by Rick Partlow
The kid shrugged.
“You want safe or you want quick? Sir,” he added, belatedly and with some malice .
“Oh, shove that sir up your ass,” I told him, turning back to the bull.
Shit. I’d gotten us into this.
“All right,” I acceded. “We just walk right into the herd, then?”
“When he starts coming at us,” Quinn suggested, “we should get on opposite sides of him so he won’t know who to go after, then we can stab him with the spears from both sides and pin him down so he can’t just gallop away. These things are as fast as a horse.”
“All right,” I said, starting to rise from cover, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“If we don’t get a clean hit,” he warned me, “if he gets off the spearheads and starts whipping those antlers around, we need to split up and run like hell. Try to get a tree between you and him, maybe even climb it.”
I cast a skeptical glance at the stunted, waterlogged trees in the marshland beside the wide river and couldn’t imagine one of them holding my weight. But no plan ever got implemented if you just sat around coming up with contingencies.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We walked into the herd as if we owned the place, and at first, the elk didn’t seem to notice. They kept grazing, ignoring us, maybe because of the odor-masking mud-and-piss mixture caking our faces, necks and hands, or maybe because we didn’t smell like wolves or bears or Skrith or anything else that hunted them on this world.
“You’ve done this before, right?” I asked Quinn, my eyes locked on the King Elk.
“Hunted with a spear?” he asked, and I nodded. “I’ve…seen it done. I was like twelve and my uncle wouldn’t let me take the kill because he didn’t think I was big enough.”
“Something you might have mentioned earlier, Corporal,” I gritted through clenched teeth.
“Yes, sir,” he said, no apology whatsoever in his voice. “I regret keeping you from bringing one of all the other personnel we had available who knew anything about hunting with a spear.”
I wanted to snap at him, but I couldn’t.
“Fair point.”
We were about thirty yards from the bull when he finally turned his head and fixed us with a regal glare, snorting his outrage.
“Oh, there we go,” I murmured.
“Move left,” Quinn instructed me, sidestepping to the right, making some space between us.
I kept going forward, but angled away from him just a few degrees. The ground was damp, the footing uncertain, and I stepped calf-deep in a puddle of marsh water, soaking my boot and the sock beneath it. I pressed on, ignoring the discomfort. At about twenty yards away, the bull lowered his head.
“Now!” Quinn yelled, lunging at the huge animal, the haft of his spear tucked in close to his side.
I tried to imitate the form he’d showed me back at the Skrith palace, with the spear close to my body, not extending my arms too far, keeping it in tight to increase the leverage. I ran at the left flank of the beast at almost the same time as Quinn lunged in from the right, but the elk pulled up short, prancing backwards, snorting in alarm at something coming from behind him…something running on two legs but hunched over as if he might be more comfortable if he could have gone on all fours, something covered in thick, dark fur and a loincloth of tanned hide and nothing else.
Anu Neeme Klas leaped with the grace of the wolf inside his genetic code, fangs bared, trying to latch onto the elk at the base of the animal’s throat. I’d seen the same sort of attack on nature documentaries, and it didn’t always go well for the wolf. The bull elk must have had a subscription to the same streaming service, because he lashed out with a double-kick of his rear hooves and the Skrith ambassador went flying into the brush, leaving a frightened, pissed off bull elk staring at the two humans who were his only convenient targets.
“Shit!” Quinn dove to the side when the elk swung its antlers around at him. “Run!”
Oh, that’s helpful.
I scrambled away, keeping the point of the spear between me and the elk, as if the overgrown toothpick would save me from this angry ungulate. He didn’t charge directly at me, so I figured he didn’t realize how flimsy my weapon was and was being cautious. And who could blame him? He had a whole herd full of elk cows to try to impregnate, and who has time for getting stabbed with a spear when there’s that much work to do? He took two steps forward and I took about ten back, splashing into the water again, then back out of it. If I tripped and fell over backwards, he was going to gut me with those antlers, but I didn’t dare look away from him to watch where I was going.
