The Hard Way

I heard the echoing ‘loo-loo-loo-loo’ of grief before I cleared the rock field.

Peero did have a large family, and it sounded like every damn one of them had found his remains at the bottom of the cliff.

Ullarians don’t ‘do’ revenge – unless they conclude a death as unjustified. My thinking was Peero’s family would assume the worst and come a’hunting. How? Because Peero had arranged for food for his family – an honourable job – and the food escaped. It wasn’t his fault the intended meal kicked up a fuss, and to kill someone in the pursuit of a noble cause… Yeah, honour required the family to complete his mission.

Bad, bad news for me.

There is a saying that there’s a silver lining to every cloud, but I couldn’t think of one at this particular juncture of time.

The ‘loo-loo-ing’ rose and fell in rhythm, echoed off the cliff face. Were there as many Ullarians as the sound indicated? If so, trouble had reached my neck and was rising.

I kept going. The counter-grav occasionally hiccuped as it propelled me across the landscape. The race to my ship was one I had to win, or end up… digested.

The c-g unit skimmed over rocks, and I concentrated on the direction of the ship. A vague ache throbbed through my legs every time my boots hit or brushed an obstacle. Without the unit, I was dinner.

While in motion, I did a medi-scan and groaned. Busted ribs, both ankles, fractured lower spine, deep contusions, a few cuts… the manual for the Marine counter-grav doesn’t recommend falling off a cliff, especially when you exceed the weight limit. I figured, you know, they underestimated the performance, in case of emergencies.

I guess I was wrong. Peero’s falling on me after I’d shot him definitely overstrained the counter-grav.

My foot hit a rock and the C-G hesitated, hummed then stopped. I fell face forward onto the pebbled ground, cursed before the damn thing righted itself and left me hanging, head down from the waist. Just what I needed: a headache to go with the one I already had.

When I got back to United World Council, I was going to…

The sounds of grieving cut off mid-peak and I felt my blood go cold. The family completed the lamenting of their lost patriarch. Now, they’d come after me. I pushed upright and urged the machine to move forward. It hummed in agreement like a mentally-challenged druggie and complied.

I checked the navigational unit strapped to my wrist. At this speed, it would be dawn before I reached safety.

“Yeah, think positive.” I muttered and thought of the horde behind me.

Ullarians produced multiple offspring in one birthing, sometimes up to a dozen of the little wrigglers. Given that a ‘small’ Ullarian family consisted of thirty or so kids, Peero’s family could be as large as hundred or more.

How do you come up with a hundred-plus names? I wondered as the unit surged then resumed its hiccuping.

To stop and repair it meant death, but I might have to make the attempt anyway.

Out on the crackly grasslands, the unit picked up speed; no major obstacles to think about, I suppose. I would have turned to scan the terrain for hostiles, but anything that stopped my forward momentum gave metres to the pursuers. Worse, the Ullarians could run faster on four limbs than I could on two – two working legs, that is – so I had to get to the sand dunes as fast as possible and hope the shifting sands slowed them down.

Over the humming and occasional buzz of the counter-grav I heard the Ullarians:

“Say-gan. Say-gan. Say-gan.” The sound was so soft and whispery, it creeped me out. I’m not usually afraid of the night, but this rhythmic hush of words out here in the dark wilderness…

I knew Ullarians used the technique to terrify prey, hell, it worked just fine on me; the constant sound coming ever closer, ever louder, until you knew they were right behind you and panicked.

My jaw clenched to keep the fear at bay, but my imagination wove a scary scenario without effort on my part. With no visible landmarks to show me how close freedom was, my mind was filling with wrong directions, and worse: A hundred Ullarians, with their razor sharp teeth, multi-fronded green skin and multi-digited limbs, all reaching out to rend me into raw, bloody food.

The whispers grew louder, a monotone of hypnotic sound filled with murderous intent.

The hair on the back of my neck stayed down, so they weren’t close yet, but I activated a five hundred metre proximity alert on the navigational unit. It would at least give me time to kill myself before those ani… Ullarians got their hands on me.

As I moved forward, I checked the ammunition in my gun. I had enough to take on maybe a quarter of them, not enough to escape. Two choices then: shoot myself, or lift the filter mask and take a deep breath of the Ullarian-poisoned atmosphere.

“Bugger.” I re-holstered the weapon.

