“Ahh,” ahhed Marlyn, knowing of the event. “That must be the awkward liaison she stumbled onto, in what she expected to be an unoccupied anti-ship missile storage hold. She was verifying a missed inventory entry, and found Clarice Femfreid and Yilini Jastrov practicing missile firing and targeting, in the nude. A noisy bull’s eye strike apparently.”
After some heartfelt laughter and exchanging a few amusing remarks, he told Marlyn that Yil claimed they were going to sign-the-line for a short-term contract for one child.
Mirikami offered another observation and prediction. “Clarice’s husband was killed in Krall combat testing before the Fancy even arrived here. She was a member of my one and only combat team, and we have stayed friends. I know she had a couple of parings with uncontracted male friends over the years, but nothing that was long term or reproductive related. Our future prospects were bleak most of that time, and she never expected to be young again. None of us did.
“She has at least fifty years of experience over Yil, but they nearly look the same age now. We are going to see more of this. It’s no more surprising than the start of contract marriages of two generations ago, when males were in extremely short supply. Older women often contracted with mothers of teenage boys for reproductive rights, provided they were over sixteen and the woman could pay, and the mother received a seventy percent share of the hefty contract fee as dowry. We simply grew away from the necessity of wide age gap reproductive matches, once there were more males around.”
Marlyn agreed. “It’s odd how quickly we shift our societal rules and morals to match what we intend to do anyway, no matter what the rules were previously.”
“Did you hear from Aldry, or perhaps Rafe, that we Kobani are already expecting our first eleven TTGs? Genuine and True Third Generation children. Three conceptions came while we all were in Human Space, three more happened quickly after you returned with good news on our progress, and the rest were not reported until after Noreen and I came back.”
“Wow! I didn’t hear about all of that, Tet. So many so quickly. Who are the expectant parents?”
“I have no idea. Aldry and Rafe refused to say before the parents elect to speak out. Even then, the fathers may choose to stay anonymous. The contract records are sealed from the public unless the signers agree to the release. According to Aldry, the mothers will start to show earlier than normal, because the fetus will grow faster in the supercharged metabolisms they have now.
“Aldry also says the first pregnancies appear completely normal, other than seeming to be 15 to 20 percent farther along than for unmodified humans. I’m sure you recall that you and Noreen delivered your three bundles of joy almost a month early each time, and you only had clone mods and high metabolism. These new moms also have superconducting nerves and muscles.”
Marlyn had a practical concern. “If the mothers are any of our raiders, I wish I knew. I don’t want them endangered, and I recall that a high metabolism in us SGs made for rapid onset morning sickness for many of us. I briefly hated Noreen because she never had that, and I did, twice out of my three children. The expectant moms won’t be very effective, if they’re puking in their helmets.”
“According to Rafe, none of the mothers-to-be are on the teams we’re taking with us, based on threat of medical disqualification if they tried to go. However, there might be some recent conceptions none of the medical staff is aware of, or even the future mother knows about yet. Hell, Clarice and Yil might just have started a little rocket man.”
Marlyn displayed a brief pause with a puzzled expression, and then, “Oh! You mean because of where Noreen found them.” She laughed at the pun. “If so, I hope a boy isn’t named that.”
“Anyway, back to the first part of your double mission. How soon will you be ready to Jump? We will time the other launches around the departure times of the migration ships when you tell us you have them. My arrival to CS1 should be the most delayed, because of travel time of the rescue ships. I expect Trakenburg’s men to complete the clanship captures in a few days, and then I’ll have to wait somewhere closer to CS1 for the expected arrival of the big ships.
“I may arrange to hold up some of the other rescue ships at unoccupied star systems, as I’m going to do, to keep our attacks as close to simultaneous as practical. We can’t let slow and unarmed migration ships get to any of the targets first and give anything away.”
