by Steve Perry
* * *
Dachande awoke warm with pride of the memory. It was long ago and there had been many Hunts since, many of them harder and bloodier than the first. But the first had been where he discovered the truth of the warrior; it was a truth that had served him well. Now it was his turn to pass the knowledge on, to teach it to the young ones who had yet to feel the power of the Hunt, to know the joy of the first kill. It had been a long time since he had felt that newness but the dream brought it back as if it had been only moments past. The Hunt was what a warrior lived for; all else was nothing compared to it. Honor. Skill. Victory. Those were the things of life.
5
Noguchi left her apartment early so she could catch Hiroki before he made rounds. The corporation employees’ living quarters were all in the same building as the offices and mess hall, along with the community center and central operations; narrow passageways connected this building to the equipment storage and the main garage. To the east and south was open range; the north, mountains, and west was Iwa Gorge, a canyon too deep and long to herd the rhynth—although it certainly kept them from wandering too far in that direction. One less fence to build.
Noguchi walked through the connecting hall and saw one of the geotechs headed toward her, a thin older man with brown skin and very little hair. His name was… Hein? Hinn?
As they passed she made a conscious effort to smile and nod at the man. He seemed vaguely surprised, but returned the courtesy, his teeth a sharp contrast to his dark face.
A condescending voice spoke in her head. That wasn’t too hard, now was it?
Noguchi made a mental note to check the personnel files that evening. She felt almost embarrassed; six months and she didn’t even know the people she was supposed to be working with.
All of that was going to change. Noguchi had started to realize just how little she had seen of Prosperity Wells. She had, of course, spent time learning the layout of the complex when she’d first arrived; it was an efficient setup. A med center with helipad; there were quarantine and holding pens for the rhynth, a transmitter/communications control shack, and a school connected to a rec center. There was also a fairly decent, if very small, shopping mall, complete with two tiny restaurants and a bar. Not that any of these got much use. Only the company people lived in the Wells, although most of the ranchers were in walking distance—if you didn’t mind a long and hot hike. If it wasn’t Earth, at least an attempt had been made to try to make it look like a town. There were hardly enough people in the gene pool to turn the planet into anything civilized, and even with more settlers, it wasn’t likely to ever be a mayor population center; still, the company had made a token effort to make it look like home.
But besides seeing an occasional holovid at the rec’s theater, she hadn’t really been a member of the community. It wasn’t her home and she wasn’t going to stay here any longer than it took to show a profit and shine in the company’s eyes enough to earn a transfer to the next rung on the ladder. But Hiroki was right, she would have to do what was necessary to earn the spot and so far she had remained as insulated as a thermetic bottle.
And The Lector would be arriving in less than seventy-two hours…
So I imagine everyone will welcome me with open arms and songs of greeting now that I’m finally ready, hai?
Right.
As she walked between shelves piled high with bike and copter parts, she heard voices from the direction of the open entryway into the yard. She could make out the distinct soft tone of Hiroki’s voice among the others; he sounded irritated.
Noguchi slowed her pace to catch the gist of the conversation she was about to walk into.
“…not the point, Hiroki! The company’s making a killing from our sweat and we’re getting screwed—right, Ackland?”
“That’s the way the Ranchers Association sees it.”
Noguchi waited just inside the door to listen for another moment; several ranchers and Hiroki stood in a loose circle several meters away. She could just see the edge of Ackland’s heavy rhynth-hide coat, which he wore even on the hottest day. He was a large, opinionated man who had an amazing ability to cause friction.
“I don’t even know why I’m discussing this with you,” said Hiroki. “Ms. Noguchi is in charge now. You should be talking to her.”
A perfect cue. Noguchi stepped forward and through the entry.
“That bitch? She doesn’t give a shit about us,” said Ackland.
“Maybe if she got laid once in a while—” started one of the other ranchers. Rick Harrison.
“Anybody who tried would freeze his dick off,” said one of Ackland’s men.
