Carson and Ethan had largely gotten over the urge to show off their TG abilities in front of their parents. Especially when some bragging feat of accomplishment for a mom or dad was inevitably followed by words such as: “Great, now see how fast you can do the dishes and clean your room,” or “You really are strong, so carry the laundry over to the Flight of Fancy.”
When Thad spotted a flash of teal through the windscreen, he became concerned. That was Kit with him. She had been doing patrol duty around the camp, watching for predators that might be tempted to “sample” a new prey animal. The radio at his waist hadn’t made a peep, which he’d expect if something large, like a family of K-Rex came close. The forty-foot partly blue-feathered Koban replicas of a Tyrannosaurus were extremely dangerous, and you needed heavy guns to bring them down. They absolutely could not be frightened away. For exactly the same reason whiteraptors could not be chased away at home. An apex killer feared nothing.
The Rex’s often followed behind herds, but the Ceratopsians he and Ethan stalked had not passed particularly close to the expedition’s temporary campsite. They had been camped in the area for several days, scouting the region around an abandoned Krall compound, planning for a new settlement. There had been no sign of the big predators, and they would be hard to miss from the air.
Thad wiped his bloody blade in the grass, and slid it into its sheath. He wiped his hands on more grass as the truck closed, hardly slowing. He picked up the rifle and stood waiting as the truck slid to the end of its wild ride. Both Kit and Ethan made graceful exits on the fly, even as the truck rocked back with its brake locks set. For what seemed the millionth time, he noticed the smooth powerful movements of his son and Kit, and mentally compared their movements to how he remembered the Krall moving, so many years ago. He knew he was biased, but he saw more grace and greater power in both of them, and not only because the Krall were bowlegged and he hated them.
With no preliminary, Ethan said, “Frill Kit, Dad.”
He reached out and gripped the fleshy frill of the heavily panting cat, using thumb and forefinger. Instantly he had an image of Tet beckoning with a sense of urgency, followed by an old image of several Krall carrying rifles, all of which suddenly whirled and looked directly at him, and they started running for a shuttle he saw beyond them. They fired towards him, and to their sides, as his viewpoint rotated and shifted rapidly, in fast and confusing arcs. He realized he was seeing a ripper’s view of a pursuit of three Krall warriors that were fleeing for their lives. They were shooting at the ripper, but missing as it bounded and twisted, changing directions. He caught a glimpse of other rippers coming in from the sides. His viewpoint suddenly shifted, and he was now seeing the scene from one of the other rippers, which pulled up just as a shuttle hatch closed. The Krall had barely made it into their shuttle. The sense was that these were old pride memories.
Another image of Tet returned, one hand apparently on Kit’s frill, the other hand clearly beckoning him urgently. He pointed skyward, and then at the larger of their two shuttles. He next saw an image of Prime City, then Hub City. Then the images were from Kit’s viewpoint, racing from the camp to find them.
Thad released the frill, and told Ethan, “You drive, get us back to camp now.” He put his rifle into its padded gun box behind the front seats, and motioned Kit to get in the back. He felt the heat radiate from her body as she passed him, and realized she had run that twelve-mile distance to reach them. He gripped the doorframe, pressed a hand against the truck cab roof, and braced his feet. This was going to be one brutal ride.
The truck wheels tore up the dirt and grass as it spun around, and Kit stretched her neck over the seat back to press her frill against his upraised left forearm. There was an image of a gazelle’s meat rotting on a savanna, apparently on the plains of Cenozo continent if Thad was correct in his assumption. Then an image of the kill they had just left behind followed, making the context clear to him. The inference was obvious; this was wasteful to leave the meat.
He risked a head bump to grip her frill with his left hand, forming a mental image of something he had never actually seen. This was something humans were good at, but hard for a ripper to do. She received an image from him of the Krall, shooting at humans of her pride and at her now grown cubs. Rippers could distinguish real memory images from those humans created, but understood this was her “Father’s” explanation of why they had to go now.
Her deep snarl and exposed canines proved she had forgotten the wasted kill.
