Koban (69 page)

“Stop.” ordered Noreen. She assumed the explosion was the bobby
trap set by Thad.

They waited for what seemed like an eternity, but Maggi’s thumbnail
watch measured as less than two minutes.

“If we killed any Krall at that cave, the hunt is over.” Willfem
couldn’t help stating the obvious. It would be tragic if those in that marsh died
after a Krall death.

****

Gladys Parfem knew her fear of snakes may have gotten them all
killed. She hadn’t even hit the nasty green slithery slimy thing that had suddenly
wriggled its ten-foot body right past her helmet’s faceplate. The two men with her,
each no more than ten feet away in their triangle looked at her accusingly through
the intervening grass.

All three removed their safeties from the claymores they had
positioned facing away from them in a ring. They placed the trip wires nearby, to
pull when they sensed the warriors were closing. Now down so low, up to their necks
in water, they realized they didn’t have decent firing positions. They couldn’t
see more than twenty feet through the two-foot high marsh grass.

The holes they dug weren’t so deep they couldn’t push up a bit
to gain height, but a brown armored head would make a fine target from a considerable
distance. Throwing a grenade any distance from a crouched position wasn’t going
to be easy either, and the Krall would have to be right on top of them for those
to do any good.

Perhaps the shot hadn’t been heard, or if it was, couldn’t be
triangulated to the marsh. And Twentieth Century Santa was coming to take them safely
back to Earth.

It was still morning, but they knew the hunt had started, not
just by the clock, but because they had seen the Krall shuttle fly over earlier.
There was even some sort of muffled explosion from the other side of the river just
before Gladys lost her mind and fired at an eel that couldn’t hurt her.

All they had now was hope that the explosion had drawn the Krall’s
attention away from the marsh. The helmet broadcast ended that hope.

Cody Masters had already had his external microphones cranked
to maximum for the last hour. Every click buzz or plop in the water startled him.
Now he could hear significant splashing from three directions, per his suit visor
display. It was growing louder.

He was sure the voice he’d heard warn them was that of Colonel
Greeves. He was surprised, but clicked on his own helmet to thank him and set the
blame for their deaths where it belonged. He wasn’t giving their position away,
since the visor showed approaching splashes from three directions. Even the Krall
couldn’t run silently in the marsh.

He pulled a pin on a grenade, and saw Deigo do the same. Placing
his gun in his left hand, he pointed it down to let water drain from the barrel.
He knew the ammo was designed to blow water or muck from the barrel when fired,
but you got less kickback if it was clear.

The splashing sounded closer. He looked to Deigo and nodded.
They both threw as hard as they could from their crouched positions in the directions
they heard splashes. As soon as the little bombs arched up, there were three simultaneous
loud splashes as large bodies hit the muck, and ferocious fire hurtled over their
heads. An explosive round caught Deigo’s right arm before he pulled it down, blowing
off the armor and arm at mid forearm.

Cody was glad Deigo’s helmet blocked the scream he was sure accompanied
the pain. The round’s detonation was bad enough through his amped up speakers. He
started firing his own explosive rounds through the grass, as was Gladys he noted.
Deigo had to be in shock, but he managed to raise his gun in his left hand, pulling
the trigger and pointing it out over the marsh grass.

Where were the grenade explosions he wondered? Finally, he remembered
that Thad told them there was a five-second delay after releasing the safety handle.
They should have held them a couple of seconds before the throw. Their shots were
also probably wild and too high, because he heard splashing again as the Krall resumed
running towards them.

Suddenly, two close together explosions threw muck and black
water up and back down on them. That had stopped the running splashing sounds for
a moment. He pulled another pin on a grenade in his left hand to have it ready,
and wrapped his mine’s trip wire around the same hand. Picking up his gun, he resumed
firing, holding the gun as high as he dared, and pivoted it in an arc, spraying
rounds randomly. He heard his concussions in the muck, and the Krall explosive rounds
were hitting around them.

Gladys actually threw a grenade, but its high arc suggested it
had only traveled about ten or fifteen feet in front of her.

