Hunted lop-4

by James Alan Gardner

  "Holy shit," the admiral, Festina, whispered. "It’s a Laughing Larry."

  She looked across at me, seeing if I knew what she meant. I nodded. In my years as a bodyguard, I worked real hard to read up on every weapon in human space… not to use the weapons myself, but to know how to defend against them if Sam or Verity ever came under attack.

  The best way to defend against a Laughing Larry was to surround yourself with steel-plast walls. Not very likely in the middle of a forest.

  I was trying to think of other defenses when something spun into the far side of the clearing. It was a golden metal ball, a meter wide: hovering a little way off the ground and rotating fast like a kid’s top. All around its outside, the thing had little slit openings that caught the air, making that whistle-ish laughing sound. Inside, I knew it had electric amplifiers to make the whistles louder — the person who invented this thing thought the cackly hyena laugh would be great for intimidation.

  Absolutely right. I was shaking in my boots, hearing that sound chuckling in the darkness — and it didn’t help that I knew how Laughing Larries worked. Each of those whistly slit openings could shoot a hundred razor-sharp flechettes, tiny boomerang-shaped darts that could slice through skin like an ax through jelly. They could even pierce a Mandasar warrior’s carapace, spiking through the shell and deep into the flesh beneath. If this Larry opened fire, it would spray out a full 360 degrees of shrapnel, cutting us open like a hail of knives.

  The golden ball whirled to the Bumbler where the little machine still lay in the grass. More hyena laughing. The Larry circled the Bumbler like a cat that’s found a dying mouse and wants to poke at it a bit. Or maybe it was more like a dog: a bloodhound that’s been following a trail and has sniffed out something that smells like prey.

  Around and around the Larry hummed, prowling near the Bumbler as if trying to pick up someone’s scent.

  "What is it?" a voice whispered. The warrior had lifted his head off the dirt and was staring at the spinning ball. His ear antennas had. flattened straight back against his skull; he didn’t like the hyena cackle either.

  "It’s a weapon," I answered softly. "It shoots sharp things that can hurt even you."

  "Run, Teelu" he said immediately. "Hold it I, whilst you escape."

  "Stay still!" Festina snapped. "Maybe it’s looking for someone else."

  At that moment, the thin whistly sound coming from the ball shaped itself into a single word.

  "Ramoss… osss… osss… osss."

  "Okay," Admiral Ramos muttered, "maybe it’s not looking for someone else."

  "Ramoss… osss… osss… osss…"

  The whispery sound whistled through the clearing as the ball continued to spin. Fifty revolutions a second… I remembered that was their top speed. Then again, that was twenty years ago; they were probably better now.

  I held my breath for almost a minute… and still the Larry didn’t attack. "Maybe it’s just trying to scare you," I whispered to the admiral.

  "Or maybe it isn’t sure who I am," she whispered back. "I’ll bet it was tracking my Mayday. Now that I’ve shut down the signal, it can’t identify me."

  "I thought Laughing Larrys had visual sensors too."

  "They do," the admiral replied, "but Larries aren’t smart, and it’s hard to recognize people in the dark. In the normal visual range we’re just black blobs; on IR, we’re still blobs, only brighter. So it’s straining its tiny computer brain, trying to figure out who we are. It doesn’t want to waste a thousand rounds of ammunition killing us if we aren’t its programmed target."

  "Ramosss… osss… osss…"

  The ghostly voice was getting on my nerves. "Why is it after you?" I whispered. There was no harm talking — when a Larry’s making noise, it can’t hear anything else.

  "It must have been sent by the recruiters," Festina said. The warrior’s ears perked up and he turned, as if seeing her for the first time. "They know I’m investigating them," Festina continued, "and I’ve already had threats to stay out of their business. One of them must have followed me here… and decided this was the perfect time to take me out of the picture. All alone on Mandasar territory. If people find my body sliced to ribbons, they’ll blame it on local warriors, not the recruiters."

  "Villains they," the warrior growled. "Black black villains…"

  The smell of burning wood poured off his hide.

