Exo-Hunter Read online

  “Just do it,” I say, and I switch off my comms.

  My body has mostly healed from my run-in with the puddle jumper, but the previously fading injuries are starting to act up. The constant charge is taking a toll, but when we pass through the tall grass again, I glance to the left.

  And I see Beatrice.

  Just a part of it.

  But it’s massive, and enough to push me past the pain. We don’t just need to get off the ground to escape this thing.

  We need to leave the atmosphere.

  “Dark Horse,” Chuy says, as we pass through the field.

  “I know…”

  I push myself harder than I have in years. We reach Lil Bitch’n just as something massive hits the ground behind us. A shockwave sprawls us forward, into Drago’s open arms. He tosses us, one at a time, deeper inside the cargo bay and shouts, “They are in. Go!”

  Looking out the back, I see a tree trunk, but it’s not vertical. It’s lying on its side, surrounded by a cloud of dust and pollen.

  It was knocked over…

  “Hold on!” Morton shouts in all our ears, making us wince, but the urgency in his voice is clear.

  Beatrice is here, and we need to not be—now.

  I haul Carter onto one of the two benches lining the bay’s sides. Strap her in. Before I can buckle myself, Lil Bitch’n lifts off and the front-end tips up. I clutch my buckle as my feet fall out from under me. Dangling from the bench, I look down as we launch up through the trees.

  Below us, two trees explode away from each other, as something massive pushes between them.

  Beatrice’s head.

  It looks like a snapping turtle the size of Grand Central Station—and that’s just its head. The creature’s four red eyes are focused on us.

  On me.

  Beatrice turns its head up. Chasing us. Eyes narrowing, it roars.

  The blast hits like a tidal wave, throwing off Lil Bitch’n’s trajectory—and knocking me loose. As the lander rises up out of the jungle, slapping through leaves and shattering small branches, I topple down toward Beatrice’s battleship-sized mouth.

  7

  I don’t know how Beatrice can see me or why she even cares to consume me. To her, I’m a crumb.

  Then again, she—I’m assuming Beatrice is a she—is an alien creature. For all I know, her flavor receptors might be magnified a thousand-fold, making a crumb super tasty and satisfying. Or, and this feels like a stretch, she’s intelligent enough to recognize that the little creatures who arrived from the sky are a threat.

  Beatrice’s size wouldn’t protect her from a planet-wide predator cleanse. In fact, it might just make her an easier target. The Union would carve her up to sell in exotic markets across the galaxy.

  My body twists as I fall.

  I extend my arms, arresting the tumble so I’m facing down. There are no teeth in Beatrice’s beaked mouth. She either swallows her prey whole, or she bites off big chunks. I don’t see how she’d even register my tiny body bouncing off her tongue and rolling down her throat.

  Maybe she wouldn’t.

  One can hope, because this is one scrumptious human morsel she won’t be tasting.

  I reach down and tap the Slew Drive, spinning as I fall, right into the endless white, which stops any and all motion. I’m ‘standing’ in that I feel upright, but I can move in any direction I put my mind to.

  But I can’t move.

  The Slew Drive is good at taking my thoughts or desires and using them to help me move in the right direction for the correct distance. But I normally have some idea of where I’m going—like to the surface of a planet. That’s a pretty big target. Ideally, I’d rotate back to the Lil’ Bitch’n, but I’m not sure where they are. And the big Bitch’n is somewhere in orbit. Rotating into open space would be a really bad idea.

  Seeing no other option, I shift my body just an inch and rotate back into the third dimension, down to the planet’s surface.

  Or rather, five feet above it.

  I fall, touch down, and then slip through the surface. Water consumes me. I sink ten feet before reaching the bottom. I try to swim up. Try to push off the muddy bottom. But my weapon and magazines have turned me into an anchor.

  Lungs burning, I shed my gear, loath to leave my custom weapon and homemade rounds behind, but none of it is worth dying for. A hundred pounds lighter, I push off the bottom and…nothing. The mud has a firm grasp on my boots.

  You’ve got to be kidding me.

