Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Notice the roadway, or dirt way I should say.” He prompted. “It’s artificial, including the weeds and tufts of grass, but looks real, and doesn’t leave tire tracks or foot prints. Not for the last hundred feet in fact, if you look back where we just walked.” Glancing rearward, there was no sign that twenty people had just trod this way.

  Reynolds strode confidently down the broad ramp, and disappeared into the shadows as they followed him down. As the last person left the ramp, Reynolds operated another touch pad to raise the ramp as silently as it had lowered. They were briefly in deep gloom, with only some faint ceiling panels providing dim, red colored light. Another touch pad suddenly brightened the parking area to near daylight conditions, as the entire ceiling glowed with a pale white light.

  “These lights switch off the instant a ramp is activated.” He showed them markings painted on the floor that indicated where the second ramp would lower, to provide a two way up/down roadway for people or equipment.

  Pointing to several openings along the back wall, on either side of the ramp’s hydraulic pistons, he said, “These are personnel tunnels that lead back to concealed rabbit holes along the canyon floor. There are branches that lead you up to trap doors behind clumps of boulders. I used this very corridor the day we ambushed the sixteen Dragons that saw us duck into the mouth of the canyon. We parked down here, and ran back that tunnel to spring the trap, and called a mass of prearranged artillery down on them even before we fired our rockets.”

  He reflexively rubbed his left arm, recalling what had happened to him not long after that ambush. He’d been captured fleeing the area, losing his left arm in that explosive process. It had been regrown after he was rescued by these people, now his friends, on Koban. However, he remembered the pain and being without an arm for months.

  “OK people,” he turned towards the doors on the other wall. “Let’s see what was left behind. Anyone that sees a rat, mouse, large insect, bird, snake, frog, or any other small creature, must be alert for the possibility that it could be a spy bot, and potentially a means for us to make contact with the Poldark military.” He went over to one of the personnel sized doors, rather than one suited for a truck, and used a thumb pad while looking into a retinal scanner. The door promptly slid opened.

  “I think my retinal pattern is on store here in the computer, but I’ve seen newcomers also get right in, so there may be a planet wide data base. It might simply be a way to verify that I’m a live human and not just a dead hand on the thumb pad. The spec ops folks that let us use the base were pulling out, and didn’t much care what we did here. They warned us that if we let the Krall follow us down that we’d better find a way out fast.”

  He led them through the door and along a wide corridor that went past empty, open rooms with wires protruding from walls and ceilings, where equipment and computers had been removed. There were a few items of dilapidated furniture left behind, some scraps of paper and signs on the walls. Reynolds turned into a large room and stopped to look around.

  “This was a command center, with satellite feeds, secure, jam-proof landline communications, several AIs, and screens all over the place. However, right over here, around this corner is what I’m looking for, I think. I hope they didn’t tear it out when they left.”

  He went around the corner, into an open side room off the main area, then smiled and nodded. Mirikami and the others joined him, looking at a large relief map of the area, as if an x-ray had been made from overhead, fifteen miles up, with the network of tunnels revealed along the ridges, and crossing under valley floors in some cases.

  “Obviously we’re here.” He pointed at the nexus of most of the tunnels, although there were some smaller hubs where ridges intersected and other tunnels split off. “Novi Sad is east southeast from here, about forty miles to the river along the outskirts, and there was a sizeable suburban area on this side of the Solda River, perhaps thirty miles from us.”

  He ran fingers along the map. “These three tunnels are large, and they go more than halfway to the edge of the housing areas and some former industrial parks. Even before I was captured, they had all been evacuated by the civilians, and the military was preparing for urban warfare there, to hold Novi Sad as long as possible. It’s very hilly over there and the terrain in between us and there is rather exposed, open farmland mostly. That’s why the supply tunnels were dug, to avoid attacks by single ships on convoys headed to this area, supporting our forces holding the mountains, and later just these foothills as we were shoved back.

  “I think we can head towards the current front lines through them, but from there, we’ll have to figure out a way through the fighting from behind the Krall. They tend to push sporadically in limited fronts of three to ten miles wide, when a single clan is carrying the load of fighting along a hundred mile front. The other clans normally hold in place, to let the other clan draw all the action. When that dies down, another clan, possibly several hundred miles away, takes their turn. There will be four to six of the single-clan shoves going on somewhere on the continent every day. We could most likely infiltrate through the rear of a clan not part of an assault. The spec ops troops do it somehow, and they don’t have the ability of a TG.”

  Mirikami considered that last remark. “They can’t do it by direct confrontation with a warrior unless they have a sure-fire, quiet method of assassinating a guard, so it must be by stealth. I wonder how they get around their superior sense of smell.”

  “Oh, that. I was told that because so much of the area where the Krall are fighting us has recently been under human control, and there are so many dead that their sense of smell becomes less sensitive. I’ve also heard spec ops use pressurized cans of ‘eau de suer’ to temporarily overwhelm the Krall sense of smell.”

  Dillon barked a hard laugh. “Sewer water? Really?”

  Reynolds looked at him with a grin. “Like Maggi might say, ‘you don’t have any couth.’ Not sewer you lunk head, it’s the French word for sweat. Suer, you illiterate barbarian.” He chuckled at having sucked him into a joke.

