Koban: Rise of the Kobani (44 page)

Spec ops training no longer focused very much on water situations, as the early teams had done, so a strong aptitude for swimming, or a mild fear of drowning were less significant in operations against the Krall. The enemy themselves didn’t care for deep water, or build installations that employed waterways. Nevertheless, they had an impressive array of effective and deadly detection systems for defending against waterborne intruders. Per the military analysts, the Krall’s sophisticated amphibious defense hardware appeared to be additional examples of borrowed or stolen technology, which was considerably more elaborate than much of what they used for land warfare. Some previous race they faced must have been well versed on such defenses.

On a smaller scale, fighting on or in water was similar to the Krall’s avoidance of space warfare, where operation of a clanship involved the skills of only a few warriors on the command deck, but a loss of the ship could wipe out an entire raiding party in the hold, which had never fired a shot.

Cost versus benefit for the Krall considered a handful of surviving warriors, out of hundreds after a raid or from part of a larger invasion assault, were valuable breeding assets when recovered. The loss of a clanship (the material value of the ship seemed negligible to them) was also the loss of the crew and warriors in the hold, with no return on the clan’s breeder investment. Human persistence in fighting in ways the Krall didn’t like resulted in extremely heavy human losses, or serious damage to the planet’s ecology to change their behavior.

Rhama’s population and environment was devastated by a single Krall Eight Ball, which
could
have been accelerated to an appreciable fraction of light speed, thus eradicating all higher life on the world by its impact. That lesser impact was used to deter further space attacks by human fleets, which themselves were costly in human ships lost.

Bollovstic, before that world’s fall, had a thriving fishery and employed sea shipping for much of its Rim world level of local economy. Persistent human use of assaults and infiltration from coasts and rivers had caused the Krall to turn that world’s oceans and waterways into death traps for any shipping, and had killed off essentially all larger life forms in the oceans by automated hunter killers of anything that moved under water, and detection systems that drew bombardments of any surface activity. Since the Krall did not intend to inhabit the planet, they didn’t care how devastated its ecology was when they departed. It was a disposable battleground.

Markel went to one of the technicians that maintained the auditorium Living Plastic morphing system. “Alois, I need you to check the monitor and chair in cubicle fourteen, the one I happened to sign onto this morning. The signal levels were far higher than normal, and I had to adjust the scale to keep the peaks down where I could see them on responses. The left and right brain conflict comparison was good, and the correlation between different subject matters was proportional, but there was excessive amplification. Check the results for my first responder, and my last one. They both did the same thing. The other two men and one woman looked normal as far as their data peaks.”

Alois looked up in interest. “Dr. Chalders had one that did something like that. He had me come in and look at his system right after his third trainee left.  All I could determine was that the sensors in the chair was sending stronger signals than usual. It looked normal for me and for Chalders when we sat in the chair.” He called up her interview results from this morning, and looked at the signal levels registered on his own screen.

“Yep, that’s similar to what we saw on his screen. The relative peak heights and curves were fine; they were simply a factor of ten higher than the strength of the nerve impulses expected. There isn’t an automatic level adjustment programed for that. I’ll bet you simply ran the amplitude down using the slide control to see what you wanted.”

“I did. Except, I’ve done dozens of these interviews. Why would we suddenly get high levels unless an amplifier was boosting the signal?”

“Dunno. Let me ask Karp.”

“Karp,” he called on the KP model AI directly. “There were three unusually high signals seen today on the monitored interviews just finished. How were they amplified, and why? Answer to me, and to Dr. Markel who is with me, please.”

“Sir, there were no amplified signals in the referenced data of the three interviews I believe you are referring to, two conducted from cube fourteen and one from cube nine.”

“Those are the cubes that I meant, Karl, but how did their nerve impulses get so amplified? They were well above normal.”

“Sir, there was no additional amplification applied beyond normal, and the signal strength was greater than the scale factor that was selected. Therefore, the peaks of the impulses went above the maximum level selected for each display. All three examples were displayed in their entirety on screen when the scale factor was properly adjusted.”

That didn’t sound like an answer to the technician. “Why were they greater than the screen’s selected scale factor?”

“Sir, the base input was a stronger signal than previous and subsequent individuals registered on the sensors in the two chairs.”

This was one of those damned logic loops, where AIs sometimes seemed to lead people around in circles. “And why was the input signal stronger than for the other people?”

“Sir, I do not have parameters in my data base for the full range of possible signal levels for all humans, and the default scale factor used was set as a fixed parameter by the original programing. I can automatically adjust the display scale in the future, to prevent overdriving the wave form seen on the screen, if that is preferred.”

“Yes. Please do that Karl.” To the technician this resolved the issue.

“That was an easy fix, Doc. I’ll let the AI take care of it for us. It’s what they’re here to do.”

In Alois’ mind, the next time this happened the maximum signal level, whatever it was, would be fully depicted on the screen. The Doctor had just said the comparative levels between the two sides of the brain were within parameters, with no conflicting references, deception, or confusion indicated. The shape of the waveform curves was also typical, the crests simply being higher than the display’s preselected scale factor.

Markel thought this explanation sounded a bit off kilter to her, but the technician was satisfied that he’d instructed the AI to adjust for the problem. She shrugged, and went to her office, no longer curious why the signal strength from those three nervous systems registered ten times higher than for a normal human.

****

Jorl pretended to lend a hand to Fred, as he climbed over the peak of a “V” shaped steep log incline that rose about thirty feet. Most of the other men on the course were starting to show real fatigue as they sweated their way around the course for the third time.

