A Friend in Need

by Travis Perry

Jax knelt down beside Ernsto, who was flat on his back on a sandy patch at the bottom of a rocky gully, wincing in pain. “I’m so sorry about last night—I guess I’ve been regulating how much I drink by how much I bring in…I usually run out of cash before I can put down that much ale.”

Ernsto snorted, “So it’s my fault for helpin’ you bring in too big a haul?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. The fault was mine. I’m sorry I led her to you, that Zana lady.”

“Well, don’t expect much from me. I never used to forgive anything from anyone.”

“Used to? Does that mean you forgive now?”

“Well—that angel sure would want me to…” Ernsto’s voice trailed off and his eyes watered.

Jax stared at his new friend and didn’t know what to think. He’d heard Ernsto cry out before, as in for help or in pain—but he’d never seen him cry, not a single tear, not even when he’d set the bone in his arm. There was so much he didn’t know about this guy. What in the world could have affected him so much?

“What angel?” Jax finally asked in a soft voice.

“Never mind about her…I forgive you. God knows I done a lot worse than what you did. To someone a lot better’n me.” A single tear streaked down the side of his face, past his ear into the sand. Ernsto wiped at his face absently, as if he didn’t really care.

“Changing subjects, er…I don’t think I set your bone quite right. Your left arm is shorter than the other.”

“Hmmm. Don’ blame yourself. I think it’s because the bone is shattered in that spot.”

“Ah…doesn’t that mean it will never heal right? I’m not a doctor or anything, but I think that’s the case.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure you are correct.”

“Shouldn’t we, ah…do something about that?”

“Got any suggestions? Remember I’m wanted everywhere. And believe me, the man that’s after me is sure to make me disappear forever. If they catch me.”

Jax rubbed his chin, looking upward, Sheba visible low over the east mountain ridge in the dust-orange hued sky. “You know, I think I’ve got an idea…”

Struggle

By Travis Perry - 

Zana’s mechanical left arm grabbed at the right arm of the man, who must have been Mons, who had wrestled her to the ground and had her pinned to her back, his hands pressing down on her shoulders. “You’re a woman!” he exclaimed in a surprise barely audible as the dust storm whooshed around him.

Her only answer was to vice down her hand grip on his arm. He grunted in pain as she squeezed but without hesitation rolled off her to her right, using the torque of his body twist to pull his arm free from her steely grip. She rolled onto her own right side, reaching after him with her left arm. But Mons no sooner tumbled away than he rolled back. With both hands he shoved her left hand into the ground, then her left shoulder, pushing her face down as he rolled himself back over top her body, pinning her under his greater weight.

That made Zana angry. She thrust her left arm behind her back and grabbed the first piece of his body she could reach and squeezed as hard as she could. Her mechanical side had some tactile sense, not as good as her right, but she perceived a bone breaking—which she realized was Mon’s left humerus, the bone of his upper arm. He screamed in her ear, but his credit, made no move away from his dominant position, his weight still pressing her face-down into the ground.

“Leggo!” he managed to shout. And now she could feel a cold steel blade along the right side of her throat. “Leggo, sweetheart! Or I’ll gut you like a fish!”

Zana paused for a moment, something in her wanting to tell him to go screw himself, something in her willing to die for the privilege of defying him. But something else wanted to live, if nothing else because she couldn’t stand the thought that she would die while her father still lived. She let go of the arm, the whirling dust storm surrounding them, the man’s weight crushing her face against the ground. She turned her head left to be able to breathe. The ground pressed back at her fiercely, several fist-sized rocks strewn underneath her—Ernsto was clearly a lot bigger than she was, his weight easily dominating hers.

“Jax, you idiot!” shouted Mons in pain. “Come here!  I need your help.”

The wind suddenly shifted again and seconds later died as it sometimes did, utterly unpredictable. The sky still hid itself behind high clouds but the dust storm was coming to an end nearly as fast as it had begun.

At that moment, she heard Cotton’s feet scrambling over rock. He’d somehow made it up the rock ledge and now his furious barking fast approached.

“Back him off,” growled Mons, pressing his knife a bit harder to her throat.

Zana turned her head right, the direction of the barking—Mons accommodated by backing off the knife a bit. “Sit!” she snapped, “Stay!” Cotton whined, but she could see in the dimness that he obeyed. “Good boy.” Cotton barked in frustration.

“Good move,” said Mons pained voice in her ear. “It’d be hard for me to kill a dog with only one good arm. Don’ get me wrong, I’m sure I’d still kill it. But it’d be messy. Painful—mostly for it.”

“Him!” Zana snapped back.

“Him then,” answered Mons.

“What the hell!” exclaimed Jax’s slightly slurred voice. “There’s a dog and that woman and…what the hell happened?”

“You celebrated your kill too much, that’s what happened!” Mons snapped. “Come over here and help me tie her up. And my arm is broken, I’ll need you to splint it!”

In this short time, a gap had cleared in the sky, greatly increasing the ambient light. Her head turned right, human right side of her face up, she heard Mons gasp as Jax stumbled close to help him. “By the angels,” Ernsto exclaimed, “You’re beautiful!”

“You bastard!” she shouted. She would have spat on him if she could have.

But then the two of them lashed her as she lay on the ground, using a lot of extra rope on her left arm, and then took her rifle and survival gear. Some time passed before Jax finished with Mon’s arm, before the two of them stumbled out of the area. Cotton obediently but frustratedly sat for her the entire time, barking regularly.

