Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (32 page)

“Yes, Sire. Good luck.” And within minutes, in mid battle, the fleet was suddenly gone.

****

Mirikami wasn’t surprised. “Well, I expected a withdrawal. Although, I thought they might try to slip out their troops and landers before their fleet left. We would have bled their fleet heavily while they made the attempt. I suppose that’s why they saved what is really their most effective force. The landers would have been decimated if they attempted to climb without having first crippled the nearest PDF defenses, and then passing through our domination of orbital space. It was a rational decision on the part of their commander. I assume he left with the fleet.”

Maggi, more a political thinker, considered the implications. “I think letting the supply ships through makes them feel they’re in a stronger position than before. It helps us by showing we can be merciful, and they have some strength to use in trading with us when we start to negotiate. Right now, they feel stronger with those supplies in hand, with over eight hundred fifty space planes, several hundred armored landers, and one nearly intact tank force. They surely believe they have four armies pitted against negligible ground forces, and think they can still prevail at those four cities. If their history is like ours, they know air power has never won a ground war on its own, and we’ve seen they understand a blitzkrieg style of ground warfare. However, if they get their troops into towns or cities, like Fort Bradford here, it will be hard to dig them out.”

“They won’t take over Fort Bradford, even with their armored units.” Sarge said with assurance. “There’ll be a force of nearly thirty thousand troops here by tomorrow, two thirds of ‘em Kobani. The PDF shuttles are bringing in the local troops they had dispersed at other cities, which will bring them up to just over ten thousand. Our people landed with us.”

Maggi wasn’t so certain. “The Ragnar have about forty-five thousand infantry moving this way on commandeered trucks, escorted by several hundred space planes, and I think Thad said about eighty-four landers are flying low with them, providing them with aerial plasma, laser, and missile defenses. With at least twenty Stranglers, each with their own similar defenses. They aren’t exactly wide open to attack from orbit.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t want us to have to fight them off if we could negotiate instead.”

Tet had a better understanding of what Sarge was trying to achieve. He’d decided to let the former Poldark infantryman try out another of his schemes. to keep the destruction down, while convincing the enemy they needed to negotiate.

“Maggi, Sarge has a plan, and he discussed it with Gaffigan, Thad and me. We think it’s worth a try, to gain a military advantage that the Ragnar will see and respect.”

“Tet, I heard Colonel Gaffigan say the ladybugs are no match for any of the Ragnar tanks in a shootout, except for those units with Debilitaters transmitters. And even they carry lasers that can take out a ladybug. We don't know how well even our modified body armor will hold up against the Debilitaters, and the PDF troops have copper screen undies for their only protection, as do some of our own people. General Nabarone can’t talk Admiral Foxworthy into delivering his troops here yet. Not without President Strickland’s approval. I don't think we look strong enough to the Ragnar to force them into negotiating their surrender.”

Sarge grinned. “Then let’s convince them to agree to an honorable truce, after first convincing them that we could blow their hairy asses to kingdom come if we want.”

“How do you plan to accomplish that without actually having to do it, Oh Great and Sneaky One?” She asked sarcastically

“Watch and learn from an experience warhorse, you little blondie. I’m not Captain of the Sneaky Bastard without reason, ya know.”

“Humph. Big deal, you’re self-named. And if you imply I’m a blonde airhead again, you’ll learn what a gelding is, warhorse.”

Thond was impatient for Hitok to enter the outskirts of Fort Bradford. Not that he could read the city’s name on the sign by the roadway. “I ordered the Stranglers to hover below the tops of the rolling hills, and they’re sweeping all of the roads and buildings along all the routes into the residential areas. The drones saw refugees, all of them humans it appeared, evacuating the city away from us for the last two cycles of this world.”

This time, the invasion force, joined by infantry was proceeding cautiously, spread out over a wider front, using natural cover. The armored units didn’t always use roadways, and the terrain offered shielding from the now stilled orbital lasers, which had no space targets now. The drones reported none of them had been lowered into pits, or tipped to their sides. There were no narrow canyons they could block, nor a river valley with a dam they could destroy and thus bury or sweep them away. Nevertheless, Commander Hitok was determined not to underestimate this enemy, as three other Ground Force Commanders had done.

Thond continued to contemplate this strange acting opponent. “If this so called Federation has other species as full participating members, they are certainly making themselves hard to find. Humans, the sea crabs, and the hairy little tree dwelling bipeds, are the only creatures that we’ve seen, or had reported to us by the Thandol. They are supposed to have several other member species.”

Hitok, intently observing the drone images, and those he, or the AI in the mobile command center selected from cameras mounted on other tanks, stayed focused on potential ambushes for his multipronged force, as it started to enter the edge of the city.

