Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (43 page)

“What is it?”

“A card with Prada device addresses listed on the back to contact us and on the front a silhouette of a ripper, and below that the phrase:
Have Genes, Will Travel.”

Annoyed, Dillon asked, “Why just the ripper image? Why not a damn wolfbat and white raptor as well? You know we’re keeping the source of our most important genetics a secret. This is almost advertising that.”

The young men exchanged glances and raised their eyebrows. “Not a bad idea, Uncle Dillon,” Ethan said agreeably. “We really only used the ripper image because Kit insisted, and Kobalt agreed with her, naturally. Besides, a Kobani looks like anyone else, but a ripper with us will draw attention and respect.”

“The cats? You got them interested in off-world adventures?” He was incredulous.

“Dad, they’re full partners. After Kit was rejuvenated and had long-range communications, she and Kobalt both wanted some other exotic travel experiences. Neither of them feels as if they fit in with the basic circle of life on Koban now. They have a new lifespan that can be extended repeatedly, and as we know, the balance of predator and prey is almost a religious conviction for ripper society. They don’t have many ways of earning credits of their own. If this business pans out and makes a profit, they’ll have some cash. With the small Torki speech disks, their Comtaps give them a voice, and they can do their own banking with an AI system. Cat society is going to change I think, at least for those traveling off Koban.”

“What can they do for you on Chisholm? Scare the hell out of cows?”

“Picture one of us walking into a cattle town bar, filled with gun hands of the local cattle Baron. A tall stranger with his trusty kitty at his side, asks the bartender for a whisky and tall milk. Do you think any of those cowboys will wonder if the stranger is a Normal that just happens to have a ripper friend? The cats with us should keep miscalculations to a minimum.”

“A cattle Baron. Really? I think you spent too much time with Aunt Maggi when you were young, and she was in her Old West period of interest.”

“If the shoe fits…” Carson trailed off.

Ethan added, “I think Chisholm has many of the old west parallels that triggered the same inherent sources of human conflicts. The entrenched wealthy and powerful that have had it their way for ages, and the poor and weaker newcomers that have to force the wealthy to change their ways and play fair, and alter their huge profit margins to share land they wrongfully consider their own. There was a reason those films were made. They reflected the real conflicts of the old west, even if a bit over dramatized.”

“You boys better do what I said. Research Chisholm, and study the records of pre-space range wars in the American old west. Your Aunt Maggi regaled me with the stories. Those could be pretty bloody and violent times, and full of real drama. Watch your backs. A face-to-face standup gunfight isn’t always how it happens. You’ve heard how I killed the first gunman I ever met. I knew I couldn’t out draw him, so I gut-shot him under the table as he drew on me. It wasn’t noble, but I lived.”

Carson rolled his eyes at the old story, seldom repeated by his father but heard many times from his mother and aunt. “Nut-shot is how Aunt Maggi described it.” He grinned.

“Whatever works. Watch your backs and cover your nuts.” His dad grinned back.

****

“That’s just nuts!” Alyson declared.

She couldn’t believe the ruins below her. “The Torki used to build skyscrapers? They’re crabs that live in sea side caves for heaven’s sake.”

She was captain aboard her own ship, Mother’s Pride, and she was speaking to her first officer, Richard Yang. The Torki passengers were below in the acceleration compartments installed for them, in case they ran into stray Krall clanships this deep into former Krall controlled space. It had happened multiple times in the past six months, and any sudden maneuvers could harm the crabs while leaving the Kobani barely inconvenienced.

They were flying over the remains of a long abandoned Torki city on their original home world of Ocean. The translated name came from the clicks of Torki speech. Most of the larger cities were more than abandoned. They had been blasted and bombed into rubble by the Krall when they conquered the planet many thousands of years ago. The Torki had capitulated by abandoning their cities and fleeing to the cold seas, where the Krall didn’t want to pursue.

This city had been abandoned before being attacked, when the Torki finally recognized this enemy didn’t want territory, just combat opposition and technology. Despite numerous examples of Krall attempts to eat Torki prisoners or the dead, it was apparent that the Krall enjoyed the white firm flesh far less that did the Torki themselves.

