Koban: Rise of the Kobani

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Wister hoped you might be able to help the Raspani recover their intelligence. As I explained, we will bring some here to live a more comfortable life than on Koban. We all should try to help them recover their mental capacity if we can.”

  Coldar made a tossing move with his smaller left claw. The humans had learned this was a Torki shrug, indicating he didn’t know the answer. “If they still had the implanted devices it might be possible to do so. I think the Krall killed or ate all of the Raspani with Olt implanted devices, and force bred them to keep the species alive. Without the Olts to preserve their knowledge, they would soon lose civilization under the Krall. We know the Prada believe the Raspani hid their minds, and if they were nearly as advanced as the Olt’kitapi was technologically, they possibly could have used their Olts to record their minds in one of the libraries. However, there have been no new Raspani Olts made for many thousands of years, and the minds would have been lost anyway.”

  Maggi nodded, in basic agreement. “Nevertheless, with human, Prada, and Torki assistance, they may have the capacity to recover some of what was taken from their minds. I thank you for your offer to help us. We will be bringing the first of them here within a week. Wister has returned to speak with his sister, to activate a part of one of the underground factories to make fencing material.”

  “Your mental images must have been very convincing.” Coldar complemented. “We have never known the Prada to do anything that was outside of what their Krall Rulers ordered them to do. The accomplishments of your species, despite your youth, may have sparked the Prada into their first independent thoughts in ten thousand years. You have certainly sparked thoughts of hope in our own minds. With the freedom to ask for materials from the factories, we can make some interesting things for your people. The Krall have never made use of all that we learned from other species. Perhaps we can put that knowledge to good use on your behalf. We wish there were more of you. The Krall have many more warriors than your small population, and can hatch many more in a short while. Even feral Krall are dangerous if they chose to turn them loose on your worlds.”

  Marlyn, who had been simply listening to the discussion until now, butted in. “What are feral Krall?”

  “Like those on our smallest continent on this planet, which you call Haven. That place will not be suitable for habitation unless they all eat each other.”

  With a sigh, Maggi asked. “You mean there are Krall on Haven? When were you going to reveal this to us?”

  “There is no danger, so long as they can’t get to any of the other continents. They are surrounded by an ocean they cannot cross, which is filled with creatures that will eat them if they try. Our Torkada, bred for living in the sea are eaten in their millions by ocean life before they return here, and if they land on that continent to escape the predators in the sea, the feral Krall will eat them. They will also eat any Torkedia that land to molt. Except to hunt, breed and lay eggs that is almost all the feral Krall are capable of doing. They have no language, learning, or tools. They fight each other, and eat the losers. They have animal cunning, but never develop high intelligence or technology.”

  “How did they get there? Why did the Krall leave them?”

  “That place was a nursery continent for several finger clans, with natural geographical boundaries to keep the clan populations separate. The Krall do not nurture or raise their cubs until the survivors reach age five to eight orbits old. Those feral Krall were left there by their parent clans as not worth the salvage of their bloodlines. Had the adult Krall remained there, the feral Krall would have eventually been killed and eaten by the clever and cooperating pre-novice cubs they select for initial training.”

  “How dangerous are they?”

  “They killed a small Torki colony there many orbits ago. We don’t know if there was a Prada village, but it would be gone by now even if it went underground. There may still be large animals that survive there, and large predators. Eventually the feral Krall eat most animals but themselves, growing weak and starving as their own population is unable to feed the dwindling survivors. There are abandoned worlds where this has happened.”

  Maggi wasn’t particularly surprised. “Humans can’t survive without adults to raise and instruct children, but it appears the Krall have also bred to the level where they require adults to intervene to select those cubs that are able to accept training. If all adult Krall were eliminated, or lost all of their technology, the species would not be able to make wars on any but themselves. This is a strategy we have considered, but was not sure if it could work. We want to leave the Krall without the means to use Jump travel, or make war equipment.”

  “You will have to eliminate their forced labor, or they will make more weapons.” Coldar didn’t sound any different in tone, but there was an obvious inference here. He surely wanted to know how the Kobani were planning to do this. Was killing the slave workers part of their plan?

  “Coldar, did Captain Greeves, Marlyn who is here with me, explain what the name Haven means in our language? That is the name we will use for this world when we speak of it to others of our race.”

  “I only heard the sound of the word in your language. You did not use a low Krall word. Does it have a meaning in your language, or is it only a sound that represents this place?”

  “It has a meaning. The equivalent meaning in low Krall is a refuge, or a place of safety. We want to bring as many of the forced labor survivors here to this planet as is possible. If the populations on production worlds are not much larger than they were here on Haven when we arrived, that may be possible. However, we don’t have ships larger than clanships in our possession now, and we only have three of those. We considered trying to capture the larger Krall ships we have heard about for that purpose, or find some in Human Space we can buy. To buy them will take more time, and raise questions we don’t want to answer in Human Space. However, we will try to find such transports somehow. We intend to save as many of your people as we can.”

