Alien Game

by Rod Walker

  That meant the rocket erupted from the launcher and slammed into the rear starboard rotor of Toulon’s quadcopter. The rotor and a large part of the quadcopter’s hull ripped itself apart in a raging fireball, shrapnel raining in all directions. I threw myself down, bits of metal bouncing off the wrecked quadcopter around me.

  After a moment, the roar faded away, and all I could hear was the crackle of a fire.

  “Anyone hurt?” barked Tanner.

  “I report no injuries,” said Charles.

  “I’m fine,” said Mr. Royale. “Sam?”

  “I’m not hurt,” I said. “Which, all things considered, is kind of surprising.”

  “Yeah,” said Tanner, straightening up and peering outside again. “Let’s have a little chat with Mr. Toulon, shall we?”

  We stepped out of the quadcopter and into the jungle. Toulon’s quadcopter was on fire. I had entertained a hope we could use it to fly back to Outpost Town, but the rocket had smashed one of the rotors and torn a big hole in the hull. The bodyguards were dead. Two of the men were dead from gunshot wounds, and the third had been killed by shrapnel from the explosion. Toulon himself lay on the ground, shivering, with gunshot wounds in his arm and leg, and a piece of shrapnel embedded in his side. That in itself probably would not be fatal, if he got to a doctor in time, but combined with the gunshots he was in trouble. Also there were all sorts of alien bacteria that would crawl into his open wounds, and the injections any visitor to Arborea received would only keep them at bay for so long.

  He was in a lot of trouble. But to judge from the furious sneer he directed at us, the reality of his situation hadn’t quite caught up with him yet.

  “You’re going to regret this,” said Toulon, gritting his teeth. “You’re going to pay, all of you.”

  “Yeah,” said Tanner, pointing his Avenger at Toulon. “We’re the ones bleeding to death in the middle of the Arborean jungle. We’re the ones in trouble.”

  Toulon laughed. “Do you think Valier would let me die out here? I was one of his biggest backers for this plan, and I paid fifty million for this.”

  “Backers?” said Mr. Royale. “You weren’t on the board of directors.”

  Again Toulon laughed. “Look, it’s the burrito king. It would be fitting if you were ground up and served in your own disgusting burritos.”

  For a moment Mr. Royale just stared at him, and then he shook his head.

  “I thought so. The Most Dangerous Game, I assume.”

  Toulon blinked. “You’re not as stupid as you look.”

  “The Most Dangerous Game?” I said. “What is that?”

  “The book I saw Valier reading,” said Mr. Royale.

  “So what does that have to do with anything?” I said.

  “Everything. It was a book written by a man named Richard Connell on ancient Earth, long before even pre-interstellar spaceflight,” said Mr. Royale. “In the story, a nobleman named Zaroff invites guests to his private island, where he hunts them for sport.”

  I looked at Toulon, at Mr. Royale, and then back at Toulon.

  “Oh, man,” I said. “That’s really messed up.”

  “Seriously?” said Tanner. “The entire Safari Company is a… a front so rich morons with too much money can hunt people for sport?”

  “Why would EcoMin allow something like that?” I said. “I mean, I know they’re scoundrels, but there’s a big different between corruption and graft and hunting people.”

  Toulon snorted. “The Acadarchy is broke. The only thing that’s keeping New Princeton afloat is loans from some of the more solvent planetary governments, and they’re getting ready to pull the plug. So the Acadarchy needs money, right? New Princeton is overpopulated anyway, and most of the population consists of useless do-nothings. Why not sell hunting rights to the highest bidder? Valier and his pet ecocrats are on board with it, since they never shut up about the negative effect mankind has on the interstellar ecology. Everybody wins. The Acadarchy gets a lot of money to keep running, and they can get rid of some of their surplus population. The customers get the thrill of a lifetime.”

  “Yeah, everyone wins,” I said, “except for the people getting hunted.”

  Toulon shrugged, sweat glittering on his face. “It’s not like you matter.”

