Hunter, Warrior, Commander

by Andrew Maclure

  “I can see why people have always followed you Sah Lee. You have no problem taking charge, do you?”

  “I’m sorry Seltet, I didn’t mean to tell you what to do…”

  “You carry on Sah Lee. I thought this was going to be an uncomfortable, character building night out without food or water. It’s now looking like it’s going to be a fun night camping in the woods!”

  Sah Laughed. “I’m not promising that, but we should be safe and have food and water. Unless one of the cat-like predators attacks. I’ll have to stay awake all night.”

  “What cat like predators? You didn’t mention them before.”

  “My AI told me there are some on the area, but I should be able to take it, even without my hunting knife.” She held her hands out and extended her claws, then drew back her lips exposing her long cuspid teeth.

  “Mmm. Scary. But are they actually useful for hunting?”

  “They are all I’ve ever used. I was given the knife at university, I’ve never owned one before.”

  Sah Lee’s AI showed her images of the plant they needed, and they quickly found a patch of it nearby. They had a strong pungent smell, which Sah Lee thought might overcome her ability to catch the scent of water, so she left Seltet busy applying the sap from the plant to her exposed skin while she went in search of water. She soon found a stream four hundred meters from where she had left Seltet. The stream bottom was gravel and the water clear, though stained slightly brown. Sah lee carefully sniffed it, then took a taste. Apart from a slightly peaty flavor the water was unpolluted and clean. She ran back to fetch Seltet, and they both took a deep drink.

  Sah Lee had detected the scent of several animals while looking for water. The smell of an animal gave a good indication of what it ate. Ignoring the ones which had the scent of insectivores or carrion eaters, Sah Lee quietly slipped away into the undergrowth while Seltet busied herself making tinder and collecting firewood. When Sah Lee returned with two dead animals weighing about three quarters of a kilo each, she found that Seltet had made a fireplace by scraping out a hollow and surrounding it with rocks she found at top of a rise a hundred meters away, most of which were of the kind that shattered into sharp flakes when struck hard against each other.

  Sah Lee struck the back of her knife against a stone fragment to make sparks and quickly set fire to the tinder. Seltet built the fire while Sah Lee prepared her prey for cooking, taking the skin, guts, feet and heads several hundred meters away and burying them. She stopped to cut greenwood sticks to skewer the meat on and by the time she got back, Seltet had a good hot fire going.

  The sun had completely disappeared below the horizon. The only light was from the stars in the clear sky and the fire. As soon as they finished eating, they burnt the remains of the meat and bones and thoroughly washed their hands and faces in the nearby stream, then rubbed the pungent smelling plants all over themselves again to deter the biting insects and mask their scent from predators. Seltet quickly fell into a deep sleep while Sah Lee sat by the fire, feeding it with just enough wood to keep a flame going, determined to stay awake and keep watch all night.

  Chapter Fifty Four

  Catattack

  Sah Lee awoke with a start. High in the tree’s birds had started to call to each other, and the sky had started to lighten. The sun would rise in about twenty minutes. She sat up and sniffed the air. Not detecting anything threatening she stood and looked around, and quietly walked into the undergrowth. She returned a few minutes later to find Seltet blinking herself awake.

  “Did you sleep well?” Sah Lee asked.

  “Yes thanks. That run tired me, we ate well, and I felt quite safe with you keeping watch all night.” She looked at the fire and frowned. “I thought you were going to keep the fire going all night to keep the predators away? That’s cold now. It must have been out for several hours.”

  “Uh, no. I decided to let it burn out. It was attracting insects.” Sah Lee decided it was better not to tell Seltet that she had fallen asleep not long after she had.

  “If you need to refresh yourself, go that way.” she said pointing into the woods the way she had gone.

  “Why that way?” asked Seltet.

  “Because that way,” Sah Lee pointed ninety degrees away, “is downwind, so if the scent of, uh, what you leave there…”

  “You mean my piss?” Seltet asked.

  “Uh, yes.”

  “You’re in the army now, and in the field. There’s no time for pleasantries and euphemisms when you’re in action, say what you mean.”

  “OK. The scent of your piss travels a long way. It’s wet and warm. If a predator picks up the scent downwind of you, you won’t be able to get its scent when it stalks you. If you piss upwind, its scent could mask a predator coming from that direction. If you piss at ninety degrees, a predator could find it and possibly track you, but it’s not the same as having a huge sign pointing at you. Got it?”

  Seltet grinned. “Very succinctly put Sah Lee. I’ve learnt something today already. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Seltet returned, and they started to break camp. Sah Lee said “Listen. Can you hear that?”

  “All I can hear are the birds in the trees.”

  “Only the birds that sit high in the trees. The bigger birds that scratch on the woodland floor are all silent. Listen.” She turned to face downwind into the woods. “Something big, just one, coming slowly towards us.”

  “I can’t hear anything.”

  “Shh! Get well behind me.” She reached behind her and pulled her hunting knife from its sheath. Dropping into a half crouch, she slowly started to move forward.

  “What are you doing!” Seltet whispered.

