Koban Universe 1 (2 page)

Besides, she wasn’t going
hunting
; she wanted to see what sort of birds had taken up residence in the old dome, and were making those high frequency squawks. She patted the hunting knife strapped on her right calf to confirm it was secure, and started to trot towards the dome, only a quarter mile distance.

There was small brush and grass
growing in the thin layer of dirt that had blown over the wide circular landing pad pavement surrounding the dome, but no trees. Those had halted their relentless advance at the outer edge of the partly buried landing field. There was a half-mile of light teal colored grass on the open ground around the building, all that the thin soil covering would support.

As she neared the
building, even her enhanced vision didn’t reveal a great deal inside the shadows of the missing windows. Dirt and dust had partly covered the intact windows ages ago, and relatively dim light leaked through them now. Out here in the sun, her ripper vision wasn’t adapted for that interior dim light. It would adjust immediately to the lower light levels, once she was inside.

Despite the shadows, she caught sight of something small and gray, which swiftly pulled back into a darker area. It seemed to start
out moving on four limbs, and then rose up onto the rear set just as it vanished. It was a bit smaller than a wolfbat, and the brief glimpse showed it had a different body type, because there was no flight membrane stretched between the limbs.

She
suddenly pulled up short and muttered. “Huh! They left the doors open.” She had just discovered that several of the ground level doors, under the overhang of the closest garage entrance were standing ajar. No need to jump up to scramble through a broken window. The doors of every other abandoned dome on Koban had been closed against the elements, and most were even locked.

The rifle would have been no encumbrance to carry by this route, but it didn’t seem worth returning for it now. She still wasn’t going hunting.

As she neared the closest door, which was
standing open by almost two feet, she drew her .45. As her thumb pressed, and then
slid
the safety forward, the small power pack in the gun butt also chambered the first round with a soft clicking. Fast reactions or not, there was no reason not to be prepared.

In the shade
of the overhang, her eyes quickly adapted. In the dust below the doorframe was a jumble of scuffs and marks. The small looking prints were indistinct, but there had been a lot of traffic through this doorway. A dome like this, if left open, made a great den for small animals to hide from their predators. It did occur to her that a den this large might also be home for some large predators.

Looking through the gap
, there was only open floor visible, so she used one hand to push the door open wider. It pivoted on the hinges easily, without sticking or making a squeak. Krall construction used a composite form of carbon on door hinges, which appeared to be self-lubricating with a form of graphite. The ease of movement didn’t seem particularly odd. Unless perhaps the dome was old (it was), or if the doors were used far more frequently than expected.

She looked to each side and up
, before sticking her head through the opening. Nothing waiting, and even the maintenance shop here appeared more barren that she had encountered at a half dozen other old domes. The Krall were wasteful, and often left behind useful items, such as their computers (rather poor quality anyway), trucks with fusion bottle power (very sturdy), and a small amount of furniture, broken weapons, old body suit uniforms or damaged armor. None of that was evident here.

She walked through what would be a maintenance area for vehicles at most domes, or a storage area for supplies, such as ammunition or small arms. The line of tough window material, which normally lined the next wall in
side, had all been smashed, and the large wide swinging doors were torn off the hinges and piled haphazardly near a sidewall. There wasn’t enough undisturbed dirt here to leave identifiable individual tracks on the floor. There clearly was a considerable amount of traffic through the doors at times, but there wasn’t a sign of life at the moment. Not even the insects she expected to see, also unusual for as long as the place had been open to whatever wanted to enter.

Passing through a broken doorway
in the back wall, she walked along the corridor to the next set of destroyed doors, which led down a wide passage towards the large hall or auditorium that was always at the center of one of these domes. There appeared to have been some sort of fighting here, long ago, from the amount of dust accumulated on the broken windows and doors she saw on the floors. The debris had been moved to the sides, but not cleaned up, and no repairs started.

There was still no sign of another of the little gray creature
s, like the one she had seen through the third level opening earlier. She had not heard another sound, other than her own muffled movements, and the sound of wind whispering through the hallways. That air movement proved there were other openings out of here, or the breeze couldn’t flow through so continuously.

When she reached the central hall, she saw her first sig
ns of life. Or rather, there were many signs of past life. There was a disorderly pile of bones, filling almost a third of the central area’s floor, stacked three times her own height at the center. She pivoted in place, looking all around, seeing or hearing nothing alive.

The typi
cal ring of eight elevators was spaced around the wall of the hall, placed midway between each of the radial passageways that led in to here. They were all closed. There were stairways built next to each elevator. In this dome, the stairs led up, and descended down into darkness. This building apparently sat over one of the underground Krall factories, which would have once been operated by a slave race. The Krall only fought, they didn’t make anything but war, and lay eggs to make more Krall.

