Koban: Rise of the Kobani (97 page)

“I saw him blink rapidly when I started talking. I look younger in the face, and I’m concealed inside this suit, but he reacted to my voice. Let me remove a gauntlet.”

He grabbed a hand, and promptly pushed a conversation to the Krall of the last time the two of them spoke on Koban, just before and after he destroyed the compound gates, around what was then called Koban Prime. Thad had the other hand so he could “listen” in on the interrogation. Mirikami was making certain Parkoda knew exactly who held him captive now.

The return images from Parkoda, with low Krall words embedded said, “I should have destroyed you in your ship that day, and not permit Telour to leave you there. His weakness has cost all clans the ships being built here.”

“We have destroyed not just the ships here, Parkoda, we have attacked the ships the Mordo clan produced, and the hammers the Torki make for the Stodok clan. We are not simply blowing up the ships and hammers; we will also destroy the factories. We captured or destroyed all of the migration ships. We are using them to carry away the Prada and Torki that know how to build your weapons. Thanks to you and Telour, your weakness has allowed humans to cripple all Krall war-making ability.” He wanted to rub salt in the wound, despite how petty it made him sound and feel. It was the sort of taunt that a Krall would find most infuriatingly painful, coming from a prey animal.

The flash of hatred that returned was tinged with a sense of impending vengeance. It wasn’t of personal retribution, although there was an impression that somehow, if not Parkoda directly, Tanga clan would have a roll in some important capacity. His thoughts were focused on racial revenge, and total human extermination.
It involved the soft Krall.

Again, a reference to a variation of the Krall
species. Simultaneously hated and needed by the clans. “What are the soft Krall?”

The visual images of them he and Thad saw looked much like novice Krall, until a modern Krall from Parkoda’s memory was seen striking one of them. The “soft ones” were a bit smaller, and were uniformly gray, with no red tinged skin as they aged. They all went unclothed. The age difference was apparent because they were seen in family groupings, with small ones held, or seen standing within an obviously protective circle of adults.

“How will they help you attack humans, and why would they help you?”

The
unexpected image of the plump, organic looking ships was something very different from anything ever associated with the Krall previously. The scale factor was impossible to judge at first, until in one image they realized Parkoda was standing on a rugged volcanic-looking landscape, looking up at one of them from nearby. It was shaped far different from a clanship or migration ship, and sized somewhere in between the two.

Parkoda, being directed to answer questions, and having
received mental images from Mirikami, had an inkling of their mental ability. He was trying to hold information back, but not very successfully.

“Why will the other
type of Krall help you? They appear to be captives and abused. Are they forced? Why do you need them anyway?”

The
return thoughts came out confused and mixed.

Mirikami was asking too many questions at one time, he was too agitated, and this threat seemed too real. The Krall
would brag and exaggerate, but they mostly did not lie to prey animals because there was no reason to fear them or to worry about what they knew.

For some reason those ships felt like some kind of weapon to Parkoda, but one that he did not understand, and could not use himself for some reason. The “weapon” apparently didn’t
like
him, or perhaps it didn’t like Krall in particular. How did a weapon have likes and dislikes?

“Where are those ships you saw?”

There was no thought leakage of that location at all, only the same scene of the ships. At first, Mirikami believed Parkoda had done what no other Krall had managed to do. Hide his thoughts. He asked in another way. If I take you to the navigation system of a clanship, can you find where the star system is located?”

An image of a control console appeared, but the galactic map
he recalled did not suggest any star system.

Another approach was tried. “Where do the soft Krall live?” There was instantly a stellar system in his mind, and they knew that he could go
there
if he wished. He had feebly tried to hold that back.

“Tet, I don't think he
knows
where those ships are located. I saw at least a half dozen of them in one mental image, with an enormous gas giant planet in the background sky.”

“I saw that, and the reflected light from what would normally be white or light gray cloud tops on a gas planet that size looked red. That world where they were parked, side-by- side, has to be a terrestrial-sized
moon of a super Jupiter. The giant world is probably orbiting a red dwarf star, whose red light was being reflected.”

