“Max, I want to send some teams into those tunnels and out to the foothills, to see if they can destroy those two ships. Because the base was turned over to the PU Army, I need to know what plans they have for that base before I request to use the tunnels. The general’s inquiry about the base and ship landings affects my decision. I need to know.”
To a human this was flagrant manipulation, but to the AI it was quite reasonable. An expression had grown as AI’s had simplified, yet simultaneously complicated people’s lives. There’s more than one way to skin a chip.
“The general asked the AI if Krall tanks and other equipment could travel through the tunnels that lead towards Novi Sad.”
The light went on instantly. Trakenburg knew the answer, and why the general was concerned about the two ship landings. Could the Krall use the tunnels to sneak close to the city? He’d just seen humans inside the base, checking out the tunnels. One was a man the Krall had captured, and since he had his arm restored, he’d had medical treatment. These could be collaborators, at some previously unheard of level. There were twenty humans just in that scene he had frozen on his wall. How many more?
He knew the Krall couldn’t use the tunnels without causing their destruction. However, their equipment would pass just fine, particularly if driven by humans! How in hell could he broach the subject with Nabarone, right out of the blue, without making him suspicious of how he just happened to bring the subject up at this key moment?
“Sir, you have a priority call from Major Caldwell, General Nabarone’s aide de camp.”
He was so surprised he actually jerked in reaction. Did the frigging Pentagon give Nabarone a backdoor into Max? What kind of infinite loop could they create with that sort of nonsense? “Just a moment Max.”
He walked around his desk and sat in his utilitarian chair, composing his thoughts. This had to be a coincidence, because Nabarone was no clumsier than he was at this game. He wouldn’t have revealed his cards so easily.
“Put him through on the large screen, Max.”
The stocky major appeared, sitting at his own desk. “Good morning, Colonel. I hate to bother you, but we have an urgent situation General Nabarone needs to run by you.”
Confident he knew the subject matter, Trakenburg maintained a poker face. “Good morning to you as well, Major Caldwell. What can I help with today?”
He got right to the meat. “We had two clanship penetrations today that at first glance seemed independent of one another, but have landed near a former base of yours, SOB-23. You released the base to us to use, before we were pushed out of the Sredna Gora foothills a couple of months ago. One of those ships landed virtually on the base’s doorstep, and the other one within five miles of the first. When we checked the area out, and realized the tunnels leading from the base towards Novi Sad were so large, we wanted to be sure you have them mined to blow if the Krall enter. Do you have the means to detonate them on command, if the Krall found a way to bypass the detectors?”
Good, they were going to be able to cooperate here, without him giving anything away. “Major, that would be the standard method my demolition engineers would set up, but I’d have to check with the team that did that, to make certain. Two landings by an empty base do seem too coincidental, considering how wide an area the foothills cover. If they have a means to defeat the sensors, they might also have a way to disable the explosive charges, or jam a radio detonation signal. We should also have hard lines to trigger them, but I think we had better take no chances. We left the usual spy bots behind, and there will be some in the main base. A Krall intrusion should generate an alert, but just in case, I’ll have my AI run a check of recent reports from the bots, if you’ll standby.”
He muted the audio, but assumed that Caldwell might be able to read lips. He probably couldn’t, but since he could do so himself, he wouldn’t sell the man short. “Max, check the recent feeds from the spy bots in our former outpost, SOB-23, and let me see them on my desk screen.”
There was pointless coverage of almost nothing, much more than he expected. That was why he had a bored corporal watch the feeds. “Max, just show me anything you would consider significant, a possible deliberate unauthorized entry, not just animals and windblown weeds.”
This time he had a feed he’d not already seen, shortly after the unknown group entered the first underground garage. It was the same twenty people. There were a few glimpses as they passed along corridors, but he didn’t ask for sound. He’d have his corporal go over this with a full team. “Major, we definitely have a problem we need to investigate. Let me show you a fast pass through what I just saw. Max, send the images from my desk screen out to the major, at the fast play speed I used.” While that feed started, he continued to talk.
“Major, we both need to have our experts look at this closer, but I’ll share what we find with you, if you will do the same. We may have humans working with the Krall. They could enter the base and not trigger the explosives, and could even drive the enemy equipment down there because that won’t be sensed as Krall warriors.”
He saw the video stream finish on his small screen, and he could still see Caldwell’s face, while the major was only able to see the recording. The man was as shocked and confused as he himself had been.
“Major, I’ll be available if the general wishes to speak to me directly, but please pass him my thanks for bringing this to my attention. The base is under his control now, although I want to request permission to infiltrate some of my spec ops teams into those three Novi Sad tunnels, and investigate what’s going on at the base. They can assure us if we can blow those tunnels at will.”
“Yes Sir, Colonel, I’ll pass your request to the general as soon as we sign off. I think we need to find out who these people are as soon as possible. I have the recording, and I’m sure we both will have AI’s scanning records to find out who they are. I’ll keep you advised of what we find. I assume you will do the same.”
“Absolutely, Major. This war belongs to us all. Good day.” He switched off, and brooded a moment, before his AI intruded on his thoughts.
