Koban: The Mark of Koban (27 page)

“Well,
let’s get busy and help MacDougal and others like him. We need to find when, where,
and how whatever killed his brother and sister in law got inside. Then find and
kill the thing.

****

Mirikami
was enjoying a rare relaxing day away from decision-making, drinking Death Lime
juice under a shade awning on a hillock, next to a sweet smelling grove of
everblue fir trees. Vince and he were simply talking about how beautiful this
dangerous world was.

Maggi and
Sarah were discussing the imported plants the Krall had brought for the
Raspani. They were curious as to the reasons behind the consideration this
appeared to imply on behalf of the Krall. They were a race that never showed
concern for even other Krall.

Deciding
to pull the men’s conversation into something more productive than pure
appreciation of nature, Maggi asked Mirikami his thoughts on the two species of
plants.

“Sarah informs
me there are two vitamins and an enzyme in the green fern plants that is
missing from Koban plants, which the Raspani need for vigor and improved health.
The Raspani need this to thrive, but it isn’t essential. We both can see the
Krall motive for furnishing the plant if they want faster growth and healthy
stock. Otherwise we doubt they would have bothered.”

Mirikami
agreed. “I’d say Krall efficiency is at work there. More meat for the harvest,
with no care for the actual well-being of the Raspani. What have you learned about
the plant that’s red colored? Is it from somewhere else on Koban or imported
from off world?”

“It shares
many matching genetic markers with the green fern, proving they both originated
on the same world.” Sarah told him.

Maggi noted,
“The red leaves may actually find some use in cooking for us. It’s safe for
humans to eat, if you can tolerate the heat. The coloration provides fair
warning.”

“Excuse
me? Heat?”

Sarah smiled.
“Spice, not temperature Commander. It contains a compound very similar to the
capsaicinoids in some Earth chili
peppers. The Raspani appear to enjoy eating it, but we’ve found nothing present
in them that appears unique nutritionally, or lacking on Koban. Therefore, it
must be a flavor of their home world. Not a flavor they crave constantly, but
they appear to enjoy it in moderation.”

“First
of all Sarah, please drop the Commander title, I beg you. I’m simply Tet.”

“Tet,
you are nothing simple, but I’ll remember. I’m interested in your thoughts as
to why the Krall might have brought the pepper plant here. You must admit, you
have had some success in figuring out Krall thinking and motivations.”

“Perhaps
I’ve had some luck in doing that Sarah, but I always assume anything the Krall
do has some self-serving motivation at its root. The plant can’t just be for
giving the Raspani pleasure, or it probably would be something for them that’s
equivalent to sugar, or work like an addictive drug does for humans. The
Raspani don’t crave the flavor if they eat it in moderation.

“You
have to ask yourself, what use did the Krall have for keeping the Raspani alive?
The answer is they use them for food. The green plant helps increase the health
and quantity of that food. Perhaps the red pepper is for quality?”

“How
would the plant help that?” asked Vince. “A cooking spice?”

“The
Krall like their meat fresh and raw, or dried as jerky when in the field. I can’t
see a Krall carrying spice leaves around and a cook pot, can you?”

“Then
how do you think they use the plant?” Sarah wanted to know.

“You’ve
heard the phrase ‘you are what you eat’ haven’t you? I suspect they feed it to
the Raspani for the flavor it
imbues
in their flesh.”

Maggi
asked Sarah a couple of questions. “You say they don’t eat a lot of this plant.
Is the spice extremely concentrated?”

“No.
less so than the ground peppers we compared it against.”

Mirikami
thought a moment, tapping his lip. “I saw some pens inside the airlock
building, apparently for holding the Raspani before slaughter. Are there
feeding and water troughs there? A hungry Raspani might eat whatever it’s given,
if held long enough. The Krall complained more than once that humans don’t
taste good, that we’re too bland. This may be what spices up the flavor for
them.”

“I think
you could be right,” agreed Vince. “The pens you noticed hold exactly eight
Raspani, the Krall’s favorite number. We saw that there were curious bracket mechanisms
that could lock on and hold each of the Raspani with the upper torso forced
down over the troughs. They could have forced them the spice as long as they
wanted. Damn them.”

“That’s
our compassionate enemy for you Vince. When we have the improved communications
installed, Jake can listen to and observe the Raspani. He might find out how
much language they retain. We may discover what they still know.”

****

Noreen
took the shuttle up over the Hub City dome in a hover a few thousand feet
overhead, to allow Dillon and Thad to open both rear hatches to calibrate their
helmet displays, IR sensors, and adjust camera zoom.

Over the
suit radio, on a shared frequency with the shuttle, Thad pointed out a recent
rutted trail.

“To the
north, there’s a double path through the grass and muddy patches. Looks like
wheel tracks. Could be from a truck going out and returning. There’s been no
rain in the last couple of weeks, since the snow melted, so they could have
been made at any time since then. I think we should see if they lead to a
gate.”

Noreen
followed the tracks at a modest pace, to keep the slipstream low around the
raised hatch doors. The tracks wavered around terrain obstacles, such as hills
or sporadic growths of trees and bushes, but maintained a northerly path right
up to one of the compound’s gates.

Noreen set
down well away from the tracks and gate, to avoid disturbing the scene, in case
there was useful detailed information up close.

The gate
used the airlock principle, with two hinged gates at each end of a thirty-foot
corridor extending out into the savanna.  The wire tunnel formed of closely
strung parallel heavy wires stretched between gray metal frameworks.  Those
frames were insulated from the ground by a few inches.

