Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

“We need any edge we can get. They have to let us have this.”

  “Admiral, they offered it free this time, and will sell you the use of as much of the substance you want, if you compensate them fairly. You won’t get their technology for some time. They don’t even want money. They want to be allowed to buy weapon systems and supplies from the same companies that the army and navy use. Just like they bought the space planes they modified to call Shadows.”

  “Henry, I don’t have the authority to do that, but I can certainly take the proposal back to the Hub with me, and let the politicians decide. If our scientists can’t duplicate the technology, you know damn well the Rimmers will get their price. The small numbers of the Rimmers involved here made a disproportionate difference in the outcome. Very effective people. I’ll be sure and mention that.”

  When she says Rimmers, thought Nabarone with amusement, she doesn’t know she’s actually describing Kobani, and is saying this to one of them. He’d be interested in knowing if her favorable impression of them would alter, if she knew how they had achieved their capabilities.

  ****

  As Telour warned Pendor before this meeting today on K1, the Tor Gatrol was displeased. Somehow, Pendor needed to retain his position as the Gatlek for the new invasion. Telour had conspired with him to grant him this role, in trade for his cooperation to help him replace Kanpardi. They both had considerable status to gain, or lose.

  As it happened, the Tor Gatrol was a bit more than displeased when Pendor was alone with him. Kanpardi snarled, “You allowed two hundred seventy eight of the clanships I gave you to be lost, simply while leaving Poldark, and now you want me to advise the Joint Council to replace your losses?”

  “My Tor, I was following your command to withdraw enough forces to establish a new invasion front. The humans appeared to have been anticipating the event. They demonstrated preplanning, as if they knew not only what we would do, but when we would move.”

  Still furious, Kanpardi demanded, “How would you explain this security breach, where the humans learn of a plan that Telour told you in private, and only you on Poldark knew the details? When you informed the leaders of major clans of my orders, did you use unencrypted radio communications? The quantum keys we use are unbreakable. Races more advanced than human could not decipher our messages in the past. Even the Olt’kitapi, who was the most advanced species in quantum sciences, used the same secure methods of encryption.”

  “My Tor, all our radio messages were encrypted, and the keys are changed regularly. However, I did not use radio to inform the major clan leaders or any of my staff of their honored roll in a new invasion. I summoned them to my bunker, and explained it muzzle to muzzle, just as Telour advised me to do. They were ordered not to discuss the plan outside their highest sub leaders already on Poldark, to prevent the minor clans from learning of the partial withdrawal and new invasion. As evidence that this secrecy was maintained, the small clans did not learn of the withdrawal before the fleet lifted, even though they share the encryption keys we use. They were surprised and angry. There was no communications leak.”

  Kanpardi sounded less angry and more inquisitive now, and puzzled. “Yet the humans knew they needed only to retreat with their armies until your fleet departed. Before the presumably surprise assaults even started they had infiltrated stealthed troops, and planted explosives along a section of the perimeter around your inner defensive circle. They detonated them exactly as your own ship lifted, allowing their low altitude cruise missiles to enter. In space, they fired railguns at exactly where your ships would leave atmosphere, and many clearly fired before you started to launch, coordinating the arrival times from many different gun platforms.” He paused in thought.

  “This is much like we did to them on their first fleet attack here on Telda Ka, when we sensed their larger ships coming to attack what they call K1, through the advance ripples in Tachyon Space. We were waiting where their largest ships arrived. Our departing fleet would not produce advance tachyon waves before any of our thousands of clanships Jumped. That obviously is not how they knew.” He was thinking aloud, analyzing the facts and possibilities.

  “Next, they Jumped a full squadron of heavy cruisers directly into your fleet’s midst, equipped with an advanced stealth system similar to ours, firing all weapons as they emerged, at targets identified seconds earlier by exploding railgun slugs that had just swept through your formation. The cruisers then quickly fled before suffering a tenth of the damage done to our ships, despite your overwhelming numbers. I wish my selected leaders and their advisors had planned as well as these mere animals.” That derogatory reference, a near insult actually, could only be directed to the Gatlek and his staff.

