Her tongue and wit were her primary weapons, with minor retaliatory physical acts as a fun means of interaction with her friends. The definition of a “minor” retaliation depended on whether you delivered or received said fun retaliation. Dillon had once received a nerve jangling, paralyzing Jazzer shot to his groin, after he pushed an embarrassing witticism too far with Maggi. The retaliation was quite funny to her and others. Not so much for him at the time.
Mirikami lay there quietly, offering no wisecracks of his own. Aside from wanting these upgrades to complete as quickly as possible for the upcoming combat missions, he had a new personal motivation to be tolerant of Maggi’s jokes. He had been a bit sore with a pulled back muscle when he had climbed into the med lab last month. The dinner with Maggi had been more educational than anticipated.
This younger version of Maggi had recovered appetites other than food. The ninety- one-year-old Mirikami, with mere clone mods, couldn’t easily keep up with the “dessert” an enthusiastic revitalized TG2 offered him, along with her home cooked dinner.
The two had shared affection for one another for years, and had conspired in private frequently, usually concerning matters regarding the future of the two domed cities of people they were determined to keep alive on Koban. However, their ages, responsibilities, and the tiring high gravity had conspired to keep their personal relations entirely platonic. Maggi was the first to experience this new lease on life that her Prada longevity and age regression mods had delivered, and she knew that Tet would receive them when he returned. She had placed other people’s needs first for long enough.
She made her feelings known to Tet at dinner, offering him a marriage contract. He promptly accepted, it being only the second such contract he had entered into in his life, the first since leaving New Honshu as a young man. Thus, that agreement led to a late night celebration, which led to his pulled muscles and his subsequent insistence that he start with the new mods the first thing the next morning. At least as close to the “first thing” as Maggi would allow, and even then not until after a ten AM final breakfast “treat.” He was definitely going to need his youth back.
Rafe stepped into the room to check on the progress of his “older” clients. “Gentle Men, how are you feeling now that you are awake? Any uncomfortable lumps I can add to your beds?” he asked jovially.
The med labs were designed to be as comfortable as they could be, and they shifted an unconscious body and moved pressure points to prevent bedsores. However, after a month of lying there, the body’s support points grew tender no matter how often they were changed.
“You can damn well move the huge lump that you put under my left hip.” Thad griped.
“Well, good news friends. The month of immobilization, which I did for you four has proven more beneficial than I expected. Maggi, when she did the first Koban mods, was allowed to get up once a day for a real meal, and then returned to the med lab after an hour or two. She experienced some bouts of pain and discomfort when up and awake, and her movements seem to have retarded the work the nanites were doing when she got out, stretched and ate real food.
“You four have made faster progress, despite receiving more mods at once. I can let you step out after a few checks on your vital signs, provided you return to sleep here for eight hours per day for another week. The age reversal process needs more time to access every living cell, and to regrow youthful tissues. The Prada mod will hold you at whatever physical age you have when we stop your regression. Maggi took off another five years the first week you went into the tanks.”
Sarge said, “Damn. Bring me a mirror. I want to see how young and good looking I am now.”
Aldry had walked in while Rafe was talking. “Alas, Sarge, there are some miracles that even modern medicine and nanites can’t perform. Unfortunately, you still look seventy- five.”
“Hey! I was forty-nine when I entered your damned torture chamber.”
“Oh, really? That is truly tragic. I must have inserted an IV needle backwards.” That elicited general laughter and confirming, but false, observational comments of Aldry’s assertion. Reynolds looked like a young recruit.
“Very funny. When do you and Rafe take your turns in these tubs? I want a chance to annoy you.”
“We won’t go in until we complete all of the upgrades on the TGs that are going on the first missions against the Krall. They don’t need age regression, and they already have TG mods. We only need an hour to start them on the TG2 MEEN enhancements, which is what the TG1’s are now calling them.”
