Koban: The Mark of Koban (16 page)

****

The Tanga Clanship performed a White Out three hundred
twelve miles above the planet, already in stealth mode (other than for the
unavoidable gamma ray burst). It promptly vectored away from its reentry point,
moving around the planet as it released thirty-two stealthy single ships.

Parkoda wasn’t at all concerned with detection or attack on
the Clanship. It was merely his desire to disperse his warriors efficiently, to
allow them to land covertly and conceal their small ships close to population
centers. This way he wouldn’t have to spend much time recovering as many
warriors with a shuttle, assuming the prey discovered the craft while their
operators were away raiding. Before the Clanship departed, it would blast unrecovered
single ships of any dead warriors.

The gamma rays were detected, of course, but this didn’t
generate a planet wide alarm when no radar returns were seen. The Clanship’s unique
arrival burst characteristics; previously measured at Gribbles’ Nook, were not
yet part of Bollovstic’s Traffic Control Center database, so they ignored the
presumed anomaly.

The local government was aware of the Krall threat, but they
were well down the list for Hub assistance as a nonmember of the Planetary
Union. Something they would soon reconsider.

This predominantly agricultural world, once considered
definitely in the Rim category, was now flirting with Hub respectability, as
other settled planets in the region became New Colony members. Their closest
neighbor and frequent trading partner, Poldark, had joined the Planetary Union
recently.

Most of the single ships settled into the forests and hills
near larger hamlets and villages of the more established agricultural regions. A
few ships decided to accept the challenge of landings on the outskirts of the
largest cities.

The novices had no mastery of Standard, and nothing to say
to their prey if they did. The warriors concealed their ships and started their
hunts. Their raid leader had told them that the humans would be unarmed, and
not expecting this raid. Their mission was to terrorize humans and to remind
them that such raids would continue, taking place at random times and places,
and would gradually increase in intensity and duration.

The novice warrior, Potok, had never smelled a human, but
had seen them in recordings. In twilight on the continent where she landed, she
was near an apparent human nest, much like those their slave race of Pradas
made in agricultural regions. She scented multiple animal smells, but was
unable to determine which odor might be from a human. Having followed one scent
through a field, and passing a pile of warm
feces
along that trail,
she decided it was probably not from a human. Unless humans behaved more like
Krall grazing meat animals than she expected.

Her superb hearing picked up multiple sounds from a large
red building. The big double doors were closed, and there were no windows. She
dashed to the side of the building at a corner near the doors. The structure
appeared to be made of woody native material, probably from the local trees. It
was coated with some thin artificial surface, which an extended talon scraped
away to show it was the source of the red coloration, with amber fibrous wood
underneath.

The wood had been applied in long parallel slabs that did
not feel very strong. Up close, the sounds were much louder from inside, but it
was impossible to tell if it was a spoken alien language. There were clearly
multiple speakers.

Through slender cracks between slabs of wood, she could see
into a darkened interior, where there was movement. She also noted that the
slabs were less thick than the base of her talons. She was confident she could
break through the wall with ease, and avoid any possible trap that might wait
behind the double doors. Parkoda had cautioned them that humans preferred
trickery to direct combat.

Her mind made up, Potok drew her two pistols in a blur,
armor piercing shells in one, explosive rounds in the other, and rammed a
shoulder into the thin wall, which gave way with a crash. She rolled into the
building on the floor, firing at every startled cry and movement she detected. Realizing
she was surrounded she fired indiscriminately at every target, reloading
rapidly. They apparently had been waiting in small compartments to each side,
hiding as they waited for her to enter by the double doors.

The screams of the dying and wounded was thrilling to her
ears, as her dark vision completed its couple of seconds of adjustment. She had
fired and reloaded several times, and gory death surrounded her.

