Koban: When Empires Collide

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Stop this slaughter. Did my orders slip from your memory matrix so swiftly? Don’t be like them.”

  It was Mirikami, of course. Wounded, unable to speak from a throat injury, but his mind and Comtap intact.

  “Give them a chance to surrender. Don’t risk yourself to do that, but don’t kill on my behalf, or you’ll shame me.”

  Greeves interjected. “Stay still Tet. Let the nanites work. We’ll have you up in a med lab in no time.”

  To the complement that had followed them down into the depths. He added. “Captain Mirikami will be fine. A slug passed through his suit helmet flex joint, and the side of his neck. It missed bone and vertebrae. He can Comtap, but not talk. Bleeding has already stopped, and nanites have started closing the wound. Continue the mission. We want the Emperor alive, and any of his noble family members that are here with him. Surround, but do not approach. Use mind Taps to locate them.”

  There were no more grenade blasts, and the sounds of occasional plasma bolts receded, as the two forces moved to the lower two hospital levels.

  Ethan and Carson approached Mirikami’s prone position, where Thad was kneeling beside him, holding the damaged helmet. It had a perforation in the front left of the flexible neck section.

  Carson expressed both his and Ethan’s feelings. “Hey, Uncle Tet. You scared the hell out of us.”

  “You forget to duck?” Ethan asked.

  Mirikami, his dark eyes looking up at his young “nephews,” appreciated their concern for him. He’d worried about them often enough. Via Comtap he said, “It surprised me too, and no, I didn’t see it coming.”

  Sarge’s face, helmet removed, appeared above him. “You know, I gave an arm and a leg for Koban, but I was never dumb enough to try to donate my head.”

  Mirikami, a smile on his lips, Comtapped, “Thad reminded us today that its flat and hard. Easily replaced with an anvil.”

  “Et tu, Brute?"

  “You read Shakespeare? I mean…, you can read?” Mirikami acted surprised.

  “Nah. Watched a Tri-Vid version.” He gestured at Greeves. “With a backstabbing best friend, it gave me perspective.”

  “Go to Hell, Caesar.” Thad replied with a friendly grin.

  Then he added, “As soon as my icon for you changes to pale amber, I’ll have a team make a litter and carry you up to the Mark, with an escort. A med lab will have you fixed up in a day or two, I’ll bet.”

  “Not so fast, Thad. I’m feeling no pain, in no danger, and I intend to stay down here until we know if Farlol is here, and if there are surviving Olt’kitapi even farther down. I’d like to talk to them both.”

  Holding it out, Thad showed him his misshapen helmet. “It won’t mate with your suit now, I had to damage it further to remove it fast. Your suit speaker can’t receive from your Comtap, and the AI in your helmet won’t connect for the translation.”

  “Get a spare sent down from the Mark’s or Avenger’s stores. I’ll wait.” He was going to be stubborn.

  With a sigh, Greeves looked up at Reynolds, and told him, “Bring me Chyou Li’s helmet. It’s the same size.”

  “Why should she give hers up? I’ll wait for a spare?”

  “This is faster, and less risk of an ambush for whoever brought the spare. There must be many Thandol on the levels we bypassed.” Thad seemed oddly subdued.

  “I’m not taking that girls helmet away from her.”

  “You aren’t.” Now his expression was grim.

  With a shock Mirikami realized without his own helmet, having its AI granted Force Commander functions, he was woefully uninformed.

  “Oh damn. How many did we lose Thad?”

  “Nineteen dead, twenty-six wounded. None of the wounded are in critical condition, half of them able to walk and fend for themselves.”

  “Chyou?”

  “One of the dead. She was with my group.”

  “I’m so sorry. I’m not being deliberately obtuse, but the helmet’s condition?”

  “Oh. Undamaged…, and clean.” He added, understanding the concern. “Until I download the AI’s recording we won’t know exactly how it happened, but its seems obvious. An armor penetrating round caught her in the flex joint under her right armpit, and ricocheted down inside her suit. We had just started throwing grenades, and she may have been in mid throw. She died instantly, but her helmet was untouched. She’s your suit size, so it will mate.”

