by Vicky L Holt
Thank goodness I had landed in the shallow end, and not on this thing’s back.
Before I could process this new species, a second one rose out of the mud. It was smaller than the first, but shared identical features.
While still staring at me, the biggest one took a lumbering step toward the opposite shore and yanked at some thick leaves growing at the edge. Its powerful jaws uprooted the entire bush, and it devoured it like the slowest woodchipper of all time. I watched in amazement as the leaves, twigs, trunk and roots, were consumed. It took a long time, and I had to shake myself out of the hypnosis. I was the first human to ever observe these creatures in their natural habitat, eating small trees like it was nothing.
Frustration at losing the beacon aside, I experienced a momentary thrill. I was exploring an alien planet! Everything I did here would be the first for humankind. Everything I saw or touched would be the first.
The huge mud cows chewed from side to side and slunk back into the mud. Bubbles rose from their behinds, and I had to wonder, was there an actual fumarole under there or was it just the mud cows’ gas?
Relieved I wasn’t going to be its next meal, I turned and looked up the steep tree-covered hillside. Somewhere in this mess was my beacon. I hoped it had a signal of its own … a beacon for the beacon. Because as amazing as this all could be, I was still stranded with no feasible rescue in sight unless I planted and installed that thing.
“VELMA, can you ping the beacon? I dropped it down a hill.”
“Locating auxiliary beacon. Beacon not found.”
Dammit.
8
The absence of the child’s scent had me on edge. I knew every predator on Ikthe. With my shining blade tested, I had already killed a scabika and the venom-bearing snake we called talathel, “tasting many deaths.” Its venom caused the victim to writhe in pain for weeks suffering wicked dreams. Sometimes the victim lived, but they were never the same.
With no scent to track, I couldn’t be sure where the child headed if I lost trail sign.
I came upon a clearing in the meadow. Trampled down grass and a dead firefly. I gave a gruff laugh. How had a mere child killed the firefly? I examined its body. It had emptied its poison sacs. My head shot up. I scanned the vicinity, certain I would find the collapsed body of a dead child. Instead, I saw the grasses parted into a small footpath. What sorcery was this? I followed.
The tall grasses made way to the edge of the ikfal, and I crouched to enter the game trail. The crescent of a heel made in red mud was but one clue. Within the brush, broken branches and crushed leaves revealed the path of my prize. A wry smile crossed my features. The mighty hunter was hunting a child.
Making my way through thick foliage, I flattened one of the giant stinging insects against a tree trunk. They were a nuisance to my kind, but fatal to smaller creatures. My anxiety for the child increased with each step, just as the soil changed color the farther up the hill I went.
After many veltiks, I realized I had lost sign. No more broken twigs, no prints in the stinking black detritus underfoot. Still my sense of smell failed me. The child had no odor.
Another talathel slithered down from one of the great white-trunked trees, its shining green scales advertising both beauty and a spiraling horrific death. I grasped it by its neck as thick as my wrist and yanked it out of the tree. Its entire length fell from the canopy, and its coiled muscles wrapped around one of my legs. This was stronger than the last one; I needed both hands to wrench its jaws apart until it snapped. Lax in death, it fell to the ground with a thud. The scrabbling jokapazathel ran out from under the brush to scavenge it with their sharp teeth and claws. They were furious tiny scavengers, often not waiting for a creature to die before picking its flesh from its bones. They had dark-brown fur with yellow dappled spots, well-suited to life on the ikfal floor.
I had lost the child’s trail. Backtracking, I found the last sign. It was a full boot print, perfectly pressed into the brown mud of the upper ground. Frequent rains on Ikthe washed the lighter red-orange dirt from the tops of the hills down to the valleys. Black and brown mud shown through the brush the higher up one traveled. There sat the print, outlined in fine detail. There were odd geometric shapes pressed into the mud, like a language. Who would inscribe a language onto the bottom of one’s boot? What did the shapes mean? Perhaps this was not a Theraxl child. But a child from where? Only our enemies, the Makathel race, knew of our sister planets. They attacked Ikshe once a century, but never touched Ikthe. Who would do so? And even our mortal enemies loved and cherished their children.
