Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (3 page)

****

Sarge wouldn’t let go of his gripe. “I still think we should go to Wendal, to rub Emperor Farlol’s trunks in his own crap when we scare the hell out of him, or perhaps kill his royal imperial ass.”

Thad sighed, again. “You just won’t let it go will you? Both Tet and President MacDougal told us no. Twice for you. Even if you don’t think good old Stewart knows a rifle from his penis, you damn well know Tet understands the military aspects of our raid. He appears to have a grasp of Thandol psychology, and thinks a direct attack against the Emperor, on his capital planet, would trigger a massive and recklessly rash response by them. That would be a major attack, and one we can’t stop. Right now, they don't know how thinly we’re spread. Tet wants to make them cautious, not ragingly reckless.”

Sarge voiced one final bitch, in a tone indicating his acceptance of inevitable defeat of his personal preferences. “Attacking a damned repair base, or any base deep in Empire space, will also piss them off. If they’re gonna hit us back, and nobody doubts that, scaring the boss elephant might make him hesitate.”

“It wouldn’t damage their
ability
to strike back, even if Farlol the umpty umpth were killed. The Ragnar would simply be given more material support, and turned lose, with instructions to show no mercy, to accept no surrender of human colonies. They didn’t appear ready to kill everyone on Zanzibar 2, at least not until we started kicking their asses in space. According to the two low ranking apes we captured, they were stationed on a Smasher that carried a close cousin of the Emperor, who was only there to observe the action. The near disaster for that observer’s ship must have embarrassed the Ragnar commander of that fleet.

“He’d been placed in charge of conquering the Federation for the Empire, and losing that imperial observer could have been disastrous for him. The two ape grunts think that if the cousin of the emperor had died, this Force Commander Gimtal Thond would have been executed, and the Ragnar replaced for the task of trying to take us over.”

“Humph. Then I don’t suppose he’s very favorably disposed to us then, is he? This ship repair planet, Meglor. Isn’t that where the two captives expected Thond to send the damaged ships of his fleet?”

Thad detected the first signs of interest from Reynolds, now that he couldn’t talk anyone into his own plan of action. He knew his friend well, and the best way to spark his interest in their mission, was to ridicule his knowledge of the subject. “I thought you had your complaining mouth open too wide to hear the briefing. What the hell do you know about Meglor, except its name?”

“Aside from a Crusher being parked in orbit there, and Thond’s Zanzibar fleet in for repairs, it’s where Stranglers are made out of damaged Smashers, or from that ship class, when they’re slated for refurbishing. They cut off one pointy corner, install a Debilitater at the bottom, and add better ground attack defenses.”

Thad was pleased he’d provoked his interest, but was surprised as well. “That last information wasn’t in the briefing I heard Tet give. How do you know about the Stranglers?”

“Because,
Colonel
, a mere sergeant like me knows to read the mission particulars that are sent to his Comtap, and not just listen to the big wigs chatter. You only picked up the overall strategy with your big floppy looking ears. I read all the dirty details, which often tell you how to survive when the strategy fails, and the
fit
hits the
shan
.”

“O-Kay, detail man. What mission use do you find in the knowledge that Stranglers are made at Meglor? How does that help us determine how effective Decoherence bomb delivery is with dense gasses inside our three test ships?”

“It doesn’t help a damn bit.” He held up a hand to hold off a reply.

Then he picked a quote out of his wolfbat memory matrix.

“But, Tet also said this about the test clanships we’re taking along,
‘those clanships don’t have to return home. They can do something else destructive.’
It’s the something else destructive I’m thinking about. It can be done at Meglor just as well as at Wendal, and it would clearly benefit us if we can destroy as many Stranglers we can find there.

“By the way, I’d consider Tet’s suggestion to take three damaged clanships with us merely a guideline. There is probably a dozen of them on K1 waiting for hull repairs, which already have the T-cubed software mods and can travel fast enough to go with us. However, I don't know how many basic AI’s we can beg borrow or steal to operate them. There’s no shortage of Prada communicators to give them our instructions, in or out of Tachyon Space, and to hear their reports.”

Thad was taken aback. “Damn, man. Did you just come up with all of this?”

“No, of course not, you dullard. I was hoping for a bigger mission to Wendal if I could convince Tet and Stewart to let us go there. I never got a chance to make my case. The only thing that changes for me now is the destination. And however many of the ships we can take from K1. Not all of them can be made airtight, none of them will have advanced stealth, and some probably don’t have full weapons or missile capability. However, we only need three made airtight to test the atmosphere’s effect on Decoherence bombs. Any others we take with us are bonus damage delivery systems.”

Thad imitated Mirikami’s lip tug. “Hmm. I was going to fly the Ripper on this mission. Now I think we’ll take your ship, the Sneaky Bastard, so I can be free to operate my own drone. I like your idea, so you get to drive the command ship. Sneaky is our motto, Bastard is our embodiment, and we won’t ask them to expand the mission. That way nobody will tell us no. We’ll ask for forgiveness, not permission. Let’s work on those dirty little details.”

****

The scientists were meeting in the Marine Lab that Vince and Sarah had established in the coastally located Hub City dome. It had taken a couple of days to arrange for all of the desired participants to assemble. Those days gave the two researchers time to gather and organize their findings on kuttlefish.

Coldar was there because the Torki had assisted the two marine researchers in their underwater observations, providing them with powered subsurface craft that could follow the subjects of interest. Because the Torki had a small coastal colony next to Hub City, those citizens gave them the results of their own direct observations and recordings of animals the two researchers studied. Max Born had arrived with a technician, along with Rafe and Aldry, and Blue came largely out of curiosity.