The group chuckled, all except for Hiroki.
Harrison broke off abruptly when he spotted her striding toward them. He coughed suddenly into his hand.
“Ms. Noguchi,” he said. His voice was loud.
She held her head high and stared at him. He dropped his gaze, as did the other men. Only Ackland had the nerve to meet her eyes.
“I thought we were in the middle of a roundup, gentlemen,” she said, voice cool.
Hiroki stepped in. “We were just discussing the agreement their association has already signed.”
Ackland tapped his pipe with the heel of one hand. “That was before we saw what the market was doing back on Earth. If we’d known the price of meat was going to jump like this, we’d have asked for more.”
“And if the bottom had fallen out of the market, would you have offered to take less?” said Hiroki.
All eyes turned to Noguchi. She faced Ackland, obviously the man to negotiate with.
“I’ll talk to the company and see if I can swing a larger cut for your ranchers,” she said. “We want to be fair.”
Ackland nodded and tugged at his dirty red beard. He opened his mouth to speak, but Noguchi cut him off.
“But there won’t be anything for anyone if your rhynth aren’t ready for shipment when The Lector arrives.” She noted his flash of annoyance with smug satisfaction. No matter what she changed, Ackland was never going to be a man she enjoyed working with. “I suggest you get back to your jobs.”
She smiled at the others as they followed Ackland across the yard.
Hiroki raised his eyebrows at her after the ranchers had reached a safe distance.
“Pleasant man, Ackland,” he said blandly.
“Perhaps someday we’ll marry,” she said, keeping a straight face.
Hiroki grinned.
“Let’s saddle up,” said Noguchi. She shaded her eyes against the suns and looked out at the open plain. “I’m ready to get some rhynth shit between my toes.”
“Words of wisdom,” said Hiroki.
Noguchi nodded and then walked with Hiroki toward the hover bikes. Already she felt as if she’d set wheels in motion; and once started, there would be no turning back.
* * *
The young males stood in standard formation and watched Dachande expectantly. The kehrite stank of musk and the air was alive with tension. He had made them wait long enough; it was time.
Dachande looked at the heaps of armor and weaponry that Skemte and Warkha had lined up against the wall. “You may collect your ’avm’asa’,” he said, waving at the armor. “Now.”
With passionate cries of excitement, the yautja ran to the piles of equipment and Hard Meat shell, shoving and kicking to get there first. There was enough to suit all of them, of course, but they would fight for the better trappings; the stronger males would get the prime supplies. That was always the way.
Dachande watched as the yautja strapped on the scarred platings and struggled for arm sheaths and masks. Shafted knives were weighed and measured, burners’ sights checked. Med kits and multiple eyes weren’t standard for young males’ armor, nor were tarei’hsan loops; only the warriors used such additions. There was shift capacity in a few of the suits, but the young males would not need such things anyway; the first Hunt was more a matter of point-and-kill than tracking and hiding. Inv
isibility was generally reserved for prey that shot back. You had to earn the right to use the better gear, and the prey for which it was necessary.
It was still two nights until landing on the seeded world, but the yautja would need to become accustomed to their ’awu’asa’, to feel comfortable with movement and weight. Dachande himself had slept in his armor the first night he had donned it. They had worn the gear only briefly during their training and under strict supervision. For this there were reasons—the main being that a young male given too much power too early was a hazard to himself and others. Turn some of the wet-behind-the-knees younglings loose with a burner even a few weeks ago and there would have been the risk of holes in the ship’s hull or bodies piled in the corridors. The ceiling of the firing range had more scars than a ceremonial blood-Pig.
Dachande watched Tichinde backhand a smaller male for the mask he held and hiss triumphantly at the gain. The Leader nodded thoughtfully; Tichinde was strong but reckless. Such recklessness could get him killed. Did he survive, however, he could be a great warrior and a credit to his teacher. It was far better to be brave and die than to be cowardly and survive by hiding from the Black Warrior. Songs were not sung about those who showed their back to an attack.
