by B. V. Larson
In the midst of this frozen, natural beauty was a dark, beetle-like shape. The interloper was of such size it looked like an insect clinging to a golf ball. Behind it, a furrow thirty miles deep ran around the world. It was such a deep wound that lava could be seen bubbling up and darkening into gray ash and fresh rock in the monster’s wake.
“A sobering sight,” I said. “To think that such an abomination has chewed through inhabited worlds as well...”
“We have to stop it, Leo,” Samson said, looking down as if mesmerized. “Do you think we really have a chance?”
“It’s as good as done,” I told him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
He smiled back, but his eyes told me he didn’t really believe in me. At least, not a hundred percent.
I couldn’t blame him for that. Despite my bravado, my entire plan hinged on a few weak links. Luck would have to be on my side to succeed—and Lael had to stay as arrogant and thin-skinned as she’d always shown herself to be.
Upon reaching the yawning opening in Splendor’s side, we were caught in a gravity beam. We rode the rest of the way into the enemy ship, helpless in a grip of green light.
When we were set down, we allowed ourselves to be arrested without incident. I enjoyed the consternation of the arresting crewmen. The last time we’d boarded Splendor, we’d caused quite a scene.
Hulking figures, armored Imperial troops, surrounded us. They were actually skinny guys in thick suits that accentuated their minimal musculature. Lael herself wasn’t among them. Perhaps she’d learned not to get too close to tricky humans.
We followed the group to the central chamber moving down passages that wound around the ship’s spine. There, at last, I met Lael.
“Blake,” she said, nodding to me as we entered. “Come talk to me before you die. I must admit, you’ve piqued my curiosity.”
A dozen armored shapes surrounded me, but I shrugged as if barely interested.
“Fine,” I said, “if you have refreshments.”
She shook her head. “You dark-worlders are always thinking of creature comforts,” she said. “But I’ll indulge you one last time. Try this yellow fruit—it’s flavorful.”
I did, and I found it excellent. It was a cross between a mango and a cantaloupe. Samson tried one too, and he nodded appreciatively.
“So,” Lael said, watching us. “You really aren’t predators. Odd that your sub-species could be so feral.”
“We’re omnivores,” I said, “just like you. We’re a cross between Hunter of fruit and Hunter of flesh.”
She nodded. “That much is true—the Imperial Kher dine on fare which is a blend of flesh and vegetation. I must admit, I find it somewhat profane to see how similar you are to us—your superior antecedents. Most species were altered more significantly when they were seeded on various worlds.”
“I’ve had a few thoughts about that,” I said. “Have the Kher ever isolated their point of origin? The world upon which they originally evolved?”
“No, we haven’t. Countless Imperial anthropologists have searched long and hard for that mythical planet—if it exists at all.”
Nodding, I stared at her for a few seconds. I’d just discovered something very interesting, but I wasn’t sure how to use it to my advantage yet.
I was beginning to think Earth was the birthplace of the Kher after all. It made some sense, as the countless other planets among the stars that supported Kher life were clearly not the evolutionary point of origin. If the Imperials didn’t know where they came from… well, why couldn’t the evidence we’d seen on lowly Earth be conclusive?
The only mystery after that would be how the Imperials had come to be. Had they left Earth long ago and colonized the stars with varied versions of their own anatomy? Or had it been more complex than that?
Unable to think of an immediate way to make use of my advantage, I took the time to eat the entirety of the fruit Lael had offered and suck the pit clean.
“Now that we have eaten, we can honorably slay one another!” Lael announced.
I wasn’t entirely sure if that was supposed to be funny, or representative of normal thinking for the Imperial Kher. But in either case, she was serious.
She stood up and indicated our surroundings with a sweep of her arms. She pointed to a row of armored suits.
“Don your choice of equipment,” she told us. “Meet my specialist in close-combat, Colonel Vopeth.”
Vopeth was already suited in his armor, looking quite at home in it.
