Sometimes when he was alone in the giant machine, driving across the virgin landscape, Jerrick would let his anger and disappointment get the best of him. Yes, he had a temper and he knew it. His father kept telling him in a calm and patient voice that he was just a young man and had much to learn.
But Jerrick was determined, along with his fellow colonists. Beating the land into submission, they first planted a fast-growing genetically modified grass that soon covered the rolling hills, laying down a soil matrix and providing pastureland for the first ten cattle revived from stored embryos. Other fields of grain ripened quickly, increasing the stores. Step by step, they were gaining a foothold. The Hardscrabble colony would survive—just barely.
Jerrick drove the mammoth agricultural machine that could plow and fertilize the soil, plant crops, and later harvest them. The solar panels on the combine’s roof soaked up energy from the overcast sky. On his regular rounds of the valley, he inspected the crops, the spreading pastureland. The ten head of cattle grazed peacefully on the well-defined fields of green grass in the rolling hills. Beyond the grassland lay darker, thickly forested hills that remained unexplored.
As he reached the rolling, grassy hills, he expected to see the cattle placidly grazing, as they did every day. The ten animals tended to stick together, given the limitations of the fertilized pastureland. He scanned for the locator pings on his control screen and frowned. No movement. When he topped a low rise and saw the discolorations on the grass, the splashes of red, the slumped brown shapes, he felt suddenly sick.
Swallowing hard, he accelerated the mammoth combine, rolling the treads across the uneven ground and not even noticing the vibrations. As he leaned forward to look through the slanted windscreen, he saw the fallen shapes.
The cattle, their bodies torn apart and shredded.
Jerrick wrenched the combine to a halt, sick and infuriated. Leaving the engine thrumming, he popped open the cab door, swung down to the tread, then leaped to the ground. He raced across the bloodstained grass, appalled by what he saw. Six of the cattle lay before him—or what remained of them. The smell of blood in the air was like a heavy mist of bitter iron. Jerrick gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes as he tried to understand what he was seeing.
One of the cow’s heads had been torn off and lay discarded, the big bovine eyes staring sightlessly, pink tongue lolling out of its mouth, red blood spattered everywhere in the grass. Its side had been raked open, ribs splintered, entrails pulled out like confetti. One of its hind legs had been ripped off and cast aside. The other five cattle were just as mangled, and Jerrick found it difficult to determine where one carcass ended and another began. He breathed in and out, his nostrils flaring, his blood boiling.
When he heard one of the cattle lowing from the other side of the grassy hill, Jerrick just reacted. He ran, thrashing through the grasses, nearly slipping on a sheen of blood and loose intestines. He reached the top of the rise, saw other dead carcasses strewn about, and gaped.
The last surviving cow bleated in terror as it tried to struggle away. Long red gashes marked its side.
But it couldn’t escape the monster.
Jerrick recognized the horrific creature that had killed seven colonists last year, the most fearsome indigenous predator on Hardscrabble.
The gruzzly was like a nightmarish crossbreed of a dinosaur and a grizzly bear. Black, spiky fur covered the huge frame. Its pointed, scaly face was like a flattened crocodile’s. It had a plated belly, and sharp spines covered its tail. The wide paws were tipped with claws the size of threshing rakes.
Before the giant beast could slaughter the last cow, Jerrick roared out a wordless challenge, hoping to distract the thing. The gruzzly stopped and looked up at him, focusing on new prey.
Despite his defiance, Jerrick nearly soiled himself. He instantly regretted that he had left his plasma rifle in the combine’s cab.
Last year, the gruzzlies had unexpectedly come out of the nearby hills, massacring livestock as well as colonists, even though the taste of Earth animals—or people—was not appetizing to them. The native predators simply slaughtered their victims and left the bodies strewn about. Gruzzlies attacked anything that moved.
Now the huge beast reared up, turning to face Jerrick and leaving the wounded cow to limp away, still bleating in terror. The young man bolted, desperate to get away.
With an ear-splitting roar, the gruzzly bounded after him.
