Koban 5: A Federation Forged in Fire (51 page)

“If you do not have proper PU style formal clothing for the palace meeting in the morning, and a dinner tomorrow, a tailor will be sent to your quarters to insure you are dressed to avoid offending the invited guests. Your finder’s commission will increase, if Sheik Sayed is able to haggle for higher bids. Your appearance and behavior will help him, and thus you, to attain the highest prices. You may learn that other sheiks will wish to retain your services if you impress them. You are not to mention the Christoph boy to his guests, because that represents a private deal between you.

“A protocol instructor will arrive to teach you what you need to know to avoid giving accidental offence to the visiting sheiks, which could be fatal for you if the proper form of respect is not shown.”

“I appreciate the preparation. I already know not to show the soles of my shoes, or to ask about how many wives, and to be punctual. Unfortunately, little of Khartoum’s social life is known. Do I bow or shake hands when introduced? Do I reply sir or sire, or sheik if addressing one of them?”

“The instructor will guide you, but in general, you should behave like most people on the Rim Worlds I’ve visited. Shake hands, say Sir, and you might say Sheik along with their name if you are with more than one of them, which is quite possible tomorrow. I hope you do well, because there are items I want imported from Human Space that are seldom seen here. I could deal directly with you. I’d hate to have to feed you to your own rippers if things went bad.”

“They wouldn’t eat me.”

“Not even if starving?”

“Hmm. Valid point.”

“Then please help us bring in the heavy construction equipment we need to move those…, you called them rhinolo?”

“Yes, and if you control the bull, the largest one, the cows and calf will always follow him closely, straying only a little. Except, you would need a massive and tough piece of equipment. You have no idea how powerful that bull is and how hard it is to kill if he gets loose. You can see the thick steel bars holding them, attached floor to ceiling with welds. Unlike the other cages, which can be lifted and carried, the rhinolo must be herded. Where will you keep them?”

“The Sheik owns a number of tanks, would some of those be suitable to force the bull to go where we want, with heavy carbon fiber cables to tie him to them?”

“Perhaps main heavy battle tanks, four of them, front rear and sides would be heavy enough. That bull might be able to tip one of them over.”

“He has a company of them, a dozen tanks total. As to where he will keep the animals, there is a modest coliseum on the other side of the palace, where fights and other local entertainments are sometimes conducted. Until heavier pens are constructed, like the one you have, the rhinolo can roam in the central arena, with thick stone block walls, twenty feet high to contain them. Even the four gates into the ring are sturdy inch thick steel.”

“That sounds secure until you build something permanent, but getting them over there is the problem. The five mile trip from here to that arena provides a great deal of opportunity for that bull to get mad, and eager to break free into the open country side.”

“How did you get them aboard your ship?”

“They were lightly drugged then by the people that sold them to me, and were held in an electrified fence corral, with a chute to my main ramp and extending to this pen. I have some of that fencing in storage, but it would take more than a day to set up and it won’t reach to that arena. I don't have the drug they used, and I don’t know enough about their metabolism to risk a tranquilizer intended for Earth animals. These big grazing animals are not as dumb as you might think, not as they would be on other worlds. They’re relatively bright, and they know an electric fence when they see one. They don’t try to test them, but I don't have very much fencing with me.”

“Then perhaps we should fly close to the arena and offload them there. There are wild animal pens under the seating area and below the arena floor.”

“You’ve seen the size of the Falcon and know the size of that arena. If it’s open to the sky, do you think I will have room to land inside the coliseum and let them walk down the ramp? How big are the events and entertainments held there?”

“I don't know if you are familiar with the history of ancient Rome on Earth, but think of gladiators, or small well trained forces armed with swords and spears, animal predators from multiple planets matched against people armed with hand weapons, or animals against other animals. The sheiks each host competitions with each other, for best fighters, best animals, or most interesting executions. Those are always entertaining, but the largest ones, only two or three held per year, are amazing spectacles and held at the largest arenas. Sheik Sayed had thirty thousand guests at his last hosting, nearly six years ago, and although not the largest in size, his arena will have room for this ship if it can land precisely vertical. Your animals have him interested, if they prove to be as formidable and dangerous as they seem. Only the antelope seem too tame for arena use, but they are attractive for display.”