“Hmm,” I said, studying the suits. They had complex controls inside. There was no way Samson or I could figure them out enough to be competitive in a short amount of time. “Combat between two men on Earth is never done with weapons of any kind. As we don’t know how to use your devices of war, we must insist neither of us should.”
Lael shook her head. “That wasn’t specified before the terms were accepted,” she said.
“Ah-ha!” I shouted, turning to the circle of watching faces. Many officers and crewmen had begun to gather. They were eager to witness mayhem, I could see it in their eyes. “I’m impressed, Captain Lael! It’s always said we Earth men are tricky, but there’s no comparison in this case. You’ve managed to bamboozle us. To gain our confidence then alter the arrangement at the final moment in your favor. I applaud your—”
“Enough!” Lael shouted angrily. “You’ve overstepped your bounds, Captain Blake. There is no trickery here, no deceit.”
“Well then, let us fight unarmed.”
Lael’s eyes slid from her crewmen to my face, then back again. “I will do so if you give up your champion,” she said. “Fight Colonel Vopeth yourself.”
“Unarmed?” I asked mildly.
“Yes. Unarmed.”
Vopeth’s eyes slid to meet hers, then went back to mine. He still looked confident. I got the feeling he was the master of personal combat aboard Splendor.
It was obvious why Lael wanted me to face Vopeth, rather than Samson. It wasn’t just because I was smaller than either of them. It was because if Vopeth could beat me, she would get her shot to do more than beat me down.
I could tell by the look in Vopeth’s eyes he meant to kill me, if he could.
“You’ve got a deal,” I told her.
Slowly, a smirk began to spread over her features. It was an unpleasant sight.
Even as she displayed her happiness, Vopeth began rapidly shedding his armor. He didn’t look worried at all—in fact, he looked downright eager.
=53=
While we prepped for the upcoming fight, I continuously checked the time. Abrams had made important promises to me—but he was late with the results, as usual.
“What’s your plan, boss?” Samson asked me. “How are you going to take this freak down?”
Colonel Vopeth was a freak. Unlike most of his comrades, he was a mass of ropy muscles under his armor. He seemed not to have an ounce of fat on him, and his pale hairless skin slid over hard lumps of flesh. The muscles underneath flexed with smooth precision as he removed his chest piece.
“With any luck, I won’t have to,” I said, glancing at Samson. “Try to think of a way to stall—”
A hard blow struck the back of my head, announcing that the fight had begun. A cheer went up from the surrounding armored troops, and I barely had time to stagger back around to face Colonel Vopeth before he barreled into me.
Apparently, human customs when dueling didn’t apply to the Imperial Kher. That shouldn’t have surprised me, as the Rebel Kher hadn’t been terribly formal when such conflicts began, either.
There was no handshake, no bow, not even a clear declaration of intent. Vopeth had simply hurled his helmet at me and nailed me in the back when I’d turned away. The moment he’d gotten his armor off, the fight had commenced.
Samson put his hands on my shoulders and spun me to face Vopeth at the last instant. He gave me a slight shove in the right direction and stepped back. That was all the momentum I had as I met the co
lonel’s unexpected charge.
Fortunately, I wasn’t stunned, just surprised. As a veteran of several street-fights and countless conflicts with the Rebels, I responded automatically to the situation.
Stepping to one side, I gripped Vopeth’s outstretched fingers and guided them away from my eye-sockets, where they seemed intent on gouging like an eagle’s claws. His forward motion carried him over my carefully placed foot, which caught an ankle and sent him sprawling.
Those hands, though—they caught me on the way by. Red nails furrowed my skin, the furrows rapidly filling with blood. His knobby white fingers squeezed my guiding hands painfully. Such strength! He wouldn’t be an easy opponent in a clinch.
Instead of waiting for him to regain his feet, I leapt to the attack, landing a kick into his back as he tried to get up. My heel sank into his left kidney, and I heard a hiss of discomfort escape him.
