Read Koban: Rise of the Kobani for Free Online

didn’t black out, but it was close, and the acceleration pressure wasn’t letting up yet. Acceleration couch or not, this was grueling pressure, even for a genetically enhanced Second Generation Kobani.
    He forced himself to concentrate on the details of the landing, the sequence of actions he’d have to take to descend rapidly and safely into the canyon, to remain clear of the high walls and miss the huge boulders Sarge had said littered the ground. This is what he’d have to raise up to do when the ship reached a point vertically over the box canyon and halted. The next surges and turns would be progressively more brutal, because of the speed they were building. The rapid stop at the end might literally be a killer.
    The next turn threw them to the other side of their couches, with more grunts of pain. The Smart chair’s self-molding contours were not designed to adjust so quickly, unable to react to such extremes of forces applied so suddenly. Mirikami did briefly lose his vision for a moment, his sight dimming as he lost peripheral vision, and he seemed to be staring into a darkening tunnel. This was despite the pressure he exerted internally by bearing down with his chest and abdominal muscles, to force a higher blood flow to his brain, fighting to stay conscious.
    He lost out to that effort on the next even harder switch back, and blanked out for five or ten seconds. He regained his senses as they accelerated the last five miles to the target point. He knew the next kick would come from what would feel like below him, as the ship rotated to fly rear-end towards the direction they were now traveling. The Olt’kitapi designed navigation system was waiting to apply a final maximum thrust, which would rapidly slow and halt them over their target point.
    The couch would provide the most cushioning possible from the bottom directed counter thrust, but Mirikami now knew without a doubt, based on the previous forces he’d just experienced, that he would be unaware of the world for some time after that, if ever again. He would feel nothing when the ship dropped to the floor of the canyon.
     
     
    ****
     
     
    Hortak gnashed his dagger teeth together and his red pupils blazed like hot coals on an onyx orb. The cursed other clanship had started moving, their thruster engine cut off, replaced by the tachyon-powered drive. His own ship now had no choice but to continue through the cloud of spreading ions the other ship had just vacated. The pursuing human missiles would continue after his ship, although they would likely spread out a bit as they encountered the exhaust fumes the other ship left behind.
    The other ship was now accelerating hugely, and conducting stressful high-speed turns that would strain any Krall. Although this activity would draw the attention of the human tracking systems, the only close threats the other ship faced were those already on Hortak’s tail. The missiles had to go through or past his ship if they would attack the other target, and they were not going to pass up his slower, heavier loaded target to do that.
    The questions he had now are where was that ship going, and what had been its original destination? It was accelerating at two-thirds of its maximum rate now, and would shoot past the mountains and out of the edge of the storm front in a short time. It would be streaking over the remaining human controlled third of this land mass. Making it a speeding but easily targetable object, with an extremely turbulent trail to point the way it was moving. It appeared bent on a berserker’s death, going down in a blaze of glory.
    Then the clanship’s pilot appeared to have decided to kill the ship and himself, even before meeting the enemy! In an act that would leave every warrior aboard unconscious, with the pilot insensate and collapsed on the command deck, the clanship reversed nose for tail and applied maximum acceleration to come quickly to a halt over the far edge of the mountain