Koban: Rise of the Kobani (8 page)

Reynolds said, “If they have Dragons, Tet, your TGs can’t pop them open, or even get close. We might have to abandon the Mark and get everyone down here.”

“If they are bent on attacking us, I’d agree, but I don’t see why they would have a plan to do that if they believe us only to be from a different clan. We’ll head back as soon as we see the tunnel.”

“We’re almost there. There’s another underground parking area on this side of the base. We passed under the back wall of the box canyon, and on the other side of these doors ahead is another larger garage. The bigger vehicle supply tunnels run from there. Why don’t we see if you can open the door this time?”

Mirikami thumbed the pad, while peering into the retinal scanner. It took slightly longer than the process had for Reynolds earlier, but the door slid open, and the same style pale white light panels activated. On the other side was a parking area, four times the size of the first one, with seven tunnels leading out along three walls.

Reynolds described the ones they were interested in using. “The three tunnels on the opposite wall all go towards Novi Sad. I can’t say which is best for our purposes, because I don’t know the Krall dispositions at the ends of any of them. The right side tunnel goes a mile or two closer to the river, where there used to be warehouses of supplies to route to the troops fighting in the mountains.”

“Thanks, I can’t say yet which one will be best for us. We’ll see what images we had from orbit, before we made our penetration this morning. I want to head back to the Mark now.” He turned to go back through the opened door when one of the TGs shouted.

“There’s an insect running across the ceiling, Sir.”

They all looked where he was pointing. It had been invisible until the ceiling panel lights came on and it moved.

It looked more like a small lizard than an insect to Mirikami, when he sighted it, just before it pulled itself up through a hole at the corners of four light panels.

“Sarge, could that have been an actual live critter?” he asked the native-born Poldarkian.

“I’ve seen live geckos of similar size and color, which have sticky foot pads to walk on walls and ceilings. They were apparently stowaways on some shipments from Earth, since no one admitted to violating the importation of animal rules. They spread all over the place after they first appeared, a couple of hundred years ago I think. That one could have been natural, or a spy bot.”

Tet shook his head, and chuckled. “I might have felt stupid, but I wish I could have gone to it and asked it ‘to take me to your leader,” or something.”

He turned again to leave, remarking, “It was probably a real lizard.”

****

The corporal said, “Colonel, I should have a group photo and head count for you in a moment. The gecko-bot was waiting for them on the ceiling when the door opened and the lights came on. I had it programed to return to the upload socket as soon as it had an image. It’ll also send any audio it picked up. The sound may need some clean up, due to the echoes, but Max will have that ready with the images in a few seconds, Sir.”

Trakenburg acknowledged his young bot handler’s efficiency. “Good work, son. Route that to me in my office, my eyes only, as soon as the AI has it processed.”

He whirled around and stalked into his secure office, closed the door and activated the privacy system, and tapped the large wall screen alive. “Max, do you have an ID on any of the people that entered SOB-23?”

“Yes Sir, one of them appears to be a Sergeant Garland Reynolds, of the PU Army, native to Poldark. I have no match for the thumbprint, retinal scan, or facial image of the man that opened the door to the second parking garage. I am running facial matches for all of the people that I have good features for comparison. Most of them turned to look directly at the gecko-bot when one of them saw it moving. The only match is again apparently for that Sergeant Garland Reynolds.”

“Max, you said
apparent
twice for him. Why would you be so unsure? He is or he isn’t that man. Thumb print, retina, and face match. How about physical size and body shape?”

“Sir, all of those match except for two significant discrepancies. Sergeant Reynolds was reported dead over six months ago, and his lower left arm was found still within a piece of his armor in his destroyed halftrack. This man is obviously alive and has a left arm.”

“Humph. You have no imagination, Max.” A very literal statement when made to an AI. “Arms can be regrown, and deaths misreported or faked. I think you should consider that the man we see in this recording,” he looked at the recorded images moving on his high definition wall screen, “to actually be Sergeant Reynolds, alive and well. Now we need to figure out who his companions are, and what they are up to in that old base.”

He noticed there were four older men in the group, and they seemed to be leading the clearly younger people behind them. Those young people looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Although, age was always difficult to discern between middle twenties to early fifties, at least on anyone in this era’s gene pool. The youthfulness of those young men and women was obvious. Aside from that mystery, where did they come from? How did they know about that base? What were they doing checking out the tunnels that led towards Novi Sad?

“Max, what do you have in archives for Sergeant Reynolds? Before his purported death.”

“Sir, he operated in a guerilla warfare unit, and was briefly allowed use of SOB-23, as you were moving your operatives out, just ahead of the Krall advance. His last reported contact was less than thirty minutes after leading an ambush of sixteen Dragons, which he and his men drew into that same canyon. A later analysis of the unusually sharp Krall response, which followed that attack, determined that it coincided with the apparent loss of the Krall invasion commander in some sort of combat action.

“It would be speculation, Sir, but perhaps Sergeant Reynolds’s unit was responsible for that Krall commander’s death, and the sergeant’s own injury and disappearance shortly after may be related. He was severely wounded if he lost his arm, and the suit helmet was recovered with a record that he survived removal from the armor by Krall Blue Suits. The suit’s nanite infusion was incomplete, and he could have easily bled to death. There is no further record of him after that. It seems redundant to repeat that the Krall don’t normally keep prisoners alive or offer medical treatment, and prisoners almost never escape.”

“We see he’s healthy and free now, and has friends that we can’t find any record of. I assume you have found none yet, Max?”

