As she issued this warning, Kador dove to ground, having already sighted the falling round as a dot nearly overhead. Motgar also dove to earth, but on her back searching for what he had seen. When the motion sensitive part of her vision detected it, she relaxed slightly. It was obvious from its very slight lateral movement that it wasn’t dropping directly on her position, but it was less than a second from impact.
The heavy blast was just in front of the huge rock, and other than throwing up dirt and dust, it did them no damage. All four warriors were on their feet as the debris was still rising, racing for the greater shelter of the lower cliff face. They needed to get up to the next level where the gunfire came from.
Suddenly there were two explosions a full leap in front of Tyroldor when the delay on the two grenades, which only Gorpak had seen, expired. The octet leader felt two stinging impacts on his upper right leg, and distinctly heard a whirring sound very close to his left ear as a fragment passed near.
Gorpak paid for his failure to recognize the possible threat those two grenades had represented. They had hit on a bare rock strip in front of the rock face and rolled closer. He grunted and paused as his vision disappeared in his left eye with a dazzling burst of pain. The impact was not great and there was no deep penetration, but a piece of grazing shrapnel had torn through the bulge of his eye socket.
Deanna tripped the actuator for another grenade catapult, and launched two more hurtling out towards the Krall.
Tyroldor saw them, as did all his warriors, so they went prone to be below most of the fragments when they exploded. However, he now recognized the threat the human’s fragmentation bombs represented to his unarmored warriors, and there would certainly be traps along the easier climbing points of the rock face.
The leader still considered the explosive weapons a low enough threat that they could complete the attack, but if a warrior died within his view in the process, he could not deny the knowledge of the death. The ledges were visible from the dome.
He remained confident they could kill these humans, but not if the hunt was terminated because of a ridiculous agreement.
He commanded that Motgar and Gorpak continue to the rock face and find a route to the first terrace that avoided the easy places to climb, which were likely booby-trapped. These two warriors were now his least effective fighters. They could be a distraction for the human defenders when he and Kador used an advantage he had that the humans did not, aerial transportation and the shuttle’s lasers.
Technically the lasers were not usable because the humans did not have them, and the shuttle should be used only for scouting and delivery of his warriors. Nevertheless, it could be argued that his octet did not have artillery, fragmentation weapons, armor, and explosives, and the humans did.
They waited a ridiculous amount time on the ground before the last two small bombs exploded. Tyroldor had no idea what advantage that conveyed to the humans, but timing them made it easy to work around their threat. After the ineffective explosions, he bolted for the shuttle, ordering Kador to follow.
He commanded the novice to sit in the second cockpit seat for another pair of eyes, and to operate the laser controls if they saw a target where they could be used. He lifted the shuttle and swiftly flew the length of the ridge top, made a return pass of the next lower ledge from the top, then the lowest ledge, the lowest and widest with just enough room to set the shuttle down.
He could see the two warriors using their talons to find purchase in the open rock face when he passed over them, and they were over halfway to the first level. He set the craft down facing the location where he had seen the gunshots originate, and beyond that the place where the grenades had been thrown. There was considerable cover on the ledge, with midsized boulders and bushes all along its length.
Aware that the slow moving humans would not have had time to travel very far since they had conducted their last attack, they would be in the vicinity, and would leave a fresh scent trail.
The two of them stepped through the hatch close to the rock face, and squeezed along the length of the shuttle, until their guns commanded the area in front. The two climbers rolled over the edge in a coordinated move facing opposite directions and lay prone, not using the shelter of the rocks or the scraggly shrubbery.
There were only a couple of the blood-drinking insects hovering nearby to see, and they quickly flew away.
The four warriors carefully sniffed the air for fresh human scent. It was present but was hours old. Tyroldor had the other warriors cover him and he went personally to the small stack of rocks where he knew the last shots had been fired at them. He did this himself because he did not trust his inexperienced novices to be cautious; something they had been trained to disregard.
Not seeing a potential trap in the bare rock around the small artificial stack of stones, he approached closer. He found the small three tube gun cluster, braced with stacked rocks and the little radio controlled actuator that had “pulled the trigger” on the set. The tubes were not currently aligned with the former shuttle parking place because Tyroldor’s own return fire had struck and shifted the rocks within two seconds of their having fired.
He uttered a low snarl when he realized there was no trail to lead them to the humans responsible for not only the last series of gun shots and explosions, but probably not for the previous more costly attack that had cost him his most effective warrior and a talented novice.
They had been led around by these little piles of defecation while remaining completely hidden, except for the three trapped and killed in the marsh. Even that simple action had somehow cost him one of his superior novices.
This device, and probably all of them on the ridge had been remotely activated. So one thing he knew with a certainty, they were watching this area right now.
At least they could see the sheltered parking area that was the most probable place to park a shuttle. They had known just when to activate their devices, and they had to use a radio transmitter to send the signal.
It had been an effective strategy thus far. The only member of the octet they had not damaged with these simple, almost primitive weapons was Kador. Gorpak would require surgery to excise the eye socket for his eye to regrow. Motgar might need her deepest fragments surgically removed. His fragment wounds were relatively minor, and his muscle tissue would eventually expel the foreign material.