Ethan was able to roll smoothly with the truck jounces, and was bracing and floating at various times as they bounced and turned, at nearly seventy miles per hour, over the lumpy and grassy semi-plains, going around trees, shrubs, and the larger rocks he could see. “What’s going on Dad? I saw the images, but Kit didn’t have the context. When did the Krall do those things? Why didn’t Uncle Tet call us on the radio?”
Unlike Ethan, Thad had trouble finishing a sentence without grunting from some hard bounce or jolt. “They haven’t arrived…grunt…yet. Tet didn’t …oops…use radio because they…unhh…might hear. Jake must have…ugh…picked up a White Out. We’re maintaining radio silence now…ugh…as planned. They might land at either dome....ouch…” He bumped the top of his head against the cab roof.
“Damn! Try to miss some of them, OK?”
Except for involuntary grunts, and a few yelps as Thad banged an elbow, head, or knee, they drove on without conversation for nearly nine minutes. It was annoying for Thad to see even Kit handle the jolts better than he did, and he was using hands, feet, elbows and knees, for bracing. He was going to be bruised by the time they reached their destination, assuming he was even conscious. He swore the TG kids all went to some secret Krall driving school.
The truck finally slid to a dusty halt in the camp, finding it in disarray. It was obvious that they were leaving much of the durable or easily replaced equipment where it was. Tet was at the door of the larger shuttle, and shouted to Thad to hurry. Kobalt’s huge head peered around Mirikami’s side. Several SG kids were carrying fragile equipment to the other shuttle, on the run.
Forced to limp from a knee bang as the truck jarred to a stop, Thad hustled to join Mirikami. He was halfway there when he remembered his rifle. He was turning around when Ethan passed him with the heavy weapon carried lightly in his left hand, and he gripped his dad’s arm with his right hand to hurry him along. Kit flashed by and darted through the shuttle hatch, briefly pausing to touch frills with her brother.
Mirikami clapped him on the shoulder. “I was afraid I’d have to leave the second shuttle for you. You nearly beat Dillon back from the Krall compound, only two miles away. It’s a single Clanship, and so far, Jake couldn’t say where it’s going. He picked up the gamma ray burst at about two hundred thousand miles out. He can’t use radar, but Jake visually tracked it by telescope as it vectored towards the moon. That’s almost on the night side right now or at least over the horizon, and I have no idea what it’s doing. As soon as Jake detected the White Out, he sounded the recall sirens at Prime City and Hub City. I only hope we get everyone inside or under cover.”
“Tet, if they are around the limb of the planet, we can still use the com sats for a few minutes.”
“Sorry Thad, I did use them briefly to speak with Jake, then I told him to use tight beam laser to place them both in standby. Cahill, the idiot, tried to use their radio right after Jake issued the warnings to go radio silent. We need to play dead as long as we can. We have to get them to land where we have some chance of catching them off guard.”
Dillon looked around the edge of the cockpit door, from the pilot’s seat. “Hey Thad, saw Ethan driving. I’ll try to be smoother than that. Everyone get seated, we’re lifting right now. Tet can tell what little we know.” The increasing high pitch thruster noise cut off as the hatch closed, and the shuttle lifted, a bit rocky in his haste. Dillon was a qualified pilot, as was Thad, but he lacked what Tet called “the touch.”
Thad took a
seat next to Alyson Formby, the first TG from Hub City, and one of only three TGs on this expedition. She had virtually begged to go on this trip. After a taste of “freedom,” her own words, from what she called the “repressive social boredom” of conservative Hub City, she was a full convert to the idea of gene mods after a week’s visit at age seventeen. At eighteen, the age of consent set for Hub City youngsters to make adult decisions, she had flown to Prime City against her parent’s wishes, and asked for the Koban mods.
When her initial adaptation period was over, which the ripper frilling had helped accelerate, she went home and recruited dozens of eighteen-year-old Hub City kids to try the same mods.
