Koban: When Empires Collide Page 10

  Mel asked, “They don’t have the same superconducting interface, like we do with our Comtaps. How would they see mental images, like we do with Mind Tap?”

  “Hell,” Macy complained, “even if all they do is hear us, that’s an unfair advantage.”

  In the plaza, Cal had invisibly approached the dozen armed Ragnar that were still posted around the Ravager. He’d been wondering about the sudden blank stares they had intermittently displayed in the last fifteen minutes, when previously they had been turning their heads, looking all around, conversing normally. Up close, he saw faint glints in the left eye of each Ragoon.

  “Shit. Folks, do you recall the spec ops visual enhancement technology, what they were using when we first encountered them on Poldark? The infrared detection, and computer generated video projection system implanted in one eye? These bastards have something equivalent in their left eyes. I think they may be able to select which image of the sub-channels in the main broadcast to watch. If the goons they left here in the plaza can watch you, I’ll bet the ones hunting you can. They’re frigging cheating if they are.”

  Surprisingly, Thad wasn’t the least upset. “We never revealed our specific genetic enhancements, and they didn’t ask, nor did we ask them about this broadcast. Now we know, and we can use it too.”

  Gonzo Haliburton, on the team with Thad, wasn’t the fastest thinking Kobani. Or perhaps as fast, but not as sharp and analytical. Having Mind Tap, a Comtap, and even a wolfbat memory matrix, didn’t make you a genius. Not every Kobani was adept at pulling out generally available data, and if you didn’t know what was in your vast collection of information, or how it related to your current situation, you didn’t seek it, or know what to filter for.

  “Colonel, how can we project the pictures inside our eyes? Those pricks can see us from miles away, from many vantage points, and we can’t see them until they get close.”

  Thad might have ripped into Sarge with glee, but he was patient with Haliburton. Although the man wasn’t suited for a leadership role, he’d proven fearless in fights, and was good at it.

  “Gonzo, Athena’s AI has deciphered the modulation for the video and audio signals in the broadcast from this island. There are only eight of us, and she has a crew of ten. If eight of them each select one of us for a continuous Comtap link, and send us what they see on the cameras that can see us, or that sees the enemy, we’ll have not only the same sort of information the apes do, but a second person to watch for us while we do other things.”

  Gonzo’s limited imagination didn’t yield that easily. “There ain’t that many monitor screens in a Scout. Our guys can’t watch us all.”

  “Everyone has a suit, with video inside their helmet.”

  “Oh, right. OK. Cool.”

  Sarge appeared to have nearly bitten his tongue in the effort, but he managed to stay out of the discussion. He focused his annoyance with Gonzo on the locked front door of the HQ, or whatever the administrative building was called. He grasped two support posts that formed part of the sides of the door’s decorative framing, using them as bracing, and kicked as hard as he could at the right side, where the door latch was located. The door material, and the side of the frame shattered and flew inwards, in a spray of fragments of whatever artificial material they were made.

  “Hey, they left the front door unlocked,” he announced with a grin. He stepped through to have a look around. Gonzo smiled, and uttered a quip that erased Reynolds’ irritation with him.

  “Damn, they’ll be pissed at you. I’ll bet they’ll send a killer team after our asses.” He followed Sarge inside, chuckling.

  After a few minutes of searching various unlocked or open offices, the two men saw nothing of interest and walked out, unaware of the reaction of some of their watchers.

  ****

  Hitok, his shuttle en route to High City, was watching the humans as they explored the training compound. His largest monitor screen on the shuttle was divided into sixteen small squares, the left eight displayed his people when in camera range, the right side showed what the humans were doing.

  What he’d seen so far supported some of their claims, to be able to do things other humans couldn’t do, and frankly, neither could a Ragnar.

