Koban Universe 1

by Stephen W Bennett

  The Krall were discovering that extended talons were less useful for this climbing task than fingertip pads, as Maggi used. There was considerable scrabbling as talon tips slipped and they had to renew their grips. One or two had found that retracted talons and their four thick finger and toe pads worked better, but the Krall already above those fast learners were slower to figure this on their own.

  Maggi drew her pistol, and decided she would pick off the smarter climbers first, particularly those that might hit climbers behind them as they fell. In a flash of insight, she decided against headshots, for the quick kill. Instead, she shot at hands.

  The fourth one in trail, directly below her, was shot in its right hand as it held on to pull itself up. It was surprisingly quick. It planted its wide left hand around the end of the beam with a retracted talon grip, and still moved up a foot. She admired its tenacity so much, that she shot its left foot to see if it could use that combination to continue.

  A waste of a second bullet, she reprimanded herself. Then was vindicated as it slipped free, and grasped at the Krall just below, pulling it free as well, who it in turn caught at the shoulders of a third, sending three killers into the blackness below, roaring their rage.

  Rational beings would have seen the futility of the high losses to be incurred, just for a single adversary who couldn’t escape. If they merely waited for hunger and thirst to do its work, she was doomed. Except, the enraged reaction confirmed that this wasn’t going to be a rational response.

  Maggi knew there had been autopsies done on Krall, which suggested that there was an adrenaline-like chemical, whose production spiked suddenly when warriors around them were killed or they themselves were wounded. It triggered the familiar berserker rage. The Krall didn’t particularly like each other, respected sometimes, but not liked and never “loved.” A prey “animal” that killed one of them often became the intense focus of rage and revenge. Most humans didn’t survive that level of attention.

  The Krall that the Planetary Union Army normally faced were trained and carefully selected warriors, capable of reluctant withdrawal, and of much smarter actions than these sad representatives. Those higher status warriors had been culled from a mass of hatchlings, such as those that had managed to survive here, with no culling and completely untrained. With each death, more of them leaped out to make the climb, eager for their chance at a challenging kill.

  Thanks to such mindless, driven persistence, Maggi was eventually down to her final magazine of all explosive rounds. There had to be a considerable pile of flesh in the lower levels of the complex, directly under her. The clangs of impacts on metal had shifted to duller thuds, as the bodies accumulated. Other Krall had made their way down into the dark factory from above, either coming from the dome, or perhaps from the surrounding woods. If some were from the woods, then she may have helped draw them away from the boys and the rippers. They would have had much more room get away outside anyway, and could outpace any chasers if they avoided being cornered, as she was.

  Eventually reaching the sixteenth and final round, she had to decide if that one would be saved for herself or not. She saved it for the time being, holstering the pistol, and drawing her eighteen-inch molecular edged blade. She hung upside down by a knee, from one of the angled supports, slashing at hands, wrists, and fingers as they came in reach. She nearly lost the knife once, when she stabbed straight into the top of a skull, and the violent twist of her victim’s neck nearly tore the weapon from her grip.

  This hanging position only permitted her to defend three sides of the main support beam. From time to time, a Krall would reach up, grab the angled support farthest from her on the opposite side, and swing a leg up and over. She would then have to quickly pull up and dispatch the “successful” climber with a flurry of cuts and slashes. Despite her best efforts, she was slowing down. It was only a matter of time before she would take too long to kill one of them, and others would gain a handhold behind her.

  She made her decision. It would be to deny them a direct victory. She intended to leap out over the abyss, and use her final saved round on the way down.

  That time was fast approaching, she knew, as she barely managed to keep two of them from reaching the top behind her. That’s when she felt them finally change tactics.

  It was felt, because the unexpected jolt nearly shook her loose from her one handed grip, as she swung over and slashed the fingers off a hand griping a top support beam. They were somehow battering the main beam she thought, to shake her down.

