Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  Chack had returned with the other hauler, and was now going to carry some of the older passengers to the dome on his pallet. Dillon stood on the step-up on the side of the vehicle to ride along in support.

  Mirikami positioned his two other volunteers on either side of the Ramp, facing out, to offer some protection as people made their cautious way down the ramp.

  Noreen was puzzled, “Sir, I heard Jake say there was another group of eight wolfbats close, and ten more groups behind them. Those five that attacked were the smaller bunch. Where are the others?”

  “Mam,” Jake replied to her question, which he assumed was intended for him, “The eight flew to the Krall Clanship, which parked south and west of us at the edge of the landing area. They circled there for over six minutes. Next, they flew east, but stayed well south of our position before turning north. They have just turned west towards the ship, and are one point eight miles away.”

  Mirikami pulled at his lip in thought. “I’ll bet they were waiting for someone to come out of the Clanship, because they would have had a longer distance to get to the dome from there. They’re clever little bastards. Now they are after new prey. How soon will they get here? I can’t see them.” He faced east looking around the sides of the Ship.

  “Sir, they are coming from directly opposite the ramp, so the ship is blocking you. They are increasing speed now at just under one mile, and they are low to the ground.”

  Damn, they really are smart! He realized. “Noreen they are using the ship as cover to get close before we see them.”

  “Link me to every transducer outside the ship.” Without a pause, he said “Break; eight more wolfbats are approaching from the east, behind the ship, which they are using for cover to sneak up on us. Be ready, they are less than a mile away.”

  “Noreen, tell the guy on your side of the ramp and I’ll tell mine. They have their faceplates open, but they were told not to use the radios.”

  Mirikami got right up to the big man on his side before he recognized the older man. He was the husband of one of the scientists, and he had eaten dinner with them a few times. He was probably even older than Mirikami. To hold up the tanks, he was leaning forward, hands on his upper thighs.

  “Ray watch your side of the ship, eight wolfbats are trying to sneak up on us from behind the hull. Step away from the crowd and get ready to pull the trigger if you get a clear shot. We might get a chance test those things and see if they work.”

  Just then, there was a tremendous crash below the ship, and debris ricocheted off the bottom of the ramp and the jacks. Several people, startled by the sudden noise and vibration, screamed and ducked. They looked relieved when they realized what had happened.

  The lower part of engine number two had just fallen, as the work inside the ship cut it free. That part of the plan was apparently going well, but Mirikami hadn’t heard a warning from them.

  “Sorry Captain,” he heard Jorl’sn say in his ear. “That lower unit pulled free sooner than we expected under this gravity. I was going to warn you before cutting the last supports. Is everyone OK?”

  “Fine Roni, we have a lot going on, I’ll get back to you.”

  As he said that, wolfbats flashed out from below the ship, three to each side, climbing with furious wing beats. In a bit of good luck, the falling thruster control nozzle and plasma chamber had accidentally disrupted an attack that had been intended to go below the ship and come out within the crowd of people near the ramp, or possibly hit those coming down. If anyone at the top fell they could knock another half dozen people down. A two hundred pound man weighed three hundred now, and everyone was already tired from holding that extra weight up for the last couple of days.

  If not for the Pep and Oxy pills, a lot of the older or out of shape people might be wheezing and sitting on the ground before reaching the dome.

  The flyers quickly regrouped over the top of the ship, where they circled. However, Mirikami only saw six. Where were the other two?

  He had his answer a moment later when a woman’s scream came from the opposite side of the ramp. Noreen was hurrying that way, but Mirikami couldn’t see the woman so the ramp must be blocking his view.

  Noreen’s Sonic sounded, and two wolfbats quickly darted away, clearly in a rush of wildly flapping wings, twisting and turning their heads like a dog shaking off water.

  “The Sonics work on these damned bats Tet,” He heard Noreen yell with satisfaction. Then her tone changed. “I have a lady with some serious bleeding from her throat, face and arm bites. We need one of our medics with a smart bandage. I think she’ll be OK if we control the bleeding.”