Before anyone could ask, she explained. “MEEN stands for Mind, Eyes, Ears, and Nose mods, from the Koban derived genes. They wait a couple of weeks for those to complete while they walk around. They won’t receive the Prada age prevention mod until they reach twenty-five years of age.”
“Well, I want to see how close to twenty-five I am now.” Reynolds persisted.
Maggi sniped at him. “You definitely look more infantile, or perhaps that’s only due to how you sound. Rafe just told you that you could get up in a few minutes. Be patient, or I’ll shove you outside naked and let you sunburn. If you haven’t noticed, the replaced, younger skin is pink, and your tans are gone.”
Rafe had manually verified Dillon had proper vital signs, and was detaching some of the devices that had kept him fed, healthy, and his muscles toned while he slept. “The sunburn remark is valid, Gentle Men. After you wash away the dead cells, apply a cream I’ll give you to induce rapid melanogenesis, to protect and darken your skin. It won’t leave you as dark as your tan was before, but it will protect your skin from sunburn until natural exposure completes the job.”
Rafe cleared each of the other three men to exit their med labs, handing each a tube of the melanin inducing cream. Mirikami lowered the side of his case to swing his legs out, wearing only a pair of white shorts. He looked at his legs, which were slightly darker than Dillon’s pasty legs only because he was naturally darker by birth. Nevertheless, he looked more pallid than he had even as a Spacer, who spent little time under the suns along the routes he flew.
One pleasant surprise was seeing the flat stomach, and shorts that formerly stayed snugly in place about to slide off his hips. He might not have physically regressed all the way to his mid-twenties, but he was at the weight he held when he was in his late twenties.
He felt very light on his feet. “Why did you lower the gravity in here, Rafe?” They were on the Flight of Fancy, and he assumed the gravity was reduced in this expanded infirmary and rejuvenation ward for some medical reason.
“What do you mean?” Rafe looked puzzled. “We didn’t adjust the gravity.”
Maggi knew what he meant. “It’s the new you, Tet. You didn’t experience the carbon fiber muscle growth as it gradually infused your clone mod muscles. This is the first time you’ve felt the Koban carbon fibers at work. After you spend some time Mind Tapping with those of us that also have the ripper frilling genes, your thought processes will greatly speed up. For now, focus on your enhanced senses, such as hearing or sense of smell. They‘ll be working now, and you can sense things you never noticed before. You hear that high pitched thrum?”
“Yes. I assumed it was my tinnitus, which I sometimes experience due to an explosion and depressurization injury, which slightly damaged my inner ears in the Navy, many years ago.”
“It’s actually something causing a high frequency throb in the air handling system. I showed Chief Haveram the area where I thought it came from, since it’s annoying as hell and in the ultrasonic range. He couldn’t hear it, but he’s in a med lab in the next room, and when he gets out, I’m going to push him to find the damn cause and make it stop. I can hardly sleep on the ship anymore because of that constant thrum. That is a gift of your new wolfbat hearing.”
He raised his nose. “Another air processing issue is the smell. What is that?”
She laughed. “That’s you, my dear man. It’s also the three smelly brutes that emerged from cocoons when
you did. The med labs remove your waste products, but you haven’t bathed as the old skin was replaced. You wouldn’t have noticed the sound or mild odor before you had a predator’s senses. A group shower for all of you. NOW!”
As the four men meekly headed for the connecting shower room, Mirikami asked another question. “Rafe, Aldry, I have ripper vision enhancements, right? Why don't I see better now? It seems ordinary to me.”
Aldry, still standing by the door, waved her hand over a wall sensor and the overhead light panels went out, leaving the only visible light source coming from the small readouts and telltale lights inside the four med labs. To Mirikami and the other three men, it grew dark for less than a second, when suddenly the room appeared bright again, with less intense colors, but everything and everyone easily visible. The ends of the med lab casings looked brighter now, a glowing shade of yellow versus the silver gray before the lights went off. He realized it must be from the warmth of their power supplies heating the outer shell.