The Krall
had high voltage applied to the entire metal assembly. The procedure was to disarm
the gate assembly by throwing a manual switch that bypassed the current, and
open the inner gate. Drive into the protected wire tunnel, close that gate
behind you, open the outer gate and drive out. Stop and close the outer gate,
reapply the electrical power to the whole assembly via a switch outside, and just
drive away.

However,
there was nothing that prevented you from leaving both gates open, or to leave
the power off.

To prevent
plant growth from contacting the electrified gate, there was a wide paved area
under everything. Time and winds had placed a layer of dust and blown detritus
that accumulated on the paved surface.

Dillon,
first to arrive at the gate, could see two sets of truck tracks went through.
However, there were also dainty looking small hoof prints leading into the
compound, some obliterated by the truck tracks that had returned, passing over
the hoof prints and the outgoing set of wheel impressions.

“Thad,
whoever went out and back must have left the gate open long enough for these
gazelle hoof prints to be put down.”

His fellow
hunter was at the closed switch box on the wall, which he opened and glanced at
the single small light inside. “The power is on now, so it’s just as Tet
supposed. Someone left the gate open for a period of time, letting in the
gazelles, and certainly something that must have been stalking them.”

A more
experienced tracker, Thad came over closer to the fencing, Noreen and Marlyn were
curious but staying well back, their pistols out, looking around nervously.

Thad pointed,
“Look at the smeared dried mud on the right side, by the fence, like something
slipped and fell into the wire. Is that a print next to it?” He closed his
faceplate to access the helmet’s video display, and zoomed in on the dried
print he’d noticed in the hardened mud.

Dillon did
the same. “Wow. That’s a panther or ripper print, I think.”

With
assurance, Thad said, “It’s from a ripper. See those deep indentations in the
mud? Two inches in front of each toe. That’s from its extended claws, and they
are two inches out from the toes and too deep for a panther, which is smaller.
That isn’t as large a print as a full grown male’s, but it could be from a
young male, or a female.”

Because
they had closed their faceplates, and not switched on their external speakers,
the two women hadn’t heard that chilling pronouncement.

As they
turned back to the Ladies and opened their faceplates, Marlyn asked, “Aren’t
you two Boy Scouts going to pick up a piece of poop to taste, just to tell us
female yokels what the gazelle’s had for dinner?”

Noreen
snickered, and even Dillon couldn’t suppress a laugh. Thad smiled
appreciatively at the joke, but he was busy scanning the area, his hand on his
slung rifle. “Let’s get into the shuttle folks, right now. We have a bad kitty
somewhere around here.”

That
sobered the mood up quickly, and they hustled back inside the shuttle, watching
the two hatches close, with weapons at the ready. They had already seen how
easily a ripper could handle even armed humans.

Noreen got
them airborne and started a search pattern, while Thad radioed Mirikami.

“Tet, you were
right. A ripper got in last week when someone drove out and back in a truck,
carelessly leaving both gates open at once. A number of gazelles came through, perhaps
running from the ripper, because one of them fell and slid on mud into the unpowered
fence. The ripper left a print on top of the gazelle’s slip and slide streaks.
We’ve started a search for a possible den, but it isn’t going to be active
much, with so little game to hunt. Are you safe out there with the Raspani? How
sturdy is that enclosure?”

“Thad, the
Raspani haven’t been attacked, because Vince and Sarah keep a head count. Let
me ask them about the tent material.” They could hear him talking in the
background, mouth away from his handset. He was back quickly.

“Vince
tested the material and it’s far stronger that our Smart Fabric, and much
stiffer on the sides, more so than what you see draped from the poles as a roof.
We’ll confirm the top material is just as strong, in case the ripper climbed up
to try to enter.”

“Just be
careful. The two people it took will only feed it for so just long. Then it
will be after the easiest prey again. Will you warn Hub City? I don’t think it
should be through the Governor. She won’t want to talk to any of us right now,
or ever again possibly. We’ll explain later.

“We met MacDougal
just after you left with Vince, and he’s a decent sort and no fan of Cahill’s.
He won’t side with us on genetics, but he’s friendly. See if you can reach him.
Be delicate in your ripper warning. The two people the ripper killed were
family for him. A brother and his wife.”

“So.
That
explains his contacting me, despite Cahill’s objections. I’ll find him, even if
we have to go into the dome looking. Keep me updated on your search.”

“Will do,
Tet. Out.”

Noreen,
waiting for the call to finish, asked, “What sort of den do rippers use? What
am I looking for, Thad?”

“The
prides I’ve seen from the air near Prime City gathered in groups on the open plains
during breezy or cloudy days or under trees if it’s hot and sunny. I think they
used some shallow caves or shady rock ledges farther north. I don’t know what
they do at night, besides hunt sometimes. It’s hard to get very knowledgeable
of animals we can’t go near.”

“I’m about
to pass over a group of low trees and bushes. Do you boys think your IR sensors
would pick out a heat source under that?”

“It
should, and I guess we need to look at them all. Dillon, you take the right
side I’ll cover left. Let’s pop the hatches open. We might be doing this for
hours, if not days.”

That
proved to be a prediction for boredom, as there were a thousand such places to
check, even with the Raspani enclosure cutting down the search area. After
several hours, Dillon’s helmet sensors highlighted an icon’s heat signature
right out on the open grassland. He quickly switched to normal vision and
zoomed in on the spot in tracking mode, to compensate for their movement
towards the next grove of trees.