by Scott E Moon
“Make a fire. Keep an eye on her. I’ll stand watch.”
“Neither of us is sleeping tonight,” Rickson said.
“You can sleep all you want. Just don’t plan on waking up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
DROON crawled in a circle out of habit, but it was the wrong thing to do. He wasn’t the hunter seeking wounded prey, but an injured, hunted weakling that would die. The explosion had struck him with his eyes open. He could barely see, but the worst part had been the Clingers.
He knew the parasites followed him. They fed like a virus and were relentless, but he had been able to avoid them. The creatures had difficulty covering long distances and didn’t dare attack when he was strong. Only one Clinger managed to bite him and hold to his flesh. He thought the others hoped he would weaken and fall so they could devour him.
Droon whined as he felt the ground with his hands. He had lost more than his vision. He couldn’t smell nor hear his hunters. Terror dominated his consciousness. He didn’t dare be on the defensive. He must attack. He must be the hunter. They must fear his wrath. He must taste their fear as he fed on them.
The Clinger on his back stretched over his head and around the sides of his face. The stupid attack worked this time, because Droon couldn’t inflict enough pain to frighten the creature. It knew others of its kind were near and that Droon would die.
He felt one seize his foot and wrap tightly from his toes to his knee. This clinger was small but strong. Another went after his other leg. Droon thrashed to avoid it. More came all at once, taking his hands and arms, his chest, his groin. Droon wailed until it seemed blood and flesh ripped from his throat.
Pain.
There was so much pain.
Pain. Fear. Knowledge.
He would die. He would be consumed.
Droon thrashed on the ground. The Clingers refused to let go. He hurled his body from a large rock, striking the ground with force. A Clinger released his left hand and he immediately began to claw the others that swarmed over him. They came in waves, wrapping his body and piercing him with their needle mouthed undersides. He shredded them, cutting into his own flesh many times to dislodge them. He wailed.
So much terror. He didn’t like the feeling.
Other creatures in the enormous canyon reminded him of his lost home. They fled. He heard their hearts beating in panic but couldn’t chase them. There were so many Clingers on him that he could barely stand. But some of them were dead. He pushed away the motionless flaps of two sided flesh. The short fangs poked through his skin and the hard top layer banged his knuckles like a rock hammer when he punched them.
Droon snarled. He would live. He summoned inner strength. What came wasn’t exactly Bloodlust, but something similar. The first Clinger to flee escaped. Others weren’t so lucky. He managed to free his hands and grab a Clinger at both ends. He pulled until it tore apart. All of the Clingers shrieked and spat venom. He threw one into the sky. He bit a hole in the center of another.
When he finished, a surviving Clinger mounted on the hard, many jointed back of another. He studied the two monsters, realizing they weren’t killing each other, but holding each other.
Were they exchanging fluids, sharing the things they called thoughts? Droon marveled at his amazement. The strange sensation wasn’t unpleasant, though he thought it was a human emotion. At the same time, he thought he was right. The Clinger he carried shared thoughts, shared blood, shared hate.
With great effort, Droon selected three of the healthiest Clingers, including the first that had bonded with him, and stacked them. They resisted. He pummeled them with his fists while holding them against a rock. When he had control of them, he slipped them over his back like a cloak. The new Clinger community was heavy, but it made him feel invincible. His armor was strong. No warrior of his race ever had armor.
The night pulled away from him, afraid of his wrath. He ran after small creatures and devoured them whole. He learned to command the Clingers and soon his arms, legs, body, and even his tail were sheathed in organic body armor.
He listened for Cla-ven-da and moved toward the rocks where she hid. A thought occurred to him, exotic and new. He worried that he could not remove the Clingers. Worry was like fear, though even more rare to him. While he had occasionally experienced fear, he had never worried and was not sure he was using the correct word to describe it. It was a human word, and he realized its poison.
