The older man climbed down from the observation platform, while Jerrick used the zoomlenses to scan the landscape again, obsessed. He didn’t want to move. Deep in the hills, the whistling explosions and flashes of fire continued intermittently, far away, but now the young man focused on another turmoil much closer at hand.
In the nearest field of swift-growing wheat, a huge and hairy gruzzly loomed out of the morning mist like a monstrous shadow. The dark fur on its left side was singed and scabbed, as if it had been injured by one of the hunters’ energy weapons. The big beast stalked forward, snarling, sniffing.
Jerrick glimpsed the mirror flicker again as the armored alien predator made itself partially visible. The great gruzzly generally relied on its sense of smell and hearing, so the camouflage wouldn’t be a perfect defense. The beast’s black tongue flicked out of its reptilian snout, and it roared, sweeping its rake-like claws from side to side, looking for its target.
Facing off, the alien hunter dashed toward the gruzzly, then disappeared entirely as its camouflage locked in.
The wounded beast lumbered along, wading through the wheat field, destroying the precious stalks as it looked for the alien hunter it could sense nearby. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, a line of fire licked across the ground like a fire hose of flames. The hunter was intentionally burning the fields to madden the animal. The gruzzly stumbled away from the dark smoke and crackling flames.
The hunter set more of the crops aflame, boxing in the huge beast.
Jerrick watched, appalled. “That’s our field! Damn you!”
The alien predator seemed not to care, using the flames to drive the gruzzly. The predator was a humanoid-shaped blur against the rising fire. The furry beast charged directly into the flames, somehow finding its enemy.
The predator blasted his prey with the flamethrower, but the heat rolled off the big animal’s reptilian chest plate. Facing a real battle now, the hunter switched off his camouflage field and withdrew two long knives before throwing himself at the smoke-maddened gruzzly. The furry creature smacked him sideways, bowling the predator aside. The armored hunter rolled through the rising fires in the field, stumbled back to his feet, then lunged forward again with both knives extended. His snakelike hair tentacles writhed, and through his metal mask he let out a bellow that sounded just as primal as the gruzzly’s.
They engaged. The hunter’s sharp blades dipped into the gruzzly’s body again and again like a stinging wasp. With massive arms, the beast clasped the hunter, wrapped around his body, and squeezed tight. Long claws struck sparks across the armor, damaging it.
Then the predator clamped a small self-adhering explosive to the gruzzly’s back. With a brief, bright flare, the explosion blasted through the beast’s vertebrae and into its chest cavity, incinerating its heart and spine. The huge monster collapsed, dead, while the predator reeled backward, barely able to keep his own footing. His shredded armor sparked with random energy pulses, and his body leaked runnels of acid-green blood. Though obviously wounded, the predator remained upright over his kill.
The dead gruzzly lay twitching, smoking. The burning fields crackled around them.
Watching the carnage from his observation platform, Jerrick muttered, “Damn you.”
Unexpectedly, he saw the stockade gate open below. He leaned over the sharpened wooden barrier. “What the hell?” A figure stepped out onto the wide, trampled road… a lone man carrying a plasma rifle.
His father!
Davin closed the gate behind him and marched down the road toward the burning wheat field, the dead gruzzly, and the wounded predator. Out in the burning field, the hunter was preoccupied with decapitating his kill, sawing through the thick neck.
Jerrick shouted, “Father, come back here! What are you doing?”
Davin turned to him, held up his rifle, and called back to his son. “You’re right—somebody has to fight for our colony.” Though obviously determined, he looked very small. “If that predator is wounded, this might be our only opportunity to hurt one of them.” Davin began to sprint ahead.
“Come back!” Jerrick called. What if the man’s actions simply enraged the other alien hunters?
Some of his fellow colonists had climbed the corners of the stockade, looking out over the wall. Several others opened the stockade gate to watch. His father was foolishly convinced he was right, as always… and Jerrick knew the man wasn’t always right.
As he approached the wounded predator hunched over the carcass of the gruzzly, Davin opened fire with the plasma rifle, but most of his shots went wild, striking the churned ground. One even hit the side of the fallen carcass, burning a new hole in the thick, furred pelt.
The muscular alien stood, dripping with dark gruzzly blood as well as his own bright green blood from his wounds.
Davin raised the plasma rifle and shot again. One of the energy blasts ricocheted off the predator’s hip, striking sparks from the alien’s armor, but not seeming to wound him. Transient spiderwebs of static flickered up and down the alien’s body as the camouflage field flickered on, then faded again.
Emboldened, his father yelled bravely, stupidly. He shot four more times, missing repeatedly, until one blast struck the predator’s shoulder and destroyed the popup energy gun mounted there.
The muscular hunter seemed angry rather than intimidated. He grasped at his belt and removed a metal cylinder, squeezing it. The long, pointed javelin ends extended and then locked into place with a snick.
Davin strode forward, firing indiscriminately, poorly. Though the colony leader was still far away, the predator cocked back his arm and hurled the whistling, crackling javelin.
Jerrick screamed, helpless. His father couldn’t duck fast enough, though he managed to fire twice more—and missed both times. The energized javelin slid through his abdomen, piercing him smoothly.