The Torki, when suspended in water, didn’t find the Koban gravity very objectionable, although they limited their time ashore, and they were not fond of the spring and summer warmth. Coldar was acutely uncomfortable on land today, not having left Haven very often to visit Koban. Accordingly, he was partly submerged in a large and cool marine sample tank for his comfort.

Blue was likewise ill suited for Koban’s gravity, although he had the advantage of occupying the body of a former mindless Raspani, one who had lived on Koban as a Krall meat animal. He retained a sturdier musculature than did an average member of his species.

Torki and Raspani scientists had never studied genetics with the aim of discovering how to change their DNA to add desirable new traits. This was a dangerous seeming sort of science, particularly when applied to your own species. Apparently, only humans had gone far beyond simply understanding genetic problems, first learning to cure those problems via DNA repair, and eventually incorporating corrective genes in their own bodies.

Then they took the next step, modify their own genes for enhancing existing features. On Koban, they took the tremendous risks of adding genes never found in a human’s genome, to add features no human had ever possessed. This was considered an unacceptably risky proposition by any other intelligent species, and rarely attempted. The Prada’s minor exception had added ageless longevity for them, by continually repairing accumulated DNA damage, but they had stopped there. The Kobani had copied that feature too, using the Prada gene mod as their pattern.

Humans always accepted high physical risks in their lives, and with genetics, they were no different. The near extermination of their species in the Gene War was a negative example of the risks involved. Despite this example, the Kobani, with multiple drastic gene changes, had produced a positive result, saving their species from extermination by the Krall.

Aware that Vince and Sarah had wanted technical expertise to help explain how the nanotube film conveyed the protections it did for the kuttlefish, Max Born asked them for the electron and neutrino scans he’d requested, of the microscopic structure of the film.

Projected on a wall-sized screen, he and his technician took notes of the scale factor bars on the image, indicating the size and lengths of the nanotubes, the apparent large gaps in the film at that huge magnification, and used those numbers as inputs into some computational software they had on their handheld, AI assisted, computers.

“Vince, what are the frequencies of the electrical pulses from the biological sensors of the predators, used to find their prey? You said you could get recordings of that with the equipment we loaned you.”

That resulted in another wall projection, and the technician said, “I see it arrives as relatively low frequency pulses, but within each burst of electrical energy, there are considerably higher frequency waves. The main pulses have wavelengths, if you called them that, which are far too long for sensing the tiny gaps in the film as anything but a continuous surface, keeping the cuttlefish’s nervous system virtually undetectable, but which might reveal an animal that did not have that layer of tissue.

“However, the real stealth comes from the spacing of the smaller gaps, which are in general, less than a half wavelength of the higher frequency of the embedded signals contained within each main electrical pulse. There is where we think evolution could have driven the kuttlefish to grow a nanotube film that is also impenetrable to the higher frequencies. There has probably been an evolutionary battle, where predators evolved higher frequencies to spot shielded prey, and only the prey that had smaller gaps to exclude the higher frequency of radiation survived over time.”

Vince looked at Sarah, and it was apparent this wasn’t much of a revelation to them. They already knew the kuttlefish were hard to detect by their prey. Born saw they hadn’t grasped the significance of what was implied.

“Sarah, Vince, this means that the film you discovered must have a mechanism that allows the spacing of the gaps in the nanotube to gradually vary over long evolutionary time, which prevents higher frequencies from passing through, and revealing their superconducting nervous system beneath. This is vital to its possible use for blocking the even higher, and multiple frequencies, we are able to block with the jumble of different sized Q-carbon crystals at joints in body armor. At first, I didn’t think the film would be capable of that if it only protected against the low frequency electrical pulses you first described.

“Although, I still see a problem, because the recorded spectrum of the Debilitater signal shows that we must block at least two slightly different frequencies to rob that radiation of its ability to interfere with our superconducting nervous systems. We can’t use a film that contains both sized gaps, because some portion of the highest frequency will still pass, and even that could render us disabled, even if it doesn’t kill us at low levels.”

The two marine biologists looked gloomy, at least until the technician added his experience with Faraday cages.

“It’s not a lost cause, people. If we use two differently scaled meshes, as I’ve done using metal screening, where I needed to exclude only a small set of specific frequencies, allowing others to pass, we might still block the two base frequencies we found, which are the most damaging to a Koban style nervous system.

“I made life, and sometimes death, very unpleasant for dozens of Koban rats, as I experimented on the parts of the Debilitater spectrum that does us the greatest harm. Removing those two frequencies reduces the sensation to only a mild burning and itchy sensation.”

Blue, who hadn’t heard of that experiment asked, “How do you know what the rat felt?”

“I didn’t need to ask them. When they survived without seemingly any ill effect, I stepped into the simulated beam with those frequencies left out. I’m here, so it didn’t kill me.” He grinned.

Coldar pivoted both eyestalks towards Blue, who turned his face toward Coldar. No one needed to receive the silent and private Olt and mind enhancer communication which they surely exchanged, to know what was said.
A
c
razy human taking a ridiculously dangerous risk. Again.

Rather than address their alien allies’ amazement at how quickly humans achieved useful answers to difficult questions, accepting risks other species would avoid while they lost time finding a safer way, Max had questions for Rafe and Aldry. They had been mere observers thus far.

“Rafe, Aldry, I believe blocking the two most dangerous modulated frequencies of the Debilitater radiation can be achieved, using a suitable combination of two layers of this biological film Vince and Sarah have discovered.

“I think our combined labs can find a means of deposition of carbon nanotubes, laid on etched grids laid out with the two specified sized gaps, to simulate the end product we need, and test it for the radiation blocking properties we need.