Tracked on Predator Planet (Predator Planet Series)

by Vicky L. Holt.

  I cocked my head and furrowed my brows. What was the purpose of her industry? She never removed her suit. Esra’s suit had protected her from numerous dangers. It must be so for Joaxma as well. I considered what she might make from a pazathel-nax pelt if she had one. Its white and gray fur would be quite beautiful next to the silver of her eyes.

  With a pounding heart and racing breaths, I jolted to standing and snagged my helmet. What mystic nonsense were such thoughts to me? The cage confining my heart creaked and ached, but I ignored it. I was too long without the company of a female. That was all. I turned my back on the glade and the trespasser. I had received no summons from the Goddesses. The builder was merely an inconvenient curiosity.

  I traveled until the suns set and hunted the nocturnal slithering black agothe-talaza. Its meat released bursts of juicy flavor on my tongue. I tossed the skin away and hiked to a cave I knew on the south side of Treed Mountain. It was many veltiks away from the glade. I would never need travel to the glade again.

  I found the cave and killed the shegoshe-tax cat that lived there. The meat was worthless, so I threw it off the cliff to be scavenged by the jokapazathel rodents. I swept out the scat and other detritus. It was a good cave.

  I slept and, in the morning, gathered wood and stone to construct my own homestead. As I whittled the bark away from several long sticks, my mind sought out images of Joaxma at her work. From where did she hail? Who taught her the ways of the ancient hunter? We no longer used the skins of beasts to make our armors, yet it once was so. I ground my teeth and pulled another stick from the pile. I narrowed the end into a point. Repeating the task, I had several such sticks by the end of the day. I buried the points into the ground a few steps away from the entrance to my cave. Forming a fence, I now had a simple barrier from the lesser creatures.

  I stacked the stones inside, creating an inner wall. The black stone we called mountain-heart. I chipped until its edge was sharp and used it to create a bowl in the center of a big rock. I would use it in a similar manner to Joaxma’s stone bowl.

  My mouth turned down at the thought, but I resumed my work; I should not be thinking of her.

  I placed the large rock outside the cave, where a natural run-off would collect rainwater from the rocky cliff above, then stood back and admired my work with a grunt.

  My stomach growled in reply. Dried meat held no appeal. Nor did that of the agothe-talaza. My mouth watered at the thought of fresh glisten-fish. I slammed a fist into the rock cliff I stood beside, and tumbling stones fell around me. I glared at the cave wall, and the rattle of pebbles stopped.

  With the memory of the taste of glisten-fish on my tongue, and my own mother’s recipe scrolling in my mind, I determined to return to the little builder’s site. If I approached the stream from the opposite side while she was in her ship, I might hook a line of glisten-fish and sneak back through the ikfal without her ever being the wiser. I wanted to keep my distance, even while curiosity burned as bright as two suns in my heart.

  Naraxthel had transformed from a single-minded hunter to someone I did not recognize, coddling the soft traveler. Maybe he didn’t think we had noticed the possessive way he had stood between the human Esra and the rest of us, or how he had hovered near if we approached her. But he had minced no words when we had stared at her opened suit, marveling at the horrific bruise the agothe-fax beast had given her but noting with interest her covered breasts.

  “Your eyes to me!” he had shouted.

  I had laughed. No, I had no interest in becoming like him, and the longer I stayed away from Joaxma, the less danger she posed to my solid, unmoving heart. While I might satisfy my curiosity for a tik and make the glade as unwelcome as possible, she would no longer draw me to her like a moon moth to a flame.

  I grunted. Resigned to my fate of easing the strange obsession with the space traveler, I glanced around my comfortable cave once more. After many suns, I too would have furs. They would complement my bedroll. I would exchange my armor for the tough hides of rokhura. I would blend into the ikfal and become a ghost to my people. If my path crossed that of the little builder, then so be it.

  6

  Steps away from my first snare, prickles shivered up my spine. I stopped and peered into the forest, certain something was watching me. “Vector, activate thermal imaging.” I saw a moth. “Vector, switch to UV vision.” Maybe it would pick up something.

