Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (55 page)

“What do you mean?” Mirikami and Maggi felt a sense of unease.

“We wish you success in your mission to weaken the rule of the Emperor, which should gain you more time to gather your forces, and build more of your new ships and weapons. Even if you overthrow the present Emperor, the Thandol have new information that may push them to act sooner than is typical for them. The High Command was instructed to confirm or refute what the Emperor suspects, that the Federation was behind what happened at Wendal a few cycles ago, as well as at their base a cycle later.

“If it is confirmed, he will feel compelled to display his strength to those that may wish to overthrow him if he appears weak. You should leave as soon as possible for Wendal, to weaken the Emperor’s position before he reaches his decision. We hope for good fortune for the two of you, and your Galactic Federation, where we too chose to live.”

****

Farlol’s public relations assistant had requested a moment with the Emperor, who was reviewing the speech he was about to give. “Your Imperial Majesty, before you address your subjects, there has been a follow up message from Rogue 2, sent by your second cousin, Captain Shanthot, who survived the attack there, and the destruction of his Crusher. He says the analysis of our losses there continue, and they have more information about how the enemy forced the Crushers out of orbit. There were two thousand nine ships of all types destroyed, and many hundreds more damaged, of over five thousand eight hundred ships gathered there. The damage was concentrated primarily on Smashers, and in particular the far smaller number of Stranglers.

“He says the high ratio of Strangler losses, nearly all of them, implies the enemy was fearful of those ships, despite their not being capable of conductive an effective defense of the base. For that reason, it appears one important goal was to reduce the threat that the assembling fleet represented to the population at the Federation target world. We know their most effective human fighters are more susceptible to the Debilitater radiation than are most species. That is what our Alien Intelligence Service learned from our paid Ragnar informants. That information supports our belief that it was Federation ships that made the attack, and selectively destroyed those Stranglers first.

“Their projectile weapons fired incredibly high velocity small projectiles, made of a dense material accelerated to over one percent the velocity of light in a short distance. The only sign of the launches were indistinct mass density anomalies, seen for a short time, that moved impossibly fast towards the targets and grew huge, yet always vanished before the projectile impacts.”

Farlol asked, “Could the large masses be the stealthed ships? If so, we could fire Decoherence bombs at them even without precise targets.”

“Captain Shanthot says they were not ships, because plasma bolts, lasers, and missiles passed through the centers of other similar mass centers, those that pulled the disabled Crushers out of orbit. He and other officers believe the enemy has gravity control beyond what we have within our ships, which we use for inertial compensation and internal gravity. They were somehow able to project, or broadcast, a powerful gravitational field where they wanted. They used this method to pull the disabled Crushers out of orbit, and smash them into our parked warships.”

“Do we have scientist looking at duplicating that technology?”

“Yes, your Majesty, for a very long time, in fact. They say they have studied the physics of this since we learned the Olt’kitapi had a similar technology tens of thousands of orbits ago. They claim the mathematics is very difficult. We are no closer now, than when the Krall killed the Olt’kitapi. The High Command says the technology obviously is not a perfect weapon, because the Krall defeated their masters, who had that level of gravity control.”

“True, and humans defeated the Krall, who must also have used the stolen technology against them. As the High Command said, it must not be an ultimate weapon so powerful that we cannot defeat them.”

“Your Majesty, High Commander Trindal believes it may also have been used here at Wendal, just before the attack at Rogue 2.”

“What?” His shrill trumpeting revealed he was indignant and outraged. A dangerous mood for a despotic absolute ruler. “I was told it was an unexpected expansion of the upper atmosphere, causing increased drag that brought the Crusher debris down. Was I lied to?” There was an ominous tone to his even louder, deeper note trumpeting.

“No, your Majesty.” His assistant assured him quickly. “The new theory from Commander Trindal is that an unnoticed weak gravity field at orbital altitudes could have attracted the upper atmosphere, causing it to rise. This inconceivable possibility was not possible prior to observing the action at Rogue 2, where there was no atmosphere involved, yet the two Crushers were pulled out of safe orbits.”

The Emperor, calmed by that explanation, was still facing a public relations problem. “I cannot tell the people that the Federation attacked us again here at Wendal. I would appear weak, unable to defend my capitol world. I will tell them of the Federation attack at Rogue 2, without naming the location, or any speculations about new weapons. I can use that attack to distract from what happened here, which I will still call a natural disaster. I can demand greater effort towards retaliation against the Federation. If I do not, I will have coup plotters crawling out of every grassy plain. If I die, you know that those of my Court, and many of my allies will join me.”

That wasn’t always true. If a coup came from within the Emperor’s own extended family of high ranking nobles, it was less violent for those farther downstream from the Emperor’s immediate family and most loyal supporters. If a coup was accomplished by one of the other noble family lines, there
would be
extensive bloodshed for the Farlol line. Only the lesser Farlol nobles, and other high born family names would be unaffected. The latter might even benefit if they joined the usurpers early.

Except, Farlol the 84
th
had maintained a tight hold on his throne, and curried favors from political allies, whom he rewarded. If he directed patriotic fervor towards an external enemy, and struck back hard, he could defuse growing opposition to his rule.

“I will focus on the Federation threat, not only for my annexation plans, but for the safety of the Empire. I will modify my speech today, and direct the fervor of the people towards defeating the Federation threat, and they will forget about the unfortunate
natural disaster
here on Wendal.”

“Yes, your Majesty. Are you ready to proceed to the Great Square now? We should not keep them waiting tonight as you often do. Not if you want them to display the full energy of their trumpeting and bugling in favor of your call to war. The louder it is, the better it will sound and look on the recordings, which I will have sent to all of our colonies and major outposts.”

