Koban: The Mark of Koban (10 page)

“She isn’t as popular as she pretends,” Maggi
said in an aside to the others. “With nearly fifteen thousand claimed supporters,
this is
all
she could call on to listen to her little welcoming speech?”
The gloating chuckle sounded all too much like Maggi was going to enjoy the
day.

The four, with Tet a step ahead, started for
the dome, their path naturally passing well in front of the small dais, actually
beyond the small cluster of congregants watching them with suspicion.

Mirikami noticed with alarm that although his armed
group carried Krall made pistols and human made neural Jazzers, he couldn’t see
a single weapon on any of Cahill’s people. They were outside with no
protection. Were they crazy? His own group was looking up and around, whereas
these people were only watching him.

He glanced up and saw that as usual, when they
saw activity at a human habitat, two squadrons of wolfbats were circling
overhead. Not flying as high as the fliers did at Prime City, where residents
there often took shots at them. Former captives there always watched for these
bat-like dog-sized intelligent hellions, having lost too many people to their
attacks.

Winter cold wasn’t the only reason that
Skeeters were less prevalent closer to the coast. The potentially killer pests
apparently preferred a jungle as a breeding ground, such as Prime City had nearby. Nevertheless, the milder climate of Hub City, provided by the warm ocean
currents, allowed more cold weather active time for the stinging eighteen-inch
wide bloodsuckers. It was shirtsleeve weather here today, and sunny. What were
these fools going to do if either of those threats appeared, swat them with
their bare hands?

The small crowd divided as the four
approached, clearly forming a lane for them to walk up to the dais, to “report”
to their self-described Governor. This would put the militia-like leader of the
lawless Prime City element in front of the representative of Hub law on Koban,
surrounded by her supporters. Only it didn’t happen that way.

Glancing down the human aisle at Cahill,
Mirikami nodded and waved cheerfully, as he continued towards the dome
entrance.

Maggi also beamed her sweetest smile, like an
arrow to the heart of her bitter rival from the original Board of Directors of
the University consortium. Maggi had wrested the Chairfemship of that Board
from Cahill.

The same Board that had organized the charter
of the Flight of Fancy, for its uncompleted scientific trek to Midwife, a now destroyed
remote biological research station found by the Krall. To Cahill’s mind, Maggi
was the reason she found herself stranded on Koban. The Chairfem’s rival now
knew research at the remote station was actually to hide outlawed genetic
research for human colonization efforts.

Flabbergasted, Cahill watched her adversaries
simply pass by her carefully arranged ambush. “Stop,” she shouted, sounding
desperate. “We are meeting out here, in the…, uh, beautiful sun light.” She
considered trying to order him back, but knew that wouldn’t work and would only
serve to show how little power she had.

She pulled up her blue robe’s trailing hem,
and called for the three ministers on the platform to help her down in this
damned dangerous gravity. She had ordered the platform’s height built to place
her feet at Mirikami’s eye level, forcing him to have to look up sharply at his
superior. Now she also had to call on those below to support her, with hands
gracelessly placed on her backside, to help lower her awkwardly to the tarmac.

Her supporters, some smirking despite
themselves, pulled back to permit her to lead them in the rush to catch
Mirikami and his “lieutenants” before they entered the dome. The Prime City criminals were walking rapidly, clearly taking advantage of the illegal gene
modifications they had used on themselves.

Like a trail of ants following their queen,
her followers fell in behind her as she made the best speed she could to catch
the four about to enter
her
city uninvited. In an effort to delay them
Cahill called out. “Show some manners and civility when visiting someone’s
home.”

Mirikami glanced back at the shout, but Maggi
said in an undertone, “Don’t pause or answer her Tet.”

She was dismayed when Tet stopped and turned
to face Cahill and her minions. In fact, Noreen and Jorl’sn followed suit. Had
none of them listened to her advice? She had no choice but to do the same,
since she wasn’t going to enter alone.