Thad shook his head. “Hell, that doesn’t narrow the search much. Red dwarfs are a dozen for a Hub credit. They’re the most common mass star class in the galaxy. Probably half of them have a close-in Jovian planet.”

“Not many of those systems would have a habitable terrestrial-sized moon that close. It would have to be tidally locked, one face always towards the Jovian, and there was a breathable atmosphere with decent pressure, and plant life.”

“OK. It’s
so not like looking for a needle in a giant haystack, but a long search nevertheless, in a large volume of space that humans have never been inside before. Parkoda apparently wasn’t high ranking enough to know where those ships are kept, which does suggest they are important. However, Parkoda knows that the soft Krall are needed, and they damn well don’t trust them. I don’t know what the connection would be.”

They had not paid a great deal of attention to Parkoda. He was secured in an acceleration couch that a Kobani could not break away from if secured, and would stand up to acceleration that w
ould render them unconscious. The Krall wasn’t going anywhere, and he was no longer a physical match in strength or speed for any one of them, let alone the eight TG2s standing around outside the conference room.

However, he was a physical match for two prospective opponents that he knew he could control. He had gradually felt sensation return, from whatever agent they had used that nearly paralyzed him. They were pulling information from him that he had not spoken, but were discussing the answers to their questions they asked, as if he had told them. They put pictures and words into his mind. They must be doing the reverse, and obtaining information from him. He hated Telour, despised the Graka clan, but he
KNEW
his species was destined to finish walking the Great Path, and to rule the galaxy. He would not let this prey species slow the Krall’s march. If they spoke true, and why lie to a warrior they certainly would kill once he was of no use, they had struck a blow against the war effort against them. The ultimate weapons would destroy them, but he was not going to let them find out any more from him.

He started his final battle, the enemy being his own body. He used his will to shut off blood flow to duplicate organs, such as his two liver-equivalents, a pair of adrenaline-like organs that provided the rage stimulus to fight on despite any physical damage, his blood cleaner kidney function was also a target, but was too slow to be effective quickly. Then he willed his two hearts to slow to a stop. He could s
hut down his brain, but once unconscious, his body would restore all functions automatically, and he’d recover. He maintained a steady pattern of breathing, and left his eyes fixed straight ahead. Soon he won this last battle against the prey, and his two hearts. He quietly expired.

Thad grasped Parkoda’s hand, with the intent of asking how long his travel had been from the planet where the ships were visited, to reach CS2. That would provide a distance, if not a direction. The echoes of the final random thoughts of a dying brain was all he detected, and that was of gloating satisfaction.

Seeing Thad’s surprised look, Mirikami touched the other hand, and detected even less of Parkoda’s final thoughts. He shook his head. “We lost our fear of them and let him slip away from us. We know they have one more super weapon, more destructive than any they have used on our worlds.  They require the soft Krall and those ships, in some capacity, to apply that weapon.”

“We don’t even know where to go
, to strike at these ships.” Thad said, worry showing on his face.

Mirikami was pulling at his lip. “No, but we may be able to find the soft Krall that somehow are part of using those weapons. They could be our next rescue mission.”

“What do we do right now, Uncle Tet?”

“Ethan, we will finish our own mission, gather the Torki, the Prada, the Raspani, and get them away from the Krall, safe on Haven. I’m confident your mother finished her mission and Noreen her own. The Krall never even conceived that humans might have the ability to strike them this deep inside their space, and to do so this effectively. It may take some time for the impact to drive home the point we made today, that we can and will do more than simply defend our worlds.

“I anticipate there will be severe retaliation, using the same weapons they already have at their disposal. They have plenty of them. Some of their vital supply lines are cut, but what they already have available is deadly. If we can keep cutting the supply of clanships down, and spur the PU Navy to go after their existing ships in great enough numbers, we can start to turn the tide of battle.”

“What do we do about their apparent super weapon on those ships?” Thad asked.

