The animal shuddered just as another boom reached Seiko’s ears, and he was startled to see blood spurt from the nostrils of the rhinolo. It took several more steps towards him, and bellowed so loud that it hurt his ears. It terminated with the bull’s collapse just as a louder boom sounded.
He looked over to his left towards the dome, past the other wrecked truck, and saw one of the haulers from the Fancy coming his way. Perched on the front forks he saw Doctor Martin, holding the largest damn gun he’d ever seen.
Seiko felt drained, and his legs would no longer hold him up. He sat down hard on his butt, jarring his broken ribs painfully. As the hauler drew close, he raised his pistol and fired another load of buckshot at the four tons of dead meat ten feet away.
“Hey Jason, I think you got him,” Chack said laughing, from the driver’s cage of the hauler.
Dillon quickly stepped off as the machine stopped, and rushed over to the grinning Steward. Concerned that the man wasn’t clear headed enough to know that he was safe, he put his hand on the gun and pulled it away from his weak grip, saying “You can stop shooting man, it’s dead.”
“I know, but that was the shell I’d saved for myself. I didn’t need it anymore.” He giggled at how stupid that sounded, then laughed, coughed painfully, and slapped Dillon weakly on his shoulder.
Getting a bit of his breath back, he had a question. “Doc, can I ask where the hell you found that small cannon you have there? These Krall pieces of shit,” he pointed at his pistol, now in Dillon’s hand, “ain’t worth spit on these things.” He pointed to the rhinolo.
“Jason, meet my fifty caliber anti-tank rifle and new best friend,” he replied, and let the man hold it. It was heavy and he yelped as his ribs hurt from the effort.
“I have broken ribs, so can you take it back? I’ll make love to it later.” He quipped.
Chack, now standing next to him said, “If broken ribs are all that big mother gave you, you came out better than the three Primes.”
A voice sounded in all their ears, “Chack, we are all Kobani now.” It was Mirikami, now linked to Dillon and Chack. “Jason, I can’t tell you how relieved we are that you’re safe. I watched you risk your life to warn those other trucks. It’s unfortunate that the lead truck didn’t understand what you were trying to do before you wrecked while warning them. But they did try to come back for you.”
“Yes Sir, they did, and I don’t fault them for turning back when they saw what was coming. I wish they’d left sooner.”
“I saw your gunner firing as that bull came after your truck. I’m sorry he didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t make it too, but he and I would have settled up afterwards anyway. He shot me in the side when I didn’t turn back and kept chasing after the lead truck. He didn’t give a damn about them.”
Concerned, Dillon and Mirikami simultaneously asked how badly he was wounded, speaking at the same time.
“My body suit saved me,” he said wheezing. “I have some broken ribs, and I think a punctured lung, but I’m alive. That’s better off than Aaron and the others.”
“Dillon, you and Chack bring him back to the Fancy for treatment. I’m working on finding some other drivers to get out there to help those ships unload. Dillon, as soon as you drop off Jason, we need more of those big guns uncrated.”
“Yes Sir.”
“Our other work needs to continue, and the Chief and his group never broke stride. We have to get all the ships down today. It won’t get any safer around here. Mirikami Out.”
The day’s work continued. They encountered no more than the expected problems with transferring people in high gravity. Another handful of people died, due to age and stress, and a bad fall. Thirteen were stung because they wouldn’t keep an eye on the sky.
The critical task of moving dead fusion bottles into four ships went without a hitch. Inside them and out of sight, they worked to loosen the bolts that held one of the two units each ship carried.
Next, the Krall had approved the ferry flights, and they commenced. Except for the four ships with bottles to be replaced, and the cargo vessels, every transport launched thirty minutes apart to dock with the eight large transports in orbit. Those passengers were lined up to go when docking was accomplished, and some of each large ship’s crew went with each load. As soon as the evacuees were in couches or bunks, the docked ship broke free. They left orbit as soon as they could line up for the proper descent.
The small fuel tanker was overworked transferring fuel to ships that were low. Fortunately, at least half of the transports carried enough fuel for two more round trips to low orbit, and several had enough for three trips without a refill.
By dusk the last two ferry trips were preparing to descend, with two others just down, but unable to complete unloading before dark. Mirikami and the Captains involved agreed that the discomfort of short rations to feed those people a full meal tonight wasn’t reason enough to risk lives. They had played recordings of the nighttime ripper attacks for those people, and they watched that lone bull rhinolo wreak havoc in broad daylight. Grumbling reduced considerably after watching those scenes.
49. Power to the People
At a late super, the six Koban Committee members met to consider the hardest, yet most successful day since the Krall forcibly brought captives here.
Mirikami offered a toast, “Gracious Ladies, Gentle Men, I salute the courage, bravery, and sheer hard work witnessed today. Tomorrow will be a final Krall test, before they depart to invade our worlds, expecting to leave us behind so weakened that we cannot survive the next year. Because of heroic efforts like today, I know we will survive.” He lifted his glass of wine.