“Sir, I searched death records as you suggested. I have an even stranger facial match than the one for Sergeant Reynolds.”
“OK, put the face on screen, Max, and tell me what you have.”
A close up of a well built, ruggedly handsome, dark-haired, middle-aged man appeared, and Trakenburg recognized him as one of the larger two men of the four he’d seen previously, in an image taken from the garage recording. Then, a military style hologram, used on ID badges many years ago appeared on the right side of the same screen. It looked like the same man, but the garage image from today looked older, and more weathered, and had a sort of smile on his face.
Under the hologram was the name Thaddeus Greeves, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Poldark Militia. That same Militia had been absorbed into the PU Army when the war started, at the same time Nabarone became Brigadier General of the fledgling Army forces on Poldark.
From having studied Nabarone’s background, Trakenburg knew he was the last commander of Poldark’s small planetary Militia. The date on the hologram was from twenty-three years ago. There was no possibility that the general would not know who this man was if it actually was Greeves.
“Is it a positive match Max?”
“Perhaps ninety percent, Sir. As positive as I can be from images taken twenty-three years apart, Sir. The data did not mention a twin or even a brother for the man. However, there is another similarity with Sergeant Reynolds. He was also presumed dead. He was in charge of a security detail that went missing, part of a diplomatic mission twenty-three years ago. He was on a ship apparently captured by the Krall, along with a junior diplomat named Mavray Doushan, the man that made the famous recorded warning about the Krall.”
Chapter 3: Easier Said than Done
“Son of a bitch! Stop the damned playback.” Nabarone leaped up and came around his desk to get a closer look at the image on-screen.
; “What is it, Sir?” Caldwell was startled by his boss’s vehemence, not his language, which was typical for the rough edged general.
Instead of answering the major, he spoke to the AI. “Carla, rewind the recording up to where this man,” he tapped the image on the touch sensitive screen, “passes through the door, and stop play when he looks directly at the spy bot’s camera.”
Standing only feet from the high definition image, Nabarone concentrated on the man’s features and movements as he walked through the doorway, then the face looked directly at the lens as a young man pointed out the moving spy bot. The image stabilizing software held the recording rock steady, despite the gecko-like “wiggle” of the small robot.
“Carla, I want a life-size zoom on the man’s face that I indicated.”
Four feet in front of Nabarone was a face, viewed from a higher, overhead point, which he was sure he recognized. “Carla, can you rotate the perspective to make it a face-on view of him, as if seen from my own eye height?”
The software made it appear the camera lens descended from the ceiling, and now from four feet away, Nabarone, six feet one inch tall, was looking slightly up at a man about five inches taller than he was. He stepped in closer to look at the man’s eyes, and noticed his slight sardonic smile, with a bit of slope to his mouth.
“I believe it’s him!” he stated firmly.
“You think you know one of them, Sir?” The major was even more surprised, and privately a bit skeptical. It was odd if a personal eyewitness ID could beat the computer search running in the background. The AI could process most of the faces of the planet’s male population in a few minutes, and it had been at the task for almost five minutes.
“Howard, on the wall behind my desk, please bring me the framed hologram of myself with my ex-contract wife, my sister, and another man in uniform.” He knew Howard had met his sister, if not his former contract wife.
Carrying the picture to Nabarone, he made the obvious comparison as he approached. “The man with your sister looks like that guy.” He easily saw the resemblance.
“Yes. They were engaged…, oh, about twenty-three or four years ago, before he was lost on a space flight from here to Bollovstic. Sybil and I have wondered what happened to him, but assumed he had died. Initially we supposed it was a Jump Hole accident, later we suspected it was probably at the hands of the Krall, which would have been three years before we even knew they existed.”
“Excuse me? How would you have assumed that, Sir?” Caldwell was confused.
“I know you have heard of Mavray Doushan, of the ‘Doushan’s Warning’ fame.” It wasn’t a question, since almost anyone in Human Space that wanted to study the start of this bizarre war had listened to that recording.
“Doushan wasn’t alone on that lost ship he was aboard. He was with the Ambassador…, whom I can’t recall his name now, and their families. They also had a small security detail. Thaddeus Greeves, the man in the picture you’re holding was in charge. They all disappeared without a trace, except for that recording. Until now, it seems.
“Thad was taller than me, and always seemed to have a half smile, a bit lopsided, when he was relaxed and happy. Like with my sister in that holo, and I think like on the screen in front of us. I can’t understand how it can possibly be true. Nevertheless, I feel in my gut like it is true.”
Carla, like any AI worth its salt, accepted input from any source it had available, including audio. Nabarone’s remarks had furnished the clues it required to narrow the search.
“Sir, using multiple records of Colonel Thaddeus Greeves from the former Militia archives, and personal recordings you have retained of Militia ceremonies with you and Greeves walking together, I believe that I can say, with ninety-eight percent accuracy, that the man in the new recording is him. An adjustment for slight aging is also consistent with what you see, assuming he continued to spend time out of doors to retain the evident dark tan. He also appears to have maintained an above average exercise regimen.”
