Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  As soon as they left atmosphere, Mirikami transmitted a double click on the frequency, confirming they were clear. He allowed Jakob to execute the Jump command, and they rotated out of Normal Space.

  ****

  The commander of the Krall invasion forces on Poldark asked his aide to restate his allegation. Gatlek Pendor must have misinterpreted what his second in command had meant. “Kaldot, you say it is your belief, and that of my K’Tal’s, that this clanship launched today was the one we believed died a berserkers death?” Pendor was incredulous of his aide’s words. The implication was outlandish.

  “That is our thought, Gatlek. With dependable evidence beyond the coincidence of location of the launching point. There was an audio recording available of the thruster sounds when that same clanship previously flew over the Dorbo clan warriors to attack the human forces, about twelve hands of days ago. That day, Dorbo was enjoying an unexpected strong assault and artillery bombardment from human forces, near the river and south of family nest areas that the humans live in, close to Novi Sad.

  “That day, two of the attitude thrusters were misadjusted on that clanship, and caused what two K’Tals called a vibration at an ultrasonic frequency between the two. A harmonic is what both of them named the sound it made, of which I do not know the word’s meaning. I only know that it was a very loud and improper noise, and I was told that an adjustment should have been made to the side thrusters to remove the distracting sound from our ears.”

  Impatient with an explanation he didn’t understand any better than did his aide, Pendor snapped, “Do you mean this sound was the same from the slow moving clanship that escaped today?”

  “Gatlek, both K’Tal’s say the two recorded sound patterns are the same, even though the second time the sound was recorded from a greater distance, and therefore not as loud. They said it was not how loud that mattered. A sound pattern that repeated the same exact harmonic was the proof it was from the same source. They say it came from the same clanship that attacked the human forces like a berserker, and was destroyed by four seeker missiles.”

  “You mean that it only appeared to be destroyed. It must have stayed in human controlled territory those many hands of days, hidden from us, and then was launched to space slowly, and the human defense forces did not try to destroy it.”

  “That is our belief.”

  “What has the Darpot clan told you of their destroyed clanship, and the missing sub leader? The forbidden interclan fight they reported to us days later apparently ended on the same day we thought a berserker pilot attacked the humans, and was destroyed. That was a false conclusion about it being a berserker.”

  “Yes. They have found every member of the small crew of the heavy loaded supply ship, except for a sub leader in command named Hortak.

  “As you were told previously, Gatlek, half of the clanship’s crew was killed near where another clanship’s landing blast pattern was found. They appeared to have died in an assault on that mystery ship, and their own ship was destroyed in a more successful attack, presumably from the crew of the unknown craft. Some of the Darpot clan’s dead crew was found inside their clanship. Another four hands, less one, were found dead in a valley with the bunker construction machines, which had apparently been ambushed. There were four hands of damaged machines in the valley, so one warrior apparently did not die there.

  “The new sub leader for the Darpot says the clanship was almost completely unloaded, but they are missing many small arms, and five mini-tanks. She also says the dead that were found where the other ship had landed were killed in strange ways.”

  “What is strange about deaths from attacking a clanship with mini-tanks, three transports, and trucks? That is always a lost fight against heavy lasers and plasma cannons.”

  “The dead were doubly killed, she said.”

  “Did anyone order her to explain this ridiculous claim?”

  “I did, Gatlek. She meant they died of plasma rifles shots, mostly to their heads, and had massive body damage from a clanships heavy weapons where they were found in and near the tanks, trucks and armored transports. They were shot again with powerful weapons after receiving fatal head and body wounds, from plasma rifles and our standard projectile pistols.”

  Pendor snorted in amusement and confusion. “That is inefficient of the attackers to waste time and energy that way.”

  Kaldot agreed. “I did not consider her claim seriously when first made. I do now, because of the flight of the ship and its apparent safety while in human territory. Then it launched unchallenged by the humans from their territory.”

  Pendor was shrewd, and one of the rising new breed of Krall commanders. He didn’t like the unexplained aspect of this bizarre event. Nor the possible implications he could draw from them.

  “The fight near the ship that escaped off-world was not real. Some of the Darpot equipment was taken, and the departed clanship, under control of many unbalanced warriors that defeated Darpot, seems to have done this and went to join the humans…,” he paused almost a second, a very long period of contemplation for a Krall of his high status.

  “Impossible!” he was emphatic. “There are tales of disgraced Krall that suffered a mind or brain defect that have gone to join the enemy, but over our long history it is but a few hands of them only, and always acting alone. This theory requires many such insane traitorous warriors acting together. The soft Krall are securely contained, and do not have the means or the physical capability to defeat us talon to talon. They are old warriors of the time of the Olt’kitapi. We passed them on the Great Path a thousand breeding cycles ago.”

  Kaldot was tentative. “Is the alternative that non Krall did this?”

  The backlash he feared did not happen. Pendor considered this possibility for a moment, before making a conditional rejection.

