assistirfilmes Book 2: Chapter 16: Hunted
Book 2: Chapter 16: Hunted
Book 2: Chapter 16: Hunted
Howard
September 2189
Vulcan
The buster struck the raptor at just shy of Mach one, spreading fragments of carnivore over the hunting party, other raptors, and most of the nearby vegetation. The red cast that it added to the greenery lent an eerie, dangerous aura to the scene.
Not that a dozen hungry raptors needed help looking dangerous.
This was the third hunting party this week to run into a raptor ambush, and I was glad I’d decided to bring a couple of busters along. The raptors were getting bolder since they’d been successful in taking down a couple of settlers. The Landing City planning committee was still smarting over that—it was their decision to reprioritize guard details that had led directly to the deaths.
The spectacular death of one of their number caused the raptor hunting pride to hesitate, just long enough for the humans to regroup and open up on them. The raptors were tough, but they hadn’t evolved to withstand a twenty-second-century assault rifle.
Within seconds, the raptors were down. The hunters bent over, panting, more from nervous reaction than exertion. My observation drone hovered nearby, keeping watch.
The group leader, Stéphane, looked up at my drone. “Eh, thanks there, big guy. They come out of nowhere, those bastards.”
I bobbed the drone once by way of acknowledgement. The raptors had set up an ambush for the hunters and almost pulled it off. They were intelligent—there were still ongoing arguments about how intelligent. The original three-person hunting parties were now double the size. And everyone involved took the duty very seriously.
“No prob, Stéphane. A little buster billiards now and then is great fun.”
Stéphane laughed, and the group organized themselves back into a proper skirmish line. We had another kilometer of perimeter to cover before we could head back. I silently ordered down another buster from orbit, and assigned a mining drone to come pick up the remains of the one I’d just expended.
Bob’s personnel busters were a versatile tool for wildlife control. I still wasn’t sure if it was more economical than rigging up an armed drone, though. I resolved to discuss Bob’s plastics-backed shells, if I ever had five free seconds to rub together.
Security was turning out to be a much bigger deal than we’d initially planned for. This planet’s ecosystem was incredibly rich, diverse, and competitive. Even many of the plant eaters had weaponry that would give an earth predator pause. In that particular, it was very much like the popular vision of the dinosaur era.
We’d gotten the hint in the first week on Vulcan, when a pride of raptors had paced through the new townsite like they owned the place. Without so much as a please-and-thanks, they’d tried to eat one of the AMI backhoes.
I grinned at the memory. The backhoe wasn’t harmed, other than needing a new paint job. But it suddenly occurred to the planning committee that they weren’t in charge. At least not yet. Hunting and guarding details had been beefed up forthwith, and we’d mostly managed to keep people and raptors separate. Mostly.
And speaking of which, I had a job to do. I sent the drone up to a thousand meters to get a thorough scan. The colony spread below me, looking a lot like twenty-first-century suburbia—except for the very large fence around most of the perimeter. The fence was backed with sonic stunners, to handle the more unruly wildlife, and the trees had been cleared back an additional half kilometer. A small herd of brontos munched on leaves at the edge of the treeline. Like the raptors, they only generally resembled Apatosauri, and they were only half the size of their namesakes. The colonists had gotten on a dinosaur kick when naming the local fauna, even though some of the associations were a bit of a stretch.
I did a quick overflight of the cleared perimeter. Nothing big enough to matter revealed itself. Satisfied, I turned back towards Landing.
The larger buildings at the center of the town comprised the administrative hub, while the airport and two manufacturing centers formed a triangle around it. People and goods moved around in communally-owned AMI-driven vehicles, available in all sizes from commuter cars to buses. The colonists had decided to build their new life on Vulcan with some social changes, starting with the abolition of private vehicles.
Only three months after landing, the city looked and felt established and stable. I was truly impressed at how quickly everything had gone up. Of course, the USE staff had had literally decades to refine their plans while they were stuck in the enclave after the war. No surprise that they’d worked out a lot of the bugs.
I finished my aerial sweep. It looked like the raptors were done for the day. I called Stéphane. “Hey, chief. All clear. There’s nothing anywhere near the fence now.”
Stéphane grinned into the phone. “Bon! I guess the fence crew will have to come up with something new. They keep thinking they are finished...”
We both laughed. The Fence Construction group was taking a lot of flak lately.
