Koban: The Mark of Koban (33 page)

The President could see that the Joint Chiefs were
virtually on the edge of their own seats. They didn’t know about this either,
and couldn’t interrupt the President’s briefing to pose the questions they must
be burning to ask.

“I do have an idea Madam President. My
Flagship was the most massive ship and a more crucial target if the Krall knew
of our planned dispositions. Yet I had no more Clanship coverage than the light
cruisers, which was none at all. I now believe that it was our plan to disperse
our most capable ships far away from K1 that set the stage for a last moment
early warning to the Krall.

“All of the six battleships were on the
ant-spinward side of Human Space when they jumped. The Gauntlet and Mace were
located the farthest from K1. Those two ships were the first hit by Worms as
they emerged, and a study of the proximity of Worm missiles to the other
battleships as they made their White Outs shows that the
farther
away
the battleship was when it started its Jump to K1, the earlier the Clanships
must have fired their missiles at the arrival points.

“Had the other ships traveled farther, I
believe the Krall would have had Clanships waiting for them as well. The
pattern of ships still climbing out of atmosphere, below others of our
arrivals, matches well with the various distances they had to travel to reach
K1.

“It will take scientific analysis of these
indicators to reveal how much notice they actually had, based on our Jump
distances. However, I feel confident that the Krall have technology that
detects some advanced signal that tells them when and where a White Out will
happen.”

“A faster than light signal Admiral?” Stanford
knew it was a stupid question as it left her mouth.

“Nothing can travel even
that
slow in Tachyon
Space, or T squared Space, Mam. The Krall obviously can sense some advanced
wave or effect of where a White Out will happen, if it travels for long enough.
We won’t make that mistake again. Now that we know the effect must exist, our
scientists can watch for it by setting up Jump tests. And we might figure out
the rocket propelled quantum bore devices too, since we have five of them that
ran out of fuel inside our ships.”

Stanford stood up to leave. “Admiral, you only
lost our first battle, outnumbered, against an experienced and technologically
more advanced enemy, and you survived to learn from the experience. You brought
most of our fleet home, along with clues about the Krall’s technology. We might
have fared a lot worse. Thank you.”

****

Kanpardi, as Gatrol of all the Krall forces for this early phase
of the war on humans, had a requirement to address the joint clan leaders when
they called for an explanation. He considered it an inefficient use of his
time, but the leaders wanted to know more about how the humans had managed to
mount a surprise attack on their new forward base.

“The humans launched a failed raid, and lost more than one
third of the ships they sent against us. We detected their arrival points for
their longest Jumps in time to wait for them.

“Many of the prey’s big ships were those we detected, and were
the first destroyed or damaged. Some were killed by warriors that chose to earn
guaranteed breeding rights by their destruction, and a place for their names in
our histories. We seriously damaged many surviving human ships with the old Raspani
weapons.

“I will now maintain Clanships in orbit, to be ready for
them more quickly. We can bring orbiting weapons platforms here if that is
wanted. I do not believe we need the Olt’kitapi ships for this new tactic from
the humans. We do not have so many Olt’kitapi ships as we once had, and no
experienced operators.” He was careful not to call the Krall that could control
those ancient ships “warriors.” The meeting would waste more of his time in the
following discussion of why those Olt’kitapi changed Krall were still allowed
to breed.

Kloptra, of Dorbo clan had a complaint to voice, as Kanpardi
expected. “My clan lost three domes and nearly half of our Clanships. How will
you compensate us for this loss, caused by your failure to prevent this attack?”

“Dorbo received the same warning that launched Clanships
from Graka, Tanga, Mordo, and even your finger clan Maldo. Those clans and
others activated their ship defenses or rose in time to meet the enemy, and
lost few ships on the ground or in atmosphere. It was your clan’s decision to
train all of your novices for fighting humans on the ground, and left none on
duty in your ships. You knew, as did all clans, that humans had built a fleet.
You chose to ignore the threat.

“We have called for Clanship construction to increase on
three slave worlds, and over one thousand twenty four existing replacements will
arrive from our other worlds. However, you will
not
receive a larger
share because you were not prepared. You would not have had domes destroyed so easily
if your Clanships were able to defend them.”

“Then allow my clan to invade and take a human planet as
penalty for this attack!”

Kanpardi snorted in ugly humor. “The humans have taken a
step closer to becoming a worthy enemy, and Dorbo would slow all of us in our
steps along the Great Path to discourage this? To kill a human world now, which
many clans can use to purge their weakest novice warriors is not an efficient
use of this prey. It would reward your clan for poor preparation today.
However, it is a matter for the joint council to consider and to render a
decision.” He knew the way he had worded his criticism that Dorbo clan would
not prevail.

They spent much of the remainder of the council meeting
deciding the proper distribution of new Clanships. Another part spent on how to
divide the breeding points of today’s kills among the clans. He was impatient
for the discussion to end. He had raids to plan and approve.

Kanpardi gave some thought to what the fast
learning humans may have learned from their failure here. The Krall had known
for some time that humans had learned how to use the higher level of Tachyon
Space. The more rapid speed of travel between stars was of limited advantage,
since the distances were such that lightning fast raids ended before distant
space based reaction forces could arrive. The joint clan council had even considered
finding a way to give them an intact Clanship, to allow them to copy the drive.
This clever prey had figured it out without help. They probably did this from
study of captured single ship drives that accessed second level Tachyon Space,
even though they didn’t have Jump capability.

