INDIGENOUS SPECIES
1
The colony planet was named Hardscrabble, and that should have been his first clue. Filled with hope and determination, Jerrick and the other 150 colonists should never have believed the propaganda or the brochures from the colonization initiative.
But now they were stuck on this bleak planet, to live or die depending on their own grit and resourcefulness.
As he drove the mammoth combine farming vehicle across the rugged landscape, Jerrick made a sour face as he remembered the obviously doctored images in the database, but the young man’s father, Davin, had been convinced. Davin was a dreamer, optimistic and—worse—charismatic. He had persuaded half of his extended family and a large group of friends to join him on the venture, and all of them believed that this unclaimed planet would be a new opportunity, a new home. No one had thought to wonder why no one else wanted Hardscrabble.
The combine’s engine hummed and rumbled, and Jerrick guided the giant vehicle with ease and long familiarity. The huge treads rolled along the dirt roadway, taking him around the field patches of enhanced wheat and corn.
The colonization initiative had given their group a basic setup allotment with tools and supplies, preserved food, crop seeds, livestock embryos, prefabricated buildings, large agricultural equipment, and a sketchy survey database with meteorological recordings and a cursory biological summary obtained by automated satellites.
When they had arrived on Hardscrabble a year ago, the colonists found a bleak world with a temperate climate and breathable, though sour, air. Native plants provided oxygen, but the soil was not hospitable to Earth-based life-forms, requiring a great deal of fertilizer. Their herd animals could not digest the local species of grasses. Hardscrabble’s insect and bird analogues were inedible, and often just a nuisance. None of the animal life could be considered game, and some indigenous creatures were deadly predators—as the colonists had discovered in the first year. A special plot of land had been designated as the settlement’s own cemetery.
Many would have opted to jump aboard the next supply ship that arrived on Hardscrabble… except that no ship was coming. This was their world now, sink or swim.
As he drove along, Jerrick clenched his hand into a fist and slammed it down on the polymer control deck of the raised cab. The colonization initiative had lied to them. The 150 dreamers here were not afraid of hard work, and none of them expected this to be easy—but they had expected honesty.
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 again. 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 out 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.
The older man climbed down from the observation platform, while Jerrick used the zoomlenses to scan the landscape again, obsessed. He didn’t want to move. Deep in the hills, the whistling explosions and flashes of fire continued intermittently, far away, but now the young man focused on another turmoil much closer at hand.
In the nearest field of swift-growing wheat, a huge and hairy gruzzly loomed out of the morning mist like a monstrous shadow. The dark fur on its left side was singed and scabbed, as if it had been injured by one of the hunters’ energy weapons. The big beast stalked forward, snarling, sniffing.
Jerrick glimpsed the mirror flicker again as the armored alien predator made itself partially visible. The great gruzzly generally relied on its sense of smell and hearing, so the camouflage wouldn’t be a perfect defense. The beast’s black tongue flicked out of its reptilian snout, and it roared, sweeping its rake-like claws from side to side, looking for its target.
Facing off, the alien hunter dashed toward the gruzzly, then disappeared entirely as its camouflage locked in.
The wounded beast lumbered along, wading through the wheat field, destroying the precious stalks as it looked for the alien hunter it could sense nearby. Seemingly coming out of nowhere, a line of fire licked across the ground like a fire hose of flames. The hunter was intentionally burning the fields to madden the animal. The gruzzly stumbled away from the dark smoke and crackling flames.
The hunter set more of the crops aflame, boxing in the huge beast.
Jerrick watched, appalled. “That’s our field! Damn you!”
The alien predator seemed not to care, using the flames to drive the gruzzly. The predator was a humanoid-shaped blur against the rising fire. The furry beast charged directly into the flames, somehow finding its enemy.
The predator blasted his prey with the flamethrower, but the heat rolled off the big animal’s reptilian chest plate. Facing a real battle now, the hunter switched off his camouflage field and withdrew two long knives before throwing himself at the smoke-maddened gruzzly. The furry creature smacked him sideways, bowling the predator aside. The armored hunter rolled through the rising fires in the field, stumbled back to his feet, then lunged forward again with both knives extended. His snakelike hair tentacles writhed, and through his metal mask he let out a bellow that sounded just as primal as the gruzzly’s.
They engaged. The hunter’s sharp blades dipped into the gruzzly’s body again and again like a stinging wasp. With massive arms, the beast clasped the hunter, wrapped around his body, and squeezed tight. Long claws struck sparks across the armor, damaging it.
