Koban: The Mark of Koban (71 page)

Stay hidden. Go!

In a flash, they separated and
vanished silently into the teal colored grass that matched their skin and short
fur so well.

Mirikami rejoined and passed the
prisoners still descending the stairs, some, despite youth, were running low on
energy, and displayed the tremble of legs and arms that were fighting to ease
them down the steps. Reynolds was using the wall to steady himself, and he seemed
physically fit, aside from the missing arm. More so than the younger civilian
men and women, but he had obviously not had an easy time as a prisoner.

“People, we have only four more
decks to go, and on the next deck down I’ll make a brief detour to bring in a
young lady that helped me get inside the ship. She will add two more guns to my
two, and believe me when I say she is vastly more proficient with them than
anyone you have ever met. We will both help you down to the next to last level,
and figure out what our next move will be.”

Mirikami dashed ahead, leaving
Reynolds leaning on the wall, looking at the obviously older and smaller man in
wonder, shaking his head.

Pressing the inner airlock door’s
buttons, it whooshed open. He had closed the inner door for Alyson to step into
the outer door faster if needed, but the last he heard she was still in the
small hanger watching from the open hatch. He activated the outer door, which
automatically closed the inner door behind him. As he stepped into the hanger,
he found he was looking down a pistol barrel.

Of course he was. She hadn’t known
who was coming through that door. With her enhanced reaction speed, he barely
had time to register the gun pointing at him before it was in her holster
again. “Any luck Sir? I didn’t hear any bangs.” She had glanced at his belt to
note the missing grenades. Her half smile was proof she wasn’t particularly
concerned, trapped on an enemy ship notwithstanding.

“I placed the grenades to try to
knock out the thruster engine if they try to leave. I never got high enough to
find the Jump Drives. Instead, I found us some new friends from Human Space.
There are seventeen prisoners working their way down to the bottom of the ship.
They are nearly out of strength in this gravity, and I don’t know how we will
get them from here to the dome alive.”

“Wow. New faces! Come on, I want to
meet them.” She jumped to the door and pressed the open buttons. The same
nothing happened as before. Mirikami pressed, and it whisked right open. They
looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Alyson saw the other door and keypad,
walked over and encountered another failure to communicate with this darned
Krall ship.

Mirikami again opened the door.
“The prisoners are unable to open or close doors here either. I let them out
but they had a keypad right by the door that had them locked in a large compartment.
The standard press worked for me but not for them. Let me put my hand on yours,
but you press the keys.” The door whipped back open. Mirikami pulled his hand
away, and Alyson couldn’t close it again.

“Kiddo, none of you had better
stray too far from me, or at least my hand, else you can’t get off this boat. I’m
not positive why as of yet, but I think I have the magic touch.”

He led her over to the stairs, where
the end of the line of former prisoners was partway down to the next deck.

Reynolds had stayed behind to see whom
Mirikami was bringing back with him. She was young, pretty, taller than
average, medium length blond hair in a short pony tail, and moved in a way that
seemed nearly a glide, smoother and more graceful than he’d ever seen anyone
move, in any gravity. She looked very fit, without looking “muscled,” and
carried two Krall designed pistols in low-slung tied off holsters. The clips on
both hers and Mirikami’s guns were longer than any he’d seen before for Krall
pistols. The fanny pouches they had with them were just the right width to hold
up to six similar sized clips.

Mirikami made a brief introduction
to the group, and since he didn’t know the other prisoner’s names yet, didn’t
ask them now to save time. He indirectly made Alyson aware of the one prisoner
he expected to be of some help if they got into the fight he believed was
inevitable. “Sergeant Reynolds, if you can slide this into your waistband
please accept one of my pistols.”

He handed the weapon over butt
first, safety on. He was pleased to note Reynolds verified the safety setting
as he accepted the gun, and placed it under his left armpit and, somewhat
clumsy using one hand, ejected the clip, looked at the armor piercing rounds,
and reloaded the clip. As he slid the gun under his overly snug waistband,
Mirikami told him more about the weapon.

