Koban: The Mark of Koban (72 page)

 “Why can’t we use these, if
they’re charged?”

“Like the doors of this ship, Krall
plasma rifles will not activate for anyone but a warrior.” Realizing what he’d
said he shouted, “Hey, maybe it will work for your ‘magic touch.’ Let me show
you the activation sequence.” He rushed over and accepted a long and too heavy
rifle from Mirikami.

Demonstrating he said, “They insert
a talon tip here, and slide this catch forward, and a string of gold colored
lights briefly activates on the power pack if it has a charge.”

“Sorry, I left my talon tips at
home. Does anything else work?”

Alyson pulled a slender stylus out
of a side pocket. “I use this to write or tap on my pocket computer tablet when
I don’t want to talk to it, will it do?”

Mirikami inserted it into the small
hole on the side by the catch, and slid the button forward. His reward was a
dim amber glow of one light for a moment.

“Damn.” Reynolds looked strangely
at Mirikami again. “We can take them apart, and even improved our own rifle designs
based on theirs, but I heard we never got the control modules to ever activate
their weapons for us. Some sort of quantum encrypted device was what I heard kept
them dead. For a short time, after a warrior dies, you can use their dead hands
to activate a weapon. It will stay operable about thirty minutes. After which
you need another freshly dead Krall.”

He tapped the replaceable power
module below the weapon. “This power pack is nearly drained because it should
have more lights and a much brighter glow if charged.”

Mirikami rapidly tried all sixteen
rifles, and a dozen never glowed at all, but several others gave the same dim
glow of a single light. The power packs needed replacing or recharging, and
they found no spares, and didn’t know where a recharge station was located.

“Gar what if I activate the four
with weak charges, and even if there are only one or two shots in each, you use
them? I’ve certainly never fired one of these.”

“Nope. You’d have to hold hands
with me. When you let go, the weapon will switch off in ten or fifteen seconds.
In basic training, we’re taught to use an available enemy weapon system so long
as the Krall owner is recently dead and is in physical contact. We had to haul
that heavy ass carcass with us if we needed to move for the next half hour.”

“Why not take just the hand? Not
squeamish are you?” Mirikami couldn’t help but smile at the thought the rugged
one-armed sergeant would be concerned about this.

“Hell no. I’d wear their hollowed
out skull if that would keep me alive and killing other Krall. Except the hand
alone doesn’t work. We naturally get few opportunities to test or try this, but
reports from the field say when a soldier
could
stay with the corpse, or
carry it near him in a truck, he had use of the Krall rifle. Even then it only
lasts for roughly thirty minutes after death, when the gun decides its official
user is really dead.”

“Well place the four with any power
over by that portal. If we need to make a run for the dome, that door and ramp
is on the side towards where you need to go, with the Krall on the opposite
side, I’m told.” He pointed to the opposite side portal.

“Sir, what use are they on that
side?” Alyson had the same question Reynolds was about to ask.

“If we open that portal, and drop
the ramp, I can cover all of you from behind that ramp as a shield. If you run
straight away from the shuttle, the Krall can’t get a clear shot without moving
away from the shuttle. That gives me and the folks at the dome a chance to pin
them down or keep them occupied.”

Looking skeptical, Reynolds asked,
“Have you ever fought the Krall? They don’t stay pinned down.”

“I don’t have as much experience as
you Gar, and mine was twenty years ago, but there are two more boys outside like
Alyson, and they will also be shooting at them. The warriors will definitely
respect their abilities after only a couple of shots.”

“I don’t mean disrespect, but
strong isn’t enough with these warriors. I use armor that nearly matches them
in strength, but I can’t move fast enough to make it do what they can do.”

 “We think we have that covered,”
was all Mirikami said.

Then he added, “Let me Link with my
men outside and see what they may have come up with while we were busy here.
Jake, a Link please.” He didn’t wait for an acknowledgement anymore.

“Dillon, Thad, we can’t find a way
to lock them out of the ship, and I doubt even with Alyson’s help we could hold
off five of them if they charge in here. What have you come up with?”

Thad answered. “Ethan and both cats
are behind the Krall, not quite straight out from the dome, so they are out of
the line of our fire. He has a hand radio, which is set to receive text only since
they would hear voice calls. He also has a .50 caliber rifle with him. When
shooting starts he can get one or more if they head for the Clanship, before
they duck around the shuttle for cover. We have some shots at them from the
other side, from under the overhang, but only by shooting around landing jacks.
It’s possible for them to have cover from both directions for most of the way.
Some of them might make it through, and their shuttle still has its pilot. We
have it tough, no matter what we do. If we send our two shuttles up, the sound
is different, and they will spring into action before we ram, and you all will still
be inside.”

“Like sergeant Reynolds said to me
a few minutes ago, we need a distraction that convinces them they don’t need to
come back to the ship. I have something in mind, but I need to consider it for
a bit.

“Jake will need to talk to them in
High Krall. He won’t fool them for long, and they will figure out he isn’t
really one of them. We will speak to them in Standard after that, perhaps
ordering
them to go away and leave us alone.  That should piss them off, and I don’t think
they’d be inclined to do anything a human told them to do.

“We might explain we are survivors
from the other compound and are no threat to them. Nothing excites a Krall more
than weak prey to kill that defies them. I want to push them towards a hunt that
will sound fun for them, since we had only their guns and flimsy armor when
they left. We can threaten them and say they are outnumbered eight to one.
That’s normally terrific odds for six novice warriors, and these are all battle
experienced. Our attempt to fool them and to hide will be a clear sign of weakness
to them.”

The others agreed, and Mirikami
ordered Jake to start a conversation, and feed a translation to him, Thad, and
Dillon. Then he signed off.

