Koban (86 page)

They walked closer to the bottom of the ramp, and urged everyone
to hurry, and even try to take additional steps up despite the gravity, to get back
inside faster.

Willfem was wishing she also had brought some explosive rounds,
but who would have used those for wolfbats or skeeters? Then for some unexplained
reason she had also felt an urge to bring soft nose slugs and armor piercing rounds,
useless for skeeters. There was no explaining the irrational side of fear.

****

Telror, watching from the concealment of a dead flying thing
saw more prey coming out of the large flying thing than the whole pride could carry
home tonight. She didn’t know how many pride mates Rasha could quickly gather by
calling them to a hunt. She would have to wait for the pride members at the opening,
to explain that the killing vines were dead.

Then she heard loud calls from around the side of the dome, and
recognized it as similar to the lower sounding calls she could hear between the
prey animals she was watching.

Then the prey abruptly changed their pattern of movement. The
two not-life things carried some of the prey away towards the large den, as they
had done before while she watched. However, the prey below the flying thing began
to crowd close together, much like a threatened herd on the savanna.

Some were climbing back up to the flying thing, not in a panic
but they were clearly wary now, frequently looking out into the dark. She was undecided
what to do for a moment, because other prey was still descending to the ground in
that odd smooth motion where their back legs did not move.

One of the two creatures Telror recognized as sentinels or heard
leaders, raised two of the small stinging sticks it had hanging at its sides. It
handed one to the second sentinel, making small calls, and looked to the north.
Several of the not-life things leaving the den turned away, going back to their
den empty. Combined with the loud call from the den and the change in direction
of movement, the raising of stinger sticks signified a readiness to defend the herd.

Her eyes and ears told her that none of the small bloodsucker
insects was near. The prey did not normally hide when the insects flew close. This
time she knew her prey was alert to a threat they considered more serious.

It couldn’t be her presence causing the alarm; she was downwind
and had not moved for a long time. None of the prey even looked directly in her
direction. The two with stingers faced north, the direction from which her pride
mates were coming. They should be here soon. These clever animals must have sentinels
on the top of their den watching for threats. Her pride mates would be coming with
haste, using Rasha’s images of the trail. They must have been seen from the higher
ground, despite the darkness. The prey would soon escape into their den or flying
things.

She had to act alone or there would be no successful hunt here
tonight. She moved low to the ground from her concealment, her belly touching the
hard flat rock, keeping her claws retracted to avoid the sound of scratching or
clicking. She wanted to close the distance silently, so when her charge came she
would not be seen before she could strike and kill her first targets, the
sentinels.

****

Using old cameras salvaged from wrecked ships, Jake had been
given fiber optic “eyes” to watch out over each of the four entrances this week.
Flashing an infrared image on the main screen, Jake spoke in his normal tone, “An
image like that of the suspected predators is slowly approaching the Pink Nebula
from one hundred thirty feet west. It…”

Mirikami interrupted with “Link to all,” without waiting he shouted
“To your left Nan! A ripper is a hundred feet out from the Nebula, about to rush
you!”

He had taken in the screen image at a glance and knew as he spoke
it would not be enough warning. Through the Link, he heard Nan shout to Johnfem
and watched her image turn to her left, and the ripper instantly turned into a blur
of movement.

****

Telror knew the instant the sentinel snapped its head around
in her direction, even before it called its warning, that her slinking silent approach
had been detected. With no cover ahead or to either side she could only charge,
retreat was not a consideration.

As the alerted sentinel moved to point the stinger stick her
way, in slow motion, it finally flashed. Telror had watched the movement, and judged
her bounds and timing so that as the stick finally pointed her direction, she leaped
up and slightly to her right. The illuminated trail through the air of the rocket-propelled
slug was visible as it passed below her to the left, even missing where she would
have been without the leap. She twisted her body slightly in midair to land ready
to leap in a different direction.

It was a good decision, because both sentinels flashed their
sticks towards where she landed, the stings passing close behind just after she
had immediately leaped away to her left. That precision was odd because they did
not appear to have good night vision. The bloodsuckers always came very close before
the small lights revealed them.

She realized,
the
lights, of course!
How careless
she had been. She had instinctively positioned herself so the half moon’s light
was behind her would not reflect from her eyes toward them, but she had over looked
the lights the prey used to see in the dark. She was running directly at those bright
lights, like small moons to reflect back at her prey. None of the pride’s night
prey had anything but moon light to see by.

The sentinels were smart enough to aim stings where her eye glow
told them she would be. It was a simple solution. Close her eyes for three bounds.
Then she would be too close for them to adjust when her eyes reopened. One last
look as she formed a memory image of the flat wide open surface, and where her targets
were standing.

Before she touched down on her soft footpads, she had her eyes
shut and claws retracted again to make no clicks. She instantly made her next leap
blind, but in a northerly direction that would take her into the shadow made by
the flying thing from their lights. In two leaps, she would turn to face them. No
bright eye reflections then.

****

Willfem knew she had been too slow the first shot, but yelled
for Johnfem to aim for the eyes. The ghostly green fire marked the bounding predator’s
position as it shifted direction. They both fired where they observed the two glows
descend, but misjudged the timing due to the higher gravity and faster drop. The
green glow had rapidly lifted even as they pulled their triggers.

Adjusting her aim and trying to estimate where the next arc would
land, Willfem was trying to predict a point in front of the leap when the double
glows winked out. This wasn’t like the brief quick eye blinks from before, now they
simply disappeared. She fired where she had hoped it had landed, but now only faced
darkness with the ship’s floodlights behind her, providing a perfect silhouette
of her.

