Unfinished story

 

In the far distance, silhouetted against the pale disc of the late evening sun, a lone figure stood up in a classic shooter’s stance: feet slightly apart, holding up a long device that aimed squarely at the wobbling vehicle.  The vehicle was heading toward a gap in the crater wall, one of three gaps.

“Harold.”  Ben keyed his comm and waited.  No response came, but he was certain Harold was listening.  After a few moments of silence, he decided to go all in.

“Harold, we have a sniper on the ridge.  He can hole that vehicle and probably injure or kill everyone inside it.  Give up now.”

That, at least, bought a response.  “Sniper, my ass.  No weapons on the manifest.  Nothing like weapons.”

“Doug, show him.  Take out something non-essential.”

Atop the ridge, the sniper fired his weapon in utter silence.  A searchlight on top of the vehicle exploded in similar silence a moment later.

Ben spoke into the comm again.  “That searchlight wasn’t all that big, Harold.  He hit it while you were moving.  If he wants to shoot something, he can shoot it.  Stop now.”

Abruptly, the vehicle stopped.  Ben exhaled quietly, unaware until this moment that he had been holding his breath, speaking in strained whispers.  He felt like screaming.

How in the hell had Harold got through the psychological tests?  This monomania was poison to the community.

A hatch in the side of the distant vehicle popped open and three people clambered out.  A pause, and two more followed.  The hatch closed, and presently the vehicle began moving away again.  The people, in their garish, brightly colored skinsuits, began hiking back toward town in the high, skipping steps typical of Martian pedestrians.  It wasn’t easy to make such a gait look contrite, but they did it.  From here, Ben couldn’t make out who was who.

“I can see him through the viewport.  I have a good line on him.  Can’t say what it might do going through the port, though.  Might deflect, might not have enough energy to stop him.”  Ben registered, distantly, the absence of the word kill.   Because that was what they were talking about, the projectile having enough energy, after passing through the thick material of the viewport, to also pass through Harold Ponsoon’s skull, brain, his self-aggrandizing plans, and out through the other side of his towering ego.  They only wanted to stop Harold, not kill him.  Right?

Right?

“Is he buttoned up?”

“Affirm.”  Harold was wearing a skinsuit, too.  Of course he was, the vehicle didn’t have an airlock.   Its interior had been open to the near-airlessness of Mars’ surface as the other occupants had left the vehicle.  It was just a pat question, something to throw out in the moment, to make it sound like he was gathering information, assembling data in order to come to a conclusion, the right conclusion.  If there could be a right conclusion to this scenario.

“Hold.”  If the shot deflected on its way through the viewport, Harold would not be incapacitated by a sudden loss of cabin pressure.  He’d probably be scared shitless, but not otherwise affected.  “How many rounds do you have?”

A totally different voice came on the comm channel now, a woman’s.  This was a party line, after all.  All the comms could talk to all the other comms, but for the moment Ben’s was prioritizing only a few.  Anyone else that had anything to say to him would have to leave a message.  “We only had time and materials for ten.  Doug used a couple for sighting in, I think.”

“Six.  I burned six.”  Doug’s voice had taken on a curiously flat tone.  “But I’m pretty confident with this thing, now.”

Three rounds remaining, now that one of only ten high-velocity bullets that had ever existed on the entire planet of Mars had been used to cold-bloodedly murder an innocent searchlight.

And damn Harold Ponsoon, they might need that searchlight someday.

“Losing the angle.”  Doug’s voice was flat, cold.  I wonder what the psych tests said about him? 

Harold would have heard Doug’s statement, of course.  Depending on how he set his comm, Harold might be able to hear everyone, every word.  Every curse, every plea, every exhortation.

He’d hear this, too.  “Let him go.”  Against the darkening sky, he saw the silhouetted sniper continue to hold the stance for a couple of seconds longer, holding the picture in the telescopic sight, then lower the weapon.  “He can’t go far.”

He had bluffed, Harold had called, and ultimately Ben had to fold.  The stakes were too high.  The searchlight was bad enough, but to risk destroying a priceless viewport and God only knew what other damage to the vehicle was too much.

The vehicle passed through the gap and disappeared from view.

 

Two weeks earlier

“I’ve just about straightened it all out.  The primary motor controls were cooked by that solar flare on the trip out and a lot of the monitoring, but I’ve converted everything over to either analog control or just manuals.  You’ll have to keep on your toes to run it, but it’s no worse than operating, say, a 20^th century automobile.  Anyone can do it.”

“Well, that’s good, Harold.  We’re needing that thing back on the line.”

“Dibs!”

Ben cast a baleful eye at Harold.  “You can’t call ‘dibs.’  There are far too many legitimate users who’ve had to double- and triple-up on the other Pioneers for you to have a joyride.”

Harold inexpertly hid an offended expression.  “I’m only joking.”

