Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (79 page)

“What if this system had not erupted, or had calmed down before they even called their clanships back to K1? How were you going to stop them from chasing us home to our bases then?”

“Blanchard’s nova, a new one that your Astrophysical
Research Consortium listed for me, is on
the anti-spinward side of Human Space. That’s another binary system, with a white dwarf eating material from a normal companion, and it went bang less than two months ago. It’s probably a much more violent event than Spica, but two weeks of travel farther away. I called that Wait Point 2, with a longer time to reach it but the same results. Some sort of deadly stellar event can always be found. It’s a dangerous Universe, and your astronomers keep track of the hot spots just so we can stay away. Usually stay away, that is.”

Mauss hadn’t known how well Mirikami had studied these backup plans for their extraction from K1. “OK. You apparently think it’s safer, now that the Krall are off our trail. You told me you wanted to collect most of your people, except for a couple of Comtaps that would have stayed with Chatsworth’s staff, and one with Bledso’s people for updates. Will you entrust them with me, to introduce them to whomever the navy selects to replace Lela, and to work with Bledso?”

“Thank you, Golda. That would be helpful. I can take you back to the Lancer, along with another clanship to travel with you, to rendezvous with the various fleet elements to pick up my people. Like you, we’ll have a great deal of grieving to do over empty caskets at home. This is our greatest loss ever of people. I know that’s far fewer than the almost thirty thousand people your navy lost this week, but we are a far smaller community, and very close knit. We have too few citizens to fill even a midsized city on a Hub world. Is the Lancer still stationed at Rimfire?”

“Yes, it should be. They don't know what happened at K1. Do you have a timeline for the funeral services? I don't want any of your people that lost friends or family to be delayed.”

“I doubt we’ll hold the public services even within a week of our return, although there may be some private family services. Could you ask if any of the spec ops Comtaps would volunteer to stay with you for communications relay? None of those men have family on Koban.”

****

Frakod, becoming more comfortable with passing time as an advisor to Telour, spoke up. “Six days and no trackers have yet returned my Tor. You warned them not to do so if they found no bases.” That would have been a dangerous reminder a few days ago, but the Tor Gatrol was now fully in charge of the clans, and himself. He had organized the recovery very well, and postponed the formation of a new Joint Council.

Telour agreed. “Our ships from New Dublin are impatient to pursue the enemy and our now more conservative and experienced pilots are ready to seek revenge. The humans may have fled our wrath farther than we expected, to the other side of their space, believing we would not chase them that far. For now, we will start to attack worlds where the enemy fleet once lived. I will send them today.”

Another aide, emboldened by his leaders return to self-control, added. “The living ship will be here soon. Your plan for that can proceed, even as these raids strike humans worlds at random.”

“That is true.” Telour agreed. “I have been patient, and I can wait longer for my own revenge, because it will come to me soon.”

No one on his staff felt he had been the least bit patient, but for this, he did seem prepared to savor what was to come.

****

Torpol, the highest status representative on the mission to fetch a living ship, was from Dorbo clan. Unknown to her, she was also the highest status member of her entire clan still living, following the destruction of the Joint Council dome and her clan leader, on distant Telda Ka. That knowledge would await their return.

She initially spoke for the group, although the two members of the new Tor Gatrol’s staff carried significant weight. They would gain more authority soon, once the other high status members of the various clans, who were sent as confirmation witnesses, were used to verify that those two warriors represented the Krall’s new Tor Gatrol.

After just over seven thousand light years of travel, the reward and respect the representatives expected was blunted by their being disarmed before they were ferried to an airless moon, by the multi-clan guardians of the Olt’kitapi ships. There they were taken by shuttle to the habitable large moon that circled an immense gas giant planet. The pathetic soft Krall, bound hand and foot in steel shackles, with a hood over his head, was carried roughly along by the guardians. He would never be out of their sight.

Pildon was the only name the Krall permitted their captive to use with them, believing that a second name should be some sort of title that was earned, usually a result of combat kills, death matches won, or promotions for leadership success.

Within his community of fellow prisoners, he was known as Pildon Fetra. They referred to themselves as Krall’tapi, rather than by the term soft Krall, intended to be a derogatory description by the “true” Krall. They privately paid homage to the ancient Olt’kitapi species who had offered them evolutionary advancement, and a part to play in a great multi-species civilization that was to be forged. The Krall’tapi had paid a terrible price for accepting that offer, but the Olt’kitapi had paid a greater one because it was offered.

Pildon was terrified for his family, a particularly large and extended group, fearful of how brutally they might be tortured or killed. His primary selection criteria appeared to have been based only on his family unit’s size. They provided the Krall with more hostages to ensure his sincere cooperation, no matter what was asked of him.

The last time the Krall leadership had called for the use of a living ship had been generations ago. Pildon had never even seen one of the powerful ships of legend, but knew the lore of them well, and had shared the oral traditions passed down from those that survived similar ordeals in the past. Any of them knew what was required of them.

Not all family leaders survived to return from such a mission, but the fact that their relatives had always lived afterwards was evidence the head of the family had fulfilled the demands made of them. The Krall’tapi used an old and almost forgotten description, Kin Dar, for the dome where they were kept. They believed the words originally meant something similar to “secure place,” but after so many thousands of years, their original language had changed and they didn’t know. So many generations had lived here, never seeing more of the world than where their repeatedly repaired or rebuilt dome was located, that the words Kin Dar now referred to the entire planet for them. A world that they knew relatively little about, and couldn’t call their
Home
.

