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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