Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Candice, Hub society has inertia, it keeps steering some people after logic says its social construct is no longer the best guide or even applicable. Even I haven’t given up hope that someone looking for all of us missing people us will look far enough away from Human Space to stumble onto this world. Stewart has the same hope. I know you think we should accept where we are, and turn this into home, in our hearts as well as in fact.”

  He looked up into the darkened sky, moon glow faintly illuminating some of the higher clouds; the view of the moon was blocked by the bulk of the dome a hundred feet away. The strange constellations were not a concern to people that had traveled to so many worlds. Almost no one remembered the sky locations of the random star alignments of Earth, which had ancient mythical names.

  Candice followed his gaze. “This is a beautiful world Glen, despite its hardships and dangers, I can love it. Can’t you?”

  He was about to answer when a click of claws on tarmac, and the faint scrape of paw pads caused him to start a turn as he reached for the pistol at his hip. Wolfbats did not fly at night, and it was still too cool for skeeters to be very active, but anyone with sense went outside armed.

  The ripper was on them before Glen’s weapon fully cleared the holster, and he died without ever seeing his killer. A swift gape jawed bite and head rotation as it leaped over him twisted and snapped his neck instantly.

  Candice, even slower to react, was struck on the back of her neck and head by a powerful-clawed foreleg as the ripper leaped over them both. It had determined how to strike them both simultaneously from behind, but the unfamiliar hard tarmac had thwarted a complete surprise when her claws made brief contact for the final leap. She had shifted position in midair to adapt to the prey that was slowly reaching for a stinging stick. That reduced the force of the impact to the neck of the smaller prey, stunning it rather than delivering the deathblow intended.

  As Merki touched down on the rock-like hard ground, she now used her claws, fully extended for the greatest possible grip despite the scraping noise, to turn back and finish the stunned smaller prey animal. It had fallen forward and rolled, the second stinging stick falling well to the side, out of its reach. Merki’s night vision could clearly see this, and there were no other of these prey animals nearby to concern her. There was no rush to complete the second kill.

  She sprang back to the still living prey, intending to experience its mind terror as it confronted death. She wanted to experience the thrill of the first kill of one of these prey animals by her pride.

  There were no shared mind pictures from any of her elders of this prey animal. However, she assumed it would match those shared images of the red ones, rarely slain in the past. They each had held a belief in their superiority over all living things, and a hatred of her kind, mixed with respect. The mental images remembered from them came mixed with fear and awe that they were defeated by one of the pride.

  The prey was seriously injured and unconscious, robbing her of experiencing the animal’s terror. However, that would not prevent Merki sensing the most recent thoughts and impressions from the animal’s mind. She brought her neck frill into contact with the creature’s head, to form a clear connection.

  I love this world my mate is hurt I miss home I hate the red ones I want cubs how can we get home…

  Recoiling, Merki broke contact, stunned at the overwhelming intensity of the kaleidoscope of images, feelings, and impressions from the female. That was another shock! She knew this unknown creature was female and her mate, whom she loved, was lying dead near her and was still a clear sharp image in her mind. These animals were self-aware! As the pride and their hunter cousins were aware, only this was a stronger sense than she had ever experienced, even with direct frill contact with her pride mates.

  Reluctant to try contact again, Merki nevertheless approached the female she knew was only moments from death. An impending death was a sensation any of the pride could feel from a mortally injured prey animal, and this creature instinctively felt death approaching, even if she was not conscious.

  Instead of contacting the head, where her people knew lay the source of images, she lowered her own head to permit the frill to contact only the outstretched front limb. She found the images were still present, but that degree of filtering made them weaker and less painful. They were slipping away as her life also slipped away. Merki absorbed images that were confusing and strange to her, lacking any context for most of them.

