Planet Broker

by Eric Vall

  I knew his comment was a subtle dig that the AI felt a little underappreciated. “Aw, come on, buddy. Don’t be like that,” I cajoled. “You know I’d be lost without you. You’re the one who always gives me the kick in the ass I need.”

  “A duty I happily take on,” Omni responded.

  I shook my head with a smile.

  Since I felt a little more confident now, armed with my insider information, I started walking toward the hills again. As I went, I began to test out the weapons in my hand. First, the dagger. It was perfectly balanced, double-edged, and honed to a razor-sharp point. I slid the blade against the pad of my thumb to test it out, my skin split as easy as paper. A bright bead of blood welled up through the gap, and the surface tension held it taut for just a moment before it cascaded down the back of my hand. I sucked my thumb into my mouth and tasted salt and metal.

  Next, the spear. It was a little heavier and longer than I would have liked, clearly intended for an Almort, who all seemed to be at least half a meter taller than me. The shaft was smooth and unblemished, ashy in color with no discernable grain, pattern, or adornment to the wooden composite. The tip of the spear just looked like a longer and wider version of the dagger. I trusted that it would be just as sharp and saw no reason to test it, too.

  Once I had familiarized myself with the blades, I began to practice with them. The make, design, and materials might have been different, but I knew my way around a knife.

  Growing up on Proto, not very many people had the money for particle-beam weapons. That didn’t mean there weren’t any, but most of them were owned by the drug lords or the brothel owners or the Corporate men. For everyone else, we got by on archaic warfare. People rarely used the old projectile guns that had been popular on Earth in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They could still be manufactured, yes, but no one wanted to be the idiot that compromised a space station hull with a molten hot lead bullet and jettisoned everyone out into space. I had seen some pieces, a few chrome handled revolvers hung on belts or tucked into coats, but they were worn by the upper class as statement pieces. I doubt any of them were even loaded.

  For the rest of the masses, knives were a tried-and-true staple. Anything could be turned into a blade if you sharpened it enough and if you had the fire and force of will to use it. I had both of those things in spades. As a cocky little shit teenager, I used to walk around Proto with a honed piece of metal I had soldered to the handle of a wrench. I used it mostly as a scare tactic to deter people from fucking with me, but there were a few times I’d really had to use it. But those few times I did, I wasn’t the one that had to limp off after.

  The Almort’s weaponry was more refined than the shoddy work of a skilless orphan and as such, required a little more finesse in order to use them. I worked on hefting the spear over my shoulder and extending my arm like I was throwing it. I practiced the movement again and again, even starting at a run a few times and skipping into the air to see how the weight of the shaft would affect an airborne toss. I landed nimbly on my toes and spun in a tight circle as I lashed out at an invisible enemy to my left with my dagger. The short blade sliced through a patch of blue-green grass, and I watched the tips flare as they fell to the ground.

  As I stood there panting, sweat cooling along my hairline, I suddenly felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

  I instantly went very still and lifted my head toward the horizon.

  It seemed while lost in thought and my practice runs, I had walked farther and faster than I had intended to. The horizon, which had been kilometers away, was now much closer, the hills rising in front of me more steeply than I had first assumed.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the grasslands behind me, but nothing caught my eye. I turned back to the foothills but there was nothing there either, just the swaying, unlit grass in its muted hues of blue, green, and lilac.

  But the feeling of unease only grew worse, and I felt every muscle in my body clench in response.

  “Um, Colby,” Omni said in my ear, and this time, he was the one whispering.

  I didn’t dare respond, but it seemed the AI’s utterance had been rhetorical because he continued, regardless.

  “Did you remember everything Cy’lass told you? I assumed when you said, ‘It’s all coming back to me,’ that it all, in fact, had come back to you, but I don’t think it did,” the AI rambled.

  I wanted to scream at him, but something in my peripheral had caught my attention. I focused on the swath of grass about twenty meters to my left as Omni kept talking.

  “Should I bring up the playback or just give you the highlights?”

