Koban Universe 2: Have Genes, Will Travel

by Stephen W Bennett

  The first scraps of driftwood he reached were the larger and heavier pieces, the smaller of which might be used as clubs. Particularly a piece that looked to be an eight-foot split rail from a homemade fence, washed here from some farm. He could break it in half to make a club easier to swing. He glanced back at the three wolves still in the creek, and the bolder lead animal was nearing this side of the stream, but had drifted back with the water flow as it crossed.

  Carrying the rail, he moved upslope to the lines of lighter branches and scraps, laid parallel to the last high water mark of the most recent flash flood. Mindful of possible venomous reptile analogues on Chisholm, he used the rail to hurriedly poke at and spread out the debris, seeking anything that he could use. The tree line was still nearly a hundred feet away, so he didn’t have time to be very selective.

  He picked up a long, slender, slightly bowed tree branch that he thought he might sharpen on one end, to use to fend off the wolves from the safety of a tree. It was older wood than he thought, and it broke at the rotted center of the bow.

  He suddenly heard a high-pitched quavering cry up the slope, from the other side of the grove of trees where he was headed. It was promptly repeated from behind him by two of his pursuers, and then echoed multiple times again from somewhere beyond the grove. The rest of the pack would arrive soon. He had to get up into a tree before they caught him in the open, and he started running for the grove, dragging one end of the fence rail, intending to break it in half on the way.

  The rail butt passed through some drifts of smaller debris, as the nearest range wolf yapped in a deeper more eager voice. Ethan looked back to see the animal had reached the bank, and it was using its long legs to accelerate after the pack’s prey, to try to catch it before it gained the slightly greater security of the trees. Ethan saw that, in his present state of weakness, it would beat him by several body lengths to the closest tree. He paused to try to snap the four-inch thick rail in half, to have a swingable club to use.

  As he held one end of the rail up, he stamped with a bare foot at the center, breaking it where he wanted. The piece on the ground looked to have a better end for a two handed grip so he bent to pick it up. As he did, he spotted something slender and artificial in among the scraps of twigs and branches he’d just disturbed, where the rail end had scraped the ground.

  He was letting the wolf get closer by pausing to look, but he knew he’d have to face it in the open anyway. If he could hurt it with the club, he would still beat the two stragglers.

  The object he saw was long and dirty white, partly covered in dried mud. He quickly used his new club to probe under and lift the dirty white object. It was a long, an inch thick and rounded shaped plastic rod, of roughly his body length. He eagerly grabbed and lifted it clear of the mud and sticks. It appeared to be an old tool handle, made of extruded Smart Plastic, probably a cheap rake or pitchfork handle. It was tapered at the end where it had once fit into the attachment cup of the missing metal part the old tool.

  He instantly decided on a weapon trade. Unlike real wood, it would retain its strength for decades. It wasn’t sharp, but he had found a better weapon for use as a prod, when up in the trees, assuming he got there.

  He threw the other discarded rail piece at the wolf, as he turned to run for the trees, keeping the better club and the tool handle. The wolf slowed and turned aside as it flinched away from the missile, but quickly resumed its chase, having lost only a couple of steps in the pursuit. Its fellow scouts lent their yaps behind him, as they too reached the shore.

  Ethan, as he ran, pressed down on the stiff plastic tool handle at its center, using his club, dragging the tapered end along the gritty and rocky soil, leaving a shallow rut. He intended to improve on that taper, to forge a sharper point as he ran.

  Closer than before, fresh high trills came through the trees, informing him that the main pack was closing in on the sounds of their yapping pack mates. He had fifty feet to run to reach the nearest tree, and the wolf behind him would overtake him in half that distance. He pulled up his tool handle for inspection while on the run. It would have to do.

