Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire

by Stephen W Bennett

  Just then, there was the distant thunder of thrusters, as a descending and gleaming white and gold space yacht dropped down towards the landing pad, five miles distant.

  Sayed sighed. “As usual, Sheik Qasimi is first to arrive, determined to try and make a deal before his rivals arrive. It must work for him sometimes, because he is always early. Now I have to entertain the old fool for additional hours, while I refuse to reveal what I have to sell. I apologize, and must ask you to return to your quarters and the animals until my guests and I gather at my pavilion. Kadar will not accompany you now, but one of his men will escort you. I will see you next at the arena.”

  They both stood, another limp handshake, and a guard that Haveram had seen on the Falcon met him as he left the veranda.

  Haveram visited Kim and Karl, and via frilling, outlined the fake show he had planned. Of course, Kim wanted to change things. “Just two of us cannot kill a bull rhinolo, why not let the blue streaks go first, and Karl and I can demonstrate our hunting technique and bring down that big buck.”

  “Are you advocating wasting the meat of a kill?”

  “No! We would feed on the meat after frilling its death thoughts.” She was shocked he would suggest she would waste a kill.

  “There’ll be no time for that. We may be involved in a fight before you could eat anything. Besides, the agenda is set, and the rhinolo are already inside the arena. The Sheik plans to put four people into the arena with the rhinolo, to watch them be killed. These are bad humans, and you want to entertain them first with your hunt, to kill for fun? What sort of domestic ripper have you become, anyway?” He was grinning as he thought that at her.

  She was sullen in her answer. “I wasn’t serious. I only tried to tease you, as humans do. You turned it back on me, I think.”

  “Nice try pussy cat. But don’t tease a race of teasers, we can smell it coming.”

  “Ha. Tell that to your shoes tomorrow, Chief super nose.”

  Uh oh. Rippers had a sense of humor that might involve peeing in his shoes, or leaving a small dead animal’s bones in his bunk. He’d have to sleep fully dressed and in another bed for a few nights.

  Then, Haveram linked to the entire planet-side complement, as they discussed possibilities and actions today, and then added links with the four ships in orbit, as to what was being observed at multiple palaces, where yachts, but not their cutters were seen undergoing preflight activities.

  After hearing the reports, Haveram said, “It looks like nineteen of twenty-two sheiks may be coming. That reinforces my impression that a few of the sheiks don’t engage in the death games and child sex trade. They also have the smaller palaces, without a coliseum type structure nearby. The more decent and moral men may end up being the top dogs after today.”

  Thad wasn’t so sure. “Their titles and sheikdoms are inherited, and you can be sure the oldest or most favored male heirs have been raised in this atmosphere of cruelty and decadence. Today’s action might shift the balance some, but it isn’t a long time cure for this planet.”

  “I don’t think so either,” Haveram said, “and I’m sure we don’t want to try to impose Hub society on these people, so long as they refrain from kidnapping children for ransom, stop engaging in the forced sex trade, stop smuggling dangerous drugs and weapons to other worlds, and end the killing of people here for entertainment. I think we’ll be back here from time to time, to police their activities.”

  “Who’s gonna pay us to be the police?” Sarge wanted to know. “Federation credits basically will come out of our tax budget, and we have an emerging government, a large number of new worlds with a great many expenses of our own. The PU has obviously never done anything about controlling any of the Rim Worlds, so long as they didn’t attack a Hub world or a member colony. Can we afford charity work?”

  “I don’t see a problem with leaving these corrupt murderous bastards with a lot less cash when we leave here,” Thad offered.

  Haveram agreed. “They surely have palace vaults here that we can empty, and they must have it in banks or invested in illegal businesses on other Rim Worlds, as Sayed did on Poldark. I think, for a reward share, we should inform authorities on Rim Worlds of the sheiks dirty money and investments, after we pick their brains here. If those authorities are part of the corruption, a Mind Tap will expose them too. Tet revealed our mental ability last month on Earth, so for a short time we can use it to expose the crooks, at least until they get better at hiding their thoughts. Even then, we can probably get their flunkies to talk.”