He roared at the moons that seemed just out of reach in the sky. When he ran through the night, he sometimes stopped to make a different sound. On his home world the fear sounds would have made him an outcast, but he was alone. He stopped near the rocks and bit his hands. He smeared the blood on his face and felt the skin growing thick and strong.
“Cla-ven-da,” he said. Then he made whimpering sounds that changed each time his wounds throbbed. He searched for something to eat and remembered the people left near the fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SUNRISE advanced across the central valley of Long Canyon. Kin watched the shadows recede. His eyes closed for a second. Several heart beats later, they closed again. He clenched his jaw and exhaled forcefully. A hard slap across his face would wake him up, but he didn’t want to move. His post was still in shadow and he had an excellent view of the approaching trail.
“Are we dead?” Rickson asked as he walked out of the cave and sat beside Kin. “I fell asleep.”
“I know,” Kin said. “You snore.”
“Really?”
“Sounded like a lion.” Kin had almost described Rickson’s nocturnal rumblings as the sound of an angry bear, but caught himself at the last instant. He thought of his old friend all night. He also pondered the probable fate of the four travelers and decided they were dead or severely injured. If Droon followed Kin and his companions, the travelers might still be alive, but being tied up and wounded at night in the wilderness was dangerous, even if there weren’t Reapers, Clingers, and other things prowling the night.
“I need to go back,” Kin said.
“For the prisoner?” Rickson asked.
“I’m more concerned about the four travelers we found at the Reaper camp, but I should find Raif also.”
“Are you really afraid he will accuse you of being some kind of traitor?” Rickson asked. “Does it really matter, since the Fleet already knows about you?”
Kin kept his eyes on the valley, watching for the Reaper, not looking at the young shepherd. “There’s no telling what he’ll do. To make an accusation, he’ll have to admit he was AWOL, which is punishable by death. But since he’ll claim to have been foraging, they’ll go easy on him.”
“How easy?”
“Twenty lashes and a stint in the brig.”
“I don’t see how the Fleet can punish you. I bet no one else could have destroyed them.”
Kin stood and gathered his weapons. He slung two of the rifles across his back with his axe and gave the other to Rickson. “This is the safety. This is the trigger. Don’t use it unless you have to.”
“Where are you going?” Rickson asked.
“Back to the Reaper camp. If the travelers are alive, I’ll do what I can for them and come back before sunset.”
“What about the Reaper?”
“I’ll look for him too,” Kin said. He studied Rickson. The boy seemed a frightened child, not a teenager, but a little boy. Kin hated the decision he had made, yet the force of it was like the planet’s gravity.
I’m not his father.
He couldn’t resist the need to hunt, though guilt assailed him. Rickson was young, but he was Kin’s most loyal friend.
And I’m going to leave him here to protect Clavender from the worst killer in the galaxy.
“I can’t leave them out there. I should’ve fought the Reaper back there. Then we’d be on our way to Crater Town with nothing to worry about.” The words were lies—wishful thinking—but he didn’t want Rickson worrying about Raif and the Reaper.
�
�So I just stay here with Clavender?”
“No, you throw her across your shoulder and hump back to Crater Town by yourself,” Kin said.
“I’ll have to if you get killed.”
“I won’t get killed. I’ll be careful,” Kin said.
Rickson didn’t look convinced.
THE trip took Kin three hours. He moved cautiously, searching for signs of Droon and the travelers. The Reaper was strong and hard to kill, but not invincible. He probably ate something or someone and burrowed underground to heal.
The camp had been abandoned hours before Kin returned. All the equipment was gone and the cook fire covered with dirt, evidence the travelers were alive and healthy enough to move out. He searched for a grave site, found nothing, and eventually picked up two trails. The pattern of footprints told a story. Kin read it on one knee, scanning the area for signs of an ambush as he always did.
The four travelers were moving on foot, single file. Raif was paralleling them.
