Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  Life had been awkward for a hypersensitive but physically tough kid that was forbidden to fight, and then the Krall came. Now Frank had an enemy he was not only allowed to strike back at, but to kill. A social outlet he had craved.

  “If you want to call me Frank, then I get to go with you. I’ll accept your gene mods. I also want to participate in the raids.”

  “New Citizen number…three.” Sarge died off at the end, under a withering glare from Mirikami.

  “Count to yourself.” He was told. Then Mirikami went to the next of several sensitive subjects.

  “Henry, I know your answer from previous conversations, and I agree that you are needed here to run the war on Poldark and to coordinate for us. That doesn’t mean you can’t have dual citizenship if you want, the same as these two wish to do.” He looked at the two other officers, realizing a clarification was needed.

  “I wasn’t as clear as I should have been. This is all so new to us. I am not asking you to renounce Planetary Union citizenship. Each of you is a citizen of your birth worlds, perhaps of another adopted colony world you call home now, and of the PU. My adopted world isn’t even a PU settled colony, but there are Rim worlds that have not joined the PU, and those populations in large part feel like PU citizens, and fight for it against the Krall.

  “We perhaps can be called a Frontier world, located beyond the Rim. Being loyal to us does not preclude loyalty to where you are from. We are not an adversary of the PU, or the Hub worlds that dominate the PU government. We know that some of their citizens will not reciprocate that feeling, because of our violating the genetic laws.” He switched back to Nabarone.

  “Excuse the diversion, Henry. Let me tell you what we can offer to you as a no-strings-attached gift. Frank and Joe want to come with us, and you can’t do that and still defend Poldark.

  “Without your leaving Poldark, we can send a ship back with some of our biologists. The most useful of the SG mods can be implemented with very little outward physical effect while in progress. Other than aches and some mild fever that is, depending on what mods you elect to receive. For example, I have six mods, but the two strength and endurance muscle mods are the most useful to you on this planet. You don’t suffer from the extremes of heat and cold of our home, nor need the high metabolism to counter the high gravity energy drain. I doubt you will have children to whom you wish to pass along superconducting nerves.”

  Nabarone grimaced at the last remark. “No.”

  “How much risk would it be for you to travel later, Henry? Would your DNA be checked?”

  “No. With a war against easy to spot aliens, it’s unusual for most people to be scanned for DNA now. You’d have to trigger a hit with a facial recognition database for a fugitive to be flagged for DNA testing. Besides, what am I saying! It’s good to be the General. I bypass all of that bullshit on a military transport.”

  With a trace of sarcasm, Mirikami concluded, “The lack of an objection from a ‘shy man’ like you tells me you’re receptive to the notion. The problem is how to get you, the technicians and equipment, together on Poldark. You can help your own cause there. I had Jakob run a search for a civilian Jump ship we could afford to buy with what we have left from our dwindling cash reserves. All of our precious metal has been sold.”

  “I can fake the loss of a military courier, if you need something small and fast.” Nabarone proposed.

  “No. Medium sized and civilian is better because it doesn’t have to be explained each time it comes and goes if it’s legally registered. I have a tramp freighter in mind, which is in the right price range, and will hold modest cargo, or perhaps forty to fifty people if partitioned properly. The seller, a man I believe was a contraband smuggler to Bollovstic before the war, needs to unload his ship. There are some irregularities in the ownership, due to his former financial partners-in-crime laying claim to a share of the title. I need it cleared up, and to let them argue over how to split the money after the fact. With that ship, we can visit here without alerting the whole defense grid when it does a White Out. It was converted to T squared technology before the investors realized the Krall would take their Rim markets completely away from them.”

  “What did they smuggle?” Sarge asked.

  “Don’t know, don’t care. However, the Falcon is the best buy I could find for the money we have left, and for what we need. The former captain said it was the fastest ship in this sector, and he claims the PU Navy would never have caught them in this millennium.”

  Nabarone shrugged. Easy problem to fix. “I have considerable influence with the governor, as you might imagine. A cash deal should make the new registration a matter of a few days to complete. Who will be the captain of record when it leaves?”

  “Captain Mike Haveram doesn’t yet know he’s being promoted out of the useless engineering slot he fills on the Mark.”

  “The chief is going to be pissed,” Dillon offered. “The only one that hates being in charge of a ship more than him is Sarge.”

  A hand held out by Mirikami halted the expected rebuttal from Sarge. “He will have a ship that actually needs maintenance, which is something he has craved. After he gets her home, he can give her to whichever former Spacer Captain he picks that he can get along with, and go back to running the Engine Room.”

  With the hand now down, Sarge spoke up, but it wasn’t about Dillon’s double jab at him and the chief.

  “General, I was under your overall command before capture by the Krall, a mere fly speck on your elevated rank’s rump to be certain. However, you can reactivate me and send me off with the Mark when she leaves, or let me stay MIA and presumed dead in the official records. I’m going with them either way, and not being a deserter is my preference. What do you say, Sir?”

  “Go, before I discover you stole my best set of real gold stars. Considered dead or alive is your choice.”

  “Dead takes less explanation and forms to complete.”

