Koban: The Mark of Koban (90 page)

That didn’t happen. In a surprisingly fast move, the prey
animal unexpectedly stepped towards him and ducked his body under that upward
deflected left arm thrust. The prey executed a crouching spin, and grasped the
left wrist from below in an iron grip. That powerful left hand held him
surprisingly and painfully tight. The human’s right hand rose up in a near blur
that swept past the end of the four thick fingers once, and then back just as
fast. Releasing the Krall’s wrist, he kicked back against the left kneecap hard,
flying away in a tumbling roll, and rose to his feet to face the warrior. This all
happened as Kolak’s right hand completed the wide swooping stroke, intended to disembowel,
slicing only air.

“Four gone.” Rich said.

Kolak saw four pieces of jet-black material on the deck.
They were one-inch curved and sharply pointed objects. He looked at his now
declawed left hand in shocked disbelief. He had seen the blur of motion, but
had felt nothing as the human cut off his talons.

He was furious!
It will take nearly half a year to regrow
those.
He thought. It hadn’t occurred to him to consider how long full
regrowth of those four fingers would take instead.

Rich held up the knife for him to see. “Sharp isn’t it?
Molecular edge, nearly as hard as a diamond. Come on, I have four more nails to
trim, you slow stupid animal.”

The impatient tone was infuriating, but obviously being
taunted into another brute force lunge could have bad consequences. Kolak moved
more slowly, thinking
I have greater strength. I could lift his weight
easily.
He was forgetting that weight and strength was not the same thing,
and he had never needed or learned the use of leverage.

When the Krall didn’t come for him again right away, Rich
moved in, more confident of not only his greater speed, but he had sensed the
Krall’s effort to break his grip on the wrist, and it couldn’t even flex it
when he’d squeezed tight.

The Krall’s bowed legs bent slightly deeper as Rich grew
close. He was prepared for the spring when it came, noting the toe claws
hooking into some of the many recessed cargo tie downs in the deck, seeking a
grip to propel its body forward.

Kolak used his legs to start pushing himself forward,
intending to use his mass to bowl over the smaller lighter weight human. Once
he had him down in his grip, the human was dead. As his momentum built, he saw
the human leaning back, appearing to lose his balance and about to fall
backwards. Triumphantly, he pushed harder and his arms reached forward to grasp
his victory. Except, the human suddenly thrust his knife up into the left wrist,
through the bones, using that to pull Kolak forward, and his right hand went
under the talons and grabbed and simultaneously pulled hard on the right wrist.
As the human’s backside touched the deck, his proportionately longer legs came
up under Kolak’s abdomen, and both his feet kicked up strongly, lifting the huge
warrior in a high arc, completely passing over his presumed victim by using the
warrior’s own momentum.

Said victim tore the knife from the bones in the left wrist,
and he held onto the right wrist tightly as Kolak’s arc continued and he crashed
heavily to the deck on his back. In a flash, Rich swung a leg over to straddle
the right arm even as the Krall thudded down. Two fast slashes of his knife,
and four additional talons graced the deck. Now the human kicked against the top
of the Krall’s head and shoved himself away, just before the grasping clawless
fingers of the left hand could touch him.

However, Rich didn’t roll completely free as he had the
first time. He switched grip on the right wrist with his left hand, and as he
rolled up on to his left knee, he sheathed his knife with his right hand and
pulled the Krall’s right arm over his upraised right knee, resisting the
Krall’s strenuous effort to pull free. He swiftly pulled that right arm farther
across his knee, then with a powerful downward shove on the captive wrist with
his left hand, and a push down on the Krall’s upper arm with his right hand, there
was loud noise as the elbow tried to bend backwards. It snapped like a dry twig,
broken on Rich’s knee.

The howl from Kolak wasn’t only from rage this time. Rich
stood back, ready to break more limbs when the Krall got to his feet.

Alyson walked over, impatient. “Damn it Rich, I wanted him
alive, but I can’t wait all day while you enjoy beating the crap out of him.
She drew her pistol and swiftly shot the Krall in its left elbow and then both
kneecaps. The howl of pain rose in intensity.

“You can finish slowly beating the hell out of him in six
months, after he heals.”