The longer I thought on it, the more troubled I became.
Was this a child, or a spirit from the afterlife? Tales of spirits tormenting the hunters of Ikthe were often told on the space stations orbiting Ikshe. I dismissed them as the stories of the bored and lazy. But I must wonder now. Had I been following the trail of a lost spirit?
I circled the last track, careful not to mar its shape. I puzzled over it when a glance to my right revealed a gash carved into an ikfa trunk. Inspecting more closely, I almost stepped off the invisible ridge. A mudslide.
Ah. I remembered this slide now, having fallen down it many hunts ago myself, as I frequently haunted new game trails; a hunter never overhunted a prime area. The pit at the bottom hosted elder sister and younger sister mud-beasts that smelled of scabika dung. They ate plants. Unless one was unfortunate enough to stumble across their brood of younglings. Then they would grind one’s bones to dust with their teeth.
This was not the brooding season, so the child would be unmolested. But had she survived the fall?
Some of the trees of this planet were carnivorous. The long tendrils of the forest-teeth tree would grasp an unsuspecting creature and curve it into itself. The bole of the trunk would split to accommodate its prey, and then close inch by inch as its juices digested the animal while it yet lived.
I decided to take the slower descent down the hill. The child had the luck of the Holy Shegoshel to find this mudslide. With no scent to lure predators, and now to be covered in a layer of mud-beast slime, she would be invisible to at least half the animals of the planet.
Perhaps she was an emissary sent from the Holy Sisters of Shegoshel. Perhaps my long delay in winning the Lottery was being investigated by our deities, and my chance to create offspring for the Mighty Hunter line was at last due.
I stepped gingerly down the hill, letting the claws of my gloves gouge trunks to steady myself, and letting the weight of my heavy boots crush the seeking tendrils of the forest-teeth tree. My boot knocked against metal. I stooped to pick up the object. Turning it over in my hands, I studied the metal cylinder.
Its design was sleek and clean. Its heft spoke of several internal components. I ran my scanner across it, and a message appeared in my visor.
“UNABLE TO IDENTIFY.”
I looked for seams and found a thin line dividing the cylinder in half. Using my claws, I pried it apart. Wires and green chips with silver lines inscribed in strange shapes filled the cylinder. A glowing red light shone from one end. I fiddled with a gray button on the top, and the light switched to green. It brought to mind the communication devices I had on my ship. They blinked to show when they were working properly. This was a beacon!
Anger erupted from my heart-home. It was a spy! Some enemy of small stature would send a beacon and alert others to the location of my hunting planet? Raxfathe to the enemy, after we battled together.
I took a random handful of wires and ripped. The green light died. As would the spy who dared to reveal the sister planets to the universe.
9
As expected, some of the mud dried on my suit, making it harder and harder to move. I ached to remove the foul thing, but something told me my polymer suit was probably the only thin layer standing between me and death. A number of menacing plants and insects with about six too-many legs snatched at me.
The flora on this planet was breathtaking in its beauty. Huge fronds, s
o green they were almost black, offered cool shade. Yet glowing red orbs peeked out from the shadows—eyes unblinking and ominous. I was afraid to inspect them closer, but they didn’t appear to be animal eyes. No, the plants had eyes here. I shuddered, shaking off the memory of Chris staring at me over an open bottle of liquor.
The bluff grew steeper and I panted as I struggled to find purchase among the bracken. I grabbed tree roots and the thick stems of bushes to pull myself up. Even missing fifty pounds, it was becoming more and more difficult. I grabbed onto a beautiful green root but noticed my error too late.
That was no root.
My suit stifled the scream that would have echoed throughout the forest when the snake’s huge head circled around and faced me. I let go of the snake only to flail for something else to grip, but my hand found crumbling rust-colored dirt and rotting plant life. With my right arm socket burning, I held on to the other tree root with all my might.
