Free Koban 4: Shattered Worlds by Stephen W. Bennett Page A

other.
    Droktad knew what the numbers were, but they had never had any importance to him. He moved his talon tip down rapidly and saw the number he wanted to reach counting down on the screen, as the lower frequencies were passed, and thus longer wavelengths were indicated. There was another legend at the top that said he was now in a specific radio frequency range. He didn’t care any more about that label than he did runny droppings from his cloaca. Except human armor could be detected in that range.
    When he looked at his targeting screen, now that it was set to the proper spectrum, he was dismayed to see it was very dark, with some movements indicated. He couldn’t see how he could direct his lasers accurately if he couldn’t see the target’s surroundings. He told the K’Tal so.
    Fangar, in a slightly condescending tone that he wanted to make her regret later, told him how to select and lock-in the upper and lower radio range, then return to visual light frequencies to overlay that signal on the visual light on screen. He did that, just as she confirmed the method when she blasted another suit he saw faintly and only partially outlined on her own screen.
    “That one was motionless and hiding behind a large strut.” She added with supreme satisfaction.
    It wasn’t hard to accomplish the frequency overlay, and he was quickly looking out at the area on this side of the wreckage in normal light on his screen, with presumably the radio wave data included. He didn’t see anything moving at first. Then, at the south end of the piles of jumbled material, he caught a ghostly outline moving quickly towards the edge of the dome wall curve. A human was making a dash for safety, where it would pass out of his view around the curve.
    Proving yet again that the speed of light couldn’t be beaten in a foot race, Droktad claimed his own second victim, as he burned the suit in half at the waist, and it became fully visible in normal light as it fell. The superimposed radio images were mere ghostly outlines, which one had to look at carefully to see them against the richer, color-filled surroundings on his screen. He appreciated the detection that Fangar had made of the hiding human he’d just seen her kill. However, he would still give her some unpleasant duty for her disrespectful tone to her sub leader, a moment ago.
    They had found and killed four humans, but more could have been held within those two destroyed ships and now would be hiding out there on the cluttered tarmac. There were certainly more of them on the other side of the dome. They had helped destroy the dome he was charged with guarding. He’d seen the shape of more of their ships on the other side before his clanship was shot down. He desperately wanted to kill more of these cursed attackers before the guard clanships figured out what was happening, and finally arrived to finish the task. He knew he faced some unpleasant duty of his own when his sub leader confronted him. This might be his last opportunity to kill humans for a long time.
    With a grunt of satisfaction, he detected the shape of a foot, and the top of another human’s helmet, making a fast peek over a particularly massive support node with multiple broken struts protruding. There were two targets there. If he had control of the plasma cannons, he could take them out with a single shot, but he wasn’t giving this shot to Fangar.
    The heavy lasers would take longer to get through the node, but two of them could be brought to bear at the same time. He was joyfully (for a normally somber Krall disposition) sighting not only the heavy lasers on the node to flush them out, but setting up two smaller lasers to personally sever the lower legs when they started to run. He’d then kill them slowly, a talon length at a time, by burning off small segments as they squirmed. It had been a year since he’d had human prey to enjoy.
    His snort of amusement drew Fangar’s attention, and she knew he had found a