Koban Universe 1

by Stephen W Bennett

  The teal colored grass, cropped short by the gazelles that had been held in the half kilometer per side square feeder lot around the house, was only the first step to the real freedom they craved. They wanted to reach the larger electrified outer compound’s fence, where the main herd grazed in safety until the yearlings were separated and brought into the feeder lot.

  On this side of the house, they could see the trees of a forest grove only a kilometer distant, on the outside of the heavy duty electrified fence, as well as the lighter and safer perimeter fence, which surrounded the entire property. Ryan looked to where the gravel drive passed through the “air lock” gate, as his parents called it for some reason. It was a double set of gates, which was also electrified, and it allowed a vehicle to pass through the fence, one gate at a time, and still block any large animal pests or predators from entering to threaten the herd or household.

  There was a reassuring column of brown in the distance, caused by the two trucks as they stirred up dust on the unpaved dirt trail, headed towards Hub City and its slaughterhouse.

  Kam nudged his arm, and made contact with his frill. Raised entirely by humans, he was capable of more than sending simple images and emotions, even if nature had denied rippers the power of human speech. His mental words matched the image he sent of a quivering blue and brown, long eared fur-ball, with frightened eyes. “Will you stand here frozen like a fear struck marsh rabbit, or will we go to the hunt?”

  The amused tone of his thought was only half in jest. His new brother was reluctant to disobey his father, but he had “sworn” to complete a hunt today with Kam.

  Ryan flashed back, in silent irritation. “I made sure the trucks were still moving away. Last month one had something break and they came back after a short time.”

  He lifted the coiled rope from his shoulder, which had two loops already tied in the ends. The small loop he slipped over a bracket that held the bottom of the vent in place against storm winds, thus forming their top anchor point. The larger loop, intended to fit around Kam’s upper shoulders and chest, was slipped over the cat’s head as it stepped lithely through. Ryan cinched it up under the cat’s front legs and chest front, before the cat turned around and stepped up on the four-inch ledge of the opening, balancing easily.

  Ryan slipped on a spare set of his mom’s work gloves, which he took from his pack on the floor, braced himself with his feet against the base of the wall, with the loose rope coil at his feet. Now he was prepared to support the weight of the cat as he lowered him to the ground.

  “Don’t go out too fast,” he warned. “Use your front claws to hold on until I start letting you down.”

  He was easily able to lift the hundred-pound cub with his arms wrapped around him, but the rope was only a half-inch thick. It could slip through his hands if he wasn’t careful. Kam eased his rear quarters over the edge, his front claws extended to grip the wood frame.

  Fingertips of a hand in contact with the ripper’s paw, Ryan sent, “OK. I have you, ease down the side.”

  They had decided to avoid any oral conversation by Ryan or any growls from Kam until well away from the house. Sam had mike pickups inside for conversations, and the AI might hear them through the walls.

  Ryan had a firm grip and it was no problem to lower Kam the twenty feet to the ground. Although he did realize that he should have placed knots in the slender rope for a better grip if there had been slippage. He pulled the rope up when Kam wriggled free, and lowered his pack, where Kam’s jaws and paws worked it out of the loose loop. Then Ryan went down the rope easily, just as he did on the thicker climbing rope in the gym at school. That practice is what had given him this idea. Planning to return in a few hours, he left the rope hanging. Doc wasn’t going outside, even inside the larger fenced compound. The gazelles were skittish of people, but their horns were also dangerous to a person as slow as the old man was.

  They stayed in the “cone” of visual protection from the front and rear video cameras, as they walked straight away from the end of the house. This blind spot was another aspect that had made this route and his plan a good one. He could have aimed either camera farther away from covering this direction while he was out of the house, but if his mom looked at the recordings to check for predators inside the outer fence, she would notice the difference in that coverage.

  He was pleased to have thought up this up on his own, although Kam’s urgings pushed him to put it into action. He made sure he bragged a bit to Kam, as he stroked the frill on the cat’s neck. For once his new best friend didn’t have anything snarky to think back at him.

