Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  The stubborn Krall he held was a slow learner, and Carson had virtually arm wrestled against the warrior’s unbroken arm. He’d used a grip from the backside of the wrist so the Krall’s fingers couldn’t curve inward to stab the human’s hand with its extended talons. It turned out that Carson had no problem forcing the Krall’s arm to bend where he chose, and shoved the hand into the warrior’s face, as it fought to prevent him. It retracted the talons, but they always extended a half inch, and Carson raked them down its muzzle, causing deep scratches.

  That had not prevented it from another try to stab Carson with talons, and it would not respond to him in Standard. Carson pulled out his knife that had paralyzed Stilkap, and made a small cut on Pindor’s neck. If enough of the thorn extract remained on the blade, this one would soon grow easier to manage. If not, he’d apply a bit of the extract from the small tube directly on the Krall’s purple tongue, for faster absorption.

  He heard the sound of trucks and halftracks on the tarmac, and in a moment a dozen vehicles had surrounded the shuttle, each filled with cheering men and women, all giddy with relief, wearing foolish looking grins on their faces. That lasted until they saw the pitiful and repulsive sight of Cahill’s naked and gutted corpse. Someone covered her remains with a tarp from the back of a truck. No one covered up the dead Krall, which were objects of the greatest interest to all. Until, that is, they learned there were seventeen new human faces on the now opened Clanship. Twenty years of news from home resided with those people, and the gawkers moved that direction quickly.

  Carson heard Mirikami’s voice, and his Dad’s, talking as they rounded the back of the shuttle.

  “Even if I don’t tell her Dillon, and I’m not going to make up a lie, Jake has it recorded and at least fifty people under the overhang saw what he did. She will see for herself, and hear about it from others. Besides even if I scrubbed the recordings, denying that it happened that way when it sounds exactly like him, and like you by the way, is a waste of good air.”

  “Tet, she’ll kill me for letting him get into this situation. If he had simply shot the big dumb shit in the head like I asked him to do, the rest would not have happened.”

  “Sure, and the other Krall would have dashed into the shuttle when they saw the cats and Ethan coming, lifted off, and burned Hub City down around our ears. Then they would have used the Clanship to lay waste to Prime City, depart Koban and bring back more hunters for the grandest planet wide survivor hunt they could imagine.”

  “Dad, what are you two talking about?”

  “What your mom will do to me when…,” his words trailed off as he looked at his son, horror struck. His voice finally returned.

  “Oh. My. God! I’m a dead man.”

  Carson was confused. “What?”

  Mirikami had been staring as well, his initial expression of concern turning into a wide grin as the truth became evident. “Have you considered what you look like right now?”

  The boy looked down at his gore covered clothes and limbs, and as he grinned, caked and quickly congealed Krall blood flaked from his cheeks. “I guess I’m a bit of a mess.” Then he hurried to add, “None of this is from me. Really.”

  His dad rushed over and started brushing and flicking away bits and pieces of shredded Stilkap from his son’s hair, back, and clothing. The Krall blood wasn’t coming off, except where it had already dried on his high metabolism’s heated skin.

  “Don’t anyone record him yet!” Dillon shouted. However, that was exactly what some of the onlookers were doing.

  “Someone please trade him a shirt before his mother gets a look at what I let her son do.” He shook his head. “I’m a dead man!” He repeated.

  “Dad! Relax. I’ll go take a shower and change before I call Mom.”

  Ethan stuck his head out of the shuttle. “That isn’t even the worst I’ve seen him, Uncle Dillon. Have you ever blown up a dead bloated rhinolo just to see what would happen?”

  20. The Mark of Koban

  They gathered to inspect the Clanship, celebrate their victory, and discuss how and why only Mirikami could use any of its facilities or even open the doors.

  Six shuttles from Prime City made a three-hour afternoon flight, filled with science and engineering teams, Chief Haveram and his Rats, a lot more TGs, some returning Hub City citizens, and the rest of the Inner Circle decision makers.