He pulled at his lip. “One step at a time. I don’t think they will bring them out the first thing after they learn what we did. We attacked K1 twice before they took a hammer to Rhama. They can’t walk the Great Path very fast if they destroy the finest worthy enemy they have ever faced too quickly. They need more attrition from the war they started for that purpose, and by their long-range standards, it is barely under way. We still have over seven hundred planets and a trillion people. I don’t think they will feel rushed.

“There must be Prada or Torki that know something than can help us, and we can go after more Krall prisoners, now that we know what we want to learn. We can scour their histories, stored in the minds of every Krall. They blabber about any of it if given the chance
. They might not know how the weapons work, as Parkoda didn’t know. However, the Krall are braggarts. I mean, what could they have? Something to blow up an entire planet?”

“My Tor, we should blow up one of their planets now!” Telour was livid with rage.

His brilliantly planned mission to increase clanship production was now worthless. He and Graka clan would earn no status increase, and both had suffered a loss of respect from some clans, as had the Mordo, and Stodok clans. Clanship production was essentially halted, the hammers were destroyed, and the ability to make more hammers was probably lost forever.

Kanpardi was adamant. “No! You would react by using up one of our most powerful weapons at the first real set back to the war. In the past, our greatest and irreplaceable weapons were wasted on weak opponents, before we understood how the Olt’kitapi ships would react. Unless the Torki learn to copy their capability, we only have one use of each of them. We may be able to destroy multiple worlds before the ship we use learns of the consequences, because the others did not quit talking to us right away, after a single use. But they do learn of the deaths somehow, of what we have made them do, and they will no longer respond.”

He, like every Krall, was bemused by compassion for an enemy. He could not comprehend how the Olt’kitapi had managed to instill this alien concept in a machine.

“We have been at actual war for barely five orbits of this base world. The first fifteen orbits we spent in ever larger, more frequent raids, pushing our enemy to prepare to fight better. Now they have
done
so, and like a half-trained novice, you want their aggression to stop before we have advanced but a single step along the Great Path.

“The clans will now end their lazy ways. They agree, now that the means to expand our invasions to other worlds is diminished, that we always needed more material. A lesson that I too admit I have now learned from a worthy enemy, is that we needed far greater
vigilance on our own worlds
. We
let them
sweep in and attack our most vital resources, because no other enemy was ever able to do that.”

He outlined his new strategy, until the damage to their clanship production was repaired.

“We will use what clanships we have built now, and recover what parts we can from the production sites. A major offensive on Poldark will push back the humans, permitting us suddenly to move half of that force, to invade another nearby Rim world.

“
We will also consolidate other widespread forces on Telda Ka for a third invasion, of one of their heavily populated inner colony worlds. We must be seen as advancing the war if you and I are to survive this momentary reversal. I want the fault of this lack of preparation to be placed on the clans that opposed my decisions earlier. Your trip proves my decision to have Graka clan unilaterally increase clanship production was the right one. However, it was delayed by jealous and selfish clans, who could not see the need as I did. Graka will come through strong and shrug off this loss. Our status is less damaged because of the mission I sent you to perform, which no other clan considered necessary. The other great clans that were struck look weaker in comparison.

“
Stodok clan is gone, of course. They have needed culling for many breeding cycles. They alone had the advantage of surprise forces on their orbital station, and were totally defeated.”

The
Stodok clan leaders would not suffer the humiliation they earned. Their past reckless mistakes had caught up with them and they had apparently all died in one last “for the Path and clan” resistance. An old clan, but no stronger than many finger clans, they had too few warriors on their single planet to resist the attackers, due to previous foolish interclan battles where they were over matched. This time, forbidden to withdraw or to submit, there were none left alive on their home world. Perhaps a handful that were on other worlds for clan business still survived. At least until they were all eventually killed, by demanding repetitive death match challenges, triggered by the derisive remarks from other warriors.

Tanga clan had fifteen migration ships taken, and the remainder of stored older ships was destroyed. They could still make the Torki construct more of the slow to build big ships, but it would take almost two orbits to complete even two, assuming the work could be accelerated to that level. There had never been a need for more of the new ships than to replace those that Krall pilots “wasted” periodically.

