1

  The Hunter

  They did not believe I would succeed. I will prove them wrong.

  Eagerness itched in my heart. My legs felt confined inside this drop pod, bouncing, ready to lunge for my goal. For now I had to wait. Amber runes flickered across the dark ribbed windows that framed the blackness of space. The estimated arrival: fourteen hours. Far too long. I am ready now. Blood ran hot through my veins and the lust to spill blood burned hotter. This would be the greatest hunt of my life, a hunt that set me apart from all of my brothers and forefathers. They did not believe I would succeed.

  I am Karok, clanless. I am youngblood. I will not sate my honor on offworld primitives as my brothers have. They earned their petty status hunting among themselves as packs against great beasts, but no great beasts were they. They were biters, not maulers. Great hunters, yes. Warriors, no. I am different. They will know this.

  I will be the first of my former clan to decorate my walls with skulls never seen among my family. The pelts and manes I had not yet decided how I would display, but I had plenty of time to decide on a manner that was tasteful. With bated patience, I scratched my foreclaw along the alloy of my armrest and imagined the awe on their faces when I laid down those wondrous trophies.

  I trilled gently and sighed. Upon the dim glow of the pod's amber display, a planet of mostly water and some masses of land lay depicted among many lines of coordinates, topographical assessments, atmospheric calculations. I did not bother myself with knowing all of the details. The only aspect that mattered was that I could breathe the air and resist the local pathogens. Already I had ingested capsules to immunize myself to the planet’s microbiology.

  It will be the perfect hunting ground, this planet Earth. Many prior hunters touched down and took many trophies and spoke the tale. The fauna were dangerous, beautiful and at times monstrous. The planet’s apex life, Humans, were said to be physically unimpressive, technologically developing, and yet heinously clever and ruthless. Like a nest of insects, their ability to propagate and fight in unison had not gone unnoticed. I longed to see this behavior for myself.

  With a flick of my claw along the glass of the pod’s display port, I circled and zoomed in on a live imaging of the planet. Among my clan’s generations of hunts, we have no interactions with Humanity, which stirred both shame and eagerness in me. My effort to learn of this creature took me to the jungles of the homeworld, where some clans have indeed collected skulls, spines and skins of this species. I longed to gauge this creature in person, to feel the skin and hair, to gaze among their floral-colored eyes. Back on the home planet, there is a spot above my mantle where a decorative necklace of teeth might look elegant.

  Eyes closed, my mind wandered to the deserts of Yautja Prime that lingered in my dreams. I awoke to the rumble of the pod’s frame, a mechanical hiss and chime that signaled an approach to a celestial body. I adjusted the settings of the viewport and a shimmer of light carried itself from right to left across the glass.

  In the distance, Earth.

  The approach began to quake the pod. I braced myself. The quaking thundered into my legs, my spine, my jaw. I gripped tight over my armrests. The pod shimmered from the inside. The trembles ebbed away and there came finally the sensation of true weighted gravity. Inside my chest I felt my core settle, no longer falsely pulled by antigravity, and in came rushing the sensation of freefalling descent.

  I watched through the viewport as the dark of space became azure and white, as white became filtered twilight. The atmosphere swallowed me and the stars lit up the sky. The pod ejected an intense thrust and began to glide, falling fast, then falling slower, until it came to float upon the Earthen sky. Below, the vastness of the Earthen seas ran onward and forever, and I wondered how clever these Humans could be. To become apex predators of a planet they mostly cannot survive in was indeed remarkable.

  The pod’s glide ceased and then I was falling. A great expanse of trees and polygons of land rushed up to meet me. The pod crashed into the ground. My body stirred slightly in my seat. Antishocks absorbed the blast but it did not fully dampen the thunderous clash with the ground. A moment lingered before the pod’s viewport unlocked itself and hissed a sharp air. The last vestiges of particle air from Yautja Prime escaped my pod, burned up in the Earthen atmosphere and all at once, I felt the coolness of the planet's air on my skin.

  The amber light of the pod began to power down, and from the dashboard of the former viewport, a cube of contained energy ejected on a flat bridge. I removed the cube and slotted the piece into my gauntlet. Red runes flickered across the interface. The netting weave armor illuminated and I cloaked myself into the shades of green and browns, a blurred form against the woodland backdrop.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Through the filter of my biomask, I drew a long, deep breath of Earth’s air. Even parsed through my scrubbers, the air tasted cool and sweet, filled with a grassy, plant-like fragrance. There came a hard wind that pushed rivers of grass in a joined billow and the trees wafted their heavy branches. I knelt down and laid my claws through the grass, fingered the blades and pulled out tufts of soil and meshed it through my palm. The soil was soft like bedding. My sensors detected a healthy acid balance. I did not enjoy the coolness of the air but I enjoyed the smell of it.