“Come here, boy, help me,” she said as soon as she estimated that Mons was out of rifle range from her dog. How dare he call her “beautiful”—she would escape these ropes and hunt down Ernsto Mons if was the last thing she ever did. She hated no one more than him at that moment—not even her own father.

Collision

By Travis Perry - 

Zana mounted the height around the hill in a steady stride, spiraling counterclockwise upward, moving briskly but not so fast she couldn’t hear. Cotton, who’d been well trained, didn’t bark much as a rule and wasn’t barking now. But he whined with an eagerness that told her he smelled or heard someone and it wasn’t easy for him to hold back rushing forward faster than she ever could.

“Good boy,” she said in a sub-vocal tone a dog would hear but a human never would. “Stay with me.”

With a suddenness that Zana had experienced all of her life, the calm night was suddenly and sharply broken by a harsh wind rushing in from the hinterlands. She faced into the wind and saw in the distance a darkness moving forward at a rapid pace, blocking out the stars more each passing second. A dust storm coming in. Soon.

She reached a wall of rock that formed a knob around the very top of this little mountain, a base to a climb that led steeply upward. From above, her ears received a wind-dimmed noise that by its tone had originally been shouts, “Ernsto! Ernsto! Where are you?” The voice she realized was Jax’s.

She glanced down at Cotton, who had his paws on the rock wall, scratching at it with his claws, looking as if he wanted to scramble up the little cliff, growling in a low tone. “He’s up there, is he?” Zana vocalized. Cotton replied with a single sharp bark.

She was taking a risk, but chances were fairly good that Mons would move toward Jax’s voice, giving her the opportunity to come up behind him, if she moved quietly enough. And now was the time to move, while she could still see the handholds in the rock.

Her mechanical left arm pulled her up from handhold to handhold, while she managed to keep the rifle from banging into her too badly as she tried to both help move upward and control it with her right hand. Soon, she’d mounted the little rock wall and found a ledge about a meter wide there. Above her the hill continued up steeply to the top, maybe seventy meters higher. She saw the dark shape of a torso some fifty meters above her, the lower body covered by the curvature of the hill.

She pointed the rifle that way, looking and listening as the wind rushed around her in a whistle. “Ernsto!” shouted the shape above her. “Ernsto! Hey, I brought medicine! Hey, where are you?”

At that moment, Cotton started barking furiously from down below. And the wind changed, now hurling dirt around her, the hillside offering some protection, but not enough to keep her eyes from watering and blinking. But nonetheless she was able to see well enough to notice a flash of movement registering a dark shape—a human shape—hurling itself from behind a boulder less than five meters away on the hill above her, straight down towards her. She raised the rifle to fire, but too late.

A man’s body collided into hers and she fell, losing control of the rife. The man, who had strong arms and who smelled of sweat and bug gall and blood, grappled with her as the winds whipped dust around them and Cotton’s barking transformed into a frenzy…

Equal and Opposite Reaction

by Travis Perry

Zana followed Jax as he climbed up a trail leading into the hills north of the Palmer camp, Cotton padding alongside her. The lesser whalelight and an unusually dust-free fiveday Summer night made visibility much higher than it would normally be at this hour.

There must be somebody else up there she realized. Why else would a hunter with money in his pocket and ale in his belly climb a hillside in the middle of the night? Normally someone like that would rent a locker for his gear and a cot for his backside and sleep in camp for the night…or even the next day or two…

So she scanned the hills very carefully, looking for any warning of danger, her rifle at the low ready. And then she saw it—a glint of light reflecting from what must be some sort of glass. She snapped up her rifle and looked through her scope. The optic brought the glint close but whatever caused it was already moving.

She lowered the rifle for better visibility and ducked into a branch to the left, veering off the trail Jax trudged up, which would put her in a counterclockwise rotation around the hill. If Mons were up there, she’d circle around until she found him…

#

“Looks like Jax’s had a good time,” muttered Ernsto as he looked through Jax’s binos, watching him stumble up the hill. The binos were his new friend’s most expensive piece of gear—so Jax hadn’t wanted to part with them. But he had insisted…

Some instinct told him to scan the area behind Jax. Two shapes moved there, in line with Jax, trailing behind by about one hundred meters. “Damnit! He’s being followed!”

And the larger shape suddenly changed shape. Ernsto saw light reflect of what probably was a rifle optic as it rose. He cursed and rolled over to all fours and scrambled forward, down the hill, scrambling downward in a circle going clockwise around the peak…

Observation

by Travis Perry - 

Zana decided to keep an eye on the one called, “Jax.” A tiny flicker of recognition had crossed his face when she’d shown him the glossy of Ernsto Mons. Jax knew Ernsto, or at least had seen him at some point, Zana would have bet her last credit on that. She could have threatened him, but her gut instinct told her he wouldn’t have talked—not easily anyway.

At the moment, Jax lingered at Maddie’s Pub, seated at a stool near the front, while Zana lingered at a table near the back. He was that kind of hunter, it seemed, the kind to drink big whenever he brought in a big haul. The kind that, like it or not, was the main reason a business like Maddie’s could turn a profit.

Hours passed but eventually, Jax stumbled out of the establishment, dragging a heavy pack after him, clearly full of something, probably supplies. Not too suddenly, Zana followed along after him, Cotton padding alongside her.

Just as she passed outside the pub door, she observed Jax stumble into the nearby “Elimination Tent.” At least he wasn’t the kind of hunter to empty his bladder on the outside wall of the Pub…Zana rounded the corner around the left of the tent. And waited.

