“Because the Ragoon’s need to keep pace with your armor, I’ve been informed that most of the units have already obtained a significant number of human trucks, equipped with long empty trailers that can carry them. Some of our overflow of troopers will stay inside them when they are driven onto the landers, and that way we can leave the most damaged Pounders sitting here they are, flying only the most effective ships. You can use their transportation to position infantry anywhere our enemy gathers to oppose you.
“We have to coordinate this carefully, but your Pillagers need that additional support, because our fleet is too heavily engaged in keeping the enemy ships from descending to attack you. You can’t afford to advance as recklessly as I first instructed you to do. And I can’t continue to underestimate the enemy’s adaptability.”
Chapter 7: Partial Disengagement
“I think the Ragnar overestimated how easy invading Tanner’s would be, they compared us to species within the Empire, and how few Federation citizens they and the Thandol found of us on our new colonies, which were nearly defenseless at the time. We humans, as our friends often remind us, are like wild and unruly children of the galaxy, and the new and growing Kobani branch is even worse.” Mirikami explained, with a grin. The second Kobani fleet was on its way to Tanner’s World, and he was sharing his thoughts with a varied audience.
“We know now, after receiving information from other previously well-traveled and intelligent alien species,” he nodded to the Prada, Torki, and Raspani representatives in the room, “that humanity is not at all like the typical, slowly evolving, cautious and gradually expanding space faring species they knew or heard about. We’ve since had reinforcement of that notion after meeting two species living in the Empire, the Hothor, and the remnants of the Olt’kitapi.
“The Hothor are more cosmopolitan than any of us here, despite restrictions placed on their travel by the Thandol. They trade with several nearby species, and through a web of multi-species hired help, employed by the Thandol on their various capitol worlds over millennia, they have learned what all of the empire’s twenty-six species are like.” He paused a moment.
“There once were at least eighteen species here in our relatively small spur off the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. That’s at least forty-four species, all of which spread slowly, over what we humans consider very long periods of time. Tens of thousands of years.
“To paraphrase an old human saying, the Olt’kitapi and Thandol were slow in expanding, but they were old! They explored and controlled sizable tracks of their local galactic regions, but they did that over many thousands of years.
“In contrast, we Humans have only been in space for a bit over five hundred of our years, or orbits, as many of you prefer to count, and we now control Human Space, and what was once the Krall conquered territories.”
He listed another smaller category within the known, and slowly spreading races. “There have been five particularly aggressive races like the Krall, Thandol, Ragnar, Finth, and Thack Delos, which are relatively rare, yet are still relatively slow expanding, slow to embrace changes. Had the Krall not had help, they would never have achieved spaceflight, and would have self-destructed. So only four aggressive, and slow evolving species, achieved interstellar travel.”
“I don’t wish to sound aggrandizing when I create a different category for humanity, or because I’m a Kobani human, perhaps I can’t help myself,” He smiled.
“Humans are both aggressive, fast evolving, and have rapidly expanded. Perhaps too much for our own good. We may have met our match with a long established empire, who wants to take us down.”
He had deliberately excluded rippers from his classifications, as a non-technological, but intelligent alien species, who had never traveled anywhere without humans, and had not shown a desire to expand or colonize.
“We humans are neither cautious or gradual, nor very peaceful, and we evolved on a world near the upper gravitational margins of where complex large land based life forms typically can arise. Worlds that exceed about 1.3 times Earth’s gravity is where the approximate energy boundary, or energy wall if you prefer, is encountered for complex advanced land based creatures. They need more energy to function at a high level than is readily available to them, and larger lifeforms rarely evolve out of water.
“If the planet lacks a massive molten iron core, with an internal magnetic field to protect life from damaging external radiation, from their sun or cosmic rays, then large complex land life doesn’t appear at all, for any gravity level, although sea life might grow large.” He held up a hand at what appeared to be a couple of objections forming from some of those in the conference room.
