our hairy asses down on the ground fast, at least if you expect to live to bash another head before these falgrats destroy all of your Pounders.”

Thond was shocked at how close this ship, Hitok’s command vessel, had come to being destroyed. His shuttle was still in the landing bay when fate delivered the unexpected attack at a brief, but key moment of vulnerability.

The close proximity of the Pounder to the flagship was all that had prevented their complete destruction. The flagship, obviously central for fleet operations, had data feeds to its AI from every warship in the fleet. The enemy’s exits from Tachyon Space went undetected without gamma ray bursts, and their superior stealth kept them that way, since the mass detectors were slower to spot them. At least until they launched missiles and fired energy beams. Detections of missile launches and beams firing at several nearby Pounders arrived at the flagship a half second before Hitok’s Pounder came under fire. It was just enough time, and a lucky break that the enemy ship coming after that particular lander was fractionally late starting its attack. The Pounder’s own AI normally controlled its automatic defenses, but they were on manual control while Thond’s shuttle approached. Live crews couldn’t match an AI’s response time, but in combat they also damn well wouldn’t shoot at the Force Commander’s incoming shuttle in error.

Three of five incoming missiles were destroyed by the flagship’s AI, with rapid response by its energy beams, and the two surviving missiles penetrated well away from the Bridge, engines, and fusion plants. The thick, high-density armor of a Pounder limited some of the external hull damage. However, the warhead blasts inside, after the hypervelocity missiles penetrated, was devastating to the troops nearby, even enclosed in their sealed body armor. Nearly one hundred of the five hundred Ragoons wouldn’t be joining the fight on the ground, and one of two Debilitater units mounted on a Pillager base lost its antenna, so it would serve only as a mobile medium power battle laser now.

Thond’s first act, even before leaving his shuttle, or knowing if the Pounder would survive the attack, was to link his memory assistant to the flagship AI for information. Next, he called Grudfad. “Lieutenant, I recommend you link the fleet data feed into your Combat Center back to every Ravager. They need that slight warning time to defend against any more such cloaked attacks. Your AI just informed me that this Pounder would likely have been destroyed if there had not been time for the flagship to intercept several missiles.”

“Yes, Sire.” Grudfad wasn’t about to remind FC Thond that Space Force responsibility had just been transferred to him. But he felt it necessary to point out a consequence of obeying Thond’s politely offered
recommendation
. “Won’t the high use of data transfer significantly occupy much of the flagship AI’s computation time, and limit data fed to our weapons center from our own sensors?” He wanted to demonstrate his grasp of the ships AI assisted defenses, and its limitations.

Thond wasn’t impressed. “Of course. Which is more important? The flagship or the rest of the fleet? Assign a couple of Ravagers as your escorts. I need to move out of this shuttle and join Hitok, Thond out.”

This was another lesson in experience and priorities for the Lieutenant Force Commander, now Acting Space Force Commander. Thond wanted him to realize his ship, and its commander, were subservient to the needs of the entire fleet he now commanded.

As Thond strode onto the Pounder’s bridge, the bulky body armor concealed his impressive silver tipped black fur. Nevertheless, a distinctive black and silver surface design, a default pattern programed into his stealth system, identified him to Hitok. Just as Hitok’s charcoal gray fur pattern on his armor, with a gruesome helmet top resembling a blood-spattered skull, identified him as Head Basher.

Hitok used his memory assistant to trigger his armor’s simulated fur shiver mode, turned to greet his friend and offered an apology. “Gimtal Thond, I welcome you to Pounder Group 1 old friend. I suppose I should add that I wish the meeting had been a little less
warm
. I’m sorry our reunion has started so badly.”

Triggering his armor’s shiver mode, Thond thumped his armored chest once in respect. “What fun is a battle if the enemy never does the unexpected, and offers no surprises?”

Offering one thump in reply, Hitok said, “This surprise nearly ended yours and my participation. When you traveled here from the shuttle bay, you must have seen where one of the two missiles broke through. My ship engineers say the hull damage will slow our atmosphere entry speed, but if we grant them a short time, they can weld two temporary metal sheets over the holes so we can descend at higher speed. They can make a longer lasting repair on the ground.”

