Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  Thad opened his faceplate and turned up the suit’s external speaker so any transmission could be heard by the others in the room.

  Jake spoke next. “The Krall on the ground in the valley told the shuttle that the scent of five of the humans did not leave the hole, which I believe they mean a cave. They say their scent is still in the air.”

  The AI continued immediately, “The shuttle ordered them to attack and shoot into the cave as they rush the enemy.”

  They waited anxiously for a half minute.

  “Oh look!” Noreen was pointing at the monitor, but Thad, looking out of the dome with binoculars shouted, “Got you!” He leaped into the air with a fist pump.

  About ten seconds later a muffled “whump” of an explosive concussion reached them, as the dust column rose still higher.

  “Damn, I hope that killed some of them,” said Maggi.

  Unable to restrain himself, Thad slipped a bit on his com security. “Jake, have any of the hunters said what happened?”

  “The Shuttle first pulled up into my camera coverage,” he stated, “but it has now landed below the tree line. I have heard no transmission since the apparent explosion. I do not know if they caused that or if…”

  “Stop.” ordered Noreen. She assumed the explosion was the bobby trap set by Thad.

  They waited for what seemed like an eternity, but Maggi’s thumbnail watch measured as less than two minutes.

  “If we killed any Krall at that cave, the hunt is over.” Willfem couldn’t help stating the obvious. It would be tragic if those in that marsh died after a Krall death.

  ****

  Gladys Parfem knew her fear of snakes may have gotten them all killed. She hadn’t even hit the nasty green slithery slimy thing that had suddenly wriggled its ten-foot body right past her helmet’s faceplate. The two men with her, each no more than ten feet away in their triangle looked at her accusingly through the intervening grass.

  All three removed their safeties from the claymores they had positioned facing away from them in a ring. They placed the trip wires nearby, to pull when they sensed the warriors were closing. Now down so low, up to their necks in water, they realized they didn’t have decent firing positions. They couldn’t see more than twenty feet through the two-foot high marsh grass.

  The holes they dug weren’t so deep they couldn’t push up a bit to gain height, but a brown armored head would make a fine target from a considerable distance. Throwing a grenade any distance from a crouched position wasn’t going to be easy either, and the Krall would have to be right on top of them for those to do any good.

  Perhaps the shot hadn’t been heard, or if it was, couldn’t be triangulated to the marsh. And Twentieth Century Santa was coming to take them safely back to Earth.

  It was still morning, but they knew the hunt had started, not just by the clock, but because they had seen the Krall shuttle fly over earlier. There was even some sort of muffled explosion from the other side of the river just before Gladys lost her mind and fired at an eel that couldn’t hurt her.

  All they had now was hope that the explosion had drawn the Krall’s attention away from the marsh. The helmet broadcast ended that hope.

  Cody Masters had already had his external microphones cranked to maximum for the last hour. Every click buzz or plop in the water startled him. Now he could hear significant splashing from three directions, per his suit visor display. It was growing louder.

  He was sure the voice he’d heard warn them was that of Colonel Greeves. He was surprised, but clicked on his own helmet to thank him and set the blame for their deaths where it belonged. He wasn’t giving their position away, since the visor showed approaching splashes from three directions. Even the Krall couldn’t run silently in the marsh.

  He pulled a pin on a grenade, and saw Deigo do the same. Placing his gun in his left hand, he pointed it down to let water drain from the barrel. He knew the ammo was designed to blow water or muck from the barrel when fired, but you got less kickback if it was clear.

  The splashing sounded closer. He looked to Deigo and nodded. They both threw as hard as they could from their crouched positions in the directions they heard splashes. As soon as the little bombs arched up, there were three simultaneous loud splashes as large bodies hit the muck, and ferocious fire hurtled over their heads. An explosive round caught Deigo’s right arm before he pulled it down, blowing off the armor and arm at mid forearm.