Then the predator clamped a small self-adhering explosive to the gruzzly’s back. With a brief, bright flare, the explosion blasted through the beast’s vertebrae and into its chest cavity, incinerating its heart and spine. The huge monster collapsed, dead, while the predator reeled backward, barely able to keep his own footing. His shredded armor sparked with random energy pulses, and his body leaked runnels of acid-green blood. Though obviously wounded, the predator remained upright over his kill.
The dead gruzzly lay twitching, smoking. The burning fields crackled around them.
Watching the carnage from his observation platform, Jerrick muttered, “Damn you.”
Unexpectedly, he saw the stockade gate open below. He leaned over the sharpened wooden barrier. “What the hell?” A figure stepped out onto the wide, trampled road… a lone man carrying a plasma rifle.
His father!
Davin closed the gate behind him and marched down the road toward the burning wheat field, the dead gruzzly, and the wounded predator. Out in the burning field, the hunter was preoccupied with decapitating his kill, sawing through the thick neck.
Jerrick shouted, “Father, come back here! What are you doing?”
Davin turned to him, held up his rifle, and called back to his son. “You’re right—somebody has to fight for our colony.” Though obviously determined, he looked very small. “If that predator is wounded, this might be our only opportunity to hurt one of them.” Davin began to sprint ahead.
“Come back!” Jerrick called. What if the man’s actions simply enraged the other alien hunters?
Some of his fellow colonists had climbed the corners of the stockade, looking out over the wall. Several others opened the stockade gate to watch. His father was foolishly convinced he was right, as always… and Jerrick knew the man wasn’t always right.
As he approached the wounded predator hunched over the carcass of the gruzzly, Davin opened fire with the plasma rifle, but most of his shots went wild, striking the churned ground. One even hit the side of the fallen carcass, burning a new hole in the thick, furred pelt.
The muscular alien stood, dripping with dark gruzzly blood as well as his own bright green blood from his wounds.
Davin raised the plasma rifle and shot again. One of the energy blasts ricocheted off the predator’s hip, striking sparks from the alien’s armor, but not seeming to wound him. Transient spiderwebs of static flickered up and down the alien’s body as the camouflage field flickered on, then faded again.
Emboldened, his father yelled bravely, stupidly. He shot four more times, missing repeatedly, until one blast struck the predator’s shoulder and destroyed the popup energy gun mounted there.
The muscular hunter seemed angry rather than intimidated. He grasped at his belt and removed a metal cylinder, squeezing it. The long, pointed javelin ends extended and then locked into place with a snick.
Davin strode forward, firing indiscriminately, poorly. Though the colony leader was still far away, the predator cocked back his arm and hurled the whistling, crackling javelin.
Jerrick screamed, helpless. His father couldn’t duck fast enough, though he managed to fire twice more—and missed both times. The energized javelin slid through his abdomen, piercing him smoothly.
Davin stopped in his tracks, staggered forward two more steps, then fell sideways.
Jerrick howled, unable to tear his eyes from the zoomlenses. “Noooo!”
Limping, the predator stalked forward, moving sluggishly from his own injuries. He stopped, looming over Davin’s body.
Through the lenses, Jerrick could see his father grasp at the smooth, sharp end of the javelin, but couldn’t get a grip with all the blood.
The predator grabbed his weapon and slid it back out. The pointed ends retracted into the handle.
Davin lay there, choking, already dead but not yet realizing it.
The predator turned his smooth metal mask toward the distant stockade where Jerrick stood screaming and shouting. After a moment of consideration, the predator bent down, slashed Davin’s neck with his jagged blade. He grasped the colony leader’s hair and peeled the head back, then with a brutal yank, he pulled off the head along with several vertebrae and the frayed ends of the man’s spinal cord. The predator held up Davin’s head like an unimpressive trophy, tucked it onto a clip at his side, then he retrieved the much larger head of the gruzzly. He carried both trophies as he limped off into the dissipating smoke and flames of the destroyed field.
4
Jerrick’s grief transformed into a twisted knot of anger, injustice, and a need for revenge—but he knew it was a useless longing. He had no illusions about challenging either a giant gruzzly or an armored alien predator.
One of those hunters had killed his father, slaughtered him in full view of the colony settlement, torn off his head and kept it as a trophy. Davin had been trying to defend his home, but those evil hunters just wanted… sport.