Thond flipped his armored hand in a gesture of agreement. “I think that is an advisable precaution. I’m sure the humans have in place defenses they used against the Krall clanships that conducted raids. We need every advantage that speed can provide. Any of your other damaged ships should make similar repairs, if it doesn’t take too long.”

He was quick to amend his advice. “Although, I’m not telling you what to do with your group specifically, but as overall Force commander I’m going to order all group commanders to proceed as rapidly as possible with landings, to move towards their assigned cities and capture the spaceports. The way each of you accomplishes that is your responsibility. I provide the goals and my four Ground Force commanders, jointly or independently, decide how to achieve those goals.”

Hitok squatted briefly, indicating assent. “Therefore,” he said, “I’ll send in my undamaged Pounders first, to establish a perimeter and offload my armored units, while we conduct limited repairs on the damaged ships. My command ship will obviously be one that is delayed slightly. I lost three Pounders, with fourteen others too damaged to make an entry without repairs. I intend to conduct three waves of entries. Undamaged ships land immediately, a smaller wave will follow with this ship after a short interval for repair, and any that require longer repairs to follow as they can.”

“Krintar, how many landers do say you have to send in the first wave?”

“I have eighty-three undamaged ships, with forty-one thousand five hundred Ragoons total, and four armored vehicles per ship. I’ll have three hundred thirty-two Pillagers of various types that can form an Armored Force column to send ahead to the city that I’m assigned to capture. I don’t yet have the exact count of the types of armor that will be in the undamaged ships, but it will be varied. A mix of Debilitaters and medium lasers, heavy plasma cannon and light lasers, heavy lasers and a mortar, or my favorite, the large smooth bore self-guided enemy armor killers, or bunker busters, on the largest Pillager base. There are only four mobile command centers, one per Pounder Group, and mine wasn’t damaged in the attack. We agreed not to bring any personnel carriers because we expected to land at our primary targets, not travel overland to the spaceports. Now Our troops and armor will have to separate.”

Hitok wasn’t offering a criticism, since he had sided with Thond’s argument to leave those vehicles behind. They both had favored more troops and heavier armored firepower, instead of greater mobility for fewer Ragoons. He repeated an ancient Ragnar truism. “A plan of attack never lasts longer than the enemy’s different opinion.”

The Force Commander shivered the electronic fur pattern displayed on his left shoulder, to indicate a sort of shrug. “My initial plan didn’t last long today. Now I need to change the enemy’s opinion by what I do to adjust.”

****

“Henry, we need to adjust.” Mirikami announced. “Even without PU navy assistance, I think we have enough Kobani ships to drive off the Ragnar fleet, or severely hurt them if they refuse to abandon the invasion. But there isn’t enough radiation protected body armor in the entire Federation for everyone, and we don’t have armored vehicles or anti-armor weapons to drive the Ragnar off the planet. At least not before the Thandol could send part of just one of their three far larger fleets to drive us away.

“There are nearly a thousand rippers asking if they can go fight with us. Obviously, we can’t risk losing so many of them, not that so few of them would make that much of a difference in this case, against so many. Not until we have a viable defense against the Debilitaters. No one with a nervous system is immune to the radiation, but anyone from Koban is far more susceptible than are the PU regular army troops against that weapon. You saw the images from Zanzibar. Our people die, or become totally incapacitated at relatively low exposures to the radiation, compared to a Normal that is mildly affected. Tanner’s needs more help than your Kobani spec ops. We need regular PU army forces.”

Nabarone felt as if he was betraying his friend, his people, and himself. But his hands were tied. “Tet, I can’t send regular army men and women into a new war without the approval of President Strickland. I’ll live with the violation of my oath to the PU, to help preserve Koban and the Federation, but I can’t ask those troops to do so. I can’t even solicit volunteers, because they aren’t free to do that either. I’ve convinced Foxworthy to load my Kobani speck ops onto her troop carriers today, with the expectation that Strickland will have a Kobani Comtap link to relay deployment authorization before she needs to Jump.” He paused, sending a mental image of troops filing onto a PU transport, and equipment, including armored vehicles, being loaded into their equipment bays.

“As you can see, Tet, they’re wearing or carrying their Kobani body armor, but only about half of them have recently been to Koban or K1, to have their suits radiation proofed. We thought we had more time. Most of them will need the same sort of fine copper mesh that Tanner’s PDF forces are using. But I sure as hell don’t have any.”