Koban Universe 1 (9 page)

He blocked his own thoughts
from the cat now, in order to receive the unguarded thoughts of the leopard, which would remain unaware of the wolfbat’s mental presence. Other than verifying that the pig still lived, Flock Leader ignored its fatalistic desperate thoughts. Predators couldn’t be concerned about the prey’s objections to being eaten.

The leopard was in a blissful mental state, as expected, and although his view of the area was monitored by some autonomous part of its mind, watching for obvious threats, its awareness was focused on the delectable dying thoughts
and fear from the pig. It would require only a couple of minutes for that to end, so the cat sometimes relaxed its bite to extend the process.

The first thing Flock Leader noted was that there were no images of cubs to feed, or a mate with which to share this bounty.
That was good. Those would have complicated the negotiations. The cat was determined to eat its fill, but was resigned to not being able to retreat to a safer place, to preserve the entire carcass for its sole later consumption. That was a point for negotiation, an offer of future bounties like this one.

Flock Leader gently inserted a thought that the wolfbat had made this possible, by leading the screamers to such a large prey animal. His intention was to show the cat that a wolfbat could find more large prey from their silent position above the forest floor
, using their rapid mode of travel, and lead the cat to animals too large or dangerous for a wolfbat to attack.

The concept
wasn’t rejected outright, but the cat, thinking it was its own wandering notion, thought only of the opportunity of prey theft from wolfbats, as it had committed today with the screamers.

The strange thought arrived
to it that the wolfbat had already helped the screamers isolate the pig from its drove, and helped them hold it in place as they wore the animal down. That explained the lone wolfbat’s presence, when it could never take down a pig that size alone, nor steal it from the large screamer pack. The cat’s first smug thought was that it had taken the prey from not one, but two competitors.

The idea that sharing the prey now, in exchange for future help in obtaining other large animals was taking trust too far. The cat thought this concept was an outlandish bit of daydreaming
in its part. What would ever convince the screamers and wolfbat to do that, when they would soon be fighting for the part of the carcass the cat would have to leave behind?

Suddenly, i
mages of past hunts, with wolfbats departing with the remains of different large prey that the pack had been led to find by the wolfbats filtered into the cats mind. The images were so strong that it knew they came from another mind, and certainly not from the pig.

The leopard raised its head, not releasing its jaws
by lifting the pigs head, and saw the wolfbat hidden behind the bulk of the sow’s body. Flock Leader quickly sent stronger images of past hunts, and cooperation with rippers, of kill sharing with them. This cat knew nothing of rippers, but the frill and mental contact was unmistakable as having occurred between this wolfbat and a cousin feline species. A gigantic set of cousins in fact, that nevertheless benefitted from the proposed cooperation with this smaller predator.

Unexpectedly, an angry, strident new mind joined the group frill.
One that wanted both of the larger predators to leave. It nipped at the wolfbat, who then tried to share the same thoughts as it had with the leopard. The concept of hunting cooperation, as they had seen over the past month from the wolfbats.

With brain power considerably less than either the cat or bat, the little terror, dominate within its own pack, bit the wolfbat  harder, to try and force it away from
their
prey. They would drive off one predator at a time. The bat drew the bitten wing farther from the screamer, now standing on the side of the lower abdomen of the sow.

Suddenly, Flock Leader, maintaining muzzle contact with the pig for the mental link, heard a welcome sound.
It was the ultrasonic calls of Flight Leader, who had arrived with two squadrons, each with eight flight members. There were seventeen wolfbats coming, and he could hear their echolocation signals as they navigated down through the crown of trees. He called out to them, sending only a rally cry to circle his position. His very reply would permit them to home in on that sound and find him.

He renewed his offer of cooperation with the cat, and included the dominate screamer in the offer. The screamer
, not understanding where this thought came from, instantly rejected the idea. However, Flock Leader made it clear that with a combined force of eighteen wolfbats, the offer would only be open for a short time. The flock could take and hold possession of the entire pig if Flock Leader chose to do so.

To make the point that he was negotiating from a position of strength,
Flock Leader suddenly swept his lightly bleeding and nipped wing over the screamer, who was looking fearfully up at the new threats. He pulled the five-pound theropod close, and not so gently closed his jaws around its neck, and then returned his muzzle to contact with the pig. The sow’s heart had just stilled, and the mental link would not last long now.

