Yilini was pursuing the eighth warrior as it moved quickly behind the central column. He knew that there could be weapons belts hung there, so he was alert when a long arm snaked around the side with a pistol aimed right at him. It was much like shooting a stationary target in a practice range. He fired at the pistol itself as he threw himself to the right, to get a better angle on his opponent. The dive and roll was a good idea, because his slug’s impact helped fire a round as it severed a thick finger. The Krall’s bullet passed through where he would have been if he’d continued straight ahead.
The Krall behind the column, using his uninjured hand, threw a two-foot double-edged heavy knife back handed, as Yilini was rolling to the side for a better shot. Yil saw the wrist flip, and was measuring the rate of turns as the blade came spinning his way. He had a bright idea.
The Krall, his only pistol now a wreck, had thrown his best-balanced knife at the rolling target he glimpsed briefly, before pulling his head back from the line of fire. These fighters were impossibly fast and accurate for humans, but they smelled and looked like that prey animal. He threw at where he knew the human would be as he came up to fire again. The smacking sound and painful scream told him he’d take one of them with him, even if he died today. He lunged around the column with a slightly smaller blade, ready to gut his wounded opponent if it was not already dead.
The heavy thud as his own knife buried itself up to the hilt in his chest startled him. He paused in surprise, looking down. That rare look, unusual on those rigid reptilian features, froze there for eternity. The brain that might have ordered the expression to change spattered on the side of the column. He didn’t even hear the last of the rapid three shots that finished the knife’s job.
“Got him, Alyson.” Yilini called out.
“Took you long enough Yil,” was her wisecrack answer.
“I had to learn how to catch a knife and throw it back first. Never tried that before.”
“A bit of overkill then. I heard three shots. Did you hang him too?”
“Smart ass. What’s Rich doing with the one we’re saving?”
“Dancing.”
As Yilini came back around the column it did rather look like Rich was dancing with not one, but two Krall. The Krall without a uniform was obviously one of the two that had been involved in mock combat when the hatch opened. He was holding up a black uniformed dead warrior as a shield. Since Rich had holstered his weapon and wasn’t trying to shoot him, and Alyson was aiming at the top of the stairs, the Krall probably assumed only the one human was matched with him for this fight, but it had a gun and he didn’t.
Kolak had seen how deadly accurate shots these humans were, and so fast that even he saw their hands blur when they drew their pistols. When the third human came closer and didn’t shoot him outright, he assumed it was definitely a fight between himself and the opponent he faced. They were fast, but not massive. He knew he out massed them all, and the smallest one of the three was the one he faced. He was heavier by at least a factor of three, and humans could be broken or pulled apart easily. He’d done just that multiple times.
Alyson went to the portal and signaled to the rest of the assault team to start across. She needed Rich to shit or get off the pot and take this Krall down. They had to know what lay above them if there was an octet down here. They might need to employ an eight-way ascent rather than the two-way they usually practiced, and would have to wait for help.
“Rich, the full team’s on the way. Do it, damn it.”
Truth be known, Rich knew he was faster, and a better shot than a Krall, but he had seldom beat the other TGs in hand to hand combat or wrestling. He practiced the moves and was fast, but his smaller size worked against him with the other TGs, and he lost more often than not to the bigger boys, even some girls. This huge Krall made him nervous, and he couldn’t simply shoot it dead because Alyson needed to read its mind. For some reason he didn’t consider blowing off the elbows and kneecaps of an unarmed Krall. That was barbaric, foreign to his parent’s way of thinking and to the sense of fairness they’d taught him. He’d not yet personally seen what this alien enemy did to humans when it had them captive.
His friends were watching and he wanted their respect. He decided to provoke the Krall. “Drop the dead guy you coward, and fight me. A single human terrifies you?”
Kolak had never had a human challenge him, they had screamed for him, begged him, cried hysterically, a few even had hurled insults before they died badly. None had ever challenged him to fight. His time as an interrogator had shown him many sides to the humans he killed. This one’s behavior was new.
