Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (knowledgeable books to read .txt) 📗

crackling sound ripped through the air, and something blue streaked over my head. I flinched. A hole the size of a bottlecap melted in the metal wall behind me, and the air filled with the sharp stink of melting plastic.

“Get off the shuttle of your own volition or I’ll kick your corpse off it,” the bulldog said.

“Fine. Geez.” I stood up and walked toward the ramp, still listing a little. My inner ear hadn’t adjusted to the stillness yet.

I hesitated on the threshold. It felt like something awful was waiting just outside the shuttle’s gaping mouth for me, like once I stepped out there, I’d never be able to get back home to Gramps.

I turned to the bulldog. “Is there like a passenger manifest? I’m really not supposed to be here. I promise.”

He pulled back the hammer on his MegaBlaster and pointed the business end right between my eyes.

I stuck my hands up and kept walking.

The heat hit me like a fist. Immediately, sweat started running down my back. A hot breeze blew through, gluing my shirt and red sand to my sweaty skin. I squinted against the sandblasting and the murderous sunlight.

There were two suns hanging in the sky. A huge white fiery one that looked close enough to touch, and a distant pale blue one. And when I turned around, there was another sun, a weird black one with an orangey-magenta corona, just barely sticking up over the horizon.

No freaking wonder it was so hot.

Flat, red dirt stretched out for miles in every direction, broken up by nothing but silvery heat distortions and mirages of dancing water. Not a tree or hill in sight. The only shade was cast by the shuttle we’d just climbed out of.

And when I say shuttle, I mean spaceship. Not like NASA, but like a little Twinkie-shaped thing all scuffed and patched and sitting on six pairs of legs tipped with wheels.

All around the shuttle, the aliens—or criminals, I guess, depending on who you asked—were tapping these huge watches on their arms with screens the size of a smartphone.

“This ain’t none of the usual dropoffs,” a squid alien said to the shuttle driver. “Where we at, boss?”

“They’re having some weather down in the southern hemisphere,” the bulldog grunted. He let his MegaBlaster dangle from its strap, one hand stabilizing it while he pulled a red cigarette out of his duster with his other hand. He didn’t light the cigarette, but the end started smoking as soon as he took the first puff. “Had to fly around. This is the only raincheck point the Confederated Planetary Authority has listed for this side of Van Diemann. New Iron Hills should be about fifty miles east, across the Rust Flats. There’s a closer settlement in the opposite direction, on the other side of the Shut-Ins, but you’d break your neck getting to it.”

“Cain’t be much,” the squid said, holding one of his tentacles up in front of his folded face. He poked at a watch the size of a paperback book. “It don’t even show up on the map.”

“Not worth the risk,” the zebra lady said. She flipped her cape of rubbery white head skin over her shoulder and turned the way the bulldog had said was east. “New Iron Hills is the best bet.” She smirked from me to the redheaded guy with the prosthetic leg. “If you can survive the radiation, neh?”

“Worry about yourself, Pilonian,” the redhead snapped at her. “Humans can survive anything.”

That set off just about everybody within hearing distance. Whoops and gurgles and snorts of laughter, along with a round of insistence that “every human squishes if you squeeze ’em hard enough” and “don’t start with that meat roach nonsense here, boy.”

The guy with the elf ears and slanted cat-eyes stepped up toe-to-toe with the redhead. I wasn’t tall, five-seven when I stood up straight, and at sixteen I still had my fingers crossed for another growth spurt. The redhead had to be close to six foot, but this elf was a head and shoulders taller than him.

“I know your face, human,” the elf said. “You’re a Thompson. From Qaspar-7.”

The redhead’s hands balled into fists, and he stood up taller, facing the elf down. “You musta worked for me ma, then, along with everyone else on that planet. How’d ya like it, groveling to one of the humans who sent you pointy-eared ponsers running?”

The elf’s eyes narrowed.

“You didn’t send us anywhere, roach,” the elf growled, bumping chests with him. “Your elders tried, but all they managed in the end was to lose the war, the system, and the respect of every planet in the Confederation.”

“The Confederation proper screwed us. Too much Ylef money coming in to do right. No way you trash coulda beat us fair.” He shoved the elf.

The elf jumped at the redhead.

This fight was a lot faster and bloodier than the ones in the movies. The elf hooked a big right at the redhead, his long arm glowing with blue light. The redhead’s upper body caught fire—literally, it whooshed up like a gas-soaked brush pile—and he slammed out a flaming red block followed by a kick to the elf’s gut with his prosthetic. When the elf doubled over, the redhead rocked him back with a burning uppercut to the jaw.

There was a nasty crunch as the elf went down. I’d been too caught up in watching the punches to realize it, but the redhead had been standing on the elf’s foot the whole time, pinning him in place. One more solid shot to the chin knocked the elf out cold.

Nobody seemed too shocked. For the most part, the aliens who hadn’t left yet were just messing around on their big watches, not paying attention.

The big slug, though, was like, “I got all of that! This is so going on FightScreen.”

“Good,” the redhead snarled. “I want the Big Five to know Warcry Thompson is here and ready for recruitment by the time I get to New Iron Hills.”

“You should