Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  “Get in the shuttle! We will destroy them here then return to the jungle. They drew us here when we were ready to hunt there, so they did not want us to look there. They will pay for this he vowed.”

  Cowed by the octet leader’s rage they leaped to obey, and the shuttle quickly lifted and hovered over the center of the canyon.

  Kapdol armed the side lasers, and Tyroldor quickly descended to draw even with the wide crevasse on each side.

  “Fire in sustained mode,” ordered Tyroldor, and the ravening beams blazed into the cave depths, as Kapdol directed the laser mounts so they pivoted back and forth to cover the full width.

  The evidence that humans were present was quickly confirmed when a series of com set communications were detected as coming from both sides, and four near simultaneous claymore blasts scoured and pitted the hull of the shuttle.

  This was followed by a barrage of explosive and armor piercing rounds from the cave depths. These hammered the hull with ringing impacts, leaving larger pits and several struck and cracked the side view ports of the cockpit. However, a craft designed for interclan combat, capable of short space flights with the attendant collision risk with battle debris, was not going to be penetrated or disabled by mere handgun fire.

  The return fire quickly diminished as the superheated rock within the caves exploded in shrapnel like fragments, and the armor proved virtually no protection from the ravening energy. They continued to play the beams almost a full minute after the last sign of resistance was detected, and quit only when the overheat warnings on the plasma fed beam pumps sounded.

  The rock roof of the caves had collapsed as the stone shattered where the beams passed, and tons of rock buried whatever remained of the defenders.

  Watching the cave roofs collapse, Tyroldor was satisfied that nothing had survived through that hell of exploding rock and the crushing tons of rock. He climbed above the sides of the canyon, and rotated to see the distant jungle. Now the next part of the hunt could start.

  Motgar, also certain these particular cave defenders were dead asked, “We will not search the remainder of the hiding places of the ridge?”

  “We found no fresh scent on the lower ridge, so they only intended us to walk into their traps.” He affirmed.

  “We found their hiding place by their scent rising in the air. We were pulled away from the jungle by them before because I believe they have much of their force hidden there. I will hover slowly back and forth over the treetops with both side hatches open, where you will watch and sniff. If we detect their scent that way, we will circle to find the center of the infestation, then land and approach from four sides.”

  Then Tyroldor put the ridge behind them, heading for the jungle.

  “Poor bastards,” Frank said, of the people in the canyon.

  Earlier, when the two warriors leaped out on the narrow upper ledge and stood sniffing towards the canyon after the shuttle pulled back, they suspected the worst. They saw the craft disappear briefly beyond the canyon edge, and return to land on the top.

  The warriors looked over the edge for a minute or two, then all returned to the shuttle and it descended out of sight again, between the canyon walls.

  ****

  Panic was evident when Mirikami’s team heard helmet broadcasts from the men in the canyon caves. They screamed to one another that the Krall were using the heavy lasers.

  This wasn’t a complete surprise to the six in the sealed tubes, buried almost under the previous parking place of the Krall shuttle. They had watched as the craft’s lasers had wiped out every trap they had set on the lowest terrace, and expected them to continue the process at the next higher level.

  They’d next heard frantic transmissions as the four trapped men tried to coordinate their fire on the shuttle, triggering all four claymores at once. They ducked as far back and to the sides of the dead end caves as possible. Desperate to hide from the beams seeking to turn them into cinders.

  The last transmission Mirikami’s team heard was “They got Cravens.”

  Dillon asked, “Who was Cravens paired with?”

  “That sounded like Farley Blagson to me,” responded Juan. “He’s friends with Cravens.”

  “Well, warning those four was pointless, as we had discussed. If they were found they had nowhere to run. I put it to all of you now; should we send a warning to the five in the jungle and reveal to the hunters that there are still people alive over here, or let them take their chances?”

  “They may think they killed the ones responsible for the bobby traps here,” said Frank. “If we say anything they’ll come back for us. I vote they take the same chance we already took.”

  “I agree,” said Juan.

  “They had an opportunity to join up with you Sir, and they chose to go it alone.” Deanna reminded him.

  “Clarice, you’ve been quiet,” Dillon said.

  “I don’t want anyone here to risk their neck for them, since they didn’t want to help us. But if none of you object, I want to get the hell out of this hole and go kill those two bastards lying out there with skeeters on their asses!”

  “Obviously this isn’t a humanitarian gesture you have in mind,” Mirikami observed dryly. “Unless they revive or get picked up, the skeeters and wolfbats will kill them eventually, so you want to make sure?”

  “To make sure, for Albert,” she stated firmly. “I don’t want to die doing it, and I don’t want to put any of you at risk either. But I can’t stand not making sure that at least two of them are dead for sure, because we aren’t positive they lost any warriors elsewhere.”

  “Let me make a proposal. If Clarice and I both climb out, and I rebury her and my empty tube, we can make sure these two are dead and keep the rest of you hidden.”

  “Hold on Captain,” Dillon told him. “I swore to back you up out here, and you are not going to get me to back down from that. If you go, I go, and I’ll tell right now that I want to do it. Clarice, if I set the camera so you get to watch, will that satisfy you?”

