Koban (95 page)

“Heads up, they’re crossing over now,” He advised Chief Haveram
on the Link. The team that had worked all night in the Drive Room with him was safely
on upper decks. They had no tattoos and were at a higher risk of random violence
from the Krall.

The K’Tal led the warriors up the ramp, and without more than
a glance at Mirikami’s solid black tattoo, went directly to the Drive control room
where the two fusion bottles sat making cooling sounds. Both had just been shut
down by the Chief. They were already on battery power.

Internal ears were deployed by all five Krall, as the K’Tal apparently
instructed them. It removed a device from its chest belt, which Mirikami, who had
followed them inside, initially thought was a Katusha. However, he noticed that
it had a circular bell mouth, not oval, and different controls on the handle.

The K’Tal seemed a bit awkward with the control buttons, using
a single talon tip. Mirikami recalled that this was reputed to be a tool made by
the Raspani for their own digits, before they devolved into a Krall meat animal.
The gadget had a striking similarity to the Katusha, a tool said to have been made
by the Olt’kitapi. The Katusha also had some odd quantum connection to the tattoo
marks it made.

Telour had told him this Raspani tool could make a hole through
anything, which might also indicate it would employ some weird quantum effect.

The K’Tal spoke its first words in broken Standard, looking at
Mirikami. “Power modules dead now? If alive it is bad, and we go to kill all humans
on ship.”

The Chief spoke up, “I shut them both down before you entered
the ship. It is hot inside, but the magnetic field is off, and the plasma was vented.”

In response, the K’Tal suddenly turned to face the closest fusion
bottle, and aimed downward from the near side top edge through the center of the
casing. He seemed to press a button, but there was no sound. At first Mirikami didn’t
see anything but a brief shimmer in the air from the device to the bottle’s casing.
Then he noticed that there was a spray of gas starting to shoot from a circular
spot on the casing.

The K’Tal stepped to the side and watched as the white gaseous
spray ended, and revealed a perfectly round hole just over an inch across in the
outer casing.

The K’Tal must have spoken to the warriors, because one of them
stepped next to the K’Tal, who watched as the warrior also fumbled with the tool’s
controls. Satisfied, the K’Tal pointed to a new place two feet away from the first
hole. The warrior pointed, pressed, and a shimmer in the air followed by another
spray of gassy material came out of another hole.

The other three warriors, one at a time repeated this so that
there were five holes made before they finished. The last hole was made from the
far side of the bottle’s housing, and the last warrior, a shorter female by her
coloring, used a lesser downward angle. Mirikami jumped back more when a spray of
grey-white material jetted out of a hole in the housing near the floor on his side,
the beam, or whatever it was, having passed completely through the bottle and had
continued through the deck.

Next, they each repeated the Swiss cheese process on the second
fusion bottle.

The K’Tal, who had never given his name, said after they finished,
“One warrior to do this to every ship, and to engines. If humans do not turn off
power, they are killed by warriors.”

That risk had been assumed as a given, and each Captain was standing
by on their ship to ensure power was either already off now, or would be off as
soon as the last passenger was evacuated. Turned off sooner if a Krall headed their
way before they had finished.

By noon, every ship had been evacuated, and shortly after that,
there were thirty-seven more completely dead hulks on the cluttered tarmac.

And lady luck was with them. None of the long dead replacement
bottles, which were doubly dead now, had been detected under the freshly polished
or painted housing covers. That part of the plan had worked like a charm, to save
four units out of the seventy-four to be destroyed.

One detail the busy humans had overlooked was the lone shuttle
from the Fancy, sitting on the ramp, because it wasn’t considered a “ship.” A warrior
walked up to the outside of the shuttle and put a dozen holes in the engine section.
The small fusion bottle, for electrical power, was in idle but not shut off. They
were lucky that the random holes the oblivious warrior made missed it, but only
because it was mounted well forward from the reaction engine. There was some toxic
fuel leaked, but the little ship’s computer automatically closed shutoff valves.
Unfortunately, the shuttle fusion bottles were only slightly better than the small
truck units were.

Mirikami told the other committee members that the shuttle oversight
was his fault for not having it stowed away in its snug little hold. The warrior
that killed the shuttle probably did so simply because it was on the tarmac in plain
sight. He didn’t look for the other stowed shuttle still in its hold on the Fancy.
There were probably one or two stowed on each of the eighteen other passenger transports,
and probably a small launch on each of the cargo ships.

Superb on the battlefield, Krall warriors were rather dim witted
on average, particularly when it came to thinking about the implication of why there
was only one human shuttle found when there were many big human ships to carry others.

As soon as the Krall had left the Flight of Fancy, the four electrical
engineers, two physicists, and two Jump Engineers from other ships converged in
the control room of the Drive section. They joined Chief Haveram and his three “Drive
Rats,” Macy, John, and Andy. It wasn’t packed, but it was close quarters for thirteen
people, over twice the people the room was designed to accommodate.

Mirikami still felt like an observing outsider on his own ship,
as he had much of the night when the technical jargon had flown from all of the
participants, engineers, scientists, and technical specialists. The discussions
sometimes getting confused as the different backgrounds and terminology of the various
participants had to be sorted out. However, it had been sorted.

The Chief and his “Rats” had been running heavier cables in parallel
with the originals from the emitter antennas much of the night, passing them through
tight crawlways and cable runs through bulkheads. The new power line ends and the
extra slack lay hidden behind wall panels in the Drive Room, out of sight of the
Krall.

The new heavier lines were ready to be connected. The physics
people had helped build some temporary circuits to convert the direct current from
the emitters into the alternating current the ship’s power distribution system expected.

