Toltak looked up quickly in a rare show of surprise for a Krall. “He is alive?”
“Yes.”
“Kill him for me.”
That was a surprise for Carson, but he’d never dealt with the Krall before. His apparent bargaining chip was worthless. He thought of just one use for his chip. Bet it in one big gamble.
He needed to set up the last part of Mirikami’s plan. They could not allow the Krall to return to the Clanship, and they could not let them lift off in the shuttle. He knew his next action would determine if they could prevent both.
He turned back to Stilkap, and assessed his belt harness. The tight waist belt and the shoulder belt that passed diagonally across his chest and across his back was actually all one piece. The stretched skintight black body suit was tough material but had no slack for a grip. The belt it would be.
Carson rolled the limp warrior onto his face and chest, Stilkap’s eyes rolling to try to see what was happening. The boy took a firm grip on the shoulder belt near the middle of the back, using his right hand, and lifted the warrior upright in one powerful easy movement. He was heavy, but easily manageable with one hand and arm if he didn’t need to hold him very long. He lowered the body a bit, so the feet at the ends of the short bowed legs were barely touching the ground. He looked out into the grass beyond the tarmac, almost behind the shuttle and nodded.
Every Krall eye was on him as he turned to face the shuttle. Toltak couldn’t believe such a small human, roughly one-third the apparent mass of Stilkap, was able to hold his limp body by one upraised arm and hand. Against Koban’s gravity, she realized this was a more impressive feat of strength than she’d ever thought a human capable of performing. Then he showed her another.
He began running the hundred feet towards the shuttle in easy looking, long smooth strides, with Stilkap’s limp body hardly jiggling as the human held it steady in front of him. She now could see Stilkap’s open eyes, moving from side to side, trying to see what was happening. He wasn’t unconscious, as she had assumed after learning he wasn’t dead, he was alert enough to observe what was going on. How had this much smaller young human manage to do this to an experienced warrior?
Her inquiring mind, not terribly curious at the best of times, suddenly focused on her own survival. The human had, in a move even she found fast, drawn his left sidearm and aimed at her. The flash and SWOOSH of the caseless accelerating projectile was all that saved her life, because it provided just enough warning for her fast reaction to move her head out its path. She heard the high-pitched soft whine as it passed her left ear. It might had struck her left eye had she not instantly ducked right, to get behind the shuttle.
Rudbit had released the arms of the human he was holding to draw both his weapons, and as the human’s first shot passed near Toltak’s ear, Rudbit fired his left pistol (from his fastest hand), and didn’t make a useful second shot from his right hand weapon, since that slug went into the tarmac. That error was understandable, given the splatter of red and grey matter exploding out of the rear of his skull.
Rudbit’s first aimed shot was on the mark, as was generally the case for a Krall, particularly when simply standing still as he had been. That bullet plowed deep into the left side of the chest, and buried itself in the heart. Stilkap’s left side heart.
It originally had been on track to strike the human between the eyes. Except Carson had estimated the future aiming point by looking along the rising pistol barrel, and he shifted the “shield” he was carrying slightly to his left as he himself moved to the right, just before the gun flash.
Carson’s own head shot, made after the Krall released Cahill, but before she hit the ground, was already on the way. He had fired quickly after the missed shot at the leader. It just couldn’t arrive in time to prevent that return fire, so he employed his thick bodied “bullet catcher.”
Another warrior, Kildar, was stepping around the rear of the shuttle for a clearer shot at the human. He’d have to expose his left or right side from behind that Krall meat shield when he drew closer. The next thing that entered Kildar’s thoughts was a .50 caliber round, which left a much larger gap in his skull than a pistol round. His muzzle flew off and forward, proving the shot came from behind. Ethan had arrived, firing the heavy weapon at a dead run.
