Koban 4: Shattered Worlds Read Free

the two orbiting guard clanships.
    Carson rose from his acceleration couch. “Mom, I’m joining dad in his shuttle, Alyson will stay here with you. Do you want me to send anyone else up here?”
    “No. Alyson and I can handle navigation and weapons here if needed, and Karl can help with that as well. I have people for reloading our missile racks that I can call up here if we need help.” Truth be told, the AI could do nearly any of the tasks required on the Bridge, except make life or death decisions on its own.
    “Son, I know you will find this tiresome, but please be careful. Tell your dad that as well.”
    He flashed the same toothy grin he shared with his father, “You know me. Always careful.”
    Alyson shook her head. “I know you too, and that’s why we both are telling you to be careful.” She and Carson had moved into a semi-formal relationship, and had discussed a contract, “signing the line” in modern parlance, to make it official. They had decided after this raid to make the surprise announcement, which virtually no one that knew them would be surprised to hear. Carson’s daredevil reputation was well earned, and even his reckless father was shocked at learning of some of the risks his son took.
    “Right.” He kissed Alyson on the lips in passing, and then bussed his mother’s cheek on the way to the Bridge railing, which provided an open view to part of the lower deck. One hand on the rail, he lightly vaulted over to drop the eighteen feet to the deck below. The ship was only at one g, so it was hardly a knee bender when he touched down on the balls of his feet. They had lowered internal gravity to match that of the Krall planet they were about to raid.
    He continued down the stairs for two more decks, to reach the new launch bay of the shuttle he would occupy with his pilot dad, Dillon Martin, his Uncle Thad, best friend Ethan, and eight other Kobani. The original two launch bays had been increased in number and size, from the two shuttle bays and thirty-two single ship launch tubes that the Krall used. Now there were four shuttle bays with craft that held a dozen people each, and sixty-four larger tubes for the new four person ships of similar design to the single ships, commonly called four-ships now. From a distance, the two new small ship classes were almost indistinguishable from the original Krall craft, having the same shapes and proportional dimensions. It was expected this would cause some underestimation of the number of forces they actually were transporting.
    However, these were all better armed small ships than the standard Krall models because of Torki and Prada modifications, redesigned at human request. Now the shuttles carried four missiles rather than two, and had multi-spectrum lasers of higher power, capable of defeating the hull active reflectivity protection of Krall clanships and single ships. They also had plasma cannons stowed on the aft section bulkhead, which could be swung into place to fire from the left and right side hatches, when a hatch was slid open at low speeds. Any combination of the four missiles they carried could be the light hypervelocity anti-ship variety, the heavier ones for ground attack, or a new Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) missile.
    The smaller four-ships had heavier multi-spectrum lasers as well, and two of the small anti-ship missiles. The smaller missiles were described that way because that matched their primary design function, to destroy other spacecraft. However, they could as easily hit stationary surface targets, if a larger warhead wasn’t essential.
    Today, the target was a Krall dome, presumably with alert observers on duty in the upper transparent level, and ready to warn the dome and entire planet of an attack. This shuttlecraft, and the seven others, would launch fourteen of the larger ground attack missiles at the dome, even before they had the dome in sight, but would fire those slightly after the launch of two ECM pods. Which