  Leading the woman back around the side of the ramp, several people took over tending to the woman, and Noreen walked over to Mirikami.

  She glanced briefly up at the circling animals. “The poor woman’s probably going to be deaf for the next half hour from the Sonic. She said she was after a bar of metal that flew off the engine to use as a club.”

  “I wish we had more than three of these Sonics if it hurts the bats.” Mirikami replied. “Hell I wish we had more guns of any kind.”

  Chack, about a third of the way back to the dome, with a load of exhausted older scientist, shouted another warning. “Heads up, they’re diving!”

  The six wolfbats had quit circling, and suddenly folded wings and dove towards the hauler’s pallet as if it were a food platter. Chack had his Jazzer aimed through one of the small holes in the protective cage, but he wasn’t close enough to the pallet for it to have maximum effect and his aim was limited by the cage. The six wolfbats were going to swarm over a half dozen worn out elderly men and women.

  When they were no more than fifty feet up, they were literally six teal streaks in a deadly dive. Suddenly a translucent gray mist blossomed in front of them. Their momentum took them into the leading edge of the pale mist, when it exploded in a whoosh of red and yellow flame.

  Six flaming and screeching pieces of flapping shrapnel scattered out of the fireball. The flames died quickly, radiating heat painful on bare skin below them, but gone in seconds. Four of the wolfbats dropped to the tarmac, writhing in agony, and snapping at their own burning fur. One fell close enough to nip a woman on her calf, but it wasn’t a determined attack, and it seemed to be blind.

  The two flyers that had been trailing slightly in the massed dive used their fast reactions to avoid full immersion in the fireball. They managed to fly erratically away, trailing smoke from singed fur.

  “Yes,” Dillon shouted, pumping his left fist up and down several times. “The damned thing worked!”

  A stunned quiet lasted a few seconds, until everyone realized that the fireball had been made by one of them. For a horrifying moment, those that didn’t know what Dillon was carrying had thought the little horrors had turned into miniature fire breathing dragons.

  Hot and tired as they were, another ragged cheer rang out. Several people called out to ask Dillon what he had done, what were those tanks?

  He was delighted to tell them about the three homemade flamethrowers the two machinists had cobbled together. One tank held a flammable thin gel that could be sprayed using compressed air from the other tank, pushed through the hoses and out a hand held nozzle. It made a thin stream that squirted thirty to forty feet, spreading as it went. When set on fire it was supposed to make a steady jet of sticky flame.

  In theory, the spark igniter on the end of the nozzle should have lit the gel, but a laser set with a short focal length was a backup ignition source. Dillon had needed the backup laser, because the jet of material had completely ignored the spark system and had atomized into a ball of droplets and vapor. The delay actually seemed to have worked to their advantage. The gel had formed a more dispersed cloud than intended before it caught fire, and had enveloped the wolfbats in a large ball of scorching heat and flame.

  The people that had been reluctant to get down the ramp were more willing to try it now, and there were over a hundred people off the ship. At
least twenty or thirty had passed under the shadow of the dome’s overhang, and the rest were strung out along the path that went around the nose of the Krall shuttle.

  It had been nearly a half hour of screw-ups and terror, but with the armed escorts to guard them, and the medical triage using the haulers and their pallets to move the injured, they all felt safer.

  Scorpion skeeters could still be seen hovering off to the sides, looking for an opportunity to strike. Jake reported the other groups of wolfbats had arrived in the area, but now the evacuee’s knew they could be repelled. The bats circled high above them.

  People continued to trudge across the tarmac to the dome. After another five minutes, Jorl’sn called to warn that her team’s lower engine unit was ready to drop. A warning was shouted around, followed shortly by another thunderous crash, with bits of debris hitting the ramp bottom.

