Koban Universe 1

by Stephen W Bennett

  When she reached the selected junction, she passed the open stairwell, and dragged her hand along the wall on the other side, then lightly lifted it as she went. She next whirled and backtracked, to dive through the open radial corridor that led straight away from the bottom of the steps. She jumped as far as she could down that corridor to avoid a heat spot where she touched the deck. If she’d timed it right, she made the turnoff before the first of her chasers could catch a glimpse of her around the curve.

  Not that she waited to see. This passage intersected with another concentric ring corridor in roughly twenty feet, and she made a left turn into that one before the sounds of pursuing growls and inarticulate grunts passed where she had made her jump. As she had hoped, momentum kept them moving straight, and the scent trail continued briefly.

  Most telling for them was the faint IR glowing streak, which she’d left on the right side wall, focusing their attention to that side and away from her true direction. Even when the warm streak faded, the push of the mass behind the leaders moved them farther in the wrong direction. When the scent and IR streak ended, they had to shove to go back the way they came. Lacking language, they couldn’t communicate other than by clubbing those in their way, and displaying the signs that the trail had gone cold.

  Soon, her new scent trail direction attracted Krall who had been farther back in the pack, and they moved into the correct corridor. By then, Maggi had made another two turns and had gained some separation. It was effectively pitch black for visible light, and the temperature differences of the structure around her was largely based on the heat conductivity of the materials used. She had a memory of factory layouts from having been inside several other underground facilities, and this level was more or less a standard layout for any of them. Two levels down, the factory would open out into larger high ceilinged production and assembly areas, with hoists and abandoned machinery lining wide and open pathways between various manufacturing stations.

  There was no way of knowing what the clan that had once lived here had forced their alien slaves to make for them. However, there would be many levels below her, and huge high ceiling areas that spanned four or five levels. There was ample room to try to avoid the Krall, but eventually she’d run out of ammunition, and they would finally sniff her out and corner her in the dark. Being faster and stronger did not trump sheer numbers.

  This wasn’t a matter of heroically selling her life for a good cause in the war with the Krall. These were inbred dregs, left behind with no regard for what the unchecked progeny could do life on an isolated land mass, like this island. On any of the other three continents, these primitive acting Krall throwbacks would already be dead, unable to compete with the larger and tougher animals found there. In the end, they probably couldn’t beat out Koban life on this island either. The dome had provided them a refuge from predators that might pass this way. When the normal prey animals diminished from over hunting, the Koban predators would discover a taste for Krall flesh.

  None of those thoughts helped Maggi with her own predicament. She didn’t see this ending in a triumphant victory over a pack of wild Krall. There was nothing for her to gain in this fight, or for the rest of the Kobani on the planet, regardless of how many of this plague of killers she took down with her. Besides, she had placed her companions at risk, because of her irrational feeling of annoyance. What had she thought those four youngsters would do? She sent them off with no instructions at all, except to “scout for threats.” She could have Mind Tapped them in a few seconds with a touch, telling them to stay close, and return quickly.

  Now she was going to die down here, and they might die trying to reach her. She didn’t want their bones to join the pile with hers, although she couldn’t think of a way to get high enough to improve the weak signal of their transducers. She had lost the signal at about thirty feet below the main floor, when she was still close to the open stairwells. That was a direction closed to her now, at least if she wanted to delay her death. Despite the darkness, her IR vision component could guide her. There were other stairs (also next to dead elevators) closer to the center of every Krall factory complex. She went in search of one of those now.

  When she reached the next set of stairs, she knew that the stale, unstirred air here had put her pursuers on her trail again. Wherever she went, some scent would lead them. She was wearing a light jacket, because this island was so far south that it had cool night breezes, coming off the polar ocean currents that flowed past. She started down the stairs, seeking some place she could leave the jacket as a distraction.

  As she descended, the walls gave way to a vast feeling of space, where there were echoes from the blackness around her, sounds of condensation drips, and the smell of mustiness. The lack of visual temperature contrasts close to her, for easy reference when she entered the large open volume, caused her to experience a momentary sense of vertigo. She couldn’t orient herself properly, and the lack of stair rails could send her off the side of the steps if she wasn’t careful.

  When she adjusted her focus, she realized there were temperature variations detectable farther across the vast feeling space. Old machinery, walkways between them, power and cooling lines, conveyer systems, and structural members could faintly be discerned. The Krall, with their more sensitive IR vision would be able to move faster here than she could. The ripper genes conveyed superior low natural light vision, because they never hunted in total darkness, as she was in now. She had to pay close attention to where she walked, to stay centered on the steps.

  When she reached the wide walkway at the bottom of these steps, she touched some of the machinery. It felt damp and gritty to the touch, with flakes coming lose between her fingers. There had been no maintenance here for a very long time, and unseen rust probably coated many of the metal parts, catwalks, and support beams.

  She walked between tall mysterious pieces of equipment, and turned down several side walkways, to get her heat signature out of sight of the stairs, once her chasers reached this far. They were coming, because she could hear them.