Omega

 They say I'm the most powerful because I'm the one who's counted on for the aftermath, the "most important part," as they call it, and I guess you could say I am but not the way you might think. There's power and then there's influence. One has more impact, one has more reach. Which is more useful depends on where you're standing and when.

Blondie McBoobs is talking, I can't tell which one. There's a 4 on her mic which narrows it down to one of three possibles but damned if I can remember their names. "Omega, why is it we only see you after all the fighting is over?"

"Well ma'am," when you can't remember their names, "ma'am" works fine. "I can't be everywhere at once. That's why there's an entire league and not each of us addressing issues individually. By teaming up we've been able to consolidate and coordinate communications so when there's more than one trouble spot, we can tune our responses to make the best use of our abilities." It's a canned answer and I can almost give it in my sleep. I've gotten this question before.

"Some of you have the most amazing abilities, though - completely over the top kind of stuff. Why don't you apply those powers to make the world better?"

A-ha, another old one. "Do you want the Harry Potter answer or the real answer?"

"What's the Harry Potter answer?"

"Let's see...I think it was Hagrid who said, 'everybody'd be wantin' magical solutions to all their problems,' something like that. But that's just restating your question back at you. No, it's bigger than that - literally. Earth is vast. You think it's small but that's just your corner of it. Just the United States is vast and that's just one country; there's hundreds of countries and even the little ones are more than any of us in the League could alter by sheer force. The entire world, 'fixed?' Fixed according to whom? Fixed how? No. The League is like hired security, we stop bank robbers and criminal masterminds and suchlike but organized crime? They've been hiding for generations and our equipment and scope to sniff them out is the same stuff conventional law enforcement has. We don't have magical senses," and that's a lie, "to scope out evildoers. Jet can fly and I have my abilities and Nightshade is what she is but it's not like the comic books. We're special in some ways but we still have to use our hands to pull our pants up. Sure, there's some over the top powers but think about it - Nightshade still has to eat. We're not...gods."

Lie. A little. And I dodged the question. I show up at the end because the end is the part I want to be at.

"Thank you for your time, Omega."

"My pleasure, ma'am." Donegal, that's her name. "You take care, Ms. Donegal."

Jet had already set up the screen so I could go to work without too much interference. I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Flames. Spewing water and crackling electricity. Those are easy enough, a twitch of thought like crinkling my nose at a bad smell, and the breakers clicked over. It's nice having existing controls to influence. But not before I had taken in so much of it, a vibrating sizzle of sensation. The breakers clicked over when I willed them to, but they were opening circuits that were drained of potential.

Fire feels like inhaling until you're full, and then inhaling some more. It is a glorious rush, taking all that wild energy into you. Doing it induces a strange chill in the area of effect but me? I love it. I feel it right down to my toes, an orgasm of energy that could be dangerously addictive.

There were a few wild months in college that were punctuated by what appeared to be a rash of sofa burnings around Fraternity Row and I was happy enough for them to get the blame but let's not fool ourselves. It was me and was it a little masturbatory? Maybe. Was it fantastic? Oh yes.

Do I miss it? Every damned day.

So when there's a city block with flames leaping up and people running and colorful suits flying through the air and shouting catchphrases, I'll be along to mop up afterward, to drink in all the chaos and order it, to subdue the energies and revel in the rush and you'd better believe I'm glad I'm a girl. A guy feeling like this would not be able to hide the super woody in his spangly outfit.

That's why they call me Omega: when there's wild energy loose and threatening people, I end it. I bring it to a stop.

What nobody realizes is that I am quietly inside their heads, tapping here and nudging there. Organized crime is too organized and not interested in destruction. They want influence, not chaos. So I find the more chaotically inclined and ease them into a life of villainy, to glory in fright and fret and running around in mindless terror. I steer them to seeking destruction and general nuttiness.

The League I have gathered around me are good people, solid people who are nevertheless a little sloppy. Jet ricochets off things and breaks buildings, Donder is destructive just being himself. Shit gets crazy. They subdue the bad guy, sloppily and with lots of upheaval and then, offhandedly and with something resembling contempt, call me in to clean up.

And I do. I soak it up, the fear and fire coursing through me in a silvery cascade of joy and sensation. A lust for the wild forces moves me to sometimes allow the building to fall and I breathe in the energy of the fall. Blocks of concrete the size of houses fall like feathers and I am weeping with ecstasy.

They call me Omega, the clean up artist. The tail end. The super maid. They cannot feel me inside their heads, steering them like little cars, pushing them around, crashing them into each other because I like the crash. They call me Omega.

I am Alpha. Earth isn't vast to me, not really. I'm just pacing myself.

Untitled

"Okay, I need you to work with me, here..." The stranger set his half-emptied mug down, strong tea sweetened with honey.

"All right?" The bard had been sharing stories all evening for coppers and drinks, and was having a good night.

