The search of the space around the planet and of its moon had taken more than two hours. Her curiosity about the location of the final abandoned ship satisfied, Toltak ordered Gapod to descend over the southern part of the largest northern hemisphere continent, where she would identify the abandoned main Krall dome along the southwestern shoreline. She was the only warrior of the six aboard that had lived on the future home world.
Toltak sighted the old walled compound on the coast as they descended. She was pleased at how well it had held up since the mass departure, with some overgrowth visible, but far less than expected. Even the Raspani enclosure still stood. If any of the food animals survived, perhaps they could acquire some of that fresh meat when they finished their hunt. Dried field rations of the spicy staple grew tiresome, but they needed to depart by midmorning tomorrow, to avoid a late arrival at their base from raising too many questions about their less-than-maximum efficiency trip.
There were several large animal herds visible from miles up, which from the size of the specks appeared to be rhinolo. They’d have to launch a shuttle after landing, but they would only need a short time to prepare that. If they moved fast and efficiently, they could be on the savanna and hunting by midafternoon, and eating rhinolo steak by late afternoon.
As the ship settled, she assumed some sea borne storm or a heavy rain had washed the ramp area clean, because there was little if any dust kicked up by the thrusters. The Clanship sank lower on its landing jacks than on other planets, but because they had increased internal gravity two days prior to landing, the local gravity matched what they had felt inside for those days. In normal Krall fashion, the pilot and a warrior named Stilkap hurried to the shuttle hanger to open the outer hatch and preflight the craft.
Toltak, and the three other warriors, Pindor, Kildar, and Rudbit, drew six rifles from an armory rack at mid ship, selecting clips for both armor piercing and explosive rounds. They ignored drawing plasma rifles and the armor they had used on Poldark, stored in compartments below. It wasn’t that plasma rifles couldn’t drop a rhinolo, quite the contrary. Nor was the sportsmanship of a hunt a real consideration. Plasma guns made it such a sure safe kill that there was no risk for the hunters, furnishing no test of their “Krallhood.” The risk of death or injury increased the satisfaction of the kill. They would likely kill one or two animals apiece, and cut only enough meat from one to make the day’s meal.
Carrying the rifles and ammunition to the shuttle bay, the six Krall donned weapon harnesses with pistols, and attached spare clips and personal knives. Sealing the shuttle hatch, Gapod started the maneuvering thrusters, and carefully lifted and guided the shuttle out of the large Clanship hatchway. As soon as they were clear, he boosted smoothly towards the herds, and the hunt they had been anticipating.
****
Mirikami pulled at his lower lip, reflecting on the departed shuttle. “They clearly didn’t detect anything out of place here, or that party of six wouldn’t miss out on a chance for a fight. I’m surprised none of them even stepped out on the ramp, or checked the dome. They never show much in the way of idle curiosity, but I expected them to want to look inside. I thought we could ambush some of them under the overhang, out of sight of the Clanship.”
Thirty minutes earlier, the two expedition shuttles had carefully parked underneath two of the dome’s large garage overhangs, to hide them. There had been armed Hub City citizens waiting inside each of the four dome entrances. They had quickly converged on the west entrance, where the Clanship finally chose to land. Jake had control of both human shuttles now, was prepared to lift them and fly low over the dome at full thrust to ram the Clanship. He had watched and relayed the Krall’s departure track from the moon, and determined they were most likely going to land at their old main compound.
Clustered behind parked trucks under the west entrance’s overhang were the only three TGs they had with them at Hub City. Thirty-two Hub City youngsters were in their eight-week adaptation phase as new TGs, over at Prime City. Carson, Ethan, and Alyson, were huddled with Mirikami, Dillon, and Thad behind a halftrack transport. Twenty other adult Hub City SGs were hiding behind other trucks for added firepower. The two rippers were inside the dome doors, with a couple of hundred other Hub City citizens ready to defend their home. They had sent the cats there, out of sight, because if seen by the Krall, they would provoke instant shooting, whereas an unarmored human being spotted, even with a Krall pistol, wouldn’t seem like much of a threat to a Krall. That was the expectation anyway.