Trying not to sound critical, or imposing his authority on a commander he’d granted full authority over his own Group, Thond had to comment on a difference he saw compared to past behavior by Hitok. “Krintar, it’s your force, but I don't recall you being so cautious when we campaigned together in the past. On Kindar, Folthan, or Spil’dar, where we met stiff resistance from those three revolts.”

“Gimtal, we never lost even a tenth of a Group from all three of those armed insurrections combined, not even counting the eleven other punishment raids the Emperor sent us to administer, after he felt some trivial slight, or insult had been made. Yes, we lost some Ragoons, a few Pillagers, even a few Ravagers, Stranglers, and Smashers, in the insurrections. But losing three entire Armored Forces, in a single action? That only happened long ago, against the Thandol, and even then, those greater losses took place over many years, against superior weaponry and a dominant fleet. And that was done by actual military forces. I don't know that we’ve even confronted human military ground forces yet.”

“Commander Gontra’s armor was certainly met by the human military.” Thond countered, in a remark he instantly regretted.

“Not by a human ground force military.” Hitok answered. “That was a space defense system, which was unexpectedly converted into a ground defense. I never heard of any other opponent doing something like that.”

Hitok used a Ragnar expression to explain what he was doing now. “I’m trying to learn what they have hidden under their hairy armpits. An alien trained ground defense force might do things we don’t expect. Who knows what weapon they can pull from a symbolic armpit, which we didn’t anticipate?”

As the Pillagers moved through the suburbs of Fort Bradford, following sweeps of beams by the cautious Stranglers, dead flying things were found on roofs, in yards, and often in streets. Some small dead ground dweller animals could have been pets, pests, or small animals that infiltrated where civilization tolerated them. There were no large livestock type creatures seen lying about, as there had been in the agricultural regions they had passed along the way earlier, and which were left dead behind them. There was no smoke, although it was like a scorched earth policy for any animal life they encountered. Yet, there were no dead humans. The civilian populations had apparently moved out in an orderly fashion a day ago, demonstrating that it was a well-organized movement, and had been anticipated.

Seeing something on a screen, which the AI had brought to his attention, Hitok called a halt to the tank advances that were moving along the paved surfaces. There was something circular in the center of multiple roads, seen in several images right about where the first buildings appeared at the edges of the city.

Thond leaned over the armored shoulder of the Ground Force Commander to see what he saw. It was a metal looking disk, round, and wide enough for an unarmored Ragoon to fit through if that was a hatch of some type, placed in the center of the road. A query of the AI, using drone images for data input, showed that there were such disks spaced at regular intervals along every roadway deeper into the city, and a close up drone image showed wear and scratches on the surfaces, proving they had been there for a considerable time.

In an abundance of caution, Hitok ordered three different units, on widely separated random streets, to train three main weapons on the disks and to fire on them, to see what effect they would have.

The heavy laser turned the nearly finger thick metal of its target red, then nearly yellow-white as it slagged and turned molten at the center, and fell into a cavity below, when its edges pulled in from a metal rim that supported the cover. At another manhole cover, a plasma bolt vaporized a foot-wide hole in the center of its target, with blue actinic sparks glancing off the surface when the bolt first struck. A second bolt cut the disk through on one side and that object too fell into a dark cavity.

The massive blast from a bunker buster shell blew the cover from the third target flying high into the air, spinning rapidly end over end like a huge example of coin currency, which some alien cultures still used for small purchases. The explosion also blew open the center of the road, revealing a buried hard sided round tunnel, located a half body-length under the pavement, which ran down the center of the street.

Sending Ragoons to inspect the holes, they reported what they found to Hitok. Two of them were gagging after opening their helmets briefly, and all three stated that the odor from the tunnels proved that they were part of a sewage system, with noxious water flowing along their bottoms.

After that, and seeing that the sewer lines were so close to the surface at the middle of the roads, he instructed his heavy Pillagers to stick to the center of the roadways, with their treads positioned to straddle the sewer lines, and thus avoid the risk of their weight collapsing the streets over the voids down their centers. They’d have to use cables from another Pillager to pull a stuck unit free.

He instructed the combat AI to ignore the metal sewer covers so they wouldn’t be pausing constantly. After that, about the only firing done along residential streets was by lasers, aimed at the occasional parked vehicles found along the streets, just in case they were booby trapped as firebombs, or with explosives. That was always done at a safe distance, and there was never a secondary explosion.

The spaceport was on the far side of the city from the side where they had approached, and they were moving steadily but carefully, with some Ragoons riding on top of the armor, and others riding in the locally confiscated open topped trucks they had found, and a few troopers dashing off to the sides to inspect places where an enemy might be concealed.

Every trooper had their plasma rifles aimed outwards, using their linked visors to share targeting data if need be. Every sixth trooper wore heavier armor with additional powered assist, and wielded either a heavy laser or a rapid fire, multi-plasma chambered automatic weapon, with preheated ceramic barrels. One out of a company of twenty, called a Foot Legion, carried a shoulder fired missile launcher, linked to their helmet visors for after launch guidance.