  “If it were not also impossible, I could consider that. That enemy would need to carry newly dead warriors, for activating the clanship and the weapons, as humans have sometimes done and replace them as the quantum locks detected death and refused them access. Where could they obtain so many dead for a long day of fighting? All but one Darpot corpse was counted.”

  He quickly decided on a course of action that moved the problem from his talons. He could not solve the mystery, but he could report this matter to a leader that was famed for his new thinking, and for adapting to this changing type of war. Tor Gatrol Kanpardi, the overall commander of the war with humans would be informed of this strange event on the current invasion planet. Kanpardi was actively planning invasions of two other human worlds, as the next phase progressed to involve more clans and, pressure humans into more desperate resistance and effort.

  ****

  Kanpardi was in a joint clan planning session on Telda Ka, when the urgent courier report from the Gatlek on Poldark arrived. He was relieved to have an excuse to leave the room full of bickering clan leaders. They were supposed to be preparing to open two new invasion fronts on human worlds, one a heavily populated and long settled colony, which had considerable industrial and technological capability on the planet. That world, the colony of Alders, would be the first real test of human ability to resist, when a world of very high value to them was threatened.

  However, the council was not discussing what resources were needed to support three invasions, such as increased weapons production, expanding clanship building, or making more of any of the tools of war that were required. Instead, for three days they had argued over the fighting roll that should be granted to each of dozens of finger clans. The smaller clans were demanding greater access to serious fighting. They were client clans that major clans had spawned in the last three thousand years, to increase the number of sympathetic voices supporting the parent clan’s interests in joint clan meetings.

  Now came the time for the major clans to pay back those millennia of finger clan’s support, with status earning combat opportunities in new invasions. The obligation was heavy on the tips of all their talons. It
blunted their ability to strike at the real problem Kanpardi saw. Logistics and supply, versus which small clans would receive significant rolls in new invasions, was moot when the equipment to give to them was limited.

  Once out of the council room, he spoke only with his trusted Graka clan mate, Telour. Kanpardi voiced his dissatisfaction with the lack of efficiency the joint clan council displayed.

  “Clans that recently fought thousands of years of restricted interclan warfare, have been deluded into believing there is no limit to the materials of war, which they now waste so quickly. In clan wars, we did not tolerate pointless material destruction for pleasure, and preserved more weapons and ships for repair and reuse.

  “The humans, as worthy enemies should, do not grant that tolerance, and we have pilots and warriors that recklessly risk ships that belong to all Krall, as if they have no responsibility to bring them back for reuse. Their own wasted low status lives are not worth the price we pay when they do not return with the tools of war.”

  Telour, slow to grasp just how annoyed his mentor was, commented, “The reckless dead do not earn status to reproduce, and their genes are removed from the Great Path. The new cycles of warriors are growing smarter, and learning to detect and avoid the devious ways that humans fight.”

  Displaying his irritation, Kanpardi snapped back. “Humans are changing how they fight faster than our warriors are adjusting. We will win because we have the ability to destroy all of their worlds. However, to increase the culling of good fighters from weak we need more fronts in the war. We lose war material at the rate it is made. It is not easy to expand a war this way. The clans that have control of production worlds think replacing losses is enough. The only production increase was of clanships and single ships, after the humans attacked Telda Ka twice.

  “If they attacked what they call K1 again, even stronger than before, the losses would limit us to fighting on Poldark for years. We would have to waste the invasion possibilities of several human worlds, by total destruction, as another lesson to them. A large war on three worlds will divert their fighters and material to prevent such an adventure. We need to build for those other invasions.”

  To demonstrate his grasp of the politics to Kanpardi, Telour said, “The controlling great clans do not want to take K’Tal and warriors away from fighting, to open new worlds for production, or to increase it where we have trained slaves now. This thinking slows us on the Path.”

  Annoyed by his subordinate’s effort to show he agreed with his leader, Kanpardi told him, “Cleaning my cloaca for me will not serve your status well, Telour.”

  Telour decided to ease away from the subject that had his leader agitated. “Then it is good I brought you a report from Poldark, to remove your thoughts from clan politics.”

  “Tell me.”

  The briefing of the information from Pendor was followed by information that Telour had thought was also interesting, and which he had gleaned from another unusual incident report, two or three hands of days earlier than when the one on Poldark started.

  “My Tor, I was previously aware of a minor event here, at a Dorbo clan dome, of two lightly staffed clanships taken by force, and the watch standers and some of the occupants killed. On one ship, an octet had been engaged in physical training inside, and most of them were found dead. There were bodies and discarded body armor found charred on the ramps after the two stolen ships launched, but several bodies were missing, as if taken. This sounded similar to me of the story of the missing commander of the destroyed clanship on Poldark.

  “Dorbo clan blamed their incident on some other clan, because of an unexpected landing of a clanship close to the two that were taken. They all departed together, so they believe it was a new finger clan that wanted additional clanships, but had no influence to have any assigned to them.”

