Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  Everyone groaned and shook their heads.

  Before the morning meal ended, Mirikami Linked in to speak with Dillon and Thad. “Good Morning. Are you two still at breakfast?” he asked.

  Dillon answered first, since Thad had a mouthful. “We are, Tet. Maggi and Noreen are with us.” He had tilted his head in the typical indication to others that he was in a Link.

  “Jake, include the others in the Link.” Mirikami requested.

  “Do you mean just those others at the table with Doctor Martin and Colonel Greeves, Sir, or everyone on the ship?”

  With a sigh, “Just those at the table, Jake.”

  Mirikami immediately told them why he had Linked. “Stewart MacDougal has asked for our assistance. Hub City needs hunter help. They had two fatal attacks last week at twilight that they think were by a ripper, or possibly a desert panther. Our other two hunter teams are out on hunts, since you two have been out of business for the last two weeks having your nerves jangled. Would you be feeling up for a trip to Hub City?”

  “Who is this MacDougal character?” asked Thad. “Those twits get rid of Cahill already?”

  “MacDougal says he is Cahill’s new Lieutenant Governor. He didn’t say if she appointed him or if they had an election. Cahill apparently dismissed her other aids after they all thanked us profusely for saving them from the wolfbat attack on our last visit.

  “MacDougal said she refused to call us for help, but they don’t have our level of outside surveillance from the derelict ships we have parked here, and none of them feel particularly competent with the guns we gave them. They have shuttles and good pilots from some of the ships they arrived on, but they haven’t spotted the animal from the air. MacDougal thinks the predator is a recent arrival, and with nearly fifty five hundred square miles to check, they don’t know what to do.”

  “They have the enclosed Raspani herd area, has the animal killed any of those?” asked Thad. “That would be a natural food source for a ripper, and cut down on the search area.”

  “I asked MacDougal, but the Hub City people don’t go into the enclosure often, and its low ceiling makes a shuttle search impossible. Two of our scientists went there a couple of weeks ago to study the Raspani. I spoke with Vince Naguma and Sarah Bradley after talking to MacDougal, but they haven’t seen any signs of predator activity.

  “The missing man and woman appear to have been killed close to the dome. They were armed, but their pistols were both found on the ground unfired, near blood trails, and the bodies were gone.”

  Dillon had a question. “How would a ripper or desert panther get inside the compound? The electric fence is still active on the top of the wall I take it?”

  “The voltage monitors we set up for them indicate so,” answered Mirikami. “But MacDougal claims that someone spotted a few gazelles grazing near their dome a few days ago, and those can’t get over a thirty foot wall even if the power went off for a time. I suspect one of the thirty-two double gates is, or perhaps was open, and the power bypassed. As you know, when someone manually opens an outer gate, the power diverts around that short piece of fencing to avoid accidental electrocution. Then they need to rearm the outer gate when it’s closed. The electric fence on the walls stay powered continuously when someone bypasses a gate.

  “I’m thinking we could use the heat sensing and night vision capability of your armor’s helmet visors, plus the semiautomatic 50 caliber rifles, which we will not give to them. I’ll also send more surveillance equipment for their dome. I plan to go along, and if forced to do so I’ll run interference with Cahill’s supporters, and take along any of you that want to visit our Raspani researchers. At least that will be a good pretext to take so many Prime City folks with me.”

  Greeves was ready. “Tet, I want to go outside and play. I’m tired of being cooped up and prodded and poked to see if I’m any crazier than I was before the Kobani mods.”

  Maggi chimed in, “Thad does seem fine and adjusting well, though Dillon is probably just as nuts as before the last mods.”

  “Maggi always has a kind word for me Tet,” answered Dillon, with a grin the Captain couldn’t see. “I agree with Thad. I’m ready to field test any detrimental effects the nerve mods may have had.” Then he committed his faux pas.

  “Who will we get to fly us over, since…” he bit off his words. How stupid could he be, with Noreen sitting right next to him? Continuing, he tried to cover the slip, “Since I don’t know the shuttle qualified pilots of the other crews very well.”

