Koban: Rise of the Kobani (71 page)

“Besides, if what we say isn’t enough, and what we do isn’t convincing for you, then we will continue what we are doing anyway. We do not
intend
harm, even if someday we do cause harm.”

All Coldar said was, “You will have Torki help.”

“That’s all it took?” Mirikami asked, taken aback by the swift answer. “A speech by one human?”

“The example of your short speech is one no Krall alive could make. We
Torki clearly understood that we could no more stop you than we were able to stop the Krall. We have helped the Krall because we had no choice if we were to survive. You give us the option, and ask for our help. Your species may prove to be an unintended plague on the galaxy, but certainly a more benevolent one than the Krall planed. We will take our chances and help you.”

“Thank you. How about your people, Wister? Do you accept our word, and agree to work with us?”

His head moved side-to-side, in confusion or indecision. “I sense much of what Coldar says is a possibility to concern us, yet I do not believe you
intend
to do harm. However, our position was previously stated, and what help we can provide to you on Haven will still be given. I will urge other elders to do more to help you move our remote villages to Haven. The Rulers never told us other Prada villages were forbidden to live in this system, because before you came we did not have a way to do this unless they moved us.”

“Fine, we can work with that degree of cooperation, Wister. Thank you.”

Next, he rounded on his two ship captains with a stern look, and said, “Now I need to address this matter of insubordination, bordering on mutiny by my two highest ranking officers. You have concealed vital information from me.” He glared at them.

“Like, when do I get
my
turn to become fast, gain super powers, able to leap over tall things?”

Maggi, butting in, said, “It’s faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap a tall building in a single bound, and more powerful than a locomotive.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“God. You sound as historically ignorant as my moron protégé sometimes. You want to become Superman, and don’t know who he is. I’ll explain it to you over a home cooked dinner, at my place.”

“I didn’t know you could cook.”

“The depth of your ignorance appalls me, Tetsuo.” She shook her head, a grin indicating she had some sort of education in mind.

Maggi was demonstrating new equipment for the four men, who were lying in adjacent med labs. Right now, she was showing how the helmets of their new body armor worked. The Torki had reopened their own smaller underground high tech production facilities, and had ordered fabricated materials per new specifications from the larger Prada factories, as parts of the new design armor. For illustration purposes, she held one of the new helmets the men would wear.

“The Torki are making the control modules, weapons, and power distribution systems for the new armor at a rate of ten suits a day from his home lodge. That will increase to a hundred per day he said, as more workers learn the new skills, and two other lodges join them in the work. The Prada are already at a hundred shells per day production for the basic suits and helmets.

Tossing the helmet lightly she observed, “The armor is thin and light weight, as also were the suits the Krall gave us for combat testing. Now, however, the articulation is natural feeling, as if it were a layer of flexible skin at the joints. It behaves much like Living Plastic, except it is flame and puncture resistant, air and watertight.

“This stuff has tremendous tensile strength, protecting your head, limbs, and torso, because few of the Krall pistol rounds we tested on bare shells would penetrate. The armor piercing rounds might get through. Plasma rifles will be less of a threat. It required two or three plasma bolts at the same point to burn through, and then finally it transferred the heat to the inside. The final outer stealth coating will reduce plasma and laser resistance even more. However, a fifty-caliber, armor-piercing round can still punch through, with much less penetrating power, but probably deadly. The real technology is in what the Torki added, and the quantum controlled layering of the suit skin surfaces. That provides stealth and energy weapon resistance, as I mentioned, but does more.”

Tet, just recently awakened and still fuzzy headed, said. “Maggi, before Rafe put us under last month, you still had not explained how you could see out of your helmet. There are no eyeholes or a face plate on that one”

Mirikami, Dillon, Thad, and Sarge were undergoing TG2 conversion with Koban genes in the same room, simultaneously applied with the Prada age retention gene, and nanite age regression. It had been deemed more merciful to place the recipients into a state of induced coma for the month, while the most painful muscle growth and nerve attachments were forming. That period had now passed.

She gave her typical sounding reply. “Knuckle head! There are no peepholes or actual windows on the clanships, yet you get to see outside the Mark of Koban just fine don’t you? The quantum level control of the surface material that coats the ships, and these suits, is what makes it possible for them to reflect, absorb, or pass and amplify selected electromagnetic radiation. The coating on the helmet fronts and on the inside is similar to the view screens on the Mark’s Bridge. The zoom ability is amazing.