To increase the insult, the captured ships were used in the later raids, weeks later, to carry trained slaves away. That act was hampering restarting clanship production. The first Prada elders sent to do that were killed by angry Tanga leaders, when they told them the saltwater flooding had ruined the factories. Another group of Prada, sent by the Graka clan said the same thing about those factories. That group of elders was spared execution. They would assemble a new starter factory, being sent piecemeal, in smaller clanships.

The Maldo had lost what was probably
of most immediate value to the raiders. Eleven clanships. A twelfth stolen clanship was shot down as it lifted off, but it managed to deliberately crash into the main dome, killing many of the high status clan leaders there. Twenty other Maldo clanships were destroyed, still sitting on tarmacs. That pattern of clanship destruction was repeated at every site the raiders struck. There had been no attacks on Krall planets, other than bases located inside enemy territory, for at least fifteen thousand years. It was daring, and unexpected.

It also had to have been humans doing this. Not a single intact body was recovered
, because the raiders did a masterful job of finding and removing their dead and their armor. However, a few pieces of armor, sometimes with the accompanying human smelling and bad tasting meat inside, were found.

The armor surface had nearly the same hard quantum controlled coating as did single ships, which could partly account for the many reports that the raiders were invisible in the visible and infrared light spectrums. Single ships didn’t quite have that detailed level of invisibility, and the power required for this feature demanded a fusion generator. The enemy certainly did not carry any of the bulky things with them on their suits.

A suit’s leg, with limb inside, was recovered. However, it did not show signs of powered assist. The strength sometimes exhibited by the wearers implied there
was
such assistance. It was difficult to obtain good observational evidence, because the enemy couldn’t easily be
observed
. Any warrior that got close enough to see a flaw in their stealth or engage the enemy directly, wasn’t around now to describe the experience. It was hard to survive a well-armed enemy you could not see. Counter measures were being considered.

The suits
were apparently a technological advance, yet one that was extremely limited in the scope if its use. This sort of human fighter had never been seen on the battlefield. It seemed their only effective use was in sneakiness and trickery, for which humans were noted.

In the last
quarter orbit of K1 since the multiple raids, courier ships had been dispatched to every clan home world, and they then spread the alert to their forces on other worlds, and to their sponsored finger clans. No clanships were to be left unguarded. Even if only one or two were actively scanning and watching for intruders, no White Out would go unchallenged. The enemy had proven to be more worthy than any had in the past.

Telour wasn’t giving up his desire for retribution so quickly. “My Tor, we can do the things you say. Yet, I believe humans need to see there is a price to pay, as when I hammered the world they named Rhama, where their fleet retreated after the second attack here.”

Kanpardi shook his left shoulder in a sign of negation. “That was a different situation then. Construction and build-up on Telda Ka was not complete. We had not yet invaded the place they named Bollovstic. That first full-scale invasion was delayed full orbit because of their Navy. I forced the humans to leave this base alone, making that first invasion and the one on Poldark easier. We will now be able to invade two more worlds before this orbit ends on Telda Ka.”

“My Tor, would the humans not fight more fiercely if we destroyed their home world? We did, when the Olt’kitapi destroyed our home with this same weapon.”

Kanpardi looked at him sharply. The black orbs, with fire in the pupils, glared intently. “You grant this weak prey the belief that they could act with the same strength, ferocity, and honor that our race did?”

Telour’s tongue was tied for the moment. He couldn’t support the logical conclusion his half-thought-out statement implied. Kanpardi correctly deduced what Telour’s actual motive was. It was simple, and came with harsh words.

“You want revenge because your personal plan for status gain was spoiled by them. Even if the revenge you want isn’t in the interest of the Krall or our Great Path. I may have promoted you unwisely.”

Telour knew in his two hearts that the first half of Kanpardi’s words were true. He also knew that Kanpardi’s time as Tor had just grown shorter. There now was a more aggressive Til Gatrol behind him, ready to replace the Tor’s talons if anything happened to the war leader. Accidents happened to the smartest and best of warriors.

