Koban Universe 1 (5 page)

The underground factory was centered under the dome, and the floor of the dome was partly supported from below by structural beams. One was a large vertical “X” shaped central beam, which appeared to provide
primary support for the ceiling, at a point her memory told her must be under the center of the great hall above. The beam was completely clear of catwalks for three levels below the ceiling, and at its top, there were four smaller angled support beams, which branched away, to distribute ceiling support over a wider area.

If she reached that upper junction, she would have the four angled beams to use for moving rapidly around the four sides of the central support. The Krall would have to climb straight up to reach her, only
a few at a time. When her ammunition ran out, she had her knife, strength, and intelligence, to hold them off longer.

She started running for the center of the complex, where she could get close to that support beam. She was exposed to view for part of her run, and new calls reporting her sighting reverberated
everywhere, which at least refreshed her acoustic map of where things were located. It was nice she could count on that level of support from her would-be-killers.

She saw a problem as she neared the center, and the resolution improved. Her
present level didn’t have a catwalk that came closer than twenty feet of the beam. Krall were now at the stairs she would need to climb, to reach a higher level that came within a few feet of her goal.

As she neared the edge of the catwalk closest to her target, it w
as literally time for a leap of faith over the dark abyss. Running in the pitch dark, she slapped her right foot down less than an inch from the edge, and jumped.

The distance was well within her ability to leap, even in 1.52 gravities, and she was certain she was on an intersecting trajectory
with the beam, arcing over the deep dark chasm. What her mental map could not tell her, was the texture of the beam she needed to grasp in the dark. If it were slippery and damp, she would slide down, unable to reach her intended refuge at the top. Moist wasn’t actually in doubt, not in this dank humid environment. What she needed was a gritty or rusty surface, for a secure grip that would permit her to climb.

She’d kept her eyes closed for the jump-off, using only the mental map
as reference, but now opened them to try to see the details of the beam as she drew near.

There would be thanks offered to the god of thermal conductivity. Heat from the dome above had crept down the beam, and its edges glowed
faintly, where the heat was radiated away.

The
metal had a wonderfully dirty, marvelously coarse, slightly rusty surface for a secure grip! It probably left a red mess on her clothes and hands, and particularly her right cheek, pressed thankfully against the damp coolness. Now she had the means to climb, and tenuously started up, testing her handholds on the rough surface of the edges, and trying out climbing techniques. In only a few seconds, she was moving like a spider monkey up the beam on one bar of the “X,” going hand over hand, using booted feet squeezed in hard for her lower grip.

She was in clear view of probably every Krall that had been after her, but because they had been in the process of descending to her level, they w
ere clustered close to a distant stairway, fighting each other to get down first. She passed the catwalk that extended closest to the beam in a few seconds, even as some of the more fleet footed chasers ran towards her.

The beam was too sturdy to transmit any vibration of the impact of Krall bodies as they jumped on below her. However, the almost joyous grunts of a close pursuit sounded directly below her, only twenty feet behind.

Lighter, stronger, and more agile, she outpaced them to reach the four-way junction, where forty-five degree angled smaller beams branched out to the sides, providing a place for her to sit. As she looked down, she could see the body heat of a chain of pursuers climbing after her, the closest one forty feet below.

The Krall were
discovering that extended talons were less useful for this climbing task than fingertip pads, as Maggi used. There was considerable scrabbling as talon tips slipped and they had to renew their grips. One or two had found that retracted talons and their four thick finger and toe pads worked better, but the Krall already above those fast learners were slower to figure this on their own.

Maggi drew her pistol, and decided she would pick off the smarter climbers first, particularly those that might hit climbers behind them as the
y fell. In a flash of insight, she decided against headshots, for the quick kill. Instead, she shot at hands.

The fourth one in trail, directly below her, was shot in its right hand as it held on
to pull itself up. It was surprisingly quick. It planted its wide left hand around the end of the beam with a retracted talon grip, and still moved up a foot. She admired its tenacity so much, that she shot its left foot to see if it could use that combination to continue.

A waste of a
second bullet
, she reprimanded herself. Then was vindicated as it slipped free, and grasped at the Krall just below, pulling it free as well, who it in turn caught at the shoulders of a third, sending three killers into the blackness below, roaring their rage.

Rational beings would have seen the futility of the high losses to be incurred, just for a single adversary who couldn’t escape. If they merely waited for hunger and thirst to do its work, she was doomed. Excep
t, the enraged reaction confirmed that this wasn’t going to be a rational response.

Maggi knew t
here had been autopsies done on Krall, which suggested that there was an adrenaline-like chemical, whose production spiked suddenly when warriors around them were killed or they themselves were wounded. It triggered the familiar berserker rage. The Krall didn’t particularly like each other, respected sometimes, but not liked and never “loved.” A prey “animal” that killed one of them often became the intense focus of rage and revenge. Most humans didn’t survive that level of
attention
.

The
Krall that the Planetary Union Army normally faced were trained and carefully selected warriors, capable of reluctant withdrawal, and of much smarter actions than these sad representatives. Those higher status warriors had been culled from a mass of hatchlings, such as those that had managed to survive here, with no culling and completely untrained. With each death, more of them leaped out to make the climb, eager for their chance at a challenging kill.