“Yes, call my Palace guards, all of them this time. I want them displayed behind me in two ranks, in their splendid uniforms, to help lead the trumpeting when I want it to begin. Have their voices amplified, to sound over the entire square to make it sound louder.”

****

The Emperor and his elite one thousand Palace guards, with real weapons held tightly vertical in both trunks, the right tentacle near the shielded trigger lever, the other tentacle on the selector, for choosing what sort of energy beam or projectile they would elect to fire at an opponent. That could be a potent plasma bolt, a medium laser, or heavy projectiles could be selected. These were large weapons, but in the grasp of a Thandol they didn’t seem so big. In addition, there were decorative red streamers on each trunk tip, and a red feathery cap with gold trim, worn over the dome of their large foreheads, which concealed its underlying armor plates. They had red armored articulated leg and knee pads on all four legs, and red blankets with gold trim were draped over their backs and hanging free, as low as their stomachs. It was a form of flexible medium armor, but it was more for ceremonial show than what they would wear if in an actual planned firefight. It had no stealth capability.

Hung below their thick necks, in front of their broad chests, was a flexible armored pouch holding two spare power packs for their weapons, and four projectile magazines. There was also a transparent shield affixed to the back of the pouch, which could be detached and raised in front of their large faces as protection, while they fired their rifles from around its sides. Their bulky large bodies, and exposed trunks and tentacles, were part of the reason they didn’t often engage in ground combat as infantry. They tended to rely on remote controlled drone tanks, mobile artillery, and aerial weapons platforms in that sort of combat.

The Emperor’s entourage started out in a double column, with half of the guard leading the Emperor and his aides, and half of them behind. They didn’t start stamping their broad flat feet, creating echoes that preceded them to the reviewing stand, until they were within hearing of the masses of Thandol assembled in the Great Square.

That thumping and repetitive sound was the trigger for the crowd to also stamp their feet in the same rhythm, and to issue soft trumpets of “Farlol,” as the first of the Palace guards divided to form a file on either side of the knee high wall of the third level reviewing stand. The cries of Farlol increased sharply as the Emperor, in his own dazzling uniform and draped red cape appeared. He went directly to the wall at the center, as the remaining Palace guards also split to either side to form a second rank, their feet still stamping. The large number of guards told everyone that the address tonight was of greater importance than they expected.

The chants of
Farlol
increased greatly, to a cacophony of sound and tramping footpads, waiting for the Emperor to lift his trunks to signal the end of the chants. He normally basked in the chants for a time, and he did so this time as well.

The noise echoed over the vast city for miles. The soft pop above a rooftop near the Emperor’s quarters went unnoticed. Soon, there was some soft swishing among plots of sugar spears, and where there were fresh plots of dark soil, with new tiny shoots of the golden grass recently planted by loving tentacles of devoted and aged gardeners. Some small inch deep holes appeared next to many of the shoots, and then were promptly covered over by unseen hands, as a small deposit was hidden under the rich soil, where the moistness would revive the tiny dried eggs, stirring them to release the thousands of tiny transparent worms. The nematode-like clear worms were all but invisible, unless placed under a microscope.

The undetected stealthed visitors used the same rooftops to return to their small stealthed craft, and as the sounds of trumpeting rose from the Great Square, at the end of a rousing Imperial speech, the Scout was hundreds of feet in the air, lifting slowly on its Normal Space drive, until reaching the edge of the upper atmosphere. There it Jumped for home, to await the reports of how the Emperor fared in the weeks following his public appearance.

The newly hatched microscopic worms found a rich source of natural sugars to enjoy in the grass roots, and thrived in the frequently watered rich soil. They bored their way into the roots of the grass, where they would live off only part of the plant juices of this grass, having evolved to avoid killing the host plants. The worms would mature in just over a day, the males fertilizing the females, which returned to the soil to leave their tiny eggs to hatch, repeating the cycle of life. When the grass was pulled up by the roots for consumption, the worms, and often eggs in the clinging soil, went along for the ride.

A Thandol, despite resembling a slightly smaller version of an Earthly elephant, had a digestive track that had more in common with cattle. Grasses required up to three days to pass through their multiple stomachs and digestive track. The tiny worms, after arriving with the grass, mostly survived mastication, and they took advantage of the three days of digestive time to hatch new worms, mature, breed, and lay eggs.

In the absence of soil, the worms burrowed in and laid their eggs in the porous soft intestinal linings and digestive track of a Thandol. There, the eggs were protected from future ingested cures for the infestation, and hatching worms repeatedly renewed the infection in newly eaten grass. Fecal matter from the worms, and the bodies of females that died in the intestinal walls after laying eggs, became increasingly toxic to a Thandol as the intestinal colony grew larger. The toxins caused a series of digestive problems, which would contribute to diarrhea, gas, and nausea. Despite feeling like vomiting often, the reduction of absorbed nutrients drove an infected Thandol to crave more food, which benefited the worms and supported their life cycle.

Worms bearing eggs not yet implanted in intestinal walls, would be expelled in fecal matter or vomit, where new colonies might form in other favorable locations, and infect new Thandol victims, and spread in their feed plots, or in many other suitable plant hosts. Symptoms of the infection were slow enough to develop, that the problem could spread extensively before the initial infected individual showed obvious signs of the intestinal parasites.

****

Maggi woke her husband early. They had arrived home late, by Koban time, from Wendal, satisfied they had done all they could to deter the Thandol from attacking the Federation immediately, and if they chose to continue anyway, delay them by severely damaging the fleet they were gathering for an attack, and had planted parasite eggs where the Emperor would consume them. They hoped he’d find himself preoccupied with a debilitating physical problem, and dodge public appearances for a couple of months, while they planted false rumors of a coup, to be circulated within his own court.