Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (25 page)

The system the Olt’kitapi had selected for construction of their Dyson Swarm habitats coincidentally contained a planetoon and moony pair.

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This doesn’t look right
, Telour thought when his clanship performed its White Out near an airless moony at the prescribed standoff distance in the stellar system where the Olt’kitapi ships had originally been found parked. He made the week long Jump from the soft Krall prison world with a single clanship, per the millennia old protocol for such visits. But where were the Guardians that should have been here to challenge him within seconds?

There were no transmissions made to them, or even a sign of Guardian ships, which were always stationed on, or near this moony. Some of the Guardian clanships normally orbited the large rocky and habitable planetoon, which also held the moony in its gravitational grip. The planetoon was itself the largest satellite of many dozens of moons that swung around a super Jovian gas giant, but it wasn’t an airless world, and was of course not lifeless.

He didn’t know the exact number of ships or Guardians normally posted here, but on his previous visit, Telour’s craft had been met in space by sixteen clanships, and there were four hands of clanships parked next to the dome on the airless moony. Even more clanships were parked near the dome on the larger planetoon.

His clanship had been instructed to land on this moony previously, after an inspection out here in space under the distrustful guns of the Guardians. Once on the moony he and the few warriors he was allowed to select to accompany him (Parkoda had been forced to come along for further humiliation), were shuttled down to the parent planetoon, to land inside an extinct volcanic crater, close to the row of parked Olt’kitapi ships. Guardians were already inside the ship he was to inspect, armed against any possible attempt to take one of the powerful ships without authorization.

There were no clanships near the dome on the moony this time, and there was no reply to his repeated attempts at radio contact. It was impossible to follow the protocol if the Guardians didn’t participate. Before leaving the vicinity of the moony, he had his navigator and weapons master perform active scans of the near vicinity around the rocky planetoon, and then farther out, millions of miles along the orbit around the gas behemoth that dominated the sky.

There were two other large moons detected but no clanships sighted. After many impatient minutes, there was no reply from the large dome on the planetoon. They were barely seventy thousand miles away, but the small moony was presently on the wrong side of the parent world to see that dome.

He ordered his navigator to accelerate and leave the airless moony behind, moving ahead in its same orbit, maintaining their present distance from the world below. Soon, they were positioned between the planetoon and the more distant monster gas world. The scar of the large volcanic crater was visible below them. There were sixty-four clanships parked on the tarmac around the dome, something they were able to see as soon as they came around the limb of the world.

There still were no replies to their communication attempts. Telour made a broadcast in which he identified himself as the Tor Gatrol, and stated his intentions to land at the dome.

His weapons master spoke his concerns. “My Tor, this is strange. Should I activate our tracking radar for defensive missile launches?”

“No. The Guardians might take that as a sign of a rogue clan that is attempting to take unauthorized possession of the death ships. We could never successfully defend against all of their combined weapons. Nevertheless, heat our plasma chambers, and leave the automatic laser defenses active. Do not open any weapons ports, which would look threatening.”

The navigator had a suggestion. “My Tor, I can hold an energetic tachyon, in case you order a Jump away from here. We can descend on Normal Space drive, without a thruster plume forming a blind spot for our sensors below us.”

“I approve of the precautions, but when we reach atmosphere we can’t form a Jump Hole that deep in the gravity well. I don’t know of a reason for the Guardians to attack us, or to ignore us as they have. Their sole duty is to preserve these weapons for use by the appointed war leaders of the Krall. I was that war leader when the previous ship was used. It may be that they did not anticipate another use of these ships for several thousand years. It has never happened before so soon. If they have become lax in their duty, they will be replaced.”

He realized how hollow that threat was.
If I use the remaining ships, the Guardian’s purpose no longer exists. They may resist being disbanded, as if they were an established clan.

To his weapons master and navigator, he instructed, “Watch for any activity that appears hostile, such as a clanship opening their firing ports, or if you detect heat buildup on the hulls over the plasma chambers of the parked clanships. Be ready to return fire as we move away at maximum acceleration.”

They were prepared for an attack, but nothing marred their landing where Telour ordered, at an isolated spot well apart from the other ships on the tarmac. There were still no signs of activity.

The sixty-four escort warriors he had expected to leave behind on the moony now formed a large honor guard for him. The six soft Krall he brought were locked up and kept apart, wearing shackles, with four warriors guarding each of them, per protocol if they had landed on the moony. His aides and other clan leaders remained as well.

The honor guard, carrying arms, which definitely wasn’t according to standard protocol, lined up on each side of the deployed ramp, and fell in behind Telour as he passed them, to form a double rank following in trail. The Guardians had broken with protocol, and he wasn’t walking into the dome unarmed. He carried pistols on each hip, since toting a plasma rifle took away the smooth, arms free fast stride of confidence and authority he was projecting.

Proceeding at a fast pace, but slower than the typical run, Telour thought it leant him dignity, by his making an obviously unconcerned approach to the dome. To some, this might indicate the opposite, by uncharacteristically displaying a false lack of concern in circumstances that surely seemed to warrant a level of uncertainty.

When they arrived at the dome, the personnel entry doors on this side were closed, but not secured. A twist of the door handles and the lead warriors opened several easily. An octet rushed through each open door, weapons off standby, but held in a cross-chest carry that showed them to be prepared, but not seeking targets. Telour entered the center of the three doors with the remainder of his honor guard. There was no one to be seen, and except for the faint sounds of air processing and the vague sounds that a powered dome always made, there was no sign of the Guardians.

Telour sent two octets of warriors to spread out and check out the central hall, the exercise level, and the watch standers consoles under the armored glass roof of the top level. The com set reports arrived in minutes. There were was no one in the dome, and nothing looked out of place.