  “This is where the hunter becomes the hunted. Stay here and keep quiet.” Sah Lee told her and silently disappeared into the undergrowth.

  Seltet listened carefully, but all she could hear was the calling of the birds high in the trees. Sah Lee was right, the rustling sound of the birds scratching through the dry, dead leaves was absent. Time seemed to stretch out as she waited. However confident Sah Lee was in her abilities, taking on an apex predator in its own territory armed only with a knife was verging on the foolhardy. It was her fault that they were in this position. She had brought them into the wilderness without any planning, any risk assessment, completely unprepared. The planet had been occupied for several hundred years. It was usual to fence off any dangerous fauna from settlements, so she hadn’t expected to run into any without warning.

  She heard a low pitched, angry sounding, rumbling roar. Her blood ran cold. That didn’t come from a small animal. The roaring was quickly accompanied by the sounds of the undergrowth being crushed and the snapping of branches. The noise seemed to start about seventy or eighty meters away, but the commotion was getting closer until suddenly, it stopped. There was silence for a couple of minutes then she heard the sound of something heavy being dragged toward her, rustling through the old dry leaves and twigs on the ground and swishing through the undergrowth.

  Seltet looked around, trying to find her best route for escape. She dismissed the idea of climbing a tree, many cat like predators were agile climbers. She was sure she would be able to outrun it over a distance, but not confident she could over a short sprint, particularly in the woods. Her best chance was to get a good head start on it. She knew that she couldn’t defeat a large predator, she was completely unarmed, not even carrying a knife, but she didn’t want to leave Sah Lee in case she was still alive.

  “Sah Lee?” she called out, hoping to hear some sign of life.

  “On my way, I’ll be with you in a moment, but this is a bit heavy.”

  “Thank the gods and stars, you’re alive.”

  “Of course I’m alive!” Sah Lee’s voice called back. She emerged from the trees dragging an animal almost twice her size with both hands clamped on the skin on the back of its neck. Her jump suit was ripped from shoulder to waist. She had blood around her mouth and on her fingers
and a row of deep scratches down her body which were bleeding profusely. Small twigs and leaves were entangled in her hair and a thick smear of dark mud ran down her left leg. Seltet noticed that Sah Lee’s hunting knife was embedded between the shoulders of the dead beast.

  “Sah Lee, are you all right!”

  “Only a few scratches. I’ll be fine. That would have been easier without these boots on.”

  “Just a moment,” Seltet said as Sah Lee continued dragging the beast toward her. After a few moments, she continued, “I’ve spoken to Major Erret San Mer, she’s sending a medical unit. The lander should arrive soon.”

  “That’s good, I’ll be able to bring this back. I think I would have struggled to carry it back by myself.”

  “Carry it back - are you mad! You’ve got a great gash down your side. You’ll bleed to death if we don’t get you treated!”

  “My physiology is different to yours. The scratches hurt a bit, but they’ll stop bleeding soon. To you, it probably looks a lot worse than it is.”

  Sah Lee spoke to her AI. “You said that the solitary predators were only a bit bigger than me. This is huge!”

  “What I told you is correct. Their average size is slightly larger than you. The females are far smaller than the males, that is a male, therefore it is a lot bigger than average.”

  “You could have got us killed! Why didn’t you tell me that the males were that big!”

  “Thank you for your feedback Sah Lee. In future when giving you information about predators I will give you more relevant detail.”

  “That would be helpful.” she said to her AI, sarcastically.

  “The predator was a lot bigger than I expected.” she told Seltet. “If I had known it was that big, I would have suggested we make a run for it.”

  “Why didn’t you run when you saw it?”

  “Because it saw me at the same time as I saw it.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I knew it was going to pounce on me, and I knew how I would have attacked if I had been in its position, so I leapt out of the way to attack it from the side as soon as it made its move.”

  “Is that when it clawed you?”

  “No, that came later. I’m going to sit down for a moment. Dragging it over here has worn me out.”

  “All that blood you are losing can’t help. I don’t care what you say about your physiology, you can’t sustain that amount of blood loss for long. Lay down quietly until the lander arrives.”

  “OK, but I’m all right, really.”

  By the time the lander arrived, Sah Lee was unconscious. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and her skin had become cool and clammy. Seltet was unable to stem the blood loss as the wounds were so large.

  The lander descended in medical emergency mode, smashing through branches as it came down and crushing a small tree. It hit the ground with a thud, the landing feet embedding themselves half a meter into the soft woodland floor. The boarding ramp slammed down, and two medics sprinted out followed by an automated gurney. As soon as they saw the animal’s body, another larger gurney shot down the ramp to join them. This saved Seltet the problem of persuading them to take the dead creature back with them, but it took her some time to persuade the medics not to attempt to resuscitate it.

  Sah Lee was given an oxygen mask, and a quick scan, her wounds rinsed out and pressure dressings applied. At the same time, a medic inserted an intravenous drip and a universal synthetic blood substitute was infused into her.

  “What about the other casualty, is that an enemy combatant?” The medic asked.

  “No, it’s a wild animal.”