"You said, 'Dragons are logical, they only hunt things that attempt to run from them.' Right?"

"Yeah."

"So that makes sense. Prey runs; if it runs, it's prey."

"Correct."

"And then you said, 'they only attack that which attacks them first.' That's kind of a mistake though, isn't it?"

"I don't think so." The bard had never changed a word in the stories and songs handed down through the Guild. That was unimaginable. One mustn't ever tamper with The Truth. Do what you want with local songs and stories and of course compose whatever the hell you like, but Guild songs were sacrosanct.

"I do. That's not attacking, that's defending. It can escalate to eliminating a proven threat, i.e. killing an enemy. But it isn't attacking when you don't start the conflict. Anything that doesn't start a fight isn't an enemy, it's just another creature."

"Okay, I can accept that clarification. But the point remains that a dragon won't initiate hostilities."

"Fine. And now it all falls apart with the last bit: 'But something that does neither terrifies them.' I don't see how or why. They won't attack unless attacked first, so the base state there is to do nothing. If the target isn't fleeing, it isn't food either, so the base state there is to also do nothing. Are you telling me that if you just walk up to a dragon and stand there, it's going to be frozen with fear?"

"Look, man, if you're going to pick the old sayings apart, we're going to be here all day..."

"It's simpler than that."

"Oh?"

"Absolutely." The stranger picked up his mug and drained it, waving to the innkeeper for another. He set it down, idly turning it 'round with one finger. "And I'm pretty sure I know why."

The bard sat back. One fingernail scratched gently up a string of the lute, producing a subtle hiss. "Say on..."

"Old saying, right? Nobody knows how far back it goes, right?"

"Right..."

"But the rule of the Bard Guild is to never change the stories, because the stories are true, right?"

The stranger knew bardic law! Oh, this might be a very interesting evening... "Right."

"If the stories are true and all the statements within the story are not in conflict with each other, then some assumptions around the statements must be mistaken. To be frozen with fear by something that is neither attacking you nor running away is not logical."

"But what about the implication?"

"What about it? Implication is only suggestion, not fact. The fact is that the reaction is illogical. And that leaves only one conclusion."

"And that is...?"

"That what we have been calling 'dragon' all this time is not, in fact, a dragon."

The bard felt her pulse quicken. This might be one of the older Seeing Songs coming to light. "If not a dragon, then what is it?"

"I think it's a man."

Dafydd

 *clunk*

*clank*

*twang* That was different. Still hurt though.

"Boy! Come here!" That's the trainer. My sparring partner looks over to him with something like gratitude. He nods at me and goes over to spar with one of the straw dummies, which unfortunately appears to be putting up a better fight for him than I did.

The trainer is a big, big man. Scars, but not bad, suggests he's put up good defenses in all his fights. Nothing missing: fingers, eyes, not even teeth.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Me Gran calls me Dafydd, sir."

"And what's your parentage? Where are you from?"

"Don't know parentage much, sir. Me da up an' buggered off not long after I was born, Gran says. Me mum keelt over with the consumption about five winters ago an' now it's just me an' Gran, sir. Me, Gran and a passel o' sheeps."

"Hm. Shepherd kid, hey?"

"That's right, sir. They're not our sheeps though, sir, they're the landlord's flock an' we've got a little hut in return for watching the sheeps."

"Got it."

So he's sizing me up, the trainer is. I'm not big, never was. Some winters have been pretty tough, Gran can't do much for money but some knitting and spinning, good work but it doesn't pay well and if the hut's too cold her fingers just can't go fast. I try to help out but keeping the sheep keeps a roof over our head and that's pretty important. So sometimes dinners can be on the thin side...just like me. Just like Gran.

Soldiering, though. Soldiering pays, pays better than shepherding and spinning combined. Gran could be a bit more comfortable in her old age maybe. A lad's got to think of these kinds of things. We could maybe live a bit closer to town even.

"I'm not sure I can use you, kid. You've got courage enough, I can see that. You get knocked down and damn if you don't get right back up again."

"The wolves and dogs keep coming, sir. If you go down and stay down, you get eaten. They're a lot more respectful when you stand firm."

"Ha. Yeah. But courage only goes so far in a fight against men, boy. You need an edge of some kind, and the edges I have to offer you seem a bit out of your league." He unwraps a small bundle and shows its contents to me. "Legend has it that this kind of wand had some magic in it, centuries ago. With it, you could take on foes at a distance." He wrapped it back up again, looking around as if afraid he were being observed. "Study on it and see if you can make anything of it." He handed it to me, still furtive. "I can use courageous fighters, and if it means you don't mix it up hand to hand, even better.

"Go on now. Don't show it to people."

I carried it away and in the relative privacy of a privy, unwrapped the item and looked at it again.