  As he said ‘highlights,’ I felt the breath leave my lungs in a prolonged hiss. “Omni,” I gritted out, quieter than a whisper, barely a sound at all. I hadn’t taken my eyes off that patch of blue grass. I hadn’t even blinked. The AI must have taken my exclamation for anger.

  “Alright, alright, playback it is,” he blurted. There was a whirl of machinery in my ear, a few clicks as the recording skipped to the parts Omni wanted, and then Cy’lass’s voice hissed quietly at me as my memory finally caught up.

  “There are some beasts that do not produce the lights... around Ka’le, there is only one beast like that... the Malog.”

  And, just because my brain hated me, I also remembered Sef’sla’s words to me from the feast last night.

  “You must keep your wits about you. Remember what you have been told. Stay on your feet. Beware the grass. And don’t turn your back against it.”

  Something moved in my peripherals again, but this time behind me, and I felt my heartbeat ratchet up to supersonic speed as I remembered the last little golden clue.

  They hunt in fucking mated pairs.

  Chapter 16

  My heartbeat echoed in my ears like a resounding gong. Every nerve ending suddenly felt like a live wire. I didn’t know if it was residuals from the Almort brew or just pure, base adrenaline or both, but I could feel the wind brush feather-light against my cheek, I could feel the heft and the texture of the weapons in both of my hands, and there was a strong taste of salt and metal on my tongue from the fear that burned through my veins.

  The animal part of my brain screamed for me to run, to tear back through the grass toward Ka’le and pray that I even made it, but I had learned to tame those baser instincts long ago in the dirty alleyways of Proto. I forced myself to take a sharp, deep breath through my nose and assess this situation as quickly as possible.

  As I slightly pivoted my body to keep an eye on the two spots where I thought the beasts were hiding, the clues began to fit like puzzle pieces in my mind. Okay, so the Malog were large carnivores that roamed the plains of Proxima V in search of tasty Almorts to eat or, in this case, tasty and noble human idiots. They were fast and adept at camouflage it seemed because no matter how hard I stared at the waist-high grass swaying in the wind, I couldn’t detect a single flicker of light. So stealth and surprise were their game. My knuckles blanched white as I clutched my weapons tighter and slid into a defensive crouch. Rules number one and two in any fight: always keep your hands up and make yourself a smaller target.

  The fields were so quiet around us I wondered if the Malog could hear my heart racing. I still couldn’t detect them, however, neither hide nor tail or… scale? Actually, I had no idea what they looked like beyond the six legs and supposed armored scales along their shoulders. That put me at yet another disadvantage.

  But I knew they were there. I knew it in my bones, by the stillness in the air, by the alarms that wailed and screamed in the back of my brain. Any moment now, the Malogs were going to attack.

  I needed a game plan.

  I immediately discarded the thought of using the dagger. Even though it was larger in my human hands than it would be in an Almort’s, the blade still wasn’t that long. It would be me within arm’s length of the Malog, and I honestly wanted to stay as far away from them as possible. I spent half a moment wishing I had a laser pistol
or, better yet, the ion cannon on the Lacuna Noctis again, but I quickly squashed that train of thought and forced myself to focus. Wishing for things I didn’t have wasn’t going to save me right now. I had to make do with the tools I had been given, just like I always did.

  The spear was my only viable option. I’d have to draw the Malog out of the grass and into the open to use it.

  My eyes darted between the two spots of grass. Had they moved closer? I couldn’t tell. Fuck.

  I needed to take out the male first, I decided. Most of the time, the females turned out to be the better hunters, but the males were typically the more aggressive and the more dangerous. The sons of bitches were usually bigger, too.

  The only problem was since I didn’t know what these Malog even looked like, I had no idea in hell how to distinguish between males and females. On colonized planets, Omni was usually able to download a database of the local flora and fauna and relay the information to us when we need it. However, here on Proxima V, I was in every sense of the world in the dark and in the wild.