  Sarge, who had brought the subject up, had another thought. “Ah…, I don’t want to sound like a spoil sport, but if we don’t have some sort of accounting for what we take, we’re all going to look like pirates ourselves.”

  Haveram agreed. “You have a point. We’ll ask Stewart and our alien allies to think of a way to do this sort of thing in an official, public, and accountable manner, with a method to manage and report confiscated property, like what we’ll be taking from these sheiks. Aside from compensating us for our work in cleaning up a mess like this, much of the money should be used to benefit those that were robbed or harmed by the sheiks, or simply are in dire need.”

  Sarge proved he was onboard with the idea, although a bit hazy on pre spaceflight historical myths. “Great, I always wanted to be a Robbing Hood.”

  ****

  Karl was concerned. “You will not let the bad men put people in with the rhinolo will you?”

  “No. Except, we don’t know when that was planned. The sheiks have been looking at the rhinolo, having lunch as they talk about prices and trades, and they want to know what these animals will do, how they will act when confronted by men. They know you two are supposed to come in and herd them out of the arena after they turn those four people into mush, and they really want to see that.

  “The rhinolo are nervous now, but the bull is prepared to protect his small herd, and he has repeatedly charged towards the wall, just ten feet below the men looking down, laughing and making mocking calls at him. He’s in a frothy frenzy to get to them, and reared up on his hind legs several times to place his front legs on the wall, his horn tip only five feet below them.”

  Karl and Kim were waiting with Haveram in a pedestrian passage under the seating area, staying back out of sight of the gathering of sheiks and their security men, at the large covered pavilion on the opposite side of the arena. When Haveram had let the cats out of their enclosure, his three armed watchers had vanished behind a steel door with a window, where they nervously watched him and the rippers play and tussle together, before moving up towards the arena level and the pedestrian passageways near the lowest viewing area.

  Thad and Sarge were in place, still stealthed of course, positioned near the heavy steel doors at the two passageways, at opposite ends of the oval arena that were farthest apart. One of them would ensure a door was opened to accept the rhinolo if that was needed in a hurry, and the other door concealed the blue streaks, out of their pen and ready to enter the arena. The Manager of the Menagerie was present near the door for the blue streaks, feeling falsely that they were of little threat and merely a decorative species. He had sent two men to the other end, to operate the motors that would open that door, believing the rippers would be chasing the rhinolo there, doubling the risk at that end.

  None of the Kobani knew where the four sacrificial prisoners were being kept, or if they were even in the coliseum at all. Five Kobani were at the landing pad, prepared on signal to make certain that none of the yachts could lift, and that Sayed’s cutter stayed grounded. The other three Kobani were sitting on the roof of the pavilion, waiting for things to start. There were two late arriving sheiks in limousines still on the way from the landing pad, but they would reach the arena shortly. Their arrival, in an estimated ten minutes, was what Haveram and company were waiting for, to have all of the rats present. That was when Sheik Sayed’s impromptu court judgement caught them off guard, and initiated the conquest of Khart
oum’s Destiny.

  Chapter 11: Retribution and Judgement

  Shandra Stillwell, one of the Kobani sitting on top of the pavilion’s roof suddenly linked in on the group circuit. “Crap! Chief, eight of Sayed’s security men suddenly grabbed four of the servants that were on table clean up duty, and lowered them into the damned arena, kicking and screaming. The rhinolo are at the other end but they sure as hell know they’re there.”

  “Servants? We assumed he would use the four prisoners awaiting his judgement. Wait, I’ll bet he brought them here and used them as table cleaners, just to keep them off guard. We’re on our way out. Cover the rippers from the security men after they go into the arena. Thad, be ready to open the door for the rhinolo, but I don't think with people out on the arena floor to attract them, that we can herd them where we want. The cats may only be able to divert them for a time.”

