Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (16 page)

The terror of this pitiful, half-brainless creature stirred his soul to save it if he could. He liked the newly awakened minds of the Raspani he’d met and spoken to, and knew this one would be one of those soon, if it lived to receive a mind enhancer. He was going to save it, somehow.

When he neared the shallow end of the pool, he made the mistake of promptly leaping into the water from the side of the pool, at the same distance from the edge of the shallow water as the Raspani was. He found himself in water just below his belt. There was a firm flat rock bottom to move over, but he had to push his way the thirty feet to the bleating Raspani against the water’s resistance. He wanted to get close enough that his poor marksmanship would spare the victim injury. Belatedly, he realized he should have ran all the way to the end, and dashed in from the easier to navigate inches deep water to run out to the Raspani.

He heard shouts from behind, as Jack and Winona broke out of the trees and spotted him and the Raspani. “Stew, what were you shooting at?” was Jack’s shouted question. All they could see for the moment was the struggling Raspani.

He shouted back, to warn them in case they couldn’t see the threat. “Skathers have gotten into the pool. I’m going to shoot the one that has this one by the hind leg.”

Just then, the skather’s tail obligingly flailed above the surface of the water, proving that Stewart’s claim wasn’t imaginary in this land locked pool.

He finally drew near enough that he could start firing into the water closer to where he saw ripples of the powerful tail just below the surface. The Raspani had lost more ground as Stewart had made his way closer. He was forced to move down the gradually sloping bottom towards the tiring Raspani, and the water rose above his waist. His angle to shoot at the skather was lower, and he saw some shots strike the water, and skip up to knock chips from the far wall.

He held the lightweight rifle higher with his right hand, and waded closer to the Raspani, extending his left hand. The Raspani desperately reached for his hand, having floated beyond the point where its short legs and feet had traction with the bottom, being pulled to deeper water. Its grip had the desperate strength of any frightened creature being attacked, and at simultaneous risk of drowning.

Stewart, with his longer legs in contact with the bottom, leaned back and pulled as hard as he could, and the Raspani floated closer. However, his own feet slipped the other way a foot. He backed up a step, and pulled again. The water behind the Raspani whipped into a froth of bloody water as the skather’s tail and body jerked harder as its prey seemed to show fresh strength.

The Raspani’s ear piercing squeals increased in volume, from the pain caused by the beast latched onto its right rear leg, as it bit down harder, and whipped its head and body back and forth. Holding his rifle as high as he could, his hand on the forward part of the stock as if it were a pistol grip, he pulled and held the trigger with the barrel pointed at the splashing water behind the Raspani. He fired perhaps eight or ten rounds, while the weapon jerked as he fired from that awkward, one-handed overhead grip.

The receiver click, after the magazine fed it’s last round was easily heard, despite the ringing in his ears. He didn’t have any spare ammunition, not that he could have pried himself loose from the Raspani’s death grip on his left hand and forearm to reload right then. However, the last several rounds had an effect when the tail and body of the skather was near the surface, sometimes exposed as it fought for its meal. It must have been hit one or more times, because the Raspani was suddenly able to move forward faster, with Stewart’s assistance.

As the side of the lower torso drifted to him, he reached back with his rifle barrel and pressed that against the rump, to try to push it ahead. The Raspani wasn’t so panicked now that it couldn’t see that it was getting away. Holding onto its benefactor’s extended left arm, now behind it’s shoulders, would slow its progress to escape, so it released the man’s hand, and resumed the two handed imitation of a sloppy breast stroke, while its undamaged legs pumped to help move it forward.

Stewart placed his free left hand on the creature’s butt as it passed and shoved, causing the Raspani to drift ahead quickly, and its feet touched bottom. That was obvious when its long back, previously barely above water, lifted several inches, as it was able to stand.

