Koban: The Mark of Koban (67 page)

“If she steps outside and alerts the Krall, I will shoot her.
Understood?” He spoke as if to the man, but continued to look directly at
Cahill. She shook off the restraining hands as she turned to walk back into the
dome.

Mirikami stared for a moment, on the verge of ordering the
mayor to lock her up, but didn’t want to overstep his authority in Hub City.
He’d been careful not to pressure these people to follow Prime City’s lead, believing,
correctly thus far, that survival instincts and common sense would prompt them
to do what Koban itself required to stay alive here. He could be wrong in this case.

He returned to the truck, where Thad and Dillon waited.

“I’m going inside the ship and hope I can get to the Jump
Drives to do some damage. Let me have two of those grenades.” He attached them
securely to his pistol belt.

Thad had a question. “Tet, do you even know the layout of a
Clanship? The Drive Room obviously isn’t near the base, as on our commercial ships,
not with those sally ports for warriors placed around the bottom. The images I
saw from Jake’s old recordings of Clanships that landed here showed the central
shaft of the single thruster main engine, surrounded by the four hatches and
decking. The Jump Drive and control room could be placed anywhere, possibly
near the top.”

“Thad, our own warships put Jump Drives and fusion bottles near
the center, for maximum protection in battle. However, I may just focus on killing
the thruster engine, which has to be at the top of that center shaft. If they
can’t get off planet they can’t make a Jump Hole.” He paused in reflection,
reconsidering.

“That isn’t exactly correct.” He tugged at his lower lip as
he thought.

“They can’t make a
successful
Jump Hole, but they could
try to make one anyway, and destroy a few thousand square miles of the planet,
taking us with them. I don’t think they’d
want
to inflict that much damage
to their intended home world, but I’m damned confident they won’t want to leave
it in our hands when they know we survived here. OK, the Jump Drive is the most
important, I’ll go for that.”

Making sure that Dillon and Thad were in the Link with Jake,
prepared to follow through on his order to destroy the Clanship at any cost, he
ran across the ramp to the dangling rope, Alyson still holding the tension
steady against a mild breeze.

“Sir, do you want me to go up and pull you into the hatch?”
She seemed entirely too cheerful for the gravity of their predicament.

“Alyson, I don’t have your TG muscles, but I do have the
clone mods. I will climb this, thank you.”

The truth was, Mirikami was in good condition for running, rock
climbing, weight lifting, and hand-to-hand combat practice with Thad and
Dillon, but he’d not tried a rope climb since scaling a cliff, with Dillon
helping pull him up on his one and only combat Test Day. There was a technique
to this sort of climb, he knew that, but didn’t know what it was and he knew he
was about to look clumsy.

Unfortunately, the minor rope climb problem suddenly found
itself replaced by a major problem. Jake’s voice in his embedded transducer.
“Sir, the Krall shuttle has turned back, and is moving faster than when it
departed.”

By his deliberate head tilt, Alyson knew the AI was speaking
to him, so she waited. His reversal came quickly.

“Alyson, get up there as fast as you can and pull me up. The
shuttle is on its way back.”

The girl startled him by a sudden crouch and a vertical leap
of nearly twenty feet, and then pulled herself up in several long easy overhand
pulls, flipping over the edge, never using her legs after the jump.

Mirikami glanced at those waiting under the overhang,
knowing Thad and Dillon had also heard Jake, and they were passing the word. He
wrapped the rope around his right arm, passing a loop around his waist and held
with his left hand. He looked up and nodded at a waiting Alyson.

She nearly yanked him off the ground in a flurry of rapid
pulls that strained his arm, and in mere seconds, he passed over the hatch
edge, swung as if from a feminine gantry on her upraised right arm.

He glanced at her confident smile and deep blue eyes, as she
sat him lightly down on the hanger deck.
Pretty, lithe, strong as a draft
horse, and faster than a thoroughbred,
he thought. A simple but potent
demonstration of what these youngsters were capable of doing. Alyson was only
eighteen, and a mere month out of her final phase of Koban adaptations. She’d
only get stronger and faster, as the kids a year ahead of her had done. Like
Carson and Ethan. If they survived the next few hours, it would be mainly be by
the abilities of these three kids.

