The eight staircases spiraled through several higher decks, with some more compartmentalized than lower decks, but none that seemed suitable to hold the Jump Drive and fusion bottles. He’d expect heavy armor around that, in the event of a missile or plasma strike that penetrated deep. A human warship did this, and humans had far less combat experience than the Krall.
The next deck had a sizeable circular enclosure that occupied all but twenty feet or so of that level, leaving a wide corridor all the way around, with doors by each of the eight stairway landings. Each door had a different single symbol over them, and a key pad. Two symbols in a row were those he’d just thought of as Left or Right, but now he decided the eight symbols were probably more like 1 through 8, or something similar, such as names for the digits on a Krall’s two hands.
This wall didn’t look particularly armored, and there were no power or control leads coming out, so it shouldn’t be the Jump Drive room. However, he wanted to see inside anyway. He selected the door with the symbol he had called “L,” and now decided was actually “1.”
His pistol at the ready, he stood to the left side and pressed the top two left buttons. The wide door slid open with an audible whoosh. He peeked around the left edge, and glimpsed a figure coming towards him. He ducked his head back around the edge to avoid a slug through the eye and was on the verge of emptying his clip into the room when he heard a question.
“Toltak, is that you?”
It wasn’t so much the question; it was more the timber of the voice, and the familiarly accented Standard. It sounded like a human male, who next shouted at the owner of the hand holding the gun poking around the door edge at him.
“Don’t shoot, ...unh… there are seventeen unarmed people in here.” The man’s voice had grunted in the middle of his words as he yelled, accompanied by the sound of a body hitting the deck.
Mirikami called out, “Who are you?” He could hear scuffling across the floor. The glimpse had shown him the area was mostly open, and he vaguely recalled multiple large lumps or objects on the floor, but his attention had been on the figure approaching him in a hurry. It had certainly looked man-like in his brief glance. A Krall would have gotten off multiple shots, and would be through the door by now.
There was no reply to Mirikami’s question, but he could hear whispered murmurs from the room and soft footsteps. He decided to look again, but lowered his head so it would appear at a different height, in case anyone had a gun pointed where his head was seen last.
Holding his weapon ready, he aimed it inside as he exposed only his right eye to a potential shooter. A foot kicked out from the other side, knocking the gun flying across the corridor, and a tall well-built man stepped around the edge. He swung a wide hard punch with his right hand that went over Mirikami’s head, partly because Mirikami was still in a crouch, and partly because he was a short man anyway.
The unshaven man wore ill-fitting tight clothing, and the lower left sleeve flapped as if empty. He was well over a head taller than Mirikami, but his wild punch and awkward stance as he over balanced instantly told the smaller man something. Rather than draw his other pistol, Mirikami grabbed the man’s right forearm as it passed over, and pulled it around with clone mod strength, and twenty years of 1.52 gravity conditioning, and stepped into the man’s stomach with his left shoulder, straightened from his crouch, and tossed the man easily over his body, never letting go of his right arm.
The big man thumped heavily to the metal deck, knocking the wind out of his lungs, as Mirikami stepped closer and placed a foot on the right side of his neck, twisted and pulled up on his right arm, and bent his hand and wrist painfully down in a locking grip. He glanced into the room, and saw at least a dozen people, men and women, all terrified, and looking as if they’d like to dig under the metal floor and hide.
He turned his attention back to the man he had down, as he heard him gasp to regain the wind he’d lost. The man was trying to pivot his body around to ease the twisting that was close to dislocating his shoulder, or breaking his wrist. From the shape of the left sleeve, he only had a stump of a bicep for a left arm.
Mirikami warned him this time. “I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t stop struggling and tell me who you are and what you are doing on a Krall Clanship, you will be spending some time in a medlab, healing.”
With only one eye able to peer around the foot pressing into his neck, shoving his face into the deck, he said in a strained voice, “Sergeant Garland Reynolds, we all are Krall prisoners.”
Not easing his grip in the least, Mirikami continued his questions. “Where are your captors, how many are there?”
