Koban (75 page)

Both had their face plates cracked open so they could talk, yet
not worry about a sting to the face.

Dillon stopped abruptly. “Hey, the Krall here on the left sees
me. His eye is tracking my movement. He drew his eyelid back wider than I thought
they could open. He probably saw us climb out of the ground. I wonder what the hell
he thought about that!” He added a sinister chuckle.

****

Sitdok’s agony throughout his body was still terrible to bear,
but had diminished some near his legs, where it had started. He was aware of the
skeeters biting him, but didn’t feel them. He could see them and hear them from
time to time, as they shifted position, or fluttered their wings in agitation as
they pushed one another for the best spots to feed on him.

He thought he would recover movement before they fully drained
him because his legs burned much less now. The poison was gradually wearing off
where it had first started, and he decided it would not kill him directly. The biggest
risk to his life was being helpless against the insects and flying animals of Koban.
He was so wrong.

Sitdok couldn’t believe what he was seeing when he saw the ground
start to open up. The poison surely was causing hallucinations. He was imagining
Koban hatching an armored human, emerging from the dirt of the planet. It climbed
out fully formed if a bit smaller than the other three humans he had seen. He could
see its soft ugly face because it had no helmet on its armor.

It walked over to another place and helped as another human was
born from Koban. They replaced the ground over the place where it was born, only
glancing his way a few times. Then they both returned to close the hole that birthed
the smaller human, and then it too put on a helmet.

He heard them speak in their low frequency slow speech, and watched
with renewed horror and fear as the large one pulled out a very large knife and
started walking slowly towards him. The little human held a smaller blade, but was
moving towards a place behind him where he knew Pitda had been similarly struck
down.

When the human swung his large blade in a horizontal sweep over
his body, it was not to kill him, as he expected, but to kill the insects that had
been feeding on him. He heard their frantic buzzing as they tried to fly away. They
couldn’t do so without disengaging their biting parts from his tough skin.

The splatter of their engorged bodies threw his own undigested
blood on the ground where he watched it stain the dirt, along with their green insect
ichor.

The human was saving him. He had actually felt the pulling of
the insect mouthparts as they tried to tear free and escape. He felt like he might
be able to move his feet slightly if he tried. If this human born of Koban dirt
waited too long, he was going to discover who was really going to inherit this world
as their true home.

He vaguely felt its unwholesome touch as it rolled him over onto
his back. The movement stimulated what circulation he had remaining, and the burning
was lessening in his lower abdomen.
Move me even more stupid human and stir my
muscles to recover faster, wait a little longer,
he thought
. I will have
you just as we had your clan mates in the marsh.

The human looked towards a nearby tree, away from him, holstered
the gun it had held in its left hand
. Another foolish move,
Sitdok decided,
as he tried to bunch his leg muscled to kick a talon-laden foot into the slow moving
animal’s soft body.

Then the creature held up the empty left hand and moved it from
side to side towards the tree, with a blunt toothed grin that looked familiar.

He had seen that expression on another human, in the marsh. Over
Stokol’s shoulder, just before that warrior’s head blew off in a bloody mush.

****

Dillon whirled around and swung the machete, his left hand joining
with the right in a high overhead arc, and saw the Krall’s eyes widen as the blade
descended, severing its head in one stroke.

He saw the legs twitch strongly; one even kicking out towards
him, indicating the creature had been on the way to recovering.

He reached down and grasped the boney crest at the top of the
head with his left hand, and held it up for Clarice to see on the camera. He stuck
the machete in the ground and waved right-handed at the camera this time. The slow-to-die
Krall continued to blink rapidly and look around as life and awareness drained from
its brain and mind.

“Done with your mighty hunter pose, Dillon?” Mirikami asked,
amused at the young man’s theatrics. “You needed to put one foot on the corpse for
full effect.” He laughed, wondering about humanity’s own capacity for cruelty.

