Koban: The Mark of Koban Read online

  The Mark of Koban

  By Stephen W Bennett

  Text copyright © 2013 Stephen W Bennett

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover image used curtesy of NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute.

  To Rob, first for his friendship, then for invaluable tips, suggestions, and advice. Proofreading what “fat fingers” produce, in copious amounts, is much harder than simply reading. Thank you.

  To Anita, for unwavering support and encouragement, and endless patience when she calls me for dinner, and I say (falsely), “I’ll be right down.” Then type another two pages. I couldn’t do it without you Babe.

  To my sons and daughters-in-laws, to the gaggles of grandchildren, thanks for all of your complements and praise (biased, or fairly earned, I don’t care). I love you all, and thank my young Kobani TGs for protecting me from Krall and rhinolo.

  Table of Contents

  1. Gribbles’ Nook

  2. Winter Hunt (Koban)

  3. Slaughter on the Nook

  4. Hub City (Koban)

  5. Actions and Reactions

  6. Caught by Surprise (Koban)

  7. Poldark and Bollovstic

  8. Mothers Provide (Koban)

  9. This is not a Drill

  10. Small Premonitions (Koban)

  11. Operation Deep Lance

  12. Wedded Bliss (Koban)

  13. New Lance

  14. The Blues Brothers (Koban)

  15. Fjord

  16. Sweet and Sour Sixteen (Koban)

  17. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

  18. A Homecoming (Koban)

  19. The OK Corral with Knives

  20. The Mark of Koban

  21. On the Mark, Get Set

  22. K1

  23. Risk Factors and Three Missions

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  1. Gribbles’ Nook

  It was a quiet shift for Carl Grayson in the planetary traffic control unit; he wasn’t even wearing an earpiece this late at night, using speakers due to the low traffic volume. Three ground-to-orbit ingot transports from Standard Smelters were all that had been in orbit for the last two hours. Galactic Mining and Rim Land had finished their orbital ingot deliveries for the day.

  Yesterday had been busier, when there were three Jump ship freighters in orbit, with a dozen ingot transports up gathering the parked ingot containers, produced by over a dozen mining companies. After the three blocky looking freighters had finished loading containers, they separately broke orbit and Jumped back to the Hub area.

  Today, the two-month task of refilling the assigned parking orbits for the various mining companies had resumed.

  It didn’t stay quiet. Not very quiet at all.

  “Hey!” Grayson exclaimed in surprise. “Mam, we just had White Outs.”

  “Mr. Grayson,” his shift supervisor replied in mock severity, “that’s hardly unusual is it? You would know we have an arrival scheduled today if you had bothered to read the pre duty list.”

  “But it’s four bursts at once Mam and they’re all about five hundred miles out. I’ve never seen any ship pop out that close, have you? And four at the same time?”

  She stood up and walked towards his display. “There must be some sort of software glitch, Carl. We only have two Jump arrivals in the next three days, and they never White Out close to the planet.”

  “Mam, the computer shows four separate gamma bursts,” he insisted, “with no more than ten seconds between the first and the last. They’re clustered within thirty miles of each other too, over the northern pole.”

  Lady Alice Lambeau could see the large traffic monitor display clearly now, and it did show what Grayson described. However there wasn’t a single chance out of near infinity that there could be four random Jump ship arrivals that close to a planet. Not clustered that tight and all popping nearly simultaneously. Typically, a ship was lucky if a White Out occurred within an Astronomical Unit of the target star, let alone practically in orbit at the destination planet.

  “They aren’t sending their ID or registry either,” She noted another irregularity.

  “Whoops,” she let slip her surprise as the display tagged additional White Outs. “There’s another four. Over the south pole?” Confusion was evident in her voice and perplexed expression.

  The second cluster of gamma ray bursts had also originated from a small patch of sky, roughly five hundred miles from the planet.

  “Mr. Grayson, call those eight ships and find out who they are, where they came from, and what they need. I’ll be at my console calling the CEO offices of the big three, to see which one of them forgot to tell us something. This is a sloppy way to run a business,” and she turned away.

  She meant the largest three mining ventures on Gribbles’ Nook, Galactic, Standard, and Rim Land, which if combined, accounted for nearly two thirds of all of Nook’s shipping traffic.

  “Lady Lambeau,” Grayson spoke in excitement. “You aren’t going to believe this! Another eight White Outs, two sets of four, opposite sides of the planet, same distance away. These are equatorial, outside the parking orbits.”

  “I said to call them on the radio Carl,” she answered in exasperation. “I’m waking up some CEO’s to find out what the hell they have going on.” It was actually late night only for two of the largest three company offices, but Carl knew what she meant.

  As she lifted the com set, she heard Grayson again, shouting this time. “Damn! One of Standard’s transports just exploded. He must have hit an ingot in the wrong orbit.” A loud emergency transponder alert sounded briefly, before Carl acknowledged it on his console.

  The disaster triggered radio calls from the other two Standard owned spacecraft. Standard16 made a call to Standard21, the transport that had exploded, trying to contact the escape pod. The other transport was calling traffic control.