If I’d been more confident, I would have jumped on his back, rode him down and pummeled him—but I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with yet. I assumed a fighter’s stance instead, my weight balanced, my arms up and ready.
He bounced back to his feet and spun around. He came at me again, but he had some respect for me now. He didn’t charge like a playground bully. He circled, sidestepping, and I did the same.
Around us, the armored Imperials beat their gauntlets on their chests in a rhythm. This created a clanking din that they seemed to be familiar with. Farther back, behind their circle, stood the tall waif I knew as Captain Lael.
She would have been captivating if it wasn’t for her bloodthirsty smile. She wanted to see me beaten down, that much was clear.
“Don’t toy with him, Vopeth!” she called out. “I’m getting bored.”
Vopeth glanced at her and nodded—but the exchange was an error on both of their parts. I stepped in quickly, feinted once with a punch to the belly, then landed a hard one on his nose. The blood spurted, looking redder than usual as it ran down in runnels over his white chest.
Roaring, Vopeth threw his hands wide and caught me in those long arms. He dragged me closer in a hug.
I made him pay for his move. Rather than trying to pull away, I smashed a knee into his groin, drove two stiff fingers into his throat and slammed my skull up into his teeth.
Blood poured, and he grunted in pain, but none of my actions got him to release me. Fantastic strength drew me into an embrace. His arms tightened and squeezed.
Not since I was a child had I been manhandled like this. It was a bear-hug, right out of schoolyard lore. It occurred to me that these Imperials weren’t sophisticated physical fighters. They fought with brute force and little else.
Even that was a surprise. The Imperials I’d dealt with before Vopeth had all been weak of limb, dependent on machines to do all their heavy lifting. Could it be that Vopeth had been altered? Manipulated in some way so as to be strong but not terribly fast or agile?
It hardly mattered what the source of his strength was because Vopeth was crushing the life out of me. His arms were steel bands, and my ribs were already flexing painfully. His fingers were like those of a robotic loader. They cut into my flesh, closing with such strength that I could feel them bruising me, separating my own layers of meat and sinew, driving so deep they pressed between the bones in my side and kept going.
Only my own empowered limbs, aided by the symbiotic creature within me, allowed me to contest this monster at all. With my mind in a panic, I tried to think of a counter. Pain hadn’t seemed to stop him. I couldn’t apply greater force—all I had left was to fight dirty.
The world had shrunken down to me and Vopeth, but still I was somewhat aware of my surroundings. Something was going wrong. The crowd encircling us had backed up. Captain Lael was shouting something, and the light built into the ship’s walls brightened rhythmically. Even Samson was looking around, frowning in concern rather than watching the fight.
Everyone seemed distracted, except for Vopeth. I was similarly focused, as I knew it was possible that I had only a minute left to live.
I stopped trying to hold back his crushing arms with my own hands. Instead, I reached up and planted a thumb on each of his squeezed shut eyes. I began to dig in, and he began roaring, a sound echoed by my own lungs.
He released me at last. His hands flashed up, grabbing my wrists and stretching my arms wide. His mouth hung open and he panted. I smashed my head into his face until the blood ran from my scalp and his broken teeth.
He hurled me away at last. Blinded, he staggered around the chamber. I wrapped my arms around my chest and wheezed.
“What’s going on, Samson?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of emergency alarm. They took off in every direction.”
Blinded, his face a ruin, Vopeth caught the sound of my voice. Growling like a beast, he tottered in my direction. I didn’t want to chance another stint in his grip. I kicked out a knee as he came close, and he fell to the ground, crawling and lashing out with his powerful hands to grip me.
“I’m sorry, Colonel,” I said to him, “but I’ve got to be going now.”
“You have no honor, Blake!” he cried hoarsely.
“We’ll call it a draw,” I said, “if that will make you feel better.”
With that, I trotted out of the chamber. Samson followed in confusion.