Not more than a minute later, she heard footsteps stumbling out across the hardbrick in front of the tent flap entrance. Jax was lucky somebody didn’t assault him and take whatever money he had left on him…if he had any money left, that is. Apparently the Palmer Trading Camp on the outskirts of Adagio wasn’t actually as rough as local lore would suggest.

Jax didn’t reenter the pub. Instead, he stood in the reddish light of the lesser whale, puzzled for a moment, while Zana observed him from the side of the tent. He unsteadily lined up his body as his eyes searched something in particular, perhaps a specific feature on the horizon. Then he pulled on the heavy pack onto his shoulders and stumbled that direction, in something loosely approximating a straight line, straight out of the Palmer Camp.

Zana found it simplicity itself to follow after him.

Inquiry

Inquiry

By Travis Perry

“You seen this man?” The woman asking had a definite no-nonsense presence—titanium patching on her face, a robotic left arm and left leg. The glossy she held in Jax’s face looked familiar.

“Uh, maybe. I see lots of people.”

“There’s a substantial bounty on this one—the biggest I’ve ever seen. If you know something leading to the arrest of Ernsto Mons, that would be worth five thousand credits to you.”

“Ernsto Mons—that’s the guy in the picture?” Jax looked up at the woman’s face. Her non-robotic parts were actually quite attractive. He felt embarrassed to notice, and it formed a painful reminder of his wife separated from him on Avenir, but in fact he hadn’t seen a lot of women of late—other than Maddie, of course, and some old hag who did cleaning. But the blaze in her eye told him she was even more no-nonsense than his first impression would indicate. Her dog eyed him with a tilted head, as if suspicious.

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“About everything—theft, smuggling, murder, human trafficking, insurrection, plotting to assassinate an Avenir government official, plotting to overthrow the Avenir government.”

Jax let out a low whistle. “Whoa. So what’s five thousand credits? Like ten percent?”

The woman nearly smiled at him. The expression sent a chill down his spine. “Why? Are you going to try to haggle for a bigger cut?”

“No—I mean, no, ma’am. Just, er, wondering…” his voice trailed off.

“Look, do you know something or not?”

Jax had already decided what to do. Whatever else he had done, Ernsto had kept a coriander beetle from attacking him from behind while another attacked from the front. Ernsto had also helped move the beetles into the trading camp, yielding a good haul, though he had insisted on staying outside himself. Jax owed him. “Er, sorry. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Hmmm,” she replied, studying him. “Well, if you change your mind, ask for me at the trading post. Everyone knows my name there.”

“Which is?” When her fierce eyes met his own, Jax added, “…er, ma’am…”

“Zana. That’s all you need to know.” And then she turned away.

Bounty

by Travis Perry -

Jax ran after the headless coriander beetle that dragged Ernsto under its body. The spear would not be effective against the thick shell at the rear of the creature, but he thrust it anyway. Perhaps some sort of pain reflex would slow it down…

The beetle’s hindquarters twitched when Jax jabbed, but otherwise the spear point had no effect. A streak of dark human blood flowed behind the dragged human, from Ernsto’s back.

“Help! Help!” Ernsto barked as he helplessly kicked and punched upward. Jax briefly considered pulling his scythegun. It would ruin the value of the kill, but it certainly would stop the beetle’s forward motion. He hesitated, concerned the blast might also injure or kill the human underneath the beetle…

Before he could decide, the beetle’s headless—but still running full speed—thorax pushed into the sandy patch where Ernsto had hidden. In the sand, Jax saw him push hard with arms and legs and disengage himself from the bug’s undercarriage, the softer ground allowing him to succeed in pushing himself down and away. The decapitated beetle kept moving forward until it impacted a boulder on the other side of the sandy patch. Its way blocked, it still tried to move ahead, its legs vainly scratching the rocky ground, the headless torso pressed into the boulder too big for it to budge…

“You all right, pal?” asked Jax, standing over the motionless Ernsto, who had rolled over to his stomach on the sandy ground. Quite a lot of dark venous blood oozed from his back, all over the back—the wounds in fact seemed deeper and more extensive than what he could account for based on the recent scrape along the ground.

“Just give me a minute,” said Ernsto. “I’ll be fine.”

 “We need to get you to a doctor,” Jax replied. “With this bounty of a harvest—three corianders in good condition—we should be able to pay the medics for some treatment.”

“Bounty,” muttered the voice below him, “That’s an interestin’ choice of words…there’s a bounty on my head that’ll make your notion difficult to carry out…”

“Don’t worry. Nobody checks that sort of thing at the Palmer trading camp.”

The man chuckled bitterly. “If only you knew.”

Uncertain Injury

by Travis Perry -

 “Front or back?” demanded Ernsto in a low voice.

For an instant, Jax wondered front or back what? But then his mouth said, “Front,” and he stepped forward with the spear, eyes searching for any bit of rock he could quickly scramble to the top of to lure the beetle coming down the draw into a standing position, exposing its lungs.

A quick glimpse cast backward showed the man he’d just met pull himself out of the sand, moving backward toward the aggressive male coriander on the rock pile behind them, his very large knife gripped in his right hand. Snapped back forward, his eyes registered the beetle from above now charging down the draw, grunting in rage.

