“Yes, Sir,”
Noreen had caught on. “Ahh, that was what you were doing while I was getting mobbed, wasn’t it? You were figuring out a way to talk with Jake when you want. You said it was vital.” Just then, she cocked her head as Jake followed the Captains orders, and started playing the recording.
Grinning as he saw her tilt her head, he knew literal Jake had followed through. He saluted her casually, and walked away without a backwards glance. He headed for a lift that would take him to a shower and a bed in his own stateroom.
14. History Lesson
Five hours later, Mirikami slapped his alarm silent, and felt refreshed if not fully rested. As he dressed in a fresh uniform, he casually talked to himself. “I feel refreshed and ready to face the day. I wonder if Telour is on the Bridge, or looking for me?”
“Yes Sir, Telour is on the Bridge. He has been randomly monitoring your cabin, but is not now. He has also observed Commander Renaldo, who is still asleep, he watched multiple passenger areas, and monitored crewmembers on duty. Telour ordered Ms. Jorl’sn to switch cameras randomly for the last three hours and twenty-four minutes. I believe she is demonstrating fatigue beca...” Here Mirikami interrupted with “That can wait.”
Jake cut off immediately.
Going to his com panel, he called the Bridge. Jorl’sn answered promptly, seeing it was from the Captain’s quarters. “Bridge, Jorl’sn.”
“Roni, I’ve had some sleep and will be up to relieve you within five minutes. Noreen is probably still asleep, and I’ll give her another hour of rest. Is everything secure?” Now that sounded stupid, he thought, with alien killers aboard.
“Yes Sir. I have been following Telour’s instructions as best I can.” She did sound stressed.
“Very good Roni. I’m on my way.”
He grabbed two energy bars and a cool fruit drink from his tiny galley supplies, and headed for the Bridge chewing and swallowing as he went. He needed to shorten the time spent on duty directly under the eyes of a Krall.
He was on the Bridge in less than four minutes, since his and Noreen’s quarters were close. The other crew berths were below passenger country.
As soon as the lift opened, Telour growled, “You die as long as all the other humans! How can you be the clan leader of them if you stay in the same pretend death for so long?”
It was a shocked few seconds before Mirikami thought he grasped what the Krall meant. “Excuse my stupidity Telour, do you mean the time I was in my cabin, with the lights out and asleep?”
“Of course!” He actually seemed angry. That was not something you wanted a Krall to feel towards you.
“You did the same as the other humans I watched, that do this wasteful pretend death. A true clan leader of human animals would not do this, or would do it less. How can you gain status to lead your clan if you are inactive just as long as any other human is? You cannot earn status laying down, pretending death.”
“Telour, all humans need what we call sleep, and do this normally about one third of the time. We need this inactive time to repair our bodies and clear our minds, to form permanent memories of what we have learned that day. Don’t the Krall have a need to do this?”
Telour made a sharp noise that Mirikami thought sounded somewhat like spitting. “I have seen the humans sleep like death with all of the weak animals I have studied on Koban. This is part of what makes humans inefficient and prey animals. The Krall never do this! We are always active because our enemies would catch us if we were as helpless as you were. I believed that if I found a human that leads his kind better, as you have done, that this human must have earned the right to lead because he did more and learned more, by staying active. You did not sleep as long as many of your kind, but long still, and was as helpless as they.”
“Telour I will try to explain to the best of my ability, but if this does not require my junior officer to be here, may I relive her and allow her to go below to eat?”
“Yes.” He snapped.
“Ms. Jorl’sn, I have the Bridge, and you are relieved and off duty. Please go below.”
“Aye, Aye Sir.” Then she hurried down the stairs not waiting to summon the lift. She was just glad to be off the bridge.
“Telour, you have worked with humans on Koban for two years, some must have acted as leaders. Didn’t they sleep the same as the other humans?”
“On Koban they were not leaders in truth.” He rebutted. “The false clan leaders on Koban were given that position by other humans. A true leader earns that right, or will take a position from another by challenge if he has equal status. Of the humans I saw on Koban, none lead because it was earned. They talk to convince others to give leadership to them. They have earned no more status, and often less than those who follow them. And when tested as leaders, they always fail and die.” He explained.
“Some of us believed, as I did, that it was because your best leaders had already died in combat when we first met, before learning to honorably submit to a stronger warrior.”
“I believed I saw a difference with you that told me you must have earned your right to lead humans. You made right choices when we disabled your Traps, you ordered your clan to properly submit before our novice warriors found reason to kill very many. You convinced Parkoda to offer Ra Ka Endo for your clan before you even reached Koban. This is different than has happened on other raids or that I heard from other raid leaders.
“My plan was to use your status among humans for my own advantage on Koban. Now I find that you become inactive the same as other humans, at a time you should be most alert! Leadership must have been given to you!” The contempt was evident in the accusation.
Mirikami, not wanting to lose any edge he unknowingly had gained, used reason in his explanation.
