Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire

by Stephen W Bennett

  Noting the two Prada nearing the stair top, Madie said softly, with a wink. “Here come the raw grub eaters, let’s not upset their fragile digestion discussing cooked food.”

  Sven countered. “A pickled anchovy might not be considered cooked.”

  Madie grimaced, “And now I might consider not eating tonight.”

  They subsequently completed their orbit, and then hovered briefly over Valley Center, allowing the two Prada to make a decision. Rithal’s decision was followed of course, as coming from the eldest.

  “It is reasonable,” Rithal insisted. Nawella had favored an area where there was evidence of more technological development. “In a new small village today, the construction progresses all around the first house built for the elder in charge. That is where the people gather for the stories and wisdom from the words of the elder as the village is built. That is an ancient tradition of our people, and it seems reasonable that this city grew around a source of accumulated wisdom. There may be a library structure or a cultural center in that large cluster of squares that fill the geometrical center of the city. It is a good place to seek written examples of our former language.”

  As Nawella predicted, their first steps on One Land was a heady experience. They felt lighter on their feet, the dimmer red sunlight yielded perfectly shaded colors, where the Kobani needed their ripper vision to brighten the scene, and the air smelled wild and invigorating. The latter invigoration was probably due to the air being a bit higher in oxygen than before, due to the long absence of an industrial society, and increased plant growth.

  Nearly every one of the giant trees had bark infested every few feet it seemed, with a plump grub of a large symbiotic beetle that protected the trees from some sort of nuisance pests. The Prada longer middle finger, with its hooked claw, was ideally suited to extract the grubs. Even though they proved not to be “sweet” as predicted by Nawella, they were indeed savory, with the flavor of the tree bark infused in their juices. The Kobani crew effectively vanished while the Prada acted more like furry gluttons for the first hour.

  Captain Sven said they were seeking possible threats from wild animal life that would live in this forest. They did in fact encounter a group of fifteen to twenty pack animals, which could pass for hopping wolves here, and chased them away. Their real motive was not to have to see another wriggling, three-inch yellow grub bitten into, with thick clear juices squirting to the sides of furry little jaws. Then the lips and fingers fastidiously licked clean, and that to be repeated, and repeated, and repeated, until fuzzy gray, brown, beige, and black tummies were bulging with satisfaction. Not even the captain was interested in pickled anchovies that night.

  In that days that followed, the industrious swarm of Prada cleared jungle residue, covering collapsed structures. These buildings, like those seen elsewhere on the continent, had never been bombed, and it was theorized that when the Krall first attacked the outer colonial outposts of the Prada, that the surviving populations learned of the Krall background, and of the age of their species. The Prada had previously said they slightly knew of the Olt’kitapi, but they were too remote for trading. They had been warned away from Olt’kitapi space when the revolt started, but didn’t directly know about the Krall.

  After a long period of no contact from the Olt’kitapi, they suspected the elder race was gone. When the Krall arrived and bragged it was so, as they raided Prada worlds, they had quickly accepted that their new enemy was the elder species, and refused to fight them, offering instead a willingness to follow their bidding and to work for them in the empire they were building. They had then followed their elders into slavery, frequent relocation, hardworking survival, and a severe population reduction.

  The small six-person Kobani crew watched them work, but unless individual strength was required for the minor task of moving a piece of debris too heavy for several Prada, and machinery wasn’t quickly available, they remained observers and protectors. Except for one attempted rescue that failed, and a retribution that was thwarted when the futility was recognized.

  A young male Prada had been hanging by one foot and his prehensile tail, as he used a hand laser to cut away thick ropy vines hanging from thirty to forty story high tree limbs. He swung over on smaller vines towards a massive tree trunk to clamber down to aid in removal of the pile of vegetation he’d helped create. He reached for a protruding thick green end of a large vine, about the thickness of his body, which wrapped around the slender trunk this far up, to use it to slide closer to the forest floor.

  The “vine” opened a large mouth, not even needing to unhinge its jaw, extending its body in a rapid strike from the support of the tree, and closed its toothed jaws over the surprised and screeching victim, who dropped his burner in a futile effort to hold open the irresistible jaws of the massive snake.

  In response to the other cries of Prada distress, Madie arrived on scene with Nawella, close to the base of the tree as the snake analogue spiraled around the tree to the more open sheltered ground under the shade of the vast tree canopy above. There was a noticeable bulge, located ten feet back from the head, followed by another fifty feet of body that quickly reached the ground.

  Madie reached for her plasma rifle, but she was stopped by Nawella.

  “Let it go. Our brother is already dead, and from the size, this is an old one of its kind. This has been its territory for many years. Its type will be pushed far from here as we reclaim our cities. We will be more alert now, as we are for the ground predators you frightened away the first day. This was once our world, but we had been so safe from such threats for so long that we don’t even have stories of these animals. We are strangers in our own land, where we first evolved. We will master our world again, but I hope we have learned to share and conserve better, after seeing how the Krall treated every living species they met, and every world they ruined if they stayed there long enough.”

  The clearing effort continued but with Prada eyes more alert, in the trees now as well as on the ground. There were another few deaths, two from poisonous animals and one a poisonous insect, but nothing ate another Prada.