  I crouch, untie my boots, slip out of them, and this time, just swim for the surface. I break the water, gasping for air, spitting out liquid that tastes like dead fish. Treading water, I spin around until I spot Beatrice. She’s a few miles away, on the far side of the large lake into which I’ve fallen.

  Lil’ Bitch’n is high in the sky above her, twisting away as the rear hatch closes. They’d have seen me rotate away. They know I’m alive. But they don’t know where yet.

  I lift a hand to toggle my comms and I immediately start sinking. In fact, even my perfect figure-eight water treading is barely keeping me above the surface. My clothing is saturated…but it’s more than that.

  Water on this planet is less dense.

  I twist around. The shore is just thirty feet away. An easy swim on Earth. But I’m not sure I can make it.

  Mouth open wide, I suck in a lung full of oxygen-saturated air and slip beneath the surface. As I sink, I shed clothing like I’m about to get horizontal with Kim Cattrall in a kimono. When I reach the bottom again, I’m wearing my boxer-briefs and belt, upon which is a knife, my sidearm and the Slew Drive.

  Free of the extra weight, I cut through the water, reaching the surface with just a little more effort than it would take on Earth. Then I kick for the shoreline repeating, “Please don’t bite my dick off. Please don’t bite my dick off.”

  Unlike most people, who have a fear of swimming in the ocean because of Jaws, I have a fear of swimming in lakes because my cousin’s best friend’s yuppie brother went skinny dipping in a lake and had his penis chomped by a snapping turtle. I’m wearing underwear, but if Beatrice has had babies any time recently, this lake could be teeming with penis-pilfering reptiles…though I guess they’d probably be large enough to eat me whole. Better to be eaten whole than to live without a dick.

  I’m out of breath when I reach the shore, but I catch it quickly. The oxygenated air gets me back into fighting shape in just a few seconds, which is good, because Beatrice is looking at me.

  “How can you even see me?” I ask the towering creature, who stands a good hundred feet taller than the five-hundred-foot-tall trees. That’s bigger than Godzilla, I think, and I scramble to my feet.

  The ground shakes when the monster steps toward me, knocking trees to the side. When she roars, I can see the soundwaves approaching as they ripple the lake’s water. When it strikes, my body vibrates, and the leaves on the trees above me flutter.

  “Well, this is hellacious,” I say, and I toggle my comms. “Need a pickup.”

  “Would if we could,” Chuy says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means Morton is a chickenshit, and he’s flying us back to Bitch’n. Drago and I will come back for you, but—”

  “That’s going to take too long,” I say, backing away toward the forest. “I think Beatrice wants to make me her boy toy. Morton…”

  “Uh, yes…?” he says.

  “I want you to ask yourself a question, okay?”

  “S-sure?”

  “Was that a question, or an affirmative? You know what, doesn’t matter. I want you to ask yourself who you’re more afraid of, the city-sized alien, or me?” I do my best Jack Nicholson level crazy at the end of the sentence, oozing menace.

  He answers without missing a beat. “The alien. I’m sorry, boss. I am. But I…I salvage non-living junk. I don’t have the nerve for this.”

  He’s not wrong. That he picked us up the first time means he overcame his fear long
enough to do his job. I’m the one who fell out. This is on me. “Do me a favor? Once you reach the Bitch’n, get Carter out and let Drago fly back down?”

  “Yes, sir,” he says, relieved that I’m not chewing him out or threatening his life.

  “Chuy?”

  “Yup?”

  “If I don’t make it—”

  I hear a click. She’s disconnected. Our possible eventual demise has always been a sore subject for her. She’s already lost a lot. We all have. Right now, we’re all the other has. I don’t blame her for not wanting to talk about it. But if Beatrice turns me into a puddle of dung, she’s going to regret not saying goodbye.

  Guess I better start running.

  As Beatrice steps into the lake, I sprint into the woods.

  Fifty feet in—the distance it takes to pass one damn tree—a gushing roar rises up behind me. A cool breeze tickles my exposed back. I don’t have to look to know what’s happening. An understanding of physics is enough. Beatrice’s big ass foot displaced a shit-ton of water, kicking up a freshwater tsunami that is now crashing through the forest.