They had no way of knowing how many more Krall could be aboard the Clanship, nor if anyone would be standing watch. The shuttle flight had Mirikami worried, in case it was destined for Prime City, but there were hundreds of armed TGs there, with Jake able to warn them of inbound traffic, which might take several hours to arrive if they stayed suborbital.
Jake’s remote surveillance cameras here at Hub City had revealed one blue and one brown uniformed Krall enter the shuttle, along with four black suited warriors, all with rifles. The brown suited K’Tal would probably be the pilot, and the blue uniform was either a translator, or possibly the mission commander. Except, what was their mission here? It didn’t seem as if they were on high alert.
The big passenger liner in an equatorial orbit had been a major worry for Mirikami, having moved it by thruster power five months ago from the moon. Chief Haveram and a dozen former Drive Rats from various ships had accompanied Mirikami on the risky shuttle trip. They had scavenged Trap emitters from spares stores of ships in orbit at the moon. Then they picked the ship to repair that had the least hull and wiring damage from the emitters the Krall had shot off when they captured the big craft. Mirikami had placed it in a stable circular orbit at seven hundred twenty miles, because at that height, Jake predicted that it would have the least risk from impacts by the cargo ship debris.
They had brought down all of the spare Trap emitters, for modification on the ground to work with the selected ship’s different wiring system. Chief Haveram did not expect to finish the changes for a few months, so fortunately the hulk had been left cold and dead looking. The Krall had low curiosity and little imagination, so apparently they never considered that a clan of “dead” humans had moved the ship to restore its Jump capability.
If the Krall commander was still aboard the Clanship, and activated the heavy lasers, the two shuttles might not survive long enough to ram. If the plasma chambers were hot, and the cannon barrels preheated, the shuttles would never close the gap for a ramming attempt. Jake had no heat sensors at this dome, only visual cameras for Hub City, but he saw no shimmer of heat waves radiating from the closed plasma cannon ports, suggesting an off-guard Krall crew.
Mirikami mused aloud, but quietly. “The lower hatches are still closed, and none of us know for sure if they are coded, or will activate for just anyone. The shuttle hatch is wide open, but it’s at least thirty feet off the tarmac. I’d like to try to get inside, to sabotage the Jump Drive or thruster engines, and use the ramming plan only as a backup. How can I get up there? Do we have some rope and something I can use as a grapple hook?”
Ethan and Carson, crouched behind the same truck with him, shared a quick glance. Carson spoke softly for both. “Commander,” He used his formal title in front of those from Hub City that could hear them. “Ethan and I don’t need a rope or a grapple to get inside, and we can move a lot faster than you can.”
“It’s at least thirty-feet up, and even you two can’t jump that high.” Mirikami hadn’t said no. He wanted to know how they’d get inside.
“We can jump and reach fingers to nearly twenty five feet, so with one to help toss the other, either of us can easily reach the lower edge of the hatch and get inside.”
“Boys, it has to be me going inside. I know how to sabotage a Jump Drive or their thruster engines and you don’t. Besides, I don’t want anyone else in there if I have to order Jake to ram with the shuttles.”
Carson explained how they’d get h
im inside. “I’ll take a rope with me, Ethan will help toss me higher than I can jump, and I’ll pull you up with the rope. OK?”
Mirikami argued to have the two of them jointly toss him up. They countered by telling him he didn’t have as sure a grip, and that he couldn’t beat a warrior in a fight if he ran into one. Mirikami reminded them he’d outsmarted an entire octet once. As soon as the dickering had started, Alyson crouched and dashed inside the maintenance shop, to return quickly with a coil of rope tied to a truck’s towing hook.
She glanced at the two boys, still arguing with Commander Mirikami, shrugged, stepped around the front of the halftrack and bounded, graceful as a gazelle, across the hundred feet of tarmac to stand under a Clanship landing jack.