Many possible rock formations lay in view—all good, none great. With reaction time running out, Jax charged a fractured boulder to his left and leapt upon it in a single adrenaline-fueled bound. He just managed to raise his hands over his head as the beetle hit the rock. It paused a moment then flipped up to a standing position, the four lower legs on the ground, its pinchers and upper two legs clawing at its higher opponent—Jax.

The edge of the book lung showed itself near the bottom of the beetle, close to the ground, close to the boulder. It would have been relatively easy to miss the target for someone too nervous or plain terrified. But Jax had done this many times before…his pulse pounded and his body trembled with the rush of fight-or-flight chemicals that naturally flooded into his bloodstream, but his mind was focused and clear—the spear flew down in a very short throw, sinking straight into the lung with a psssh of releasing air.

The mortally-wounded bug was not dead yet. It shook, as if with rage, and dropped back down on all sixes and charged up the boulder, pinchers hammering together. Jax lept backward, landing on hands and feet just behind the rock. Before him he witnessed the butt of the spear wedge into a crack of the boulder as the massive beetle plowed forward. Its inertia only drove the spear deeper into its body. It twitched but stopped moving forward, its yardball-sized head advancing no further than just beyond the boulder’s peak.

“Help!” the voice came from to his left. Glancing that way, he saw a headless coriander beetle that clearly had kept charging forward after its decapitation, which must have impacted into Ernsto and knocked him down because now it was dragging him forward, pushing him by the beetle’s undercarriage, its headless neck gushing fluids on the human’s face as it plowed Ernsto forward nearly at full speed, tearing the man’s back across the ground.

This was bad. Jax knew a coriander beetle could live a long time without its head.

Surprise

by Travis Perry -

                    

Jax often hunted alone. He’d tried partners and had found that while there is safety in numbers, there was the downside that a lot of these hunters were bugscat crazy—and dangerous. And when hunting alone, he got 100% of the haul, every time.

This blazing fiveday Summer afternoon, out on his own, he stood with a rock formation behind him. Temporarily he leaned his spear on a rock as he pulled loose the drawstring on his rucksack made from a membrane found on the inside of the pinto beetle shell. He reached in and pulled out a wet gland, one he’d taken on a hunt just three days ago. This contained the musk of male coriander beetle. He squeezed the gland, expressing pungent fluid on his hands. He wiped his forearms in the smelly goo and held his arms upward in the air, letting the hot wind spread the odor wherever it whipped in this narrow rocky draw.

He’d learned from experience that male corianders were aggressive and territorial. One strong whiff of a rival and they’d come charging from all around, spoiling for a fight. In practice this may not work so well, since there wasn’t always one in the range of the scent. But he’d spotted several in the area before he came down the ridge covered with broken black basalt into this claustrophobically tight, sandy-bottomed draw.

Another problem came from the fact the beetles could charge in from any direction—that he’d accounted for by where he placed himself. Within the high rock walls on either side, there was only one route in—the natural rock heap behind him covered that route to his rear, so any bug coming after him would have to charge down the draw from the ridge, the direction he was facing, one at a time.

The rocks helped him with another potential difficulty—male coriander beetles usually charged in low, pinchers first, making a poor target for a spear attack, which ideally hit the book or bellows lungs under the belly.  If a beetle charged him here, he could back up the rock pile a little bit. Almost every time the corianders would raise themselves up on their four hind legs when facing an enemy on higher ground, giving a perfect shot at the lungs. Though sometimes they didn’t slow down at all, charging straight up, slamming their heavy sharp pinchers together in the attack. Times like that were a little more challenging…

He heard scurrying from the ridge before he even had time to retrieve his spear. Spear newly in hand his eyes caught a coriander as it shook its head back and forth, sweeping its antennae. It audibly grunted from the top of the draw, just over one hundred meters away.

“Right down here, buddy,” Jax said. “Come on down.”

Within seconds the obedient bug charged down the draw, straight toward his position. It was a healthy young male, larger than average. It would bring a decent price.

Crossing the sandiest patch in the draw, the bug suddenly stopped and squealed. Its legs thrashed but something from underneath held it in place. It attempted to pivot its pinchers underneath its body, a position anatomically impossible for it. It thrashed over on its side, legs twitching.

Bug flipped over, Jax now saw an arm, a human arm, holding a large knife that had pierced the bug’s lungs—sticking straight up from the sand. The patch moved and suddenly a man stood up from it, huffing and blowing sand from his mouth.

“Hey you, on the rock pile,” croaked the voice. “I’ll split the kill with you if you can give me a hand.”

Jax moved forward. He didn’t know whether to be more annoyed at the loss of his kill or amazed by the means by which he’d lost it.

The man’s legs were still buried in sand. “I figured one would come by sooner or later,” he mumbled.

“Sooner or later?” exclaimed Jax. “How long were you buried there? I’ve been in the area for a couple of hours and I didn’t see you at all.”

“Ah…it’s been about two days I think. It was fiveday Winter when I dug in.” The man tried to spit but nothing came from his mouth. “You wouldn’t happen to have any water, would you, pal? That’s the main thing I need.”

“Sure,” said Jax, more astounded than before. The dark-haired man took a long drink from his waterskin and reluctantly handed it back.

“So now what do we do? This is my first kill.”

“Your first?” Jax scratched his head. “You came out here with just a knife?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“Dear God—who are you?”

“Ernsto—last name doesn’t matter.”

Jax couldn’t help but chuckle. “You must be the craziest man—” he cut off when he heard new grunting from the top of the ridge. Another coriander beetle, this one bigger than the last, stood at the top of the draw.