Little details stood out, things I wouldn’t have expected, like the cloud of bugs surrounding him, flies and mosquitos dancing a constant ballet of torment, which would be enough reason for me to go into a murderous rage, too. And his breath. If Godzilla ate bean burritos all night and then went to bed without brushing his teeth, his atomic breath would still have had nothing on this guy. And more than anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about how incredibly massive the animal was and how easily he could kill me.
“You okay, Quinn?” I called.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “I kind of twisted my ankle though. Stepped in a hole.”
I risked just a flicker of my eyes in his direction and saw Quinn pushing himself to his feet, using the spear for leverage. He was soaked, dirty water dripping off his camouflage field utilities, though that had to be an improvement over the crap we’d rubbed on our skin.
“Think you can get his attention over there?” I wondered. “Cause right now, I think he’s decided I am all that’s wrong with the world.”
Another three steps backward to the bull’s one forward. He tossed his head and bugled, a sound that set the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Intuition told me he was going to charge again, that he was working himself up to it.
“Yes, sir,” Quinn said. I could make him out in the corner of my eye, and he was limping badly.
“Quinn, can you run on that ankle? Because I have a feeling we’re going to need to run.”
“Don’t know, sir,” he admitted. “But I guess we’ll find out.”
I was forgetting something. Oh, right.
“Anu,” I yelled, hoping my translator was waterproof. “Are you okay? You still alive over there?”
The speaker affixed to my collar spouted something in Skrith, and I was impressed with its durability. I made a mental note to leave a five-star rating for it when I got back to Earth. The Skrith made no reply.
“Anu Neeme Klas,” I tried again, wondering if the guy was dead, or unconscious, or just too proud to answer to the shortened name. “Are you hurt?”
That was a dumb question, I realized. He’d taken a kick right to the chest. Of course he was hurt. The elk must have thought it was dumb, too, because he began to lower his head at me. I stuck the butt of my spear into the ground and aimed the point at him, like a pike against a mounted knight. Which wasn’t going to work—he wouldn’t charge straight into it, he’d just knock it out of the way, but I wasn’t sure what else to do.
A moan rolled out from the brush to my left. Not a human moan, but a unmistakably the sound of suffering, and there was only one suffering being in that direction. The elk paused, turning to the new sound and I turned with him. Anu Neeme Klas was rolling out of the bushes where he’d fallen, hands on his chest, blood welling between his fingers from the deep cuts the elk’s hooves had left there. He tried to stand, getting his feet beneath him and unfolding in a motion no human not trained in gymnastics could have imitated.
“Get out of there!” I yelled at him, taking a step toward him.
The elk was faster. Its antlers swiped sideways and struck him at the shoulder, knocking him sideways into the water. It was going to kill him. I don’t remember thinking about it, I just lunged with the ivory blade and buried it just behind its front leg. The bull thrashed the spear right out of my hands, the haft slapping th
e side of my head and sending me reeling, stars filling my vision.
If I could have formed a coherent thought in that moment, it would probably have been something about how idiotic it was for me to survive firefights with Venezuelans, Russians and Tevynians only to get killed by a deer on steroids. I tried to shake my head clear, expecting to see the bull advancing on me, ready to get revenge by ripping my guts out, but the animal was a good deal more sensible than any of us and he was trying to run.
If he runs, we don’t get the Skrith vote.
Why that was my primary concern at the moment, I’ll never know. But at least I wasn’t the only one. Quinn darted in with admirable speed for a guy who had a twisted ankle and jammed his spear into the right side of the bull’s chest.
The animal didn’t make a sound. That was the oddest part. He’d been bugling up a storm before, snorting and pawing at the ground, but once the spears had gone in, he was mute. Blood frothed from the elk’s mouth, bubbling out of his lungs, and I knew he was done for. I pushed myself up, warm mud squishing between my fingers.
