Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  The gene mods were proving their worth, because there was no way they could have had the energy to drag that corpse the hundred feet to the cliff last week. Even so, they were half-exhausted.

  They took a breather, sipping a warm energy drink from their reservoir tubes, watching as the distant dot of the Krall shuttle passed repeatedly over the jungle in an obvious search pattern.

  “Well my Capy Tan,” Dillon teased, “you still think we can climb up and drag this hunk of dead meat up that cliff by your rope?” He laughed at the obvious absurdity of the idea now that they were almost worn out.

  “It was just an idea I had when I felt so damn good at the start,” grumbled Mirikami. “I always had a backup plan. Look at the opening, halfway to the rock chimney. It looks wide enough to stuff him in. He’ll be out of sight if we pile rocks and brush in front.”

  “Tet, with the noses they have there is no possibility when they follow us that they won’t find him. Then they’ll know he isn’t alive.”

  “Yes, but they will be all the way over here by then, well away from our people. They will know that we climbed up to at least the next level. I believe they’ll keep coming after us. They know they destroyed our traps on the first terrace. The blood lust should be high by then to get the humans they know killed two of their own.”

  “You don’t think they’ll stop the hunt do you? Even with the evidence of two of their dead laying right in front of them?”

  Mirikami shook his head no. “This leader has met with more trickery and trouble than in any human hunt here before us, and I’m sure he is feeling enormous rage. They are supposed to get matching weapons or counter measures in their staged clan battles and wars. To ensure no one overwhelms an opponent.”

  “Hell, we are hardly about to overwhelm them Tet. We know they have killed seven of us so far.”

  “Nevertheless, in pursuit of his personal plan, Telour has permitted us something of a weapons gap this one time. You saw the octet leader use the shuttle lasers to hunt for us on the ridge and then use it to kill the men in the canyon. The Krall have not used that sort of advantage before today. They always hunted on foot or in trucks, armed with pistols, rifles, and knives. I believe right now that this octet leader thinks his team has been cheated of their ‘glorious’ easy victory.”

  “Well, I hope I get to cheat him out his life, or of another warrior if I have to go down today.”

  “Let’s not get fatalistic, lad, we have some options to try. But I don’t see that shuttle right now, do you?”

  Dillon jumped to his feet and moved to see around some obscuring trees. “I think it sat down.”

  “We need to get going moving again. Grab your side of the line.” Mirikami stood up.

  They stuffed the corpse into the crevasse as best they could, and simply tossed bushes over the opening. Mirikami tied Sitdok’s head to his belt, running a loop of rope he cut through the mouth and out the neck.

  “What are you doing, keeping that bloody damn head Tet? You into souvenirs now?” Dillon chuckled.

  “Did you forget that when we get up there that we can be seen from the dome again?”

  “Oh, right. You can show our proof of a kill, even if the frigging hunters won’t stop.”

  At the base of the chimney, Dillon gently uncovered the upward facing buried mine. He inserted the safety and detached the trip wire, and let Mirikami tie the claymore across his back with a loop of rope.

  He also took the rest of the climbing rope Mirikami handed him and started the climb in the narrow but deep split in the rock face. There were operate made hand and foot holds that had been chipped into the rock by earlier teams, as well as natural small ledges and cracks.

  Dillon made the dangerous high gravity climb in less than twenty minutes, and let the line down to Mirikami, only a third of the way up. The Captain had known that he’d need help. He wasn’t overly hot, but had gone through his supply protein bars, and was running out of fuel for his new metabolism. He didn’t know how Dillon was managing so well.

  Once on the lower terrace, he ordered Dillon to climb higher, and make use of the devices they had left up there. He suggested that he put down fresh scent trails and remove the mechanical trips, since they knew to watch for those now. Triggering the actuators remotely was no longer risky if they already knew you were there.

  He told Dillon he would set up the one claymore they had recovered in one of the lower caves, one already cleared by the Krall. What he didn’t tell him was that he had also brought a wide flat sheet of plastic explosive, pinned to the Smart Fabric over his chest, with a detonator in a pouch on his ammo belt that he could insert if he was cornered. He’d try to take one of them with him if he could.

  42. Final Gambit

  “There’s Dillon,” Noreen shouted happily, “I knew they were OK.”

  Followed instantly by consternation, “What’s he doing up on that cliff and out of his spider hole?”

  Thad had his binoculars trained on him. “He’s lowering a line, and he had a claymore strapped on his back that he just set down. Someone else is making the climb with him. See? He’s helping pull someone up with the line.”

  “That’s most likely Tetsuo. He promised me he wouldn’t let that young lunk head run off alone. But if the Krall didn’t find where they were buried why did any of them bail out for the cliffs?”

  “Should we broadcast and tell them the Krall landed in the Jungle?” Noreen questioned.

  “They knew that before they came out of hiding,” answered Thad. “The camera on top of the rock can see over most of the north half of the compound except for the valley side of the ridge. When I only saw four Krall on the ridge top I was afraid two had stayed behind to search at ground level. Then they lasered the poor bastards in the canyon and headed for the jungle.”