And then he heard grunting from behind. He whipped his head back and saw another big male waving antennae. From the top of his rock pile.

The Flight

by Travis Perry -

“It is the wrath of Lallah. We must flee it!” exclaimed Shoo. Back in the nomad camp, all the men had formed a circle around a small fire of lavabrush and bug bristle. Ross had been included this time without question…and now Shoo had just pushed her way into the circle.

“Grandmother,” said the young man standing just to her left, eyes lowered in embarrassment. “Please, this is the council of men…” his voice trailed off into a gurgle.

Shoo looked around with bright eyes, “Yes, I suppose that would be why there are none but men here!”

“Grandmother, please,” said the young man on her right—this one really was her grandson.

“This is a simple thing, dear men. Hear me out and I shall quickly leave you in peace.” The sweet old hag grinned toothlessly.

Markas looked across to the oldest man in the council, meeting his eyes…who happened to be Shoo’s husband. The grizzled elder simply shook his head with a cough that nearly formed a laugh.

An expression crossed Markas’ face that might have been a wave of annoyance, but it soon disappeared as he faced her, his eyes blazing. “You may speak, woman, but then you will return to your place.”

“Good you hear me, young man. Good you hear. For it is recorded in the tales of the old women that if the mountain will not come to the prophet, the prophet must go to the mountain. And in times of trouble, ‘Flee, flee, always to higher ground.’”

“So we are to run then? That is your advice?” Markas spoke the last word with a sneer.

“What will you do instead? Fight? The righteous shall be saved from the wrath of the Holy One, but only if they heed the word of Lallah, given to the community of the righteous, to both the men and yes, the women!”

“The old women’s stories,” replied Markas in faux-deference.

“Stories I was teaching when you were still sucking at your mother’s milk,” answered Shoo in firm determination, her hands on her hips.

“Very well, old woman,” said one of the elders. “We hear you. Please leave now.” Soon others echoed this plea. Moments later, the chorus of voices rising, Shoo stepped out of the circle of men as abruptly as she’d entered it.

Ross found it interesting to note that after hours of deliberation, even though none of the men repeated anything Shoo had said—not in the way she’d said it, anyway—the council agreed the tribe needed to flee…up into the mountains of the volcanoes of the Five Rims…until such time as the wrath of God had passed them by.

The Cause

by Travis Perry

Markas stood over his aspbug. Three of its legs had been torn from its body before Markas had killed the flailing mount himself.  Ross stood beside him with the other two nomads, surveying the damage. One aspbug and all five buzzies dead, but the humans were still alive.

Ross could see in their eyes that nomads respected him more for having fought for himself. But he’d only been trying to stay alive. He tried not to flinch in pain as Markas bound his wound with a cloth, stopping the bleeding. He did his best to keep his hands from shaking—he thanked God he’d peed not long before the attack, or else he probably would have wet himself.

Standing next to Markas, Ross shifted his feet back and forth to hide the shaking of his legs from the tribesmen, none of whom seemed shaken at all. He watched Markas use his knife to open the body of one of the beasts who had attacked.

The inside of its carapace was crawling with white little moving shapes, like carrion fly larvae, but with legs like spiders. “See, stranger?” The nomad’s voice rasped in a hard whisper. “These are the cause, the reason the buzbugs ran yesterday, the reason they attacked just now.”

“I see them. What are they?”

“They are a sign of the wrath of Lallah. They come to execute His judgment on all that lives.”

“How do they do that?”

Before Markas could answer, one of the small white bugs leapt of out of the body of the dead buzbug onto the nomad’s right hand, the one holding his knife. Immediately the small creature began burrowing into the skin of his hand. With surreal calmness, Markas switched his knife to his left hand and held up the back of his right in front of his face. For a moment he watched the bug dig itself under his skin. And then with the knife in his left, he slashed at the bug, removing it and half the skin from the back of his hand.

The Fight

by Travis Perry

Ross yanked his knife from his belt and stabbed hard at the buzbug that had fixed itself to his leg. His stabs counterattacked in an unaimed frenzy while he screamed at the top of his lungs. His pierced leg kicked hard, almost of its own will, and after eternal seconds the mandibles which had sunk into his leg broke off, the bug falling to the ground.

His fellow nomads had yanked their own black powder pistols from their belts, each responding with a directed fury as if they’d been killing rabid buzbugs their whole lives, firing their single-shot weapons, each one impacting a bug carapace. Then in a flash each dismounted and pulled their knives, launching themselves into frenzied buzbugs with fast hard stabs of the steel knives Ross had traded to them years before.

Ross shouted again, more an enraged roar now, and followed them by jumping off Markas’ mount, which had become the target of most of the buzbug attacks. On the ground he eyed the screaming buzzie with broken mandibles and hurled himself into it, knocking it down, one arm around it as it clawed at him with its hard legs, his other arm stabbing at the side of its hard abdomen, some of his blows glancing off. He finally dispatched the beast which had bitten him, it struggling far longer than it had any right to do.

He looked down and saw blood gushing from his wounded leg…

The Attack

by Travis Perry

Ross rode behind Markas on his aspbug mount. As much as the nomad did not seem to like him, the man clearly expected Ross to hang onto to his body. The discomfort most Eclectia men felt about touching one another was clearly not something nomad men experienced. Ross found himself more comfortable reaching under his own thighs to grasp the rough saddle strapped across the bug, even though this made staying put in his seat awkward.

