The Legend of Ivan (2 page)

"Well, now ya done it." Francis wagged a finger at me once everything was taken care of. "This place'll be crickets for the next couple of days."

I considered telling him the chirping insects were not native to this world, but tact suggested a different approach. "Sorry for the trouble," I said.

The barkeep waved off the apology. "No need, no need. Takin' care of this heap is my retirement, so empty days give me a chance to enjoy some peace."

"Still," I said, producing a large wad of currency. I placed it on the table. "Will that cover what you'd have made tonight?"

Francis threw back his head and laughed. "Son, that'd be about a weeks worth."

Shrugging, I pushed the money across the counter. "Consider us even, then, as long as you assist me briefly in my search."

"Ah yes," he nodded, "I admit I'm a bit curious. Who might you be lookin' for?"

I swept off my hat, scratching the thin, brittle hair remaining to my organic scalp. "Raymond Cobb; he has information for me, and we set up-"

"Sorry to say, Archivist, but Cobb moved on from these parts not two days ago."

"He told me he lived nearby and frequented this location," I said, clenching a fist. "In our messages, he
himself
suggested we meet here."

The barkeep nodded. "Certainly. Time was you could find ol' Cobb sittin' right where you are, pissin' away what little life he had left. However, it seemed he ran outta money and hopped a shuttle to the next shit-mining world before any of his substantial number of creditors knew what hit 'em."

Sighing, I stood up. "Then I've wasted my time here. Where did he go?"

"'Fraid I can't say." The barkeep shrugged. "He stopped in here to pay a small bit of his outstanding tab and bid me a fond farewell. Hell, I never expected him to-"

"I appreciate your time and kindness," I said, straightening my long coat, "but I need to leave. I must track down where this shuttle went. Please tell me the exact time of his departure, if you can."

"Oh, it was about... Tuesday 'round four in the afternoon." Frustration pulsed within my veins, as I'd then need to find if the local station kept decent enough records. Of course it was also assuming Cobb didn't give a false name or stowaway on board. Hopefully the outbound traffic was slow enough that I'd only have to search a couple of systems to get back on track.

"Hold up!" Francis called as I moved towards the exit. "Yer not workin' fer one of his collectors, are ya?"

I shook my head.

The barkeep motioned for me to sit back down. "I was probably the closest thing Cobb had to a friend around here. Maybe I can help you out?"

I contemplated the possibility. A bartender can be like a primitive Archivist, in a way. Stories, gossip, and information flows freely in this kind of environment. Of course, the standard brain architecture can't process near as much data, but...

"What do you know?" I asked.

Francis grinned. "What were you lookin' for?"

I took a deep breath. "Various leads suggested that Raymond Cobb interacted with the man known as Ivan on the world TF-557, named-"

"Hunter's End." Francis laughed out loud. "Oh, I know this one. Cobb'd been spewin' this story for years. I always kinda wondered how much there really was to it." He shrugged. "You being here means that there's gotta be some truth to those tales about Ivan, yeah?"

I gave a nod. "My employer seems to believe so, and the sparse records left from Hunter's End
do
state that someone called Ivan, whether imposter or otherwise, came and left during the time when Cobb was employed there."

"Oh yeah," the barkeep nodded seriously. "I know exactly what yer lookin' for."

I sat back down. The ever familiar hunger, the allure of fresh information, settled into my mind. "Tell me."

Chapter 2: Ivan and the Dinosaurs

"There was something Cobb always said every time he started this story. I believe it wouldn't do this Ivan fella or Cobb himself justice if I told it any other way.

Ivan punched a dinosaur.

Hunter's End just so happens to be on the ass end of the ass end of the galaxy, as I'm sure you're so keenly aware, good Archivist. The usual devices were set up to fix the unlivable conditions, only take a few hundred or so years to accelerate nothing into proto-goo. Before you know it, they got eating, breathing, shitting life. Well in that time, administrations changed hands, documents and hard drives fell into the incinerator, people moved on with their lives, and, whoops, someone misplaced a planet.