  Ricco was back from his first trip to the portico under the dome, and said several others of the captives had finally arrived. They were helping to carry injured or weak people inside. However, they were afraid to come very far outside, saying the wolfbats often hid in ambush behind or under the trucks. He had brought Rigson’s Jazzer back, and Mirikami directed him to give it to Noreen.

  “Before you make another trip back to the dome Ricco, I need you to start dragging the engine pieces from under there. Don’t go under the ship yet, but play out the winch cable with enough slack that we can connect it quickly when we can get under there safely.”

  “Link me to Chief Haveram.” He told Jake.

  “Chief, how is your team doing?”

  “Captain,” he was huffing as he talked. “We are a bit behind the other teams, but we will drop the lower unit in another five or six minutes. Willfem and her team are well on their way to cut loose the midsection of their engine, but the scrap is still in the way. Are we going get those cleared soon, Sir?”

  “That’s being arranged, but we were waiting for your first piece to drop. I don’t want anyone hurt by falling parts. But if we hadn’t been using haulers for ambulance service, we could have been ready sooner.”

  “So I heard, Sir. We lost someone?”

  “Yes, two men. A flying sort of bug stung one man when he was at the top of the ramp. The previous captives here call them scorpion skeeters. The man fell, and gravity did the rest as he rolled down the ramp and broke his neck. Another man died from multiple stings, but the damned things landed on him and were sucking blood.” Mirikami felt an involuntary shudder.

  “We’ve other falling injuries, stings, and bites; with some pretty serious damage from those things they called wolfbats. Those ugly bastards weigh about twenty to twenty five pounds, and really do remind you of a blue or green Earth bat. They are unbelievably fast, and extremely vicious. They seem to a lot stronger and smarter than you’d expect. However, we can brief all of you this stuff later, before your crews have to cross to the dome. I’ll tell Ricco to standby for the next drop.”

  Five minutes later, after a warning, the third engine’s lower unit crashed to the tarmac. Ricco dashed to the first unit that had fallen, attached the cable securely, and started the task of trying to pull it away. It was too heavy for one hauler to drag with a steady pull, but with repeated jerks, it moved several feet at a time. It was tricky to avoid the landing jacks and pass between them, so he had to tug at different angles to do that.

  Finally, Ricco used his Link to call Chack for help, who said he was halfway back from the dome. The haulers working together easily drug all three lower units several hundred feet from the ship. They were now over an hour into the engine removal and evacuation.

  Maggi called down to the Captain from the top of the ramp. “We have just over three hundred down, Tet, but I thought we’d be half done by now.”

  “I did too Maggi,” he called up from the chair he’d had brought down for him. He was starting to wear out doing so much walking and running around in the heat and gravity. Everyone needed exercise and conditioning to handle this planet. It could have been worse, if they hadn’t started acclimatizing the ship days earlier, and without the Pep and Oxy pills. He was on his second dose.

  “If we are still moving people and Parkoda returns,” he pointed out, “that might force him to allow us more time to finish pulling the engines. We need to keep this ship in one piece.”

  “Hey, that gives me an idea. Let me ask our friend if he can figure out how far that shuttle had to travel to their meeting.” Knowing Jake was always listening, he stated his question aloud.

  “When Parkoda’s shuttle left, did you see where it was going, and can you estimate how long it might take to travel there and return? Put Maggi in the Link.”

  A half dozen nearby people, just stepping off the ramp, glanced at him after hearing the question, displaying curiosity. He was tired, but it wasn’t smart to be careless with this precious Link.

  “Sir, the shuttle departed towards a larger compound that I observed from orbit, which is the only one in the direction they took. It is located on the south west coast of this continent two thousand six hundred forty four miles from here. Before they flew over the horizon, the shuttle had reached a constant velocity that I can use in my estimate. If they did not lift to suborbital altitudes, something that shuttle is capable of doing, and then I estimate they would take between two and one half hours and three hours for a round trip. Any time spent at the destination would increase that time.”