  I scanned the entire tree line. Nothing. Everything. Shades unseen by the human eye existed in a brilliant alien array, but nothing stood out from the colorful plant life. Wild exuberant leaves and petals, stamens, tendrils, and vined branches, huge fronds with speckles and symmetrical veining, foliage on ceremonial display. It took me back to childhood powwows on the Restored Indigenous Lands of my home continent. Exhaling, I switched back to normal vision and approached the snare.

  The furry brown creatures had grown wary of my snares by now, but the animal I caught this time brought me up short. Was it a reptile?

  I stepped closer, but not close enough for its long toothy snout to reach me. It was still alive, thrashing about in bursts of frenetic energy, then stopping to pant. A purple tongue lolled out of the gray-skinned snout. The animal had four eyes, and, like the gigantic orange and black bird, it had a wrinkled flesh bag at its throat. The snare had snagged a rear paw, but it had five others with which to claw the dirt. It had torn up a fair radius in its attempt to free itself, and when I grew closer, I could see blood running down its snared leg. And gnaw marks.

  I grimaced. Some animals would chew off their own legs to be free.

  The snout was twelve inches long, with jagged teeth that rimmed its length. Its narrow body writhed like a snake’s, but it had spikes along its spine, and each of the six legs was tipped with vicious curving claws.

  The longer I stared at it, the less frantic its movements became. It was tiring itself out.

  The skin seemed rough like a crocodile. I questioned the sharpness of my knife’s edge to cut through it. A pang twisted in my gut. I could let it go, but its agile legs and sharp teeth would show no mercy to anything in its path, including me. “Reptile spirit, thank you for the life you give to me,” I whispered, then raised the club.

  I killed the animal, then bowed my head a moment. Resetting the snare required combing through the underbrush to obscure the line once more.

  I walked to each of the other snares, finding one rodent in the second. The third hadn’t sprung yet. And the last one … something had bitten through and escaped. With a sigh, I retied it with a new length of twine. Maybe the Trickster had stolen my prey. I chuckled at myself. Utter nonsense. Nanabozho was famous among my people for causing mischief and teaching morals. But if the Great Spirit knew I was here, why couldn’t the Trickster find me and stir up trouble as well? I couldn’t help the half-smile.

  Back at camp, I fed more fuel to my tanning fire. I gathered my tools from inside the pod, but once outside, kept staring into the dark forest. I knew something watched me.

  After I skinned and brain-tanned the newly caught rodent, I inspected the reptile. It would give me an even larger hide, but I was more interested in the glossy claws I could make decent weapons out of. Feeling gooseflesh erupt on my nape, I looked up at the black forest again. I could use a decent weapon.

  The smoke, as well as the electronic waves produced by my perimeter, were, indeed, keeping the wasps away. The short grass deterred the salamander-snakes from traversing as well, but it was only a matter of time before bigger predators crossed my path. I would have stayed working inside the pod, but I was running out of room. I glared into the forest, then returned to my work.

  For now, I was using a rock to de-flesh the skins, but it would be nice to have a better tool for the purpose. As I scraped pink wads of flesh, revealing the white hide underneath, I pondered what I would need to make such tools. Smooth, straight branches with a wide flat end. I could carve them. A bit of sharp metal with handles on each side would be even better, b
ut there were no extra blades in the EEP. Heck, even bones would work.

  I sat back on my rock for a moment and surveyed the glade. I kept busy. Each day was filled to the brim with activity, but what was I working toward? My hand tightened its grip on the rock. This was my home now. I was working toward a comfortable, isolated life. If I was lucky, others from the Lucidity would join me. They could, even now, be setting up their own base camps.

  Food, shelter, water.

  I smirked. When everything was stripped away, our basic needs were simple. I reached out and stroked the fur of one of my case pelts. And connection. That would be harder to come by unless I found my shipmates. I cocked my head. Maybe I should try to find them…

  I scowled. If I set my beacon and disabled the Handler chip, I should, in theory, be able to find any other castaways more quickly. Why was I being so stubborn about it?

  In Overseer mode, the Vector could also access weather patterns by utilizing the transospheric nanosatellite array. I could see systems coming days before they hit. Yesterday’s little shower had taken me by surprise, but it had been mild. Considering the wild tropical storms possible on my home planet, having extra warning would be invaluable.

