Alien Game Read online

  The quadcopter rose, the engines howling.

  “Did I hit it?” said Rogson. “Did I hit it?”

  The tankstrider reared back with a roar of anger and pain, its legs lashing at the ground, its thick tail whipping back and forth, its massive armored beak snapping. I had a brief vision of that beak closing around the quadcopter and crushing it the way Tanner crushed walnut shells. The tankstrider let out another bellow, shuddered, and collapsed to the jungle floor with a thunderous crash.

  The creature remained motionless, and the only sound in the quadcopter was the roar of the rotors.

  “I did hit it!” said Rogson. “It’s down! Is it dead?” He sounded as excited as a child who had hit a baseball for the first time, and with the sudden release of nervous tension, it was all I could do not to burst out laughing. All the same, it was an awesome sight.

  “Congratulations, Finance Director Rogson,” said Charles. “You have successfully claimed a tankstrider as a prize.” The Bodyguard grinned and clapped his employer on the shoulder. “Pilot Hobson! Take us down to ground level. Guides, prepare for harvesting and guard protocol.” Charles leveled a thick finger at me. “Indentured Worker Hammond, stay with me.”

  “What should I do?” I said.

  “Watch for tromosaurs,” said Charles, checking his own rifle one last time, “and if you see one, shoot it until it stops moving.”

  Hobson could have descended straight down to the jungle floor, but instead, he took a leisurely flyby, circling over the down tankstrider. The reason for that became apparent when the Lawyer leaned out the side door, holding an expensive camera. Rogson wanted footage of his conquest, no doubt to lord it over his hated rivals on the board. I suppose it was good advertising for Safari Company. Maybe in a few weeks, the rest of Rogson’s board would show up with money in hand.

  At last Hobson set the quadcopter down on the jungle floor, and we disembarked. Charles, the other guides, and I went first, looking back and forth for signs of predators. The tankstrider was a lot of meat, and that much meat would draw the attention of every scavenger for miles. Still, nothing stirred at the base of the massive trees, though the endless drone of insects filled my ears. The smell was perhaps the most overwhelming part of it all. The quadcopter had smelled of metal and gun oil and too many sweating men in too small of a space, but nothing smelled like the jungles of Arborea. It was a mixture of rotting vegetation and strange spores and odd fragrances from the flowers, overlaid by the ozone-like odor of the dead tankstrider.

  Nothing on New Princeton had smelled like that, nothing at all, and I felt very, very far from home.

  I stayed near Charles, and at his direction four of the guides spread out, watching the jungle for any sign of predators. Two of the guides went to assist Rogson and his minions. Rogson started by posing for photographs, the rocket launcher slung over his shoulder and one foot upon the tankstrider’s side, beaming triumphantly. Meanwhile, a half-dozen tread-mounted drones rolled free of the helicopter. They would claim pieces of the tankstrider’s side as trophies, as well as cutting chunks of meat for steaks. Tankstrider meat was edible, though I thought it tasted a little too bitter. In a few days, once all the meat had either been scarfed down by scavengers or eaten up by the jungle’s insatiable blanket of bacteria, the Safari Company would send out an expedition to claim the exoskeleton and the bones. Tankstrider bone and chitin were tough, and had dozens of commercial applications.

  I considered the dead tankstrider for a while. I know I should have felt sadness at the passing of such a giant creature and all that, or so the EcoMin broadcasts claimed in their lectures about the evils of hunting, but I didn’t. The creature was just too big. And too alien.

  “Pay attention,” snapped Charles. “You can look at the pictures later.”

  I scowled, but he was right. I turned my attention back to the jungle as Rogson posed and the whirring drones went about their work.

  So I saw the rippling distortion first.

  At first, I thought my eyes were tricking me. It was hot out, really hot, and the ripples looked like the mirages over asphalt on a hot day. Except we were in the middle of the jungle, with no asphalt anywhere for miles, and the sun couldn’t punch down this far to the jungle floor. So there were no reason for the air to ripple like that.

  Except, of course, for the stealthing of a tromosaur.

  “Charles,” I said.