They gathered in lines of eight before starting each round, and lifted a
ten-inch, sixteen-foot long wooden pole off the ground. They lifted it to their left shoulders, and then jointly pushed it overhead, with arms extended, and lowered it to their right shoulders. They repeated this with the other shoulder four times before lowering it to the ground. Another random team of eight might be instructed to sit with the same size log cradled in their arms; their toes hooked under a smaller elevated wood rail, and perform group sit-ups, with the heavy log clutched to their chests.

Griping Fred’s hand, Jorl was updated on what Fred had picked up from the same interviewer Jorl had spoken with earlier that morning. Fred had broken protocol, under the guise of ignorance of the rules of no contact, and shook her hand as he left, asking her a pointed question.

In response to, “Gee, what will spec ops capability be like by the time I finish training?” he sensed the flash of fear as she thought of breaking the law, and of her genetic research. They were seeking to replicate the three hundred year old clone mods for strength and endurance. The reliance on performance enhancing drugs was too limiting, and too slow to take effect, and required long down times after extended use. Her actual spoken reply was that she wasn’t party to what technological enhancements were planned.

Fred was surprised that there was such a small cadre of people here in the loop of what was being attempted. Only six people knew, and only four of those were scientists. There were relatively few staff people, yet bringing in new people increased the chances of a leak or discovery. That was why she did double duty, performing interviews, which did not require an actual scientist to conduct.

It was ironic that they had only a small group of idealists and patriots that were forced to operate in secret. That was much like the Koban Committee had done under the Krall’s eyes. The group later evolved into calling themselves the Inner Circle when the Krall left, but they kept their full goals confidential from the other former captives for years, knowing of the probable opposition to the use of Koban genes. These people at SOB-1 feared their own government, in parallel with Mirikami’s own concerns.

As Fred and Jorl pretended to cautiously step down the steep log slope, Fred wondered, “Is this as much as Captain Mirikami needed to know? That they want to do what we did, at least at the very start?”

Jorl shrugged, “Even if it is, they can’t do what we did, not without Koban genes. Carson told us the spec ops exomuscle suits barely match what an SG can do, and they don’t have the heat and cold adaptations, or the endurance. I guess using the suits on top of the clone mods would help them a great deal. Their electronic eye display enhancements and small AIs are super cool, and that IR sense.”

“We’ll have the IR vision matched with riper genes, and we won’t need an audio system to hear high Krall speech, or have to use a handheld scent device to detect their stinky red asses. I also believe we can think as well or better than a pocket AI.”

Reaching a platform at the bottom they jumped five feet to the base of a wide rope lattice, to climb up fifty feet, over and then down the other side. A corporal, one of the course monitors, had watched them talking as they had come down the log ramp.

“You two chatty pals can just casually loop the course two more times while your teammates go eat a leisurely lunch.”

Ten minutes for mouth stuffing a meat sandwich and gulping water while standing was hardly leisurely, but the lack of any sort of meal mattered to both of their high metabolisms.

Jorl tried to salvage their meal. “Corp, if we beat everyone ahead of us on this rotation to the end, can we still eat lunch?” The two had been staying roughly in the center of the sixteen they had started with on this cycle. They were on the backside of the winding course, about half way to the finish line.

“Hell, I watched you two sissies creeping down that ramp. You won’t even catch that girl just two apparatus ahead of you.”

Without even a glance at one another for agreement, they easily climbed the lattice, nearly dropped down the other side in a reckless looking move, trying to make it look clumsy, and continued to catch and pass the people they had allowed to pass or stay in front of them. Those behind them started cheering them on, and those in front looked over their shoulders at the noise, and increased their own efforts to stay in front.

They practically crawled over Grandy, as she low crawled under low netting.  The woman was still holding her own with many of the men. She laughed in good nature as they passed her, and caught up to the next man just ahead of her. He wasn’t quite so friendly, and tried to get in their way, but to no avail. Without making it look too obviously easy, they caught the next athetletic looking man, the leader on this rotation and the two that had come before, passing him less than a hundred fifty feet from the end. They ran down the length of seventy-five feet of parallel logs, then stepping twenty-five feet from log to log, which were at right angles to the course, placed five feet apart, then jumped into a mud pit and jogged to the finish line together.  They pretended to be winded as the corporal, who had cut across the course, using his Booster Suit for speed, reached them.

“Not too bad, lads. Go eat. However, now that you proved you can do that when pushed, I’ll expect that much out of you every day this week.” He uttered his best diabolical laugh, as Fred and Jorl provided a pair of fake groans, then trotted off to eat, with grins unseen.

They saw Yil already eating as they got in line for a sandwich tray. His group had been ahead of them on the rotation prior to “lunch.” The platoons were not exercising together as units this first morning, with the interviews throwing the schedule off and splitting platoons. They joined him just as he was cramming the last of his food in his mouth and washing it down with a large gulp of water. Fred casually leaned on the same standup table, touching Yil’s hand as he set his own tray down. Yil looked at Jorl as he got the rapid-fire Tap update, winked and grinned as he ran off with the men he was grouped with for now. They were accompanied by the motivational bellow of a different corporal, “Move your flabby asses, you over fed lazy pigs.”

No trainee walked anywhere at SOB-1.

****

At the end of “hell week,” the ranks had reduced by two full platoons, so there was exactly sixty-four of the initial ninety-six remaining. The “miraculous” number seemed like it was arrived at by design.  They now comprised four full platoons, ready to enter the next phase of training. The men (Grandy had not made the final cut) had spent three continuous weeks working out in Heavyside gravity. First, they worked out on the orbital station (except for the three TGs), then at the Port Andropov camp, and finally at SOB-1.