Koban: The Mark of Koban (35 page)

“And the ‘control’ couples?” Maggi inquired. 
All prospective parents had to have the first four human clone derived gene mods
just for the fetus to survive, making them a ‘control’ population.

“We have more than a thousand of those couples
that have entered short marriage contracts. Some will have babies. When you
took the poll, did they say if they would try for conception, or use contraception?”
The city needed to know for allocation of future resources.

“We didn’t hold their feet to the fire for an
answer yet. They have a couple of months to make a decision.

“In addition,” Rafe anticipated her next
question, “we have quite a number of mixed SG couples, where only one partner has
the redundant Kobani superconductor nerves. I know some of them will let nature
take its course, and some will use contraception until they trust the results. However,
no matter how we look at things, we’ll be hip deep in children in a few years.

“The SG’s will be born fully enhanced, many
with the Koban parallel nervous system, and there will be SG.5’s, with only one
parent fully enhanced. Those ‘point fives’ will present a mix of heredity of Koban
nerves and standard features that we will have to monitor for instabilities. We
understand the old clone mods well, but the Koban nerve mod is new. If there
are problems found there, we will have to set genetic switches to prevent
incompatible gene combinations on future births, and correct problems that
arise after the fact.”

Aldry focused on where the discussion was
leading. “We need to start preparing for the population shift, and find people
to be our teachers, pediatricians, daycare staffers, people to manufacture what
children will need, and make things they will want. There were very few toys in
those cargo ships destined for the Rim Worlds. We’ll have to make some, and
design and produce clothes for infants first, and shift production as they grow
and mature.”

Maggi brought up something she had heard
Dillon and Thad talking about. “We will need to produce weapons suitable for
the smaller hands of children, and decide when they will be taught gun safety
and use.”

Rafe was shocked. “Are you nuts? Give kids
guns?”

“Rafe, go outside and walk around the inner fenced
compound tomorrow for two hours, no weapons or armor.” Maggi stared at him. He
caught her meaning of course.

He didn’t want to concede. “Then we can’t let
the children go outside without armed adult supervision.”

“Ever? In addition, we know that it takes two
sets of eyes, and two guns to ensure greatest safety. Do you think two adults
will accompany every child outside at all times? This is Koban, not some safe
Hub or Old Colony world. Wild and wooly Rim worlds have to let children out to
learn about their environment. Besides, even if we don’t want them out, they
will sneak out. It’s better to teach them self-defense early. There will be careless
accidents, yes, but surely less damage than what native life will cause if they
don’t have weapons. We can start with nonlethal jazzers for them. We’ll be
making those soon, now that we can manufacture the chips, small klystrons, and high
capacity battery packs.”

“There will be parents that
will not
go
along with giving their kids guns.” Rafe sounded like he’d be one of those,
even though he had no children.

Maggi nodded. “Probably so, for a time. I
can’t imagine we will ever have a requirement that forces that choice on parents
or their children. However, they will likewise not have the option of denying
that gun choice for others. There
will
be armed children that
will
go outside alone. I don’t mean at age five or six, but they are going to be gun
qualified at some age well shy of maturity. We will never inhabit this world
from inside a dome, and so long as Krall inhabit our Galaxy, we will never be
safe anywhere in it without our guns.”

Rafe shrugged. “Well, on a less contentious
subject, the fortified gazelle milk sufficiently matches the ripper milk
sample. We matched it nutritionally that is. The cubs will survive and thrive, although
they don’t like the taste as much what mom used to make. We are looking at how
to improve the taste aspect as well. They are growing fast, like everything
with a high metabolism on this world. I think they’ll want meat in another month,
since their first teeth are sprouting.”

“Aldry and I looked in on them yesterday, and
their beautiful blue eyes were wide open, watching us carefully. They both
tracked my gloved hands as I reached in to touch them. They have such little
claws, and they extended them to bat at my fingers. Has anyone tried a frill
contact again, since our married couples went on honeymoon?”

“No. Both couples made additional frill
contacts under controlled conditions and monitoring before they left.” Rafe
shrugged. “The cubs now seem to have imprinted or bonded on the first human minds
they contacted. The ripper mother was first of course, but she’s gone. It seems
like they have each chosen two new ‘parents’ as replacements. Kit imprinted on Marlyn
and Thad, and Kobalt bonded to Noreen and Dillon. By the way, those are the
Koban sounding names the couples picked for the cubs.”

“I’m eager to try frill contact myself,” Maggi
admitted. “However, I’ll let Noreen or Dillon serve as a filter for my first
contact with Kobalt. They tell me it can be overwhelmingly intense the first
time. I’m intrigued that the cubs seem to intuitively grasp our alien thoughts
and respond to them in kind. Such as our naming them, and then learning the
rippers use individual names for one another. Who would have ever expected that
level of self-awareness? They know their biological mother was named Merki, the
more remote father was Bolar, and there are names embedded in other images from
the pride their mother was from.”

Aldry had thought about this as well. “In a
roundtable discussion with a number of our people, we rather think that the
only reason rippers don’t have a full-fledged symbolic mental language with
words for everything, as we do, is that a picture really
is
worth a
thousand words. The cubs may be able to grasp our words quickly with picture
reinforcements.”

“What are we going to do when they get their
teeth and reach a size that’s really a risk to us? Put them in a cage? Wild
animals on Earth always remained wild at heart, and could have a bad day and
turn on the humans that loved them. Hell, Maggi, you even shot Dillon in the
balls with a jazzer when he pissed you off once.” His grin was short lived.

She directed her notorious “sweet little old
lady” smile towards Rafe, which suddenly made him wish he had not made that
last comment to the legendary “Tiger Lady.”

