Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire

by Stephen W Bennett

  He directed the pilot to land closest to the left most of the three operational ships at the right end of the line of ships. The empty space to the left of the one he chose marked the place where the lost Huwayla had been parked for millennia.

  There was a depression several feet deep, left behind in the accumulated red dust and dirt covering the underlying layer of ancient dark gray basalt. It was ringed with a kind of red-brown grass that covered most of the crater floor, and had not yet grown down the recently exposed low slope. Telour had never known that the ship from that slot had a name, and as customary for a Krall, he didn’t care what a machine might think it had been named by its dead makers.

  Every Krall had been selectively bred to be ambidextrous, but retained a slight preference for their left hands, and they had used the ships in a systematic fashion, selecting them from the left end of the line, moving to the right. There were other gaps in the line, but there were still eleven ships present, of which eight were considered aware and alive. Only the last three would interact with a visitor by opening automatically as they approached, and would respond to a soft Krall’s instructions, as verified by periodic testing after each hundred orbits had passed.

  Telour’s escort octet filed out first, and stood four to each side as he made his exit, followed by the pilot. He strode purposefully towards the left one of the two main entrances, one placed at the center of each side, anticipating a tongue like ramp to extrude as he neared. The outer airlock door should iris open for him as he stepped onto the ramp. He abruptly stopped as he reached the point where he remembered where the ramp of the other ship he’d entered had extended.

  There was none of the odd movement of the hull material, which he recalled from before as the ramp prepared to extrude. He moved closer, but to the side of where the ramp should extend. There was no reaction.

  “Ship. Open for me, I wish to enter.”

  No reaction. He ordered one of his escorts to walk directly towards the center of the oval of the large airlock hatch. If the ramp suddenly extended and he was unable to avoid injury, there were other warriors present. No ramp appeared and the hatch didn’t open.

  “Try the smaller airlocks at ground level.” The warriors ran the length of the ship to where smaller oval shapes identified other personnel airlocks of two different size scales. None of them reacted, even to efforts to push at them.

  “To the other side.” He led his troops to what he thought of as the right side, although he’d been told there was really no front or stern for these ships, so left and right was a matter of personal orientation. The main hatch on that side, and the multiple smaller hatches, stubbornly stayed completely inert.

  As he started running towards the next ship in line, the first of his honor guards were arriving from their speedy run across the grassy floor of the old crater. Without question, like ants, they followed their Tor as he ran towards the side of the next ship. It didn’t react.

  He called a conference with his octet leaders and his pilot. “This may be why the Guardians are not here, if the ships are no longer responsive. What knowledge do any of you have of the code of behavior for a Guardian? I would expect them to remain until relieved, but they have their own guide for their duties here, outside of their own clans.”

  One of his aides spoke up. “My Tor, a clan mate of my own training cycle earned high status in the invasion of the place humans called Bollovstic, and was selected for the honor of being a Tanga clan representative to the Guardians. They would not shirk their duty to guard our greatest weapons. He returned after half a breeding cycle to breed, and returned to combat on Poldark as a sub leader. He is on New Dublin now. He was not allowed to speak of his duties here, but was even more faithful and energetic in following orders after he returned. I don’t think the Guardians would leave this technology unprotected, even if it did not work properly.”

  There was an agreement on this matter, that the lack of response from the ships was not why the Guardians were absent. Telour gave voice to the only reason the Guardians would accept for leaving. “If the Joint Council sent them orders they would leave, but only after the commander verified the council’s order in person. As Tor Gatrol, I could not order them to go, and we know the Joint Council issued no such order. We have still not solved that mystery, and I must leave it for later. Now one octet,” he pointed to an octet leader, “will complete the check of the hatches on other side of this second ship, and I will go to the last ship in the line.”

  He wasn’t sure what he’d do if that one wouldn’t open either, but he definitely wasn’t leaving without getting inside at least one of them, by whatever means necessary.

  In the absence of Prada slaves there was no ground maintenance performed here, but the low growing brown and red grass analogue covered most of the miles of wide open plains in the vast old crater, with only low orange tinged shrubs visible, many growing along the edge of a shallow streambed. The currently dry and meandering cut exposed the red soil down to the underlying gray basalt, and it passed between the final two ships, but closer to the last one. Telour leaped over the narrow dry stream followed by all but the octet he’d left checking the previous ship. There was a narrow twenty-foot gap between the stream and short shrubs, and Telour was racing along a slightly worn path to reach mid ship, to test the main hatch.

  He reacted instantly with a leap to the side, and drew a pistol at a sudden movement on his right. His warriors reacted by leveling their plasma rifles at the same movement through the grass that their leader had seen.

  With a snort of amusement, Telour holstered his pistol and felt a sense of relief. What had produced the movement in the grass was a small ramp, being extruded from the base of one of the smaller airlocks that were spaced along the oddly shaped, round ended hull.

  His pilot displayed his own sense of relief. “My Tor, this ship is responsive to our passing. Will you enter here?”