It appeared to be a stick. Not a proper stick like for walking, or a useful stick like for fishing. Just a stick. It had an odd notch on one end though, a notch with a distinct worked quality that told me it wasn't natural.

So we ask ourselves: why put a notch in a stick? Or wand. Whatever you call it. It's the kind of notch you'd put  on so your fishing string can't slip off, but the whole thing is maybe only a third the length of a usual fishing stick.

Okay, I've got some cord Gran made for keeping my packs tied up, loop that around...Yes, it's perfect. Now I have a stick with a cord on it. That's useless.

"Oi! Some of the rest of us might like a go!" Ah, time to leave the privy then.

"What the bloody - anything you catch down there, I don't want." He's mistaken the wand-and-cord for a fishing stick, understandably. "The hell you doin' in there? Drop your lunch before you got to eat it?" He laughs uproariously and thumps me on the back to send me on my way. That's fine. The boss said don't show the wand around and if it's being mistaken for something else entirely, I think that counts.

Thus excused from formal hand-to-hand training, I took the stick home to the sheep, who were unimpressed. Whipping the stick around made the cord pop a little like an actual whip, but it wasn't shaped right so it never did more than a faint pop.

Gran wondered over the stick but didn't have anything to offer besides agreeing that the notch was definitely unnatural, that someone made it. And she agreed that it was shaped exactly right for holding a cord.

"Not only that but look at the curve, Daf. It's to hold a cord under strain. Not just strain, but moving too. See how everything has been so carefully smoothed? The cord can swing back along the stick to straight out and never encounter an obstacle. See this grain here - this was a stub but it's been carefully shaved off and smoothed out. Why, do you suppose?"

"No idea, Gran." And I went out to watch the sheep for the night.

All evening long, as shadows stretched out longer and longer, I messed about with the stick. The whipping was almost interesting, but not quite.

Holding the cord behind a finger until the stick was moving its fastest was something else. The cord made a loop that zinged around until I let the cord go. That was very interesting and I wondered how that could be useful. What could I make of making something go faster than I might do just with my hands?

Sometimes you could scare off dogs and wolves with a thrown stone, and of course the faster a stone is thrown, the farther it goes and the harder it hits. Little me by my lonesome can fend off a wolf big enough to eat me all by his lonesome, with a sharply flung rock stinging him in the hindquarters. Could I somehow use this thing to throw a rock?

The first try went badly. So did the next two hundred twenty-eight tries because the rock just wouldn't stay on the cord.

In the morning, I shared my thoughts with Gran and she looked at the cord.

"Well, it's a little chafed from the rocks but not too bad. But if we added something..." Gran's hands moved fast with her tools, and when she handed it back she had knitted or woven a portion of the center of the cord into a kind of basket. "Now the rocks won't be on the cord. They'll be in it. Try that, and see how you get on."

I tried it. Taking the wand and cord into the field - close to the flock, of course, because it's good for the landlord, if he should just happen by at random, to see his shepherd boy tending his charges - I dropped a rock the size of a quail egg into the little cord basket and, letting it dangle, give it a good swing.

The rock in its basket went whiz and as my arm came to the end of its arc and slowed down the end of the cord with the rock seemed to go even faster and came back toward me and in shock I let the cord end go and the rock flew out of its basket and screamed past my ear, I swear it actually screamed. I know I nearly did too, it was so fast.

This needed thinking about.

More tries got it sorted. I didn't even need to swing very hard, not like for throwing a stone but I soon learned I could do that too. The trick of it was to let go of the cord at the right time. It takes practice.

And I practiced. One thing a shepherd boy can do, watching over his flock of an evening, is practice something that doesn't take much in the way of light or tools. A stick, cord and rocks being all the tools I needed, I could practice until my arms ached.

A couple of weeks later, a trio of wolves came slinking around the low hills at the far edge of the field. Under the moonlight they were easy to pick out, even though they were a good hundred paces away or longer.

Wolves around here have learned to stay more than fifty paces away from me. I'm a decent shot at that range and some boys throw farther, though none more accurately than me. I might not be especially strong but as far as targets go if I can only reach it with a stone, I can hit it with a stone. But at a hundred paces or more, wolves don't worry about people.

Tonight I dropped a stone a bit larger than a quail egg into the cord basket, gave it the twirl around my head that I had learned was most effective, sped up the swing and released...

whizzzzdock

With a sound like an axe hitting wood, my stone flew perfectly, almost in a flat line, and connected with the second wolf. It went down without a sound. Startled, the other two leapt up and vanished back into the trees.

It took me a couple of minutes to get to it but when I finally did, I found the wolf exactly where it had fallen. It was dead, a big bloody hole in its head just above one eye. Wolf skulls are hard, I know - but my rock was harder.

It took a fair portion of the night to drag it back to the hut, it was so heavy. I think it weighed nearly as much as me.

Shortly after dawn as I could hear Gran up and moving around, I called her out to come look at it.