  I kicked him. He let out a satisfying cry of pain, his eyes going wide, and I wondered if he had ever been hit before. Granted, kicking a wounded man when he’s down isn’t the most chivalrous thing to do, but I figured he deserved it. I might have kicked him again, or maybe just shot him, but Tanner’s free hand clamped over my arm.

  “None of that,” said Tanner with the sort of hard smile he used when breaking up fights between rowdy workers. “Mr. Toulon is going to cooperate fully.”

  “And just why should I do that?” said Toulon.

  “Because you’ve got nothing to lose,” said Tanner, tapping his earpiece, “I’ve been recording everything since you strutted out of your quadcopter. And we’re your only way out of the jungle.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you’ve got,” said Toulon. “Minister Valier himself supports this plan.”

  “Yeah,” said Tanner, still with that nasty smile, “but he’s not the only Minister, is he? And all the other Ministers hate his guts.”

  “This is true,” said Mr. Royale. “The best way to deal with the Ecology Ministry, other than bribes, is to have friends in the other Ministries.”

  “Exactly,” said Tanner. “And it’s good to give friends a gift now and then. Such as a video that proves Valier set up his own private murder park on an alien world? See, the other Ministers might not care about that, but they do care about bringing down Valier, and my video is exactly the kind of club they can use against him. And against Toulon Group, too. I would bet Toulon Group has a lot of competitors, and I’m sure they’d love to have a PR weapon to use against it.”

  “Why, Winston,” said Mr. Royale. “That was downright vicious.”

  “Thank you,” said Tanner. “And if that doesn’t persuade you,” said Tanner, “you’re wounded, bleeding, and alone in the jungle. One of your hired idiots blew up your quadcopter, so you’re stuck here. Unless you cooperate, you’re not going anywhere.”

  “All right,” said Toulon. “Fine! I’ll admit to anything you want. Just get me back to Outpost Town.”

  I was sure that he was lying. If we took him back with us, he would spin some story for Valier that would get us all arrested and killed. Or Valier would simply have us executed to protect his secrets. A fresh wave of fear went through me. In the chaos of the crash, I hadn’t been thinking about the explosion we had seen at Outpost Town. What about Kayla and Hoskins and the others? What had Valier and his men done to them?

  “Security Director Tanner,” said Charles. “We had better go now. All that blood will have drawn the notice of scavengers.”

  “You’re right,” said Tanner, grimacing. “All right. We’ll need to work up some kind of sled for Toulon. It ought to be in the emergency supplies on one of the quadcopters…”

  Then the scavengers in question showed up.

  I spotted the first one lumbering towards us through the trees.

  They didn’t have a proper scientific name yet, or even a good nickname. We called them bears, because they sort of looked like the mammal from Old Earth, except that Terran bears did not have six legs, were not twenty feet long, and were not festooned with poisoned spikes down their spines. The Arborean bears were omnivores and lived on fungus and vegetation for the most part. That said, when they could get meat, they loved meat… and the smell of human blood seemed to draw them like flies to honey. They weren’t as vicious or as cunning as the tromosaurs, but when roused, they were just as dangerous.

  “Charles,” said Tanner.

  Charles raised his Avenger and got off three quick shots. His rounds penetrated the bear’s head, and the creature went rigid and then collapsed, which allowed me to see the small troop of bears behind it.

 
For a moment they froze, staring at us. The bears looked a bit like a picture I had seen once, a freeze frame of a landslide right before it wiped out a village on some distant colony world.

  I was pretty sure we were not the snow in this situation.

  “What?” said Toulon. “What is it?”

  “I advise immediate tactical retreat,” said Charles.

  “What are those things?” said Mr. Royale.

  “Right,” said Tanner. “We’ll have to carry Toulon. Ian, you get his…”

  The bears surged forward, and I had just enough time to reflect that they did rather look like an avalanche of spines and fur and large, sharp claws.

  “Run!” shouted Charles.

  “Wait! Wait!” said Toulon. “Please! Don’t leave me!”

  Even if we had wanted to, there was no way we could go back for him. The bears had the scent of the blood in their nostrils, and they were good and riled up. If we had hesitated even a second before running away, the bears would have ripped us apart as well.

