Koban: Rise of the Kobani (20 page)

Thad and Sarge were seated on different carts, placed in center seats, close to the right hand wall rushing past, their feet supported by slender extendable rods from the frame. Eighteen spec ops troopers were with them, the other nine men staying behind to “protect” the twenty unarmed TGs still in the parking garage. One of those “protectors” was Sergeant Jenkins, whose now reset, dislocated left elbow left him partly disabled, but suited to be in charge of that detail.

Clearly, a sense of belief and a level of trust had formed with the spec ops team itself, but it seemed that Colonel Trakenburg wasn’t as sold on their story.  Not as much as Captain Longstreet appeared ready to accept them. He had coordinated with his superior, and clearly felt awkward at the tight security measures he was instructed to maintain. The two older men were virtually surrounded by their spec ops “companions” on the carts, with a rock wall on the right to prevent them from suddenly leaping clear of their ride.

The irony to Thad was that Trakenburg had told his mission commander to leave only nine men to guard the vastly greater threat the twenty TGs potentially represented, yet had nine men each guarding him and Sarge.

Thad assumed a video of the young faces and civilian clothing had misled the colonel. Barehanded, the kids could take on their same number of Krall and win. Not that he expected them to do more than wait impatiently.

He had not been allowed to communicate with the Mark, and he was concerned Mirikami might send someone down into the base to see why he had not Linked before proceeding down a tunnel to Novi Sad. A semi-friendly fire incident would not bond the two sides very well.

It was difficult to determine how far they had traveled, but the cart made only a few gentle curves as it moved at about fifteen miles per hour. Longstreet didn’t wear a helmet, and wasn’t holding any sort of device, yet he behaved as if he was observing something. However, he suddenly slowed the cart and made a right turn into a cross tunnel that had the same dimensions.

As Longstreet glanced over his right shoulder to check on the following cart, Thad could see a pale glow of small amber and red lines of light in his right eye. He realized there was an internal projection system in the man’s eye, probably a biological implant that replicated the helmet visor display. He grinned in the darkness. Perhaps he
had
seen Sarge’s underwear.

They slowed to a stop about a half mile of travel after the turn. “All off at this scenic rest stop.” Longstreet announced, as if a tour guide.

He flashed a small hand held light to reveal a hatch in the wall to their left. He pushed down the L shaped handle and it swung inward into a gently up-sloped corridor that could accommodate men in heavy body armor.

Reynolds nodded. “I’ve used some of these for my ambushes, but will this one exit in a valley, or on a ridge top? If the latter, we have quite a climb.”

“The map says it branches to go both places. However, we’re going only part way up inside the ridge, to one of several side rooms where we have some natural looking erosion into the rock strata. At least one of those rooms should have a view where we can look out from those shadowy recesses and observe the clanship and valley floor.”

Thad looked closer at the wall sides, which had a semi-glazed appearance. “How and why did you cut all of these tunnels? You couldn’t have known the Krall were ever going to invade and give you a use for them. These would take a lot of time and work.”

“Not much human work at all, and not much time.” Longstreet countered. “A Rim Colony named Fjord had to bore habitat tunnels in granite because they had so little flat open space to build cities on their glacier covered planet. They designed AI controlled combination drilling, boring, laser, and plasma cutting heads for various sized tunnels and rock types. You make seismic maps and lay out where you want tunnels and rooms on a computer. Then let a few dozen of them work away on their own with automated trucks to haul off the debris. Our ridges here were much softer stone than granite, and we didn’t even start to cut until the invasion started and we anticipated the future need as we were pushed back. This system would have helped Bollovstic hold out longer if they had done this. This tunnel is less than two years old.”

Longstreet gave his hand light to Thad, and one of the other troopers gave one to Sarge. “We have infrared night vision and emitters for those frequencies ourselves, and don’t need the lights. I don’t want you tripping and falling as you walk up the slope. You’ll have to switch them off before we enter the observation rooms. There’s natural light that filters in, and we don’t want the clanship to see a light shining out. These sedimentary rocks won’t withstand a heavy laser or plasma strike unless we are deeper inside.”

They climbed for almost twenty minutes on the nearly thirty-degree slope. Longstreet, accustomed to the needs of normal men he sometimes worked with, asked them several times if they needed to rest.

“Nope.” Reynolds told him the third time he asked. “You can pick the pace up a bit if you wish. Previously I would have been pooped by now. But as an SG I feel fine, and I know for a fact that Colonel Greeves, who has been adapted longer than me, could walk my butt off if he were in a hurry.”

They heard Longstreet mutter as he climbed ahead of them, at an increased pace. “Gotta find out what they really mean by SG and TG.”

****

“So it really
is
Thad Greeves?” Nabarone had been all but certain, but the long lapse in time had made it seem too improbable.

“That’s what he told my mission commander.” Trakenburg confirmed. “He claims he came here looking for assistance, based on what he learned from Reynolds. He said they rescued Sergeant Reynolds from the Krall when they captured the clanship they used to fly here. He didn’t say where that supposedly happened, and won’t say where they are from. I have my doubts they could have taken that ship, and suspect they snatched it the same way they seem to have taken the other unattended Krall equipment. They have offered us the key to operating Krall equipment, by the way. He told us it’s embedded in the damn tattoo’s the Krall wear. Our scientists tested those and never found anything, but he showed us that he and his people wear a blacked out version of the tattoo, and they certainly can use Krall weapons. A young girl with him described their version of the tattoo as meaning a ‘worthy enemy’ to the Krall.

