Strange Company by Nick Cole (best way to read ebooks TXT) 📗

type of idiot. Wants to just shoot stuff for fun. No skill. No herd management. And even though the Capellas have a reputation for that kind of hunting, we discourage it. Hunting on Capella arose out of need back in our history. I guess their history now. The world when it was first discovered was real violent. Fight-for-survival stuff. Every day. The pioneers had to kill a lot of Saurians just to survive and they used the meat they took to make it until the next colony ship showed up twenty years later. Their original ship broke up in orbit, cluster engine failure and reactor cascade, and they had to drop with minimal supplies to get the colony established as the whole thing cooked off above the surface. Entire world, they find, is filled with lizards that range from the size of small turbo rail cars to entire city blocks. Ten stories tall was the biggest one I ever saw. But I’ve heard bigger.”

He’s not drinking. Just staring at his beer as he talks.

“So, until the conservation movement a few years back, killing ’em was the only way to keep the colony active. Now we discourage willy-nilly shooting because they’re, the Saurians, not just a tourist attraction, they’re beautiful. And majestic, Orion. I’ve seen ones with tiger stripes and feathers so beautiful it takes your breath away. They’re slow and ponderous and for the most part they just go about eating and roaring mindlessly about something. At night, way out on the central savannah, under the three moons, near the obelisks that dot the world, to hear them moving around and roaring in the night is like experiencing something older than humanity itself. Something… mystical. Those obelisks, those are older than any other artifact we’ve ever discovered, and we have no clue about them. I went in one, once, and I lost time, Orion. You ever hear about that phenomenon? Like I was in a dream while I was in there. When I came out, I felt like the dream had been lifetimes and that I’d lived entire other lives in there and had adventures, and I couldn’t remember any of it after walking back out into the moonshine. Crazy. It’s humbling. That world. The giants and the mystery. All of it.

“So, I’m going upriver on that last gig with some nimrod Monarch who just wants to shoot everything that comes down to the Saya for a drink… well, it started getting to me. As he just murdered them. Wasn’t hunting. Just plain ol’ slaughter. And you know why, Orion? Why it was getting to me?”

I didn’t. But I was on pins and needles because this story was the opposite of the guy I’d seen always in the background. Boom Boom our squad designated marksman, just laughing at someone’s story, or a good joke. Or Stinkeye and his antics. The old operator swearing murder and curses at us as he wallowed around in the miasma that was him. Knowing that when we were out there and in it, Boom Boom had our backs and could put good rounds on target when needed.

Like he was a clock in the universe that could be measured by.

“It started getting to me,” he continued. “The slaughter. Because I knew that when we came back downriver, I’d have to see all those corpses just lying there in the sun. I knew those animals and there was a time and place to manage them, and this… this party barge to hell wasn’t it. I’d watched this total tool shooting them up while his harem and his hanger-onners all hypergolf-clapped and drank themselves silly. They didn’t even want to stop and take pictures of what he killed. Just wanted to watch the Monarch shoot more and act ambivalent about it all as he played bump rap as loud as thunder on a clear day. Damn music drew the big ones down to the river because they’re especially sensitive to vibrations on that world. Lotta quakes. So they came down and he shot them as fast as he could. Never got tired. It was… well… it just was. But I didn’t like it. Know what I mean?”

I did.

He paused.

“So, I didn’t want to see it. And I’m just up there in my ride ahead, trying not to get them killed and wondering why I shouldn’t just steer them into a channel that’ll flip the barge and let the tooth serpents get ’em down under the black waters. Probably didn’t do it because that woulda ruined my pa’s biz. So I don’t. I just lead them toward more. More killing. The big… I don’t know… finale, I guess you’d call it… happened once we got into Razarsaw Valley. They got carried in by a-grav pallets and then set up on a small hill I’d identified near a terraclops trail I knew of. Couple hours later, near dark, here comes one. I used to call that one Stinky. Big and old. Huge mournful eye that looked like it had seen every day of the universe. It’s dark enough, and they’re drunk enough that I’m hoping they miss Stink and just let him go on and live his life out for what remains of it. But nope. This Eidi tool wants to bag one. Out comes the gold monstrosity rifle and he fires and puts a .950 round right through Ol’ Stink’s right foreleg. Misses the heart and vitals and blows off the shoulder joint. The terraclops goes down in the dark out there and even though the Monarch’s got laser and thermal imaging, he doesn’t want to finish it because he can’t see with his antique scope. He’s got this vintage old-school scope and he fancies that makes him a real hunter compared to everyone else because he doesn’t cheat. ‘I don’t use technology,’ he told me the entire time. ‘And look how good I shoot. Better than even you I suspect, right everyone? I’m the best, of course.’ Everyone