Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (26 page)

He reacted instantly with a leap to the side, and drew a pistol at a sudden movement on his right. His warriors reacted by leveling their plasma rifles at the same movement through the grass that their leader had seen.

With a snort of amusement, Telour holstered his pistol and felt a sense of relief. What had produced the movement in the grass was a small ramp, being extruded from the base of one of the smaller airlocks that were spaced along the oddly shaped, round ended hull.

His pilot displayed his own sense of relief. “My Tor, this ship is responsive to our passing. Will you enter here?”

“The ship will not guide me to the command center without a soft one to speak for us, and the insides of ships can be configured differently by past occupants. I know the way to get to the command deck from either of the two large airlocks, using the wide main corridors. I’ll enter there to let my memory lead us.”

He ran even faster to reach the main airlock and angled away from the ship before turning to walk directly at the hatch. The large ramp didn’t extrude, not even when he was so close he’d be in the way of its full deployment. It had occurred to him the ramp would never strike anyone, because the Olt’kitapi would never build a ship that would allow that to happen. He walked to the base of the hatch, almost at eye level, and banged his closed fist on it hard enough to hurt. It made a dull thump.

Clearly angry and frustrated now, he stalked the two hundred feet back to the smaller hatch. The ramp had automatically retracted after the last warrior followed their leader away. As Telour approached, the ramp again was extruded, forming from hull material that flowed to the place where it grew out to form a four-foot wide ramp, twice that in length. With the ship so settled into the shallow layer of red volcanic soil, the base of the ramp barely cleared the grass at the side of the ship.

Telour stepped onto the ramp, and the outer door irised open with hardly a sound. The airlock compartment was relatively small, and unlike the main airlock, the inner hatch on this one was not transparent. You couldn’t see where the airlock led. Judging the size of the airlock chamber, Telour called a hand of warriors forward, to crowd into the small compartment ahead of him. To his other warriors he said, “Cycle through five at a time after we are clear. When you step on the ramp, the outer hatch should open automatically after we exit the airlock on the inside.”

He entered behind the four warriors pressed close ahead of him. He was seeking some way to activate the airlock cycle, when the outer hatch suddenly spiraled inward and sealed behind him. Surprisingly, there was still outside light coming from behind them. From this side, the door was amazingly transparent, or it had turned that way for both sides. But, it didn’t seem from the peering eyes of those outside, that they could see Telour looking back at them.

Again, Telour looked for a control panel of some sort, when he noticed differently scented air had cycled into the compartment. The uplifted muzzles of the hand of warriors were also checking the new smells. It proved harmless and the oxygen level actually improved greatly, from the slightly low fifteen percent oxygen of the outside air, to double that level in here. The planet’s air had contained limited odors, with little variation in the life so far observed, of simple plants and a few insects they had seen, and no animals.

The new air was a total surprise to Telour. He’d expected the intriguing rich smells he’d experienced on his other forays into the previous ship. Those scents, he was informed, were believed to be like those of the original Krall home world, Kratos. This was entirely different.

For one thing, aside from double the oxygen content, there was something exotic, yet familiar about the smells of plants and animals that his sensitive nose picked up. He remembered odors like this, from more than a breeding cycle ago. It smelled like Koban!

The inner airlock door swept open from the middle, and the lead warriors stepped into the corridor thus revealed, just as another door irised closed at the other end. However, it didn’t fully close before they saw a hand and a small pistol pull back as the shrinking circle in the center of the door spiraled closed. It was a human sized hand in an armored gauntlet. There had been a series of
phhitt
sounds, of slender projectiles passing through the air. The needle gun had launched a large number of slivers as the airlock hatch had spiraled open and that other hatch closed.

The four warriors snarled swiping at their faces and necks and charged forward, lowering their rifles to fire. The two in back shoving their rifle barrels forward enough not to burn their clan mates in the lead. Set for full automatic and maximum energy, they squeezed their triggers, intending to blast their way through the flimsy looking door.

