Koban 4: Shattered Worlds

by Stephen W Bennett

  The Comtaps posted at each colony had apparently vanished that same night, although reports of stolen patrol boats were filtering in only as ships from those systems brought the local colony news and military dispatches to Earth.

  Medford, in desperation, briefly toyed with having someone pretend they were a Kobani, and publicly admit they had attacked the Krall planets. After all, there were no physically obvious distinguishing differences. But that wouldn’t standup to a Senate investigative committee, so it was merely wishful thinking.

  It was only when the news reports came, with tri-Vid coverage of the daily destruction happening on Meadow, that the public sensed the scope of the disaster. Every day, more solid fragments than could be diverted would mostly strike the outward facing night side of the planet, making the hours when darkness approached, until dawn, the most spectacular and terrifying.

  Scenes from space, taken over a week ago near Meadow, revealed a massive doomsday fragment, now nicknamed the Hammer by a sensationalist media, showed a spherical two hundred thirty eight mile diameter nickel-iron lump, bearing down on Meadow. It would strike at a shallow angle, but that still would end any possible rescue hopes for the billion plus people still on the surface. The planet’s crust would be peeled back to nearly a ten mile depth, as the impact vaporized the Hammer, part of the upper mantle, and the shattered melted crust would spray to the sides. Molten debris would reach suborbital heights, and rain back onto the planet many thousands of miles from the impact site, spreading the heat and surface damage well ahead of the hypervelocity shock wave of the firestorm that would engulf the entire planet within a day. Every scrap of surface life would be incinerated, as the upper half mile of planetary crust eventually succumbed to the heat and melted. The oceans would flash boil to steam, and some of the water molecules would briefly disassociate into oxygen and hydrogen for a time, before a flaming rejoining. Perhaps the deepest microbes and viral particles would survive the heat driven destruction, deep within the crust on the opposite side of the world. They were already heat tolerant.

  The media maintained a steady rotation of chartered small Jump craft between Hub worlds and Meadow and Bootstrap, to feed the public’s obsessive and voracious appetite for news and video. Those covering Meadow, the more dramatic story, told Hub viewers the huge fragment was only days away now. In another week, when the news craft returned to their parent markets, the disaster would be the only story on each Hub world. There was going to be a huge public outcry and panic when the Tri-Vid recordings of the disaster hit the airways. Most of the anger and outrage would be directed against the Krall, obviously, but people would demand to know what the government was doing to prevent a repeat in other systems.

  There was no way to put fake Kobani in front of an investigative committee, not with Medford’s political opposition demanding to participate. Besides, the Krall didn’t give a damn about her problems or the public’s perception of what the PU government was doing; they wanted their attackers handed over, or information on where they were based, which she couldn’t provide. Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t.

  She’d have to give them what she thought she knew. They called themselves Kobani, they were physically strong, had new alien technology, and apparently lived on one or more worlds on the edge of Human Space. She didn’t know very damned much, but having the Krall focus on scouring Rim worlds for their Kobani opponents was a better option for her that attacks on Hub worlds. Rimmers didn’t vote in PU elections.

  ****

  Bithdol had been unable to move anything other than his eyes for many days, at least with conscious control. He knew he breathed and his two hearts beat, but he did not feel them, and could not control his muscles, or any of his body’s functions. He obviously defecated and digested, because his naked form was unceremoniously hosed off to remove the runny excrement daily. A hanging bag of dark liquid, which ran through a hose and down his throat was replaced every second day. That was obviously the source of his smelly excrement, and his continued life.

  He was being force-fed and kept alive by his enemy, not even shackled or restrained in any fashion, so far as he could tell. The smaller human caretakers, who were changed often, would easily move his bulk around to wash the deck under him, directing the mess into the hole in the floor that let him know he was kept in a clanship’s sanitation compartment. Since it had only the single hole, it had to be the one reserved for the highest status warrior on board at the time, a mission commander, pilot, or high status guests. He wondered if he should feel honored.

  He had willed himself to die, but he lived anyway. The enemy gave him a drop of some clear liquid twice daily, administered on his long purple tongue, which they pulled out and shoved back inside his slack jaws. Because the gradually fading numbness always increased after that, he knew it was the drug keeping him paralyzed.

  He had been captured while infiltrating a disabled enemy clanship, and he assumed he was still inside the same one. He was unsure, because he was in armor when captured, and when the power pack was disconnected, they moved him while he was unable to obtain visor images. Then the drug was first given to him by several darts of some type, fired into an exposed hand.

  He lost awareness for a time, and once awake again, his armor and blue uniform were gone. He was in this waste facility, with a tube to feed him. He had an innate sense of time, except for the period of blankness the first day. At first, his attendants came at irregular intervals, but sometimes they grasped a finger where he could see it, and he felt some flashes of images in his mind, as if they wanted something from him. Then they would leave.

  Now there was the sound of heavy work on the ship, presumably repairs to the damage it had suffered. He heard low Krall spoken by Prada outside his compartment, but never saw them. He could command them to help him if he could speak, but he managed only hissing croaks, and that was only when the drug was wearing off.