The elk was sitting, legs folded beneath it as if he was resting, but his neck was limp, his head propped up on his antlers. I felt a tremendous sadness, and then a tremendous pain in my head.
“Shit,” I moaned, putting a hand to my head, feeling wetness but not sure if it was blood or just the mud.
I stumbled over to Anu Neeme Klas. He was propped up on an elbow, coughing, looking pretty bad with blood streaming down his chest and his right bicep. Quinn plopped down in the mud, hands going to his ankle, face screwed up with the pain, and I had an idea he hadn’t just sprained it. And me, I could barely see straight and every attempt to think wound up with my pulse beating in my temples. I pulled my comm unit out of my pocket, my fingers so wet and muddy I nearly dropped it.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said, blowing off communications protocol because I didn’t think the enemy elk army could crack our comms. “Anybody listening?”
“Yeah, I gotcha, Andy.” It was Julie. I wanted to smile but it hurt my face. “You guys okay?”
“Well, we’re doing better than the elk,” I told her. “But not by much. You wanna send someone out to pick us up? Because Anu probably has some broken ribs, Quinn busted his ankle and a fucking elk somehow managed to brain me with my own spear, and if the Skrith are counting on us to haul this big-ass carcass out of here, then I’m going to leave it for the coyotes.”
Chapter Eleven
“Could I get a medal for killing an elk?” I wondered, the words gasped as I tried to get my breathing back under control.
Julie raised her head from my chest and eyed me askance, sweat beading on her forehead.
“That? That’s what you’re thinking about now?”
“No, I wasn’t thinking about it just now!” I insisted, shaking my head, hands going to her back, rubbing gently as if I was trying to massage away a hurt. “Just afterwards, for a second…” No, that didn’t sound good, either. I leaned up and kissed her hard, then tried again. “I mean, I was kind of lost in a haze, carried beyond consciousness by the rapture of our experience together and disconnected bits of thought began to bounce off of each other in my state of wonder and ecstasy and that, unfortunately, was the one that came out.”
“Oh, my God,” she moaned, resting her cheek against my shoulder and shaking with silent laughter. “It’s a damned good thing you don’t write romance novels, or you’d have starved to death.”
“Are you saying I’m not romantic?” I demanded, feigning outrage. “And hey, wait a second, are you saying you read romance novels?”
“Hey now!” she exclaimed, sitting up and hunting for the light switch. It was easy to find because the portable lamp had come down with us on the shuttle. The Skrith didn’t use them, their night vision being superior to ours. I squinted against the sudden glare. “I never said I read romance novels.” She raised a hand as if in testimony in court. “I may have read a couple, in my life, but I don’t read them…”
I laughed, glad I could do it without pain thanks to the ship’s chief medical officer who treated my blow to the head. Quinn and especially Anu had spent a lot more time in the medical clinic than I had.
“I am so never letting this go,” I promised her. “When we’re a hundred years old and…” I shrugged, “…well, not grey, I guess. Looking exactly like we do now. When we’re a hundred years old and have like ten kids, I will still hold this over your head.”
“Ten kids?” she repeated, horror written across her face. “Jesus Christ, Andy, it’s a vagina, not a clown car!”
“Hey,” I reasoned, “I’m exaggerating a little, but this is a brave new world, hon. Say you get the itch to have a kid every ten years or so…well, that’s a hundred years to get to ten, and the oldest will be ninety before the tenth is born. It’s going to really put a twist in the nuclear family.”
“Don’t we have to be a family before we’re a nuclear family?” she said archly. “Or a thermonuclear family, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t remember ever saying I wanted to have more kids, and I certainly don’t think I would have forgotten if you’d ever asked me to marry you.”
I stopped for a moment, disengaging my mouth and letting my eyes do the work. She was propped up on one arm, the golden light from the lamp doing wonderful things for her bare skin and I smiled with appreciation.
“Would you?” I asked, finally.
