Koban: The Mark of Koban (91 page)

He saw no other Krall, and finally reached the highest few
decks where the curvature of the hull was gradually causing the staircases to
converge, reducing in number to only four. Not slowing, he pulled his second
pistol and erupted onto the command deck. He instantly killed the one black
uniformed Krall that had promptly leaped over the consoles at him. He realized afterwards
that the warrior’s only armament was his plasma rifle, disassembled for
cleaning. He’d been completely unaware that anything was amiss on the Clanship.
The ship was theirs.

The blue uniformed Krall below must not have been wearing a
com set after all. In hindsight, why would it need one, when it was eating on
its own ship, parked by its own dome, on a Krall base the humans wouldn’t dare
attack from space, let alone land and conduct a raid.

Thank you Dorbo clan
he thought.
We’ll put this to
good use.

****

Alyson and Yil both sprang onto the command deck of their
ship, and severely wounded the brown suited K’Tal they found using the star charts.
It had managed to draw its pistol despite multiple wounds to hands and both arms,
before Yil shot it in the jaw, and Alyson shot its pistol. They had been more
concerned with avoiding damage to the command deck equipment than capturing the
pilot alive, but they managed to do both. They administered the Death Lime
toxin, which would have her immobile in five minutes.

Yil raced back down the stairs, to let the other boarder’s
know they had control of at least one ship. Except for the surprise of running
into an octet having a practice session, the Dorbo clan had lived up to its
reputation of being the Krall equivalent of slackers. Three TG’s per ship had
proven perfectly adequate to capture the two lightly crewed Clanships.

Alyson considered this fact. A veritable army of Normals
would not have been enough.
Hell, they couldn’t even have opened the bottom doors,
she thought.

****

 Still avoiding any radio broadcasts that could be
identified as of human origin, Mirikami and the Chief kept an eye on the view
screens centered on the two open portals of the captured Clanships. They were
waiting for the double thumbs up signal from each ship, indicating that Noreen
and Marlyn were ready to launch. They had already had the signal of a
successful capture of each. They would signal him and not each other, because
they couldn’t see each other’s hatches. When both were ready, Mirikami would
close his two hatches as a signal for them to launch in the planned order.
Noreen would lift first, followed promptly by Marlyn’s ship, and Mirikami would
be right behind.

Reynolds had told them that after the full invasions had
started on human worlds, this sort of sequential Krall launch string had been a
common practice on Bollovstic and Poldark. Recon drones had also seen it used
here on K1, except the times when they launched in a mad scramble to meet the
PU Navy on those two attacks. Clanship pilots, as independent as any Krall,
liked to display their flight skills and distained the automatic control system
the ships were capable of using. Multiple launch collisions had happened during
the attacks on K1, when Clanships came up in massed liftoffs. The Navy’s assumption
was that flying by the seat of your red-skinned butt was acceptable for Krall
pilots in those cases. However, they usually staggered their lift offs, or
spread them over wider ramp areas when it wasn’t an emergency.

As badly as Mirikami wanted to get into space, he didn’t
want a crowd following them, or even to attract any attention. He didn’t know
squat about the Krall tracking capability of ships after they Jumped. He
assumed a colder tail made the task harder, so they would leave in a manner
that looked normal, before splitting up in three directions.

Noreen and Marlyn obviously put their intensive practice on
the Mark of Koban to good use. They nearly tied in signaling and closing their
hatches. Mirikami taped the two controls to shut his own hatches, as the signal
for Noreen to lift as soon as she was ready. He made a ship wide broadcast. “We
are launching within minutes. This will be Krall level acceleration, so secure now.
Captain Renaldo will lift first, then Captain Greeves. You should be able to
hear them through the hull. I will be thirty seconds or less behind the second
launch. As soon as we reach a safe distance out of atmosphere, we will Jump.
There will be no announcement. The TG1s that plan to test your Tap ability ship
to ship, be ready, but know that we will not all three enter the event horizons
simultaneously. Mirikami Out.”