Sweating hard, Jerrick tumbled over the uneven grassy ground, tripping in the blood, springing back to his feet. He raced back toward the mammoth combine, either to take shelter in the cab, or preferably to get the plasma rifle.
Despite his panic, he kept thinking that those cattle had been Hardscrabble’s future! Jerrick wouldn’t let some mindless monster kill them all and face no consequences.
As he ran, he could hear thundering footfalls ominously close behind him, the crackle of crushed grasses as if a great machine were barreling down on him. Jerrick put on a burst of speed, seeing the safety of the combine ahead.
But he wasn’t close enough. He couldn’t run fast enough.
He glanced over his shoulder to see the enormous beast right there, huffing, swinging back an enormous paw. Jerrick slipped on the bloody grass, stumbled over a loop of intestine, and fell forward—and that saved him. The paw would have raked across his shoulders and ripped out his spinal column. Instead, the glancing blow just knocked him sprawling on his face. He rolled, crawled toward the nearest carcass. He backed up against the dead mass, panting so hard that each lungful screamed in and out of his mouth.
The gruzzly lurched forward. Jerrick slumped, surrendering, knowing he couldn’t outrun or fight the thing.
Then he saw a ripple in the air, like a ghostly silhouette of a large man. The shape seemed to be made out of air, water, and invisible motion. The gruzzly didn’t see the three red dots on its scaled chest plate, like a targeting mark.
With a whistling roar, an energy burst ripped through the air. It came out of nowhere and struck the gruzzly, leaving a smoking crater of flesh and black blood. The big beast reeled backward, raised its paws and clawed at its wound. The hulking thing turned to find its attacker, but could see nothing.
Jerrick heard a rattling, clicking sound… an inhuman sound. The air shimmered again, and the camouflage faded to reveal an armored man standing there—no, it wasn’t a man. It wore a strange metal mask with blank eye slits; tufts of hair dangled like tentacles fastened to its skull.
The strange hunter let out its clicking, clattering challenge again, like a growl made of rattlesnakes. The hunter was focused on the wounded gruzzly. He held a cylinder in his huge, clawed hand, then squeezed inset controls. Long pointed ends snapped out of each end of the cylinder to create a javelin. Cocking back a well-muscled arm, the hunter hurled the javelin, which spun through the air and plunged into the gruzzly’s upper right chest with a crackle of blue lightning.
The big monster clawed at the high-tech weapon, snapped the metal shaft in half, then lumbered toward the barely seen hunter. The rippling mirror-like camouflage dropped away entirely, and Jerrick’s strange savior let out another sound of clicking challenge. The hunter drew two long, wicked blades, holding one in each hand, as it stormed forward to face his opponent.
The injured gruzzly threw itself upon the mysterious hunter, who was a deft fighter. He slashed with the curved blades, drawing bloody designs on the beast’s chest plate, and cut the thick, matted fur. The gruzzly snapped its powerful jaws, but the hunter drove a wicked blade beneath its scaled jaw and through its palate.
Bleeding from mortal wounds, the gruzzly thrashed, clawed, and struck the hunter aside, sending him tumbling into the grass. The hunter sprang back to his feet, close to where Jerrick lay frozen in amazement and terror. The stranger was at least nine feet tall and packed with muscles. From the lithe way he moved, the hunter did not seem at all human.
Bleeding, dying but not knowing it, the gruzzly attacked ag
ain. The masked hunter regained his feet, and another weapon popped up on his shoulder, spinning, acquiring a target. Three bright red dots appeared over the gruzzly’s heart. Just as the monster spread its clawed arms wide to crush its opponent, a searing blast ripped through its chest, blowing a crater through the sternum and all the way out the back, leaving bent ribs and splintered vertebrae like a crown of bones and gore.
With a hissing, choking rumble, the gruzzly collapsed to the ground.
The alien hunter stepped back and regarded the carcass, letting out a long succession of clicking growls as he inspected the kill.
Jerrick kept panting, frozen in amazement as he slumped against the bloody cow carcass. He felt helpless, but oddly not afraid. He didn’t know what this hunter was, but he had killed one of the fearsome gruzzlies, the bane of the Hardscrabble colony. The young man swallowed hard, but made no sound.