The terraforming processes were a set it and forget it type of arrangement. In this case, "forget it" was key. Plenty of ambient life sprang up in the meanwhile, and, by the time the damn place was re-discovered, some monstrous lizards had the run of it.

The usual pack of rough-edged explorers found it teeming with all manner of life, thinking it was some monumental discovery that'd make them stinking rich. They thought they'd claim and sell it off to some corporation or another. One of the people, however, took one look at the size of the critters down below and thought of something else.

He figured that the big lizards were like the ones found on prehistoric Old Earth, so the guy came up with a different idea: one that stuck.

They turned the whole damn planet into a game preserve.

All across the galaxy, the most daring folk dropped in to try and bag one of the bigger beasties, and hell if a few didn't end up with some mighty fine trophies in the end.

Many more of 'em ended up torn to shreds.

There was something a little funny about the way they ran things there, Cobb always told me. Some of the finer hardware in life, energy weapons and the like, seemed a bit finicky down on the planet. The folks in charge talked about how the electromagnetic interference from solar radiation or something like that screwed 'em up. 'Course, most everyone else thought the proprietors ran some kind of device to make the challenge more...

Well, challenging.

It added to the thrill of it, using archaic metal shooters to take down some giant lizards. Flechette guns were still allowed, but they didn't have the same punch against the thick hides of the bigger beasties. And thank goodness the world sat too far out to bother with because our lovely core government probably didn't think much of the fifty percent or so fatality rate. It's no wonder they named the place Hunter's End.

In any case, Cobb found himself less sober than usual, laid off of a recent mining gig somewhere within a few weeks travel to Hunter's. The owners came by lookin' for warm bodies to be employed in their fine establishment.

"The pay was good," he'd always say, "if you could survive the term of the contract."

The amount of money the owners were raking in could afford a pretty high premium, and most of it went back into services in the tiny colony anyway. If the employee happened to pass on, well... let's just say that wills didn't often enter into the equation.

Cobb hopped from job to job down there, either by some bloke getting eaten or too scared to stick around. Drunk as he was most of the time, there wasn't a whole lot of fear or wisdom in his blood.

So Cobb became a guide.

It seemed he found his true calling in life, as Cobb, even three sheets to the wind, could always find his way out and back. He might be missing a hunter or two, but he himself always managed a return.

His last run was with a man who called himself Ivan.

Now, I've heard more than my share of stories about this guy, and the size, shape, and stature changes more often than fashion trends in the core. A tiny guy, a huge guy. He's dark-skinned, light-skinned, every Old Earth nationality put together. He's an alien, he's a devil. I'm sure you know, Archivist.

The way Cobb told it was that Ivan was huge and fair-skinned. A regular bear of a man with a rumbling laugh that would shake the walls and the liquor tolerance of a whale. Reckless and wild, he was strong as a bull with twice the temper. He'd crush you to death with a hug, and that's if he liked you.

Of course, Cobb only spent a few hours with the man, so I don't take much stock in anything but his description of Ivan's appearance. He said the man had a funny way of talkin', almost harsh in its sound. I'll try to mimic the way he portrayed it for your benefit, Archivist, but I'm not much good at that sort of thing. Hell, I don't know if Cobb had it right to begin with.

Anyway, what Cobb always said, before he got too deep into exaggeration, was that Ivan had a sense of brains inside the brutish body. "A hint of cleverness," he said. It's probably why the big fella made it outta Hunter's End with more than his own skin."

******

The settlement area stank to high heaven, due to the thick repellant necessary to keep the vicious beasts away. It worked for the most part, though they kept defense towers on the walls with pretty heavy equipment in case. The owners turned a tidy profit from the insanity and death their preserve offered, but they obviously wanted nothing to do with the massive beasts themselves.

It was a muggy afternoon when Cobb stumbled out of his bunk, strung out with a pounding headache. After the usual bout of morning retching as his body reminded him of the dangers of drinking, he took a swig from his three-quarters empty bottle of whiskey.

"Raymond," a voice called. He looked up to see the fellow with the laughable title of "Tour Planning Advisor" heading towards him.

"Mornin' boss," Cobb replied in a thick slur.