  I drew the dagger in my left hand closer to my side in a tighter defensive position and tried to slide my right foot back around, so I fully faced where I thought the two Malogs hid, but as I did, I heard something.

  I didn’t even process it fully, couldn’t even describe it, but every survival instinct I had zeroed in on the noise and I spun around completely, in the exact opposite direction I had thought the Malog would come from, just as a giant, six-legged shadow exploded out of the grass five meters away and leapt into the air.

  “Holy fuck!” I shouted unintentionally, just as Omni screamed in my ear, “Colby, watch out!”

  I reacted without thinking.

  While the Malog was still airborne, I dove underneath it and to the right. My legs launched me parallel through the grass barely a meter off the ground. As I threw myself, I spun my body so I could see the Malog’s belly as it soared over me, and I lashed out with the tip of my spear.

  The angle was awkward, the spear shaft tucked partially under me as I had struck out mid-motion, but I still managed to clip the Malog’s side. But the metal X’ebril spearhead rebounded off the beast with a sharp clang, and I realized I must have hit one of its armored scales. I didn’t injure it, but I had disrupted its momentum, and it tumbled as it landed, flattening the grass around it in a wide five-meter arc as it skidded to a stop.

  I landed less than gracefully myself. My shoulder banged into the hard ground and knocked the breath out of me, but I used the force of it to execute a sloppy tuck and roll. The spear tripped me up, but I managed to stumble to my feet and slid back into a crouch, my dagger held out protectively in front of me.

  I panted as I stood there, and my eyes cast frantically about as I searched for the other Malog, but I didn’t have to look for long. The Malog that had attacked me was getting to its feet again and, behind it, the grass parted to reveal its mate.

  With the blood pounding through my veins, and the air sawing in and out of my lungs, I got my first look at the creatures, and I quickly realized why U’eh had called the Malog nightmares for his people.

  As a space station kid, animals and wildlife had always been fascinating to me. After I was recruited by Terra-Nebula, I spent hours combing through their data files, scouring reports from colonized planets about the different beasts they had discovered there. I even found an old, slightly corrupted file that contained the data about Earth’s old ecosystems. Wolves had been my favorite. As an orphan, I always envied their pack dynamics, but tried to think of myself as a lone wolf, cast out, abandoned, but resilient and strong.

  In terms of shape and overall size, the Malog were nearly equivalent to the old standard Earth wolf. They were about a meter tall at the shoulder and nearly three meters long. Their heads were vaguely canine shaped, but sharper in the snout, and they had tails, but that’s where the similarities ended.

  Instead of fur, their bodies seemed to be covered in a thick, dry skin, in muted shades of dark blue and gray, like that of a reptile, except, of course, along the shoulders and sides. There, armored scales extended back from the base of their cone-shaped heads and directly to the shoulders, since they had little neck to speak of. The scales were a mix of broad, sharp-looking plates that overlapped like chainmail, and strange tendrils that almost looked like a mane, tapered to needle-like points.

  All of that, however, paled in comparison to their six fucking legs. They really were a living, breathing nightmare, like some hellish, bastard offspring of a komodo dragon, a wolf, and a spider.

  I watched as the Malog that had attacked me shook its narrow, cone-shaped head and got back on its many feet. I gulped as I saw that each padded foot came with talons fifteen centimeter long. Its mate seemed to be checking for injuries as it nosed along its side, and when it was done, it let out a deep, guttural growl that resounded all the way down to my gut.

  The sound sent a shiver up my spine, and my palms broke out into a cold sweat, but I forced myself to keep studying them. They had to have a weakness, and I didn’t have a lot of time to find it. These fuckers were fast and all it would take was one microsecond of hesitation and I was done for.

  My eyes tracked how they moved and shifted their weight on their legs to see if they were well balanced. It seemed, like most quadrupeds, their center of gravity was low to the ground and divided evenly amongst the limbs, or at least the four front ones. As the two Malog slowly tried to slink to the right and left in order to circle around and get behind me, I kept one eye on their positions and the other on their back legs.