  Looking around, he turned his face away from the people shuffling away, and murmured in a low voice. “So, we have three hours at a minimum, perhaps four hours.” Mirikami pondered, lip tugged as usual. “We will surely have everyone off by then, and only the engine crews might be onboard if they hit any snags. I think we can finish.”

  “Well,” Maggi offered a caveat, “we are going to have to rest some of our hardest working people before then Tet. I’m about to collapse in this gravity and heat, even sitting up here in my own chair, with a little of the ships’ cool air reaching me. I swapped out my five volunteers up here and let them get inside for cool air and drinks, and all we did was stand and boss people around.

  “Our folks inside and your three remaining Stewards, have mostly been sitting in cool comfort waiting their turn on the lifts or stairs. Your Stewards out here have walked to and from the dome several times now. It isn’t very far, but the gravity, heat, and stress makes that strenuous.”

  She offered another observation. “Those damned bugs stay close for any careless person they can sting. The bats are up there too, I can see them circling. The ones we killed are still lying on the tarmac, so that display might be keeping them at bay. But passive isn’t how the Krall said they normally act. I’m worried they will overcome whatever fear is keeping them away.”

  “You’re right, Maggi. Keep the people coming at a steady pace, and I’ll send some of mine back for a rest, and bring out the fresher people. Do you think any of the passengers could handle a Jazzer?”

  “They handle complex scientific equipment, so yes. It’s their steadiness under pressure I question. But if their lives will be on the line in a few days anyway, the sooner they learn the better.”

  Mirikami agreed. He called Noreen and explained what they needed to do, and told her to take a break, and to tell Dillon and his flamethrower squad to sit in the shade of three tarps that had been raised for them.

  Their soft suits might also need new power packs soon in this heat. People coming down the ramp could bring fresh packs. He had decided the escalator might have been useful after all, just to get back up into the ship.

  “Jake, deploy the passenger ramp. Activate it for two way use when deployed.” A tall hatch opened about fifty feet up the ship’s side. A longer steeper personnel escalator started extending down, forty-five degrees around the side from the cargo ramp. He didn’t plan to use it except for crew, and he could coordinate that use with the engine work to avoid debris.

  “Link to Willfem”

  “Nan, how’s it go
ing?” He asked as soon as Jake made the connection.

  “We are well on the way to a second set of drops in about six to eight minutes, Sir. We plan to do them all together this time. We have a third of each team resting right now, and we rotate through the hardest jobs. The gravity is taking a heavier toll than we expected, but despite that we are ahead of schedule.”

  “How’d you manage to do that? I expected you to fall behind, not shave off minutes.” He was pleasantly surprised.

  “We can work faster than we anticipated,” she explained. “The Chief’s team, using his expertise, caught up with us and gave us some shortcuts he thought of as they worked. We all unconsciously built in extra time to be more delicate with cutting up machinery that we’ll never use again.”

  “That’s good to hear, but don’t take any more risks than necessary. You are doing better than we are. We don’t quite have half the folks off yet. We are going to use the passenger ramp after all, but only for crew use, so we can rotate people in and out for a cool rest. We can also bring you people out the easy way. It’s ridiculous how dangerous that cargo ramp feels when you weigh fifty percent more and you’re tired. A fall here can break limbs or kill you.”

  “Very good Sir. One of us will give you a couple minutes warning before we cut the next sections loose. These are larger pieces, so you want to get people farther away if you can.”

  “Right. I’ll pass the word now, and we’ll be ready when you are. Mirikami Out.”

  He gave the update to Maggi, just as she was briefing her own relief, and then told Noreen. She advised him that the three remaining rested Stewards were heading down to the ramp now. All six remaining Stewards on outside duty were going in with her. Rigson had been sent to the dome after his injuries.

  Mirikami checked with Chack and Ricco, telling them about the impending next drop. They both said that the hard suits had kept them cool and hydrated, and driving the haulers wasn’t tiring. They didn’t need a break.