Koban: The Mark of Koban

by Stephen W Bennett

  The soundproofing of the tower had also prevented him from hearing something else. These creatures were shooting pistols from both hands as they ran the hundred feet towards the terminal, firing along its entire length. Windows, visible on an angled wing of the terminal, were blasting inward as explosive projectiles struck.

  Lambeau turned at Grayson’s shouted warning to her, “Get down; they’re also shooting out the higher windows.” He dove towards the floor.

  Lambeau, who had yet to see what was happening outside, stood there frozen with confusion registering on her face. That look was still there when the explosive rounds struck the windows. The plazsteel shattered into jagged shards and blasted inwards, ripping that expression from the front of her skull. She was dying when she flew back and hit the floor.

  Grammer was a bit luckier, for a few minutes at least. Lambeau’s body, between himself and the window, had inadvertently shielded him. Of the exploding fragments, only a few jagged pieces embedded in his left arm, and one tore a crease along the top of his forehead, starting a trickle of blood down his face.

  Startled, Grammer first cringed, and then screamed at the pain in his arm and the horror of seeing Lambeau’s bloody faceless skull as she fell to the floor, long fragments of glittering plazsteel jutting out of her body everywhere.

  An incredible crescendo of sound, explosions, gunfire, and screams now poured through the shattered window.

  Carl crawled to Grammer over the sharp fragments, glancing only briefly at a clearly finished Lambeau, and tugged at his pant leg to get him to crouch down. The man seemed to be in shock. “Beldor,” he shouted his first name to try get through to him over the bedlam from outside. “We need to get the hell away from the port. The things from that ship are shooting at everything in sight.”

  Tugging at a two-inch piece of plazsteel stuck in his bicep, he winced as it came out. “What things? Who is that?” He spoke in a dull monotone. He had been too far back from the window ledge to see the base of the ship as it spilled attackers onto the ramp.

  Carl was about to describe what he had seen, when a dark shadow passed across Grammer’s face, and there was a crunch of something stepping on the fragments behind him. They were fifty feet above the ramp, how could anyone have climbed up here so quickly?

  Beldor’s eyes widened to an improbable degree, and he screamed again and tried to turn and run. Something reached over Carl, where he crouched on the floor, and snatched the other man up by the right shoulder as if he were a toy.

  Carl rolled onto his back and looked up at a fearsome apparition from Hell.

  Standing over two meters tall, merciless black eyes with red pupils that reflected light like small flames glared down at him. The bony crested head seemed small for the thick chested body, and gray lips had pulled back from yellowed dagger like teeth.

  The creature returned its gaze to the squealing and kicking man in its large taloned left hand, the four claw tips buried deep into his shoulder. It easily held Grammer’s weight two feet off the floor, despite the creature’s arm extending out straight. That muscular arm appeared longer than the thick, slightly bowed legs, which also terminated in taloned four toed feet.

  Carl noticed that its right hand held what looked like a large pistol. In a nearly blurred movement, it smoothly holstered the weapon. It used its now free right hand to grasp Grammer’s injured left arm, raising it out to the man’s left.

  In a seemingly effortless motion, accompanied by Grammer’s shriek of agony, it casually twisted and tore the man’s left arm out of its socket, with strings and tendrils of flesh and tendons dripping blood from the shoulder and the arm’s end. The screaming mercifully ended as Grammer went limp. Grayson first thought his friend was dead, until blood spurting from the gapping shoulder wound proved the man’s heart still pumped. He had passed out from the pain.

  The monster, uninterested in playing with a quiet victim, made an easy over the shoulder reverse toss, casually throwing the limp body backwards through the shattered window without even looking, where it fell fifty feet to the tarmac. Carl vaguely heard the body hit, but he wasn’t interested in Beldor’s bad ending. The creature was looking down at him now.

  It tossed the dangling arm in its right hand into the air and caught it smoothly, close to the torn upper end. Still looking at Carl with blazing eyes, it extended a long purple tongue to sample the blood. It seemed to draw back its lips as if in a caricature of a smile. It clearly enjoyed the terror the act produced in its next victim.