The emotions and images were as sharp as Flock Leader could make them. Share this kill, and we will help you make more such large kills. If not, we will take this one for ourselves. He offered a show of trust, that from his position of strength he did not need to make. He would let the cat have its fill of the prized organ meat, then allow the screamers to eat what the
y could hold today, and then his squadrons would strip the pig and carry the meat in their throat sacks to their home nest in relay. The link was fading, and then was lost as the leopard lifted its head, breaking frill contact.

There had been no acknowledgement from the cat
before the link faded, no indication that it had accepted the offer. If it chose to leap over the pig and attack Flock Leader, who was holding the dominate screamer in his jaws, both would die before either of their support forces could save them.

The cat looked into the wolfbat’s eyes, opened its fanged jaws, and plunged them into the soft flesh of the lower throat of the dead pig, starting its feeding process
by tearing open the flesh. Flock Leader backed away, and released the screamer, who still didn’t care for the deal, but couldn’t control the outcome. It ran clear of Flock Leader, joining the apprehensive pack watching the circling wolfbats.

Trusting the leopard or not, or
believing the wolfbat or not, the pack would learn to adapt to the new and larger prey they would be able to attack and share. If they received their fair portion, the cooperation would continue, even if all they understood was they were eating better if they followed the lead of these larger predators.

Flight Leader
understood what was happening and the need to wait, and when Flock Leader flapped up to join him, they controlled the impatience of their squadron mates as they anxiously watched other predators eat a prize they could have claimed.

In a relatively short time,
the cat had its fill and it looked up with bloodied jaws to the circling wolfbats, then it leaped over the pig and scattered the screamers. It was petty gesture of dominance, which made certain they understood the hierarchy here. It walked calmly into the forest, with a wolfbat sent to follow it to its lair. They would need to find it again for the next hunt.

The screamers promptly swa
rmed the pig’s carcass to feed.

Outraged cries came from the squadron fliers at allowing the smaller screamers
to eat from this kill. Without an actual language, the deal just negotiated by Flock Leader with the cat would only become apparent to the other fliers over time, as the flock’s food supply increased, despite having to share with other predators. The small stomachs of the screamers were soon filled, leaving a considerable amount of meat for the flock.

Finally, the
two squadrons were ordered to descend, to eat their fill, and store chunks of flesh in their throat sacks to take back to their mates and pups in the nest. They would need to make a several round trips, because this was considerably more meat from a single kill than the flock usually acquired. Pig meat was a sweeter, fatty, high-energy delicacy than they normally obtained.

With the
cooperation of the two new hunting partners, there would be opportunity for a greater variety of larger animal kills, which would bring types of meat the flock had seldom savored. As Flock Leader, and organizer of the joint hunts, he would have the right of first choice of meats over his other flock members on future large kills.

It was
good
to be the Flock Leader.

“Physically he looks like a healthy two month fetus, Carol.” Aldry Anderfem put her scanner rod back in its charging holder on the portable body scanner. This first pregnancy for a “full” Kobani couple was being followed and studied with intense interest.

Carol looked at
her pleased husband. “See? I told you I knew it was a boy.”

He was elated
if he was having a son, but wondered how his wife knew. “Hon, the baby doesn’t have language yet, nor real thoughts. Certainly, no mental pictures to share with us or that he could understand from us. Are you certain you or I didn’t accidentally insert our own desires to have a boy into the baby’s mind, and that’s what you sense? A baby girl that thinks she’s a boy?”

This w
as part of what Aldry was here to assess, and to reassure these young first time parents of what to expect. To explain how an unborn child, conceived of Kobani parents with the latest set of genetic modifications, would be affected by its parent’s new mental ability and the child’s own inherited mind reading ability.

She chuckled. “It may not have been obvious on the monitor Richard, but there is definitely a ‘stem on the apple.’ You are indeed having a boy, not a little girl who thinks she’s a boy. I can’t say
for certain if the fetus has received any thoughts from you two or not. This is the first one ever, but accidental mental influence from either of you is unlikely with the fetus. It’s after the delivery you need to exercise caution.”

T
echnically, Carol Slobovic and Richard Seeker were not the first Kobani couple to become pregnant, and a half dozen other children had been successfully conceived, with the expected and predicted rate of normal prenatal development. The term “normal prenatal development” was what had been redefined for Kobani births.

