Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (40 page)

Hitok’s vision shifted from a gaze into the distance, where he observed an event he’d not witnessed, yet which seemed almost like a personal recollection. He stared at Kobalt for a brief moment, and then turned his head to look at Mirikami, trying to match that innocuous looking human, slightly smaller than the majority of his species, comparing him with the image of him fighting with far larger Krall. A creature who
definitely
appeared considerably larger and more intimidating than the similar looking Krall’tapi he’d just met.

“What is it Commander Hitok?” Thond inquired of his confused looking friend.

He flipped one wrist a couple of times, “I need an explanation, I think. More than one. That creature they introduced to us as Kobalt,” he pointed, “which they call a ripper, comes from the home world of the Kobani humans, which they claim is a heavy gravity planet. Just now, it touched my hand and somehow he caused me to acquire what seems like a personal memory. But I know that I never witnessed individual combat between a human and a Krall. In fact, I’ve never seen an actual Krall, only pictures, and of course the two similar looking Krall’tapi that we met today.”

Thond looked bemused, then slightly alarmed. “It made you see some hallucination of a fight between a human and a Krall?”

“It does not seem like a hallucination because it is extremely vivid and detailed, as if I witnessed the fight. It also isn’t just any human; it was that one.” He pointed directly at Mirikami, who seemed surprised, but knew the signs of a memory transfer when he heard it described.

He said, “I know of two occasions when Kobalt has witnessed me in direct confrontation with a Krall. Both times I was fighting with the same warrior, the war leader of their entire species, by the name of Telour. If it had a bloody ending, it was the second and final meeting.”

Hitok looked at him skeptically. “You tore his two hearts from his shattered chest with your bare hands? I don't know how I know the organs were his hearts, or that he had two, but that is what my thoughts tell me. He had you in his grip, prepared to crush your body and break your back, as you were held tightly to his chest. That Krall was a male? That’s what my thoughts tell me.”

“Yes,” Mirikami acknowledged, with a head nod that the ape decided indicated agreement. “Telour was a rather large Krall male, and our Death Challenge took place on humanity’s home planet of Earth, in the Planetary Union’s capital city. His death at my hands was not preplanned, but I found I needed to convince the leaders of that government that the Federation humans, the other Kobani like me, truly were stronger and faster than the Krall. That evil creature deserved to die, because he had caused the deaths of many billions of humans, and had ordered the complete destruction of two inhabited worlds, using an ancient Olt’kitapi ship with powerful gravity control. Kobalt was there, and saw it happen.”

Hitok gave several hoots of humor, and said to Thond, “Old friend, I wouldn’t recommend you trying your Bone Breaker demonstration on a Kobani. You have only one heart to give for your people, and we need you to live.”

Thond, not convinced, nevertheless replied in kind to his friend, with a hoot-laugh of his own. “Perhaps if you kept your distance, old Head Basher, you might prevail.”

“If that blue demon can give you the same set of memories, you wouldn’t say that. Captain Mirikami performed a maneuver, in midair as the Krall attacked, that I would have called impossible. I had to recall the blur of his movements several times, and I still don’t know how he survived the Krall’s deceptive initial attack. I also don't know how I received these thoughts, but I actually feel the emotions and concern that this ripper felt for his family member, as he watched that fight to the death.”

“Family member?” Thond looked at the huge blue furred, four-footed ripper, then the much smaller, tan and nearly hairless, bipedal Mirikami. The inference was obvious.

Mirikami, who had been observing Ragnar gestures, flipped his left wrist up once, and said, “He considers me to be his Uncle, and he was raised from a newborn cub by a Kobani woman, Noreen Renaldo, whom you met.” She waved at them, having heard what was said. Every Kobani, with their wolfbat hearing, was listening.

“She was once my second in command on a ship where I was the captain, and I have long considered her like the daughter I never had. She is Kobalt’s adoptive mother, so I’m a ripper’s Uncle. It’s a complicated story of our social development, and we don’t need to talk about that.

“We
do
need to talk about how a ripper’s telepathic thought transfers work, as happened just now. It is an awkward discussion, which my mate Maggi was trying to open with you just now Force Commander. We know how implausible this sounds. The rippers are the only natural telepaths we of the Federation have ever discovered, or heard about. It’s only possible because of their unusual organic superconducting nervous systems, which we’ve only found on Koban, and which all native animal life there shares. However, only a small group of creatures that are closely related to the rippers have inherited the rare brain neuron mutation that makes thought communication possible.

“It is not long-range, because as Commander Hitok experienced, it requires direct physical contact.” Mirikami was deliberately leaving out the artificial genetics that gave the capability to the Kobani. Passive thought reception by Kobalt and the Kobani had been happening intermittently for the two hours of this meeting, the apes unaware that the casual contacts revealed their unguarded thoughts. The Ragnar were a social species that shared a prehistoric mutual grooming instinct, therefore they were not averse to being touched, as were the Thandol, and they tolerated it but didn’t invite it from aliens.

After several nonhuman citizens of the Federation also allowed Kobalt to share her perspective of Mirikami’s fight with Telour, those that had not witnessed the original event discussed their new artificial memory. They admitted they were impressed with how their normally restrained military leader had acted, when deadly action was called for. Mirikami was embarrassed by the attention this garnered him, from those that had never seen him even angry.

“Yep, that’s my kick-ass husband,” Maggi told them, enjoying his discomfort.

Hitok was describing to Thond and other Ragnar how it felt to sense and recall those implanted thoughts, and explained that he was clearly aware that they were not from his own memory or experience, because the background thoughts and emotions he sensed were not his, but from the alien.