  Dillon had only lame repartee to offer. “Ha! Raise your arms and you’d knock out an octet all by yourself.”

  Thad, never a man to avoid fart jokes added, “This entire subject stinks to high heaven.”

  Mirikami had to break it up before the surrounding young TGs jumped in with their own youthful enthusiasm. “Enough guys,” he said sharply, cutting off the laughter.

  “Sarge, can you show us which tunnel is most likely to take us close to where we need to be? Please, you go first…, so we can follow our noses.” The youngsters found the bit of irreverence from their normally staid captain hilarious, for more than a full minute.

  As Reynolds led them along the same corridor as before, Mirikami checked his Link with Chief Haveram. “Chief, have you heard from Ethan or Richard, or anything of interest from Conrad at the valley entrance?”

  The reply was comfortingly prompt, and sounded strong, even underground. There was probably a Link repeater built into the base, since the PU Army also used transducers. “Conrad has seen no Krall activity,” the chief told him. “Ethan has checked in as they topped each ridge. Those boys are fast. Up one side and down the other in five minutes. If the cliffs are like these around us, they must have goat genes in them as well. They saw nothing in the first three valleys, but could hear sounds of machinery rolling on gravel from beyond the next ridge they had to climb.”

  Mirikami thought for a moment, mentally counting the number of ridges between them and the Krall clanship, which he recalled from the aerial images recorded as they landed. “Chief, that would be two valleys closer to us than where the clanship landed. They may be threading their way through the valleys to reach us, using some sort of transports they carried with them. I want to hear what Ethan reports as soon as he can see what’s happening.”

  “Will do Sir. Shouldn’t be more than another fifteen minutes.”

  When Mirikami was obviously finished listen
ing to his Link, Thad asked what he’d heard. “Ethan and Richard find some activity?”

  “They heard some sounds from a valley located well before they reached the Krall ship. It was described as mechanical, like rolling trucks on gravel or rocks. We might have company coming, with transports or Dragons. Let’s see the tunnel ahead, and then head back. We were not setting off towards Novi Sad right now anyway.”

  Reynolds said, “If they have Dragons, Tet, your TGs can’t pop them open, or even get close. We might have to abandon the Mark and get everyone down here.”

  “If they are bent on attacking us, I’d agree, but I don’t see why they would have a plan to do that if they believe us only to be from a different clan. We’ll head back as soon as we see the tunnel.”

  “We’re almost there. There’s another underground parking area on this side of the base. We passed under the back wall of the box canyon, and on the other side of these doors ahead is another larger garage. The bigger vehicle supply tunnels run from there. Why don’t we see if you can open the door this time?”

  Mirikami thumbed the pad, while peering into the retinal scanner. It took slightly longer than the process had for Reynolds earlier, but the door slid open, and the same style pale white light panels activated. On the other side was a parking area, four times the size of the first one, with seven tunnels leading out along three walls.

  Reynolds described the ones they were interested in using. “The three tunnels on the opposite wall all go towards Novi Sad. I can’t say which is best for our purposes, because I don’t know the Krall dispositions at the ends of any of them. The right side tunnel goes a mile or two closer to the river, where there used to be warehouses of supplies to route to the troops fighting in the mountains.”

  “Thanks, I can’t say yet which one will be best for us. We’ll see what images we had from orbit, before we made our penetration this morning. I want to head back to the Mark now.” He turned to go back through the opened door when one of the TGs shouted.

  “There’s an insect running across the ceiling, Sir.”

  They all looked where he was pointing. It had been invisible until the ceiling panel lights came on and it moved.

  It looked more like a small lizard than an insect to Mirikami, when he sighted it, just before it pulled itself up through a hole at the corners of four light panels.

  “Sarge, could that have been an actual live critter?” he asked the native-born Poldarkian.

  “I’ve seen live geckos of similar size and color, which have sticky foot pads to walk on walls and ceilings. They were apparently stowaways on some shipments from Earth, since no one admitted to violating the importation of animal rules. They spread all over the place after they first appeared, a couple of hundred years ago I think. That one could have been natural, or a spy bot.”

  Tet shook his head, and chuckled. “I might have felt stupid, but I wish I could have gone to it and asked it ‘to take me to your leader,” or something.”

  He turned again to leave, remarking, “It was probably a real lizard.”

  ****

  The corporal said, “Colonel, I should have a group photo and head count for you in a moment. The gecko-bot was waiting for them on the ceiling when the door opened and the lights came on. I had it programed to return to the upload socket as soon as it had an image. It’ll also send any audio it picked up. The sound may need some clean up, due to the echoes, but Max will have that ready with the images in a few seconds, Sir.”

  Trakenburg acknowledged his young bot handler’s efficiency. “Good work, son. Route that to me in my office, my eyes only, as soon as the AI has it processed.”

  He whirled around and stalked into his secure office, closed the door and activated the privacy system, and tapped the large wall screen alive. “Max, do you have an ID on any of the people that entered SOB-23?”