  Cody was glad Deigo’s helmet blocked the scream he was sure accompanied the pain. The round’s detonation was bad enough through his amped up speakers. He started firing his own explosive rounds through the grass, as was Gladys he noted. Deigo had to be in shock, but he managed to raise his gun in his left hand, pulling the trigger and pointing it out over the marsh grass.

  Where were the grenade explosions he wondered? Finally, he remembered that Thad told them there was a five-second delay after releasing the safety handle. They should have held them a couple of seconds before the throw. Their shots were also probably wild and too high, because he heard splashing again as the Krall resumed running towards them.

  Suddenly, two close together explosions threw muck and black water up and back down on them. That had stopped the running splashing sounds for a moment. He pulled another pin on a grenade in his left hand to have it ready, and wrapped his mine’s trip wire around the same hand. Picking up his gun, he resumed firing, holding the gun as high as he dared, and pivoted it in an arc, spraying rounds randomly. He heard his concussions in the muck, and the Krall explosive rounds were hitting around them.

  Gladys actually threw a grenade, but its high arc suggested it had only traveled about ten or fifteen feet in front of her.

  Deigo was slumping sideways in his water-filled foxhole. Whatever the hell a fox was. That’s what Thad had called these pits. He saw Deigo pulling on his lanyard with his left hand. Apparently that was about the last thing he had the strength to try.

  As it happened, it was the last thing he ever tried. And he succeeded.

  The claymore exploded with an enormous bang through Cody’s cranked up audio. It cleared a sixty-degree swath of swamp grass in front of Deigo’s position. The slightly curved back plate that held the plastic explosive had hurled the thousand or so small bearings and scraps of metal nearly parallel with the base of the grass.

  What someone had neglected to tell Deigo, or Cody for that matter, was that the back plate obeyed Newton’s law. It flew the opposite direction from the shrapnel if not anchored somehow. It smashed through Deigo’s faceplate and helmet in a spray of blood and black water, causing Cody to flinch away from the fragments and splash. When he looked back, all he saw were bubbles in the black water and blood as the submerged suit filled.

  However, there was a satisfying scream of rage in front of Deigo’s position, unfortunately followed by resumed rapid splashing. A smaller than average but very pissed off Krall appeared over the grass firing into the watery pit where Deigo had sunk.

  Cody managed to get off a single shot as he brought his pistol around, firing too soon, and his clip was empty. The Krall, shifting position to duck, made a lightning move to remove an empty clip and reloaded a fresh one from its chest belt. There was no way he could reload in time.

  At that instant, the five-second timer on the grenade Gladys had tossed expired. When it detonated to the Krall’s right, it tossed the warrior sideways and out of sight.

  Gladys now realizing the enemy was right on top of them, pulled her own lanyard, and was more fortunate than Deigo when it blew, because the Krall return fire had struck close in front of it and had caused it to aim downward slightly on its tripod. The second deafening explosion didn’t spread its pellets as parallel to the marsh as the first had, but the back plate went flying an inch above her head.

  As she recovered her senses from the concussion, lifting her pistol and firing blindly to her front, the good fortune avoiding the back plate proved temporary. Another Krall stood up several feet in front of
Cody’s claymore and fired multiple explosive rounds into Gladys, shredding her head, body and armor together in a spray of black mud, water, and blood.

  Cody pulled his own lanyard as he ducked his helmet below the water. He heard the deafening explosion through the water and felt it shake the muck. He had dropped his gun, which was empty anyway, but he knew where his loaded spare was.

  He lifted his helmet above water, reaching for the second pistol he’d left on the floating ammo platform. Except something grasped him and lifted him bodily from the pit. He was forcefully spun around to face the same snarling Krall warrior, who appeared distressingly healthy. It held him at arm’s length by his helmet, dangling below its big left hand.

  Obviously, it had managed to leap out of the way, as Cody had ducked and pulled the wire. All he had done was cut down marsh grass.