"Oh, my! And you killed it?"

"Yes, Gran! With this!" And I showed her the stick and cord. "I hit him with a rock farther away than I've ever thrown anything. It was like magic, swish-and-flick! You swish the stick and flick the cord and down he went!"

"Don't exult over the death of another creature, boy, you know better." But Gran's admonishment was effaced a bit by her clear appreciation. "We need to skin this poor thing. I don't know if wolf is good eating but I'm not wasting him. And certainly not his hide, either, that'll be good when winter comes." And she immediately set about the messy business of taking an animal to bits.

Later, after a breakfast of fresh wolf steak and a nap, I went back to the training ground, and to find the training boss.

"Sir, I've puzzled it out."

His eyebrows climbed right up into his hair. "Really? The, um...what have you done, lad?"

I showed him the stick and cord. He didn't seem to recognize it at first. "You gave me this and told me to try to work out the magic of it."

"Oh, right! That! Er, yes, well...how did you get on, then?"

I demonstrated the swish-and-flick that kills wolves when done right, when done on a moonlit early morning when you're by yourself and no-one to help you. I showed it to him, but without the stone because when you add the stone, it becomes dangerous.

"And you killed a wolf?" He looked incredulous. "With that?"

"I'll tell you what: let me show you." And we went out to the training pitch where older boys and younger men were battling each other with blunt weapons and heavy shields, stabbing straw dummies to death and running, running, running because all the weapons are swords and the best way not to get stabbed or slashed is to run away from it. Stab, slash, run. Run, stab, slash. Over and over. "Oi!" I shouted at the fighters attacking straw dummies. "Clear off!"

They looked at me from well over a hundred yards away, comfortably farther away than I had killed this morning's breakfast and even at that distance, the look on their faces was clear: and for what good reason should we, they were obviously thinking.

The boss trainer waved them to move away, and they did.

Stone. Cord. Twirl, twirl again for good measure, swish, flick.

The stone made a new sound, not the whiz but the scream, eeeeepaf somehow coming to our ears a moment or two after we saw the dummy's head burst in a puff of chaff. Faint shouts of shock erupted from the people close to the dummies, and one fell over trying to get away. Those dummies are tough, regardless of them being stuffed with straw. They're tough so bashing and stabbing them will feel like the real thing, even tougher than that because they get bashed and stabbed by an awful lot of soldiers in training, and the head popped like a pumpkin dropped from a height. My stone flew true. If I can reach it with a stone, I can hit it.

The boss' hand came down on my shoulder.

"My God." He said nothing else the entire time we were walking to the dummies. When we got there, it was a mess from the neck up. An exploded, obliterated mess.

"Can you do that again? Can you do that against a man?"

A wolf is one thing. A man is quite another. "I don't know, sir. I reckon I can, if needed."

"The enemy have been gathering their army for some time at the valley plain but have promised they'll just go away if we send someone out to fight their champion. He's unbeatable, as near as we can tell, and no one wants to go near him. He's huge, has a tremendous reach and swings a sword twice the size of anything our biggest man can lift. We're going to have to fight this war the hard way..." which was why I had been training in the first place, "...unless someone can take him down."

I looked down at my simple little device, a foreshortened fishing stick, a shepherd's tool for killing when necessary.  Was it necessary?

Fool.  An entire invading army will simply leave if its champion is killed?  And no losses to my countrymen?  Of course it's necessary.  No honorable man could forfeit such a chance.  Take one life to save hundreds, maybe thousands?  Of course it's necessary.

"I think I could do that. Kill just one, to make the rest go away? I could do that." I picked up a handful of smooth stones to drop into my pocket. "Take me to the war."

As we walked toward the the road that led to the valley that led to the river that led to the war, the training boss said, "You know, boy...I gave you that thing to get you away from this. You're too small to fight a man's fight. You'll get killed."

Possibilities were opening up before me that had never been open before. "So?" A man’s fight, indeed. It’s a fight that needs fighting, be it men or women or children or even shepherds who do the fighting.

"It's not a magic stick, boy."

"No, sir. Of course not. There's no such thing as magic. It isn't a wand. It's just a stick, an extension of my arm. It's my skill and practice that make it work, nothing to do with magic."

"Aye, but...well, what do you even call it?"

I hadn't worked that out yet. I coiled up the cord to sling it over my shoulder. "I don't call it anything. It works because of me, and I call myself Dafydd." And that got me to thinking. "This big champion the enemy has brought us, what do they call him?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"It just seems right, if I'm going to kill someone. Gran would have me at least give him the respect of knowing his name."

The river plain came into view and with it the army and its champion standing tall before them. Our own army stood on this side, both shouting and receiving abuse to and from the enemy just a hundred paces away. I felt the stones in my pockets, stones picked from the soil of my homeland, smooth and round, slightly larger than quail's eggs.  Among the enemy's army one stood head and shoulders above the others, a beast of a man.

