Koban: Rise of the Kobani (89 page)

Yilini and Fred were progressing even faster than Carson’s teams, because there were a fewer number of things to destroy in a foundry and smelter, and the ship assembly
work had apparently slowed recently, due to a shortage of large metal hull and deck sections, built as replaceable modules. Yil said that must have something to do with the low ore piles by the various crushers near the smelters. There was a shortage of raw material, which perhaps explained the lower activity in all three factories.

Yil was still explaining his theory of
a temporary supply shortage, when Carson interrupted him. “Yil, I’m hearing one hell of a loud thundering sound, and the floor and walls are vibrating.”

“I hear a roar
too,” he replied.

Fred had the answer they needed. “I’m outside, on a hull cradle i
n the assembly area in the shipyards. I can see two of those migration ships coming down near the dome. I can’t believe fat tubs that huge can actually land on a planet. I see two more in the distance, coming down off shore. Those are the water landings for the Torki. Anyone hear from the teams sent out there?”

Two teams
, in four ground transports, had raced out to see if there was a Krall presence around either lodge. Two of the fast moving Dragons had gone with them, since there had been less Krall resistance at the shipyards than expected. A convoy of over a hundred trucks and halftracks was on the way from the destroyed main dome, but they were at least two hours away. The roughly one thousand warriors crammed in and on them would have to be intercepted at some point, because the loading of the migration ships wouldn’t be completed by then, even if the Prada all agreed to drop everything and come quickly.

Noreen had been speaking with Wister’s older sibling,
Nawella, before the descent. The fifteen-hundred-year-old Prada had experienced four previous moves by migration ships over the centuries, but was nervous. She knew of how some landings ended with a crash when the Krall pilot collapsed several landing struts coming down too hard, or off slightly from a near perfect vertical touchdown. On one of her landings, the pilot had allowed two of the ten landing jacks to come down off the edge of a tarmac into soft ground. The ship nearly toppled before the two jacks, at full extension, finally found solid enough support.

This time the landings were deftly handled, and delicately executed by Torki pilots. The first landings they had ever performed, but exactly as it had gone in the simulators they used for practice. The five large thrusters used ionized water as their reaction mass, once they cut out the Normal Space gravit
y drives at about one mile of altitude. Most of the remaining water in their tanks would be used for the departure, but that was far less than what they generally carried.

The
departure weight of the ships by the domes would be far less, because they didn’t need to retain a large and heavy volume of water for their Prada passengers to soak in, as did the Torki, to reduce acceleration stress. The Torki pilots assured Noreen that they would lift swiftly and lightly, much like a Haven insect that flew similar to a butterfly. How that description fit with a ship that more resembled a giant, silvered Earth pumpkin than a fragile winged fluttery insect, Noreen chose to ignore.

Nawella, true to her word, was among the first off the migration ship, accompanied by ten TG2s, in a Krall armored battlefield transport. The big trucks had ample room in the lower hold of the ships. It could be driven in and out using the wide sturdy ramp. In planning
, they had allowed for possible sniper fire after the ships sat down.

The
elder spokesperson, technically a “spokesprada,” had to be protected if they hoped to convince the workers to come along quickly. Or even to come along at all. Once inside the factory, surrounded by TG2’s, Nawella directed them to where she needed to be taken. There was an overseer room, which monitored all sections of a factory, and had a communications system. For the joint factory complex like this one, she could link all three public address systems together. The dome, as housing for the Prada, was included.

The problem Mirikami had seen was that they needed to disseminate the information widely, to every Prada, but after so many thousands of years, the Prada now spoke only low Krall. Any Krall in the dome or factory would hear and understand what was said. 

The solution they wanted to try was to ask representatives of the various work sections to go to the “gathering” rooms, used during shift changes, to exchange information each day. Each division of workers had elder members that were tasked with learning what problems or issues had come up on the previous shift, and that was then passed along to the next shift of workers by the next shift’s elder representatives. Wister and Nawella both believed that if the elder division members could be convinced to evacuate, the others would listen and follow them. The multiple gathering rooms, or conference rooms as the humans would call them, could be addressed privately, and via video link from the overseer room.

Nawella expertly activated the PA system for the entire complex. She’d done this many times as an elder Prada project manager. Her first announcement, audio only, was to request al
l elder division members, of every shift, to assemble in the gathering rooms.

They knew this would be a time of risk for th
e Prada that exposed themselves, and moved through the interconnected factories. The main avenues in the factories would have invisible TG2s guarding the way, watching for any Krall activity. Nawella identified herself and stated her age. She explained she was of Sither clan, a widely spread clan after thousands of years of migration moves. She knew not to reveal any detail that could identify her as currently residing in the Koban system. Her name and clan were matters of interest only to other Prada, and the Krall had never taken notice of them.

The Pr
ada relied on honesty within their ranks, and accepted an elder’s claim of age until proven wrong. If it was part of a deception, and revealed as such, that Prada was shunned and would die alone. Such a penalty was so severe to them that none could recall it being applied in over a thousand years.

There were several hundred Prada seen climbing down from the ceilings, or crawling out of hiding places. They were cautiously looking for any threat from their so-called Rulers, who displayed notoriously random violence at times. A Prada
normally would obey any order from a Krall, but in the case of berserker rage, they felt justified to run and hide if no order was given specifically to them by name. It was convenient that few Krall knew any slave’s name.

As they hurried along the corridors, some taking an “overland” route on machinery or elevated walkways, their long tails were constantly twitching at any sound. Three times the sound was from a sudden Krall
attack scream, and a plasma bolt or laser cut it short. A few warriors were still prowling the factories, seeking a fast and potent hidden enemy that struck them down without warning or challenge. Three more completed their hunt with finality.

