Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (47 page)

“True. Particularly for you humans. Even the new PU applicants that want to move to the GF will find many worlds the Toki, Prada and my people must pass up as too challenging. I actually think you full Kobani may have fewer choices among human immigrants.”

“Why? We can live anywhere Normals can live, or that our allies can live. The PU might be shocked at how many of their own citizens on Hub worlds have applied to immigrate. Some even want Kobani mods if they can move to the Galactic Federation. An even larger percentage of Rim World residents, who are already outside the official borders of the Planetary Union, have requested Kobani mods, but don’t want to move anywhere. There will be a lot more Kobani in just a few years.”

Blue clarified his meaning. “My point was that the desirable planets for the Kobani might be limited. You
can
live on low gravity worlds, but you seem more comfortable on high gravity planets. Your Haven representatives to the Federation rotate home often. Even our President jumps over there frequently, now that he has the physical stamina to live there. Of course, for Stewart, a Jump even without T-cubed travel is mere seconds to Koban. In Human Space I think you only had one world, Heavyside that would suit the Kobani physical capabilities?”

“Yes. There were other high gravity worlds, which had life on them, but not in the variety found on Koban, with its carbon fiber muscles and bones, and the superconducting nerves to make them fast enough to be practical. Heavyside is the only higher gravity world we tried terraforming, and because so few people wanted to live there, and Normals couldn’t bear children on the surface, it never became a real colony.”

“You used the word terraforming. The word refers to making a world more like Earth, does it not? According to the spec ops that became Kobani, and spent time training on Heavyside, terraforming failed on Heavyside. Why do you not try Kobaforming it instead? If that’s a valid word in Standard.”

Maggi considered this a few seconds. “That world isn’t a New Colony, it’s technically an outer Rim World based on location, and it has no representation or diplomatic relations with the PU. The military took over part of it as a training base only after the war started. The civilian population survives on seafood exports, and the damned runaway rabbit population provides meat they get tired of eating. They have no predators there, and rabbits are considered a pest. I think that world is ripe for improved living conditions. Kobaforming might become a real word.

“We can have our Kobani spec op folks based there approach the residents of the single city there, with a proposal to introduce the most gentle of Koban plants and animals. To import more high gravity lifeforms later if that works. It isn’t as if there’s a very useful local ecology already there. Then they could work up to a more involved Koban ecology. Hell, I don't know exactly in what order it’s done, since I was never involved with terraforming a planet. The technology and details of the logical steps to follow are available, and have been used hundreds of times.

“That work mostly ended when genetic modifications were outlawed. Scientists could not change existing life on a planet to feed us, and certainly couldn’t change Earth based life to adapt to that world. Koban has shattered that mold for Earth based life. Perhaps we need to expand to high g worlds in that way. I’ll bet there were more planets in human Space that were bypassed because there were no normal people that could live on them. Now there are people that perhaps can live there. Even if the PU is opposed to our using those worlds in Human Space, they have no say about such planets in Federation space.”

Blue saw a practical problem. “How will you find them? If there was no civilization there for the Krall to kill they never stopped at those stars, so their navigation systems will not show you the planetary details. There were no other races, before you created the Kobani branch of humanity, which would be interested in starting a colony on such a massive world.”

“Blue, I don't see the problem you do. We’re Kobani, and we’re human. Like the Krall, we’re not afraid to go anywhere, and unlike the Krall, we have great curiosity and an urge to explore and to have risky adventures. With so many ships, we’ll have youngsters poking their noses into all kinds of unexplored star systems. I just hope we can keep up with the opportunities that await us.”

Blue flattened out the vertical smile crease on his forehead, indicating a more serious mood. “I just hope we can
survive
what you reckless adventurers stumble across.”

Chapter 10: Khartoum’s Destiny

“Murderous opportunistic bastards.” Howard Caudwell was furious and disgusted. The human trafficker’s ship was disabled prior to a Jump, but they had tried to draw the closing pursuit away when they dumped their helpless young cargo, encapsulated in a leaky life pod with emergency beacon broadcasting. He was in Comtap link with his boss, Henry Nabarone.