Davin stopped in his tracks, staggered forward two more steps, then fell sideways.
Jerrick howled, unable to tear his eyes from the zoomlenses. “Noooo!”
Limping, the predator stalked forward, moving sluggishly from his own injuries. He stopped, looming over Davin’s body.
Through the lenses, Jerrick could see his father grasp at the smooth, sharp end of the javelin, but couldn’t get a grip with all the blood.
The predator grabbed his weapon and slid it back out. The pointed ends retracted into the handle.
Davin lay there, choking, already dead but not yet realizing it.
The predator turned his smooth metal mask toward the distant stockade where Jerrick stood screaming and shouting. After a moment of consideration, the predator bent down, slashed Davin’s neck with his jagged blade. He grasped the colony leader’s hair and peeled the head back, then with a brutal yank, he pulled off the head along with several vertebrae and the frayed ends of the man’s spinal cord. The predator held up Davin’s head like an unimpressive trophy, tucked it onto a clip at his side, then he retrieved the much larger head of the gruzzly. He carried both trophies as he limped off into the dissipating smoke and flames of the destroyed field.
4
Jerrick’s grief transformed into a twisted knot of anger, injustice, and a need for revenge—but he knew it was a useless longing. He had no illusions about challenging either a giant gruzzly or an armored alien predator.
One of those hunters had killed his father, slaughtered him in full view of the colony settlement, torn off his head and kept it as a trophy. Davin had been trying to defend his home, but those evil hunters just wanted… sport.
And his father had fallen victim to that sport.
With the gate closed again, while the colonists huddled behind the scant protection of the stockade wall, the fire in the wheat field gradually burned itself out as the gray skies became more overcast, clouds thickening with disapproving storms. Jerrick, meanwhile, brewed enough of a storm inside him.
His father had told him repeatedly that until Jerrick could control his temper, until he could think of the b
igger picture, the young man would not make a good colony leader. But now his fellow colonists were looking to him in that position. Maybe anger was what they needed. Davin had been too passive, too optimistic… too naïve. And now he was dead.
Looking at the mournful colonists, Jerrick breathed quickly, smelling bitter smoke in the air, possibly tainted with blood.
“We will bury him,” Jerrick announced. “I’ll go get his body myself, unless someone else wants to help.” Five people volunteered, and more looked ready to join in, but he cut them off. It was risky enough as it was.
After Jerrick had scanned the territory with his zoomlenses, seeing no movement from either gruzzlies or predators, they opened the stockade gates. Under thick gray skies, he and the volunteers rushed down the dirt road, two of them carrying plasma rifles. Davin’s rifle still lay on the ground near his body. Apparently, the predator hadn’t felt any threat from it.
The enormous gruzzly carcass lay sprawled and bloody, its thick pelt and reptilian plates torn by the predator’s attack. But Jerrick only had eyes for his father—or what remained of him. The man’s head was gone, half the spinal column uprooted like some noxious weed. His familiar brown work shirt was now soaked in red. He remembered his father sitting at home by the warm glowlight, mending rips in the garment, adding patches, because the Hardscrabble colonists couldn’t afford to waste good clothes. Now, the shirt was beyond repair, just as Davin was. There would be no fixing this.
Jerrick stared, feeling his stomach roil, his heart pound, his cheeks growing hot. Tears filled his eyes, but they didn’t fall; instead, they seemed to turn to steam with his anger.
He picked up his father’s feet; two of the other colonists took him by his sprawled arms. As they set off in a slow, somber procession, Jerrick scowled down at the weapon. He said to one of the other volunteers, “Take the rifle. We might need every possible defense.”
If it came to all-out war, he doubted they could fight even one of the alien predators, and many of them had come to Hardscrabble for their grand hunt. Fortunately, the aliens seemed interested only in the gruzzlies—but that could change. The colonists could not rely on the protection of simple stockade walls or the barricaded doors of prefab colony homes. Jerrick knew of no other way to intimidate the predators into leaving them alone.
Anxious, he glanced around, listening for that threatening, clicking growl, looking for the mirror-shimmer in the air that camouflaged them. But he saw only drifting smoke and the remaining flickers of the burning field.
Reaching the barricaded settlement as the clouds darkened and a late afternoon storm set in, Jerrick did not want to leave his father’s body lying outside. Their cemetery, which displayed far too many graves already, was outside the wall in the unprotected area. Jerrick and his companions worked together swiftly to dig a resting place for the optimistic dreamer who had convinced them to come here. They used shovels and picks, taking turns with the heavy work while others stood guard with their plasma rifles.
When it was finished, Jerrick thought the empty hole looked like a cold and lonely mouth yawning open. He just stared at it before he nodded and bent down to pick up the headless body. With two others helping, they wrestled Davin into the grave and covered him up with dirt.
As the wind picked up and the sun dropped below the horizon, everyone went back inside the stockade to huddle with their loved ones, to hope against hope for some way to survive…
5
Jerrick had other ideas. He felt abused, beaten, but not defeated, and he would not simply cower. In his heart, he understood how foolish his plan was, how he might be putting the entire colony at risk if he failed.
