3

  Laws of the Hunt

  The specimen tracked the woods often.

  From morning to afternoon, primitive weapon in hand, it lurked from a small shelter off into the open lands beyond the forest’s grasp, often prowling for game, other times simply walking aimlessly. I found that curious. It would be easy to kill the human now but that seemed a reckless waste of valuable observation. It moved in a way I did not suspect. Sometimes it sat down and seemingly waited, staring into space. Other times it appeared to weep, or curse and scream. I found those behaviors fascinating, as much as I appreciated the nature of their posture, their gait.

  So alike me, these humans, but not. The one I watched from the trees was a modest height and many hundreds of pounds lighter than even the weakest runt of my kind. This particular human as well was, to my observation, an elderly male, and in that short-span of human life, could mean the specimen was between forty to ninety years old Earth years old. I found its ritualistic sobbing endearing, and wondered at what could possibly trouble such a short-lived species so deeply. This morning, the elderly specimen prowled the woods in a hunt, I judged by the hunched posture, and it patrolled the regular haunts of its hunting grounds for the typical ruminants that grazed here.

  The specimen, over the course of days, seemed to realize that the hunts were turning up less ruminants, less rodents, less prey at all. The cause and effect was valuable for my learning. The meat on Earth was truly delicious, and once I easily caught the rodents of all sizes, I hunted down the ruminants at leisure, horned and not. Draped in the pelts of my meals, the cold no longer disturbed me as much on most days. The local avian I have since left alone, but caught in my hands at times to admire.

  This hunting ground teemed with opportunity.

  I looked down upon the elderly human as it seemingly surrendered the hunt, laid the long-barreled weapon over its shoulder and stalked back to its shelter. This time I followed. My cloak embraced me and bent light around my form, attached my visage to terrain. The specimen climbed carefully down a sloped hill and back to a fenced structure with two levels and a pasture of grazing bovine. I longed to taste the bovine. Perhaps I would kill those later.

  The specimen entered the shelter. With a shift of my neural lace, the biomask’s vision mode flickered to a pulsing sonar imaging system that filled my sight with shape and structure from fragment signal alone. I touched my fingers along the loose fencing that bordered the shelter from the outside terrain, and I pushed at what appeared to be a gate. It fell open easily and I stepped inside. Inside the shelter, two rhythmic beating hearts. Through the walls, their words reverberated and my vision mode imaged the inside of the shelter with marginal detail. I raised the listening volume of my mask and trained my audio filters to their garbled, Human tongue. It bored me quickly, so I bashed my fist off the wall.The voices stopped. Through the walls, I saw the faint reverberations of their footsteps as they turned in my direction.

  So amusing a reaction, I trilled and slid away, withdrawing back behind the gate. Tucked behind a tree, I watched .The shelter’s door opened and the elderly specimen exited, his weapon in hand. So fierce and brave. It does not flee, even in the face of absolute ignorance of its predator. It comes armed to fight, even old, even ignorant.

  The specimen inspected the area, weapon raised, and eventually forfeit the pursuit and returned to the shelter. This hunt would make for a good first offering. I shall kill and kill well, and afterwards eat much of the bovine in the fenced quarter. Still, I needed to gauge the other specimen, if it was honorable prey or not. If not, it was no great loss. There were plenty of pickings.

  I vaulted down the path and stood outside the weak, flimsy door made of some earthen wood. Inside, my sonar imaging system detected two figures talking amongst one another, their voices hushed now. I sensed which one was the hunter; slightly larger, though still short and squat, and I could see the faint outline of vibrations upon the alloy of his weapon which grew clearer with every word he spoke. Though the corners of my peripheral vision remained blurred and fragmented, so long as I focused the sonar detection in a single direction, my sight was infallible.

  I launched my clawed boot into the door. It shattered at the knob, hung halfway from the hinges, and I ripped it free and flung it into the narrow corridor of the shelter. The noise stirred many vibrations and I could see all directions of the tiny little hovel, the two figures huddled together in the cooking-space in the next room, behind a wall, their trembling forms barely containing two quick-pounding hearts. The male specimen raised the weapon. On the left, into the next room, he waited. I trilled eagerly, the excitement hot in my blood.

  I withdrew my combistick and ejected both ends of the spear. Slowly, I raised the pointed end and peeked the blade out from behind the wall.

  The human cried out and fired. The corner of the wall rippled apart. My breathing grew harsher. The lust for the kill burned hotter. I swung the spear again, drew a second cry. The boom filled the room with sensory details filtered into my biomask; vibrations lingered in all corners of the shelter, highlighting moving figures, male and female, trembling hands, sweat. Rapid, panicking hearts.

