Part 25

June 8th, 2155

Pabano was a wiry five feet, eight inches tall, completely bald with piercing dark eyes, and he held a staff of some very dark, almost black wood. Davdan waited until the rest of her group were in place for breakfast in her kitchen the next morning before she brought him downstairs and introduced him.

"My loves, I am proud to present my lifelong love Pabano, father of my daughter Damdan, twice Grande Champion, and recently retired Leader of the Council of the Jaguar People of Uruguay, Second of the Council of All Jaguar People. He will spend the inactive period of his retirement here in this Elder's Enclave house with me, and I will have his love full time for the years that remain to us, as well as his political advice. He also has more fight experience than anyone else alive, and you will find he has a lot that is of interest to share on that subject. Please help me make him welcome in the zone."

Pabano smiled and bowed. "Greetings." he told them softly with a pronounced Spanish accent, and they returned it.

"Davdan has told me all about you, and I have followed your exploits closely on screen." he added.

"I am certainly looking forward to discussing fighting with you, Pabano." Tika smiled.

"He was known as 'The Quickest Man Alive', when he was active as a fighter." she informed her group. "So we have that in common."

"Not really in common," Pabano chuckled, "Since you will never be the quickest man alive, and I was never the quickest person alive. Even at my best, there were a few senoritas who were a touch quicker than me."

"Like Davdan?" Pina asked.

"No, though she was very quick. But she has other qualities that make her dangerous besides Quickness."

"Still, I am sure you have much to teach me of strategy as a speed specialist."

"And I am sure you have things to teach me, as well." Pabano nodded graciously.

All their screens signaled incoming calls at once, and they answered them to find that Jena and Jela were conference calling them.

"We have hunted, and we are victorious!" Jena told them excitedly.

"All five?" Davdan asked.

"All five!" Jela told them triumphantly.

"Are you all right? It looks like you are in a med!" Raz asked in concern.

"It is not bad. I am clawed on my calf, and Jela-Mother got clawed twice on her arm, but they are not too serious."

"Five?" Tira asked suspiciously.

"We did not want Tira-Mother and Menak getting too distracted from their fighting, so no one knows the details of your hunt except me, Davdan and Naz." Tika said. "You should explain the whole thing from the beginning."

So Jena related Binjo's call about the five man-eaters and the fate of the humans who had hunted them.

"After we got to the closest trading post, some Lion People Elders guided us to within a half mile of our prey." Jena said, continuing the narrative and showing video at the same time. "We washed in a stream there and scrubbed ourselves with sand from the bank, and covered ourselves with dust from the savannah while we were still wet, all to put the local scent on us, and help hide our own."

"Not that Jena has any scent anyway!" Jela laughed.

"And the dust was great camouflage, as you can see." Jena continued. "So then we tracked them for many hours, waiting for an opportunity, as they were moving steadily. Jela-Mother was kind enough to give me leadership of the hunt, so when we were discussing what to do, she was careful to offer her thoughts as advice, and to let me make the decisions, but I think hers were the crucial thoughts."

"And you were smart enough to know when to take the advice, and when not to!" Jela teased.

"Thank you. Anyway, we were pretty close behind them when we found a good spot, and that is when I got the first one! Here, watch this, the fight judges had about seven drones in the air above us, and they got good recordings of almost everything! And they've already edited them to show the best views!"

The footage showed Jena and Jela looking out of a jumble of rocks and boulders a hundred yards wide, watching the five lions heading away. The lions had just passed through the jumble the minute before, and one of them was straggling behind, perhaps thirty yards away. The two hunters conferred for a few seconds, whispering directly into each other's ear with their hand cupped around it so that their own screens could not pick up what they were saying.

Then Jena made a short, high, whining noise, softly from deep in her throat. The lions walking away took no notice. Jena repeated the sound, a little bit louder. The straggler stopped and looked back, his ears perking as he scanned the edge of the rocks, which ranged from twenty-three feet high down to gravel. As he had stopped, the hunters ducked down behind the four-foot high boulder that hid them. Jena eased her screen along the ground until the corner with the front camera was beyond the edge of the rock to see what the lion was doing, and he noticed the motion and began trotting back toward them.

"He comes. One so far." Jena whispered, and they eased back, keeping the boulder between them and the huge cat, until they were behind two bigger boulders closer to the center of the rock field, then they each climbed one of the bigger boulders behind that and hid on the back side of the top.

