Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  Carson and Ethan displayed far more control of their actions right from the start. They weren’t close to their maximum physical strength yet, because that would take months of strenuous exercise, which they were now capable of exerting. Yet they were moving much more smoothly and confidently than the other forty-eight candidates from the first week were.

  Tet and Maggi had heard some rumbles that Carson and Ethan had received some sort of special “treatment.” People had noticed the boy’s advanced skills with the new modifications. Knowing that the special treatment allegation was false did nothing to dispel the rumors, or explain the differences. They decided they needed to do something before they had a problem.

  To assure a free and open discussion, Maggi invited the first fifty candidates, and their parents, to meet in the old Krall fighting arena. Half of that level had become a hydroponics section, the other half was now an exercise area for residents, and there were two partitions for school use, divided between primary school and high school. The meeting would use the exercise area.

  There was room for three times the hundred and fifty people that came. The exercise equipment from multiple derelict passenger ships was in the room, with a padded floor on one side for tumbling, yoga, acrobatics, martial arts, boxing, wrestling, and even hand-to-hand combat practice. There was a weight lifting section, and a full range of exercise machines to develop any muscle or groups of muscles that needed help in meeting Koban’s heavy gravity demands.

  The room was familiar to most of the residents of Prime City. This level had been off limits when the Krall were here, but there had been a smaller area for humans to exercise. That was where those facing combat to the death with the Krall had worked out. Later, the exercise habits continued even after the Krall left, and with more people, they needed a larger area.

  This room was where the newly enhanced SG1 teenagers, now changed to Third Gens, had been coming to work on their coordination, and building strength into their new muscles. It was also here that other parents had watched Carson and Ethan work out, and saw them performing side by side with their own TG kids. They claimed there was a significant difference, and they wanted to know why. So did Tet, Maggi, and the boy’s parents.

  Maggi moved to the center of the padded area, and invited everyone to seat themselves on the edge of the pads, leaving the center open.

  In her drill sergeant voice, a constant surprise to even those that knew the small woman well, she addressed the assembly. “I think you know why we are meeting here, but I’ll make certain all of you know. The first class of fifty new Third Gens has been working out here, and some of you have observed a difference in how advanced Carson and Ethan are in their adaptation, compared to most of the other TGs.” She paused just a moment.

  “Maggi,” a voice spoke up from the crowd. A man rose to his feet. It was Frank Constansi, one of the members of Mirikami’s legendary Spider Hole combat team. He remained close friends with Tet. “They aren’t good compared to most of our kids. They are far above any of them. I don’t think you’ve watched them all exercise together. Unlike some suspicious types I’ve heard speak out in the Great Hall, I know that you and Tet wouldn’t hide anything from us, nor condone favoritism. I suggest there is a reasonable explanation, and I want us to help you find what it is.” He paused briefly to look around at the other parents.

  “When we do understand how they got so good so fast, then we can see that all of our new TGs get that same benefit, my son included.” There was scattered applause.

  Maggi nodded her approval. “I’ll admit I have not seen Carson or Ethan when they were up here, although I’ve looked in on others exercising, and I was impressed with their leap ahead in strength, and how fast they are. I did see signs of coordination problems. Trips, falls, accidental smacks to a friend’s face or body when they play fight. They all appeared able to lift a huge amount of weight for their size. I heard Dillon say that both Carson and Ethan have broken his own personal weight lifting records by a large margin, and even the girls are matching or beating his old lifts, made when he was younger. Is that what you mean? That Carson and Ethan are a lot stronger?”

  There were multiple “no’s,” and head shaking.

  Frank explained. “The difference doesn’t appear in strength, because I watched another seventeen year old boy, Matt Dempsey, beat Ethan on a squat lift. In the strength category, nearly all of the seventeen year olds understandably outperform the sixteen year olds. The difference is in those two boy’s speed of movement, in the level of coordination they have. That’s where they beat anyone they match up with. I think you should watch some examples. The kids know what I mean. Let them show you.”