Recruiting among the girls didn’t prove to be very hard, not after her former dominating large boyfriend, Brad Culligan, tried to force himself back into her good graces. His arm would heal sooner than his pride, because Alyson chose the same public location to humiliate him as he had selected in trying to forcibly kiss and fondle her. The Great Auditorium was half-full at lunch time when his high pitched cry drew everyone’s eyes, as he flew seventeen and a half vertical feet into the air (measured by Jake, on request), breaking his arm as he tried to break his fall. The pitch of Brad’s shriek on the way up was “assisted” by virtue of where Alyson had applied her “lift” to launch the good looking, but obnoxious bully.
One aspect of the social changes on Koban had been to bring males out from under the repressive “weaker sex” image that had pervaded society after the Collapse. The “boys are back,” was a new catch phrase, but a few went too far back into the past. The girls insisted on remaining “Ladies.”
Alyson had a question that must have been on the minds of the six SGs aboard the shuttle, with Carson and Ethan the only other TGs. “Mister Greeves, what are we going to do if the Krall find out we didn’t all die?”
Thad glanced at Tet, and answered her, and the other youngsters, as honestly as possible. He figured Ethan and Carson already knew, having been around the Inner Circle’s social conversations all their lives.
“Alyson, there is to our present knowledge only one Clanship, with an unknown number of warriors aboard. We need it to land, we hope at one of the cities where we can hide and try to ambush them, and make certain it never departs. We have to prevent that departure, at whatever the cost.” He looked around at the young faces, one his own son, and realized he could be looking at the price right now.
Mirikami told them some of the flexible plans, many of which had been in outline form for years. “If this is the only ship, and we can keep it from leaving, we will not need to resort to the diaspora model, where we send families and small groups out into the wild, all over the planet to survive as best they can on what they can carry with them or make out of local materials. That has been our last resort plan.
“The situation we face now, at least thus far, offers us a greater hope of preserving what we have built. If there are five hundred, or even two thousand armed warriors aboard, which, given the size of a Clanship is possible, we will be hard pressed to kill them all without losing many of our own, and possibly one or both domes. That still requires that we not let that ship get airborne, to use its lasers, plasma cannons, and missiles. We will lose if that happens. The worst event for us would be if they escaped the planet and Jumped.”
“Sir,” it was Alyson again. “How will we keep the Clanship grounded? We don’t have any weapons that can dent one of those. I studied all I could find in the library about them. They’re supposed to be really tough.”
Mirikami nodded grimly. “We could try to storm the ship and get inside to take control, but the weapon that I see as most effective is the one we are riding in right now.”
Their blank looks turned to comprehension when Carson blurted, “Ram them with this shuttle?” Now they all looked positively alarmed.
Mirikami shook his head. “For smart kids, you sure miss the point sometimes. I wouldn’t ram them with all of us aboard, actually with nobody aboard. Jake, if his signal isn’t being jammed, can control a shuttle if given Link capability.”
“Sorry, Sir.” Carson apologized. “TGs do think fast under pressure, and a remote piloted shuttle was going to be my suggestion. However, none of us could be sure you classical’s had considered that option.” Rather than call the older humans slow thinkers, the TG’s had started using the term classical thinkers. Once the older generation understood the term, it quickly lost its charm.
Laughing wryly, Mirikami pointed out something to the three young TGs. “We old farts don’t think as fast as you hyper youngsters, not in a fight, but with enough time, and I don’t mean just a few hundredths of a second of time, our experience and classical native intelligence can come up with plans that work. Our contingency planning was underway before any of you pups were even born.”
“I guess Aunt Maggi was right about Uncle Tet.” Ethan informed Carson, with a wink.
Mirikami simply had to ask. “What did she say?”
“Don’t poke a bear just to see if it’s awake. It might bite your ass off.”
****
To her five other clan members on the command deck, Toltak said, looking out the viewport, “This will be our home world, after we walk the Great Path but a few hands of hands of breeding cycles.”
Her pilot, Gapod, was unimpressed with the view, as Krall generally were with scenery anyway. “It looks like most worlds we own, no more dangerous.”