  "Stay still," Festina warned. "It looks like Friend Larry is stuck in a decision loop. Let confused dogs lie."

  "But if it’s confused," I said, "won’t it radio its controller for further instructions?"

  Suddenly, the laughter increased to deafening volume and the Larry whizzed toward us.

  All three of us jumped. Festina and I leapt toward the woods, hoping we could get behind a good solid tree trunk before the Larry opened fire. The only reason we succeeded was because the warrior jumped the other direction — straight on top of the golden ball, like throwing himself on a grenade.

  The next two seconds weren’t pretty. It took that long for the barrage of flechettes to flense the carapace off him and slash his insides to pulp. The Larry’s laughter was overridden with a scream, then a gooey slurp of organs getting splattered in every direction. When I looked back, I couldn’t see the gold ball at all; just the warrior’s shell lying over the ball like a lid, and underneath, the whirling butcher-thing was still as loud as hyenas, spinning inside the warrior’s husk. The Larry had completely cored its way into the warrior’s belly… and soon enough, the occasional flechette was able to pierce out the warrior’s side, blowing away little chips of armor. I ducked my head behind my tree trunk just as the Larry giggled into view again, carving out through the last bits of shell like a buzz saw.

  My heart was pounding as I listened to the Larry laughing just a few paces away. If it wanted to come after us, there was nothing to stop it from chopping the admiral and me to gobbets; Larries could fly upward of eighty kilometers an hour, way faster than a human could run. I decided if it started toward us, I’d hit my Mayday implant and take to my heels, hoping the signal would draw the Larry after me. It might give the admiral a chance to get away.

  But when I looked over at Festina, propped up behind another tree, she had her fingers resting lightly on her own wrist implant. Planning exactly the same thing, to sacrifice herself for me.

  I didn’t want to think what my dad would say if I let an admiral die in my place. When I was little, Dad called me "Jetsam," saying I’d be the first thing he threw out if he ever had to lighten his ship. It made me mad, how something like that flashed through my mind at a time like this. But I really had no choice — given the trade-off between Admiral Ramos and me, I had to trigger my Mayday first. So I did.

  A high-pitched squeal filled the air: my Mayday sounding on the admiral’s implant. Except that my implant was squealing too — Festina must have set off her own Mayday at the same instant.

  Both of us playing the self-sacrifice sweepstakes. It would have made me smile… if I wasn’t sure I was going to be sliced to ribbons.

  But the Larry wasn’t moving. Maydays or not, it remained out in the clearing, spinning in place on top of the warrior’s pureed carcass. Why wasn’t it coming after our signals? Had it used all its ammunition digging out through the poor warrior’s body? Or was it confused because it had two separate Maydays, and didn’t know whether to come after Festina or me?

  I held my breath and started to count the seconds. As I reached twenty-three, the Larry suddenly lifted into the air and swooshed away above the trees, heading back toward the canal. A trick to draw us out? I counted another thirty as the hyena laughter receded… and then only let myself move because the admiral called, "Edward, are you all right?"

  "Sure."

  We both turned off our Maydays and eased out of our hiding places — where we’d cowered while a brave warrior gave his life for people he didn’t know. Looking at the blood-spattered grass, I told myself the poor kid might have died happy,
knowing it was a warrior’s most honorable death: killed in righteous battle, protecting others. In the last millisecond before he was shredded, he might have felt… what, fulfilled? Validated? Triumphant?

  But he was still dead. And I’d never even learned his name.

  Admiral Ramos walked stiffly into the clearing. She paused over the remains of her Bumbler… but the little machine looked like it had been whacked a thousand times with a meat cleaver. Another casualty of the flechette barrage. Festina nudged the mechanical remains with her toe, then ground the debris angrily under her heel.

  Fragments of circuit boards went crunch. I didn’t like listening to the sound, so I asked, "Why did the Larry leave?"

  The admiral shook her head in the darkness. "Who knows?" Slowly, she walked over scattered scraps of the warrior’s body and knelt beside the largest piece of carcass. "Thanks," she said, laying her hand lightly on the boy’s blood-drenched shell. "Thanks, whoever you were." Then in a soft gentle voice: "That’s what ‘expendable’ means."