  Others images were not unlike those experienced from pride mates that opened their minds, not deliberately shielding. Merki sensed Images of this creatures own pride mates, some whom she loved or liked, and some she did not like. Again, a fleeting image of the red ones and a strong fear of them for her entire pride came through, unmistakable. This creature’s people hated them as predators that killed wantonly, for pleasure. The same sense of wrongness the pride images conveyed of the red ones. The pride shared a similar morality with these slow ones.

  The mind faded as Merki’s senses told her the heart had finally stilled. Confused, she backed away a short distance. It wasn’t easy to consider this female as prey now. Oddly, that impression did not fully extend to her dead mate. He had tried to defend against the attack, and use the stinging stick to kill her. Yet that wasn’t why he felt more like a prey animal, and the female did not. It was possibly because there had been no mental connection with him.

  A sense of hunger reminded her of why she had stalked these creatures. Her responsibility to her cubs overrode her reluctance. She regretted having made frill contact with the female, because of the confusing and conflicting sensations she now experienced. The slow ones no longer seemed like normal prey to Merki. However, her cubs needed the nourishment the meat would indirectly provide. This was not a wanton kill, and wasting the meat would make it one.

  Placing the carcasses almost parallel, heads touching, Merki used a method she’d seen in mental pictures. She opened her massive jaws wide, gripping both of the skulls, with left and right canines puncturing the tops and bottoms of each head. An awkward wide stance as she dragged them away made her slow, but the weight was minor for her.

  After reaching a medium height tree some distance from the slow one’s den, Merki placed one carcass there, well off the ground. Now, with one carcass, she could move faster to reach her birthing den on a rocky hillock quite some distance away. She then raced back to retrieve the second kill. She had made sure there were no subterranean insects near her new den, to steal her store of meat. Now she would feed and await the delivery of her cubs.

  She had no idea how she was going to keep producing the protein rich milk for them unless she continued to prey on the slow ones. It was the only way to keep the cubs alive until she could escape their territory, although stalking them had lost its attraction.

  The mind images from the dying female and its feelings were disturbing to Merki, because they conflicted with her life experiences, what she had learned. Her cubs had learned nothing directly from the outside world yet, receiving only what their mother provided. Now they had these foreign images.

  9. This is not a Drill

  General Nabarone finally had his new Planetary Union command complete. Ten thousand troops, the pick of the last six training cycles from TB-85, twenty five thousand recruits per cycle, the best soldiers out of one hundred fifty thousand, processed through an ever tougher training program as the Krall maintained their murderous pressure on the Hub government.

  “Mike, you followed through for me. My boys in the training cadre spotted the best prospects, and the signing bonus you provided kept many of them here. Frankly, the raid on Bollovstic provided as much motivation as the cash. These are motivated young people, ready to fight. Finally out from behind mother’s apron.”

  Governor Boldovic was annoyed. “Hank, your loose tongue and anti fem sentiments will get your ass fired, and I personally don’t care for your attitude any more than I like the anti-male sentiment we’ve endured from the
Ladies in charge.”

  “They wouldn’t be giving this much of a role to the men if they could do it themselves, Mike and you know it. We are entering another reversal in culture.”

  “Hank, women make up almost one quarter of your new crack troops, and if humanity dies, the Ladies go with us. Men are not sacrificial lambs in this war; we all face the same fate. If you disrespect any of your own troops, I’ll replace you myself.”

  Nabarone paused in thought a moment. “You’re right. You are right and I apologize, Mike. I’ve had that shoulder chip so long it’s hard to knock it off myself. I’ve seen how my female troops perform. They are smart, fast, and good at improvising, and all of them became good shots. With the powered armor, they can match up against any man except for height and weight. None of us can match a Krall.”

  Boldovic waved his acceptance of the apology. He accepted his friend’s sincerity because Hank seldom felt the need to apologize, and his pause just now was his typical reaction when he reconsidered and admitted he was wrong.

  “Anyway Hank, I asked you here to tell you that the orbital arms factory will be Jumped in-system sometime this week, and the news of that impending arrival was delivered by the Union cargo carrier that bought your twenty new combat shuttles and pilots.”