He tossed the corpse of Rontor aside. “I will break you, and tear pieces off and shove them into your openings. I’ll cut you to pieces with my talons and eat the parts as you watch.” He extended his recently sharpened talons to maximum. He mimicked the lip movement humans called a smile, aware that the revelation of his jagged dagger teeth usually terrified them.
Rich was into his bravado mode now. “Well, we have a walking, talking, cowardly lizard that says things he can’t make happen. I have some sharp claws too, and I plan to trim your nails.” He pulled one of his matching double-edged knives from a right calf sheath, in a fast and smooth crouching move, rising to stand straight, his weight balanced on the balls of his separated feet. He wasn’t a good wrestler, but he was good with knives, since hand speed there was useful.
With no more preliminaries, the Krall lunged at him, using a common Krall fighting tactic. He shoved his left hand forward, talons out, intending to swing the right hand around to cut his opponent open, because the human would be forced to use both hands to try to defend against the thrust of the left.
That didn’t happen. In a surprisingly fast move, the prey animal unexpectedly stepped towards him and ducked his body under that upward deflected left arm thrust. The prey executed a crouching spin, and grasped the left wrist from below in an iron grip. That powerful left hand held him surprisingly and painfully tight. The human’s right hand rose up in a near blur that swept past the end of the four thick fingers once, and then back just as fast. Releasing the Krall’s wrist, he kicked back against the left kneecap hard, flying away in a tumbling roll, and rose to his feet to face the warrior. This all happened as Kolak’s right hand completed the wide swooping stroke, intended to disembowel, slicing only air.
“Four gone.” Rich said.
Kolak saw four pieces of jet-black material on the deck. They were one-inch curved and sharply pointed objects. He looked at his now declawed left hand in shocked disbelief. He had seen the blur of motion, but had felt nothing as the human cut off his talons.
He was furious! It will take nearly half a year to regrow those. He thought. It hadn’t occurred to him to consider how long full regrowth of those four fingers would take instead.
Rich held up the knife for him to see. “Sharp isn’t it? Molecular edge, nearly as hard as a diamond. Come on, I have four more nails to trim, you slow stupid animal.”
The impatient tone was infuriating, but obviously being taunted into another brute force lunge could have bad consequences. Kolak moved more slowly, thinking I have greater strength. I could lift his weight easily. He was forgetting that weight and strength was not the same thing, and he had never needed or learned the use of leverage.
When the Krall didn’t come for him again right away, Rich moved in, more confident of not only his greater speed, but he had sensed the Krall’s effort to break his grip on the wrist, and it couldn’t even flex it when he’d squeezed tight.
The Krall’s bowed legs bent slightly deeper as Rich grew close. He was prepared for the spring when it came, noting the toe claws hooking into some of the many recessed cargo tie downs in the deck, seeking a grip to propel its body forward.
Kolak used his legs to start pushing himself forward, intending to use his mass to bowl over the smaller lighter weight human. Once he had him down in his grip, the human was dead. As his momentum built, he saw the
human leaning back, appearing to lose his balance and about to fall backwards. Triumphantly, he pushed harder and his arms reached forward to grasp his victory. Except, the human suddenly thrust his knife up into the left wrist, through the bones, using that to pull Kolak forward, and his right hand went under the talons and grabbed and simultaneously pulled hard on the right wrist. As the human’s backside touched the deck, his proportionately longer legs came up under Kolak’s abdomen, and both his feet kicked up strongly, lifting the huge warrior in a high arc, completely passing over his presumed victim by using the warrior’s own momentum.
Said victim tore the knife from the bones in the left wrist, and he held onto the right wrist tightly as Kolak’s arc continued and he crashed heavily to the deck on his back. In a flash, Rich swung a leg over to straddle the right arm even as the Krall thudded down. Two fast slashes of his knife, and four additional talons graced the deck. Now the human kicked against the top of the Krall’s head and shoved himself away, just before the grasping clawless fingers of the left hand could touch him.