  The jolt came again, and she was better prepared this time to hold on, but debris splintered from the ceiling and unexpectedly struck her in the face in the darkness as she looked up, lodging tiny fragments of grit in her eyes. Unable to see their IR signatures, she’d have to rely on her mental acoustic map to continue the fight. The sound absorbing enemy bodies could be faintly perceived when they were close to her, via occultation of background sound reflections. Of course, they often could be sensed directly, because their noisy mouths made their heads and eyes a target for her blade.

  The third, much harder impact, shattered large segments from the ceiling, because she felt from which direction the larger particle spray came. The pieces stung when they hit, and one larger shard nicked her left cheek. Unless a smaller angled support beam had just pulled free, she couldn’t understand how that happened. Nor could she imagine how these Krall had managed to apply something heavy enough to act as a battering ram on the sturdy beam. Apparently, a few of them were more resourceful than she had expected, compared to those still climbing towards her.

  Because the battering had caused some of the climbers to slip down the column, she had a moment to reposition herself, to confront the next closest climber. It was fortunate that she was climbing over an angled support beam when the next and stronger impact came, because the chaotic loud low frequency noise disrupted her mental acoustic map, and simultaneously slightly displaced the beam she had reached for in her blindness.

  Missing her handhold, she spun downward, saved only by a knee hooked over the support she had straddled. Without the mental map of where she was in space, she’d have to listen for a few seconds to rebuild that. The Krall were screaming their anger even louder, as if she had done this. She needed to try to blink the grit out of her eyes, using the tears generated by the irritation. If she could regain part of her IR vision, she might hold them at bay while her mind rebuilt a map from the sounds echoing around.

  With effort, she tried and failed to open her eyelids. Dust, mixed with tear duct fluid had gummed them closed while she’d held them tightly shut. Shifting her knife to her left hand, she used her right thumb to try to pull the right eyelid gently open. It hurt, as this activity drug grit over the surface of her eye.

  Dazzling light blinded her for a moment as the eyelid lifted, and she thought she had done that to herself. Possibly a shot of pain induced optic nerve activity. Except her eye, even though closed, adapted swiftly to a continuing glare, closing the iris. It was then that she sensed the pink glow through her eyelid. The light was real. The ceiling must have cracked, to allow light through from the hall in the dome above her. The Krall wouldn’t need IR to see her now, and she couldn’t take advantage of the same light. If several of them got hold of her, she might not be able to fight free.

  She thumbed open the holster retainer and drew the Krall made pistol. It occurred to her for the first time that a Krall bullet ending her life was too ironic. She should have saved the last round of her human made .45 instead.

  There was a clanging metal on metal sound on the girder on the opposite side of the main support. She prepared to straighten her leg, to start the drop into the dark depths, pistol ready.

  “Hey! You going to just hang there, or help us?”

  Thinking she was hallucinating, she asked eloquently, “What?”

  The hallucination had Danner’s sassy mannerisms. “Clever reply, as you would tell one of us. Climb over and grab the line I just
tossed over that cross beam. We see the locals are climbing up to get you. We’re out of ammunition, the shuttle lasers are ruined, and you need to get your butt over here.”

  She used her right hand to pull herself up to straddle the support beam. “How the hell did you find me?”

  She heard Cory in the background mutter, “Just like her to quiz us, instead of listening to us knuckle headed kids.”

  “Uh. I heard that, young man. Danner, I can’t see, I have dirt and grit in my eyes. I’ll climb over to the other side. You guide me to the line.”

  “OK.”

  Following his directions, she found the line in a few seconds, with an improvised hook on the end.

  “I can pull myself over on the line if I tie it off here. Where the hell are you? You don’t sound very far away.”

  “We’re sticking through the floor of the dome. I guess from your perspective, we’re stuck through the factory ceiling. You only have about twenty-five feet to go, but I suggest you tie the rope securely around your chest, and swing down to let us pull you up by hand. Hurry if you please. There are Krall almost up to you.”