Mirikami had rolled the other Krall over, seeing it too
could move its eyes and blink. It seemed to be cooling assessing him, and he saw
it look down along its body to see Dillon, who had just tossed away the other Krall’s
head. It looked back up at him, and seemed somehow defiant, and unafraid of its
fate.

Dillon warned him. “Tet, the other one kicked its legs when I
severed its head. I think the paralyzing effect of the toxin was wearing off. Don’t
take any chances near this one, even with the feet blown off.”

“Right. I’ll stay out of reach. He was pulling at his lower lip.

“Uh Oh. What are you considering Tet? I know that look.”

“Sooner or later that shuttle will come back here to check on
these two, to see if they lived or died, but to collect them either way. This warrior
appears to have higher status. Check out his tattoo.”

“That’s a fair amount of color. If I understand it, the red represents
a lot of dead Krall from challenges, or probably clan warfare. But what has that
started you thinking about?”

“If we leave them both here, when they come back they’ll be really
pissed, and will smell that two humans did this. I don’t want those supersensitive
noses looking too hard and too long around here.” Mirikami waved in the direction
of the buried tubes.

“OK, let’s give them a good trail to follow,” Dillon offered.
“We can head to the river, like I suggested before.”

“They will damn well catch us there and all of them might not
go after us. I think going where we still have some bobby traps will offer a better
defense.”

“You mean on the top terrace where they didn’t finish the clean
out job?”

“Yes, and I’m thinking they might be more inclined to come after
us together if they think we have one of them as our prisoner.”

“He must weigh three hundred fifty pounds! And he’ll be coming
out of his stupor at any time.” Dillon protested. “We can’t chance taking him alive
with us even if we can lift him.”

Looking at the Krall and the back plate from the claymore, he
removed a strong climbing rope he had coiled and hanging from his belt.

“I wasn’t planning on lifting him very much, more like dragging.”

Then he added, “Who said we were taking him alive?”

The curved metal plate was tied to the Krall’s back with much
of his upper body weight resting on it, hoping it would reduce friction when they
pulled him along by ropes at his knees. His hands were tied across his massive chest
to his utility and ammo belt.

Dillon was taken aback when Tet had him tie the severed head
to the dead Krall as well.

They only had about twenty feet to drag that weight on dirt and
grass, before reaching bare rock. Then the lower friction of metal on stone would
allow them to move faster. They hoped.

Getting the “dead weight” moving was tough. Almost as hard as
it had been for Mirikami to coldly turn the paralyzed Krall into that mass of dead
weight. It was done with the Krall’s own long slender “skinning” knife, driven through
the softer roof the mouth and into his brain.

He had to punch it through with hammer blows using a convenient
rock, the Krall’s leg stumps twitching.

This eliminated the messier result Dillon had achieved. In
addition, it promoted the illusion the higher status warrior could still be alive.
Mirikami had avoided looking into the Krall’s eyes as he killed him. Perfectly aware
of how weak his enemy surely considered him for despising that act of murder.

The gene mods were proving their worth, because there was no
way they could have had the energy to drag that corpse the hundred feet to the cliff
last week. Even so, they were half-exhausted.

They took a breather, sipping a warm energy drink from their
reservoir tubes, watching as the distant dot of the Krall shuttle passed repeatedly
over the jungle in an obvious search pattern.

“Well my Capy Tan,” Dillon teased, “you still think we can climb
up and drag this hunk of dead meat up that cliff by your rope?” He laughed at the
obvious absurdity of the idea now that they were almost worn out.

“It was just an idea I had when I felt so damn good at the start,”
grumbled Mirikami. “I always had a backup plan. Look at the opening, halfway to
the rock chimney. It looks wide enough to stuff him in. He’ll be out of sight if
we pile rocks and brush in front.”

“Tet, with the noses they have there is no possibility when they
follow us that they won’t find him. Then they’ll know he isn’t alive.”

“Yes, but they will be all the way over
here
by then,
well away from our people. They will know that we climbed up to at least the next
level. I believe they’ll keep coming after us. They know they destroyed our traps
on the first terrace. The blood lust should be high by then to get the humans they
know
killed two of their own.”