However, Rich didn’t roll completely free as he had the first time. He switched grip on the right wrist with his left hand, and as he rolled up on to his left knee, he sheathed his knife with his right hand and pulled the Krall’s right arm over his upraised right knee, resisting the Krall’s strenuous effort to pull free. He swiftly pulled that right arm farther across his knee, then with a powerful downward shove on the captive wrist with his left hand, and a push down on the Krall’s upper arm with his right hand, there was loud noise as the elbow tried to bend backwards. It snapped like a dry twig, broken on Rich’s knee.
The howl from Kolak wasn’t only from rage this time. Rich stood back, ready to break more limbs when the Krall got to his feet.
Alyson walked over, impatient. “Damn it Rich, I wanted him alive, but I can’t wait all day while you enjoy beating the crap out of him. She drew her pistol and swiftly shot the Krall in its left elbow and then both kneecaps. The howl of pain rose in intensity.
“You can finish slowly beating the hell out of him in six months, after he heals.”
She crouched and grabbed a now limp finger on the right hand as the Krall continued to snarl and struggle to turn over or to sit. Rich held the shattered left arm down, as Yil straddled the broad chest to prevent him from trying to sit up, the crippled legs flailing uselessly. Despite Alyson’s complaint about waiting all day, Rich’s fight with the surviving Krall had lasted well under two minutes. The main assault force was only half way there.
Alyson jerked her head back sharply when she initiated the Mind Tap. “Ouch, that must really hurt. Kolak doesn’t like you very much either, Rich.”
“Kolak is its name? Why would he be more pissed at me than at you? You shot the crap out of him.”
“Kolak here hates me too, but you humiliated him without using a gun, so you are number one on his ‘to kill’ list today. By the way, you also apparently scare the poop of of him. He’s never been beaten in a hand-to-hand match, not even by another Krall, and you are only a stupid prey animal. His thoughts, not mine. Now let me make him think of what I need to see. He is starting to suppress the pain and almost able to think clear enough. His knowing Standard should help.”
The Krall’s rush of red colored pain filled thoughts were easing. She sent images of the inside of the Clanship, with an implied question in a final image she knew it could not resist. She supplemented the last image with words. “How many warriors above will come down here to kill us?”
If it knew that answer, it would be unable to avoid thinking of the hoped for carnage. However, she learned there was only a single K’Tal pilot on the command deck. Kolak didn’t even consider her much of a warrior.
“No problem guys. Give me your hands.” They stepped away from the helpless wriggling Krall. She transferred the information in less than a second and let go. “Rich pass this info to the rest of the team when they arrive. Captain Renaldo can start up just as soon as she’s here. Give this one a sting of the Death Lime to keep him still.” She nudged the head of Kolak with her foot and he tried to bite her.
“Yilini, let’s get up there now and take the K’Tal out, alive if we can, but only if we can do it fast and easy.”
She placed the plasma rifle on the deck. “Leave your rifle too Yil. We’ll go faster and quieter. The pilot only has a pistol.”
They went to opposite side stairwells, and made their leap to the second deck, making only cursory checks of each deck as they went up, thanks to the knowledge picked from Kolak’s mind.
****
On their ship, Ethan and Jorl had worked their way three quarters of the way up without a sign of life. They were one deck below the common feeding area, where the Krall had stored stacks of dried red Raspani meat in freezers and coolers on the Mark of Koban.
They had kept each other in sight on decks that were largely wide open. On others, like the next two decks, they wouldn’t be able to see one another. Their repetitive training had allowed them to maintain a consistent pace, using their internal clocks to stay parallel. Ethan sprang up the stairs and launched himself towards the ceiling, turning in midflight as he did so.
Standing at a Krall style high table were two blue suited warriors, tearing chunks from slabs of Raspani rib meat, and some gray-blue looking food was on trays. One, with is back to Ethan, was sucking on a tube of fluid. The other Krall looked up at the motion as Ethan pushed off the ceiling.
Ethan had one of his pistol’s already out as he climbed and fired a quick shot, but because of the angle, the Krall with his back to him blocked his view of the one that saw him.