  One of the males, the one named Mel he thought, took a short running start towards a two-story building, and his leap easily reached the second story lip of the roof overhang, where he used one hand to guide himself around the edge to land lightly in a crouch. It looked like he would have made it without using his hand, which only diverted his trajectory for his graceful landing. Even allowing for their adaptation to a much higher home world gravity, the leg strength required seemed out of proportion for that leap.

  After the human climbed to the roof peak he pointed out beyond the compound walls, and looked down to his comrades. His lips didn’t move, and the camera audio pickups heard no words, but when the others looked up at him, there had obviously been communications. They were using their equivalent to a memory enhancer part of the time. Hitok directed the AI in the compound’s communications center to point a wall top camera out to where the man had pointed.

  He saw an adult Drathor, closer to the walls than was normal in daylight if the camp was occupied. They were smart hunters, and this one must have noticed the Pounder leave, then silence inside the walls, and the absence of the scent of fresh prey from there. It was out in the open, and it must have crouched down into the brush when the shuttle approached.

  These reimported beasts were one of the reasons the camp retained its ancient walls. A young Ragnar in training needed to sleep safe and quietly sometimes. On more than one occasion, over many decades of orbits, Drathor had managed to force their way in through one of the massive gates. The cadre and trainees were not permitted to kill the rare and protected beasts. The trainees had to lure them out with their bodies as bait, as a test of their bravery. In the last resort, if an intruder refused to leave, there was a weapon’s locker with a few low power handheld Debilitater projectors, to use to drive them out with pain.

  A Drathor was an excellent scent tracker, fast and smart, and always hungry. It would be interesting to see if the humans dared to exit the compound with that beast in plain sight. And if they could escape from it if they did. Their weapons were too puny to seriously threaten the tough animal. If they stayed where they were, in less than a quarter cycle they’d have eight even deadlier killers inside the walls with them.

  Motion on another image caught his attention. The lone female, from a standing start, had easily leaped two and a half times her body length, to grasp the edge of a roof at a corner, to examine one of the surveillance cameras mounted under that eave. He’d set the monitor system AI to track the motion and activity of sixteen designated targets, but he was most interested to see what the humans were doing. Her leap itself, just as that of the male had been, was higher than any Ragnar could match, not without some mechanical help, or a ledge to push off from as they reached higher.

  Although she wasn’t as massive as a female Ragnar, she swung there, easily supported by only the end joints of two fingers. The height of those jumps, and the strength of her two finger tips, were things he knew that neither he, nor the most athletic Ragnar could match.

  Then the impertinent one called Sarge did something that truly shocked him. He kicked in the locked door to the cadre office. More than kicked it open. It splintered, and tore away one side of the door frame. That tough manufactured plastic had been especially chosen as construction material at this site, and it had never yielded to three previous attacks by massive and hungry Drathor, after the beasts had forced their way through a strongly secured and thickly timbered gate. This human broke it open by himself, with a single kick.

  Hitok considered alerting his team now, to caution them about the surprising physical feats he’d just witnessed several Kobani perform. He decided to wait, because he could see his Ragoons were all moving as quickly as they could, each one eager to reach, the com
pound first, and they couldn’t safely do that and watch what he wanted to show them.

  Most of their travel was spent moving along the most secure natural vine trails, located nearly a hundred feet above the winding paths through the undergrowth. They wouldn’t want to pause, or even slow down, to focus attention on an eye implant’s detailed projection of what the humans had just done. All they could do, without slowing, was simply confirm that the images indicated their targets were still inside the compound, because the background included the buildings.

  They needed both eyes to find fast and safe path-vine routes between the trees, and to guard against unexpectedly coming upon any of the dangerous arboreal animals and insects, and watch for possible aerial threats, which could dive through the overhead canopy, to attack from above or behind them. Traveling fast and reckless was already a risk.

  Yet, before they closed with their opponents, Hitok had to make sure they were aware of some of the improbable capabilities of their foe. His Ragoons on Tanner’s World had not encountered Kobani in hand to hand fighting. Exceptional leg and finger strength wasn’t discernable from previous space combat, but their claim to have unusual strength had now been established.