  Stokol, seeing his prey had no gun, holstered his own, and deliberately drew a slender nine-inch knife from a sheath on his chest harness, letting him observe the motion. This wasn’t going to be a swift end like Deigo and Gladys had, Cody realized in horror. It used the knife tip to start to probe for an opening at the rotor joint of his right shoulder. Cody frantically punched and pushed at the arm as the blade tip tried to force an entry.

  Feeling how puny the human’s frantic resistance was, Stokol exposed his teeth. It seemed a good time to test the reports of how poor these things tasted. He would carve pieces from it while it still lived, and force it to watch him chew.

  Cody continued to punch and kick without effect. He clutched the Krall’s thick right wrist with his own right gauntlet, punching at the hand and forearm with his left fist. He couldn’t even deflect the slow deliberate probing of the knife; much less halt the relentless strength of that piston like arm.

  He was about to use his left gauntlet to reinforce his right hand’s grip, or to grab for the knife blade when he realized that in his fear he had forgotten something. The grenade, its pin already pulled, was in the hand he was using to punch. He felt and heard metal screech as the knife tip suddenly slipped up between the plates of the armored joint of his right shoulder. He opened the lower fingers of his left hand enough to release the grenade’s safety handle.

  Cody screamed as the slender blade tip was maneuvered and forced powerfully into the new crevice, encountering the Smart fabric over his shoulder. It couldn’t cut through the tough material, but the blade’s pressure at the small tip pushed the fabric into his flesh all the way to the bone. Screaming from the pain, the shoulder socket began to separate as the tip pushed deeper.

  Stokol was puzzled at the resistance to his knife tip. The human looked soft but seemed to have a very tough skin.

  Cody tried to count, but the Krall’s insistent thrusting in and out to get all the way through the oddly tough seeming shoulder was horribly agonizing, sending rivers of hot pain down his arm and up to his neck. His own screaming destroyed any effort to focus. His right hand fell limply to his side as the shoulder joint gave way. He was afraid he might pass out, but he was also terrified that he might not.

  From behind the warrior that held him suspended, he saw a second Krall, speckled from multiple shrapnel punctures. He had come to watch the surviving animal suffer. The third warrior could be heard screaming its rage and pain near where Deigo’s mine had mowed the grass, probably lying where the grenade from Gladys had thrown it.

  We didn’t kill any of the sons of bitches, he thought miserably through his pain. Not yet anyway.

  He brought his left hand up to the side of his head as if to weakly punch at the warrior, and opened his mouth wide in a scream he didn’t need to fake. The warrior leaned in to enjoy the prey’s expression as he savagely twisted the blade through to grate on the backside of the armor.

  Stokol’s blazing red pupils were glaring into the animal’s eyes, determined to intimidate and penetrate the dim awareness of this pathetic meat animal that had dared cause them so much trouble.

  Cody rotated his wrist so the Krall could see what he held next to his head. The Krall hadn’t seen the other tossed grenades clearly, so it didn’t recognize the oval muck covered object.

  Through the human’s faceplate though, he clearly saw the open-mouthed scream turn into a strangely blunt toothed smile, and an unmistakable look of triumph in those ugly white with blue center eyes.

  The warrior’s own eyes widened suddenly in a flash of recognition and fear, and its instant reaction was to release the helmet. However, Cody dropped less than a millimeter before the grenade converted his and the Krall’s head into eel food.

  ****

  In the valley, following Kimbo clan’s aggressive and risky tactics, one novice ran full speed all the way to the cave mouth, angling in from the side. He fired both pistols in concert with his zig zaging clan mates just behind him. Waiting only for a coordinated pause in their firing, he leaped into the entrance and fired around the bend that they could see was a few yards inside.

  The heavy fire with a combination of armor piercing and explosive rounds should suppress defensive fire, and once the lead warrior was positioned to fire at anyone just around the bend, the other two warriors would pass him and burst around that corner, increasing the fire rate to six guns directed at whoever was in there. They would keep up that pressure and kill every human they found, or force them out through some hidden bolthole. Those escape attempts would be covered by the two waiting higher status warriors.