  Pendor had thought about what he would say to the hard questions he knew he would be asked. He had prepared his unlikely defense. “I do not believe it was a failure of any communications protocol, my Tor. It must have been the result of information taken from an unsuspecting member of my staff, or from a major clan’s sub leader after the secret was passed to them in person. It would have been done using a new drug the humans have, and which I reported to you more than one orbit ago. It is said to force a warrior to enter the pretend death a human experiences nightly, and speak when unconscious, just as captive humans sometimes do.”

  “We do not experience the pretend death they call sleep. What is this strange story you weave to excuse mistakes?”

  “My Tor, it was in a report, one I made after my investigation of my predecessor’s death at the hands of humans. Gatlek Gentda’s death was part of a deliberate plan to capture him alive, and extract information using a sleep drug, derived from an unknown natural chemical that forces a human to need sleep. In our ancient histories, our race once also did this daily rest, before we bred this weakness away. I’m told the soft Krall still go partly dormant at night.”

  “I recall that report, but not any results from an investigation of the human that confessed to you. Explain the story.”

  Pendor repeated the sheer fabrications that Sergeant Reynolds had spun to try to stave off his torture and death. Namely, that the humans had deliberately gone after the old Gatlek to drug him and get information. At the time, Reynold’s fabrication seemed smarter than to admit what would be a fatal truth for him. That Gentda was simply brash and dumb enough to be caught in a human ambush and killed, and Reynolds only took the Gatlek’s body because his more advanced looking armor displayed some different communications technology.

  The concocted story had kept Reynolds alive, and gotten him off Poldark, enroute to some other Krall world, to safeguard his phony knowledge from supposed assassination by humans that knew he might “talk.” An unexpected and unauthorized detour of the clanship to land on Koban inadvertently saved his life, a detail unknown to Pendor.

  That bullshit story apparently lived on with Pendor. Except now, it was part of the Gatlek’s own bullshit cover story. The Krall certainly couldn’t have quoted a better source for his heaping pile of bovine dung.

  Kanpardi glared at his subordinate. “No one else has ever reported a similar story. You said the ship with this captive disappeared. Is there evidence to back your story?”

  “I have recordings of the interrogations, my Tor.”

  “Even if it was true, how would that have revealed any of the withdrawal plans?”

  “After your plan was under implementation, there were sub leaders of the major clans reported missing in combat that had that knowledge, and a middle status warrior from my own staff vanished. He left the bunker to organize and coordinate the moving of supplies for the withdrawal, shortly before an artillery barrage. We assumed his, and the other missing warriors, were typical random losses due to enemy action or perhaps from a death challenge from a warrior in a rival clan. The bodies were not found.

  Pendor shivered his left shoulder, in the pattern of a Krall shrug movement. “It is conceivable that one or more of them, each with partial knowledge of the coming withdrawal, was serious
ly wounded and taken alive. This reported sleep drug is used to prevent a warrior from forcing their own death, and to place them into the same pretend death that humans enter nearly every day. In that state, it was said that some warriors speak in answer to questions. I have seen this happen with the prisoner I mentioned, who when exhausted by forced alertness for days, spoke to our questions when allowed finally to enter pretend death.”

  “I do not accept that a warrior can be made to betray the Great Path.”

  “The human, who agreed to help us if we allowed him to live, said a warrior would not know they were helping humans, or were even speaking the words into the air. I will repeat this story before the joint clan council. I have a copy of my report and the recorded interrogations, since the original must have been lost. This reported new drug might explain the sudden human competence in the face of what should have been a masterful and unexpected strategy on your part, Tor Gatrol.”

