by Art DeForest
Hunter’s Game
by Art DeForest
Book 1 of Hunter’s Saga
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2016 Arthur D. DeForest
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by other means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.
Dedication
To my family and friends. You have all made life and this endeavour not only possible, but fun.
Acknowledgment
To Michael Anderle. His knowledge and encouragement turns fans into a fellow authors
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1
The cross-hairs settled into place. The swordbuck fed unaware along the edge of the meadow 800 meters away. That was an unheard of distance to contemplate a shot from. Especially with an old style chemical burner like Alex was using. He loved the old rifle though. It felt like you were actually hunting instead of playing a virt-game. That’s how energy weapons felt to him. What with their remote hands off powered tripod system that allowed you to aim and fire the weapon using what amounted to a game controller. There just wasn’t any challenge. Even using one in it’s hand held configuration was too easy. After all there was no reason to compensate for wind or distance on a ray gun. Beams of coherent light didn’t drop or drift after all.
Alex's heart started beating faster in his chest as his finger started taking up the slack in the trigger. The 7.5mm slug thrower, while an old weapon, was state of the art in it’s day. Weapons similar in style and function had been standard equipment on all of the colony ships heading out from old earth. People settling far away worlds often lived rough at the start and a rugged, reliable weapon for food gathering and self protection was essential. It could reach out with an effective kill range of 2000 meters and the optics, while not powered were good enough to acquire a target at that distance. Elevation and windage turrets let you zero in on the target. Modern man portable weapons had similar range, but absolutely zero drift made shooting them as simple as point and click. Alex loved the challenge of accurately judging wind and distance in order to make a clean accurate shot. It took skill and practice.
The crosshairs started to vibrate as they rested on the distant target. A deep rumble started to make it’s presence known. Abruptly the sword buck bolted into the trees, alarmed by the disruption. Looking up, Alex saw a craft come over the horizon headed roughly towards town.
It was big. It could easily carry a large amount of cargo or maybe people, Alex speculated.. While freighters were common enough, this ship had a military bearing to it, armored and hulking. It almost dared you to challenge it. It was also unfamiliar. Being a bit of a space geek, Alex thought he knew most of the common configurations in the Assemblage, but the frame and engines were something he’d never seen before and it caused a flutter of anxiety to ripple through his abdomen. A craft being that big and low to the ground was definitely out of the ordinary.
Counting the trip a bust Alex slung his rifle and backpack and started the long trek back towards home. Shaking off his anxiety he figured he’d glass the ridges on the way back until dusk then settle in some hollow for the night. Hopefully he still had a chance of getting some meat to put up towards the lean times this coming winter.
Luck wasn’t on his side. The disturbance caused by the ship passing at low altitude like that, seemed to have put all the wildlife on edge. There wasn’t a sword buck or brush deer to be seen.
Alex sighed in disappointment and made camp in a clearing surrounded by towering Near Pine. The fact that they had long thin needle like leaves and didn’t drop them in the fall was where the similarities to old Earth pine trees ended. Even though the needles didn’t drop these trees could never be called evergreens. The reason was that the needles were a deep eggplant purple. Alex’s family had lived on the planet of Plentiful going back three generations now, so Alex only noticed the difference in colors as an interesting product of his school studies. He also thought the planet’s name was a bit ironic occasionally, given the aforementioned lean times that the long winters in this part of the world seemed to provide. In general though, Plentiful lived up to it’s name. Being an agrarian world it grew a lot of crops and raised many head of various food animals for shipment to the other members of the Assemblage.
Alex settled into his sleeping bag beside the fire and looked up at the stars peeking out from behind the towering trees and listened to the breeze shushing through them. He loved it up here. It was quiet and peaceful. Nobody bugging him to get his chores done or making sure he studied. Putting aside his earlier anxiety Alex snuggled deeper into his sleeping bag and drifted off into a contented sleep.
2
Dawn saw Alex packed up and once more hunting the ridge tops headed toward home. He knew that the closer he got to populated areas the less chance he would have of finding game. As the sun’s welcome rays infused him, Alex’s focus on hunting waned until at last he was simply walking casually down the ridge that ended overlooking the small cluster of a house and out buildings he called home.
Almost within sight of the homestead Alex thought he heard a muffled shot in the distance. His apprehension from the day before immediately returned. His mom Beth kept an old single shot break action shotgun at home to scare off small predators that sometimes tried to pick off a stray chicken. Yes, they had chickens. Chickens were one of the many species of livestock that had successfully been transplanted by the colony ship to Plentiful. He shook his head, trying to dismiss the feeling. “Nothing ever happens out here in the sticks. She’s fine” he told himself.