“Telour, I think you took the ability the Krall use to their advantage to always remain alert, and expected to also find that ability in human leaders. When you didn’t find it in me, you were angered. I think I can explain how our way, for humans, is not very different from your way, even if it exposes us to a weakness you do not have.
“Tell me.” He ordered.
“I just learned from you that the Krall never sleep, yet you are trying to gain an advantage over Parkoda, as he tries to gain advantage over you. You and Parkoda are both always awake. You both compete for status, and you have a plan to gain status from Parkoda’s own prize, even though he is awake as much as you are. There is no advantage to be found between two Krall if both are always awake.
“The need to sleep is no disadvantage between humans, because that is how nature made all humans. We truly are at a disadvantage compared to the Krall who never sleep, but that is obviously true in every respect.” Stroking their huge egos seemed to work before.
“There is a small piece of meat in this,” he reluctantly agreed.
“I assume nature made the Krall always awake, which humans cannot do. If all humans must sleep, then none gains status or advantage over other humans because of this mutual weakness. Our leaders gain advantage by leading better than other humans who would also be a leader.”
Mirikami’s last remark caused Telour to shift completely away from human deficiencies. Like Parkoda he couldn’t resist bragging, nor of correcting human misconceptions of how the Krall had made themselves powerful, despite evolution’s own random ways.
“We changed ourselves to always stay alert; nature did not give us this valuable strength. We have forced nature to give our bodies more speed and strength, to lose the weaknesses we had long ago. We see more, hear more, sense more than the ancients could. Only our oldest stories tell of when we were weak in body, when the Olt’kitapi believed their minds and machines alone were enough to rule us. That now dead race told us of how their science had helped nature make their minds great. They promised to give this curse to us as their gift.
“We knew their minds would not protect them if we were strong and gained their trust. We took their machines and weapons to kill them. We
were used by them on all of their worlds, like strong smart animals they could train. Lying to us and calling us their friends, while planning to make us as weak as themselves.
“Our old bodies, even so long ago, could easily defeat their smaller and softer bodies. They were fruit and plant eaters that believed their brains made them more powerful than we were. When we rose up to attack everywhere at once, we lost our first home world to them, and many Krall died before our final victory. After that, we owned their many worlds and machines. We ate them all, like the food animals they were.
“Those warriors that survived to win the final battles were the best fighters, the strongest, and the swiftest. Those victors brought us new cubs, which also grew to be stronger fighters. The Olt’kitapi had told us there were other races, some that we had not met, that a few had hardly left their home worlds, and others lived on many worlds. They were to be our future friends, just as the Olt’kitapi said they were also our friends. We saw the Great Path set before us to follow, if we were to survive in the galaxy. We could never again be weaker than other races.
“We awarded the most cubs to the best fighters after we fought wars. These were no different from those wars we had always fought with our own clans before the Olt’kitapi ended our traditions. Now we only pick those for breeding when we find strength in our greatest warriors. Different clans breed for new strengths, so they can trade cubs with other clans for different strengths. We chose those new strengths that nature created for some but would not give to all, and gave them to every Krall as we walk the Great Path.”
He sounded almost as if he was reciting a litany, and perhaps he was.
“We slowly found the races we had been told existed. They were new prey to light our Path. When an enemy was defeated, we returned to fighting ourselves until we found new prey. We have fought ourselves for many breeding cycles now, testing clan against clan. However, finding humans with so many numbers, and many worlds, we are testing against you now.
“I think humans can be pushed to become a worthy enemy, but not every clan agrees. Some want to waste you for food animals, only they have never tasted your unpleasant sweet meat. There are too many of you to keep as slaves for making or growing what we need, and we already have good slaves now.
“We have not increased our numbers for many cycles, because we cull many weak warriors ourselves, fighting between clans. If we slow the culling we can grow to great numbers, but that is standing on the Path, not even walking. We need wars with a worthy enemy, so we can run on the Great Path.
“Graka clan does not want great numbers of Krall we want great numbers of wars, so we can speed along our Path. Our clans are all seeking a new strength, as Koban life has shown us exists. We will make new warriors with bodies that move as swift as animals do on Koban. My Graka clan may achieve this in twenty or thirty breeding cycles.”
Mirikami, soaking this in, was amazed at what Telour was willing to share with a proclaimed enemy they were planning to exterminate. He felt frightened by what he was learning, since their confidence appeared justified. He assumed breeding cycles was their equivalent of a generation, so they clearly took the long view, using selective breeding to improve.
He didn’t want to stop the flow of information by asking what he meant by becoming as swift as Koban animals. The Krall had distained the higher intelligence of that first race they exterminated, so getting smarter wasn’t their goal, it was stronger and faster they valued.
Despite Telour seeming to be brighter than Parkoda, Mirikami’s admittedly limited experience of this race suggested that they were not quite as smart as most humans. The scientists they had aboard could better evaluate that premise than he could.
The Krall bragged on, warming to the subject of how they had fought slow and steady wars many times. Mirikami mimicked a rapt level of attention, while essentially tuning him out, thinking beyond his own ship’s fate.