  I sighed and scraped away the final bits of flesh from the hide I worked. It was time to let go of my pride and let Vector have its head. As soon as I finished up, I would do that.

  The rock caught on a nodule in the skin, so I leaned in closer. Piercing alarms blasted inside my helmet. I tossed the skin and snatched up my nearby machete, crouching and scanning.

  There!

  A sinuous segmented gray insect, the length of a garden hose but a foot wide, creeped toward my tanning rack. Low to the ground, I couldn’t see how it had triggered my perimeter. Then it reared up, thousands of spindly insect legs waving as if to draw the aroma of the fire into its mouths.

  I retched—its underside boasted openings its entire length.

  “Vector, video this insect.”

  “Recording. Your heart rate has escalated. Do you require assistance?”

  “Not yet.” I flexed my fingers around the machete handle.

  The monstrous millipede dropped back to the ground and zig-zagged closer. Its head appeared eyeless. If the end was the head. With its mouths kissing the ground everywhere it moved and its legs acting like feelers or noses, I couldn’t know for sure. All I knew was that it was big enough to devour my entire collection of skins and meats if I let it.

  I took a step.

  It stopped moving.

  Okay, it sensed ground vibrations. Made sense. I took another careful step. In three large steps, I would be close enough to decapitate it. I swallowed the sour acid in my mouth.

  It remained still.

  Heart in my throat, the machete whistled through the air. I chopped off a huge segment. Green liquid sprayed, and both segments writhed. The short segment I thought was its head rolled onto its back, and I watched in horror as the many mouths opened and closed, gasping for air. The remnant charged at me, ripping a scream from my gut, and I jumped backward.

  My breaths came in painful gasps as I prepared to cut another chunk off. It was a twisted game of fractions. How small did the pieces have to be for it to die? A glance at the short chunk showed it to be yowling silently and waving its legs in a hypnotizing ripple.

  When the long portion reared up again, I swung in a sideways arc, slicing the bug in half. It rolled into itself, but its legs continued to wriggle and sway. The green liquid clotted, and the millipede segments righted themselves and crawled toward me.

  Oh shit.

  All the segments were still alive. Now I was fighting three, as the smallest had quivered its way onto its front once more and headed into the fray.

  With Vector’s RR weapon in the back of my mind, I grit my teeth and fought on, cutting vertically through the insects, correctly deducing it was the only way to kill them. Unfortunately, the longest piece was harder to kill. It stopped rearing at me, perhaps learning that was how its, uh, children died. It swerved around me, trying to trip up my boots.

  Think, Pattee. My gaze slid to the smoking fire. With a desperate lunge, I skewered the bug and dragged it to the fire, planting my machete into the embers.

  The shock turned its exoskeleton bright orange, and after curling and scrolling around the blade, it finally expired, its slender legs shriveling and disintegrating in the heat.

  Gasping for breath, I left the machete in the fire and stumbled into the pod. Inside, I pulled off my helmet and puked into the waste receptacle, the horrifying mathematical quantity of the bug and its grisly death affecting me.

  I knelt and grappled with the drawer of water pouches, sucking one down and leaning against the wall.

  “Vector, I need you to concoct some kind of invisible sound barrier for bugs. Like they have on Earth. Do you think you could do that?”

  “Of course.”

  I mopped sweat from my brow and slowed my breathing. I had to get back to work. And retrieve my weapon from the fire. As much as I wanted to curl up into a ball, that attitude would lead to my death on this planet. With a final shudder, I stood up and got to it.

  7

  My steady lope through the ikfal induced a meditative state. While I had determined to keep my distance from the Mahavelt female, the nearer to the glade I traveled, the greater my anxiety grew. I carried my bedroll and hunting accoutrements. I frowned as I slowed to a walk and plucked several jokal grasses to pocket amongst my herbs. Perhaps I should not have left my raxtheza. But it was meant to show I was, in truth, dead. I still had my other blades.

  I combed through the jokal grass, searching for the yellow herb we called quaza jofa: ear grass. Its petals were shaped like ears, but its flavor was that of a savory meat. I needed it, along with the jokal grass, to make my glisten-fish stew.