  Coldar had a ready proposal. “I can tell you where to find such ships in orbit, empty and ready to use. They are stored where they are built, and returned there after use. On your navigation system, I can show you the planet where the largest Torki ships are built, and saved for use by any Krall clan. They are not a Krall design. They were designed by my ancestors to travel the stars in watery comfort. The ships are thirty times larger than a clanship, although they will not carry fully thirty times as much.

  “They can hold twenty complete Prada villages, or four or five Torki colonies like this one, with sea water for us. The length of time for crowded occupation depends on what provisions can be stored. The number of Torki they carry also depends on how much seawater can be loaded. A short Jump needs less comfort and less water.

  “The description of our ships in our language is a series of clicks and whistles, but means the journey our spawn starts when we release them in the sea. We now use the low Krall words for migrating animals as the purpose of these ships. We no longer gave individual names to them, because the Krall will use none. However, if you can use them, we would like to name those that bring any of our people here. I will give you a list of ship names, with the meanings before your people do this. It will have symbolic meanings to the Torki you rescue.”

  Maggi didn’t grasp the usual self-centered Krall motivation here. “What do the Krall do with such large ships? Why do they use ships not designed for their own use, like the clanships were?”

  “The migration ships still are built only because the Krall want to move us when they build a new base, or colonize a new world for a clan or a new finger clan. They can carry the Torki or Prada workers, and the factory sections for them to assemble a starter facility. That small initial facility is used to build the remainder of a full-sized production complex, and that factory then can make other complete factories if those are required, or to make weapons and ships. It is faster and more efficient for them to move us.

  “To rescue ou
r workers, you will not need to take the old factories apart, or load starter factory sections. You can destroy what you leave behind. This way you would be able to carry more workers inside each ship. Some of the past production worlds we have lived on would need no more than five migration ships to move all of the workers, Prada and Torki combined.”

  Maggi gave Marlyn a skeptical look that was wasted in front of the oblivious Torki. “Tell me again how huge these ships are that only five will carry all of the workers from an entire factory world?”

  Coldar understood her confusion. “Expect to need less than five for a single world. I used a number that I hope provides for less crowding and faster loading. To your populous race, I know it does not sound like many beings to fill an entire world, and it is not. That is because the Krall do not want or need worlds full of workers. When they choose a new world to colonize for a finger clan, they take only the workers needed. None of the worlds the Krall inhabit will have many workers, or many Krall warriors. They may have many pre novices, but those are culled greatly between breeding cycles.

  “If the old world is to be abandoned by an entire clan, those workers left behind are eventually food for millions of hatchings of feral Krall left behind, who reproduce without limits or culling. The underground factories are destroyed before a clan departs, so we cannot use them to build effective protection or sufficient weapons.”

  The wonderful Krall, thought Maggi, always a loving and caring species for their subject races.

  “Why didn’t this happen on Koban, or here? They left us there to die.”

  The Torki considered this question for a moment. “It may be that abandoned eggs hatched, and the faster native life ate the weaker hatchlings before they reproduced. It also may be that because the clans intend to return to this system to make a home world of Koban, they left no large nests of unattended eggs to destroy the balance of life. Their feral young consume most life on abandoned worlds, which is why the clans do not return to them later.

  “In the time since they left Koban, over twenty orbits, ten thousand or more feral Krall should have hatched from a typical large nest in a less than twenty days. In three hands of orbits, they would mature enough that survivors would reproduce and increase numbers by ten or twenty times. In two more hands of orbits, they would multiply enough usually, to kill even the large animals on any continent, or killing their young would be enough. A starting nest of a hundred thousand eggs might cover any continent of your world by now. Perhaps that couldn’t happen on Koban, where even most herbivores are stronger and faster than a Krall hatchling, or faster than a novice aged cub.”

  He waved a claw. “Even a few clutches of eggs from low status females can create a dangerous population after twenty orbits. These would be left at random, in forests or grasslands by females with too low a status to produce cubs worth training up to novice level. An unmanaged Krall reproductive cycle is shorter when the young are left untrained, without ruthless culling by adults. Twenty orbits is a more typical breeding cycle for producing warriors that earn higher status.”

  Maggi shrugged. “Then we escaped the fate of other worlds they left behind. So we only need ten or fifteen of your giant ships?”

  Coldar expanded on the number estimate. “The actual ships needed may be two tens more than that, depending on how many worlds you will raid at one time. I named numbers that are even multiples of ten in our method of counting. We use a base ten system, the Krall use base eight. What is your system for counting, a base four number system? You have four limbs, and we have ten, when you include our claw arms.”

  Maggi explained humans also used a base ten counting system, because of the number of digits on our two soft “grasper claws,” and that we did not count based on our number of limbs.