Five smooth stones.  My homeland versus the invaders.

"They call him Goliath."

The Most Dangerous Gamer, part 4: The Adventures of Human Gina

 One of the Llobbans had quit.  Jajaqin hadn’t bothered to learn their name.  They had observed their partner staked to the ground like a tent and Human Gina bouncing toward the horizon with another captured weapon, and simply quit.  They had shrugged out of their hunting gear, sworn fluently into the camera, dropped all the equipment on the ground and shuffled away.

The other Llobban, once they had wrestled themselves free of the net, watched them go dispassionately.  They made no effort to call their partner back.  Jajaqin wondered about that; he had assumed that the duo were at least friends, but this bloodless acceptance of their partner’s abandonment suggested something else.  He wasn’t familiar with Llobban culture, and didn’t know any of them socially.  It hadn’t seemed important until now.

“Don’t go,” he said as the remaining hunter began to gather up the quitter’s gear.  “I have a suggestion.”  The Llobban listened as he laid out his idea.

“We won’t make as much on a winning hunt if we have to split the winnings with everyone.”

“I understand that.  But Human Gina had me neutralized in just a couple of breaths!  And she surprised me, and you know my people aren’t easy to sneak up on.”

“Actually, we didn’t know that.”  Evidently the Llobban needed to expand their social circles too.

“Well, we are.  Let’s get the others to meet up with us.  This is a completely different hunt from anything else any of us have ever done, and we’re going to have to do it differently if we’re going to succeed.”

It was nearly an eighth-turn before everyone had gathered in a location they’d agreed upon via their trackers.  Firstly they had all had to sleep – only Jajaqin could stay awake all night without suffering neurological injury and he was unwilling; it had been a stressful postmeridian.  He guessed by its small eyes that the human wasn’t very adept at night, and might naturally take an extended break.

In the morning, they discovered they had been mistaken.  Sometime during the night, half their weapons had simply disappeared.  When they took stock of what was left to them they realized that all their ranged weapons, projectile throwers and the like, had been stolen away.  They were left only with direct-contact devices like the Llobban’s spears.

The Aranndan triad screeched.  Jajaqin’s translator uttered a stream of very bad words, and a couple of blank spaces where the translator either lacked a word or else encountered a decorum threshold.  It wasn’t common, but it happened.  The Aranndan leader rasped, “It got our guns!”

Jajaqin chuckled quietly to himself.  The group had been highly skeptical of everything he’d told them the previous evening as the sun went down.  The night hadn’t been dark since the primary was in opposition so even as the sun went down, the dimmer but far larger planet covered nearly half the sky, providing a softer light that nevertheless left no shadows.  Under such conditions and despite them leaving sentinels awake in shifts during the night, Human Gina had stolen in, collected the guns, and escaped again.  The Aranndan added, “The creature is a demon.”  Jajaqin wasn’t sure of that last word, but never mind that for now.

“Do you believe me now?  I only had a brief encounter with it – with her – and she had neutralized me almost before I realized she was there.  She is small, strong, very fast.  I don’t know much about her species but she’s easily physically the equal of any of us.  She doesn’t give off any scent markers that I detect, and she’s even quiet.”

The remaining Llobban grumbled, “Probably because they’re so small.  Slip under stuff.  Between stuff.”  Jajaqin had talked them around to staying, but in the face of these further developments they clearly were having second thoughts.  “They called us something when we dropped out of the tree on them, though.  What was that about?  They called us Erb.”

“Does she know any other Llobbans?  Maybe she mistook you for someone else.”

“We don’t all know each other, you know.”  They flapped tentacles irritably.

“What do you call yourself, anyway?”

“We’re Dollo.”

The Aranndans refused to provide names.  “If you need us, just call us Aranndan.”  Jajaqin remembered that Aranndans guarded identities jealously, generally only opening up to intimates.  That was fine by him.

The big blue individual across from the low table where they had compiled their remaining equipment was of the same species as Human Gina’s companion, Booj: a Qualan from the outermost jovian’s innermost secondary.  He was affable and, compared to the taciturn Llobban, downright talkative.  He boomed his formal name, a rich, thrumming chord that Jajaqin appreciated for its qualities even if he couldn’t pronounce it, “but just call me Arn.”

The Aranndans looked vaguely annoyed but said nothing, ruffling feathers and settling again.  The Qualan noticed it anyway.  “What?” he asked.

“It’s because of you that we’re faced with this…this creature.”

“Because of me?”

“Because of your species!”

“Like Dollo said: we don’t all know each other.”