Immature Torki, called Torkedia, ate their dead elders in order to receive the Olts they bore, passing them to the next generation. Adult Torki also fed new Olts to Torkedia in chunks of meat taken from dead elder Torki, in order to expand their population of enhanced adults.

Eating a naturally deceased elder was a practice acceptable to their species, but they were morally opposed to killing to eat any of their kind. A Torkada was an adult form that had matured from a Torkedia without receiving an Olt, or advancing to a highly intelligent mature adult Torki. It was too late to embed an Olt once their brains had reached a mature state on their first adult molt, so the fully enhanced Torki preferred to avoid the Torkada, and built barriers that kept them from entering their cities.

Torkada had a significant level of raw intelligence, but lacked a brain structure that provided adequate long-term memories, and thus the ability to foster high-level thinking and future planning. It was the potential for this ability, which the Olt’kitapi had recognized when they created the Olts. This furnished the Torkedia with the electronic mental enhancements to help them advance, to reach an adult stage where they called themselves a Torki.

The Krall, when they obtained Torki agreements to furnish them with their advanced quantum technology for use in war, they removed every adult Torki from Ocean, and the developing spawn drifting in the seas eventually became Torkedia, and without Olts, grew into adult Torkada. 

It was mature Torkada seen scrambling through the ruins of the destroyed cities, and here they were found in the surviving upper levels of fifty and sixty story structures that, from the collapsed material around the bases, had once been taller. The external view was relayed to Coldar and his survey team down below. Alyson could see them on her own monitor, but other than fidgeting claws and overactive eyestalks, it was impossible to determine the emotional response they felt at seeing the wreckage of their former civilization.

According to the records stored in their Olts, they were possibly the first Torki to have visited here in the eleven thousand years since the Krall had defeated them. It was possible that the Krall had stayed here with Torki forced labor working for them for much longer, as had happened at the Toborkiti ship yards where Migration ships were built, but if so, none of those Torki managed to survive to synchronize Olts with Torki on other Krall worlds.

The cool, low gravity watery worlds the Torki preferred didn’t appeal to the Krall. Therefore, aside from neglect, that should be good news. That was because their planets probably had not been heavily exploited, or as ecologically damaged as were many Prada and Raspani worlds. So far, eight of their colony worlds, visited on the way to Ocean, had not suffered a feral Krall infestation and simply looked abandoned. The Kobani had long ago rescued the Torki on Toborkiti, and had killed the warriors found there. That clan had never found the Torki colony world suitable for a nesting ground, meaning that particular ninth colony was also ready to be reclaimed.

Although the Torki had settled and explored a region comparable in volume to Human Space, they had colonized only twenty-three planets. That was because of what they considered limited acceptable habitats on most worlds they had found with existing life.

Compared to humans, who settled over seven hundred usable worlds in a similar volume, the Torki could look forward to future stellar neighbors, most of whom would be humans living on higher gravity worlds, and the Prada and Raspani would find some drier low gravity worlds that suited their needs.

Alyson landed Mother’s Pride near the outskirts of the better preserved dead city, and watched with pleasure the excited reactions of Coldar and the other nineteen Torki, as they caught the first scent of the sea air, and felt the high humidity, low gravity and air pressure of a place they had never been, but which felt like home. They skittered around on multiple legs almost like the immature children, the Torkedia, that Alyson had seen return to Torki colonies after years of independent development in the seas of Haven.

Coldar was eager to move closer to the shore at the base of the buildings that rose from the water itself. Alyson had a question. “Coldar, have the seas risen? The water is up into the lower levels of all the structures. Waves may have eroded the bases, aren’t you worried they’ve been weakened? They might collapse if disturbed.”

“These buildings are a form of coral reef. The coral is still alive at the bases, and it has maintained its support. We can see this from the pinker color and thickness at the bases, that they have supported the pale, almost white dry structures above them. The tops may have weakened, but the basses are stronger than when they were abandoned.”