  Marlyn had a Spacer’s question. “Coldar, are these large ships controlled and flown the same way as the clanships? Can one of us that know how to operate a clanship fly them?”

  “Once in space I think yes, because the Torki navigation and control systems were changed to be like those on a clanship so Krall pilots can operate them. However, these large ships must land on a planet to load and unload, and that is difficult for pilots that have not been trained to do this. If the ship is to carry Prada, it must set down on a hard surface, and that requires very fine control. To carry Torki, it can land in the sea much more safely, and our people would go to the ship where it floats, close to their lodge. It is then loaded with considerable sea water before it lifts, so no more than one or two lodges could be carried without crowding.”

  “Do you have Torki here that know how to fly one of these ships, using both dry land and sea landing sites?”

  “Using information on our Olt, in principle all adult Torki can learn to do so. Though some will do that better than others. Will you want some of us to travel with you? We are not good fighters or very fast, but we can lift heavy weights for loading, and operate the landing systems manually if computer control is not flexible enough for landing on the ground.”

  Maggi shook her head, before remembering the alien wouldn’t know the human gesture yet. “I doubt we would want to risk taking you along to try to capture those ships. There are maneuvers our people can make in a clanship that will probably kill you or the Prada. I may not look very strong, but remember that I kicked you high in the air and onto your back.”

  Coldar moved his large claw under his carapace to touch the tender place where her small powerful feet had nearly cracked his shell. “I have not forgotten.”

  “What we can do,” she proposed, “is to have the Torki most qualified to be pilots of a migration ship mentally go through practice sessions, thinking of all the things they would do to operate the ships, while some of my people use a Mind Tap, and learn from them. Then we can teach that flying technique to our other people much faster.

  “I promise you, Coldar, that we want you and the Prada free of the Krall, and not only because we want the Krall to lose the ability to make war. We need your help in making this world, and Koban safer places for you and for our people to live. If we gain new technology from helping you, our chance of stopping the Krall improves. This is a case of mutual benefit. We can help each other.”

  Coldar waved a claw. “If you look around, you will see that the few Torki that can best teach you to fly our ships are coming to join us. I called them using the new Olt capability. If you will permit, I will show you on your ship, the Beagle, where our former worlds are located in your navigation system. One of our old colony worlds makes all of the migration ships, and other places are worlds that make many of the clanships. The clanships can be made by the Prada at any factory complex, but for efficiency, the Krall build them on only two worlds.

  “You should also go to the single world where the Hammer weapons are made and kept in orbits. Just one of these is able to destroy an entire planet, but it takes many orbits to form even one. The Botolians invented them as a smaller solid ball of dense crystal, which they launched at Krall clanship formations at high velocity with a magnetic accelerator. They often missed their targets because they could not be guided, but were almost indestructible.

  “The Krall admired the powerful balls, and ordered the Torki scientists to learn how to make them as larger hollow balls that they could fly and steer. Using the Botolian made gravity projectors and their compression techniques, combined with the Raspani quantum disintegration tools to carve them without breaking their crystal structure, our technicians made them hollow with a hatch opening. When equipped with a tachyon powered drive system, a Krall pilot can Jump one of them to any world, and gradually build a velocity close to light speed if given enough time.”

  Maggi told him they knew of these weapons. “They used one of them against my own home world of Rhama, I was told. It killed nearly a third of the population, and ruined the biosphere. We don’t want any of those balls used against us again. We have high velocity, diamond-tipped uranium projectiles to fire at them, to try to crack their
surface.”

  Coldar spread his claw arms wide. “We had not thought of that method of destruction of the hammers. They shatter if they strike a massive enough object at high velocity. You found an alternative, a high velocity small mass with the hardest natural tip possible. We understand how a small crack will cause the shell to rupture violently. In making these balls, some lose stability and explode before completion when we try to carve the opening. You must need to shoot many projectiles to hit one of them when they move so fast.”

  She explained the theory of defense. “There are hundreds of railguns around our planets, ready to fire in the direction of any of these incoming hammers, which we call Eight Balls for a reason not worth explaining. The hope is that we can kill them far enough away to protect the planet, using many thousands of high-speed, diamond-tipped heavy metal slugs. I was told our military has not had a chance to test the railguns against the real hammers, only against similar sized drones flying under computer control.”

  Coldar raised and lowered his carapace on his left side, in a gesture Maggi didn’t yet recognize as equivalent to a human headshake. “To truly protect your worlds, you must destroy all of the hammers that are stored in orbit around the former Botolian home world. Then remove or destroy the gravity projectors the Krall made us operate for them, the Botolian machines that were captured after the war. Next, you must rescue the Torki there who may know how to rebuild and use the projectors. Without the projectors to focus intense gravity for producing the collapsed matter, no more hammers can be made.”

  Then Coldar abruptly shifted to a very different subject. “Would your fighters like armor that is lighter, stronger, and more technologically advanced than any the Krall have?”