  Instead, Kam was eagerly sniffing the air, and visually scanning the approaching fence line near the edge of the woods. Ryan had the same ripper genes for detecting the smell of prey, but a human’s much smaller nose reduced the number of receptors, so Kam would be the better tracker.

  They lifted the flexible plastic mesh fabric of the inner feedlot fence and crawled under. It was there only to keep the yearlings in the feedlot and separated from the rest of the herd.

  As they neared the twenty-foot high, electrified wire fence, they knew to stay back from the deadly strands. Even the gazelles knew to do that. Both Ryan, and recently Kam, had seen the mental and video camera images of large animals that had pushed through the next outer harmless wire fence. They had died from mere contact with the deadly heavy fence. Those views had clearly impressed on them both not to come near any strand suspended on their insulators.

  The education on how fatal it was had been beneficial, and Ryan had soon discovered that some of Koban’s smart and smaller predators had learned to dig under the lower strand to gain entry. All of Koban’s animals were brighter than the equivalent species that filled similar niches on other planets, due to the improved mental processing ability of their superconducting neural circuits. They weren’t as bright as humans or rippers, or even wolfbats, but people didn’t call them “dumb” animals here.

  Koban animals were not born with knowledge of electric fences of course, and some learned the hard way to avoid the threat, with their fatal lesson serving as examples for others of the various herds. Those occasional educations were a source of fresh wild meat for settler households, and Sam notified them each time the fence monitor indicated an electrocution had happened. One happened every month or two. Excess meat could be traded, in a barter system for things that other homesteads had in plenty. Waste not, want not was a philosophy that ripper society had impressed upon humans on Koban.

  The reason for the small shovel became clear, when four feet from the fence Ryan removed his pack, untied and unfolded the shovel, and started to dig a trench. Kam’s task was to help move the dark soil back away from the ditch, and to widen the trench behind the boy as he dug closer to the lower strand. He dug deeper the closer to the fence he came. Kobani muscle strength, even of a (nearly) four-year old boy, was greater than for a Normal with clone mod muscles. As he dug closer to the wire, he lay prone and dug two and a half feet below the surface. The wire, running six inches above the ground, provided them a safe separation. At one point, he half folded the shovel blade to lock it in place at 90 degrees to the handle, to rake the dirt to the rear, where Kam pawed it farther back and piled it for replacement when they returned.

  In less than an hour, the soft loamy savanna soil had yielded to their labors, and the trench passed under the fence and four feet to the other side. Ryan was dirtier than he’d expected to be, but he’d be washed and in clean clothes before Doc saw him later this afternoon. Kam was more fastidious, and licking his fur and paws clean as they rested a moment.

  Ryan next used his damaged wire cutters to cut a boy and cub sized hole in the lowest part of the wire outer fence, and they crawled through. He left behind a coil of wire, the cutters, and a pair of pliers that he’d use to patch the opening when they returned. The uncropped grass outside the electric fence was taller, and provided better cover. Kam’s teal fur closely matched the grass anyway, and Ryan was dress
ed in darker mottled shades of blue and teal. He didn’t blend as well in grass, but he thought it was close enough until they reached the grove of trees.

  Still staying out of sight of the house camera’s Ryan moved to a stand of spear grass at the edge of the tree line. He used his knife and the shovel to chop several of the stalks free at their bases, and trimmed the excess upper fronds to leave him two six-foot long, straight throwing shafts, and one thicker five-foot heavy spear to hold. He chopped down on the thick solid bases with the heavy kitchen knife, as the images Sanjay had given him showed to do. All three soon had sharp pointed tips, and he cut a series of shallow notches with backward slanting slivers, placed several inches from the tips, which would make the spears harder to pull free from an animal when he hit his target.

  He hadn’t brought a means to fire harden the tips with him because this close to home, fire and smoke would likely be detected by Sam and reported to Doc, as well as the other settlements within a twenty mile radius. Brush fires were a common problem out here, so he’d accepted that his spears would need to be sharpened again after each use. He anticipated they were only going to be used once today anyway, in his mind’s plan, to take down his first wild mule deer, antelope, or some other medium sized savanna game.