Feeling good about this rescue, he was reveling in the shouts from his friends on shore, now directly in front of the Raspani, encouraging it with beckoning gestures, ready to help it clamber out of the water. Why they weren’t going in deeper to help was curious. They would have good footing, with water only up to their hips.

That was when the tone of their urgent shouting actually registered with him. It wasn’t joyous sounding, as the rescue he’d performed should demand. It was an urgent warning of something behind him.

He looked back and saw the rippled trails of two skathers gliding through the water towards him, only their nostrils and eyes above water. He turned and started wading as fast as he could, but the water seemed to have turned to molasses to his perceptions, only reluctantly passing around his chest, as he tried to outrace the toothy death gliding smoothly his way.

He reached water only up to his waist, but a glance back told him he wouldn’t make it. They were mere feet behind him, and his companions had moved to the sides, staying clear of the dangerous water, seeking better angles to shoot. Even if they hit their targets and not him, they wouldn’t do enough damage to prevent the two submerged skathers from grabbing him. He had less than a quarter of a Raspani’s mass. They’d easily pull him under water and tear him to pieces, out of reach of his friend’s equally lightweight weapons.

He whirled around to face his attackers and backed away, determined at the very least to strike a blow in his defense. Grasping the rifle with two hands, he smashed the butt down hard on the closer animal, striking at the eyes located two and a half feet behind the opening jaws on his left. The one to his right suddenly surged ahead, rotated its head and snapped its jaws closed on his right thigh, and immediately twisted its body to his right, to roll over and try to tear the flesh from his leg or break a bone. He flailed at it with the rifle butt, but the water cushioned the blow, and he deliberately threw himself in a roll in the same direction as the skather rotated, to delay its tearing his leg off.

The other one would likely join in as soon as it blinked off the blow to its eyes, and find a grip on another limb. He instantly lost sight of the second one as he went under, and the blood from the Raspani had left the normally clear water cloudy. His knew his blood would be added to that murk in a moment. He wondered if his brother had felt this mentally collected as he faced his own death. He was frightened, but not paralyzed with fear, even knowing he was about to die a nasty death.

He completed two rollovers in the water, and he was trying to work the rifle barrel into the gap between his thigh and the opening at the back of the beast’s jaw. He hoped to jam the rifle muzzle into some tender throat tissue and force it to release him.

He knew it was over when he heard a roar and felt the heavy impact of the second skather strike. Apparently, in the murk and feeding frenzy, it hit the other skather in the process. He felt the teeth in the jaws gripping him rake along his thigh, as the pressure eased slightly. He took the opportunity to shove hard on the rifle butt, causing the teeth to tear his flesh more because that was the only way he had leverage, to force the metal barrel deeper into the open throat.

There was violent shaking, as if the other skather had a grip on the one that had him. It hadn’t looked that much larger, but all he’d seen was its eyes, and nostrils at the front of its upper jaw. There was another roar, and he wondered how they did that underwater. He had about used up the last breath as he went under. The exertion had consumed the oxygen in that last hurried gulp. If he was lucky, he might drown before they tore his living, feeling body apart. He let his air escape in a rush, ready to inhale the water to end this as quickly as he could.

His fatalism firmly in place, he was rudely disabused of his preparations to meet his death, when the jaws on his right leg suddenly released their grip. He was confused as to which way was currently up, after the several rolls he’d endured. He realized it was brighter to his left, which meant that had to be the direction of the sky. His right hand found the stone bottom and he pushed off, towards the light.

Suddenly a large dark form hulked over him, and then he saw gaping jaws coming for him through the water. The blue jaws clamped firmly over his left shoulder, but not as crushing as before. He shoved his hands up to fight off the beast, when his tired oxygen deprived mind recalled that skathers were light green, not blue. His hands reached and touched the monster, and
FUR
!

Suddenly his mind seemed to explode with a confusing
kaleidoscope
of images, colors and…, rage.