  I lunged. My footsteps heavy on the flimsy wooden floor. The elder human shrieked, raised his weapon. I plunged my spear through the gut, swat the blasting weapon away and ripped the hole in through the gut and up to the sternum. The blood was thick and wet and smelled of iron. I switched my vision display with a thought and looked upon the writhing human’s face. Eyes bursting from the sockets, mouth gaping, screaming, veins taut all over the face. Quickly, I ripped the spear from the chest and plunged the end through the neck. Inch after inch of sharpened alloy carved through the jugular, spilling bright blood down the pink neck of the specimen.

  It gurgled, and I plunged the combistick through the wall behind the specimen. Shrunken away in the corner, the second specimen had not stopped screaming. The blood-curdling shriek-sobs had begun once I made contact with my spear, and still the creature howled and sobbed, hands clasped over the face, fingertips dug into the cheekbones as if in heinous disbelief. It shrieked and shrieked until it held no more breath, wheezed for more, and shrieked again.

  I turned down the volume on my audio receptor and focused on my prized kill. The elderly specimen’s heartbeat had ceased function. I yanked the combistick from the wall, from the throat, and beat firmly my fist off the grip to elegantly drip the blood free. “A brave creature,” I trilled from the inside of my mask. I looked to the awe-struck specimen in the corner and analyzed it with clarity. Elderly, female, and sick with an ailment, but not one that stifled its capacity for screaming. The light turned inward and shimmered over my form, and I uncloaked myself.

  A fresh breath of air seemed stir inside the female specimen and she began screaming with renewed vigor, so much vigor that it began to sting through my auditory dampeners. I clenched the creature around the throat and applied light pressure. The shriek choked in its throat, garbled, and the wide, wet eyes stared up at me, frantic, panicking, gagging on fear. I laid my thumb on the chin and turned the head left, then right. It was old, the pelt saggy and frayed, yet something about it was absolutely beautiful. Otherworldly. Soft and flimsy, like floral petals, but with such capacity for vocalizations! I listened carefully to its song of fright, trilled gently along, and tried to mimic the sound.

  That was enough admiration. I released the eldering female and turned back to my kill, and as I stepped away from the shrill cries of the surviving specimen, my cloak bent outward to shield my form again. I grasped the elderly male and yanked it across the floor, the trail of globulous blood staining deep into the rickety wooden floor. I carried the body outside over my shoulder and started back towards my nest.

  There would always be much to learn, that much would never change. Even the Elders were students of the hunt, even if they would not admit it. I was not proud to say that I did not know as much on the Human anatomy as I would have liked, but this was part of the hunt. One must learn how to conduct a blade on your kills; it was not enough to end the life of the an honorable beast. The work that came after remained the most important part of a ritual; one must display the honorable beast. To do so properly required a delicate hand that was equally precise, fine knowledge of said creature’s body, and the standard techniques of tending to a fresh kill so as not to waste the creature’s flesh.

  The elderly male was my first Human trophy. I plunged my wristblades into the stomach and gut down the chest. I pulled the entrails out and laid them over the branches, considering what to do with them, if anything. With a careful use of my scalpel, shears and spoon, I pulled out the eyes and place them in a small jar filled with preserving-solution. They floated among the pink-red stained solution like little gemstones, and I adjusted my biomask to observe the color frequency that Humans may use, so that I may look upon the eyes of my first kill as its fellow kin might see it. Two white orbs with a blue center iris and dark little pits. I tucked them safely into a secured box in my nest, and as I resumed tending the trophy’s flesh, I felt that perhaps the eyes would be my best claim out of this.

  The pelt did not skin easily, or as easily as I had thought it might. I pulled, yet the pink flesh did not peel easily from the red flesh, and after an hour of my excessive cutting, I was left with more red flesh than any presentable pelt at all. My cuts had been too deep and reckless, as well, for I had nicked the bones in several places, even when I had made cuts that seemed minimal. So weak, this flesh, and so easy to tear and strip, but difficult to peel.