  From his second floor window, he’d seen them every day of his life it seemed, walking at the edge of the outer fence, appearing to taunt him.

  Kam sniffed the air and lowered his stomach closer to the turf, in a semi stalking posture. He looked at Ryan in an obvious invitation for him to follow the young ripper. Ryan moved up quickly to touch the frill, and knew that the cat had caught the faint scent of multiple animals wafting through the trees from the unseen savanna on the opposite side of the grove of trees.

  Ryan could scent a tang of antelope droppings, but not the musty scent of the animals. Kam also claimed he scented distant rhinolo, which was a prey animal they definitely did not want to let see them. They couldn’t possibly kill one of the huge blue-green beasts. Instead, they would become the hunted in a heartbeat if sighted by a bull. For that matter, a cow or even a year old calf could trample and gore them to death.

  The heavy humpbacked frame of a large bull might stand nearly three meters at the muscled front shoulders, with nearly inch thick hides that resembled creased armor plating. The single long nose horn could reach four feet in length on a bull, with eighteen inch, slightly forward jutting side horns at its base. The thick bony plates of their face and skulls made them nearly bullet proof in a head on charge. At 10,000 to 12,000 Earth pounds, the 1.52 times Earth’s gravity of Koban gave them the impact force of a locomotive with a bad attitude, and yet with surprising agility.

  Koban’s carbon fiber muscles were put to good use on these behemoths, and they could hit a top speed of nearly fifty miles per hour over a short distance. In short, for humans that were lightly armed or not inside an armored tank, or airborne in a shuttle, you didn’t let even an isolated herd member catch sight of you on foot. In a mass charge of the herd, only speed, aerial flight, or a heavy armored vehicle could save you from destruction.

  Fortunately, the southern savanna variety of rhinolo ate only grasses, and not foliage and leaves, so they wouldn’t normally be found in these trees and bushes. The tree canopy wasn’t thick, and the sun beamed through in many places. Kam’s learned skills from older rippers had been passed to Ryan, and they both moved smoothly from shaded area to shaded area, staying out of the sunbeams and crouching lower than the tops of the low brush and shrubbery, growing under the wide topped, thirty-foot high, fern-like dark blue trees.

  The scent of antelope and a type of ungulate that humans called a mule deer, mainly because it had large ears, both grew stronger. They would often forage together in the trees on the leaves of forest underbrush. Those two animals were Ryan and Kam’s hoped for prey. They had gazelle meat to eat all too often to be infatuated with that meat staple of the ranch.

  Kam, much faster than Ryan, would try to flush a young female antelope or mule deer towards an ambush point, where Ryan could try to hit it with his spears in a front shoulder. Once slowed, Kam could overtake it and go for the throat clamp, to asphyxiate one of the 1,000 to 1,100 pound animals (in Earth weight). Ryan was to catch up and use his heavy third short spear, and complete the kill quickly. Use of his jazzer would seem like “cheating” to Ryan, and he wanted to rely only on his spears, and the knife in his belt.

  They intended to target females, not only for the smaller size of a doe in both species, but because antelope and mule deer females lost their smaller horns and antlers this close to their rutting season. Male antelopes never lost their horns, and male mule deer had a rack that lasted into deep winter.

  As they used game trails to slip quietly closer to the far side of the grove of trees, they spotted an isolated cluster of three antelope, two females and an immature buck with a small set of spiral horns. Ryan positioned himself to the side of a wider game trail, where there was a pair of thick tree trunks on each side. He could stand behind one while remaining concealed, and animals following the trail at a run would pass singly through the four-foot gap between the trees.

  Kam would circle wide out onto the savanna to belly crawl close to the three animals, with the intent to spring and chase them towards the trail. Ryan was to try to spear the smaller female as she passed the narrow point in the trail. The horns on the buck had only grown to eighteen inches, but represented more of a risk for the two novice hunters. They were confident, but not stupid and over reaching. At least that’s what their immaturity and inexperience led them to believe.