  “The ship will not guide me to the command center without a soft one to speak for us, and the insides of ships can be configured differently by past occupants. I know the way to get to the command deck from either of the two large airlocks, using the wide main corridors. I’ll enter there to let my memory lead us.”

  He ran even faster to reach the main airlock and angled away from the ship before turning to walk directly at the hatch. The large ramp didn’t extrude, not even when he was so close he’d be in the way of its full deployment. It had occurred to him the ramp would never strike anyone, because the Olt’kitapi would never build a ship that would allow that to happen. He walked to the base of the hatch, almost at eye level, and banged his closed fist on it hard enough to hurt. It made a dull thump.

  Clearly angry and frustrated now, he stalked the two hundred feet back to the smaller hatch. The ramp had automatically retracted after the last warrior followed their leader away. As Telour approached, the ramp again was extruded, forming from hull material that flowed to the place where it grew out to form a four-foot wide ramp, twice that in length. With the ship so settled into the shallow layer of red volcanic soil, the base of the ramp barely cleared the grass at the side of the ship.

  Telour stepped onto the ramp, and the outer door irised open with hardly a sound. The airlock compartment was relatively small, and unlike the main airlock, the inner hatch on this one was not transparent. You couldn’t see where the airlock led. Judging the size of the airlock chamber, Telour called a hand of warriors forward, to crowd into the small compartment ahead of him. To his other warriors he said, “Cycle through five at a time after we are clear. When you step on the ramp, the outer hatch should open automatically after we exit the airlock on the inside.”

  He entered behind the four warriors pressed close ahead of him. He was seeking some way to activate the airlock cycle, when the outer hatch suddenly spiraled inward and sealed behind him. Surprisingly, there was still outside light coming from behind them. From this side, the door was amazingly transparent, or it had turned that way for both sides.
But, it didn’t seem from the peering eyes of those outside, that they could see Telour looking back at them.

  Again, Telour looked for a control panel of some sort, when he noticed differently scented air had cycled into the compartment. The uplifted muzzles of the hand of warriors were also checking the new smells. It proved harmless and the oxygen level actually improved greatly, from the slightly low fifteen percent oxygen of the outside air, to double that level in here. The planet’s air had contained limited odors, with little variation in the life so far observed, of simple plants and a few insects they had seen, and no animals.

  The new air was a total surprise to Telour. He’d expected the intriguing rich smells he’d experienced on his other forays into the previous ship. Those scents, he was informed, were believed to be like those of the original Krall home world, Kratos. This was entirely different.

  For one thing, aside from double the oxygen content, there was something exotic, yet familiar about the smells of plants and animals that his sensitive nose picked up. He remembered odors like this, from more than a breeding cycle ago. It smelled like Koban!

  The inner airlock door swept open from the middle, and the lead warriors stepped into the corridor thus revealed, just as another door irised closed at the other end. However, it didn’t fully close before they saw a hand and a small pistol pull back as the shrinking circle in the center of the door spiraled closed. It was a human sized hand in an armored gauntlet. There had been a series of phhitt sounds, of slender projectiles passing through the air. The needle gun had launched a large number of slivers as the airlock hatch had spiraled open and that other hatch closed.

  The four warriors snarled swiping at their faces and necks and charged forward, lowering their rifles to fire. The two in back shoving their rifle barrels forward enough not to burn their clan mates in the lead. Set for full automatic and maximum energy, they squeezed their triggers, intending to blast their way through the flimsy looking door.

  Unexpectedly, they smashed into the slightly yielding door and each other, when their rifles failed to fire. Without an instant of hesitation, despite these warriors never having encountered a door like this, one of them jammed his thick rifle barrel hard at the place in the center, where the door had closed off that last circle of light. With a scream of fierce triumph, his weapon forced its way through the flexible material. That joy was short lived, when the butt of the weapon abruptly slammed back into his lower torso, knocking him back with a grunt of pain, and the bent barrel was shoved back through to their side of the door.

  The second Krall in the front pushed two taloned fingers through the same center point to force an opening. He was using his strength to stretch the flexible material aside, and trying to push his other hand through the gap. Suddenly, he snarled in pain and drew back his hands, revealing one was missing two fingertips, sliced cleanly through the bone.

  Telour, who was certain this trap had been set for him, reversed into the airlock and was going to let his four warriors hold back the enemy while he rejoined the larger force outside. He stepped clear of the inner hatch and waited for it to cycle closed, enabling the outer door to open. It wasn’t cycling, and looking through the transparent outer door, he didn’t see the safety and reinforcements out there that he’d expected.

  Instead, his warriors outside had been ambushed and were in a heavy firefight, crouched down in two wide semicircles around the airlock and ramp their leader had used to enter. The front rank was prone and firing in two directions, the inner rank was crouching and firing over them, towards forward and aft. Plasma blasted bodies of many warriors, farther from the airlock, proved how quickly and deadly things had turned outside. Over a dozen warriors were dead or incapacitated, and those defending the airlock were dropping steadily. They were originally told by Telour they would stay behind in the dome on the moony under the eyes of Guardians. When they reached the planetoon with no sign of Guardians, they hadn’t donned their armor, expecting that act to be viewed as a hostile if the mysteriously unresponsive Guardians were watching.