When I get out of here, I’m buying a RAS.

A Remote Activation System allowed a pilot to bring a ship to them, and not worry about running flat out to it. Too late for me now.

Hell, with the bounty in my hot little hands, I wouldn’t have to work again. I could retire to a beach somewhere.

I huffed out a small breath. Who was I kidding; I loved bounty hunting. If I had my way, I’d never retire until someone retired me. Which brought my thoughts to Rahman.

Rahman Chezerain: handsome, manipulative, ruthless, generous, arrogant, clever, brave, foolish, funny, violent, greedy and my competition.

Once upon a time, we’d been partners in business and lovers, but when you add two dominant personalities together, all you get is tears in the end because compromise is so difficult. I can’t say how many times we fought, how many times we made up or how many times he made me cry – with frustration, with betrayal, or anguish.

The relationship ended with me telling him with perfect rage-filled sincerity: “One day, I’m going to kill you.” He’d stolen a bounty from me.

He’d smiled with genuine amusement and bowed. “One day, I might just let you.”

In that one moment, I hated him with a pure passion and I watched him walk away. In retrospect, I should have been the one to walk away. By letting him do it, I left the door open for his return. I should have killed him right then.

But… I couldn’t help but wish he was nearby, but he, like the other hunters, searched on the water worlds for Peero, since Ullarians preferred humid, liquid worlds and not the dry desert planets like Helios; and that made Helios perfect as a hideout for the convicted World Killer.

There would be no last minute rescue for me, unless I did the rescuing.

Desiccated grass snicked against the toes of my boots; not a good sign. The counter-grav unit was failing, lowering, but I had to keep forward momentum going until the last moment. After that, I was down to crawling.

Out here, on the grasslands, I couldn’t hide. Ullarians were excellent hunters and they’d be on me like white on rice in a jiffy if I stopped moving.

Their cries increased in volume but the proximity alert remained silent. It could be there were more than I first thought. How ‘big’ was Peero’s idea of a big family anyway? Or was it a smaller group and they were getting closer.

Touch down, or should I say crash down, happened a mere two hundred metres from the edge of the grassland, some three hours later.

My boots finally ran into something they couldn’t bounce out of the way and over I went. It’s like tripping unexpectedly. You have no time to brace yourself and… hell, I did trip! Splat, roll, thump, clamp the jaw to stop screaming in agony.

I lay there; just… lay there and wondered when the painkiller had worn off. Oh, and how I was going to escape the ravening horde. As a side benefit, the proximity alert finally went off.

“Oh… joy.” I said to the murky sky.

If the c-g had lasted a little bit longer, the sand would have slowed them down, damn it!

I envisioned the swarm of Ullarians racing towards me. I cursed myself for this hunt when I knew I’d need help. And I cursed the malfunctioning equipment.

My feet and legs hung just above the ground by maybe a centimetre, if not less, bobbed as the c-g kept humming and buzzing and jerking and spasming. I rested on my shoulders and the back of my head. The unit’s only use now was to keep my legs and back in traction, but it was useless as a weapon.

I reached down then paused. I’d sworn I’d crawl and that’s what I’d do. While my legs and feet were off the ground, there was no weight on the broken bones. But after another big, fat dose of painkillers I’d also move faster. Probably ruin my elbows.

As a way to delay my fate, it sucked, I thought as I went through my weapons inventory, but I had nothing else to…

I patted my sleeve. Sand skis.

In the race to escape I’d forgotten, thought of inconsequential things when my mind should have been on the job. All I’d thought about was getting to the sand, not how to cross the ocean of desert. Answer: the same way as when you started the hunt.

I sat up, tugged the skis from my pocket and pressed the button. The lights on the ankle cuffs glowed green and the slippery length extruded out of the interior of the ski, clicked in place. Now I had a barrier against the rocks in my path. Better yet, the remaining energy of the counter-grav would give me that extra lift. All I needed was momentum.

The cuff eased over my boots, automatically clamped around my ankle and I had that perfect ‘Oh, shit’ moment just before raw, energy-sapping, mind-blanking, nerve-searing, pain shot up my legs.

My fingers fumbled with the med kit, dropped the first syringe and juggled the second. I clamped my hand around, stabbed the needle into my thigh and pressed the button. Cold relief surged through my veins, leaving the bone deep throb of serious injury.