  When he heard the wolf close behind him, he flung the club back over his right shoulder at the sound, not expecting to hit the animal, but to distract it a moment. He whirled around to his left, with the pointed end of the tool already pointed behind, and slid to a stop, planting the butt of the pole against the ground. The turning motion was almost his undoing, when vertigo caused his vision to swirl, and he couldn’t alter the position of the tool’s tip for its best position.

  The animal had dodged to its left away from the club, as Ethan had hoped, the same direction Ethan had turned, planting the end of his improvised pike at a forty-degree angle in the dirt, his foot holding it down firm. The range wolf, its eyes just returning to its target after avoiding the thrown club, saw its prey was stopped and crouching, and it lunged ahead to the attack, intending bowl it over with its momentum. After that, it would instinctively block this prey from reaching the trees until his pack mates arrived, to take it down. It didn’t see the nearly end on view of the tool handle, pointed directly at its face. Ethan had hoped to aim the tip at the center of mass to hit the chest, but the pointed end went into the open jaws, and out the right side of the back of the animal’s mouth, as it slid three feet down the length of the impaling shaft.

  The yapping changed to frantic cries of pain that sounded much like those of an injured terrestrial dog. Ethan lifted the butt of the rod, slung the wolf downward as he withdrew the shaft, and made a quick stab at the stomach. The scrabbling beast rolled enough that vision impaired Ethan couldn’t correct quickly enough, and he struck the ribcage. That gouged the skin under the still water matted fur, which was enough to force the injured animal to back away, still yipping in pain, but not mortally wounded.

  Ethan didn’t wait to see if it would recover enough to resume its attack. He whirled to continue his race to the trees, which caused a repeat of the sense of vertigo from his head motion. He used the butt of his weapon to keep himself from falling to the side like a drunken cowboy, and staggered ahead, recovering his balance as he neared the first tree. A glance back proved he was well ahead of the second two wolves, and the former leader had apparently lost interest for now, as it pawed at the wound to its mouth.

  The first tree had a shorter trunk than the next several did, and grew out of the ground at an angle, making it easy for him to climb, but equally so for the wolves. He started inward towards the taller and straighter trees, trunks separated by roughly twenty or thirty feet each. Their overhead branches overlapped, forming a shady canopy. He selected a taller tree he wanted, and started towards it when movement to his right changed his mind. The lead elements of the pack had entered the grove, and had come silently.

  Ethan looked up at the tree he was currently under, and made the only decision he had left. With his poor equilibrium, blurred vision, and general weakness, he couldn’t risk another slip in trying to reach his target tree or they’d be on him. He still had high gravity adaptation and Kobani muscles, by crouching slightly, he sprang straight up, using the shaft of his pike to help push him up, and he was able to loop his left arm over a branch fifteen feet overhead.

  He swung by one arm as his sight turned to tunnel vision. He knew he was close to passing out from that last exertion. He needed his right hand free to climb up on the limb, but didn’t want to give up his only weapon. The yapping of hot pursuit had resumed, as the pack watched their prey try to escape to the trees. His feet and legs were certainly within leaping jaw snapping reach, so he took a chance with his pike. It became a different type weapon, and as he raised his right arm to grasp the limb, he threw the spear up and into the tangle of branches and leaves. He grasped the limb with his right hand, just as the two scouts neared his tree. He used his arms to pull himself higher, and his kicking swinging legs were tempting targets.

  One wolf leaped on the run, too soon, and passed inches below a waving right f
oot. The other waited another bound closer before leaping more vertical. It closed its jaws on the left ankle, and hung from it as Ethan screamed out in pain. He kicked down with his right foot, catching the wolf on its tender nose, and it slipped down, teeth tearing at flesh as it went. Another kick to the face, and a shake of his left leg, and the wolf dropped free.

  His vision darkening more, Ethan swung his right leg up and over the branch on the side away from the tree trunk, aided by how much it sagged from the weight of his dense body. He pulled up with his arms and rolled his torso onto the center of the four-inch thick limb, his legs and feet spread wide to use the support of the smaller branches farther from the trunk. He laid there, eyes closed as he calmed his heart rate and lowered his blood pressure.