“You Qualans are forever blundering into wild business ventures of every sort!  Let’s go mine asteroids!  Let’s sell Aran blankets!  Let’s go introduce a completely wild human to the entire system!”  All three Aranndans looked cranky as their spokesperson groused.  “You are reckless.  Yes, all of you.”  He stomped to his feet but couldn’t seem to decide where to go, and threw himself back down.  “I am stuck in an untenable hunt with a undecipherable.”  Jajaqin knew that the translator knew all the epithets, and so guessed that this was probably a cultural idiom that seldom got off the Aranndan world.

Silently, Jajaqin tapped the camera on his thorax.  “Maybe you would like to choose your words more carefully?”

The spokesperson fumed.  “Why should I?”

“So you won’t have to explain the precise meaning of what you just said to all of us here and our paying viewers."

The spokesperson said nothing further, but his companion stood up.  “I will do the talking from now on.  Please call me Aranndan.”  This one’s demeanor was far different and Jajaqin guessed, based on no evidence at all, that a status game had just been won among the Aranndans, but he couldn’t say who the winner was.

Arn rumbled, “No explanation is necessary.”  He hummed low in his throat, making small pebbles near his feet vibrate.  “I know that word.”

As one, the Aranndans got up and left the table.  Jajaqin sighed.  Ganging up on Human Gina was going to be far more difficult than he had thought.

"All right, everyone.  Let's come up with a plan."

The Most Dangerous Gamer, part 3: The Adventures of Human Gina

Gina looked around. Leaving Jajaqin behind, she had opened a further gap on...him, she guessed, these Jovians came in all kinds...and again leapt into a tree.

Leaping into trees does not get old. I love low gravity. This particular moon, midway out from the sun but fairly far from its planet, was a tad on the cool side. She had dressed for the part of prey: snug pants, athletic top, thermal vest, running shoes and a crocheted hat from her mother. If she stayed still too long, she might get colder than she liked, but not dangerously so. But it was all dark colors which served well in this forest with its ruddy foliage, and when she moved quickly she could open up to avoid overheating.

She had taken no weapons. Prey don't have weapons. But when she had disarmed Jajaqin and subsequently returned his gun, she had nevertheless kept his knife. The size of a large human machete, she wore it strapped to her back and so far had found no use for it.

From her elevated vantage point, she scanned her surroundings. In the distance, a small cloud of the little bird-analogs zoomed into the air, suggesting a disturbance that might be important.

That was all.

A mass dropped onto her back, wrapped around her body and dragged her out of the tree.

"What..." She didn't have time to say more before she landed, then tangled and fell over. She looked up. "Erb?"

A Llobban even higher in the tree than she had been stared down at her, two eyes focused on her and two more looking off to one side. Uh-oh...

Here they came: another Llobban swarming through the underbrush, also armed with a net in addition to what appeared to be a small forest of three-meter long blunt spears. Llobbans had evolved in water but graduated to land a long time ago. They were denser than most Jovians, almost as dense as Gina herself, and strong and quick. She had tried arm-wrestling Erb but the absence of bones in their body made it a pointless exercise. Erb had no leverage, but with three tentacles together could pull as hard as she could with one...and Erb had forty-eight more arms.

She stood, stumbled, and then jumped hard to get the net out from under her feet. While still aloft, she flung the net away from herself, trying to send it in the general direction of the Llobban who had netted her in the first place. The newcomer was just thrusting a couple of spears at her as she landed, but she parried one and grabbed another, applying a twisting disarm move to it as she advanced. More spears came at her but she had wrenched this one out of the Llobban's grip, her one hand being more than equal to any one tentacle.

The Llobban in the tree had neatly fielded her thrown net, sorted it out - fifty-one tentacles versus a net looked like a difficult problem in dimensional topology - and flung it back at her. She dodged, and it landed on her opponent, the second Llobban.

Gina stabbed her seized spear through net, snatched another away from the struggling arms and poked it through the net too, driving them deep into the ground close to the Llobban's many armpits. Tentaclepits? A half-dozen or so more spears and she had effectivel pinned the whole person to the ground, though their companion was making their way down from the treetop.

Both nets were neutralized, most of this one's spears were stuck under the net with it. The other one in the tree didn't appear to have any spears, maybe they had wanted their arms free for climbing. Might have something else about its person, but she didn't see anything at the moment. Llobbans didn't wear clothing so there wasn't much concealment beyond their gear harness. Maybe they'd just try to grapple...that would be difficult. All those arms and pretty strong too. But she had leverage and they were working individually.

"Gang up on me!" she shouted at them, tucking a couple of the spears under one arm and darting away.

The Most Dangerous Gamer, part 2: The Adventures of Human Gina

Jajaqin stared. He may have squealed a scream of alarm, he couldn't be sure.

The human bared its teeth at him, swooping down from the branch and, planting a foot on his thorax, wrenched his hunting implement out of his grip in one swift tug. Dancing about him like a qinqabet, it snatched his knife out of his belt too. It squeaked something at him, so high pitched it almost hurt his ears.

His translator laughed, "I got your gun!" How did the damned gadget impart the amused tone?