  ****

  Thad had to ask. “Does anyone wish to wait for them here? It might be another hour before they cover the eight or ten miles from the ends of the island.” He wasn’t soliciting volunteers exactly, but if they split into two groups and everyone went out to meet the enemy on a ten-mile wide, rainforest covered island, it was quite possible some of them could pass each other unseen.

  Sarge offered a compromise. “I’m willing to stay relatively close to the compound, in the area here, outside the dense rainforest. I’d like to see that big hairy beast a bit closer. If Athena has someone monitor channels of the four cameras mounted over each gate, I’d know if any apes sailed past all of you out in the jungle.”

  “OK. I wouldn’t want any of them arriving here, and thinking we ran and hid from them. Part of the purpose of our agreeing to this matchup is giving the Ragnar population a perception of us as fighters they need to respect.”

  In an afterthought, he added, “Sarge, you’d better be careful. That thing has hair, not scales, so it probably isn’t a cold blooded, slow moving reptile. It can probably run straight through any of that brush, which looks to be higher than we are tall.”

  “I’ll bet I could outrun it on a trail, and every one of the red bark tree groves we can see has multiple trails leading to it, and a clearing under them. They appear to drop fruit, and animals must gather under them to feed. I was thinking of drawing it to one of the trees, so I could climb up and watch it from up close.”

  “Yeah, well don’t forget our hunting trip on Juro continent two years ago. That pack of red raptors was a damn sight faster than you that morning.”

  Reynolds was defensive. “They only got that close ‘cause I had to pull my trousers up first.”

  At that cryptic remark, Macy adlibbed a facetious jab. “I didn’t know there were sheep analogues on Juro. Couldn’t you just kiss her and run?” She laughed at his suddenly open mouth and red face.

  Sputtering at the turn the joke had taken, he didn’t help his case. “I was answering the call of nature, damn you.”

  “I’ll bet you were,” she shot back.

  “Hey, hey,” Thad said, to deflect the joke back to the one he’d started. “The man went into a grove of low growth Brindle trees, with their large soft leaves. He wanted privacy while he contributed to their fertilization, and had the use of nature’s toilet tissue. There was nothing obscene or dirty involved.”

  “Thank you for clearing that up.” Sarge glared at Macy, and appreciated the support. For about two seconds.

  “Nope. Not dirty at all. But damned stupid! Walking off without a gun in dinosaur country. Sarge scrambled up a taller tree just in time, and the raptor pack didn’t get shit for their trouble. No, wait…, that’s all they did get.” Now he and Macy laughed together, while Reynolds fumed.

  Gonzo, not much of a humorist, wanted action, and he wasn’t interested in waiting. “The first group let off have a head start over the second bunch. How about four of us meet them half way? If Sarge keeps that cuddly monster occupied, we can navigate the trails to the denser forest faster. They claim to be at ease in those trees, running along vines. I’d like to try that, and show them we can meet them on their own terms. If we wait another half hour, they might reach the central highlands before we get to the forest.”

  “OK. Jindal, Sam, Kintar, you three go with Gonzo; spread out when you reach the tall trees. Try to intercept the group coming from the north. I assume Hitok split his team into two groups of four, but they might not stay together along the way.”

  He gestured at Macy and Mel, the latter still on the roof. “You two are with me. We’ll meet the southern group. We’ll try to let one get past us for Sarge. Perhaps he’ll feed one to his hairy friend.”

  Sarge had a suggestion. “How about we call it an H-Rex rather than hairy friend. At least until we learn the Ragnar name.” Looking at the two Kobani groups ready to move, he said, “I’ll go get its attention, then you seven head out.” He ran to the north-west side of the compound’s wall and scrambled up in two bounds. There, using that height, he took a second to scope out the trails that led to a tree grove, nearly halfway to the beast.