  As I tried to peel the flesh from the head, I achieved the same effect, and the bloody red-white skull glistened under my amateur butchery. The brow, crown, and several places in the jaw and eye sockets were nicked, scratched, and overall clawed from my constant gripping for leverage while I cut the meat away, and by the end of the process, I was left with a beaten, battered human skull that was worse than when it died. I washed the skull, tried to buff out the scratches of my own claws but it was to no avail. A great shame came over me as I looked upon the splatters of blood, the entrails spilled into the grass and hung over the trees, the hanging kill with the stomach opened up, missing stretches of skin. It seemed a grotesque waste of my effort, but for my first kill on earth, such a thing brought me no glory. I could not let this go to waste. I polished the skull, buried the entrails in a shallow, bloody pit, and laid the skull beside my bedding in my nest.

  Was there honor in this kill? Maybe, likely not, but it was my first kill and it was part of this hunt. As I bedded myself among a lush garden of local leaves on the floor of the nest, I laid the skull atop my chest, my claws folded over the cranium, and drifted off to sleep. In my dreams, I prowled through the halls of my shelter back on Yautja Prime, the inner ribbed walls and smooth floors guiding me in circles, from room to room. Each time I turned a corner, the elder male specimen was there, staring with eyes wide with fear, and he tried to flee. I chased him yet each time I killed him, his body crumbled to dust in my claws and then I would turn to see him again, fleeing, and myself chasing. Somewhere in the distance, there came a shrieking that I could not deafen.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Something stirred in my nest.

  I rose. Blades ready, my wrist raised, I leapt from back to crouched in half a second. The nest rumbled in the trees, shaking on the suspended ropes, and I braced my claw on the wall for balance. I switched the spectrums on my biomask’s visual systems, and still my sensors observed no contact. But that was wrong. In the air, there came a subtle movement that I felt on my skin, upon my locks and my claws. Like the passing of wind, but one that had a sting to it.

  I looked. From this corner to that corner, I looked. My body relaxed. Had I simply scared myself from dreams to wakefulness? That seemed unbecoming of myself, and I felt a pang of deeper shame in my general unease. To be the most dangerous predator on an offworld hunting ground, and still I did not sleep with ease nor comfort.

  Red light illuminated inside the cramped corners of my nest. Up in the makeshift ceiling, a beam of three-dots flashed over my eyes, centered on my face, and I felt my skin suddenly crawl down into my soul. I was dead. My shame washed over me, through me, drenched, and then I dropped my head in resignation.

  “Already you surrender?” The soft chitter of Durukal‘s words came filtered from his biomask.

  “I have no cannon,” I said, angry and ashamed.

  “That does not stop a warrior.” The light turned away and shimmered down the shape of mass poised in the corner of the nest’s ceiling. Hands and feet braced against either wall, the Elder suspended himself with ease, the shoulder-cannon poised and aiming down at my face. “Was that not your goal?”

  I did not know what to say, and I found myself foolishly repeating myself. “I have no cannon.”

  “No dexterity, either.” The Elder fell from the ceiling corner and landed hard on his feet. The nest stirred in the trees on its suspended ropes. I caught my balance with a hand on the wall. The Elder remained still as stone inside the shifting shelter in the trees, balanced and unbothered.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “Am I not to undergo this rite alone? Or have I failed to meet your expectations already?”

  “Both.” The long white locks of the Elder danced with each turn of the head, and he was dressed not in netweaving but plated cuirass and greaves, draped over in a dark green cloak that was clasped to his collar with the skulls of creatures from distant worlds. His biomask had no lenses, no patterns, no expression. A blank sheet of metal from crown to chin left no impression of his status, clan, or abilities. From the folds of his cloak, he withdrew an unevenly gashed human skull. “What is this?”

  “It is mine,” I realized, searching my nest for my first human trophy. “I tracked that hunter and killed it.”

  “You butchered it.” Durukal turned the skull over in his claws. “This bone is splintered all over. You would display this? Stake your honor on this?”

  “It is my first kill.” I felt the anger in my heart begin to simmer, but I could not voice myself carelessly. When my clan would not sponsor my hunt to planet Earth, it was Elder Durukal who agreed to do so, even without my own clan’s acceptance. It was through his will that the Mothership escorted me across the stars and dispensed me here. “I could not throw away my first kill.”

  “This is not a warrior.” His claws closed around the skull. The cranium cracked, the cheekbones splintered, and then it all caved inward inside his palm. “This is slaughter, youngblood. There is no honor in this kill.”

  “It was armed,” I insisted. “It attacked, and was killing to kill. I had watched it hunt for days before I claimed it.”

  “You misunderstand,” Durukal said. He turned over his palm and spilled the crumbled fragments of bone out unto the nest’s floor, and twiddled his digits to flick off any remaining bone dust. “The kill is not illegal, boy. It has no honor. You are not sponsored by your little clan, Karok. It is my will, my honor, that has been staked in your name. So your hunt will fall under my parameters. Is that understood?”