  It shouldn’t have bothered me. Toulon had shot us down, murdered Hobson, and he would have gladly killed us all for trophies. But it still felt wrong.

  A single shot rang out. Toulon fell silent.

  As we sprinted away, I risked a glance over my shoulder. The bears tore into the three dead bodyguards, ripping them apart in a feeding frenzy. I didn’t see Toulon, but I didn’t hear him screaming either.

  We kept running.

  After about a mile, Charles called for a halt. We were all breathing hard.

  “The bears will remain occupied with the dead until they are sated,” said Charles, “and their scent should drive off any other predators. We should be safe for the moment.” He paused and looked around the jungle, wiping sweat from his brow. “Within certain parameters of safety, you understand.”

  I looked at the other men. They were looking accusingly at Mr. Royale.

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t leave him to be devoured alive. That wouldn’t have been right.”

  “He tried to kill us!” Tanner shouted. “Did you forget that?”

  “It’s one thing to shoot a man. Even he didn’t intend for us to be torn apart by monsters.”

  “Only because that would spoil his trophies,” I observed sourly.

  “Regardless, Mr. Toulon is no longer the problem,” said Mr. Royale. “I suggest we turn our attention to the situation at hand. What are we going to do now?”

  That was a very good question, and I had no idea how to answer it.

  Chapter 5: Interdepartmental Rivalries

  “We’re going back to Outpost Town,” said Tanner. “Once we’re there, we’ll figure out what’s going on, and then we’ll make a plan of attack.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But when we get there, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tanner. “We’ll figure it out then.”

  I started to say that wasn’t a very good plan, but I made myself shut up. For one thing, it wouldn’t have been helpful. That and Tanner had a point. We couldn’t make a plan until we knew for sure what had happened at Outpost Town. Kayla was still at Outpost Town, which meant Tanner would stop at nothing to get her to safety.

  “Very well,” said Mr. Royale. “We had better get started. I presume we do not want to be caught outside in the jungle come nightfall.”

  “We do not,” said Charles, who had never stopped surveilling our surroundings.

  “Did you know?” said Tanner.

  “Know what?” said Mr. Royale.

  Tanner’s mouth twisted. “What Safari Company was really about?”

  “If I did know,” said Mr. Royale, “Do you really think I would have let myself get on a quadcopter hunted by the likes of Alexander Toulon?”

  “Good point,” I said.

  Mr. Royale shook his head. “I only invested in the Safari Company because it was New Princeton’s first off-world business venture in decades. I hoped it might lead to restarting the colonization program. I had no idea it was a front for this sort of… sickness.”

  “What about all the sabotage, then?” I said.

  “Sabotage?” said Charles.

  Tanner scowled. “Do we really want to talk about this?”

  Mr. Royale shrugged. “Why not? We’re all in the same sinking ship at the moment.”

  “We were friends with Mr. Royale back on New Princeton,” I told Charles. “That’s why he hired us on. He was worried someone in the Ecology Ministry would try to sabotage the Safari Company, and he was right. I mean, didn’t you ever wonder why so much stuff kept breaking down?”

  “It is the nature of machinery to fail,” said Charles. “Though we have had a high number of technical malfunctions.”

  “Yeah, a lot of those were on purpose,” I said. “We’d get a shipment of cleanings drones and their cleaners would be pre-loaded with paint instead of bleach, or the harvesting drones had sabotaged drive units, stuff like that. Lots and lots of petty stuff. Most of it wasn’t dangerous, but some of it could have hurt or killed someone.”

  “Or delayed the grand opening of Outpost Town,” said Charles.

  “I thought Valier supported the Safari Company,” said Tanner, “and some faction within the Ministry opposed it.”

  Mr. Royale shrugged. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe someone else is trying to stop the Safari Company.”

  “Or maybe,” said Tanner, “we were right all along, but we had it backward.”

  “What do you mean?” said Charles.

  “Right,” said Tanner. “We assumed that Valier was in favor of Outpost Town and the Company and that some faction in the Ministry was trying to stop us because they don’t think humans should affect the interstellar environment. But what if the faction in the Ministry was trying to stop Valier because they realized he’s nuts?”