  “Tet just reached the terrace; Dillon grabbed his hand to help him up,” Noreen observed.

  Thad was trying to understand what they were doing. “If there were two warriors left behind Dillon and Tet would never have left their hiding places, the cameras would let them see that. They never would climb up there in plain sight if a couple of warriors simply moved away on foot,” insisted Thad.

  “I want maximum zoom on Captain Mirikami,” Maggi ordered Jake.

  “What do you see?’ Noreen wanted to know.

  The screen image reached maximum for the camera they had installed in the dome, and Mirikami still was only an image four inches high. The Ship’s telescopic cameras were blocked by the dome.

  “There’s something banging around at Tet’s thigh level, tied to his belt I guess,” Maggi replied.

  Suddenly the Captain waved in the direction of the dome, and lifted the object tied to his waist to chest height, holding it out.

  “I can’t make that out, even with binoculars. Did you make any bombs that shape? It isn’t quite round. I wonder what that is?”

  The little image of Mirikami detached the object from his belt and held it over his head with his left hand, two fingers raised on his upraised right hand.

  Even as Jake answered Thad’s rhetorical question, he realized what he was seeing.

  “Sir, it has the same shape, size, and coloration as a Krall head.”

  “Goddamn! They got one!” Thad shouted. “Tet brought the head up with him as proof.”

  “They probably killed the other warrior we can’t account for as well, or they wouldn’t be out walking around,” Maggi noted. “That’s why he’s holding up two fingers.”

  “Do you think Telour can see that? How good are their eyes?” Noreen asked.

  “They have good distant vision, but I’ve seen them use a binocular like device on other hunts. Telour or some of his warriors will have some right now watching this. I’ve seen their silhouettes at the top windows during previous hunts, observing the action.”

  He added, “We need to get the hunt stopped before the five people in the jungle are slaughtered. If I use my suit com, I can tell everyone that
we see the head of a dead warrior. The Octet leader will have to admit the hunt’s over.”

  He snatched the helmet off the table again and locked it in place, faceplate open so the others could hear. Keying the same general push, activating all channels of the com set, he made a broadcast he hoped would end the killing.

  “Attention! A Krall hunter has been killed, and his head is being held by a human where it can be seen by those in the dome. Telour knows the hunt is over, and all of the human survivors have immunity. Stop the hunt, as honor and the agreement requires.”

  He repeated this several more times, in different words. He even had to hush some broadcasted cheers from Primes elsewhere in the dome that had been monitoring, and transmitted their own glee.

  Mirikami and Dillon both waved that they had heard, but wisely made no transmission of their own to revel their location to the hunters.

  In the shuttle, Tyroldor heard the message, but because it originated at the dome, and he didn’t understand the human language he ignored the transmission.

  The three dome observers watched as Dillon climbed to the second level, began inspecting the devises there at the various small caves, and sheltered areas.

  Mirikami too started looking at the destroyed defenses and traps along the lower terrace. Some of the small caves could no longer be entered, due to collapsed rock filling them.

  Then he reached a cave where the destroyed claymore had been concealed outside, intended to blast whoever entered or stood in front of the malodorous opening. It was Dillon’s much maligned and joked about “shit cave.”

  Mirikami placed his replacement claymore at the base of the same scorched rock where burned brush had once provided its concealment.

  He tossed the heat damaged back plate of the exploded mine out in plain sight, in front of the little cave opening. Tossing scorched dirt onto the replacement mine to disguise its intact condition, he detached the lanyard and put that in a belt pouch. Then he attached a remote actuator, and carefully removed the safety pin.

  All he needed was to spot a Krall walking in front of the device when he could actually see him, so he continued down the terrace to the larger double cave, where one entrance had partly collapsed from the heat blast and exploding rock. The other opening was still passable, if you climbed over the fallen rock.

  Mirikami set the severed head on a prominent rock pinnacle near the cliff edge, just past the freshly booby-trapped “shit cave.” The head was visible from both the dome and from below.

  The problem with manually triggering the mine was that he wouldn’t be able to see the booby trap from inside the cave. He’d have to lay prone on the ledge behind fallen rocks for his observation point, and duck into the cave if he missed his target. Inside is where he’d have to make his final stand if pursued. He was going to try to keep them away from Dillon, which is why he sent the impetuous younger man up there.

  Mirikami pulled out his small detonator and opened his chest plate to reach the quarter inch thick rectangle of plastic explosive. This improvised bomb would be his last hope to kill any warrior that came into the cave after him. He started preparing for that final stand, if needed.

  ****

  Telour had been completely surprised to see his human clan leader pawn climb up onto that ledge. He realized that he had never asked him which humans from his group were joining the fight. Mirikami had told him he would not accept immunity without earning it, just like any of his people, so he had chosen this hunt to do that.

  His presence and planning obviously explained the most successful defense so far by a human team on a hunt. Even though seven humans were dead, Telour had expected much higher human loses by now. It seemed probable that there were two dead warriors, which the octet leader was bordering on dishonor by pretending he didn’t know, avoiding confirmation.

