Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (23 page)

Now she thought she might be able to make a run for it. She turned to judge the best path to take before rising, and saw why that idea was doomed to failure. The sub leader, looking over her head at what his warriors were firing at, would see her move. He had stayed back to keep possession of his plaything, even if concerned with the sudden attack. A ripple in the light from the reflected weapon flashes appeared in the air behind the sub leader. Too shocked to move, a huge dark form started rising from the smooth water worn stones of the streambed.

From thin air a hellish nightmare was appearing, rearing on massive hind legs, its front legs splayed up and out like arms, but headless. At least headless until, a kind of hood that had been invisible was tossed back, revealing the piercing glow of deep blue eyes that flashed with the reflected plasma fire. Then the previously dark maw of a set of jaws opened, revealing incisors longer than her hand. That mouth opened wide and descended swiftly over the sub leaders head, and closed with a crunch. It happened fast, but not before she saw the widening eyes of the sub leader, as the jaws descended.

As the Krall’s head came free, the beast sat back on it haunches and turned to the side, lowering its body to all, fours, and spitting out the bloody head. It sat wide-eyed next to the still standing corpse, which didn’t seem to know it was dead yet. The blue eyes blinked and gazed at her, and the glare from them softened.

As it quickly rose to all fours and moved towards her, she saw the folds of a cloak-like covering fall in drapes around its sides, partly concealing the front legs with invisibility, as if she could see through the creature. The broad blue shaded chest and massive head remained uncovered.

She realized it was wearing a type of flexible stealth camouflage. Except, now it was walking directly at her. Torn between stark fear, and the thought she clung to
that my enemy’s enemy is my friend
, she didn’t move. In fact, she didn’t think she was capable of movement at the moment.

It loomed over her seconds after killing the sub leader, and she broke her state of immobility to lift a hand in a futile effort to ward off this unstoppable force of nature. It lowered its head beyond her own, bringing its neck close to her forehead, where she pushed up to fend it off, only to touch a soft fur covered ring around the beast’s throat.

Then it said,
“If you want to leave this place, hold around my neck, you must be fast.”

The words were almost Standard but overlaid with a feeling of urgency and an image of her arms gripping its neck, her legs raised and going around its waist. She wasn’t too stunned to realize she wasn’t about to lose her head, and this animal apparently had a controller who had sent it to rescue her.

She stretched her arms, and was just able to move her hands far enough around the curve of the thick neck to get an adequate grip. It required her to press her face against the animal’s fur and the soft ridge under its neck. She thought it smelled a bit unwashed and sweaty, and she had trouble lifting her legs to get a grip. The animal instantly lowered its rear haunches to let her do get her long legs up around its sides. It suddenly turned around end for end, and she was nearly thrown free. She let out a soft cry as she nearly slipped free, and grabbed some neck fur in her fists.

“
Good. The prey has become hunters again, and will look this way. My head is exposed and they will see us if it is not covered. Hold strong.”

She saw an image in her mind of the animal bunching up its front shoulders and tossing its head sharply down, to throw the hood back into place. Forewarned, she wasn’t shaken free, although it was a near thing. She felt the sinuous movements of the powerful muscles as it walked carefully ahead.

Tell it to go faster, they’ll shoot us,
she wanted to urge the controller. She was afraid to speak for fear the Krall would hear, and she didn’t know if the human in charge of the animal could hear her anyway.

“I am in control of myself, small human, and your smell is worse than mine, because I do not reek of fear. The covering is out of place and does not let me see out. If I make noise or disturb the ground by moving fast, the Krall pack will shoot their fire sticks where they know we are. This cover is not strong enough to protect us well. I must stalk slowly to stay hidden.”

The first comment got her attention.
Small human?
Why would the trainer say it like that? And why did he have trouble seeing?

Then, with the return of her normally competent mental process, with the prospect of being skinned alive not filling her mind, she wondered how she was hearing this. What was the source of the mental images she sensed so clearly? She
must
be imagining them.