Shaking his head, the advisor replied, "It's after noon, Raymond, and we got a small group ready to go. They're looking to find Max."

Max was somewhat of a legendary figure. Supposedly he was the biggest, meanest, blood-thirstiest lizard on the planet. The beast was rumored to have been the end of more than three hundred wayward hunters.

"I sawr 'im plain as day," Cobb told anyone who would hear it, especially if the individual be willing to provide drinks for the duration of the story. "Th' meanest sumbitch, fitty feet high with bigass teeth and leathery skin tough as starship plate. I tell ya, Max'd chewed up 'is share of dumbass gunnies. He had nuttin' on Ivan though."

Following behind the advisor, Cobb vaguely wondered, as he always did, if this would be his last run. The pay was far too good though, and he considered how many other places allowed heavy intoxication on the job. The customers were too reckless to care about that particular added risk, and the owners didn't care much about the guides or the guests.

"They're already waiting by the transport," the advisor told Cobb, who nodded and took off at a jog. Managing not to stumble or fall down, he approached the transport helicopter, the usual anti-grav or hover lifts not functioning due to the interference.

Cobb's jaw hit the floor when he saw the hunting party. One man was armed to the teeth. Bandoliers of ammunition and weaponry were strapped across what appeared to be every inch of his body. Slung across his back was a massive flechette rifle, the type that fired the razor clouds instead of the single rounds. Against the warnings of the establishment, he also carried an assortment of energy pistols. Hard ballistic body armor coated his torso and limbs with the matching helmet laying on the floor of the helicopter. Combat knives lay in sheathes, strapped to several locations on the armor.

The man was short, laughably so, but the armaments he carried would have kept Cobb's mouth shut even if the second man wasn't twice as scary.

He stood to be at least six and a half feet tall and three-quarters that wide. Cobb's first thought was that they brought a shaved bear along for tracking or something. He continued to gawk at the huge figure as he noted that the man slung what appeared to be an iron tube over his shoulder. Small etchings lay across its dirty and marred surface, and it took Cobb several moments to figure out the device was actually a small cannon.

"You must be Raymond Cobb," the enormous man said, crushing Cobb's hand in his grip as they shook and pounding the guide on the back. "I am Afanasi Sergeyevich Lukyanov."

Cobb stood, blinking and wondering if his hand or spine had shattered under the greeting onslaught. His scattered mind comprehended about a tenth of the name, and he gave a blank stare.

"Call me Ivan!" the man bellowed, grinning. "My associate is the very unoriginal Mister Grey." The short man gave a nod. "We are here to take down a nasty beast."

Not having rediscovered his ability to speak, Cobb nodded and gestured for them to enter the helicopter.

"Yes, yes, of course." Ivan nodded, stepping into the passenger area. Without a word, Grey jumped in as well. Cobb took his seat in the cockpit with the pilot, donning a headset as the whirling blades roared to life.

"Where to?" the pilot called through the radio, looking at Cobb with expectation.

Synapses were sluggish to fire in Cobb's brain, but the brief conversation with the advisor rolled into his mind. "They're takin' a shot at Max. You know where he'd be?"

The pilot laughed. "By the usual stomping grounds, I'd wager; it'll take us a few hours to get to the base camp near there." He shook his head. "Time enough to give these fellas their last rites?"

Cobb nodded and took a final swig from the bottle he grasped, chucking it out the window as the craft rose into the air. He took a couple of glances at the formidable pair in the back, who appeared unconcerned that their quarry had killed so many. After a few minutes, Cobb closed his eyes and fell asleep.

He jolted awake from a shallow, dreamless nap when the helicopter touched down, for a moment forgetting where, who and what he was. The thick stink of the critter repellant brought his mind back to task, and he hopped out of the transport into one of the secondary base camps. He was quite used to the smell and even associated it with safety.

Grey and Ivan slid out, gathering their armory as they exited. Grey featured the usual grimace as he set his helmet with transparent visor in place, and Ivan wore a wide grin as he hauled the small but heavy iron cannon out. Cobb noted slots all around the large man's coat, round protrusions which must have held ammunition.