He dropped the big rifle in favor of using both pistols, but quickly found himself twisting aside to avoid a shot from the Krall leader. She was responding to that heavy gunshot sound, and narrowly missed her agile target. He had twisted in midair, and the slug passed inches from him. He fired back, hitting her once in the lower torso as she too rolled into a tuck to make a smaller target. She continued to roll until she was behind Cahill, but not so far as to be exposed beyond the shuttle nose, a target for the human running towards the shuttle. The dimwitted emissary was numbly sitting next to Rudbit’s corpse, too frightened to move.
In her left peripheral vision Toltak caught a glimpse of teal, which flashed in view briefly towards the aft end of the shuttle, but her attention was on the human that had just gone to ground after giving her a minor abdominal wound, and presumably having killed Kildar. That warrior had not fired back since the booming rifle blast, which was a powerful indication he wasn’t able to do so.
She used the flabby human as a shield, as she sought out her target in the high grass. He had appeared to scurry quickly through the high grass after landing. She was on the verge of basting away with explosive rounds in his vicinity, when a chilling huge roar sounded from her own right, in grass closer to the shuttle’s nose. There was no mistaking the sound of a ripper this close.
Pindor had an ankle wound, but was firing towards the human around the rounded shuttle nose. He had left that foot exposed below the bow and the human took the only shot he had. He must still be using Stilkap as a shield out there on the ramp, because bullets striking the edge of the shuttle nose and on the tarmac behind Pindor proved the human was still shooting back. Now a ripper was joining the attack. The cowardly emissary had not lied about that either.
There were two mysteriously effective human fighters closing with them, and a ripper nearby. Her team had suffered three warrior casualties, therefore, it was time to get into the shuttle and use its mobility and lasers from the air. She called behind her to Pindar, telling him to follow her, as she picked up the human sack of flabby white flesh, to block the shots she assumed would be coming from the human in the grass.
Pindor took several more shots at the prone corpse of Stilkap, using explosive rounds that made small geysers of blood and guts spout from his disgraced former clan mate. The human was so small he was invisible behind the thick bulk of the now dead warrior. Except when he raised a hand in a brief flash from some random spot behind the frayed body, firing extremely accurate shots in return. That was how Pendor’s ankle had been shattered.
Unlike a Krall, humans did not charge into a battle, recklessly accepting wounds. They were too fragile, and because of that, they clung to life tightly. As tightly as this human appeared to be clinging to safety, and staying under cover. His caution would cost all the humans their lives. This cowardly bad tactic allowed Pindor to fire two shots, quickly disengage and fall in behind Toltak and her human meat shield. He limped badly, but was blocking out the pain. They would enter the shuttle and close the hatch, then rise to let Gapod burn them. The ripper that had roared earlier now streaked out of the tall grass towards the edge of the tarmac, bounding left, right, and twisting as it was fired at, and missed repeatedly. A shot from the grass struck Pindor in the arm but he considered it a flesh wound because it did not break a bone. He lifted his bad ankle through the hatch, just as the other human leaned around the craft’s nose around shot him in his other knee, causing him to go down. He shot back instantly, but too late to score a hit.
Toltak callously stepped on his back and placed her other foot in the shuttle, as she fired off a series of rounds towards the bow and emptied her second clip. She counted on the hostage to guard her
front from the human that was too stupid to shoot through her to kill an enemy.
She triumphantly slapped the overhead panel to close the hatch, unnecessarily leaving Pindor to his fate. As the hatch lowered past halfway, she holstered her empty weapon, pulled a short knife from her chest belt and, with a fast downward and powerful slash, eviscerated the hostage and shoved her body onto Pindor, as she screamed and clutched at her intestines, spilling from the long gaping wound.
She shouted to Gapod. “Lift the shuttle and come around before these two humans can run far enough to find shelter. They move fast, but I want to see if they can outrun a laser.” The last of the outside light at the bottom of the hatch, as it swung closed, showed Pindor looking up at her with hatred. She could have waited for him to use his arms to pull himself in, or hauled him in herself, but chose leave him to the mercies of the ripper. She heard a shot through the closed hatch, but didn’t know who had pulled the trigger.