T
hose previous six gene-modified mothers had all delivered healthy and normal babies within the last few months. With the high activity metabolism of a Kobani mother and fetus, the gestation period only lasted between seven and eight months, which was an expected result. These were not preemies, because full term development didn’t take as long when tissues grew quicker, and organic superconducting nerves assisted in that faster development.

However, those
previous seven children (one delivery was twins) were the progeny of what was being called “early gene mod” Kobani. The child of Carol and Richard would be the first to be born of parents with genes that provided
all
of the gene enhancements available, or that were anticipated. The first full Kobani birth.

Their baby
would inherit more new gene complexes than any of the previous children had, and one of those modifications was more revolutionary that any of the others. It was an ability never encountered in a life form of any species, on any world other than on this planet.

Koban was a
world with gravity 1.52 times that of Earth, with a significantly higher percentage of heavy metals and rare earths. Eons ago, that availability had provided primitive life there the building blocks for organic superconducting nerves. All subsequent higher animals on Koban had evolved to incorporate this lightning fast nervous system. That made possible the evolution of additional features, unique to this planet. The fastest, strongest animals ever encountered anywhere lived on Koban, in abundance.

Through the strange fortunes of a war forced
upon humankind by aliens, over twenty three thousand people were forcibly stranded on dangerous Koban. This was done by an enemy that called themselves the Krall, who had tested their captives for fighting ability. The captives were later left to die when the enemy departed Koban, to start a protracted war with humanity.

However,
the marooned prisoners didn’t die, they adapted. Not slowly, through natural evolution, because that could never have proceeded quickly enough to save them. There had been geneticists and bio scientist left behind among those stranded thousands, and their militarily “worthless” scientific equipment was left stowed in holds of captured human spacecraft, which the Krall had permanently disabled from flight. Those scientists found a way for people not only to survive on the beautiful but highly hazardous world; but they proved it was possible for humans to thrive on Koban.

G
enetic enhancements were the key to survival here. They began with the addition of well understood, but three hundred year old gene modifications originally designed for use in worker human clones. These made the clones more suitable for hard menial work, in harsh climates on hundreds of new colony worlds, and for fighting wars. That was before the practice of human cloning and gene modification was firmly outlawed under penalty of death.

T
he forbidden clone mods made survival barely possible on Koban, but left even those that accepted the changes facing a risky and grim future. With the ice broken on the legality of using gene mods to survive, some of the castaways chose to do better than simply scrape by. Besides adapting themselves to be safer on Koban, they wanted to make sure that the powerfully built Krall would be unable to dominate them physically, if they ever met again.

Every form of higher life known
to Man was based on variations of DNA. The scientists learned to incorporate favorable genetic features copied from Koban’s native animals. The chosen candidate animal for an organic superconducting nervous system was a fast and powerful tiger-like Koban predator, called a ripper. This second nervous system initially ran in parallel with the normal human nervous system. Later, they also incorporated the genes for the carbon fiber reinforced muscles of a ripper, as being most compatible with the nervous system selected as their model.

However,
the carbon nanotube genes for making stronger bones came from a different Koban species, a dinosaur-like large raptor, which needed stronger bones to handle its greater mass in the high gravity. After the first successful Koban derived changes, the people with those features were super strong, faster reacting than a Krall, and much harder to “break.”

These
first Kobanoids, the racial name they called themselves, were later described as having “early genes.” The first of these Kobani parents passed the Koban genes successfully to their children, who inherited all of the traits of their parents.

Then t
he science and technology of the genetic improvement process took a sudden leap forward, when improved medical equipment became available to the people on isolated Koban, after they finally managed to restore contact with now war torn Human Space. It had been twenty years of isolation for Koban, and human worlds were losing the war to the Krall.

War had always spurred technological developments
throughout human history, and technology was advancing, but it wasn’t enough. What was required was to match, and even surpass the Krall physically, a strategy that required use of outlawed biological and genetic technology. Something the Planetary Union that governed Human Space refused to consider. Koban was the only place where that illegal strategy had been applied.

The Kobani
acquired new families of microscopic biological nanites from allies in Human Space. Originally developed for repairing the bodies of wounded soldiers and civilian casualties, they could regrow limbs, damaged tissues and organs. The Koban based scientists modified them and were able to increase the growth and linkages of new tissues and nerves, doing it faster and more effectively. This was a necessary step to produce many superior humans, capable of fighting and beating the Krall, who were bent on the total destruction of a physically inferior human species.