  The first assumption Telour made was that the Guardians might have taken control of the great ships. Except, for them to wait until he entered a ship made no sense. Besides, it was a human hand they’d seen at the other door. At least those outside still had plasma rifles that worked, which the four warriors with him did not. Turning to see how the protectors inside with him were doing, he saw that they were moving with difficulty, one slipping to the floor as he struggled to draw a short sword from his utility harness. In a flash of insight, he knew the needles must have held something like that sleep drug Pendor had told him about, and which he’d half thought was a human fabrication.

  Telour leaped out of the airlock and ran down the short corridor, grabbed one of the rifles and returned to the airlock in case it cycled to let him join his honor guard, or he could try to batter his way out. The reports on Telda Ka had repeatedly described the deactivation problem, and he wanted to see for himself what was wrong with the weapons. He had his two pistols on his hips, but a plasma bolt did greater damage at longer range, and he had only a few reloads for his handguns. He saw the power pack was switched off, and he detached it and tried to activate it while separated from the rifle. It failed to show the small lights that indicated power level, yet he knew it held a full charge, as every warrior had automatically verified before stepping out of the clanship.

  The muffled cracks of plasma rifles had been a constant staccato behind him, heard faintly through the outer door. It had just ceased while he perused the rifle in his hands.

  A look proved his warriors were still prepared to fight, but their rifles had just quit working. At least two hands of them carried pistols as personal weapons and he saw those being fired, with the softened whoosh heard through the hatch. The other warriors drew knives or short swords, and they were clearly preparing to charge, to close with the enemy. Said enemy apparently was located around both ends of this, and the closest adjacent death ship, where Telour couldn’t see them, or perhaps they were stealthed. All he saw were red and green lasers and the actinic flashes of plasma bolts from the attackers.

  The concept of yielding wasn’t even faintly evident in the outraged demeanor of any of the warriors that he could see outside the airlock. This was further evidence that the unseen force they were fighting wasn’t Guardians, as Telour had briefly considered. It wasn’t dishonorable in interclan warfare to yield to a superior force, unless the order to fight for Clan and Path had been given. He had not given that order, although he would have if he had known humans were here. Not that it mattered against animals, even Worthy Enemy animals. A warrior never yielded to animals, even if the warrior was unarmed and seriously wounded.

  He considered the disabled weapon he’d just carried to the airlock. He’d brought it closer to his outside warriors by at least three leaps. The spread of the disabling software was said to be short-range, and transmitted from weapon to weapon, device to device. Now he knew that the effect would pass through the closed hull of one of these ships. He’d inadvertently disarmed his own warriors, although he was sure the humans would have found a way to do this at any moment. The length of the ships the humans were using for cover was great enough that they had not yet approached close enough to the warriors outside. Telour had just solved that problem for them.

  A harsh whisper caught his ears. “My Tor, be ready. We cannot move.” The sub leader who had led the charge in the corridor was in a slumped position against the wall, head drooping, but his eyes were alert, and he was breathing. It was obvious his control of speech was also failing. There were three needles visible in the left side of his face and neck.

  The dozen or so needles he’d heard had missed him by chance, or none was aimed at him in a deliberate act. No matter, he threw down the useless rifle and pulled his left pistol. He had just started to move to stack his guard’s crumpled bodies as his cover, when the hatch in the corridor swished open.

  “Telour, I’
ve been waiting for you.” The human knew his name, confirming the trap was set for him. There was something familiar about the voice.

  Pistol held ready in his dangling hand, he advanced towards the open door only a few steps when a partly armored figure stepped from behind the frame of the hatchway. It was a young dark haired male, whose hands were hanging empty at his sides, but there was a Krall made pistol in a low-slung holster on his right side. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, meaning the suit’s beam weapons were unavailable.

  Stupid, thought Telour, as he snapped his hand up to put an explosive round through the smile he saw forming.

  In a blur of motion even the Krall’s heightened perceptions couldn’t completely resolve, the small man drew his weapon and fired from the hip, as Telour’s weapon rose to almost chest height, where it exploded from the slug’s impact before he could complete the trigger squeeze.

  Even as the pieces of the shattered weapon was spinning away from his stinging and numbed left hand, Telour reached for his right side weapon, only to have another soft nosed slug pass between his grasping fingers and smash that pistol as well. In an equally fast motion, the armored figure holstered his gun.

  “Dillon told me you’d make the typical Krall mistake of raising your gun too high before firing. I’d have beaten you anyway, but I used his low hip fire method to save time. I should have had more confidence. Wearing the damn suit slowed me down, but Maggi would have shot me in the ass herself if I’d met you without some bulletproof protection. Besides, you were going for a head shot, just as I expected. Suit or no suit, I still needed to beat you to the draw. That was fun.”