“It has a full thirty-two round
clip, and I have it set for semiautomatic. The knob on the back end is a
selector for full automatic, but that empties your clip fast, and I didn’t bring
enough ammo for two shooters. Here’s an extra clip, if you have a pocket.”

“I have a snug shallow pocket, but
these were pants the Krall found to replace my bloody ragged and dirty uniform.
I mean to speak harshly to their tailor.” Mirikami laughed again at his
irreverent good humor in a bad situation.

“Thanks, this is the first time in
weeks I haven’t felt gun naked with Krall around. Not that I can outshoot them,
but it makes me feel better anyway. I feel bad leaving you with one less gun,
but I actually am a decent shot, if not in the same speed class as a Krall. But
then nobody is.” He laughed wryly.

“Trust me Sergeant. We have some
youngsters here that are faster. Alyson is one of them. When the shooting
starts, she will be who I’m counting on to provide cover fire if we need to
run.”

Reynolds looked at the slender girl
with a clearly skeptical expression. He didn’t say anything, but Mirikami and
Alyson both smiled and glanced at each other.

“You look winded sergeant. Perhaps
Alyson can assist you in getting down.” Mirikami winked at her.

Reynolds was about to make some
polite refusal. However, Alyson stepped swiftly under his right arm, placing
her left shoulder in his armpit, wrapped her left arm around his waist and
lifted him easily. In a flash, she lightly skipped down the stairs to the next
level, dancing lightly around the four people already on the steps, using the
last inch of outside edge of each step, with Reynolds hanging over the
dangerous drop in one arm of a mere girl.

The “Whoa, whoa, whoa, look out!”
ended with him being deposited lightly on his feet at the bottom, and Alyson
promptly leaped over ten feet back up the steps to bring down another tiring
former prisoner. She repeated this for the last three in the line, depositing
them on the final deck above the sally ports on the lowest level.

Jaw hanging open Reynolds blurted,
“Son of a bitch, she’s strong as a man in armor.”  Then realizing he had said
that in front of a very young Lady, he apologized.

“I’m sorry Alyson. You just surprised
the hel…, I mean the dickens out of me…, of us all.” The other younger people were
also staring at her as if they didn’t believe what she had just done in this
gravity.  The sergeant had already calculated that his two hundred thirty
pounds (minus one arm) was equivalent to nearly three hundred fifty pounds
here.

“I knew Captain Mirikami was
extremely strong when he tossed my big butt over his head when I tried to take
his gun way. For a small man he’s a real bull. But I do believe you could take
him with one hand behind your back.”

  Mirikami nodded, smiling as he
walked down the stairway to join them. “With
both
hands behind her back
and probably on one leg, and blindfolded. I’d prefer it if you called me Tet. I
haven’t really been Captain of a ship since the Krall gutted her to keep her grounded
on Koban. Which, by the way, is the name of planet where you have landed.”

“I go by Gar, since Garland sounds
like a pretty decoration. I thought I’d recognize all the habitable planet’s
names in Human Space if I heard them. But not one called Koban.”

“Well, Gar, if we get out of this
predicament alive today, there are a million questions me and the people
stranded here will be asking you and answering. We’re twenty years out of date
with news from Human Space, because we are far outside of even the Rim worlds.
How goes the war over all?”

“You won’t like it. The Krall
started the war just about as long as you say you’ve been gone, so you don’t
know how bad it’s looking for us. We’ve lost six worlds, several with most of
their populations, and Poldark is slowly going down. They could take us in a
month or two if they really wanted, but they actually want it to last. They…”

Mirikami interrupted him as he made
the last step down, and held up a hand. “That part of their long term plan we
know, but we can spend days talking after we kill or capture the six Krall wanting
to get back inside this ship.”

“I heard your side of the
conversation earlier. You have a transducer, probably an older version of the
one I have. You seem to have them stalemated because they appear to think they
are up against another group of Krall, from a different clan.”