With her eyes now adapted, she rose to her feet. Looking
around, she didn’t see any mangled forms that resembled the images she had seen
of humans. There were large and medium four legged animals blown apart and
bleeding in stalls on each side of the aisle leading from the double doors. She
had just managed to heroically, and single handedly, kill all of the human’s unarmed
livestock. She was alone, so no other Krall had seen her humiliation, requiring
a Death Challenge to silence.

Nikola
Milankovitch
, his wife Vlada,
and their daughter Mira were about to sit down to dinner when the explosions
and animal screams from their cows, pigs, and goats erupted from the direction
of the barn. He quickly ran to a front window as he flicked off the lights. He
couldn’t see anything unusual for a moment, until he saw splinters fly from
some of the planks on the barn. Ragged holes appeared in the boards, and animal
squeals and screams accompanied the explosions. All of the chaos clearly came
from the barn. There was a whooshing sound just before each of the blasts.

Nikola frantically shushed the questions of his wife and
daughter. Whoever was in the barn was obviously heavily armed and slaughtering
their livestock. It seemed self-evident the house could be next.

This particular continent of Bollovstic was subject to rapid
moving weather fronts, with warm moist air mixing with colder air, much like
the North American plains on Earth. Tornadoes and fierce thunderstorms were
relatively frequent, and most farmhouses had storm cellars.

Nikola kicked the rug away from a trap door and raised the
hinged lid over the narrow stairway. He had to shush Vlada and Mira again,
pushing them to descend as quickly as possible.

“Hurry and be absolutely silent,” he instructed them. He
bent to kiss them as they stood on the stairway. “Go down now, make no sound or
turn on any light. The glow might be seen through the floor boards.”

“Nikola, get down here with us,” his wife said, in a hushed
but louder than-a-whisper tone.

“No, whoever shot our animals will know someone is here, our
lights were on before. I will put the rug over the trap door, and move the
table to hold it down. You must guard Mira. Don’t let her cry.” Their daughter
was only eight years old. Giving his wife her protective duty, he knew she
would obey without further objection.

Blowing them a final kiss, he lowered the door, quickly pulled
the rug over it, and lifted the heavy table in a display of adrenaline driven
strength to place it on the rug. He had placed just two chairs at the table
before his repeated glances through the twilight lit window caused his heart to
freeze.

A nearly two meter tall apparition came out of the barn, not
through the doors, but through a sidewall, in a spray of shattered planks. He
knew instantly from the Tri-Vid images at the community hall that this was one
of the aliens they called a Krall. They had one defining characteristic; they
killed any human they encountered, no hesitation, and no mercy.

Nikola knew what he had to do for his family. He pulled the
loaded crossbow from over the doorframe and pulled on the long lever that drew
back the carbon fiber chord. Locking and cocking the chord in place, he made
sure he positioned the bolt properly. He had other bolts, but he knew this was
a one shot opportunity.

He cursed Hub laws that had forbidden manufacture of
firearms. They were changing that law he had heard, but it wouldn’t help him
now. Holding the crossbow in his left hand, he picked up the long handled ax
he’d left by the fireplace with his right. Having seen the creature burst
through the side of the barn, he didn’t expect it to do that to the heavy
insulating log timbers of the house, but the windows and doors would be no
barriers.

He backed into a corner between two windows, with a view of
the front and side door of the living and dining room combination. He would
hear if it came through a window of a bedroom or the back door of the storage
room. It certainly hadn’t been using a subtle quiet approach so far.

His aim just happened to be towards the window and front
door to his left when the glass exploded inwards, and a massive body came
through firing its weapons. Fortunately, it focused first on the jacket laden coat
rack, also to the left of the door, so it wasn’t looking his way. He pulled the
crossbow trigger almost by accident, startled by the shattering window and
frame. He instantly started swinging the ax towards the beast as its feet hit
the floor, and he took a step towards the thing.