“No Sir. I have searched all of the Poldark civil and military records back two decades, and I have started checking port of entry logs of off-world visitors as well. Because Sergeant Reynolds was reported dead, should I also check death records for any potential matches with the others, Sir? Without DNA to compare, the search will be less certain, and requires much longer.”

“Max, are you saying you have better things to do?” Trakenburg smiled.

“Sir, I am able to conduct this search with no significant reduction of my full operational capability. I thought it useful to inform you of the possibility that the search could take longer than you were prepared to wait."

He decided to “mess” with the AI’s stiff programmed personality, to observe its reaction. “I thought perhaps you had a date with Nabarone’s Carla tonight.”

“Are you referring to the general’s AI, which he calls Carla, Sir?”

“Why yes. It has a charming female voice and personality. I thought perhaps you two had made a connection. A date as it were.”

“I communicate and coordinate with his AI frequently in the open, and by use of the unofficial backdoor Link your superiors have arranged for me, to keep you informed of his actions regarding combat activities that could impact your own secret missions. Is that what you mean by the term ‘a date,’ Sir?”

He was amused, but not enough to continue the pointless joke on an AI. “Never mind, Max.” However, the momentary diversion did bring an idea to him. “Max, the sergeant was under Nabarone’s overall authority, and the man used SOB-23 for a time. Check Carla’s records for recent references to that base.”

He didn’t expect such a quick reply. The database was immense. “General Nabarone made a computer inquiry this morning about two Krall clanships that landed close to SOB-23. One ship is estimated to have landed in the canyon where it is located.”

“What! Why wasn’t I told?” He didn’t like surprises like this.

“Sir, you transferred use of the base to the Planetary Union Army after our withdrawal. It isn’t listed as one of our assets, so it did not trigger an alert to inform you of the landings.”

“OK. But, what was Nabarone’s reaction? What information was he asking the computer to give him?”

“Sir, my parameters for the backdoor access to General Nabarone’s AI does not authorize me to provide you with that information. It does not have any bearing on Special Operations missions currently underway or planned for the future. There is a privacy issue involved, and General Nabarone outranks you, Sir.”

“But you told me about the two clanship landings that you learned of from his data base.”

“Sir, I learned of them through our own data base, I can only confirm that the same information is in the data base of the general’s AI, and that he inquired about the landings.”

God damned AI’s!
He thought. Dumping tons of trivia on your head when you didn’t need it, and then using some preprogrammed limitation to deny you information that might actually be vital. He had an idea how to make Max understand that spec ops
did
have a mission that could be impacted. He’d invent one right now!

“Max, I want to send some teams into those tunnels and out to the foothills, to see if they can destroy those two ships. Because the base was turned over to the PU Army, I need to know what plans they have for that base before I request to use the tunnels. The general’s inquiry about the base and ship landings affects my decision. I need to know.”

To a human this was flagrant manipulation, but to the AI it was quite reasonable. An expression had grown as AI’s had simplified, yet simultaneously complicated people’s lives.
There’s more than one way to skin a chip.

“The general asked the AI if Krall tanks and other equipment could travel through the tunnels that lead towards Novi Sad.”

The light went on instantly. Trakenburg knew the answer, and why the general was concerned about the two ship landings. Could the Krall use the tunnels to sneak close to the city? He’d just seen humans inside the base, checking out the tunnels. One was a man the Krall had captured, and since he had his arm restored, he’d had medical treatment. These could be collaborators, at some previously unheard of level. There were twenty humans just in that scene he had frozen on his wall. How many more?

He knew the
Krall
couldn’t use the tunnels without causing their destruction. However, their equipment would pass just fine, particularly if driven by humans! How in hell could he broach the subject with Nabarone, right out of the blue, without making him suspicious of how he just happened to bring the subject up at this key moment?

“Sir, you have a priority call from Major Caldwell, General Nabarone’s aide de camp.”

He was so surprised he actually jerked in reaction. Did the frigging Pentagon give Nabarone a backdoor into Max? What kind of infinite loop could they create with that sort of nonsense? “Just a moment Max.”

He walked around his desk and sat in his utilitarian chair, composing his thoughts. This had to be a coincidence, because Nabarone was no clumsier than he was at this game. He wouldn’t have revealed his cards so easily.

“Put him through on the large screen, Max.”

The stocky major appeared, sitting at his own desk. “Good morning, Colonel. I hate to bother you, but we have an urgent situation General Nabarone needs to run by you.”

Confident he knew the subject matter, Trakenburg maintained a poker face. “Good morning to you as well, Major Caldwell. What can I help with today?”

He got right to the meat. “We had two clanship penetrations today that at first glance seemed independent of one another, but have landed near a former base of yours, SOB-23. You released the base to us to use, before we were pushed out of the Sredna Gora foothills a couple of months ago. One of those ships landed virtually on the base’s doorstep, and the other one within five miles of the first. When we checked the area out, and realized the tunnels leading from the base towards Novi Sad were so large, we wanted to be sure you have them mined to blow if the Krall enter. Do you have the means to detonate them on command, if the Krall found a way to bypass the detectors?”

Good, they were going to be able to cooperate here, without him giving anything away. “Major, that would be the standard method my demolition engineers would set up, but I’d have to check with the team that did that, to make certain.  Two landings by an empty base do seem too coincidental, considering how wide an area the foothills cover. If they have a means to defeat the sensors, they might also have a way to disable the explosive charges, or jam a radio detonation signal. We should also have hard lines to trigger them, but I think we had better take no chances. We left the usual spy bots behind, and there will be some in the main base. A Krall intrusion should generate an alert, but just in case, I’ll have my AI run a check of recent reports from the bots, if you’ll standby.”