That faster Jump technology would help
build-up human ground forces with improved weapons more rapidly. The latest
human body armor, improved fire control, and fast mobile forces were reducing
the novices in raiding parties sooner than scheduled withdrawals, with early
recalls becoming more frequent. This was good for superior novice selection,
but if the trend continued, the novices would have to learn to fight in their
own armor, with heavier weapons.

They loved the bigger faster firing guns, and disliked
the encumbering armor despite the electronic sensors that it furnished. The
core of experienced novices was increasing, and soon larger scale raids with
those battle-trained warriors could start. For now, they were breeders and
slave race work monitors. The larger raids should push the humans harder, to
improve and arm even faster.

There probably would be more space battles,
which the Krall didn’t find as enticing, because the personal thrill of a
face-to-face kill was missing. He was actually envious of the novices that had
boarded the smaller disabled human warships left behind. Those were armed and
desperate prey, knowing surrender was no option. They had fought to the last
human, taking a considerable number of careless warriors with them. The
surviving novices of the boarding parties were ready to join the growing ranks
of experienced predators, but there were proportionately fewer of those produced
that way, due to the limited number of chances for such fighting inside ships.

Until humans guessed how their arrival was
expected, there could be more one sided space engagements. Specially designed weak
Trap fields could detect ripples from massive objects moving in level two of
Tachyon Space from many light years away. The signal was particularly strong if
the direction of travel was towards the sensors. The ripples, like bow waves,
traveled only a little faster than the mass causing the ripples in the second
level of Tachyon Space, but if the journey were long enough and the mass great
enough, the advance wave could arrive early and strong enough to provide a
useful warning. Such as the twenty-two minute warning they received today for
the battleships.

The number of other ships the humans arrived
with had surprised him, pleasantly so. They had not experienced a space battle
for thousands of years. The outcome was never in doubt, not even if there had been
no warning. The drawback was that dome destruction killed more warriors without
the value of culling weaker talent from greater. This was wasteful on a small
scale in the short term. The warriors that had responded most rapidly were
those that met the humans in space or at least had launched their Clanships.
Those killed in domes or on the ground were of lesser value to the Path,
overall, because they reacted slower or were less prepared.

The humans would know that some ship White
Outs were detected in advance, even if it was only slightly.  They probably
would not know how it happened, other than as a warning given shortly before
they arrived. Human treachery was something they would surely consider, if the
captives left to die on Koban were typical examples of the species.

He was less concerned about humans having samples
of the ancient Raspani tools turned into weapons. If humans recovered any of them,
the quantum beams were surely too complex for their primitive science to
reproduce. The Olt’kitapi had only taught the science to the Raspani, who had nevertheless
fallen easily to the Krall. Kanpardi idly chewed a spicy strip of Raspani dried
jerky as he walked to his waiting shuttle. In twenty two thousand years since
they killed the Olt’kitapi, no race other than Raspani had understood how they functioned.
Despite how clever the weapons worked, in battle they were of limited use
because of the short range.  When you understood their threat, a ship could
avoid or destroy them.

The human space fleet was more a nuisance than
a threat to the Krall’s advancement on the Great Path. Ground combat was the
more certain way to generate large numbers of superior surviving warriors.
Humans couldn’t build enough ships to block lightening ground raids, and once
warriors were on the ground, humans could not easily use space bombardment of
scattered targets mixed in with their own people. 

Humans persisted in wanting to protect
material things, places, and property, and most of all, lives of their
noncombatants. The Krall didn’t want “things” or to possess places, nor did
they care much for individual lives of their warriors. They wanted pure one on
one combat, and the only thing they treasured more was an honorable mention in
the histories that described the exploits of great warriors.

However, space borne attacks as humans
conducted today could delay launching new ground raids. Kopandi would bring in different
weapons, those they had preserved or copied from various other conquests. Even
before the clan meeting, he had send couriers to return with sixteen orbital
platforms to defend their base. He also called for sixteen of the inertial ball
weapons, having small Jump Hole generators buried inside a protective collapsed
matter armored casing. Those would provide some surprises, and disrupt the human’s
next raid, particularly when they turned to flee to supposed safety.

Another attack here was inevitable, but
allowing it to delay ground raids for so many days again was unacceptable. It
was clear that humans were not as weak willed as their frail bodies suggested.
The next attack on this base needed to fail more decisively, to convince the
human clan leaders that ground defenses were more effective than space fleets.
It was true, but humans always seemed to require convincing.

Maggi met them at the shuttle, and promptly
hugged Noreen. “You managed three impossible wonderful things in one day? Dear,
I’m speechless.”

“I only wish.” Dillon answered, careful to
stand well out of reach. “Besides, what’s so impossible about my asking her to
marry me? Telepathy and what else were so wonderfully impossible?”

“Well, you guessed one out of three you
knucklehead. Cat telepathy was obviously the greatest; breaking Cahill’s nose was
second. The third thing, which you got the most wrong, wasn’t that she learned
you wanted to marry her. Anyone with an intellect above a rhinolo’s butt knew
that. The miracle was that the cub found
anything
to read in that dung
pile you call your mind.” Obviously, standing clear of “Tiger Lady” wasn’t
necessarily safe either.

Maggi turned and offered another hug. “Marlyn,
my dear, I believe congratulations are in order for you as well. You roped in
one of the best in the herd.”

Thad, shaking his head looked at Dillon with a
lopsided grin. “I don’t sense the change in society that’s supposed to be
taking place, do you? I feel like a piece of meat in a market the Ladies own,
culled from the herd they manage.”