  He was aware of the wild yapping below him but didn’t open his eyes for fear of triggering vertigo again. The sound of clawed feet, scrapping on the bark of the tree trunk forced him to open his eyes.

  One member of the pack was half way up the trunk, taking advantage of a forty-degree bend half way up, to gain enough purchase to pause there and rest, while it looked at him, and then at how it might climb higher. If it reached the end of Ethan’s limb, it would surely try to move out towards him, since he was only a body length from the trunk. The extra weight out that far would probably snap the branch. Particularly if the beast took the risk of leaping towards him, or had the balance to try to walk out on the limb.

  Glancing down, there were nine wolves under him, including one with a bleeding jaw. They yapped some, but with a predator’s instinct, knew they had their prey trapped, and would attempt to get him out of the tree, or simply wait him out. They had water, he didn’t, and some of them could hunt elsewhere for food, while others kept this meal pinned up in a tree for later.

  Ethan saw something drip down from his perch, and noted it probably came from near the hair at the back of his head. He was still bleeding and a wolf sniffed and licked at that drop, and at other drops Ethan had not seen fall. Two of the pack were sniffing and licking at the ground below his left foot, which must also be bleeding. These signs assured the pack that their prey was injured and weakening. They would try to get to him, or wait for him to weaken and fall if they couldn’t.

  Ethan began to inch his way towards the tree trunk, needing to get there before the climbing wolf reached that high. He needed to climb higher into the tree, where he could brace himself and not fall out of the tree if he passed out, and to make it harder for them to climb high enough to reach him. He couldn’t see through the leaves above him very well, but hoped he could find his weapon. It wasn’t on the ground, so his toss of it up into the tree hadn’t been a wasted effort.

  He won his inchworm race to reach the tree trunk before the wolf could work its way up to his limb, although it had a front leg over a smaller limb a few feet below. Another wolf was now climbing the trunk, following the first example. The long legs and their claws helped them do this, and their very attempt was proof enough to Ethan that they had done this before for other prey. A human might represent a different sort of meal for them, but meat was meat.

  He carefully stepped from limb to limb at the trunk, to gain vertical distance, but that ran out quickly, because these trees didn’t grow tall, they spread. From his vantage point, he spotted his erstwhile tool handle, pike, or spear, if he could get to it. He saw it slightly below him and farther out from the trunk, lodged in some tangled branches.

  He climbed back down five feet, and worked his way out on the limb towards the rod, but was worried it might jostle loose and slide free to the ground. The first wolf into the tree was using its jaws as well as its legs, and was doing a credible impersonation of a clumsy monkey. It would be level with the base of Ethan’s limb by the time he retrieved his weapon. The second wolf was close behind, obviously learning from its predecessor’s example, and a third wolf was in the lowest limbs.

  Damn, they should be called monkey wolves, he thought sourly.

  When he reached for the plastic rod, it was the pointed end he grasped, which allowed him to see how blunt the tip was. He pulled it closer, and used the only tools he had with him to try to improve the sharpness of that tip. His teeth.

  He bit and tugged at the edges and tip of the bloodied and muddied pointer end, stripping away slender strips of plastic fibers, one at a time, to elongate and narrow the point. He would have been content to sit in the crotch of his large limb and do that for longer, but the stronger branch also provided a wider and more stable place for the wolf to stand when it reached the base of the limb, by the trunk. The easy balance it displayed, with all four paws placed on the opposing sides, suggested that it was comfortable there, and it took a steady step towards him. Growling now, the higher pitched yapping of pursuit was finished.

  When Ethan saw it lower its rear haunches several inches, he knew it was about to launch itself at him. He still held the handle far back along the shaft with his right hand, while his left hand steadied the tip for his teeth, in order to strip small strands from the now more slender and pointed tip. It was still far from sharp, but improved. The instant Ethan sensed the animal starting its attack he brought his right hand forward fast and hard, gripping the shaft tightly. His left hand, using his thumb and index finder as guides, helped to keep the shaft aligned with his target, to counteract his double vision problem.