The Electrical Engineers had learned about the existing current
regulators and step down transformers in the ship’s power distribution system, and
they could use those to reduce the input from circuits the physics people had rigged,
and thought they could provide a proper regulated current and voltage to repower
the ship. If some of the parts from the seventy-four destroyed bottles could be
salvaged, better DC to AC circuits would soon replace those that the scientists
had jury-rigged.

Running power lines to nearby ships would also be possible, since
there was far more energy available than the Fancy would ever need. For now, they
were only tapping into a single set of emitters for the secondary Trap. After the
Krall pulled out, they could work on power from the second set of emitters.

A Link from Nory Walters told them when the dome power died even
as they were making the first connections on the Fancy, prior to testing the system.

A lot more study would be needed to figure out the alien power
system in the dome. But once they could ramp up the output from the second Trap
field, the technical guys thought it was more a matter of time, than a matter of
“if” they could supply the entire dome, and the electric fences it had once powered.

Jake, running on battery power, reported some irregularities
in the power being fed to him from the new system. It was decided to keep him on
steadier battery power, and use the less stable new power feed to keep those charged.
There would be time to make adjustments later. For now, it was vital to keep the
ship looking dark, so they killed all but a few low power lamps where they needed
to see to walk, and stepped out into the open cargo hold.

It was still early afternoon and the sun was hot on their faces,
its light streaming down between gray and white rain clouds in the intense blue
sky.

Telour was standing alone next to his shuttle, apparently waiting
for his warriors to exit the dome after their latest round of destruction.

Now he felt so adapted to Koban’s heat and gravity that Mirikami
practically trotted down the formerly dangerous slope of the cargo ramp. He walked
over to speak to his Krall enemy. He had Jake put him on full Link to his entire
crew.

He spoke first. “I suppose you and the clans are satisfied with
the death sentence you believe you have given us today.”

Looking down at the shorter human, Telour answered. “I did not
sentence you to death or you would already be dead. We will keep the agreement the
clans made, you are alive and we are leaving.

“I think that you, human clan leader, do not in truth believe
that you and the other captives will die here. You said that
I believe
we
have given humans a death sentence. You did not say that
you believe
it is.
We will let the life here on Koban teach you what you need to learn about death.”

Nodding, assuming Telour had learned that gesture, Mirikami told
him, “You Krall are starting the war you wanted. Are you ready to lead your warriors
to attack an unsuspecting, unarmed planet, whose people have no reason to hate you
or any desire to fight you?”

“I am eager to fight, to kill without the restrictions of the
testing done here. We will use weapons no stronger than what humans use against
us, we may even give you technology to make the fight more interesting, to help
us walk our Great Path faster. When one of your hundreds of worlds makes the mistake
of using forbidden mass killing weapons, it will be destroyed with a warning. They
will learn after one or two end this way. We already have a radio message that tells
them we will do this. Another idea from you, but recorded with my voice.”

“Thank you,” he replied, with no gratitude felt.

“Already we have many eggs hatching, to find the few great warriors
we need. Those with speed and strength more like the animals that live on Koban.
We will feed them foods with the same rare metals found on this world added. We
know what makes the animals able to move faster here, and we will someday breed
that into our cubs. Making humans angry is part of that plan. You will do what every
race we have met has done. Fight us and kill our weakest and slowest fighters, yet
you will lose as we grow even stronger.”

Mirikami felt more belligerent than was safe. “I hope we do learn
how to survive here, Telour. If we can do that, when your children return to reclaim
this world, our children will not give it back!” A head-rearing snort proved how
humorous Telour considered this remark.

I still leave them laughing
, he thought.
This way I
know they don’t take the threat serious. They really should.

The five other Krall made their exit from the dome on the run,
as always. They entered the waiting open hatch without a glance around. Telour did
look once more around the area.

It was not the rapid eye darting, with quick head movement as
if searching for threats. He appeared to be making a mental image of his last handy
work, of dozens of destroyed human ships, against the background of a world that
he did not appreciate for its natural beauty, but rather its natural savagery
and deadliness.

Without another word, or a second glance at the human standing
in front of him, he whirled and entered the shuttle, the hatch quickly falling closed.
Mirikami hurriedly backed up, away from the sudden rush of vertical thrusters, and
watched as the craft rose, then angled up sharply and kicked in the full aft thrusters
and headed for an orbital rendezvous.

Humans were alone on Koban for the first time.

Still watching as the shuttle dwindled to a dot, Mirikami said
aloud “This world is ours now. We are Kobani.”

It had been three months since the Krall had left orbit. The
power was nearly back to normal in the dome, and nine ships were now repowered.
The dome and five ships were fed from power lines passing down and out through the
Flight of Fancy’s former thruster tubes. The other four ships used their own
bottles. More power lines were to be added with time.

After all of the cargo had been assessed, they found nine more
fusion bottles in various containers, two of them large enough to power two more
ships, the other seven being under powered to fully operate an entire ship. However,
they were suitable to run machine shops and pharmacy equipment, which produced items
that were in high demand.

Thad, Deanna, Frank Constansi, Clarice Femfreid, and Juan Wittgenstein
had completed adapting to their first gene mods in the first week after the Krall
pulled out. Noreen had joined them, saying Dillon was wearing her out.

Tet and Dillon had started the second round of mods to enhance
their strength and endurance, and after some rough going for a first week of shots
and nasty supplements, and almost three months of exercise, they were feeling the
strongest and fittest they had in their lives.

Dillon was so adept now at his hand-to-hand training from Thad,
that even with Thad’s new adaptation for heat and higher energy levels; he could
no longer beat Dillon at anything he taught him.