Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Some are, yes Mam. However, Colonel Trakenburg, former CO of my unit on Poldark, and a number of other speck ops troops died for real, right alongside Mirikami’s people, conducting raids to weaken the Krall.”

  Her smirk was erased, but not her determination. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound flippant. However, before I let any of you aboard our ships, I have to know what you bring to the table for communications, and how well you can hold up without an acceleration suit. The Sword is typical of our newest heavy cruisers, and she can accelerate like a demon. You had better be sure you and anyone Mirikami sends us are able to handle what she can dish out. I want you to arrange for the courier you came here in to lift, and join us in orbit. In hindsight, I’ll need to transfer to her myself to meet your corporal with a chip in his head before we Jump to test communications. I want to control both ends of this com test, and put some real distance between us. However, I damn well don’t plan on sharing your acceleration testing on the Sword, not even if I liked being covered in jell.”

  This is going to be an interesting day, Longstreet decided.

  ****

  The Comtap supported negotiation had been ongoing for over an hour. Mirikami was in a Jump Hole aboard the Mark, staying near Koban and Longstreet was on the navy heavy cruiser Sword, with Chairfem Bledso, and they were in a Jump Hole and remained near Earth. Other than having to relay her questions and comments to Mirikami through Joe, the Chairfem was excited about the results of instant communication over hundreds of light years of distance. She didn’t know where Mirikami was exactly, but when the Sword jumped one light year in a random direction, to preclude the Mark tricking them by being in the Sol system, they never lost the long-range link.

  “OK, Joe.” Mirikami responded to the most recent request. “Tell her we’ll be sending our Comtap volunteers to Luna Base over the next week. The arrival schedule will be worked out in advance, so you or Condor will be in a Jump Hole when our ships are nearing Earth. They’ll tell you when they are within ten minutes of making an exit close to the Moon. Your ship will exit first, and warn the navy gunners at Luna Base that a friendly clanship is about to White Out.”

  There was a moment of delay, not at all due to the hundreds of light years separating the two men, and finally Longstreet said via the Mind Tap link, “I just relayed that to her Tet. They want to put their engineers aboard our ships as soon as they land at Luna Base, to install the new IFF transmitter and receiver. No more risk of friendly fire, at least not from a fast responding AI system. I also believe they want to nose around inside.”

  “Good. That’s a relief. I didn’t want us have to protect our asses from our own side if things get hairy. Let them look around. They’ll quickly discover they can’t even open a damn door without us. We gave the PU a handful of Katusha’s through Nabarone, but other than seeing some tattoos on standard spec ops troopers, who needed to operate Krall weapons, I’ve not heard of a Krall tattoo on anyone else that wasn’t Kobani. I guess they could have put them on their asses rather than below the neck. My guess is they didn’t expect to encounter humans in possession of functioning Krall clanships, so why bother with tattoos.”

  Bledso had offered Mirikami’s ships the standard Identification Friend from Foe systems, one to be installed on each of the clanships he sent to support the fleet. Even if a human mistook a visible Kobani ship for a hostile clanship, the ship’s fire control AI system wouldn’t direct fire on the target without a command override. Left unsaid was that if distrust developed with Mirikami’s flotilla, the navy could always authorize that override.

  Bledso, and the naval officers with her, were naturally oblivious to even the possibility of Mind Tap, so casual touches had revealed a pervasive “trust but verify” attitude towards the supermen who were coming to their aid. Understandable, when there would be a “Rimmer” representative aboard each of their capitol ships, and they potentially could be conscious and mobile, when the crew was not.

  First Longstreet was tested, and then Condor; proving to them that Joe wasn’t a freak of nature. They each had flown on the Sword throughout a busy day of stress testing. The captain of the Sword tried increasingly violent maneuvers under AI navigation control, monitoring her passengers while they were strapped into standard acceleration couches. Her medical staff watched for signs of distress in their visitors, as the extreme forces applied began to test the ability of normal crewmembers to remain conscious, even in their jell filed suits and clamped in place at their battle stations.