And his father had fallen victim to that sport.
With the gate closed again, while the colonists huddled behind the scant protection of the stockade wall, the fire in the wheat field gradually burned itself out as the gray skies became more overcast, clouds thickening with disapproving storms. Jerrick, meanwhile, brewed enough of a storm inside him.
His father had told him repeatedly that until Jerrick could control his temper, until he could think of the bigger picture, the young man would not make a good colony leader. But now his fellow colonists were looking to him in that position. Maybe anger was what they needed. Davin had been too passive, too optimistic… too naïve. And now he was dead.
Looking at the mournful colonists, Jerrick breathed quickly, smelling bitter smoke in the air, possibly tainted with blood.
“We will bury him,” Jerrick announced. “I’ll go get his body myself, unless someone else wants to help.” Five people volunteered, and more looked ready to join in, but he cut them off. It was risky enough as it was.
After Jerrick had scanned the territory with his zoomlenses, seeing no movement from either gruzzlies or predators, they opened the stockade gates. Under thick gray skies, he and the volunteers rushed down the dirt road, two of them carrying plasma rifles. Davin’s rifle still lay on the ground near his body. Apparently, the predator hadn’t felt any threat from it.
The enormous gruzzly carcass lay sprawled and bloody, its thick pelt and reptilian plates torn by the predator’s attack. But Jerrick only had eyes for his father—or what remained of him. The man’s head was gone, half the spinal column uprooted like some noxious weed. His familiar brown work shirt was now soaked in red. He remembered his father sitting at home by the warm glowlight, mending rips in the garment, adding patches, because the Hardscrabble colonists couldn’t afford to waste good clothes. Now, the shirt was beyond repair, just as Davin was. There would be no fixing this.
Jerrick stared, feeling his stomach roil, his heart pound, his cheeks growing hot. Tears filled his eyes, but they didn’t fall; instead, they seemed to turn to steam with his anger.
He picked up his father’s feet; two of the other colonists took him by his sprawled arms. As they set off in a slow, somber procession, Jerrick scowled down at the weapon. He said to one of the other volunteers, “Take the rifle. We might need every possible defense.”
If it came to all-out war, he doubted they could fight even one of the alien predators, and many of them had come to Hardscrabble for their grand hunt. Fortunately, the aliens seemed interested only in the gruzzlies—but that could change. The colonists could not rely on the protection of simple stockade walls or the barricaded doors of prefab colony homes. Jerrick knew of no other way to intimidate the predators into leaving them alone.
Anxious, he glanced around, listening for that threatening, clicking growl, looking for the mirror-shimmer in the air that camouflaged them. But he saw only drifting smoke and the remaining flickers of the burning field.
Reaching the barricaded settlement as the clouds darkened and a late afternoon storm set in, Jerrick did not want to leave his father’s body lying outside. Their cemetery, which displayed far too many graves already, was outside the wall in the unprotected area. Jerrick and his companions worked together swiftly to dig a resting place for the optimistic dreamer who had convinced them to come here. They used shovels and picks, taking turns with the heavy work while others stood guard with their plasma rifles.
When it was finished, Jerrick thought the empty hole looked like a cold and lonely mouth yawning open. He just stared at it before he nodded and bent down to pick up the headless body. With two others helping, they wrestled Davin into the grave and covered him up with dirt.
As the wind picked up and the sun dropped below the horizon, everyone went back inside the stockade to huddle with their loved ones, to hope against hope for some way to survive…
5
Jerrick had other ideas. He felt abused, beaten, but not defeated, and he would not simply cower. In his heart, he understood how foolish his plan was, how he might be putting the entire colony at risk if he failed.
He didn’t care. He needed to do this.
As the storm gathered with greater force, Jerrick took one of the plasma rifles, checked that its charge was full, then opened the stockade gate. Telling no one, he climbed up into the mammoth combine machine and swung himself into the cab. He took a deep breath and touched the controls. Starting the engines, switching to full battery power, he activated the bright headlights.
Cones of illumination stabbed into the blustery blackness, showing Hardscrabble’s bleak landscape, the burned and damaged crops, the wreckage of their hopes. Jerrick’s anger grew hotter as he rolled the giant vehicle through the gate and outside. Behind him, he saw three colonists running after him, attracted by the noise. They waved their hands and shouted, but Jerrick didn’t stop. At least they could close the gate behind him.