“Pilot,” He called back to the ship. “Prepare my shuttle. We will visit the death ships.” They had been visible along the worn crater rim as they landed, almost three miles from the dome. He wasn’t taking any of the soft ones along with him just yet. He intended to see if he could gain entry on his own, as he had done when accompanied by Guardians over a year ago when he visited. He knew the Guardians had no special access rights to the ships over any other Krall.

Not even a Guardian could order one of the ships AI’s to do anything. Doors and air locks opened automatically when any Krall approached one of the active ships. Only a soft one could order doors to lock, could regulate the temperature of a compartment, ask the ship to reconfigure a compartment’s walls and doorways, or to instruct the ship to prepare for departure.

He elected to take only one shuttle, with room for an octet to fly with him and the pilot. The other shuttle would bring the soft Krall and guards if he sent for them. He had brought two operators per death ship, in the event one had to be killed as an object lesson for the other. He would solve the puzzle of the absent guardians later. His first priority was to see if he could enter each of the three ships, and then he’d have the prisoners brought to him, along with the aides he would use to crew the death ships, and at least two octets of warriors per ship. This time he intended to travel on one of the ships himself. The rest of his honor guard he sent towards the row of parked ships since it was only a three-mile run. He estimated he would pass them in the shuttle just before they arrived.

He directed the pilot to land closest to the left most of the three operational ships at the right end of the line of ships. The empty space to the left of the one he chose marked the place where the lost Huwayla had been parked for millennia.

There was a depression several feet deep, left behind in the accumulated red dust and dirt covering the underlying layer of ancient dark gray basalt. It was ringed with a kind of red-brown grass that covered most of the crater floor, and had not yet grown down the recently exposed low slope. Telour had never known that the ship from that slot had a name, and as customary for a Krall, he didn’t care what a machine might think it had been named by its dead makers.

Every Krall had been selectively bred to be ambidextrous, but retained a slight preference for their left hands, and they had used the ships in a systematic fashion, selecting them from the left end of the line, moving to the right. There were other gaps in the line, but there were still eleven ships present, of which eight were considered aware and alive. Only the last three would interact with a visitor by opening automatically as they approached, and would respond to a soft Krall’s instructions, as verified by periodic testing after each hundred orbits had passed.

Telour’s escort octet filed out first, and stood four to each side as he made his exit, followed by the pilot. He strode purposefully towards the left one of the two main entrances, one placed at the center of each side, anticipating a tongue like ramp to extrude as he neared. The outer airlock door should iris open for him as he stepped onto the ramp. He abruptly stopped as he reached the point where he remembered where the ramp of the other ship he’d entered had extended.

There was none of the odd movement of the hull material, which he recalled from before as the ramp prepared to extrude. He moved closer, but to the side of where the ramp should extend. There was no reaction.

“Ship. Open for me, I wish to enter.”

No reaction. He ordered one of his escorts to walk directly towards the center of the oval of the large airlock hatch. If the ramp suddenly extended and he was unable to avoid injury, there were other warriors present. No ramp appeared and the hatch didn’t open.

“Try the smaller airlocks at ground level.” The warriors ran the length of the ship to where smaller oval shapes identified other personnel airlocks of two different size scales. None of them reacted, even to efforts to push at them.

“To the other side.” He led his troops to what he thought of as the right side, although he’d been told there was really no front or stern for these ships, so left and right was a matter of personal orientation. The main hatch on that side, and the multiple smaller hatches, stubbornly stayed completely inert.

As he started running towards the next ship in line, the first of his honor guards were arriving from their speedy run across the grassy floor of the old crater. Without question, like ants, they followed their Tor as he ran towards the side of the next ship. It didn’t react.

He called a conference with his octet leaders and his pilot. “This may be why the Guardians are not here, if the ships are no longer responsive. What knowledge do any of you have of the code of behavior for a Guardian? I would expect them to remain until relieved, but they have their own guide for their duties here, outside of their own clans.”

One of his aides spoke up. “My Tor, a clan mate of my own training cycle earned high status in the invasion of the place humans called Bollovstic, and was selected for the honor of being a Tanga clan representative to the Guardians. They would not shirk their duty to guard our greatest weapons. He returned after half a breeding cycle to breed, and returned to combat on Poldark as a sub leader. He is on New Dublin now. He was not allowed to speak of his duties here, but was even more faithful and energetic in following orders after he returned. I don’t think the Guardians would leave this technology unprotected, even if it did not work properly.”

There was an agreement on this matter, that the lack of response from the ships was not why the Guardians were absent. Telour gave voice to the only reason the Guardians would accept for leaving. “If the Joint Council sent them orders they would leave, but only after the commander verified the council’s order in person. As Tor Gatrol, I could not order them to go, and we know the Joint Council issued no such order. We have still not solved that mystery, and I must leave it for later. Now one octet,” he pointed to an octet leader, “will complete the check of the hatches on other side of this second ship, and I will go to the last ship in the line.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d do if that one wouldn’t open either, but he definitely wasn’t leaving without getting inside at least one of them, by whatever means necessary.

In the absence of Prada slaves there was no ground maintenance performed here, but the low growing brown and red grass analogue covered most of the miles of wide open plains in the vast old crater, with only low orange tinged shrubs visible, many growing along the edge of a shallow streambed. The currently dry and meandering cut exposed the red soil down to the underlying gray basalt, and it passed between the final two ships, but closer to the last one. Telour leaped over the narrow dry stream followed by all but the octet he’d left checking the previous ship. There was a narrow twenty-foot gap between the stream and short shrubs, and Telour was racing along a slightly worn path to reach mid ship, to test the main hatch.