  Kanpardi wasn’t fooled by the clumsy and blatant flattery from Pendor, yet there was an advantage to be had here for him. The invasion force to land on the old human colony of New Glasgow, a heavily populated and advanced world on the edge of their Hub region, needed every advantage to establish a firm talon grip before the humans brought in reinforcements. The loss of ten percent of the material for Pendor’s invasion force could possibly jeopardize that operation, and Kanpardi, who had developed that plan, would suffer a loss of status and influence if it did.

  Kanpardi swiped talons of one hand at empty space. “I do not see another way for humans to have predicted in advance what I would do in response to their attacks on our factory worlds.”

  Kanpardi was intelligent, but his inbred Krall ego wouldn’t permit him to consider that a human prey animal, one much like the now surely long dead Mirikami, could understand his motivations so well. A prey animal that had foreseen his most probable course of actions, based on the Krall’s current supply shortage. A shortage created by the prey’s own actions. That possibility fell outside any reasonable worldview of the Krall war leader.

  He reached a decision, one that required him to keep Pendor as Gatlek for the next invasion. “I will take you to speak to the joint clan council. Tell them your story. I will recommend that the needed supplies be furnished for your fleet. After you have established a base of operations on the target world of New Dublin, I will personally visit there to see that things proceed as I want.”

  He needed Pendor’s invasion started and removed from his immediate concern, so he could focus on his next task. The second invasion he was planning was of another world, also located one quarter of the way around the sphere of Human Space, in the opposite direction, named New Glasgow. This was one of the outer lying main Hub worlds, which humans considered safe. It would be easy to establish a successful landing there, due to a lack of any sizable military base and a modest agricultural economy, much as Bollovstic once had been like. It was far removed from the region where Poldark and the now defeated Bollovstic were located. Attacking both New Dublin and New Glasgow would deliver a shock to humanity.

  He idly wondered where the old places they were named after were located. Attacking those would truly shock the humans. He’d have to assign someone to research where those older named worlds were located.

  The two new targets were even farther from the dead colony that humans had called Greater West Africa, before Kanpardi ordered the population exterminated so he could use the world as a base, now called K1 by humanity. These two invasions, in opposite directions, would demonstrate the long reach and power that the Krall could still exert. A double blow to an enemy that might think they had significantly damaged the Krall’s ability to wage uninterrupted war.

  Kanpardi believed his approach offered the best future for developing new breeding lines of Krall. The latest hatchings were producing a higher number of cubs that displayed faster learning, and which employed better strategies to find advantages over larger cubs born weeks earlier. It was clear that breeding only for brawn and strength was not all that was needed to confront a highly adaptable species like humanity. This race could be easily defeated at this stage, but what would have happened if they had not met them for another five thousand years?

  The Tor Gatrol decided they definitely had to add higher intelligence and trickery to the list of advantageous attributes to breed for, when facing an enemy like humanity. It appeared humans might have found a way to turn a great weakness, the need for sleep, into a potential weapon.

  If Reynolds bullshit stories could be weaponized, they would be lethal.

  Chapter 8: Feral Consequences

  “Wake up, sleepy head. Can’t win this war with your eyes closed half the time.”

  Carson prodded Alyson awake, where she lay napping in her acceleration couch on the Bridge of the Beagle.

  The pretty girl snapped to instant wakefulness, quickly absorbing her surroundings and data from her console, as only a Kobani could do. “We’re still three thousand four fifty two miles out. Not a sign of clanships, no radio transmissions, and no radar scans of us. It’s not the start of my watch until we reach low orbit.” She checked the time. “I could have slept at least another six minutes,” she protested.

  “What would six more minutes do for you, lazy bones?” Carson asked with a grin, seated at a nearby couch and out of immediate reach of an irritated woman.

  “At ten times a normal persons thought processing speed, it’s like an hour of sleep to me.” She answered in a rather lighthearted grumble, as she triggered her couch to morph into a sitting position.

  She added, in a dig at her new husband. “Or for a slow male mind like yours, that’s almost like a full night of rest.”