Reynolds promptly had a question.
“Who is Jake? You’re saying he understands and speaks High Krall? We only have
a partial dictionary of either Krall tongue, because they nearly always encrypt
communications, just as we do.”

“I think twenty years ago the Krall
were unconcerned about what we learned here, because we were not expected to
survive long after they departed. Jake is a JK model AI from my old ship, and
without his help we would not have survived to see the Krall depart, nor have
had the help to construct industry and develop the technology that helped keep
us alive. He learned their language from unguarded conversations they had in
our presence, and from bugging a habitat dome where they occupied the top
levels to monitor us captives. We never let them know he existed.”

“Your people and computer would be
a gold mine of information for our intelligence folks. Especially if they can
figure out how you personally can operate Krall equipment.”

“Yes. Well, I don’t think I’m the
only one that can do that, but I’ll wait for a chance to test my theory if we
survive our current problems.”

One of the other captives called
down. “When are we going to make a break for it? Can you open the hatches for
us?”

Reynolds identified him as Karl
Wetherby, a young blond haired man with some militia training. The sergeant was
explaining what was happening when a completely unplanned, distraction arrived.

Dillon broke in on Mirikami’s
monitoring of Jake’s simultaneous translation of his opening conversation with
the Krall. “Tet, Cahill found an unwatched maintenance side door, and just
stepped out onto the tarmac. I think a Clanship jack or the shuttle’s position
has the Krall view of her blocked, but that won’t last long. You threatened to
shoot her if she interfered, but I don’t think that’s going to be necessary.
She’s walking towards the shuttle wearing her old blue governor’s robes, with
her hands in the air. She must have completely lost her mind.”

Once the Krall had made it clear they suspected there were
occupants in the dome, Thad ordered Jake to transmit a carrier wave with random
Krall style frequency modulation in a directional signal beamed out over the
savanna, and to do it intermittently. Thad knew the Krall detection equipment
on their shuttle was certain to pick up some part of the radiation leakage from
the side lobe of the dish on top of the dome. He based this belief on empirical
evidence from shuttles used to hunt humans on Testing Days, when the Krall
located human teams using such directional dishes when they tried to
communicate secretly.

However, they would get no information from the purely garbage
transmissions Jake sent, although the time wasted on pointless decryption might
prove beneficial. Thad figured the Krall would believe that the message contents
were coded, rather than simply junk. After all, who sent random messages in a semi
secure directional beam? They would assume there was a distant recipient the
dome occupants were trying to reach.

Confirming there were occupants in the dome was clearly revealing
no secrets. They had turned back from their hunt, landed, and were repeatedly
trying to make contact with the mysterious clan they thought was inside,
offering to negotiate.

The actual frequency Jake used for the dummy transmission
was one suggested by Dillon. It matched the frequency Jake recorded from the hunter
killer octet sent after the combat team Mirikami had formed. That was on the
last Testing Day the Krall conducted on Koban, proving humans were capable of fighting
well enough to match Krall expectations. The Kimbo clan had used that
frequency, and they were a small but extremely aggressive clan, which might be
of concern to these Krall.

Dillon hoped they might believe that Kimbo clan was here
illegally, and hesitate to initiate hostilities with that volatile clan if they
could negotiate instead. Interclan negotiations were common, even if almost
never used with humans. Thad endorsed the frequency choice, noting that each
clan did seem to have a set of frequencies they preferred to use on former hunts.

Now, with Jake attempting to open a fake negotiation that
was sure to fall apart, Cahill’s action might serve as a completely different
distraction for the six Krall they faced.

****

Toltak stepped into the shuttle for the third time to check
the progress of the computer’s effort to decode the intercepted message from
the clan inside the dome. With so many thousands of years of conflict, and
encounters with alien communications and codes, their slave races had
established an immense database of previously used encryption systems for their
masters, and quantum methods of searches for known patterns. Learning who was
inside was tied to knowing not only what they had said, but also whom they were
trying to reach.

They had two earlier transmissions to work with, and a third
transmission interception a short time ago was the longest yet. The software
system indicated all three transmissions contained different contents, but used
the same encoding and modulation. They were all on a frequency used most often
by two clans.  Based on past interclan warfare, the computer should have enough
data now to furnish at least a hint as to which clan was here.

That knowledge would be of use in estimating the strategy
for terms of negotiation. If Kimbo clan, it was important to recall their ultra-aggressive
tactics in a fight, and how that translated into a more forceful negotiation
style. If the Maldo clan, a small and recent offshoot of old Dorbo clan, they
would more likely want equitable trades for each concession or agreement. Both
trespassing parties would require assurances that were plausible, that the
other side could not divulge the mutual secret. They needed to know how secure the
other illegal visitor was of their secrecy within their own clan.

She found Gapod facing aft and looking at the secondary
communications display rather than looking out of the windows at the dome and
Clanship. This was sloppy, and she challenged him. “If we are attacked from the
dome, you are not ready with our most powerful weapon, the right side laser.
Why are you not watching?”

Undaunted, Gapod was ready with an answer. “The computer
sent the sound that it had a possible match for reading part of the messages.
It did that twice before and I called you to look. You were angry with me after
the second time, because you said you were not where you needed to be if they
attack. Your action made no response possible by me that would not leave you
angry if this was a false match. I chose to look for myself, and only call you
if we could read the messages. I did not know you would enter.”

She didn’t directly rebut him since he had a valid point, so
she looked at the console to see the last search results. Gapod returned to his
pilot’s seat, already aware that he’d been correct not to call her. The
possible match had been yet another random combination that briefly looked
logical. The following attempt to decode more of the messages using that
ancient encryption system had failed.