Unexpectedly, they smashed into the slightly yielding door and each other, when their rifles failed to fire. Without an instant of hesitation, despite these warriors never having encountered a door like this, one of them jammed his thick rifle barrel hard at the place in the center, where the door had closed off that last circle of light. With a scream of fierce triumph, his weapon forced its way through the flexible material. That joy was short lived, when the butt of the weapon abruptly slammed back into his lower torso, knocking him back with a grunt of pain, and the bent barrel was shoved back through to their side of the door.

The second Krall in the front pushed two taloned fingers through the same center point to force an opening. He was using his strength to stretch the flexible material aside, and trying to push his other hand through the gap. Suddenly, he snarled in pain and drew back his hands, revealing one was missing two fingertips, sliced cleanly through the bone.

Telour, who was certain this trap had been set for him, reversed into the airlock and was going to let his four warriors hold back the enemy while he rejoined the larger force outside. He stepped clear of the inner hatch and waited for it to cycle closed, enabling the outer door to open. It wasn’t cycling, and looking through the transparent outer door, he didn’t see the safety and reinforcements out there that he’d expected.

Instead, his warriors outside had been ambushed and were in a heavy firefight, crouched down in two wide semicircles around the airlock and ramp their leader had used to enter. The front rank was prone and firing in two directions, the inner rank was crouching and firing over them, towards forward and aft. Plasma blasted bodies of many warriors, farther from the airlock, proved how quickly and deadly things had turned outside. Over a dozen warriors were dead or incapacitated, and those defending the airlock were dropping steadily. They were originally told by Telour they would stay behind in the dome on the moony under the eyes of Guardians. When they reached the planetoon with no sign of Guardians, they hadn’t donned their armor, expecting that act to be viewed as a hostile if the mysteriously unresponsive Guardians were watching.

The first assumption Telour made was that the Guardians might have taken control of the great ships. Except, for them to wait until he entered a ship made no sense. Besides, it was a human hand they’d seen at the other door. At least those outside still had plasma rifles that worked, which the four warriors with him did not. Turning to see how the protectors inside with him were doing, he saw that they were moving with difficulty, one slipping to the floor as he struggled to draw a short sword from his utility harness. In a flash of insight, he knew the needles must have held something like that sleep drug Pendor had told him about, and which he’d half thought was a human fabrication.

Telour leaped out of the airlock and ran down the short corridor, grabbed one of the rifles and returned to the airlock in case it cycled to let him join his honor guard, or he could try to batter his way out. The reports on Telda Ka had repeatedly described the deactivation problem, and he wanted to see for himself what was wrong with the weapons. He had his two pistols on his hips, but a plasma bolt did greater damage at longer range, and he had only a few reloads for his handguns. He saw the power pack was switched off, and he detached it and tried to activate it while separated from the rifle. It failed to show the small lights that indicated power level, yet he knew it held a full charge, as every warrior had automatically verified before stepping out of the clanship.

The muffled cracks of plasma rifles had been a constant staccato
behind him, heard faintly through the outer door. It had just ceased while he perused the rifle in his hands.

A look proved his warriors were still prepared to fight, but their rifles had just quit working. At least two hands of them carried pistols as personal weapons and he saw those being fired, with the softened whoosh heard through the hatch. The other warriors drew knives or short swords, and they were clearly preparing to charge, to close with the enemy. Said enemy apparently was located around both ends of this, and the closest adjacent death ship, where Telour couldn’t see them, or perhaps they were stealthed. All he saw were red and green lasers and the actinic flashes of plasma bolts from the attackers.

The concept of yielding wasn’t even faintly evident in the outraged demeanor of any of the warriors that he could see outside the airlock. This was further evidence that the unseen force they were fighting wasn’t Guardians, as Telour had briefly considered. It wasn’t dishonorable in interclan warfare to yield to a superior force, unless the order to fight for
Clan and Path
had been given. He had not given that order, although he would have if he had known humans were here. Not that it mattered against animals, even Worthy Enemy animals. A warrior never yielded to animals, even if the warrior was unarmed and seriously wounded.