  If anything, his hesitation focused everyone’s attention on the loss of Roni Jorl’sn two weeks ago; in the whiteraptor attack on the Flight of Fancy’s only remaining shuttle. There were other shuttles to use, but they needed a pilot. Noreen had taken Roni’s death very personally, and neither she nor Mirikami were forthcoming about everything that had happened.

  All Dillon knew was that a large raptor had Roni’s ravaged body in its jaws when he and Thad arrived in another shuttle. Thad had killed it with a .50 Cal semiautomatic rifle from a rear hatch, and two other raptors ran away. A forth, smaller raptor, was already on the ground mortally wounded, apparently by Roni and Noreen, since Mirikami had been briefly unconscious and never fired a shot. A later necropsy found Roni’s left forearm in the upper gullet of the smaller raptor. It must have been very traumatic for Noreen to witness, and he wouldn’t ask her for details.

  Noreen patted Dillon’s arm in reassurance. “I can fly them there, Tet. Could you ask the Rimmer’s Dream to loan us their larger shuttle?”

  “I’ll check with Marlyn Rodriguez. She still calls herself First Officer after the ripper attack killed Captain Johnfem, but she’s taken on the duties of Captain for her crew and the Rimmer’s Dream passengers. If not their shuttle, I’ll find another. Gather up what you need for the trip, and I think we can be on our way by noon.”

  ****

  Stepping into the secure lab, Aldry found the man she had been seeking. “Morning Rafe. I saw your lab lit up late last night. Has your team managed to locate the genes the whiteraptors use for growing those carbon fiber claws and nano tube bone reinforcements?”

  “Morning Aldry.” He was red eyed from the all-night analysis. “I think we’ve identified the primary genes, but we’re looking for the source of some proteins that help merge the nano tubes into bone growth. The huge toe claws were straightforward genes to identify, but we don’t know of an application yet, since we don’t want to put black claws on humans. However, raptor bone growth is a mixture of calcium, minerals, and long carbon nano tubes that make them incredibly resilient and difficult to break.”

  He shrugged, and added, “At first we didn’t really know why they needed bones that strong, even with the 1.5 g’s of stress they undergo. It didn’t seem they needed that for running. Antelope and gazelles, which are fast and perform impressive jumps, don’t have the nanotube reinforcement, nor do the heavier rhinolo. Then we thought about the stress that raptor bones undergo for those high leaps on moosetodons, to slash down at their prey.

  “The large female would have an Earth weight of a ton and a half, or equivalent to over four thousand five hundred pounds on Koban. Tet says the big one was at least forty feet off the ground when she caught the shuttle by the landing skids.”

  Aldry thought she had a counter for that hypothesis, “Didn’t it use the moosetodon carcass and wall as step-ups to get that high? It didn’t simply jump forty feet straight up using only its muscles.”

  “Ah ha,” Rafe grinned, “then it needed to survive landing from that high without breaking a leg or straining a leg muscle in case it couldn’t hold on to the prey. We didn’t think it would act that reckless unless it was sure it could do so safely. Testing proved the bones and claws could take the landing strain easily, but a calculation from our dynamic model indicated that their leg muscles shouldn’t be able to absorb the landing without tearing. And the beast did get forty feet high, which also suggested more strength than we would have expecte
d in this gravity, even using the available leverage.”

  “You’re stringing me along, Rafe,” she prodded him gently in the arm. “You probably already know how it could do that. Give.” She ordered with a knowing smile.

  He displayed a sheepish grin. “We don’t have that gene complex fully isolated yet,” Rafe acknowledged, “because we didn’t start out looking for it. However, we discovered sheets of tough carbon fiber woven into the muscle tissue on the necropsy. It is there on other Koban animals as well, at least in the muscle tissue. Everyone missed it initially because we didn’t think to look for that. We didn’t expect anything like that.

  Aldry looked a bit surprised. “I’ve heard of prosthetics for amputees that couldn’t regenerate a limb, which use carbon fiber as synthetic muscle. It was an idea taken from the powered military armor developers, from around the time of the Clone Wars.”