  There was sometimes minor strain seen on the faces of the two spec ops, when the force levels were so high that blackouts occurred for a few individuals of the crew. However, the manual tests arranged for the two subjects, where they typed messages on keyboards, operated selected pieces of non-vital equipment, or spoke to the AI, demonstrated that they were never seriously hampered. They even grinned a time or two when a particularly high acceleration was applied. Their claim that they could still fight their own ships at stress levels even the Krall could not match appeared plausible.

  One bone of contention appeared when Mirikami had said his communications people would be wearing their body armor while the ships were in combat. Bledso had balked at first, knowing that their weaponry was built into their suits, and her sense of distrust was implicit.

  “Tell the Chairfem if our people don’t wear their armor they’ll have no protection in the event of a hull breach and atmosphere loss while in combat. Furthermore, even if provided standard navy pressure suits, she’ll have misused her best in-ship defensive assets if a disabled ship is boarded by the Krall. Even if the navy crew is able to extricate themselves from their acceleration suits quickly, they have little or no chance of repelling even a single warrior that gets inside. Our people, as she must have seen by now, are stronger and faster than the enemy is. With our weaponized armor, her crews will have a chance to live long enough to be rescued.”

  There was the expected wait for Longstreet to repeat his words to Bledso, and then he replied, “Hold on Tet, I told her what you said, but she looked skeptical. I’m offering her a demonstration and it’ll take at least a half an hour.”

  Mirikami had grown impatient long before Longstreet finally relayed Bledso’s acceptance of armored Comtap personnel. “She agrees Captain, we can wear our armor.”

  “How did you convince her?”

  “We didn’t even have our armor with us on the Sword, it’s still on the courier, so Condor and I gave her and the crewmen of the Sword a demonstration of our native ability. You told her how fast we were, but nothing we did earlier today required much speed or movement, just a bit of strength. We held a mock gunfight in the main hold, starting with a quick draw. We borrowed a pair of the security division’s pistols and gun belts. We drew, and rapidly shot tight pattern silhouettes around each other’s heads into cargo pads fastened to bulkheads behind us. That was from all the way across the hold, emptying our weapons in two seconds. Then we ran towards each other at full speed, threw the guns at each other’s heads, snatched them in midair and holstered them as we closed. We engaged in strenuous hand-to-hand combat all over that hold, which only had a one gravity field. We made it look good, ricocheting off walls, ceiling and deck, with flips, twists, and turns like two showoff Kobani kids! A lot of unnecessary but impressive flash. Nobody on board this ship will ever call us out, no matter how pissed off they get.” His words were accompanied by mental images, and a grin.

  In afterthought, he added. “A couple of the thinner interior bulkheads need some warps removed.”

  Amusement obvious in his thoughts, Mirikami said, “Kind of over did the demonstration a bit, don't you think?”

  “Tet, they tested us like a pair of seated dumb assed trained apes today. They really needed to see we were dangerous and useful to them, even without our weapons and armor. When armored we’re even better use for repelling boarders.”

  Because they were Mind Taping, the exchanges were lightning fast and mere seconds
would pass for Bledso. Mirikami had time to probe. “What has Bledso or the Sword’s crew said, or you have picked from their minds about how we got to be this way and what they think of us?”

  “The navy doesn’t allow dummies in its ranks. They know what we have done must be genetic, although none of them suspect the alien origin of most of the genes we have. We picked up thoughts when we shook hands after the demonstration, and Big Bird and I solicited their opinions. Most were envious, and wanted to be able to do what we can do. A few of them were clearly afraid of the gene laws and of social condemnation if they had our modifications. One petty officer clearly was hiding hostile thoughts about us, and barely considered us as true humans. However, even she thought God would want us to help them fight the godless Krall.