The snake’s eyes were jeweled with red and gold striations, and it wove a slow dance before me. I shook myself from the hypnotic movement and fixed my bearings. I looked down to see the tail of the snake wrapping around my ankle and working its way up my leg. Even through the suit I could feel the long muscles beneath the scaly skin as they squeezed tighter and tighter.
Oh no. I was not being crushed by some overgrown garter snake. Not on an alien planet no human had ever seen. If I was going out, I was going out big. Like by one of those big-ass dinosaurs I’d seen overtake the armored figure. With my right shoulder aching, I used my free left hand to access the tool belt around my thigh. I had a multi-tool in my grasp. A good thing, because the ambitious snake’s body was now wrapped around my upper thigh. It was putting pressure on my femoral artery.
I lifted my head to meet the gaze of the dancing snake. Its head was as big as my helmet.
“VELMA, what is the threat assessment of the reptile?”
“I do not sense the presence of a reptile.”
Oh schist.
“VELMA, use your scanner thing. I’m staring at a freaking snake, here.”
“The lifeform has a minimal heat signature and should pose no threat.”
“What the…?”
I was on my own.
With a frantic jab, I sunk my tool into the snake’s thick body now coiled around my waist. I stabbed it again and again, and it grew tighter and tighter. How was that possible? The reptile’s bright-red blood made the scales slippery. What if I could dislodge it? But I couldn’t let go of my tool, and I couldn’t let go of the tree root.
Then an idea came to mind.
I was on a steep bluff. If I let go, the snake would have to readjust its leverage to prevent my dead weight from pulling it down with me. I took a deep breath and quit fighting to hold the branch. I released my grip and let gravity take over.
The snake uncoiled its wounded belly to grasp around other stationary objects, and its tight hold of me relaxed. I exhaled to make myself smaller by a degree or two, and let myself slip through and tumble down the bluff. I already knew what was at the bottom, and I preferred to take my chances with the ugly hippos.
The snake coiled and uncoiled, trying to regain its, uh, footing, but the wounds I inflicted must have been bothering it more than I realized. It slithered off into the dark foliage, leaving a trail of blood in its wake. I had fallen a few feet, and I was now cradled in a large bush. That one didn’t have eyes, thank goodness.
My heart rate returned to normal.
“VELMA, did you not notice I was fighting for my life here?”
“Your escalated pulse and O2 levels indicated a state of beneficial exercise.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then shook my head. She needed to be recalibrated or something.
I resumed my climb, more careful than ever of which branch I grabbed hold of. Some of the roots resembled the twining smooth limbs of mangrove trees back home. But they were larger. With plenty of hand and footholds, I made progress, though I was wary of the dark tunnels, one of which the snake had disappeared in to lick its wounds.
Hand over hand, I climbed back up, keeping an eye out for the beacon. It had to be around here somewhere.
“VELMA, any sign of the beacon?”
“My scanners are picking up low levels of both solar and electric power nearby.”
“Excellent!” I climbed. “Give me the location of the beacon.”
A red light glowed on a superimposed grid.
“Okay,” I said, wheezing. “Almost there.”
Left hand, up. Right hand, up. Left hand, up. Then something grabbed my calf.
“What?” I looked down. A thick vine was tangled around my lower leg. “Oh, it’s just a plant.”
VELMA was silent. I looked back down and tried to kick my way out of the tangle. It grew tighter. It wasn’t the snake, was it? My helmet bumped the bank as I tried to peer down at the tendril knotted around my calf. It yanked again.
Okay, that was not normal.
I pulled up with all my might, trying to dislodge the vine. It pulled back.
Oh, hell no.
I wrapped my left arm around a jutting root and reached down with my right hand to yank at this octopus plant. Every tendril I ripped away was replaced by two. Soon, it looked like my leg was sprouting its own greenery.
I grabbed my multi-tool again—the pliers this time. I snapped the vines in two and worked my boot through the tangle as fast as I could. Once I was off this horrible hill, I was running back to my EEP and locking myself in permanently. This was ridiculous.