  Of the latter group, Thad was comfortable facing up to his wife, Marlyn, since Ethan had not acted half as brashly as Carson had. Dillon, on the other hand, expected a very chilly reception from Noreen. She had opposed allowing the SG teenagers to receive the Koban mods before reaching age twenty-one, and only later reluctantly agreed with Mirikami that eighteen had been a more reasonable alternative. She continued to argue that Prime City should raise the decision age from sixteen, to match where Hub City had set their adult level, at age eighteen.

  She had tearfully stepped out of the shuttle and hugged Carson, embarrassing him with kisses and physically checking him for injuries. His younger sister and brother acted as if they were happy to be related to him for a change. Katelyn was also a TG at seventeen, and Cory, over fourteen now, would have to wait an impatient eighteen months for his Koban mods.

  Noreen, satisfied her oldest was all in one piece, looked around for her husband, and spotted him with most of the rest of the Inner Circle members, seemingly trying to hide in a group of much shorter people. Tet came just below his shoulders, Maggi to mid chest, and Aldry and Rafe to his nose and chin. She saw Marlyn and Thad were holding hands, standing together with Ethan, and their two younger children, Bradley who also was a TG, and Danner who was waiting, like Cory, to grow up too fast.

  She thought she knew why Dillon had avoided her and let Carson meet her alone at the shuttle. She’d had time to put her thoughts in order on the flight.

  Placing her arm around Carson’s broad shoulders, she pulled him along smiling, calling for his siblings to follow. “Let’s all go pick on daddy, shall we?”

  As they drew closer, Dillon sighted them coming because he had a head at crow’s nest height, and a disinterested mind on the chatter around him. He was using his peripheral vision to watch for the expected frontal attack, waiting only for his darling opponent to formulate her strategy. He mentally girded his loins for the emotional assault.

  The others, seeing Dillon stiffen slightly and turn his head, followed his gaze, and stood by to either offer moral support, or in Maggi’s case, perhaps deliver a joyful salvo of her own. She thought he’d acted properly in allowing his son to face the Krall as he had, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t act as a sniper for whichever side came after her favorite prodigy.

  Noreen stopped a few feet in front of her husband with both her fists on her shapely hips, arms akimbo, and a stern look on her face. She came directly to the point, using past history as her cudgel. “Dillon! If you had listened to me two years ago, and we waited until these kids were twenty-one to get their Koban mods, Carson would be dead. So thank you so very damned much!” The stern look relaxed.

  Dillon looked at his feet and offered his prepared lame defense. “Honey, I’m sorry, I had no choice. He was going to go out anyway and…,” her changed expression and actual words were slow to impinge on his defensive shield. However, they finally penetrated into his awareness. “Uh…, uh, w-what?” he stammered.

  Maggi was ready. “Not too quick on the uptake there, genius. To think I mentored you all those years to promote your promising career, and now you sound like a stuttering moron. Try listening to what people say to you. She said you were right, knucklehead.”

  Mirikami exploded into laughter. The day had been tense and bloody, and his closest friend wasn’t in trouble with his wife after all. That was a huge relief. Short lived for him, as it turned out.

  Noreen turned to her former Captain, stern look returning. “You, on the other hand, Tetsuo Mirikami, manipulated people and planned this operation on the fly, as usual, without ever consulting
those that would probably agree with you, if you simply explained what the hell you were trying to accomplish. Lucky for you it all worked, yet again.”

  His hearty laugh had shrunk to a weak smile. “I console myself with the knowledge that if a desperate plan of mine fails, at least I won’t live to suffer the consequences.” He shrugged.

  Shaking her head she said, “Fair enough Commander.” She gave him a smile. “So please tell us what you plan to do, now that we have a captured Jump capable ship, with another one of ours to follow. And please remember in your plans that I was trained as Spacer.”

  He nodded. “How about we go check out the one we have over there.” He hooked a thumb at the Clanship. “If you promise to forgive me, and Dillon, and Carson, I might let you give a Krall Clanship its first name. Making it a part of the growing Koban naval fleet.”

  “I’ll think about that for a while.” She hooked an arm through the elbows of her husband and Tet, and steered them towards their prize.