Alyson craned her neck to look up. “A Fifty story coral reef? Really? You didn’t just stack coral sections to build this?”

“Each building was grown in place, with fresh seawater pumped up with special nutrients added for a strong interlocking crystalline structure, and we kept the coral growing. When a level was complete, we raised the flow of water, and allowed the lower levels to die and harden into a strong base. For the tallest structures, there was a scaffolding-like metal structure to provide support. These building took hundreds of years to grow and as you see, could last thousands of years if maintained. The maximum safe height was around seventy levels, and those top levels did not bear great weight. They were often sleeping quarters with water sprays to make them comfortable.

He gestured in a spiral motion with his smaller left claw, an inclusive gesture that took in the entire cityscape. “This coral isn’t natural; it was selectively bred for this purpose over thousands of years of study. It doesn’t thrive on other planets, so we had to use other means to build structures on colonies, or used seaside caves and artificial tunnels, as we often did on Krall controlled worlds. With the Krall moving and controlling us, and our lack of control of our environment, we simply relocated our small colonies when too many Torkada returned to overuse our resources. In a city like this, we would have recovered most of our returning Torkedia to help them become adults, with Olts waiting for them. We had smooth sided seawalls with entry locks, to prevent the misplaced, overly mature Torkada from entering the city. Our oceans here have many more natural predators of our larvae than found on Haven, helping to regulate our population. There are too many water predators on some of our smaller colonies, where expansion proceeded slower.”

Alyson was watching what the other Torki were unloading. “Those carrying bags contain Olts. What will you do with them today? I assumed you would be looking over the structures to see if any are usable, or where to build new ones.”

Coldar made a carapace bob, which was their adapted gesture to mimic the human head nod. “We will do that, but some of that work will be done by the population already here.”

“I thought the Torkada were incapable of advanced learning and higher thought.”

“The Olts are for the few Torkedia we saw wandering along the water’s edge. If they haven’t started forming their first color molt, we can feed them an Olt. There will be many dead or dying Torkada to furnish the meat for this. They have a high mortality rate.

“After that, the young will have Olts with all the libraries our children always have to aid them in their learning. A few of us will remain to guide their thinking. One Torki can influence and guide a hundred new minds. There are thousands of Torkedia on Ocean now. If we can reach most of them before the next season of molt, in two of your months, our ability to populate this world again will go swiftly.

“This world is our species birthplace, and we know its seasons. We chose to come here now, to recover the peak number of this cycle’s returning young. Perhaps six thousand to seven thousand Torkedia. Next orbit, that number will repeat, and join the thousands that wish to immigrate here. Those of us here on this trip will spawn eggs and sperm at shores of cities where we want Torkedia to return in future years, and more of us will visit here in weeks ahead to do the same. 

“In five years, we should have more people and cities being built here than you will have on Koban. Initially we will populate our world faster than Kobani or other humans can reproduce, but that will taper greatly when our reproduction rate slows. That’s because the population of small native predators that evolved along with us will increase, to eat more of our larvae. Our home has a natural population growth limiter, which prior to our evolving sentience, prevented us from consuming more food that was available to sustain our population. We will then establish managed sea chandle and trinda farms for feeding our growing population. I long to taste trinda growing on a long strand of fresh wild chandle weed before the day is done.” His trembling palps around his mouth caused his translated words in Standard to slur, as he thought of the experience.

“Coldar, how long has it been since you ate this dish? You were born on Haven, and I haven’t heard any mention of that seaweed, and whatever a trinda is.”

“None of us on Haven have experienced the dish, although it was grown on our colony worlds in farms long ago. Our Olts retain memory of the flavor. Samples will return with us to Haven, but it will not be released into the environment there. The Prada and Raspani will help us build pens well inland, far from the seas, to grow them in limited quantity as a specialty food treat. A trinda is a small crustacean that attaches to chandle floating in seawater, and they form a symbiotic relationship. Neither tastes as well alone, but their combined flavor is modified when living together, as the plant absorbs the wastes from the trinda, which eats contaminates and parasites from the weed to keep the plant healthy. You should try this marvelous flavor.”