  Then his fortunes improved slightly. Perhaps missing a shift because of confusion of whose turn it was, his twice-daily visits for the drug was missed one evening. He knew it was the evening because the work on the clanship proceeded in regular cycles, because animals needed their nightly death. Not working around the clock, as would a Krall K’Tal.

  By morning, the drug’s effect had faded due to the missed dose, and he was able to move his tongue. He pulled it far back into his toothy mouth, and curved it up and back, nearly swallowing the long slender muscle. When the next human attendant appeared, to dose him again and hose out the mess, she was reluctant to reach so far back into the throat, past the red pitted eyes, more mobile and expressive than usual today, glaring at her down that fearsome snout. Instead, the female, which Bithdol could tell from her scent, let the drop fall into his open lower jaw, which had dried out and was a boney plate with a thin tissue covering. It was not an absorbent medium, so she should have directed water into his mouth, to wash the Death Lime extract down his throat. How was she to know? She wasn’t supposed to be doing this at all.

  That evening, the same sixteen-year old girl had to fill in for her older brother, who had taken off on a weekend lark with his girlfriend the night before, and had left her a written message to cover for him, which Caroline had missed seeing. He had a Comtap chip, but she had only received her Kobani mods two weeks earlier. Their parents were conservative former Hub City residents, and they hadn’t really encouraged their two children to “go Kobani.” Naturally, they did it anyway, since that was something they had the right to do at sixteen, even if Mom and Dad were opposed.

  Rodger had done it at sixteen and a half, and less than a year later, his little sister followed suit almost on her birthday. Her brother’s abilities on Haven, where they lived with their parents, were amazing. Caroline wanted to be amazing just like him.

  She wasn’t slated for her Comtap embed until after her superconducting neural system had matured a bit more, with the nanites still busy in her body providing nutrients, so Rodger’s note was his best effort to let her
take on more of his responsibility.

  Her seventeen-year-old brother had been assigned the odious task of Krall-care for skylarking, and cutting school. The Krall was left locked inside the Mark of Koban while it underwent repairs. It was considered as good a place as any to house him, until he would transported to Koban once the repairs were finished on Haven. This was her first Kobani type duty, which her brother had first told her she was too young to perform, and she would be too afraid to be near a Krall, even if it was paralyzed.

  After she begged to go with him, he let her tag along, and after showing her what he did, offered to share this awesome job with his little sister, as a favor from him. He’d never read Tom Sawyer, but he clearly shared some of the philosophical aspects of Mark Twain’s legendary young scallywag. Only this wasn’t as safe as whitewashing a fence.

  Early the next morning, which was her agreed shift and which left Rodger free to sleep late, she drove a truck out to the shipyard a few miles from Xenos, and entered the Mark. The Prada, who were preferentially nocturnal, worked late and started late if not forced to work multiple shifts, as the Krall had required. They were not yet in evidence. A circumstance that made her substitution for her brother less likely to be noticed.

  Because the Prada and Torki had no tattoos, which provided the quantum key to open secured doors, the locking devices on the ship had been disabled by Kobani, for ease of access by the Prada during repairs. Those were normally installed and activated on new clanships just after the Prada completed assembly, and a Torki team came in and set them up as they worked their way out of the clanship, under the eyes of Krall guards.

  All doors devices were now keyed as always unlocked, able to be opened by anyone with standard simple code presses, except on the second deck below the Bridge, where the Krall sanitation compartment was kept locked, on a nonstandard code. This prevented a Prada from accidentally walking in on Bithdol. They no longer considered them Rulers, but it was best not to test that status too freely, or perhaps let something “unfortunate” happen to a helpless prisoner, who may hold some information that could be needed later.

  When the door slid open to her coded key press, only Caroline’s new Kobani reflexes saved her life. The talons that streaked out to rip out her throat were deflected, as her right hand instinctively came up in a blur. She was knocked back from the opening, falling back onto her rump.

  Bithdol was now perfectly and painfully aware of how strong this worthy enemy was, so he didn’t attempt to grapple with her. His last effort to beat one of them that way, when he was wearing his own powered armor and was armed and prepared, had ended with all of his limbs being broken, his helmet visor smashed into his face, and his plasma rifle barrel destroyed by a hand grip.

  This time he wanted to get to the command deck and either launch to space, find a weapon, or do something else to kill some of his captors and die before being recaptured. He leaped well clear of her, and scrambled up the two flights of stairs, leaping over the railing at the top. He saw no weapons lying about, nor had he really expected to see any. He rushed to the console and powered it on, and tapped to check if the tachyon Traps held particles. They were empty and offline. The thrusters registered as operational, but fuel was so low that he could never reach orbit. He wouldn’t get away from wherever he was.

  He hit upon a suicidal plan that could prevent his recapture, and could kill a large number of the enemy, damaging the area for miles around. If the Traps would power up, he could try to capture an energetic particle deep in this gravity well, and attempt to form an unstable Jump Hole with a fluctuating tachyon Trap. Done while sitting on the surface of a planet, that would cause a satisfying blast, even if he couldn’t see its aftermath. He tapped the controls to apply power to the Trap field emitters, just as he heard a shaky voice at the stairs, speaking Standard.