Deigo was slumping sideways in his water-filled foxhole. Whatever
the hell a fox was. That’s what Thad had called these pits. He saw Deigo pulling
on his lanyard with his left hand. Apparently that was about the last thing he had
the strength to try.

As it happened, it was the last thing he ever tried. And he succeeded.

The claymore exploded with an enormous bang through Cody’s cranked
up audio. It cleared a sixty-degree swath of swamp grass in front of Deigo’s position.
The slightly curved back plate that held the plastic explosive had hurled the thousand
or so small bearings and scraps of metal nearly parallel with the base of the grass.

What someone had neglected to tell Deigo, or Cody for that matter,
was that the back plate obeyed Newton’s law. It flew the opposite direction from
the shrapnel if not anchored somehow. It smashed through Deigo’s faceplate and helmet
in a spray of blood and black water, causing Cody to flinch away from the fragments
and splash. When he looked back, all he saw were bubbles in the black water and
blood as the submerged suit filled.

However, there was a satisfying scream of rage in front of Deigo’s
position, unfortunately followed by resumed rapid splashing. A smaller than average
but very pissed off Krall appeared over the grass firing into the watery pit where
Deigo had sunk.

Cody managed to get off a single shot as he brought his pistol
around, firing too soon, and his clip was empty. The Krall, shifting position to
duck, made a lightning move to remove an empty clip and reloaded a fresh one from
its chest belt. There was no way he could reload in time.

At that instant, the five-second timer on the grenade Gladys
had tossed expired. When it detonated to the Krall’s right, it tossed the warrior
sideways and out of sight.

Gladys now realizing the enemy was right on top of them, pulled
her own lanyard, and was more fortunate than Deigo when it blew, because the Krall
return fire had struck close in front of it and had caused it to aim downward slightly
on its tripod. The second deafening explosion didn’t spread its pellets as parallel
to the marsh as the first had, but the back plate went flying an inch above her
head.

As she recovered her senses from the concussion, lifting her
pistol and firing blindly to her front, the good fortune avoiding the back plate
proved temporary. Another Krall stood up several feet in front of Cody’s claymore
and fired multiple explosive rounds into Gladys, shredding her head, body and armor
together in a spray of black mud, water, and blood.

Cody pulled his own lanyard as he ducked his helmet below the
water. He heard the deafening explosion through the water and felt it shake the
muck. He had dropped his gun, which was empty anyway, but he knew where his loaded
spare was.

He lifted his helmet above water, reaching for the second pistol
he’d left on the floating ammo platform. Except something grasped him and lifted
him bodily from the pit. He was forcefully spun around to face the same snarling
Krall warrior, who appeared distressingly healthy. It held him at arm’s length
by his helmet, dangling below its big left hand.

Obviously, it had managed to leap out of the way, as Cody had
ducked and pulled the wire. All he had done was cut down marsh grass.

Stokol, seeing his prey had no gun, holstered his own, and deliberately
drew a slender nine-inch knife from a sheath on his chest harness, letting him observe
the motion. This wasn’t going to be a swift end like Deigo and Gladys had, Cody
realized in horror. It used the knife tip to start to probe for an opening at the
rotor joint of his right shoulder. Cody frantically punched and pushed at the arm
as the blade tip tried to force an entry.

Feeling how puny the human’s frantic resistance was, Stokol exposed
his teeth. It seemed a good time to test the reports of how poor these things tasted.
He would carve pieces from it while it still lived, and force it to watch him chew.

Cody continued to punch and kick without effect. He clutched
the Krall’s thick right wrist with his own right gauntlet, punching at the hand
and forearm with his left fist. He couldn’t even deflect the slow deliberate probing
of the knife; much less halt the relentless strength of that piston like arm.

He was about to use his left gauntlet to reinforce his right
hand’s grip, or to grab for the knife blade when he realized that in his fear he
had forgotten something. The grenade, its pin already pulled, was in the hand he
was using to punch. He felt and heard metal screech as the knife tip suddenly slipped
up between the plates of the armored joint of his right shoulder. He opened the
lower fingers of his left hand enough to release the grenade’s safety handle.

