Koban: Rise of the Kobani (98 page)

“What sort of bomb can do that?”

“Some of the freed Torki, grateful to us after the new arrivals had the additional library in their Olts open up to them, made a concerted effort to gather bits and pieces of information picked up simply by being around bragging Krall for thousands of years of their slave history.”

“And? Do I have to cajole it out of you?”

“Maybe. Depends of what the word means. It isn’t Standard.”

“I think it was originally French, but how I apply it depends on how nice you are to me when we meet. I want to go with you if you are going to stay gone a month at a time.”

“Fine, kajule the hell out of me then.”

With a sigh, “It’s cajole. Tell me about the bomb.”

“It doesn’t sound like a bomb as such. Not like one that you would drop on a planet. The Olt’kitapi had mastered a branch of applied quantum physics, and we already know they had remarkable control of small-scale quantum features.  When applied over a broad area, like ship hulls or our suits, it can control light reflection and propagation. The Torki know some of this, at least how to make and use it, if not how it’s done.

“I know that, but.,.” He cut her off.

“I’m not finished yet. The Torki believe they had technology that could adjust quantum states of matter at the level of fundamental particles, such as quarks or electrons. There isn’t a tremendous physical difference between matter and antimatter, the opposite electrical charges for example for the same family of particles, and they speculate that the Olt’kitapi found a way to create antimatter in a short time.”

“That sounds like you’re saying it was an antimatter bomb that was dropped, which was speculated about when we first heard how the Krall’s parent world exploded.”

“I don’t think so, Maggi. From the Krall histories, the planet seems to have ruptured from the inside. Aside from the problem of how the Olt’kitapi would contain or handle antimatter to make and deliver a bomb, if it struck the surface much of the initial explosive force would blow the antimatter back into space, reducing the effect and mostly destroying one hemisphere. Certainly catastrophic enough, but not matching the description. The entire planet fragmented and made the star system too filled with debris to enter. The antimatter would appear to have been delivered to the core.”

“Well, it isn’t like we can make one, or defend from one either. We have to stop them from using the weapon in the first place. What about the prison star system for the soft Krall? Any clues?”

“Not so far. It apparently isn’t kept as secret as the location of the ships, because Parkoda was in charge there, as a low-level resentful prison warden. We don’t have any idea what the connection is between the weapon and the original model Krall. Only that they are essential to its use. Parkoda found one final way to cheat us of using what he knew against his species, by killing himself. I was overconfident that he was personally no threat to Koban.”

“If they were going to use the weapon, wouldn’t they do like they did to Rhama, hit Human Space right after the fleet returned from K1 the second time?”

“I just don’t know. The high and mighty Tor Gatrol Kanpardi is moving to do what I speculated would happen. They seem to be grouping for a big assault on Poldark. Henry is calling for more forces from the PU, and Navy help. I don’t know how quickly they can get significant reinforcements there.

“Hey, you keep pulling doom and gloom out of me. What is your cheerful news?”

“The new Raspani refugees, particularly those Noreen was able to rescue from their former colony world at CS2, are significantly less interbred than those we found at Hub City, or that you rescued.”

“That means what? They are smarter?”

“They are talking to the Torki.”

“Really? What language?”

“Torki.”

“How would the Raspani have learned that? The Torki were still not a spacefaring race when the Krall beat the Raspani. And it’s impossible for us to speak it, how do they?”

“It’s sort of a pidgin version of Torki, because they can’t make some of the sounds.”

“OK, that seems promising for them. What do they talk about, the flavor of grass, or where they are?”

“No. They want the Torki to build them an Olt.”

“What? How do they know about those? Did the Torki show them or they heard them talk about them?”

“The Raspani say the Olt’kitapi made devices for the Torki, for the Raspani, and for the Krall. Coldar says that what they called the devices in Torki, in the broken speech sounds they make, is nothing like the word ‘Olt,’ which the Torki say to humans and Prada in Low Krall, or us in Standard.  They use sounds that seem like they are trying to say
mind makers
in native Torki. Coldar confirmed that by repeating the phrase
mind maker
in clear Torki, the new Raspani all became excited. Interbred Raspani herds paid no attention to the phrase. The Krall truly appears to have bred intelligence out of those poor creatures.”

“Wow. Does Coldar or any of his people know how to make the device they want?”

“No, but the Torki that Noreen rescued from the same planet say their Olts record that they encountered Raspani thousands of years ago when the Torki were first brought there by the Krall. This was before there was a single Raspani herd restricted to a small enclosure, when the planet was still healthy. The Krall used to go on hunts, with bare talons, to kill and eat the poor creatures.”

“I thought you were going to cheer me up. Hell, that’s almost as depressing as what I told you.”

“How about the fact that the Raspani gave those Torki a gift back then, and asked that it be kept safe. The Torki were told it was the skull of a great Raspani leader, and he contained the seeds for many of their dead to return.”

“Sounds a bit like the legend the Raspani on Koban sometimes described, of their people returning from the stars to save them. This lot has a variation of the same sad story.”

“I agreed, initially, until one of the Torki, from CS2, produced a crystal case that holds a round skull of a Raspani. It’s encased in this solid looking cube, and he brought it along with some of their more portable tools. He was sort of the supply master, or tool keeper. He inherited the task from a Torki before him, and one before, and so on. The case was traditionally passed along with the tools to whichever new Torki got the job.”

“Sounds like the story had a touch of truth to the myth.”

In a teasing voice, which the older unmodified Maggi had never been heard to use, said enticingly, “Don’t ‘cha wanna hear what I found?”

