Koban: Rise of the Kobani (85 page)

This had not quite evened the scorecard, and Parkoda knew he would lose this game, but any victory for him loomed large today. He wished he’d delayed his guard’s departure to witness his clever remarks. He lamented the fact that only Graka clan was witness to his cleverness, and the retaliation from Telour would only escalate now.

Telour left his guards at the blockhouse, awaiting replacements from Tanga clan, and accompanied Parkoda into the compound. As an experienced Krall warrior, with high status from combat, Telour wasn’t personally concerned about any threat to himself. The same could actually be said of a novice with no kills. It was bred into Krall nature to relish combat, and to have no fear of the outcome.

Besides, Telour knew that if Parkoda failed to keep order in this compound, and a high status visitor were even attacked by a soft Krall, he would be fortunate if his clan leaders allowed him a berserker’s death on some ice cold human world.

They moved quickly across a wide, grassy area, which lay between the structure that surrounded the ten-mile wide circle, and the inner dome. A hundred-foot high hollow ring, thirty feet in depth, had a mirrored surface inside the ring, where Krall monitors walked the four internal ring corridors, looking through the one way transparent armored walls at their prisoners. No Krall had ever heard of a frosted doughnut, which the compound somewhat resembled. The outer ring was the frosting for the unseen guards to patrol, watching their charges move about in the outside habitat where they produced their own food.

At the center was a sizable dome that housed over a hundred thousand of the “family units.” That term stuck any Krall as bizarre, that these cousins to the present Krall species knew their offspring, and the mated pairs (usually) stayed together through multiple breeding cycles. The Olt’kitapi mental infection had taken these traitors away from the Krall’s future on the Great Path.

These once typical “soft” Krall had allowed their minds to be modified by that damnable dead species, to make them behave similar to weaker species, to form alliances. Those were the mere animal species that all true Krall knew they were destined to dominate, or to destroy.

Whatever was done to them was permanent, and made a part of their genetics as a dominate feature. Cross breeding was possible with true warriors, in the early stages of Krall selective evolution, but the offspring of the mattings always retained the mental “defects.” Namely, of the soft Krall’s lack of aggression and loss of the intense desire to fight for domination. Of the most critical importance to the aggressive and warlike Krall, those long ago cubs of cross breeding, when they reached novice age, could be trained to fight but they still could not activate any of the ancient Olt’kitapi “living ships,” even with a tattoo.

The inability of the modern and evolutionally improved Krall warrior to be able to operate one of those ships was the sole reason the older version of their species was permitted to exist. The ability to even cross breed was now lost, after twenty-three thousand years of genetic separation. However, only an unmodified soft Krall could arouse the last large ships the Olt’kitapi had ever designed.

Unless activated by a soft one, the ships seemed to slumber in a standby state for hundreds of years, occasionally activating on their own. They never tried to move from where they were stored, an act that would trigger their destruction. The great ships performed internal self-maintenance, rarely performed hull damage repair, and based on monitoring their activity they apparently did a massive data download, using their intricate sensors. Afterwards, they returned to the former standby state, apparently never requiring fuel replenishment. At least they had no fusion bottles the K’Tals could find.

The soft Krall could make the old ships respond to them, and to obey their commands. However, the soft ones claimed they didn’t understand the technology of the ships. They professed not to know how they were able to get the ships to do what they did, or why the modern Krall, with the same tattoos as they had, were not able to do so. This denial was professed under conditions that even the warrior breed would consider extreme. The extended torture and dismemberment of the adults, and components of their “family units,” would generate any concessions demanded but the one they wanted, which was, how to make the ships respond to the more dominate species. It was most frustrating, and required keeping the breeding line of the traitors alive, and healthy.

A viable-sized breeding pool for the soft Krall had to be maintained as well, something the selective breeding programs of individual warrior clans had proven was necessary. Unwanted, but useful, the early Krall genotype was maintained in captivity and guarded. Today, their numbers were being counted solely for the purpose of Telour to harass Parkoda. This was a way for Kanpardi and Telour, representing Graka clan, to rub Tanga clan and Parkoda’s muzzles into the dirt.

It was a minor diversion from the more useful mission of increasing clanship production on Graca clan’s former nest world. The roughly seven thousand light-year journey was already a long one, and the few light-years detour was well worth the time cost for the revenge.

Telour entertained himself most of the day, critical of any perceived infraction by Parkoda, or his clan’s warriors. When he actually came face-to-face with one of the reviled soft ones, the pallid-grey hide appeared looser on her slightly smaller than normal frame. It made her resemble an underfed pre-novice. The red coloration all adult Krall sported now was a product of the gene selections that had led to the rapid stopping of loss of blood when cut or punctured. There had been greater
sexual dimorphism between males and females in the early history of the race, and the soft ones retained that trait. The females were unusually small, and thus unfit for fighting. Not that the males were warriors either.

They looked like smaller pale Krall, but their talons were short and could not be retracted or extended, they could bleed to death if a limb were severed, they had but one heart and liver, and their lungs were smaller, reducing the barrel chests of the true warriors. If the lights went out, they had no night vision and little infrared capability. The ultrasonic ears did not retract for combat or when not in use, and did not have the more cup shape that permitted a more directional detection capability. Watching them move in the 1.3 g gravity of this planet, they obviously lacked the same muscle definition, speed, and strength of those that followed the Great Path.

Looking at the soft ones for the two hours it required for counting them all, Telour grew sick of seeing them. It was his fault for demanding the count, and then insisting he watch Parkoda as they passed by him individually. He relented on that decision, to complete the process within a full breeding cycle, or he died of boredom. It was another small victory for Parkoda when he permitted the line of soft Krall to pass by other Tanga clan warriors, each holding a Katusha mounted on a stand with computer attached. These did the actual counting, and the total from each station was linked and combined.