  Then he and his K’Tal, plus two curious warriors, saw clear proof that his chosen human organizer had definitely made a kill. A warrior’s head dangling from the human’s waist demonstrated beyond any question that the hunt should be over.

  To drive the point home the head was raised high and the little human raised two digits on his other hand. Did that mean two dead? Telour wondered. There seemed to be only four warriors on the shuttle, of the six that had arrived at the ridge. The octet potentially had lost half of its warriors. This was far more than Telour had ever expected. Two dead warriors was a huge success of his plan to prove humans were capable of fighting. Only three warriors over nearly five years of various types of testing had died, measured against thousands of human deaths.

  The suit broadcast from somewhere in the dome was unusual, he thought, but not unprecedented. Humans often watched events play out in the hunts, and sometimes gave warnings that had never offered any real benefit to the hunted in the past. This time might be different, because for the first time humans here knew that immunity had been earned for the ones still alive, and the hunters were in the jungle, apparently not aware.

  Kimbo clan’s risky rushing tactics didn’t seem to be proving very effective against booby traps. Their recently successful methods were something Graka clan had wanted to observe, but they never expected to see them flounder against mere humans. It was instructive.

  Finally, as a method to counteract the surprise human weapons and tactics, the octet leader had used his shuttle’s capability. This seemed like an overreaction, since they could have withdrawn to obtain armor and scanners, and then return. That would have cost them valuable time, and the shuttle weapons were only being used against mere prey animals, not another clan. The humans were using new weapons they had devised themselves, and which the octet hadn’t expected. It wasn’t clear if a combined clan council meeting would be critical of the Kimbo octet leader or not.

  The dilemma Telour faced now was how to end the hunt without seeming to push the Kimbo clan’s hunters to withdraw; something he didn’t have the authority to do. However, he wanted to keep his little clan leader alive for organizing future hunts.

  The manner in which the octet leader had manipulated reports and evidence to maintain his presumed “ignorance” was clever, but that would be over if he saw his dead warrior’s head on that rock. Telour thought of a way to present proof that the octet leader could not deny, and that did not require that he accept the word of a rival clan member.

  Tapping his com button for the appropriate channel, he sent a message every member of the octet would receive.

  “Tyroldor, this is Telour, compound commander for Graka clan. While you hunt in the forest and jungle, a human on the ridge has presented evidence visible to us in the dome that may prove they have killed one of your warriors. If this is so then the hunt should be suspended by an honor agreement with the prisoners that if they fight well and kill a hunter, those human fighters that survive will be granted immunity from this and future fights.”

  There was a long wait, unusual for a Krall warrior to take a quarter minute to respond, but it finally came.

  “Telour, there are four humans we are about to surround, and we just killed another. They cannot escape us. If I leave to confirm a possible death we may lose the advantage.”

  Telour answered, scorn dripping from his pointed teeth, and revealed by his snarl. “You have four warriors against four humans, and if the octet leader leaves for a short time your three novices will lose the advantage over these slow puny animals?”

  There also was no mistaking the snarl behind the quick response to the provocation. “You knew these humans had weapons my octet was not equipped to detect and counter. Had we been properly briefed, we would have swarmed over them and they all would now be dead. These cowardly animals fight only from hiding, always with weapons of treachery that they do not wield themselves.”

  “So you find these humans to be a worth enemy?” That was a loaded question, because proving they were worthy was Telour’s plan to gain status for himself and his clan.

  Another snarled reply answered. “If cowardly fighting with
hidden traps and use of trickery makes them worthy, then some clans may find them so,” hinting that Graka clan could be one of those. “Kimbo clan fights bravely and attacks our enemies directly and defeats them openly.” He finished.

  “Then your objection to what is a completely new human method of combat means that if they do not fight like Krall warriors, then Kimbo does not want to participate in the war to come? Perhaps we can train the many billions of the enemy to fight as Kimbo wishes?” Telour half expected a challenge to result from that taunt.

  Tyroldor restrained himself with great effort, remembering that the goal of his clan was to gain an early role in a fight against the human worlds. To admit that Kimbo’s methods were less effective against this new enemy would not achieve that goal. If properly equipped, his novices could have faced the unexpected weapons more effectively. He tried a compromise course that would allow his novice warriors to continue the attack on the retreating humans, even if he had to leave them.

  “Until I confirm the death of any of my warriors at so distant a place, my warriors here will continue the pursuit and kill any humans they find.”

  “Pursuit?” questioned Telour. “You said they were almost surrounded. They are so swift now?”

  “They have the weapons you did not tell me about,” he said accusingly, enraged. “They explode from concealment when they leave them behind on the trail. The human we killed here died as it set such a weapon, and it injured another one of my novices. Because I can’t permit even a single death in this hunt, we need to proceed with caution in this dense jungle.”

  Telour told him “Unless you say that three of Kimbo’s finest novices are unable to defend themselves from four fleeing humans that have never fought before, you perhaps should protect your clan’s honor and confirm or disprove the death of a warrior at the ridge.”