  “I guess I was lucky the round that struck me was a through and through.”

  “When you get home and face Stewart, and far worse than the President, face Maggi, you might reconsider how lucky you think you were. Neither of them wanted you leading an assault force.”

  Sarge returned with the helmet, and only after it was clamshell closed over his head, mated, and sealed air tight with the suit body, did the AI asses his condition, and it accepted his Comtap identification and established his Force Commander functions. His status icon faded from amber to pale green. He was ambulatory and capable of self-defense, just not able to speak.

  “Help me get up.”

  He was only briefly lightheaded, as the nanites in his bloodstream and tissues adjusted his oxygenation. He had no intention of running anywhere, or of trying to turn his head in either direction. He could use his internal visor, and Comtap the AI for the view in any direction.

  He took a few steps, and declared, “I’m good to go. As long as don’t turn my head.”

  In afterthought, he linked to his suit’s external speaker. “How do I sound?”

  “Like a tin man, of course.” Was Sarge’s own speaker issued reply.

  Carson and Ethan, satisfied that Mirikami was OK, trotted away to join the Kobani searching the lower two levels. They weren’t even out of sight before a report arrived.

  “Jorl and I Mind Tapped a high-ranking pair of non-uniformed security Thandol, who sent their last fifty uniformed Troopers against our far larger group as soon as we entered the main corridor. Those troopers fought to the end, despite our overwhelming numbers against their fifty, with no sign of surrender. As did the two security officers who only had hand guns, or rather trunk pistols I suppose is the more accurate term. We took them and a few of the troopers alive.

  “We told them we would not harm the Emperor, and reminded them that they couldn’t stop us anyway. We said that our commander wanted to talk to him, and arrange a truce between the Empire and the Galactic Federation. Their minds tell us they think he might agree to talk, but they don’t know for certain. I let them go, and they retreated to a lavish looking area, based on the exterior décor of the walls. Perhaps to discuss our offer with the head pachyderm.”

  “OK. I’m on my way down. What’s on the level below yours?”

  “Apparently, they put nearly all their security on the first hospital level, after they finally understood we were crazy enough to come down here. The next level down holds more quarantined members of Farlol’s court, which consists mostly of close family members, and a couple of his second cousins from the High Command, who had the misfortune to have breakfast with his Imperial crappiness before he showed symptoms.”

  Walking with more confidence, Mirikami, accompanied by Thad and Sarge, followed Carson and Ethan down the ramp to the VIP patient wards. As they approached Cal and Jorl, two Thandol cautiously peered around a side opening a hundred feet down the wide corridor from them.

  Cal said, “Here come the two security officers. They were conferring with the Emperor, who was moved down here into that ward before our other two fleet contingents arrived, assuming we would bombard the palace. He’s still recovering, but from our Mind Tapping those two, we know he’s ambulatory and is starting to eat again.”

  The two Thandol hesitantly moved up the corridor, looking very nervous by the twists and turns of their trunks and twitches of their tentacles. There were leather holsters on each of their front legs, for carrying some sort of medium length gun. They were empty now, and on a nearby counter top there were parts of wh
at looked like weapons that might have fit in the holsters.

  Mirikami gestured. “Those the guns you took away from them?”

  “Pieces of them,” Jorl answered. “They were mid-power range laser weapons, and too low energy to damage our armor unless we stood still and let them. We ran up and took them away from both officers, to show that we could. Then we bent and twisted them by hand, breaking them into the pieces we tossed on the counter. It was a little demonstration. I think we sprained their trunks. They were expecting to be stronger than we are. Same as the two prisoners Maggi tied in knots once.”