As the straggler entered the rock field Jela could see that the other four lions were coming as well, though at a more leisurely pace, and she flashed a quick hand with five fingers extended to her daughter, who nodded, listening carefully for the lion's approach. When she heard it sniffing the path that ran between the ten-foot high rocks she and Jela perched on, she silently gained her feet atop the boulder with three quick moves. She drew her knife as she glanced down and jumped. The lion was unaware as she fell on him, lashing down at the last moment with both heels together in the center of his back, driving him heavily to the ground and breaking his spine. She absorbed some of her momentum with her legs and pitched forward, turning as she did to hit the face of the boulder her mother now stood upon sideways rather than face on. The lion's roar was an almost screaming sound, it was incredibly loud, and it echoed around the stones. She impacted with her hip, shoulder, and the outside of her right arm and right leg and bounced off, avoiding a slash he launched with his right claws. Though his hindquarters were inert, he twisted his torso and slashed at her again, and she took two steps around him to stand on his tail and drive her knife into his body to the hilt while dodging his claws, then pull it out as she jumped back.

Less than two seconds had passed since she had landed on him.

"The others come!" Jela called urgently from atop her rock.

The widest aerial view showed that the other four lions had broken into a run as soon as they heard their brother's roar.

"Fall back to the tree!" Jena yelled and ran as soon as she heard her mother's warning, without even glancing up at her. Jela scrambled down the rock a bit, then jumped most of the way and sprinted after her daughter. They ran toward the edge of the rock field for twenty yards, then cut left down a three-foot-wide alley between two house-sized boulders.

Jena reached the end of the alley and emerged onto open ground at the edge of the rock field. She ran even faster as she made straight for a sixty-foot high tree thirty yards away. She approached it just as her mother was emerging from the alley and launched herself upward, running up the trunk for two steps and pulling herself onto the lowermost branch, eleven feet off the ground.

Jela had heard a lion approaching quickly behind her as she ran the last half of the alley, and once she was at the end of it she turned and reached over her shoulder to draw her katana. She stepped a bit to her left as the lion charged her, and with three fast and flowing sweeps of the razor sharp sword she cut it deeply on it's right paw, down the front of it's muzzle, and down the right side of it's neck, then sheathed the blade as she ran for the tree. The next lion was delayed a bit by having to get around it's brother's thrashing body in the narrow alley, then jumped over it when Jela was two-thirds of the way to the tree.

Jena awaited her, crouching on the second lowest branch, six feet above the lowest and sixty degrees around the trunk.

Jela made the first branch and stood as the lion reached the tree. Jena reached down as far as she could with crossed arms, and Jela reached up and jumped as she stood on the first branch, they each grabbed the other's forearms with both hands, and Jena hauled her mother up onto the second branch just as the lion made it onto the first, as agile as a kitten. Jela frantically whipped her katana out of its sheath and swung wildly at the lion, nicking it's ear. It had overbalanced a bit as it slashed at her and dodged her strike, and it leaped easily to the ground.

The three remaining lions gathered under the tree, pacing around and growling up at the two hunters. They were magnificent animals, well muscled and tawny, their manes black-tipped and almost completely grown out.

The recording paused and Jena and Jela's faces returned to their screens.

"And then there were three." Jela said with satisfaction. "I hated to kill one with the katana, but there seemed little to be done about it. And how about Jela's strike?! No lack of courage in my girl, I think!"

"It was absolutely brilliant!" Raz agreed enthusiastically.

"We learned afterward that Jena had cut the first one's liver pretty severely, as well as getting some good intestine damage and breaking it's back, and it died about half an hour later." Jela continued. "The one I had cut with the Katana bled out in about five minutes. I did not get an artery, but I got a big vein, and that was enough."

"After they treed us it was a patience game." Jena stated. "We knew that they were not going anywhere. They had drank at the stream only an hour earlier and eaten the day before, so I knew they were willing to wait until we dropped out of the tree from thirst or sleep or exhaustion." Jena said. "Lucky for us we were well fed and had gotten a good night's sleep, and had our water bottles. The judges called a few minutes later to congratulate us on our two kills and ask if we wanted a flyer to retrieve us, but Jela-Mother told them to get the hell off the channel!

"Here is some footage of us in the tree near the end of the day, that we recorded of each other."

Their screens showed the two hunters sitting on the second branch of the tree, sweating under the savannah sun and occasionally throwing big bark chips at the lions to keep their attention, and to prevent them from resting so they would be less alert later.

"We waited until it had been fully dark for a couple of hours, then I went down to get another one." Jena continued. "It took me over an hour to slip down the tree and stalk twelve feet to the closest one, because although they were resting by that time, they were fully awake. I was lucky because they had all moved over to one side of the tree to lay down, to bask in the last of the sun, so I was able to slip down the tree on the other side from them. Do you want to watch the whole stalk now?"

"Just show us the highlights." Davdan chuckled. "We will watch it all later."

"All right." Jena said. "You cannot really see that much anyway, because it was so dark, and the drone flyers with the infrared cameras were pretty far away. Here is me half way down the tree. Here is me easing out from behind the trunk. Here I am about halfway over to the lion." The last two clips had shown her flat to the ground in the foot high grass, only moving occasionally, and so slowly as to be barely noticeable even then.

