Koban: Rise of the Kobani (45 page)

They received their first weekend off, which was actually only respite from the obstacle course. They still ran to classes, to chow, to barracks, to any place they were told to go, which was frequently. Studies had shown that in a higher gravity field, the human body needed some time to adjust after strenuous exercise, to increase the addition of muscle fiber after such an extended series of workouts. The men received more protein in their meals, and they were given supplements, to promote new tissue growth.

The TGs accepted all of the supplements assuming they wouldn’t hurt them, even if not needed. They were informed by Captain Renaldo that they might have a bit more unsupervised time in the weeks to come. She was formulating an action plan to use the TGs presence, and their abilities, to render a bit of technology transfer, before pulling her three people out of the camp.

The knowledge that there were some people wanting to work on human genetic improvement, but were forced to start nearly from scratch, pushed her to the decision. Unable to converse with Mirikami, she had moved out to a position behind a gas giant, and on a scheduled day for possible communication, she null Jumped and was able to exchange information with the Beagle.

The excitement that the expedition had made contact with a Prada group on the newly named Haven was astonishing, but that news was soon shifted to a back burner as she learned a fact that was more personally important, and also helped focus her mind on completing her present mission as soon as practical.

She shared the limited knowledge she had, of the future path a few people in the Special Operations midlevel command structure wanted to follow. She requested guidance on what genetic information might be shared, reminding Marlyn that her AI, Karl, had the encrypted clone mod data in storage, copied from Jakob on the Mark of Koban, before the AI was included in the cargo pods.

Through Alyson, Noreen asked Marlyn to radio Koban, to speak to Aldry or Rafe for help in identifying what genetic data was safe to provide to a secret group within an already secretive Special Operations organization.

Maggi, on the Beagle, stunned Noreen and Alyson when she surprisingly sent a series of Tachyon Space propagated TG1 messages directly to Alyson. The initial impact, as Alyson excitedly told her captain who had contacted them and how it was possible, left Noreen flabbergasted and nearly breathless. 

It was possible for an SG to be enhanced to TG1 level, perhaps even higher thanks to the modified nanites and med labs that Marlyn had taken to Koban. Getting home soon was definitely on Noreen’s mind, but her present mission had to be topped off with a gift. Maggi described how to select the right material from Karl’s database, which Alyson passed to the AI, along with Noreen’s personal key to allow the files to be decrypted and copied to a data cube.

Holding the black cube, Noreen said, “This data cube would have earned us extermination from the Krall had they known we brought it with us to Koban. I didn’t know that then of course, and neither did Tet. Now it could deliver personal destruction to those we pass it to, from their own government. On the other hand, it can help with delivering all of humanity from Krall destruction if the information is used properly. So small, and yet the most powerful weapon we have against the Krall. Information to make ourselves stronger than they are.” She looked at Alyson beside her, a product of this same information, and more. She was a lovely young woman,
human
, and could kill a Krall with her bare hands.

“The Beagle wasn’t waiting for anything else from us were they, Alyson?”

“No Mam. Dr. Fisher signed off after I acknowledged that I had received and understood her last message. Wow, I
never
expected to sense her mind on that last series of null Jumps. I had Tapped her mind before of course, in the few days after I became a TG1. Her mind ‘flavor’ was obvious to me. She also told me that Bradley, Captain Greeves second son, is a TG2 now. He has
all
of the Koban mods, as do most of the TGs on the crew. Bradley told Maggi the cats were right. Most people do have strong odors. I think general hygiene will improve, particularly with boys, once they all can smell their own feet.” Her laugh was light and pleasant.

Laughing with her, Noreen told her to go down and place the cube in one of the single ships. She had been tempted to let one of the other TGs pilot it down, but decided that Karl could remotely operate it, and despite the lack of planetary defenses here, there was no need to risk anyone, however slight the danger was.