The three bugs rode hard to the west, their riders chasing the buzbugs that had charged off in a frenzy toward the setting sun. The wind whipped hard and the ash blocked out the stars. Ross had no idea how the men knew where they were going.

A cold winter morning revealed a bleak rocky horizon, the distance scattered with a few pygmy lavabushes. Markas glanced back at him without slowing the aspbug’s trotting pace. “You see them, stranger? There, by the hill on the left.”

At first he saw nothing…but then his eyes caught sight of five or six buzbugs charging east in the direction of the rising sun with the same ardor with which they had run last evening, but no longer bleating. He wondered what happened to the rest of them, the other dozen or so bugs…

Markas and the other two riders angled off to the left. The long legged aspbugs soon brought the men to in line with the charging buzzies.

Normally a buzbug would come to a stop near an aspbug, or at least change direction out of fear of the much larger beast. But these buzbugs, each one an herbivore, charged straight at the much larger mounted animals.

Markas, leading the riders, brought his mount to a quick halt, too late to respond to the charging buzbugs, who now voiced a sound Ross had never heard before. A sharp hiss. They leapt at the aspbugs, their mandibles chopping, attacking the Markas’ aspbug. One leapt high and pain lanced through Ross’s right calf as the mouth of the frenzied herd animal pierced his flesh…

Preparations

by Travis Perry

Burt had always been careful to save as much money as he could. Now he held all that remained of all his decades of hard work and thrift in the bugbristle sack in his right hand, maybe eight or nine blank copper coins left. From his boat at the dock, he looked over to his boys loading cargo on all three of his ships.

He’d been able to get financing on two more Zirconia-made aluminum boats, but he’d had to make down payments. He’d told his fishermen his plan and to a man they’d looked at him wide-eyed astounded. But they’d faced tsunamis with their boss, Burt Jonzn. They knew his instincts and in the end, they trusted him.

He trusted them, too, they were good boys—though they did need to be watched from time to time. Had he and Marta been able to have children, he’da hoped they would have turned out like his boys.

Sam would captain the second boat, Rekay the third. The boys began to load down from the rusted metal fishing dock onto the boats the supplies and provisions they’d just purchased with Burt’s life savings. The boys had chipped in too, even though he’d been against it at first. But his money had simply not been enough.

The boats sank low in the water as biodiesel for the motors got loaded in, along with heavy cases of scythegun rounds, and of course the weapons themselves, along with food and medical supplies. They’d cleaned out the Smit family store and had to go to the Palmer trading station to find all they needed, which Burt disliked. Palmer cost too much—plus the profits wound up on Avenir, instead of in Adagio itself…

The boys aboard, him and two others in his ship and two in each of the others, the three aluminum boats—not fishing craft at the moment, rather miniature cargo ships—cast off from the dock and headed out in loose formation past Adiagio’s open tsunami gate, headed for Funder’s Cove…

The Rider

by Travis Perry -

The charging bugs hurling forward, Ross didn’t know where to run. He dodged left as a buzbug bolted past him and then right, too slow, as another plowed into him. The beast massed less than half his weight but it sprinted as it bleated in terror and hit him low and off-balance. Ross plunged to the ground, rolling, catching glimpses of the nomads responding. None yet knocked down like him—all dodging more successfully than he, even the old ones—in spite of his terror of being trampled to death, some part of him registered chagrin at that.

He pulled himself to all fours, the herd bugs of the nomads still rumbling around, over, and into him. Markas, a robust man of about thirty, jumped up and seized the elongated neck of his aspbug as it galloped, all sixes clawing rocks and gritty dirt backward. He swung upward into the saddle and in moments had his mount under control. He thundered the beast forward and reached a calloused hand out for the bridle of another frenzied mount.

Ross watched in fascination, again amazed at the resourcefulness of this nomad people. But several herd bugs hit him in the side at that same moment, knocking the wind out of him and rolling him onto his back, reminding him he was still in the midst of a struggle to survive.

Covering his face with his hands and balling himself up to make a smaller target, belly down, his ears recorded not only the bellowing bugs and the staccato thunder of their hard chitin feet impacting on rocky ground, but also the nomads calling out to their beasts and one another. In minutes—no, probably seconds drawn out long in the heightened awareness of fear—the rumbling of most of the herd had ceased.

Ross uncovered his head and quickly stood to his feet, ashamed to be the only man on the ground. He spotted Shoo, the old woman who always favored him, also hunched down like he had been. He walked over to her and without thinking offered his hand to help her up. The move was unthinking because in the tribe men only touched women if they were close relatives or married to them. So the fear of having committed a grave social error rushed into him, too late to take back the hand hanging down. But the old woman took the hand and pulled herself up, grinning toothlessly at him.

After that he afforded himself the luxury of looking around. His eyes confirmed what his ears already knew. The nomads, led by the first aspbug rider, had gotten the herd back in control…most of it anyway. Some dozen bugs still rushed westward.

Ross met the eyes of Markas, the rider, who glared back at him in anger. As if the stampede had somehow been his fault.

Rumbles In the Wilderness

by Travis Perry -

The nomads knelt down when they prayed and then arched their backs to the rear, catching themselves with hands stretched to the rocky ground behind them, their faces swinging upward toward Eclectia’s ash-tormented dome of a sky. Their faces sought the sky, but their eyes remained closed as their lips mumbled their supplications to the Divine.

Ross Smit had worked many years to earn his place among the nomads. Most people in fact, did not even know that the nomads existed—he’d learned of them as a teenager from a friendly and overly-talkative-when-drinking miner.