"You can hardly tell from this vid, but there was intermittent clouding, and once I was in range I waited ten minutes, until it was completely dark. This infrared view shows the strike the best.

The lion was lying on its side and she was behind it. Her glowing green infrared image slowly gathered her legs under her and rose into a low crouch, then she sprang horizontally seven feet, staying two feet above the ground in a low dive, and drove her knife into the lion's neck with both hands as she flopped onto the ground. The lion roared and roused the two remaining lions as she rolled to her feet and ran for the tree. She had almost scampered up to the first branch before they reached the trunk, and though they did not try to make it up to the branch the one in the lead sprang to its hind legs and slashed at her.

"And that is when I got it on my leg." Jena stated. "I got the artery on that lion though, and it was dead in two minutes. And I do not mind saying that I was scared enough to crap myself during that entire stalk!" Jena laughed. "Now watch how Jela-Mother got the next one! It was about two hours later, after they had settled down again."

"I noticed that one of them was under the lowest branch, out near the end." Jela stated. The infrared view showed her standing on the second branch, holding another branch over her head to steady herself, as she eased her way out along the branch until she was almost above the lion she had targeted. The view fast-forwarded. "Like Jena, I memorized the position of everything when there was light, then made my move when it was very dark. Here it is."

The infrared view showed her standing in the same spot, then she stepped forward and to the side off the second branch. She fell six feet, then caught herself with her left leg and arm around the first branch, hanging underneath it, and was far enough from the trunk that her weight and momentum bowed it down to within four feet of the ground before it sprang back up. The lion had startled and looked up as she'd hit the bottom branch, and as she reached the bottom of her motion he had slashed at her at the same time that she stabbed him in the throat. He scored her arm with three claws and she dropped her knife as the branch lifted her back out of range.

"I got him through the windpipe." Jela stated. "He drowned in his blood twenty minutes later."

"And then there was one." Jena snickered. "The last one was not so neat. Jela-Mother and I were both injured badly enough that I was uncomfortable with either of us doing any more aerial maneuvers. I waited an hour, and now I think I should have waited longer, then I went down to stalk it. I had just put one foot on the ground when it detected me."

The vid showed her step onto the ground, and the lion suddenly jumped up and went for her. She spun around the two-foot thick tree trunk and stabbed it in the side with her knife to about three-quarters of the blade's length before it jammed between two ribs. The lion spasmed, wrenching the knife out of her hand, and she dodged around the tree to gain time to draw her sword. She backed up, slashing continuously to counter the lion's moves, and scored on it's paws four times while Jela hung from the lowest branch and dropped to the ground to assist.

Jela ran up behind the lion as she drew her sword and swung, cutting half its tail off and scoring the back of its left hind leg, and the lion turned on her with frightening speed, its roars painfully loud. She blocked one of his slashes with her blade but he got her on her right arm with his second one, then he spun back again as her daughter slashed deeply into his flank with her sword.

Jena jumped back again as he faced her, and Jela also slashed his flank with her sword, and the lion turned and ran.

Jela picked up her knife from where she'd dropped it earlier, sheathed it, and started applying another adhesive dressing to her arm as they jogged after the lion.

"We followed him for over an hour. " Jena said as she fast-forwarded the footage. "By the time we caught up to him again he was half dead from blood loss and internal bleeding. Jela-Mother let me have the finishing strike, which I think was generous of her, since I had already messed up the first attack on him."

The video went back to normal speed, showing the lion lying on his side in a patch of bush by the bank of a stream, the handle of Jena's knife protruding from his ribs. It only took Jena eight minutes to slip up behind him through the bush. She made a five-foot leap and drove her mother's knife into the side of his neck, then jumped back. He spasmed and growled and rolled over, but his eyes were already dimming.

"I got the artery on that one too, and he was dead in a minute." Jena said with satisfaction as she stopped the playback. "Then I got my knife back. Then the Meds picked us up, even though we did not ask them to, and our injuries are barely class ones. But we were pretty drained so we took the ride. The Elders of the Lion People told us to go ahead and that they would arrange the bagging and carrying of our kills. We told them to have the lion skins made into rugs and sent to us at home.

"That was about ten minutes before I called you. It is still dark here, though it will be dawn soon. We will be leaving here to come home as soon as we finish with this call."

"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" Pabano breathed, amazed at what he'd seen.

"Gods, my love, what an adventure!" Raz laughed. "A hunt like no other, especially for Tiger People!"

"Yes, it was amazing!" Naz agreed.