Cody screamed as the slender blade tip was maneuvered and forced
powerfully into the new crevice, encountering the Smart fabric over his shoulder.
It couldn’t cut through the tough material, but the blade’s pressure at the small
tip pushed the fabric into his flesh all the way to the bone. Screaming from the
pain, the shoulder socket began to separate as the tip pushed deeper.

Stokol was puzzled at the resistance to his knife tip. The human
looked soft but seemed to have a very tough skin.

Cody tried to count, but the Krall’s insistent thrusting in and
out to get all the way through the oddly tough seeming shoulder was horribly agonizing,
sending rivers of hot pain down his arm and up to his neck. His own screaming destroyed
any effort to focus. His right hand fell limply to his side as the shoulder joint
gave way. He was afraid he might pass out, but he was also terrified that he might
not.

From behind the warrior that held him suspended, he saw a second
Krall, speckled from multiple shrapnel punctures. He had come to watch the surviving
animal suffer. The third warrior could be heard screaming its rage and pain near
where Deigo’s mine had mowed the grass, probably lying where the grenade from Gladys
had thrown it.

We didn’t kill
any
of the sons of bitches, he thought
miserably through his pain. Not yet anyway.

He brought his left hand up to the side of his head as if to
weakly punch at the warrior, and opened his mouth wide in a scream he didn’t need
to fake. The warrior leaned in to enjoy the prey’s expression as he savagely twisted
the blade through to grate on the backside of the armor.

Stokol’s blazing red pupils were glaring into the animal’s eyes,
determined to intimidate and penetrate the dim awareness of this pathetic meat animal
that had dared cause them so much trouble.

Cody rotated his wrist so the Krall could see what he held next
to his head. The Krall hadn’t seen the other tossed grenades clearly, so it didn’t
recognize the oval muck covered object.

 Through the human’s faceplate though, he clearly saw the open-mouthed
scream turn into a strangely blunt toothed smile, and an unmistakable look of triumph
in those ugly white with blue center eyes.

The warrior’s own eyes widened suddenly in a flash of recognition
and fear, and its instant reaction was to release the helmet. However, Cody dropped
less than a millimeter before the grenade converted his and the Krall’s head into
eel food.

****

In the valley, following Kimbo clan’s aggressive and risky tactics,
one novice ran full speed all the way to the cave mouth, angling in from the side.
He fired both pistols in concert with his zig zaging clan mates just behind him.
Waiting only for a coordinated pause in their firing, he leaped into the entrance
and fired around the bend that they could see was a few yards inside.

The heavy fire with a combination of armor piercing and explosive
rounds should suppress defensive fire, and once the lead warrior was positioned
to fire at anyone just around the bend, the other two warriors would pass him and
burst around that corner, increasing the fire rate to six guns directed at whoever
was in there. They would keep up that pressure and kill every human they found,
or force them out through some hidden bolthole. Those escape attempts would be covered
by the two waiting higher status warriors.

Tyroldor, after ordering his other three warriors to destroy
the humans that had stupidly given their marshy hiding place away, had landed the
shuttle on the hillside a hundred feet above the cave. Pitda had rushed out to watch
for possible hidden exits to open. Tyroldor remained in the shuttle ready to pursue
any humans that might pop out much farther away.

The hard charging lead warrior, Tindak had just leaped into the
cave opening when the hillside over the rocky mouth erupted upwards with an explosive
roar, and collapsed back down to cover the mouth of the cave. Both of the covering
warriors, still well outside the opening when it exploded, were blown backwards
off their feet, but nimbly twisted and turned in midair to avoid or deflect some
of the rock shrapnel that came flying towards or down on them.

They struck the ground perhaps forty feet down the slope, sliding
backwards on their hands and feet with talons extended, their pistols having been
holstered while in the air. They landed cat-like on all fours facing the collapsed
cave and immediately ran back up to start flinging large rocks out of the way.