  The front four legs were lithe, long, and seemed to be double jointed like a spider’s at the elbow so the Malog could crouch belly to the ground when they stalked prey. The back two limbs, in contrast, look almost vestigial. They were shorter and thicker at the thigh, more muscular, but I couldn’t figure out their use. Right now, both Malogs had these back legs pulled up, almost like a bird, and tucked back nearly parallel with their broad, stubby tails.

  I scowled as the Malogs kept trying to slip into my blind spot and continued to pivot on my back leg to keep them in my line of sight, but I knew they were gearing up for their next, most likely coordinated attack.

  As if on cue, the Malog on the left, who was the larger of the two and the one who had attacked me first, darted forward and swiped at me with its foremost right leg. I parried its blow with my spear, and its claws raked down the metallic spear shaft with a high-pitched screech.

  While I was still engaged with what I assumed was the male of the duo, the female used the opportunity to charge me from the side. I saw her coming, but I didn’t have the chance to get out of the way since her mate was still snarling and snapping at my spear.

  As a last defense, I lashed out with the dagger when the female was in striking distance and managed to score a deep gash down her snout. Blue-black blood splashed hot against my face, and I tasted salt and metal again before the Malog slammed her rock hard shoulder into my sternum and sent me flying through the air.

  I landed flat on my back with all the air driven out my lungs. I blearily looked up from where I lay prone in the dirt and for a moment I couldn’t distinguish between the flashing lights of the bioluminescent grass and those caused by my newly acquired concussion.

  “Get up, Colby, get up!” Omni cried in my ear as I hastily scrambled to my feet. My head still spun a little, but I had at least managed to hold on to my weapons.

  I shook my head to right it and then looked around for my opponents.

  The female Malog pawed at her snout a half dozen meters away, a wet, whiny snarl issuing from her throat. Her mate stood beside her, but he only had eyes for me. His eyes were huge round orbs of the darkest black.

  Death beckoned in those eyes.

  “Not… today, asshole,” I panted, ribs sore and possibly broken. I raised my spear to point directly at the male. I thought of Neka’s face and how her ears perked up when she was happy. I thought of the fire in Akela’s
amethyst eyes and the curve of her smirking mouth. I was not going to die here. “I’ve got people waiting on me.”

  The female lifted her head and snarled at me. Blood gushed down her snout and into her gaping maw. Fangs the size of my hand gleamed in the faint light of Proxima V, and black blood mixed with saliva dripped from each tip.

  Okay, Colby, note to self: don’t get fucking bit.

  Second note to self: end this as quickly as possible.

  Third note to self: where the hell had the male gone?

  “Shit,” I cursed as I shifted my grip on the spear and extended it out before me. I looked over my shoulders frantically but didn’t see the male that had been there only a second ago.

  The female seemed to sense my frustration. She snapped her jaw shut and then let out a deep, sonorous growl. I felt the bass of it in my chest, and the low-pitched sound echoed out across the plains as she sunk into a stalking crouch, her belly flat against the ground, her four front legs bending out on either side of it like a spider’s would.

  And, as I watched, the female Malog lowered those strange back legs, the thick, corded muscles contracting for just a moment as her claws touched the grass before she used them to propel herself forward faster than I could track. Her huge bulk slid across the flattened grass like a fish cutting through water, and she closed the ten-meter gap between us in the blink of an eye.

  I had a split second to react, and I just went with my instinct. As the Malog aimed to cut me off at the legs, I leapt toward her and jumped as high as I could, my heart in my throat, my hand clenched so tightly around the spear my fingers were numb. I just barely cleared the top of the Malog’s head, and as I came back down, I stabbed at the body below me with the spear.

  Once again, the scales deflected me, but our opposing momentums caused the spearhead to glance off her shoulder and skate down her back. The blade sliced open a meter long gash along her left flank, and the Malog let out an ear-piercing shriek of rage. Another outraged roar echoed somewhere behind me from her mate, and as I hit the ground running, I let myself be carried forward into a sprint.