Koban 6: Conflict and Empire (38 page)

Eventually, bringing any sort of weapons was rejected, with Thond describing guns as
the artificial equalizers
. As Hitok pointed out to Thond, “Bone Crusher, you and I, nor any of our officers will require weapons to defend ourselves against unarmed humans, should they foolishly become aggressive.”

“Agreed, my Head Bashing friend. I’ll propose that a Legion of us meet with twenty of their representatives, all unarmed and without armor. I want to include at least two female officers in our party, because they will have females present. This isn’t the falgrat sucking patriarchal Thandol we’re about to meet, so our female warriors deserve to participate.”

When they learned that nonhumans from the Federation wanted to be included, it caused some consternation and discussion, but because there were no subservient species in the empire that could intimidate the Ragnar, it was decided this would leave the Ragnar party all the stronger with fewer humans present. Besides, it was a perfect opportunity to learn more about the composition of the mysterious Federation.

The last consideration was where to hold the meeting. Thond made the bold and clever proposal to hold the meeting on the wide-open area of the nearest spaceport, if it was first evacuated. Since that had been their objective all along, he expected that offer to be rejected. However, a surprising counter proposal called for the Ragnar group to arrive in a Pounder, which could pick up their participants at the northern edge of the city and fly the short distance to the east side spaceport. The humans said they would all arrive on a single ship of their own, landing on the tarmac within a comfortable walking distance from the Pounder, perhaps three lengths of a Pounder apart.

The humans had not mentioned anything about disabling the weapons aboard the Pounder, something not quickly done, nor easily verified. Thond assumed the human ship would be one of the warship types that had fought so effectively against their Ravagers. He was wrong.

The Pounder was sitting alone, near the center of the mile-wide circular tarmac, with no activity detected around the structures of the hangars, cargo storage buildings, and passenger terminal on one side. Of course, there could be any number of humans hidden inside the buildings, but they would be a half mile away, with the Pounder shielding the Ragnar from view. Considering that the undetected mines had not been used wipe out their armor, the treachery of an ambush seemed unlikely now.

A received radio message was brief, and it was claimed to be from Mirikami, although the AI could have spoken for anyone. “Our ship is leaving orbit now.”

They hadn’t asked where he was located earlier, and assumed he was planet side. This was probably why the spaceport had been an acceptable place for them to meet.

Instead of the long minutes of waiting for an atmospheric entry, there was an audible
POP
sound, and suddenly a large elongated white object, with both ends rounded, appeared a hundred feet above the tarmac, and quickly settled to the surface. The craft was slightly longer and bigger around than the Pounder, which was also larger than Ravagers were.

Nearly simultaneously, sensors aboard the Pounder detected a small burst of gamma rays above them at the edge of the atmosphere, as if a very low mass object had entered Normal Space there, and an alert was sounded.

The Federation ship settled with its long axis horizontal to the ground, and parallel to the Pounder. The only human ships the Ragnar had seen previously, the captured Krall clanships, always landed tail first and sat on massive jacks. This was a new class of enemy ship to them, and its instant appearance suggested deception was involved. That was troubling, in a situation that required a fragile trust to be extended, between opponents meeting to establish talks, which might not lead to a truce.

Thond pounced on what he saw as a violation of the protocol they both had agreed to follow. He radioed his complaint to them. “You were to arrive
after
we landed, but your ship was hovering there all along, using its Normal Space drive and in stealth mode, well before we arrived.”

As he transmitted, a ramp smoothly extended, and a large hatch irised open in the center of the side of the craft towards the Pounder. The motion of the ramp and hatch opening looked odd. It was as if the surface of the spacecraft had flowed to form the ramp and the hull surface pulled back to make an opening.

A lone figure, clearly a bipedal human in some sort of lightweight clothing, had its arms and hands exposed, displaying their unhealthy looking and nearly hairless skin. The head was also bare, but at least the ridiculously small thing had short black hair on the top.