Mirikami nodded. “This word was
placed off limits to all Krall by the joint clan’s leadership. These six have
violated that restriction. We think they want to make a deal with a clan they
think is already here, also in violation. We have to either kill or capture
them, or destroy this ship. If we do the latter, I’d like it a lot if we were
not still aboard.”

Reynolds looked surprised. “These
are hard to knock out. If you have that kind of firepower, why don’t you just take
out the six Krall I heard you say are waiting by their parked shuttle?”

“Because our big firepower is only
two shuttles of our own that we can ram this ship with. The Clanship can’t doge
or shoot back at us, sitting here without a crew. If we go after their shuttle
their pilot is inside, he could probably get airborne first, and our craft are
not armed.  The five other Krall would run back in here. I don’t think we can
keep them out. The best option is to ram this ship before we let them regain control,
and the nineteen of us needs to cross a gap of a hundred feet of flat open pavement
to reach cover. Between a rock and a hard place, as a pithy Lady friend of mine
might say.”

“Can you lock the big doors down
below?”

“I doubt it. I just figured out
today how to open and close doors on this ship using the default codes, and
discovered that I’m the only one of us aboard that can do even that. You
already told me our spooks, spies, and intelligence people can’t do it. Let’s
go down anyway, and look at ways we can possibly block the doors from opening.”

He, Alyson, and Reynolds made the
descent to the lowest level alone, because they had the only weapons if the
doors should suddenly open. There they saw the four large heavily armored hatch
portals, designed to draw swiftly up into hull pockets above them, permitting
warriors waiting behind them to leap nearly fifteen feet to the ground and
swarm to the attack.

Reynolds described recordings of
Clanship raids he’d watched many times, and told Mirikami that warriors poured
out of those hatches in a steady stream, leaping to the ground and racing away
as the next warrior dropped behind them. However, under the wide decking beneath
their feet, he said there were recessed ramps that could slide out and drop to
the ground for loading or unloading heavy equipment, supplies, and mini-tanks
he called Dragons, and trucks or other ground transports.

Mirikami checked the double key pads,
placed on both sides of the portals with thirty or so feet of heavy hull
plating in between each portal. It appeared you could operate ramps and hatches
from either side of the doors, and the armored hull plating and doorframe lips would
give the door operator cover from external fire. The double key pads were
identical to those he’d seen earlier, and one must control the hatch, and one
the extendable ramp, although Reynolds didn’t know which key pad was which.

They would need a ramp extended to
get the new prisoners down. In this gravity, Mirikami could tolerate, with
care, a fifteen to twenty foot jump if he rolled on landing. Alyson, and any TG,
could go off the fifteen-foot drop in a dead run and with just a bit of knee
flex keep right on running when they hit the ground. The newcomers could break
bones or suffer severe sprains if they tried to jump down, as if they had fallen
from twenty-three feet.

Alyson, despite her inexperience,
had been thinking of all she was seeing here, at ten times Mirikami and
Reynolds thoughts. “Sir, if we destroy the key pads, will that keep the doors
shut? Then the only way in is by the open shuttle hatch, which poses a bottle
neck for them, and is also covered from the dome entrance.”

Mirikami shook his head. “Alyson,
they can open these remotely, I’ve seen that done from the ramp at Prime City.
I doubt destroying the key pads would disable the doors. The motors that move
them are inside armored hull plating for the hatches, and even if there are
maintenance hatches here, we don’t have time to find the tools and disable all
four doors.”

Reynolds added his dismal
observation. “The hatches are smooth surfaced and I don’t see a way we can
insert anything, even if we found it, to hold the doors jammed and closed. If
they want in, we can’t stop them, and they have eight stairways to go up from
here. Even sharing a gun with Karl, a young man up there with some militia
training, we can’t keep them all trapped down here. You need an external distraction;
one that they don’t think requires them to run back here.”

Their subsequent search of lockers
around the central thruster shaft, and others against the bulkheads between the
portals revealed what at first appeared to be treasure. They found sixteen
Krall plasma rifles, which Reynolds casually identified for Mirikami,
apparently disinterested.