“General Nabarone said the Army has tens of millions of soldiers in the training pipeline now, many of them from Hub worlds, and they can be placed wherever the Krall choose to go. The productivity of weapons and equipment is finally at a level to supply that many troops.”
Carson saw where she was going. “After this week, the Krall can’t deliver their new equipment to the front lines at the pace they need. They have already lost their migration ships, and the clanships they have now will have to last until replaced in a few years, from new facilities. If the Navy can take out more of their clanships it will force the Krall to slow down their advances, while humanity continues to build up forces.”
Noreen was amused to watch her son pull at his lower lip, in an unconscious imitation of his uncle’s thinking pose. His words also echoed the thoughts that could have come from Mirikami. “This is going to enrage the Krall clans. Berserker anger might be impossible to resist on Poldark, if they decided to punish humanity there.”
Dillon, stepping out of a lift, heard his son. “Carson, it isn’t as if they weren’t winning the war the way it was going. Higher human casualties may result from our attacks in two days, but Krall recklessness and anger should also deplete their resources faster, buying time and saving lives in the long term.
“From the Prada and Torki we have learned they don’t have the large slave population we expected. They only kept alive those workers they needed, to drag out wars for as long as they could for their selective breeding to succeed. High productivity has never been a requirement when they fought past wars. We are taking the workers that know how to build the most critical weapon elements with us. This will hurt them.”
Carson asked the key question, which they all had been asking themselves. “What can they do to hurt us in return?”
The answer, when it came, would be worse than anyone had imagined.
****
Telour’s visit to the soft Krall world was now paying the dividends he and Tor Gatrol Kanpardi had expected. Til Gatrol Telour, bearing his new title as Kanpardi’s second in command, marched down from his clanship between two octets of his own honor guard. He had only permitted his title, and his inspection, to be announced in advance of his landing.
Telour relished the rare look of surprise on a Krall’s rigid face, when Parkoda realized that the title of Til Gatrol had been awarded to his old Graca clan nemesis.
Parkoda, still a Tanga clan sub leader with one name, knew to expect a difficult time from any representative sent by Tor Gatrol Kanpardi, but he knew this inspection was going to be particularly brutal to his ego. There wasn’t even the possibility that his clan would back him this time, in a death match challenge offered to anyone with such high status. On Koban, he now knew his clan leader had sacrificed him for a possible political advantage for the clan. A move that failed when Kanpardi had shrugged off Parkoda’s insulting remarks, and had remained the Gatrol.
Protocol required Parkoda to walk up to a high status, triple-named warrior and salute, and ask how he could serve him. Determined to show no sign of his anger and resentment, he stood in front of Telour and raised his left arm; talons extended, and dropped the arm crisply.
He fervently wished he could have torn the flesh from Telour’s muzzle, the stoic expression on his personal and clan enemy marred by a slight ripple of his flexible lips. The latter betrayed a sense of pleasure, as if Telour had just tasted some particularly flavorful Raspani meat.
Maintaining iron control over his own temper, Parkoda asked, “How may I serve you, Til Gatrol?” He omitted saying his base name of Telour, which conveyed no overt insult to the high status rank because the full title was spoken on his initial greeting. It was a trivial slight aimed at the holder of that rank, demonstrating that he wasn’t currying the favor he knew wasn’t going to be offered.
“Sub leader, you must personally show me how you verify every soft Krall prisoner’s location, and demonstrate that they are all here.” Telour knew well how it was done, but making Parkoda do it personally was part of showing to all that he was a low status flunky.
This demand surprised Parkoda. He anticipated criticism of how security was conducted, how guards were trained, and how many were assigned to monitor the compound where the soft ones lived. This demand was simple arithmetic, done mainly at the inconvenience of the soft ones, forcing them to pass in lines through a Katusha tattoo detector and having them counted. This was done periodically anyway.
“Yes, Til Gatrol.” He turned to his own aide, to order the assembly siren to sound over the compound. He was interrupted.
