Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (107 page)

“No Mam, I mean that this
is not
Mirikami’s ship, the Mark. It appears to be a standard Krall clanship with different type of damage than the Mark was reported to have. It was obviously a bait and switch. A test he set up to see if you would try to arrest him. Perhaps Chairfem Bledso’s Comtap, or the one at Atlantis where I was, decrypted the message you sent to us through them. They may have warned Mirikami, or he simply guessed you’d try this. He’s a smart and insightful man.”

“Captain, you sound like you admire him. His actions provoked these Krall atrocities.” She wondered if this officer had been deliberately careless in executing her orders. She’d wished there had been a ranking female officer at Atlantis she could have sent.

The man answered carefully. “My detachment was at K1for that attack, a survivor of TF 1, when we lost Fleet Admiral Chatsworth and Commander Boise on the Sword, so I respect him Mam, and what he and his people can do physically. Outnumbered, they came in and outfought the Krall when they swarmed us. That’s why I couldn’t risk stopping enroute, to check who was inside that ship. He and his people could have taken over
my
ship. I waited until we were near Luna Base, with enough marines to board it while we kept the ship in our gun sites.”

“This leaves me in a difficult position. I wish…” She trailed off. “Never mind, Captain Redford. The mission is over, and Chairfem Bledso or…, someone from the navy will have your next orders. Good Day.”

She had more or less used her presidential authority, and
shanghaied
his and the other two ships from their rescue mission to the two stricken worlds, and ordered them to capture Mirikami. She’d told Bledso after the fact, who was outraged to have been bypassed that way. Now Medford didn’t quite know who to tell him to report to, so he could resume his regular duties.

Bledso had been virulently opposed to her action, and had warned her that it could backfire. However, it had already been put into motion before she even knew it was underway. The vanishing of the Comtap specialists the same day she had spoken to Mirikami had prevented her from altering the plan by increasing the forces she’d sent. She then had to wait for the detachment to return to have any news.

She’d expected Mirikami to contact her after he found himself a prisoner in his own ship, confirming her plan had worked. Without Comtaps that couldn’t happen. Bledso would remind her of the thousands of lives that might have been rescued by that detachment, which now had to be added to the political cost of the mission’s failure.

As for the missing Comtap specialist, somehow that damned small girl had disarmed and tied up six of her security team, who were assigned to watch her closely until Mirikami made contact. Then her personal pilot was found in a closet of the ready room, adjacent to the landing pad where the Presidential yacht was parked. The woman swore she didn’t tell Slobovic how to operate the ten passenger former navy courier, and had not provided the security codes to authorize the urgent late night launch to orbit.

Although, the pilot admitted the girl had asked her how to do this, while she earnestly looked into her eyes, held her hands, and asked very politely. After the series of questions ended, which the pilot swore she had not answered, the slight looking girl had tied and gagged her, and carried her one handed to the closet.

The craft was parked with tachyon energy held in one of its Traps, always prepared for an emergency departure on Normal Space drive if there were a surprise Krall raid on the capitol. It had lifted silently, after sending the correct complex authorization codes, and Jumped shortly after leaving atmosphere. The pilot lost her position, even though she passed the latest in lie detector tests.

Medford knew that Bledso’s Comtap specialist, Andy
something
was his name, had also vanished the same night. He had certainly not joined up with Slobovic because a computer search found he had caught a ride on a shuttle bound for Luna Base early the next morning. He’d provided a travel authorization, signed by a recently retired Special Operations unit commander, to board the routine twice a day flight. There was no trace of him at the base now. It would be some time before the soon-to-be-mothballed old destroyer was missed. That was the only destroyer that had returned from K1, after the decommissioned squadron’s self-destruct hammer mission there, under AI control.

The Comtaps posted at each colony had apparently vanished that same night, although reports of stolen patrol boats were filtering in only as ships from those systems brought the local colony news and military dispatches to Earth.

Medford, in desperation, briefly toyed with having someone pretend they were a Kobani, and publicly admit they had attacked the Krall planets. After all, there were no physically obvious distinguishing differences. But that wouldn’t standup to a Senate investigative committee, so it was merely wishful thinking.

It was only when the news reports came, with tri-Vid coverage of the daily destruction happening on Meadow, that the public sensed the scope of the disaster. Every day, more solid fragments than could be diverted would mostly strike the outward facing night side of the planet, making the hours when darkness approached, until dawn, the most spectacular and terrifying. 

Scenes from space, taken over a week ago near Meadow, revealed a massive doomsday fragment, now nicknamed the Hammer by a sensationalist media, showed a spherical two hundred thirty eight mile diameter nickel-iron lump, bearing down on Meadow. It would strike at a shallow angle, but that still would end any possible rescue hopes for the billion plus people still on the surface. The planet’s crust would be peeled back to nearly a ten mile depth, as the impact vaporized the Hammer, part of the upper mantle, and the shattered melted crust would spray to the sides. Molten debris would reach suborbital heights, and rain back onto the planet many thousands of miles from the impact site, spreading the heat and surface damage well ahead of the hypervelocity shock wave of the firestorm that would engulf the entire planet within a day. Every scrap of surface life would be incinerated, as the upper half mile of planetary crust eventually succumbed to the heat and melted. The oceans would flash boil to steam, and some of the water molecules would briefly disassociate into oxygen and hydrogen for a time, before a flaming rejoining. Perhaps the deepest microbes and viral particles would survive the heat driven destruction, deep within the crust on the opposite side of the world. They were already heat tolerant.