  “Nuts?” I said.

  “Obviously, Spraycan,” said Tanner. “Hunting humans for sport and profit? That’s the kind of thing that only happens on pirate asteroids in uncharted solar systems. New Princeton is a major power in the Thousand Worlds. It’s supposed to be civilized.” He added a mocking edge to the last word. “Something like this can’t be kept secret forever. Sooner or later it will leak out, and there will be trouble. I bet Valier kept this secret from everyone else in the Acadarchy. I wasn’t blowing smoke when I threatened Toulon. If that video gets out, the other Ministers would be delighted to tear Valier to shreds with this as an excuse.”

  I shuddered a little, thinking of how Toulon had been torn apart by the bears.

  “Then that should be our plan of attack, Security Director Tanner,” said Charles. “We must escape with proof of Minister Valier’s misdeeds. Should we act quickly enough, he will fall to the other Ministers’ attacks before he can bring down retribution upon our heads.”

  “And,” said Mr. Royale, “we should try to rescue anyone we can from Outpost Town.”

  Charles scowled. “We should assume that all the guests are part of Valier’s plot.”

  “We shouldn’t,” said Mr. Royale. “I’m not.”

  “Yes,” said Tanner. “Apparently, Toulon found KwikBreets sufficiently offensive to kill you over them.”

  “Which is just appalling,” said Mr. Royale. I expected him to say something about the morality of murder or the sanctity of human life, but I was wrong. “We use only the best ingredients in KwikBreets. The very best! And we have over twenty-nine different flavor configuration and styles.”

  “I thought it was twenty-seven,” I said.

  “We added two since you’ve been gone,” said Mr. Royale. “Salsa and Spicy Buffalo Ranch. The second one is really quite popular, and has been our fifth bestseller–”

  “My point,” said Tanner, before Mr. Royale could get going, “is that all the guests might not be on Valier’s side. This private murder park of his might be a way to raise money, but it’s also a good way to settle some grudges. All those industrialists and traders who showed up for the grand opening
brought their own bodyguards, and some of them might be on our side.”

  “We will not know until we can assess the situation further,” said Charles.

  “Like you said, Winston,” said Mr. Royale. “I don’t suppose we can call Outpost Town?”

  “No such luck,” said Tanner. “We can’t get a radio signal back to Outpost Town without the boosters in the quadcopters. The vegetation mucks it up. That, and if Valier has control of the quadcopters, it’s likely he’ll send someone out to shoot us if he realizes that we got away from Toulon and his thugs.”

  “So we have to cross the jungle on foot,” I said.

  We stood in silence for a moment, contemplating that grim fact.

  “It has been done before,” said Charles.

  “Never without casualties,” I said.

  “We don’t have a choice,” said Tanner. “Both quadcopters are wrecked, and if we call for help, we’ll probably have Valier’s goons show up to kill us. So unless one of you can magically grow a pair of wings or something, we’re going to have to walk.”

  “The sooner we get moving,” said Mr. Royale, “the sooner we can return and set matters right.”

  Or get ourselves shot, but I kept that thought myself.

  “Exactly,” said Tanner. “Let’s get going. Charles, you’ve got the most experience with the jungle. You should take charge until we get back to Outpost Town.”

  “Very well, Security Director Tanner,” said Charles, and he barked a stream of instructions.

  Charles took point, with Tanner and Mr. Royale in the middle, and I brought up the back, which I usually did when I went out on hunting expeditions with Charles.

  During the first five kilometers, we wound up shooting and killing about twenty-three tromosaurs. I wasn’t sure if they were coming to investigate the wrecked quadcopters or not. The fire and the explosion would have frightened off most of the animals of the jungle, even the really big ones like the tankstriders, but as the fires died down the scent of blood from whatever remained of Toulon and his goons would have drawn scavengers and predators both. Sometimes the tromosaur packs followed the bears, hoping to steal away a bit of meat… or to take down an aging or a sick bear. The tromosaurs would kill anything if they could get away with it, and the things were clever.