I kicked and fought, snapping off thin ropes and trying to break free. It gave up after several minutes, and I reached out to grab another handhold. I pulled with all my might, panting with the effort and wanting to maneuver my feet as far away from that vine as possible. My head came up past more shrubbery, and then my eyes fell upon a pair of huge armored boots. I froze.
Oh. Wow.
10
My ears picked up the sounds of snapping branches long before I saw the enemy. Still no scent came to my nose, but no matter. Nothing on Ikthe was as loud as this intruder.
I followed the sound; it arose from the side of the hill. My enemy was climbing back up. I drew my weapon, the raxtheza, and readied to grant this spy its due battle before receiving raxfathe. It would be a mercy on such a planet as Ikthe.
While I heard the snap and strain of branches and leaves and scuffling boots, I could not hear the pants of breath or gasps of effort. What a strange enemy the Goddesses of the Shegoshel had brought to me.
There. The leaves trembled. And parted. I saw a muddy gloved hand grasp onto a root. The other came up. A helmet joined them. It rose, and within the clear helmet I saw the delicate features of—a female. Her eyes were the color of the great Waters of Ikthe, many veltiks away from here. Green and blue, shifting with the waves. The moment the female’s wide eyes met mine, her face contorted into a scream, though I heard nothing. The gloved hands clawed for handholds, and all the while she stared at me through the brush.
Spy or no, I could not perform raxfathe on a female. But what to do?
She lost her grip and disappeared into the thick green leaves as she fell.
My lungs churned for breath and my heart-home stuttered. I felt the chill of the Great Mountain of Shegoshel, several veltiks to the north, as if I were sitting in its shadow. Shards of ice ran through my veins. A quick scan of my life signs revealed all to be normal. Why this icy cold?
The enemy spy was a female. With eyes like the oceans teeming with death-swimmers.
The Goddesses of the Shegoshel were laughing at me today.
I had no choice but to follow the enemy down. I must protect my people, my people’s planets, and my people’s customs. The enemy must die. But like the jeweled talathel serpent, sometimes it was a shame to eradicate a thing of beauty, though it would kill you without a thought.
I sheathed my raxtheza and jumped down the side of the bluff. The enemy’s soft-armored suit might disgu
ise its breaths and voice, but it couldn’t mask the loud bumbling through the foliage.
The spy would be my newest trophy within a matter of tiks.
11
Snakes. Human-eating plants. Hippos that ate entire trees in one gulp. Reptiles so huge they might as well be dinosaurs. And I couldn’t forget the mud. So much mud. The rusty goop slipped through my hands and made my gloves too slick to hold on to any of the huge leaves or bendy branches I could reach.
I yelped, trying and failing to stop my fall. It could be argued the mud was saving my life as I slipped and slid right back down the embankment. Different trail, same destination. I calculated how long my suit could provide air under the boiling mud pit. If those things down there left me alone, maybe I could last a while.
Well, it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the only one I had. Some of the other choices were following the bloody trail of the jade death snake or letting the aggressive octopus plant haul me to who knows where. Yeah, no. Mud pit it was.
Momentum gave me an edge, as well as the fact I was sliding out of control. That huge guy, the hunting alien who took out all those dinosaurs? He was a lot bigger standing. He could snap me in half with one hand. While I had cheered him on from safe inside my EEP, he had been far away. And when he was buried by dead dinosaurs, he hadn’t seemed quite so … large.
As my gaze followed his legs up and up, his size became apparent. His armor plates surrounded powerful thighs. He had a tool belt, like me, but with unrecognizable items. Emblems on his chest plates were punctuated with black metal embedded in the red material of his armor. Broad shoulders and weapons strapped to his back revealed him to be not just a hunter, but a warrior. And when I saw the hint of glowing eyes through his black visor and massive war-like helmet, my mouth went dry and my heart punched a hole through my sternum. He was alive! But he hadn’t looked happy.