“Compared to me, you mean?” Nabarone chuckled, somewhat sorrowfully. Running an Army kept him inside, desk bound, growing pale and a bit heavier.
“No Sir, I was not…,” Nabarone cut her off.
“Carla, what about the sergeant? Howard here already told me you found a recent match for him.”
The AI repeated essentially, what Colonel Trakenburg had learned from his own AI, Max.
Nabarone ruminated on what he knew or surmised. “Two native sons of Poldark, loyal to their world and humanity, beyond question. One was fighting against the Krall for certain, when he was apparently captured and seriously wounded six months ago, but looks healthy now. The other man was likely captured by Krall twenty-three years ago. How do we make a connection between these disparate events, which involve Krall captivity?”
“General, I know you had a personal connection to Greeves, but most outsiders are going to consider collaboration a possibility. Despite never having seen it in a case where the humans were given such freedom of movement.” He saw the reddening in Nabarone’s face and hurried to finish before he was cut off.
“This doesn’t fit the past examples at all sir. The few cases we know of, the prisoners were in deplorable condition, half starved, beaten and often mutilated, to force their reluctant cooperation. The handful of willing traitors have done what the Krall wanted, and then they were killed using particularly gruesome methods, proving even the enemy found them despicable. After so much time, this would be the first example of the Krall even trying to use subtlety or such trickery. I don’t buy it, Sir. You know I will speak my mind if I disagree with you, but this must have some other explanation.”
“I think so too, Howard. Let Trakenburg know what we found, and I’m sure he discovered the same things by now. Both our AI’s have access to the same databases. Give him the go ahead to insert his teams, and offer any assistance we can provide. Perhaps the distraction of a diversionary counter attack would help cover their infiltration to reach the tunnels. I don’t know how his spec ops teams get in and out of enemy lines as often as they do. A lot of them don’t make it back as it is.”
****
Ethan’s excited scouting report was relayed by the chief as they were returning to the Mark. Mirikami asked Jacob to Link him and his fellow scout, Richard, with only the SG’s. They would be making the decisions and the over eager youngsters didn’t need to be made more hyper than they were by hearing the report. The previous TG face-offs with the Krall had gone entirely their way, but in a larger fight, anyone, no matter how fast and strong could be killed if shot from behind, or hit by random chance. Mirikami needed to know what they faced, and with his SGs, come up with a strategy.
“Ethan, tell us what you see.”
“Captain, in a valley about a mile from their ship, the Krall just parked four of those small white tanks Sarge described. There were four more already parked there. They also brought three large, heavy armored looking enclosed trucks, made in two sections, with four large wheels on each part. Those trucks have a flexible joint of some kind between them, which lets them bend in the middle when they turn a corner. There are sixteen smaller wheeled motorized carts, which were already here when we arrived, mounting what looks like double plasma cannons on them. The barrels protrude through a curved heavy shield and it all can pivot in a full circle. The cannon bores on them have a much smaller diameter than what we have on the Mark. They are leaving everything unattended, Sir. Parked them, and then ran on foot, back the way they came.”
Mirikami looked over at Reynolds as they rapidly walked into the first parking garage. “Do you know what the big trucks do, and anything about the portable plasma cannons? The tanks we know about.”
“Sure. The trucks are personnel carriers, to cross a battlefield area under fire from artillery, plasma rifles and even small cannons. They can withstand most mines. How many are there, Ethan? That’s an indication of the number of warriors they might have, because they can hold sixteen in e
ach articulated section.”
“There are only three of them parked below us, but there could be more in the next valley closer to the clanship, and perhaps some by the ship itself. There are eight of the Dragons, and they were just shutting four of them down and getting out of them as we topped the ridge. The sixteen portable plasma batteries were apparently already parked, since they have a lot of dust covering them, kicked up by the later arrivals.”
Mirikami had a question for them. “Ethan, the big truck sections you see, would they fit through one of the big portals of a clanship?”
“It would be a close fit, but I think so, Sir. The Dragons would pass through easy.”
“What are you thinking, Tet?” Reynolds asked. He saw Mirikami fingering his lip.
“That’s a lot of bulk cargo for a clanship. There couldn’t be room for much more than that equipment aboard. Perhaps another large truck to make the usual set of four they prefer, and more Dragons or smaller trucks. What I’m leading up to is that there couldn’t have been much room left inside. Certainly not for five hundred warriors and their arms, armor, food and ammunition. That ship could not have carried so many warriors. Four of the large armored carriers can hold a hundred twenty-eight, sixteen in a section, and they need more warriors for the Dragons and plasma cannons. That second clanship that separated from them probably has most of their warriors. They are weaker now than they will be later.”
“Son,” Thad asked, “you said they parked the tanks and trucks then they left on the run, just like they left the other equipment? All unguarded?”
“We can see through the windshields of the big trucks, they are pointed towards us, and the cabs are empty. The mini tanks only hold one warrior and we saw them leave. The plasma cannons have an open cockpit.”
Mirikami nodded. “We’re on the same wavelength, Thad. If we act fast, we could have ourselves a small armored column if we want one.”
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 7