“I said for you to personally show me all of the steps. If I was in error and you have been demoted in status again, and this warrior you turned to is now the sub leader in charge, I will order him to do as I said.”
There, Telour thought in satisfaction. One cloaca lick forced in public. This was in front of Parkoda’s next highest subordinate. The word would spread. The number two Krall always wanted his superior’s status and job, if he could get it without exposing his own disloyalty or justify to the clan leaders that a death match challenge served their needs.
Parkoda’s eyes narrowed and his deployed ultrasonic ears quivered to show his emotion, but all he said was, “Follow me.”
Then he ran towards the armored blockhouse, placed outside the main entrance to the dome where the prisoners were housed. Because Krall generally ran from point A to point B if it was more than about fifty feet, it wasn’t an insult to do this. However, doing so at top speed was pushing the envelope of proper respect.
For Parkoda’s purposes, he wanted to dismiss the warriors inside to leave immediately. He would send them to help herd the soft one’s towards the counting stations, before they could see what next humiliation Telour could think of to inflict.
When Telour stepped inside, the hand of warriors there were racing through the heavy airlock-like door, into the dome. Parkoda pressed the button to trigger the head count siren call the instant Telour entered, making certain he saw him performing the action. The wail of the alert through the open double doors diminished when the outer door closed.
That gave Telour his next opportunity to nitpick Parkoda’s administration of the facility, but robbed him of his audience.
He noted critically, “Both doors were open simultaneously. A soft one waiting outside could have tried to enter the guard house.”
Parkoda countered. “There were five of us in here, all armed, and we have twice their strength and speed. I assumed your time was too valuable to wait, so I opened both doors to send my warriors to gather the soft Krall faster. They will be tending their crops and Raspani herd.” This was a Raspani dung pile of an excuse, but Telour couldn’t call them back to witness another humiliation of their sub leader.
One of the two honor guard octets had followed Telour, at his signal, and the eight warriors were crowded at the outer entrance behind Telour. This gave Parkoda an opportunity to dig back at these Graka clan interlopers.
“I can call four of my warriors to staff this guard post so we can go inside, but if your octet can safely perform the duties of the hand I would call, you and I can enter the compound to observe the head count. Unless you require the protection of your honor guard from the soft ones once inside.”
Bam! That was a double slight delivered in as polite a manner as possible for a Krall, which hit at both the octet, and Telour. The inference that an octet of elite Graka honor guards might not be the equal of a hand of ordinary Tanga guards provoked snarls from those behind Telour. The second slam was suggesting that Telour might need them to defend him against the non-aggressive soft Krall prisoners inside the compound.
This had not quite evened the scorecard, and Parkoda knew he would lose this game, but any victory for him loomed large today. He wished he’d delayed his guard’s departure to witness his clever remarks. He lamented the fact that only Graka clan was witness to his cleverness, and the retaliation from Telour would only escalate now
.
Telour left his guards at the blockhouse, awaiting replacements from Tanga clan, and accompanied Parkoda into the compound. As an experienced Krall warrior, with high status from combat, Telour wasn’t personally concerned about any threat to himself. The same could actually be said of a novice with no kills. It was bred into Krall nature to relish combat, and to have no fear of the outcome.
Besides, Telour knew that if Parkoda failed to keep order in this compound, and a high status visitor were even attacked by a soft Krall, he would be fortunate if his clan leaders allowed him a berserker’s death on some ice cold human world.
They moved quickly across a wide, grassy area, which lay between the structure that surrounded the ten-mile wide circle, and the inner dome. A hundred-foot high hollow ring, thirty feet in depth, had a mirrored surface inside the ring, where Krall monitors walked the four internal ring corridors, looking through the one way transparent armored walls at their prisoners. No Krall had ever heard of a frosted doughnut, which the compound somewhat resembled. The outer ring was the frosting for the unseen guards to patrol, watching their charges move about in the outside habitat where they produced their own food.
