Koban: Rise of the Kobani (53 page)

The truck stopped a hundred feet from the tree line, and the small female Kobani human stepped down. She was alone today, except for the ripper of course. Not that she needed any protection from the Prada, and little even from the marsh dogs. Not with her surprising speed and strength.

When the cat jumped down from the back of the truck, its size was evidence that it was the male of the two rippers. The Kobani all called him Kobalt, and the creature actually considered the leader of the group of humans to be his mother’s sister. His biological sister, Kit, thought of the leader as her real mother. Harming any of the two cat’s extended family would have a
bad
outcome for the perpetrator. Their brief mind pictures made that amply evident, bringing an involuntary shiver to Wister.

Wister had actually seen the Rulers flee from these predators on Koban. They would bravely stand their ground to shoot the large blue humped animals with long nose horns, from which they loved to eat cuts of raw red meat, except when rippers were near. From the top of a partially completed dome, Wister had seen a pride of five rippers move to ambush three hunting Rulers as they focused on a herd of the large meat animals too intently. The wind was wrong, and they never smelled the doom closing from their rear and sides.

All three of the hunters were killed that day, with only a wound to one of the large male rippers. The fast agile beasts took them all down in a coordinated attack from three sides, avoiding most of the hasty brief gunfire with relative ease. Afterwards, they all took turns standing over two of the badly injured yet still living Rulers, and lowered their heads to touch them. Next, they roared a challenge before killing the two survivors and carrying the mangled bodies away to eat.

His memory was jerked away from its dark musing by a voice. “It is a bright and good morning, Wister,” Maggi called to him as she approached. She had one hand on the small ring of blue flesh around the ripper’s neck.

Wister suspected that it was the equivalent of the mindreading hand touching for the Kobani, to sense and send mind pictures. The pride that killed the Rulers that day long ago must have sensed their pain and fear by touching them.

“It is a good day, so far.” He was conditioning his reply on how the negotiation would go between them. He had a firm hand gripped in the neck fur of Jelko, who was trembling fearfully at the approach of the huge cat. The ripper outweighed the dog by probably a factor of seven or eight. Its long upper fangs were casually exposed in a manner that was deliberate, since at other times they were not easily seen.

In previous (very fearful) contact, Wister had clearly sensed that the predator used its mind reading ability to sense its prey’s fear, and savored the terror and thoughts from its kills as they died.

Wister had been surprised and shocked when once Maggi touched both himself and Jelko’s ear simultaneously, when neither of the cats was present. She fed him the mental pictures that Jelko had in his mind, of tearing out the throat of this creature that was touching its master and itself. He knew this creature had hurt and frightened its master and itself only days earlier. Jelko was looking passively at her this time, yet wanted to kill her in a vividly gruesome manner.

Maggi had told him in low speech, “Do not be concerned. All predators have violent thoughts like this. For anyone they do not like or trust, or they perceive to be prey, they think of attacking them. I am not bothered by his thoughts, because I also sense his emotions are fully in check, due to your comforting presence.” She told him she had not sent Jelko images of her own thoughts, because it could frighten and confuse the animal, causing a violent reaction. It may not like her, she had said, but she liked him and his type.

Wister had discovered that day, that her liking Jelko, even if the dog did not like her, was a factor in her favor in his mind. He trusted the judgment of Prada that liked the marsh dogs, more than he did the Prada that did not like them. He was suspicious of their sincerity or motives if they could not empathize with the animals that worshiped them as their masters.

Maggi, who had picked that from his inexperienced unshielded mind, had toyed with pointing out the incongruity in his thinking. She wanted to ask him why he didn’t expect empathy from the Rulers, in exchange for Prada devotion to them. She considered bringing one of the captives held on Koban, a typically and completely arrogant and unsympathetic Krall mind for him to sense.

She was tempted to try a mental relay between a Krall and a Prada. However, it would not be a Prada as important to them as Wister was. Not yet, without some predictability for the probable outcome. She certainly wasn’t going to tell any of the Prada right now that they had multiple Krall “Rulers” as prisoners.

She offered Wister a small clear container that held eight white grubs, dug fresh from the bark of “grub” trees, located on the other side of the old dome. Bradley had used his new ripper sense of smell to find the grubs. The trees near the village were foraged more frequently and had fewer and smaller grubs. The small offering was one she thought would please the Prada. The pre breakfast search had certainly
displeased
Bradley. She now owed him a chocolate cake when they returned home.

She provided an explanation. “The grub trees on the other side of the dome have not been checked, and have many of these in their bark. I thought you would like them.”

“I will enjoy them later, and share with some of our young ones.”

He accepted the gift with more grace than he had rejected previous technological gifts she had offered. Those appeared to offend him slightly, and he acted suspicious as to why she did that. It required explanation of human culture to ease the tension. He explained that they could easily employ electric lights if they needed them, and solar powered lights were not needed for them to see at night.  The same for a gift of battery powered communications devices, and motorized trucks (presumably made by some long dead Prada on Koban). The Rulers preferred they live a simple village life here, so they did.

To Maggi, it was frustrating to offer to free someone that didn’t seem to want the freedom.

“Wister, have you considered how you will help the new Prada that will arrive here? More small villages
are not an effective way to house many of them, and they do not know about this world, its foods, and its dangers.”

He delivered a shimmy of the shoulders, a Prada shrug. “The arriving Prada may have leaders older than I am, or older than my sister, Nawella, of our village. They would decide what we all do. There is room in the factories and in the living quarters for many more Prada. There is no need for that many maintenance workers, but there may be room, without violating the village size limit, or the number of villages on the surface.”

