Koban: Rise of the Kobani by Stephen W. Bennett Page A

faster.”
    The Krall, following his orders, were perfectly aware that moving the equipment farther away from the ship and to another nearby valley took more time. They would then have to return a greater distance, and Hortak would blame them for how much that longer trek slowed the unloading.
    They knew his attempt to elude the pursuing human missiles, by drawing them after their speeding ship, was intended to divert the human weapons targeting onto another clan’s ship. The two K’Tals on the command deck had described the clever plan, and then told how it had unraveled when the second ship performed a near suicidal high acceleration maneuver, outrunning them and the human seeker missiles.
    After the missile diversion idea had failed, the necessary extended travel to the “wrong” side of the mountain range brought them closer to human forces. An attack by humans now could disrupt their training mission, before they learned the proper tactics for this new style of war. His clan mates were not particularly pleased with their sub leader at this moment, as he blamed them for his less than optimum decisions. A fatal change in leadership was not out of the question.
    That was why Hortak had stationed the next highest status warriors of the new finger clan on the second clanship. They were unavailable for a prompt challenge for the overall leadership role of the mission if he made too many errors. If the small training base were already well under way when they arrived, there would be no grounds for a death match challenge at that time. The sub leader had made some sloppy decisions, although individually none of them was detrimental to his continued higher status, or his life. The day was young, however.
     
     
    ****
     
     
    “General Nabarone, the two clanships this morning split up, and based on satellite imagery, both appear to have made it down safely, Sir.” Major Caldwell, his aide de camp, had made the decision to provide this unsurprising detail to his boss.
    “Howard, since you don’t normally pass trivia along to muddle my mind, please get to the damned point. What was unusual this time, of the hundred such penetration events every month?” He was grumpy this morning. A battle for a hilly section of territory on the northeastern front was lost last night, and he’d stayed up late to see if the reinforcements he’d sent could help hold the heights. They had not, and now the enemy could fire down on his troops below as they retreated, and they were firing down on supply depots, which also had to be moved back, under fire. Retreat was an unfortunately well-practiced process by now.
    “Sir, A third ship, apparently another clanship based on its later  turbulence trail size, was detected already deep in the atmosphere, and it probably had slipped in slow and low, using the same line of weather that caused the rain and mud slide problems we had on the Crager Heights last night. If one of the two clanships this morning had not flushed it out, as it swooped towards them with six Seeker Missiles following, it’s likely the sneaky one would have landed thirty miles from our eastern lines, close to Novi Sad, completely undetected.”
    “Just one ship? That isn’t a lot of extra force to apply in that region. We are well dug in around Novi Sad. Could there have been more of them we didn’t see, you think?”
    “Sir, we doubt there could have been many more concealed ships in the fast moving narrow front, but both ships disappeared within a five mile radius of one another. They could link up forces.”
    “What makes you think they will join forces? You implied the hidden ship was revealed because of the actions of the second arriving ship. That means they didn’t sneak in together, and therefore may be from different clans. Although, I’m curious as to how many other sneaky ships may have landed. How many prior to that clumsy commander revealing their operation got past us? We may have a build-up we didn’t