  He and the two cats had started moving from their place of concealment as soon as the mental image had reached them. Pairs of guards, standing by the arena railing, had suddenly grasped each of the four victims, who were cleaning up and returning empty plates and glasses to a table near the same rail. They were bodily lifted over the side and swiftly lowered, struggling and yelling, hanging by their arms and hands, fingers smashed with a rifle butt when they grasped the railing bars.

  The guards released them, to fall the remainder of the twelve or thirteen feet to the red soil of the arena floor. This was a week before the Sheik’s appointed court day, and they had hoped that by rendering dedicated service today, they might mitigate the severity of their upcoming judgments. There were three men and a woman, and they crumpled to their hands and knees or rolled to their sides as they landed. They had seen the bull rhinolo stamping around below them earlier, of course, and now they understood exactly what the Sheik’s judgment for their offenses would be. Death.

  It was going to be gruesome deaths for the benefit of the guests, to drive the bids up for the purchase of the massive exotic animals now on display. The four condemned people frantically tried to find purchase for fingers and toes or sandals in the small cracks between the heavy granite blocks that formed the thick walls around the arena. They hoped to climb high enough to get above the beasts, the largest of which stood nine feet high at his massive front shoulders. As would be expected, the arena had been specifically designed to contain its victims, with the blocks fitted too closely together for a climbing escape. Blocks were rough unpolished granite on the front, so that a suction cup device couldn’t adhere. Something that condemned people had tried to use long ago, when the entertainment festivals first began. The early sheiks had adapted.

  There was no escape for them that way, so they ran towards the nearest steel door, below and adjacent to the pavilion. The four of them might be able to push it on its roller track.

  The huge teal colored bull started digging at the soil with his front feet, assessing the small predators it now found down at his level. It was checking them for the presence of the stinging sticks that creatures like this often carried, when they hunted the great herds on the savannas of Koban. There were such sticks with the similar predators at the top of the gray cliff that surrounded them, but these figures did not carry them. Even the immature male calf could kill these slow and weak pack-hunting animals if they didn’t have stinging sticks. Not that the bull intended to yield his own pleasure by giving the young male his first kill in defense of the herd. The youngster would have to learn how to kill foe of the herd by observing the mature bull’s vengeance. He started his charge.

  As Haveram and the two cats exited the lowest level pedestrian tunnel and came within view of the arena floor, the bellowing bull, followed by his diminished herd, were in full charge. He was halfway to his four intended targets, who were futilely trying to force the multi ton door open enough to slip through a gap, or to use the inside lip and one-inch gap from the wall to find a grip and perhaps pull themselves above the reach of the charging animals. No one wanted to be last, so there wasn’t any cooperative effort. The woman, realizing she couldn’t outfight the men, turned to run to the identical door on the opposite side of the arena, two hundred feet away.

  She was looking to her right, at the big, three-horned animal that seemed to be moving far too fast for its mass, and saw it was still going towards the three men fighting at the door she’d abandoned. The sheiks had stood and moved closer to the railing for a better view, and they were amused by her hopeless run across the wide expanse of dirt. One of the teal colored cows, the mother of the calf, had split from behind the bull’s path when she saw the other potential threat to her offspring, in isolation and fleeing.

  The woman, adrenaline fueling her legs, focused on the door on the other side she needed to reach. It appeared impossible she could find a way to escape even if she reached her goal, but she wasn’t giving up yet. The unexpected collapse of her desperate plan came when a cheap, loose fitting sandal tip, scooped lose dirt and caused her to trip and fall head first, arms extended in a skid on the arena’s dirt.