He was hearing the same philosophy spouted by Parkoda, the same description of what the Krall planned for the entire human race, using us to cull their weakest links, saving the best genes for their long-term selective breeding program. What we were seeing was their “Best in Breed.” Selected for specific traits, but intelligence wasn’t a top priority.
If deeper raids into human space were about to start in the more populated parts of the Rim or even New Colonies, there was a big influx of captives soon headed for Koban.
Mirikami knew with utter certainty that the Hub government, when they learned of the new threat, would first try to negotiate, to offer treaties and make concessions, though they certainly would increase defenses. Those defenses would be mostly limited to the Navy at first, because the Ladies in power would not like armies, necessarily composed mostly of males.
They would be slow to create a ground warfare capability until it was forced on them, and even then, it would rarely take on an offensive role. “Reason over rage,” was the saying that had prevailed after men had all but died off.
He had the wry thought that there were new guns in town, and the schoolmarms were toting rulers and erasers to hold them at bay. The boys were still standing in the corner, placed there by the women three hundred years ago.
He wondered how the Krall would respond if we went all out against them, as many individual governments would have supported three hundred years ago. Nukes, chemical warfare, and certainly biological attacks back then. We probably wouldn’t win that sort of war either. The technology Mirikami had already seen must be just a glimpse of what the Krall had available.
They claimed to have destroyed seventeen other intelligent civilizations, and Parkoda had said a few were much more advanced than humans were now. They had perhaps twenty five thousand years of fighting and weaponry development, or weapon borrowing to their credit. They might like their killing simple and personal, but they wouldn’t have to keep it that way.
Jake was of course recording this rant by Telour. The Captain was going to have to play this for the Board of Directors, to make them see how important it was to find some way to get this information back to Human Space.
They also needed some sort of plan, or strategy for themselves, to guide them when they reached Koban. A fighting chance was better than no chance. He’d have to talk with the Chairfem alone, she had a sharp mind, and he’d seen her maneuver the Board to get votes she wanted from them.
Telour had started to wind down. It must be grand to awe an intelligent animal with your exploits, but in the end, it was still just a contemptible animal listening to him brag.
“I am honored to hear you speak of the Krall’s history. If more of my people would learn from the Krall, we may find ways to become a more worthy opponent for you. We of course don’t want to lose this war, because that means death for us. But perhaps we can delay the end and gain honor if we learn new ways to fight you.”
Telour studied the smaller human a moment. “You may be the clan leader of humans I seek after all.”
Gee, Mirikami wondered. Was that flattery for a new pet?
“Facing honorable death in combat that you cannot win is a thing we respect, even of animals. If humans as a pack do well in the testing, we will have a measure of how to test ourselves when we fight you. Should one warrior face sixteen humans, or sixty-four of you? What weapons will we allow for our novices? What weapons will we give humans to use?
“We need such information to follow the Path more efficiently. Any Krall that finds a way to do this more quickly will earn many breeding points. I will become a warrior known for that.” He said that with assurance.
“When Parkoda departs on the next raid, soon after we arrive, I will remain behind on Koban so I can give rights over the human clans to true leaders. If the leaders will make humans fight better they will be rewarded. They must also meet some of Koban’s natural dangers in our tests, but they will always fail in that. It is expected, because even the Krall seeking the fastest Path have so far failed many of Koban’s tests.”
Th
at revelation certainly caught Mirikami’s interest. They knew next to nothing about where they were going. It appeared the Krall themselves found the world deadly.
Well wasn’t that just great!
Prison breaks might be pointless, and fatal even if they succeeded. He remembered Parkoda had said we needed protection there by the Krall.
Telour renewed his earlier offer to Mirikami. “If I can make humans fight better than they do now, and the advantage is found in Parkoda’s prize, but discovered by me and not him, I will take a larger part of his reward points from him. This can happen only after he has departed on a new raid, unable to claim credit for my plan. A human leader that helps this happen will have advantages granted that only I will control.
“Because I will stay behind on Koban this is a risk to my future status. However, the tests go very bad now, because combat for a novice is too easy against you, and almost none have lost. If you humans can change how you fight, and prove you measure above slaves or meat animals, our Path will be shorter, and I will gain high status.”
Mirikami’s first though was, I may be about to step in it right now! Nevertheless, he didn’t think being classified as a slave race or meat animal by the Krall would improve human survival chances more than fighting them would. Moreover, going down fighting would be his choice.
“My people may not accept a single leader, and they might divide into separate clans as do the Krall. There will be some that follow a leader that will encourage cooperative fighting and some few individuals might chose personal combat. Those individual human fighters will not last very long, as you have seen.
“The advantages you offered me must actually be given to the fighters, more than to their leader, or they will not follow him very long. I tell you truly, that humans will think this way. They will not respect a leader who sends them to risk death, but keeps all of the advantages for himself. This must be a decision of those humans that fight as to what they will consider an advantage. Not even their leader can decide this for them.”
Koban Page 16