The travelers were probably armed and Raif only had one hand, but Kin didn’t like their chances. Raif was a Fleet trooper. If he were naked and missing both hands, he could still murder four civilians in their sleep.
Kin ran possible scenarios as he tracked them. The least likely: Raif would contact the travelers and beg for help, claiming to be a victim of the Reaper or bandits. That didn’t feel right. Troopers like Raif didn’t trust civilians and weren’t good at pretending to be meek victims.
Kin squatted in a dry gully, sipping water from a pouch and chewing a ration bar dense with nutrients. He considered the travelers and their poorly concealed trail.
Raif would dominate or kill them.
Droon’s voice split the air, echoing in the distance. Kin slowly put away the water skin as he chewed his last bite. Slow movements were quiet and harder to see. He counted the seconds and waited for another Reaper call, but nothing came. Without a second cry, there wasn’t way to determine which direction the Reaper was moving.
He looked at the footprints. None of the travelers were moving fast; their tracks were close together, indicating short strides. Someone heavy—one of the men—was dragging his feet, either tired or wounded.
They had taken time to properly break camp, as good survivors would, but Kin thought they were probably injured from the explosion, though he hadn’t found blood or discarded bandages. He closed his eyes, massaged his forehead, then looked at the tracks one last time.
He turned back to Rickson and Clavender, feeling ineffectual and foolish. He should have stayed. Hours of tracking and using energy he couldn’t spare had only put him in a bad position between two enemies.
He came across the tracks of the travelers again. They were either lost, which was unlikely, or on the run. The terrain wasn’t confusing; it was uneven, but easy to climb a rock and see for miles. Something pursued them.
He heard the Reaper again and decided it was closer to the rocks where Rickson and Clavender were hiding. He started to run, watching for the travelers, Raif, and whatever was hunting them.
An image of Droon slowly stabbing one of his claws into the abdomen of the bound woman replayed in Kin’s mind. Would Droon let her go? Kin doubted it. A gambling man might assume the Reaper would ambush the travelers caught in the open, rather than assault a defensible position. Kin had placed his bet when he left the cave. He needed to stick to his plan.
He veered toward the direction he believed the travelers were headed. He found them a short time later and they were waiting for him.
Daylight revealed much about Droon’s recent victims. Kin recognized them. Several month ago, they visited Crater Town, committing minor crimes—disorderly conduct and larceny. They made the townsfolk uneasy, so Kin ran them out.
The largest man was covered in religious tattoos—symbols from many cultures that scrolled across his muscular frame. A nine digit series of numbers on each forearm marked him as a registered pit fighter, a modern day gladiator trained since birth. Kin wondered how long he had been stranded here. Though trained killers, pit fighters were pampered and treated like celebrities. Living in the harsh environment of Crashdown seemed to have soured his mood.
Kin never learned his name. The people of Crater Town had been glad to see him leave.
Last night, he had been face down in Droon’s camp, beaten into submission. Now he leered at Kin. Raif stood behind him smiling.
“That’s him. Ten-thousand credits for each of you if we take him alive, five-thousand dead,” Raif said.
“Five-thousand is a lot of money.” The tattooed pit fighter held a section of sheet metal with a handle cut into it and razor sharp edges on the business end. He smiled, yellowed teeth poking out of his dark gums.
Kin surveyed the others. The woman appeared hard as the rest, but crouched slightly and held her abdomen. Fear radiated from her sallow face. Dark circles surrounded her eyes as she stared at him. She was having doubts about their plan. The remaining two men were small and looked on the brink of starvation. Unlike the pit fighter, they wore patched canvass shirts and carried axes—Bear’s axes.
Droon howled in the distance, definitely moving away from Kin and the fight he couldn’t avoid. The Reaper’s furious voice cracked. He screamed a battle cry that was answered by a gunshot. The rifle report echoed across the canyon.
“I should have let you bleed out, Raif.”
“You should have.”