  The creature obviously had good eyesight. It immediately detected his movement, and it pivoted its head towards him to bring its binocular vision into play, estimating his size and distance.

  It didn’t make a sound or a move until its potential prey leaped down from wall on the outside. It merely made a deep grunt, and leaned forward from its upright posture, using its tail to balance the massive head and toothy jaws, and its two powerful legs started a ground covering lope along the trail, holding the oddly short arms close to its chest. With its body now lower than the height of the brush, it effectively vanished, and it moved towards the odd-looking animal, expecting to pick up its scent or hear it when it drew closer. This was a tactic it was familiar with, used by the hairy delicious animals that often taunted it, but not always successfully. Even if it missed this prey, it had just encountered half-day old scat of the horned black browsers, which were a more substantial meal. It would welcome either a meal or a snack, after a predawn rain that had suppressed the scent of a trail it had followed last night to this more open area. Then the giant flying beast forced it to hide, and probably startled the beasts he stalked into running farther away from him.

  As soon as Mel confirmed the predator was going after Sarge, Thad’s group opened the massive south gate, and vanished into a trail through brush that ranged from human height, to ten or fifteen feet high. There were large prints in the thin soil, which looked as if a so-called H-Rex might have made them recently, but being filled with water, were not made after this morning’s rain. Obviously, the ancient wall and heavy gates served a genuine purpose.

  ****

  Salmod was running easily along a long sagging vine, only thirty feet above the forest floor. He instinctively balanced himself, to avoid starting the leafy path-vine from swinging side to side. Despite his desire for speed, he placed his bare feet gently enough to minimize the risk of pulling this new path-vine free of its days-old attachment point on the tree ahead. He avoided gripping it too tightly between his big and second toe, to not tug on it overly hard as he moved forward.

  His boots were banging against the sides of his thighs, hanging as they were from his weapons belt. After his near fall, he was forced to use these newer vine links, to work his way back up to the older and more taut vines located higher, where there was better light for their leaves. He could have paused to climb a tree to reach the mature vines, but if he went vertical, he would not be moving horizontally, towards the enemy he wanted to be the first to meet.

  He cursed the stupid falgrat sucking dragnak, for causing his fall and near injury, delaying him. The large leathery flying pr
edator had caught a mere glimpse of Salmod, as he raced swiftly along an older, rigid, and dominant path-vine, located just within the base of the canopy branches. He was flashing in and out of the same beams of sunlight the vines sought, and that flash of motion is what drew the attention of the predator as it glided over the forest top.

  It dove through the canopy, and coming from above and behind Salmond, the sharp beaked killer would have speared him in the back. Even had he survived the wound, and fought off the predator as it followed him into the undergrowth, which might or might not safely break his fall, he’d have been unfit to continue his mission. It was only the whisper of a wing tip brushing leaves that warned him in time.

  He threw himself down at the vine, using the grip of his left foot toes and left hand to hold on, as he reached for the sheathed long knife at his left hip. His body swung below the vine just as the dragnak, adjusting its trajectory downward, smashed into the vine as Salmond’s falling weight also yanked down. The old vine, having fruited long ago, was dry and gradually dying. The wrist thick tendrils of its final attachment point snapped at the point where it had wrapped around the thin upper tree trunk, only a short distance ahead of Salmod.

  Even as the two combatants started to fall, the dragnak was struggling to get free. It would glide down to attack its hopefully injured prey where it landed. Salmod pulled his blade free, and slashed backhanded as the predator flapped its nine-foot wingspan to pull back. It had lifted its slender pointed-beak skyward, its sturdy throat exposed. The muscled neck, used to thrust its beak into prey and absorb the impact, gushed a mortal amount of blood as the sharp edge bit halfway through.

  Keeping his grip on the vine, still attached to the anchor tree ten body lengths away, Salmod started what would be a long swing that would smash him into that same tree. He was still high enough to be seriously injured if he let go of the vine. However, he had a bit of luck.