  The wolf’s momentum and the strength of his arm thrust worked better than his use of the tool as a blunt pike earlier. He struck the wolf on the left side of its chest, avoiding the bone he saw at the center, aiming where he expected the wolf’s heart to be. The shaft penetrated deeply on the left, but missed the animal’s right side oriented heart, and entered a different organ. It would be a fatal injury, simply not an instant death.

  The wolf uttered a loud yipe, biting at the shaft protruding from it chest as it was pushed to its right by the force of the blow, and two of its feet on that side of the limb slipped off the branch. The wolf fell sideways, pulling the shaft with it, its jaws gripping tight at the offending object. Ethan again briefly experienced tunnel vision, as the effort lowered the blood pressure feeding his high metabolism brain. He let the tool handle slip from his grip, as he collapsed back on the limb, where the wider part of a fork supported his shoulders, his legs dangling down on each side of the thick branch. Before fading to black, he could hear the wolf falling down through the tree, yowling as it hit branches and jarring the shaft, which had penetrated a lung.

  Ethan wasn’t conscious to hear the thud as the animal hit the ground or its whimpers for a time before it drowned in the blood filling its lungs. The other two wolves in the tree backed away from him, not going all the way down, but prepared to wait for their intended victim to grow weaker. Humans were never to be trusted, and this one had proven to be armed and dangerous. Not that he was armed any more, which they didn’t know, and they fortunately didn’t know he was unconscious. They would wait.

  The soft whistle of air from the other side of the stream didn’t penetrate into the grove, and the view of the far bank was largely blocked by the trees, and by brush growing on the upper edge of the drop off. After that faint sound vanished, there was only the sound of the breeze rustling the leaves in the trees. The breeze didn’t carry a new and strange scent to the wolves, so the pack sniffed at their dead pack mate instead. So long as they had potential prey at hand, and they weren’t starving, they wouldn’t consider eating one of their own, even if already dead.

  ****

  The first clue the pack had that their patience wasn’t going to be rewarded was a deadly one, and it came upwind directly at them, a whirlwind of teal, hurtling through the trees, making no sound until it was on them.

  Kit had circled around to approach from downwind after Bandit quietly landed the shuttle on the other side of the creek, close to where she had though Ethan would be, based on mental images from Maddi.

  Bandit promptly called her attention to an IR signature of a human in a tree, with a clust
er of animals below it, and two of them in the tree. A cooling carcass on the ground told Kit why the pack was waiting, and why the two range wolves in the tree had stayed back. Ethan was alive, and had fought them.

  She knew she needed to approach them fast, but still in a stealthy fashion, because these alien predators would act exactly as a ripper would in the same circumstance. If prey was about to be stolen by a more powerful predator, or a larger rival pack, they would rush to finish their attack and try to drag the kill away with them. She wasn’t going to give them that chance. She came in silent, until only one tree trunk shielded her from them, and she saw two heads turn her direction. Her speeding bulky body, even low to the ground, was too large for the last tree to hide her, and now she had to get all of their attention fixed on her, including the two closest to Ethan.

  She unleashed the roar of her life, one that her larger ripper brother, Kobalt, would have admired. It rasped her throat with its intensity, and because these animals had never met her kind before, they were startled but their attention was locked entirely on this unknown threat, with no intention of yielding ground.

  The proper response would have been to flee for their lives, but as one of the two apex predators on this continent, when in a pack, they stood their ground. They were about to meet the new visiting apex predator, who was magnitudes above any other animal on Chisholm.

  Kit ignored those on the ground and leaped directly into the lower limbs of the target tree, and as she landed, she raked her extended claws along the length of the body of the lowest wolf, flinging it through the branches, breaking its back before it ever made a sound.