Maggi was brought up short by this remark. “What factories and living quarters?”

“The ones under our feet. Far below the forest and that old dome. Where my sister has been the elder leader of the maintenance workers and of the schools for the last three orbits.”

To her credit, her mouth only hung open for a second. “There are factories underground here?”

His pointed nose darted forward and back in a Prada nod. “Yes, of course. Under almost every large dome. The same as you have on Koban. Because you have not met Prada before, they must not have survived there. The factories will not be ready for production now.”

It was fortunate that the large bird population of Haven kept the insects under control. An open moist mouth, held that way for several seconds was a definite invitation. She closed her mouth before one of the flies buzzing near Jelko’s head found a new home.

She felt a bit dim, repeating what he said, but couldn’t stop herself. “There are factories under the largest domes on Koban?”

There were limits to even an elder Prada’s patience with a member of a junior species. “It is surely how you made the things you brought with you, such as the truck you just drove. To make the parts to repair the domes and fences, to repair the walls. To make the weapons I see that most of you carry.  I did not know of the factory to make clanships on Koban, but some of you must know. You have one.

“The Rulers would surely not leave those things with you if you would not follow the instructions to limit your village size and live a simple life, as we do.”

She didn’t think now was the time to tell him the “benevolent Rulers” had left all of the humans to die, so they never expected them to be around long enough to make good use of what they left behind. Now she knew where the excess Prada population went, to account for the children here in the village. She was partly right.

“When you have children, some adults must move below to the factories to keep the village population constant. Is there a limit placed on the factory population?”

“No, but with no production ordered by the Rulers, there is not a great work need below. Over time, we do have deaths up here, and some accidents happen down there. We accept maintenance workers back into the village to keep the population at the level instructed by the Rulers. When our workers below grow too few for adequate maintenance, we have as many replacement children as needed up here, and send adults below. When the children are old enough, they rotate below to learn how the factories work, about Prada history and knowledge, and an adult will come up here. There are often more than twice as many of us below as there are in the village.”

“If you can have babies anytime in your life, and you live so long, why aren’t the factories full of Prada? You only die by accidents or predators. Are there that many accidents and predator kills?”

“No. Except why would we have babies when we do not need more workers? After many orbits, we were close to the minimum workers for proper maintenance below, and so I permitted six babies to be born over the last two orbits. When they go below for training, I will allow more babies. This will continue enough orbits until we have twice as many workers below as we will have in the village.”

This explained their apparent rigid population in the villages, because an excess or deficiency was corrected by population shifts to or from the factories. In addition, an apparently well-regulated birth rate supplied the buffer required. With twice as many below ground as above, there were roughly 5,375 Prada per village.

“What can the factories make?”

“Everything the Rulers need. Uniforms, some furniture, dome construction elements, construction equipment, fusion power modules, trucks, projectile, plasma, and laser hand weapons, swords and knives, computation devices, heavy body armor, plasma cannons, mini-tanks, laser defense systems, ground and air transports, orbital shuttles, freezers for food, radios…” Maggi placed a hand on his, to send a “stop” image. This sounded something like the orbital factories that humans used, but perhaps on a larger scale and more flexible, although apparently less well automated than we used. Human orbital factories did not require so many maintenance workers.

She explained why she had stopped him. “That seemed like it was going to be a long list. What is left for the Torki to make or build?”

“The Torki build the security and controllers for all of the complex equipment. Many weapon systems are quantum keyed, just as some doorways have keypads. Clanship systems and shuttles, and single ships use quantum encryption to activate. The Torki also modified the Malveran orbital defense platforms for the Rulers, and gave them remote piloted single ships with Jump Hole projectors in the nose. They know how to build the Hammer craft, the quantum interface controls and tachyon drives to operate them as Jump ships. Naturally they understand the quantum mechanical methods to make stable collapsed matter for their outer shells.”

“Hammers?”

“Yes. The Torki can make hollow balls of matter that are very dense, using delicate control of strong gravity fields, to compress the material to form as a single crystal. Only the Torki know how to make openings in them as they take shape, using a Rolperry; that is a small quantum atomic dispersion tool the Raspani once knew how to make. Even the word for the tool came from the Raspani language. That was before they sacrificed their minds to feed the Rulers.”

“You said that before, about the Raspani, that they had great minds. They have been food animals a long time. How do you know about their minds, and that they made this tool?”

“The Torki are smart,” his head darted forward once. “Yet they say they do not know the science of that Rolperry tool. The basic quantum rules, which make the tools work. The Raspani hid their minds after the Rulers claimed their worlds, and that science was lost.”

Maggi told him she had seen the Krall use a Raspani tool. “They held them in their hands to make small holes through any material. A human that came to Koban recently told us there were missile weapons that use those tools in their nose, to bore holes through ships. Is that the tool that you called a Rolperry? Who else makes those tools for the Krall?”

“There are no more of the tools. We Prada placed many of the last of them on missiles for the Rulers. When they are gone, there will be no more, unless the Torki learn how to do that.”

“Have you seen the Katusha tools? The ones that are used to give the Rulers their tattoos. We think it works on a similar principle to the Raspani Rolperry tool. The Katusha gives the Krall the key, in their tattoo, to operate the machinery the Torki make for them. That tool was created by an ancient race called the Olt’kitapi. We have some of them, and I wear a tattoo that was originally placed on my chest by the Krall (she patted below her throat).” She opened the top button of her tunic to show the solid black oval.