  “OK. Let’s see what we are here to discuss. Ethan, Carson, please step out her next to me, and I’d like Matt Dempsey to come up, and several other seventeen-year-old boys. I want to avoid the age issue with the younger boys, and with girls that would have less muscle mass.”

  Reluctantly, seven boys walked out, half of them pushed there by their parents, including a red faced Carson, with his dad doing the shoving.

  Maggi motioned them to join her. “I won’t bite,” she assured the reluctant participants. They moved closer, but acted as if she might be lying about the biting.

  “OK boys, I assume we aren’t talking about who can jump highest, and it isn’t weight lifting, or other strength related ability. So how about we see a demonstration of what Mister Constansi means. Matt, you did a lift that beat Ethan, what is something else he can do that you can’t do? Describe it and then the two of you show us.”

  Matt turned red. “I’d rather show you with someone besides Ethan or Carson. I don’t want to look stupid.”

  “Fine, pick one of the others first, but that isn’t going to show us the difference we need to see.” Maggi was being unusually gentle with the shy boy in front of the crowd.

  Matt motioned to Jose Wittgenstein, his friend, and a son of a former Spider Hole team member.

  Matt explained they were going to do two things, but warned they wouldn’t look very impressive. He told them the demonstrations were simply a child’s games, and the first was patty cake. Only with superfast hand movements, palm slaps, and handclaps. The two boys sat facing one another, close together, legs crossed, placing their hands on their own knees.

  Before they started, Maggi couldn’t help reverting to her natural acerbic manner. “Matt, you didn’t want to work with Carson or Ethan because you would look stupid. However, you and Jose will play patty cake for us. That’s better you think?”

  The comment drew laughs from the gathered parents, and both boys turned red. Matt simply replied, “Perhaps you should just watch us Mam. This involves speed and coordination.”

  At a nod from Matt, the two started in the standard slow manner of clapping their own hands once, then smacking each other’s palms together, then clapping their hands, slapping their knees, then alternating palm slaps from both right hands, then both left hands, and repeat. It was a variation on a child’s game seen on many worlds. The repeated cycles always sped up until one or the other player missed a clap, palm smack, knee smack, or missed the other person’s hand. Someone always made a mistake when it got too fast.

  The boy’s movements gathered velocity quickly as they got the rhythm going, and in five repetitions, their movements had accelerated to what seemed an impossible speed for a human. The loud staccato crack of their hands sounded like rapid applause, at a machinegun pace. Their hands were near blurs, and they continued at this pace for thirty incredible seconds. Until Matt smacked so hard he pushed one of Jose’s hand too far back, spoiling the flow. They stopped, everyone’s ears ringing from the rifle cracks of their hands. For a “stupid” game, there was now stunned silence.

  Matt looked up and said, “I lost control of the hand slap I was trying to deliver. I could easily see Jose’s left hand coming, but I hit too hard and off center, and pushed his hand back and to the side. It was my mistake, so he wins.” He shrug
ged.

  “That always happens with this game in about ten or fifteen seconds, for most of us. Not for Carson or Ethan, because none of us have their control at higher speeds. Just now, Jose and I leveled off at a speed where we wouldn’t make mistakes too soon in front of everybody. We stayed slow for that reason.”

  Maggi was shocked. “That was slow? Hell son, I could barely see your hands you were so fast. Silly game or not, being able to do that so fast is positively not child’s play.”

  “Well, maybe not, but I don’t last three seconds with either Carson or Ethan. Nobody does. They don’t make mistakes, and we can’t increase speed without losing the rhythm.”

  Maggi glanced at Ethan, right next to her. “Who wins between you and Carson?”

  “We can go ten minutes without a mistake usually, and it’s true that we can go faster than the other TGs. It can be either of us to make a mistake, but it’s probably more often me. The speed of the other kid’s movements, their muscle speed, isn’t really the limitation with playing us. It is their ability to keep the hands meeting the target dead center, with the proper force. That’s where Carson and I are better. Our eye-hand coordination and muscle control at high speed.”