  There was much work to do! Yes, it was not wise to tarry. One must know their hunting grounds and, although I had rations for the next month, still I wanted to know what Earthen meat tastes like. First rites came first, I took to my pod and began to dismantle it. The hull came undone from the seating and I carried it deep into the woods, under the cloak of overhead brush and branch. The trees here were heavy, thick and tall, their outstretched tines weaving together into a net that bordered ground from the sky. What homely shrouding. It pleased me.

  Above and between a trio of close-knit trunks, I used the hull as a flooring, binding the corners to the bark with a woven alloyed rope, and the pod’s former viewport now served as a translucent roof. My mask display showed that my temperature had dropped but not dangerously, not yet. My cloakweave netting would not aid in the colder seasons and I suspect the Elders knew that. My arsenal was chosen for me and I knew it was not chosen at the behest of my best interests.

  I finished my nest quickly. It carried my weight, shielded the rain, and appeared difficult to spot among the branches and elevation. Inside, I sat neatly on the curved floor and laid out the field satchel. A medcanister of coagulant gel, antiseptic resin, a ration of pain-dulling capsules, suture filaments and an adrenal injector. There were more medicinal supplies than I expected. After the med canister I drew out three solid, packaged ration bricks, and already the feeling of the hard, freeze-dried meat and nutrient paste irritated me. There were six more rolls of metallic rope, hooks and a handheld flamekit.

  Suitable. I needed no more than this.

  The blades ejected from my gauntlet. Sharpened to a glistened point, lubricated for ease of eject and withdrawal. They were acceptable for combat but I preferred them for gutting. My blades were not serrated for damage, they were angled and clean, meant for filleting, making fine cuts and peeling flesh. For combat I wielded something else.

  All that I needed lay in the narrow grip of a forearm-length stick. Parts of the grip were made of bones from the first creatures I hunted with my brothers offworld. The sleekness of the craft remained an honor bestowed to me by the crafters in the vast underworks of my home desert. I was permitted a weapon of my choosing, any weapon, and the weapon I chose had drawn a chitter from the council of Elders that presided over my Rite. I did not choose a great weapon. I chose the only weapon I would always need: my first combistick, made to fit my build, my arm, my draw. My soul.

  The spear ejected with a quiet hiss. I withdrew one end and ejected the other. With a turn and click, I unbuckled the grip and drew free the metallic string, braced it on the groove of the small, knuckle-sized compound wheels and locked into place a bone-and-alloy-plated compound bow. I fingered the string tenderly, found it taut and springy, and peered down the angled, bone-molded sight. Finally, I undid the grip and folded it back into a stick shape, opened the slit of the shaft and sprung free a single-edged saber, tapered to a fine point that sheened with folded metals and oily lubricant.

  I reached from my nest into the bush of leaves overhead, plucked a thick green leaf and sliced along the edge with my blade. It seemed less like cutting and more that the leaf parted itself from the implication of cutting. Hot blood burned in my chest and I trilled gleefully with anticipation. This was not the greatest weapon in my arsenal; back on the homeworld, I had dozens of greater weapons. But this one I would live and die by.

  With a flick of the hand the blade slid back into place, and I folded the shaft of the combistick into itself and hung the weapon from the holster of my belt. My kit packed and prepared, I peered my head outside my nest, across the branches and bushes where avian flocked, down to the earthen floor where I saw the heat of small bodies scampering about. Critters, the lowest of prey, but no less prey. Under the light of the moon, I could not expect great beasts to abound.

  Instead, I prowled. I climbed higher into the trees until I reached the precipice. I looked upon the reaches of the forest, listened to the quiet song of this alien planet’s hum. The wind breathed slowly and the clouds passed across the stars and I followed the weave of branches with no direction in mind. Only to let the feeling of this new place wash me within its atmosphere. For most of the night, I simply prowled. I pounced from branch to branch, claws dug into the bark, slid down a level and leapt to another. I landed in between the split frame of a tree trunk, tips of my claws braced for leverage.

  There, I saw beyond the reach of the trees that the planet’s sun had begun to rise faraway on the horizon. My first Earthen dawn, and my first time alone and away from home.

  The hour arrived. My hunt begins.