He drove on into the storm. The treads rumbled along the dirt road as the mammoth combine surged toward the grain fields. The lights of the big harvesting machine showed some patches of green that still remained. Not all of their wheat and corn had been burned and trampled by the gruzzlies and the alien hunters. If the outside threat went away, the colonists could replant immediately, try to survive on reduced rations until the settlement recovered.
But before worrying about the colony’s long-term survival, he had to make sure they all made it through this night. He had to intimidate the predators enough to make them leave the people alone.
He widened the beams so he could scan the landscape beyond the fields. As he skirted the burned patches, he counted four dead gruzzlies scattered on the ground, all of them headless. The giant beasts had been driven from the hills, causing devastation to the delicate colony—but now they were killed in some sort of extraterrestrial big game hunt. And the colonists were caught in the crossfire.
Tonight, Jerrick intended to go hunting himself.
The windows in the cab rattled in the wind gusts and a splatter of rain as the big machine crawled across the landscape. He drove toward the pasture where the cattle had been slaughtered. Even after nearly two days, their mangled carcasses still lay untouched. On Earth, there would have been carrion birds and scavengers, but none of the indigenous Hardscrabble species could eat the Terran-based flesh.
As the mammoth combine rolled into the low hills, Jerrick played the broad spotlights across the grassy patch. Suddenly, he spotted an enormous, hulking form caught in the beams. His heart froze—this gruzzly was even more enormous than the one that had attacked him before, more gigantic than the ones the alien predators had killed in the fields. This one was huge, like the mother of her race.
Now, she bent over another carcass—a big gruzzly that lay slaughtered on the ground. In comparison to this huge monster, it looked like just a child.
A cub.
The massive mother gruzzly leaned over the decapitated carcass and rose up on massive hind legs, responding to the bright lights of the oncoming vehicle. She let out a roar so loud that the cab itself rattled. Instinctively, Jerrick glanced at the plasma rifle beside him on the seat, and knew that he could empty the entire charge and not stop this titanic animal.
But he did not intend to fight with a mere plasma rifle.
Jerrick operated the controls, swung down the armored clearing saws, the diamond-hardened blades designed to mow down forests for cropland. The blades hummed and squealed.
He jammed the accelerator, pushed the armored treads into charge mode. The combine rolled forward, and the mother gruzzly reared up, sweeping both paws at the big mechanical opponent, not backing down for an instant. The sawblades whirred and spun. Laser guidance lights flayed across the targeting zone ahead of the combine.
Jerrick gritted his teeth. These monsters had killed several colonists, massacred all ten of the cattle, ruined their chances for survival. It didn’t matter whether or not the alien hunters were worse; both were his enemy, and Jerrick had to make his mark.
The gruzzly faced the oncoming vehicle, swung a huge paw and smacked at the spinning blade. The diamond-hardened teeth caught in its thick hide, cutting deep, but the monster’s blow was strong enough to misalign the saw, bend its extended arms.
Responding quickly, Jerrick swung the second blade down and cut into the monster’s shoulder, but the gruzzly retreated, ripping its flesh free. Its roar of pain rattled the night.
Bringing the engines to full power, Jerrick pushed the combine forward. He swung down the rotating thresher arm, a spinning cylinder designed to harvest crops and throw the plants into spinners and processers. The gruzzly grasped one of the rotating thresher plates, but caught its arm inside the unit. The cylindrical force was strong enough to break the monster’s arm. The trapped gruzzly tried to break free and let out a maddened howl, but she was powerful enough to jam the thresher. Although the engines strained and groaned, they couldn’t keep turning. The mother gruzzly tried to wrench her broken arm free.
“Die, damn you!” Jerrick snarled.
The gruzzly ripped herself loose, snapping the threshing cylinder, then staggered backward. Even in her pain, the injured monster turned toward another sound.
In the darkness and the blowing wind, Jerrick saw movement through the window of the cab. On the fringe of the broad spotlight cones, a rippling, mirrored figure appeared—a lithe and enormous predator. Standing on the killing field, the alien hunter launched a blue plasma bolt from its shoulder-mounted weapon. The blast seared through the blackness, striking the gruzzly in the ribs and leaving a cauterized wound there.
The monster reeled and staggered, but Jerrick felt only indignant anger. He had struck first, gravely wounding the mother gruzzly. He didn’t know if his idea would work, but he knew he had to see this through.