The Krall always had kept their agreements to release families after a mission (as they called them), saying it was a matter of “honor” to them. They were entirely oblivious to the dishonor of holding innocents under the threat of horrible deaths, to force a family leader to perform genocide on their captor’s behalf. Those family leaders that had never returned were on ships that had never returned either, but which had accomplished the mission, whatever it had been. Almost certainly, the murder of many beings was involved, although the soft Krall prisoner himself was never actually told what the result had been.

After generations of waiting, Pildon was rigid with fear that he might not be able to convince one of the hideously old ships to function for him, as he’d be instructed to do. He knew there were a larger number of old ships that refused to respond to instructions from a Krall’tapi than there were those that would obey. The last family leader to return to Kin Dar after a mission had said when he was taken to talk with the ships, that only five were fully aware and willing to converse with him. He’d said the ship he had commanded would no longer respond to him when it returned to join the others, returning entirely on its own initiative, accepting no commands. That left only four operational. When those ships were gone, the Krall would have no need of the despised Krall’tapi, and they knew what that meant for their future. They didn’t have a long one.

Pildon knew the history of how the Krall had used these ships. It was something his people needed to know and recall, and they had tried to preserve what limited knowledge they had. That was because the fate of all of them was tied to the continued responsiveness of these strange vessels to the Krall’tapi, who in turn obeyed the demands of their Krall overlords.

The Krall’tapi was permitted no written records or computers, but before the species had diverged, all Krall had been keepers of the earliest and very long oral histories of their once united people and clans. Now they each preserved their separate histories, the prisoners retaining what little new they learned. Mentally, he reviewed the outline of what had become almost a litany of the general history and knowledge they had preserved about the ancient ships:

Nineteen of the living ships were discovered and claimed by the Krall after the revolt, on a world that was a moon of an even greater world. They were found in a solar system of multiple gas giants and ice worlds. The Olt’kitapi had intended to use the ships in the system where they were found, to start a great engineering and building project. The dead worlds were to become building materials to form a vast complex of smaller artificial living worlds.

When the Olt’kitapi finished their work, they said the Krall’tapi would be invited, along with many other species to live there peacefully, forming a great galactic society.

After the revolt, some of the powerful ships had vanished early, under orders issued to the Krall’tapi, sent on casual missions for the Krall leadership, intended to generate less devastation than they were capable of causing, and yet they still had never returned to their parking area. It is not known what they were made to do, and the Krall leaders did not say afterwards. After fulfilling the onerous task forced on the Krall’tapi and the ships, none of the very first ships used, or their passengers, was heard from again. Their likely fate had probably been suicidal dissipation in Tachyon Space, as final acts of living and intelligent ships with a conscience.

After such early wasteful and direct use of the enormous power of the ships for moderate levels of destruction on enemy cities or colonies, the fleet was quickly diminished. The Krall leadership began to conserve them, and use only their full power when a monumental level of punishment was required, in order to control the behavior of an enemy.

Even so, now only nine of the self-maintaining ships would respond or display any signs of awareness. Five of those nine, although clearly still alive, would no longer obey instructions from a Krall’tapi. That was after those particular five ships had deduced that their constructive capability had been carelessly used, or deliberately misused in what proved to be subtle acts of pure destruction, at the direction of those they believed they could trust. Destruction, which led the living ships to harm an intelligent species, even though it was claimed to be inadvertent, only an accident.

This happened when the Krall masters coerced their prisoners (using intimidation and threats against their families) into directing the ships to use their capability and power from the outer reaches of a stellar system, where the nature of the occupied worlds present there was not apparent.

The first two times a living ship was instructed by the Krall’tapi to target a planet from the remote regions of a solar system, it was promptly sent home in an effort to prevent it from learning what happened. The Krall themselves preferred to witness the punishment as close as they could, to watch their prey animals die, and clanships had zoomed in to observe, while the living ships swiftly returned home.

However, somehow the intelligent ships always learned what the consequences of their actions had been. From their reactions and subsequent shutdown, twice in a row, the Krall realized they couldn’t hide the mass killings of intelligent life, and the ships appeared to “die” or withdraw afterwards, when learning they had caused this.

The Krall grew more subtle, and tried to leave the ships with the belief the deaths were accidental consequences, explaining through the Krall’tapi that the deaths happened indirectly, unexpectedly.

Nevertheless, after every inhabited world was damaged, somehow the ships learned of it and concluded that they were responsible. Thus, later misused living ships declined to respond to commands, but they no longer elected to die.

The self-deactivation of ships used this way, convinced the Krall to restrict the use of the ships as weapons. “Sparingly used” by that Krall definition, resulted in more of the ships becoming unresponsive to instructions, even if willing to wake up and interact when entered. The deactivated ships would no longer leave the planet where they had been found.

The last four of the untraumatized ships are now considered a precious and irreplaceable commodity, only to be used in what Krall clan leaders consider is a great need. The craft were far more precious to the Krall’tapi, who had a more personal reason to wish to preserve them.

Pildon concluded his personal recitation.
My people survive only as long as the last of these ships, and I now must help kill another one.