Merkiaari Wars: 03 - Operation Oracle (25 page)

Scree scree scree.

Hmmm, an odd earthy scent, but tasty, she decided as drool filled her mouth again. She swallowed, and winced as her stomach growled. Was it loud enough for the tuskers to hear? She watched them closely. Apparently not. She closed in, but not too close.

The two adult creatures were guarding the little ones, who continued squabbling among themselves over something they’d found. Shima chose the male for her dinner; it was the larger of the two adults, but Shima wondered if tuskers might fight cooperatively in a pack. She would find out she supposed, but she hoped not. A good hunter did not waste meat. She couldn’t eat all of them, even gorging to build reserve fat, and she didn’t need to do that here. Should she look for something else? No, she decided. She was new to this world and its creatures. She had to start somewhere and learn its ways.

She pounced.

Shima dropped with her limbs extended and claws out roaring her challenge. The little ones scattered, and ran in all directions. Good. The female spun toward her mate, saw Shima land on his back, and charged.

“Yow!” Shima screamed in pain and surprise. The bristles covering the tuskers were quills, not wiry hair. She yowled again and threw herself off the male.

Shima’s fur protected her somewhat, but the quills had penetrated her skin shallowly and in numerous places. Curse the luck. She was bleeding, but not badly. She hoped they weren’t poisonous. She didn’t think they were. She pulled one of the quills out of her harness strap and took a quick look at it. No sign of poison. Good, the fight was still on.

Her appraisal was quick enough that she avoided the female’s charge, and had enough time to scream another challenge. The female turned quickly, almost folding herself in two to face Shima, and shook her body aggressively. Every quill on her body stood up and rattled against each other as a warning. Then it surprised Shima again. The little demon spawn rolled into a ball presenting spiky pain in all directions to any attacker. Shima spun to the male in time to see him fold himself into a ball as well.

No fair!

Shima padded up to the male and batted at the annoying thing. Yow! That hurt, harmonies curse it. She pulled the broken spines out of her paw and glared at the little menace. She sniffed and growled and nudged the thing trying to make it unroll itself, but no go. Well... she backed away in consternation. Well shit, as Kate would say. Now what?

Shima glared at the two spiky balls of alien goodness and paced around them, daring them to open up, but they didn’t. She could use her beamers to shoot the stupid things, but that wasn’t hunting, that was slaughter. It didn’t seem fair somehow. She could use her knives to kill them, and that seemed better, but it was still an unsatisfying conclusion to the hunt. If she’d been truly in need, she wouldn’t hesitate, but she was hungry not starving.

Shima chuffed in annoyance, and turned away. She walked back the way she’d come staying on four feet, leaving behind the demon spawned excuses for dinner. She looked back over her shoulder hopefully, but no, they weren’t taking chances. Still tucked up tight. She spat in their direction, and trotted away. They probably tasted awful anyway, she thought, trying to convince herself that she hadn’t just been bested by a pair of spiky aliens less than half her size.

Shima followed a game trail and picked up more alien scents. She discarded the tantalising and delicious seeming tusker scent layering the trail, she was learning after all, and zeroed in upon something else. This one was a predator, at least it smelled like a meat eater, and the scat it left seamed to verify it. She chose it as her prey, and planned to expiate her humiliating failure with the tuskers by enjoying its flesh tonight. She was hungry enough to eat it raw, bones and all, but she would have anyway—not the bones thing, but eat it raw yes. Meat always tasted best still warm and bleeding. Besides, this was her first alien dinner. It would be wrong to cook it the first time; this was research of a sort after all.

Shima laughed to herself, and finally found the funny side of her non-fight with the tuskers. She could laugh at herself now. It had been funny in a way, but she was glad she’d been alone. At least she knew not to hunt tuskers by choice now, and no one had seen her failure.