  I resumed my pace, eager to fish, although I ignored several streams en route that would have been suitable.

  At the tree line, I inspected Joaxma’s snares. A successful night of trapping. A pregnant jokapazathel, a fat puddle bird, a juvenile jokapazathel, and a spiny, warted rock climber.

  The Sister Suns would rise soon. I released the pregnant and juvenile jokapazathel, which still lived. The Goddesses would curse me were I to intentionally kill unborn offspring on Ikthe. With death at every turn, the unborn took on a sacred aspect here. Of course, the human wouldn’t know that and wouldn’t be condemned by the Goddesses for it. However, if I could make the trespasser’s life a little difficult, subtly convince her that life in the glade was too much trouble … How could that be wrong? The puddle bird I took for myself as tribute. I left the spiny, warted rock climber. That would occupy the builder while I fished.

  The animals limped away, shaking their legs as if to rid them of the sensation of the twine. The puddle bird escaped my grip, hopped a bit, then lifted into a graceless flight. It flew over the glade and dropped a load of kathe onto the nosecone of the ship.

  I belted out a laugh before stifling it. A memory came to me, unbidden. Hivelt Matheza! Why do you pester your little sister? Give her the toy or I will box your ears! I don’t care if she stepped on your map, you show kindness before the Goddesses.

  I slinked back into the thick brush, angered at the memory, and hiked the perimeter until I found the head of the stream. I walked through it, its depth reaching to my knees in the middle. Once on the other side, I hiked farther south, seeking the spot where a fallen limb had created a cool and still harbor for the glisten-fish to rest on their annual migration. I could catch a stringer’s worth in that riffle.

  Across the stream, something out of place caught my eye. Cages? Curiosity piqued, I waded the stream and inspected them.

  A wry smile curved my mouth. Her cages trapped the disgusting dirt-tongue that consumed all manner of filth, though it was harmless. A darting motion in the brush snagged my attention. Ah, the mischievous acid-spitter. I considered a jotik. It was an easy decision.

  I opened one trap
and withdrew the dirt-tongue, depositing it in the stream, caught the acid-spitter, and shoved it into the cage without ceremony. I grunted at myself. After dousing the mild acid off my armor with stream water, I searched for my fishing hole. If I made her life difficult enough, perhaps she would choose elsewhere to settle, instead of my treasured glade. My mother’s glower intruded my thoughts. The acid-spitter hissed at me every time I looked at it. Guilt tainted my fishing.

  “Oh, very well,” I said to no one. I released the spitter; it leaped into the trees without a backward glance.

  I found the spot, my heart easing as I plugged a juicy green beetle onto the end of my tri-hook. The spot I chose had a clear view into the glade and toward the little ship, merely by chance. I kept my helmet on in order to utilize my stealth settings.

  Sabotaging snares and traps. Spying on a female. You have no honor, Hivelt.

  “I spy on my enemy.”

  My line tugged, and I tugged back with a gentle pull. A jotik later, a stronger tug yanked the line, and I gave the fish its head for a rotik, then pulled up, freeing the fish from its watery home. I gave a silent shout, mindful she could exit her ship at any time. I admired the fish. It was leaner than I had expected for the season. I frowned and lashed its body to my underwater pouch. As the suns rose, I caught five more, each leaner and smaller than the last. I would still have enough for my stew, but they were far scanter than I would have liked.

  I leaned over the stream, peering through the clear water into the trough created by the limb. A few fish milled through the water. Scowling, I scanned the streambed.

  This was the wet air season, was it not? The stream should be teeming with huge fat fish swimming northward to the head where the water dove into an ancient cave system. The glisten-fish laid their broods of eggs in the dark waters, where they glowed to attract the little water suns. The water suns traveled through tunnel rivers in the darkest black, drawing salts from the water, and releasing the excess onto the glisten-fish eggs. The mineral calcified the eggs until they became irresistible to the blind night-crabs, who gorged themselves on the eggs, then traveled back through the tunnels in search of fresh water. They burst through the ground at the banks of streams to quench their thirst. The eggs hatched inside the night-crabs and erupted from their bellies to begin the process all over again.