She stepped several feet
over to the closest bones, and saw that they were not only old but were clearly animal bones, and had been broken open to get to the marrow. None of the bones or skulls was of animals instantly recognizable to her. That wasn’t surprising, since they knew little about the animals on the island anyway.

Maggi was mystified
by the macabre display of bones. What animal would, or could, pile them up like this? Rising from the broad base of the pile, the bones at the peak would have needed to be thrown over fifty feet to reach up there. Four legged predators like a ripper, or a swamp dog, didn’t have that sort of dexterity using only jaws. A wolfbat could drop them from the air, but she was confident none lived near here. Why a predator would trash, or decorate was a better word, their den this way was another question.

As she skirted the
pile, staying near the closed elevator doors and wall, the breeze flowing from the passage she had entered by finally brought her a scent of the death all so evident, as she went halfway around the large room. The outer bones, those at the base of the pile, were old and desiccated, with little odor. As she moved downwind of the stack, the odor grew stronger. It was chillingly familiar.

She drew her
other pistol, and sought the source of the smell she recognized.

Looking higher, the evidence was
in plain sight, scattered on the topmost layers of the heap of bones. They were so mixed and jumbled that they had not registered as different from the animal bones lower down. The evidence also formed the freshest new top layers.

One
small, cracked open skull was peering at her, from where it had been tossed after the brains and flesh were stripped and eaten.

A young Krall.

It had been probably eight or nine years of age, old enough to start early warrior training, and subject to the brutal culling administered by the adult trainers. There had been no Krall trainers on Koban for twenty-three years. Furthermore, this particular dome, the only one on New Australia, had clearly been abandoned about a hundred years ago. Yet she estimated this skull was on a living creature less than a
week
ago.

Peering closer, she saw that there were
at least a hundred such small skulls amid the tangle, and a few significantly larger ones, which would correspond to a slightly older Krall of novice age. All of them having been killed and eaten, with their bones tossed here. The symmetrical pile suggested that the remains had been tossed there from every side, and the high central point was equidistance from the railings of the three rings of balconies around the hall.

She was sure the feasters had had ringside seats
as they added to the pile. There was also no doubt as to who the killers were. Feral Krall infested this island.

They would have
originally hatched from a deserted nest of probably one low status Krall female, possibly two or three, and after a century, the offspring had to be seriously inbred. The deadly but untrained aliens would grow and reproduce unchecked, and might eventually swarm over an entire continent or perhaps a whole planet if all of the landmasses were connected.

On nearly any planet but Koban, t
hey would kill and eat every animal encountered, and eventually have only each other to eat. On the larger landmasses here, the high gravity prey animals were extremely fast and tough, and their predators even more so. Feral Krall couldn’t spread very far against that competition. This isolated island might be a different case, and vulnerable to being overran.

The larger
Krall bones, literally teenagers it appeared, probably ate hatchlings when nearby game grew sparse. Any fight between a pair of older Krall would lead to a least one set of larger bones on the pile. The adults, those that survived to that stage, must have to move out in ever widening circles to hunt for diminishing prey each day. Those surviving until about eleven to twelve years old could breed with a sibling, and the females would lay clutches of as many as twenty eggs.

Maggi considered the math
and time span a moment. Proof that all of those hatchling females
didn’t
live to reproduce and find enough food, was the fact there had been
room
to even land here by this dome. If only twenty eggs (with ten females hatched, on average), had each laid twenty more eggs every twelve years, for a hundred years, the island would be hip deep with Krall. However, the survival rate of hatchlings was an unknown factor here.

Each
round of new hatchlings would fight each other, and eat anything they could find or kill, and were subject to predation from older Krall, and from Koban predators when they went outside. That must be why there were no insects in this charnel house. They were food. The smaller Krall would also have to learn to hide from the hungry larger ones, unless starving and they had the numbers to try to take a bigger one down.

T
hat figure I saw was one of the small ones
she thought
. It feared being seen by me…

“Wait.
” She interrupted her own train of thought aloud. “Even small, these are Krall! Those little shits are not afraid of
me
. Simply looking for an advantage.”

Looking at where she stood, that advantage came to her.
“Damn! I’m in the middle of their turf, alone.”

Confirmation came in
the flurry of ultrasonic sounds that her voice provoked. From the passageway she had just traversed, scrabbling taloned feet and high frequency gibberish issued forth. More of the same came from the other passageways, and some from above on the balconies. They had done what adult Krall warriors, in their arrogance of superiority, rarely did. Sprang a trap. This may be how they had killed a few of the larger Krall examples on the bone pile.

The
naked ones she suddenly saw climb on the railings were more than hatchlings, but slightly smaller than a novice warrior. These were not speaking anything that sounded like language, just making angry, competitive sounding cries, without lower frequency sounds mixed in with them. They must have learned that making low frequency sounds spooked hearing limited prey prematurely. Maggi was definitely spooked with what she
could
hear. It sounded as if there were quite a few of them.