  Intellectually, the almost four-year old boy and the nine-month old ripper cub were smart enough to recognize their limits, electing to go for the smaller, safer of the prey animals. Physically, they still were outmatched, although their emotions, imaginations, and determination made the hunt entirely plausible, in their minds.

  Kam made the wide arc, staying downwind of the group of antelopes, and moved through the taller teal grass of the savanna. His matching fur and small size allowed him to vanish, even to Ryan’s sharp vision. Ryan’s camouflage clothes were in mottled dark blue and deeper teal shades, blending in better with the darker leaves, shadows, and scattered sunbeams under the trees. The antelope had similar colorations, with darker teal markings shading into dark blue stripes on their sides, and lighter blue and white spots on their upper backs, which resembled stray spots of sun dappling.

  There was no coordinated signal planned, but the roar of Kam’s charge out of the grass, mere yards from the antelope, and their terrified ululations as they instantly leaped away in the opposite direction, sent a message that was impossible for Ryan to miss.

  He could hear two pair of hooves coming directly his way, and one set moving off to the left of those two. His wolfbat hearing told him the lighter pair of hoof beats headed his way was in the lead, although whether it was the smaller doe or the young buck he couldn’t be certain. However, they were following the game trail that appeared to offer the fastest escape route to their terrified minds. Kam was roaring deeply for all he was worth, trying to sound like a full sized ripper.

  Just as the thumping pair of hooves drew close, Ryan stepped directly back away from the tree trunk about ten feet, staying in the sound “shadow” of the approaching two antelopes. This would keep the tree between him and the antelope’s frantic eyes as they sought other threats or movements ahead of them. Cocking his right arm, he gripped his first spear with it oriented straight at the tree, to prevent the prey seeing the end of the shaft protruding out to the side of the shielding tree trunk. He waited, hands sweating with excitement, for a warning that he did know was coming.

  Kam uttered a higher pitch screech, a sound often made as a ripper pounced on its prey, to increase the terror “flavor” they craved when they frilled the animal as it was caught. It was timed to come when the lead animal was about to pass through the gap in the trees.

  Ryan instantly hurled his fir
st spear at a point on the right side of the gap, where he anticipated the left shoulder would be of his yet unseen target when the spear arrived. As expected, the antelope that burst through the gap was hit solidly in its front left shoulder.

  Even as he’d released the throwing spear, Ryan had grasped the shorter and thicker of the two other spears, the one with a blunt cut butt. He stepped onto the trail, placed his right knee on the ground, planted the spear butt in the ground along his left side, and pivoted the sharp tip towards where the chest of the antelope would soon be.

  The lead antelope, it was the smaller female, lunged through the gap in even greater panic than before, her attention fixed on the predator it was certain, from that last screech, was about to land on her back. She was hit high in the shoulder by the thrown spear, and before she could look back to the front, ran into the short spear. The thousand pounds behind the impact easily snapped the shaft, although Ryan, his left leg ready, had already shoved hard to roll to his right as the wounded animal screamed and leaped past him.

  On its heels, the young buck flashed through the gap, and dodged away from Ryan and the still spinning splintered spear shaft.

  Ryan had rolled into a crouch with his second throwing spear pointed at the buck, in case it decided the boy was worth lowering its head and horns, and charged the new threat as it passed. Not to worry. Kam emitted a second screech as he flashed through the gap in the trees, pushing off from one trunk with his hind legs in an airborne teal blur, and the buck darted off the game trail to the right, away from Ryan and the ripper pursuit.

  Kam glanced at Ryan as he passed, and seeing his partner was safe, and two of his spears were now used, he knew their primary prey was wounded. He continued after the doe, which would now be slowing its run and leaving a blood trail. Not even a mature ripper could catch a healthy antelope in full stride if it had as much of a lead as these animals had been given. However, rippers were pride animals, and used ambush tactics when they drove prey to where their pride mates waited. It was Kam’s job now to overtake and down the injured animal, and Ryan was to follow with his spear, to deliver a swift coup de grâce while Kam held the doe by the throat.