When he looked back at Maggi and the others, he saw they also had faint yellow to red glows on their bodies, with shades of green to blue on their clothing and shoes. He knew they were in a darker area of the room, where his infrared senses must be picking them out. Above the med labs the internal small lights, as dim as they were, provided his light sensitive vision with enough photons to see clearly the fine-lined patterns in the cool ceiling panels.
The lights came back up, and his vision quickly returned to normal, without his being blinded by the returning glare. “The transition is faster than I’d expect,” he noted.
Rafe answered the unasked question. “The superconducting links to your brain operate far faster than before, Tet. It’s still possible to flash blind you for a moment, or to put you briefly into total darkness, but the TG2’s we’ve tested say it lasts only a second at most.”
Nodding, Mirikami was about to enter the shower room when Maggi, a mischievous look on her now youthful, pretty pixie face, innocently asked, “Want me to come in and scrub you down again, dear, just like before you went into that box?”
He glanced back quickly but didn’t answer, and with a pained red-faced expression, turned and stepped through the doorway. Maggi naturally found a way to help her future contract husband get over his embarrassment. “Wow, we can see that blush all the way down to your butt, lover. Better put on a lot of that tanning cream.”
****
The planning stage of Krall territory raids was finally underway. Between the Planetary Union scouting reports, and the information from the Torki and Prada, the three most critical weapon production worlds had been selected. However, those targets required separate preparatory raids, to enable the Kobani to conduct evacuations of the forced laborers from the manufacturing worlds. If they were left behind, the Krall would force them to rebuild the factories and resume production, or probably slaughter them if that wasn’t possible, and start production elsewhere.
Coldar, standing on the Bridge of the Mark of Koban, which was now parked on Haven, described the first preliminary targets, two Torki shipyards, to Mirikami and his mission planners. The coastal shipyards were located on a former Torki colony world, left operational by the Krall after the conquest because their giant ships proved useful. “The only ships now built at Toborkiti colony are the largest ones of a very old design, which can be partly filled with sea water. They now are described only as migration ships.”
He stated an often-repeated truism. “The Krall are very wasteful of ships, lives, and material. From previous reports that reached my lodge, back when dome construction both here and on Koban brought new workers from different Krall clan worlds, we learned that the migration ships were being replaced at a rate of two of them every five orbits of Toborkiti. The maximum rate of construction of one ship, per yard, requires nearly two orbits, so the Krall keep construction in progress at all times. Krall pilots recklessly fly them manually, rather than allow a Torki pilot do so with automation to assist. Therefore, rusting wrecks are to be seen on many worlds. Migration is a dangerous time for us.
“That type of ship design was used at the height of our own spacefaring era, thousands of years ago, and we have never improved the design because the Krall will not let us do so. They normally use them to move a lodge of my people, or several Prada villages, to a new world along with the technology we use, such as tools, instruments, and automated production facilities. If they do not need to fill the water tanks for moving a Torki lodge, they can carry several Prada villages, and one of their modular starter factories.”
“Coldar, do those ships use the faster Krall Jump capability, using T-squared Tachyon Space?” Mirikami asked.
“No. We did not have that technology when we were conquered, and the Krall have permitted no basic modifications since. The Krall pilots and warriors that monitor and insist on flying them always complain of the lack of speed and efficiency. Clan leaders assign low status warriors to guard and fly migration ships. Their loss of time and of ours, or even of an entire ship because of a bad landing, is unimportant to the clans when they fight very long wars.”
Mirikami looked worried. “Well, that low Jump speed creates a logistics problem for us when we raid production planets deeper into Krall controlled space. We can’t safely use our clanships to tow even one ship that large and massive into the T-squared level, nor do we have enough ships anyway. We can’t use our three modified ships to raid, or for pulling multiple migration ships for evacuation, or use them for resupply of those slow boats.