Disengaging the mammoth combine’s treads while the thresher and the clearing sawblades continued to stutter, he popped open the cab, grabbed the plasma rifle, and sprang all the way to the ground, bracing his boots in the grass.
“That’s my kill, you bastard!” he shouted at the alien predator. “Leave it alone!”
He sprinted toward the dying gruzzly, but even with such wounds, she could still cause a lot of damage. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the camouflage flicker and wondered why the alien predator was so afraid to show himself. Jerrick certainly wasn’t.
He ran out into the open, yelling. He fired five direct blasts with the plasma rifle, and—unlike his father—he struck his target each time. One high-energy projectile after another hammered into the gruzzly’s chest. The enormous animal collapsed to the blood-soaked grasses with a loud whuff!
Jerrick approached the monster, showing no caution. One of the gruzzly’s arms had been nearly severed by the sawblade, the other mangled by the thresher cylinder. Her blood looked dark in the glare of lights from the harvesting machine.
Jerrick saw the mirrored camouflage of the alien predator also closing in on the dying beast—but he arrived first. Defiant, he stood over the monster, pointed his plasma rifle at the wounded gruzzly’s throat, and blasted at point blank range.
When the giant creature lay dead on the grasses of what should have been peaceful pastureland for the colony’s cattle, Jerrick held his plasma rifle in both hands, sweeping its barrel across the night, looking for the flickering hint of the alien hunter.
“This is mine,” Jerrick shouted. “My kill—my trophy!” He placed a boot on the great gruzzly’s furry carcass.
He swung the plasma rifle around, doubting it would save him if the alien predator decided to attack. He saw a flicker off to the right, and he stared defiantly. “My kill!”
The camouflage field flickered into traceries of static, then dissipated to reveal a tall and powerful humanoid figure. A smooth, eerily inhuman mask covered his face, and snake-like ropes of hair dangled from his skull down to his shoulders. Even though the eye holes were blank, Jerrick could read deep menace there, a simmering bloodlust. The predator might respond with fury, killing Jerrick for daring to intrude on the kill… but Jerrick didn’t think so. The predator faced him, stared at him.
“My trophy,” he said again in a lower voice.
Risking everything, Jerrick pointed his plasma rifle and fired twice more at the dead gruzzly’s neck, severing its head. He tossed the plasma rifle aside, heard it clatter on the grass, then he bent down to grasp the dead monster’s hideous head, and dragged it away from the rest of the body. He stood with his legs spread on either side of the cauterized neck. “My trophy.” He crossed his arms over his chest as he faced the predator.
The ominous alien stared at him, muscular arms at his sides.
After a long, tense moment, the predator bowed slightly in acknowledgement, then turned away. He activated his mirrored camouflage and stalked off into the night.
Jerrick nearly collapsed with terror and relief. He stood blinking in the whipping wind and intermittent rain, but otherwise the night remained silent—until off in the hills he heard a series of explosions as the team of predators kept hunting gruzzlies…
6
Rattling along, limping with mechanical damage, the mammoth combine rolled back to the settlement inside the stockade. Cradled in its harvesting scoop, the big machine carried the oversized gruzzly head—Jerrick’s trophy. The dead monster stared out with glassy eyes as the combine rolled toward the gates.
Awed colonists swarmed out, both terrified and relieved. When they opened the stockade gate to see that Jerrick had brought back the head of a huge gruzzly, they recoiled. He stopped the vehicle just outside the defensive wall, swung the combine around, and worked the controls to set down the scoop. He deposited the head of the mother gruzzly on the ground.
Leaning out of the cab, he shouted to the colonists, “Leave it there as a warning to those predators! It’s my trophy. Maybe the smell of death will even keep the gruzzlies away.” He let out a bitter laugh. “They don’t want to tangle with us.”
Jerrick regarded Hardscrabble’s greatest indigenous predator—but he had killed it, so maybe he was the greatest predator on this raw, unclaimed world. He saw fire rising in the distant hills and knew that the alien predators would keep hunting gruzzlies as those beasts retreated deeper into the wilderness.
Leaving the oversized head outside as a warning, Jerrick rolled the machine inside the stockade, and the colonists swung the gate shut behind him. He felt vindicated now. Victorious and, oddly, safe. He hoped the alien predators as well as the gruzzlies would give the human settlement a wide berth for now.
The desperate colonists would pick up the pieces, then figure out how to survive. For now, Jerrick wouldn’t worry about what the next season would bring.