She shook her left shoulder dismissively at her clan mate’s hatred. If he were lucky, a shuttle thruster jet would cut him in half, before the ripper tore him limb from limb. With that thought in mind, she didn’t hear the low whine of the thrusters increasing, as they built power to get airborne.
“Gapod get us airborne, now! Before we have to hunt for those two humans.”
He didn’t answer, the ship didn’t lift, and there was no thruster noise. The cockpit door was open, as it often remained, but her pilot didn’t look around the edge to acknowledge his leader’s order. She saw something on the darkened floor in the windowless cabin area, darker than the shadows cast by the doorframe that was backlit from the Koban sun. Her nose, previously filled with the scent of her own, Pindor’s, and the human’s blood, scented other things. A fresh, strong blood smell was from a stain on the floor, seeping out of the cockpit, from beneath the pilot’s seat, but it wasn’t the source of another strong and unfamiliar smell.
Part of the shadows on the floor moved, accompanied by a deep-throated low growl that produced an unusual and very unpleasant sensation in both of Toltak’s double stomachs. A large feline head swung around the edge of the doorframe and looked into her eyes, reflected sunlight turned its eyes into green glows inside the darkened cabin. Its massive jaws and huge canines were wet with Gapod’s blood, which was what was flowing along the floor, and explained why bleeding had not automatically sealed itself. She recalled the flash of teal color in her peripheral vision when outside, as the humans shot at them.
This was why they had pushed for that “honor” challenge. To keep the shuttle grounded, its hatch opened, and her team distracted by the unprecedented spectacle of a human beating a Krall. She could have ordered her team safely into the shuttle at any time, but facing only ordinary humans, why would she? They had manipulated her and her team to create a distraction, to keep the shuttle grounded and its hatch open.
Toltak remembered she had fired off the last rounds in her two clips before closing the hatch, and had betrayed the first rule of battle, instant reloading. She had ignored that rule because she knew she had reached safety, and would defeat her foes.
She had never seen a ripper, only recordings, and heard stories of them. This one filled the doorframe, and outweighed her considerably. She performed a mental inventory. She had her talons, teeth, the short bloody knife she had just used to kill the human, two empty pistols, and multiple full clips. What she wanted was armor and a charged plasma rifle, if even that would be enough at this close proximity.
Toltak moved her left hand slowly towards a spare clip, figuring a dumb animal would not understand the risk if it allowed her that freedom. It appeared to grimace as her hand reached the clip closest to her left pistol. The curving lips remarkably resembled a human’s facial gesture, when they saw something amusing. She would have to be faster on this reload than she had ever been in any combat situation. She prepared herself, and made her move.
Outside, as the hatch closed, Carson, Kobalt, and Ethan, running at maximum, all reached the shuttle nearly together. Ethan had shot and destroyed a gun that Pindor had turned in Kobalt’s direction, and Carson arrived in time to kick the other pistol out of his hand when he drew that one.
Kobalt stood, jaws agape, ready to decapitate the warrior if he moved to harm his “humans.” Ethan had said he could kill, but also that his father and the pride leaders wanted at least one red one taken alive. Kit had entered the not-life flyer to kill its pilot. Her smaller size and superior stalking skill over Kobalt’s ambush style, using his size and strength, had made her the best choice for this mission.
He knew this tube was really a machine that flew, but image sharing with wild prides encouraged him to use their “language” and concepts. His sensitive ears had heard no sounds from inside, particularly the absence of gunfire. He was concerned for his sister, but knew she was aware the survival of all of the human prides required that this flyer stay on the ground. She would die before letting a red one regain control.
The boys talked as Carson touched the flush mounted keypad by the hatch, pressing various keys, starting with the standard press, but it wouldn’t open. He felt rather than heard the entire craft suddenly rock and vibrate, and the roar from inside was easily heard, probably all the way over to the dome. Kobalt snarled, and looked at the Krall on the ground looking back at him nervously, fatalistic about his survival beyond the next minute.