She followed the scents and tracks off the trail and far into the trees. The animal left prints completely different to that left by tuskers. No hooves for this creature. It left prints indicating padded feet and claws. She placed her hand beside one of the impressions and her ears swivelled listening for movement close by. The print was bigger than her hand but not by much. She backed up and compared the depth of her print to that of the prey. Similar. Very similar. Their weights must be close too. Shima looked around warily. This didn’t feel right. She was tempted to use the harmonies, but no. Her previous failure still smarted. She wouldn’t betray her father’s training.

Shima advanced again, but warily, her ears straining for any sound. Her eyes were wonderfully keen these days, making her aware of how far below a normal Shan’s perceptions she had been before. She was at her peak now with regard to her senses, and was determined to build her body’s stamina back to peak fitness as well. She slowed as a feeling of being watched came over her. Right forefoot, left hind foot, and pause to listen, left forefoot, right hind foot and another pause this time to taste the air.

She whirled and slashed as something dropped from the trees behind her. She felt the barest touch on one claw as she spun, but there was no blood. Her ears were back, safely out of danger as her roar rumbled up to shatter the silence. The answering roar shocked her to stillness, and she blinked at the crouching creature before her.

Her jaw opened wide showing her killing teeth in an instinctive threat display, her vision tunnelled and her ears clamped themselves against her head tighter than ever. The creature before her was startlingly familiar, but not at the same time. His jaws full of teeth any Shan would be proud to own. His eyes were nothing like a Shan’s eyes and glowed red with blocky horizontal pupils, but the orangey red coloured fur and sharp claws? Marvellous! Obviously a hunter, using the trees to stalk prey as Shan would, as she herself
had
so recently done! Shima felt a kinship with this creature and would have liked to admire him at her leisure, but she was busy.

Fighting for her life.

He pounced upon her, raking claws and snapping jaws. Shima suddenly knew what her prey felt when she attacked this way. She was the prey now, and it was exhilarating and terrifying all at once. She rolled to the side and onto her back, claws out trying to rend his belly as she would have had this been another Shan attacking. That was her tactic; treat him like Shan because she had never fought with anything else remotely like him.

Shan no longer fought each other except for play. Cubs and younglings wrestled, but this was a bit more serious. Jaws snapped at her muzzle, and she grabbed his ruff with both hands, trying to turn his head away, but he was incredibly strong. She flexed her fingers and her claws shot out and into his flesh. Blood poured and he went into frenzy, struggling violently and whipping his head back and forth. Froth flew from his snapping jaws, but Shima pushed him back, turning her face away from him, but really having to work at it to keep those teeth out of her hide. She couldn’t hold him!

He ripped himself free, and leapt away.

Shima rolled back onto four feet snarling and giving her attacker a good look at her teeth in a show of aggression and ferocity. The fight was all about instinct now. She didn’t fight her people’s natural reactions. She embraced them. Her vision was already tunnelled, centred on her prey. No time for thinking now, her hunt kill reflex had a firm hold upon her. Her scream of rage rose over the forest, quieting the other creatures hiding within it. Her prey had increased the distance between them, but Shima knew what was coming. She braced for the charge, but the beast surprised her again by pouncing a second time. She would have charged. Hit and run strikes were ingrained in her people in these situations, because they would most likely be fighting Shkai’lon or Shkai’ra.

Shima’s heart thundered within her chest as she met the beast in the air mid-leap. This time Shima had his measure. Her jaws clamped his throat tight, cutting off his air, and she wrapped her arms around his body to hold him while her rear claws went to work on his belly and genitals, ripping into him.

They crashed to earth, Shima on the bottom but in the ascendant now. She had him where she wanted him. Blood and slippery ropes of entrails gushed out upon the ground, but Shima didn’t release the pressure on his throat. His struggles became desperate but already weakening. She bit harder and harder and harder. Growling and ripping and crushing his throat, and snarling and biting and ripping and...

