Koban: Rise of the Kobani by Stephen W. Bennett

that.”
    “Me too. We won’t get too far away right now. As we discussed before, Sarge wants to see what was left behind after the final evacuation. We can also verify if the tunnels leading away are intact. I’ll be down below with Thad and Dillon, as they choose the scouting team to look at the Krall ship, and we pick a team to go into the base. We’ll also have a perimeter set up down near the canyon entrance, and at least two people watching on the cliff tops.”
    The chief nodded, but had a question. “You left the stealth skin active, but opening a hatch partly negates that, from aerial or space based radars. Do you want the hatches left open for a quick retreat, or closed?”
    “Good point. Close those after the teams are out. They can be opened in an instant by you, or manually by keypad if needed. I see the Krall kept their ship in stealth, perhaps because we are near to the human battle lines and more subject to attack.”
     
     
    ****
     
     
    Hortak railed against what he considered offloading inefficiency, as his K’Tals and warriors struggled to unload the equipment stored in the clanship quickly enough to please the sub leader.
    They were wise enough, and of low enough status not to voice their counter opinion, that his rushed landing of the ship on a slope, close to a cliff face, had rendered one of the four hatches and its ramp unusable for use by their heavy equipment, tanks, and transports. Only light, hand-carried supplies could go down and navigate the sharp turn at the bottom of the ramp closest to the cliff, carried by the reduced complement of one hundred twenty-eight Krall on the heavily loaded and cramped clanship. The large armored troop transports, one-warrior mini tanks, excavation and bunker construction equipment, had to wait slightly longer for lowering to the bottom deck, reassembly, and being driven down one of the three unobstructed ramps.
    The assembly process was frustrating, because Hortak had sent all of the Prada slaves on the second clanship, now located over a thousand miles away. His K’Tals knew how to train the warriors in the operation of the tanks and armored transports. However, the assembly of the equipment, and particularly the operation of the construction equipment, was normally slave work. It was demeaning for a warrior or a K’Tal to perform this task, not to mention the forced admission that even a K’Tal did not know as much as a slave about how the heavy pieces should fit together, and in what order.
    After mounting the plasma cannons on all of the ceramic turrets for the mini tanks, they had to remove them all. That was because access through the cannon barrel’s turret opening to the adjustable fine tolerance slip ring, inside the turret, was blocked. The tank turrets could not be mounted on the body of the small tanks with the cannon barrels attached.
    When the first turret was properly attached to its motorized base unit, its cannon in place, it had to all be removed again in order to insert two fusion bottles. The hatch opening at the rear, sized for a warrior to enter or dismount the mini tank, would not pass the two bulky power generators. One bottle for the electric drive motors, another for preheating the plasma chamber and magnetic confinement coils of the ceramic cannon barrel. They needed to go down into the tanks through the wider top opening before the turret was attached. Time was lost.
    “Move our tanks and transports farther away from the clanship,” Hortak ordered harshly. “If the humans see our radar profile, because the portals are open so long, they are close enough they can launch a missile attack on the clanship before we have safely moved our supplies and equipment away. Our warriors and slaves from the other clanship will require days to arrive here. We cannot successfully defend our position because the slaves need to set up and adjust the two automated laser control consoles, and their mobile batteries. You must work