  “You’re right. Only here it’s natural. My team believes it explains why Koban muscle mass and size is no greater than that of similar weight Earth bred animals. Evolution solved the bulkiness problem here by making the muscles stronger, without investing so much mass and resources into building them up to exaggerated sizes.”

  Anticipating the answer, she asked, “So what use do you think you can make of these genes, once you have them all identified?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing at all for normal control humans, I think. Not even for people such as you, me, Dillon and Thad, with or without the Koban nerve mods. We, basically, are standard model humans with minor enhancements, compared to where we want to go. We might not be able to use these mods for our children, which will be born with the new nervous systems that react faster, to take better advantage of the enhanced human muscles they will have at birth.

  “We’ll have to wait until we have some of the second-generation kids to decide if we can enhance them with new Koban muscles and bones. I’m staying on the conservative side of adding risky new features. If we produce any life threatening genetic failures, our list of willing participants will dry up, and we will eventually lose to the Krall.

  “However, the third generation will certainly be receptive to these new genes, especially if we can incorporate them at the fetal stage, before the bones and muscles form. I’m not ruling out a bone and muscle retrofit for second-generation children, before they reach maturity. We need to verify all of the genes required, and the insert points for them. Then we have to prove that not only are they heritable, but compatible with our Normal control groups for reproduction. Reproducing would be proof that they were merely greatly enhanced humans. That would save us a full generation in achieving a higher level of Kobani adaptation.”

  Aldry fully understood the implications. “Wow. We had better keep this within the Inner Circle, and share with the gene volunteers of course. The more Koban adapted we become, the more Cahill and her supporters will oppose us, until we can prove that those children can breed true with Normals…” She paused just a moment then added, “Who the hell am I kidding? Ana Cahill will oppose us at every step because she wasn’t in on the project from the start, and has polarized herself into the ‘Loyal and Fanatical Opposition’ so strongly that she can never reverse course.”

  “Well, I’m already certain,” Rafe concluded, “from the discussion you, Maggi and I have had previously, this is the only route to making humans physically superior to the Krall. With the nerve enhancements, we would be faster than they are only until they bred in the ability to grow organic superconducting nerves of their own. Telour told us the Krall were within perhaps fifty breeding cycles of doing that. They lay eggs; their cycles must pass faster than our generations of live births.

  “However, our present capability to enhance human muscle and bone structure isn’t going to make us any stronger than the Krall. We also don’t have the organ redundancy, or the rapid self-healing they exhibit and limb regeneration. We do have medical technology to replace organs and regrow limbs, which is nearly as good if you actually survive a fight. If a Koban adapted human is faster, smarter, and also much stronger than Krall warriors, then our only concern will be how badly we, the Kobani, are outnumbered.”

  “Gee, is that all?”

  ****

  As the shuttle approached the Hub City dome, Mirikami asked Noreen to fly over the Raspani section. Nearly one quarter of the Krall compound was covered; tented was the word that came to Mirikami’s mind, because there were thousands of roughly one hundred foot high tripods that supported a transparent tough membrane.

  The membrane, perforated over most of its surface except where the “tent pole” tripods provided support, allowed air to circulate in and out. Numerous large ground level fans at the sides of the enclosure aided that flow of air. Rain and sunlight freely entered, via perforations and transparency, to sustain the mild climate that supported the Koban grass and leafy shrubs the Raspani herd ate. Those plants were essentially the same savanna grasses and plants that rhinolo and other native grazers browsed. Except Mirikami sighted wide swaths of red and green growths that he had not seen elsewhere on Koban.

  “Any of you know what the red and green plants are?” Mirikami asked.

  Marlyn Rodriguez provided an answer. “Your scientists told me they were probably from the original Raspani home world. They thought the plants were perhaps nutritional supplements that were lacking in the Raspani diet, and brought here by the Krall.”