The spray of brains from the one he killed spattered the other one, but it ducked below the tabletop as the next slug just missed. The storage compartment under the table shielded the other warrior and blocked sight of him. Ethan tried for him anyway, shooting at the tough plastic substance. The warrior he had killed wore a pistol, so he assumed the other one was armed as well.
Ethan rolled quickly to his right as he landed softly, to get closer to another table for cover. A hand came over the tabletop and fired a pistol blind, hitting exactly where Ethan had landed. He shot back but the hand had withdrawn as quickly as it had fired. His bullet grazed the table edge where the hand had been, on target. He fired again as he continued to move, but at the lower compartment in front of where he saw the hand. The hand popped up at another spot and again hit where he had just been. That was good shooting from the blind side of a table.
Ethan reversed himself. His straight-line course towards the closest protection was too predictable. He holstered his pistol and unslung the plasma rifle. That table and its plastic storage section wouldn’t stop a star hot bolt. Predictably, another quick shot from the cagy warrior struck the deck close to where he would have been had he continued towards that better cover. This was a thoughtful shooter, who was being more careful than he’d expect from a typical Krall warrior. It had a blue uniform, but so had Toltak and she had not been all that smart.
He activated the rifle’s power pack, and as soon as he did, a flurry of wild shots rang out that sent him scrambling for cover, as the shooter changed location. The direction of the sound of the last shots told him his clever shooter had gotten behind some heavy metal coolers. Not ideal cover from a plasma rifle, but far better than the table had been. The hasty shooting act also told Ethan that the power pack made some sort of a sound when it powered up, although it was too high pitched for human hearing. That was obviously how his opponent knew it had to move to better cover.
He took a shot at the end of a cooler he thought might be the right one. The wider heavy bolt setting selected didn’t penetrate, but did leave a pitted halo behind in the metal. He dialed the beam down to the slender diameter of a stylus, and fired at the opposite end of the cooler. This time he drilled right through this side, and wisps of smoke rising from the other side proved it went all the way through.
He couldn’t hear anything, but
was worried that a blue uniform meant a com set button. He hadn’t seen one on the left side shoulder as he entered this deck, but the right shoulder had been out of view behind the Krall he’d killed. There could be an ultra-sonic call for reinforcements going out by radio now. He couldn’t wait.
“There are several hundred of us coming up from below. It’s better to try to defeat me now, or you will have no chance to escape.” There was no reply to his slight exaggeration of numbers.
The rest of the raiding party should be climbing aboard by now, with his mother. He had trouble thinking of her as “Captain Greeves,” but they didn’t yet have control of the ship. If this warrior wasn’t the pilot, the actual pilot could on the command deck and powering up the heavy weapons, such as the plasma cannons and laser systems, ready to fire on the Mark or the teams crossing the tarmac. He wondered where Jorl was. If he had heard the shooting, he’d be infiltrating from the other side. He may have passed by this deck before the sound of the shots could reach him. If so, Ethan’s Mind Tap data said the next deck with an open area to see all the way across was three decks higher. Jorl would pause and reverse there.
He had an idea. He shut down the noisy power pack, and removed it from the rifle. Leaving the rifle behind, he crawled rapidly around some tables, well away from his last location.
When he had an aisle where he could run towards the center of this deck, to reach the other side of the centrally placed food coolers, he switched to a full clip on his pistol. He started shooting rapidly in various directions, and slapped the power pack to activate it and slid it hard back the way from which he’d come. Then as quietly as he could he ran in a crouch, down the aisle, looking from side to side as he passed other crossing aisles.
He suddenly spotted his target, a blue suit headed away from him in a lane to his right, following or fleeing from the sound of the power pack. He shot him twice in the back just as he ducked around a corner, the Krall’s head no longer exposed for a kill shot. Ethan didn’t start down that lane after him, and quickly reversed a few steps. Three shots suddenly flew in his direction, along the aisle where he had wounded the Krall.
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 65