  Taking a deliberate bite of flesh, the sharp teeth pulled a cleanly cut chunk from the end of the arm, and it chewed briefly, before shaking its protruding muzzle, and spit the piece of meat out. It made its first audible sound, a deep growl of disgust.

  Grayson was nearly petrified, and grasped a long slender piece of plazsteel that his right hand came across on the floor. No matter what, he wasn’t going to die the way Grammer had, never having a chance to fight back.

  He gathered himself and lunged towards the groin area of the beast with the eight-inch shard in his right hand, as he simultaneously threw glass fragments at the creature’s face with his left hand. At least he didn’t die as Grammer had.

  The Krall released the dead man’s arm, reaching for both pistols in a blur, but blinked as the chips flew towards its eyes, delaying its reaction time a few hundredths of a second. The sharp shard in the man’s right hand managed to stab the warrior’s upper leg, and a fierce look of triumph was present in the man’s eyes before the explosive rounds blew him apart. The plazsteel’s tip broke off in the Krall’s leg as the human’s shattered body flew back.

  Reaching down to remove the broken three-inch tip from his upper leg, the Krall novice remembered Telour’s warning that humans were tricky. That they could be a worthy enemy at times.

  The warrior wondered what this human could have done with a real weapon, or with time enough to set a trap. The blood had already stopped from the insignificant leg wound as the novice went searching for more humans to kill. He wasn’t going to try eating any more of their flesh again, not even to intimidate another one of them. That taste wasn’t to be experienced without justification.

  Telour had wanted to join his raiders on the first wave, but his position as commander dictated that he wait until they had subdued the immediate surroundings. This would ensure the Clanship’s security. Except these were humans, not opposing Krall clans they were attacking in an exercise. There would be no effective resistance, let alone a counter attack. He was itching to participate in the killing.

  Finally, he had a report from a leader of a hand of octet’s that the buildings immediately around the spaceport had been cleared of humans. The other warriors were already moving in random directions, independently engaging any humans they encountered. This was the purest of individual combat that the Krall so enjoyed. If only it wasn’t so easy.

  Telour commanded his K’Tal pilot and a hand of reserve warriors to follow him to his shuttle. He was in a hurry to move deeper into virgin human territory to hunt. Some place where a warning may have reached, and that might offer opposition to him and his force.

  The four warriors he had kept back had not dared to complain, but he knew they had felt cheated of the thrill of an unfettered hunt. Many enemies and no restrictions on collateral damage, as they had when conducting inter clan warfare. Telour would make it up to them.

  As the shuttle lifted, he selected a frequency scanner that permitted him to listen to the large number of frantic human transmissions on the airwaves. His skill as a translator would now pay dividends.

  He halted the scanner and backed up a few channels to listen to a transmission that sounded more organized than the rest. He suddenly had armed human targets to seek. The direction and distance was indicated on the console display, and he pointed with a talon tip to instruct the piloting K’Tal to go there. Some humans were issuing weapons, and organizing some sort of a force to fight them. This was excellent.

  2. Win
ter Hunt (Koban)

  This was crap! It was cold now in Koban’s northern hemisphere. Dillon and Thad had spotted a small yak herd moving slowly south, on a gray day filled with light blowing snow. However, they needed to take four animals back with them today for the meat. If they hunted from an open hatch of the airborne shuttle, it meant only one man could shoot, and he would be exposed to a freezing wind.

  If a stampede started, then the next three animals would be scattered well apart on the snow-covered plain. The herd was moving in the direction of a rocky knoll sticking up from the snow-covered former semi tropical savanna. The windblown snow had shown Thad that the rocks were downwind of the yak herd.

  Thad proposed that with two shooters lying on the flat top of the rocky pinnacle, they should be able to drop two yaks apiece at long range with the .50 caliber sniper rifles. This way they would have a close cluster of carcasses to pick up, before the herd even knew what was happening.