Kobani
scientists succeeded in producing stronger, and much faster humans, who were better fighters than were Krall warriors. However, to be truly a new race of the Homo sapiens species, they had to be able to breed true with each other, and with unenhanced “Normal” humans of the general population. That ability was demonstrated with the inevitable mattings between Normals on Koban, those who avoided the alien gene themselves, and the early Kobani that some Normals came to love. Any gene mods used required that the recipients retain the ability to pass on their new genes to their offspring.

The leap in medical te
chnology allowed multiple new desirable genetic traits to be added, and they were able to incorporate them all together, rather than one at a time. Had the Kobani incorporated the new genes in a more sedate manner, that phase might have resulted in some “middle gene mod” Kobani. Instead, the new nanite technology allowed a major transition, skipping ahead as five sets of new genes were incorporated simultaneously.

T
he people that received all of the changes were said to be “full Kobani.” Some of the young people with those changes did what impetuous lovers have always done. Mated and merged their genes.

Th
ere was a gene complex to provide the Kobani with low-light night vision and infrared heat detection, and one to enhance the sense of smell. These too were derived from the predatory night hunting rippers. Other genes were copied from a large flying animal called the wolfbat, which provided ultrasonic hearing, a capability that the Krall also had. Another mod was one that didn’t have an immediate effect, but would have a long-term implication for humanity, because it prevented aging once a Kobani reached their mid-twenties, and regressed the age of older Kobani to that same physiological age.

However, i
t was a revolutionary and unprecedented fifth gene complex, also taken from the amazing, sentient, and intelligent rippers, which had the greatest potential for immediately altering human social interactions.

I
t was a feature that gave the recipient a form of contact telepathy. It was a consequence of a rare mutation in the early evolution of the felidae family, involving their organic superconducting nerves. Every known member of the cat-like families discovered thus far on Koban displayed this capability. A touch, particularly by a nerve dense organ, would enable the exchange of thoughts, emotions, and mental images with any life form.

Aldry was a geneticist
who acted as a medical doctor at times, and the fetus within Carol was the first child conceived by two parents with Mind Tap, as the telepathy capability was called in humans. In rippers, the ability was called “frilling,” because the telepathy nerves were concentrated in a fleshy frill on the necks of those predators.

She and her fellow geneticists had designed the nerve dense fingers of human hands to be the most appropriate sites for the best
mind-to-mind linkage to the human brain. Although any tissue infused with nerves would serve to convey some degree of weaker mental communication.

There would
certainly be physical “contact” between a fetus and its mother. How might that affect the mind of a developing fetus? This provocative question had every potential Kobani parent concerned, and Aldry was one of those conducting research.

It was one thing to accept
and employ these gene mods as a consenting adult, or even to permit those as young as sixteen years old to elect to receive the mods, per the age restrictions in place for informed consent to request them. However, a fetus never has such an option, and how the potential exposure to unshielded adult thoughts might change them was unknown. Would Mind Tap contacts between the parents and a fetus alter their brain development? Their minds? Ensuring their babies had a normal childhood struck future parents as vital.

Richard re
flected his and Carol’s concerns. “Will Mind Tap affect our baby? That’s what our own families have been asking us, Dr. Anderfem. None of them have the full set of mods as of yet, and they don’t understand details of Mind Tapping very well. Carol and I do understand, and even we don’t see how we can always shelter a still forming baby from ideas that are too mature for them to grasp. We’re worried about Ryan losing his innocence and missing a real childhood.”

Aldry
smiled. “I see you had a boy’s name picked out.” Then she offered some words of reassurance.

“Richard, we aren
’t operating totally in the dark concerning mother and fetal mental contact. We’ve had rippers living with us since before you two were born. As you know, Kit and Kobalt were the first ripper cubs we raised, adopted as orphans into two families, and they have both become parents multiple times in the last twenty-three years.”

The
ripper siblings were the best known of the cats, and they had lived among humans the longest. They hadn’t even met another ripper until they were nearly grown, being reared by their human “mothers and fathers,” raised with human siblings they considered brothers and sisters. Yet, the two cats had knowledge of wild ripper society that predated their first contact with other cats.