  By Kanpardi’s rapt attention, Telour was satisfied he had drawn the respectful interest of his superior with his additional research. Then he was asked, “Have you any explanation as to either of these two events, or a means to connect them as actually related?”

  “My Tor, the sequence and timing of the two similar incidents permits the action on Poldark to have directly followed those on K1. I use the human name for Telda Ka for a simple reason. I suspect a human involvement in this. The only other alternative that could be shaped to fit the facts, which Gatlek Pendor completely rejects, is that a number of warriors have abandoned the Great Path and joined with humans against us. His rejection of that unsupportable theory is justified beyond any possible doubt, in my judgment.”

  Kanpardi looked at him with greater interest. “You would say this because in our long history there have been no organized traitors in our ranks?”

  “Yes. There have been reported only a few hands of brain damaged warriors with mental aberrations, caused by some head injury, that have ever rejected our destiny to rule the galaxy.”

  “Can your rejection of traitors as a possibility explain the ability of these attackers to bypass quantum encrypted locks on our ships and weapons, if it was not done by one of us?”

  Telour realized Kanpardi was testing him, and had formed an opinion of his own, even though he had only just now heard the details. That meant Kanpardi’s own theory must be one that could be reached quickly, based only on the facts presented. He was leading Telour with the questions he asked.

  “Humans may have learned how to bypass our locks, or have discovered that the key is in our tattoos. Since we must still be living for the tattoos to work, they might hold warriors captive to use them. That would be difficult, however, because they would need multiple live warriors, even though we can force our own death, and we are very difficult to capture and hold… No!”

  He stopped himself short, as if for a moment of consideration. “The clanships that were taken have operated at normal acceleration levels a human cannot accept or survive. They would need to be as strong as we are, and we have never encountered humans like that in combat, where such capability would be more valuable to them than stealing three clanships they cannot use efficiently. Not even a powered suit can protect them from acceleration. It is either traitors of our own, or soft Krall.”

  Kanpardi didn’t seem surprised at the soft Krall comment, an indication he had thought of that. He had an alternative answer to the subject of opening their quantum locks. “Humans probably have acquired Katushas from dead warriors or destroyed clanships, and may have learned how to apply a tattoo. This would provide them their own access to our equipment and weapons. However, as you have proved you understand, our ships perform at levels that we cannot use when we have human prisoners onboard. The inertial force would make them unconscious, as when they do the false death at night. Or it will kill them if we use high acceleration.” He twitched his left shoulder, to indicate there was a question or problem he still saw.

  “The soft Krall could fly our ships, and even if they are no physical match for warriors that have followed the Great Path for twenty-two thousand years, they are still stronger than humans. We still give them the tattoos so they can operate the higher Olt’kitapi designed ships for us, when we force them to do so. I question if the Tanga clan has perhaps grown lax, and let some of them escape their prison world?”

  Telour, pleased the soft Krall idea had not been immediately dismissed said, “It would be very dangerous to their captive offspring and mates for soft Krall to come to Telda Ka or Poldark, where we have forces on alert for human attacks.”

  Kanpardi could be cautious for a Krall, a contrary trait in a Great Path warrior, but one that had actually helped elevate him to lead this current war. “No matter if it is dangerous for them to come here, there are at least three clanships no longer in our control that we must somehow explain.

  “None of our clans on the Great Path would ever yield to a threat by any enemy, even if the threat was against a planet covered in warriors and nests of our own clan. We would never let a foe control us as we control the soft Krall.” He extended
his talons in response to a new thought.

  “Some of the soft ones may finally have grown the bones in their backs to resist us. If some were free, could they be hunting for the ancient Olt’kitapi ships? They are never allowed to enter one of them unless they, and their offspring and mates, are in our total control. Otherwise, we would be the one’s watching our clan worlds explode, as when the Olt’kitapi killed our first home.”

  Telour sensed the opportunity he had maneuvered to create was finally there, for him to earn higher status, by pretending to offer a personal sacrifice of his own time for his mentor. “My Tor. We have discussed unilaterally increasing clanship production at the world our Graka clan controls. However, we would gain no more than our normal share of clanships for our placement of additional K’Tals and warriors there, to push the slaves to work faster, to deliver more ships. We can recover that diversion of our warriors in status points many times over, if the new invasions can take place sooner, after you convince the joint clans that more material is required for new invasions.”

  Now for the proposal. “My Tor, send me as a representative of our clan leader. I should also go as a personal representative of you, as Tor Gatrol’s second in command. The first level of authority, as clan representative, would permit me to order Graka clan sub leaders to increase clanship production.” He let the reason for his proposal to represent the Tor Gatrol, a promotion to second in command, to hang in the air unexplained. He anticipated the question, which he’d made inevitable.

  “How would you use the promotion you have just proposed for yourself?” Kanpardi liked the proposal’s brashness, and suspected Telour’s answer would match.