“Hold on, before you mention an obvious exception. As our geneticists and geologists have explained to us, Koban, at 1.52 times Earth’s gravity, is a far greater rarity than are other more massive-than-Earth analogues, such as Heavyside is, in Human Space. The increased presence of heavy elements in the entire Koban system, it’s richness in rare earths, made it possible for a different sort of early nervous system to evolve on that heavy terrestrial planet. You should note that superconducting nervous systems didn’t appear on smaller Haven, which has the same high ratio of heavy elements, because it wasn’t a required advantage for higher lifeforms evolving in that lighter gravity. The energy needs were less severe.
“Energy consumption requirements are greater for all of Koban’s lifeforms simply to move around, and obtaining that energy to survive made it a far more competitive place for evolution to solve those problems. Organic superconductor nerves were necessary to be able to handle the higher energy requirements of using powerful and faster muscles, and for fueling the quicker thinking, energy consuming minds of every complex animal on that high gravity planet. We Kobani have borrowed that capability, or stolen it, if you think that’s the more appropriate term. There was no way the Empire, or the Ragnar, could have expected that.
“That artificial evolutionary step, which we Kobani made, has placed us outside the physical capabilities of any similarly sized species the Empire has previously faced. For some reason, they discounted the lesson the Krall learned by being defeated by us. Normal humans were already giving the Krall a tougher fight than they expected.
“The original Earth variety of our species, even before some of us modified ourselves to become the Kobani racial branch, will present the Thandol Empire with a considerable challenge. The people of Tanner’s World are demonstrating that now to the Ragnar. The Kobani fleet is showing them how much harder it will become to defeat us, if we combine forces with the Planetary Union.”
Sarge, linked in from the Sneaky Bastard, hadn’t seen Mirikami’s restraining hand, and his question wasn’t about why humanity was so different anyway. “Tet, how do you think the Thandol built and controlled their long lasting empire? They’ve encountered at least three other aggressive species who they beat, and they now use them to do much of their fighting. I’ve met the four prisoners we brought with us, two Thandol and two Ragnar. Neither species evolved on worlds with even as much as Earth’s level of gravity. What made them more powerful than the other species in the empire?”
“Come on Sarge,” Mirikami chided him. “Aggressive and once dominant nations on Earth didn’t have soldiers with greater physical advantages over those they defeated in war. The will to fight, a well-trained trained army, good generals, and technological breakthroughs helped. Per the Ragnar prisoner’s stories, T-cubed travel was discovered by the Thandol first, and they used it to their advantage against less advanced opponents. Sometimes, good fortune determines which side wins the key battles, which then determines the victors in the war.”
Maggi chipped in with her opinion, since she had spent the most time with the prisoners. “The Thandol, Ragnar, and apparently the Finth and Thack Delos are not greatly stronger or faster than those species they are able to dominate. They’re certainly more aggressive than most species, and they developed high technology weapons, giving them an
edge over unwarlike species. The Ragnar prisoners are convinced that it’s only because the Thandol discovered T-cubed Jump travel a thousand years before meeting them that the Thandol Empire prevailed and spread faster. They believe it would have become their empire but for that bit of good fortune for the Thandol.”
Blue Flower eater offered some of the now recovered Raspani history. “It’s also true that we and the Olt’kitapi discovered a few worlds with evidence of extinct aggressive species, who used their growing technology to destroy themselves in local wars, before spreading out of their home system to colonize. That is another common thread for many aggressive species, but not all.”
He looked around at the Kobani in the room. “It nearly happened to you humans before you left your home world, and once again after you had many colonies, with your Gene War. Had the Olt’kitapi not helped the Krall get off their home planet, they would have destroyed themselves there. We unaggressive species would undoubtedly be considerably safer without aggressive types like yours around.”