He’d begun his efforts by first pursuing Human Studies at Zirconia University (though he’d grown up in an underwater colony mysteriously named “Enterprise”), not realizing for many years how much all he learned fell short of what his choice of study had been in the Golden Age of Social Sciences back on near-legendary Earth. He then had studied every fragmented bit he could learn about the dialect of the northern nomads—during The Voyage, nearly all languages of the past had been forgotten, leaving what had been called “English” as the dominant tongue. But that one language had since begun to split and fracture—and the nomads must have been different from the beginning. Even then, with all the knowledge of their language and culture he could attain, it had taken four years of him posing as a friendly trader before they’d accepted him into the tribe.

He dressed like them, ate like them, rode their giant insect mounts wherever they rode to follow their “buzbug” herd (the prefix “buz” did not refer to any sound the canine-sized insects made—Ross suspected the word tied back to some now-lost human language), and followed their customs in every way he knew how. Still, he was not fully accepted as one of them—he once asked them to teach him to pray, but they’d treated the very request as a near-blasphemy. So he’d learned to content himself with watching as they rose upright on their knees and fell backward, over and over, performing the evening prayer as the Whale set into barren hills far to the west.

He’d asked once why they did this and at first no one had answered. But finally, as the awkward silence stretched long, an answer came from one of the old women, the one who from time to time toothlessly grinned at him and seized his cheek in her iron grip as she served him supper, hurting him, but meaning only to show affection, laughing at what a good son he would have made…if only he’d been born human. She’d said, “To face Immakah, dear child.”

Through his studies he suspected the word referred to an ancient holy city on Earth. So instead of bowing down in humility to the ground as many praying cultures had done, of course they prayed upward to face their holy city. The sky somewhere contained the city, somewhere on Planet Earth—which they called “Ard,” though without real knowledge of what “Ard” was—so of course they faced the sky in prayer. That moment of discovery, that rapture of understanding—that was why he’d chosen Human Studies (what he’d once heard anciently had been called “Anthropology”). It was better than Wizardry—better to know his fellow man, and thus, himself, than to know the angels and whatever powers knowing them might offer.

But this day the prayers did not end with the setting of the sun. “Buzy! Buzy!” yelled one of the boys left out with the herd during prayer time. On ancient Earth it would have been like shouting, “The sheep! The sheep!”

At that same moment the bugs began sounding, their voices repeating in a, “AhAhAhAhAh AhAhAhAhAh.” Several of the praying nomads snapped upright and turned their heads. Most continued to pour petitions upward.

But in an instant the voiced “ahs” came much faster and in a much higher pitch. And much louder, as the entire herd emitted piercing near-screams. Now all the nomads, even the old ones, sprang to their feet, their eyes looking behind him wide with shock and terror. Ross whipped his head back eastward, the direction all the nomads were looking. He saw what all of them had seen, what his ears also began register as rumbling thunder. The entire herd, hundreds of bugs, were charging full speed at the dismounted humans. As were the “aspbugs,” their mounts. All of them in a frenzied charge all at the same moment, straight at the humans, all of them together, and screaming, screaming, stampeding westward, as if trying run headlong into the blazing circle of the setting sun…

Decoder

by Travis Perry

Burt Jonzn shook hands with the man his cousin had brought out to the boat. The handsome younger man spoke, “Mr. Jonzn, I’m Robin Corpsman.”

“Nice ta meet ya. You can read ancient writin’?”

“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe. I need to see it first.”

Without further comment, Burt flipped open the tarp at the back of his boat. He eyed the face of the young man as he caught sight of the large disk, glinting with gold and etched in some bizarre form of hieroglyph. Robin’s eyes lit up in the open wonder of awe, not the attempted-but-failed desire to hide ambition, the covert lust of greed.

“Where did you find this?”

“Ocean bank. I s’ppose it was an island once.”

Robin leaned in and spoke in a near whisper, “I can’t believe it…”

“Can’t believe what, friend?” Burt studied the archeologist. His cousin Edard stood nearby, tapping his foot with the impatience of wanting to make the sale.

Robin stood straight and met his eyes, his face flushed with excitement. “There is a book by one of the old pioneers that claims to contain ‘angel writing.’ The author, a gent named Ernesto Hanks, was regarded as bugscat insane in his own day…but some few wizards have always maintained his book contained real symbols, that somehow the man really had been in communication with the angels. The symbols here look just like the ones from his book.”

“Really,” said Burt, beginning to acquire some of Robin’s excitement. “Can you tell me what it says?”

“You know, I think I might be able to! I’ll have to go get a copy of the book—it’ll take some time to decode. I don’t have the book’s contents memorized.”

“Oh,” said Burt, surprised with himself that he’d been hoping the young man would be able to read the disk now.

“Ahem,” interjected Edard, grinning greedily. “It looks like we’ve just shown you the greatest discovery in your field since the Founding. Surely you realize we’ll want to be compensated for our efforts in bringing this to you.”

“Ah, whoa, uh, I’ve got a grant for two hundred credits to fund my studies, but that’s all the money I have.”

Edard snorted. “This is worth a thousand times that!”

Robin looked down at the bolted metal of the fishing dock. “Mr. Mayor, you’re right. In fact, if this really is a disk made by angels—heck, even if the pioneers made it—it’s worth more than a thousand times what I have…this is literally priceless. But that doesn’t mean it will be easy for me to get the credits to pay you.”