  Rithal was proven correct in her assessment that there would be a repository of written material in the center of the old city. There were even printed versions of old preserved documents in heavy clear cases that had survived the collapse of buildings. Many of their more modern records had become digital representations, and even if the media on which they were recorded was recovered, the means to read and interpret the data was assumed lost to time.

  That was when Nawella’s small expedition to a scientific research area proved to be the solution. In underground tomb-like vaults, used for unknown purposes thus far, were ancient experiments sealed from moisture and extreme temperature changes. In the vaults, they found relatively well-preserved electronic instruments, and the mediums on which technical data had been preserved. It wasn’t literature, history, or even daily stories of life, but Nawella was convinced that some of it would be the recorded language of the Prada who had performed the research. Even if unintelligible technical data were present, there would be verbal notes added to discuss what had been learned. Using Krall equipment, the Prada had done the same sort of thing in organizing their war production systems for them.

  Nawella consulted with the technical specialists she had brought, who told her the inoperable instruments could be replicated, and the old recording media could then be read, or copied carefully, and heard for the first time in perhaps eighteen thousand orbits.

  They also rejoiced that they again had a standard orbit on which they could base a reconstructed year for Prada ages. This was something else lost to them, as the Krall moved them around, often without allowing them to collect any personal possessions, such as time keeping devices. When they converted the orbital periods of all the worlds where Prada had been taken by the Krall, they could eventually calculate, with reasonable accuracy, which of them was the truly the eldest in years, as measured by One Land’s o
rbital period.

  This had a high priority for them, further proof that the Prada could not abandon their deeply ingrained cultural, and possibly instinctive acceptance of following the guidance of their elders. At least now, thanks to advice from an elder species, the Raspani, they would only follow the lead of the elders within their own species.

  ****

  Blue Flower Eater made an elbow squeeze, the Raspani gesture of negation, and said, “We are not seeking our home world. We knew where Great Plains was located from the day our massed personalities were reawakened in the chip within this skull,” he tapped the side of his head with a slender dexterous finger that seemed at odds with his pudgy looking arms.

  Maggi was puzzled. “You don’t want to resettle Great Plains, to repair any damage the Krall may have caused?”

  “I certainly don’t, personally. Besides, I was born and raised on the colony world where this mind enhancer chip was found, in that relic skull saved by the Torki. The world you called CS2, where clanships were built by the Mordo clan. That world, we called it Red Grain after the delicious forage on its plains, was ruined by the rape of its resources for the shipyards, and its air is poisoned. The grain we loved has all withered and died. I don’t want to return there, since we were forced to become a food herd there, and our processed dead were shipped to other worlds by the Krall as rations. Those minds still inside my chip were from there, and they too have only bad memories.”

  “OK. I see why you don’t want to restore Red Grain for habitation. Why not your home world, of Great Plains?”

  “It is less of a personal reason for myself, and for the nearly quarter million minds I still carry, but most Raspani feel the same, that Great Plains too was ruined, but not only by the Krall. Graka clan moved their nesting grounds from the planet you called CS1, because they had ruined that world. Just as CS2 was ruined by Mordo clan by clanship production, strip mining, foundries, and smelters. Graka moved their clan nesting grounds six thousand or more years ago from CS1. Would you care to guess where they went?”

  “I presume it must have been to Great Plains. Did they rape its resources too?”

  “Not to the extent they did on their clanship production world, but that was because there were fewer resources left to plunder. Fewer, because we Raspani had done our share of plundering the environment for a longer period. We are a much slower developing people than humans are, even after the Olt’kitapi gave us our mind enhancers, leaving us thousands of years to extract what we wanted from our home world.

  “Then the Graka clan dismantled our cities, homes, and factories, for metals to make their domes, and to send the metals in trade for status points from Mordo to build clanships, or to other clan production worlds to make other weapons in exchange for their status points to become a Great Clan. It’s far easier to steal metal already processed, than to dig the ores, transport it, process it, and then build something. We can’t easily rebuild what we had on Great Plains because most of the materials would have to be imported, and we Raspani have less emotional attachments to places than do the Prada and even the Torki, who are not noted for sentimentality.”

  He pondered a moment. “Less attachment to flat plains covered in grasses, perhaps because such grassy plains are common and similar on any world we selected for colonization. They all soon feel like home. We do however have long lasting emotional reactions to events that happen on a world.

  “I explained about Red Grain, and on Great Plains we learned that the Graka clan allowed their newly hatched cubs, and pre-novices to hunt down nearly the entire population for sport and training, and to eat some of them, of course. They forced our people there to plant the red spice plant everywhere it would grow, so that when the Raspani had too little of grains, grass, and ferns to eat, that plant kept them alive, and got them slaughtered when it spiced up their flavor for the Krall. Red spice grows everywhere there now. I won’t live there, when we have alternatives.”