The Ragoon assigned the rocket launcher carried only one additional reload strapped to the back of his powered armor. However, two other troopers, assigned to protect him, each had two missile reloads on their backs. More reloads were carried on external racks of selected smaller Pillagers.

The twenty-one columns, having passed through the outer city were approaching taller structures now, some of which were residential appearing, some apparently businesses or offices. Twenty tank columns had eighteen Pillagers each, and a center twenty-first column had the command module, with six pillagers in front, and six trailing. As a group, they formed nearly a rectangular grid, moving through alternate blocks formed by streets of the city, which were not all perfectly parallel. Some of the roads conformed to the steeper rolling hills, and those main streets wove around them, and sometimes two lines of Pillagers joined for a time as streets merged, until one column split off again to follow a parallel street a block or two over, trying to maintain their spacing and common line of advance. They were two thirds of the way to the center of town, which was marked by the highest clusters of tall oddly designed buildings, which to the Ragnar had exotic, and strangely beautiful alien patterns and colors, that never repeated, as did similar tall city structures at home.

Here, there were seldom aerial connections between buildings, crossing high over the streets, as there always was in Ragnar cities. The Ragnar were surface dwellers now, but had not lost their liking for the simulated tree dwellings they once used in ancestral times, when they were smaller creatures. They had no particular fear of heights, and enjoyed the open walkways between tall buildings. They would never build such oddly shaped and differing height structurers so far apart from one another. Human cities did not remind them of primeval forests at all. You also couldn’t have crossovers between buildings with such differing heights near their tops. In a deep forest, the canopy formed by the tallest trees meant they were generally uniform in height at the crown, and they grew closer together. This provided the ancestral concept for the preference the Ragnar retained for their cities, with buildings slenderer that what humans built, seldom as tall, and placed a bit closer together with high crossovers, like thickly woven symbolic vine walkways. It was strange, the smaller simian humans seemed more monkey-like than apes, yet they displayed less interest in traveling between their buildings, far above street level.

This Ground Force had met absolutely no opposition yet, and it was worrying the hell out of both Thond and Hitok, slowing the advance in favor of caution. Not one of the other three Ground Force Groups had survived to reach more than the very edges of their target cities, and they were not attacked until there was no escape for them. Not seeing a threat now, made its absence seem all the more ominous.

Both Ragnar officers would have been more comfortable had they been forced to fight their way to this point. What in hell was wrong with this enemy?

Suddenly, their waiting was over, and they reconsidered their wish for action.

The lead Pillager of each of the Legions of the armored advance, eighteen tanks strong per Legion now, due to earlier arrival losses, simultaneously suffered explosions from underneath, caused by some sort of shaped charges, which speared through their bottom armor, and struck the drive motors on the left or right sides. The compartmentalized sections for the crew, sealed tight when in combat, saved the other two crewmembers when the spalled armor fragments and the molten penetrator metal shredded and burned the Ragnar in the breeched compartment. The tank commanders, placed highest in the turrets, were all spared, but gunners or drivers died instantly, depending on which side the mine struck.

It was only the leading units hit in each of the twenty-one columns, all of them struck from below, and all of them detonated at the same instant. Thond and Hitok both realized it had to be due to some sort of command detonated mines, but their linked sensors, fed through the combat AI in the mobile command post, had not reported anything out of the ordinary on or below the roads.

The Pillagers hit were at varying distances ahead or behind their adjacent columns by a tank length or two, so they couldn’t all have been coincidentally poised, with their front compartments exactly over a buried mine. As the surviving Pillager crews leaped out of their stalled and smoking units, a rapid series of plasma bolts from the front and sides of the units damaged tore through body armor as they tried to scramble away from their disabled tanks. A number of commanders retreated to their turrets, which was safer than being exposed to the withering fire. With only single-side drive motors operational on some units, they could try to pivot in place, pitting the thicker frontal armor against the bolts. The tank commander could remotely fire the main gun if a target presented itself.

The source of the bolts proved to be from modestly sized tracked vehicles, with a rounded drivers cab, and a larger rounded and humped back. A three barreled plasma cannon on a three hundred sixty-degree swivel mount, protruding above the large rear hump was doing most of the damage, although there was plasma rifle fire from one of two small open ports in the armor protecting the driver’s section. With three ceramic barrels, the plasma bolts alternated from each barrel in a nearly continuous stream, collimated on the same target point. The star hot plasma bolts burned through body armor as if it were foil.

The armor of a Pillager was too tough for even a half dozen such hits on a single spot to breech, but it could be done if allowed to continue. Even if no longer fully mobile, the damaged units had weapons the commander could access via his visor links. Bunker busters were the favorite weapon of any self-respecting Legion commander, and the fusion power from two power plants, one dedicated for weapons, and a smaller one for drive motors, could operate the turret motors, and the redundant electrical systems.