Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (70 page)

“I think the Olt’kitapi only held them at bay initially because of the advanced technology they had, and wisely refused to share it with them. They tried to pull them into a joint vast habitat construction project, where their mutual interests in maintaining a stable solar system, and an economic trade dependency would have forced the Thandol to adopt modes of cooperative behavior.

“Had the Krall not turned on the Olt’kitapi, it might have worked. If the subservient races in the Empire escaped Thandol control, including their enforcer species, the empire might have been forced to moderate their ambitions. It’s another way to temper the actions of a bully. Make it advantageous to them to moderate their behavior and cooperate.”

  “I can see that as an Olt’kitapi strategy.” Maggi agreed. “It’s essentially what they were doing with the Krall’tapi, but failed to limit the regular Krall’s access to the weapons technology. Probably because they saw the threat of the empire, and sought more defenders, sooner than they could alter the Krall’s hyper-aggressive tendencies. Their plan to fight fire with fire exploded and consumed them.”

Dillon shook his head. “It’s too bad they didn’t meet us first.”

“What? Normal humanity?” Maggi asked skeptically. “Things might not have gotten as far out of hand, but humans have not been very altruistic in the past. We might have been a different kind of disaster waiting for the Olt’kitapi to find.”

“No, I meant
us,
the Kobani!”

“Lucky you, to be on the other side of your wife where I can’t thump your head. Why would there have ever
been
any Kobani if the Krall hadn’t been around to kidnap and dump us on Koban.”

“Uh…, you know what I mean.”

“I do, and I hope what we have become will be as beneficial to the other species we encounter in the galaxy as you imply. Remember, at our core, we’re still as human as the people in the Hub.”

“We possess one vital difference, an improvement in conscience I think.” Mirikami offered.

“How’s that?” Noreen wondered.

“Due to Mind Tap, and the ripper sense of balance for what was once termed the circle of life. As rippers do, we sense the minds of those we encounter. Even if we need to kill to defend ourselves, and others. Rippers kill to eat and survive, but don’t kill wantonly.

“We Kobani, as a group, not always individually, have become less willing to destroy all of the lives of those we fight, and even hate. It’s why some of the Krall continue to exist. We’ll fight and kill in combat, of course, but the ability to empathize with other minds was never before a human characteristic. We are better able to understand other species, and capable of pulling back from the compete destruction of one even as odious as are the Krall.”

He shrugged. “Dillon is right, even though his statement seems contradictory. The Olt’kitapi
would
have fared better had they met a people as we are now. We may have become the defenders they needed back then. Assuming of course, we ever become numerous enough to protect all those that we are already committed to defending. The Empire is large and powerful, and the Thandol are smarter than the Krall, with greater technology.”

They had been linking via Comtap with the complements of all five ships throughout the meeting. It had been quickly decided that too many Kobani and rippers all in one place wasn’t prudent, even though the Hothor appeared to be as cooperative as Pholowela’s records suggested they had been previously. Of course, Thad and his crew on the Ripper had monitored the talks as they had scanned Canji Mot for things of interest, without finding anything unusual. Based on several arrivals and departures at other spaceports, it didn’t appear the Hothor had T-cubed ships. Those would be essential for traveling to visit the former Olt’kitapi region of stars in the Orion Spur. How they had known so much about the species the Olt’kitapi had met so long ago still wasn’t known

Thad then used his Normal Space drive to travel to Canji Dol, the colony planet in the same system. At the uncompensated accelerations the Kobani and rippers could tolerate, they reached the other colony world in just under five hours. A Jump, with a subsequent arrival White Out would have taken only seconds, but that would have been impossible to hide at the moonless second world.

The Ripper had been involved with performing scans of what was a heavily forested world, with a warmer and moister climate due to its location, orbiting closer to the star the Hothor called Mother. It had an even lower surface gravity than did Canji Mot at .62 of a standard gravity, and appeared to be predominately rain forests at mid-latitudes, with perhaps half the surface covered with what sensors showed were shallow seas.

