Koban: Rise of the Kobani (96 page)

Parkoda was familiar with Graka clan weapons, and they preferred red as well. He assumed then, that the dead warrior was from Graka, and that a raider had shot him. Then something unusual caught his attention. Lower branches of the trees were pushed aside, as if someone were casually moving through the trees, not trying to be subtle. Three different such pathways were made through the trees this way, and they all converged on the corpse. The body was turned over, apparently to confirm that the warrior was dead. This would have been unexceptional, if whoever had converged along those three pathways had been visible.

Paying closer attention, Parkoda could see grass and leaves being pressed down, leaving a footstep impressed in the vegetation as the unseen attackers moved away. The size of the foot impressions were too small, and shaped wrong for a Krall’s four splayed toes with talons. Krall armor replicated their talons on feet and hands, for a more natural feel when in a close up unarmed fight.

These unseen raiders did not seem to be Krall-sized. He let his mind briefly dwell on Telour’s suggestion that some of the soft Krall had escaped. However, the soft ones were only slightly smaller than standard sized Krall females, and had the same shaped wide feet. Besides, he had proven that none was missing from his guardianship. This must represent some alien species, with a technological advance in armor. If he could kill one of these creatures, and return with their armor
and
a clanship, he’d certainly receive more than a little status increase. He didn’t have armor himself, but being less encumbered, he could move quieter, and stay lower. Knowing what clues to look for would help him spot other aliens moving through the trees.

He crawled out of the compartment, staying as low and flat as his thick-muscled chest permitted. The railing wall wasn’t solid, and had a one-inch gap every few feet, permitting him to see down into the grove of trees. He wanted to see one of them moving down there again, coming more or less towards him. He had selected a magazine from his belt with armor piercing rounds. He’d stich shots up and down the upper front half of whatever came his way. One of those rounds should find its way through the more fragile helmet glass, and he’d have his prey.

He saw his opportunity when a startled Raspani blundered through the trees, using its pudgy arms to part branches away from its face as it hurried pass. It could have bent its upper torso to almost horizontal and in-line with its squat gray body, thus passing its short-legged centaur-like body
under
the branches, making less noise and branch motion. It was too stupid to recognize that it made itself a subject of interest, and could draw fire.

An unseen follower was either herding the Raspani, or trying to catch sight of the frightened animal. It also pushed through the branches recklessly. Parkoda hadn’t heard plasma bolt firing in the upper part of the dome for some time. Perhaps the raiders believed all resistance had been eliminated in the dome.

Parkoda made an estimate of the height of the creature, based on what was the highest level of branches that whipped back as it passed. He sighted ahead of its path, as it followed the Raspani’s flight, and just as the branches started to move between the next two trees, he fired half of his clip through them in rapid succession, right where he expected the head and chest to be. The whoosh of the rounds leaving his weapon was followed by the sight and sound of them tearing through the leaves and branches along the way. He heard three solid sounding impacts. That was accompanied by a cessation of movement through the tree branches, and a thump as the body struck the soil. He had his prey!

He watched and waited, to see if there would be any activity to go check on the corpse, as they had checked the dead warrior, visible a hundred feet to the right through the trees. He noticed that his target remained frustratingly invisible under the trees where it fell. It wouldn’t have been fully visible to him anyway, with the leaves obscuring his view.

He went to the nearest stairwell, as always, ignoring the elevators as a lazy transport. It would be much too noisy in this situation anyway. Parkoda kept his toe talons retracted and the tips up, to avoid any scraping. He went down the steps utterly silent, for a four hundred pound killer. His red pupils blazed in anticipation of recovering this alien and his armor. The Tanga clan’s Torki slaves could reproduce nearly any technology they received.

The stairway’s last flight exited into the large central hall, with a ten-foot wide strip of bare surface around the sides before the dirt pit started. The hall was almost fifteen hundred feet across, which was filled with the soil for the trees, grass and ferns to grow.

Using his battlefield memory, Parkoda sighted the tree with the bark pattern he’d seen from his hiding place on the third level. The dead alien was two leaps beyond that and one leap to the left, from his present position. He looked around the hall for movement, and saw a Raspani at the edge of the trees well to his right. It could be the same meat animal the alien had been following. Staying low, and waiting a moment for the Raspani to look away, to avoid causing it to run from his sight, Parkoda darted swiftly into the trees, staying well below the branches, and avoiding clumps of ferns that he would disturb in passing.

No way would Parkoda stupidly blunder through the branches, hanging as low as his chest, as the otherwise invisible alien had foolishly done. He crept in the direction he knew the body laid, taking a circumspect route to avoid fern clumps and fresh drops of leaves. The Prada kept the dead fallen branches and most leaves cleaned away, but had been distracted from that duty today. He was close enough now that he could see where the creature had fallen.

Looking carefully from a short distance away, he still did not see the armor, but he could see through to the rectangle of grass under it, pressed down where it lay. He started forward, but stopped to reconsider what he saw. A
rectangle
of grass?

The phifft sound of air just behind him coincided with a sharp prick of minor pain in the right side of his neck. He whirled, ignoring what had struck him, and pointed his gun, held in his left hand, under his right armpit to shoot exactly where he’d heard the sound originate. He squeezed his finger, to send armor piercing shells whooshing at whatever was so close behind him.

Except his finger closed on air, the weapon having been snatched from his hand as he went to aim it under his right arm. He saw the weapon suspended in air an instant before it crushed inward, then the broken weapon flew through the branches. He’d instantly reached for his right side weapon, only to discover it was already out of its holster. He was rewarded with seeing it follow the first pistol, just as broken.