“Believe me when I tell you that underestimating any animals from the home world of these is a mistake. It would be difficult to capture them, but there are dinosaur analogues there that are much larger and stronger than these animals are. That half-grown feathered whiteraptor is a cousin to the dinosaurs, and its small compared to some of those giants. I think I can attract many customers with those if I can learn how to transport them. I had no idea the entertainments here were so extreme.”

“We don’t let it be known. From what you just told me, you could become very rich if you can provide proof of these animals and be able to deliver them here. But that’s for later. We only have today and part of tomorrow to get ready for the presentation, because the Sheik is very eager to act. You appear to have gained his interest. You are unusually fortunate, and would do well to cultivate more of that good fortune.”

Haveram grinned. “I’ll do my best to deliver everything the sheiks of Khartoum deserve.”

****

The rhinolo transfer had gone very well, at least as far as Captain Kadar and Sheik Sayed was concerned. Only two of their men were killed, when a motorized steel arena door was shut but not latched, with the heavy pins at the top and bottom never inserted into the steel frame. The big bull, after the four rhinolo charged towards the outside light from the Falcon’s deployed ramp, rushed around the arena snorting and bellowing, shattering several two foot thick wooden posts embedded in the floor of the arena, equipped with wrist shackles.

While the bull was occupied with doing that, Haveram used his Normal Space drive and quietly lifted off as soon as the rhinolo were down the ramp. He was hovering and moving away, under the watchful eye of Kadar and two of his men behind him on the Bridge, as he drifted to land at the side of the coliseum, to allow unloading of the other animals. They saw the bull charge back through the place where the Falcon had been, charging right into one of the gray painted twenty by twenty foot doors. It dented only slightly at the middle, but the problem was that the bull had thrust up and to the side as he pulled up his rush, choosing not to simply run into the solid surface at full charge.

The door, not being securely pinned, slid open almost a foot on the right side, revealing a slender view of the open topped corridor used to feed animals or fighting forces into the arena. The other end of that hundred-foot long passage had a duplicate sliding steel door, which was securely latched. In between the big doors were the two animal handlers that had assumed that a closed but unsecured arena door was good enough. They had turned back to the simple motor control to close the door again and latch it, when the bull used its nearly four-foot horn to hook the door. His massive neck muscles, used to fight other bulls to defend his breeding rights with his cows, slammed the multi-ton door wide open along its track. The next targets for its horn and fury were the two men, who fought each other to see who would be first to reach and enter a personnel door, one placed on each side, midway down the passage. They both lost that race.

Haveram was shocked, and felt helpless as he looked down and saw what was about to happen. Kadar and his men simply appeared intrigued while observing the mayhem. Later, after the broken, dismembered, stomped and crushed bodies were removed with shovels and buckets, the captain was forced to apologize to his master, when the sheik eagerly asked to see the video replay.

“Sir, I’m sorry. There was no active arena Tri-Vid camera positioned to catch what happened down that passageway. Nothing was supposed to happen back there so they had not been activated. Several arena cameras shows the bull ramming into the door, then when he saw the narrow gap that his hit caused, he shoved it wide open with his horns and snout. The two handlers were not in the frame of any of the active cameras when they were attacked, but I saw it all. They each were initially speared by the horn through their legs. Then, one after the other, still alive and trying to crawl away, they were hooked again in the legs and tossed high into the air. Unbelievably, they were caught on the longest horn again as they fell, stuck through the center of their torso this time. They were shaken so violently sideways that their bodies were torn open. Because this happened twice in the same manner, I think the bull had the skill to toss and catch them like that. It was a surprising display of precise movements by such a massive animal.