The crossbow bolt struck the alien in the side rather than
the back it had presented to him when he pulled the trigger. The Krall had
started twisting in midair as soon as the bolt had left the grove, as if it had
heard the nearly silent weapon. Nikola let loose of the swinging ax just as the
first armor-penetrating round passed through his lower rib cage. The projectile
passed easily through his body and out his back, but he continued his step
towards his killer, right arm out stretched towards the Krall. He raised the
crossbow as a club in his left hand.

The next three rounds of explosive and armor piercing shells
ended Nikola’s further participation in the fight, as his head and chest
exploded messily. He didn’t live to see the ax cleave the deployed left ear
from the side of the Krall’s head, as she was unable to turn away as she fell
to the floor.

Potok rolled to her feet with a springing graceful motion,
and whirled around to cover the rest of the room, which was clearly empty. A
rapid search of the few other rooms showed the house to be empty of humans. She
now had time to pull the bolt from her side, and the three-inch deep wound
promptly sealed itself, and the bleeding stopped as the punctured lobe of that
part of her multiple lungs shut down.

The more embarrassing wound, the loss of her ultrasonic left
ear, wasn’t particularly debilitating, but it would be obvious when she
returned from the raid. Parkoda would ask why she had extended her high
frequency internal ears when attacking humans. The raid leader had briefed them
that only the Krall had ultrasonic conversation to overhear, the humans being
mute in that frequency range.

The bleeding by her ear also ended quickly, but her left
side hearing was now impaired. Angry that she had “killed” the threatening
looking clothing rack first as she crashed through the window, she knew that
had allowed this slow moving creature to injure her twice before she made the
kill. She would have to rush to a population center quickly to score more kills
after this personal fiasco. She dove out of the same window she used for her
entry, unaware of the two “kills” she left behind, right under her feet. The
dead human had beaten her a third time.

****

Humans sighted two of the landing single ships, despite the
silvery reflective coating that made them difficult to spot in the daytime sky.

Goran
Milošević
saw a small reflective ship descend into the canyon on the other side of the
ridge he was prospecting. That was where his nearly played out gold mine was
located. He was searching for a continuation of the gold bearing vein on the
other side of the ridge. His first thought was of a claim jumper, so he was
cautious as he climbed to the top of the ridge, careful to avoid outlining
himself against the clear blue sky.

Peering
around the rocks and bushes at the top, he couldn’t see any sign of the small
silvery ship, which he estimated was only thirty feet long, and perhaps five or
six feet in diameter. However, he easily caught sight of the large red-gray man
shaped demon in a black body suit. It was rushing recklessly through the tough
scratchy brush at the bottom of the little valley, moving in the direction of Kragujevac,
the town where he sold his gold and bought supplies.

Fearful,
Goran waited long after the demon had disappeared, passing around the bend at
the end of the rocky canyon. Nevertheless, when he didn’t see another demon,
and that one wasn’t apparently coming back right away, he wanted to see if his
one-man mine was untouched and the entrance still concealed.

Cautiously,
he made his way down the familiar but steep sides of the canyon, where he had
prospected for several years. He kept the location of his mine secret, even
though he had a claim that included this valley and the next, where he had been
prospecting today. Claim or not, he stockpiled his gold nuggets and dust until
he could make a quick foray into the town five miles away. He knew of people
that would rob him if they knew exactly where he hid his hard-earned wealth.

When he grew close to the concealed mine opening, he
immediately recognized that the covering dead brush had been disturbed. It was over
the opening, but not in a natural arrangement like similar dead brush dotting
the hillsides. Goran had carried the tailings away by hand for years, to keep
his mine’s location secret, but the dead brush was vital to hide the color
changes and the opening itself.

The demon had replaced the brush in a clumsy imitation of
the cunning way he had protected his mine for years. However, this wasn’t
Goran’s main concern. Was his gold cache safe? He rushed down the rest of the
slope and proceeded past his small cabin inside a dense grove of trees, built
next to the small creek he used for water. The rickety cabin had been smashed
open on one side, rather than at the only door. Again, he was concerned, but
this wasn’t what he was so desperate to see.