“We have all become Kobani.”
To shouted accolades, they drank the first of several toasts, before eating a meal rich more for its newly arrived variety than its delicacy or finery.
“I have really missed pork and beans.” Thad, shoveled in another mouthful of a mundane but long absent dish from his diet. “Despite jokes and complaints about military food on Poldark, this was my favorite.” He ate a bite of sharp cheddar cheese, took a swallow of beer, and chewed happily.
Maggi looked over at the big man, and asked innocently. “Are you sleeping in your dome quarters tonight?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. I’m thinking of giving it away. Why?”
“The Krall have a more advanced air handling system is all,” she answered sweetly.
Dillon guffawed. “Thad, you know the more she likes you the more she picks on you, right?”
“I’ve noticed. If the love gets to where I need a cup like you wear, show me where you hid the larger ones, OK?”
Reverting to fading feminine sexual mores, Noreen defended her man, “His cup runneth over, trust me.” She patted his bulging bicep. “I think the genetic mods have had other beneficial side effects.”
Maggi groaned, but laughed at the youthful exuberance.
Aldry chuckled as well, with a bright idea, “Letting that rumor get out would make recruiting candidates for the mods really easy.”
“What do you mean rumor?” retorted Dillon.
Aldry continued, “Speaking of physical abilities in general, as soon as you have the time to come to the lab, we can start your mods Thad. Tell Deanna and the others for me too please. Tet, Dillon, my team is ready to start you two on the slower developing mods, for enhanced muscle strength and endurance. When winter comes soon, we have a cold adaptation mod to try.”
Mirikami was ready to start. “I had about decided that with the Krall’s departure that we might not need those mods. However, our experience with rippers and rhinolo proved to me that we need every possible physical boost we can get to force the native life out of the compound. We have to reseal the outer gates and push out the native life just to step outside the dome.”
“Ahh yes, faster, stronger, better..., that continuing problem.” Aldry hesitated, looking to Maggi for approval to say more.
&nbs
p; Maggi stood and took the reins. “Tet, we have done additional original research, well beyond what we extracted from the old records. We believe we can do considerably better science than simply implementing three-century-old procedures. It’s too soon to start live testing of our discoveries. When things settle down after the Krall leave, we have some soul searching to do. There are ways humans should be able to match up pretty well with native Koban life in speed and strength, not quickly, but eventually.”
“Really?” Mirikami was surprised. “How is that possible? Not even the Krall managed to live here without hiding behind guns, walls, and electric fences. Wouldn’t we have to physically surpass them to accomplish that?”
“Exactly!” Aldry let the implication sink in.
Mirikami thought on this a moment before he spoke. “So your gorilla comparison was wrong then?” he asked.
“What’s that about a gorilla comparison?” Thad asked.
Aldry explained. “I once told Tet and Dillon that we couldn’t modify their human genetics to match a Krall’s strength, basically because we would have needed them to be born with a gorilla’s strength and DNA in the first place, and work up from there. Or I said something to that effect. It was a physical and a practical restriction that applied to them, to all humans actually, and it still does.” She saw Thad’s blank expression, and expanded on what she was saying.
“We were not born with the DNA framework needed to build ourselves up, from where we are now, to the physical level of the Krall. The Krall were already well evolved towards the high physical level they have achieved now. We can’t simply add-on features to our own DNA to match them.” She tried an analogy.
“Putting a fusion bottle and electric motors on a child’s tricycle isn’t going to make it competitive with a race car or one of our trucks. However, there is a long-term solution to reach that goal if we prepare ourselves first. We can…”
Stopping, she shook her head and waved her hands as if dispelling smoke.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This is early research right now,” She cautioned. “We’ll know more in a month or two, once we are free to expand our research and set up the other labs to confirm what we think. We have to recruit more of our scientists to get a wider range of opinions and ideas.”
Maggi changed the subject. “We can resume this discussion another day. We have more immediate problems to solve. Tet?”
“Alright then. At dawn we restart passenger offloading, and should be done by midmorning. I’ll contact Telour after dinner to see if I can talk him into letting us disable the engines on these other ships the way we did the Fancy.” He placed no faith in that prospect.
“It would be good to have the accommodations and facilities for better human habitats than the dome. We don’t have anything to trade him for his advantage now, but it’s worth a shot. That’s all I have. Anyone else? No? Then let’s eat.”
The committee split up after the meal, and Mirikami went to the bridge to make his call to Telour.
“No,” answered Telour, to Mirikami’s request to let humans disable the engines and keep the ships as living quarters.
“My K’Tal and warriors will go to each ship at first light. The engines will be destroyed as well as the power modules, what you call fusion bottles. If I had a Clanship for use, I would simply put a missile in the heart of each human ship. It would be faster, but our Clanships are being prepared for Jumps, to start our war.”