“He was literally bounding down that corridor after them, at times as high as three or four feet off the ground with all four feet. I think it weighs over four tons, but it looked nimble under our gravity. Captain Haveram says all of these animals come from a heavy gravity planet. After the men were dead, the bull backed away and snorted, and seemed to call to the other three. The bodies were then trampled and tossed by all three of the other rhinolo, who took turns by their age I think, the male calf going last.”

In apparent answer to a question, he shook his head. “No, I think these are stronger Sir. Sheik Al Mady’s Hybrid African tusked war elephants are certainly heavier and larger, and Sheik Nami’s pseudo-rhinos from Trandor are about the same size, but I don't think they would stand a chance against these beasts, not in strength, and certainly not in speed or agility. I think that bull, all by himself, could beat several elephants and pseudo-rhinos in the same arena with him.”

Haveram naturally could only hear one side of the transducer conversation, but Kadar said, “Yes Sir. We have a number awaiting your judgement at your next hearing day. No Sir, none are accused of infractions that severe. Perhaps loss of a hand or foot, with a med lab regeneration after however many months you decided. Yes Sir, I’ll have them brought to the arena and held for tomorrow.”

When his master disconnected, Kadar, seemed relieved he’d not received a punishment for his not having had better camera coverage. “I thought I might be facing that bull tomorrow, but we have prisoners awaiting the Sheik’s court next week, to hear what they would forfeit in retribution for their offenses against his laws and decrees. Now it seems the four of them might forfeit everything.”

“Were these violations for what I heard called sharia laws?”

Kadar shook his head. “Centuries ago the violations may have been judged that way in this sheikdom. Under a few of the more devout sheiks, those poorly defined laws are still in effect. Under Sheik Sayed and his recent ancestors, and in many sheikdoms that agree with his family’s evolved positions, the laws here are what the Sheik says they are. After enough time the laws have stabilized, and they change now only gradually.”

He seemed completely untroubled by this excessive punishment for what were probably minor offenses here, and that his comment that change in the laws came gradually was negated by the whim this Sheik had just displayed. The original punishment anticipated appeared to involve amputation, with a specified period of living with the deliberate crippling before the offender earned the “right” to have the lost appendage or limb regrown. Haveram wondered how many “average citizens” around here were living with replacement parts, or had triggered the whim of the Sheik and died in the arena.

Haveram didn’t bother glancing up to the ceiling, because Thad and Sarge had quietly departed when Kadar’s men removed Billy from the ship, and he was then driven to the palace in the back of a truck under heavy guard. The number of guards reflected the boy’s value to the Sheik more than the boy’s perceived risk to him. They definitely had that backwards.

He wasn’t sure where the other eight Kobani were, but it didn’t really matter to him. For the moment Haveram, Saber, and the rippers all appeared to be in the good graces of this despot sheik. Some of those that came with him would have spread out around the small spaceport, waiting for the arrival of VIP guests tomorrow, or like Thad and Sarge, had headed for the palace. They didn’t know how many sheiks were invited, but there were over two dozen known to be on the planet. From what data Haveram had extracted from the captain and first mate of the Delta Dawn, not every sheik here was engaged with human trafficking, at least not as far as kidnaping victims from other worlds. The majority of them engaged in smuggling of some type, much of it illegal drugs, stolen goods, and arms, but not always items consumed on the home planet, where drugs and alcohol consumption was frowned on in general. The sheiks were intermediaries for many trades and activities they didn’t permit on their own world. They used the revenue to pay for the Hub world luxuries they craved, to maintain their expensive lifestyles.

A number of more devout sheikdoms and their sheiks avoided any involvement in off-world activities that they believed violated their version of Islamic faith. Their beliefs and practices clearly violated PU laws regarding women’s rights, but not the tenants of their faith. As it happened, those conservative sheiks were not among those Sayed had invited tomorrow. Sayed’s invitees tended to gravitate towards the shared corrupt and perverse taste of absolute despots everywhere in every time, who earned money illegally that solidified their control and power over Khartoum’s Destiny. The worst of the lot was coming to see what Sayed had to offer, via his new off world resource, Chief Haveram.