  “Hot Damn! Now I can start to disburse my troops to protect more cities. But shuttles are far cheaper than tanks, why only twenty? I requested a hundred.”

  Boldovic laughed out loud. “That was fast even for you Hank. From ‘hot damn’ to looking the gift horse in the mouth in ten seconds. Did you also ask for trained pilots?”

  “Ah, no. I assumed we could scrounge those up on Poldark, and train them,” he admitted.

  “Well you now have fast, well equipped and heavily armed shuttles, and two Warrant Officers to operate each of them.”

  “Warrants?” He asked suspiciously. “Navy?”

  “Navy trained, because they have the only school, but they’re Army, and in your chain of command and have to answer to you.”

  “OK. Except with only twenty fast transports, we aren’t going to be as mobile as I was planning. The Krall attacks on colonies Bollovstic, New Dublin, and the one deeper into the New Colony, Brussels, all followed the rapid, brief, and dispersed strikes I predicted. Thirty-two single ships, except for the additional eight on Brussels.

  “You recall that I wanted to distribute our ten thousand troops widely, to move one hundred defenders into one hundred population centers in less than an hour. How many can each of these shuttles carry?”

  “The communication I read said fifty troopers plus two medics, and all of their equipment.”

  “Hell, that’s only ten percent of my force that’s mobile Mike. We need to get our troops where the bastards are killing people.”

  “Hank, it goes against my grain, but if we sell our new factory weapons to people that want them, even at lower than fair prices, that income can be used to buy civil shuttles locally to eventually meet your needs. That’s really a hidden tax, but they won’t resent it as much when they get guns.

  “In the meantime, if you spread the other nine thousand troops among the larger population centers, we have ground transportation to move them to the outskirts. The Krall have so far landed outside of towns and cities, and then raided into the suburbs. We can protect most of the people most of the time, to paraphrase.”

  Nabarone grumbled and mangled his own old saying. “If it was their ‘ox being screwed’ I suspect the Hub would respond to the pressure a lot faster.”

  “You’re mixing up your metaphor’s Hank.”

  “No I’m not.”

  ****

  Actually, the Hub government did feel political pressure. However, the outer worlds felt the pain and loss of their citizens and security. Bollovstic was the first to suffer, when thirty-two Krall single ships landed randomly on the planet, and those warriors killed at least nine thousand defenseless men, women, and children before departing. The Krall’s only losses were two single ships, one destroyed by its anti-tamper device, and a miner collapsed a mineshaft on the other.

  That Krall warrior had concealed his ship inside a gold mine, of all places. Literally, and metaphorically as well, as it turned out. The crafty miner made a hundred times more money from selling the ship’s location to the Planetary Union than he had ever made in five years of gold mining.

  The Krall had needed to retrieve those two stranded warriors with a shuttle, for a net loss of zero Krall lives. That was probably a null genetic improvement mission from the Krall’s standpoint, if they intended to gain more than simply the terror effect.

  ****

  Admiral Anderfem stood next to the captured Krall single ship. “Doctor Magnus, I have to say that this doesn’t look like a leap in technology. It’s not very impressive looking, about five and a half feet high and…, what? Thirty feet long?”

  “Close Admiral, thirty four and a half feet by five feet nine, ignoring some fractions. That flat matte grey finish isn’t flashy either. However, this is one hot little ship, with a tough hull, with active and reactive skin.”

  “Can you turn it on for me yet? I heard that we’ve been unable to switch on Krall equipment.”

  “No Mam, we have not managed to activate their systems. It just doesn’t respond to us when we try to power it up. However, that did not prevent us from studying its design, and figuring out what it does and how it does things. Much as we might study a Tri-vid set we couldn’t activate, and learn what it did and how it might work. We know some gee whiz stuff, but don’t understand everything.”

  “I’ve been hearing rumors, why don’t you just list the gee whiz features you know about, even if you don’t understand them yet. Assume I haven’t heard any stories. I’ll have to brief the President later, and neither one of us were physics majors, so go easy.”