The alien walked out onto the top of the ramp and waved with its right arm and hand, just as the radio speaker relayed the translator AI’s voice. “Hello. I’m the person you see waving. I’m Captain Mirikami. Captain is my title, as the captain of this spacecraft, which is named the Mark of the Federation.

“Before you saw us appear, we were not hovering here in stealth mode, although we do have that capability. We did indeed just arrive directly from orbit, and we did so by use of our Jump Drive, to appear above the field at a safe distance, before settling to the ground. We followed the agreed upon protocol to the letter, and we arrived after you.”

Thond challenged this new lie, now questioning his decision to meet with them here. “Ships cannot Jump into thick atmospheres. The air density is too great, and would severely damage systems, and of course kill everyone aboard when the gas molecules intersected with the tissues of your bodies. Why lie about this and start a meeting that requires trust, with such an obvious deception?”

“We didn’t lie, but we wanted to demonstrate a technology of ours that you have not seen previously. This was not a violation of the agreed to protocol, which I point out was proposed by us, for this very purpose. Although it may appear to you to be a deception, it was done to demonstrate that we have applications of technologies the Thandol, and you, do not possess.

“In one sense, we did
not
Jump into a volume of atmosphere where you saw us appear, because that volume was empty of air when we arrived. That air was Jumped an instant earlier, to a point many miles above us, to avoid wasting the gases this mode of arrival would otherwise cost the planet over many millions of such arrivals. You may have detected the small burst of gamma radiation its exit caused above us. We used level one of Tachyon Space to move the small mass such a short distance. It isn’t worth the trouble to suppress the exit radiation.”

Not that they had figured out how to do that with the gravity projectors yet. Nevertheless, you don’t reveal weak cards to other poker players.

Mirikami continued the explanation. “In effect, we arrived in a precisely defined bubble of vacuum slightly larger than the shape of our hull. A small atmospheric collapse against our hull is what caused the soft sound when we made our exit here, when the remaining small void in the atmosphere closed around us. This technology makes arrivals and departures to and from planetary surfaces faster, so long as we are careful where we shift the material we displace, and ensure the place where we arrive is clear of solid objects. Otherwise, objects sitting where we appear might be very seriously damaged.”

The inference was intended to be obvious. Mirikami was suggesting that the new Mark could have as easily transferred a ship-sized chunk of the Pounder into space as it arrived. This was technically inaccurate, as far as the Mark Jumping into a void made within a solid object was concerned, which would be suicidally dangerous if there was even a minor miscalculation. Again, why admit you didn’t have all four aces in your hand?

This technique was a recently developed use of the gravitational projector and control units mounted in the ends of this first of the new Mark II class of Federation ships. Tachyon energy was most often used with Jump Drives, to create an event horizon around a ship when it rotated into tachyon space.

The similar but smaller gravity projectors that the Krall had stolen, from the extinct Botolians, had been used by the unimaginative barbarians to dump dead bodies and damaged spacecraft into Jump Holes, to evaporate without a trace in Tachyon Space. The Krall had forced an isolated group of Torki slaves to learn how to use the projectors to compress pure carbon, as the Botolians had once done in their war with the Krall, to force the collapsed matter into the tough crystal structure of Hammers, or Eight Balls, as humans called them.

The dual projector system developed by the Olt’kitapi had considerably greater flexibility and control. With the single projector Mirikami had sheared from the Dismantler ship, Huwayla, available as an example, the Federation now possessed those valuable tools, and potential weapons.

Remotely Jumping matter through Tachyon Space, to exit in Normal Space at some other nearby point, was a small-scale application that the Olt’kitapi, with their theoretical physics and math wizardry, had never thought of using. Possibly, because they had no need to do this, or, like most slow developing and cautious species, they didn’t consider such risky, potentially explosive measures to be rational or reasonable. Humans were considerably less worried by such concerns, and the idea had been thought of independently by two different technicians, who tested the tachyon powered focused gravity projectors.