Edard snapped, “If you don’t, I’m sure that someone else will—“

Burt interrupted, “Two hundred credits will be just fine.”

“Burt!” Edard’s eyes blazed.

“It’s my discovery, cousin. I can sell it as I wish. Don’ worry—you’ll get your twenty percent.”

“You’ve got to be joking!”

“I’m not.” Turning to the young man, he said, “Sound reasonable?”

“Ah…sir, that’s to find the whole Founding…the two hundred, I mean.”

“Oh, sorry, son. How about one hundred?”

“BURT!” Edard’s face raged red and his eyes protruded even more than normal.

“Uh, I might be able to make that work…” Robin’s voice trailed off.

“Still too steep? How ‘bout eight?”

“Burt…” sputtered Edard, “a man…does not customarily…barter downhill!”

Robin nodded his head, so Burt extended his right hand, ignoring his cousin. As the younger man took it he said, “It’s a deal then. But one more thing.” He retained Robin Corpsman’s hand in his firm grip.

“What’s that, sir?”

“I want to know what the disk says. Whatever it says. Promise me you’ll tell me.”

“Yes, sir,” said Robin, his eyes widening in surprise. “I will.”

Pot of Gold

by Travis Perry -

Mayor Edard Jonzn looked over to the left and sighed. Toward the left, on the east side of Adagio bay, lay his office, the center of all things he controlled.

His cousin Burt had him out on the old upper fishing pier on the other side of the bay, about as far as you could possibly go within the confines of the city away from his office and his personal sphere of influence. He had friends among the fishermen, of course, but naturally he was the best of friends with the biggest commercial boat captains—none of whom docked at the old pier.

He turned his head back to meet his cousin’s eyes. “What in the whales do you have me out here for, Burt?” He chewed an unlit cigar, unlit, because he knew his cousin’s Holiness background and that he frowned on smoking. Not that he really cared what Burt thought, and it so happened he was really hankering for a smoke at the moment, but you never know when you might need someone’s help someday, especially a relative’s. A good politician couldn’t go about offending people without any purpose—if you’re going to offend someone, it should be for a very good reason…

His cousin must have had some kind of bug up his behind. He didn’t have any of his fishermen with him and he looked both ways before he lifted the corner of the tarp that covered something that looked like an enormous disk of some kind in the back of his fishing boat. Or maybe a portal cover for some Sheba-sized ship.

Under the tarp lay a disk alright, covered grime in between the lines that seemed to show some strange pictures—or maybe a kind of writing. A bit of whaleshine hit the edge of the disk as the fishing boat rocked with a gentle harbor wave. Grit covered parts of the disk, but the glint of light shone with an unmistakable golden hue.

Edard reached out and touched it. It had a heavy, smooth feel. Metal, but not too hard…obviously in the sea for some time, but not corroded to speak of. He knew what that meant. “Burt…I think that’s solid gold!”

“Well I think it idn’t,” replied Burt, his lips a bit puckered as if he were chewing lemons. “A solid gold disk would deform under its own weight—curve down in the middle when lyin’ flat. This disk doesn’ do that, so it has some stiffer metal its middle, so is only coated with gold. Granted, the coat is no electroplate job—it’s real thick, I figure about a centimeter on each side.”

“Well, well, cousin Burt, I’m impressed.” Edard felt a rush of relief that he hadn’t lit his cigar. “Cousin, you’ve come to the right man. I don’t know where you got that thing, but I’m sure we could get a pile of platinum for it…I’ll take only a modest commission, since you’re my cousin and all; you won’t regret this, Burt, you’ve come to the right man, your good ol’ cousin Edard will hook you right up!” He barely noticed how he’d started talking faster.

“I regret it already,” said Burt, looking more puckered than before. “You don’ understand. I want to find out what it says.”

Edard sighed. “Very well…the science types probably won’t pay as much as a private collector, but there are a few teams of science types working around here. I could connect you with them…granted, they might have to request some funds from up in Avenir to cover it purchasing it…which might mean you’d have to take payment in credits.” He found his own lips puckering like his cousin’s.

Burt sighed. “No, I don’t mean to sell it to the science jonnies either.”

“You want to keep it? Why? To sell it later? I doubt the price will go up over time, if that’s what you’re thinkin’. Demand won’t rise for somethin’ nobody’s seen before.”

His cousin pulled the tarp back down, covering the exposed portion of the disk. Eyes down at the tarp he said in a low voice, “You don’t understand. I intend to give this away—as long as I’m givin’ it someone who’ll try to figure out what it means.”

For several pounding beats of his heart, Edard had no answer to this. But then his natural poise poured back in a flood. “Burt, look, that’s just crazy talk. I can see you’ve found something special here and probably think that God or something wants you to make this bigger than just yourself—”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“And it certainly can be even if you sell it—think of your men, Burt. The men who must have helped you haul this up. If you don’t feel right in taking money for yourself, consider that you should take the money for them—think of what it would matter to their families.”

“And maybe my cousin?” said Burt, scowling.

Edard removed the cigar from his mouth and gave Burt the sincerest glassy-eyed stare right into the eyes that he could muster. “Is it a crime to help a relative?”

Burt snorted and looked down again at the tarp. Voice quiet, he observed, “Yeah, the boys could prob’ly use some help…” His voice trailed off. Then he looked up again at Edard, square in the eye. “Get me someone who can really read this and we’ll talk about sales after that. All right?”

“Of course, of course,” blinked Edard innocently, grinning in triumph within.