Alex picked up his pace a bit wanting to get a view of the homestead. He was hoping mom had bagged something that might be edible or might at least have a usable hide. What he saw when the house came into view had him frozen in place, the blood draining from his shocked face.
His first sight was of the front of the house. The front door was wide open and several people stood at strategic places in the yard looking towards the door. Alex’s heart thudded in his chest as he quelled his first impulse to sprint down the slope to confront the people invading his home. Thought quickly reasserted itself however, as he could do no good blundering into a group of what he now noticed to be armed personnel in uniform clothing. His anxiety ratcheted up a notch as he noticed for the first time that one of them seemed to be lying in a crumpled heap on the front porch.
He quickly shed his backpack with shaking hands and took up a prone position on the ground behind it. He rested his rifle on the backpack pointed toward the house. This let him use the scope on the rifle to clearly see the scene unfolding below. The front porch was 500 meters from where he lay among the brush and trees. Countless hours of practice spotting and judging various imaginary targets from that front porch gave confidence in his estimate. The 15x setting on the scope brought the scene into sharp detail. He was scrutinizing the prone man on the front porch. “What the heck is going on.” he asked himself. “That guy looks dead!” He was studying the apparent dead guy in his scope when movement in the house caught his attention. As he adjusted the scope to better view the door, a large man dressed like the others, but with a bit more decoration on his unfamiliar clothing stepped out of the house dragging his mother brutally by the arm.
/> As Alex watched in outrage the man threw his mother off the from porch and into the yard. She landed hard, kicking up dust from the hard packed earth in front of the house. She gathered herself quickly as the man walked down the steps and stood over her. She made it to her knees, hands raised imploringly to the man. Outrage quickly became boiling anger as he watched his mom’s rough treatment. He could see her pleading with the man as he approached to stand over her, his face a mask of rage as he glared down. The man, the leader of this group at a guess, barked a few short angry seeming words down at his mother in reply. The next instant hot anger became sickening horror as the man quickly stepped back and drew his sidearm. With no hesitation the muzzle flashed and Alex heard the distant report of the chemical powered pistol that ended his mother’s life.
Horror became unthinking shock as his mother’s body,the center of Alex’s world, slumped to the ground like a puppet with it’s strings cut. This couldn’t be happening. “What? Why?” Alex’s head was spinning incoherently as the man holstered his weapon and started barking orders to his people. They immediately started to fan out to search the barn and the surrounding area.
Shock became stone cold rage. Alex watched the leader turn and started walking towards the house. Something cold and dark was swelling in Alex’s chest. The man was just crossing the threshold back into the house when his head exploded in a fine red mist and what was left of him was flung forward like a rag doll to lay in the entry way.
That cold, dark feeling infused Alex, putting him instantly into the calm state of a killer. He didn’t even remember jacking a bullet into the chamber or lining up the shot. He came somewhat back to himself as he pulled back the bolt and ejected the spent casing. The sharp smell of propellent re focusing his attention to the scene below as the bolt closed, putting a fresh round in the chamber. The killer looking out of his eyes searched out the next target
People were running for cover.. Assault rifles pointed outward in all directions. Alex could hear distant shouting and sporadic gunfire as they took cover and tried to find a target for their weapons. None of the weapons seemed to be pointed at him up on the ridge however and had no bearing on Alex as he focused on the scene. His state of icy rage sustained him through the next space of time as he started ending lives. One. By. One. He didn’t know who they were, but they were the enemy. They had taken the only person he loved after invading his home nothing could save them.
The cover the armed people sought didn’t help them hide. From Alex’s elevated vantage point he could see them all. There was a body part to be seen or at best a thin amount of cover that had no chance of stopping a 250 grain projectile that traveled at over a 1000 meters per second.
The fifth person dropped, blood and gore spraying out as the bullet exited explosively from his back. The remaining 4 soldiers began to realize that the killing fire must be coming from the hills. Rifle barrels raised as they started to search for a target. They had no success however, as they desperately sprayed the hillside. None of the return fire even came close.
One person, this one seemed to be a female abruptly rose and started a dash to get around the side of the house and better cover. She was running straight away from Alex however, making the bullet little harder to place than a stationary target. The slug that entered between her shoulder blades throwing her forward to land like a wet sack of grain.
The remaining 3 soldiers, terrorists, thugs, whatever, had stopped firing. Alex could tell by the elevated muzzles scanning back and forth along the ridge that they only had a rough idea of where Alex was. He paused for a bit to assess the situation. There, one assailant was raising his head just a bit to high to survey the area. BOOM! The rifle bucked against his shoulder.
Two left.
The two split apart. Each running in a different direction zigzagging as they went. Heading towards opposite sides of the house trying to get behind it. Alex decided on a target and tracked him, trying to get a sense to the pattern of his movements. The man hesitated a bit too long when he reached the corner of the house however. Boom!