  Tyroldor, after ordering his other three warriors to destroy the humans that had stupidly given their marshy hiding place away, had landed the shuttle on the hillside a hundred feet above the cave. Pitda had rushed out to watch for possible hidden exits to open. Tyroldor remained in the shuttle ready to pursue any humans that might pop out much farther away.

  The hard charging lead warrior, Tindak had just leaped into the cave opening when the hillside over the rocky mouth erupted upwards with an explosive roar, and collapsed back down to cover the mouth of the cave. Both of the covering warriors, still well outside the opening when it exploded, were blown backwards off their feet, but nimbly twisted and turned in midair to avoid or deflect some of the rock shrapnel that came flying towards or down on them.

  They struck the ground perhaps forty feet down the slope, sliding backwards on their hands and feet with talons extended, their pistols having been holstered while in the air. They landed cat-like on all fours facing the collapsed cave and immediately ran back up to start flinging large rocks out of the way.

  They had avoided some of the flying debris, but not all. The blood flow from small wounds caused by rock shards was already shutting down. One warrior even ignored a three-inch long slender rock extending from his back, inaccessible to him a foot below his left shoulder.

  Pitda had been bounced into the air briefly as the hillside over the cave expanded and settled, but he remained alert a hundred feet up the slope, watching everywhere for human targets. His head was pivoting around constantly.

  He made no move to help the two novices removing rocks, Tindak, if trapped or killed inside was simply a sacrifice to Kimbo’s relentless attack style. The two digging were not trying to find or save their clan mate, they were pursuing the enemy that might be alive inside.

  Tyroldor had lifted the shuttle immediately when the explosion came, and he was now circling over the area at low altitude around the column of dust that was rising into the clouded sky. He was seeking secondary dust eruptions that would indicate where the pressure in the cave found an outlet. That could be where the enemy might also appear.

  There were no other dust plumes, and when he tried to contact Tindak, he received no reply. With barely an instant to think about it, he ordered the other three warriors to return to the shuttle, and he landed nearby. If humans were inside, they were either dead or trapped. If his warrior was dead, he didn’t want that confirmed by having the rubble removed. That would bring the hunt to a humiliating early halt.

  It was possible this had been a trap, or a human suicide
to deny his warriors the glory of the kills they deserved. Telour said the humans were intelligent, but he had not told them they had given them explosives. That had to be truth or Graka clan would lose considerable status for cheating on a minor combat demonstration.

  The humans of course were free to add to their fighting capability as they could, just as his octet was free to respond in kind. The humans apparently had done so with explosives, leaving Graka clan with clean hands. His team did not need explosives in this sort of hunt and he had but a single day to finish the mission. He would allow no wasted time to negotiate for matching explosives. He wondered what other tricks the humans brought to the game, that Telour was under no obligation to mention.

  The status points for humans found in the cave, dead or alive, would be awarded to the octet. Live animals discovered later could be killed because the novice’s “sacrifice” had trapped them by sealing them inside.

  Finding and killing the remainder of the humans was a greater priority, and they could return to check this hole later. If it had only been an empty trap and all sixteen humans were found and killed elsewhere, they certainly didn’t need Tindak’s body.

  His three warriors had just returned to the shuttle, when he received a report from the three that went into the marshes. He anticipated confirmation of three kills because that was a very poor defensive location for the humans to choose. They clearly had intended to hide there, and probably gave themselves away with a panic shot at his warriors when they passed near.

  He was pleased when the novice reported that all three humans were dead. However, the report came from Sitdok, not Stokol. He was lower status than was the warrior he placed in charge. The driver should have made the report, and would never voluntarily yield the honor of reporting the kills to his leader. Tyroldor sensed yet another problem.

  Telour was certainly listening to their transmissions and watching from the dome, so he had to be certain an inexperienced novice did not report what the leader was not going to ask. To be forced to admit later that he knew of a loss to the octet. He would have failed this test for his clan.