  The drawback was the need to park the shuttle out of sight behind the hill, and clamber a couple hundred feet up over large rocks with the heavy rifles slung, to reach the top. There was a foot of fresh fallen snow on the flats. The rocks, now blown clean, had deep patches between them were snow had gathered into drifts or filled the hollows.

  On the plus side, both men were eager to field test their latest three modifications for strength, endurance, and cold adaptation. The genetic mods, designed several hundred years ago, were originally for use with clones, not Normals. Implemented in Thad and Dillon several months ago, they had completed the virus carried cellular level gene transformation in less than two weeks. However, it had required months of exercise and high protein food to supplant the old muscle mass with the new, which the modified cell structure made possible.

  They didn’t appear particularly bulked up, no more than any men that exercised regularly. However, they both could now run two miles at a modest clip in the 1.52 times Earth standard gravity. They were sure they could go even farther if they wished. Previously they were unable to jog more than a half mile on Koban, not without stopping to take a breather. They soon amazed themselves and their friends with the weight lifting capability they developed.

  Dillon, the younger and fitter man had probably weighed 210 pounds, or 95 kg in Earth mass when the mods were administered, which was equivalent to about 320 pounds on Koban. The scientist, never having lifted weights, had no experience by which to judge his progress, but it was significant.

  He was now able to bench press 280 pounds, measured from the numbers stamped on the weights in the fitness center of the Krall disabled ship, the Flight of Fancy. This was equivalent to lifting 425 pounds on Koban. He could squat (he hated that term) 450 pounds, or about 684 in the higher gravity. He had dead lifted 400 pounds, equivalent to just over 600 here.

  Although Dillon was still increasing what he could lift, Jake informed him, in a bit of ego deflation, that his present efforts were not world records if adjusted to Earth gravity. However, this was still far better than other unmodified long-term captives on Koban could do, with years more of muscle adaptation behind them. Including Thad.

  Therefore, when they parked the shuttle, the two newly rejuvenated and competitive men raced one another to the top of the rocky hill. Dillon would have won, but Thad Greeves, a former military man and a Colonel, cheated by gleefully shoving him off a boulder into a deep drift, and beat the younger man to the top.

  Laughing as he caught up with him at the crest, Dillon told him, “You know I would have beaten you if you hadn’t cheated.” Neither man was breathing very hard.

  Thad grinned. “In combat there’s no such thing as cheating. You win or you’re dead.”

  “Hey,” Dillon protested, “this wasn’t combat!”

  “I know, so I cheated,” Thad laughed. “You’re lucky I didn’t push you into that deep crevasse full of snow, just below the crest. I’d be sitting here eating yak jerky waiting for you.”

  “It would serve you right if you had to eat that crud for cheating,” Dillon told him with a grimace. “It’s called yak jerky for its wonderful flavor.”

  “That’s just the spices I used. It isn’t so bad.” Thad answered, defending his homemade snack. “I’ve eaten worse in field training.”

  “Well, I’ll settle for fresh yak steaks, medium rare tonight,” and Dillon looked out towards the distant herd through the gray haze, still plodding towards them.

  Thad advised, “We may as well settle down between these two largest boulders to get out of the wind. I’m not cold yet, but these parkas and our cold adaptation can only do so much. We have about half an hour before they get close enough. I have some of Tet’s Earth coffee in a self-warming bottle with me.”

  “Won’t the coffee smell give us away?” Dillon asked.

  “To a herd that was already downwind of this hill, sure. Check the wind direction mighty hunter.” Thad teased. “Besides, our own human scent is enough to alert them. They just don’t equate us with danger, not yet anyway. Any strange smell might keep them too far away to shoot.”

  Slipping down between the two large boulders near the top, they used their gloved hands to scoop out piled snow to make a sheltered hollow, with an opening to the north, so they could still observe the distant yaks.

  Thad triggered the power cell of a small bottle of coffee he pulled from his backpack, removing the cup-sized cap. “I’ll give you the cup, and I’ll drink from the bottle. It only holds about two cups worth anyway.”