“No. I send pictures to you. With human words I have learned.”

These thoughts, that she now comprehended wasn’t something that she was hearing, formed directly in her mind. It was a bizarre new technology.

“I cannot see how far from the cave I am. If they track our trail, we will be found. I do not want to leave you to their slaughter for pleasure. You can help me save you. If I lift my left leg a little, the cover will rise for you to see from under its edge, and the red ones will not see it happen.”

The slow steady walk paused, and she felt the thick left leg lift, and brush her shoulder and elbow. Suddenly the pitch darkness under the stealth covering was relieved by a small amount of residual twilight.

She had no idea the creature could see through her eyes via this mental connection. Until he said,
“You are almost as blind in the night as I am under this covering. We have drifted farther from the bushes we need for concealment on the left side.”

Before he could raise his other leg, to check the right side of the dry stream’s bank, there was a soft sound of a breath to that side, followed by two quick pants.

Gantor promptly resumed walking for two body lengths, drifting farther right. Another breath and he halted. A paw extended from behind some bushes and made a brief contact with the metallic coating of the Chameleon Skin. This was enough for a flash of shared thoughts and images through the metal in contact with his frill.

Using Krit’s view of that side of the stream and the location of the underbrush, Gantor confidently used that transferred memory to walk deftly around the shrubbery hanging out over the streambed on his right, and behind that to reach enough concealment that he could toss back the annoying hood and see by the faint ambient sky glow. He then climbed gently up the bank, so that the weak human wouldn’t lose her grip.

He thought to her.
“The moon is not up yet, so you will not see well. My pride mate Krit is with us. Release my waist and neck but keep a hand on the soft ring you feel there so we can share thoughts. Make no noise by trying to speak your words, think them only, because we are not far from the red ones.”
The last was accompanied by a live image of the Krall moving around under the bridge, barely sixty feet away.

“They will smell us. We have to get farther away.”
She thought back. All she knew was the Krall had great scent tracking skills, but in this case, she was preaching to a true expert.

Gantor reassured her.
“They are not tracking us. Even if you cannot smell their stink, we can, because we are downwind with a good breeze, and they cannot smell us where they are. We will take you to where you can find the soldiers you were to meet before the red ones caught you.”

Surprised, she asked,
“How do you know that, and where they are?”

She’d become aware of the second huge shape standing on the other side of her rescuer in the low light, and that both appeared to be large cat-like animals whose backs came up to her lower chest. A different set of thoughts replied to her speculation, and it had to be the animal pressed close to the other…, she decided to call them tigers, since overgrown blue tigers are what they brought to mind.

This one was smoother in his communications with her.
“We know where you were going by two ways, Adrianna. Your mind does not know how to block what you think, even your name. You wanted to die without telling the Krall where you were going, but we sense your unguarded mind. We have smelled a large group of non-Kobani humans coming closer, for more than a full day. That is the only herd you could join so we will go there. When you are close to them, we will part from you because they will be afraid of us, even though the human pride told them we were with them. The Kobani call my people rippers. A good name, I think, but it causes fear in humans that do not know us. ”

She latched on to a word he’d thought twice, that produced a mental image of a strong connection
. “You know of the Kobani. Are you another alien race they met?”

The amusement she sensed came from both animals, which had formed a multiple mental connection with her mind.
“They came to our world and gave it a new name. They say it is Koban, yet we only think of it as
Home.
They live there now and some of our former pride cousins live with them, and they form what your people call families. Gantor and I are from a pride that is a friend of humans, but we are not part of any of their prides.”

There was a flash image of Krall movement just outside the cover of the overpass. “
It is not safe for you so close to this enemy. We can learn of each other as we travel. Climb onto my back and hold the fur at my neck. You can’t do that while Gantor wears the human made stealth cover.”

“You don’t have a stealth cover?”

“I did, it was hard to see out, and after I removed it, it would not fit me properly again, so I no longer carry mine.” 