  I run around the large tree, to keep myself from getting struck by the wave’s full force. The tree shudders from the impact. Water explodes around both sides, and then surges past. When the rushing water is more like a river than a wall of kinetic energy, I leap in and let it whisk me away faster than I could run. By the time Beatrice clears the lake, she’ll have emptied a good portion of it. If I can keep myself from getting knocked unconscious by a tree…or a fern…I should keep pace with the behemoth.

  But that’s easier said than done.

  I hit every tree, root, and stem I pass. It’s like I’m stuck in a prehistoric pinball machine. I can’t control where I’m going or how fast I’m moving. The best I can do is try to spot an obstacle, twist toward it, and absorb the blow with my legs. My knees are already sore.

  A roar tears through the air, snapping my hands to my ears.

  Beatrice is close!

  Trees behind me crack and fall.

  The rushing water is a trickle to the giant. The trees are like saplings. She charges after me unabated and with such fury that I’m certain she is the first intelligent life we’ve encountered. I’m going to keep that to myself if I survive, and I’m going to do my best to convince the others this planet is uninhabitable. Beatrice isn’t wrong about wanting to kill human invaders, but, “You’re trying to kill the wrong person!” I shout.

  “Dark Horse? Are you still alive?” It’s Porter.

  “For the moment,” I say. “Is Lil’ Bitch’n back yet?”

  “Uh, no. Bitch’n is a thousand miles out, but—”

  “What?!”

  “But we’re in a fast orbit. We’ll have Lil’ Bitch’n docked and back to you in…fifteen minutes, give or take.”

  “Give or take what?”

  “Ten minutes. But that’s all give. There isn’t really any take time. Not sure why I said that.”

  “Porter…”

  “Yes?”

  “What did you want?”

  “Oh! Right. Sorry. The Slew Drive. I’ve got a firmware upgrade for you.”

  “Will I be able to rotate out of here?”

  “Absolutely. The recharge time was really just a guideline, to prevent the chance of a nuclear meltdown.”

  “Nuclear…meltdown?” Distracted, I thump off a rock and barely notice.

  “Well, yes, what did you think powered a Slew Drive?”

  I’ve got a thousand snarky comments cocked, locked, and ready to rock, but I hold back my verbal assault. I can worry about irradiating my balls another time. “Send it!”

  “Well, I would, but the unit appears to be…submerged. Are you in water?”

  “Yes, I’m in water, damnit!”

  “Well…can you get out of the water?”

  I reach out for a passing fern and catch hold. The stem bends under my waterlogged weight, but it redirects my course to an unaffected skyscraper of a tree. I slap against the tree’s trunk, cling to the rough bark, and freehand scale it a few feet above the water.

  But I won’t be able to stay long. A fresh wave of water rushes toward me, and behind it, Beatrice’s foot!

  “Send it!’ I shout. “Send it, now!”

  “Okay…annnnnd…done!”

  I reach for the Slew Drive. “How many rotations can I get out of this?”

  “As many as you want, until you explode.”

  “How many is that?!”

  “No one has ever tried rapid fire rotations before. They’re not really called for when moving between planets. This is the kind of situation I warned you about when you asked for—”

  “Blah, blah, blah, words. Turn on every exterior light the Bitch’n has. Light it up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Christmas?”

  “Just make it bright!” I shout, as a shadow falls over me. I look up at the underside of Beatrice’s baseball field-sized foot, trigger the Slew Drive, and rotate five hundred feet straight up.

  It’s unnecessary. Probably stupid. But I rotate back out of the fourth dimension right in front of Beatrice’s face. I linger just long enough for gravity to take hold again, and for me to flip Beatrice the bird. Then I rotate again, and again, bouncing around in the atmosphere, eyes on the sky above. With each rotation, I rise higher. The air gets thin and cold. Goosebumps pepper my skin.

  And then I see it.

  High above. A glint of light.

  I focus on it, imagine where I want to be, and then rotate off world.

  I appear in the Bitch’n’s landing bay, just as the Lil Bitch’n’s hatch lowers to the floor, revealing Chuy, Drago, Carter, and Morton. They’re all rushing and worried until I say, “What took you so long?”