  As they approached, one of them spoke in the Thandol subservient species patois, his eyes nervously on the four newcomers standing with Cal and Jorl. The reason he was nervous was revealed by what he probably had been commanded to say to the leader of the victorious invading forces. A force that had just annihilated the portion of the Imperial Guard that opposed them.

  “Which of you is the subservient Federation representative that is requesting an audience with his Imperial Majesty, Detab Romal Farlol, the eighty-fourth Emperor of the Farlol line?”

  Sarge started forward, “Why you…,” but Mirikami placed a firm hand on his arm.

  “Wait! He’s only trying to survive the day, and say what he was ordered to say. I’ll speak for myself.” This issued from his chest speaker in formal Thandol, and in Standard by Comtap, to the other Kobani.

  Looking directly at the officer that had spoken, he continued in Thandol. “I respect your bravery, and your loyalty, in speaking words to a victorious enemy leader that you expected could lead to your instant execution.

  “If I were a Thandol, obeying an absolute ruler, I might do the same in your place. But I’m not. I’m a Kobani human, and a citizen of the Galactic Federation, and as such I have no absolute ruler. No citizen of the Federation, nor of our allies, the Planetary Union, have absolute rulers than can order us to do as your Emperor just did. Our leaders cannot, and would not, order us to die just to see which words might offend an enemy and get an underling killed, as a test.

  “I will be perfectly clear here. I am not requesting an audience with him, I am granting him one with me. Because he has been sick, I am providing him the courtesy of a personal visit, rather than having him suffer the indignity of being brought to me. I do not wish to end his Imperial line, or disrupt his reign. Unless he leaves me no other option than to kill him.”

  Mirikami started forward, passing between the two thunderstruck officers, who were shoved bruskly aside by Thad and Sarge on either side, who on Mirikami’s Comtap signal moved in lockstep with him. Ethan, Carson, Cal and Jorl, fell in step behind.

  The two Thandol nearly bleated like sheep as they pivoted to follow, but the Kobani marched swiftly to the beaded string curtain across the opening into the Emperor’s ward, and marched through.

  On the other side, there was a cluster of four pale blue uniformed Thandol around one with a draped red cloak over its back, trimmed in gold, the colors that were reserved for royalty in the empire. The Emperor looked very thin, and was supported on each side by belly high padded rails, with a long soft padded narrow couch that ran under the length of the thin looking figure, who straddled the supporting couch. Side rails apparently serving the same function as bed rails in a human hospital. Farlol wasn’t completely steady on his feet yet.

  The pale blue uniforms were the colors of his doctors and nurses, and as followed in a Thandol professional society, there were no females present. Not even consort females in the background. The Emperor was too weak for sexual exploits.

  Farlol, perhaps expecting to be shot on the spot, rose a bit higher, locking the knees of his clearly shaky legs, and did not sway to touch the side rails at all. He was going to face his fate as a Herd Master, on his feet, head held as high as his species neck permitted.

  Mirikami walked to within a Thandol body length, stopping in front of Farlol, and all seven Kobani, Mirikami centered in the front of the two files, executed a brief, but deep bow.

  As Mirikami returned to vertical, concealing the painful twinge the move had cause him, said, “Your Imperial Majesty, I am Tetsuo Mirikami, and I am the Galactic Federation’s equivalent of your High Commander, and these officers with me are my staff. I hope the unfortunate events of this long day have not drained your strength excessively. My leaders, as well as I, hope that your reign over the Empire will continue for many orbits to come. Provided we can achieve a peaceful resolution of our differences.”

  He’d briefed the other six, by Comtap as they marched in, on what Maggi suggested would be the appropriate protocol for them to use. Show respect, in the face of their obvious strength as the victors today, and let him know immediately that he might yet maintain his trunk-grip on the reins of his empire. Now they would learn if he retained the mental capacity to grasp what was being offered.

  His obvious confusion at first appeared to argue against that, but as his two security officers rushed to his sides, to face and share with him whatever his fate would be, he seemed calmer. He must have parsed the trumpeting and bugle notes he’d heard from this alien, from which the fine nuances of the Thandol language were absent, and there were no tentacle twitches to revealy clues of the emotional content, and sincerity or the lack of that, carried by the words.