“After we landed on this world, the leader told us they were going hunting, leaving us locked inside. We heard distant clanging from below after the ship landed and then silence. I think all six warriors were going out to shoot something they call a rhino. Or an animal’s name that sounded something like that. I wasn’t sure we’d even landed at first. They cranked up the damn gravity two sleep cycles ago, and it never let up. Where the hell are we that the gravity needed to stay so frigging high after we landed?”
“I think they wanted to go rhinolo hunting. It was something they used to do when they lived here. The gravity stayed high because that’s its normal value. It’s one point five two times Earth standard. You said Sergeant, which I assume is a military rank and not your first name?”
“Yes, I was captured by the Krall invasion forces on Poldark. I’m a Sergeant in the third division, second battalion, in a ‘bait’ unit.”
The mention of Poldark explained why the accent was familiar. Mirikami could ask about his oddly named military unit later. “Poldark? Have you ever heard of a man named Mavray Doushan, from about twenty five years ago?”
“Sure. When the Krall raids first started, they played some recording by a guy that was supposed to be a captured diplomat of ours.”
“How about a Colonel Thaddeus Greeves, from Poldark?”
“Yea, but not in that recording. He led a security detail for our Ambassador to Bollovstic, on the same lost ship with this Doushan person. Doushan was a Deputy Ambassador or something, nobody very high ranking. They’re all presumed dead since the Krall ain’t noted for their kindness. I went through my guerrilla training in a camp named after Greeves. Otherwise I never heard of him.”
Mirikami released his hold and stepped away from the man, keeping an eye on the other people in the room, whom he now counted as sixteen in number.
“If Colonel Greeves were alive, could he vouch for you?”
“He ain’t, and he couldn’t. I wasn’t in the military until a year before the real invasion started. When it was clear Bollovstic was going to fall, and Poldark was getting larger raids, I joined up. That was two and a half years ago, Hub time. I figured we were next on the Krall’s list, and I was right.”
“Well, Sergeant Reynolds, I hope you didn’t name that camp the ‘Greeves Memorial Camp’ because Thad isn’t dead. He’s outside this Clanship, and may be fighting the Krall right now. You said there were six, are you sure that was all of them?”
“That’s all that Toltak, the leader I mentioned, said were going hunting. I’ve only seen three of them personally, since they don’t socialize with us much. The pilot and one warrior are all that ever came in here besides that sweet bitch, lady Toltak.” Mirikami smiled at the man’s irreverent manner and sarcasm.
“Do you know the layout of this ship? I’m looking for the Jump Drive to disable it, so they can’t get out of this system.”
“I’m ‘fraid not. There ain’t no guided tours on this luxury trip. They just shoved our butts up the stairs and left us locked in here for four days. By the way,” he was sitting up now, looking up at the door key pad above his head, “how’d you unlock the door? We’ve never managed to crack their damn code on Poldark, even when we have a spy bot watch them press the keys. We assume they have an embedded device, like our ear transducers, that’s needed to activate the d
oors or most of their equipment. Only we ain’t never found anything on or in any of their corpses that would open a door or work their equipment for us.”
Mirikami gave him a wide berth as he stepped closer to the key pad. He was growing more confident that Reynolds was indeed a prisoner, but wasn’t taking chances. Reaching up, he pressed the two top left buttons, and the door swiftly slid closed. He pressed them again, and it opened. He looked at Reynolds and shrugged. “Try it yourself. Perhaps it’s only locked from the inside.”
Reynolds got up stiffly, his breath recovered, no apparent rancor over Mirikami slamming him to the floor. That and his only good arm painfully twisted. He pressed the same two buttons, and the door remained stubbornly open. Mirikami waved him away, then closed and reopened the door. Reynolds tried again with the same lack of success.
“I don’t know why it won’t work for you Sergeant, but I have a dilemma now. I want to be sure this Clanship never Jumps out of this system. I don’t want to leave you people locked up, yet many thousands of lives depend on my preventing this ship from reporting our existence on this world to Krall leadership.”
