The Huntsman

by Rafael

  He remained nearby but long minutes passed and Kreetor did not reappear. He dismissed any notion the scalding water had disabled the alien. Its effortless flight had indicated nothing such. He welcomed the respite though. All the running had left him flagged. Perhaps it too rested. And calculated.

  Ahead a screech filled the clearing. Two aliens appeared. Janesh assumed a casual, un-aggressive stance and strode toward them. Twenty yards away he slowed, leveled the spear. One slow step then another he closed to fifteen. One bird winked out. Janesh smiled. “Too late. You can’t fly back fast enough.” He inhaled. “Ruuun!” The bird winked out. Janesh paled. Winked out not flew out. Wormhole!

  He turned to see the scientists halfway there. Miranda passed Ariel to Clara then ran back. “Noooo!” Janesh took off, his legs pistons thumping across the grassy glen. Miranda gathered the bamboo spears. Turned to join the others. Kreetor winked in. Shocked and frightened, Miranda slowly backed up. Run Janesh, he commanded himself. Run like you’ve never run in your life.

  From the shadows Duncan and Ronan leaped. Iron jaws clamped on a wing. It leaped about, one wing flapping, shrieking its pain. Janesh closed in. Miranda dropped the others and stabbed with one spear missing again and again the whirling mass of fur and feathers. With a powerful twist it smashed dogs and wing against a hut wall knocking the wind from its tormentors and dislodging them. It leaped once, twice but its lame wing would not lift. Janesh leveled his spear center mass. It winked out.

  Janesh pulled up. Duncan and Ronan scrambled to their feet in full blood rage, their well-muscled frames no worse for wear. Janesh pivoted toward Miranda, wanting to scream at her. She stood her ground, evaded the point. “I couldn’t let it hurt them.” They glared at one another. Miranda’s face softened. “With the spears we can poke through the roof when it lands.” Janesh nodded but wouldn’t relent. The syllables marched out slow and deliberate. His tone brooked no refusal.

  “Stay inside.” She gathered the spears. The dogs looked at him expectantly. “Guard.” They trotted after her.

  Halfway to the tree line, Janesh squatted down with the spear vertical. If not reckless, Miranda had aided his strategy. If it could not land on the roof it would have to come through him. He doubted a winged creature would wink into the hut. In such confined quarters odds for serious injury surged. Think, Janesh, think. There has to be a way to defeat this thing. Based on Miranda’s telling of the Seer’s healing abilities, it’d be back soon enough. Abilities.

  He rose and turned back to the hut. He began to run, faster and faster. His entrance startled everyone. “Give me all your blankets. The wool ones.”

  “There’s only four.” Clara called out.

  “That will do.”

  He paused to turn back in the entrance. The night sky framed his powerful body. His chest heaved and expanded from exertion. “No matter what you see, do not shout, do not make a sound. Silence is life.”

  Deep in the clearing Janesh looked about. He searched not for a place but a sense. One grass blade rose above the rest. With unhurried care he tamped down the surrounding grass then positioned it between him and the hut. Knife firm between his teeth, he squatted before it and pulled the blanket up his back to hold over his head. Just enough flap hung over the top that his field of vision became the lone blade.

  The forest’s sounds swirled around the blade: buzz, chitter, squeaks, grunts, chirps, clucks. He stared at the blade. Descent began. One by one the sounds faded. Breathing slowed, became a whisper. He descended. The heart arrived, thumping, pulsing, whooshing through veins and arteries and out to the blade. He descended. Cells vibrated, palpitated, hummed and thrummed. They swirled into the blade. Descent slowed.

  His life force swelled and oozed, dampening, stifling, muffling sound. He plunged deeper, to the sam dhi, to the sound emitted at the beginning of time, the silence of the divine whole. Janesh arrived.

  He did not wait. That presumed time’s passage and for him it had stopped. In the stillness of one, in the silence of union, he listened and heard all.

  Behind him a feather alit. Disturbed air swirled and eddied then floated again. The wind curved around a body, edging it, framing it. A beak opened. Heat expelled. Clarified gel sliced the air. It struck the blanket, useless and spent. Grass folded. Again. Then again. Closer, closer. It stopped, assessed. Air swirls bent back, back, back. The beak tensed for its downward plunge.