One left.
Alex had noticed the smallish scout class ship behind the house when he first got into position. It was in the open area between house and barn. The immediate events in his front yard had temporarily driven it from his mind. Now he focused on it as it was the likely destination for the last soldier who had made it behind the house and out of view. Focusing his scope on the craft, he saw a hatch at the back that seemed to take up the full width of the fuselage. It hinged from the bottom creating a ramp inviting those outside to enter.
He continued scanning the area between the back of the house and the ship. Nothing seemed to be moving. Alex settled in like a sabercat waiting in the brush to ambush his prey. He knew the last soldier had to get to that ship. It was only a matter of time.
Patience was the main reason Alex was an exceptional hunter. He could watch a meadow all day waiting for dusk when the game would come out to feed. The soldier wasn’t as patient as a swordbuck. Alex’s guess was right as to the route the last soldier would take and within 5 minutes the man made his dash. He entered the left side of Alex’s scope, sprinting madly, as he crossed the windage mark farthest away from the center crosshair. Alex stroked the trigger. He had judged the man’s speed well enough. The last assailant spun and dropped, skidding to a stop well shy of the open hatch.
3
Alex continued to stare at the last target for a time. Slowly his icy rage began to fade. He looked up from the scope to look around the homestead and the immediate area. He could detect no one else. The tremors started then. Slowly at first in his hands. He saw his mom’s crumpled form lying in the dirt, so still, and empty. It all came crashing down. Tremors became shaking as tears started running down his cheeks. The killer retreated as the broken hearted son came once again to the fore. Seeing his mother’s still form, looking so frail, sprawled unnaturally in the yard with the torn bodies of the people he’d killed around her became too much for Alex to bear. Turning to the side he vomited violently into a nearby bush and taking a deep breath, he let the sobs come. Great wracking sobs tore at him, punishing him for what he saw. Punishing him for what he couldn’t stop. Tearing him apart for what he had done. He relived it all in his mind. He saw his mother fall once morel. He relived every cold blooded kill as his humanity made him pay the price for his actions.
He wasn’t sure how long it took for him to come back to himself. The sun was still high in the sky, but the angle was a bit steeper. The shadows were starting to cover more area. Alex wiped the tears from his eyes his breathing slowed down from the ragged breaths of anguish to a more steady rhythm. He gathered himself as best he could. Taking his canteen off the back of his belt in still shaking hands, he took a swallow of water and rinsed his mouth out, spitting off to the side. He quickly drank what was left in the container and looked back down at the homestead. His brain once more clicked into gear.
“I have to get down there and try to make sense of this” He thought. “Who knows when someone’s going to come looking for these guys.” He thought back to the large ship he’d seen yesterday. “I’ll bet it’s sooner rather than later.” he surmised. “I….I have to take care of mom.” The thought nearly overwhelmed him. Taking a few trembling breaths, he gathered his pack and reloaded his rifle. Making sure he had everything, he started the cautious trek that final distance to home.
He made his way cautiously but quickly down the ridge and across the narrow strip of brush and trees that skirted the property line. Reluctantly he approached the first soldier sprawled behind a fence post he’d tried to use as cover. A large blood soaked hole was visible in his chest through the tatters of his uniform shirt. Nausea tried to grip him once more as he examined the soldier. Up close he confirmed that it wasn’t a uniform he had seen before. More questions.
There were other humans in space besides those in the Assemblage of course. Man’s escape to the stars had been as fractured and disorganised a
s mankind itself as a whole was. Sure, groups could form and accomplish mighty things, but mankind could never quite get all it parts pointed in the same direction.
The Americas had managed to get most of it’s people heading in roughly the same direction and it was this group that first discovered the rifts out beyond the Oort cloud. These allowed almost instantaneous exploration at galactic distances. Humanity had already developed the Alcubierre Drive that allowed faster than light travel, but intergalactic travel still required months and even years to travel between celestial bodies. The rifts cut down that travel time to an eye blink.
The rifts were basically, as it was described to Alex, holes in the folds of space allowing near instant travel over hundreds and thousands of light years. Some solar systems had only one known rift, making them an endpoint of a rift route. Some, like the Plentiful system, had more. Plentiful had three rifts heading to different parts of the galactic arm creating more branches to explore on the rift tree. No one seemed to know for sure why some solar systems had more rifts than others. At least not that Alex had heard.
Like all the rest of man’s discoveries, once someone figured out how to do something, everyone else seemed to figure out how to do it too. Before long the European Union and some of the asian collectives, primarily the Pan-Asian confederation and the resurgent Chinese Empire also figured out how to use the rifts. Like sap through a tree with many branches and offshoots mankind started flowing out to find new places in the galactic arm to call home.