"That is the most spectacular hunt I have ever seen in my life." Davdan stated, looking thoughtful. "Seriously, the best I have ever seen. The three kills that were clean, Gods, even Jela's sword kill, they were spectacular! Excellent strategy! Excellent use of terrain!

"Do you know when you will receive the judgment?"

"Binjo said he would call us with it at eleven, but I asked him to hold the result until we called." Jela said. "We will sleep on the tube home, and we want to share it with you, so we will call him after we meet you at the tournament. We should be there by eleven thirty."

"We love you all, we will see you then!" Jena smiled.

"Bye! Love you!" several in Davdan's house chorused, and Jela ended the call.

"Well I must hurry, as I want to inspect the constructions before we leave." Raz stated, as Jela's closing vid window revealed several blinking messages on his screen. He dug into his breakfast with gusto.

"I need to contact Professor Hamimoto and several others of my cosmology team." Pina explained as she stood with her breakfast tray. "Please excuse me." She went into the living room, her screen under her arm.

"Well, I also have things I could be doing, but they can wait!" Naz stated happily. "I am going to watch Jela and Jena's hunt all the way through at regular speed, every second from the moment they stepped out of the trading post to the one when they called us! And I do not care if it takes all my spare time for the next three days to do it!"

"I will join you!" Davdan agreed.

"As will I." Pabano smiled.

"Well, I am inspired by what I have seen!" Tika stated. "We have two hours before we must be in the air. I am going hunting!"

"I will join you!!" Tira laughed.

"As will I." Menak smiled.

"And I." said Slin, giving Tika a cuddle.

There was nothing really interesting available to be hunted in their territories that day beyond a nine foot crocodile, but they greatly enjoyed stalking it, and Menak make the kill. They divided it into four bags and carried it to Davdan's house, where they sent it to the trading post in the mail tube.

Ali arrived to pick them up in the white luxury flyer at five minutes to ten, and they were at their suite in the Nehru Performance Coliseum by eleven thirty. Jela and Jena were already there, looking tired but happy and satisfied.

They exchanged happy greetings and hugs, and everyone congratulated Jela and Jena again on a great hunt, and they in turn congratulated Tira and Menak on their victories the day before.

Then Jena called Binjo. She was automatically put on hold for two and a half minutes, then Binjo appeared and snapped; "The judgment has not yet been decided!" Then he ended the call and the logo of the Council of Hunting Judges took his place on her screen. "Well, I guess there is some disagreement among the judges of hunting!" she shrugged, her eyebrows raised in surprise. "I will send him a message and ask him to hold the announcement until after today's fights, and call him again then."

Tira and Menak surrendered their tokens at 11:30 and the group took their seats.

At noon it was seen that of the previous day's twenty-one victorious fighters, only fifteen were healthy enough to fight again. This was scheduled to be the fourth round; the round of thirty-two, and the next day to be the round of sixteen. Since there were less than that number of fighters remaining, the tournament would now be one day shorter.

"So that's what, seven and a half fights?" Ali asked with a grin.

"Seven fights." Raz told him with a grin. "The top ranked fighter gets a bye, and will not have to fight in this round. Since the Grande Champion has not let go of the number one rank since the tournament started, he gets the day off."

"Four rounds left. Four fights to win the Grande Championship." Menak said quietly, and he and Tira turned in their seats to hug each other.

The judge began the day's proceedings, then announced; "Because there are fifteen fighters remaining, the venues will be allocated according to the round of sixteen. And now, we will begin the draw!"

Menak was drawn with the fighter who had been ranked twentieth the night before, for the second fight. Tira was drawn with the fighter who was ranked third, for the forth fight.

There were ten minutes between each fight in the round of sixteen, and only the two biggest stadiums were used for alternating fights. The second ranked fighter, who had been Grande Champion the year before, was drawn for the first match, and the popularity polls as well as his rank dictated that he would fight in the biggest venue. This meant that both Menak and Tira would fight in the football stadium four hundred yards away, home of the New Delhi Typhoon.

Since the draw had only taken a few minutes, they had more than an hour before Menak's fight.

Tika's stride was purposeful as they re-entered their suite. "We will need fifteen minutes to go from here to the paddock in Typhoon stadium." she stated decisively. "That leaves forty-five minutes of usable time before Menak's fight. There will be twenty minutes after that before Tira-Mother's fight, and that is too short to come back here, so we will have to spend it in the V.I.P. lounge over there. It will not be private, so it will not be very useful time.

"We will spend the next twenty minutes preparing for Menak's fight, and the twenty after that preparing for Tira's. Then I suggest we all cuddle for five minutes before we go over there. We should cuddle between Menak and Tira-Mother's fights as well."

"Cuddle?" Menak chuckled.

"Yes." Tika smiled. "It is the secret of great fight trainers everywhere. Or at least it would be if they were all as smart as me."