  “Get away from that control panel. Now!”

  His glaring hate filled eyes bore in on the timid sounding animal. He instantly saw it wasn’t armed. There were streaks of blood on her right forearm, where his talons had penetrated as he tried to rip out her throat. Again, he was impressed with the speed they could move. No Krall could have blocked that strike when their arms were down and his slash was directed from that close. He’d barely registered her hand moving, and it had hurt him when he hit her.

  He glanced at the bloody arm she was using to point with, and it should have been broken. He’d done far worse to unarmored humans in the past, when he was on raids. He’d had fewer chances to use hand-to-hand combat with human soldiers in armor, but from stories from warriors that had done so, the soldiers arms were still disabled by such a blow. Her unprotected bare arm should have snapped. His limbs certainly had when he was captured.

  She was moving cautiously towards him, instead of using her speed advantage, as she should. He knew she was afraid. Her fear would cost her life, this ship, and as big a piece of the surrounding planet that could fit into the event horizon before it collapsed.

  The Trap field never needed much time to snare a medium energy tachyon, and with luck could capture a large one in the time he appeared to have. He kept a talon poised over the control to activate a null Jump. He didn’t need a destination coordinate to form an event horizon, only a large enough tachyon. There had already been time enough for at least a minimal Jump, and more that that was probable.

  Bithdol didn’t take his eyes off her, noting she was bunched to leap. Besides, knowing the mass equivalent of the explosion wouldn’t alter how large it would be, only his knowledge of that. He didn’t want to risk her reaching him before he could tap and activate the Jump command.

  When her bunched muscles unwound with an impossibly powerful fast leap at him, actually ripping the base of a bench seat lose from the deck where her backside foot, unseen by him, had been pressed for launching her over the console, he was barely able to complete the destructive tap before she could reach him from ten feet away.

  He felt the impact, and experienced a sense of victory as he was jarred by the explosive power that flung him away from the console.

  When he slid up against the bulkhead, his chest crushed, torn open and bleeding, he wondered how he could still sense pain, after being blown to atoms as Tachyon Space briefly entered this Universe, annihilating a small part of the matter within the event horizon before it was released as a massive White Out.

  “I told you!” he heard in Standard, as his vision began to blur. He wasn’t walling off the pain as he should, and his mind was working slower. Then he saw the reason for his blurred vision, the pain in his chest, and muddled mind. He wasn’t receiving proper blood flow to his head.

  He couldn’t. His two hearts were held in the hands of the girl that had torn them from his chest. Her knuckles had been cut and bruised on his shattered ribs, but they would heal, he would not.

  Why are we still here?” was his last unhappy thought.

  ****

  “We shouldn’t still be here.” Mirikami said. “Not the Mark, the shipyard, and probably most of Xenos.”

  “Why? Asked Thad. “He couldn’t blow it up with the fuel tanks drained for maintenance, after you landed here on thruster power. Even if there had been fuel, the blast wouldn’t be that big.”

  “Not that. The console was powered up and he activated the Traps. There is a high-energy tachyon in it right now, which I’ll release harmlessly shortly. However, he had a null Jump configured, which only needed to be activated to blow a chunk out of Haven.”

  He turned to the girl sitting on the undamaged visitor’s bench, with dried Krall blood on her hands. She’d been crying, sure she had gotten herself and her brother in deep trouble. Mirikami had already Mind Tapped her, with her cooperation, to get pictures of how the Krall got free and what she saw when she arrived on the Bridge.

  “Caroline, that Krall,” he glanced at the gory corpse, “had its hand over this console when you spoke to him. In your mind, your image indicates he looked up suddenly, as if surprised when you
spoke. Is that Right?”

  “Yes Sir. I told him to get away from the console.”

  “Naturally he didn’t, and you leaped over the whole console to attack him. I caught that much, but you were overwrought and extremely nervous when I asked you the first time. The image of the actual attack on him, and your fear, comprised most of your thoughts I received. I want you to go over again what he did as you lunged at him.

  “In particular, what did he do with his right hand then? I see you have two small puncture wounds on your right arm. Were they already there when you jumped him up here?”

  “Yes Sir. He did that below, when he tried to kill me. When I was reaching for him up here, after I was airborne, he seemed to move in slow motion. His right hand moved down to the console just before I hit him, and he touched something, just before I…, I…”

  She had trouble saying, I punched my fists through his chest and tore his hearts out.

  Krall anatomy was taught in Koban high school science classes, as was Torki, Raspani, and Prada anatomy. However, her knowing a hard-to-kill Krall had two hearts, and where they were located wasn’t what Mirikami wanted to know about.

  The slowing effect of motion was an effect of adrenaline and a superconducting nervous system, nearly anytime a Kobani was subjected to a high stress situation. All of them that had engaged in combat, or were in some sort of accident had experienced the slowing of time effect. Her wolfbat memory structure, even as new as it was for her, should have recorded what she saw, if her eyes were positioned to see what he thought she should have seen. After examining the navigation console, he didn’t understand how the Krall had failed to finish his final act.