“Ah. The trust issue.” Reynolds said, nodding. “There have been human collaborators and informants for the Krall before, trying to curry favor and earn survival. You just now found us alive and healthy on a Clanship. I understand, and I also know that no assurance from any of us will serve to convince you of our loyalty to humanity this minute.”
“You do see my problem.”
“I also see your solution. Lock us up again. Stop the Krall from getting away. If you succeed, we might survive. If not, they are eventually definitely going to kill us all anyway, when my bullshit story that kept me alive is proven false.”
“Can you tell me the story fast?”
“Not all of it, but here goes. While my unit played bait to ambush a small tank force of Dragons, I sorta accidentally killed their dumbass invasion leader and stole his armored suit for the electronics I saw on it, with his body still inside. After my capture, with his body in my personnel carrier, I knew I faced painful and ultimately fatal interrogation. I convinced them that humans had discovered a chemical that can force a Krall to fall asleep, just as humans do, and then get them to talk in their sleep and reveal secrets. That was why I told them I tried to kidnap their leader. It was total crap of course, since I had no idea who he was ‘till they told me.
“I offered some trumped up goofy explanation about this secret drug, and even faked sleep talking for them myself. They kept me alive unharmed for testing, and the information I promised them on the fake drug. I lied too damned good, and they were taking me to a world where they have other alien experts to study the biology of human sleep, and find a way to block my imaginary drug. Then they captured these sixteen poor bastards as part of the phony study I tricked them into conducting on me. I had no idea they would do that.”
The young people in the room had a dawning look of outrage at Reynolds overheard story. It was a ludicrous tale that only a devious and desperate human mind might concoct. It was something that the Krall might fear was possible, knowing nothing about why humans and other low animals needed to sleep.
Mirikami laughed, noting the angry looks of his fellow captives. “Sergeant, I’m convinced. Not about the ridiculous sleep drug, but about why all of you are here. That is far too wild a story to fool anyone but the Krall, who despise us for sleeping and are so proud that they don’t suffer from that so-called weakness.
“Besides, I think leaving you locked in with these angry youngsters could be hazardous to yours or their health. However, I don’t have a way to get any of you safely off this ship yet, but the portals at the bottom are a possible way out if I open one for you when I’m done. I haven’t a clue why none of you can activate the doors, unless they inserted a device on you that blocks the key pads.” Something about that notion tugged at the back of his mind, but it slipped away.
“Well, I do appreciate being let out. I might tag along to help you break something if you are OK with that. By the way you have my name, what’s yours?”
“Tetsuo Mirikami, former Captain of the Flight of Fancy, captured by the Krall over twenty years ago, and brought here as a captive, along with my passengers and crew.”
Now Reynolds looked suspicious. “They never found time to kill you in twenty years?”
“They tried once and failed, shortly before abandoning this planet for their own reasons, until today that is. I’m in good company, with thousands of other former captives and their children. However, that too is a long story and I don’t have time to tell it now. Suffice to say, they thought this dangerous heavy gravity world would kill all of us after they stranded us here. We obviously survived.”
As Mirikami talked, he walked over to retrieve his second pistol, noting a hopeful look on the Sergeant’s face. He believed the man’s story, but didn’t know him, so he holstered the weapon. “I don’t want to be caught without all my weapons before I disable this ship. When we make a break for it, and possibly have to face the six Krall, I’ll let you have a pistol. I assume you can shoot.”
“You assume right, although a plasma rifle is my preference against any Krall, armored or not. I sample fired their guns like those that we took off their dead. Ultra-light weight, but you have to be lucky to get through any part of the armor, except for the face plate, or a leg or arm.”
“I’ve never seen a plasma rifle.” Mirikami admitted. “The Planetary Union hadn’t allowed their manufacture after the Collapse, at least up until my ship was captured. These Krall were not wearing armor when they got into the shuttle, so these guns will work fine on them if you hit them enough times, or put one though an eye, mouth, or nostril slit. We also have some heavier rifles with the people outside.”