  She quickly looped the line around her chest and under her arms. At the sound of a snarl from right behind her, she pushed off into the darkness. To her accelerated perceptions, the second before the tug of the line was felt passed like an eternity. She had resigned herself to jumping to her death a moment ago, but with salvation now at hand, this short drop was terrifying.

  As she was being pulled up, her body rotated, and her ears sensed the enraged snarls of the Krall that had just missed grabbing her. When the point of origin of that sound suddenly shifted closer, she knew it had launched itself after her.

  “Look out!...”

  Simultaneous with Danner’s warning, she quickly drew and fired her last bullet.

  The Krall’s screech ended with the swoosh-blam of the explosive round and a spatter of wetness on her face and arms, thus eliminating that particular bit of noise pollution.

  “…Damn, that was a nice shot,” Danner amended what he was saying, all in the same breath.

  “Got your sight back just in time,” Cory added.

  “Nope. Still can’t open my eyes yet. However, I’ll have a neat trick to teach you two. Assuming you can learn how to use your ears.” She enjoyed the pun.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder guiding her as she was lifted, and a rectangular opening bumped and scraped against her shoulders, then hips.

  When she put her hand out, feeling for support, she felt an instrument console tilted at an odd angle. She also smelled the inside of something she knew well, which could not be here.

  “How did you get a damned shuttle down here? What happened to the broken windscreen you just lifted me through? I don't smell Kopper or Kally, just your sweaty armpits.”

  “Wow. You’re welcome. So glad to hear your thankful comments.” Danner sounded as much amused as annoyed.

  Cory added, “If the window pisses her off, just wait until she finds out about the rest of the shuttle.”

  “OK. I’m sorry.” She responded. “Thank you both. Please get me a water bottle and the med kit, so I can clear my eyes. You can tell me what happened as you do that.”

  “Uh…, I’ll have to get a cup of water from the shuttle water cooler. You tossed all the water supplies out with the camping equipment. We couldn’t bring them inside with us because the cases wouldn’t fit through the windscreen frame. Which we had to shoot out, by the way, just to get back inside. The hatch code was changed somehow.” There wasn’t an accusation there exactly, but a question was certainly implied.

  “Oh. You didn’t hear my last transmission?” The guilt came back to her.

  “It was broken up, and we were kind of busy fighting off a bunch of big, unusually stupid Krall.”

  Her heart skipped a beat when neither of them mentioned the two rippers, and she couldn’t smell a fresh scent from them. “The cats?” She dreaded an answer.

  “Oh. They were too large to fit through the window. We used the ammunition stored in the shuttle to help them tear a hole through the wave of Krall coming out of the woods. They were headed for the open plain a mile on the other side of the trees. No Krall can catch them there, and after what we and they did to them getting back to the shuttle, I can’t believe the Krall would want to try that again.”

  “After you were inside, why didn’t you open the rear hatch for them?”

  “Speaking of using ears.” Danner chuckled. “Didn’t I mention the code was changed? The standard code wouldn’t work.”

  “Did you try the console master switch? It’s the override if you’re inside you know.”

  “Uh…, no.” He sounded sheepish. “We were shooting Krall out the window at the time, so Kopper and Kally could break through to the woods. We only thought of it later, after the Krall were crawling all over and banging on the top and sides.”

  The application of water had loosened the gum around her left eye, and when she pulled both lids back, she had Cory pour more water onto her upraised open eyes to flush them, blinking and rolling her eyes to clear them of grit. She could see a little now.

  Squinty eyed, she asked, “Why are we stuck here with our nose pointed down?”

  “Because the pointy end of the shuttle made a better battering ram?” Answered Danner, with a smirk.

  His expression annoyed her. “You broke through the floor of the dome with the shuttle? Were you nuts? How did you plan to get out of the same trap where I was? That all of us are in now? This thing isn’t going to fly us back out you know. It must be smashed to hell.”

  “Before Cory burned an entry into the side of the dome for me to hover through, to reach the central hall, I called Prime City by radio. They answered, and help is coming.”

