Free Koban: Rise of the Kobani by Stephen W. Bennett Page A

rules. They spread all over the place after they first appeared, a couple of hundred years ago I think. That one could have been natural, or a spy bot.”
    Tet shook his head, and chuckled. “I might have felt stupid, but I wish I could have gone to it and asked it ‘to take me to your leader,” or something.”
    He turned again to leave, remarking, “It was probably a real lizard.”
     
     
    ****
     
     
    The corporal said, “Colonel, I should have a group photo and head count for you in a moment. The gecko-bot was waiting for them on the ceiling when the door opened and the lights came on. I had it programed to return to the upload socket as soon as it had an image. It’ll also send any audio it picked up. The sound may need some clean up, due to the echoes, but Max will have that ready with the images in a few seconds, Sir.”
    Trakenburg acknowledged his young bot handler’s efficiency. “Good work, son. Route that to me in my office, my eyes only, as soon as the AI has it processed.”
    He whirled around and stalked into his secure office, closed the door and activated the privacy system, and tapped the large wall screen alive. “Max, do you have an ID on any of the people that entered SOB-23?”
    “Yes Sir, one of them appears to be a Sergeant Garland Reynolds, of the PU Army, native to Poldark. I have no match for the thumbprint, retinal scan, or facial image of the man that opened the door to the second parking garage. I am running facial matches for all of the people that I have good features for comparison. Most of them turned to look directly at the gecko-bot when one of them saw it moving. The only match is again apparently for that Sergeant Garland Reynolds.”
    “Max, you said apparent twice for him. Why would you be so unsure? He is or he isn’t that man. Thumb print, retina, and face match. How about physical size and body shape?”
    “Sir, all of those match except for two significant discrepancies. Sergeant Reynolds was reported dead over six months ago, and his lower left arm was found still within a piece of his armor in his destroyed halftrack. This man is obviously alive and has a left arm.”
    “Humph. You have no imagination, Max.” A very literal statement when made to an AI. “Arms can be regrown, and deaths misreported or faked. I think you should consider that the man we see in this recording,” he looked at the recorded images moving on his high definition wall screen, “to actually be Sergeant Reynolds, alive and well. Now we need to figure out who his companions are, and what they are up to in that old base.”
    He noticed there were four older men in the group, and they seemed to be leading the clearly younger people behind them. Those young people looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. Although, age was always difficult to discern between middle twenties to early fifties, at least on anyone in this era’s gene pool. The youthfulness of those young men and women was obvious. Aside from that mystery, where did they come from? How did they know about that base? What were they doing checking out the tunnels that led towards Novi Sad?
    “Max, what do you have in archives for Sergeant Reynolds? Before his purported death.”
    “Sir, he operated in a guerilla warfare unit, and was briefly allowed use of SOB-23, as you were moving your operatives out, just ahead of the Krall advance. His last reported contact was less than thirty minutes after leading an ambush of sixteen Dragons, which he and his men drew into that same canyon. A later analysis of the unusually sharp Krall response, which followed that attack, determined that it coincided with the apparent loss of the Krall invasion commander in some sort of combat action.
    “It would be speculation, Sir, but perhaps Sergeant Reynolds’s unit was responsible for that Krall commander’s death, and the sergeant’s own injury and disappearance shortly after may be related. He was severely wounded if he lost his arm,