It was the rookie pilot, Lieutenant Derkat, who impulsively volunteered to be the second Ragnar to receive thoughts from Kobalt. He was instructed to place a hand on the frill, and he didn’t jerk it away, as had Hitok in his surprise. He asked aloud if there were different memories, which Kobalt might share with him. The manner in which it was answered did surprise him.

“Of course. I can share the memory of a hunt with a pride of rippers, as we tracked and brought down a large prey animal called a rhinolo, on our home savannas.”

Prior to that mental thought reply, Kobalt had used the fob around his neck to speak aloud in translated Fotrol. This was different, because it included emotional content as well as images that reinforced the reply, and was not spoken at all.

The distinction was noticed immediately, and the Lieutenant answered in kind, thinking his answer, that he’d like to see how a group of rippers would hunt together. The scale of the rhinolo was impressive because the image included other rippers trying to trip what he sensed was a huge old male animal. The large and muscled rippers were dwarfed by the old rhinolo, and only their cooperative efforts made the hunt a success.

He immediately wanted his wing mate, Lieutenant Kranfa, to experience the thrill and excitement of that hunt, and he loudly called him over, unaware that Thond was behind him by several feet, and had observed the interaction.

When Kranfa approached the two, his apprehension allayed by his wing mate’s obvious enthusiasm, Kobalt suggested that they could share a telepathic conversation of the hunt between them all, using Kobalt as a form of thought relay. It wasn’t until Kranfa had received the burst of thoughts that covered the hunt, that he felt secure enough with the process to try the thought relay. He asked, “How do I think at my companion so he can sense my thoughts?”

“I heard that,” the rookie said, pleased. “I mean I received your thought, even though you spoke it to Kobalt. Try it without speaking out loud.”

The ripper patiently told Derkat he should follow his own advice, and stop talking.

After that, the two Lieutenants exchanged their silent conversation, with Kobalt acting as intermediary. They played with this for a time, before Thond placed hands on their shoulders to ask what they were doing. He was instantly part of a group conversation.

Kobalt said,
“Interesting way to communicate, isn’t it Commander?”

“I’m touching them, not you. Why am I receiving your thoughts?”

“You have my thoughts too Sire, I think,”
Derkat thought but didn’t say,
“Because I hear your words, but also sense your thoughts and curiosity.”

Maggi, pleased that Kobalt’s experiment was working better than she had planned, came closer to explain how this thought relay through Kobalt could be used to experience thoughts from another species. Even those that didn’t share a common language. Images, meanings, and emotions could be conveyed without language, as the rippers had done for eons before meeting humans, who had a spoken language.

She explained. “It was this ability that helped us learn the Thandol tongue, and Fotrol, as well as the languages of the species within our Galactic Federation. I’m sure you’ve sensed the emotions of the sender, and detect the background thoughts from the minds you communicate with telepathically. Rippers are what we call our
Truth Sayers,
or others of us say they are
Unbiased Witnesses
. A ripper has never been known to tell a lie, although in order to conceal a truth that they don’t wish to share, they can withhold their thoughts or images on a subject. In fact, so can you, and any intelligent and aware species can do that.”

Suddenly wary, Thond broke contact with the two lieutenants. He’d realized his thoughts were being shared with the ripper.

Kobalt chuffed in amusement, and said, “I could only sense thoughts you have on the surface of your mind, and even then only if you decide I can know them. To withhold a thought is as easy as deciding not to answer a question aloud. If I ask you how many mates you have had, if you don’t want me to know, those thoughts are no more shared with me than are the words not spoken by your mouth.”

Maggi suggested he allow some Ragnar to experience thought sharing with various members of her group, with Kobalt the conduit. “Kobalt will of course know everything that passes through his own mind, but he will not alter or block what another’s thoughts are, because rippers do not do that with themselves. They are painfully blunt and honest at all times, but honesty is one of their greatest virtues.

“This ability is how we have forged a trusting environment for our Federation government, despite multiple species and languages, with distrust and skepticism as present in us as it surely is in you. Yet knowing what the other side in a discussion truly thinks, if they open their minds to you, is revealing, if not always flattering to your ego.”

“In what way is it not flattering?”

“Ask Kobalt what he thinks about the Ragnar, your appearance, your smell, your general attitudes toward species other than yours. You probably don’t have to open your mind all the way to learn that, because he has already experienced contact with nearly all of your party. I ask that you not take personal offense because ripper opinions, of humans, and our other Federation species, are not full of complements either.”

“Do I ask him verbally, or just touch him?”

She laughed. A sound not that different from the hoots of Ragnar laughter. “He isn’t deaf Force Commander Thond. He heard everything I said. And he doesn’t care if you or I like what his opinion is of us. It’s what he thinks, and that’s what he will tell us. Just touch his frill, the raised area that encircles his neck. That is where the highest density of their network of nerves is located, to share thoughts the most clearly and rapidly.”

After a few moments of touching the frill, with Thond’s involuntarily expressions changing as he learned what the ripper thought of the Ragnar, and him, he removed his hand, and glared at Kobalt, before he hooted several times.

“I don't think we smell sour and musty, and our grooming one another does not mean we are infested with body parasites. I do admit that we act arrogant to other species, and have displayed little regard for their wants and desires. We can’t show such regard for subservient species or we couldn’t perform the duties required of us by the Thandol. That is how we have maintained our greater freedoms and prosperity over other species within the Empire. I do think I could likely beat a Kobani in unarmed combat, because I would not stupidly charge at one of them without thinking of what I would do first, and what they are capable of doing. Kobalt finds that delusional on my part.

“I do believe we are superior to the Thandol in both intelligence and physically, and are better fighters. If they didn’t have their huge navy and advanced weapons, which we are not allowed to duplicate for ourselves, we would become better rulers of the Empire than they are. Kobalt thinks we would replace their tyranny with our own. I think our rule would be beneficial to those currently under the footpads of the Emperor.”