Ethan felt another vibration at his hip. It was his Dad, sending him a text. He switched it to voice, and answered what the message must have been asking of them, located as they were out of sight behind the shuttle. “Kit got inside, we are certain she killed the pilot, because Carson could see that from where he was concealed behind that big ass warrior he carried with him.”
“Are they all dead?”
“The leader made it inside well after Kit killed the pilot, and it closed the hatch after killing Cahill. We heard no gunfire inside, and I just heard a hunting roar, so I hope she’s OK. We have a live one wounded and captured outside the hatch. Dad, we can’t get inside to see if Kit is OK, and she can’t get out.” The last was an anguished cry for help.
“Ethan, this is Uncle Tet.” The unnecessary introduction made the nervous boy utter an involuntary spasm of laughter. He’d known Mirikami’s voice his entire life. “I heard you say you have a captive warrior. Lift him up and use his hand, or hold him near the keypad and you press either the top two left keys or the top two right side keys. One of those should open the hatch.”
“I already tried the normal open codes, Uncle Tet.” He sounded a lot younger now than he did when he went to war a short time ago. His cherished cat “sister” was inside, possibly hurt.
“Just follow the instruction I suggested. I’m on my way from the Clanship. I can open their doors and operate their equipment, and I think your dad can too. If it doesn’t open, I’ll be there soon.”
Carson bodily lifted the Krall by his belt, who could stand only on one leg because of the shattered kneecap. It made a swipe at him with the hand talons of the unwounded arm. The boy was expecting and prepared for such an act by the Krall. As the arm came up and the talons lengthened, Carson grabbed the arm, lifting it until horizontal, twisted it so the palm was up, arm fully extended, whirled to face away and savagely pulled the hand down, swiftly snapping the Krall’s arm at the elbow on top of Carson’s shoulder. It had taken less than a half a second. Carson spun back before the warrior had time to react to more than the sudden pain of the break.
Turning the Krall to face the hatch, he reached under the warrior’s higher armpit and pressed the keys Mirikami had suggested. The sound of the hatch motors and the door unsealing caused him to back away and hold the Krall up as a shield, his feet off the ground. “Get behind us Ethan, let this turd catch any bullets.”
Both boys drew their guns. Carson his left pistol and Ethan drew both, aiming around each side of the Krall’s body, dangling from Carson’s upraised right hand. However, they both forgot to coordinate this with K
obalt via a quick frill, and he surged under the hatch even before it was open enough to pass his body. He forced it higher with his shoulders and entered with a roar that went silent quickly.
That sudden cut-off of an attack roar left Ethan with a chill. He dropped down to see under the hatch, which to his heightened nervous system, appeared to rise at a glacial rate. He could see the haunches of Kobalt, who was in the aisle between posts, which Krall held onto when flying. It wasn’t until he shoved his own head through the partly raised opening that his hearing picked up two ripper’s deep purr equivalents.
Kobalt was touching neck frills with his sister, who was standing astraddle a Krall, with only scraps of its shredded blue uniform evident. The extensive deep scratches all over the warriors body was testament to its rough undressing. As Ethan leaped inside, the improving light revealed a few scrapes and cuts on Kit, but he saw nothing like a serious injury. He made his way around Kobalt, through the forest of support post for warriors, to touch Kit’s frill.
Ethan discovered she was sharing mind images with her jealous brother, passing him what they both clearly considered some of the finest “tasting” terror and fear sensations either of them had ever experienced. The largest number came from this Krall in particular, but Kit had already shared some from the pilot she had killed. Frill exchanges moved thoughts and images at lightning speed via the superconducting nerves. Ethan caught up in seconds as Kit repeated them for him, and Kobalt looked at him resentfully. Kit had a kill, and Kobalt only had second hand thrills. He was pissed off he hadn’t been allowed to kill the red one outside.
Carson joined in, and they all went through them one more time in a few seconds, Kobalt looking at the warrior his “brother” still held gripped by a weapons belt. When Carson realized Kit was OK, he’d let Ethan spend some time with her alone.
Koban: The Mark of Koban Page 56