Gantor added, “I wore mine with the head cover back. Without this cover, you would be dead. I could have escaped them after my attack, but I could not carry you fast enough and unseen.”

With humor evident, he said,
“They looked right at my rear, and saw all the way to the other side.”
Describing the effect of Chameleon Skins.

She climbed onto Krit’s back.
“I thank you Gantor and Krit for my life. I will repay your favors.”

“Belly rubs are nice.”
Gantor said, before separating and scouting the trail ahead. The three moved quietly away from the bridge, growing acquainted.

****

A few days later, Chief Haveram was pleased, of course, but shocked at how rapidly this powerful Krall invasion force was being turned into a retreating, hand weapons wielding force. Except for being here in greater numbers, they now fought much the same way as early raiders of individual cities had once done, able to terrify an unprepared human population when the war started, provoking the Hub government to respond and rearm. That type of raider force wasn’t a match for the heavily armed and armored human forces of today, which as recently as three days ago couldn’t significantly slow the heavily armed and armored Krall down, not when their physical advantages were added into the technology mix.

Starting this week, with the limited technology they now had to use, the advantage lay almost entirely with humans and their far greater numbers. The physical advantages of Krall warriors was no longer the deciding factor when faced with waves of heavily armed and armored soldiers. Not when each unarmored warrior with only a short-range projectile weapon, carrying limited ammunition, had to face down ten armored soldiers carrying longer-range high-powered plasma rifles, supported by mobile laser weapons, tanks, ladybugs, space planes, and artillery.

As General Nabarone quipped for public consumption and morale building, mangling an old aphorism along the way, “It looks like the massacre is on the other foot now.”

Haveram was referring to Nabarone’s optimistic assessment for Poldark, but thought New Dublin was in a different category. Better off, in fact. 

“Howard, I was included in Henry’s Comtap links of what’s been happening on Poldark, and although the war is swinging the army’s way there, it isn’t happening as rapidly there as it is here, even though he has a much larger and more experienced fighting force.”

“Chief, how many thousands of square miles did the Krall occupy at New Dublin? Compared to over three million square miles they held on Poldark, located on a continent that only had four and a half million square miles total. This is only a foothold on New Dublin, but on Poldark, they had us in a headlock, with our armies being pushed towards the sea on three sides, and a small land bottle neck to eventually use to escape to the connected continent.”

“Sure, but Telour sent nearly as many Krall here, and they brought a higher percentage of heavy weapons to establish themselves.”

“Right, but more warriors and weapons in a far smaller area produces a more densely populated battlefield. Where does an unstoppable software infection have the best chance to spread the most rapidly?”

“Point made. I guess Manwell’s strategy worked out well. Tricking the Krall into thinking their side had sprung a trap on the navy.”

Caldwell acknowledged a clever plan. “That stunt got a lot of missiles with Denial chips close to densely packed clanships on the ground in the first two salvoes. Navy missiles that inexplicably missed their landing supply ship targets, then the ambushing Krall fleet, with their missiles that also just missed the trapped navy ships. Having a smaller surface area in which to find the bulk of parked clanships helped us tremendously. Pendor put the thickest concentration in the occupied area’s center, and mostly his own clan’s ships. By the time the Kobani fleet and the navy launched the third and fourth waves of missiles, they couldn’t really stop them, not with the defensive middle disabled.”

“I sure as hell wouldn’t have considered that strategy Howard. Not with my recollection of Poldark’s wide-open spaces and mountains surrounding the spread out Krall. I can’t call what our shooters were doing a sniper action here. They only had to get a slug with a chip close to four or five targets to shut them down. The spec ops fly bots were all over the place. Even the rippers, with their Chameleon Skins, found an area between the active fronts and the central defensive ring to run around and disable rifles, suits, Dragons, and anything else they spotted that still functioned. I hear they enjoy racing behind a defensive line of Krall, who are armed with projectile pistols and rifles, and roar as they go, just before General Masterfem’s troops start a charge.”