  Janesh did not move, did not rise. He flowed. With a flick, the blanket whisked away like Aladdin’s carpet. He spun to his right as the beak pierced the air toward the spot his head had just occupied. His left hand closed around Kreetor’s right, crushed the fingers to useless pulp. His right held the knife that entered the Sorken’s gut, slicing back to the throat as downward momentum caused the creature to eviscerate itself. He grabbed the back of its neck lifting it straight to shear back down through bone and viscera. Disemboweled, the alien’s guts plopped to the ground. A moment later so did the carcass.

  Janesh shook with the savagery of the moment. It boiled upward from the Earth and through his lungs. His roar shattered the stillness, carried across the forest. When the last echoes died away nothing answered the challenge.

  Running feet rushed toward the site. Miranda reached him first, visible relief slumping her shoulders. The seven stood around the alien remains, staring at the macabre sight. The first extraterrestrial to reach Earth had not survived the encounter. Duncan sniffed everything with Ronan eliciting a stern “no” when he tried eating what everyone took for an organ.

  “Is it dead?” Dimitrov asked. Miranda kicked it.

  “I think so.”

  “Perhaps we should bury it.” Ariel suggested. Clara shook her head.

  “I’m not touching it.” No one moved, each lost in their thoughts, unsure their terror had ended. Narsimha broke the silence.

  “Praise Vishnu it did not have ray guns.”

  * * *

  No one wanted to sleep. They sat around a fire grateful for the ginger tea that warmed their insides and hinted at the coming exhaustion. Dimitrov raised his cup. “I think I can speak for the group when I say thank you, Janesh.” You are a brave and selfless man.” Janesh raised his cup.

  “I salute the six of you. I cannot describe the pure joy your bravery caused me when I saw that creature’s head steaming. Whose idea was it?” Everyone pointed to the unlikeliest. Clara reddened.

  “But it was Miranda who threw it and she did not miss.”

  “Without Narsimha it would not have worked. He did something to increase the heat output.” Narsimha turned to the physicists.

  “Ariel and Dimitrov bravely kept watch while I worked under a torn section. Janesh smiled, shook his head, and rose. “I feel honored and humbled to be part of such a group.” Everyone else rose and spontaneously, quietly began to hug one another. The needed act placed a coda on their shared and horrific experience.

  Reseated, movement came to a halt, as if they had become a living photograph. Except for their eyes, the seven sat frozen in place and in differing poses. Janesh felt no pain, no discomfort, no fear. The experience more resembled the deliciousness of awakening to an alarm-free morning.

  Into their midst a metallic sphere floated stopping over the fire. Rising heat caused surface reflections to warp as they shimmered. Just outside their circle the air bubbled. Four, two-foot tall, blue-feathered bipeds popped out one after the other. Straps crisscrossed their torsos anchoring gossamer sleeves and leggings shaded a lighter blue. Thin bands closed the leggings around their ankles from which leather like flaps hung to cover the tops of their taloned feet.

  Like vertical eyebrows, long, thin feathers sprang up above round, owlish eyes that shifted from slow, deliberate blinks to short, quick ones. Stubby canary-yellow beaks completed the facial features as no obvious ears protruded from the rounded heads. Black, leathery arms had a line of blue vestigial feathers running the outer length ending in delicate, three-fingered hands with opposable thumbs. Their str
ides more resembled those of hominids than head-bobbing birds.

  They dispersed among the group, slowly examining them in great detail. The sphere glowed orange and began transmitting the clicks, clacks, whistles, and trills the four emitted. After a moment Janesh could hear their interchange in English although he remained unsure if through his ears or directly in his mind.

  “Remarkable. The same basic structure found throughout the galaxy but a unique variation.”

  “Seer, confirm internal imaging for each subject.”

  “Individual imaging confirmed.”

  “I cannot imagine how the internal biology will compare.”

  “Seer, are their body and foot coverings interfering with imaging?”