  Grayson focused on the call made to him, but the two simultaneous transmissions on the same frequency had “stepped” on one another, and the old Artificial Intelligence computer system they had couldn’t sort them out.

  “Say again, Standard23.” Grayson cursed the high profit mining companies for not investing in a better AI.

  The pilot’s reply was insistent. “This is 23; I’m telling you one of the new arrivals blew 21 out of the sky! My radar happened to be active in 21’s direction, watching for stray ingots in the wrong orbit before I moved in to park mine. The missile track was obvious.”

  Partly overhearing, Lambeau changed her mind about the call to the CEO’s, and instead called downstairs to the Capitol City spaceport manager’s office, to get a rescue ship aloft. There really didn’t appear to be much hope for a survivor from Standard21’s small pieces of debris. There was only one pilot per ingot transport, and the cockpit ejection system was the escape pod. Her mind failed to register the reference to a missile.

  She was speaking with the operations manager when she heard another panicky sounding transmission from Standard23. She paid closer attention this time. “I’ve been fired on. I dropped ingots and I’m braking hard to fall out of orbit. The missile is turning to f…” The transmission cut off in the middle.

  A few seconds later Carl murmured, “He’s gone.” He watched as another cloud of debris spread on his radar display.

  Immediately keying his mike, Grayson made an urgent call, “Standard16, this is Capitol Control. Drop your ingots immediately and break out of orbit, I say again, get out of orbit immediately. Your two company ships were fired on by the new arrivals.”

  He had his mental fingers crossed that 16 would make it down fast enough. They hadn’t acknowledged his call before a third debris field blossomed.

  Lambeau was now on the line with Capi
tol Rescue downstairs, but advised them to stay on the ground, explaining what had happened.

  “No, we don’t know who they are,” she responded to a question. “Of course I’d call them hostile. They fired without warning on three of Standard’s ingot haulers.” Another question. “No. It’s too late, they’re gone. Notify the spaceport police, and I’ll contact the police forces of the other cities from here.”

  Grayson asked, “What do you think they can do, Mam?” There were only modest local police forces on the planet, all hired by the mining companies. They primarily kept drunk and horny, largely single, male employees from getting too rowdy, mugged, or having their rights abused when impaired.

  “Mr. Grayson, we do have armed police you know. There are only sixteen ships. We have eighty five million people down here, and some extremely hardnosed miners. They should be able to help the police keep those rogue crews in line, if they even dare to land after what they just did.”

  Grayson had extreme doubts. These were not “rogues,” they had killed three men and destroyed the property of a powerful mining company on this world. That act didn’t seem to faze them at all. They had not answered his transmissions to them either.

  Besides, the police here were lightly armed. Aside from bar fights, the most common crime was social. A large number of women on this crude planet were notorious for taking advantage of drunken men, illegally obtaining their sperm without contracts, or payments to them or to their mothers, using the oldest fashion method there was.

  Except for knives and clubs, there were no serious weapons available to employees (they were not citizens), on the entire planet. Police officers carried batons, non-lethal Jazzers or Sonics, and sometimes tasers. The latter occasionally caused fatal heart stoppages, so police wouldn’t use tasers on Hub worlds, considering them too risky. On the Nook, a handful of SWAT teams had rifles and laser pistols in armories, but not very many of those. The well-paid employees didn’t riot often, not when their bosses owned everything but the workers nice bank accounts, which were subject to garnishment.

  Modern society out on the Rim was more peaceful, cordial, and polite than it had been three hundred years ago, even on Hub worlds. Back when men had allowed much cruder standards for acceptable behavior. This was a gentler time. It was about to end painfully.

  Lambeau told her older model AI to notify the various police departments of what had happened, and ordered the same alert sent to the CEO’s of every mining company. Once she had protected her backside by the necessary company notifications, she also informed the “Mayors” and “City Managers” of the company owned towns and cities.

  Mayors and Managers on Nook were not politicians. Instead, whichever company had established and built the mining town appointed them. Usually a female CEO would select a woman for City Manager or Mayor, and they were on the controlling company’s payroll.

  The problems caused by lack of a unified planetary government was about to be experienced through massive confusion and chaos, as the first ever planet wide emergency struck. However, in hindsight there wasn’t anything effective a hypothetical planetary government could have done.

  No peacetime government would have been prepared, not in the face of what was about to crush Gribbles’ Nook. The Krall, a warrior race, were making their first strike into Human Space, to initiate what would be a very long war against all of humanity, intended to last for generations.

  Losing weaker warriors in battle was how the Krall improved their breed of killers, striving for galactic domination through physical supremacy. That, and with the advanced technology they had stolen through conquests of previous races.

  The Krall intended to motivate and anger the human government into a fast response, to move quickly to a war footing. Massive atrocities seemed the most efficient way to start. The novice warriors of the Graka clan were more than eager to achieve this goal. It had been over two thousand years since the Krall had exterminated the most recent alien race encountered. A dull period of planned inter-clan warfare had filled the interval. It was past time to write new history for the various clans.