  Nevertheless, the base words conveyed a hope for a path forward. A hope that he thought had expired when Trindal informed him that he was withdrawing the full fleet from Wendal, leaving the Emperor and his Imperial Guard to fend for themselves. Farlol believed now that Trindal was the leader of the coup that he’d suspected was being plotted.

  Not as mentally quick as a Kobani, not by a long shot, Farlol knew down to his footpads the politics of the empire, and of how a usurper gained support for replacing an Emperor. Farlol may have been laid low by illness, and seemed weak, but he was the one who had called in all the fleets to fight this strange and relentless enemy.

  The High Commander is the one who lost that battle, despite his overwhelming numerical advantage, and fled before the outcome was certain, at least as far as other noble families on other worlds would know. He had abandoned the field of combat, and from that loss, and position of weakness, he was going to claim the throne?

  Farlol decided he could make the best of what was being offered, and bluff his way to an agreement. “My High Commander, Delthab Trindal, has been plotting my overthrow, wishing to replace me on the throne, and has waged a war by proxy, using our security forces to attack you, after blaming the Galactic Federation for provocations that he caused. My illness has kept me isolated, but I am recovering. His treachery and weakness will not go unnoticed by my loyal followers. He does not have all of the fleet with him, and half will answer to me, and those commanders that are loyal to me will return to the fold.”

  He suddenly seemed to recall who he was addressing, and what they wanted from this meeting. “The annexation of stars the Federation claims has hereby ended. The High Command, under Trindal’s urging, sent the independent Security forces to attack you. The High Command will be disbanded, and a new command structure, obedient to my wishes will be formed. This poorly conceived war against the Federation is over. At least for the forces I still command. I cannot control, or be held accountable for what that traitor will do. I will order my Security forces to abstain from attacks on your worlds, although, they have lost some of the restraints I have held over them. They may not obey me either.”

  Mirikami, smiling behind his concealing helmet, doubting the Thandol could accurately interpret it anyway, had to ignore the bald-faced lies, double dealing, and blame shifting. Farlol would oppose Trindal, and whether it was effective or not, the resources of what would remain of the Thandol part of Empire would not be focused on the Federation for some time. Or, focused on the Planetary Union, which hit him as an afterthought.

  “Your Majesty, if this is the course you intend to follow, and your future actions support that intent, then the combined fleets of our two g
overnments will withdraw from your territory. Please note that I said combined fleets and two governments. The Galactic Federation is but one of the governments that had declared war on your Empire. The Planetary Union, independent of my government, was also attacked, and came here with me to stop the war from expanding. My government contains multiple species as citizens, but the Planetary Union contains only humans, like myself, with a vast population of potential human fighters, like those I brought here with me.”

  Let them think all humans were like the Kobani. Bullshit back for bullshit received. Eventually, it would be true. If they judged by the superb performance of the PU crews in space combat, they’d only see a difference in spacecraft used. It would be apparent that the Federation had the greatest technological advantage, but the technology of the PU was better than the Empire’s. None of their ships were easily hit by Decoherence bombs, and Debilitater radiation no longer effected their soldiers and sailors. It would be assumed that their citizens would show the same physical capability and radiation resistance now.

  There were some details discussed, to ensure the Emperor understood that bad treatment of their subservient species would be cause for intervention, and that his troopers were forcibly gathering them for removal from Wendal. At least those that were in the capitol city. By phrasing it as a forcible action of their loyal subjects, and not a voluntary evacuation, he hoped it would ease any retaliation.

  He explained their removal this way. “Your alien allies have helped you produce war material, which you used against us. We are removing those we can find, and forcing them to return to their home worlds, with a warning to not test our patience and help with war material production. Anything your own people produce is your business, so long as you do not attack us. If any of your Security Force species attack us, we will attack them.”