One by one, the dressed yautja held up their shafted knives and howled to each other, pointing their burners to the floor and pretending to fire in mock battle. Skemte caught Dachande’s gaze and growled amusement at their fervor. Dachande nodded and echoed the growl. Doubtless each of the would-be warriors thought himself the bravest to have ever picked up a spear and waved it.
The young males were as ready as he could make them. He hoped they were ready enough. If they were not, it was too late. And too bad—their successes or failures would start soon on the planet now speeding toward them.
Dtai’kai’-dte sa-de nau’gkon dtain’aun bpi-de. The fight begun would not end until the end; a tired saying but a true one.
The Hunt was about to begin.
6
Noguchi rode slightly behind Hiroki through the midafternoon light, their hover bikes setting up whirls of baked tan dust and hot pebbles in their wake. Earlier they had skimmed the inner ridges of the gorge and then circled back to town for a light lunch. Now they were headed out again, toward Beriki canyon, one of the primary runs for the majority of the herds.
Noguchi had spent most of the morning getting used to the flier’s controls; fortunately, they weren’t too hard to figure out—stop, go, height and speed adjustments. The trick was to watch for obstacles that might cause problems; jump a big rock too fast and you could find yourself on your back, your scooter flying merrily along without you, at least until the deadhand control shut it down. Besides basic instructions and a few landscape remarks through the comsets, Hiroki had kept quiet during their ride.
It was the longest she’d spent outdoors since arriving on Ryushi. The heat was incredible, the rays from two suns slapping at them with tangible force. Fiery winds ruffled the tips of her black hair at the base of her visor, and particles of sandy dirt kicked up by Hiroki’s bike pelted her goggles and dusted her cheeks. Ahead and all around, huge cliffs encircled them.
Initially, it had all looked the same, harsh and unforgiving. But she had to admit there was a sparse beauty to the plains as well. It recalled images of sand gardens that Noguchi had visited in her youth at Kyoto. Here the sand was unchanneled and pocked with planets and rocks. Knee-high stands of beige reeds grew randomly near the edges of the valleys. Stones jutted from the earth in layers of shaded browns and grays. The fractured topsoil was a huge jigsaw puzzle with no end. There was plenty of sand, to be sure, but no order here, no simple zen lines. It was raw chaos. Billions of years in the making, this world, and she and a handful of men and women now held sway over it, masters of all the dry land. It was not hard to believe in manifest destiny out here in the far reaches of the galaxy, that mankind’s true role was to minister to and control all things.
Their revving motors had surprised a goodly number of small animals out of hiding. A family of jack-lizards hopped in front of Noguchi’s bike near the gorge, headed for cover in the grasses. And Hiroki had pointed out an armored fire-walker and her mate as they slipped through a pile of rocks earlier in the morning. The female was a rosy brown, her smaller mate a faded gray. They had been poking at gravel with their short, pointed snouts, probably searching for snake eggs or beetles.
Noguchi could understand, at least intellectually, why the ranchers had left Earth to make Ryushi their home. There was a kind of freedom to the prairies, a calm serenity to the stark lands. A certain beauty in it all. On Earth, a single living plex could house fifty thousand people in tight, tiny cubicles. On Earth, open land still existed but under so many regulations that just to walk upon it without a proper license might be worth a year in prison. Nowhere on the homeworld was there such vast emptiness as was all around her here. She found herself even enjoying the weather as they neared the southern end of Beriki canyon, the simplicity of a dry wind in her face. She wondered if it was too late for this new understanding to change her standing with the ranchers. Perhaps with time…
“We’re coming up on one of Ackland’s camps,” Hiroki crackled in her ear.
“Right.” She slowed as they rounded a bend in the gully. There were several dozen rhynth grazing on weeds a couple of hundred meters ahead, and beyond, the large treaded vehicle that Ackland used to check on his herds. The crawler could hold twenty people comfortably and was equipped with a full kitchen and sleeping accommodations for at least six; most of the ranchers had automatic vehicles—AVs—but Ackland’s was the biggest.