There was something different effecting Pitda and Sitdok, because they had been paralyzed in some fashion, and might even die. That was why he left them behind. If they did indeed die, he would not be aware. It was proving harder to maintain the pretense of deniability and retain his clan’s honor.
The Krall com sets were already linked together to triangulate communication sources in the frequency range of the radios in the Krall built armor that humans wore. These units used typical Krall com frequencies, and the only detections had been from a source in the marsh after those humans had already revealed their position. The dome’s normal radio traffic was programed out of the triangulation calculations to eliminate false alerts.
However, the humans had used devices on frequencies the network clearly had not been set to use in triangulation. They wouldn’t have manufacturing capability as prisoners, so he and Pitda had discounted that possibility. Clearly that had been a mistake; one that he could correct now. They did have a field response to the human designed radio controlled actuators.
He explained what he had found to his warriors and what he would do to solve the problem. Returning quickly to the shuttle he used the command console to reset the software in all of their com set buttons. Now they would tell them where the enemy’s transmitters were located in any reasonable frequency range.
41. Spiders and Prey
When the shuttle lifted off Dillon used his tree-mounted camera to check the two warriors they could see were left behind.
“I think those two might be dead, but the hunt is obviously still continuing. If we can’t count on their obeying th
e so-called rules, then immunity doesn’t mean squat because no one is likely to survive to earn that.”
“Hey,” Juan Wittgenstein yelled. “I saw the left one blink an eye.”
“Are you sure?” Dillon asked. “I’m zoomed to the max on him, and I can’t see breathing. Or any movement, not even when the mortar landed just the other side of the rock and made me crap my pants.”
Frank laughed, a sign his tension was easing, since you couldn’t stay scared stiff for hours. “Why don’t we just watch his eye for a bit? I can see the red pit now, so if it… Hey! He did blink! And he moved his eye.”
“You’re right Frank. I saw it too,” said Deanna. “Could they be playing dead to draw us out?”
Mirikami discounted that. “If they suspected we were damn near under their feet they would have dug or blasted us out. They are not noted for subtlety, my dear.”
“Then what would leave them alive but paralyzed?” asked Clarice. “Did we break their spines or necks?”
“I think my Death Lime thorn cocktail did that. I mixed the thorns in with two sets of claymore pellets. The one I placed behind the big rock was one of those mines. We know the toxin kills humans, but it might not kill a Krall. It might wear off after enough time.”
“They’re alone and helpless,” said Clarice. “God I wish I could go blow their brains out for my husband, Albert. They killed him last year.”
“They’re all up on the first terrace,” Dillon noted. “They can’t see behind the rock. I could climb out and kill them and get back in my hole.” He proposed.
Mirikami opposed that idea. “Then your airtight seal will be breached for a few minutes, Dillon, and they would see your tracks and smell your scent trail if they return. We don’t have our shuttle to blow way the tracks and scent this time. If they find your spider hole, they can follow the fiber optic cables from yours to everyone else. I’m not saying I don’t feel the same way, but we can’t risk their lives to kill those two.”
“What if I reseal my tube, cover it and wipe my foot prints, then lead them away by making tracks and a scent trail towards the river?” he continued in a rush to put off the objections he knew were coming. “With two obviously dead Krall in plain sight, how can they claim to have followed the rules?”
“Let’s save that option for later, Dillon. The power in our soft suit rebreather packs are good until dark, with our suit batteries to help if we cut off our cooling systems. We may get hot but we can still breathe without leaking scent into the air until then. We can move to the caves after dark like we planned, assuming the hunt is over or the Krall are someplace else.”
“Look at his rapid blinking now, and his eye is pivoting around,” Deanna said. She had continued to stare at the image of the helpless Krall.
“He may be regaining muscle control,” Clarice said, frustrated they might have to let the two killers revive.
Mirikami interjected, “Ahh, I have my camera aimed up at the ridge, and I can see wolfbats circling in the sky overhead. Krall can hear their ultrasonic calls, and the bats will feed on dead warriors. I’ll bet both of those Krall are conscious and can hear them but can’t move.”
“That would be great, to see them eaten alive.” Frank was almost gleeful in his bloodlust to see the Krall die. “Oh Oh, Here comes another problem for them,” he added happily.
A skeeter settled right on the legless Krall’s back. It spent several seconds working on penetrating the tough skin, but finally became still and began to drink. Several more arrived and divided their attentions between the two motionless warriors.
“As entertaining as that sight is, we need to stay focused on the active warriors,” Mirikami admonished. “Put your camera on the shuttle Dillon. The leader just ran inside after looking at the cluster gun tubes. I think he picked up the actuator. He may have figured out how we triggered our devices.
“We anticipated their eventually tracing the burst transmissions, like they do for the suit coms. If they get anywhere close to the tree with our antenna, we will blow it to bits. The fiber optic is hair thin, so I don’t think they could find it and trace it to us.” That was the hope, at least.
