Koban: The Mark of Koban by Stephen W Bennett Page A

eager
residents ready to unhook the provisions.
    Looking at the dome, it struck Mirikami by how
uniform the Krall were in all of their structures. On reflection, there was
sameness in Clanships, shuttlecraft, trucks, weapons, in fact everything he had
seen of their artless society.
    The closest he had encountered to literature
for the Krall were histories of their conquests, instruction and operating manuals,
and inventories of equipment and supplies. The histories themselves might
contain a bit of art, since he’d observed a tendency to interlace facts with exaggerated
details to enhance a warrior’s accomplishments, or a clan’s greatness.
    Krall technology all seemed manufactured from
standard designs, apparently produced by slave labor unless there was a class
of Krall humans had not seen.
    These unfeeling creatures didn’t name the
places they lived or their ships, since they were merely objects to use.
Similarly, a human had no personalized name for a hairbrush, shoe, or a Tri-Vid
hologram system. The Krall used words that described these things, that told where
they were located, or which clan used them, but didn’t assign names to them.
Conversely, the Krall did use the human names for things and places when they
spoke Standard.
    The dome for Hub City was simply a scaled up
version of the one at Prime City. It had the same fusion plants and furnishings
(few of the latter), wheeled and tracked ground transports, and a ringed outer
wall and electric fence. The outer compound here extended out to a roughly
forty-two mile radius, except for a cut-out where it met the sea. This provided
almost three times the original walled area that Prime City had.
    The Krall had not blasted their gates open here
when they left, or destroyed their fusion plants as they had at the human
compound. To make the dome habitable, they had needed only one of the human
fusion bottles to provide the startup current to reinitiate fusion reactions in
the three Krall power systems.
    Clearly, the Krall never expected humans to
make it away from the opened up and exposed compound where they left them to
die. In their version of efficiency, they saw no reason to destroy another
compound that might be useful to them at some unspecified future date.
    “Tet, look at her,” Noreen indicated through
the cockpit windscreen as Jorl’sn set them down on the tarmac. “Cahill is
waiting at that tiny grandstand for you, wearing blue robes, of all things. You
should have worn your Smart Fabric formal uniform.”
    Before Mirikami could respond, Maggi shot that
notion down. “No, your casual civilian attire is fine, Tet. She has dressed
herself almost exactly like a Presidential appointed Governor of a New Colony
world. That little dais deliberately has room only for her and the three
cronies with her. They are people she appointed to ceremonial positions,
present just to kiss her ass and make her look important. Expect a handpicked spontaneous crowd to be ready to trot out to listen to her. ” Maggi snorted her distain.
    “Tetsuo Mirikami,” she spoke to him firmly, “you will for once, accept my political advice. I strongly urge you to
wave politely to her as you walk directly past her and into the dome. March straight
to their Great Auditorium, climb up on one of the tables that you shipped here,
and address the people that you came to feed. You are not her uniformed delivery
boy answering her summons, to stand obediently at her feet.”
    Now Mirikami knew why the shrewd little woman
had talked him out of wearing a utility uniform today when he insisted on
making the trip.
    “I assure you, for our future good relations
with these people, you must make them identify you, and Prime City, as their actual benefactors, and not Cahill the politician. She’ll look ridiculous as she
gathers her flowing robes and scurries down to hurry after you with her
groupies in trail. When she arrives, you’ll be standing on a table already
speaking to the people, and