Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (32 page)

“Good, we have the possibility of a sizable crowd and decent weather. If we give the news media a bit of a heads up just before we land, they will send news teams to the Capitol Mall. Medford surely expects us to land at the Denver Space Port. Her representatives in the State Department didn’t say to do so, because it’s an automatic assumption. Traffic control would direct us to some corner where she would screen who sees us disembark. She likely has a motorcade planned to hustle us off to whatever closed venue she has set up, to keep the public away, and only the news coverage she would permit, if any.”

Stewart was sensing a bit of Mirikami trickery. “If you don’t plan to land at the spaceport, you’re landing directly on the Mall, aren’t you? Won’t that piss them off?”

“Medford and the State Department, for sure. The media and public will love the show. They’re our target audience. This is PR, to get us seen and heard.”

You don’t think Medford will have the navy hovering over Denver, and order them to do something rash if you’re seen landing so many miles away, almost on top of the Capitol Building?”

“That’s why we’re going to travel on Pholowela. She produces no gamma rays on White Out, can exit in the upper atmosphere, and her stealth is better than our own. She can set down totally invisible to sensors. We’ll land on the Grand Mall of the Union. I suppose some people near that end of the Mall will notice the air displacement, and hear and see the ground and grass depress. The Krall never used the Dismantler’s stealth because either it wasn’t needed so far from its targets, or perhaps they didn’t even know a non-warship had that ability. Anyway, I think showing her odd but attractive design after we’re down, without any explanation of how she arrived, would be impressive and add to our mystique. More so, when we suddenly wink into view on the grass of the open Mall, right in front of the Capitol Building, with its broad steps and flat upper portico for the dignitaries to be visible from below. At least once the dignitaries scramble to get there.”

“What about foot traffic on the Mall?”

“It’s posted as
keep off the grass
at each end of the Mall, in front of the Capitol Building, and at the Presidential Palace at the opposite end. There’s another forbidden pedestrian strip for grass in front of the Hall of Justice at the center. The people can walk around the two reflecting pools in between, and along the paved pathways. They walk on the wide street and sidewalks that go around the Grand Mall in front of the government buildings and monuments, where only official traffic is permitted. There’s a Smart Plastic, imitation marble slab on the center of the upper portico at the Capitol Building, and that can extrude a dais and a stage with seats, steps, or podiums and public address systems. It only takes a few minutes to configure this. Even if Medford doesn’t want to use this, we’ll be visible standing on the portico, and the public will see us, and the media can poised on the steps below us, Tri-Vid and hover cameras recording live. I want to show off our new flag. A tilted barred spiral galaxy on a teal colored field is attractive.”

“How will everyone hear you?”

“Damn Stewart, you use Comtap to access public address systems all the time. We’ll have portable speakers with us on multiple suits of stealthed armor if the PU doesn’t set any up for us. Pholowela says she has the ability to project our voices from speakers she can extrude from her hull, but that would be behind the crowd.”

“This landing could be construed as an unfriendly act. She may order the navy to blockade your departure.”

“Pholowela can enter a Jump Hole sitting on the Mall. Nevertheless, I have a peaceful demonstration planned, that should impress those on the ground. After that friendly reminder of how we saved their asses, I hope Medford will be less belligerent towards us.”

“OK. Then is this connected to your request to send four thousand of our ships to Alpha Centauri C for an exercise? They could stay here and receive their jump drive modifications.”

“Mister President, I’m your so-called Secretary of the Navy, at least until we talk Golda Mauss into coming out of retirement and taking my job. Am I not allowed to send the fleet on a training exercise? Besides, the Jump drive modules from K1 haven’t even gone into production yet, and hundreds of ships will stay here, ready for the modifications if they’re available before the fleet gets back.”

“Tet, don’t you go and scare the PU navy into shooting at any of our ships.” He said, only half in jest.

“Stewart. This is me! I’m not going there to provoke them, and I’m not going to let any captain shoot back at them even if some hotheaded idiot did fire on us. The ships at Alpha Centauri C are close enough to Earth to coordinate with me for the demonstration I have planned. From barely four light years, they can reach Earth in an hour and a half, and can ghost in the formation we practiced last week. I have Comtap to tell them exactly when to White Out, and then Jump for home. The navy might feel embarrassed, but I’ll announce what we’re offering the PU in advance, and then demonstrate. I think many Hub worlds, and certainly the Rim worlds that have not felt protected, will understand what we offer. It’s the future Kobani role we discussed.”