  “I’m willing to do it myself, but if you both are going anyway, you don’t need an old lady slowing you down. You will have to go someplace else to hide, and I can’t go too fast.”

  Mirikami studied his camera view from the top of the boulder. “They are flying over the jungle, so we need to be a bit sneaky if we climb out. They have spectacular vision. Now is as good a time as any, so I say we do it while we can. Are you ready Dillon? No cramps to work out first?”

  “I can’t do that in this tin can anyway. My butt’s numb from this little bench, with creases from armor probably permanently impressed there by now.”

  “OK. Let me get out first Dillon. I’ll go slowly and my size will let me squeeze out with less disturbance of the dirt. Then I can lift the sod plug off of you.”

  Mirikami pulled at the vacuum seal tape they had used inside the home made six-foot tubes. This had made them airtight, thus requiring the soft suit packs to keep their air breathable.

  He carefully lifted his inch thick plastic cap, covered with a couple of inches of dirt and blue-green sod. He removed his helmet and used that to prop the cap open enough for his slight frame, even in armor, to fit through. He crawled out on the surrounding grass.

  He spoke into his open helmet so Dillon could hear through the fiber optics, asked him to thump repeatedly on the lid so he could be sure he found him. They each were buried about ten feet apart, and it was hard to spot the sod-covered circles.

  Once located, Mirikami gently lifted the grass plug, thumping back on the cover, and Dillon lifted his lid straight up.

  Grasping the underside as it raised, he held the edge high enough for the larger man to climb out, using his three-foot high bench seat as a step. He told Dillon to disconnect his fiber optic line and drop it in the tube. Next Dillon helped him set the cover back in place carefully, and they arranged the sod to obscure the circular cut.

  They went to Mirikami’s tube, and he spoke one last time to the four still
concealed, then detached his own fiber line and let it fall inside, and put on his helmet and lowered his own lid and sod plug.

  Standing, they waved at the hidden camera in the tree, which was set to show the clearing and the big boulder. Mirikami’s camera had been left aimed over the jungle. Unfortunately, the other four had no way to control the cameras now.

  Satisfied their former hiding places were well concealed, they looked at their two targets. Having only glanced at their motionless skeeter covered forms as they emerged.

  Each Krall had three bugs on their backs and legs, sipping at their life juices. It wasn’t as easy to do on a Krall as on a human, because the blood flow kept stopping after ten or fifteen seconds. They had to penetrate the tough reddish hide at a new location to get a fresh flow of blood, but they had been at it for at least an hour.

  The wolfbats had remained circling high when the shuttle was close, content to grant the skeeters their slow kills. They waited patiently, ready to descend to eat the tough stringy flesh once they were sure the dangerous companions of the red things, inside the hard flyer, were truly gone.

  They shrieked their anger when they saw the first of the new creatures climb from the ground. At first, the new Flock Leader thought the big red ones had been waiting for his squadrons to dive to feed, prepared to kill them when they came close. Then he noticed the new creature’s smaller size and slowness. He knew they were two of the hard-shelled animals that tasted so sweet. They died out here often.

  Recently these had proven almost as dangerous as the big red ones. He was glad they had stayed high, conserving energy on the warm thermals that could hold them aloft all day.

  Dillon and Mirikami held their pistols ready, but didn’t intend to fire a shot that might carry farther than intended. Even with the miles between them and the jungle.

  Dillon had strapped on a machete, similar to the one Thad often wore. He carried that in his right hand. Mirikami had only a nine-inch hunting knife. Neither carried a Jazzer, so the blades were the best means to drive off or kill the skeeters, and then to cut the throats of the Krall.

  Both had their face plates cracked open so they could talk, yet not worry about a sting to the face.

  Dillon stopped abruptly. “Hey, the Krall here on the left sees me. His eye is tracking my movement. He drew his eyelid back wider than I thought they could open. He probably saw us climb out of the ground. I wonder what the hell he thought about that!” He added a sinister chuckle.

  ****

  Sitdok’s agony throughout his body was still terrible to bear, but had diminished some near his legs, where it had started. He was aware of the skeeters biting him, but didn’t feel them. He could see them and hear them from time to time, as they shifted position, or fluttered their wings in agitation as they pushed one another for the best spots to feed on him.

  He thought he would recover movement before they fully drained him because his legs burned much less now. The poison was gradually wearing off where it had first started, and he decided it would not kill him directly. The biggest risk to his life was being helpless against the insects and flying animals of Koban. He was so wrong.

  Sitdok couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he saw the ground start to open up. The poison surely was causing hallucinations. He was imagining Koban hatching an armored human, emerging from the dirt of the planet. It climbed out fully formed if a bit smaller than the other three humans he had seen. He could see its soft ugly face because it had no helmet on its armor.

  It walked over to another place and helped as another human was born from Koban. They replaced the ground over the place where it was born, only glancing his way a few times. Then they both returned to close the hole that birthed the smaller human, and then it too put on a helmet.

  He heard them speak in their low frequency slow speech, and watched with renewed horror and fear as the large one pulled out a very large knife and started walking slowly towards him. The little human held a smaller blade, but was moving towards a place behind him where he knew Pitda had been similarly struck down.