  Maggi reassured him. “You know the Kobani will help you to resettle the colonies that are still acceptable to you, and help you scout worlds that might prove suitable for new colonies. If you could safely operate the captured clanships you could explore on your own, but that appears risky. I presume when each of your peoples has your own planets and industries, you will construct purpose-built ships for each species to use, but that might be well in the future. I’ll bet you can hire human spacecraft companies to build ships for you, based on your designs. I’d think they would like the expanded business. Wherever you decide to explore, we have no shortage of worlds, that’s for certain.”

  “True. Particularly for you humans. Even the new PU applicants that want to move to the GF will find many worlds the Toki, Prada and my people must pass up as too challenging. I actually think you full Kobani may have fewer choices among human immigrants.”

  “Why? We can live anywhere Normals can live, or that our allies can live. The PU might be shocked at how many of their own citizens on Hub worlds have applied to immigrate. Some even want Kobani mods if they can move to the Galactic Federation. An even larger percentage of Rim World residents, who are already outside the official borders of the Planetary Union, have requested Kobani mods, but don’t want to move anywhere. There will be a lot more Kobani in just a few years.”

  Blue clarified his meaning. “My point was that the desirable planets for the Kobani might be limited. You can live on low gravity worlds, but you seem more comfortable on high gravity planets. Your Haven representatives to the Federation rotate home often. Even our President jumps over there frequently, now that he has the physical stamina to live there. Of course, for Stewart, a Jump even without T-cubed travel is mere seconds to Koban. In Human Space I think you only had one world, Heavyside that would suit the Kobani physical capabilities?”

  “Yes. There were other high gravity worlds, which had life on them, but not in the variety found on Koban, with its carbon fiber muscles and bones, and the superconducting nerves to make them fast enough to be practical. Heavyside is the only higher gravity world we tried terraforming, and because so few people wanted to live there, and Normals couldn’t bear children on the surface, it never became a real colony.”

  “You used the word terraforming. The word refers to making a world more like Earth, does it not? According to the spec ops that became Kobani, and spent time training on Heavyside, terraforming failed on Heavyside. Why do you not try Kobaforming it instead? If that’s a valid word in Standard.”

  Maggi considered this a few seconds. “That world isn’t a New Colony, it’s technically an outer Rim World based on location, and it has no representation or diplomatic relations with the PU. The military took over part of it as a training base only after the war started. The civilian population survives on seafood exports, and the damned runaway rabbit population provides meat they get tired of eating. They have no predators there, and rabbits are considered a pest. I think that world is ripe for improved living conditions. Kobaforming might become a real word.

  “We can have our Kobani spec op folks based there approach the residents of the single city there, with a proposal to introduce the most gentle of Koban plants and animals. To import more high gravity lifeforms later if that works. It isn’t as if there’s a very useful local ecology already there. Then they could work up to a more involved Koban ecology. Hell, I don't know exactly in what order it’s done, since I was never involved with terraforming a planet. The technology and details of the logical steps to follow are available, and have been used hundreds of times.

  “That work mostly ended when genetic modifications were outlawed. Scientists could not change existing life on a planet to feed us, and certainly couldn’t change Earth based life to adapt to that world. Koban has shattered that mold for Earth based life. Perhaps we need to expand to high g worlds in that way. I’ll bet there were more planets in human Space that were bypassed because there were no normal people that could live on them. Now there are people that perhaps can live there. Even
if the PU is opposed to our using those worlds in Human Space, they have no say about such planets in Federation space.”

  Blue saw a practical problem. “How will you find them? If there was no civilization there for the Krall to kill they never stopped at those stars, so their navigation systems will not show you the planetary details. There were no other races, before you created the Kobani branch of humanity, which would be interested in starting a colony on such a massive world.”

  “Blue, I don't see the problem you do. We’re Kobani, and we’re human. Like the Krall, we’re not afraid to go anywhere, and unlike the Krall, we have great curiosity and an urge to explore and to have risky adventures. With so many ships, we’ll have youngsters poking their noses into all kinds of unexplored star systems. I just hope we can keep up with the opportunities that await us.”

  Blue flattened out the vertical smile crease on his forehead, indicating a more serious mood. “I just hope we can survive what you reckless adventurers stumble across.”

  Chapter 10: Khartoum’s Destiny

  “Murderous opportunistic bastards.” Howard Caudwell was furious and disgusted. The human trafficker’s ship was disabled prior to a Jump, but they had tried to draw the closing pursuit away when they dumped their helpless young cargo, encapsulated in a leaky life pod with emergency beacon broadcasting. He was in Comtap link with his boss, Henry Nabarone.

  “How many were there?” Nabarone asked him sadly.

  “Smugglers or victims?” He came back, his bitterness apparent in his snappish tone.

  “The kids of course, Howard. I don’t give a frigging shit how many of those Khartoum pricks we caught, as long as it was all of them. How many of our kids did they have aboard?”

  “Four. Three girls and a boy, preteens except for the boy, who was sixteen. The youngest girl survived for a few minutes after the cutter pulled the pod aboard, but she was unconscious and unaware of what was happening. They each suffered severe decompression, and they had struggled to stuff strips of their clothes into the leak. The older kids burned their oxygen faster as they fought to save themselves, and didn’t last as long as the smaller girl, who looked to be about age six.”