Koban: The Mark of Koban (68 page)

“Why did they leave it turned on when we left Koban?”

Toltak suddenly felt very much focused, as she felt when a
raid was about to start. She responded sharply, slipping into command mode.
“Fly to the nearest gate and land close, inside the wall.” She wanted to check
something, but didn’t want to be outside the wall when she did that, because
they had not finished their scouting. Several things had just coalesced in her
mind.

When the shuttle landed by a gate,
she made her exit and walked, pistol drawn, over to a box on the wall next to
the gate. She was studying the ground as she walked, and after opening the
latched cover to the box, slammed it shut suddenly, and looked around alertly.
Gapod wasn’t the only one to notice the change in her manner through the
cockpit windows. The warriors in back, lacking side windows, had watched her
actions from the open hatch. Matching her demeanor, they drew weapons and
rushed out to form a defensive perimeter. Against what threat they didn’t know,
but their leader clearly was now watchful for some perceived danger.

Reaching them, she quietly hand
signaled to recover into the shuttle. Closing the hatch, she told Gapod to get
airborne and to climb higher over where they were. She ordered him to level off
when the entire compound was visible. Then told all of them what she had
discovered.

“The power to the fences is still
on, after nearly two birthing cycles, and it was to be shut off when the clans
departed. The power for them comes from generators in the dome. I just saw recent
transport tracks in the soil passing through the gate. This dome has one or
more inhabitants and they have restored the security of the compound.”

 Pindor, the next highest status
warrior below Toltak asked, “Can it be another clan that has returned, also
against the wishes of the joint council?”

Toltak made a shoulder shake that
displayed indecision. “It is possible, but the risk of staying here so long
that they restored the power and repaired the fences means they must be
prepared for a chance discovery by another clan. We risked status by coming to
hunt for a single day. By staying here for so long, they risk banishment, sent to
die fighting humans with only pistols if lucky, or dishonorable execution if
not that lucky.”

Pindor spoke the obvious words. “We
cannot reveal that we found them here to our clan leaders, not without
admitting we came here, and they cannot allow us to depart if we will speak of
them being here. We need to negotiate with the clan represented here, for
mutual silence.”

Toltak spoke the obvious
alternative. “We can also fight and kill them. However, we do not know how many
we face or how well they are armed. With us in the shuttle, we have only
projectile weapons and no armor. Our Clanship was open to them while we were
scouting, and they may hold that now.

“It is possible they wait for us
inside our ship. Our first objective is to get close to our Clanship, but we
will not fly into the shuttle hanger. I have seen too many such traps when fighting
humans to let another clan do that to us.” The silence of the other warriors was
confirmation of her strategy.

“We should be prepared to fight our
way into our ship if necessary. However, by their inaction when we landed, I
think we may be able to negotiate with those in the dome. They saw us arrive
and yet stayed hidden, revealing a possible weakness, which we might use in
negotiation. They may suspect we have another Clanship coming, and we must not
reveal that we are only six warriors and this one Clanship.”

She laid out her plan to land near
the Clanship, using it and the shuttle as cover, where five of them would exit
to observe the dome and Clanship. Gapod would remain in the shuttle to use its
sensors, and the one laser port on the side towards the dome if there was a
fight. Toltak would try to make contact by radio, and initiate a negotiation.

****

When Mirikami entered the hatch, he
discovered he was in an airlock, which made sense for a shuttle hanger that
opened to space. Except the outer airlock door probably needed to close before
the inner door would open. Unless the Krall had a bypass code, allowing both to
be open when in atmosphere. He didn’t know the bypass code, so he stuck his
head out and softly told Alyson not to be alarmed if the outer airlock door
closed.

Mirikami drew his pistol, and
pressed the same top two keys on the inner door’s pad. As he had expected, the
outer door slid shut before the inner door opened. He was standing to the side,
realizing that if a Krall were waiting he would not likely get a shot off
anyway. They were too fast for an SG. He had reasoned before going in, however,
that no Krall would have waited this long to go after intruders if they knew they
were human, so there would be none waiting. A quick look through the second
hatch confirmed his reasoning, and he remembered to breathe again.

Fingering the two grenades on his
belt, he hurried quietly through a wide corridor that led towards the center of
the Clanship. The passage ended fifty feet farther in, feeding into an open
deck area that was wide and empty, except for a continuation of the large heat
insulated central thruster shaft. There was no lift present as there would be
on a human ship, but the Krall generally preferred stairs, which couldn’t break
down in a battle if power were lost. There were, predictably, eight broad
upward spiraling stairways spaced around the circular bulkhead, and eight wide
door hatches leading to side corridors and compartments placed closer to the
hull.