“Where are we going? What’s going on?”
“If I don’t miss my guess, the Hunter has decided to join the party.”
“What should we do, Captain? You think we can make it back to the pod in time?”
“No, that’s the last place we should go. You see, Abrams tampered with it.”
Samson’s eyes lit up. “Oh… I get it. Another dirty primate trick.”
“My worst of the day,” I agreed.
“Where do we go, then?”
I thought for a moment. Where would Lael go?
“The lifeboats,” I said firmly. “If there’s one person we’ll find there, I bet I know who it will be.”
Samson looked determined, and he followed after me gamely enough. I was glad to have him. It was going to be hard to get the lifeboat hatch open. I had the kind of pain that indicated cracked ribs.
Battle stations had been sounded all over the ship. Armored troops ran by now and then, but they didn’t arrest us. They didn’t seem to have orders in regard to what should be done with us. We had been guests aboard the ship only a few minutes earlier.
Now, we looked like panicked members of the crew just like everyone else. Klaxons sounded in the passages, creating an odd, warbling sound that made my brain hurt. There could be no doubt the ship was in trouble.
The ship was soon underway, pulling up out of orbit. I could feel the distant clawing of the planet’s tug and G forces of acceleration. Could their anti-gravity be out? Or perhaps it was just not operating properly? If that was Abrams doing as well, it was well-played.
But it might also mean all of our deaths. My plan had been to drive Lael’s ship out of the star system, not to destroy it while I was still aboard.
The ship was so unstable we were crawling by the time we reached the nearest lifeboat. There was no one there—but there had been.
“The hatch is sealed,” Samson panted. “The boat is gone. Do you think…?”
“I know her. She’s gone. Let’s find the next one.”
A tremendous explosion bowled us off our feet as we headed for the external hatch on the next boat. Gritting my teeth in pain, I climbed into a sitting position—then was I lifted into the air.
Samson had slid a big arm around my waist and hauled me with him like I was a kid. I groaned in pain. Some of my ribs had shifted, stabbing into my organs. The pain was darkening my vision, threatening to make me black out.
“Get us into the boat,” I said unnecessarily.
Samson was determined. He cranked open a hatch and stuffed us both through it. We crawled inside, and I weakly touched the harness straps
“Override,” I said. “Fi
re us out of the locks.”
“We don’t have good seals on these suits,” Samson said. “We’ll die if we depressurize.”
“Do it!” I ordered, head lolling.
There was a roar, a whoosh, then a bolt of terrific pain as we accelerated on boosters away from Splendor’s hull. We were fired out into open space, and through the one tiny porthole I caught a glimpse of the icy planet spinning below us.
The gouged face of the world looked different. The deep, dark furrow on the surface had been abandoned. The Hunter must have lifted off and taken flight, leaving behind a meal unfinished.
I lost consciousness after that, and it was a blessing to me.
=54=
When I awakened, our lifeboat was still spinning in orbit. Samson was there, looking sick.
“I can’t get these Imperial controls to respond,” he told me.
I looked over what he was doing. He wasn’t a pilot, but any man worth his salt had picked up the basics of flying a small space boat by now.
“It’s not your skills,” I told him. “There’s some kind of security interface on this thing. It’s not recognizing us as Imperials, so it’s not letting us fly this thing.”
We did manage to get the emergency beacon going. The communications systems and the sensors weren’t security protected.
“Mayday, mayday,” I called when I got a live channel out. “This is Captain Blake, of the—”
“Blake? You dare to live?”
The voice was female, and familiar, but it wasn’t the one I’d expected to hear.
“Captain Lael?” I asked.
“Who else? You’re broadcasting on an Imperial channel.”
“Right… How do I contact Hammerhead?”
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Because once your ship has been destroyed, Hammerhead will be the only source of heat and air in this system.”
She didn’t say anything for a while.
“How did you get off my ship?” she demanded at last. “You must have known what was happening.”