The alien hunter took out a long saber-like knife, which hummed and then glowed blue. Bending over the dead gruzzly, the hunter tilted up the reptilian snout, and then with a single sweep of the vibrating blue saber, he decapitated the kill. The energized blade cauterized the stump of the gruzzly’s thick neck, and the head rolled away, almost three feet wide. Jerrick could only guess how heavy it was, yet the alien hunter lifted the trophy with one hand.
Hearing his involuntary gasp, the hunter slowly turned, still holding the gruzzly’s head. For a long moment, he looked at the young man with unreadable eyes behind the metal mask. The hunter seemed to find him uninteresting, lying there weak and unarmed among the dead cattle.
Turning, the stranger stalked away with his trophy, using his free hand to tap controls on the armored suit. The mirror-like ripple swallowed him up in a blanket of camouflage, and Jerrick couldn’t see him anymore…
Eventually, the young man got back to his feet, covered with blood, shaking. He looked around at the massacre. The gruzzlies were horrifying enough, but now he had just seen another predator on Hardscrabble that was far more deadly.
2
It was late afternoon by the time Jerrick drove the mammoth combine back to the colony settlement. The dull gray sky showed only intermittent patches of olive green.
Ahead, he saw the fenced village compound. The tall barrier wall of spiked tree trunks surrounded the huddled prefab buildings. Upon first arriving, the colonists never dreamed they would have to make a fortress of their little settlement, but after the previous year’s gruzzly depredations, colony leader Davin had sent crews into the hills to cut down trees and use the long trunks as a primitive but effective stockade.
After that first year, the colonists realized they had been naïve to bring only a dozen plasma rifles, confident they would have a peaceful settlement—but that was predicated on a peaceful planet, without fierce gruzzlies that came out of the hills once a year. The stockade’s defenses were medieval, but effective.
As he drove up to the tall gate, Jerrick could still feel the drying blood all over his hands and his clothes. He kept trying to process what he had seen. Their year-old cattle had been slaughtered, and the colonists would have to start from scratch with new embryos. All that vital food lost.
Even though it would be nightfall soon, his father might send out crews with big spotlights and plasma rifles to harvest the meat from the mutilated animals—if he could get any volunteers to go out after dark. But Jerrick knew the carcasses would be safe enough until tomorrow, since the other predators on Hardscrabble wouldn’t eat the foul-tasting Earth meat.
As he rolled the mammoth combine through the open stockade gates, people came out to greet him, but as soon as he swung down from the cab, covered in blood and looking distraught, they knew something was wrong.
His father hurried up to him, his face filled with alarm, creases deepening in lines along his cheeks. “What is it?” He grabbed Jerrick’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length. “What happened?”
The young man let out a long, shaking sigh. “The gruzzlies are back.”
The colonists moaned and muttered amongst themselves. His father stepped back to inspect Jerrick, looking at all the blood. “Are you injured? Did it attack you?”
“The gruzzly killed all of our cattle. And yes, it attacked me… but I’m not hurt. There’s… more.”
He described the strange camouflaged hunter, the inhuman being with superior weapons, how it had killed the gruzzly and taken the head as a trophy.
More colonists gathered as the twilight set in. Jerrick told his story again, while Davin furrowed his brow and started recalculating. “Without the cattle grazing, all that fertile grassland is now wasted acreage. New embryos will take months to revive, and we don’t have another crop in place on that pastureland.” He shook his head. “This is not good.”
“Not good?” Jerrick widened his eyes, alarmed. “Did you hear what I said, Father? The gruzzlies are back!”
Two broad-shouldered men closed the stockade doors behind the mammoth combine. While Davin seemed preoccupied with other concerns, Jerrick shouted to the other colonists. “Get our plasma rifles and set out a watch from the top of the stockade. We better be prepared.”
Davin nodded. “Good idea, although last year this stockade was proof against the gruzzlies. They left us alone.”
Jerrick scratched dried blood from his cheek and said quietly, “Maybe so, but the gruzzlies aren’t the only threat I’m worried about.”