  “Oh.” She was mollified somewhat.

  “You don’t want the answer to the most important question?” It was Cory’s smirk that irritated her now.

  “Which is?”

  “How we found you.”

  “If I have to drag it out of you, I won’t tell you about the neat new thing we can do.”

  “Fine. You really made them angry and they all went down after you. The ultrasonic screaming came up from all of the stairwells, and we put our ears to the floor and heard it loudest from almost directly below us. Only you could have pissed anything off that much, and sure enough, we heard you curse a couple of times. You do that a lot, you know, when you think no one can hear you.” He hurried on, when he thought she was about to demonstrate her century old mastery of swear words.

  “Anyway, we had to see what was happening down below, and there was no other way to make a hole. Sorry about the shuttle you borrowed.”

  Danner quickly jumped in to remind her of her offer, hoping to divert her anger a bit longer. “What trick can we do that we don’t know about yet?”

  Not fooled by the obvious diversionary ploy, she went along with it anyway, because she really did want to show off what she’d learned.

  “Hear those Krall still screaming out there in ultrasonic? I want you get close to the broken window, close your eyes, and listen for a few minutes. Then tell me what you see in your minds.”

  Their surprised expressions a minute later was reward enough to pay for a wrecked shuttle.

  Bats of a Leather Flock Together

  The giant not-live flier vanished into the sky, leaving Jura continent behind, and the former passengers watched its retreat from the gently rolling flat terrain atop the huge elevated pedestal-like formation. Flock Leader issued a recall to the four circling squadrons, sent to scout the area around the rocky plateau, as their supplies were unloaded.

  The four-mile wide flat-topped slab of stone rose several hundred feet higher than the surrounding rain forest trees, its vertical cliffs were draped with jungle vines, and the forest grew almost to its flanks.

  The flock’s effort to colonize this area had been supported by their human partners, in gratitude for services fro
m the newly elected Flock Leader and his new Flight Leader, for past scouting missions to this largely unexplored continent of Koban. Last season they had scouted for a small pack of humans and a pride of four rippers, to travel upstream next to a river seeking where shiny bits of hard rocks were born. Why their human partners wanted the shiny rocks was a mystery the Flock Leader never understood, since they could not be eaten. The mind pictures implied they traded the shiny rocks with humans that did not live on Koban, for different not-live things you still could not eat.

  The flock insisted they be paid with something useful, things they could eat or use to make a strong nest, like meat that could feed them for many days without the need to hunt, as they made their new nest in the crevasses leading deep into the cliffs of the plateau. The cold bags of cubes of high quality rhinolo meat would be the last of those they would have, because there was none of those horned beasts near here. That didn’t actually matter to them, because before the humans became flock partners with them and paid them in that meat, the only time a squadron brought home rhinolo meat was when rippers left a kill unguarded. A wolfbat squadron, or an entire flock, could not bring down such large animals, and they had to scavenge to obtain such rare meat.

  There were many small to midsized prey animals here, living in and below the trees and on the top of the plateau for them to hunt. One thing they had learned from ripper mind pictures was never to kill all of any one kind of prey animal in a small area, or then there would be no more.

  Their human partner’s mind images also suggested this was smart, so that a flock would always have enough food to eat. They would try to do like the rippers, and not have so many pups that the flock needed to eat everything they could find, and split into new flocks that would soon fight over what little was left to hunt.

  There were distant flocks living at other plateaus, and they would be a source for trading females when fresh blood was needed in the flock and as opponents for raids if the younger squadron males needed an outlet for their excess energy. These neighbors were lost flocks, which had established themselves here long ago, when individual squadrons or entire migrating nests were blown here by storm winds, forced to cross over the wide waters between the lands. Their signal calls were very different, but then, remote flocks in their former homeland also had strange signal calls. The wolfbats could learn new calls quickly, not as fast as they built complex mind maps made from sound echoes, but those mind maps could hold more than just the pattern of reflected echoes.