Koban 4: Shattered Worlds (15 page)

The plastic design elements could be formed, reshaped, or made to flatten into the floor by computer commands in minutes, through the web of built in command lines, most of it powered by solar energy. Solar powered provided enough energy, of course, if the homeowner didn’t want to rearrange furniture in the rooms too often in a single day. Batteries would last through the nights and most cloudy days, and a generator could be employed.

All of the initial homes built here would be uniformly white on the outside, and have well insulated hollow walls and double paned windows. They were designed to reflect summer heat away and to keep the insides cooler. Haven was a bit closer to the local sun than was Koban, with a more circular orbit and less of an axial tilt. The planet had little in the way of severe weather, and very mild winters.

Nearly ninety percent of the original twenty four thousand Hub City residents had elected to move to Haven when they could. Twelve percent of those citizens had never accepted any gene modifications at all, and this move was a godsend for them, to escape the gravity, and the confines of the former Krall compounds. Even if rippers and wolfbats no longer threatened humans, there were ample threats on Koban for which no truce was possible. Eighteen to twenty-four inch wingspan scorpion skeeters went after any warm-blooded life they found. A rhinolo turned anything bipedal into trampled and gored mush when they caught a Normal human on foot. Even goat sized horned antelope could kill a Normal.

Those people could be a lot more
normal
on Haven, as in the sense of an ordinary human, even though there were still animal threats, like the packs of werewolves and marsh dogs, the solitary giant wolverines, and other manageable dangers. However, none of the animals was a superfast, ultra-strong creature that could kill you with a lightening move before you knew you were even threatened. Last month on Koban a Hub City woman, seeing a skinny looking migrating marshland dagger bird for the first time, had walked closer to see the beautiful creature. Without marshlands around Hub City, the gorgeous blue and green iridescent feathered bird was unfamiliar, and seemed fragile and approachable. Had the woman known the animal was called a dagger bird, the name might have instilled greater caution, and thus saved her left eye. It barely missed penetrating her brain with its long bill.

Of the approximately twenty-four thousand original Hub City captives, roughly two thousand nine hundred had refused any genetic mods at all. However, in a sort of self-delusional attitude, nearly nineteen thousand original Hub City residents had succumbed to the pressures of living on Koban. They had opted to receive the minimal modifications required to bear children and to move around easier. They had opted to receive the old strength and endurance clone mods, based only on human DNA. Their argument, if they were confronted with legal penalties based on Hub laws, would be that they were outside of Human Space, and that it was a matter of basic survival.

Of the remaining original captives that had moved to Hub City, those citizens became fully modified Kobani, and so did the majority of all of the nearly five thousand children that were born there. The children had not been raised with the stigma against human genetic changes. That taboo was ancient history to them, born of a culture they had never experienced firsthand. Recognizing the obvious benefits of the changes for living on Koban, they nearly all chose the mods. Besides, their parents didn’t want them to do it, so of course they did it anyway. At eighteen, they didn’t need their permission.

MacDougal had not been mayor of Hub City for almost a year. However, he still held considerable influence, he fostered cooperation with Prime City, and had developed a friendship with leaders there. When he offered to help build the first human built settlement on Haven, to be performed entirely by Hub City residents, he sweetened the proposal by suggesting that it be built next to the new Raspani open compound, and near a new Prada village.

They would help with building the eventual Raspani housing, when more of them were sentient, and protect the less-than-intelligent herd members until they received their mind enhancers. Working with these two species would help solidify future relations. The Prada, now recognizing that the return of sentient minds to the Raspani made them the elder species, over that of the Krall, were eager to cooperate.

The Raspani encouraged the Prada to be independent, and to rely less on guidance from an elder race. Nevertheless, they asked that they be more accepting of human participation in their construction projects. Maggi, via a Mind Tap discussion with Blue, learned that the inducement was that a youngling human species would benefit from the wisdom of the elder Prada, and that they were obligated to pass on their wisdom, as the Raspani would also do them. He explained they were hoping to wean the Prada from blind acceptance of any other race’s orders.

Stewart removed his soft suit, and joined the others in loading plastic ingots and pellets into the various hoppers on the extruder. Within an hour, they had the extruder pouring out floor slabs, with previously programed design features built into them. They laid parallel ten-foot wide strips, each the length of a one family housing unit, until they had the basic floor area laid out, each strip commanded to join the adjacent one, to form an unbroken thick floor slab.

Stewart, following Mind Tap learned instructions from a man that had done this type of work decades ago, had rotated the extrusion slit to vertical, and was about to form inner walls and doors, working their way out to the outside edges to finish the basic house frame.

Suddenly, there was the loud sound of Raspani squealing from their adjacent compound, many of them at once. He’d never heard their version of screaming, but it seemed to have that same quality of panic to him.

Slapping off the machine’s power, he ran for his nearby rifle, calling for some of the other workers to follow him. “Jack, Winona, grab your guns. Something’s happening in the Raspani enclosure.”

He slung his automatic rifle’s strap over his shoulder, and in fifty feet reached the heavy plastic mesh that formed the fifteen-foot high fence. There was a gate a hundred yards away, but he took the most direct route, climbing the fence, which had six-inch wide openings in its inch thick material, suitable for footholds and handgrips. After two decades of living on Koban, the last year with clone mods, and now on a world with a half gravity less than what he was used to, he jumped halfway to the top and scrambled over, hitting the ground on the run, while the two people following him had just started for the fence with their retrieved weapons.

The squealing continued, and came through a thick stand of trees, obscured at ground level by underbrush not yet trampled down by their low-slung browsing bodies. He’d been inside the compound by truck, but had always entered from the far end gate, closer to the Prada forest village. 