  Nailed it, I think.

  They look up in surprise, which shifts to relief, and then to hysterical laughter.

  “Should we call you Captain Chip? Or Captain Dale?” Chuy asks, giving me a pat on the shoulder. I look down at myself, glistening with moisture, dressed in underwear and a belt. It is funny. But I don’t get a chance to laugh, because Carter catches Drago off guard, snatching one of his shotguns and leveling it at Morton, who squeals and raises his hands.

  8

  “What…are you doing?” I ask Carter, though I can see perfectly well that she’s about to put a handful of tungsten buckshot into Morton’s head.

  “I don’t know what happened to you,” she says to me, “but the people I went to Antarctica with would never submit to Nazis!”

  “Technically,” Morton says, “the Nazi party ceased to exist more than a thousand years ago. The Union is—”

  Carter’s finger slips around the trigger.

  “Julie…”

  She gives me a dirty look.

  “Carter?”

  The look persists. “I’m not calling you Dr. Carter, and if you have a problem with that, we can go back to ‘Bugs.’”

  She reveals nothing.

  “Look,” I say, feeling silly for negotiating in my underwear, keenly aware that I’m starting to get perky nipples from the chill in the air, “Morton isn’t a Nazi, or a white supremacist. If your plan is to hijack the Bitch’n, rename it the USSS United States, and use it to fulfill some kind of personal future mission, I beat you to it by five years.”

  I step between the raised gun and Morton. “You’re on my ship. And this man, who just risked his life to save yours, is part of my team.”

  “Aww,” Morton says, sounding genuinely touched. “I’m genuinely touched.”

  “I get it,” I say, looking down the shotgun’s barrel. “I reacted the same way when I found myself in an Antarctic Nazipocalyptic future hellscape.”

  “He did.” Morton leans around me to address Carter. “But he was scarier. Porter pissed himself.”

  “Thank you,” I say, pushing him back behind me. I don’t think he understands what I do—that despite her super-model looks, Carter is a killer…and always has been.

 
; “I don’t trust you,” Carter says.

  “You don’t have a choice.” I motion to the ship around us. “You’re on a spaceship…in space. You might be smart, but you’ll never figure out the controls.”

  “So many buttons,” Drago says.

  “And…” I motion to Drago and Chuy, “the second you pull that trigger, you’re dead.”

  Put the gun down, I think. Please don’t be a stupid smart person.

  The squint in her eyes goes steady. I’ve seen the look before, in stalking lions before they pounce, and in my ex-girlfriend Pamela Scholl, when she found out I was seeing her best friend, Alison Emann. No idea why I still think of them both as first and last name people… In the end they girl-bonded against me, like they had no choice but to fall head-over-heels for me during the same weekend.

  Back to squinty-eyes Magoo, here. She glances side to side, just enough to spot Chuy and Drago in her peripheral vision. She’s sizing us up, tracking targets, about to put a bullet in my head, one in Chuy, and then probably three in Drago, because he’s big and a commie bastard. She’ll keep Morton alive because he’s clearly not a threat, and he’s also a source of intel.

  Or so she thinks.

  My smile disarms her. “What?”

  “Just pull the trigger,” I say, “this is getting a little melodramatic.”

  Her brows furrow, deeper when Drago starts chuckling.

  Carter’s trigger finger pulls, but it doesn’t move. I’m disappointed that she chose to kill me, but I’m also impressed. She’s a woman of conviction, dedicated to a cause. Problem is, she’s misguided, and the cause died out centuries ago.

  Before she can react to the gun not firing, my hand snaps up and twists it from her grip. I turn the weapon around on her. “Welcome to the future, Carter. Every weapon on this ship fires for one of three people, and you’re not one of them.”

  Morton leans out around me again. This time he gives a friendly wave. “Neither am I!”

  I turn the weapon so she can see the grip. I lift away my three lower fingers, revealing smooth pads. “When you pick it up, the gun checks your fingerprints faster than Billy the Kid could draw and pull the trigger. And if you want your fingerprints added to the list of acceptable users, you’re going to have to start building trust. And that means no killing people. Capisce?”