“For the helmet, there’s a surface on the inside of the area in front of your face that presents the outside world. I don’t know how they linked it to our unique superconductor nervous systems and ripper frill mods, but if you
think
at the suit, it will adjust the range of near and far vision in front of your helmet. You can select a portion of the incoming radiation from infrared to visible light, blending into ultraviolet, for presentation to our ripper level of vision. They initially tested it with Bradley’s eyes, with his ultrasonic ears, then with all of his TG2 adaptations as signal sources for suit features.

“Inside the helmet, it’s like looking out of a clear window with an automatic telescopic zoom, controlled by your thoughts. I can’t even see these various energy weapon projectors mounted on the front of the helmet, although when I think of which one I wish to use, it displays one of five different shape recticles for each of the five energy beams. If you think of the plasma pulse weapon, which is the large center blue disk on the face,” she pointed. “It places a round target symbol where you are looking, even if you are in zoom mode. It requires a specific thought sequence to fire a bolt, as a sort of safety. You teach it your own sequence for each weapon.

“For example, in my helmet I could think
plasma bolts, six, pulse fire!
Which, for me would trigger a sixty percent of maximum energy charged particle bolt, fired at the designated target. The amount of energy in the plasma can be adjusted by you through thought, just as it’s manually done on a standard Krall plasma rifle. I arbitrarily chose ten equal divisions, with number one being the weakest nonfatal bolt for a human, up to a maximum strength armored Krall killer bolt of a ten for a head shot. You can custom set your own levels, dozens of intensities if you choose, and select repeated rapid fire. At least until the plasma chamber located near your butt empties and recharges.

“There are four directed energy weapons for electromagnetic radiation. Two are for red or green light lasers, chosen by which frequency seems to have the best effect on different armor or color of targets. To circumvent specific wavelength protections of various types of armor, you have a microwave beam, and an infrared beam.  I used the infrared to heat Dillon’s cup last month. I hit exactly what I’m looking at when the target designator is specifically over what part I want to hit. I only have to think of the coded firing sequence and strength of the beam I want.

“At present, we can’t set a weapon to keep following the original target if we choose to look away at another potential target for a different weapon. When I mentioned that, Coldar says that is merely a coding change in the control module. I also told him about the PU Army having armor that can tell friends from enemy and permit the suits to fire or hold back when fighting in a congested area, with the enemy in among civilians. It can be done, he says. They simply never envisioned that situation. He said it was
wrong
to make war around innocent beings.”

Sarge made a rather Krall sounding snort. “I guess he hasn’t witnessed how the Krall normally conduct their organized slaughters.”

Maggi went on. “Anyway, they will be reprogrammed to track and fire each selected weapon at the targets we choose, for the length of time we choose, or if set for free fire, to only target the Krall. Our limitation, of course, is the flow of energy that is available.”

Thad made a critical comment. “The plasma pulse from that face gadget has no appreciable length. I don’t see how it will have a tight enough beam focus for a long-range shot. We already know the Krall can see the warmth of the magnetic field as it forms, to focus a building plasma bolt. Won’t they see where our heads are, just before we fire a short-range pulse they can duck?”

“Ethan and Carson passed that information along to Coldar, before they received their final TG2 enhancements. The suits will remain opaque to the outgoing plasma pulse until it is launched. They won’t see it coming. There are also new add-on pre-flash suppressors for plasma cannons and pulse rifles. Small magnetic collars can conceal the heat escaping from the beam focusing fields, and you simply snap them around the muzzle ends. The Torki or Prada never knew about this advance warning feature because they can’t see into infrared frequencies either.”

Sarge’s own professional critique provided him with other questions. “If the helmet plasma bolts have a short focal length, they will spread and have a shorter range. Won’t we still need plasma rifles for long-range shots? Then, if we carry pulse rifles, as we have from the war’s start, our armor’s stealth is offset when the weapon and its heat profile give us away. To hide from a Dragon, for example, we sometimes had to disarm and drop our best weapon. I don’t think the super stealth you showed us that first day will be as useful if we have to fight without our rifles.”

Maggi looked exasperated. “God, you men are such a pain in the ass! We poor women could never think of all these tough warfare related questions, could we?”

“Don’t be hard on yourself, Maggi. You haven’t been in combat yet.” Sarge foolishly thought this would mollify her.