  “By the way, as you warned, Bledso has managed to get a sample of DNA from each of us, but we expected that. Rafe and Aldry still say the outlawed science of genetics in Human Space isn’t advanced enough to figure out the source of our Kobani mods. Repercussions could come later, if humanity wins the war.”

  “That’s about what I was expecting Joe. OK. Ready or not humanity, here come the Kobani! I wish we could start call ourselves that, but Rimmer is not considered a derogatory term by those that are from Rim worlds. It’s only some Hub snobs that feel that way, and come to think of it, I just called them snobs.” He laughed at the irony of the traded barbs.

  “Tet, Bledso asked when you can meet with Fleet Admiral Chatsworth, or her representative. The use of our hundred ships has to be worked out with them. She knows our captains don’t have the advanced AIs or years of fleet discipline to coordinate very well with the complex navy maneuvers.”

  “Right. It will be Chatsworth’s call, but I think we will likely be asked to either attack a specific target on K1, in isolation from the navy units, or perhaps use our stealth to get down near the planet’s surface, or engage Krall clanships individually in space. They don’t know yet about the surprises we left behind from our scouting mission. We’ll work out where our ships can meet with whom she delegates to work with us. We can’t White Out in any populated human system for that. We’re too noticeable. I’ll personally travel to Luna Base on the Falcon with Haveram, if asked.”

  “OK Sir, I’ll tell her. Right now, it appears that Condor and I were too clever. We were just asked to stick around as talking heads for Bledso, Chatsworth, and their staffs for now. I assume we‘ll have more of these titillating relayed conversations, since one of us will have to be hovering near Earth in a Jump Hole most of the time, with our thumbs up our asses and missing the fighting.”

  There was a sympathetic chuckle. “Thanks Joe. I’ll rotate your duty with another pair of people before we attack K1. I’d hate you to miss the fun. In the meantime, keep them guessing about us. Mirikami out.”

  ****

  Bledso was concerned about her friend’s tenure as Fleet Admiral. They were not having a disagreement, but the discussion wasn’t over.

  “Lela, I agree that under the state of martial law imposed in the Rim region, that knowingly making use of gene enhanced Rimmers as a resource has precedence over civil law. We’re in a war for human survival, so that has priority. However, keeping those people on your ships after the attack on K1 will leave you open to charges of condoning what they have done. Even the president can’t protect you if the religious right motivates Parliament to force her hand to have you replaced.”

  Chatsworth stood firm. “Adriana, we have no idea what the response of the Krall will be after we hit K1. I’m convinced they no longer have Eight Balls, since Mirikami’s attacks on their worlds would have provoked their use I think. Nevertheless, they certainly have a tremendous potential for destruction with three or four times our number of ships. They can gather them and Jump anywhere for a slashing attack, including Hub worlds. Our reserve forces were delayed weeks in Jumping to defend New Dublin, because of the long travel time in learning that an invasion had even started. With Mirikami’s people aboard picket ships, we’ll know instantly where the Krall strike, in what strength, and what they are doing. I plan to send ships with Comtap users aboard them to every inhabited planet in Human Space.

  “The Krall won’t expect a sizable fleet to show up and hit them so quickly when they can be called instantly. They’ll think they have at least two weeks to pillage without challenge, because it normally takes one week to warn us, and at least another week for help to arrive. They won’t be ready for the level of force I’ll send.”

  “That might be an argument you can use. However, logic will go out the window if the extent of their gene modifications leaks to the public. The DNA samples we took from cups used by Captain Longstreet and Corporal Condor revealed they have unique genes that our new sequencers can’t find a match for, not from any current population.

  “The best guess I was given is that they were designed from scratch; a task our medical scientist would have said was beyond our ability even before the Clone Wars. Successful functional genes usually imply millions of years of evolutionary selection. Our so-called experts don’t even know what most of the genes code for, how they make them so fast and strong. However, we may have found a possible source for Rimmer expertise in the field of genetics, and from a most unlikely Hub world reference.”