  It was a thing Explorers said to each other when somebody died — like a little prayer. I’d never heard an admiral use it before. Most of the admirals I’d met were the sort to say, "Good riddance."

  Festina stood up again. "I’d better follow the Larry," she said. "See where it’s going. With luck, the bad guys will come to fetch it, and I can see who they are."

  "Then let’s go," I told her.

  She gave me a look. "This isn’t really your business, Edward…" She stopped. "You wouldn’t be Edward York, would you? The Explorer who married the Mandasar high queen?"

  "Um. Yes. That’s me." I didn’t think the outside world had heard about that, but admirals must be pretty well informed.

  Festina let her breath come out in a whoosh. "Sometime real soon, you’ll have to tell me how you’re mixed up in this… but for now, tag along with me. If I leave you alone, the wrong people might find you."

  I wondered who she thought were the wrong people. Recruiters? Captain Prope? Battle-mad Mandasars? But I didn’t ask, and the admiral didn’t explain. She just waved for me to follow as she headed into the trees.

  The Larry was no longer in sight, but the laughter still rattled through the forest, occasionally hitting a note that made the trees buzz with resonance. We plunged after the cackling as fast as we could, thrashing through the undergrowth on a general downhill slant, back toward the canal.

  Soon we reached an area where the brush was trampled flat. A lot of warriors had stormed past this way — maybe the whole militia. They must have heard the Larry too; they’d swum across the water, then started to search the woods, trying to figure out what was making the howl.

  I winced — the warriors’ trail led in the same direction as the Larry’s laughter. Were they following it, or was it following them?

  With the undergrowth all squashed, Festina and I could move through the woods more quickly, angling downhill toward the Larry’s cackle. Laughter wasn’t the only thing on the night breeze; I could smell the crusty burning-wood whiff of Musk B as thick as the smoke from a forest fire. It was the odor of disaster waiting to happen — a whole pack of warriors aching to crush recruiter bones, and a single Laughing Larry that could hover high overhead, spraying down death.

  Half a minute later, we were closing in on the hyena chatter… and also on the choking musk. Up ahead, a bright light suddenly beamed from the sky, reflecting crimson off the shells of two dozen warriors gathered in a marshy clearing. The warriors had drawn into a wide ring, circling the edge of the open area. In the middle stood a human man, and straight over his head the Laughing Larry hovered in the air like a gold-glinting sun. The light came from higher in the night sky where a skimmer floated, searchlights in its belly and a rope ladder dangling down to ground level.

  Festina put her hand on my arm and held me back out of the light. No one in the clearing noticed us; the man in the center had his gaze glued on the warriors, and they were too busy eyeing the Larry. One of the Mandasars must have recognized the gold ball as a weapon and told the others to keep back.

  "It’s a standoff," Festina whispered. "That man’s right in the Larry’s eye. You know about that?"

  I nodded. Straight under a Larry’s spin-axis, there’s a spot that isn’t covered by any firing slits. Stand there, and it’s like the eye of a hurricane — things get destroyed all around you, but you’re safe. Larries are intentionally built that way; I’d once seen an underground advertisement showing a smug business exec walking down the street with a Larry over his head, while thugs fled out of his path. THE ULTIMATE IN PROTECTION, the ad said. SLAUGHTER EVERYTHING AROUND YOU FOR A 50-METER RADIUS, THEN WAIT FOR THE BLOOD TO STOP DRIPPING. Just one problem for the man in the middle: to escape with his skin intact, he had to climb the ladder up to the skimmer. The easiest way to do that was clambering past the Larry; but that meant leaving the safety of the eye. For a few seconds, he’d be smack in the Larry’s kill zone… and during those moments when he couldn’t let the Larry fire, the Mandasars would race forward and shake him off the ladder. He’d be dead by the time he hit the ground — not from the fall, but from dozens of claws lopping him into giblets.