I picked up the syringe I dropped and jammed that into my other thigh.

Yeah, it would make me groggy, and yeah, I shouldn’t operate large machinery, and yes, of course, I had to be careful of overdosing, but I needed it.

The grass behind me rustled and adrenalin spiked through my system like lightning

.

I pushed up off the ground as hard as I could and wobbled, wavered, swung my arms to maintain my balance as the skis shot forward.

Cool. I was moving!

A cry went up behind me and I turned my head. In the darkness, thousands of green eyes stared at me. Okay, not thousands, but it felt like it.

Who knew the Ullarians had night vision? Certainly not the UWC and they were going to be pissed about that… if I lived to tell them that is.

Momentum is a wonderful thing: you just keep going in the same direction at the same speed until something bumps into you to change the status quo.

With the adrenalin rush when I pushed off, I was smokin’!

I kept an eye on my four-footed pursuers as I left the grasslands and into the desert. The luminescence in the sand created a temporary glowing greeny-blue wake behind me, but I moved faster than the Ullarians.

They kept calling my name, but the breeze rushing by my ears muted the eerie sound.

The giggle came as a complete surprise to me as I skied the dunes. And the giggle turned into maniacal laughter as I realised that I really had a chance. Then again, it could be the drugs.

Oh, the sheer relief!

The proximity alert started up again and I checked the signal. This time, it was ahead of me and not behind. It could only mean the ship. Mine or Peero’s.

I got the feeling I’d forgotten something; something important.

The icon raced towards me faster than expected, the alert’s beep increased in frequency until it was one long bee-eep.

“Eek!”

My arms went up to protect my head and face and I bounced off the fuselage of Peero’s ship with a solid thunk.

“That wasn’t so bad.” And I bobbed gently backwards, giggled. I remembered the ‘something important’: how to stop. I couldn’t turn and dig into the sand because the counter-grav held me just above the ground. I couldn’t turn the unit off to do the turn, because it was the only thing holding my fractured lower spine together.

I leaned down and took the skis off, reduced them and tucked them back into my pocket, patted them for a job well done. Then I used the fuselage to work my way around and to push off towards my own, beloved ship, the Dragon’s Egg.

“Hallelujah!” I almost wept as I shut the hatch and initiated the security protocols. Anyone lays a finger on the ship and… zap!

The ship is small, a shuttle. The mothership, Blue Dragon, hung in the heavens awaiting the return of her child.

She would have to wait a little longer, I had a medical emergency to attend to.

While the parasite shuttle had a reasonable emergency care suite, I needed the full system to repair what was broken.

For now, I could set course for the Blue Dragon and the autopilot would do the rest while I fixed myself.

I stripped off my rank clothes, careful not to disengage the counter-grav around my waist.

It finally gave up as I lay down on the flat bed and pulled the darkened cover me. The pain was enormous as I punched the buttons to initiate the med unit, and eased when the system took over. I sank into a restorative sleep.

* * *

When I awoke, the medical unit pronounced me half done. The nanos needed more time to complete repairs, but it was safe for me to emerge from my cocoon.

I pulled back the cover and slowly sat up, grimaced at the stench of sweat and fear I’d locked in with me. Cleaning up would have to wait until I was back aboard the Blue Dragon. And speaking of which.

I made my way to the pilot’s station, dragged on a robe as I walked and sank into the body-conforming seat. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds of Grav-Ball and anyone who says that’s not a contact sport, has never played.

At first, my eyes didn’t believe what I was seeing. I lifted a hand and rubbed my face. Nope. The view didn’t change.

I should be in the Blue Dragon, surrounded by grey hull, not staring at the stars.

My fingers danced over the console.

“You’re exactly where I want you to be, sweetheart.” A voice I knew oh, so well, said through the speakers.

“Rahman.” I ground out. Why was I not surprised.

“The one and only.” The smug bastard replied in that smooth dark chocolate tone.

“What do you want?” Most of the systems were online, except for one: the navcom. Without navigation, I couldn’t go anywhere, and since I was staring at the starfield, it also meant that Rahman had hacked into the system and brought me here.

“You mean apart from longer prison terms for parole violators and universal peace?”

“Ha. Ha. Apart from that.”

“The bounty, of course. And you, darlin’ are going to hand it over to me or die a long lingering death and I’ll take it anyway.”

© Jaye Patrick 2008