  Telour, the Graka clan sub leader awarded the honor of commanding this first small strike was pleased with the disposition of his hand of a hand of Clanships. The four groups of four Clanships, or sixteen ships total in the first strike by Graka clan had arrived at the orbital points where he had ordered the Clanship hand leaders to White Out. The Clanships did not all emerge simultaneously, as he’d have desired, but were well grouped after Jumping together from this star’s Oort cloud.

  The remainder of the two thousand forty eight ships of the Graka clan’s fleet, holding over a million warriors, waited in the inner Oort cloud of this system. At roughly two thousand AU’s from the star, the gamma ray bursts of the full fleet’s arrival there were still days away from reaching the planet below. The main fleet would not participate in this demonstration attack. Simply showing the enemy so many gamma ray bursts would prove what a threat the fleet represented.

  Telour was keenly aware that generations would remember this moment in the Krall’s long history. He wanted his first, preferably not only appearance in that history to be flawless.

  His Clanship had reserved the honor of making the first kills. This was something he had severely warned the other fifteen ship commanders about on this raid. Three human craft in orbit as they arrived were perfect targets of opportunity, and Telour had immediately ordered them destroyed. The first kills were thus his, as he had wanted. However small they were. He would expand the ship sizes and number of enemy crew in the retelling.

  Now, as planned, each ship commander descended on their own to land where there were clusters of humans. Telour had reserved the largest compound, where the main spaceport was located, for his own Clanship. He recalled that the human captives on Koban described a compound like this as a city, and smaller clusters were towns. The designations and names seemed pointless and arbitrary, but then animals seldom made sense.

  The Clanships each held five hundred twelve warriors for this deployment, far less than full capacity, plus weapons and limited supplies. However, any warrior could exploit local resources for food if they chose to range and kill farther from the parent Clanship for the two-day operation.

  Telour snorted in amusement. Living off the land would pose its challenges for even a Krall’s insensitive palate.

  At best, these animals tasted disgustingly sweet, with pale yellow fat that ran counter to Krall preferences. The flesh was nearly repulsive tasting, compared to the Krall’s favorite food, dark red, tangy and lean Raspani meat. They were a race from one of the Krall’s much earlier conquests, herbivores kept now as food animals. However, humans were tolerable field rations if consumed raw when in combat. Cooked, the meat turned an even more unappealing gray color if it was overdone.

  Sixteen Clanships would land near sixteen cities and towns, and then open their hatches to release Hell on their newest enemy, humanity.

  ****

  “Mam, that ship is larger than the passenger liners we get here.” Grayson observed, as the vessel settled towards the tarmac, much too close to the passenger terminal.

  He continued, “The AI couldn’t even find that design in our records. The other fifteen ships appear to be of the same type, based on the video images from other landings. They all dropped recklessly fast, and are setting down wherever they want, with no radio contacts.” He didn’t seem to be making an impression on Lambeau.

  He finally came directly to the point. “Lady Lambeau, is it smart to send out the airport police to meet them, before we know who they are, how many there are, and what they want?”

  “Mr. Grayson,” she responded with irritation. “We have to show these ruffians we will confront their rudeness with arrest if they persist in antisocial behavior. We may be living out here on the Rim, but we are not typical Rimmers. Except for the miners and laborers, of course.” She added in afterthought.

  She elaborated, “The Galactic M
ining staff of Capitol City is composed of Ladies and Gentle Men from the Hub and Old Colonies. We expect proper conduct on this world, and the sooner these scoundrels learn that lesson the easier it will be for them. I’ll wager there are males in charge of these ships.”

  Grayson rolled his eyes at her blatant bias, since he was a male from a New Colony and barely a notch above a Rimmer in her eyes. He wisely held his tongue. Carl was worried about a friend on duty tonight with the small Airport Police contingent. No more than three or four officers were on duty this late in the evening. They would have to wait for the ship’s thrusters to die and the ground to cool before approaching the ship.

  Grayson and Lambeau walked closer to the small tower’s plazsteel windows, curious to watch the landing. Beldor Grammer, the midnight watch stander, scheduled to relieve Grayson and Lambeau shortly, used his ID badge to enter the control center as the big ship settled.

  “Who is that?” he asked, looking out the window. The muffled thunder of thrusters so close to the terminal had brought him in from the break room ten minutes early.

  Lambeau glanced back to see who had spoken, so she missed the start of the invasion by a few seconds.

  Even as the ship settled on its massive looking supports, the engines cut off and four hatches located low on the ship immediately snapped up into recesses in the hull, not folding down to form a ramp. Dozens of men in black and red-gray suits leaped out onto the hot tarmac, and like maniacs, they started running across the steaming pavement towards the terminal. It had to be blazing hot out there.

  Suddenly Grayson felt coldness settle into his guts. Those weren’t men out there. They were too large, moved too fast, and the grayish red color on legs and arms was their skin, not part of a suit. Only the body appeared covered by a black uniform, with a few gray garments scattered among the throng. More and more of them were pouring out of the ship in a waterfall effect at each hatch.