He considered the disabled weapon he’d just carried to the airlock. He’d brought it closer to his outside warriors by at least three leaps. The spread of the disabling software was said to be short-range, and transmitted from weapon to weapon, device to device. Now he knew that the effect would pass through the closed hull of one of these ships. He’d inadvertently disarmed his own warriors, although he was sure the humans would have found a way to do this at any moment. The length of the ships the humans were using for cover was great enough that they had not yet approached close enough to the warriors outside. Telour had just solved that problem for them.

A harsh whisper caught his ears. “My Tor, be ready. We cannot move.” The sub leader who had led the charge in the corridor was in a slumped position against the wall, head drooping, but his eyes were alert, and he was breathing. It was obvious his control of speech was also failing. There were three needles visible in the left side of his face and neck.

The dozen or so needles he’d heard had missed him by chance, or none was aimed at him in a deliberate act. No matter, he threw down the useless rifle and pulled his left pistol. He had just started to move to stack his guard’s crumpled bodies as his cover, when the hatch in the corridor swished open.

“Telour, I’ve been waiting for you.” The human knew his name, confirming the trap was set for him. There was something familiar about the voice.

Pistol held ready in his dangling hand, he advanced towards the open door only a few steps when a partly armored figure stepped from behind the frame of the hatchway. It was a young dark haired male, whose hands were hanging empty at his sides, but there was a Krall made pistol in a low-slung holster on his right side. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, meaning the suit’s beam weapons were unavailable.

Stupid,
thought Telour, as he snapped his hand up to put an explosive round through the smile he saw forming.

In a blur of motion even the Krall’s heightened perceptions couldn’t completely resolve, the small man drew his weapon and fired from the hip, as Telour’s weapon rose to almost chest height, where it exploded from the slug’s impact before he could complete the trigger squeeze.

Even as the pieces of the shattered weapon was spinning away from his stinging and numbed left hand, Telour reached for his right side weapon, only to have another soft nosed slug pass between his grasping fingers and smash that pistol as well. In an equally fast motion, the armored figure holstered his gun.

“Dillon told me you’d make the typical Krall mistake of raising your gun too high before firing. I’d have beaten you anyway, but I used his low hip fire method to save time. I should have had more confidence. Wearing the damn suit slowed me down, but Maggi would have shot me in the ass herself if I’d met you without some bulletproof protection. Besides, you were going for a head shot, just as I expected. Suit or no suit, I still needed to beat you to the draw. That was fun.”

Telour could charge him, and he did have a heavy knife, but the skilled shooting so far demonstrated, both with the needle gun and the larger Krall pistol, and his blindingly fast speed, made it clear that a better chance might come later, since the small man didn’t seem to want him dead yet.

The two names he spoke of and a voice that belonged to a dead human almost triggered the recognition he could not accept. “Those names were associated with a small clan leader on Koban, and your voice is like his. He would be much older than you are. Are you related to a human I once called a small clan leader?”

“Even the people in Human Space thought I was my own son at first. I’m Tetsuo Mirikami, former Captain of the Flight of Fancy. We’ve been a long time in meeting again. Although, we’ve been at Telda Ka at the same time more than once.”

Telour was skeptical, but knew humans were longer lived than Krall. “I told Kanpardi we should not have let any of you live. His weakness was honoring the word of the Joint Council to allow you to remain alive on Koban when we went to war. Parkoda, fool that he was, had made it seem impossible any of you would survive even a month, when he destroyed the electric gates in the protective walls. Then I left you without power. ”

“You did cause us many deaths and much suffering, Telour, but you also toughened our resolve to survive at any cost, and to come looking for you for vengeance. Not just you personally, but your entire evil species. You personally made it possible for us to make ourselves into what you genocidal killers wanted to make of your race. Our bio-scientists genetically made us into people who can live on Koban on equal terms with the life there.”