  I could see one other way for the man to try his escape: ordering the Larry to rise with him as he climbed, always keeping a meter or so above his head. Staying safe in the weapon’s eye, he wouldn’t have to worry about it shooting him… but there was still the problem of the Larry shooting the ladder. It was a skimmer’s standard emergency rope ladder, if the warriors charged forward and the man told the Larry to let loose, a razor storm of flechettes would slice clean through the rope. Once again, he’d fall straight into the warriors’ waiting claws.

  As Festina said, it was a standoff: the militia holding back from the Larry’s death radius, the man unable to move from his only place of safety.

  I squinted to see the man more clearly. With the search-beams coming from straight over his head, I couldn’t make out his face; but he was tall and thin, with a great ball of wispy-fine hair that caught the light like a halo. He wore no shirt, just a leather vest… and as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw that the front of his body was transparent, like he’d had his skin peeled off and replaced with glass. You could see his ribs, stark and white, covering a shadowy lot of internal organs. I was too far away to make out his heart beating, but it was easy to watch his lungs expand and deflate with every breath.

  He was breathing fast, like he was nervous. I’d be nervous too if I could look down and see my stomach churn.

  Maybe if you came across a sight like this man at a museum, it would be an interesting way to learn about anatomy. Here in the dark night forest, it made my skin crawl. Whether Mr. Clear Chest was a recruiter or just someone wandering through the woods with illegal weapons, the guy was clearly a mean piece of work. He’d let the Larry kill that poor warrior… and he would have slaughtered Festina and me, except that he must have heard the militia thundering their way through the forest. That’s when he called the Larry off hunting us and brought it back to protect his own transparent hide. The little gold ball must have got to him just in time to keep the warriors at bay.

  But it wouldn’t hold them off forever — not with so much Musk B rippling through the night. I could hear a dozen pincers clacking fiercely, blood-eager to rip into an enemy. Pretty soon, the kids would be so riled they wouldn’t care about getting shredded by razor ftechettes. Someone would do something stupid, and then they’d all rush in: charging into the slashing flurry, as if the Larry couldn’t kill them all.

  Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe a few ragged survivors would make it to Mr. Clear Chest and tear him apart. That had to be why he hadn’t used the Larry already; he couldn’t be sure it would kill every warrior there. But it would spill a lot of blood… and I knew that at any second, the warriors just wouldn’t be able to hold themselves back any longer.

  "What should we do?" I whispered to Festina.

  "I don’t know," she answered. "If y
ou’re a blood-consort, can you order the Mandasars to pull back? Tell them to let the guy go and fight another day?"

  With so much musk in the air, I didn’t know whether anything could make the warriors retreat… certainly not some stinky-hume stranger they’d never seen before. But if this was the only chance to avoid a ton of carnage, I had to give it a try.

  Swallowing my fear, I stepped out from the cover of the forest. "Hello," I called in a loud voice. Better to speak English than Troyenese — the warriors should understand, and so would Mr. Clear Chest. I didn’t want him panicking and ordering the Larry to fire… which he might, if he thought I was talking in Mandasar and giving the warriors a battle strategy.

  "You don’t know me," I said as I walked toward the circle, "but you might know my name. I’m…" Edward York, I thought. But the words that came out of my mouth were, "Teeshpodin Ridd ha Wahlisteen." The Little Father Without Blame. Queen Verity had given me that title a long time ago; I hadn’t thought about it in years. But in the split second before I spoke the phrase, I’d lost control of my tongue again: back to being a helpless spectator while an unknown something walked around in my skin.

  If you want the honest truth, getting possessed was a relief — I didn’t have a clue what I would have said next. Whichever spook or spirit kept slipping into my shoes, it was sure better at bossing around Mandasars than I was.

  "Gentlemen," my mouth said, sounding all of a sudden more confident, breezy, and in control. "Pleasant though it would be to dance on a recruiter’s entrails, the price would be too high. At least for tonight. Don’t you agree?"

  I glanced around the circle of warriors. The way they glared at me wasn’t much friendlier than their fury at Mr. Clear Chest; but they’d been too surprised to rip me apart in the first second, and now the spirit possessing me had momentum on his side.