A clanship was significantly larger
than his old command, The Flight of Fancy, and was at least six hundred feet
high, compared to the Fancy’s four hundred feet. He’d have to climb the stairs,
the steps set too high and wide for a human’s comfort, and this deck was only
about thirty feet above the tarmac, with probably two decks below. To find the
Jump Drive, he hoped he wouldn’t need to climb most of the six hundred feet.
This deck appeared to be about eleven or twelve feet high, suggesting the Krall
ship might have fifty such decks, and he was on the third deck from the bottom.
It was a long climb, even with clone mods in Koban’s gravity, with a potential
ambush at every new deck.

Pistol in right hand, he used his
left hand on the bulkhead to guide him as he kept his eyes fixed on where the
steps penetrated the next upper deck. He nearly stumbled due to the high step
spacing, so he periodically checked his next step. As his head reached the base
of the next deck he could see it was lit, and as high as the deck below, and he
heard nothing other than air moving through ventilators.

Peeking over the edge, it looked
essentially like the deck he’d just left. These decks were probably where
warriors clustered, waiting to descend to the four sally ports at the base, to
join those that had already charged into battle, and where spare supplies could
be placed for fast access. He noted the recessed cargo attachments in the deck
and along the bulkheads, confirming this level was sometimes used for stowage.
There looked to be floor plates that opened, and matching ones in the ceiling
above, so there were probably hoists somewhere above that could do heavy
lifting between decks.

Feeling time was against him, he
increased his pace, hoping that any remaining crew would be closer to the
command deck at the top. He recalled that Telour, a translator that had
accompanied the Flight of Fancy on her abduction to Koban, remarked that human
ships needed far too many crew to be efficient. He said Clanships were simpler,
and more Spartan (not that he had used that word), and needed little
maintenance and no special accommodations for the warriors. They never slept,
so they needed no beds or cabins, and had common sanitation and waste disposal
sites on each deck, food distribution was on two central decks, and there were several
exercise and combat training decks. Thirty-two single ships could be stowed in
outer compartments with external hatches, or attached to the outer hull. To
double the number of single ships carried, they sometimes used both methods.

He quickly reached a deck where the
ceiling was at least two decks tall, observing the center shaft was behind a
much larger circular inner wall that went from floor to ceiling. He explored
cautiously, but growing more confident that there was no Krall located on the
lower decks. He found two doors into the large center area, and was confident,
based on the soundproofing and thermal insulation present, that this was where
the main thruster engine was located. It was clearly a far more compact engine
than the three engines the Flight of Fancy had contained. Nevertheless, the
Krall’s advanced thruster technology generated considerably more “push” that
the Fancy had been able to produce.

Pistol again at the ready, he
pressed the top left two buttons on the keypad. Nothing happened. After a
second try that failed, he circled to the other door and tried there. Surprisingly,
the hatch slid open instantly. He’d thought the vital room might be locked when
the first door failed to open.

The area was quiet and empty of life.
The geometry and engine design was alien, of course, but he found multiple large
feed lines for fuel that led to what was probably a combination mixer and
combustion chamber. If necessary, he could place a grenade here and do
significant damage that the warriors were likely not equipped or trained to
repair.

However, with an operable Jump
Drive, they could obliterate the dome here and leave a very deep and miles wide
crater if they tried to create an event horizon in this gravity well. That was
his preferred target to disable, since they would never reach another star
without Jump capability. However, a Clanship airborne on thrusters was also a
weapon they couldn’t counter. Its plasma cannon and lasers were unmatchable.
There was nothing but poor choices to select from in here.

His cable and fuel line tracing had
brought him closer to the door that would not open for him earlier. It seemed
odd to lock that one with a different code, and leave the other door ready to
open with the standard code. He noticed a single Krall character over the door.
His spoken Krall had progressed with Jake’s teaching, but written Krall much
less. However, this door’s symbol was different from the one over the other
door, and both matched the symbols he’d seen on the airlock doors on the left
and right. With a flash of insight, he wondered if this was equivalent to #1 or
#2, or Left and Right.

He tried the standard two top left
keys and the door stayed closed. Then he pressed the two top right keys, and
the door slid open.

Duh!
He thought to himself,
applying a mental slap to the forehead. He recalled the Krall generally
followed the ancient KISS rule for many things. Keep It Simple Stupid.

The airlock door that had not
opened for him had the same symbol as this door, and it would have opened if
he’d tried shifting to the two right side keys. It was strange that the other
door had not opened for Alyson, since she had used the correct key press. The
same key press had worked for him. It was a minor puzzle for later
consideration. He needed to climb higher.

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.