At the center was a sizable dome that housed over a hundred thousand of the “family units.” That term stuck any Krall as bizarre, that these cousins to the present Krall species knew their offspring, and the mated pairs (usually) stayed together through multiple breeding cycles. The Olt’kitapi mental infection had taken these traitors away from the Krall’s future on the Great Path.
These once typical “soft” Krall had allowed their minds to be modified by that damnable dead species, to make them behave similar to weaker species, to form alliances. Those were the mere animal species that all true Krall knew they were destined to dominate, or to destroy.
Whatever was done to them was permanent, and made a part of their genetics as a dominate feature. Cross breeding was possible with true warriors, in the early stages of Krall selective evolution, but the offspring of the mattings always retained the mental “defects.” Namely, of the soft Krall’s lack of aggression and loss of the intense desire to fight for domination. Of the most critical importance to the aggressive and warlike Krall, those long ago cubs of cross breeding, when they reached novice age, could be trained to fight but they still could not activate any of the ancient Olt’kitapi “living ships,” even with a tattoo.
The inability of the modern and evolutionally improved Krall warrior to be able to operate one of those ships was the sole reason the older version of their species was permitted to exist. The ability to even cross breed was now lost, after twenty-three thousand years of genetic separation. However, only an unmodified soft Krall could arouse the last large ships the Olt’kitapi had ever designed.
Unless activated by a soft one, the ships seemed to slumber in a standby state for hundreds of years, occasionally activating on their own. They never tried to move from where they were stored, an act that would trigger their destruction. The great ships performed internal self-maintenance, rarely performed hull damage repair, and based on monitoring their activity they apparently did a massive data download, using their intricate sensors. Afterwards, they returned to the former standby state, apparently never requiring fuel replenishment. At least they had no fusion bottles the K’Tals could find.
The soft Krall could make the old ships respond to them, and to obey their commands. However, the soft ones claimed they didn’t understand the technology of the ships. They professed not to know how they were able to get the ships to do what they did, or why the modern Krall, with the same tattoos as they had, were not able to do so. This denial was professed under conditions that even the warrior breed would consider extreme. The extended torture and dismemberment of the adults, and components of their “family units,” would generate any concessions demanded but the one they wanted, which was, how to make the ships respond to the more dominate species. It was most frustrating, and required keeping the breeding line of the traitors alive, and healthy.
A viable-sized breeding pool for the soft Krall had to be maintained as well, something the selective breeding programs of individual warrior clans had proven was necessary. Unwanted, but useful, the early Krall genotype was maintained in captivity and guarded. Today, their numbers were being counted solely for the purpose of Telour to harass Parkoda. This was a way for Kanpardi and Telour, representing Graka clan, to rub Tanga clan and Parkoda’s muzzles into the dirt.
It was a minor diversion from the more useful mission of increasing clanship production on Graca clan’s former nest world. The roughly seven thousand light-year journey was already a long one, and the few light-years detour was well worth the time cost for the revenge.
Telour entertained himself most of the day, critical of any perceived infraction by Parkoda, or his clan’s warriors. When he actually came face-to-face with one of the reviled soft ones, the pallid-grey hide appeared looser on her slightly smaller than normal frame. It made her resemble an underfed pre-novice. The red coloration all adult Krall sported now was a product of the gene selections that had led to the rapid stopping of loss of blood when cut or punctured. There had been greater sexual dimorphism between males and females in the early history of the race, and the soft ones retained that trait. The females were unusually small, and thus unfit for fighting. Not that the males were warriors either.
They looked like smaller pale Krall, but their talons were short and could not be retracted or extended, they could bleed to death if a limb were severed, they had but one heart and liver, and their lungs were smaller, reducing the barrel chests of the true warriors. If the lights went out, they had no night vision and little infrared capability. The ultrasonic ears did not retract for combat or when not in use, and did not have the more cup shape that permitted a more directional detection capability. Watching them move in the 1.3 g gravity of this planet, they obviously lacked the same muscle definition, speed, and strength of those that followed the Great Path.
