Koban Universe 1 Read Online Free PDF

stairs she had just used. As the first of them reached the top of the steps, the echoes of their multiple voices started echoing all through the cavernous volume, reflecting from the walls, machinery, and catwalks.
    A peculiar sensation pervaded her mind, as the sounds reflected and reverberated. She had a definite sense not only of where they were, behind and above her on the stair top, but they were over her right shoulder. As she turned her head, the echoes arriving at slightly different times and from different directions, she believed she could pinpoint their location. Not only that, but she could visualize her own catwalk, and the huge hydraulic press she was concealed behind.
    Press? How do I know that? It dawned on her that the shape she sensed next to her, in her mind, fit the design of other Krall factory equipment she had seen in operational factories. She sensed an opening in the side of the press, where material to be shaped would be placed. Quietly, she stepped closer and, eyes still closed, reached a hand out and precisely touched the edge of that recess. She hadn’t needed to fumble. She had found it easily with her eyes closed. She cautiously moved down the walkway several steps, and with more confidence, reached out and touched the other side of that opening.
    She was forming a more detailed image of her surroundings by the second, as the echoes arrived, and were placed in some sort of order in her mind. She had no idea how it was happening, but the ability was certainly familiar to her. She had Mind Tapped wolfbats many times, after they had sc outed for them, to provide the human partners with their mental images of what they had seen. Part of those images came from their eyes, part from their mental images built from echolocations. A human couldn’t make the sounds required for echolocation, but the Krall were being obliging, and doing it for her.
    One of the side benefits of the wolfbat hearing genes, had been the inherent improvement in memory organization, experienced in the brains of every Kobani after that modification became fully incorporated. The orderly structure for improved memory storage and fast data recovery had been noted, examined, and they thought it was understood as a byproduct of the wolfbat’s need for an audio map of the world when flying through a darkened jungle or cave. However, it hadn’t occurred to them to test it like this for humans, when visual cues were unavailable.
    Maggi didn’t have precise ranging cues, based on a personally generated echo measured position in this audio space. However, her mind was automatically organizing the sounds into a perception of the entire space around her. She “knew” just how wide the press was that she was touching. That there was a walkway eleven feet on the opposite side, where a formed metal alloy chest plate could be removed. This press was part of a Krall body armor production line. One that she had seen previously, in a different well-lit factory.
    This acoustic ability was one they hadn’t realized they had. Useful, even if a lesser version of the sharply defined images sensed previously from wolfbat minds. Humans were predominately-visual creatures, so it hadn’t occurred to them to look for this. She could use this ability to elude her pursuers better in the dark, but it literally wouldn’t get her out of this hole.
    Now that she could sense where there was cover from the Krall’s IR vision, she could mo ve along places of concealment. She even had an intermittent sense of where the sound emitters were (the Krall when they were making noise). Fortunately, some of them were babbling all of the time. It wasn’t language, but there were repetitions of the same sounds from different voices, which suggested they did use rudimentary voice signals.
    She could tell this hydraulic press had a narrow opening all the way through to the other side. Her eyes still shut, she crawled through the tight space, quelling the thought that