  Suddenly, two terrifying blue apparitions, emitting deafening roars that reverberated from the granite walls, sailed gracefully over the far side’s arena railing and hit the dirt running, coming directly at her. She knew the gleaming white fangs in their gaping jaws spelled her doom, and she screamed. She instinctively curled into a fetal position, arms covering her head, waiting for the tearing fangs and claws to rip her apart.

  When she next heard roars from them, they sounded from behind her and she risked a peek through tangled hair and fingers in that direction. The two predators were intercepting the largest rhinolo, as it was closing on the three men she had left struggling at the large door.

  Two of those men, recognizing they were out of time to slide open that door even if it were possible, had started running along the wall in what would surely have been a futile attempt to reach the next door at the far end of the arena.

  The animal she had heard the sheiks call a rhinolo, was oddly nearly the same shade of blue-green as the two tiger-like creatures that had gone past her for some reason. They were snarling and roaring at that juggernaut mountain of flesh, and it had pulled up its charge to wheel in their direction.

  The cats promptly swerved towards the bull’s back trail, in the direction of the herd members he would instinctively protect. He looked from side to side quickly, expecting more of the rippers to appear from some other direction, as his experience and instincts led him to anticipate. Two of them wouldn’t take on four rhinolo this way unless they expected a flanking attack from the rest of their pride, ready to tear at the legs to cripple one of the weaker or smaller herd members.

  The oldest cow and the young male were four or five lengths behind him, but the calf’s mother was veering towards where one of the four original small predators had ran and apparently fallen. He saw she could easily overpower that small single opponent, so he turned about in a spin that looked too agile for his bulk, staying with the two rippers that were clearly the greater threat.

  The fallen woman was initially hesitant to resume her run to the other side of the arena, fearing she might attract the predators again, or that the largest rhinolo, which had halted its charge and was facing her way, would see her motion and come after her. The thudding of hooves from another direction changed her mind. Another rhinolo had split from the rest, and it clearly was headed for her. She was exposed, and only a wrecked shackling post, twenty feet away, offered her any semblance of shelter, eight or nine feet of heavy timber, which these big animals could easily toss aside. She’d never make it to the heavy door ahead of the beast, and she had no hope of getting it to open if she did. Hopeless or not, she leaped up, kicked off her sandals, and ran towards the timber, which was closest.

  She kept looking back at her pursuer, and was startled by a man’s voice close by.

  “Run past the broken post, I’ll distract it. Go all the way to the wall.”

  “Huh...?” Was all she said, when a man
passed her going the other way, running directly at the rhinolo.

  She didn’t know where this maniac came from, or understand all that he said, since he’d spoken Standard and she had relatively little practice speaking that language. But, the very first word was “Run” and that she understood, because she was going to do that anyway. She slapped her bare left foot on the rhinolo-shattered timber as she leaped over, its chains and shackles laying spread on the soil. Akilah decided that if this brave fool was ready to die to help her, she owed it to him to run as fast as she could in exchange for his sacrifice.

  With a hundred feet of open dirt ahead of her now, she looked back to see if the beast had slowed to attack the stranger. She watched in amazement as he leaped towards the animal and twisted as he left the ground, reaching out with his right hand towards the long central horn, suddenly thrust up and to the side at him. Remarkably, he grasped the horn a foot from its tip, used it to alter his trajectory to pivot around it slightly, and used the up-thrust of that massive head to gain height, pushing off the side of the animal’s face with his left hand.

  He performed a twisting summersault over the snorting animal’s head, and landed on his feet on the bulging hump over the front muscular shoulders, facing the rear downward slope of the animal’s smooth back. He slid down the teal colored thick armored skin, and lightly jumped off her rear quarters, as the beast actually ran out from under him.

  Akilah, now alone in front of the monster, feared it would continue after her now, following the man’s miraculous avoidance of that vicious looking horn. It had already lowered its rear haunches, front legs pushing up and back to stop its charge, hooves kicking up showers of red soil from front and rear feet. The rhinolo was now determined to turn and attack the audacious little predator that had dared to challenge her.