Looking at the soft ones for the two hours it required for counting them all, Telour grew sick of seeing them. It was his fault for demanding the count, and then insisting he watch Parkoda as they passed by him individually. He relented on that decision, to complete the process within a full breeding cycle, or he died of boredom. It was another small victory for Parkoda when he permitted the line of soft Krall to pass by other Tanga clan warriors, each holding a Katusha mounted on a stand with computer attached. These did the actual counting, and the total from each station was linked and combined.
In the final tally, compared to the last census, taken monthly actually, there was a net decrease of two soft ones, despite the hatching of a cub that did not yet have a tattoo, and was manually tabulated.
Telour had never expected there to be any discrepancy in numbers, yet badgered Parkoda about how sloppy the process was if a new hatchling was only entered when physically seen. It implied some could remain hidden and outside their census. A ridiculous claim, but one it was impossible to prove could not happen.
That led to Telour’s pretext to take Parkoda with him, to verify that none of those potentially “missing” and now grown cubs had not escaped from the planet, and were waiting to steal a great Olt’kitapi ship. The evidence to back that possibility were the clanships stolen from Telda Ka, and one possibly used on Poldark.
Not only did it allow additional time to humiliate Parkoda, thus relieving the boredom of long Jumps, his ambitious second in command would be in charge here while he was gone. If he left Parkoda on the Graka clan production world, forced to find his own way back to his assignment post, he may discover he had been replaced at even this backwater outpost.
They Jumped for the world where the powerful Olt’kitapi ships were hidden, with a clearly angry Parkoda in tow. It was a relatively short jump, because if these machines of ultimate destruction were ever needed, keeping them in proximity to the soft Krall was more efficient.
They were quickly challenged for identif
ication on White Out, and a visual display of the mission commander and his command deck staff was required even before the boarders would dock with them. This was to preclude the presence of small gray-colored, soft Krall inside a clanship. At least none that had not been coordinated in advance to arrive as prisoners, in restraints. Five clanships met them, and four hands of warriors boarded and searched the ship, as the other ships stood by with missiles, lasers, and plasma cannons ready to fire. The borders efficiently and thoroughly swept every deck with Katushas, to verify that no soft Krall were in hiding.
Once cleared to move inward towards the star, they landed on a small airless moon and walked in vacuum suits to a shuttle made available for just Telour and Parkoda to go down to the planet. Visiting clanships, with their firepower and internal volume for carrying many warriors, were not allowed to land on the planet.
Calling the world a planet required a small play on words, because the habitable world was itself a large moon of a huge Jovian type gas giant, in a close orbit 1.5 Astronomical Units from its host star. A small moon orbiting a large moon, orbiting a giant gas ball five times the mass of Jupiter was an unlikely place to find a habitable world, with an eighteen percent oxygen atmosphere, and eighty percent nitrogen, with other traces.
Tidal stress and drag kept one face of the habitable moon pointed at the Jovian. Yet it received adequate light and heat from the star when exposed to its light, a star slightly larger and hotter than average. The planet-sized moon would sometimes fall in the shadow of the Jovian, reducing the stars heat and light for hours. However, the gas giant radiated more heat than it received, so temperature changes were not too extreme on the planet/moon.
The shuttle took them into the extinct caldera of a monstrous shield volcano. Parked along the inside rim of the crater, in shadow most of the time, were eleven ships, each five times the size of a clanship. They were smaller than the Torki migration ships, but could control immense power, and travel in a manner that no other ships in the experience of the Krall could match. Their shapes were oddly contoured, with all rounded edges, twice as long as they were wide or high, lying on their long side. They resembled a short plump sausage with a slightly bowed back that was lower in the center than at each end. There was no visible difference between either rounded ends of the ships, and in fact, either end was equally the bow or the stern. A trait it was said, that reflected its designer’s flexible mental processes, the Olt’kitapi.
Koban: Rise of the Kobani Page 69