He’d participated in the roof raising in the compound days earlier, climbing up supports, clumsily when compared to the Prada who rapidly swarmed up them. They then used their thick prehensile tails to hold on, freeing both of their hands. They’d deftly inserted the quick lock fasteners that secured the roof section to the top of a fifty foot tall support, then either came down to run to the next one, or they swung between roof support beam elements by hands, feet, and tail, to reach another support.

They each finished five or six supports to his every one. He had far more strength, but not their agility, nor their complete lack of fear of heights. When all was secured, they flattered him like some child, patting him on the back and head as if he’d done something grand…, for a slow, slightly retarded biped.

Running, he passed one of the outer roof supports as he passed under the roof edge, which covered only a fraction of the center of the whole compound. He realized where the sound originated now. It was coming from the spring fed water wallow, and the trees he was now passing through provided shade along one side of that, under the transparent roof.

The Raspani liked to wade, or even swim, in the cool clear pool when the day was hot. There were no muddy banks, only a wide gently sloping rock entry area on one side, and about a two hundred foot long pool, ranging from fifty to seventy feet wide, that ended at some low cliffs at the far end. The clear cool spring water was perhaps a hundred feet deep by the backside cliffs, and the bottom back there was always in shadow. Not that the Raspani liked to swim very much, and certainly not deep underwater. Their lower torso bore a slight resemblance to pigmy hippos, with a hog-like face on a fat neck that topped their upper body. They only liked the water for its cooling and cleansing benefits. They were fastidious about staying clean.

Stewart was nearly bowled over by two obviously terrified Raspani that, heedless of scratches, burst through a thicket of bushes he was about to skirt around. Lacking real speech, there was no point in trying to ask them anything, nor did it appear they would have tarried to answer him anyway. He took advantage of the broken branches to follow their back trail.

The squealing continued but it had lessened in volume, it sounded only like one individual now. He thought that was probably the result of Raspani fleeing from what had frightened them. The trees were thinning and he could see the start of the clearing around the pool, and the echoing of the Raspani cry was louder, as the sound reflected from the low rock cliffs along the sides of the pool.

Unslinging his rifle, Stewart burst from the trees and in twenty feet was on a ledge that overlooked the water. Below, there was rippling bloody turbid water, with flashes of several long, pale green slender shapes, twisting and turning below the surface. The normally clear water was so full of blood and bits of tissue that it was difficult to see what the shapes were. Then the source of the screaming squeals revealed itself, by apparently catching a fresh breath.

An adult Raspani was trying to drag itself up the gentle sloping rock surface at the shallow end of the pool to his left. There was thrashing bloody water near its hindquarters, which Stewart first took to be its back legs kicking, in an effort to swim or push its way up the slope. Its short thick arms were flailing the water backwards frantically, but the creature was inching backwards, not forward.

An armored looking pale green, flat-sided tail suddenly broke the surface behind the Raspani. In an instant, Stewart knew what was attacking the poor creature, if not how it had managed to get into this landlocked pool. It was what the Prada called a skather, and the humans had retained use of the same name.

Skathers were Haven’s analogue to a crocodile, except these animals had no external legs, just vestiges of ancient foot bones preserved internally. The predators, found in the nearby river, grew to at least twenty-five or thirty feet, but were very awkward when trying to slither on land. They normally preyed on migratory herd animals that tried to ford the river, or that came to the banks to drink. A sudden surge, powered by their muscular tails, and they could lunge several feet up a bank to catch and hold their prey, using long powerful jaws that had evolved to resemble those of the crocodiles of Earth.

Stewart ran along the side of the low cliff, trying to take a bead with his rifle on the skather, which apparently had a grip on one of the Raspani’s short thick and muscular back legs. It was jerking and trashing, trying to pull the squealing prey back to deeper water. Like Earth’s alligators and crocodiles, these predators generally needed the aid of their fellows to twist and tear pieces from large victims, even after they drowned them. Their jaws could hold onto their prey, and rip and puncture, but they were not suited for chewing. They would swallow whole whatever chunks of flesh or limbs they could tear free. Two of them working together, twisting and pulling on the same carcass, could rip off small enough pieces to swallow.

The blood and flesh bits in the deeper water, and flashes of multiple skather bodies there was evidence of why the earlier multiple screams were now silenced. Those victims were feeding the cooperating predators as they ripped them apart. This last Raspani was about to join them, if Stewart couldn’t shoot the skather’s flailing body, mostly concealed below the bloody water.

He fired several shots into the water behind the Raspani, afraid the bullets could deflect to hit the creature he was trying to save. He didn’t have a heavy rifle, although it had a high rate of fire. He was told it was a .25 caliber weapon, having less recoil than the larger guns that were available. He was no hunter, but had been told that people not familiar with accurate shooting should be able to use it effectively against oncoming predators. Its rate of fire would better ensure hits on the modest sized animals his Hub City people were most likely to face, such as wild marsh dogs, or even a werewolf pack.

He didn’t think he was doing the skather any harm with his few tentative shots. Part of the time, its splashing and lashing tail whipping had the exposed part alongside the Raspani’s flanks, where he refused to even aim. Stewart had seen many skathers at the riverbank, although the adults there were much larger than what he was seeing here. The Raspani, upper torso extended flat in the water, with his lower half trailing at the surface behind him, was roughly eight feet long. The unseen head and jaws of the skather, with only the tail sometimes visible, could not be even twice that length. It had to be a much lighter weight adolescent.

He had lost his brother and sister-in-law to a predator, inside the Hub City compound twenty years ago, to a ripper. He was often haunted in his imagination of the fear his family members had felt, and wishing he’d been there, armed, to try to save his younger brother.