Dillon tapped Carson on the shoulder and pointed. “Hey. Brilliant strategy Gentle Men. Blather on until a young Lady does it for you. Very clever plan.”
“Huh?” The befuddled word echoed from all three in the debate that was about to be resolved.
Alyson waved, made a quick rotation twirling motion with the hook dangling from two feet of rope. She stepped out from under the landing jack’s support column and let go. The hook rose as she released the rope, and it flew easily through the open hatchway. As it clanked to the deck, she ran at an angle, pulling the rope towards the right side hatch edge, dragging the hook towards a protruding arm of the hatch’s bottom push rod, where it snagged. She made a left-handed test tug on the rope, lightly lifting herself a foot from the pavement and swung back. As she touched down, she was facing the trucks parked under the overhang, and she made a graceful deep bow, sweeping her free right arm from waist level, out to the side. The implied “Ta Da!” was clear, as she straightened with a smug little smile.
Thad chuckled. “I guess you have your way inside Tet. It doesn’t look like anyone in the ship is monitoring the ramp area either, or we’d have some reaction because they never wait for us.”
Tet stood, and was about to run across to join Alyson, when he heard a commotion behind him, from one of the dome’s eight open personnel and truck maintenance doors. Ana Cahill was forcing her way through the clustered defenders, shouting and complaining loudly, as usual.
Mirikami rushed over, speaking urgently. “Keep your voice down. Do you have a death wish? The Krall might hear you, even though the hull.”
She glared at him. “It’s your fault we’re at risk. Your ‘superman’ project has made it likely they will kill us all now.”
Mirikami was stunned at the depths of ignorance this educated woman was capable of displaying. In a hushed voice, he stated the obvious. “They didn’t return to Koban because of any action by people they believed died twenty years ago. However, they will try to kill us all now, or escape to bring back enough warriors to finish that job. We need the element of surprise Cahill, so shut the hell up.” He’d had enough of her nonsense years ago, but had maintained a civil manner with her, until now.
She had the sense, seeing his anger, to speak softer, but displayed no contrition. “The Krall left us alive on purpose, because we were no threat to them. You criminal Primes have now created these monstrous children, which represent a threat the Krall will have to answer. I want to speak for those of us that opposed you all along, who stayed true to humanity’s laws. We do not deserve to die with you criminals. I demand to speak for those of us who should be spared.”
He glanced over to Mayor McDougal, “Stewart, please keep her quiet and away from those doors.” Then he looked directly into her dark circled eyes, the gravity sagged jowls proof she had refused the clone mods. The pudgy face and body were a testament to how productive and more useful people had kept her very well fed, and had protected for more than twenty years.
“If she steps outside and alerts the Krall, I will shoot her. Understood?” He spoke as if to the man, but continued to look directly at Cahill. She shook off the restraining hands as she turned to walk back into the dome.
Mirikami stared for a moment, on the verge of ordering the mayor to lock her up, but didn’t want to overstep his authority in Hub City. He’d been careful not to pressure these people to follow Prime City’s lead, believing, correctly thus far, that survival instincts and common sense would prompt them to do what Koban itself required to stay alive here. He could be wrong in this case.
He returned to the truck, where Thad and Dillon waited.
“I’m going inside the ship and hope I can get to the Jump Drives to do some damage. Let me have two of those grenades.” He attached them securely to his pistol belt.
Thad had a question. “Tet, do you even know the layout of a Clanship? The Drive Room obviously isn’t near the base, as on our commercial ships, not with those sally ports for warriors placed around the bottom. The images I saw from Jake’s old recordings of Clanships that landed here showed the central shaft of the single thruster main engine, surrounded by the four hatches and decking. The Jump Drive and control room could be placed anywhere, possibly near the top.”
“Thad, our own warships put Jump Drives and fusion bottles near the center, for maximum protection in battle. However, I may just focus on killing the thruster engine, which has to be at the top of that center shaft. If they can’t get off planet they can’t make a Jump Hole.” He paused in reflection, reconsidering.
