SLATE

Something hunts me in the waste.

I should expect no different. In a fertile world, are virile creatures. The calories are rich, the competition fierce. To survive the predator and prey must be faster, stronger, more deadly.

I need to reach the crash site. With it I may stand a chance. In the open, I come closer to death with every moment. Give me clothing and a good weapon and I have a chance — my species has a chance.

Colonists will come — I sounded the beacon. I have to believe it. Rangers and soldiers and mechs. Scientists and terraforming engineers. Colonists.

But I can’t be sure.

I can’t be sure the beacon’s fired. I need that ship; it may be the only means of ensuring the success of my mission. More than that, I need it not to fall into the wrong hands. It contains a wealth of technology.

The wind lifts me and throws me as I run — I have that in my favor. I have fallen on the ice more than once but I fall forward, and roll, barely losing speed. I run with wild abandon, trusting my feet and the terrain will agree and not snap my ankle or tibia or impale me on a spike of ice, of which I have had enough close calls to be called lucky.

It is not just the wind at my back. The fresh air, my lungs, this body. It is like I have been held back all my life and finally, I am unleashed. It is impossible to explain the feeling, but everything in this world is more real than anything I have known or experienced.

Things here feel that they are what they were always meant to be.

I am in the crater, running on hard ice and soft snow, along flat expanses and over sloping mounds. I have nothing in my knowledge banks that would make sense of the landscape. My best theory is that there is something below the ice that gives it its form. The center of the crater is huge and jagged like broken teeth.

There is a strangeness about it that is unsettling.

It might be the strange emptiness of a space crowded by thick forests on all sides. Or it might be the illusion created by the forest, which makes the massive basin seem small, though, really, it is the forest that is massive. I am far off, yet the forest seems mountainous on all sides. It is ever-present, like a wall nearby, and yet, not. I can scarcely believe how tall the trees must be. ‘Big’doesn’t begin to describe it. Titanic. Gargantuan. Their size strains my inbuilt thesaurus. I must see it for myself up close.

In the dark, I did not realize the sheer scale of the trees. It’s possible that I didn’t see these giants, as huge as they are. They are widely spaced, though they cover vast mileage with their branches. It is possible I never got close to their mountainous stumps.

Are these what made the night so dark?

It started as a feeling. The feeling of being watched. I do not rely on superstition but neither do I ignore it. It causes me to question whether I successfully activated the threat-detection. My hairs raise and stand on end before my vision can even flash red.

I was wise to put the cub in a sling. I may need my hands soon. I still have a dangerous lack of offensive capability. Not everything can be beaten with a fist or poked with a curved tooth. The wraith, while not large, could do more damage to me than the flesh scorpion, which is why rescuing the cub was a dumb idea and very nearly an act of treason against my species.

Even now, I can somehow feel the wraith, its fury, its terrible hunger, the constant pain of its existence.

It is in the waste. I sense it's cold. It seeks me. I feel its icon blinking in the map, though I did not set up the capability.

I wear white fur on the outside. As camouflage. It is not warmer, but would I sweat otherwise. The skin is disgusting — grimy and wet. There was no tanning involved, just butchery.

It is worse than nakedness.

Shapes, streak in my periphery. A shadow blurs with the whipping wind and snow. I veer right and feel a rush that is out of sync with the wind — faster.

I feel a sudden sharp pain in my leg.

*First blood.*

My lower legs are uncovered. The ape was stockier than I am. Its torso was long — no problem there. But its legs were short. I had to make concessions to wrap my feet with straps of leather and to make the sling, and the cinch around my waist. Still, there are holes in uncomfortable places. The freezing air steals in and around me.

It is not a deep cut but that is missing the point.

It was the test.

Is it tasty? Is it strong? Is it dangerous?

It might be that I got too close to one of the pack. A pack — that’s my working theory.

They have been shadowing me, gauging me. They will come closer and closer. Their attacks will be small at first. With each successful attack, they will grow bolder. They will bleed me if they can, weaken me, and then go in for the kill. My best hope would be to kill the first attacker, sudden and brutal, without stopping.

But that opportunity has come and gone.

I grunt.

Another cut, deeper. Blood spurts onto the ice. I hear them, no longer silent. They titter and laugh, whooping like wild dogs — not that I have heard anything like it.

Without looking down I know blood has left my body. I know it the same way I feel a rush of energy when I spill the blood of another. But losing blood is the opposite. It feels like hope trickling away. It feels like the promise of his world dripping onto the snow.

But there is nothing I can do about it.

Another flits past me. It is long and low and bounding. I do not see it lash out, but I feel the cut.

Blood streams down my legs. It into the leather bindings and I leave red footprints in the snow — a trail of blood to follow. Many things like the smell of blood; many things smell it from far away.

It was the smell of blood that brought them to me. A poorly cleaned skin, with the stink of meat still on it.

My deeds follow me. I paint a target on my back.

An unfortunate miscalculation. The ship is not far, I can feel it on my map. It is so close.

The loss of blood drains my energy and my will. My feet are numb, my legs heavy, and the words swings.