As darkness closed in, sudden spears of fire erupted in the surrounding hills. The dark forests gushed flame and orange explosions. Jerrick pulled himself up to one of the watch platforms just above the stockade wall, staring into the gathering darkness.
Davin climbed up next to him. “What could that possibly be? It looks like a war zone.”
“That other hunter, the way he killed the gruzzly… I’ve never seen anything so cold and deadly in my life. And what if there’s more than one of them?”
Davin watched the string of explosions in the hills. Even though the blasts were far away, they could hear faint bestial roars in the sudden empty silence. “Maybe they’re hunting and killing gruzzlies—and good luck to them.”
“If that’s what they’re doing,” Jerrick replied as he looked at the line of explosions. “Or maybe they’re driving the gruzzlies down here into the valley where they can fight them.”
3
Hardscrabble had never been a pleasant place, but now it was a battlefield, monsters against monsters. Explosions continued throughout the night; the roars of gruzzlies and the bright flares put the entire colony on edge. The people huddled inside the stockade, knowing that the sharpened log walls were only a suggestion of security. If either of the two deadly species put their minds to it, they could easily crash through the wooden wall.
Soft pink dawn suffused the landscape. Standing on the observation platform again, Jerrick used a pair of zoomlenses to scan across the carefully tended fields. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the dark furrows that energy weapons had torn through the croplands. During the night, the orange glow of continued explosions had sickened him. Now at daybreak he saw that a section of their corn and wheat fields had been burned and trampled.
Three huge dead gruzzlies lay sprawled on the ground, also decapitated—their heads taken as trophies, their bodies discarded in the middle of the colony fields.
Huffing with the effort, his father climbed up beside him, keeping his silence. Without a word, Jerrick handed his father the zoomlenses. Davin stared ahead, going pale. “Our crops…”
Jerrick watched the smoke rising into the sky where it mingled with the gray overcast clouds. “We have to retrieve the dead cattle, process the meat so we at least get something out of it. Can’t waste a scrap now.”
Davin nodded, still staring through the lenses. “We should awaken more embryos right away. The pastureland is still good, even if the cattle are dead.”
Anger swelled within Jerrick. “The pastureland? Father, our people can’t even leave the stockade with those things ou
t there!”
Davin lowered the lenses and glanced at his son. “Last year, the gruzzlies returned to the hills after a time. It’ll take that long for the embryos to turn into calves anyway. We have to hope—and prepare.”
“But those other things, those alien predators… they’re just hunting the gruzzlies for sport.”
Davin remained stubborn. “Then when the gruzzlies are gone, the hunters will leave too. We’ll be fine.”
Jerrick knew he could never penetrate the man’s lofty and stubborn optimism. “Our people may very well starve,” he muttered. “We had few enough advantages on this planet. We were barely holding on by our fingernails as it was.” He shook his head. “And we can’t send a distress beacon. It would take years before we get a response. The colonization initiative just abandoned us on Hardscrabble. By the time a scout ship comes to check on us—maybe in ten years?— they’ll just find a ghost town.”
“We’ll survive,” Davin said, hardening his voice. “We will! We have extra stores. We can spread out ponds of nutritionally dense algae and grow that, if we need to. It tastes like shit, but we can survive on it. And even with the burn damage, we’ll salvage some of our crops.”
“Only if those things go away,” Jerrick insisted.
As if to challenge them, a shimmering ripple of a humanoid form sprinted across the fields, stepping over the flattened roadway that led up to the stockade. Jerrick caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned to study it, recognizing one of the alien predators in its camouflage disguise.
Letting his shimmering cloak dissipate, the imposing figure came up to stand before the stockade, glancing at them, assessing their defenses. This one looked different from the hunter Jerrick had faced the day before. He seemed to find their wooden walls laughably primitive. The flicker changed in a quicksilver blur, and the creature vanished entirely. Davin stared at the empty air in angry disgust, and it was clear that he shared his son’s doubts about the colony’s chances for survival.
PREDATOR IF IT BLEEDS Page 17
