Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire by Stephen W. Bennett Page B

fusion power, and cut their landlines. I’ll have a shuttle come pick up Kobalt.” Carson ended the link, but his remark made Mirikami think of something he’d overlooked.
    Selecting a wider Comtap circuit he said, “All dome infiltration teams; Kill the power in the main fusion bottles on the ground floors, they won’t be able to restart them after we leave. That’ll leave them in the dark, with only IR vision, and we see better than they do with ambient low light through the windows. It’ll also put any factory in darkness if they have one under them.” The Prada, originally nocturnal, had excellent night vision, and even limited portable lights would allow them to evacuate safely, while the power loss would shut down machines that might be used to produce weapons that didn’t require the quantum keypads, such as older style projectile weapons. The Krall had once used a wide range of more basic low technology weapons, just as humans still had when they first fought them.
    When the PU Army finally invaded K1, there was no need to make it tougher for them to retake the human colony world by leaving the Krall with the ability to produce more and better conventional weapons than they used today. The Krall surely had stores of the older low-tech weapons and ammunition here, and on their production and clan worlds. Without clanships, those clan world weapons couldn’t get to K1. The same held for Poldark and New Dublin for that matter, when the Denial chips arrived there.
    The lightening blitz on K1 had proven that getting in close to the enemy, spreading the Denial chips at close range in direct confrontation was how the Olt’kitapi had failed. They had been a pacifist species at heart, and despite high intelligence, didn’t have the thought processes of aggressive predators. Humans had them in spades, and Kobani would engage eagerly in the confrontations required, and they clearly had won that battle.
    Now the rest of Carson’s information came into play, and Mirikami could make use of it to their advantage. He contacted Carol Slobovic. “Carol, is that pilot you captured still alive?” He’d left its fate to her discretion.
    “You mean Phordot?” she asked, forgetting she’d not mentioned her captive’s name.
    “If that was the blue suit you captured, then yes.”
    “She’s the only surviving crew member, Sir, and that’s because I planned to take this clanship down to her clan’s dome and Tap her mind again.”
    “I have a better use for her and you. Telour was visiting a small finger clan’s dome on the southern-most continent, belonging to the Tandal clan. He escaped in a cluster of nine clanships that made it off K1. We haven’t landed at that dome yet, and I want you go there, as soon as I have someone capture a clanship without using a Denial chip. Your prisoner is about to be much cleverer than you thought.”
    “Huh? I mean, uh…, what Sir? She stammered. “She doesn’t seem any brighter than the average Krall to me.” She was clearly confused. Mirikami explained in a rapid exchange of thoughts and images.
    “Oh. OK, she surely thinks she’s that smart.” She agreed. “Let me know when to deliver her.”
    “I need to set the stage first. I’ll get back to you.” Then Mirikami went hunting for another captive Krall.
    “Dillon, do you or any of your teams have a live blue suit?”
    “Hi Tet. I have a brown suit K’Tal or two, from two Dorbo domes.”
    “Thanks, but if I can find higher rank I’ll leave those K’Tal’s to your discretion.”
    “Carson called me about Kobalt, and mentioned he had an aide of Telour’s.”
    “I know about that one and I have a different use for him later today, besides, his back is broken. You might ask Carson to see if he knows where Telour may have gone when he escaped. I think I know, but his aide might know which star system. We’ll need a guide.”
    “Aha. Do I detect some lip pulling strategy being developed?”
    “Several plans