The media maintained a steady rotation of chartered small Jump craft between Hub worlds and Meadow and Bootstrap, to feed the public’s obsessive and voracious appetite for news and video. Those covering Meadow, the more dramatic story, told Hub viewers the huge fragment was only days away now. In another week, when the news craft returned to their parent markets, the disaster would be the only story on each Hub world. There was going to be a huge public outcry and panic when the Tri-Vid recordings of the disaster hit the airways. Most of the anger and outrage would be directed against the Krall, obviously, but people would demand to know what the government was doing to prevent a repeat in other systems.

There was no way to put fake Kobani in front of an investigative committee, not with Medford’s political opposition demanding to participate. Besides, the Krall didn’t give a damn about her problems or the public’s perception of what the PU government was doing; they wanted their attackers handed over, or information on where they were based, which she couldn’t provide. Not wouldn’t, but
couldn’t.

She’d have to give them what she thought she knew. They called themselves Kobani, they were physically strong, had new alien technology, and apparently lived on one or more worlds on the edge of Human Space. She didn’t know very damned much, but having the Krall focus on scouring Rim worlds for their Kobani opponents was a better option for her that attacks on Hub worlds. Rimmers didn’t vote in PU elections.

****

Bithdol had been unable to move anything other than his eyes for many days, at least with conscious control. He knew he breathed and his two hearts beat, but he did not feel them, and could not control his muscles, or any of his body’s functions. He obviously defecated and digested, because his naked form was unceremoniously hosed off to remove the runny excrement daily. A hanging bag of dark liquid, which ran through a hose and down his throat was replaced every second day. That was obviously the source of his smelly excrement, and his continued life.

He was being force-fed and kept alive by his enemy, not even shackled or restrained in any fashion, so far as he could tell. The smaller human caretakers, who were changed often, would easily move his bulk around to wash the deck under him, directing the mess into the hole in the floor that let him know he was kept in a clanship’s sanitation compartment. Since it had only the single hole, it had to be the one reserved for the highest status warrior on board at the time, a mission commander, pilot, or high status guests. He wondered if he should feel honored.

He had willed himself to die, but he lived anyway. The enemy gave him a drop of some clear liquid twice daily, administered on his long purple tongue, which they pulled out and shoved back inside his slack jaws. Because the gradually fading numbness always increased after that, he knew it was the drug keeping him paralyzed.

He had been captured while infiltrating a disabled enemy clanship, and he assumed he was still inside the same one. He was unsure, because he was in armor when captured, and when the power pack was disconnected, they moved him while he was unable to obtain visor images. Then the drug was first given to him by several darts of some type, fired into an exposed hand.

He lost awareness for a time, and once awake again, his armor and blue uniform were gone. He was in this waste facility, with a tube to feed him. He had an innate sense of time, except for the period of blankness the first day. At first, his attendants came at irregular intervals, but sometimes they grasped a finger where he could see it, and he felt some flashes of images in his mind, as if they wanted something from him. Then they would leave.

Now there was the sound of heavy work on the ship, presumably repairs to the damage it had suffered. He heard low Krall spoken by Prada outside his compartment, but never saw them. He could command them to help him if he could speak, but he managed only hissing croaks, and that was only when the drug was wearing off.

Then his fortunes improved slightly. Perhaps missing a shift because of confusion of whose turn it was, his twice-daily visits for the drug was missed one evening. He knew it was the evening because the work on the clanship proceeded in regular cycles, because animals needed their nightly death. Not working around the clock, as would a Krall K’Tal.

By morning, the drug’s effect had faded due to the missed dose, and he was able to move his tongue. He pulled it far back into his toothy mouth, and curved it up and back, nearly swallowing the long slender muscle. When the next human attendant appeared, to dose him again and hose out the mess, she was reluctant to reach so far back into the throat, past the red pitted eyes, more mobile and expressive than usual today, glaring at her down that fearsome snout. Instead, the female, which Bithdol could tell from her scent, let the drop fall into his open lower jaw, which had dried out and was a boney plate with a thin tissue covering. It was not an absorbent medium, so she should have directed water into his mouth, to wash the Death Lime extract down his throat. How was she to know? She wasn’t supposed to be doing this at all.

That evening, the same sixteen-year old girl had to fill in for her older brother, who had taken off on a weekend lark with his girlfriend the night before, and had left her a written message to cover for him, which Caroline had missed seeing. He had a Comtap chip, but she had only received her Kobani mods two weeks earlier. Their parents were conservative former Hub City residents, and they hadn’t really encouraged their two children to “go Kobani.” Naturally, they did it anyway, since that was something they had the right to do at sixteen, even if Mom and Dad were opposed.

Rodger had done it at sixteen and a half, and less than a year later, his little sister followed suit almost on her birthday. Her brother’s abilities on Haven, where they lived with their parents, were amazing. Caroline wanted to be amazing just like him.

She wasn’t slated for her Comtap embed until after her superconducting neural system had matured a bit more, with the nanites still busy in her body providing nutrients, so Rodger’s note was his best effort to
let her
take on more of his responsibility.

Her seventeen-year-old brother had been assigned the odious task of Krall-care for skylarking, and cutting school. The Krall was left locked inside the Mark of Koban while it underwent repairs. It was considered as good a place as any to house him, until he would transported to Koban once the repairs were finished on Haven. This was her first Kobani type duty, which her brother had first told her she was too young to perform, and she would be too afraid to be near a Krall, even if it was paralyzed.

After she begged to go with him, he let her tag along, and after showing her what he did,
offered to share
this awesome job with his little sister, as a
favor
from him. He’d never read Tom Sawyer, but he clearly shared some of the philosophical aspects of Mark Twain’s legendary young scallywag. Only this wasn’t as safe as whitewashing a fence.