  “Who’s that speaking? I didn’t believe in ghosts ‘til now,” Nabarone quipped.

  Mirikami had a personnel question that couldn’t be so easily answered. “Colonel, you and Captain Longstreet here have to decide how your absence will be handled. I already knew from Henry that your independent command was an irritant to him because your chain of command was outside of his. What superior needs to know what happened to you, if they need to know at all?”

  “Captain, I’m under a black ops section at Army headquarters on Earth. I have no closer superiors on Poldark. Captain Akers, based up at the Sofia front line, is the next ranking spec ops officer on Poldark. He was about to make major, based on my previous recommendation. He would likely come to the Novi Sad headquarters if I were out of the picture.

  “The five spec ops companies on the planet operate nearly independently as it is. I frequently have a company or platoon, or sometimes only a squad off planet, on various missions. I have been thinking on this almost since you arrived. I wanted us to work together, your TGs going with our teams on missions off Poldark. It looks like it will only be me and…, Joe here, invited.” It was an obvious effort to use just his first name.

  “My original hope was to request volunteers, out of the one platoon that knows about you, and conduct some raids on Krall worlds with your TGs. I’ve probed our men acting as your instructors, and all of them are eager to go on that sort of mission. I have no way of knowing how many would do what Joe and I are willing to do to be part of this, accept gene mods and simply vanish.

  “If I report up the line that just the two of us suddenly went on a mission, that won’t sound remotely plausible. We are quickly going to be considered AWOL, and eventually deserters. We will know that it isn’t true, but having those we respect think that it is will hurt.”

  Testing the waters with his suddenly human sounding superior, Longstreet had a suggestion. “Frank, if I can get enough men to form a squad to do what you and I are doing, and Captain Mirikami will accept them of course, can you dream up a mission t
hat will seem plausible? I said a lot of ‘ifs’ here, but I’m closer to my platoon than you are, and they talk to me more freely than they do to you. Fully half of the platoon has no families that they see or talk to any more. We already seem like freaks to them. Being reported missing in action is less painful than an unexplained disappearance, and leaves room for an honorable reappearance someday.”

  Mirikami put a hand on each man’s shoulder. “Joe, Frank, the Mark has room for as many men as you are likely to recruit. Certainly more than the platoon that you have here. If you will accept the intrusion of a TG1 Tapping them, as you conduct your interviews, we can bypass the men that would have a problem going on a mission that is a change in where they call home, or accepting gene mods. They go on potential life ending missions all the time, but this is different. They might live, and still not come home.

  “They don’t need to know all the details and specifics before we know their true feelings, but mentioning that they might be able to receive genetic enhancements to make them like Sarge isn’t leaking any big new secret. They all know he was recently of the PU Army and captured by the Krall, and now he’s with us. That isn’t TG ability, but it’s a start.”

  Trakenburg seemed a bit more upbeat when he said, “The Naval intelligence reports give me the pretext to scout one of the most interesting worlds they reported, only eight hundred eleven light-years away. As little as a single squad or two could be sent to do preliminary recon. We often use Navy ships for insertion, but in cases where the Krall might detect a human warship, which they could consider a violation of their order against another ‘Naval attack from space,’ we have smaller, unarmed stealthed crafts. The Penetrator class does not belong to the Navy, and are under my control. That gives me a way to claim to have used one such ship that’s off the Navy ‘books’ so to speak.”

  Thad noticed Nabarone was getting red in the face. “Henry. Turn down the heat before you spout steam. What’s up?”

  “Did any of you discuss the Navy briefing two days ago, after you came back here?”

  “Not that I know of, Henry. We were ordered not to do so.” He looked at the other SGs who said they hadn’t either.

  Now he realized that Nabarone was looking at Trakenburg who was casually moving towards the coffee pot, placing people and distance between him and the general.

  “The summary of that meeting was placed in my AI’s most secure and encrypted data base, and the Navy told me to keep it confidential until they had finished the analysis on the terabytes of data. They didn’t want the location of those planets known until approved actions concerning them could be decided. I used my position to get the information in advance for your briefing, because I already knew about the scouting missions.

  “Trakenburg, mincing his way around the table over there wasn’t given that briefing. He just described the exact distance to the closest one of those interesting worlds. The bastard has penetrated my AI’s security. I’ll have his ass for this.”

  “Henry, it wasn’t unauthorized access.” Trakenburg said defensively. Using Nabarone’s first name now only pissed the man off more.

  “Don’t ‘Henry’ me now, goddamn you! What do you mean by that? You claim you have authorized access to my AI, you turd?”

  Trakenburg, as usual, was wearing his Booster Suit, despite seldom going on a mission. He was happy he had it now, because he half expected the general to come after him. “When my AI was installed at my Novi Sad command post, the black ops division was contacted by someone from Army headquarters, offering spec ops limited secret access to your system.

  “I don’t think the Ladies above you trusted your willingness to share with them, because of your frequent baiting of visiting female officers. Hell, you even named your AI Carla, which is the middle name of your immediate superior. You were once so suspicious of the Hub government that you ran militia guerrilla exercises in case they invaded Poldark. I’m not the only one to use that back door either, because Max has sensed it in use when his own data transfer rate was reduced, and he found our line to your Carla was moving data through us. They get in via a back door to my own system. I don’t keep anything on Max I don’t want them to know in my data. I never had access to your personal files, I swear, and Max can verify that.”