  “I see it,” said Charles. “Everyone, be aware we have a tromosaur sighting.” The guides straightened up, Avengers rock-steady in their hands as they looked for targets. “Indentured Worker Hammond, it’s closest to you. Take it down. Single shots, controlled spread.”

  I knew all that, and on the range I would have been irritated, but watching that air-ripple creep towards me was disturbing, and Charles’s orders helped me stay focused.

  I sighted down the weapon’s length, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. I hit on my first shot, and the ripple expanded, rocking back.

  The tromosaur shifted into the visible light spectrum a moment later.

  It looked a lot like a dinosaur covered in mottled gray-and-green scales. I hadn’t known what a dinosaur was until I came to Arborea, but Kayla had pointed me to an article on the topic. Apparently on ancient Earth, long before Man’s diaspora across the Thousand Worlds, there had been a kind of big reptile called a dinosaur. Much later, after they had all gone extinct, humans discovered hyperspace and spread out across the Thousand Worlds, and an expedition found Arborea.

  The tromosaurs ate them all, leaving no survivors.

  After that, a second and better-armed expedition arrived to investigate the fate of the first one, and brought back word of tromosaurs. They looked a great deal like the kind of Terran dinosaur called a “velociraptor,” albeit bigger, with thicker muscles and larger claws, and scales that could blend near-perfectly with their surroundings, and eyes like yellow crystals. The second expedition named the creatures “tromosaurs”, which was an ancient Earth term for “nightmare lizard” or something like that.

  Needless to say, the tromosaurs made the fangwolves back home look like newborn kittens.

  The tromosaur staggered from the impact of my shot, its camouflage vanishing, and I felt the creature’s attention turn towards me. It hurtled towards me, and I squeezed off three more rounds. The first two hit its chest, and the third went right through its skull. The tromosaur went into a weird dance, its thick tail jerking like a whip, and then collapsed to the jungle floor.

  “Good shot,” said Charles. “Let the official log reflect that Indentured Worker Hammond claimed one tromosaur kill.” Had Hoskins been obliged to pay me, my next paycheck would have carried a nice bonus.

  “Boss,” said another of the guides, a hard-faced man named Warner. “Three more coming in, thirty degrees from the north.”

  “Two coming from the south,” said another guide.

  “The smell of the tankstrider’s blood is drawing them,” said Charles. “Warner, shoot the nearest one. See if that scares them off.” Only two things repulsed tromosaurs. They hated sounds on certain sonic frequencies inaudible to humans, and the biologists thought it was because those frequencies mimicked the sounds tromosaurs made to warn each other of the danger. The other thing was the scent of their own blood, which in sufficient quantities would drive off a tromosaur.

  Sometimes.

  Warner pivoted, raised his Avenger, and started shooting. He put four quick shots into the nearest tromosaur, two of them through its chest and the other two through its heart. The tromosaur rippled as it became visible once more, and the creature staggered and fell into a motionless heap, its tail coiling up in death. For the first time, I felt a little flicker of fear. The tankstriders were dangerous and alien but didn’t care about humans… but the tromosaurs were both alien and dangerous and they really liked to eat human flesh.

  And the remaining tromosaurs did not stop advancing towards us.

  “They’re not backing off,” said Warne
r, retreating a few steps.

  “I thought the smell of their own blood always scared them off,” I said, trying to watch as many of the rippling distortions as I could. The fear was getting worse. Trying to watch a stealthed tromosaur gave me a headache, and I had the overwhelming feeling that one of the creatures was creeping up behind me.

  “The smell of the dead tankstrider must be overwhelming the other scents,” said Charles. “Finance Director Rogson! Defensive position.”

  “But…” started Rogson, lowering his rocket launcher as the two guides nearest to him turned their attention from the harvesting drones, their Avengers pointed out.

  “Defensive position!” barked Charles in a voice that made Rogson jump and scurry for the quadcopter, the Bodyguard and the Lawyer trailing after him. “Pilot Hobson, prepare the quadcopter’s weapons. Guides, activate your sonic alarms.”