“You don’t think they’ll stop the hunt do you? Even with the
evidence of two of their dead laying right in front of them?”

Mirikami shook his head no. “This leader has met with more trickery
and trouble than in any human hunt here before us, and I’m sure he is feeling enormous
rage. They are supposed to get matching weapons or counter measures in their staged
clan battles and wars. To ensure no one overwhelms an opponent.”

“Hell, we are hardly about to overwhelm them Tet. We know they
have killed seven of us so far.”

“Nevertheless, in pursuit of his personal plan, Telour has permitted
us something of a weapons gap this one time. You saw the octet leader use the shuttle
lasers to hunt for us on the ridge and then use it to kill the men in the canyon.
The Krall have not used that sort of advantage before today. They always hunted
on foot or in trucks, armed with pistols, rifles, and knives. I believe right now
that this octet leader thinks his team has been cheated of their ‘glorious’ easy
victory.”

“Well, I hope I get to cheat him out his life, or of another
warrior if I have to go down today.”

“Let’s not get fatalistic, lad, we have some options to try.
But I don’t see that shuttle right now, do you?”

Dillon jumped to his feet and moved to see around some obscuring
trees. “I think it sat down.”

“We need to get going moving again. Grab your side of the line.”
Mirikami stood up.

They stuffed the corpse into the crevasse as best they could,
and simply tossed bushes over the opening. Mirikami tied Sitdok’s head to his belt,
running a loop of rope he cut through the mouth and out the neck.

“What are you doing, keeping that bloody damn head Tet? You into
souvenirs now?” Dillon chuckled.

“Did you forget that when we get up there that we can be seen
from the dome again?”

“Oh, right. You can show our proof of a kill, even if the frigging
hunters won’t stop.”

At the base of the chimney, Dillon gently uncovered the upward
facing buried mine. He inserted the safety and detached the trip wire, and let Mirikami
tie the claymore across his back with a loop of rope.

He also took the rest of the climbing rope Mirikami handed him
and started the climb in the narrow but deep split in the rock face. There were
operate made hand and foot holds that had been chipped into the rock by earlier
teams, as well as natural small ledges and cracks.

Dillon made the dangerous high gravity climb in less than twenty
minutes, and let the line down to Mirikami, only a third of the way up. The Captain
had known that he’d need help. He wasn’t overly hot, but had gone through his supply
protein bars, and was running out of fuel for his new metabolism. He didn’t know
how Dillon was managing so well.

Once on the lower terrace, he ordered Dillon to climb higher,
and make use of the devices they had left up there. He suggested that he put down
fresh scent trails and remove the mechanical trips, since they knew to watch for
those now. Triggering the actuators remotely was no longer risky if they already
knew you were there.

He told Dillon he would set up the one claymore they had recovered
in one of the lower caves, one already cleared by the Krall. What he didn’t tell
him was that he had also brought a wide flat sheet of plastic explosive, pinned
to the Smart Fabric over his chest, with a detonator in a pouch on his ammo belt
that he could insert if he was cornered. He’d try to take one of them with him if
he could.

“There’s Dillon,” Noreen shouted happily, “I knew they were OK.”

Followed instantly by consternation, “What’s he doing up on that
cliff and out of his spider hole?”

Thad had his binoculars trained on him. “He’s lowering a line,
and he had a claymore strapped on his back that he just set down. Someone else is
making the climb with him. See? He’s helping pull someone up with the line.”

“That’s most likely Tetsuo. He promised me he wouldn’t let that
young lunk head run off alone. But if the Krall didn’t find where they were buried
why did any of them bail out for the cliffs?”

“Should we broadcast and tell them the Krall landed in the Jungle?”
Noreen questioned.

“They knew that before they came out of hiding,” answered Thad.
“The camera on top of the rock can see over most of the north half of the compound
except for the valley side of the ridge. When I only saw four Krall on the ridge
top I was afraid two had stayed behind to search at ground level. Then they lasered
the poor bastards in the canyon and headed for the jungle.”