  “You’ve broken the army protocol to not harm indigenous wildlife?”

  “The protocol says to avoid harming indigenous wildlife if at all possible. That predator was stalking us and clearly planned to have us for breakfast. In those circumstances the army would have been disappointed if we had been eaten without making any attempt to defend ourselves. I would also point out that apart from a primitive hunting knife, we are unarmed.”

  “OK. I was just checking.”

  “She didn’t think she was badly wounded.” Seltet told the medic.

  “Her dermis, the layer of skin below the epidermis, is unusually dense and tough. She probably thought it hadn’t been penetrated by the predator’s claws - but it had. The wounds have cut into the underlying muscle and exposed her ribs in some places. I’m surprised she hadn’t gone into shock.”

  “She’s not in shock?”

  “Maybe, but she is definitely suffering from massive blood loss.”

  As soon as she had finished stabilizing Sah Lee, the medic turned to Seltet. “She’ll be fine until we get her to the medical bay in the Cruiser, then the medical AI’s and bots can take over. They’ll take a few days to heal her completely.”

  “Would you remove the knife from the animal’s body and clean and sterilize it before returning it to Sah Lee please?”

  “Of course. That’s a hell of a predator. Did she really kill it with just a knife?”

  “No, she used her teeth and claws too.”

  The medic laughed and said: “This is going to make a good story when we get back to base. I’m going to get a VR of its body. Can you help me arrange it next to Sah Lee, so I can show its relative size?”

  Chapter Fifty Five

  The Separatists

  Three days later, Sah Lee arrived in the landing area, the only passenger on an automated lander. She had a message from Touren that she would be joining her group. She had it cleared by Colonel B’Erren Tek and would be down the next day. Her AI had got the message two days ago while she was still in an induced coma, so Sah Lee expected that Touren would already be there. As she walked down the ramp to the ground, Por Aruf greeted her.

  “You’re fully recovered now?” Por Aruf asked.

  “Yes thanks. They woke me up yesterday morning and made me spend the day exercising and stretching to make sure I have healed properly.”

  “Good. We can run back if you like, but I can’t run as fast as Seltet, my legs aren’t as long.

  “I’m happy to walk, unless we need to get back quickly.”

  “There’s no hurry. Nothing has changed since you left, we’re still waiting orders. We’re dug in for a long wait, we have a lander half a kilometer away where we can get food and supplies, so we’re quite comfortable now, though we have to share the facilities with sixty other troops and camping in an urban area isn’t the best place to be. When we get back, Seltet and I will start training you in close and unarmed combat. We need to get you to be as good at fighting soldiers as you are at fighting animals.”

  “You’ve heard about that?”

  “The VR of the animal has gone all round the army, you are famous Sah Lee!” Por Aruf made a series of chirps.

  “Laughing.” Sah Lee’s AI informed her.

  “What VR? What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t seen it? The medic recorded and described the predator, showing its size laid out against you when you were laying on the gurney in the medical lander.”

  “But that was an animal, not too much different from me. I keep being shown by soldiers that they are harder to fight than animals are, I feel like I’ll never be a good fighter as a soldier.”

  “You defeated that bloody great predator because you understand how to fight animals. If we can teach you to understand how to fight soldiers and you can tackle them as instinctively as you can fight an animal, you will be able to handle pretty much any soldier you come up against. Even a Krendor!”

  “You think I might stand my ground against Si’ir Monn one day?

  “That predator must weigh in at about the same weight as Si’ir Monn. The difference is that the predator is a killing machine, honed to perfection by evolution over hundreds of thousands of years, whereas Si’ir Monn, well, he’s a good fighter, but he’s a lot of other things too. If you can get that good against a soldier, you’ll have no trouble handling Si’ir
Monn!”

  “I don’t want to kill him,” Sah Lee said, “but I’d like to know I could if I wanted to.” She grinned.

  Por Aruf chirped again. “You are going to get us into so much trouble Sah Lee. Come on, let’s run back - but at army pace, not as fast as Seltet!”

  Sah Lee let Por Aruf set the pace. She was ready for a run. She was getting used to coming around after an induced coma. Her muscles were stiff and even after all the stretching exercises she had done the previous day, she really felt like she could do with a good run, and although running a few kilometers along a road wasn’t the same as running on the plains, it was better than a treadmill or the corridors of Betzel base.

  “My friend Touren is coming to join us!” Sah Lee called out to Por Aruf.

  “Touren Ud Sen? She’s back in the army? How do you know her?”

  “She was with the Boran Medical Emergency and Recovery Group who rescued me from Aarn. She was my mentor and when I wanted to join an army she and Bekkreshan joined up too so that they could look after me, though I haven’t seen much of them lately.”

  “It looks like your army family is getting bigger. Seltet will be pleased, she used to get on well with Touren.”

  When they reached their impromptu camp they found Ren Deel, Touren and Seltet there, but Si’ir Monn was missing.

  Touren came running up to greet them. Running into Sah Lee she crashed into her and gave her a bone crushing hug. “What were you doing attacking that beast?”