“You threatened me once to stop dropping one shoe at a time, because it drove people nuts. Tell me, you little minx!”

She tossed her blonde hair with a teasing look and flutter of eyelashes. “I did a scan, and discovered a device attached to the top inside of the skull. In microscopic detail, it appears something like the insides of a broken Olt that Coldar allowed me to scan. It may be the Raspani equivalent to the Olt. Coldar says if the circuitry isn’t too different, he may be able to examine what it contains, and either try to make another one, or copy its data to the equivalent solid state matrix of an Olt. In short, we might be able to recover some of what the Raspani once knew. They also were able to use some of the quantum physics that the Olt’kitapi taught them. They made the disintegrator, or boring tool, for example.”

“Does Coldar think one of those devices can be inserted in a Raspani skull, to restore their minds to full sentience?”

She shrugged. “He doesn’t know. The Olt’kitapi designed the things specifically for each species, and the healed over slit in the old skull suggests where it was inserted. However, that isn’t how the Torki obtain theirs. They eat them when adolescent, and the device migrates to where it belongs.”

“The Torki were discovered by the Olt’kitapi well after the Raspani, so they may have improved their methods by then. If it really is a plug-in brain enhancer gadget, and the Torki can make them, we may seek a Raspani volunteer.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem. They are really pressing the Torki, and they haven’t even seen this skull yet.”

Mirikami pulled at his lip.

Maggi saw him. “Uh, Oh. What are you thinking, you clever devil?”

“Have the Prada heard the Raspani try to talk to the Torki?”

“No. Not all of the new comers are the least cordial to us Kobani. Even Wister and Nawella have had to curtail their interaction with us, to preserve their influence as elders. The workers know it was us that invisibly fought and killed Rulers. The elders are saying this is similar to interclan warfare, but that falls flat when we obviously are not Krall clan members. How does that bear on the thought you just had?”

“What species do the Prada know is older than the Torki, themselves, and the Krall?”

That made it obvious. “The Raspani are second in their eyes only to the Olt’kitapi as the elder species, but they are no longer intelligent. If the Raspani recover sentience, the Prada have a new elder race to admire and follow besides the Krall. That could cause other fresh problems, but those can’t be as bad as the Prada wanting the Rulers to show up here to set things straight.”

“My love, kindly delay your departure from Haven to consult with Coldar and his other engineers. As much as I want to be cajoled by you, we need to push this project along.”

****

Coldar passed the black-colored, flat rectangle to Aldry with a small manipulator claw. “We have two other device designs, either of which may have a better neural interface to their brains. Only they are empty of data. I don't know if we could transfer the data if the original fails to connect to the brain automatically.”

Aldry accepted the solid-state quantum storage device, disinfected it in a solution, and turned to the eager Raspani volunteer. At least it seemed eager, and he had entered the Mark of Koban willingly, riding the lift to the infirmary. It had followed several Torki that had been talking to it, and doing their best to understand what it was trying to tell them.

Mirikami found it odd that it understood low Krall, but made no effort to speak words that would surely be easier to enunciate than the grating shell scrapes and clicks of the Torki. It also spoke a version of Raspani that differed from that of the herd on Koban.

Jakob had a slim vocabulary of what those much-abused creatures could say, and had identified possible words that sounded as if they were natural for the lips, tongue, pallet, and nasal whistles and snorts of a Raspani. The creature, recently rescued from their old and former colony, did not appear to understand any of the supposed Raspani words Jakob spoke. Probably the long period of isolation and use of a polyglot mixture of words and interbreeding had mangled the Koban herd’s small vocabulary too far from the original meanings.

It was also possible the Raspani still had multiple languages when they went to the stars. Humanity had been like that, until the Collapse after the Gene War made reconstruction easier with a common evolving language, which became known as Standard.

Aldry had relied on extensive years of research on the Raspani at Hub City, and the medical procedures performed that revealed what worked as painkillers and antiseptics for a physiology completely alien from human or Earth animals. DNA decoding helped a great deal to understand how their bodies worked, but some trial and error had been involved.

The incision and skull slot were made to match that on the skull the Torki had saved for so long. That location proved quite rational when it was noticed on brain scans of the newest Raspani arrivals that, at the top of their brains were a concentration of neuron-like structures, which were part of higher thought processes for them. That area had not been as active an area for the former Koban Raspani.

Much as the Olt did for the Torki, the Raspani device had biomechanical structures that were expected to infiltrate the neural connections, and establish their own contacts. The amount of data storage, from what Coldar explained, was staggering to the human technicians and scientists. The entire vast human library of an AI like Jakob’s would fit in this device a million times over. Jakob’s memory unit was ten times physically larger than these compact items.

Looking to see that Rafe had the skull imager active, and the brain scanner ready, she took a deep breath behind her face shield, and gently inserted the device, exactly as she’d practiced with a dummy sample, on a mockup of a Raspani head.

The imager showed the lower edge of the device was slightly above the surface of the brain, and the translucent sheath that surrounded the brain. Then she shoved the top end down slowly until it was below the top of the thickened skull by a quarter of an inch. Soon, that opening would have a sliver of bone placed over it, and the skin edges glued together.

First, however, they watched for the movement the Torki said should happen, as filaments extruded from the bottom edge of the device and sought the appropriate neural junctions in a Raspani brain. The Torki said it happened inside them, once the Olt migrated to the correct location, and in only a few seconds. The half-sentient young Torki recipient usually responded almost immediately, and had access to data that it didn’t quite know how to process or understand. At least for a day or two.