“Back up, get under the lights she yelled,” scuttling in reverse
herself, firing randomly near where she had last seen those burning eyes.

The two women bumped into the back of the cluster of people at
the edge of the now fully panicked crowd trying to go back up the escalator’s right
side.

Those trying to return to the ship were colliding with people
being steadily fed down on the left side, some being knocked down, dragging down
others as they fought to avoid falling in the high gravity.

Suddenly a huge dark powerful form leaped out of blackness from
an unexpected direction, from the shadows of the ship. Willfem screamed a warning
as she fell to her left and raised her right arm to fire at the suddenly revealed
gapping maw.

The beast rolled to the side as she pulled the trigger, grazing
the ripper’s right rib cage. A mighty slap of a huge clawed paw knocked the gun
flying and broke her right arm as the claws tore her flesh to the bone. The cat
turned its head in passing and two inch fangs in massive jaws crunched into the
skull of Johnfem, jerking her off her feet into the air and killing her instantly.

Releasing the head of the dead sentinel, Telror had no time to
savor the killing experience of that prey. She landed and instantly pushed up with
her front legs and spun around to leap back over the sentinel that had stung her
side. She looked down into the frightened eyes of the animal, and felt its uninjured
front paw shove up at her neck in a futile attempt to push her away. It touched
her frill in the process.

The wonderful terror and pain of this new prey suffused her mind,
with an undertone of regret that it had not killed her attacker and that it would
not live to see her “people” defeat the pride.
Her People?
The mental sensation
was the way Telror’s pride mates thought of themselves and each other. She had never
sensed this in any prey.

Shaking her head in annoyance at her hesitation, she opened her
jaws and crushed the life out of this prey. The last images Telror sensed from it,
its paw still gripping her tough frill, were of pain of course, but also acceptance
of its death and surprise as it experienced the mind of her killer.

With a shock, she realized that she had sensed the prey was a
female, something she couldn’t have known about this unknown species, and that the
prey in turn had sensed that Telror was also female before it died.

That mutual mental awareness had never happened with any prey
she had hunted. Her people could sense the minds of their prey when their frills
were in contact with a kill, but only other lessor “people,” smaller hunters distantly
related to the pride had ever sensed them in return. Moreover, these other rarely
encountered competing hunters had their own frills. There was no frill on these
animals.

Her disorientation lasted but a couple of seconds, but that was
a huge amount of time by the standards of her normal perception of events. Looking
at the other screaming prey climbing over one another in a desperate attempt to
return to the safety of their flying thing, she knew she could easily kill them
all. However, wanton killing, no matter how pleasurable the kill itself is, was
wasteful of prey and forbidden by her people. Without pride mates to carry the meat
home, she could only carry the two she’d brought down.

She raised her head to the half-moon and the night sky and roared
a signal to the pride mates she knew must be coming. Up until now, her stalk and
charge had been mostly silent, with only low snarls and growls as she had made the
final leap. The prey all screamed as one at the terrible roar.

Seemingly impossible, their screams increased when her call to
come to the kill was answered, a short distance away out of the darkness by multiple
answering roars. One particularly loud and deep reply told Telror that Haktor, a
young new male that had recently joined the pride was coming. Hearing six separate
voices, she knew they could carry much more meat home.

With pleasure at the chance to impress this new male and potential
mate, Telror turned towards the terrified prey. She pounced on them, using only
her claws to kill by tearing out throats or opening the abdomens to release intestines.
For some reason she was reluctant to use her jaws, unconsciously preventing frill
contact. She killed exactly six more, though she could have easily killed more of
the essentially defenseless animals.

As she expected, her six pride mates arrived just as she politely
drew back to allow them to make their own kills. Quickly assessing the kills Telror
had made, the rest of the rippers killed one prey each, although some collateral
injuries could prove fatal for the slow fragile prey.

****

Watching in frantic horror on the bridge screen, Mirikami, Noreen,
and Maggi saw fourteen humans slaughtered in less than two minutes, one a close
friend.

There were at least thirty people still alive outside the Nebula,
perhaps a dozen were part of the way up the ramp clawing and climbing their way
over one another in their panic to get to the top faster, but actually slowing their
progress. There was no doubt the rippers could kill them all easily. It appeared
several people had fallen or been pushed from the boarding ramp, which might also
prove fatal if they had fallen far or landed badly.

Mirikami had been calling and pleading for rifle squads to step
out under the north garage overhang and fire at the rippers. The distance was over
a quarter mile, but the slugs would still be lethal if not accurate. Driving the
pride away was the only way he could see to save the passengers from being torn
apart.

Except for two Stewards that had been driving two of the eight
trucks assigned to the Pink Nebula, no one else went outside to try to drive the
rippers away. The firing was ineffective because the rippers were in among the people
the shooters were trying to protect, so they fired high, hoping the noise would
drive them off.

He privately cursed the other people at the north entrance for
their inaction, but after seeing the ripper’s speed and cunning, he understood the
fear of drawing attention to one’s self. It was dark out there and an unknown number
of rippers might be coming from other directions, despite his assurance that there
were no others. After all, the first one had been unseen until it attacked.

He hadn’t yet had time to absorb the loss of his friend and crewmate.
Noreen had screamed a pointless warning when she saw the huge cat shifting direction
on the infrared image. Then it burst out into the flood lit area at the base of
the ramp and knocked Nan down. They had assumed Nan died instantly, as clearly had
Captain Johnfem from its jaws as it leaped past them.