  “Oh ho. It’s going to be a bit grumpy out this morning, it seems. I let you sleep longer when I came up thirty minutes ago, carrying some breakfast for you.” He countered.

  “Oh? Where is it?” She looked around, in obvious interest.

  “I ate it. You were asleep.” He laughed at the contradiction.

  She stuck out her tongue. “Honeymoon is over, I guess.”

  “Nope, I made more. Enough for you and the Captain, and left it in the warmer. She went down to eat hers a half an hour ago, and she’s on her way back up with yours. It’s why I woke you. That, and to let you see this abandoned Krall world as we approached.”

  “Philodor was a Prada colony, not a Krall world.” She reminded him.

  “Not for probably ten or fifteen thousand years, since the Krall took it from them. The sensors haven’t found signs of Prada construction at this range. There are numerous seriously dilapidated dome circles, which the Krall left behind. From what Wister and his sister Nawella told us, a Krall clan pulled out of Philodor at least a thousand years ago. That’s time enough for any villages to have grown into cities, and factories to have been repaired and turned to local use.”

  There was a voice behind them both. “You’re forgetting that these still were the elder worshipping Prada, obeying the commands of the Krall, whom they thought was the eldest race and their rightful Rulers.” That came from the top of the stairwell. The Captain was back on the Bridge. Marlyn walked over and set a tray of food on the console by Alyson.

  “Thanks Captain.” Alyson asked her a question. “Wouldn’t they realize they had been abandoned after the first couple hundred years?”

  Marlyn shook her head. “From Mind Taps I’ve had with Nawella this week and with other Prada elders on Haven, unless the elders down there died by accident or disease, the last leaders here should still be alive. If the final Krall to leave here told them not to increase their population, not to build anything new, they’ll be doing exactly what the Prada on Haven were doing when we found them. Living in a few small tree villages, maintaining underground factories for future use. They had been doing that on Haven for over a hundred years without changing. Wister’s people didn’t want to disobey their elders.”

  “They’re sure building like hell now.” Carson noted.


  “They haven’t exactly been on their own since we showed up, have they? Particularly after we, and the Torki, worked to restore the Raspani as a thinking species. The Raspani are the oldest species the Prada now know, and they told the Prada they are free of any Krall restrictions. To the Raspani’s credit, they also told them to do what their own elders want them to do, not what any other race tells them to do, older or not. That’s why we have Nawella with us, and Torki and Raspani representatives. To smooth the process of making new contacts, assuming we find survivors here of any of their peoples.”

  Looking at the sensor data from Philodor, Alyson looked sad. “The Krall really left a trail of empty worlds behind them. Often covered with lush vegetation, and having many small to mid-sized animals and a lot of sea life normally, but nothing approaching higher intelligence.” Alyson spoke around a bite of smoked rhinolo meat, and scrambled golden gem bird eggs.

  “Kids, you missed out on some of the school lessons your parents and I got when living in Human Space, about typical native alien life. On Koban, you needed to be taught how to survive, and learn something about our own largely unexplored world. However, the majority of planets we’ve found have hosted some form of life, but rarely anything approaching intelligent. There are more and brighter animal species on Koban than on any other planet humans have settled. More even than found on old Earth. The smartest of these on Koban seem to be the rippers, but there are plenty of clever animals. That’s probably a result of the superconducting nervous systems, which speeds thinking of animals there.

  “In Human Space, people settled over seven hundred twenty habitable worlds, or at least made extensive use of them, and every single one of them had some sort of life. More than half of them already had very lush and diverse ecosystems. None but Earth had produced technological intelligent life, or a species that might evolve to become technological. Koban, with highly intelligent rippers and their cat cousins, and our smart wolfbats, some surprisingly smart dinosaur species, and the recent find of clever sea mammals, is an exceptional world. Would there ever have been a technological species evolve on Koban? We don't know, but certainly not soon. Only primates on Earth advanced to complex tool making, and that took about two million years, from stone hand axes to electronics.