Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire Read Free Page B

initially to transmit from either of them. Mirikami sent the Comtap signal to the hundred fourteen Kobani ships that were waiting to go after the Forty-two low orbiting clanships.
    “Go! These two are disabled and silenced.”
    One of the lower orbiting clanships was. It made a call to the pole watch clanship, the only one of the two it could see from its equatorial location. “Phordot, there was a gamma ray burst near you.”
    The ECM was relatively short range by design, the effect weakening over about ten miles, and its effect was originally intended to deactivate Krall communications systems in domes, not to block them with signal jamming, which would reveal the presence of the intruders. The Krall radios simply switched themselves off. A clanship within the ECM envelope wouldn’t hear an incoming call, or be able to make a call out of its own.
    Abruptly, one hundred fourteen White Outs appeared around K1, appearing behind the forty-two low orbit watch standers, their positions and clustering having been accurately relayed from the passing small ships by Comtap as they descended to the surface. The flash of detected White Outs was the signal for the small ships to go into action on the surface.
    None of the forty-two Krall clanships managed to respond with missile launches or laser cannon fire. The two anti-ship missiles assigned per ship was possibly overkill, but the Denial chips removed control of every system from the crews inside, except for radio use. It was theorized that the Olt’kitapi had left communications and life support active, free of the chips that could block their use, probably as a gesture of mercy, to permit a call for an evacuation by an otherwise disabled clanship, where the crew inside couldn’t even open an airlock to make an exit.
    The other three ECM systems the Kobani had available to them were on ships that emerged within a cluster of five or six clanships, shutting all of their radios down. If the radios were repowered manually, the ECM continuously sent the shutdown command. At least those ships in close formation would be unable to warn of the boarding process happening on each of their neighbors. Kobani were leaping across the gaps as their host ships moved in close to the now drifting enemy craft. They used magnetic footpads to swarm over the hull to enter by the four airlocks at the lowest hold level, by two shuttle bay airlocks, and by four small maintenance airlocks near midship.
    Simply removing the clanships from active Krall control and moving off wasn’t enough to preserve them indefinitely. A resourceful enemy crew, even without plasma rifles to make it easy, would find a way to rupture the reaction mass fuel tanks for the thruster engines, and the binary fuel would detonate on contact, preventing the capture of that intact clanship. The Kobani wanted these craft in operating condition, and Mind Taps ensured that every one of the boarders knew how to operate their newly acquired transportation and its internal systems.
    It was expected that the Krall would have minimal crews aboard the watch standers, enough to handle reloads in the thirty-two anti-ship missile bays, and perhaps one to three posted on the command deck. A commander of a hand or more of clanships would probably be on one craft, with a pilot, and perhaps a K’Tal or weapons master. Typically, about thirty-four to thirty-six warriors was expected. Therefore, ten Kobani boarders, facing more than three times their number of Krall, seemed like an unfair advantage. For the Kobani.
    After the denial list propagated at near light speed between every quantum lockout on the clanships, the Krall would have only the use of standard pistols and personal weapons, mostly knives, and unpowered armor (if they tried to put that on) which would furnish only basic life support. Some of the fighting would be at talon and tooth level against Kobani suit weapons, but it wasn’t as if a Krall warrior expected or would accept any