Koban: The Mark of Koban (2 page)

 Telour, the Graka clan sub leader awarded the honor of
commanding this first small strike was pleased with the disposition of his hand
of a hand of Clanships. The four groups of four Clanships, or sixteen ships
total in the first strike by Graka clan had arrived at the orbital points where
he had ordered the Clanship hand leaders to White Out. The Clanships did not
all emerge simultaneously, as he’d have desired, but were well grouped after
Jumping together from this star’s Oort cloud.

The remainder of the two thousand forty eight ships of the
Graka clan’s fleet, holding over a million warriors, waited in the inner Oort
cloud of this system. At roughly two thousand AU’s from the star, the gamma ray
bursts of the full fleet’s arrival there were still days away from reaching the
planet below. The main fleet would not participate in this demonstration
attack. Simply showing the enemy so many gamma ray bursts would prove what a threat
the fleet represented.

Telour was keenly aware that generations would remember this
moment in the Krall’s long history. He wanted his first, preferably not
only
appearance in that history to be flawless.

His Clanship had reserved the honor of making the first
kills. This was something he had severely warned the other fifteen ship
commanders about on this raid. Three human craft in orbit as they arrived were
perfect targets of opportunity, and Telour had immediately ordered them
destroyed. The first kills were thus his, as he had wanted. However small they were.
He would expand the ship sizes and number of enemy crew in the retelling.

Now, as planned, each ship commander descended on their own to
land where there were clusters of humans. Telour had reserved the largest compound,
where the main spaceport was located, for his own Clanship. He recalled that the
human captives on Koban described a compound like this as a city, and smaller
clusters were towns. The designations and names seemed pointless and arbitrary,
but then animals seldom made sense.

The Clanships each held five hundred twelve warriors for this
deployment, far less than full capacity, plus weapons and limited supplies.
However, any warrior could exploit local resources for food if they chose to
range and kill farther from the parent Clanship for the two-day operation.

Telour snorted in amusement. Living off the land would pose
its challenges for even a Krall’s insensitive palate.

At best, these animals tasted disgustingly sweet, with pale
yellow fat that ran counter to Krall preferences. The flesh was nearly
repulsive tasting, compared to the Krall’s favorite food, dark red, tangy and
lean Raspani meat. They were a race from one of the Krall’s much earlier
conquests, herbivores kept now as food animals. However, humans were
tolerable
field rations if consumed raw when in combat. Cooked, the meat turned an even
more unappealing gray color if it was overdone.

Sixteen Clanships would land near sixteen cities and towns, and
then open their hatches to release Hell on their newest enemy, humanity.

****

“Mam, that ship is larger than the passenger liners we get
here.” Grayson observed, as the vessel settled towards the tarmac, much too
close to the passenger terminal.

He continued, “The AI couldn’t even find that design in our
records. The other fifteen ships appear to be of the same type, based on the
video images from other landings. They all dropped recklessly fast, and are setting
down wherever they want, with no radio contacts.” He didn’t seem to be making
an impression on Lambeau.

He finally came directly to the point. “Lady Lambeau, is it
smart to send out the airport police to meet them, before we know who they are,
how many there are, and what they want?”

“Mr. Grayson,” she responded with irritation. “We have to
show these ruffians we will confront their rudeness with arrest if they persist
in antisocial behavior. We may be living out here on the Rim, but we are
not
typical Rimmers. Except for the miners and laborers, of course.” She added in
afterthought.

She elaborated, “The Galactic Mining staff of Capitol City
is composed of Ladies and Gentle Men from the Hub and Old Colonies. We expect
proper conduct on this world, and the sooner these scoundrels learn that lesson
the easier it will be for them. I’ll wager there are
males
in charge of
these ships.”  

Grayson rolled his eyes at her blatant bias, since he was a
male from a
New Colony
and barely a notch above a Rimmer in her eyes. He
wisely held his tongue. Carl was worried about a friend on duty tonight with
the small Airport Police contingent. No more than three or four officers were
on duty this late in the evening. They would have to wait for the ship’s thrusters
to die and the ground to cool before approaching the ship.

Grayson and Lambeau walked closer to the small tower’s
plazsteel windows, curious to watch the landing. Beldor Grammer, the midnight
watch stander, scheduled to relieve Grayson and Lambeau shortly, used his ID
badge to enter the control center as the big ship settled.

“Who is that?” he asked, looking out the window. The muffled
thunder of thrusters so close to the terminal had brought him in from the break
room ten minutes early.

Lambeau glanced back to see who had spoken, so she missed
the start of the invasion by a few seconds.

Even as the ship settled on its massive looking supports,
the engines cut off and four hatches located low on the ship immediately
snapped up into recesses in the hull, not folding down to form a ramp. Dozens
of men in black and red-gray suits leaped out onto the hot tarmac, and like
maniacs, they started running across the steaming pavement towards the
terminal. It had to be blazing hot out there.

Suddenly Grayson felt coldness settle into his guts. Those
weren’t
men
out there. They were too large, moved too fast, and the
grayish red color on legs and arms was their
skin
, not part of a suit.
Only the body appeared covered by a black uniform, with a few gray garments
scattered among the throng. More and more of them were pouring out of the ship
in a waterfall effect at each hatch.

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.