Instead, she walked over to where the sample suit was hanging, next to a normal looking plasma rifle hanging on clothes hook by its strap. She lifted a thin elastic chord that extended from the rifle’s quantum controlled trigger lock. She pulled it over to the suit’s chest plate, and plugged it into a small slot there, twisted and locked it in place.

She slipped the too-large helmet on her head, sent the activating mental command, and the helmet, her head, the detached suit, and the hanging plasma rifle effectively vanished, except for the strap on the hook, holding the weapon.

“Is that sneaky enough for you moron level geniuses?” The acidic voice came from the headless petite woman. Then the helmet, suit, and rifle reappeared, as did Maggi’s head when she lifted the helmet clear.

“The chord activates the same stealth coating on the weapon when the suit is in that mode. The rifle also provides targeting data to a different reticle on your visual display, so you can see what it is aimed at, and what pulse level you have dialed in for the shot. You can manually pull the trigger, or mentally command the shot.”

“I stand corrected.” Sarge offered. “You seem to have cleverly anticipated a battle field need rather effectively.”

“You mean you lay corrected, you buffoon.”

Then she offered an explanation that took away a bit of her seeming battlefield expertise. “It wasn’t all my idea. The Krall have always had the automatic sighting capability between their armor and rifles. Evidently they distain its use, preferring the manual mode, which helps them select warriors that genetically survive better because
they
selected their own target, fired before the enemy could, and did it all manually. I suggested that a stealth coating be added to the rifle, and activated with the suit.”

The buffoon comment canceled Sarge’s previous offer of congratulations. With a grin he said, “I guess half an idea was better than none.”

Before Maggi struck back, Thad said, “I don’t see a power pack large enough for that skinny suit’s plasma generator, let alone adding on the other four radiant energy weapons, which also need considerable power. How many shots do we have before we need to recharge or swap power packs on the suit?”

She shrugged. “Coldar says we don’t need to recharge the suit, but we can’t fire all weapons at maximum strength at the same time. The plasma pulse is the largest drain, and we can fire the directed energy beams at only partial power if we are firing plasma bolts at a rapid rate. All four of the other energy beam weapons will fire at their lower designed maximum power if you don’t use plasma.”

Thad looked bemused. “There has to be a replaceable power source if we don’t recharge. That seems like a serious weakness. We’d have to tote a lot of whatever the power packs are, and that will spoil our stealth unless they are also coated.”

Maggi shrugged again. “I don’t know physics, but there are no power packs. Coldar says the suit uses small quantum controlled alternate universe energy taps, whatever the hell that means.”

Mirikami asked, “Did he mention tachyons?”

“Oh no,” she stated firmly. “He only spoke of an ocean of energetic particles that move faster than light, of which just a few can power the suits.”

Mirikami looked at the other three men. “A sea of faster than light particles in an alternate universe sounds like a description of Tachyon Space. I think the crabs have a miniature Trap field built into the suits. They might be able to catch the most common low-level tachyons at a fast enough pace to supply suit power.”

Sarge countered that suggestion, “I didn’t think you could set up a Trap field deep in gravity wells. You told me you caught the massive energy of the tachyons that the Flight of Fancy still used for power when it was in space. If they were ever released, you said it could never capture any to replace them because it can’t lift out of the gravity well to form a stable Trap.”

“That’s true. We can’t
trap
any tachyons with the energy to form a stable event horizon down here. Otherwise, we’d repeat the early disaster on Earth’s Moon, when they learned how, accidentally, to make a huge crater on its far side. That was when scientists tried to build a tachyon driven power generation station on the moon.

“In Jump Drive class I recall that any strength tachyon can randomly tunnel into a weak Trap field at any time, and tunnel right back out. The more tachyons there are, the higher the probability of one passing through. Low energy tachyons are the most common in Tachyon Space, like our microwave background photons. At velocities greater than light, in our Universe those particles represent high energy. However, in too strong of a gravity field we never found a way to trap and curve them to stay inside our fields so we could draw energy from the more powerful particles. It’s possible the Torki learned how to extract low levels of energy for powering suits, via technology of some race that the Krall defeated. It isn’t a new idea to us, actually.”

“How’s that?” Dillon questioned. “When did we encounter this before?”

“From two examples,” Mirikami said. “We never learned how
millennia old Katushas are powered, yet we know those are all at least twenty thousand year old quantum devices. The Krall killed their Olt’kitapi makers that long ago and there are no batteries or charging points on them.  Then there is the Raspani quantum disintegration or drilling device that doesn’t have an obvious power source either.”