  “No, Examiner.”

  “This one has minimal coverings.” The other three gathered around Janesh. They stared at his feet.

  “Fascinating. It will be interesting to learn what advantage five appendages might confer. Bio-engineering will be most interested.” Another peered under his loin cloth.

  “Pending data analysis, my preliminary guess is common sexual reproduction.”

  “Any conjecture which ones are female?”

  “Impossible to tell at this point.”

  “Seer, are you sampling breath exhalations?”

  “Yes, Examiner.” Two stood before Miranda. One patted her breast, then squeezed. He moved it from side to side, up and down.

  “I have seen these features before.”

  “With the Mlaxuns, but much lower down.”

  “Yes, that is correct. Did they too use protective coverings?”

  “They are an obscure race. I cannot remember.”

  They moved to Ariel. The same one patted his chest, squeezed and tried to manipulate it. “Much less pronounced and no covering. Seer, annotate differences for priority study.”

  Two others pulled and prodded Dimitrov’s lips before moving on to Narsimha. They bent, rotated, and twisted his limbs and torso, including neck and head. “They are certainly within mechanical parameters common to the galaxy. Fascinating how again and again the outer systems’ biology are just variations of the inner core.”

  “Imaging and collection processes completed.” the Seer announced. The four gathered by the fire and took a last visual survey of the group.

  “An incredible, incredible find. And to think in our own sector.” They marched out the circle and one by one winked out.

  A second sphere floated in from the clearing to hover alongside the first. With no sense for time’s passage one minute might have elapsed or one hour. The air bubbled and out popped a solitary figure. It also stood at two feet but with green, narrower feathers. It dressed like the others with differences in detail. The horizontal and vertical straps crisscrossing its body had small, evenly spaced diamonds studding their lengths. Billowy, more ethereal, the attached white gossamer sleeves and leggings wafted cloudlike with every move. Gold-colored flaps covering its taloned feet shined and sparkled with every step. Vestigial flight feathers also streaked its arms but their iridescence twinkled and flashed in the firelight.

  The same owlish eyes peered from its head but larger, more opaque and a more sedate blink. No feathers ridged its brow but thin vertical ones alongside its head gave the appearance of ears. Its black beak terminated with a pronounced hook hinting at a meatier diet. All in all, a regal, resplendent individual.

  It stopped, looking up at the spheres. The first glowed orange. Without warning, sight and sound filled Janesh’s mind. Scene after scene showed beings of every stripe, size, and color exploding, melting, burning, disintegrating. Thousands upon thousands fled before hordes that sprang on their back tearing away flesh and bone. Entire family groups, eaten alive. Horrific pictures showed endless lines of females and their young, frightened, cowed, crying, marched into wormholes under guard, disappearing to places unknown.

  Fantastical, alien cities sprang into view, vibrant, bustling, living. Black, green, yellow clouds descended, death and devastation their aftermath. Scene after scene displayed cities in ruin, abandoned and windswept. Where nothing moved—or lived.

  Beams descended from skies to scorch and incinerate stupendous, awe-inspiring vistas. Entire landscapes rumbled then exploded blasting away huge chunks that heralded a planet’s disintegration. And all the while the screams and cries of the dying filled his ears. The weeping and sobbing of those soon to be echoed and re-echoed. Without warning it stopped.

  A voice filled his mind, soft, gentle, refined, sexless. “I am Heeklu, Lord Counselor to Ssah of the High Council, Grand Dominant of the Unwinged, Ruler of Sorke. He sends blessings that you and your nestlings may share his grace and know wisdom and prudence.” Janesh glanced at Miranda then the others. They too heard the voice.

  It walked around the group pausing at each to examine though it touched nothing. After studying the other six it stood before Janesh. “You are…” for some moments it remained still. The sphere glowed orange. “the Mahān Śikārī, Slayer of Kreetor, Warrior Priestess to the High Council, Grand Dominant of the Winged.” Its arms rose, flapped once, twice.

  “The scenes you have witnessed are not the nightmares of this galaxy, they are its reality. Nine thousand years ago we escaped that truth and fled to this undeveloped, uninhabited, resource poor, hinterland. We do not have much but we have peace.