  “Yes.”

  He leapt from the doorway of my nest, and I knew that I was expected to follow.

  Outside, the darkness of the forest loomed overhead. The Earth’s moon nestled in the center of a star scattered sky, and I landed on the grassy woodland floor with a loud thump. Ahead, the Elder prowled through the trees. I followed after him, not at a full gallop but with medium pace. He stopped at the foot of a deep cliff that bled down a mountainside into a great thicket of trees that stretched on and on seemingly forever, as far as my physical oculars could see.

  “You are already a hunter,” Durukal said. “Your father is a hunter, and his father before. Your brothers are hunters. Is that why you travel to Earth? To become what you already are?”

  “No.”

  “Did I seek you out?” the Elder asked.

  “No.”

  “Does your fate decide mine?”

  “No.”

  “So, why do you fail in your goals?” Finally, the elder Yautja turned to face me, and though we stood at nearly the same height, I felt small and towered over.

  “It was not illegal,” I trilled gently, feebly.

  “You sought me out,” Durukal began, “because you desired to be more than a hunter. What did you say?”

  “That I want to be a warrior,” I said, and took a step forward. The wind came strongly and pulled on our locks, on the grass and the trees that framed our standing at the edge. “Not a mere hunter. It was said your hunts were legendary, having slaughtered armies of humankind singlehandedly. Your palace was… impossibly beautiful. The bones and skulls that made up your walls, your flooring, your throne. What I saw was a warrior’s shelter, not a hunter’s.”

  The Elder stared at me, his blank biomask statue-like and unwavering. “Is that who you are?”

  “It is,” I whispered. “I am not weak, Elder. I am not beholden to traditions. If I will be the first warrior among my clan, a leader of armies and fighter of battles, I must be as my own. Not as those who came before me.”

  Elder Durukal turned away, his long green cloak flowing in the night winds. “What you killed was not a warrior. It was a hunter, yes, a killer, yes, and legal, yes. Did it agree with my parameters? No. If you desire to be the first warrior of your clan, then you must hunt other warriors. That is why I’ve sent you here.”

  “To Earth?”

  “To here on Earth,” the Elder said. “This planet is embroiled in the worst conflict it has ever endured. Much of it has changed irrevocably and irredeemably in the last three decades alone. It is not the same world I hunted upon, ages ago.” His head turned to face my direction. “Claim your trophies from soldiers, fighters, and other warriors alike. Do not raise your blade to a civilian again, for now I deem them unworthy of your hunt and thus illegal. Do not shame yourself again in your haste to earn your recognition.”

  “I understand, Elder,” I said, and lowered myself down to a knee. “You honor me with this hunt, with this opportunity. I shall not fail you again.”

  “We shall see. This will be the last that you see of me, until your hunt has ended. That does not mean you are not being watched and appraised, Karok.”

  “Yes, Elder. I shall stay in accordance with your rites.”

  Slowly, his head turned away, raised to the vastness of the sky and the stars overhead. “This is over. Return to your nest and start again.”

  As I turned away from him, the question lingered in my mind and I turned back to face Elder Durukal once again. “I have a final inquiry of you, Elder. Before we part ways.”

  “Speak.”

  I searched for the words to bring forth my thoughts. “You left your palace and luxuries to oversee the hunt of youngblood you did not know. When I asked if you may sponsor my lone hunt, you had every reason to decline me and send me home. Why did you agree to oversee my hunt? Why leave the homeworld and bother on my behalf?”

  “You have wanted to ask this for sometime,” Durukal said.

  “I have.”

  Several moments passed before the Elder seemingly found his own words to express his thoughts. “I agreed to sponsor your hunt because of what you told me about your clan.”

  “What did I tell you?” I asked. “We spoke in great detail of my goals on this hunt.”

  “You spoke of how your father challenged you to formal combat when you rejected his hunt.” The Elder’s claws folded neatly at the hem of his belt satchels. “That if you would not hunt as he, his father and ancestors, then you were no son of his. Something to that effect?”

  “Yes,” I said quietly. “Something to that effect.”

  The Elder gave a slow shake of his head. “I agreed to undertake your hunt because of that. Because we are more than what we are told to be. We are who we choose to be.” With that, the Elder disappeared into a blur against the night.

  I stepped forward and stood in the place where he once stood, overlooking the vastness of the forest below. Somewhere in the distance, explosions thundered and echoed.