He furrowed his forehead in a vertical Raspani smile, and pinched in his elbows in a sort of shrug. “That does not mean we are not most grateful to have you, the most irrational and dangerous species any of us have encountered, as our neighbors and allies. More than that, having you as our friends. I twitch my knees with dread, to think that had we somehow avoided the Krall disaster, there were at least four other warlike species within easy distance of us, at T-cubed speeds, living in the Sagittarius Arm. The fledgling and ambitious Galactic Federation, which you Kobani have enabled us to form, is the only protection we have from an unknown number of hostile races, sprinkled throughout a large galaxy.”
Mirikami smiled. “Well, don’t count our victories before they’re won. Although, it appears from Thad’s reports from Tanner’s, that they have stalled the Ragnar fleet’s bombardment, and would wear them down in a couple of weeks, forcing them to withdraw if they didn’t have forces already on the ground. It isn’t certain if the four independent ground forces would be able to withdraw with them, because they had a tough enough time landing, and a worse time after that. Two of the landings have had their tank forces severely degraded. Assuming the mild sounding term degraded describes the near annihilation of two of their armored columns. As I said, even ordinary humans are bad asses.” He smiled and shrugged.
“I wasn’t surprised their fleet stayed to fight, when they surely detected Thad’s inbound force, with our ships being roughly equivalent in numbers and weaponry to their Ravagers. Counting those six hundred smaller ships they call Shredders, they outnumbered his combined fleet. I’m sure they expected to win the space battle, or hold him at bay while the ground invasion took the first cities.
“When the advance tachyon wave of this group of two thousand ships registers on their detectors, about twenty minutes before we arrive, they may elect to withdraw. I had us all stay clustered close together, to increase the intensity of the advanced tachyon wave front, just so they would know we were coming. I’d prefer it if they did pull out, with tails between their legs…”
There was very short pause, and he quickly added, “Yes, Sarge, I know the apes don’t have tails. It’s a metaphor. I’ll have one of the kids explain what that is for you.” He grinned wickedly at Maggi, who nodded her approval as he turned the discussion over to her.
“Maggi has some observations about the relationship between the Ragnar and Thandol, and how we might use that to our long-term advantage.”
“Thanks, dear.” And she began.
“After extensive Mind Taps with the pair of prisoners from each species, there’s no doubt that they don’t like one another, and the Ragnar retain the hope that one day they’ll be out from under the repressive footpads of the Thandol.
“With the assistance of an AI, and several Mind Tap volunteers, we have created an early translation between Standard and Fotrol, which is what the Ragnar named their native tongue, but which we’ll simply call the Ragnar language. Like humanity now, they only speak one. I can understand it fairly well, and even speak it if necessary, although very poorly, and my chest thumps can hardly be heard, and we don’t have a hairy body for visual displays.
“Fortunately, with a software translation loaded into our Comtaps or other electronic enhancements, and a voice synthesizer, we won’t need to struggle to try to speak the language. I’ll be sharing that database with everyone, and furnish updates as we learn more.
“We’ve also refined the far more complex Thandol language, to build on the translation that we received from the Olt’kitapi, via their Dismantler ship records. We know more about their different grammar modes now, but a human will never be a speaker of their trumpeting language, any more than I can pronounce Torki claw clicks and carapace scrapes and scratches. I’ll leave most of the translation to our software.”
She shifted away from the mechanics of communication, to what contact telepathy told her how the two species think, and what they really want. “The Thandol are fearful of losing control of their extensive empire, and they have restrained the naval capability of their three security forces, to retain an overwhelming superiority in space warfare capability. Their paranoia caused them to build a vast monitoring system for detecting space travel, which they claim was aimed at detecting commerce that was attempting to avoid taxes. It’s done more to detect potential revolts developing within their security species, and to watch for any cooperative effort between them to combine their forces against the Thandol.