Jajaqin stared as Human Gina leapt gracefully back into the tree. Graceful, not like a dancer or a waterfall, but graceful like the flight of that same qinqabet, a hungry blade slicing through the air, strong and sure.

The creature was talking to him. In his life's experience as a professional hunter, that was a new one. His translator made sense of its ear-tingling chirps. "What's your name, friend?"

"I am called..." he rattled off his name, then remembered how the creature had abbreviated its own designation. "...but just 'Jajaqin' is fine."

Human Gina looked around herself. Her body conformation was terrible, she seemed to have a front and a back and if that was indeed the case, was entirely blind to her rear. Right: rocky world. His own species had spent the first half of its evolution floating. Danger might come from anywhere, and his own shape and sense organ arrangement reflected that.

And she had surprised him anyway.

"So, Jajaqin. Are you wearing cameras or are they trailing you?"

"Wearing."

"Can you turn them off?"

"Briefly. There is a privacy interrupt available, but it is temporary and turns itself back on, if I don't turn it on myself." Human Gina turned around again, scanning the distance and apparently satisfied that no danger lurked.

"How are you enjoying the hunt so far?"

Wretched creature. "Not much." He peeked at his locator and noted that, indeed, no other hunter was close. They were alone.

"I have you and your companions at a disadvantage, you know. Because of how our respective species evolved, I'm far denser than any of you, generally stronger. I'm also faster on land than any of you."

"What is your point?"

"My point is that in a contest of strength and personal combat, I have evolved advantages that are extremely difficult for any person native to this system to beat."

"You are boasting."

"Nah. It's a fact. Not trying to be rude. I mean, a couple of people I have met in the system are actually from one of the Jovians, the big gas giant planets."

"You met a," and he heard the human's translator make a sound he couldn't describe.

"Yes, that's them. Wonderful people. Absolutely astounding singers. But if I were to try to visit them in their home, I'd just die. It wouldn't even take long. I would be at the disadvantage there."

"Again: what is your point?"

"I wanted to really challenge myself. The blob guy I fought a while ago, Algo - he was a serious challenge, at least at first. But one-on-one contests just aren't getting it done, so I decided to put myself out in front of a hunt."

"Why?"

"The payday is just too good, Jajaqin." She grinned at him again, a tiny mouth full of even tinier teeth. How did these creatures get enough food to stay alive? "I mean, you're not doing this for free, either. Are you?"

"I could have. I am a popular contestant in the hunts. I would be rewarded regardless. But no, I put up money for the privilege of hunting you."

Human Gina made an expression he hadn't seen before. Its eyes got wide and the corners of its little mouth turned down. "Really? I'm flattered!" She turned around again, scanning the distance. Jajaqin stole another peek at his locator. Still alone. "May I make a suggestion?"

He was perplexed and let it show, turning a deep magenta in his extremities. "I'm listening."

"Gang up on me."

"Excuse me?"

"Turn off your camera for a moment."

Wordlessly, he did so.

"How much time do we have when you do that?"

Jajaqin told her, pausing while her translator provided converted units.

"About five minutes. Plenty of time. Okay, listen: you hunters have spread out so that each of you might have a chance at taking me down on your own, right?"

"Of course. The purse is far larger for an individual than for a team."

"What is the purse for bringing back nothing?"

"Not much. I will make a decent profit, but only a fraction of what a successful hunt yields."

"Less than being a member of a successful team?"

"Much, much less, yes."

"So gang up on me. If you don't gang up on me, I'm going to use my natural advantages against each of you hunters, one at a time, and nobody is going to have any fun."

"You don't believe one of us can take you?"

"Do you remember the first words I said to you?"

Jajaqin seethed, embarrassed. "I do."

"I got your gun. I will get all your guns, I will get all your knives, I will throw all of your hunting animals into the trees. One. By. One. If you each come at me independently, I will take each of you out, nobody wins a big purse, the viewers get disgusted and nobody has any fun."

"Fun?"

"Nobody's in this to try to actually eat me, are they? Nonlethal weapons, right? I volunteered for this for the challenge, for the contest! So come get me! All of you!"

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because this hunt is a game! And what's the point of playing if I can't lose? What's the point of playing if you can't win? Change up your strategy, all of you, because one-on-one, you won't get me."

Jajaqin considered. "Okay. That makes sense."

"Good." She looked around again. Clearly humans had evolved with their blind spots; Gina's regular check of her surroundings was natural and thorough. "You want your gun back?"

Jajaqin's camera beeped, warning him that whatever privacy he had needed was about to come to an end. "Yes."

Human Gina plucked his hunting implement up from the branch and tossed it high in the air. He followed its arc and moved to be under it, catching it deftly with his dorsal arm. But by the time he had clicked the safety off, the human had already leapt from the branch and was receding into the distance, far too fast for him to follow.