A voice in fluent low Krall sounded a few feet above and to his right. “Got you. You really thought someone that could take on a Krall world would be so clumsy as to stumble through these trees?”

The instant the voice started speaking Parkoda had tried to pivot and lunge at where the sound originated. He found himself lifted by his throat and slammed backwards into a tree trunk. He hadn’t really heard the last words, which was understandable. It is highly unlikely that any Krall warrior would have paid attention anyway.

He was reaching for his longest knife when his opponent suddenly flickered into sight. The black and white form fitting armor was topped with a roughly triangular shaped helmet with no transparent faceplate. Instead, it had a number of blue colored bulges or bumps that Parkoda couldn’t decide whether they were for multiple eyes, or for sensors.

He got a quick answer to the unasked question when a red beam of a low energy laser lanced out of one of the blue bulges to strike his blade, turning it nearly molten hot. His fingers and hand blistered, he dropped the knife and extended talons to stab his left hand forward, as the right hand swung across to swipe at the blocking move he expected to be made.

What he got was a fast hard smack to the muzzle as two talons on the left hand snapped off on the hard armor. His enemy’s hand and arm had darted past his swinging right arm in a move so fast that it registered even on his enhanced vision as a blur. He felt a tooth fragment fly back into his mouth, nicking his slender purple tongue.

He thought his enemy was adjusting his stealth capability, because the area away from the helmet was hazy. He glanced to where a holster with a gun would be, at the creature’s waist, and realized the head and feet were all that were hazy. It was his vision that was being affected.

He pushed away from the tree at his back, only to discover his legs would not take the step forward his mind commanded. He couldn’t even feel his legs or arms. The pinprick to his neck must have somehow severed a nerve. Only there were redundant nerve pathways that should have given him control. He was falling forward, and the creature stepped aside to let him fall face first into the dank grass.

“OK, guys, he’s finally down. That dose will keep him still for at least an hour, unless you pull the dart out. Frank, collect that empty demolition box. We’ll carry it back to the Mark for reuse.”

Parkoda, barely able to move listened to these words in fluent Standard in disbelief. This was the human language, and their shape and size matched their body structure. He managed to roll his head to the side and found he was looking with tunnel vision directly at a large rectangular box when it flickered into view. It was where he had assumed the enemy he had shot had fallen. There were three deep dents in the case where his slugs had struck.

Frank, a finger in one of the inch deep slug gouges asked, “Ethan, how did you know the bullets wouldn’t go all the way through the box?”

“It has the same hard stealth coating our suits have. I didn’t think any of their rounds would make it through two layers of the stuff on the box and then penetrate my suit. I carried it right in front of me, but I was afraid he might shoot at my legs. I counted on his wanting a head shot.”

“You want me to Tap him while you move on to do something else?”

“Nah. We have this dome under control.  I don’t have anything else to do unless the warriors we expected to be here show up suddenly. I’ll do the Tap myself.”

Parkoda saw some armored feet step into his vision, and then kneel down. He was rolled onto his back, based on the swirl of vision and the new perspective. He couldn’t feel his body or limbs. His head was repositioned to look at the same helmet he’d seen before. The bare hand grasping his couldn’t be felt, but the odd images that floated into his mind caused him to think of things he’d seen today and the last several days. The images were reinforced by questions in Standard, asking about how many of his clan was on the planet, how many here at the dome.

He instantly thought of his hatred for Telour and the Graka clan, and hoped the large gathering of warriors in the main dome had also been attacked. They had gone there at the order of Telour, probably to let him bask in the authority he now had. Not only in his own clan, as a representative of their clan leader, but over every Krall clan as Til Gatrol, second only in war to Tor Gatrol Kanpardi.

Ethan stood up. “There are probably no more Krall here. They all went to the main dome to meet with that high muckety-muck Krall leader. They were going to double production here.”

“What does mucky-muck mean?” Castro asked him.

“Muckety-muck. It’s something Maggi says sometimes about people that think they are more important than they are.”

“Let me call the captain and tell him what we have.”

After Jakob informed him Mirikami was in a high-level discussion about the Torki, he called his father.

He signed off, and told his team of four they were rushing this Krall back to the ship. “This one may be important to us. His name, Parkoda, and his clan match that of the Krall that captured the Flight of Fancy. We need to meet up with my dad over by the elevators. He’s coming up to join us.”

****

Still in armor from the neck down, Mirikami jumped down the last flight of stairs from the Bridge in the low gravity. He realized he had seldom used the lifts since he became a TG2. They were too slow, and he felt so energized.

“I’m off the Bridge, Thad. Why did I need to come down just to see this warrior myself? The migration ships have arrived, and will be setting down. I need to pick some people to go over in a clanship to round up those Raspani by the main dome and ferry them here to the extra migration ship.”

His helmet also off, and a lopsided grin on his face, Thad swung the chair around. Slumped in an upright acceleration couch was a blue suited Krall. “Recognize this one?”

Thad and the other Kobani present were rewarded with the rare jaw drop, and a shocked expression from the famously unshakeable Captain Mirikami.

Ethan said, “I’m so glad I asked Jakob to record this. Aunt Maggi will pay me anything I ask to get her hands on the playback.”

Still amazed enough to ignore Ethan, Mirikami asked, “How did Parkoda wind up
here
, on a
Graka
controlled world?”

“Funny you should ask.” Thad teased. “Another old acquaintance of ours forced him to come, just to humiliate him and leave him stranded here. Remember the charming fellow that gave you that final tattoo?”

“Telour? Was he that VIP I allowed to depart unmolested? Damn!”

“Parkoda wishes you’d killed him as well, although now that he’s seen you, I suspect your death is also strongly on his mind.”