“The Ragnar would eagerly revolt against them, exactly as the Thandol fear they might, if they could do so with a chance of success. The Ragnar believe the other security forces would do so as well. However, they have no reason to trust each another. If one of them colluded with one of the other species, they might be betrayed to the Thandol, and lose their privileged place in the Empire. In addition, they know their home and colony worlds would be savagely attacked by Thandol fleets. Then, the species that betrayed them to the masters would benefit from their loss. Paranoia also holds the security forces in check.”
She rubbed her hands together, and displayed her best pixie smile. “I think we can take advantage of this mutual paranoia, if we can secretly bring representatives of the security forces together, and via shared Mind Taps, show them a means by which mutual trust between one another can be guaranteed. That action, combined with our genuine disinterest in possessing the Empire’s resources, might help spark a triple revolt. As we all have learned, rippers are considerably less influenced by human…,” she paused a moment for the right words.
“Shall I call it our mental flexibility? They don’t embellish or lie, although they will withhold what they decide not to share. You all know the two we brought with us, Kobalt and Kit, who are the most experienced with mental contact with another species, and are fluent in Standard.
“Another unique thing is that they were the first rippers to ask the Raspani and Torki to design and embed a Comtap, like we Kobani have. For clear differentiation in our thoughts and writings, they will now be described as Komtaps, spelled with a K in Standard, which sounds the same anyway. They already have the databases uploaded of every language we have translations for, which means all of yours, the Olt’kitapi, and now includes the two new ones from the Empire, for the Thandol and Ragnar. Every species we’ve encountered so far can enjoy the same blunt, truthful, and sometimes unflattering words, which we Kobani have been receiving from rippers for decades.”
That caused a ripple of species unique expressions of humor to spread around the room. The lip smacks, head bobs, carapace scratches, laughs, and shoulders shimmied, revealed that those present already had experience with this.
Maggi revealed more of their plan. “Tet and I have spoken with them, and they’ll reveal their frill ability to the Ragnar that we expect to meet in the future, while not sharing with them the fact that some humans have the same ability. They can withhold that information, even if they won’t lie about what we can do.
“If we are willing to be an outside destabilizing force to help the Empire’s security forces, they may be able bring down the Emperor and his Empire, or at least keep them too busy to bother us. If we can foment a successful trio of revolts, that would serve our interests by splitting one vast threatening empire into three smaller entities, with sectors ruled by the Ragnar, the Finth, and the Thack Delos. There might be a fourth region still controlled by the Thandol. They each would need to focus on consolidating power in their own regions, giving us time to breathe, and to strengthen the Federation. Of course, we don’t know if this is possible, but we want to try.”
She looked around the room. “Fellow Feds, what do you think of trying to implement that proposal? Divide and survive.”
A member of the newest species to join the Federation spoke first. She represented a small population of people that had good reason to feel a deep distrust of powerful species having power over them. Toldot Fetra, one of the two newly elected Krall’tapi representatives to the Federation Council on Haven, had recently conducted an intensive study of human history.
She asked a question that clearly revealed her concern. “Isn’t the actual human expression divide and conquer?”
It was voiced with a sense of skepticism and distrust. She had just pulled that expression from data stored in a library placed within her new mind enhancer, a device recently implanted by the Raspani for her, and for any of her people that wished to reacquire the expanded memory, and mental link capability the ancient Olt’kitapi had once given them.
She expounded on her question. “Isn’t this merely a means to break up the Empire into easier to defeat individual pieces by the Federation?” It seemed like a logical extrapolation to make, based on her people’s experience with the Krall.
Maggi suppressed her usual impulse to answer with a caustic reply, recognizing where the suspicion originated. “Toldot, did anyone force the Krall’tapi to join the Federation? Were your people threatened, or refused any benefits of our newly developing society if you voted not to join? You and Representative Deldra Holtor were granted participation in discussions when we were forming our constitution, and you both voted to approve the final version of that document, well before your people decided to join the Federation.”
Koban 6: Conflict and Empire Page 23