He had to add a boast of course. “I will command a hand of a hand of Clanships to start our war, and I will join them in orbit soon. We Jump to a world you named Gribbles’ Nook. It is a mining world, not with as many humans as I hoped, but our clan leaders chose this place to attack to make your other worlds angry, to make them want to fight. My clan’s warriors are eager to fight a new enemy. We need no prisoners so we can kill every animal we find for two days of fighting and then we leave. Your race will come to see what we have done there. I told my clan leaders that humans will be angry.”
“How many ships and warriors are going?” Mirikami asked.
“For the raid on the strange name planet, only two thousand forty eight Clanships, and more than a million warriors, all from Graka clan. Soon other clans will send many more ships and warriors. All clans will bring slaves closer, to make nests for us as we clear one of your outer worlds of humans.”
Obviously, Telour’s clan had considerable resources, Mirikami realized, and they weren’t the most powerful clan.
“Graka clan also has the honor of first assault on a second world, after the clan leaders chose which of your outer worlds is better for us to live. My clan gained this honor mostly because I found that humans could be made to fight. I lead part of the first two attacks.”
Mirikami ignored his bragging and asked about his own problem, “How will you destroy the engines and fusion bottles on the ships here? The fuel on the ships can explode and the fusion bottles can lose containment and explode if not shut down first.”
He didn’t want to lose entire ships, or the salvageable material and equipment still inside. A fusion bottle needed a ship’s control and monitoring systems to draw and distribute its power.
This time Telour showed his first real hint of suspicion. “You did not show surprise when I said my warriors will destroy not only your ships engines, but their power modules as well.”
Mirikami feared he knew what they had done to try to preserve some of them. “We are not stupid Telour. This was a possibility we hoped would not come true, but it was not unexpected. It is extremely dangerous to simply blow up an operating fusion bottle.”
The Krall leader had an answer ready. “My warriors have been instructed by the K’Tal that came with me. We have an ancient tool made by the Raspani, before they fell to us, which makes a small hole in anything it is pointed at, and we can control how deep we need the holes. There is no fire made from this tool, even if fuel spills,”
“A hole in a fusion bottle that is operating could be catastrophic, Telour.”
“The warriors will order them turned off first,” was his simple answer.
“What about my ship, the one we used to make the weapons that you ordered us to make to fight you better? It was vital to completing your plan, and it should be preserved in your honor.” What the hell, that ploy had worked on Parkoda.
His response was disdainful, “I am not Parkoda to display a human made trophy as proof I am a Krall worthy to lead. When we leave here what other Krall would see it anyway? That ship is Parkoda’s now useless prize.
“Kanpardi is my clan’s Gatrol to lead us into the war. He says to leave you humans no energy to rebuild the electric fences, or to power your computers. He thinks humans are clever and could survive here many years with power.”
Damn, it’s going to be worse than I feared it would be, he thought. Unpowered the Fancy would be a dark hulk, and Jake would function at most a day or two on batteries. Worse, the labs would be dead, along with the hope of adapting themselves to better survive long term on Koban.
Taking one of the hidden bottles from another ship as a replacement for the Fancy was an option, assuming their entire subterfuge wasn’t discovered first. It would generate animosity from that Captain, to take his ship’s only power source. However, they needed the labs more than any Captain’s good will.
Telour made a small but surprising concession, however. “My warriors will not visit the ships that still have humans on them until last. You have time to move them to the dome.”
His following words proved he hadn’t gone all misty eyed and altruistic on them. It wasn’t a concession after all, but an example of a Krall’s preference for efficiency. “Humans will get in their way, and could interfere with my warriors work. It will take time to travel to each ship and this plan will waste less time. I intend to go to my orbiting command ship as soon as we finish here.”
Mirikami decided asking about keeping the trucks intact would remind Telour to destroy those small pow
er plants as well, or he already intended to do so. He couldn’t see a plus side to mentioning them. Those truck fusion bottles were too small to run a ship’s systems or any of the major dome equipment anyway. To get the remainder of the people into the dome fast they needed all of the trucks, and had no time to hide any of them.
There was no telling at what point the Krall would shut down the dome’s two large power generators, but Gatrol’s orders to leave them with no power would surely have included them. He wondered how hot and stifling the dome would get without air circulation and cooling. At least three of their four ship sized power plants would be needed to run the dome. He assumed they could figure out how to convert the outputs to alien equipment power needs.
Eventually Telour grew bored and cut his questions off by disconnecting. Mirikami Linked to the five committee members and told them the bad news that they had all expected.
Aldry was extremely upset. “The only hope we have of beating this planet is if we can join with it. The lab is the only chance for that. We need that power.”
Join with it? Mirikami wondered at that remark. What do they have in mind?
However, he knew that if the energy was needed to keep the dome livable for over twenty thousand people, and for operating a high voltage fence to hold back the native animals, then the labs would have to be sacrificed. Unless they found another way to generate power.
Thad’s military mind focused on the one setback that could doom them within months, if not weeks. He asked “What do we do if they find and destroy the four hidden bottles? What can we do for a backup power plan for that contingency?”
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