  Thad started laughing. “He has a point about your anti-feminist bias. Geez, you named your AI after your own boss lady?” He laughed harder.

  “I didn’t know that was Lieutenant General Cadifem’s middle name,” he grumbled. “As a young man in college, needing money, I had an uncontracted liaison with a ball breaker older woman by that name, so that I wouldn’t have to give my mother 70% of the contract money. I didn’t expect that name to bite me in the ass, again.”

  Mirikami, unable to keep a chuckle from his voice asked him, “This make you change your mind about staying behind here?”

  “Of course not. Poldark is where I can do the most good for my planet, and behind the scenes to help your efforts. I can even use the knowledge of that backdoor to think of some sort of payback, now that I know they can snoop through my data.”

  “General, I’m sorry about the snooping.” The master of sneak offered.

  “Shut up, Frances. You’re leaving and I’m happy, and if I hear another apology I know that you don’t mean, I’ll start some scurrilous rumor about you after you’re gone.”

  ****

  “Just eight more men.” Thad sounded disappointed. “I was thinking even more might want to go with us.”

  Dillon reminded him. “Ethan and Carson both said the predominant reason was when they were told they wouldn’t receive the mods that would make them TGs. We old SG’s just don’t have the sex appeal.”

  “We’re going to try the other Koban mods for ourselves. If they work for us, we could do it for them. You still think the Koban mods have a better chance of working with the later generation nanites, right?”

  “Sure, but we couldn’t explain all that to them in advance, and it might not be possible.”

  Sarge, ever mindful of the citizenship status he declared for himself, sounded relieved. “I’m still first of only eleven new citizens. The most elite of the elite.” He winked.

  “I don’t know,” rebutted Thad, arching an eyebrow. “Dillon and I arrived more than twenty years before you did. I’d rank you somewhere at about number thirty thousand or so, and you would appear to be in a tie with the sixteen other captives that arrived as prisoners with you. Your status looks rather mundane to me”

  Dillon made a double score. “These new ten are the first we ever actually invited to join us. They didn’t just fall in our lap as a helpless captive, always cheating Thad out of his poker money. Assuming, of course that his wife ever lets the poor slob have any.” He nailed the two of them at once.

  Sarge wasn’t done just yet. “Yea, yea, yea. The spec ops guys have it easy. I’d have given my left arm to get to Koban. No, wait…, I did that!”

  “Right. It would be nice if you used its replacement for something besides scratching your backside. How about helping stow the last of the cargo, and we’ll get ready to go. Our spec ops recruits are gathering their gear, and Trakenburg has stashed the Penetrator class ship in the crater, as the presumed vessel the ‘missing’ men used on the secret mission.

  “Tet says Nabarone is back in his headquarters now. We want his authority handy, in case someone decides to shoot at us on the way out. We’ll lift with less oomph than the Krall usually use, making us a tempting target. Chief Haveram had it easy. He left like a civilized law abiding ship operator, on a criminal’s former smuggling ship.” The Falcon, loaded with consumer goods scarce at home had departed earlier. It too was planning on a devious return course to Koban, to thwart any potential follower.

  “Tet picked one of the TG1 tachyon communication windows for our departure. Our wives may have left messages drifting in Tachyon Space for us. I’d like to know how they’re doing. I hope the hell my wife discovered the Morning Star planet is li
vable. Otherwise I’ll find one grouchy Lady waiting for me.”

  Thinking of his own wife, Dillon wasn’t concerned. “I doubt Heavyside was any problem for Noreen. The TGs were going to pretend to be recruits to get into the main camp and find out what the future of spec ops is. We already know they will handle the training program on Heavyside easily. Frank said he’s pretty confidant some of their people were pushing for genetic engineering, which was previously rejected by the government. Now that Poldark is steadily going the way of Bollovstic, he hopes the PU will change their minds. It should be an uneventful visit to Heavyside.”

  A few hours later, the Mark was ready. The Planetary Defense forces were specifically told to not fire on an obvious clanship launch, departing from well outside Krall controlled territory. Mirikami, waiting on the Bridge for the “all clear” was also making certain there were no stealthed clanships incoming on his sensors before they lifted. He intended to drill a rapid vertical turbulence trail through the atmosphere. Stealthed or not, that would make their track obvious and predictable, but it was what the defense forces were told to expect.

  Nabarone’s voice came over the speaker, on the frequency they were instructed to monitor. He remained his wiseass self when he said, “Ok boys. On your Mark, get set, go!”

  How original, thought Mirikami. He had heard that same dumb pun at least a half dozen times from his own people. He hit the acceleration horn once, and tapped the launch control personally. Jakob could have done it all for him, but he felt like initiating the engines himself, maintaining the pretense that he didn’t largely let the AI do the routine drudgery of spaceflight. Hard acceleration was felt immediately, and velocity increased rapidly on the column of plasma behind them. Not a standard Krall max performance liftoff, but a lot more than human staffed ships generally employed.