He didn’t care. He needed to do this.
As the storm gathered with greater force, Jerrick took one of the plasma rifles, checked that its charge was full, then opened the stockade gate. Telling no one, he climbed up into the mammoth combine machine and swung himself into the cab. He took a deep breath and touched the controls. Starting the engines, switching to full battery power, he activated the bright headlights.
Cones of illumination stabbed into the blustery blackness, showing Hardscrabble’s bleak landscape, the burned and damaged crops, the wreckage of their hopes. Jerrick’s anger grew hotter as he rolled the giant vehicle through the gate and outside. Behind him, he saw three colonists running after him, attracted by the noise. They waved their hands and shouted, but Jerrick didn’t stop. At least they could close the gate behind him.
He drove on into the storm. The treads rumbled along the dirt road as the mammoth combine surged toward the grain fields. The lights of the big harvesting machine showed some patches of green that still remained. Not all of their wheat and corn had been burned and trampled by the gruzzlies and the alien hunters. If the outside threat went away, the colonists could replant immediately, try to survive on reduced rations until the settlement recovered.
But before worrying about the colony’s long-term survival, he had to make sure they all made it through this night. He had to intimidate the predators enough to make them leave the people alone.
He widened the beams so he could scan the landscape beyond the fields. As he skirted the burned patches, he counted four dead gruzzlies scattered on the ground, all of them headless. The giant beasts had been driven from the hills, causing devastation to the delicate colony—but now they were killed in some sort of extraterrestrial big game hunt. And the colonists were caught in the crossfire.
Tonight, Jerrick intended to go hunting himself.
The windows in the cab rattled in the wind gusts and a splatter of rain as the big machine crawled across the landscape. He drove toward the pasture where the cattle had been slaughtered. Even after nearly two days, their mangled carcasses still lay untouched. On Earth, there would have been carrion birds and scavengers, but none of the indigenous Hardscrabble species could eat the Terran-based flesh.
As the mammoth combine rolled into the low hills, Jerrick played the broad spotlights across the grassy patch. Suddenly, he spotted an enormous, hulking form caught in the beams. His heart froze—this gruzzly was even more enormous than the one that had attacked him before, more gigantic than the ones the alien predators had killed in the fields. This one was huge, like the mother of her race.
Now, she bent over another carcass—a big gruzzly that lay slaughtered on the ground. In comparison to this huge monster, it looked like just a child.
A cub.
The massive mother gruzzly leaned over the decapitated carcass and rose up on massive hind legs, responding to the bright lights of the oncoming vehicle. She let out a roar so loud that the cab itself rattled. Instinctively, Jerrick glanced at the plasma rifle beside him on the seat, and knew that he could empty the entire charge and not stop this titanic animal.
But he did not intend to fight with a mere plasma rifle.
Jerrick operated the controls, swung down the armored clearing saws, the diamond-hardened blades designed to mow down forests for cropland. The blades hummed and squealed.
He jammed the accelerator, pushed the armored treads into charge mode. The combine rolled forward, and the mother gruzzly reared up, sweeping both paws at the big mechanical opponent, not backing down for an instant. The sawblades whirred and spun. Laser guidance lights flayed across the targeting zone ahead of the combine.
Jerrick gritted his teeth. These monsters had killed several colonists, massacred all ten of the cattle, ruined their chances for survival. It didn’t matter whether or not the alien hunters were worse; both were his enemy, and Jerrick had to make his mark.
The gruzzly faced the oncoming vehicle, swung a huge paw and smacked at the spinning blade. The diamond-hardened teeth caught in its thick hide, cutting deep, but the monster’s blow was strong enough to misalign the saw, bend its extended arms.
Responding quickly, Jerrick swung the second blade down and cut into the monster’s shoulder, but the gruzzly retreated, ripping its flesh free. Its roar of pain rattled the night.
“Die, damn you!” Jerrick snarled.
The gruzzly ripped herself loose, snapping the threshing cylinder, then staggered backward. Even in her pain, the injured monster turned toward another sound.
In the darkness and the blowing wind, Jerrick saw movement through the window of the cab. On the fringe of the broad spotlight cones, a rippling, mirrored figure appeared—a lithe and enormous predator. Standing on the killing field, the alien hunter launched a blue plasma bolt from its shoulder-mounted weapon. The blast seared through the blackness, striking the gruzzly in the ribs and leaving a cauterized wound there.
The monster reeled and staggered, but Jerrick felt only indignant anger. He had struck first, gravely wounding the mother gruzzly. He didn’t know if his idea would work, but he knew he had to see this through.
Disengaging the mammoth combine’s treads while the thresher and the clearing sawblades continued to stutter, he popped open the cab, grabbed the plasma rifle, and sprang all the way to the ground, bracing his boots in the grass.
“That’s my kill, you bastard!” he shouted at the alien predator. “Leave it alone!”
He sprinted toward the dying gruzzly, but even with such wounds, she could still cause a lot of damage. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the camouflage flicker and wondered why the alien predator was so afraid to show himself. Jerrick certainly wasn’t.
PREDATOR IF IT BLEEDS Page 18