Cahill, seeing the idiots pause, sensed she
could salvage her strategy, because only her followers had seen the indignity
of the last few moments, plus a few insignificant Rimmer workers. Those five were
too busy placing the fresh meat on pallets for delivery to the freezers to pay
attention.

Lumbering her way forward, she suddenly
stopped in her tracks, causing several behind her to ram into her ample
posterior, nearly knocking her down. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing!
These horrible criminals were prepared to go farther outside the law than she
had ever imagined. They had all drawn their weapons, staring intently at her
and her followers from fifty feet away. Point blank range for those Krall made
weapons.

As they aimed two pistols apiece at her
personally, she screeched and dropped painfully to the pavement, her gathered
robes billowing over her head, blocking her view of the assassins. She screamed
repeatedly at the sound of their guns firing. The screams of her followers rang
in her ears, proving they were dying under the onslaught.

She heard more firing from farther away, near where
the Rim laborers had been working. They must be trying to drive her attackers
away. She had misjudged the loyalty of those ignorant scoundrels. She felt
around, and detected no injury greater than that to her knees and hands from
her fall. Somehow, Mirikami’s group had missed her when she cleverly dove down
to escape their fire.

The shooting had ended. Other than whimpers of
wounded behind her, it was quiet. She struggled to pull the fabric away from
her head. The sunlight dazzled her for a second as she accidentally looked
directly into the sun.

Blinking to see clearly, she heard a male
voice. “Is everyone alright? Stay away from the two on the tarmac, they might
not be dead.” Huh? That sounded like Mirikami’s voice. Had they only killed two
people with all of that shooting?

There were ragged cheers from behind her, and
shouts of thanks, and affirmations that her people were not hurt. Looking over
her shoulder, her eyes blinked away fear born tears that were not truly from a
brief glance at the sun or from pain. She saw her followers either sitting up
or climbing to their feet, looking towards the sky.

Cahill looked in the same direction, and saw
two squadrons of wolfbats flapping away frantically, with two members missing
out of the two groups of five from the trailing three bats.

One of her ministers, the one who had ran into
her ass, shouted thanks to Mirikami for killing the wolfbats. That Minister of
Food Distribution would be looking for a new job, Cahill decided.

Mirikami called back to the woman, “The men
recovering the meat hit one of them, Gracious Lady. It’s a very bad idea to
come outside without a gun. The wolfbats can tell when you’re unarmed. They
have great eyesight. You had better help your people get that meat into the
freezers, it’s partly what drew the bats. That represents almost three tons of
food.”

Scrambling to her feet, hair in complete
disarray, eyes tear streaked, robes off kilter and a rip under one armpit,
Cahill was determined to salvage some of her image by entering the dome at
Mirikami’s side, as if grateful to her subordinate. She started to hurry toward
them as the four continued under the overhang of the truck parking area.

As she closed the distance, running heavily and
gasping for every breath, she heard a shouted warning from Maggi, “Skeeters!
Under the overhang.”

The tiny woman had her Jazzer in-hand. Cahill
heard it buzz two times, aimed at the ceiling. The self-styled Governor
screamed, and instantly reversed course back to her milling supporters. They
would provide an alternative target for the nasty bloodsuckers. She could hide
in the crowd, thus reducing her own risk.

After the four visitors stepped into the dome,
on their way alone to what the residents here called the Great Auditorium,
Mirikami said with a smile, “I didn’t see any skeeters Maggi.”

“Hmm. My eyes are getting old.” She shrugged.
“They must have been there. I’m sure Cahill saw them. Did you see her pick up
speed going the other way?”

The Hub president was livid. “Admiral, telling me that the
invading force lost six point nine percent of their invasion force compared to
only
a two point four percent civilian loss is asinine.”

Admiral Anderfem, formerly of the Planetary Union Navy, now
retired and a Presidential advisor, cringed at Charlotte Stanford’s words. The
Admiral’s characterization was simply her attempt to make the Gribbles’ Nook
disaster sound less one sided, to help the President’s public image.