“How flattering, to be compared to a wild
animal.” Then she fluttered her small hands, as if dispelling another thought
before offering her opinion.

 “Unlike thick headed humans, mostly
male
,
I’m hopeful the cubs will accept all humans as part of an extended pride. We
may be able to instill a need for self-control more firmly in these cubs,
simply because we
can
send pictures and feelings.”

“I guess time will tell,” was Rafe’s answer.

Admiral Hawthorne had just returned from the
Presidential Palace, and made her way to the depths of the War Room, below the
Defense Department complex. Stanford had requested the Chairfem and Joint
Chief’s deliver the New Lance mission briefing there. That was because the
President’s reelection campaign manager had wanted news footage of the Joint
Chiefs arriving to brief the President and her Cabinet.

The planned fleet operation was secret, and it
wouldn’t be revealed until the mission was over. However, a successful attack on
K1 would help Stanford’s reelection chances.

Admiral Mauss waited in the War Room for her
superior to arrive. Newly promoted from Vice Admiral, she was again the
commander of an operation against the Krall base. Only this time it wasn’t just
a task force, she was effectively the Fleet Commander, without the rank,
because nearly the entire fleet was going to K1 this time.

Hawthorne cleared the last security post and
entered the War Room, the heavy door closing behind her and electronic security
and jamming activated. No one believed the Krall had penetrated their security the
last time, since they didn’t seem to care what their enemy had planned. The
heightened security was to guard against leaks to Tri-Vid news companies, which
had known almost as much about the previous strike as some of the Joint Chiefs.

“Golda, she signed off on New Lance, just as
you predicted she would. She didn’t even have many questions this time. I had
my doubts she would approve. She got burned badly after the last raid, and in
an election year I thought she might play it safe and wait.”

“Nancy, for Stanford’s administration this is
put up or get out of town time. She has been the Navy’s friend, she listened to
us, lobbying for money for repairing the fleet, and for making the changes
asked for ship defenses. Her reelection eggs are all in the Navy’s basket. Our
fates are linked.”

“Speaking of fates, what have we learned from
the recon drones?”

Mauss indicated the big monitors with the pictures
and radar data. “We have been going over the last drone reports from K1. Those
sixteen orbiting stations at five hundred miles are as large as dreadnaughts,
with large bore ports for Plasma beams, and presumably heavy lasers behind those
shield doors we can see. The undersized thrusters suggest they are not very
maneuverable. Those probably are to adjust orbits and attitude, more so than to
move to engage an enemy. They obviously have Jump capability, since all of them
appeared virtually overnight three months ago.

“They must be vulnerable, because there are
always eight Clanships near each of them for protection. That makes one hundred
twenty eight Clanships active and in orbit at all times. No matter, I’m staying
with my plan to avoid close-in action with the platforms, which means our White
Outs will occur at one thousand miles above planet, and thus five hundred miles
above any of them. Whatever new technology they offer, we will be more
respectful of that possibility this time.”

Mauss noticed Hawthorne was looking at images
of the newest mystery objects orbiting K1. “I see you have spotted the newest
items we found in orbit this time. I decided to call them ‘Eight Balls’ because
they are shiny black, and spherical. It’s not easy to tell the scale from the
zoomed image you are seeing on that screen, but they are only about thirty feet
in diameter.”

Hawthorne shook her head slowly, obviously
worried. “How many of them are there? Do you know when they arrived or have a
clue as to what they are? I don’t like surprises just before we launch an
attack.”

“We counted sixteen, and apparently each came
docked with the platforms. Clanships moved several of them while our recon
drones watched. They docked with the orbital stations, detached the balls from
their hulls, and towed them several miles from the orbital stations at full
thrust. They have to be immensely massive because of the amount of thrust and
time it took the Clanships to move them even that far. Because of their small
size, they have to be extremely dense, almost unbelievably so. The initial
estimate is in the thirty thousand ton range.

“When the Clanships released them, a warrior
in a suit appeared to enter a hatch on the balls as the Clanship moved away a
safe distance. Shortly after that, the balls accelerated with what had to be
Normal Space drives and went into polar orbits spaced between the platforms. A
super zoom image of one of them reveals small little bumps symmetrically spaced
on their surface, which are surely emitters for Trap Fields. They may even have
Jump capability. After they were in polar orbits, the Krall removed the
operators by Clanship.

“We tried to get more data on them using wide
aperture radar on one drone, to get a sharper microwave image. That was how we first
noticed the small bumps, but the image was in data collected by several
different drones and assembled here by our scientists. That was because the inbound
microwave radiation had changed frequency on return. The balls are nearly
perfect blackbodies. They absorbed the radar frequencies and re-radiated the
energy in a different spectrum in a classic blackbody curve. However, no sooner
had we ‘pinged’ a couple of balls, which revealed the location of that formerly
passive drone, the Krall Jumped a Clanship near and were scanning for other
passive drones. The AI’s Jumped the drones home, to save what they had recorded.

“Our technical experts say the ‘Eight Balls’
mass as much as a battlecruiser, based on how hard a Clanship had to work to
move them and the speed attained. They must consist of some form of collapsed
matter. They aren’t nearly as dense as neutronium, such as material from the
core of a neutron star, but perhaps a hundred times as dense as lead, and they
are hollow because there must be a control room inside for Normal Space drives,
and at least a fusion bottle. That has to be cramped for the pilot.”

Hawthorne watched a replay of the positioning
of spheres in fast play mode. “They don’t appear to be extremely maneuverable, and
need an operator that doesn’t stay aboard. Admiral Mauss, I’d suggest you
target them as soon as you pop out. Take them out of the equation early. I must
say, however, they don’t seem very big or dangerous.”