  “Yes Sir, one of them appears to be a Sergeant Garland Reynolds, of the PU Army, native to Poldark. I have no match for the thumbprint, retinal scan, or facial image of the man that opened the door to the second parking garage. I am running facial matches for all of the people that I have good features for comparison. Most of them turned to look directly at the gecko-bot when one of them saw it moving. The only match is again apparently for that Sergeant Garland Reynolds.”

  “Max, you said apparent twice for him. Why would you be so unsure? He is or he isn’t that man. Thumb print, retina, and face match. How about physical size and body shape?”

  “Sir, all of those match except for two significant discrepancies. Sergeant Reynolds was reported dead over six months ago, and his lower left arm was found still within a piece of his armor in his destroyed halftrack. This man is obviously alive and has a left arm.”

  “Humph. You have no imagination, Max.” A very literal statement when made to an AI. “Arms can be regrown, and deaths misreported or faked. I think you should consider that the man we see in this recording,” he looked at the recorded images moving on his high definition wall screen, “to actually be Sergeant Reynolds, alive and well. Now we need to figure out who his companions are, and what they are up to in that old base.”

  He noticed there were four older men in the group, and they seemed to be leading the clearly younger people behind them. Those young people looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Although, age was always difficult to discern between middle twenties to early fifties, at least on anyone in this era’s gene pool. The youthfulness of those young men and women was obvious. Aside from that mystery, where did they come from? How did they know about that base? What were they doing checking out the tunnels that led towards Novi Sad?

  “Max, what do you have in archives for Sergeant Reynolds? Before his purported death.”

  “Sir, he operated in a guerilla warfare unit, and was briefly allowed use of SOB-23, as you were moving your operatives out, just ahead of the Krall advance. His last reported contact was less than thirty minutes after leading an ambush of sixteen Dragons, which he and his men drew into that same canyon. A later analysis of the unusually sharp Krall response, which followed that attack, determined that it coincided with the apparent loss of the Krall invasion commander in some sort of combat action.

  “It would be speculation, Sir, but perhaps Sergeant Reynolds’s unit was responsible for that Krall commander’s death, and the sergeant’s own injury and disappearance shortly after may be related. He was severely wounded if he lost his arm, and the suit helmet was recovered with a record that he survived removal from the armor by Krall Blue Suits. The suit’s nanite infusion was incomplete, and he could have easily bled to death. There is no further record of him after that. It seems redundant to repeat that the Krall don’t normally keep prisoners alive or offer medical treatment, and prisoners almost never escape.”

  “We see he’s healthy and free now, and has friends that we can’t find any record of. I assume you have found none yet, Max?”

  “No Sir. I have searched all of the Poldark civil and military records back two decades, and I have started checking port of entry logs of off-world visitors as well. Because Sergeant Reynolds was reported dead, should I also check death records for any potential matches with the others, Sir? Without DNA to compare, the search will be less certain, and requires much longer.”

  “Max, are you saying you have better things to do?” Trakenburg smiled.

  “Sir, I am able to conduct this search with no significant reduction of my full operational capability. I thought it useful to inform you of the possibility that the search could take longer than you were prepared to wait."

  He decided to “mess” with the AI’s stiff programmed personality, to observe its reaction. “I thought perhaps you had a date with Nabarone’s Carla tonight.”

  “Are you referring to the general’s AI, which he calls Carla, Sir?”

  “Why yes. It has a charming female voice and personality. I thought perhaps you two had made a connection. A date as it were.”

  “I communicate
and coordinate with his AI frequently in the open, and by use of the unofficial backdoor Link your superiors have arranged for me, to keep you informed of his actions regarding combat activities that could impact your own secret missions. Is that what you mean by the term ‘a date,’ Sir?”

  He was amused, but not enough to continue the pointless joke on an AI. “Never mind, Max.” However, the momentary diversion did bring an idea to him. “Max, the sergeant was under Nabarone’s overall authority, and the man used SOB-23 for a time. Check Carla’s records for recent references to that base.”

  He didn’t expect such a quick reply. The database was immense. “General Nabarone made a computer inquiry this morning about two Krall clanships that landed close to SOB-23. One ship is estimated to have landed in the canyon where it is located.”

  “What! Why wasn’t I told?” He didn’t like surprises like this.

  “Sir, you transferred use of the base to the Planetary Union Army after our withdrawal. It isn’t listed as one of our assets, so it did not trigger an alert to inform you of the landings.”

  “OK. But, what was Nabarone’s reaction? What information was he asking the computer to give him?”

  “Sir, my parameters for the backdoor access to General Nabarone’s AI does not authorize me to provide you with that information. It does not have any bearing on Special Operations missions currently underway or planned for the future. There is a privacy issue involved, and General Nabarone outranks you, Sir.”

  “But you told me about the two clanship landings that you learned of from his data base.”

  “Sir, I learned of them through our own data base, I can only confirm that the same information is in the data base of the general’s AI, and that he inquired about the landings.”

  God damned AI’s! He thought. Dumping tons of trivia on your head when you didn’t need it, and then using some preprogrammed limitation to deny you information that might actually be vital. He had an idea how to make Max understand that spec ops did have a mission that could be impacted. He’d invent one right now!