“So you can see the three horned rhinolo from here, and judge its speed, strength, and its few weaknesses? You can see the eight rippers stalking you from behind?” The sneer was evident in her words, even if it was difficult to replicate on a Krall’s features. They could widen or narrow their eyes and move their stiff but flexible lips, deploy the internal ultrasonic ears, and show their teeth and purple tongues. However, they were limited in displaying emotions with facial gestures, except for those of rage, domination, and intimidation. The rare snort and head toss of amusement or sense of irony was their sole lighter emotional display.
“More than one hunter has fallen to the charge of a powerful mindless rhinolo. They run and turn faster than any human you have faced in battle, and as hard to kill with a projectile weapon as any foe with armor. If you have the misfortune to have the natural hunters of the rhinolo chose you as its prey, your best defense is to get inside the shuttle door before they kill you. The one you see is probably not the one that will kill you. They are faster and stronger than we are, and very good hunters. It is the animals down there that are the reason we do not live here now, not the higher gravity.” She had adjusted internal gravity to match her memory of its strength on Koban.
“We must keep this visit as a story told nowhere else, if we wish to retain our status as it is now. The path to our clan’s home base was too close to Koban to resist a short visit, but we do not have approval of the joint clan council.” She almost spat the last words. “Tanga clan proposed that we should train our novices here, in this gravity, before they fight humans.
“We cannot change the council’s decision, but I desire the taste of rhinolo meat, and wish to share it with surviving clan mates from my former octet, as a reward for your support for me and our dead Gatlek, and for the many status kills you each have earned in battle, as leaders of your own octets.” The last comments were more to cover her own selfish motives, but once her subordinates agreed, and participated without protest, the bond of secrecy and self-interest would hold between them.
“Why was I asked to take us to the moon of this world before we land?” Gapod cared even less for the view of a moon that he did of the blue-green world below.
“Parkoda, of our clan, was the sub-leader that taught all the Krall how to take other ships and objects with us when we Jump. This was a great discovery, and he used it to tow many large human ships here with captives. The largest of the dead ships are in orbit of this moon as tributes to Tanga clan. This feat should be part of Krall histories, and Tanga clan must retell the story unt
il it is a part of that history. You will tell it more accurately if you see the prizes we took.”
Naturally, her own retelling omitted the part where Parkoda stole credit for the towing idea from humanity. It also overlooked the detail that Parkoda’s raid had captured only three of the eight large prize ships. When the human captives they contained proved to be unnecessary for additional combat testing of novices against humans, he had simply suggested blasting the ships with missiles, with no thought of their trophy value. This would have left rings of trash and debris surrounding their future home world. The competing Graka clan had proposed placing them in orbit around the moon, as an expedient means for the Krall fleet to depart immediately, to make the first attack on a human world, Gribbles’ Nook, thus starting the war. In Krall legends, brags repeated often enough sometimes became the “truth,” so Tanga clan repeated and exaggerated their contribution.
When the Clanship neared the moon, its sensors reported only seven large ships in orbit there. If there’s any quantity a Krall is certain to remember, it was the number eight, the basis of their octal number system, and two hands of captured ships should be there. Toltak immediately ordered a scan of the surface of the moon for debris, in the event one ship had somehow spiraled in and crashed. They found no wreckage after a full orbit.
Next, she conducted a radar sweep of the space around Koban, which produced scattered results. They found the eighth huge human transport in an equatorial orbit close to the planet. There was no power detected from it, and it registered cold on an IR scan. Toltak acknowledged it was possible she had not heard of the final disposition for all of the human ships during the rush and excitement of the Krall departure. She told her clan mates that she had not personally seen eight ships orbiting the moon.
Two other radar specks, spotted in probable geosynchronous orbits, drew scant attention. There were thousands of pieces of wreckage in high and low elliptical orbits. They were the remnants of a demolished human cargo ship, with pieces gradually falling out of orbit as they grazed the atmosphere on low passes, burning up on entry. That ship’s human crew had attempted to escape after arriving here. A Tanga Clanship commander had destroyed it, on Parkoda’s order, as an object lesson to other human ships, thus carelessly cluttering the space around Koban with its debris. It was this messy example that spared the destruction of the eight larger ships, which were incapable of planetary landings.
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 47