“I spent one of my own satellites to verify that these people actually do have control of the Dragons, mobile cannons, and heavy transports they say they stole. The images came through just before the Krall routinely knocked my bird down, after we confirmed that the Krall equipment is under human control. They apparently had a successful firefight with about sixteen Krall they surprised driving some tractors. After that, they attacked the second clanship, and that fight is still underway. However, they are obviously having trouble knocking out its heavy weapons, despite knocking out its lift capability. Makes me wonder how they took the other ship if they can’t pull this one’s teeth.”

“Do you have a video and audio feed for me, Colonel? I’d like to hear how Greeves sounds and watch his moves. My AI is all but certain it’s Greeves, but I’d like one more bit of evidence before I meet him face to face. I assume you have your team bringing him to Novi Sad?”

“I’ll have Max send the recordings. However, I wanted to see if their kids; and that’s exactly what they are, kids; can take that clanship. I sent Greeves and Reynolds with two of my teams to observe the clanship fight, using an observation post I was told was in a nearby ridge.”

Nabarone was incredulous. “You’re not going to offer to help them? You’ll just watch?”

“General, my own teams couldn’t take down a clanship and capture it intact. They
might
infiltrate to its base and blow it up, but would never try to clear it of warriors. Greeves implies these super kids can do that. I’m reserving judgment until I see proof. I’ll grant they are damned strong and fast. You’ll see that when they pit one boy against two of our better men. He lacks expert hand-to-hand combat skill, but easily took them both down in thirteen seconds by my timing. He could have killed them had he wanted.”

“Colonel, when Max called Major Caldwell to set up this conversation, the AI indicated that Greeves had specifically asked to meet with me, and had intelligence to offer in exchange for our help. I hope you are taking good care of him and his people. The man was fiercely loyal to his troops. He may not expect you to send a team to help fight the battle, but he won’t look kindly on us if we cost him any of his people. If you have information he can use against the Krall, which doesn’t compromise your own mission, I recommend you share that with him.”

The short pause was enough to reveal that Trakenburg didn’t care for anyone to be telling him how to handle his operations. He must have remembered that Nabarone had done more than grant him access to his former base. He had lost men and material creating the distraction that helped infiltrate his spec ops troops through the Krall lines. The general was another man that was fiercely loyal to his people. Trakenburg respected and shared that trait.

“General, I’ll be certain to let my team leader know that.”

As soon as the conversation ended, he kept his promise, notifying Longstreet to provide Greeves any help he needed, short of direct involvement with the fighting.

Next, he asked his AI how another search had gone. “Max, what did you find about this Mirikami person, the purported leader Greeves mentioned?”

“Sir, Captain Tetsuo Mirikami was reported lost with his ship, passengers and crew, enroute to an orbital station located outside Human Space. The station itself also went missing, and the presumed disaster represented over a thousand lives lost. It represented the largest single disaster to ever effect University academic personnel, but it did not create as large a news story as other smaller ship losses created in that time frame. The story appears to have been suppressed by the Universities themselves, with cooperation from Hub government spokespeople.”

“Another dead man,” grunted Trakenburg. “Where did this happen?”

“Captain Mirikami’s ship, The Flight of Fancy, was traveling through the spinward Rim region several months before the first known Krall incursions were experienced. Those were the raids when the Krall took thirty-seven passenger and cargo ships. The Doushan Mavray recording was transmitted to us during that time. There were approximately twenty- four thousand people that went missing, without a trace on those raids, and those events helped overshadow the loss of the Flight of Fancy, and the Midwife Station.”

“What was a big passenger ship like the Flight of Fancy doing traveling beyond the Rim?”

“Sir, the records indicate that Interworld Transport had a charter contract with a group of Universities, to ferry scientific personnel, specialized equipment and supplies to a biological research station, named Midwife, orbiting a planet unofficially called Newborn.”

“What sort of scientific personnel and equipment?”

“Bio-scientist and related professions in a wide range of fields. Microbiologists, biotechnologists, geneticists, medical technicians, pharmacists, bacteriologists, virologists, medical doctors, …”

“Stop.” Max might go on for a considerable time listing examples.

The specialties caught his attention, however. Biological research was still a publicly hot button item, despite the military’s pressure to seek every conceivable way to confront the Krall invasion. When the Heavyside project was started, finding qualified people to work on creating the biological tools needed for enhancing his Special Operations troops had been hard to find.

“Why were they going to such a remote location? Was their research considered dangerous?” That seemed unlikely to be tolerated. Not after the Clone and Gene Wars, and the Purge (slaughter was a more accurate term) of many of the people that had held that same type of knowledge or education, barely two lifetime’s ago.

“Sir, the stated purpose of the research was to study the emerging proto life that was forming from the primordial mixture of organic chemicals that were to be found on Newborn. This was considered an extremely rare planetary discovery. It was called ‘unprecedented’ in press releases.”

“It sounds like they might have run into a Krall raiding party. If so, then another probable Krall capture has yielded a survivor in Mirikami. I wonder how many more of these ‘living dead’ are going to show up. If all of these eighteen to twenty-year-old youngsters are theirs, then quite a few people must have survived somewhere and had children.

“Max. Link me to Sergeant Jenkins. He’s watching those kids.”

****

“Colonel Greeves, I have magnification built in, and I’m sorry that I don’t have any binoculars for you or Sergeant Reynolds. We travel as lightly as possible. However, we all can see three of the Dragons your people have captured. One each is sheltered behind those two large boulder piles, and one over by that cliff rock spur. I can’t see the other three, but my Link signal finder shows they are along the valley on the other side of the clanship, probably also hidden from Krall view.

“The drivers of all three Dragons close to us are outside the mini-tanks, and not entirely visible to us. However, I think they are undressing. Would you have any idea why they might do that? Is it perhaps too hot for them here? This is warm, but not the warmest season by far.”