“How many were there?” Nabarone asked him sadly.

“Smugglers or victims?” He came back, his bitterness apparent in his snappish tone.

“The kids of course, Howard. I don’t give a frigging shit how many of those Khartoum pricks we caught, as long as it was all of them. How many of our kids did they have aboard?”

“Four. Three girls and a boy, preteens except for the boy, who was sixteen. The youngest girl survived for a few minutes after the cutter pulled the pod aboard, but she was unconscious and unaware of what was happening. They each suffered severe decompression, and they had struggled to stuff strips of their clothes into the leak. The older kids burned their oxygen faster as they fought to save themselves, and didn’t last as long as the smaller girl, who looked to be about age six.”

“Howard, I don't want to make the crew on the cutter feel bad, but the smugglers dumped the pod to get the chase ship to stop for a rescue while they caught a Jump Tac. Why didn’t the cutter save the kids, and let the pricks escape. If the PU hadn’t boycotted Khartoum from new technology, they would have had a T-squared drive and could have been gone as soon as they left atmosphere. A diversion like the one they used was only a ploy to give them time. It should have worked. Instead, the kids died and they were caught. Why didn’t their strategy work? Bad luck catching a tachyon, or did the cutter give chase and ignore the kids?” His last question had an edge.

“Hell Henry, the diversion worked okay from the kidnapper’s vantage point. The cutter immediately turned to pursue the pod, and it would never have been able to catch the traffickers after that chase. The heartless pricks had triggered the pod’s thrusters to increase the gap, and programmed the steering computer for a random walk mode that made it change directions all the time. They punctured the hull so that escaping atmosphere was clearly detectable, encouraging the cutter to exert every effort to make the rescue. It was hard to catch the pod before the hole in the hull bled out nearly all the air pressure. It turns out they wanted that boy dead if they couldn’t get away with him. The three girls were already aboard when the boy was captured, and were incidental.”

“Then how’d the cutter catch them if it chased the pod? They should have had enough time to get minimum Jump energy. Did you have a second cutter aloft?”

“Nope, we had a Falcon and a Kobani.”

“A what? Oh, you must mean Haveram’s bird. How the hell did the Chief get involved?”

“He was on Poldark buying Hub credits with precious metals and gems so he could go shopping on Old Colony planets. Our banks know him now, and he doesn’t have to offer proof of legal origin for his Koban minerals and jewels. He was about ready to lift from the same little spaceport where he does some of his under the table buys when he’s here. The Falcon has a good suite of com gear and an AI that monitors airwaves for suspicious transmissions that might be about him. The Falcon’s AI detected there were several police shuttles inbound. It alerted Haveram in case they were coming for him.

The AI then told him about the Tower’s attempt to order another ship to wait for other traffic to clear before launching. The Chief realized the police were actually homing on the Delta Dawn, the smuggler’s registry name. One of the kids, the boy, is from the wealthy Christoph family, and he had a tracker device embedded in case of a kidnapping for ransom. Otherwise, the police wouldn’t have been closing in on that ship at all. No one knew the girls were also held captive.”

“How did Haveram get in on the chase?”

“When the Dawn lifted against instructions, Haveram heard the police shuttles broadcast an alert to our cutter in orbit, and they told the cutter’s captain that it was an escaping child kidnapper. As I said, they didn’t know about the other three kids at that time. I’ll have to clear the Falcon of a traffic violation for an unauthorized launch, but Haveram was airborne before the Dawn even cleared atmosphere. The Falcon has a hell of a Normal Space drive and it reached space fast. When the Chief saw the cutter veer off chasing the ejected escape pod, he micro-Jumped dangerously close to the Delta Dawn and shot off several of their Trap emitters, leaving them stuck in this system. He boarded them entirely alone.”

“The Falcon is armed? I didn’t know that.”

“Henry, all you had to do was ask him, Chief Haveram hasn’t made it a secret to us. He has three clanship heavy laser cannons, and one plasma cannon, all cleverly concealed from the outside. I knew about it a while ago, because he invited me to retire after the war and join him in a shipping company he plans to form.”