  Matt reminded her of the other game he’d mentioned. “Mam the other example I was going to show is even dumber to watch, and has the same outcome if we play against them. One person holds out both hands palm down, the opponent places their hands palm up under yours. You’ve seen this game. The person on the bottom has to bring one or both hands up and over, trying to slap either or both of the top hands before the other player can pull them back. None of us has ever beaten Ethan or Carson. They react too fast for the rest of us.”

  Matt clarified. “None of you guys, I mean you SG1’s can beat any of us in these games, or even come close to keeping pace. Moreover, even if Carson and Ethan can beat us now, we aren’t as far behind them as you are behind us. We see we are slowly improving compared to them, but we don’t know how they got so far ahead of us.”

  Jose laughed, and added what proved to be a telling remark, and a first clue. “Ethan and Carson can also beat Kobalt and Kit, and Kit’s first cubs, using a variation of the hand and paw slap game. The cats are tremendously fast, or I used to think so, but I think all of us will eventually be faster than rippers are at some things.” He pointed at Ethan and Carson. “You should see them at the fast draw. No Krall will want to face any of us if we all get that fast.”

  “I never saw you practice that here,” Frank told them.

  Carson answered for them all. “We only practice on the range, and just in the last few days. It’s always been us alone, since almost nobody goes there anymore.”

  His Dad spoke up. “Son, how about we unload, and test out our draws on one another. I’d really like to see that.” Dillon had once practiced often with the pistols and holsters Thad had given him and Noreen many years ago. He had thought he was about the fastest in the dome, “back in the day,” as Maggi might say.

  He removed his own clip, pointed it up and pulled the trigger, making an audible click, to confirm a slug had not come loose and stayed in the chamber. Despite Carson checking his own gun, good old dad double-checked it anyway.

  Carson seemed annoyed, prompting Dillon to say, “If you shot your dear daddy dead, do you think you’d survive dear mommy’s lifetime of unending lectures?”

  Noreen’s voice floated clearly over the chuckles from the crowd. “Your gun is not the one dear daddy had better worry about when he talks like that. Mine is still loaded.” That drew a lot more than chuckles.

  The two squared off, about twenty feet apart. Carson nearly as tall as his father, but less filled out. However, he was still growing, and everyone told him he was better looking, which was saying something. He had inherited additional good looks from his mother, and had her Earth origin Hispanic complexion.

  “Son, you can draw when you’re ready.” Dillon felt extremely calm and confident, because he still secretly practiced his draw in a mirror, when nobody was around to watch.

  Calm, until Carson answered. “No Dad, I’d like you to feel like you had at least a ghost of a chance. You start first. I’ll even let you clear your holster before I go.” They were both using the low-slung tied down holster version Thad had introduced.

  Dillon answered the pretend insult with as fast a draw as he had ever felt challenged to make. He moved his hand back against the butt and rolled the gun easily out of the holster on the back sweep, so that when it cleared the leather, the barrel would already be pointing at his target, not needing more time to raise the gun, with his finger inside the trigger guard squeezing.

  What Dillon saw and heard was a rapid series of clicks from Carson’s pistol. It magically appeared chest high, aimed at his heart, without an apparent draw having taken place. From the number of clicks, that weapon probably would have fired an eight round clip, all before Dillon’s own gun made a forlorn, much too late, single click.

  Metaphorically, daddy was dead meat, overkilled by his beloved, faster-than-greased-lightning son. Crap!

  It had happened in front of many amused watchers, the worst, from his perspective, being Maggi, Tet, and his wife. The humorous references would follow him to his grave he assumed.

  Thad uttered a simple “Wow.”