She crouched and grabbed a now limp finger on the right hand
as the Krall continued to snarl and struggle to turn over or to sit. Rich held
the shattered left arm down, as Yil straddled the broad chest to prevent him
from trying to sit up, the crippled legs flailing uselessly. Despite Alyson’s complaint
about waiting all day, Rich’s fight with the surviving Krall had lasted well
under two minutes. The main assault force was only half way there.

Alyson jerked her head back sharply when she initiated the
Mind Tap. “Ouch, that must really hurt. Kolak doesn’t like you very much
either, Rich.”

“Kolak is its name? Why would he be more pissed at me than at
you? You shot the crap out of him.”

“Kolak here hates me too, but you humiliated him without using
a gun, so you are number one on his ‘to kill’ list today. By the way, you also apparently
scare the poop of of him. He’s never been beaten in a hand-to-hand match, not
even by another Krall, and you are only a stupid prey animal.
His
thoughts, not mine. Now let me make him think of what I need to see. He is starting
to suppress the pain and almost able to think clear enough. His knowing
Standard should help.”

The Krall’s rush of red colored pain filled thoughts were
easing. She sent images of the inside of the Clanship, with an implied question
in a final image she knew it could not resist. She supplemented the last image
with words. “How many warriors above will come down here to kill us?”

If it knew that answer, it would be unable to avoid thinking
of the hoped for carnage. However, she learned there was only a single K’Tal
pilot on the command deck. Kolak didn’t even consider her much of a warrior.

“No problem guys. Give me your hands.” They stepped away
from the helpless wriggling Krall. She transferred the information in less than
a second and let go. “Rich pass this info to the rest of the team when they
arrive. Captain Renaldo can start up just as soon as she’s here. Give this one
a sting of the Death Lime to keep him still.” She nudged the head of Kolak with
her foot and he tried to bite her.

“Yilini, let’s get up there now and take the K’Tal out,
alive if we can, but only if we can do it fast and easy.”

She placed the plasma rifle on the deck. “Leave your rifle
too Yil. We’ll go faster and quieter. The pilot only has a pistol.”

They went to opposite side stairwells, and made their leap
to the second deck, making only cursory checks of each deck as they went up,
thanks to the knowledge picked from Kolak’s mind.

****

On their ship, Ethan and Jorl had worked their way three
quarters of the way up without a sign of life. They were one deck below the
common feeding area, where the Krall had stored stacks of dried red Raspani
meat in freezers and coolers on the Mark of Koban.

They had kept each other in sight on decks that were largely
wide open. On others, like the next two decks, they wouldn’t be able to see one
another. Their repetitive training had allowed them to maintain a consistent
pace, using their internal clocks to stay parallel. Ethan sprang up the stairs
and launched himself towards the ceiling, turning in midflight as he did so.

Standing at a Krall style high table were two blue suited
warriors, tearing chunks from slabs of Raspani rib meat, and some gray-blue
looking food was on trays. One, with is back to Ethan, was sucking on a tube of
fluid. The other Krall looked up at the motion as Ethan pushed off the ceiling.

Ethan had one of his pistol’s already out as he climbed and
fired a quick shot, but because of the angle, the Krall with his back to him
blocked his view of the one that saw him.

The spray of brains from the one he killed spattered the
other one, but it ducked below the tabletop as the next slug just missed. The
storage compartment under the table shielded the other warrior and blocked
sight of him. Ethan tried for him anyway, shooting at the tough plastic
substance. The warrior he had killed wore a pistol, so he assumed the other one
was armed as well.

Ethan rolled quickly to his right as he landed softly, to
get closer to another table for cover. A hand came over the tabletop and fired
a pistol blind, hitting exactly where Ethan had landed. He shot back but the
hand had withdrawn as quickly as it had fired. His bullet grazed the table edge
where the hand had been, on target. He fired again as he continued to move, but
at the lower compartment in front of where he saw the hand. The hand popped up
at another spot and again hit where he had just been. That was good shooting
from the blind side of a table.