He heard the first rumble as he cut off. Glancing at the
view screen still centered on the base of Noreen’s ship, he was in time to see
it lift out of view, in a wash of flame and billowing exhaust. On two other screens
covering the local ramp area, he saw it lift rapidly, the nose of Marlyn’s ship
visible off to one side.

In no more than ten or twelve seconds, he saw the flames
erupt below the second ship. Five seconds later, he initiated his own main
thrusters, and stabilizing side thrusters, and applied power. He was off as
well, the three ships no more than fifteen seconds apart on lift off. In
minutes, they had all cleared atmosphere.

It was exhilarating to realize they now had three elements
of a Kobani Naval Strike Force. The lead ship disappeared as it Jumped, followed
quickly by the second ship.

Mirikami lingered a bit longer, looking back at the colony
the Krall had murdered to make their base.
I’ll return and help exterminate
this infestation
, he thought.
We will return this world to human control
.
Then the Mark of Koban winked into Tachyon Space.

A day later, after two intermediate jumps, the Mark of Koban
emerged in a protoplanetary system that had never formed planets. It had a
thick, wide dusty belt of constantly colliding planetesimals that would
coalesce, collide, shatter, and do it again in a few hundred thousand or a
million years. This thinly old protoplanetary disk had never been more than a
debris field.

It was too dirty there to simply White Out inside the plane
of that dusty fragmented orbiting mess. However, it had the advantage that there
were no planets or moons for potential observers, or a pursuer to use for
concealment. The rendezvous was to be the clear region well above the disk, on
the galactic north side, directly above the tilted star’s axis at about one AU
distance.

Mirikami started an active scan as soon as Jakob confirmed
they were where he had intended to be. A more specific spot was impossible to
select from six light years away, without a planet or other reference body, but
it would be easy to detect any gamma rays from a White Out. The other ships could
navigate to them when they arrived.

“Sir, I have detected a White Out that must have preceded
our arrival by several minutes.”

Jakob highlighted the location on a screen, and the
characteristics proved it had the mass of a Clanship. At over three light
minutes distance it wasn’t in their lap, but before they let that that ship get
near, they needed to have communication to confirm the identity. For them it
was received almost instantly. Noreen had sent her identification codes almost
as soon as she emerged. Mirikami sent his code and waited. She would get his
confirmation signal just after her sensors picked up his gamma rays, after a
three-minute wait. She was the first to arrive it appeared.

Ten minutes later, they had exchanged other greetings, but
the range was too great for a convenient question and answer talk, not when it
took six minutes for the reply to arrive. However, that time lag would shrink
rapidly soon.

“Sir, there is a second White Out, Clanship mass.”

The new arrival’s position was higher above the plane than
the Mark, but a little closer to them. Mirikami repeated his identification
code.

Marlyn’s ID code arrived less than a minute after her
reentry gamma rays, and all Mirikami needed to do was wait for them to close
the distance, which would not take long. The Krall computers had the ability to
let you zoom in on star maps to navigate, or use nearby artificial things
visually. Then execute a short Jump to reach them quickly. The protocol they
had decided on was to let the other two ships come to the Mark of Koban.

In less than five minutes, after short Jumps, they were in a
cozy three-ship formation, less than a mile apart. The ring of view screens
could also become video communications stations between ships. Mirikami set
Noreen’s Bridge on one screen and Marlyn’s to the right of that. Then he walked
away from his console and up to the images.

There was nothing like a camera they could find that
captured the images, it was as if the whole screen surface captured the image
and repeated it on the other ship. In appearance, it was as if you were looking
through an invisible window into the other Bridge. There were no reflections on
your side, either of you, or of lighted objects behind you. The effect was so
perfect that you were tempted to reach through and touch the other person.