“Let’s watch them for a while,” Dillon proposed. “We have some good mechanical booby traps that still might work.”
****
Tyroldor sent his warriors along the wide terrace seeking recent scents, and looking for any kind of artificial item, such as a wire, or mechanical device.
At the very first crevice, Motgar reported there was a scent of two humans that probably had been there that morning. He instructed them to back away, and he lifted the shuttle and hovered in front and above the opening.
Kador fired the high intensity laser into the opening and played it around, fracturing rocks from the intense heating. Suddenly there was a blast from within the little cave, and the multiple splatters of dirt from the ledge in front and the billow of smoke out of the opening told Tyroldor that one of the mines like the one that crippled Pitda had been inside.
He worked his way along the entire terrace and repeated the process at every opening large enough to hold a human, and on obvious places where a warrior might have taken cover from an attack. He was rewarded by two more explosions, and found another mechanical device, which he burned.
Motgar reported that the device would have shot a metal bolt from a bowed spring arm if a trip wire were pulled. After the device was destroyed by explosive rounds, she and Gorpak sniffed at the end of the bolt and reported that the tip had a yellow coating with a strange odor.
They had detected that same scent after the mine that wounded Pitda and Sitdok had exploded. Neither warrior had encountered the scent anywhere except that place. Tyroldor told them to avoid contact with the substance. Advising it could be the poison that paralyzed the other two warriors. He ordered Motgar to preserve the bolt in a sealed pouch.
These humans were more treacherous and prepared for the hunt than Telour and his clan had warned them. The Kimbo warriors should have been sent with armor as protection from bombs with poisonous fragments and from poisoned projectiles. Humans had been hunted on Koban for four or five orbits of the planet around its star.
Finding so many of these unexpected weapons meant they must have been encountered in past hunts. Kimbo’s rapid assault tactics were particularly vulnerable to the human weapons because novices were routinely exposed to high risk. However, they should have been given armor and scanners here, and told of the remotely actuated booby traps on unusual frequencies. They could have found and eradicated most of their foes by now.
Kimbo clan had not been given the information they needed to meet this new enemy, and Tyroldor would present charges of misconduct against Telour and Graka clan before the clan leaders on Koban. However, he was determined to complete the hunt first, using the information he now had.
At the far end of the ridge, the lower terrace ended at a steep canyon where the river flowed through. He picked up the two warriors so they could complete their search of the next higher level. There wasn’t room to set the shuttle down here, so he raised the hatch and let them jump to the smaller ledge. He planned to land the shuttle on the wider lower level to wait for them to report on scent trails at possible booby trap sites, then lift to blast them with the laser.
That was what he had intended to do, but they found what they had been seeking. Both Motgar and Gorpak immediately reported fresh human scent in the air when the craft had backed away. Nothing was detected on the ledge itself, but the scent was rising with the wind out of the canyon.
Raising the shuttle above the top of the canyon, he could see a darker color stone in a horizontal band closer down by the river. He lowered the shuttle slowly, and the shadows proved what he had suspected. Softer stone had been eaten away by water in the past, leaving a sizable wide ledge of uncertain depth on each side. He didn’t see any easy access path for the humans, but he felt sure this must be their hiding place.
Carefully scouting the ridge to
p near the canyon, he didn’t see any logical place to place a mine or trap, so he returned to collect his two warriors and landed at the top.
They all searched carefully and immediately found metal devices hammered or drilled into cracks at the top, and at places down the rock face. Even though it was over eight leaps away, they could see similar devices on the opposite rock face.
“The humans used ropes to climb down, I think.” Motgar told her leader. “But there is no scent from today, it is older.”
“But the scent was fresh in the air from down below, so they must be there in the caves on each side now. The humans may have come a day early to prepare their defense and to dilute the scent.
“With their mines and bombs this is a hard place to enter by surprise, and the cave on one side can support the other side. The shuttle noise has told them we were searching here, so they will be ready.”
Kador hoping to win favor offered the usual Kimbo solution. “If we climb down and enter from both sides at once, we can kill them without risk for us all.”
The octet leader displayed an uncharacteristic hesitation. “A loss to us here will end the hunt without killing every human, if there are others hiding in the jungle. I want them all destroyed to preserve Kimbo honor.”
Again, Motgar sensed their leader avoiding Kimbo clan strengths, and he openly said the hunt would end if they lost warriors in honorable combat. Losses in battle were acceptable so long as the clan was victorious. She didn’t understand why the hunt would end now, because the hunt didn’t end when Stokol was killed.
Path and clan were not invoked in this case so she asked her leader a question. “How will we kill the enemy below us if we do not attack them?”
Tyroldor roared out a savage response. “They will be attacked, but their cowardly hiding does not deserve the honor of direct combat with Kimbo warriors! We were not told of the weapons humans have, we were not given armor for bombs and poison, not told they remotely trigger explosions on radio frequencies different from Krall clan use. What else were we not told?” he was on the verge of berserker rage.
Koban Page 55