Stanford detailed the fallacy of the numbers. “The human
cost was nearly two million fifty thousand souls, in exchange for five hundred
sixty seven, or sixty eight aliens, depending on how they reassemble the pieces
at Gem Town. Do not make that percentage comparison publicly, or even in
private, Jean.

“Those Goddamned barbarians sent only eight thousand two
hundred twenty soldiers…, scratch that. Sadistic murderous bastards is the more
appropriate description…, against an unarmed civilian population of eighty five
million three hundred thousand or so people.”

“I’m sorry, Madam President.” Anderfem told her sincerely. “I
didn’t mean to sound as if I were diminishing the loss of so many lives. It was
stupid to couch the numbers in percentages that way. I just don’t like how the
media keeps laying the blame on you as heavily as they have been doing. Who had
any idea we had hostile aliens on our door step?”

“Jean, I apologize as well,” she told her friend, the heat
leaving her face. “I know you were looking out for my best interest.
Nevertheless, don’t get trapped in a numbers game like that. It would play
right into the hands of my opposition, where they could claim I’m insensitive
to the human tragedy involved.”

“Yes Mam.”

“I know you’ve been conferring with our active duty military,
and have poured over the data that’s been arriving with each courier Jump ship.
Give me an outline of what we know. I don’t have time for an in-depth briefing right
now. I’m addressing parliament in less than two hours, the Senate and House in
joint session.”

“Yes, Mam, I’ll try.” She took a deep breath as she mentally
organized what she had learned.

“The analysts all say the available surveillance images show
each of the sixteen ships held exactly five hundred twelve aliens in black or
gray uniforms, at an eight to one ratio, suggesting the gray suits were squad
leaders or team leaders in units of eight fighters. Then there was one blue and
one brown uniformed alien per ship. The observations prove the blue uniform
represents a leader of each ship, equivalent to a Captain. At least one of
those leaders, in Capitol City, spoke excellent Standard in an accidentally
recorded interrogation. That video recording ends horribly for the Police
Captain involved. The brown uniformed aliens are likely only pilots, but
possibly second in command, even though we saw no sign they controlled troops.”

“Jean, the numbers and clustering of their combat teams,
aliens per ship and the number of ships themselves seem familiar somehow. What
is the pattern here that I can’t quite identify?”

“Mam, the aliens have four digits per hand, a total of eight,
so we believe they use octal numbers as the basis of their number system, just as
we use base ten for our own numbers. We are finding multiples of eight in squad
sizes, number of ships, and number of
fighters
per ship. The two blue
and brown uniforms per ship is an exception.” Anderfem paused before broaching
the next item.

“In addition, another far more significant multiple of eight
has been identified. This was marked top secret until you decide to release
this data publically, or not. It might cause a panic.” Anderfem looked
extremely concerned.

Sighing, knowing it could only be worse news, “Let’s hear
it.”

“The sixteen attacking ships all performed their White Outs
virtually at orbital distance from the planet, in clusters of four. A feat of
navigation we can’t match, by the way. We categorized the recordings of the
gamma ray bursts for all sixteen ships as deriving from sixteen identical mass
ships. This correlates with what we already knew, from the subsequent landings.”
Here came the worse news.

“What has not been revealed is that there were two thousand
forty eight such bursts detected with identical characteristic White Outs in
the Oort cloud of the Gribbles’ Nook system. This happened the same day as the
invasion. However, it required several days at light speed for the bursts to
reach Nook. We suspect the sixteen attacking ships were a small flotilla from a
much larger fleet in the Oort cloud.”

The President shook her head in dismay. “Ok, what’s the best
guess for alien numbers in a fleet that size, assuming the same number of
aliens on each ship?”

“Over one million fifty two thousand aliens, as a lower
estimate.” Anderfem told her grimly.