His head broke the surface and he gasped in one more breath beyond he one he’d thought had been his last, and choked as he inhaled water running down the face of the jaws that held him firmly by his entire left shoulder. His hands, futilely pushing on the animal, were the source of the images flooding his mind. Somehow, in some sort of near death delirium, the skather had morphed in his mind into the beast that had taken his brother’s life. It seemed transformed into an enormous ripper.

However, the rage he sensed was not directed at him!

His limp form was easily carried up the incline to the dry part of the rocky slope, and released gently. Then the ripper turned to roar another challenge to the skathers still in the water, now feeding on the one that the ripper had surprised and killed.
That
was where its rage was directed. At those water creatures, which had dared try to kill one of the humans this ripper claimed as extended pride mates. It turned to leave, with a calm blue-eyed glance at the man he’d rescued, and padded away, licking at its own bite wounds.

More people besides Jack and Winona now crowded around him, cutting open his pant leg and working on his wounds. Others were tending to the injured Raspani, which had nearly lost its leg, and had collapsed, heaving in shuddering gasps for breath. Seeing the shredded and obviously broken back leg of the Raspani, he forced himself up on his elbows so he could see his own leg. Punctured, ripped and bloody as it was, it was all there. A week or less in a med lab and he’d be walking.

“Well Stewart,” a familiar voice said to him, “the next time you decide to go suicide swimming, try the river, where the really
big
skathers live.”

“Maggi, where the hell was that brilliant advice before I jumped into the pool?” He managed, with a faint grin.

She gave him a shot for pain from a medical kit and told him, “Jack says you saved that Raspani’s life. Blue is over there applying whatever it is
they
use for painkillers to its leg. He says if we loan him two med labs, he has a technician’s mind inside his head that can join them together to hold a Raspani. You can recover lying next to him if you like. They decided that an empty minded one would be too restless to stay still and heal, unless it had a mind enhancer to allow it to think. It will receive one of those just produced. You can have company. They fart a lot, you know,” she offered with a smirk.

“OK. I know now that I can hold my breath a long time when necessary.” He smiled.

Then he wanted an answer. “
Where
the hell did that gigantic ripper come from? I thought those fangs had come to finish me off. It felt very protective of me; even though that’s the first time I’ve touched one of their frills. It seemed to know something about me, who I was, just before it set me down. He told me he was sorry for my loss. I don’t know what it meant by that thought.”

Maggi looked at her old friend, and former fellow mayor of another city-dome on Koban. “That ripper has known a little something about you his entire life. So has his sister. They have owed a debt of sorrow from their mother, but could not find a way to pay it without causing you more pain. Did he manage that just now?”

“I’m grateful he jumped in and saved me, but what was the debt? I’ve never had any contact with rippers, and you know why.”

“That was Kobalt. He and his sister Kit were the first two rippers we ever raised.”

“Oh…” was all Stewart could manage just then. He was thinking back on what thoughts he’d received from the ripper.

He finally asked, “Do they know it was their mother that killed my brother and his wife?”

“Oh yes. Their mother passed on her dying thoughts to them as they were born, knowing their lives would be in control of the humans that had killed her. Such mature thoughts are normally forbidden to give to cubs, before they can understand the context. It’s very difficult to communicate with unborn cubs, because of the placental sac that insulates them from frilling. She was dying, and her cubs would be her only way to pass on her regret, so she pushed hard to send them her final thoughts. She hoped that her regret, mixed with her starving need to eat for her babies, would influence us to let her cubs live. I have known of their mother’s relayed feelings since they were tiny. I didn’t think there would ever be a way they could tell you. You were too bitter.”

Stewart nodded his agreement. “Time has passed, and I do feel bitter at Glen’s loss and of his wife, but I don’t blame Kobalt or his sister. I always assumed those first two rippers you announced to us a year later, were the same two cubs I saw the day the mother was killed. I have never experienced a frill session, even though I have shared Mind Taps with people many times. With you mutant criminals.” He grinned at her.