  Tet wanted a better measure than simply wow. “Jake, you recorded that, I know. Measure the time taken for Carson’s hand to start to move towards the gun until the first trigger pull. Compare that to recorded examples of Krall pistol draws seen on the Flight of Fancy and here on Koban. Tell me the result over the speaker system here in the exercise room please.” The AI, being a computer, was even faster on the draw.

  “Sir, the total time that Carson used until the first trigger pull, compared against the averaged collection of all Krall pistol draws I’ve recorded from various holster types and attachment locations on their belts, was two point six times faster. However, it was only one point nine times quicker than the fastest Krall I’ve observed drawing a pistol.”

  “Wow indeed,” concluded Mirikami. “Carson, you just outdrew the fastest Krall Jake ever saw pull a pistol, by nearly a factor of two. Frankly, I’ll want to see this recording played again, in real time, then in slow motion. I’m not sure what I saw. That was just a blur.”

  He looked around. “Can you other kids do that? Or close to that speed?”

  Mirikami saw general nods. If they weren’t that fast now, they would get there soon he thought.

  Dillon pointed out something that made Carson’s draw seem slower than it really was. “Son, you raised the pistol to chest height before pulling the trigger, wasting time. You could beat that fastest Krall even quicker if you learn to shoot from the hip. Nicely done, however.”

  Maggi resumed control of the meeting. “Let’s get down to what we all came here to find out. How is it that two of our first fifty candidates have adapted sooner to the new nervous system than the other forty-eight? What is different about them, or what did they do differently?”

  Matt said something that offered the second clue. “If I could have practiced with one of the rippers, I think I could have gotten faster on the hand slap game. Carson and Ethan sure got faster that way.”

  Ethan explained how it had happened with him. “At first I could never beat Kit, her paws always got me. Except after a time I could sense sooner when she was about to move, and react earlier. Do you think just that bit of practice would help?”

  Dillon, with his knowledge of both the gene mods and the ripper nervous system, had a different idea. “I doubt if it’s simply practice. I’m sure most of the kids practiced those moves because it’s fun to amaze us slow pokes. However, I think Carson’s and Ethan’s faster progress is connected to frill contact with rippers. Frilling may have stimulated early maturity in the newly forming super conductor nerve receptors. Both boys have certainly had frequent exposure to frilling, which may account for accelerated nerve receptor maturation. I suggest we t
ry this for a week with some other candidates. Some from this group and a couple from the next class, and see if we can measure an increased rate of progress.”

  Marlyn made an offer as well. “Kit’s cubs from two years ago, Kayla and Kally, are returning from a visit to their father’s pride this week. Her newest cubs weaned last month, and if Kit will permit the exposure, I’ll see if we can get her to let some more kids spend time with the babies. Kopper and Kandy are too young to play the hand slap game, but that would expose at more TG’s to increased ripper mental contact. If it’s not just the game, it could be the mental exercise of using the new nervous system, which frilling may encourage.”

  The simple experiment started with a random drawing, done by Jake, who announced names of six TG kids that would start frilling with the older cats today and with the new cubs if they received Kit’s approval.

  After the meeting, Tet asked Dillon, Thad, and their boys to go with him to the firing range. He wanted to test them a bit more than watching a quick draw and hand slap games.

  When they entered, Dillon said laughing, “Not sure what you’re up to, Tet, but I’ll not get into a shooting competition with these two. I’m proud of them, but I had my butt handed to me once already.”

  “Aw, come on Dad. I’ve never beaten you at anything physical, and now I can. Let me try.”

  “Perhaps later son. I really do want to see what you can do. First, I’d like to know what Uncle Tet has on his mind.”

  “I’ll get to that soon Dillon. I want them to show off a bit first. Look down range to the farthest targets, the one in each lane at a thousand feet. The Krall are notoriously accurate shots. If you are faster, but can’t kill one before he kills you, your speed is useless. Reload your pistols and use eight of the target rounds on the table. I’m not interested in a fast draw now. I want to see you hit the bull’s eye, single shots.”