  The sonic alarm was a black bracelet wound around my left wrist. I tapped it, and a blue LED flicked on, the bracelet vibrating. I couldn’t hear the sound it made, but the tromosaurs did, and the rippling blurs stopped as the other guides activated their alarms. My fear eased a little. If the sound frightened off the tromosaurs…

  The bracelet on Warner’s wrist gave off a high-pitched screech.

  The tromosaurs went motionless, shifting back into the visible spectrum, and every one of them looked at Warner with their bright, glittering eyes. The sonic alarm was supposed to ward off the tromosaurs, but Warner’s was malfunctioning. The sound was exactly like the hunting cry of a tromosaur. In fact, unless I missed my guess, it was the cry they used when summoning others to the hunt.

  The sound was coming with ear-splitting volume from Warner’s wrist.

  “Turn it off!” shouted Charles. “Turn it off!”

  “I’m trying!” said Warner, clawing at his wrist. He lowered the Avenger, trying to get the bracelet off. “It’s not–”

  The remaining tromosaurs charged at him. I opened fire, and I got two of them, but three tromosaurs plowed into Warner, knocking him to the ground. At once they started biting and ripping at him, hammering the massive claws on their feet into his torso. He wore body armor like we all did, but it couldn’t hold up for long against that kind of abuse.

  I sprinted towards Warner to give myself a better shot, stopped and fired, and managed to get the three tromosaurs off him. Warner scrambled backward, panting, and I saw blood on his armor from where the tromosaurs’ fangs and claws had gotten through. A dozen more of the creatures stalked towards us, eyes fixed upon Warner.

  “Hammond!” said Charles. “Break it! Break the alarm!”

  “Sorry about this, man,” I said. I raised my boot and brought it down hard onto Warner’s left arm. Warner screamed in pain, and I heard the crack as I broke his wrist, but the sonic alarm shattered too. The high-pitched screech abruptly vanished.

  The remaining tromosaurs froze again. Likely they could hear the other bracelets once more. Charles and the other guides open up, and this time, the tromosaurs had had enough. They turned and fled back into the jungle, vanishing into the trees.

  The last tromosaur fled, and I lowered my Avenger, breathing hard, my ears still ringing.

  “You actually impressed Charles,” said Tanner two days later as I had dinner with him and Kayla. “That never happens.”

  “I read the report,” said Kayla. “If you hadn’t acted so quickly, Warner would be dead.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I just wish I hadn’t smashed Warner’s bracelet. I wanted to have a closer look at it.”

  Kayla shrugged. “It must have malfunctioned.”

  “Or maybe it was sabotaged,” said Tanner. “A sonic alarm shouldn’t even be able to make a noise like that. Makes you wonder what else might have been sabotaged. We’ve had so many inexplicable problems with equipment failures and malfunctions.”

  “You know what EcoMin is like, Winston,” said Kayla. “They’ll do whatever they think they can get away with.” There was sudden heat in her voice. I wondered what the ministry had done to her family, but there was no way I was dumb enough to ask her in front of Tanner. “If a faction in there wants Safari Company to fail, they’ll do whatever they can to make it fail.”

  “Well, then,” said Tanner, “we’ll just have to make sure they fail.”

  We did. The next year went on more or less as I’ve described. I became sort of the jack-of-all-trades of Outpost Town, fixing robot and mechanical failures and going out on expeditions with Charles and the other guides. Charles decided that he approved of me, and every few weeks would bring me on a hunting expedition when he was short-handed. During that year, I found a dozen different major equipment malfunctions that would have killed people, but thankfully Tanner and I managed to repair them first. We did have losses, but mostly when people were stupid and wandered outside the sonic fence and the tromosaurs got them.

  It seemed obvious that an EcoMin faction did indeed want to shut down the Safari Company by any means possible.

  It was a logical conclusion… and it was also completely wrong.

  We were about to find that out the hard way.

  Chapter 3: Spit and Polish

  I spent the day repairing some harvest drones, and went to the Tanners’ apartment for dinner, where I heard the news.

  “Mr. Royale’s coming here?” I said.