In the final tally, compared to the last census, taken monthly actually, there was a net decrease of two soft ones, despite the hatching of a cub that did not yet have a tattoo, and was manually tabulated.

Telour had never expected there to be any discrepancy in numbers, yet badgered Parkoda about how sloppy the process was if a new hatchling was only entered when physically seen. It implied some could remain hidden and outside their census. A ridiculous claim, but one it was impossible to prove could not happen.

That led to Telour’s pretext to take Parkoda with him, to verify that none of those potentially “missing” and now grown cubs had not escaped from the planet, and were waiting to steal a great Olt’kitapi ship. The evidence to back that possibility were the clanships stolen from
Telda Ka, and one possibly used on Poldark.

Not only did it allow additional time to humiliate Parkoda, thus relieving the boredom of long Jumps, his ambitious second in command would be in charge here while he was gone. If he left Parkoda on the Graka clan production world, forced to find his own way back to his assignment post, he may discover he had been replaced at even this backwater outpost.

They Jumped for the world where the powerful Olt’kitapi ships were hidden, with a clearly angry Parkoda in tow. It was a relatively short jump, because if these machines of ultimate destruction were ever needed, keeping them in proximity to the soft Krall was more efficient.

They were quickly challenged for identification on White Out, and a visual display of the mission commander and his command deck staff was required even before the boarders would dock with them. This was to preclude the presence of small gray-colored, soft Krall in
side a clanship. At least none that had not been coordinated in advance to arrive as prisoners, in restraints. Five clanships met them, and four hands of warriors boarded and searched the ship, as the other ships stood by with missiles, lasers, and plasma cannons ready to fire. The borders efficiently and thoroughly swept every deck with Katushas, to verify that no soft Krall were in hiding.

Once cleared to move inward towards the star, they landed on a small airless moon and walked in vacuum suits to a shuttle made available for just Telour and Parkoda to go down to the planet. Visiting clanships, with their firepower and internal volume for carrying
many warriors, were not allowed to land on the planet.

Calling the world a planet required a small play on words, because the habitable world was itself a large moon of a huge Jovian type gas giant, in a close orbit 1.5 Astronomical Units from its host star. A small moon orbiting a large moon, orbiting a giant gas ball five times the mass of Jupiter was an unlikely place to find a habitable world, with an eighteen percent oxygen atmosphere, and eighty percent nitrogen, with other traces.

Tidal stress and drag kept one face of the habitable moon pointed at the Jovian. Yet it received adequate light and heat from the star when exposed to its light, a star slightly larger and hotter than average. The planet-sized moon would sometimes fall in the shadow of the Jovian, reducing the stars heat and light for hours. However, the gas giant radiated more heat than it received, so temperature changes were not too extreme on the planet/moon.

The shuttle took them into the extinct caldera of a monstrous shield volcano. Parked along the inside rim of the crater, in shadow most of the time, were eleven ships, each five times the size of a clanship. They were smaller than the Torki migration ships, but could control immense power, and travel in a manner that no other ships in the experience of the Krall could match. Their shapes were oddly contoured, with all rounded edges, twice as long as they were wide or high, lying on their long side. They resembled a short plump sausage with a slightly bowed back that was lower in the center than at each end. There was no visible difference between either rounded ends of the ships, and in fact, either end was equally the bow or the stern. A trait it was said, that reflected its designer’s flexible mental processes, the Olt’kitapi.

Of the eleven intelligent ships, only nine acted aware, or would respond and display signs of awareness. Five of those nine would no longer obey instructions from even the soft Krall. That was after those particular five ships had deduced that their power had been used for what proved to be acts of aggression or intimidation by the soft ones, against another species. This happened when the Krall had coerced their prisoners (using intimidation and threats to their families) into directing the ships to use their most destructive capability on uninhabited worlds as an object lesson. These were dead planets located in inhabited star systems, but some havoc spread to the inhabited worlds. The alien species that “earned” these demonstrations had used the type of weapons they were warned never to use against the Krall. Mass destruction weapons, usually nuclear, chemical, or biological, which precluded the clans from recovering viable breeders for the Path.

The two ships that, for thousands of years, had refused to respond at all had been directed to punish worlds that had proven to support intelligent life. Although they would power up when entered, these two were the first ships ever used by the Krall for such punitive purposes, and as typical for killers, they had pulled no punches. The ships each continued to function for a short time, only to return here. Their subsequent self-deactivation after landing convinced the Krall to restrict the use of the other ships as weapons. “Sparingly used” by Krall definition caused five more of the ships to become unresponsive to instructions, even if willing to wake up and interact when entered.  Even though they had not directly targeted the subject worlds for the lessons to be taught, the impact on the inhabited worlds was noted by the ships used. The last four of the untraumatized ships were a precious and irreplaceable commodity, only to be used in extreme circumstances.

Required to disarm before they had departed the clanship on the small airless moon, Telour directed Parkoda to accompany him into each ship. As Til Gatrol, Telour was not required to explain his purpose here, and doing so would have given offense to the multiple clans that provided security for the great ships. There was no suspicion in Telour’s mind that any soft Krall had escaped, let alone penetrated security and entered any of the ships. Only the four most tightly guarded operational ships would even have responded to one of them. The other five ships patiently explained, repeatedly, that they would not obey instructions or requests from a sentient species that attacked other nonaggressive sentient beings. Apparently, each ship had to experience this act itself, because five times in a row the now stubborn ships had Jumped where directed, performed the action a soft Krall directed it to do, and then soon refused any other commands and returned here.