  As a large group of people fell in behind them, she saw a new face on a tall man standing under the ship (she decided not to think of it as a Clanship anymore). “Tet, that’s obviously one of the captives I heard you found aboard. Who is he?”

  “That gentleman is Sergeant Garland Reynolds, he’ll tell you to call him Gar or Sarge when you’re introduced. I expect his strange tale will be entertaining us tonight at dinner. I hope you found room for a med lab cabinet. He had his left arm blown off when captured by the Krall, on Poldark. I told him we have the equipment and technical knowledge, and some doctors here at Hub City that can start the regrowth. But, a spare med lab was needed, because he’ll have to spend some uncomfortable nights sleeping in it, and I don’t want the people here to do without prompt access to the only one they have.” The bulk of the available med labs had been converted for gene mod use, and Hub City always complained about their single device.

  Dillon wondered about the regrowth capability. “No one has had a limb regrown on Koban. Until now, accidents or animal attacks killed the people that lost arms or legs. I know we had a couple of kidney transplants from donors, but that doesn’t take so long and isn’t as complex. We don’t have the nanites that repair the initial damage for the regrowth. How are our doctors here going to get around that problem?”

  Aldry was a step behind, and listening. “Doctor Walden checked out all of the captives after they reached the dome, and in his examination he questioned Reynolds about who treated him after he lost the arm. Nobody, he said. Reynolds was wearing a new type of armor, developed for the war, and it comes preloaded with nanites and injectors for injuries. The suit’s AI selects the type of nanite to inject for the type of injury. He lost a limb, so it gave him the nanites he needed to stop bleeding, and to start the preparation for regrowth. They are still in his system. We hope to harvest some of them for culturing more. We fix Reynolds, and get twenty years of nanite development at the same time. With the right nutrients and the nanites, Hub doctors can regrow an identical arm in three months he says.”

  “That’s a very fair trade for the use of a med lab,” Dillon decided.

  Thad had an even more encouraging description of Reynolds value. “I spoke with him about the war, and how Poldark is coping. His information on how we might get back into Human Space, and onto Poldark in secret is intelligence that we desperately need. From Poldark we can travel to any of the other worlds. He doesn’t know about our gene mods and I didn’t offer explain how out TGs did what they did yet. He wasn’t able to see or hear what happened to the six Krall, he only knows we killed four and captured two, but how we did that won’t stay secret here very long.

  “He told me captive warriors always die, apparently by will power, if aware they are captives and can’t escape. That’s why we have both of them numbed with the Death Lime drug.

  “The two Krall are continuously aware, but have no physiological control of their bodies to force their hearts or other organs to stop. After Ethan and Kit shared their experience of frilling the leader, I learned through them that frilling a Krall is thrilling and sickening as well.

  “Their tough façade crumbles when you learn that there are things they fear, that even terrify them. A ripper’s power and speed are only one of thing they fear. Believe it or not, Ethan and Carson frighten them even more, once they saw their abilities in action. Actually, our TG’s in general terrify them. They realized how outmatched they are, and their glorious twenty five thousand year Great Path is jeopardized. Make no mistake, if their leaders learn of what we have done and where we are, virtually the entire Krall race will converge on Koban and no trickery will save us.”

  Mirikami shifted attention away from that possibility, as they neared Reynolds, who was standing by an extended ramp from the captured ship. “We had better get busy bringing the Krall’s empire down as quickly as possible. I know you have been speculating on my ability to open doors on their ships, and I can activate their plasma rifles. I think I can probably operate any equipment that a Krall can.” He paused to introduce the sergeant to everyone, without offering all of the new names that he’d forget right now anyway.

  “Sarge here informed me that a dead Krall’s corpse can be used to permit a human to operate their equipment, for about thirty minutes or so, if the body is kept in close proximity to the equipment. The human scientists and military Intel have not figured out how this works. They assume it is a device, but have never found one or discovered how it works if it exists. I’m sure I know why they didn’t find it or detect it in use. Today I told Carson how to get into the closed shuttle by using the warrior they had captured outside. I had Carson use Sarge’s procedure, only with a live Krall. It worked perfectly, as I was certain it would.”