They already knew that the two Krall captives on Koban had
no idea how it worked, and didn’t care. They knew how to
use
them, and that
was enough for them. Once, Mirikami had produced an image of his own bridge on
a screen, looking in as if from outside. He walked up to confront himself in
person. Leaning in close he saw his own skin pores, as his image scrunched its
face to see them, less than an inch away. It was awkward to do, because it was
not your mirror image, something everyone had used their entire lives. If you
raised your right hand, the image raised its right hand, as if you could reach
across your body and shake your own hand coming at you.

Mirikami had Carson, Sarge, and the Chief with him. From
time to time, some of the TGs came up on the Bridge and watched quietly in the
background, sitting on the benches.

On the second Bridge with Noreen, was Dillon, Alyson, and
Macy Gundarfem, a Drive Rat performing the Chief’s duties over there, in an
Engine Room that didn’t seem to need anyone at all. There were some background
observers as well, all standing since there were no benches.

Marlyn stood on her own Bridge with Thad, Ethan, and John
Yin-Lee, another of the Chief’s Drive Rats. There were several kneeling TG’s in
the background, and they had a grip on a seated, limp looking Krall in a blue
uniform. They were holding him up, not still, since he obviously had received
the paralyzing drug. He bore visible gunshot wounds on the chest and arms that
had sealed and scabbed already. The Krall’s jaw looked funny and seemed to be
tied in place, as if broken.

On Noreen’s ship, Dillon moved to the side, almost out of
the picture for Mirikami as he stepped close to the screen/window into Marlyn’s
Bridge. He leaned back again, looking puzzled.

“Ethan, have you Mind Tapped that Translator behind you? I’m
almost certain we know him from Koban.” That put a startled look on everyone’s
face, except Ethan.

“I have Uncle Dillon. You do know him, only I don’t think
until now that he recognized any one of the SGs with us. However, he has already
figured out where all of us must have come from.”

Dillon nodded. “The broken jaw had me looking closer, but I
think that is Dorkda. He was from Maldo clan, not Dorbo. Jakob, I think our
ship is in range for transducer use. Can you confirm that for me?”

Dillon tilted his head as he listened to the AI, then nodded
and repeated what he heard. “Jakob says it indeed looks like Dorkda, and Maldo
is a finger clan that split from Dorbo, so they are naturally allied clans.
That may be why he was at their dome. Dorkda will know quite a lot about us and
about Captain Mirikami in particular. I’m sure if you ask, he might even recall
an incident with me. He nearly decided to kill me once, because I offended his
sensitive nature with an innocent question about why they were leaving Koban.”

Noreen leaned close and looked also, and then pulled back,
shrugging. “I don’t remember him as well as you do Hon, he wasn’t facing me
down, ready to tear out my heart. I was terrified he was going kill you.”

Mirikami had an uneasy conclusion to offer. “We SGs are a
risk on missions were we will be seen by Krall that may have been to Koban and might
know us. Ethan, I need you to determine how well he can recognize or remember any
of us, and if that’s how he knows we are from Koban.”

“I’ll feed him images of you and all the SGs with us, to see
if he knows your faces, although I think most of us look alike to them. 
However, that isn’t how he guessed. He can
smell
traces of Koban on us,
and on our clothes. He was a more careful fighter than I’ve ever heard from any
of the stories I’ve you tell us. He hid, tried to shoot me from concealment, changed
hiding places and used covering fire when he heard my rifle power pack activate,
and acted rather like a human does in his own defense and method of attack.”

“Well, pick his brain son. We want as much as we can learn
from him, and any other prisoners. What else have you gotten that seems
important?”

“Not from him, but from us. We TG1s have some strange
results to report, from when the three ships did their multiple jumps. We had
flashes of personal messages each time, which we had agreed to try.”

“How is that different than what you already told us, when
we jumped into Human Space, and then to K1?”

“Sir, all of us were on board the Mark of Koban in those
cases, moving together, and each of us was at least nearby. This time we had flashes
of thoughts between TG1s on different ships. As best we can tell, we exchanged
the images in real time when the senders and the receivers were far apart. In
fact, we were
extremely
far apart. It was nearly instantaneous
connections, across light years of distance.”