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

not go to New Iron Hills, human,” said the zebra lady, nodding down at the elf guy. “’Less you want to fight many more Ylef.”

The redhead—Warcry—wiped some blood off his knuckles onto his shirt. “Maybe I do.”

“Are you that Warcry Thompson?” the slug asked, raising one eyestalk higher than the other. “Two-time Intergalactic Fighting League Under-18 Champ?”

“Forget the IFL,” the squid guy gurgled, pointing a tentacle at Warcry. “You’re Emmie the Annihilator Thompson’s son. She’s a legend on Guvo. Her and the Meat Roaches led the first human uprising in the system. They held off the Ylefs for six weeks straight with nothing but a dozen stolen gunships.”

Warcry rolled his eyes. “Sure, and she’s a saint for it.”

Whatever the squid said back was drowned out by this loud, skirling whine cutting across the Rust Flats. Red dust billowed up behind a tiny silvery fleck in the distance that became an enormous rusty chopper-style motorcycle with tractor-tire-sized wheels.

The chopper skidded to a stop, throwing up a lungful of sand and dust, making everybody yell with irritation. Except the slug. He slithered over to the chopper and climbed on behind a shark guy. The shark revved it up, and they were gone in another ear-busting, sand-throwing second.

Pretty soon, the air was full of whines and whooshes and zooming sounds. Transportation arriving to pick up the waiting aliens one by one.

I frowned.

“Do I need to call somebody?” I asked the zebra lady. “I don’t have one of those watch things. I’m not from this—” I tried to think of the right word. “—galaxy, universe, anything. I’m not from here.”

She grinned, showing big flat teeth that looked like they should be chewing grass.

“We already in one of the Five,” she said. “You a member of the Big Five, human?”

“Is the Big Five a gang? I’m not in a gang, I—”

“Hmm, complicated.” She sucked her big teeth. “You die ’less you get in a gang.” Then she looked me up and down. “But maybe I help you.”

“How?”

“I bring you with me to Jianjiao sect. Get you bed, food, clean, safe. Sounds good, neh?”

I might’ve been in a different galaxy, but I wasn’t stupid.

“In return for what?”

She turned her eyes up like she was thinking about it, but you could tell it was just an act. She already knew what she was going to say. This wasn’t her first rodeo.

“Only one year,” she said.

“One year of what?”

“You serve me for one year.”

My face twisted up. “Screw that!”

“One year, it isn’t so much on Van Diemann. Your sentence is how long?”

“Forget it,” I said. “I’m not a criminal. I’m not joining a gang.”

She shrugged. “If you change your mind, you find me in New Iron Hills.”

Then she took off running east. After she got a few yards away, her arms stretched out until they were as long as her legs, and she dropped to all fours and galloped away.

Freaky. Even compared to everything else I’d seen in the last twenty-four hours.

The Shut-Ins

I LOOKED AROUND AND realized it was just me, the shuttle-driving bulldog, and the unconscious elf left. The rest of the aliens were gone, picked up by their gangs or running for a city. Warcry, the only other human I’d seen so far, had taken off, too. Probably just as well. Based on the circumstances of our meeting, it didn’t seem like we were going to become best buds anytime soon.

“Got a plan?” the bulldog guy asked.

“Me?” I thought about it a second. “Get out of the sun first, then try to find someplace where I can call the authorities. I wasn’t lying earlier. I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Not really my problem,” he said, taking another puff off that cigarette thing. “But if I was looking for someone with the resources to contact people off-planet, I’d get in with one of the Big Five. They get stuff done, even if it’s not supposed to get done here.” He tapped the cigarette on his big watch, which made the cherry disappear, then he stuck it back in his duster. “For shade, the best you’re going to do is the Shut-Ins. But I wouldn’t be caught down there at night.”

The elf groaned and sat up, holding his ankle and spitting words I didn’t recognize. They didn’t sound nice.

He looked up, glared when he saw me, and turned to the bulldog.

“Where’d the meat roach go?”

The bulldog nodded east. “New Iron Hills, probably. Seemed pretty keen to get affiliated.”

“Then I’ll have to get there first.” The elf stood up and took a limping step on his ankle.

When it folded, I winced through my teeth.

The elf heard me and grinned in a way that made me want to put the shuttle between us.

“I’m not as squishy as your people,” he said. Blue light shined through his skin, flowing down his body until it wrapped around his ankle. Stuff crackled and popped inside like bubble wrap as the joint straightened out, then frost formed around it. When it was done, he sneered at me. “That’s why Ylefs didn’t lose the war.”

It was his tone that got to me. Instead of asking what I really wanted to know—like, how he’d done that magic—what came out was, “Sure. Why bother learning how to fight when you can just fix whatever part of you gets beat up?”

The bulldog snuffled out what might’ve been a laugh.

Obviously ticked, the elf stalked toward me, baring teeth that looked like he bleached them once a week. His canines stuck out a little farther than the rest, almost like fangs.

That move Warcry had pulled shot through my head—throw out one arm to block while firing a roundhouse kick at the gut. I got my fists up.

When he saw that, the elf stopped and pointed a long-nailed finger at me.

“If you ever show your face in New Iron Hills, I’ll make sure you don’t survive the night.”

Then he spun around and ran east, long legs eating up the red ground. As I watched, that blue light came back,