With a sigh of concession, Stewart gave his final approval. “OK. Send off the main fleet. How much lead time are you providing before your own departure?”

“We’ll leave the same day they are supposed to reach Alpha C, which will be about twelve days in T-squared travel. There’s no reason to let them sit and wait there very long. I didn’t want to send them to Sol’s Oort cloud region to wait in ghost status, and they certainly can’t exit there because after the Krall threatened to destroy Earth, the navy placed thousands of Jump capable drones throughout that volume, and hundreds more sprinkled inside the Kuiper Belt. The drones would detect remote White Outs and instantly Jump to Earth to alert them. Thousands of unannounced arrivals out there might trigger automatic attacks near Earth before I could explain the demonstration.”

“Well, that leaves you a week and a half to consider what Maggi and our allies will say, and to prepare our shy friends for facing the intense media attention. I presume you will prepare Kit and Kobalt for polite behavior in the presence of frightened Normals.”

Mirikami grinned. “At least Kit won’t be a problem for us, because she has her elder cat regal poise, and behaves like the ripper queen of the pride that she has become. She won’t yawn or present that famous ripper grin exposing her teeth, she’ll keep her claws retracted, and will try to avoid that deep chest rumble if happy or relaxed. Not that a large teal colored tiger, four and a half feet high at the shoulder, weighing almost seven hundred pounds on Earth, doesn’t look scary. Her white whiskers show her age, but no one there would know that by looking at her Koban developed muscles.”

“I take it that Kobalt is your worry, then.”

“Oh hell yes! His accepting rejuvenation while healing from that chest wound in the med lab has his youthful juices flowing again. He’s back to a biological age of four years old, but still has his mature nine hundred forty pound body mass, and all his muscles are restored to peak strength. The age slump is gone from his posture and he stands almost five feet at the front shoulder, he holds that twenty-inch head higher than ever to display his restored whiskers.

“You may not know this, but every male ripper is exceptionally proud of their whiskers when young and of breeding age. It attracts females to an obviously virile male. Kobalt has a fine black spray of them again, and he can see them better now that they stand out stiff again. Maggi says he can’t stop grinning like the Cheshire cat, showing his teeth.”

“Like the what?”

“She says it’s a fictional cat from a fantasy novel called
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
, from Earth’s pre-space history. That cat would fade out of sight, and the last thing seen was its grin. Noreen and Dillon say it’s hard to sleep in the same apartment with him, because his chest rumble of contentment is so damned loud.” 

“Why not leave him home.”

“It would offend him, and we are sort of doing the Noah’s Arc thing, by taking a male and female of each of the new alien species we’re introducing to people in Human Space. The pictures of the pairs will be flashed on Tri-Vids on every planet, which will make them more familiar to people everywhere. We want our citizens to be recognized, and not feared.”

Stewart laughed. “Good luck with obviously predatory rippers, and with the Torki for that matter. People are outright scared of uncaged tigers, and leery of a giant crab’s large claws and weird eye stalks, and their chittering and clicking speech is incomprehensible. Prada are fuzzy and lovable looking, with quaint head and hand gestures, and pleasant sounding voices. The Raspani are amusing in shape and sound funny in their native language, or when speaking Standard with a lisp on the s sounds. Their predilection for involuntary farting will tickle the hell out of kids and teens, and it isn’t as offensive smelling as the loud sounds imply.” He paused.

“You said each of the new species. Do you think Krall’tapi should be introduced so soon? Most humans, at least the live ones, have never been in the presence of a Krall, and the scale factor and skin color is the main difference for the uninitiated.”

“I’m inviting Toldot Fetra to go with us, and I asked Deldra Holtor if he would go as the representative male. They have agreed to travel with us, but want to wait to observe our reception first. Later, they might decide to make a personal appearance if our reception goes well. Meeting the PU bigwigs doesn’t commit the Krall’tapi to joining the Galactic Federation.