“It takes a lot to bring them down, I know from hard experience. Don’t count on that lucky eye or nose slit shot. They won’t hold still for you to do that, and they’ll put a slug through both your eyes if you try to hold steady aim that long.”
“We have some youngsters here that can do just that in a snap shot. If six is all they brought, then they are only a risk if they get inside this ship and leave. We will not allow that, and will destroy the ship if it looks like they might get away. I’d recommend you lead these people down, and hide somewhere below. Get out if you get the chance, but I’m going up. Good luck Sergeant.”
He had just started up the stairs again when Dillon Linked, despite Mirikami’s decision to avoid any such communication, in case the Krall detected the signal. Previously, the Krall that were combat testing them here had not cared about short-range suit communications, and allowed them routinely between the prisoners. This time they didn’t want the Krall to know anyone was here at all, at least before they had a chance to ambush them.
“Commander, they know we’re here. How are you doing, we see Alyson by the hatch but not you. Are you inside?”
Mirikami triple tapped his transducer to activate the transmit feature. “If they detected your signal they know for sure we’re here now. How do you know they know we’re here? And yes, I’m inside, searching for the Jump Drive. There may only be six of them. What are they doing?”
“Well, they have stayed hidden behind their shuttle for much longer than I’d ever expect Krall to wait to attack us. They are calling to the dome by radio. Thad and I had no idea what they were doing. I snuck over to the dome and called Jake from inside by a hard wire com set. Good old Jake chimed right in with an answer, not volunteering over the Link naturally, because he was maintaining radio silence until we called him. The damn Krall have been calling us on one of their standard frequencies almost since the shuttle landed. Because they spoke in high Krall, we couldn’t hear the sound of their voices outside. Jake says they want to negotiate a truce, and want to speak to the ranking clan leader here.”
“Are you kidding me? Negotiate a truce?” Mirikami was astonished. This was not a Krall tactic. Something wasn’t right.
Mirikami ignored Dillon’s repetition of Jake’s claim. He called down to Reynolds, who was trying to convince the other captives to go down the stairs with him. “Sergeant Reynolds, I just learned the six Krall outside are calling for a negotiation with whoever is the leader here. Do they ever do that in a fight situation on Poldark? Offer to negotiate?”
“What? Negotiate with humans? Hell no, they have never done so at our request, and have never offered to do so on their own. They never ask for quarter, nor give any. Toltak was an aid to the head Krall, called a Gatlek by rank, which was in charge of the Poldark invasion. She earned her status for that job as a charge-ahead-and-kill-them type, and our spy bots and surveillance bore that out.”
Mirikami nodded his thanks. “Jake, Link me to both Dillon and Thad.” This wasn’t giving anything away now.
Before he could speak however, Dillon asked, “Who the hell is Sergeant Reynolds? I only caught part of his reply through your transducer, but where did he come from?”
Thad hadn’t been in the first Link. “A human is aboard?”
“Focus gentlemen, he was a Krall prisoner with sixteen others, and I’ll explain later. Have you spoken back to the Krall yet?”
“It’s high Krall, we’d have to have Jake translate, but we weren’t going to talk to them before speaking with you. Instead, we have let them detect some dummy transmissions sent out over the savanna, as if to another party. We want to keep them waiting.”
“Wait. I didn’t really catch that the first time you said it. They are speaking high Krall, which they have no expectation we can hear, or understand if we could. Why? That’s an odd way to offer to negotiate with us. It’s like writing notes to a blind man.”
There was deafening silence from the other two men as they realized they had overlooked that non-trivial detail.
Mirikami had the answer in a flash of insight. “They haven’t attacked because they think the dome is occupied by Krall from another clan, and that is someone with whom they might negotiate. They don’t know how many warriors they are up against, and they left their ship wide open when they departed for the hunt. Something made them suspicious and they returned, but they didn’t go into the shuttle hanger in case some other clan is already inside.”
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 50