Ethan reversed himself. His straight-line course towards the
closest protection was too predictable. He holstered his pistol and unslung the
plasma rifle. That table and its plastic storage section wouldn’t stop a star
hot bolt. Predictably, another quick shot from the cagy warrior struck the deck
close to where he would have been had he continued towards that better cover.
This was a thoughtful shooter, who was being more careful than he’d expect from
a typical Krall warrior. It had a blue uniform, but so had Toltak and she had
not been all that smart.

He activated the rifle’s power pack, and as soon as he did,
a flurry of wild shots rang out that sent him scrambling for cover, as the
shooter changed location. The direction of the sound of the last shots told him
his clever shooter had gotten behind some heavy metal coolers. Not ideal cover
from a plasma rifle, but far better than the table had been. The hasty shooting
act also told Ethan that the power pack made
some
sort of a sound when
it powered up, although it was too high pitched for human hearing. That was obviously
how his opponent knew it had to move to better cover.

He took a shot at the end of a cooler he thought might be
the right one. The wider heavy bolt setting selected didn’t penetrate, but did leave
a pitted halo behind in the metal. He dialed the beam down to the slender diameter
of a stylus, and fired at the opposite end of the cooler. This time he drilled
right through this side, and wisps of smoke rising from the other side proved
it went all the way through.

He couldn’t hear anything, but was worried that a blue
uniform meant a com set button. He hadn’t seen one on the left side shoulder as
he entered this deck, but the right shoulder had been out of view behind the
Krall he’d killed. There could be an ultra-sonic call for reinforcements going
out by radio now. He couldn’t wait.

“There are several hundred of us coming up from below. It’s
better to try to defeat me now, or you will have no chance to escape.” There
was no reply to his
slight
exaggeration of numbers.

The rest of the raiding party should be climbing aboard by
now, with his mother. He had trouble thinking of her as “Captain Greeves,” but
they didn’t yet have control of the ship. If this warrior wasn’t the pilot, the
actual pilot could on the command deck and powering up the heavy weapons, such
as the plasma cannons and laser systems, ready to fire on the Mark or the teams
crossing the tarmac. He wondered where Jorl was. If he had heard the shooting,
he’d be infiltrating from the other side. He may have passed by this deck
before the sound of the shots could reach him. If so, Ethan’s Mind Tap data
said the next deck with an open area to see all the way across was three decks
higher. Jorl would pause and reverse there.

He had an idea. He shut down the noisy power pack, and
removed it from the rifle. Leaving the rifle behind, he crawled rapidly around
some tables, well away from his last location.

When he had an aisle where he could run towards the center
of this deck, to reach the other side of the centrally placed food coolers, he
switched to a full clip on his pistol. He started shooting rapidly in various
directions, and slapped the power pack to activate it and slid it hard back the
way from which he’d come. Then as quietly as he could he ran in a crouch, down
the aisle, looking from side to side as he passed other crossing aisles.

He suddenly spotted his target, a blue suit headed away from
him in a lane to his right, following or fleeing from the sound of the power
pack. He shot him twice in the back just as he ducked around a corner, the
Krall’s head no longer exposed for a kill shot. Ethan didn’t start down that
lane after him, and quickly reversed a few steps. Three shots suddenly flew in
his direction, along the aisle where he had wounded the Krall.

As Ethan had expected, it waited a moment to allow a pursuer
to start after their wounded prey, and then took blind shots around a corner to
catch them. He knew the two shots in the right side back were hardly going to
stop a Krall. This was a very cagey fighter, not at all like the rhinolo-in-a-gift-shop
typical warrior, constantly charging at the enemy. This one was using deception,
ambush, and cover, as if it had experience with those human tactics. Suddenly
Ethan heard additional pistol shots from the direction where Jorl should be
coming, and heard the sizzle of a plasma bolt from that same area. His help had
arrived.

It was time to resume the more vital mission. With a second shooter
as a distraction, Ethan went to the closest stairwell. He leaped straight up to
the next deck without pushing off an intermediate step. He still nearly reached
the ceiling of that next level, but he had not wanted to expose himself to this
observant Krall for that long, by taking a second step for a higher leap. He
continued up stairs now at a reckless pace, gun ready but not making an effort
to clear a deck. He needed to reach the command deck as quickly as possible, in
case a warning had been given.