The woman backed away from Kin and stared at Raif. “You know each other? You said he left you for the Reaper, just like us.” Her wide eyes betrayed her. She had been on the verge of panic, but now she was angry and afraid.
Raif came at Kin, but did it by moving quickly behind the pit fighter and toward Kin’s flank. The pit fighter charged at the same time. Kin shot him in the face and turned the rifle on Raif, who dropped to the ground, avoiding the first shot. Kin stitched the ground with bullets. He was a good shot, but Raif scrambled and rolled while the other two men and the woman rushed Kin. Everything happened fast. In the space of seconds, Kin was shooting at multiple targets and moving backward.
The woman was injured and slow. The two smaller men proved more dangerous, working as a team, coming at Kin from both sides. He shot the man on the right, then took out the woman as he swept his rifle toward the other man. He retreated, narrowly avoiding an axe in the face.
He stumbled on the man he had just shot, dropping the empty rifle and pulling his pistol. Kin preferred to shoot people in the body, center mass, and the head, but he squeezed off two rounds as he brought the pistol up, catching the last traveler in the pelvis both times.
The man fell, dropping the axe, clutching his wounds, and grunting. On his next breath, he began to scream.
Kin stepped on the man’s back and shot him once in the back of the head. He looked for Raif, not surprised to see him running ninety degrees from where Droon assaulted the rock formation. The man had either been on Hellsbreach or encountered Reapers someplace else, because the escape route he chose was just what Kin would have chosen.
Rocks and the tangled roots of bushes turned under Kin’s feet as he ran, holstering his pistol and swinging the second rifle from his back. He dodged around the scrub brush and scraggly saplings that struggled to live in the rocky valley. He knew he should be running toward Rickson and Clavender, but he wasn’t going to let Raif get away again. After fifty meters he realized his quarry was faster than he was. He guessed which way Raif would turn next and took a short cut, running up the side of an exposed boulder and coming down in Raif’s path.
The one-handed trooper slid to a stop. “Please.”
Kin flipped the selector switch on the rifle to fully automatic and fired, moving forward, punching a cluster of bullet holes in Raif’s chest. Fleet trooper survival instinct had been drilled into Raif and he proved he was a combat veteran by his actions. He was a lying coward, but a fighter to the end. He flailed his injured arm and covered the wounds with his good hand, which resulted in his fingers being s
liced off by bullets. When Kin was close enough, he ceased firing and kicked him hard.
“I bet you wish you had your armor now,” Kin said. He knelt and checked Raif for anything useful, but found nothing. There wasn’t time to go back for the rifle he dropped and this one only had two magazines left. He wished he could recover Bear’s axes, but counted himself lucky and ran toward the rock formation. A lot of damage could be done with two magazines from a Fleet rifle.
He pushed the pace. Droon had gone quiet and Rickson had only fired one shot.
Why only one shot?
Kin agonized over what he would find when he reached the cave. Rickson couldn’t fight a Reaper. He shouldn’t have left them. He should have stayed and done his duty.
That’s what happens when you get tired. Stupid mistakes. You can’t keep this up. Why don’t you just quit? He berated and cursed himself, but it didn’t make him faster.
He was intensely thirsty as he ran. It seemed like a year since he last sipped from his water pouch. He didn’t waste breath cursing Raif or Droon, but his thoughts alternated between the two killers and his own stupidity.
When he was close enough to see the cave entrance, he heard Droon again and saw him sprint out of sight into a gully. The valley floor seemed flat from a distance, but it was cut through by erosion, rock formations, and dying bushes. Thick clusters of trees thrived near the river, but he couldn’t know if Droon had gone that way.
The single shot worried him. Rickson wasn’t trained to use a Fleet rifle and probably dropped it after the first shot. Droon probably stormed into the cave and slaughtered them. Kin ran into the cave, afraid of what he would find.
“Rickson!”
No answer.
“Rickson, answer me!”
“We’re here. Calm down. It’s been half a second since you burst in,” Rickson said.