  Maggi sighed. “Tet, will we ever cure you of this dropping one shoe at a time habit?”

  “Maggi, this is how I figured it out, by picking up the clues one shoe at a time, so to speak.”

  “Fine, shoeless and clueless folks everywhere want to know, damn it.”

  He nodded. “The Intel people and the scientists were looking for a device, and either didn’t have the idea or capability to check for a weird quantum effect. What does every Krall wear, and only we early captives on Koban have?”

  Maggi and Dillon’s eyes both widened with understanding. “I’ll be damned Maggi said.”

  Mirikami grinned. “If the shoe or clue fits, wear it.” He said.

  Dillon marched up the ramp to the closed portal and was about to press a key pad when he turned to ask a question. “Hey, which of these two pads is for the ramp and which is the for the portal?”

  Maggi muttered sotto voice, which all could hear, “Please, please, make him use the ramp key pad. I’d love another good laugh.”

  Mirikami chuckled, and told him, “The portal is the top key pad.”

  Dillon nevertheless stepped onto the narrow ledge above the ramp’s slot before he pressed the two keys. The portal rushed up, instead of the ramp retracting. Had the ramp activated with him on it, he would have dropped embarrassingly to the tarmac. He stuck his tongue out at Maggi.

  She repeated an oft-used mantra as she shook her head in faux disbelief. “I mentored him, and this is all the respect I earn.”

  Reynolds looked at the open portal in disgust. All of you can open the damn doors, and I stayed locked inside rooms secured by the exact same frigging key pads. Why?”

  Mirikami explained. “Because you don’t have a Krall tattoo.”

  “Excuse me? Neither do you. You people ain’t Krall.”

  Mirikami, Dillon, Maggi, Thad, Noreen, and several others unbuttoned the tops of their shirts or blouses to reveal the oval marks.

  Reynolds was shocked to say the least. “Why do you wear those? And why do you hide them?” He was suddenly suspicious, as if he he’d found himself in a coven of witches.

  Mirikami explained. “The Krall gave us these when we were captured and brought here, to mark us as equivalent to their novices, to permit sa
fe treatment of us. At least until they put guns in our hands, eight to sixteen of us at a time, forced us out into a large outdoor compound where they came hunting for us, to kill us. They tested us on Koban, to see if they could consider humanity worthy of fighting, or if humans simply needed to be immediately wiped out of existence.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t speak for everyone, but I covered my tattoo because it was forced on me, like a cattle branding. Even though the Krall wear them by choice, we did not. I never expected to discover it had a practical use.”

  Reynolds accepted why they had and hid enemy tattoos, but it didn’t answer the bigger question. “What is this quantum mumbo jumbo crap you mentioned? I have a tattoo in a private place, and it doesn’t do magic. Except for a few Poldark Ladies.” He winked.

  Maggi was amused by his irascible character. “The Krall apply the markings with a device they call a Katusha, which was created by a highly advanced technological culture, called the Olt’kitapi, about twenty to twenty five thousand years ago. That race gave the Krall a chance to rise out of savagery, and they were the first race that paid the price of associating with the Krall. Per the stories Krall translators passed to us, they destroyed the Olt’kitapi, virtually ate them, and took their technology.”

  Mirikami resumed his explanation. “We knew that there was a quantum aspect to the tattoos. The tool that applies them can be used to locate anyone that has a tattoo, detecting them through walls, rocks, fusion bottles or solid steel, so long as they are within about a hundred twenty feet of the Katusha.

  “Previously unknown to us, the tattoo apparently confers the ‘right’ to use or control other technology that the Olt’kitapi created, via some sort of quantum link over a short scale range. I think unwittingly, or more probably dismissive of our potential, the Krall marked us early captives for cultural reasons, so that their novices would accept that we had enough status to warrant waiting to hunt us until told they could do so. Accordingly, there are several thousand of us with such marks. Another twenty thousand or so captives arrived just at the time the Krall decided they didn’t need to test us anymore, so they were never marked. None of the children born to us have tattoos, of course.”