  “Yes Mam. Well, consider that dull unimpressive looking hull. It’s a nearly diamond hard carbon crystal matrix material that we are trying to understand at a quantum level. We know that when a laser, maser, or plasma strikes it, the surface instantly becomes reflective at that specific frequency, or for radar, it can also become absorbent. It can vary that reflectivity for multiple beams of different frequencies at different places on the hull, meaning it is a localized effect, not a global change. Otherwise, we could hit it with multiple beams of differing frequencies at different spots and one might burn through if the entire hull was set to reflect at a single frequency. There is a feedback mechanism that takes the impinging radiation and…” Anderfem was tapping him on the arm, interrupting his thoughts.

  “Go easy on me. You do remember that request, made just one minute ago Doctor?” She was smiling.

  “Oh. Sorry, I’ve hardly been able to get this gem out of my mind. OK, onward to the next gee whiz it is.” He walked over to four protrusions on the hull, spaced evenly around the front circumference. There were four matching protrusions at the rear.

  “These are the Krall equivalent of Trap field emitters. Not enough to form a full spherical enclosure for a Jump Hole, and in fact they appear to exist only to trap low level tachyons for powering the Normal Space drive and inertial compensation system.” He patted the hull almost reverently.

  “The Trap based Normal Space drive system is one that we can’t match in a ship this small. This one would out power a naval cruiser.

  “That’s why we can’t get away from them when we run, we’ve observed them accelerate or decelerate at just over two hundred gravities external. Our best inertial compensation capability would allow whoever was inside to experience forty-four gravities, assuming we could package it this small. And if we also didn’t care about them being crushed into a mush patty.” He glanced at her quickly to see if his wisecrack had crossed the line. Anderfem just nodded.

  “Even allowing for Krall physical superiority, this is beyond certainty a fatal level of g’s for them as well. Forcing us to conclude that they found a means that exceeds even our theoretical physi
cs concerning what we can do with gravity and inertia via feedback from Tachyon Space.”

  Anderfem had a grim expression. “Then we can’t even match them in our understanding of fundamental physics and math?”

  “That was our fear at first Admiral, despite our impression that the Krall, on average, are less intelligent than the average human. Both species could have exceptionally brilliant members, but our exceptional geniuses should be smarter than theirs should be.”

  Magnus tilted his head and cocked an eyebrow with a twinkle in his eye. Anderfem sensed an Ah Ha moment was coming. She was right, but it took more than a moment to get it out of the good Doctor.

  “We reanalyzed the Gribble’s Nook raid. We noted the times of arrival and clustering of the Krall fleet into the Oort cloud of that system by the later arrival of the White Out gamma rays. Then we examined the arrival times of the other sixteen ships from that fleet at the planet. Exactly two thousand forty eight ships had White Outs in the Oort cloud, then exactly sixteen White Outs at the Nook. The sixteen raid ships Jumped inwards at Tachyon Space superluminal velocity, and naturally arrived long before the original Oort cloud White Out gamma rays did, because those gammas traveled only at the speed of light.”

  Before Anderfem could complain about him not “taking it easy” again, he raised his hand to forestall her.

  “The surviving fifteen ships of the Nook raid rejoined the Oort cloud fleet, we know precisely when each of the fifteen Jumped from Gribbles’ Nook, in somewhat staggered departures, and several days later we received the identical gamma ray staggering of their White Outs as they returned to the Oort cloud fleet.” Now he had the payoff.

  “Those ships could not have outraced light speed by as much as they did in Tachyon Space. They traveled at least five times as fast as our quickest couriers travel, and exceeded our theoretical velocity for ships of that mass range in Tachyon Space. Just as this little craft” he patted the hull again, “can accelerate, and gravity compensate in Normal Space beyond our theoretical limits. We believe it’s the same technical mechanism to accomplish both!” He ended on a triumphant note.