  “What was that?”

  “I know you recall President Stanford’s chief military advisor from our first raids on K1. Retired Admiral Anderfem was Stanford’s friend and her military advisor. Her family has dominated Alders world politics since that Old Colony was settled, nearly five hundred years ago. Anderfem wrote a memoir of her years advising Stanford and about the K1 raids, and wrote a strong defense for Mauss’ actions and strategy. She also mentioned in a personal history chapter, her suspicion that a member of her own family may have been one of the earliest to suffer from a Krall attack. Her sister, Aldry Anderfem vanished on a mission to a remote orbital station located beyond the Rim worlds, in the general direction from which the Krall came. Eight hundred ninety nine passengers and crew of the ship the sister was on vanished with her, without a trace.”

  “How is that a clue, and how would you have heard about the story?”

  “My aide, Commander Gale, read the memoir a year ago and brought it to my attention when I started questioning where the Rimmer’s knowledge to perform genetic modifications came from. The bulk of the passengers that vanished on that charter ship were other bio-scientists, slated to do research on an orbital station placed out well beyond the Rim.

  “I’ve since had Gale do a bit of digging in the minutes of the Joint Academic Council of major Hub universities, who organized a science mission called the Midwife Project. The project received government grants from the Department of Colonization, which in turn was provided a budget increase supported by political allies of the president. President Stanford appears to have secretly supported what would have been an unpopular and politically sensitive bioscience program. The scientist sent were the cream of the crop of those that might have been able to recover the lost scientific knowledge of how to do human genetic modifications.”

  Chatsworth wasn’t buying the connection. “Oh come on, Adriana. Unless there were armed Rimmer pirates that knew a superior race called the Krall was about to attack us, it’s pretty farfetched that they would have had the foresight to kidnap them and put them to work to do these gene changes, all before the war even started.”

  “No, of course I don’t think that. Its pure speculation at this point and perhaps a coincidence that the best minds in the area of human genetics vanished when they did. However, let me add this other bizarre coincidence to the mix, which has me scratching my head. I looked up the lost ship Aldry Anderfem was supposed to be on, to confirm that detail from the book. It was named the Flight of Fancy, and her master was listed as a Captain Tetsuo Mirikami.”

  She let that hang in the air until seeing recognition flash on Chatsworth’s face.

  “Exactly. He was from New Honshu, so his last
name isn’t particularly rare on any of the Japanese settled worlds, not even the first name of Tetsuo is unusual, but the combination of both names isn’t as common. A Rimmer leader of genetically enhanced people, who is a ship’s captain with that same name, gave me goose bumps.”

  Chatsworth shrugged. “I think you’re seeing a confluence of random coincidences. You told me this Rimmer named Mirikami was young. It’s been over twenty years since that passenger ship disappeared. An experienced captain of a large transport ship couldn’t have been a young man back then, not with gender bias to slow his career advancement. Add in another twenty or so years, and I suppose this young Mirikami might conceivably be the original man’s son, and have the same name. That’s a far stretch to make this presumed connection.”

  “I considered that. I did. Yet when I met the man on Poldark, he seemed far more educated, mature and experienced than I’d expect from a twenty five-year-old male, who was raised in the boondocks of civilization. Hell, I don't know Lela. I just wanted you to pass this along to Admiral Mauss, since she’ll be coordinating with Mirikami to deploy his hundred ten ships, learning what he can do for us. They just advised us they had captured another ten ships this past week, making them pretty damned competent I think. You told me she’ll be Jumping to a sterile system to meet with him and his fellow captains. Anything she can learn about him and his people will be useful, and the story I related to you is at least worth exploring. They got their genetic changes in some fashion, and they’re keeping how they did it a secret. Golda is as good as anyone at getting to the truth, or detecting deception.”

  “OK. I’ll have my AI look up Anderfem’s memoir and send it to her, with attention given to the interesting items you found in them.”