“Gather the rope and grapple, no time for you to go back. I
have to get into the ship, or hide us in one of these storage lockers in the
back. If they dock we have to be out of here or hidden.”

Mirikami saw there were two hatches into the ship, one
midway down each side of the fifty-foot deep bay. He was closer to the one on
the right so he ran towards that one. Alyson beat him there, in several bounds,
having coiled the rope as she went. There was a small key panel there, similar
to the ones used on doors in the Krall domes. Mirikami pressed the standard
default two-key press that worked in the domes for non-secure door codes.
Nothing happened.

As Mirikami looked towards the other hatch, Alyson crossed the
thirty feet to that one in nearly a single leap, pressing the same default keys.
It didn’t open. The sound of thrusters approaching prompted Mirikami to open
several of the storage lockers on his side, but there was no room for a person
to get inside one.

As he ran over to the other side, Alyson was opening lockers
there, most were partly full, but none with enough room to hide them both.
“Alyson, move gear from half empty lockers to fill the others, we might make
room.”

Obviously, tossing gear on the floor would be a giveaway, so
they were moving as fast as they could, making room by stowing what they
removed inside other lockers. Alyson finished first. “Sir, get in here, I’ll move
to the end and duck behind the bags of equipment hanging there. If I’m spotted,
I have a faster draw than you, and you can still shoot them in the back when
they come my way.”

That hardly seemed gallant, but Mirikami also knew it was
the most survivable plan. He was about to climb in when he realized the shuttle
thrusters were easing in pitch. Krall thrusters generated lower frequencies
than on human shuttles, by design. The Krall, with ultrasonic range hearing,
didn’t like the interfering high pitch of human shuttlecraft. The sound was
definitely easing, as if throttling back and settling to the tarmac.

“I think they are landing outside.”

Alyson nodded her agreement, “I see the nose of the shuttle
reflected on a window of the dome.”

 Before he could tell her not to do so, she rushed forward
towards the open hatch, and light as a feather in 1.52 g’s, stretched out prone
as she neared the lip of the deck. She had tied her hair back in the last few
seconds, because it had been loose around her shoulders when she offered him
the empty locker a moment ago. Now her hair was in a ponytail, and she had done
it on the move to the opening, to keep it out of the way. These TGs thought and
acted fast, for even small decision.

Trusting that she would tell him what they were doing,
Mirikami decided to see if he could get the left side hatch to open for him by
trying other simple codes. He reasoned that the Krall wouldn’t expect an enemy
to survive to infiltrate their ship, so might not have a complex code.

He tried several simple different combinations that all
failed. In frustration he mashed the two top left keys as he turned away,
intending to join Alyson. That was the standard “open/close” key combination
that he’d seen Alyson press seconds ago. This time a hiss of air marked the
opening of the hatch, as it slid sideways to open a way into the ship.

Alyson also heard, and she pulled back and came over to him,
speaking softly. “You found the combination. What was it?”

“It opened when I hit the standard two keys.” He sounded
puzzled.

“I tried that first.” She told him.

“I saw you. I tried it on the right side as well. But forget
that, what’s happening outside?”

“The shuttle landed out on the tarmac, with the Clanship
between them and the dome entrance. I can only see the shuttle by reflection
from dome windows, and it landed aligned parallel to the dome wall. The hatch
on the far side hatch opened, but not the one on the side towards the Clanship.
That shuttle and the Clanship landing jacks give them cover, and some of them
could be outside already. They are clearly suspicious of something, Sir.”

“OK. You keep watch at the bay doorway. I need to go inside
and find the Jump Drive. Watch your back. We don’t know how many came on this
tub.”

“Shouldn’t I go with you, to watch your back instead of mine?”