Marlyn was curious. “Tet, why is the coordination of such widely spaced attacks so integral to your planning? If you hold off a week longer to attack, waiting for your rescue ships to cover the distance to CS1, and Noreen is ready at CS2, any Krall couriers with the news of her raid would not be able to warn CS1 in time. So what if we miss starting a raid by a few days or a week? They won’t be ready for us.”
Mirikami considered her question and comments. “We have only recently discovered instantaneous long range communication as we enter and exit Tachyon Space. As far as we know, the Krall don’t have or even suspect this capability. However, in cautions passed to me by the Torki and Prada, they insist that we probably have not seen all of the Krall’s captured weapons or technology. If it couldn’t be copied or reproduced by their slave labor, then the Krall would hold onto whatever one of a kind weapon they had until it was needed.
“When I prompted Coldar for clues about possible technology or weapons that humans have not encountered, he spoke of an old event recorded on Torki Olts, of lodges in one star system where something important and secret was expected to arrive or to happen. Most of the Torki working there were placed on migration ships and relocated, as an efficient use of them as resources, or so they were told. The few workers that were left behind were never part of any later migrations, and no Prada village or Torki lodge has ever been sent back to that once well-populated Krall system. The secret, whatever it was, has been kept from their slaves.
“Krall surprises have a nasty habit of being dangerous.” He listed some. “At K1, the PU Navy didn’t know about Eight Balls, Worms, the old orbital defense platforms, or the traceable wave fronts created by massive ship movements in Tachyon Space. That ignorance cost the fleets and Rhama dearly.
He pulled at his lip in deep thought. “This first strike of ours is too important to have it go badly. We may never have another chance as good as this one to hurt the Krall as seriously, and to do it without any advance warning. It costs us nothing to coordinate it this way, and it might possibly cost us dearly if we don’t. Why take any risk not required?”
Seldom had a tug of a lip led to so prescient a thought, and yet indirectly brought unexpected destruction to so many victims, simply by the application of caution that the thought suggested.
****
The Beagle had been gone three days, and was within three more days of reaching Toborkiti. It was time for the Mark of Koban to lift for the first and closest of three Krall planets, each lightly occupied by specific minor clans. The Maldo, Dolbrin, and Kordak were finger clans with only a handful of domes on the conquered worlds they were given to settle, and they had only a minor presence in the joint clan council. They were mostly relegated to conducting raids on human worlds. On rare occasion, they had participated in an offensive on Bollovstic or Poldark. They had few resources beyond small weapons, armor, and vehicle manufacturing, and the original gifts of a nucleus of clanships, provided by their parent clans. Those were considered the softest targets for theft.
Between successful raids and culling weaker warriors, their ships would be parked on tarmacs, as they trained the next generation of novices, genetically the best they had produced or procured recently. After the surviving breeders of multiple raids had mated and nested, and the natural savage culling of the resultant thousands of cub hatchings had reduced their numbers to the toughest, the six to eight-year-old young killers were forcibly placed in training.
The pre-novices that were temperamentally incapable of submitting to a superior opponent, the adult trainers that captured them, were admired for thei
r spirit and killed, as lacking the ability to learn when to obey those with higher status. The remainder entered a form of basic training to become better killers and to learn how to earn their own status.
For any clan, this meant intensive one-on-one attention for the early novices, which received their first empty oval of a status tattoo. A high percentage of clan members in a smaller clan would largely be occupied with training, with few spare warriors to assign to guard clanships that couldn’t be entered by other than a Krall anyway. With interclan warfare presently forbidden, there was no need to guard against theft by a rival clan.
Based on the last of a series of raids by any specific minor clan, the timing of their next nesting, hatching, and the start of several years of novice training could be forecast with reasonable accuracy. Data provided by Nabarone from reports about raids in Human Space was given to Jakob, the Mark’s AI, allowing him to predict which of three minor clans should most likely be “hip deep” in training young semi-wild novices right now. The Prada and Torki had identified where those worlds were located for the finger clans Jakob identified. That data was gleaned from their last contact with the Krall overlords sixty years ago; they knew where each of the finger clans had last been based.