There were numerous towns, but no large cities as were seen on their home planet, and no signs of significant industrialization or mining. From the talks, it was learned that this colony’s most important exports were things that grew there. One high profit item was a moss found on the shady sides of the rainforest trees, which had important medicinal uses for the Hothor, and was in high demand as a safe non-addictive recreational drug by one of their trading partners, located twenty light years away.

There was nothing of commercial interest to the Thandol produced there, so they had never shown any inclination to visit the backward world, which the Hothor resisted fully developing. The Ragnar were sensitive to the bites of several varieties of small flies found there, and they didn’t like the heat and high humidity due to their thick dark fur, which was no protection from the tiny flies. Their four-inch fur also matted, which the fastidious creatures hated and liked to keep combed and groomed when possible. They didn’t inspect the towns there very often, and never ventured into the rain forests unless they wore cooling suits or armor.

It was explained, and pictures supported the description, that those aliens vaguely resembled tall hairy humans, with heavy bodies and thicker arms and legs. Maggi, with her interest in old Earth history, was the one to note that they resembled the legendary Bigfoot tales, where unsubstantiated sightings were claimed to be common in the pre-space flight era.

The Ragnar could also have passed for an upright, hairy faced black mountain gorilla, with long muscular arms and legs. They commonly wore only backpacks, utility belts, and sometimes wide flat shoes in mild or cold climates. They were said to be exceptionally fast runners, quite strong, and deadly fighters that enjoyed their scary reputations. They preferred worlds with gravity of around .9 g, and would sometimes live on worlds as high as a standard gravity or slightly more. 

The Ragnar soldiers commonly clipped the long facial hair from around their large black eyes, to provide clear vison for aiming and firing their plasma and laser rifles, with which they were supposed to be quite proficient. They also had powered bulky armor, with stealth capability in visual and infrared frequencies, but it required extra power for cooling their big hairy bodies down.

The Ragnar didn’t spend much time on Canji Dol either, so it had an allure for some of the Hothor, who could pretend they lived free of the intrusions of the Empire. That freedom came at some cost of discomfort, since the heat was also higher than the Hothor liked. A local plant extract, which if consumed in small quantities, repelled the flies that caused the Ragnar such misery. Delightfully, the colony too was a world of right-handed amino acids, so the Ragnar and Thandol couldn’t consume the plant. Not that any Thandol wanted to set a single one of their four, superior and exalted feet on Canji Dol anyway.

They had reached the cluster of their four ships, where they were pausing before splitting up to enter their own ships. A day of meeting with new aliens had been exciting for all of them, but it was exhilarating for the rippers. They were eager to keep talking of the new experience.

Kally, perhaps because she was young and physically smaller than the other three rippers who had visited the Hothor this first day, had actually had the only opportunity to frill two of them. They had finally worked up the courage to touch her neck, just before they were leaving for the day. Kally had invited the contact, explaining the area was sensitive. It was true, so she didn’t speak falsely, something rippers never did anyway. Except, the sensitivity she meant was for frilling, and not the pleasure of the tentative and gentle touches they made.

“I asked if they had ever had contact with a Thandol, or if I was the first four legged alien they had met and touched. I could see in their mental images, they had never touched a Thandol, although they have seen them in person often. It seems the Thandol don’t like other species to touch them. There was recognition, from each of them, that I was the first alien with four legs they personally had ever met. Then, there was a fleeting thought from just one of them, of knowing people with six limbs.

“I couldn’t reveal I had caught a stray thought, of course, but I immediately asked if they had ever met a species like the Raspani, with six limbs. They both quickly said no, but both of them actually have, and I think often. Because the topic was about limbs, from one of them I saw a brief image of long slender limbs, which were definitely not the chubby legs and arms of a Raspani. They were also purple colored. I was reluctant to ask again about different aliens with six legs because they had been secretive by their denial. I do not have the skill of someone like Maggi, to guide them into thinking the thoughts I want them to have.”