“Possibly, but the Krall won’t expect you to be up here, so
you may be able to help out if more of them come out of the sally ports at the base
of the ship. They might rush the dome entrance. You have a great sniper
position. I wish you had a rifle instead of two pistols.”

“Sir, at this range I’d have to be half blind and upside-down
to miss a head shot with either hand.”

He grinned. “I forgot who I was talking to. Carry on TG
Alyson.” He gave her a casual salute, and ducked through the open inner hatch.

****

Heading for the anticipated hunt, Toltak watched the once familiar
teal colored terrain pass below the shuttle. She pointed Gapod in the direction
the sensors indicated was the nearest rhinolo herd. As they passed over the
compound’s outer wall, she noted with satisfaction that the electrical fence
was still in place after all this time.  It would be unpowered of course, but
the last repair job had held up well.

As a no-rank raw novice here, before she gained a few status
kills in a hunt at the former human compound, she had made routine circuits
around this compound. Looking for damaged fencing, corrosion, cracks in the
wall, or places where some animal had tried to dig under. A rhinolo could tear
through an electrified gate before falling dead. It happened sometimes, if a
belligerent bull saw movement inside. The carcass might ground or short-circuit
the power to the gate or fence.

Rippers and desert panthers could scale the walls and enter,
if not for the electrified fence on the top, and they seemed adept at figuring
out if the power was off. She didn’t know how they knew, but at times small
dead animals with claw or teeth marks were found that seemed to have been
thrown against the fence and fried, to test if it was live or not. A ripper
inside the walls was a real concern. They had no fear of armed warriors, and
would stalk and kill several hands worth each year at this compound. She had
heard that some broken down gates were from rhinolo chased by rippers. The big
animals were normally smart enough to stay clear of the deadly gates, so it
might be plausible they were trying to escape a pride attack. The evidence was
ripper scent, and multiple paw prints outside, and sometimes inside a broken
gate entrance.

It was odd that the unpowered gates were not yet breached. That
had happened several times in a Koban year to energized gates when she was here.
The uncropped grass inside was proof they had not been. This close to the sea,
the salt laden breeze deposited its corroding influence on the wires,
insulators, and support posts. Without electrical power, the animals soon
learned they could push against the gates and break them down, or scale the
walls.

The tall grass and shrubs visible inside the walls should be
a constant temptation for some grazing animal or other. Removing a dead animal
from the wires was a frequent task for a new novice here, until the duty
rotated to an even newer and lower status arrival.

A herd of several thousand rhinolo was within a short
distance of the compound wall, so she ordered Gapod to circle the area well
above them, to avoid spooking them. She was seeking IR sensor signs of rippers.
The various smaller predators were also fast and dangerous, but they didn’t
work together in a pack to hunt like rippers, and were less intelligent. A
ripper pride appeared to cooperate far more than mere animals should be able to
do, and certainly targeted Krall hunting parties.

To insure an uninterrupted hunt for the short time they had
to spend here, Toltak wanted the terrain well scouted for a pride. They could
go to the next herd if one was in this area. As their path took them back close
to the wall, she snorted when she saw a large winged, blue and yellow bird that
had died on the electrical fence along the top. It had touched two wire strands
at the same time, rather than safely touching only the top wire. It was well
decayed, and the first good wind would blow it clear. Her initial thought,
provoking the snort of amusement, was at least she didn’t have to power down
the fence and climb up to pull it down this time.

“What is it you saw that is amusing?” Gapod was sometimes
suspicious of his sub-leader’s confidence in his piloting skills.

She explained about the dead bird, and how as a novice
serving here, she had to cut the power, remove the dead animals, and then rearm
and test the fence’s power.

Gapod was a decent pilot, and as a K’Tal had some expertise
with repairs, equipment, and electrical systems, but normally showed no
interest in anyone else’s duties if it didn’t affect him personally. This time,
his dull questions provoked a response he hadn’t expected.

“What killed that bird anyway?”

“It’s an electrical fence,” Toltak answered, as if to an
idiot, suppressing a snort that could spoil the pleasure of the hunting yet to
come, if Gapod took offense.