Thanks to such mindless, driven persistence, Maggi was eventually down to her final magazine of all explosive rounds. There
had to be a considerable pile of flesh in the lower levels of the complex, directly under her. The clangs of impacts on metal had shifted to duller thuds, as the bodies accumulated. Other Krall had made their way down into the dark factory from above, either coming from the dome, or perhaps from the surrounding woods. If some were from the woods, then she may have helped draw them away from the boys and the rippers. They would have had much more room get away outside anyway, and could outpace any chasers if they avoided being cornered, as she was.

E
ventually reaching the sixteenth and final round, she had to decide if that one would be saved for herself or not. She saved it for the time being, holstering the pistol, and drawing her eighteen-inch molecular edged blade. She hung upside down by a knee, from one of the angled supports, slashing at hands, wrists, and fingers as they came in reach. She nearly lost the knife once, when she stabbed straight into the top of a skull, and the violent twist of her victim’s neck nearly tore the weapon from her grip.

This
hanging position only permitted her to defend three sides of the main support beam. From time to time, a Krall would reach up, grab the angled support farthest from her on the opposite side, and swing a leg up and over. She would then have to quickly pull up and dispatch the “successful” climber with a flurry of cuts and slashes. Despite her best efforts, she was slowing down. It was only a matter of time before she would take too long to kill one of them, and others would gain a handhold behind her.

She made her decision. It would be
to deny them a direct victory. She intended to leap out over the abyss, and use her final saved round on the way down.

That time was
fast approaching, she knew, as she barely managed to keep two of them from reaching the top behind her. That’s when she felt them finally change tactics.

It was
felt
, because the unexpected jolt nearly shook her loose from her one handed grip, as she swung over and slashed the fingers off a hand griping a top support beam. They were somehow battering the main beam she thought, to shake her down.

The jolt came again, and she was better prepared this time to hold on, but debris splintered from the ceiling and
unexpectedly struck her in the face in the darkness as she looked up, lodging tiny fragments of grit in her eyes. Unable to see their IR signatures, she’d have to rely on her mental acoustic map to continue the fight. The sound absorbing enemy bodies could be faintly perceived when they were close to her, via occultation of background sound reflections. Of course, they often could be sensed directly, because their noisy mouths made their heads and eyes a target for her blade.

The third, much harder impact, shattered large segments from the ceiling, because she felt from which direction the
larger particle spray came. The pieces stung when they hit, and one larger shard nicked her left cheek. Unless a smaller angled support beam had just pulled free, she couldn’t understand how that happened. Nor could she imagine how these Krall had managed to apply something heavy enough to act as a battering ram on the sturdy beam. Apparently, a few of them were more resourceful than she had expected, compared to those still climbing towards her.

Because the battering had caused some of the climbers to slip down the column, she had a moment to reposition herself, to confront the next closest climber. It was fortunate that she was climbing over a
n angled support beam when the next and stronger impact came, because the chaotic loud low frequency noise disrupted her mental acoustic map, and simultaneously slightly displaced the beam she had reached for in her blindness.

Missing her handhold
, she spun downward, saved only by a knee hooked over the support she had straddled. Without the mental map of where she was in space, she’d have to listen for a few seconds to rebuild that. The Krall were screaming their anger even louder, as if she had done this. She needed to try to blink the grit out of her eyes, using the tears generated by the irritation. If she could regain part of her IR vision, she might hold them at bay while her mind rebuilt a map from the sounds echoing around.

With effort, she tried and failed to open her eyelids. Dust, mixed with tear duct fluid had gummed them closed while she’d held them tightly shut. Shifting her knife to her left hand, she used her right thumb to
try to pull the right eyelid gently open. It hurt, as this activity drug grit over the surface of her eye.

Dazzling light blinded her for a moment
as the eyelid lifted, and she thought she had done that to herself. Possibly a shot of pain induced optic nerve activity. Except her eye, even though closed, adapted swiftly to a continuing glare, closing the iris. It was then that she sensed the pink glow through her eyelid. The light was real. The ceiling must have cracked, to allow light through from the hall in the dome above her. The Krall wouldn’t need IR to see her now, and she couldn’t take advantage of the same light. If several of them got hold of her, she might not be able to fight free.

She thumbed open the holster retainer and drew
the Krall made pistol. It occurred to her for the first time that a Krall bullet ending her life was too ironic. She should have saved the last round of her human made .45 instead.

There was a clanging metal on metal sound on the girder on the opposite side of the main support. She prepared to straighten her leg, to start the drop into the dark depths, pistol ready.

“Hey! You going to just hang there, or help us?”

Thinking she was hallucinating, she
asked eloquently, “What?”

The hallucination had Danner’s sassy mannerisms. “Clever reply, as you would tell
one of us. Climb over and grab the line I just tossed over that cross beam. We see the locals are climbing up to get you. We’re out of ammunition, the shuttle lasers are ruined, and you need to get your butt over here.”