“So, Howard,” Stéphane continued after a moment. “We will be going to the Groggery after our shift, to sample the latest attempt at beer. Care to tag along?”
“I might just meet you there, Stéphane. I have a meeting with the colonel first. I do love watching you guys fall over dead, though.”
Stéphane grinned at me. “Eh, the last batch did remind me a little of actual beer. I think they’ll have it right, soon.”
I nodded and promised to be there.
* * *
“Afternoon, Howard.”
Bill and Bob both nodded. Bob said, “I enjoy watching the exchanges, but I have to admit that it would be too painful for me to talk to them. I’m glad Riker is up for it. I keep seeing the resemblance to my sisters in people’s faces, and it’s gut-wrenching.”
I smiled slightly. I don’t think anyone had ever come out and said it to him, but the common feeling was that Bob-1 had gotten an extra dose of Original Bob’s anxiety. He tended to get wound up about stuff like that.
I said to Bill, “Before I forget, I need to contact Riker. I want to find out if he can locate some oak and scan it for me.”
“Oak?” Bill raised an eyebrow at me.
“If Riker can get a good enough scan, I should be able to print some real oak barrels.”
“It’ll take forever to print something biological, you know.”
“I know, Bill. It’s more a proof of concept at this stage. I’ll have a printer doing nothing but making staves until I have enough.”
Bill looked confused for a moment, then grinned. “Going into business?”
“No, just doing my part to maintain morale.”
We talked for a few more milliseconds about miscellaneous items, then they signed off. And Guppy popped in with my next TODO.
Oh. That one. I’d been putting that off...
* * *
Butterworth was livid. This was no mere cow he was having, this was the whole herd. I listened, jaw agape, as he carpet-bombed his tirade with expletives. I hadn’t even been aware he knew the f-word. Turned out he was an expert in its use as a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, article, and several forms of punctuation. I made sure I was recording.
Finally, he calmed down. Relatively. Sort of.
“So these, these... Others—moronic name, by the way—are going around depopulating planets? Just because?”
“Well, according to Mario...” I noted that Butterworth couldn’t quite suppress an eye-roll. He didn’t think much of our naming choices. “...they kill all the life on any planets in the system, then extract all the metals and rare elements.”
“And we’re parked out here like a juicy target!”
I looked down and took the time to rein in my tendency to sarcasm before answering. “Colonel, it’s not like you’d have been any safer on Earth. If anything, Vulcan is slightly farther away from where they appear to be operating. And Earth has been advertising its presence for a couple of centuries with radio pollution.”
The colonel nodded, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. I felt for him. He had no doubt thought that the worst was over with the landing on Vulcan. Now we were all back in the frying pan.
“So what plans do the Bobs have, Howard?”
Now I was on more neutral ground. “Mario has built a bunch of scout-Bobs, and they’re checking nearby systems. He’s going to keep building cohorts, and they’re going to keep spreading out until they’ve mapped the Others’ depredations. Then we’ll take it from there. Bill has turned his attention to methods of destruction. Unfortunately, the Others are probably ahead of us technologically. We have some bootstrapping to do.”
“Keep me informed, please.” He wandered over and sat at his desk, rubbing his forehead. I enjoyed the few seconds of silence as he reviewed his notes.
“Farm donuts.” He said, looking up at me. “Those appear to be exceeding expectations.”
“Yes, Colonel. Bill came up with a lot of engineering improvements while breeding up the plant stock for release on Ragnarök. He has something called free time. I hope to experience it someday.”
Butterworth snorted and gave me a wry smile. We were both going full-bore, getting the colony up and running. The fact that replicants didn’t need to eat or sleep just meant that I was available seven days a week, twenty-two hours and thirteen minutes a day. Or thirty-one forty-nine, on Romulus. Scheduling was going to be a headache once the Romulan colony was up and running. Funny, I couldn’t remember any science-fiction stories that actually dealt with how you’d handle timekeeping on a new planet.
“And that means,” Butterworth continued, “that we’ll be able to set up the Spits and FAITH colonies on an accelerated schedule. I expect you’re looking forward to your descendants coming out of stasis.”
“No one more than Riker.” I grinned. “I have to admit it’s been a pretty popular program in BobNet.”
Butterworth grimaced. “BobNet. Seven billion people on Earth in the early twenty-first century, and FAITH decided to replicate a nerd-slash-engineer with a Star Trek fixation.” He grinned at me to take the sting out of the comment and reached for the disconnect button. “Until tomorrow, then...”