Maggi touched her frill, and asked if she would recall the image of the limbs. It had indeed been a brief thought by the Hothor, but something about the angular surfaces of the limbs seemed somehow familiar to her.

“I’ve seen something like that, but I can’t remember where or when. I don’t think it was a firsthand memory of something I saw, or I’d know immediately. I think it was an image like this one, which was shared from someone else.” She shook her head, as if that would jog the memory loose. “I’ll remember it eventually, when I’m not trying.”

They spoke their parting words for the day, and would resume their dialogue with the Hothor tomorrow. They hadn’t pressed to pump them for too much information on the military ability of the Thandol or Ragnar, focusing first on developing a basis for trust and understanding. From their eagerness, it was obvious that the Hothor were sincere in their desire to meet and share their cultural and social differences, as well as similarities, with humans and rippers. It was no surprise that the rippers, with a simple, direct, completely open attitude, was the most appealing to them.

Showing he still had a spring in his step after a long day, Mirikami leaped over the extended ramp without touching it, landing in the open portal facing out. The snow-covered peaks around them were ablaze with the light of the setting red tinted sun.

He was waiting for Maggi and Kally to join him, so they could eat the meal someone had made for them, after the daylong meeting broke up and they’d admitted they were all famished. Then, a link from Thad made him forget about food.

“Tet! The Hothor are hiding something on this colony, and it isn’t T-cubed ships. They’ve been hiding something in the rainforests over here at Canji Dol, surely for a hell of a long time. If it wasn’t for bill Saber’s interest in alien wildlife, and the particular suite of automated sensors our ships have, I don’t think we would have seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“They have something other than Hothor living and hiding under those trees. There’s a type of artificial camouflage covering a huge swath of forest, which presents an appearance identical to the normal thick jungle crown, and it’s a high tech active camouflage material. There must be quite a few examples of what’s living under there, because we measured perhaps a hundred thousand square miles of that covering. There are real local birds living in the fake treetops, or rather bird analogues that are nesting and flying around. Bill Saber noticed that all of the birds living in a sizable area of rainforest were different types than he saw elsewhere, with different colors from those living in the trees of other areas we scanned.”

It sounded like Thad had stumbled onto something to Mirikami, but it could have a prosaic explanation. “OK, they are hiding some sort of secret. You said high-tech cover material. What do you mean?”

“When Bill asked me to look closer, I saw that it presents an IR spectrum that is like the real forests areas, but it’s too perfect for such a large area. There should be some random irregularities, as you see when a cliff face causes a break in the trees. Perhaps where a stream cuts through, or lightening caused a fire that caused a patch of regrowth. There was only bland uniformity.

“I also couldn’t detect a single animal moving on the ground anywhere in the IR spectrum, as we could for the other forest areas. It also doesn’t provide a realistically variable radar reflection. I didn’t even try the active radar scan at first, which gives our presence away, not until I was convinced they were hiding something like a secret Hothor military complex. It’s certainly not that. I think it might be another alien race, or at least something alive that’s not native to this star system.”

“How did you arrive at their hiding other aliens or living creatures as being their secret?”

“When even the radar returns seemed too uniform, because the reflections looked as homogenous as had the passive IR scans, I told, Buford, my AI, to use the full range of sensors built into these former clanships. I asked him to try to penetrate the camouflage to the real surface, using different frequencies of various types of radiation. Sort of like how the Krall finally learned how to use long wave radio frequencies see our ships through the improved stealth the Torki gave us.”

“And?”

“First, link Maggi in, and anyone else that might have a clue as to what I found from the images. Maggi once shared an image that almost matches these, but I didn’t pay careful attention at the time.”

In a second, Maggi and several others were waiting to learn what Thad found.

“What is it you think I might recognize Thad?” Her curiosity was aroused.