  “In person,” said Kayla, setting out a dish of tromosaur fajitas. Given how many tromosaurs we had to shoot, it was a good thing they were edible, though I always thought they tasted a little off. Fortunately, enough spice covered that up.

  “And,” said Tanner, scowling at the phone in his hand, “a lot of other important people. Seems like the board has decided to go all out for the grand opening. Just what we need.”

  The last six weeks had been busy, with nonstop work. The board of Safari Company had decided that Outpost Town was ready for a grand opening. Clients had visited Arborea on a regular basis for the last year, but everything was still in trial mode—a beta test, I think they called it in software development. Despite endless glitches and sabotage attempts, we hadn’t lost any important clients, and the board was ready to open Outpost Town for business.

  And in another six months, my indenture would be up, and I could do whatever I wanted.

  It was an odd thought… but I think I wanted to stay on with Safari Company. I liked the work, both the mechanical stuff and the expeditions, and if I hadn’t been indentured, I would have made a lot of money from expeditions. Hoskins had invited me to stay on after my indenture was up, and so had Charles.

  And it wasn’t boring. Wilson City had been boring.

  I wondered what Mr. Royale would think, and I was looking forward to asking him.

  “It’ll be good publicity for the Company,” said Kayla, ever the optimist.

  “If it was just Ian, I wouldn’t mind,” said Tanner. “But the entire board is coming to inspect Outpost Town for the grand opening. Worse, a small army of EcoMin officials are coming for the festivities.”

  “Ugh,” I said. I hadn’t thought about Theresa in months, but I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of meeting her mother again.

  “Including, if the rumors are true,” said Tanner, “Minister Paul Valier himself.”

  Kayla almost dropped her spoon. “What?”

  “Evidently, the reason Safari Company hasn’t been shut down is that Valier himself thinks it’s a good idea,” said Tanner. “More likely, he just needs the money. The Acadarchy isn’t swimming in cash at the moment… Kayla?”

  I blinked. Kayla was almost always collected and calm and even cheerful, but now her lips were pressed tight together, spots of color flaring in her cheeks, tears starting in her eyes. But it wasn’t because she was sad. She looked like she was about to start crying in sheer rage.

  “Sorry,” said Kayla, waving her hand in an indistinct gesture. “Sorry. That just… upset me more than I thought. That scoundrel wrecked my father’s farm, and to hear that he’s coming to Arborea… s
orry.”

  “Hey,” said Tanner, scooting his chair towards her and putting his arm around her shoulders. She leaned against him, still shivering a little.

  “Um,” I said. “Right. Uh… I should go. Thanks for dinner.”

  “There’s no reason you shouldn’t know,” said Kayla. “Did you ever wonder why Winston and I don’t have children?”

  I had.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “My dad was a farmer on New Princeton,” said Kayla. “When Paul Valier was rising up through the Ministry ranks, he was in charge of pesticide testing. Well, he had a spiffy new pesticide, and he insisted that my father replace his old pesticides and use this stuff instead. Promised it would increase crop yields by two hundred percent, but like everything else the Ministry says, it’s a lie. The stuff killed all our crops and caused my mother to die of cancer. Valier blamed my father for it, said he mishandled the pesticide and sued him into bankruptcy. There was one other little side effect I found out later… I can’t carry a baby past three or four months without miscarrying. None of my sisters can.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “We lost everything,” said Kayla, “and now that horrible man is the Ecology Minister.”

  We sat in silence for a moment.

  “If it makes you feel better,” I said, “I got arrested for spray-painting graffiti onto Valier’s official portrait on the ministry’s campus.”

  Kayla let out a hiccupping little laugh. “I knew there was a reason I liked you, Sam.”

  Still, as much as Kayla detested the ministry in general, and Valier in particular, I wondered if that was a good sign. Valier wouldn’t be making the trip out to Arborea if he didn’t approve of the Safari Company, and as long as Valier approved of the Safari Company, a thousand minor lapses wouldn’t be enough to shut us down. All we had to do was to keep Valier from getting eaten by a tromosaur, and Safari Company could have its grand opening and start pulling in more clients. Even better, once the Company was a done deal, maybe the faction in the Ministry that opposed us would move on to easier targets.