Mirikami could reach the first of those planets in three days, sparsely inhabited by the Maldo clan, located in a volume of space formerly settled by the extinct Malverans. If too few of their clanships were found there, or conditions were not right, the next target planet was another two-day Jump to hit the Dolbrin, and the third option was within another three- day Jump, if the most distant choice of Kordak clan were needed.
They were ready to launch. Mirikami addressed the entire ship. “People, unlike the Beagle’s liftoff several days ago, we do not have any Prada or Torki on board, and everyone that is aboard is a TG2. Please get prone and strapped into your couch or pallets for this launch. It will be under the control of Jakob, and I have programmed in an acceleration performance that will certainly strain us, and is beyond the maximum limits the automatic Krall control settings would have permitted.” He let that warning register.
“This isn’t the first one of these I’ve done in the last two weeks of testing, but the watchers on the ground have not seen one yet, and few of you were on board. I hope they have their ears covered and eyes shaded, and that you all keep your underwear clean throughout this ride.”
After a suitable warning to onlookers, who all had retreated inside the dome, Jakob did a brief count down, and initiated the launch.
The main thruster and the eight attitude thrusters all ignited at maximum power, and the brilliant exhaust blast was the practical equivalent of a directed explosive. The hot thruster forces ripped small chunks from the resilient tarmac surface, as the Mark seemed to leap into the sky on an intense column of blue-white plasma. They tore through the atmosphere in a roar that rapidly went hypersonic. The heated streak of their trail began to collapse back as they forced their way through the upper atmosphere, the thunderclap of a near vacuum column formed behind them slamming shut, adding to the sonic booms at the nose and tail. They were out of the atmosphere in under a minute, then when they were out of the gravity well, the secondary tachyon Trap snared the first energetic particle from T- squared space, and they had power for their Normal Space reactionless gravity drive.
That was when the hard acceleration was applied. The reaction thrusters had been at their design limits before, in atmosphere, but they were shut down now. The Mark leaped ahead at almost two hundred and eighty-five gravities externally and at nearly thirty uncompensated gravities internally. All of the TG2s were struggling to push blood to their brains with abdominal muscle contractions, as Jakob monitored the sensors of every crewmember for problems. There was a reduction of external acceleration to lower the internal, uncompensated acceleration to twenty-six g’s, to ease the strain on a number of people on the verge of losing consciousness.
The high level of acceleration was sustained for a minute, and then reduced to only twelve g’s internally for another minute. The relief felt at the big step down was instant. The purpose of the highest g forces was to give everyone the experience of how it might feel when or if they found themselves in combat with Krall crewed clanships. Krall ships couldn’t match that same performance because of the designed acceleration restrictions the Olt’kitapi had built into the clanship controls. Those safety limiters had been removed from the human ships by the Torki. The limits now were what the humans inside could sustain after the inertial compensation had done its best, and was monitored by the AI.
That acceleration level was a significantly greater force than Krall warriors could endure and remain awake and functioning. If needed, Jakob could control and fight the ship with most or all of its crew and passengers blacked out.
Mirikami ordered the acceleration backed down as soon as they had matched the orbital velocity of the clan world they were intending to raid for supply clanships. The primary Trap field caught a far more energetic tachyon, and they formed an event horizon and rotated into a Jump Hole, reaching the second dimensional level of Tachyon Space.
“OK, Colonel,” Mirikami spoke to Trakenburg, who occupied a spare couch on the Bridge. “We now have three days in the hole. I suggest your men Mind Tap and teach a few more of the flight crews what you’ll be doing. They may have to get involved and help you out if things get hairy on that planet when we get there.”
“Tet, if we go in sneaky, there shouldn’t be trouble,” he rebutted.