  Ah. They’re back to using the natural cunning displayed when I first entered the dome, she noted. They had stopped making low frequency sounds, which most animals on Koban could hear, and were using only ultrasonic gabble. It still sounded like nonsense, but it was clear they wanted to sneak up on their prey, unaware that her wolfbat gene modifications let her hear them coming.

  They were so confidant she couldn’t hear them, that they were being very noisy. To better sense from which way they were approaching, she closed her eyes and simply listened. She had a clue to orient herself, because they would be trailing her by scent, and would be descending the same stairs she had just used. As the first of them reached the top of the steps, the echoes of their multiple voices started echoing all through the cavernous volume, reflecting from the walls, machinery, and catwalks.

  A peculiar sensation pervaded her mind, as the sounds reflected and reverberated. She had a definite sense not only of where they were, behind and above her on the stair top, but they were over her right shoulder. As she turned her head, the echoes arriving at slightly different times and from different directions, she believed she could pinpoint their location. Not only that, but she could visualize her own catwalk, and the huge hydraulic press she was concealed behind.

  Press? How do I know that? It dawned on her that the shape she sensed next to her, in her mind, fit the design of other Krall factory equipment she had seen in operational factories. She sensed an opening in the side of the press, where material to be shaped would be placed. Quietly, she stepped closer and, eyes still closed, reached a hand out and precisely touched the edge of that recess. She hadn’t needed to fumble. She had found it easily with her eyes closed. She cautiously moved down the walkway several steps, and with more confidence, reached out and touched the other side of that opening.

  She was forming a more detailed image of her surroundings by the second, as the echoes arrived, and were placed in
some sort of order in her mind. She had no idea how it was happening, but the ability was certainly familiar to her. She had Mind Tapped wolfbats many times, after they had scouted for them, to provide the human partners with their mental images of what they had seen. Part of those images came from their eyes, part from their mental images built from echolocations. A human couldn’t make the sounds required for echolocation, but the Krall were being obliging, and doing it for her.

  One of the side benefits of the wolfbat hearing genes, had been the inherent improvement in memory organization, experienced in the brains of every Kobani after that modification became fully incorporated. The orderly structure for improved memory storage and fast data recovery had been noted, examined, and they thought it was understood as a byproduct of the wolfbat’s need for an audio map of the world when flying through a darkened jungle or cave. However, it hadn’t occurred to them to test it like this for humans, when visual cues were unavailable.

  Maggi didn’t have precise ranging cues, based on a personally generated echo measured position in this audio space. However, her mind was automatically organizing the sounds into a perception of the entire space around her. She “knew” just how wide the press was that she was touching. That there was a walkway eleven feet on the opposite side, where a formed metal alloy chest plate could be removed. This press was part of a Krall body armor production line. One that she had seen previously, in a different well-lit factory.

  This acoustic ability was one they hadn’t realized they had. Useful, even if a lesser version of the sharply defined images sensed previously from wolfbat minds. Humans were predominately-visual creatures, so it hadn’t occurred to them to look for this. She could use this ability to elude her pursuers better in the dark, but it literally wouldn’t get her out of this hole.

  Now that she could sense where there was cover from the Krall’s IR vision, she could move along places of concealment. She even had an intermittent sense of where the sound emitters were (the Krall when they were making noise). Fortunately, some of them were babbling all of the time. It wasn’t language, but there were repetitions of the same sounds from different voices, which suggested they did use rudimentary voice signals.

  She could tell this hydraulic press had a narrow opening all the way through to the other side. Her eyes still shut, she crawled through the tight space, quelling the thought that the press might suddenly activate, and convert her into a messy organic replica of Krall chest armor.

  Other than the near hatchling sized Krall, the thick chests of the larger ones would not fit through the opening that had passed her slender frame. She could try other tricks like this, to slow them down. She felt confident she could shoot and hit them with her eyes closed, if they were within fifty to a hundred feet, and acoustically outlined. Her goal was to avoid letting them get that close, because the flare of a shot would identify her position to the entire volume of Krall seeking her. They would come swarming by multiple routes if she was seen.

  She passed a small dangling power cable and used her strength to flex it repeatedly, and broke off a thirty-foot length. She removed her jacket, and tied it in a bundle to one end while she walked, her eyes mostly closed. She was unable to resist the periodic need to open her eyes, to see some IR blemish of whatever she was passing. It was confirmation that her mental audio picture hadn’t misled her. That she wasn’t about to step off a catwalk.

  She found a place where a slender strip of metal stretched over a fifteen-foot gap between parallel walkways, with a long drop below. There was no clue what the strip was used for, but it was just lying there, and didn’t appear strong enough to hold her weight.

  She tied the other end of the cable around the strip, and shoved the looped knot out as far as she could, with the jacket hanging down over the drop, as a scent attractant and faint heat source. She lay prone, and scooted out as far as she could, to shove the knot farther away, and felt the metal strip start to sag. It didn’t seem attached to either side. It was a stupid trap, which wouldn’t sucker a four year old. Perhaps a feral Krall would “fall” for this.