After leaving the shadow of the gas giant, the Avenger returned to a low orbit over Heavyside. Still stealthed, Noreen rotated the ship to place the internal docking station for the single ship facing away from the planet, and its ground based radars. She had Karl open the small outer hatch, making a brief hole in their stealth coverage. Karl remotely piloted the single ship out, having switched on its own stealth mode, and flew it towards the location of SOB-1 below.

The small craft would arrive in darkness, since even stealthed from radar, and set to mimic the sky or background for potential watchers on the ground, its motion might be noticed as a ripple passing in front of clouds or mountains in daylight. At night, a few added twinkles to the stars should not be noticed. There was a normally dry ravine near SOB-1, and the ship was lightly set down in that, less than a mile from the base security fence. It was a few hundred feet outside a perimeter road, which motorized patrols followed around the fence at random intervals.

Although the base conducted classified spec ops training, and conducted radical surgery to embed state of the art technological enhancements in their troopers, it was not a high security secret installation. The Krall could care less, and there was no human enemy from which to hide the technology.

One of the TGs would need to sneak off the base, enter the small ship and retrieve the data cube and a small tissue sample, and return. The tissue sample was taken from Macy, the Avenger’s Chief Engineer (the former Drive Rat was the only maintenance person aboard, actually, and an SG). She and Noreen were technically both just SGs, but Noreen had also long ago opted to receive the parallel Koban nervous system gene mod, in order to pass it on to her children. Macy had not done that, so her tissue was proof of concept that the clone DNA changes described on the cube were possible, and had been performed successfully. It did not reveal the Koban genes for an organic superconducting nervous system. That was a detail passed by Maggi, through her messages to Alyson, which might have slipped by Noreen. Help them, but don’t reveal all of the genome changes, not before you knew what sort of reception that would have.

The intent was to later slip into one of the areas declared off limits to trainees, and leave the cube and tissue sample inside Lisa Markel’s living quarters, with Noreen’s carefully composed note, untraceable to the three TGs in the camp.  Her work area was probably too secure for the TGs to penetrate without being detected, and it was certainly not private. There was no way of knowing if they might encounter her in an interview room again. Besides, to pass it to her anonymously, none of them could simply leave it on her temporary auditorium Living Plastic desk, bare but for a screen and keyboard, let alone walk up to her and say, “Here, keep this data confidential. It contains the death penalty level knowledge of human genetics you wanted, you’re welcome.”

In the days just before the single ship landed, scheduled to arrive on a Friday night, Jorl verified with a corporal that on his few free hours on Saturday night, he would be permitted to run the one-mile oval track around the obstacle course. It drew him an odd look, a trainee asking to run more, after three weeks of running and daily exercises to acclimate them to Heavyside. However, there was no objection, so long as he made the head count for bed check, and got up when rousted out Sunday morning.

He made his runs much slower than when they were timed on training runs, a jogging pace, which took eleven minutes per one-mile lap in the 1.41 g gravity. He did four slow laps in case anyone had bothered to watch him in the darkness. Heavyside had no moons, and due to the plane of the orbit and the orientation of this hemisphere for SOB-1, even the band of light from the galactic core was always below the horizon. With no one on the obstacle course, and its lights off, a dim glow from the barracks was all that spilled over to the far side of the track, and the twelve-foot razor wire toped fence it paralleled for over a quarter mile.

One of the random truck patrols had been by twelve minutes ago, so when Jorl turned onto the backside stretch for the fifth lap, he checked all around for possible observers. Lacking IR vision, he saw mostly dark of course. He’d kept his eyes trained away from the barracks lights to retain his dark adaptation. There was
some
starlight and a local zodiacal glow near where the sun had set. He started a fast run down the dirt track, setting his feet as softly as he could, to hide the increase in tempo, kicking up spurts of dust.

For his muscles, the leap, layout and twist as he passed three feet over the coiled razor wire was easy. He pivoted to land on his feet, still at a dead run, and headed for the darker slash that would be the line of the ravine.