“That isn’t exactly correct.” He tugged at his lower lip as he thought.
“They can’t make a successful Jump Hole, but they could try to make one anyway, and destroy a few thousand square miles of the planet, taking us with them. I don’t think they’d want to inflict that much damage to their intended home world, but I’m damned confident they won’t want to leave it in our hands when they know we survived here. OK, the Jump Drive is the most important, I’ll go for that.”
Making sure that Dillon and Thad were in the Link with Jake, prepared to follow through on his order to destroy the Clanship at any cost, he ran across the ramp to the dangling rope, Alyson still holding the tension steady against a mild breeze.
“Sir, do you want me to go up and pull you into the hatch?” She seemed entirely too cheerful for the gravity of their predicament.
“Alyson, I don’t have your TG muscles, but I do have the clone mods. I will climb this, thank you.”
The truth was, Mirikami was in good condition for running, rock climbing, weight lifting, and hand-to-hand combat practice with Thad and Dillon, but he’d not tried a rope climb since scaling a cliff, with Dillon helping pull him up on his one and only combat Test Day. There was a technique to this sort of climb, he knew that, but didn’t know what it was and he knew he was about to look clumsy.
Unfortunately, the minor rope climb problem suddenly found itself replaced by a major problem. Jake’s voice in his embedded transducer. “Sir, the Krall shuttle has turned back, and is moving faster than when it departed.”
By his deliberate head tilt, Alyson knew the AI was speaking to him, so she waited. His reversal came quickly.
“Alyson, get up there as fast as you can and pull me up. The shuttle is on its way back.”
The girl startled him by a sudden crouch and a vertical leap of nearly twenty feet, and then pulled herself up in several long easy overhand pulls, flipping over the edge, never using her legs after the jump.
Mirikami glanced at those waiting under the overhang, knowing Thad and Dillon had also heard Jake, and they were passing the word. He wrapped the rope around his right arm, passing a loop around his waist and held with his left hand. He looked up and nodded at a waiting Alyson.
She nearly yanked him off the ground in a flurry of rapid pulls that strained his arm, and in mere seconds, he passed over the hatch edge, swung as if from a feminine gantry on her upraised right arm.
He glanced at her confident smile and deep blue eyes, as she sat him lightly down on the hanger deck. Pretty, lithe, strong as a draft horse, and faster than a thoroughbred, he thought. A simple but potent demonstration of what these youngsters were capable of doing. Alyson was only eighteen, an
d a mere month out of her final phase of Koban adaptations. She’d only get stronger and faster, as the kids a year ahead of her had done. Like Carson and Ethan. If they survived the next few hours, it would be mainly be by the abilities of these three kids.
“Gather the rope and grapple, no time for you to go back. I have to get into the ship, or hide us in one of these storage lockers in the back. If they dock we have to be out of here or hidden.”
Mirikami saw there were two hatches into the ship, one midway down each side of the fifty-foot deep bay. He was closer to the one on the right so he ran towards that one. Alyson beat him there, in several bounds, having coiled the rope as she went. There was a small key panel there, similar to the ones used on doors in the Krall domes. Mirikami pressed the standard default two-key press that worked in the domes for non-secure door codes. Nothing happened.
As Mirikami looked towards the other hatch, Alyson crossed the thirty feet to that one in nearly a single leap, pressing the same default keys. It didn’t open. The sound of thrusters approaching prompted Mirikami to open several of the storage lockers on his side, but there was no room for a person to get inside one.
As he ran over to the other side, Alyson was opening lockers there, most were partly full, but none with enough room to hide them both. “Alyson, move gear from half empty lockers to fill the others, we might make room.”
Obviously, tossing gear on the floor would be a giveaway, so they were moving as fast as they could, making room by stowing what they removed inside other lockers. Alyson finished first. “Sir, get in here, I’ll move to the end and duck behind the bags of equipment hanging there. If I’m spotted, I have a faster draw than you, and you can still shoot them in the back when they come my way.”
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 48