Shima slowly came back to herself still chewing into the furry throat and growling. She finally realised the beast had stopped struggling a while ago. The steaming entrails were a pile beside her, and the body a dead weight atop her. Her mouth was thick with alien blood.

“Hmmm, you do taste good,” Shima mumbled, her mouth still full. Reluctantly she pulled back. “Yum,” she said licking her muzzle clean of blood.

Shima pushed the corpse off and stood on two legs over it. She wanted to roar her victory, but sadly she had come back to herself now and such things seemed a little primitive from the lofty heights of a civilised being. Perhaps a small one?

Shima roared, proclaiming victory, and despite herself it wasn’t a small one at all. She sheepishly looked around, hoping Kazim was too far away to hear, but there was a part—a small part—that wished he could have seen her. She was proud of her skill, and that fight had really been something. She was sure that even her father, skilled as he was, would have been impressed.

Shima reached for her knives and went to work cleaning and butchering her kill.

Back at her chosen campsite, she washed the blood and stink of death from her body, and then cleaned her equipment. The harness needed special attention; it was thick with blood and other gunk. Her knives were last. She dug a pit and built up earthen walls around it, before building and lighting a fire in the centre with her old spark rock and steel. It didn’t seem strange using primitive tools to make fire. She had used them regularly since her father gifted them to her on their first hunt together. She had been a cub then, barely a year old.

Shima ate her fill of raw meat, still bleeding on the bone, and then set some to cook on sticks stuck in the ground and angled toward, but not actually in, the flames. She wanted to try some of it cooked just to taste the difference, but also planned on taking some with her to eat on the journey. It should last better cooked, not that it needed to last long. She should be with Gina and the others sometime tomorrow.

The morning dawned overcast and Shima expected to get wet before she found her friends. She didn’t care. Weather was just something to be endured on a hunt; nothing to be done about it, certainly no point in complaining. Her pelt would shed the rain, and she was warm enough. She had clean water and plenty of cooked meat. She ate some of the uncooked leftovers from her feast last night for breakfast, but left the rest for the scavengers to clean up. She had plenty of cooked meat in pouches on her harness. She wouldn’t need to hunt again today. She buried the ashes from her fire along with the bones in her fire pit, wanting to leave her campsite as she found it. Shima took one last look around, and set off to find her friends. She was determined to do that before night fell.

Shima travelled quickly, retracing her path and then moving into new territory in a straight line aiming for the river. She was sure Gina wouldn’t cross the river. Not that she couldn’t do so, but where was the need? Shima felt sure she would cut Gina’s trail before reaching it.

As it turned out, Shima was right, but it took longer than she thought. Gina was heading south still, following the path of the river it seemed. Nothing wrong with that, but surely a survey should cover a wider area? If Shima had to survey the valley, she would have zigzagged west to east to cover more terrain. It would slow the journey south, but that didn’t matter. The task wasn’t to follow the river, and there wasn’t an expiry date on their survey. Whatever the reason, Shima had her friend’s scent and their tracks now. She could quicken her pace even more and catch them easily before night.

Shima set out to do just that.

She realised long before finding them where they had to be. On the flight out, Kate had shown her the terrain on one of the shuttle’s displays, and she had pointed out the huge lake at the southern end of the valley where the river entered the gorge. Following the river so closely was the clue. Gina was either at the lake it emptied into, or heading directly for it. Shima didn’t know why. Perhaps Varya wanted to consider it as a location for the colony. It wouldn’t be unheard of for a Shan city to be built on the shores of a lake after all, and the idea quite intrigued her. Still, it did seem odd that the tracks arrowed right toward it without variation. Surely it made more sense to survey the entire valley on the way?

Whatever the reason, and with the aid of the harmonies and her hunting skills to avoid trouble, she arrived upon the shores of the lake safely by late afternoon.

“What took you so long,” Kate said, grinning as she approached. She was holding a stick with something edible thrust onto it. A fish. She took a bite. “I thought we might have to send out a rescue party.”