“We need to provide food, water, and sanitation for as many as twelve to fifteen migration ships if we conduct three raids at once. Those big ships will leave an easier to follow wake through Tachyon Space for the Krall, so they can’t travel a direct route. They will have to take a longer more devious route to prevent them from being followed back here. That could take months, on overcrowded ships.
“I have plenty of volunteer Spacers that want to contribute to the war effort, and they can fly the migration ships back here, if we can provide them some resupply. Coldar, perhaps as a demonstration of your new freedom, some of your best qualified people would want the honor of landing them on Haven?”
Coldar bounced his body several times, in apparent excitement. “The capture of our ships from the Krall would make them human property, if we Torki understand your concept of victory and property ownership from warfare.”
Mirikami shook his head, and then in case that wasn’t understood, said “No. Those ships are the product of your people’s labor. They are property that was taken from you, and you are our new allies. They will be yours when they arrive here.”
The bouncing increased for a moment, and then halted. “We will have pilots practicing in a simulator we can build before you depart. This will represent an important event for us. We offer our thanks to you.”
“Helping you is our pleasure, Coldar. How many reserve migration ships do you think are parked in orbit at Toborkiti? You previously told Maggi that perhaps five migration ships would be enough for evacuation at each planet where we will try to rescue Prada and Torki workers.”
Coldar made a left claw twirl as he estimated. “There were previously twenty or twenty-five ships kept in storage orbits in reserve. The usual ship losses, caused mostly by bad, hard surface landings by careless low status Krall pilots, are most often replaced by new construction rather than refurbishing and using an older ship from the reserve. They keep the old ships in reserve except when a massive movement of Krall clans is planned, to move nearer a new war zone. I suspect that may have happened when the war with your species started, and our small neglected population here was not included. Most migration ships used in recent millennia, if intended only for a single planet’s move of a clan are of newer construction. The older orbiting ships are saved, cold and powered down, for when a massive shift of many clan resources is required.” He spoke of a recent use of multiple migration ships that he had heard described.
“Your
human named Sarge told us of a world that the Krall captured for a base. If the Krall did as they have in other wars, probably eight or more migration ships would have been used to move warriors, workers, supplies, and factories of the major clans to that Krall base you call K1. Repeat trips would move lesser clans. When the invasions increase to more worlds, more clans will move closer to participate and they will capture other worlds for bases. They will need more migration ships to move the workers and factories.
“Unless human fighting ships attacked and destroyed the migration ships, they all will have been returned to Toborkiti for safekeeping. You will need a minimum of three rescue ships per raided planet, and four or five of them would reduce crowding, and increase speed of loading.”
“Coldar, our information told us that the PU Navy never attacked the giant migration ships when they were at K1. The admirals held the belief that such huge ships would have powerful offences and defenses.”
Waving a claw, Coldar discounted that fear. “They are slow and unarmed. The ships that would most recently have been used at K1 are going to be the easiest to awaken at Toborkiti, and will be the newest built. Those ships should be found in the highest orbits around Toborkiti, because the Krall follow old habits and traditions. The next newest ships will be in slightly lower orbits, where the previously used ships would be stored. The most ancient ships are parked in the lowest orbits, and after a thousand or more years will need many repairs before they can be used. Prada and Torki in suits would be sent to do that dangerous and difficult work.”
“When these ships are shut down, how are they reactivated?”
“They use a different design fusion reactor from human and Krall ships. However, if you have the right mixture of heavy hydrogen for fuel, and a high current external power source, they are started in a similar way to Krall fusion reactors. To start the reactors, you fill their plasma chambers from a hydrogen fuel supply of double heavy hydrogen atoms, with a one percent trace of radioactive triple heavy hydrogen, and provide the starting current to build the magnetic confinement and compression fields. After that, fuel feed and ship systems operation is almost automatic if the computer controls are activated.
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 59