  When the human swung his large blade in a horizontal sweep over his body, it was not to kill him, as he expected, but to kill the insects that had been feeding on him. He heard their frantic buzzing as they tried to fly away. They couldn’t do so without disengaging their biting parts from his tough skin.

  The splatter of their engorged bodies threw his own undigested blood on the ground where he watched it stain the dirt, along with their green insect ichor.

  The human was saving him. He had actually felt the pulling of the insect mouthparts as they tried to tear free and escape. He felt like he might be able to move his feet slightly if he tried. If this human born of Koban dirt waited too long, he was going to discover who was really going to inherit this world as their true home.

  He vaguely felt its unwholesome touch as it rolled him over onto his back. The movement stimulated what circulation he had remaining, and the burning was lessening in his lower abdomen. Move me even more stupid human and stir my muscles to recover faster, wait a little longer, he thought. I will have you just as we had your clan mates in the marsh.

  The human looked towards a nearby tree, away from him, holstered the gun it had held in its left hand. Another foolish move, Sitdok decided, as he tried to bunch his leg muscled to kick a talon-laden foot into the slow moving animal’s soft body.

  Then the creature held up the empty left hand and moved it from side to side towards the tree, with a blunt toothed grin that looked familiar.

  He had seen that expression on another human, in the marsh. Over Stokol’s shoulder, just before that warrior’s head blew off in a bloody mush.

  ****

  Dillon whirled around and swung the machete, his left hand joining with the right in a high overhead arc, and saw the Krall’s eyes widen as the blade descended, severing its head in one stroke.

  He saw the legs twitch strongly; one even kicking out towards him, indicating the creature had been on the way to recovering.

  He reached down and grasped the boney crest at the top of the head with his left hand, and held it up for Clarice to see on the camera. He stuck the machete in the ground and waved right-handed at the camera this time. The slow-to-die Krall continued to blink rapidly and look around as life and awareness drained from its brain and mind.

  “Done with your mighty hunter pose, Dillon?” Mirikami asked, amused at the young man’s theatrics. “You needed to put one foot on the corpse for full effect.” He laughed, wondering about humanity’s own capacity for cruelty.

  Mirikami had rolled the other Krall over, seeing it too could move its eyes and blink. It seemed to be cooling assessing him, and he saw it look down along its body to see Dillon, who had just tossed away the other Krall’s head. It looked back up at him, and seemed somehow defiant, and unafraid of its fate.

  Dillon warned him. “Tet, the other one kicked its legs when I severed its head. I think the paralyzing effect of the toxin was wearing off. Don’t take any chances near this one, even with the feet blown off.”

  “Right. I’ll stay out of reach. He was pulling at his lower lip.

  “Uh Oh. What are you considering Tet? I know that look.”

  “Sooner or later that shuttle will come back here to check on these two, to see if they lived or died, but to collect them either way. This warrior appears to have higher status. Check out his tattoo.”

  “That’s a fair amount of color. If I understand it, the red represents a lot of dead Krall from challenges, or probably clan warfare. But what has that started you thinking about?”

  “If we leave them both here, when they come back they’ll be really pissed, and will smell that two humans did this. I don’t want those supersensitive noses looking too hard and too long around here.” Mirikami waved in the direction of the buried tubes.

  “OK, let’s give them a good trail to follow,” Dillon offered. “We can head to the river, like I suggested before.”

  “
They will damn well catch us there and all of them might not go after us. I think going where we still have some bobby traps will offer a better defense.”

  “You mean on the top terrace where they didn’t finish the clean out job?”

  “Yes, and I’m thinking they might be more inclined to come after us together if they think we have one of them as our prisoner.”

  “He must weigh three hundred fifty pounds! And he’ll be coming out of his stupor at any time.” Dillon protested. “We can’t chance taking him alive with us even if we can lift him.”

  Looking at the Krall and the back plate from the claymore, he removed a strong climbing rope he had coiled and hanging from his belt.

  “I wasn’t planning on lifting him very much, more like dragging.”

  Then he added, “Who said we were taking him alive?”

  The curved metal plate was tied to the Krall’s back with much of his upper body weight resting on it, hoping it would reduce friction when they pulled him along by ropes at his knees. His hands were tied across his massive chest to his utility and ammo belt.

  Dillon was taken aback when Tet had him tie the severed head to the dead Krall as well.

  They only had about twenty feet to drag that weight on dirt and grass, before reaching bare rock. Then the lower friction of metal on stone would allow them to move faster. They hoped.

  Getting the “dead weight” moving was tough. Almost as hard as it had been for Mirikami to coldly turn the paralyzed Krall into that mass of dead weight. It was done with the Krall’s own long slender “skinning” knife, driven through the softer roof the mouth and into his brain.

  He had to punch it through with hammer blows using a convenient rock, the Krall’s leg stumps twitching.

  This eliminated the messier result Dillon had achieved. In addition, it promoted the illusion the higher status warrior could still be alive. Mirikami had avoided looking into the Krall’s eyes as he killed him. Perfectly aware of how weak his enemy surely considered him for despising that act of murder.