“If they elect to stay on the ship, we’ll have Tri-Vid recordings of them mingling with us to show their civilized non-Krall behavior. They clearly look gray and different from Telour, who is red toned with maturity, and he has a thicker muscular body and is taller than they are, although he’ll be seated in that motorized chair. His yellow teeth are serrated and shark-like, while theirs are short, white, and needle shaped. They have short fixed claws rather than extendable talons. The main similarity, which is unfortunate, is the black eyes with red pupils, which look so evil to us. I think they may wait to see how the Normal’s react to Telour when we publicly present him. Pholowela will route the visuals of everything that happens to them and the Kobani staying aboard.”

“Well practice makes perfect, so I’ll leave you and Maggi to practice your lines and introductions. I have some high level slob work to do.”

“Excuse me?”

“Ask Maggi. It’s her description of what I do now.”

Chapter 7: Diplomatically Speaking

Mirikami shook his head, a lopsided grimace displaying his reaction. He told the others on Pholowela’s command deck of the Comtap report he’d received. “The fleet arrived at Alpha Centauri C, and guess what the hell they encountered? There were three mining survey ships there, and their prospector drones were looking at the extensive asteroid belt from failed planet formation. They took one look at the White Out signatures of four thousand clanship masses, and the three mother ships abandoned their drones and Jumped. I hope they weren’t headed for Earth, but we don’t know.”

Dillon asked, “Are you canceling the demonstration?”

“Our ship exits over Denver in ten minutes. It’s about a 90-minute Jump from Alpha Cent C, so if the fleet Jumps to Earth earlier than I’d planned, just as soon as we arrive over Denver, the mining company couldn’t get through the red tape to reach the right people at Navy Command before we pull off our stunt. Except I’d wanted the demo to happen later, in a darker sky. That’s why we set the diplomatic conference for nine o’clock Denver time. Our press conference was to be just before then when the sky was dark, and the ships could light up their reaction thrusters.”

“Hey,” Noreen had an idea. “Move the demo ahead, when the sun is still visible at orbital altitudes over Denver. Instead of blazing reaction thrusters, why not use the stealth coatings of the hulls.”

“I don’t want them to be invisible…, Oh. I see what you mean. Make them reflective to sunlight instead of stealthy. Glitzy, as the kids would say! That may look brighter than what I was trying to do. That means they can use Normal Space drives for a more coordinated formation movement than with reaction thrusters. Noreen, why don’t you discuss it with them for me, this isn’t much of a change from what I had them practice.”

“Right Sir.” She flashed a conspiratorial smile and a wink at Dillon.

Nine minutes later, a stealthed Pholowela exited Tachyon Space a hundred miles above the PU capitol, without a hint of gamma rays, and barely a whisper of displaced tenuous wisps of atmosphere. With stealth system effective over the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including the longwave radio bands that were the detection weakness of the Kobani ships, the outside universe was as equally blank to those inside the Dismantler.
Perfect
invisibility implied
total
blindness of the outside Universe as well.

Then, one hair-like sensor tendril extruded from the hull material on the bottom side, towards the planet below. That was the first source of outside Universe information fed to those inside. It was soon followed by other tendrils, briefly, that examined the regions to the sides and above the ship. Finding nothing of concern, only the three-inch thread on the bottom remained exposed, as the large stealth bubble that was Pholowela made its descent. It moved smoothly through the thickening atmosphere, the rounded contours producing very little turbulence, and it shifted laterally at times to avoid passing through occasional thin and scattered cloud layers, which might have revealed its presence.

Dillon was impatient. “Tet, do we really need to be this cautious? They aren’t looking for us anyway, not without a revealing gamma ray burst.”

“Oh, not at all. I’m studying how sneaky a ship like this could be. I was recalling our first slow penetration at Poldark. There they used turbulence detection for fast movers like the Krall clanships always were, and they watched for holes in clouds, or ripples in the sky from slowed stealthy ships. We have almost an hour and a half before the fleet arrives, and sitting on the grass for forty-five minutes before we want to be noticed might spoil the surprise. We’re going to flatten out a six hundred foot long oval of grass when we set down. As soon as we see the news media congregating in front of the Capitol, we’ll reveal ourselves.