Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (54 page)

The older versions of the original Krall genotype referred to themselves as Krall’kitapi. They were initially given that suffix to indicate disparagment by the standard Krall, thus connecting them to the permanent changes to their minds they had allowed the Olt’kitapi to make. However, the soft Krall believed Krall’tapi was a description they should be proud to bear, because they had ceased to be trapped forever in the role of barbarians. Instead, they seemed to be imprisoned forever, by those same barbarians.

In all of those previous weaponized uses for the ships, the Krall had used their capability to kill enemies on inhabited worlds, to impose their demands on their prey to obey the limits the Krall set on warfare. Krall opponents were told to use no weapons of mass destruction, never to use radiation or biological weapons that would mutate Krall genetics, and told to fight predominately ground wars, which provided for the best warrior selectivity.

A follow up threat was always made, that they would destroy even more of the enemy worlds. That threat was executed on occasion, despite the loss of the irreplaceable ship each time. The ship had to be duped into doing what it believed was a beneficial task.

The Krall’s opponents had no way of knowing how limited these weapons were. A home world being lost was normally enough, and a second heavily populated one destroyed had proven to be more than enough of an object lesson. Now it appeared to be the turn for humanity to learn this lesson.

However, they didn’t know if only a demonstration of destructive ability, used as a threat against an enemy, might also trigger the ship to cease to obey. It was possible that even a demonstration could cost them a precious weapon, and humanity still might not react as expected. This worthy prey was proving more unpredictable than any other they had fought. The large number of human worlds, and their vast population could make the lesson more difficult to drive home. A single ship, or even two or three might have to be sacrificed, and doing so on an empty world even once had seemed wasteful to the Joint Council.

However, Mirikami was sure one of the proposed options was apparently going to happen, no matter who was chosen as the new War Leader. Telour was his greatest concern, because he had proven his cunning in the past, and was willing to try risky tactics to advance his ambitions. He suspected the number two leader’s involvement in Kanpardi’s unusual battlefield death. A shuttle in flight, designed to survive impacts of debris from exploding spacecraft wasn’t an easy thing to destroy with a single artillery shell.

Mirikami, when he learned that Telour was a top candidate for war leader, he felt confident that his ambition and political shrewdness would lead him to be selected. Kartok didn’t have high enough status to know exactly how the Olt’kitapi ships did what they did, or how many remained operational. There were rumored to be few of the ancient ships remaining, and Kanpardi had refused to use one of them, in favor of punishing humanity via two new planetary invasions. That strategy was about to change, no matter who became the new war leader.

The strike against K1 shouldn’t take place prematurely, before the greatest damage could be done to the Krall as they clustered to launch heavily loaded and slower clanships. However, it
couldn’t
wait until a new Tor Gatrol had ordered a human world destroyed. After that, with the Rhama disaster as a predictive guide, the politicians from the politically dominate Hub worlds would again capitulate to Krall threats and demands. The war would continue exactly as the Krall wanted, and eventually humanity would grow so weakened they wouldn’t have the means or the will to fight effectively.

No matter what the cost, Mirikami wasn’t going to follow that course of appeasement. That path led to the eventual eradication of civilization in Human Space, and possibly human extinction. A settled world was probably targeted for destruction, no matter what anyone did anyway.

****

“Admiral Bledso, you surely don’t believe the Krall just like having these huge stockpiles of weapons merely as property for show, do you?” Mirikami was exasperated at Bledso’s previous comment, suggesting that the massive amounts of war material on K1 could be a case of individual clans hoarding supplies and displaying their status.

He reminded her of what he knew she must already know. “For over twenty years we’ve seen that the hallmark of every Krall warrior is their desire to be a great fighter, to earn high status as a warrior and leader, to continue their personal bloodline with an equally high status mate, and to earn mention by name and clan in the long history of their advancement along their Great Path. Property, as such, has no value to them, and weapons that are not being used in battle are wasted. I know that they intend to use this material in another invasion, and soon. They don’t procrastinate like we humans do.”

As some over cautious admirals do
, he thought.

She used his nominal rank in her reply, rather than his nickname of Tet as she had done previously, a pointed reminder of his lesser paramilitary position, relative to her own.

“Captain, you are a militia leader. Effective, certainly, but there are relatively few people living out on the Rim if a plan of yours results in enemy repercussions. I have to consider the safety of heavily populated worlds. If the Planetary Union Navy attacks K1, as we have done twice before, the Krall will certainly retaliate. We could suffer the complete loss of another world like Rhama. I need to convince the president, and afterwards the public, that if we launch another attack on K1 and suffer retaliation, that it was done to stave off an equally costly invasion of a Hub world.

“Right now, I only have your personal analysis that an imminent invasion is even planned, and that it will be directed at some unspecified Hub world.” She then turned one of his own arguments against his assertion that another invasion was close to launching.

“You claim they don’t have any of the giant Torki made transport ships because of your own raids. That the enemy can’t move material to an invasion site as quickly as before using the smaller clanships. It would seem that their making more Dragons, transports, plasma cannons, and defensive systems, and storing them on their base world of K1, does not foretell of a new invasion soon, not if they can’t deliver them while supporting the two invasion forces on the ground now. They simply have to store the accumulation someplace.”

Next, she threw the words of another high-ranking officer in the room at him. Ironically, they were also his own words, previously shared with the man in question.

“General Nabarone says the Krall are at least two years away from replacing the number of clanships you’ve knocked out in your raids. They probably would have to recall the ships being used at New Dublin, to load equipment and warriors on K1. Afterwards they would spend considerable effort simply keeping three widely separated invasion forces supplied and supported. This would leave their supply lines stretched thin. Why do you think they would risk that?”