“Would I what?” she shot back, a suspicious cant to her eyebrow.
I scooted across the moss-filled animal skin mattress, which was more comfortable than I’d given it credit for, and took her in my arms, pulling her against me. Her flesh radiated the heat we’d generated even in the slight chill from the stone walls of the bedchamber. I kissed her and her arms went around my neck, giving the whole business some serious attention for a few seconds before she pulled away, gently but firmly and looked me in the eye.
“Would I what?”
“Would you marry me?”
The words came so easy, as if they weren’t pushing against years of pain and anger and bad memories. What was the old saying? “Remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
Julie smiled crookedly.
“Are you really asking, or are is this one of those games where if I say yes, you say okay, good to know? Because I’m your superior officer and in a unique position to do you great bodily harm.”
I held her at arm’s length, my hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“Julie Nieves,” I said, sober as a judge, “will you marry me?”
Something scratched at the door. That was kind of an inexact way to describe it, since the room didn’t have a door per se, just a long, narrow hall to the corridor leading outside, sound and light dampened by a series of curtains. But something was scratching out there, past the last curtain, so muted I almost couldn’t hear it.
“What the hell is that?” I let go of Julie, reaching into the pile of clothes beside the bed, seeking the rough plastic of my Glock.
“It sort of sounds like my old cocker spaniel when she wanted to go outside and pee.”
I shared a look with her, threw off the covers and retrieved my shorts from the pile. I yanked them on quickly while Julie found her clothes. The floor was ice cold under my bare feet and I resisted the urge to put on my socks, not willing to give up in traction what I gained in insulation.
“Is someone there?” I asked, gun hanging at my side.
“I seek your leave to enter the room,” a voice said in badly-accented English. The words gave the impression the speaker had memorized the sounds without knowing the intonation. But he’d made the effort to learn the words, which said something.
I shrugged at Julie. She held out a hand and I gave her the Glock, letting her hold it beneath the covers, exchanging it for my comm unit and earbud. I’d need them for the translator.
“Come in,” I said.
The Skrith who pushed past the curtains could h
ave been any of them except for the body fur shaved away from his chest. The skin there was pink and new and spoke of time spent in a Helta-tech medical lab. It was Anu Neeme Klas. I tensed, suspicious of why he would show up in my room. Maybe he was a sore loser and wanted to make me share in the misery of his broken ribs.
And hey, I could understand that. I’d had broken ribs more than once and it sucked big time. But I really wish he could have waited until morning, and not when I’d just asked my girlfriend to marry me.
“Anu Neeme Klas,” I said, trying my best to be diplomatic, or as diplomatic as I was capable of at this time of night, “what can I do for you?”
He stared at me, from under bushy eyebrows, his yellow eyes inhuman and unreadable, his breath rasping and smelling of meat. The elk, probably. They’d cooked it after we’d brought it back and put it out for all to sample in some sort of ritual. It was the first time I’d eaten elk steak and it had been delicious, perhaps the more so since I’d brought it down with my own hands. Well, Quinn and I had brought it down.
“I am unaccustomed to being beholden to anyone, particularly not an alien,” the Skrith said. “But you saved my life at risk to your own, when you had no reason to do so.”
That wasn’t strictly true. I had a very good reason: the fact that he had promised to vote our way in the conference if I won the blood hunt. If he died, his replacement wouldn’t have felt any obligation to keep that promise. But I didn’t tell him that, because I might not be a good diplomat, but I’m not an idiot, either.
“I didn’t really think about it,” I admitted to him. “There wasn’t time.”
“And yet you did the right thing when there was no time to consider it,” he insisted, “which is something of which I would not have thought your kind capable of. I am in your debt, Andy Clanton, and I do not know how I can pay it back.”
“My duty,” I chose my words carefully so as not to spoil his newfound appreciation for humans, “is to ensure my planet is accepted into your Alliance. If you help me to fulfill my duty, I would consider your debt to be discharged.”