  Not long ago electro-magnetic beams signaled seventeen separate gate openings from your world to others. We were unaware of your existence but the beams unmasked your presence. Imagine our shock. But more shocks followed.

  By the standards of galactic civilizations, you are primitive beyond description. And yet you possess a technology that is the hallmark of advanced societies. Further, as a biosphere, you evolved a characteristic never recorded in the galaxy’s natural history. Of your entire planet’s indigenous species, only one evolved intelligence—yours.

  The dividing line in sentient emergence is three. The most powerful, the most warlike, the most expansionist, the most territorial worlds in the galaxy all evolved two or three intelligent life forms. We shudder to imagine the bloodlust that dwells within one. Those that evolved four or more are less so. Why?

  On a planet with many intelligent species the possibility exists three may ally to eliminate the fourth. In order to avoid this fate, all four species learn to cooperate. When a planet evolves three intelligences, any one species may see itself as capable of defeating the other two. Two allying themselves against a third is seen as itself a provocation to war. Consequently, all three fall into lethal arms races. Across the eons entire civilizations, worlds, and systems have risen and fallen based on this formula.

  The primary exceptions have been planets that evolved plant intelligences. Their inherent immobility precludes technological development. Where plants have achieved mobility, the three species rule applies.

  Now the galaxy contains a one-intelligence world. Without other species to drive your competition for resources and technology, you have resorted to killing one another with devastating savagery and persistence. So ingrained is this lust that for the past 3,500 years of your history, only 300 have been without war. You are a race of mighty warriors. One day you will lead the galaxy’s poorest sector and cut a swath across the stars that will cause worlds to tremble at your advance. But not yet.

  If you allow the gate to be opened, others will see the signature and come to investigate. You will have no chance against their power. Most of your world will be eradicated and the rest enslaved. As your own history, a microcosm of the galaxy, can attest. The danger of discovery is so great, that you endanger sacred Sorke itself.

  The Grand Dominant of the Unwinged will open gates to the bedrooms of your leaders and decapitate your political and military structures. Leaderless, your armies will be defeated piecemeal and the populations extinguished. You will be offered no opportunity to yield, no opportunity to surrender. But the Most High Dominant does not desire this outcome.”

  The second
sphere floated to stop before Janesh. “By Trial of Combat you have earned the right to this Seer. Take it as a symbol of our worlds’ friendship. Let it abide our peace while your world advances. Destroy your premature device. When you can defend your planet, let us ignite our gates and together sally forth as allies against the darkness that enslaves entire worlds. What say you, Mahān Śikārī? You may speak, before the Lord Counselor.”

  “If we would be allies it should be based on trust. Releasing our restraints would greatly enhance it.” The Lord Counselor stood in silence. A slow blink closed then opened its eyes.

  “I will overlook the rudeness of your insult as the ignorance of a primitive. I would never base the survival of my planet or my people on trust. I certainly will not use it for my own. I have crafted this proposal because it is in your interest to accept as it is in mine to offer it. Trust plays no role and is a dangerous diversion in a galaxy that has none. Confine yourself to the matter at hand and not with distractions. If you wish your species to survive, rid yourself of this foolishness.”

  “Then as the Grand Dominant has availed himself of an astute and perceptive Counselor permit me to consult my own.”

  “It is done. Speak with confidence. The Seer will not provide me translation.”

  Everyone rushed into cacophony, stopped, then deferred to Gary. “What if this Seer is a convenient spy reporting back all it learns?

  “We should assume that it does. Better than if it leaves behind Seers we don’t know about.” replied Janesh.

  “What if it does not hold up its end of the bargain?” Dimitrov asked.

  “As Carthage negotiated with Rome, my forebears with Britain, the Indians and the whites, the weak cannot negotiate with the strong. We must accept what is given and unlike the others, bide our time. If we manage to escape detection and grow powerful, it won’t matter if they do or do not.”

  “The Lord Counselor is right. It is a fair bargain and in our interests to accept. Take it.” Clara urged.