Damn,
Mirikami thought,
she’s turning what I told Henry against me as well.

Bledso was proving to be good at political infighting. He didn’t know why he was surprised. The new Chairfem of the Joint Chiefs of Staff didn’t receive her appointment to that position based on field exploits alone. He was being forced into trying a risky demonstration, just to show her how he
knew
what the Krall were actually thinking, that it wasn’t simply based on the guesswork analysis of some low ranking Rimmer militia leader. At least he could show her what the new prisoner, Kartok, was thinking and knew. This was going to be tricky to manage.

“OK, admiral. I’ll demonstrate for you exactly how I know what I know. That Kanpardi fully intended to conduct three major invasions at once, despite the loss of so many clanships and all of their giant transports. He is convinced that Krall aggression, if unleashed without restraint, will be enough to hold human armies at bay for the time required to build enough clanships to solve their temporary transportation problems.”

He was staying with the fiction that Kanpardi was still alive and in charge. Knowing of an impending change in Krall leadership might cause the Hub, both navy and government, to wait and see what would follow, thus missing this opportunity to act while they could hurt the enemy the most.

He’d certainly not discussed this move with Nabarone in advance, not knowing that Bledso would react this way, and he could tell by Henry’s puzzled look that the man wasn’t sure what Mirikami was proposing.

“General could you please have a runner retrieve two sets of the new type of armor I brought here with me after the K1 mission? The spec ops quartermaster will have taken possession of the new deliveries of body armor. I’m only going to borrow them, and I actually only need the helmets. One of those helmets should be extra-large, able to fit over a Krall’s head, the other is for Admiral Bledso. A third helmet will be my own custom adapted helmet from the quarters you provided me, if you’ll also have that third one brought here as well.”

Even as Nabarone sent orderlies to do as requested, his look of puzzlement increased. He suspected that Mirikami was planning to use a shared Mind Tap, which he believed could never be logically explained away to Bledso. It appeared that a major Kobani advantage was about to be revealed in an effort to win the Chairfem over.

How the helmets would fit in, he didn’t know. He was about to learn how much of Sergeant Reynolds had rubbed off on Mirikami. It seemed bullshit artistry could be learned by example.

While they waited, he asked Nabarone to have the guards watching over Kartok wheel him in from the interrogation cell, where he’d been moved after The Mark of Koban had been authorized to land directly on Poldark. The Mark was now inside the same volcanic crater that had hidden it previously. A shuttle trip from there had brought Mirikami to the command bunker, with Kartok. 

Shortly, a heavily reinforced steel framed motorized wheel chair arrived at the meeting room. It was of new construction, specifically designed for holding a Krall seated, so that humans wouldn’t have to look up at the hulking prisoners on a vertical framework. The wrists and ankles were secured, with a locked steel belt around the waist. Kartok’s head was secured upright, with a clamp around the thick neck and under the jaw to keep the head facing up and forward. This allowed his malevolent black and red eyes to rove around, taking in his surroundings. There were no feeding tubes connected today.

Bledso looked at the Krall, and asked, “Isn’t this the same one you showed me last month?”

“No Admiral,” Mirikami told her. “This one is male, and a bit larger. He looks smaller because he’s sitting, but he’s about four inches taller and nearly a hundred pounds heavier than Hothdat. That other one was female, and a bit grayer in shade. It takes practice and familiarity to tell them apart. This one is named Kartok.”

At the use of his name, the Krall’s eyes, filled with fury darted towards Mirikami. Kartok spoke Standard moderately well, but he generally chose to ignore his captors. This one, he now knew, owned the voice he’d heard the day he was so humiliatingly captured. Denied an honorable death in combat, he’d have preferred to be tortured to death, as he’d done to human captives in the past. He’d show them how to be stoical as he died, ignoring their efforts to elicit any cry of pain.

Kartok assumed they were here to touch him again, asking him pointless questions as if expecting some response. Perhaps from his eye movements, or his breathing, almost the only detectable body control he had. Holding his breath until he lost consciousness never accomplished anything, and seemed a source of amusement to his captor when he recovered. His small captor knew how to mimic the snorts of Krall amusement, which he did each time Kartok attempted to hold his breath to the point of brain death.

This captor, who introduced himself as Mirikami, often spoke to him in high Krall, using his suit’s sound replicator, apparently just to show that he could use and understand the language. Kartok couldn’t deploy his internal ultrasonic ears, although at close range he could hear well enough through the membrane that concealed and protected them in combat. He wondered why the human bothered to ask him anything at all.

The Krall had no way of knowing that his mental images and thoughts sometimes were clearer to the Mind Tapping questioner if the original conversation that Kartok had heard was conducted in high Krall, instead of the slower low Krall version of their speech, used with animal species.

He assumed the repetition of the same questions in both versions of his languages was for the human’s practice. The truth was that Mirikami was fluent in both language versions, although he lacked the ability to pronounce high Krall without an electronic device that shifted the frequency higher. Kartok assumed, incorrectly as it happened, that the human also required an electronic device to downshift the frequency in order to hear the ultrasonic words from an unimpaired Krall. Of course, Kartok was unable to make any speech sounds, because his dual-purpose vocal organ, lips, and tongue, were all outside of his ability to control now. He understood that this paralysis was caused by some drug that was included in his nutrients, and had initially entered his bloodstream by some sort of small projectile.

He decided their interest in keeping him alive was due to their own strange notion of torture. Similar to his enjoyment of causing screams of pain when he removed segments of a human prisoner he questioned for information, or was merely bored for some activity. He had to admit, this form of torture was certainly effective against a true warrior. He wanted nothing more than to end his shame and humiliation by dying, and that action was denied him by their drug. At first, it appeared more of the same sort of humiliation was in store for him today, in front of different humans.