  In barely a minute, they were enjoying the hot Earth-brew coffee, which didn’t seem to taste as good when the beans were from anywhere but Earth. Supposedly first cultivated by the mythical Juan Valdez, whoever he had been.

  The two men made small talk for a time. They discussed the people that had chosen to move to the abandoned main Krall compound on the southeastern coast, now called Hub City by its new residents. The name reflected their support for the laws and customs of the Hub worlds of Human Space. They disapproved, strongly in some cases, of the genetic modifications of humans conducted at Koban Prime. That was the former Krall compound, now called Prime City, where the aliens housed their human combat test “animals.” The bio-scientists from the Flight of Fancy had found several thousand willing volunteers for gene mods, mostly from among former captives that had experienced Krall brutality first hand.

  Half of the meat Thad and Dillon planned to bring back was going to Hub City, because those more recent captives were as of yet unable to provide their own food. They didn’t seem to grasp the irony of the situation. Without the modified and boosted humans to help them, they could not survive here very long.

  The coffee finally gone, both men, in tacit uncoordinated agreement, broke down their heavy rifles to ensure they were clean and in perfect operating condition. It didn’t matter that the yak bulls couldn’t reach them up there on the rocks. It was a survival habit recognizing that nearly every example of animal life on Koban was potentially dangerous to humans. Often they were deliberately and aggressively so.

  Even genetically enhanced humans were at a severe disadvantage on Koban without technology to protect them, such as the shuttles, heavy and light weapons, electrified fences, communications, and their intelligence. People died several times a month from carelessly forgetting where they were and what to look for, even with guns and someone to cover their back.

  Thad used his scope to sight-in the lead yaks and measure distance, noting as usual that it was large bulls breaking the way through the shallow snow. They were too far out, almost a mile yet, for accurate shots in this wind and light snow, on a gray day. There were perhaps a hundred animals in this particular herd. If given the choice, they would take only the whiter haired young females, as having the more tender cuts of meat. The larger bulls had more meat but were tougher. The bulls usually were discernible by the darker remnants of bluer stringy hair under their necks, as well as their size. They all had wide curved horns, and a cross-the-skull bony ridge.

  He
told Dillon, who was checking his own sights and scope computer, “We can probably go up and take our shots in about ten minutes, though they could be headed for the bushes at the base of our hill. There are still leaves on those, and the grass under the snow around the base on the backside felt thicker when we started our climb up here. If so we can have our pick of the herd if they walk right up to us to graze.”

  Dillon lowered his rifle and was about to agree, when he paused, and placed a bare hand on the side of one of the sheltering boulders. “Do you feel that?” he asked. “A vibration.”

  Thad placed his own ungloved hand on the same rock. “Tremor?”

  Koban had quite a few active volcanoes, and was geologically active.

  “I don’t think so. It’s steady, and I’ve been feeling it through my back for some time as I leaned against the rock face. It finally grew strong enough that I took notice.”

  Thad looked out at the yak herd. “We aren’t the only ones to notice, or else they are causing it. The bulls have changed direction to our left, and have picked up the pace. Look at the snow they’re kicking up.”

  “The vibration wasn’t coming from that herd,” Dillon hooked his thumb towards the yaks. “They just now started running. Doesn’t it feel like that stampede of rhinolo we triggered, a couple of months back? We shot a cow, and before we landed, we chased a big herd away from the kill using the shuttle. It felt like this through my feet.”

  “If it isn’t the yaks, then it must be some other stampede,” agreed Thad, “because I’m starting to hear the sound, despite the muffling effect of snow. It isn’t rhinolo, not this far north. Let’s get up top. We might be able to get our shots in before the yaks get too far away, and also catch sight of what’s running our way.”

  They climbed out of their cozy rock and snow shelter, and as they reached the top of the wind swept peak, they could see the source of the distant rumble. It was an indistinct line of churning snow spray, a mile or more to the right when they faced the still turning yak herd.