****

Mirikami had just Jumped in from a scouting mission into Krall territory. He called ahead to Haven, and was in conversation. “Maggi, I picked up a Tachyon Space message from Marlyn as I made my exit. Her raid to recover the Prada and Torki at the Toborkiti shipyards was a rough one. She needed all three of the other clanships I sent with her to keep the Krall on the ground away from the shipyards, and to hold off two clanships. If we didn’t have the acceleration limiters removed, we could have lost a ship. We are faster and more maneuverable, but the Krall have combat experience.”

She was apprehensive. “Did everyone make it back?”

He paused, letting her know there had been losses. “We lost Bill Murphy
,
Consuelo
Dearborn, and Alfon Hanson. All of them were in a single defense pod mounted on the nose of a migration ship, The Blue Waters, operating lasers and missile trackers inside one of the six pods per ship. They were in the nose pod. Their hull pod was hit by an anti-ship missile.”

With the small population of Koban, any loss was of someone you knew at least by face. Alfon was a more painful personal loss for Mirikami. He had been a steward on the Flight of Fancy, and had served with the captain for over thirty years.

“Maggi, I’ll want to tell his contract wife myself. She’s expecting a daughter in four months; otherwise, she would have gone with him. Can you go with me to talk to her? I’ll see the families of the others with Marlyn, when she gets back tomorrow morning.”

“Sure, hon. I’ll take the Scorcher and Jump over to Koban when we get off the radio. I’m on the Bridge now. It’s parked next to the Raspani lands, where I’ve been working. I came up here as soon as your White Out was detected and announced by the AI. What happened to the Blue Waters?”

“Those huge slow ships are hard to defend. Had we not equipped them with point defense pods and missiles from General Nabarone, they might not have made it out. A Krall clanship Jumped in from the next rocky world out, so it wasn’t expected. Marlyn and two of our ships were covering the departure from below. The Krall had set up portable missile launchers and tried to hit the migration ships from below. Those tries were all picked off before doing damage.

“The Bad Girl was flying escort, eight hundred miles ahead of the migration ships as they tuned their Traps for a minimal Jump tachyon, headed away from Toborkiti. The new Krall clanship did a White Out right behind Bad Girl, who was out of position that far ahead.

“The Krall took advantage of the opening in the formation, fired a salvo of eight missiles total at all three ships, six were aimed at The Bad Girl to keep her busy or kill the main threat. The AI on Bad Girl automatically nailed all of those six.
One
of the two remaining anti-ship missiles, each targeted at a migration ship, was knocked out by a pod’s point defense laser or a missile, or perhaps both. We don’t know yet who got that one. It may very well have been killed by the same pod we lost. That last Krall missile altered course to target that pod. Those missiles are designed to seek active targets like that, if the pod had been the source of the counter fire.

“The clanship had obviously discounted any return fire from
unarmed
migration ships, and had already pivoted and turned its back on them, to go after The Bad Girl. We have the first confirmed clanship kill for a migration ship. It will require data from the AI on Bad Girl to determine which ship and pod the kill shot came from, but it flew right up the tail pipe. I hope it was launched from the pod we lost before it was hit.”

“I hope so too, babe.” She answered him, knowing the archaic endearment from the twentieth century was mildly confusing to her husband. Mirikami had grown up on the once Japanese colony of New Honshu, and ancient American film lore wasn’t an interest of his.

“I hope you have some better news for me. I mean Marlyn rescued most of the workers on Toborkiti, but I would like some cheerful news as well.”

“I do have some, but you didn’t tell me how your scouting went.”

“We certainly didn’t find the star system where those ships Parkoda witnessed are stashed. The Torki say the shapes and size of the images we showed them match that of the final generation of starships the Olt’kitapi were said to be producing, when the Krall revolt came. Naturally, they never saw the ships since they were not yet fully sentient at that time, and information about the ships are not in the Olt libraries. The Prada have only anecdotal memory records, and those don’t describe the ship’s appearance, only their destructive power. That type of ship was used to destroy the Krall home world, which based on Krall histories, was virtually shattered.”