Still, I run onwards. The pain drives me onwards. But it does not matter unless I can somehow turn the situation to my advantage. If I do not change the paradigm, then I am running to my death.

The ship is tantalizingly close. It is bait on a hook. This is what kills you — the in-between. The indecision. The hesitation. It is why I keep going — because it is so close. Just a little further. Just a few more steps.

If only I could make my legs work.

I grunt in pain.

A bold hit, deep.

I catch another glimpse. Hairless, and pale, the bound of powerful hind legs, low to the ground.

They whoop their delight, louder. They sense my weakness.

Soon.

Soon they will close.

I am loping now, like a wounded animal. I am that. I become what hunts me, brought low to their level. The trail of blood is one continuous line, no longer broken.

I see my story end here.

The cub on my back will die, alone on the ice, just minutes from shelter.

Water. I never see water. Flowing water. I never see a lake. I die on the ice. There are a billion ice planets that I could choose to die on. But I come to the most fertile world ever detected and die mere miles from water.

Fresh flowing water. More than a man could ever drink.

They are on my heels now. They are no longer trying. They celebrate their victory over me. They clamber over one another And there is a frag-ton of them. Over fifty buzzing red dots swarm my map.

They make their move. One runs between my legs. Another rams my side. One is on my back, digging long teeth into me, raking me with its powerful hind quarters. Then another, and another.

But I run onwards like a mech into battle. I will not make it easy for them.

They are alive, so they have never met a Solarin. They will meet one today.

Their titillating is loud in my ears. Their screams are raw and lusting.

I must be carrying half a dozen paces before they bear me to the ground. Still, I roll on the ice. I roll into a sea of bodies and come to my feet. They dive on me at once, I must have a dozen on me when they bring me down. And more pile on to keep me there.

Which is exactly where I want them.

I pull my legs underneath myself. I hunch and pull another man’s face over my own and draw the flesh scorpion’s stinger.

Frag. I thought things would never stop running. I kill the ones at the bottom first. The untanned hide is uncomfortable but tough. When an animal's teeth sink into it, they broadcast the position of the skull. I grab their mouths with the gauntlet and shove the stinger through their tiny brains — instant kill.

I twist and repeat. I built a shield of corpses and strike through my shield wall.

Their blood is weak and dirty; it burns like cheap alcohol.

There was no fortress, no hole in the ground to hide in.

I have made my own, from stones of living and now dead flesh.

The animals are in such a frenzy they hardly realise when they die. Why would they? They do not think that they are scrambling on a mound of their dead. They do not expect a fist to stab between corpses, stabbing their small bodies.

Their group feeding behavior takes over — a literal frenzy.

It is this behavior that I invoke. It overtakes them. The group overcomes the individual — a mass psychosis. The behavior triggers under special circumstances. In a locust, the swarm is triggered by the stroking of their legs which occurs naturally when a large number are close together. Something similar is at work here.

In frenzied behavior, animals are insensitive to pain. The animal in a feeding frenzy is not prepared for a direct attack from within the food source.

I think…I think they are eating their dead and thinking it is me.

So the experiments begin. I don’t go for the safe kill. I rip open jugulars. I open bellies so their entrails spill out. I snap necks with my hands and tear the heads clean off.

I think…I think it is a combination of blood and sheer brutality — in other words, points for style.

That is not all the information the experiments yield. The creatures are rabbits.

It wasn’t obvious at first, without the ears. But a rabbit doesn’t need long ears if it's a predator. The scoring cuts from sharp bones on their hind legs. It might even be metal that somehow protrudes from their bones — that, or the actual bones are metal.

On a planet with fierce predators, prey are put under pressure to adapt. In a planet of fast prey, predators are forced to adapt. Everything here is faster and stronger.

Ecosystems are generally underachievers — they find a lazy, economical balance.

I do not think that that is what has happened in this world. The bare minimum, here, is far greater than the maximum anywhere else.

By the end, I just stand and stick the last of them like a meat skewer. They are so full on their flesh that they lie with motionless with bloated stomachs.

Everything is a tool. Everything can be used, must be used. Even a man’s skin.

It was really not such a bad decision in the end.

I take the hood from my head.

The vision from behind the ape's empty eyeholes is not good.

I take a deep breath of the piercing fresh air.

How rude of me.

I turn my attention to my guest.

A massive white tiger stands in front of me on a mound of ice — though tiger is just the closest earth-species to it.

Its face is long, and like a pit-bull and its long ears taper backward. On its neck and upper back is a mane of sleek white.

It’s forlimbs are thicker than my thigh, It’s paws could take my head with a swipe.

Yet it stands, with blazing white eyes, unmoving.

Something about the eyes — ah, yes, they are not slit like cat’s eyes on earth, making it seem strangely intelligent, like a human.

Perhaps that is why it didn’t fall for the ruse. A pity, the richness of its blood would be a prize.

We look at one another for a long while, before I bend down and pick up a naked earless rabbit, throwing it at the tiger’s feet. It studies me, without taking the bait.

I turn my back to the tiger and limp the final steps to my destination.

In the battle of survival, predator and prey are relative terms.