Mirikami had coincidentally been practicing this atmospheric arrival technique for days at Koban and Haven with his new ship. This was well before the Ragnar assault had started on Tanner’s world. It offered an opportunity to use the new technology to impress a people you wanted to recruit as a natural opponent of the Thandol. They wouldn’t know the Mark was currently the only operational ship of this new class.

It was decided that there wasn’t a practical means to avoid the thunderous bang of a Jump from the surface of a planet to space, because there was no point in shifting a volume of empty vacuum into the spot they had vacated. They decided to save that noisy departure example for a final demonstration for the Ragnar.

Thond kept Mirikami waiting while he confirmed with the crew of the Pounder that the gamma ray alert was where, and as weak as Mirikami had claimed it was. Radar and visual sensors from other Pounders had detected the burst, but saw nothing where the exit had happened, directly above the spaceport at the edge of the atmosphere.

The Force Commander conceded the possibility for the human’s clam. “Captain Mirikami, the gamma rays you mentioned were detected overhead. I accept your explanation. My group of twenty will exit one end of our Pounder, and we expect your representatives to do the same. It wasn’t mentioned in the agreement, but how many different species besides humans will be with you? We don't know what to expect.”

“They are walking out onto the boarding ramp now. There are five other species with us. The sounds for some of their names can’t be translated into Fotrol, so I’ll use the sounds humans use from my language. Like with the Thandol language, some sounds for their species names can’t be spoken by a human, so I’ll use the sounds I can make.

“The large purple and yellow crab-like representative is a Torki, which you may have seen pictures of from the Thandol. The furry gray and white biped with a long tail is a Prada. The six legged gray Raspani has the upright torso with arms similar to mine. Next is a tall gray hairless species with a body thicker than mine, and…” Thond interrupted him.

“You brought a Krall? They are a member species of your Federation?” He was incredulous.

“No, that is a Krall’tapi. They are the original species the Krall evolved from, over many thousands of orbits, using selective breeding. They are not Krall, they are their enemies, and do not want to be compared to them.”

“Understood. I will inform my officers, but be aware that we are soldiers, not diplomats. There may be words spoken that offend, but are not intended as such.”

“The same may happen with some of those with me.”

Thond caught sight of something that seemed distinctly different in mannerism and body functionality from any of the others. “Is that an animal predator you brought? I thought you selected only members of your intelligent species.”

There was a sound reminiscent of Ragnar huffs of amusement, which the AI appeared to have simply replicated, coming from Mirikami. The human strode over to the huge blue sinuous moving beast, and placed an arm over its thick neck.

“This isn’t an animal, at least no more so than any of us are. This is a ripper, an intelligent species from the planet I call my home. They have a communications ability that I expect will be vital in convincing you of our sincerity in seeking a truce here, and an understanding concerning our joint futures in regards to the Thandol. His name is Kobalt, and he can speak for himself, in more ways than you would believe if I told you now.”

“Does it bite?”

“No worse than my mate does.” There was more untranslatable huffing, and a smaller human, with yellow fur on top of its head, walked up and poked an elbow into the side of Captain Mirikami, who quit making the huffing sound, with a sound indicative of a grunt of pain.

Thond, recognizing the sort of interplay he once experienced with his now dead mate, thought there might be some commonalities with humans, simply because of convergent evolution of similarly shaped bipeds, and the resultant social developments of those beings.

He offered a guess. “That was your mate?”

A different sounding voice answered, more natural sounding than the AI, and said, in oddly accented but nearly fluent Fotrol, “Yes I am, and my mate’s attempts at humor at my expense often result in unforeseen consequences for him. I am Margaret Fisher. Or Maggi as I prefer to be called. I am someone who often passes for a diplomat in the Federation, although my training was in the biological sciences. I’m not always very diplomatic.”