When the division leaders were in the gathering rooms, they were able to see the Prada female that had called them
on screen. They were prepared to take her age on faith, and the social structure on this harsh world meant that every single one of them knew that her claimed age was centuries greater than the next oldest Prada among them. Dangerous work and poor living conditions had kept many elders from reaching truly advanced ages. They were prepared to listen.

After discussion with Wister, Nawella, and other elders, a strategy of avoiding the identity of the “alien” invaders was considered best. The location where they were “migrating” was
to be another Krall world that was to be repopulated and factories rebuilt. Not mentioning the planet’s name was a no-brainer, and hardly suspicious. The Krall didn’t use them for places, merely a description of them, or the clan that controlled them. Those details weren’t provided.

Without stating this was interclan warfare, something
many Prada had experienced in the past, or certainly knew about, Nawella reminded them that sometimes the Rulers made war on themselves for practice. She told them that production was now being ended on this old and worn out planet.

“Four great migration ships have landed,” she told them.
“All Prada and all Torki workers will be efficiently moved. Today. Right now. Go tell your divisions, those on duty and those out of rotation in the dome, and their families, to take nothing with them and board the two migration ships you heard land above, and are parked on the tarmac. We will direct the flow to which ship has more room remaining. Food will be provided for you, and some is already present. Try to avoid the places of fighting. The Rulers do not need us to hinder their activity. The ships have been ordered to leave if fighting comes too close. Go now, as quickly as you can pass the word. Do not be left behind on an abandoned world.”

That reference, if any spur were needed, caused a near stampede to get the word out to board the ships. Every Prada knew that feral Krall hatchlings eventually consumed any world where they were not ruthlessly culled and then trained. The placing of explosives had been noted, even if those placing them had not been revealed. The factories were always destroyed on abandoned worlds.

Switching off the camera and audio pickup, Nawella turned to the TG2s with her. She couldn’t actually see them, but the strips of colored cloth tied to ankles and wrists let her see where they were. “They responded as I had hoped. I fear we may not be able to collect all of them in the time we have. The number of division elders was greater than I expected. This means there are more workers than we believed would be here. I need to meet the first arrivals to the ship I came on, and the Prada representatives at the other ship need to do the same, as we had planned.”

The eldest of the first arrivals would be sent back into the dome to direct the steady flow of Prada expected. Other elders would divide the loading equally between the two ships
at the east and west dome entrances. That was why the huge ships had landed on opposite sides. An intact clanship could be seen at a third entrance, and the smoking ruins of two clanships blocked the fourth entrance on the north. The scene bore the hallmarks of clan warfare, as did a hurried migration of stolen property, the skilled slave labor to run new factories.

Dillon spotted the first of the refugees streaming across the tarmac to the ship to his right, on the east side. Then another cluster broke from the dome on the west side, and ran for the
other ship. A plasma rifle bolt cut one of them down, fired from a point high on the dome.

“Damn it.” He was about to seek a target for the smaller lasers on the Avenger, when at least twenty plasma pulses, and nearly tha
t many red or green lasers turned the general area where the shot originated into slag. There was no repeat.

Instead, Dillon
resumed sighting in two of the ships’ heavy plasma cannons on the most likely entry point into the shipyards for the approaching convoy of Krall. The heavy lasers already had their target lanes designated, and would be under Karl’s control when the AI was released to fire them. He had the normal AI restriction against risking human lives. However, there were no humans or Prada on those trucks.

The Torki had started leaving their lodges before the
two teams sent to protect them even arrived. The only Krall that had been encountered were two hands of warriors, one hand per lodge, which had been on patrol in trucks. Both hands had already started back towards the dome when they saw it was being attacked. The Dragons took out their halftracks as they returned together, at a range of one mile. One warrior was still alive, and was easily disarmed by his unseen assailants. Then a removed gauntlet permitted a Mind Tap. The two patrols proved to be the only Krall presence there had been, near either lodge.

The warrior’s eyes
had widened when he saw a human hand appear in the air, and smack his own thick hand down painfully when he extended talons to rake it. The hand took a firm grip on a finger as its wrist was held in an iron grip by a second invisible hand. Questions came to it in low Krall, from a point in front of his face, in a tone of voice it recognized as also belonging to a human.

It had been years since he’
d been part of the first invasion on Bollovstic, but he remembered the sound of weak human animals. However, his head, body, and limbs were being held as if by machines. He could snarl, but not shake free, try as he might. His missing lower left leg would not have prevented him from fighting, but he never saw his attacker and those that held him until the hand appeared.

“He has nothing else to share that we need,”
the voice said, in Standard this time, which the warrior understood slightly.

“
Agar, do we take him back as a prisoner?”

“I saw his
mental images of humans he’s encountered before, as soon as he saw my hand and heard my voice.”

“So?”

“So no, Jeni. The answer is, we won’t.” Then Agar Gupta put a more merciful laser beam through the warrior’s right eye than the mercy his knives had granted his victims on Bollovstic.

A
n hour later, the two teams and the Dragons were back inside the shipyards, waiting patiently with hundreds of other TG2’s. They were actually anticipating the arrival of the convoy of highly experienced warriors from the Mordo clan dome. Gupta had shown the others by Tap what the victory celebrations had been like for these clan members. It was a weeklong event, held using the helpless humans left trapped on Bollovstic when it fell. There were no Krall escaping from
this
convoy alive.