Of course.
The rhynth themselves seemed to be unlikely meat animals. They looked to Noguchi much like a beast she had seen in a zoo as a child, a rhinoceros. The rhynth were slightly bigger than her memory of the gray-brown Terran creature, and they had a mottled-purple and ochre skin. They walked on stumpy, oddly jointed legs that ended in nailed pads, and they had a hooked, beaklike mouth above which were a pair of in-line horns, the greater horn a wrist-thick and sharp cone that jutted straight up in front, the lesser horn smaller and angled slightly backward toward the animal’s rear. Ugly brutes, no brighter than cattle, but very tasty when cooked properly.
Noguchi came to a stop next to Hiroki’s bike and dismounted, legs still throbbing with the feel of the engine. Ackland and several of his people stood grouped near the AV and watched them approach. Noguchi set her eye protectors up on her cap and patted dust from her clothing as they neared Ackland.
The big man gazed at them with a sneer. “What’s the problem, Hiroki? You and the boss lady get lost?”
“We’re just making the rounds—” began Hiroki.
“Yeah, right.” Ackland grinned without humor. “What’s the real reason? The company shoot down the price increase?”
Noguchi cleared her throat. “You know we can’t get through the magnetic interference during the day. I’ll contact them this evening.”
Ackland scoffed and started to turn away.
“And,” she continued, “I’ll do all I can to get you a bigger cut.”
She wouldn’t be talking to Earth, of course, the newly invented subspace radio wouldn’t stretch that far, but she could get a response from the corporate sub HQ on Kijita’s World: Even though it was light-years away, the new equipment could shrink that to a few light-hours, effectively only a few billion kilometers. They could get an answer by morning and the sub HQ was empowered to make such niggling decisions.
Ackland raised an eyebrow. “So what are you doing here?” He made no effort to keep irritation out of his voice.
Hiroki remained silent. “We’re checking on everyone’s progress—seeing if there’s anything we can do to help,” she said.
The late-afternoon light glinted off of the AVs pitted hull behind him as Ackland looked her up and down. Finally, he nodded.
“Yeah, you can help. You can stay out of our way. The last thing we n
eed is ‘help’ from corporate paper-pushers.”
He faced the young woman next to him and pointed to the shaded monitor built into the AV. “Roth, take some of the boys and run these three gullies. Drive ’em down into the canyon and hook up with Cho’s group.”
Roth nodded and motioned to two of the men in Ackland’s company. Ackland presented his back to Noguchi and Hiroki and punched at the controls set into the monitor’s rim. Apparently, they had been dismissed.
They walked back to their bikes slowly. Hiroki placed a hand on her forearm gently as they reached the flyers.
“I’m sorry about the way Ackland treated you,” he said.
Noguchi shrugged. “Actually, it’s okay. I know how—” she paused, searched for the right word. “I know what kind of an uncaring bitch I’ve been. I would have been surprised if he had had any other reaction. It is as if I have been in some kind of suspended animation for the last few months. I cannot explain it.”
She pulled her visor down firmly and looked toward Prosperity Wells, about to say something else—except all thoughts disappeared.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“What—?” Hiroki looked past her. “Oh, yes. You haven’t gotten out much since you arrived, have you?”
Noguchi barely heard him. The suns were setting, the desert was bathed now in golds and reds. Long shadows stretched from the mountains toward them, and in the cloudless sky, the arrangement of shade and light left her breathless. It was actually the first time she had ever seen the sunset outside.
Her mind couldn’t pair the stunning sight with the thoughts she’d had of Ryushi for the past six months; she would have to let one or the other go.
Ryushi was, in its way, a beautiful place, at least here and in this moment it was. Noguchi sighed and watched the sunset, Hiroki quiet beside her. When they finally mounted their bikes to head home, she felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders, one she had not been aware of until it was gone.
