Koban: The Mark of Koban by Stephen W Bennett Page B

looking down at her . The three of us will be
standing on the bench seats, and slightly lower. Cahill will not be able to
clamber up to try to dominate the moment. Your casual informality will be
warmly received, more so than her puffed up obvious display of self-importance.
Don’t you dare call her Governor?”  She looked him right in the eyes, to see if
he had received her message.
    “OK, Maggi.” Tet agreed with a nod.  “I’ll
follow your suggestion, because it’s good advice. Besides, I forgot to borrow a
cup from Dillon and I don’t want to get whacked in the groin.”
    The three Ladies laughed delightedly at the
remark. Maggi was known for her physical retaliations on her younger scientific
protégé. The two frequently sparred verbally, but the diminutive little old
woman often resorted to thumping Dillon on his prominently and fashionably
displayed groin. Dillon had taken to wearing an athletic cup.
    Socially, men had become somewhat peacock-like
in society, a custom deriving from a male population more-than-decimated by the
Gene War, which nearly ended the human race less than three generations ago.
Fashion trends had led to many men wearing flamboyantly colored clothing, which
displayed their physiques if they were well proportioned, and placed brightly
colored accent patches over their manhood. This advertised their reproductive value
to the Ladies in the social market place.
    Dillon possessed brilliant scientific
credentials, which unfortunately qualified him as a geek in any age. Therefore,
the young full professor had overcompensated by wearing the fashionable
clothing of an available stud advertising his “wares.” A former Ladies man, he
was now a one-Lady-man with Noreen Renaldo, the First Officer on the Flight of
Fancy.
    However, absent a clothing store or tailor on
Koban, his larger than average frame was stuck with the wardrobe he’d brought
with him when the Krall captured the Flight of Fancy. Maggi treated Dillon’s
accent patches as her bull’s eye, for rebuttals that abruptly ended discussions.
    No sooner than the shuttle hatch raised and
its four occupants stepped onto the pavement, fifteen or twenty people exited
from under the overhang of the dome entrance, right on cue.
    “She isn’t as popular as she pretends,” Maggi
said in an aside to the others. “With nearly fifteen thousand claimed supporters,
this is all she could call on to listen to her little welcoming speech?”
The gloating chuckle sounded all too much like Maggi was going to enjoy the
day.
    The four, with Tet a step ahead, started for
the dome, their path naturally passing well in front of the small dais, actually
beyond the small cluster of congregants watching them with suspicion.
    Mirikami noticed with alarm that although his armed
group carried Krall made pistols and human made neural Jazzers, he couldn’t see
a single weapon on any of Cahill’s people. They were outside with no
protection. Were they crazy? His own group was looking up and around, whereas
these people were only watching him.
    He glanced up and saw that as usual, when they
saw activity at a human habitat, two squadrons of wolfbats were circling
overhead. Not flying as high as the fliers did at Prime City, where residents
there often took shots at them. Former captives there always watched for these
bat-like dog-sized intelligent hellions, having lost too many people to their
attacks.
    Winter cold wasn’t the only reason that
Skeeters were less prevalent closer to the coast. The potentially killer pests
apparently preferred a jungle as a breeding ground, such as Prime City had nearby. Nevertheless, the milder climate of Hub City, provided by the warm ocean
currents, allowed more cold weather active time for the stinging eighteen-inch
wide bloodsuckers. It was shirtsleeve weather here today, and sunny. What were
these fools going to do if either of those threats appeared, swat them with
their bare hands?
    The small crowd divided as the