“Hey, don’t you do that before I finish mopping up on K1. I need you commanding the forces left on Poldark until I get back.”

“Relax. I’ll keep babysitting for you. I may take him up on the offer eventually, but only if and when he can get me a captured clanship to fly. T-cubed is the transportation wave of the future, and only Koban has the ships that are easy to convert. The Falcon, as a T-squared ship of human design, can’t be converted to a T-cubed drive and would need a complete new drive installed, same as it did when it was changed to a T-squared drive. That bird is going the way of the dinosaur, so he has to replace his beloved ship.”

“Fine,” he said, mollified, “But you had better give me some notice before you punch out, please. I take it Haveram is who discovered the connection to Khartoum after the boarding. Only Mind Taps could have gotten that out of the crew so fast, before the cutter took them into official custody. Are they Arab looking? That should have attracted attention on Poldark if they were men with swarthy skins and Arab accents. Some of their smugglers even use hormonal creams to restore ratty looking beards, to overcome the genetics of hundreds of years ago. Their religion wouldn’t be anyone’s business if they didn’t use it as an excuse for a fanatical and corrupted purpose, such as human trafficking, which many of the sheiks in charge of Khartoum’s Destiny do.”

“The prisoners aren’t on the ground yet, but Haveram says nine of the crew were hired thugs of the lowest moral caliber, spacers and gunmen recruited from various Rim World underworld sources. Only the captain and first mate are from Khartoum, but they don’t look or sound the part. The hired hands knew exactly who they worked for, and have similar moral standards, which is to say none at all if the money is right. They’ve apparently made multiple successful snatches on Poldark in the past, and on other Rim Worlds after the war started, selling the kids or young women on Khartoum. We have their encrypted logbook key, thanks to Mind Tap, and it provided a manifest of past trips. We know the victim names, ages and genders, to which sheiks the captain made his previous sales, and how much was paid. It’s a very lucrative trade and more widespread than we suspected.”

“When Haveram learned how they killed those kids today, what kept that captain and his mate alive, or any of them for that matter?”

“He Comtapped me, and asked if he could
accidentally
hole their hull or simply shove them out an airlock. I reluctantly asked him not to do that, since we needed their public trial to establish their connection to Khartoum. It was too late to prevent some broken bones, but all of them will heal before the trials. Executions would be called for by pre-colony Poldark law, but the sissy PU laws will prevent the executions they deserve.

“Hell, Henry, that’s a bit of irony don’t you think? Under PU law, hero Haveram that caught the scum would warrant execution, being gene modified. A consolation is if the nine scumbags are given life sentences on Poldark, they’ll find themselves placed in the general prison population. That could prove fatal to them as child killers from Khartoum, from other prisoners. In any case, we need to wake up our citizens that with the Krall gone, and normal society still in tatters here, the crooks are moving into the vacuum after the navy pulled back to the Hub, and most of the PU army is off planet with you, and civil authority isn’t fully restored.”

“I hope to hell our
panty waist
PU appointed Governor plans to do something about Khartoum.”

“Calling Fletcher names ain’t good politics Henry, and she is from Poldark. I talked to her and she really wants to do something, but as a New Colony and a member of the PU, Poldark can’t up and send a force to Khartoum to do anything. The PU isn’t in the mood for a local war on any scale, and we don’t even have diplomatic relations with that Rim World pesthole. The PU can’t recall an ambassador they don’t have, which would only show their civilized displeasure, or they could impose an added economic boycott. Since the sheiks don’t openly deal with us infidels anyway, that’s of little use. A naval blockade of Khartoum’s shipping would be tantamount to a declaration of war, so that won’t happen. Frankly, the sheiks wouldn’t give a shit what the PU might say if they won’t use force. Aside from the military, we don’t have an interstellar police force for unaligned Rim Worlds.”

“By damn, I’ll be done here in four more months, and I’ll come back and provoke some sort of frigging reaction from those bastards, to excuse our taking military action.”