“Our White Out gamma rays can’t be concealed, you obviously know that. We could exit behind a gas giant to hide our burst, but that clearly looks suspicious when we come out from behind. A lone clanship popping out in orbit shouldn’t raise any alarm. We aren’t stealthed from their sensors in any case, and I don't see a benefit from even activating that capability when they would detect that if we tried. When we land at a dome, they certainly will visually see us come down. We could make landfall at some distance from the target dome, but they might get curious as to why we landed in the boondocks.”
Trakenburg’s sneaky remark prompted a belated comment. “Frank, I thought you and Joe had decided to simply use the new suits invisibility mode to boldly walk across the tarmac to the parked ships, with the flight crews in their suits tagging along well behind to stay clear of any shooting.”
Trakenburg nodded. “That is the primary mode of infiltration we considered. However, if we could get in quieter, without the Mark being seen or heard, it might mean we get out with all of the ships we need before they even know we are there. We spec ops types like it when we can get in and out that way.”
“OK. We’ll see what the layout is when we arrive, how many ships there are per dome. As I know you are aware, I have the two Krall design shuttles that can fly you in low and covertly from a remote landing site, if that seems best.”
“I agree. We put more emphasis on the actual ship take over’s than the insertion process this week. We’re using two men to ascend per ship as your youngsters did on K1, and the three-person flight crew to act as door guards below. We have the kids Mind Tap experiences from K1 and on Poldark as guidelines, and because that sort of technique wasn’t even possible for us before our gene upgrades, we’ll largely follow their example until we find ways to improve. Two of my men have elected to retain use of the Booster Suits to evaluate how they perform in the field with TG2 abilities. Each man is paired with someone not wearing a Booster Suit.”
Mirikami was curious. “My own armor fits rather snug. I didn’t know there was enough room inside for the added bulk of those other suits.”
Trakenburg waggled a hand with splayed fingers to indicate there were pros and cons. “We found that the armor has a limited adjustment capability. Apparently, in case the owner bulks up more or losses some weight. When we clamshell closed, the armor’s seams can extrude or retract at the edges, enough for a snug fit with the Booster Suit bulk if we wear them. I don’t think I’ll be wearing
mine much anyway. Before, my Booster felt like a powerful second skin to me, but now it seems to slow me down. You give up some significant speed for a little more power.”
For two of the three days of transit, armored men and women were flipping up and down stairwells, practicing. Other than the slight sound of their passage and some degree of visual distortion to the naked eye, they were unseen, even to the ripper level of vision. That is unless the observer was wearing their own helmet, with its suit ID mode synchronized with those suits and activated. Mirikami ordered all suits aboard to be set up this way, in case anyone needed to find or help another otherwise invisible member of the crew.
On the third day, an hour before White Out, Mirikami ordered everyone into armor, even if not expected to participate in the ground action. Aside from making them available as a ready force if needed, the suits doubled as airtight protection if they took any penetrating hull hits if the operation went bad while in vacuum.
When the outside universe reappeared, they were roughly a thousand miles out from the largely tan world with mostly red and orange vegetation, already moving in the right direction to establish a nearly circular orbit. The clan world orbited a reddish-colored star, much closer in than was the case for brighter and hotter stars. The AI quickly located several Krall domes on this hemisphere, with three continents visible, one dome on each. It was obvious yet again that the Krall, even when it was a finger clan with a low planetary population, didn’t care for crowding and close proximity to neighbors.
Two of the domes were smaller than the typical size, indicating a small warrior population at those sites. There was a single clanship parked on each dome’s modest half-mile diameter tarmac, and one dome had two shuttles parked near the larger ship. The largest of the three domes was a bit smaller than the Prime City dome on Koban, but would have room for a population of twenty or thirty thousand Krall, except, there was only three clanships there, and a shuttle. That might suggest that there were less than three thousand Krall living there, or that they had departed for a raid or were at war on Poldark.
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 62