  She worked her way through the factory maze, and knew from the accumulated sound sources and noise level, that the trackers had reached the crawl space through the press. It hardly delayed them at all, and they simply walked around. It was good she hadn’t wasted much time trying that.

  A short time later, two screeches, and a clattering of heavy bodies hitting far below proved that the trick with her jacket had worked, prompting a sardonic thought.

  Gee! Two more down and a bazillion to go!

  That was an exaggeration. Her ears actually reported there were only a few hundred down here searching for her. Apparently, none of the nearly mindless dolts was willing to branch off and search very far away from the main scent trail. Otherwise, she thought her movements would be sharply curtailed by their ability to see her heat signature from a distance, if they had simply spread out more.

  Having that thought proved prescient, and proof arrived only a few minutes later. Suddenly, there was an ultrasonic cry from a distant catwalk, well separated from the main group that was following her. This Krall had not been making any audible noise at all, and Maggi had been unaware of its position before this. Even now, it was only a dim IR glow to her at that distance. There wasn’t anything between her and it to block the view, and her hotter body glow had been easily spotted. She could handle just that one, but others would be drawn like moths to her IR flame.

  The cacophony of ultrasonic calls from the larger group told her the “first sighting” call wasn’t entirely inarticulate. It must have been an equivalent to “tally ho” or “prey here.”

  There was a benefit to her from the noise increase, as the huge underground cavity filled with high frequency hoots and howls. The definition of the structures around her improved for several seconds. She mentally scanned the acoustic mind picture for somewhere to make a stand, where they couldn’t get to her en masse. She found one, but it had no possibility of retreat once reached.

  The underground factory was centered under the dome, and the floor of the dome was partly supported from below by structural beams. One was a large vertical “X” shaped central beam, which appeared to provide primary support for the ceiling, at a point her memory told her must be under the center of the great hall above. The beam was completely clear of catwalks for three levels below the ceiling, and at its top, there were four smaller angled support beams, which branched away, to distribute ceiling support over a wider area.

  If she reached that upper junction, she would have the four angled beams to use for moving rapidly around the four sides of the central support. The Krall would have to climb straight up to reach her, only a few at a time. When her ammunition ran out, she had her knife, strength, and intelligence, to hold them off longer.

  She started running for the center of the complex, where she could get close to that support beam. She was exposed to view for part of her run, and new calls reporting her sighting reverberated everywhere, which at least refreshed her acoustic map of where things were located. It was nice she could count on that level of support from her would-be-killers.

  She saw a problem as she neared the center, and the resolution improved. Her present level didn’t have a catwalk that came closer than twenty feet of the beam. Krall were now at the stairs she would need to climb, to reach a higher level that came within a few feet of her goal.

  As she neared the edge of the catwalk closest to her target, it was literally time for a leap of faith over the dark abyss. Running in the pitch dark, she slapped her right foot down less than an inch from the edge, and jumped.

  The distance was well within her ability to leap, even in 1.52 gravities, and she was certain she was on an intersecting trajectory with the beam, arcing over the deep dark chasm. What her mental map could not tell her, was the texture of the beam she needed to grasp in the dark. If it were slippery and damp, she would slide down, unable to reach her intended refuge at the
top. Moist wasn’t actually in doubt, not in this dank humid environment. What she needed was a gritty or rusty surface, for a secure grip that would permit her to climb.

  She’d kept her eyes closed for the jump-off, using only the mental map as reference, but now opened them to try to see the details of the beam as she drew near.

  There would be thanks offered to the god of thermal conductivity. Heat from the dome above had crept down the beam, and its edges glowed faintly, where the heat was radiated away.

  The metal had a wonderfully dirty, marvelously coarse, slightly rusty surface for a secure grip! It probably left a red mess on her clothes and hands, and particularly her right cheek, pressed thankfully against the damp coolness. Now she had the means to climb, and tenuously started up, testing her handholds on the rough surface of the edges, and trying out climbing techniques. In only a few seconds, she was moving like a spider monkey up the beam on one bar of the “X,” going hand over hand, using booted feet squeezed in hard for her lower grip.

  She was in clear view of probably every Krall that had been after her, but because they had been in the process of descending to her level, they were clustered close to a distant stairway, fighting each other to get down first. She passed the catwalk that extended closest to the beam in a few seconds, even as some of the more fleet footed chasers ran towards her.

  The beam was too sturdy to transmit any vibration of the impact of Krall bodies as they jumped on below her. However, the almost joyous grunts of a close pursuit sounded directly below her, only twenty feet behind.

  Lighter, stronger, and more agile, she outpaced them to reach the four-way junction, where forty-five degree angled smaller beams branched out to the sides, providing a place for her to sit. As she looked down, she could see the body heat of a chain of pursuers climbing after her, the closest one forty feet below.