Despite his reflexes, he was startled by a pair of damned mating rabbits he failed to see in the darkness. They separated with a squeal right at his feet, and ran off into the grass and low brush. He mentally apologized for the interruption. The only purpose he, Fred, and Yil had come up with for the camp’s fence he just jumped over was to keep the frigging rabbits outside. The all-volunteer trainees were not only allowed to quit at any time, they were loudly, and frequently “encouraged” by their taskmasters to do so, to give up and go home to mama.

At breakfast, Fred had heard a private that ran some of the “rabbit patrols,” as he called them, complain of the boredom of having to do that job. They drove the perimeter road without lights, using their IR senses to pick out the warmer dirt roadway from the grasses, and the frequently humping rabbits. In daylight, the trainees had seen road kill a number of times before scavengers removed the carcasses in the morning. IR vision or not, the bored drivers appeared to enjoy a deadly game with the sweet little plentiful bunnies. Jorl was also concerned with being spotted by them, since his high metabolism would have him glowing larger than a rabbit, from a considerable distance away.

On a Link two days earlier, Karl had detailed the designated landing area, where in the dark it should be possible to line up a barracks door light with an obstruction light on a radio tower, which would put him on a line with where Karl would park the single ship in the ravine.

Slipping down into the six-foot deep ravine, Jorl moved towards lining up the red radio tower light and the barracks door light. The skin of the single ship was set to project the dim background images on its opposite sides, so Jorl nearly ran into the rounded nose of the craft before he saw how the overhead stars were being projected downwards on its underside. For the benefit of the hypothetical observer, lying on the ground under the craft, he supposed with amusement.

He quickly went around the side to feel for the faint depressions of the keypad, and tapped the open code. The hatch shifted out a few inches, then rotated over the top to provide access. He didn’t touch the controls and simply picked up the note, cube, and sample vial, inside a small clear plastic bag lying on the operator’s seat. Slipping that inside his jumpsuit, he closed the hatch and started back down the ravine to the closest place to the fence, where he had jumped over. His internal time sense told him he could easily get back over the fence, and run ahead to where his slow jog would have placed him by now, where the track bends away from the fence.

He was on the verge of jumping to the rim of the ravine when he heard the sound of tires on dirt. A random patrol made the corner turn around the fence a quarter mile away, driving rather fast in the dark. It was faster than the patrol vehicles normally drove. It set Jorl’s mind working quickly. He didn’t know for certain, but assumed there must be a set of sensors they were unaware of, which had detected his movements outside the fence.

He continued along the ravine, keeping low so his IR glowing head would not be seen peeping over the rim. He scared another rabbit, which he quickly overtook in a crouched run and dive, and caught it by the hind legs. It squealed, so he placed a hand over its muzzle and squeezed. It tried to bite him. He had a half-baked plan to use the rabbit somehow, as a distraction. He heard the sliding tires on dirt, as the otherwise quiet electric vehicle came to a halt on the roadway. They definitely were looking for something or someone.

The ravine angled closer to the fence farther down, and the patrol road was squeezed closer to the fence because of that. He was nearly fifty feet from the point where he had entered the ravine, and from the blockage of starlight on the rim above there were low bushes there, so he risked lifting his face high enough to see through the base stems. He could make out one man walking along the fence, and the other seemed to be moving from their vehicle towards the ravine.

They were not using flashlights, so somehow they were employing their IR implants, apparently following his steps. It had been so recent that he supposed his prints were marginally warmer, or perhaps had disturbed a warmer layer to reveal cooler material below. Regardless, they were both now moving towards the ravine, where he had entered. He had a plan, and the rabbit wasn’t going to like it one bit. He even needed it to be able to squeal, so he couldn’t do this a merciful way. The ripper would chastise him if he shared this with Kim, the now grown cub he sometimes had hunted with at home. Perhaps the rabbit might survive, who knew?