  Marlyn had previously ferried the two Prime City scientists over here to study the Raspani, and brought their equipment and personal effects. She had spent two days with them before returning. She had willingly loaned Mirikami the Dream’s largest shuttle.

  However, when she learned the nature of the mission, and that Thad Greeves was part of the team, she asked if she could be part of the search for the predator. The Colonel was a strapping good-looking male, who had a reputation for toughness and honor. Those were bedroom qualities she admired anywhere, but on Koban those might be “sign the line” features.

  As evidence that the shuttle loan was sincere, Noreen had flown it all the way over, with Marlyn riding in back as a passenger, discussing the mission and the political atmosphere at Hub City. Marlyn had been the first one of the final Krall captives to request the clone gene mods. After her successful example, a surprising number of Spacers from various ships also volunteered.

  Like many of the Spacers, Marlyn pragmatically accepted that Koban was where she was going to spend her life. Their two hundred light year separation from even the Rim of Human Space felt more “real” to Spacers because of their travels. They understood that in the vastness of space, no human exploration ship was likely to stumble on them in their lifetime, particularly with the Krall now at war with humanity.

  As the shuttle flew over the enclosure, Noreen pointed out the grazing Raspani herd. The creatures merely glanced up at the commonly seen craft. It wasn’t the first time the people aboard had seen them, but Thad and Dillon had not seen them in a herd, only penned in a corral close to the dome. On that occasion, several Raspani were being treated for injuries suffered out on the grasslands.

  The grey creatures, paler on the stomach than on the back, looked somewhat like a pigmy hippopotamus from Earth. They were nearly three feet high at mid back, and five feet long in the lower torso. The upper part of their torso was vaguely centaur-like, which when held upright placed their heads five feet above ground.

  They had a pudgy pair of human-like jointed arms and dexterous looking six fingered hands. When grazing, they held their upper torso horizontal, but did not eat directly from the ground. Instead, they plucked tender grass shoots and fern leaves with their hands. Usually they rose up to feed themselves the foliage in an almost delicate manner.

  Raspani also ate fruits and berries if they could find them. They had the broad masticating side teeth of most herbivores, but also sported two serious looking sharp dentures, or residual tusks, jutting up from the lower front jaw. These protruded three or four inches above
fleshy lips, one on each side, framing features arranged much like on a human. They had a central flat nose above their lips, with two large nostrils, and large forward facing brown eyes under light brown furred brows. The head was smooth, rounded, and hairless, but there was some sparse brown hair growing on their upper and lower backs. The ears were pixie pointed, and upright on the sides of the head, no larger than a human’s ears.

  Their feet had six thick spread out toes to support their weight of perhaps four hundred pounds, and they could rise up on the ends of the clustered toes when they chose to run. However, their speed was about the same as a normal human on Koban. Meaning they were slow and helpless against any of the predators here. There appeared to be some genitalia below and to the rear of some of them, probably marking those as the males.

  There were a dozen cute small ones frolicking around the placid adults. It was hard to imagine how this formerly intelligent species had endured the casual Krall predation and cruelty.

  Mirikami observed approximately one thousand Raspani below them through the windows. “Well, we aren’t going to find out much about this predator up here. I’m sure Hub City has noticed our arrival. I don’t know if MacDougal told Cahill about our visit, but she will know of it now. I’d like to get down before she organizes some foolish committee to greet us and get in our way.”

  With a possible welcoming committee in mind, Noreen flew low over the tarmac on the north side entrance they most often used, then lifted over the dome and swiftly landed on the south side by that entrance.

  Maggi approved. “Noreen my dear, that was clever. If Cahill had already rushed to that entrance, then she’ll have to run all the way through the dome to intercept us over here.”

  Mirikami was using a pocket handset to call the two Raspani researchers, with whom he wanted to have a meeting. Thad and Dillon were unpacking their armor and weapons, plus some infrared scanners, and removing wheeled cases holding the surveillance cameras they had brought. Neri Barr, a machinist mate helped them. She would help mount the cameras and wire the monitors for an improved security system at Hub City.