The heat of the day was starting to lessen with the fading of the light.

It was welcome, and Urle lowered his heat threshold. He'd been worried about over-working his cooling units during the worst of it; the last thing he needed was a messy and difficult shut-down of his electronics.

The weeks of labor and limited maintenance were telling on him; everything still worked, but there was dust getting into parts of his system. Nowhere deep, nowhere dangerous. But it just wasn't working quite as well as it did when everything had been clean . . .

Now that the shadows were growing, at least, he could set his internals back down to a lower temperature. It was more efficient that way.

Stopping to wipe sweat from his still-flesh brow, he saw that a knot of Hessa were heading back in. One waved to him, and he waved back.

He was well-accepted now, he thought. They appreciated his help in the fields, and it was a good way to show them that he shared in their efforts.

Further out in the fields a handful of other loiterers were poking around near the edge of the fields of grass. Sometimes they did that, hoping to take a lizard or find some edible fungoid things. There was a strange connection between this seed crop they harvested and some edible fungi that tapped into their collective root systems.

It was fascinating, he thought. The seedgrass that they'd been harvesting was not actually discrete plants. He'd realized recently, while studying them, that they were one giant organism.

Their fruit were not even actually seeds, he'd found out. They were simply some kind of edible growth, possibly even waste products to the plants. He suspected that the plants grew them to attract the mole bugs that broke up the soil and damaged the roots of the fungus trees that tried to lock down the soil with dense mycelium. The mole bugs did not harm the seedgrass, but would seemed to only eat the fruits. It was a symbiotic relationship that was altering this part of the world; surely one day the trees would be gone, as they seemed to have no real defense against the mole bugs.

The Hessa seemed extremely tolerant of the bugs for this reason, clearly understanding their role. At least, they were in the fields, but they would kill any that tried to come into the village and eat their crop stores.

It was not just the mole bugs that were helping the crops, though. At times, the farmers would find areas of seedgrass with no stalks growing and dig down, cutting out chunks of the mycelium.

They often took out large nodes, whose function he did not understand. But they would transplant pieces of root from seed-stalk areas.

They told him that this would cause that area to start growing seeds in future years.

He could only liken it to grafting, where a fruit-yielding branch might be attached to a healthy trunk of even another kind of tree.

Besides that, the Hessa did very little husbandry of the plants. They had learned to manipulate a thing that naturally occurred . . . but not yet did they grow them from scratch.

He tested his bag. It was much larger than the ones the Hessa used, they'd made it for him, laughing all the while at its size. He could carry as much as ten of them, they said. He wasn't certain that was accurate, but he could carry a lot, and it seemed to impress them.

Hefting the sack onto his back, he turned and started trudging back towards the village.

What luck, he thought ruefully. They harvested for only a few weeks twice a year, and he'd come here during the most back-breaking period.

He really began to appreciate just how much technological progress had freed humanity from such drudgery-

A piercing scream broke his train of thought.

He did not realize he had turned, or that he'd begun running towards it for a few milliseconds.

His body had reacted automatically; not instinct, but his machine parts operating on pre-programmed reactions.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

His conscious mind tried to take in what was occurring before him.

The group near the forest were screaming. Two were running his way, while a third lay on the ground, the source of the screaming.

On her back, its claws digging into the bag she'd slung behind her, was a small creature.

It was like a small dinosaur with six limbs, black feathers covering most of its body. It was thin and lithe, but its claws were large - and deadly.

There was more than one. His system highlighted six, with perhaps one more still in the undergrowth.

He was moving quickly, flying by the two terrified Hessa who were still running away.

He let out a loud warning call; a klaxon, at a high volume, that he hoped would scare them.

The predators flinched, their gaze just lifting to notice him as he arrived.

Sliding to a stop, his leg lashed out, taking the one on the woman's back in its sternum, snapping its body back and flinging it up and into the forest.

It would be dead from a crushed chest, he calculated.

As fast as he was, wild predators like this had lightning reflexes, too, and two of them reared, leaping at him in one smooth movement. Their two sets of higher limbs reached out to grasped him, while their more heavily-clawed back-limbs ready to tear.

He twisted, one of the creatures sailing past him. It flailed its arms, trying to grab him, but it could only rake at the clothing over his shoulders.

The other one he could not dodge, and his automated reactions kicked in again.

His hand snapped out, grabbing the creature by its long neck before it could reach him.

Its head snapped forward at the unexpected and sudden stop, and its limbs flailed, trying to kick up at his arm to slash him, but metal and carbon nano-tubes were more than proof against natural claws.

Holding the thing by the neck for a moment, he flung it aside, hard. It hit a tree, but started to stir immediately.

There were more, though, and despite his actions they were not yet ready to back down.

He let out the klaxon call again, as they began to spread out around him, and they flinched.

That was when he saw that some of them were not surrounding him - they were moving past him.

After the other two Hessa, who were still running towards the village.

They wouldn't reach it in time.

These animals, if they were bold enough, would catch them. The villagers would then likely come back out with spears, and drive them away.

What drove these animals on? His system worked at hyper-speed, calculating them, and the situation.

The feathers covered the creature's bodies, hiding details. But their feathers were unexpectedly dull. It was not uncommon for animals with feathers to have bold coloration, and a good shine. It would usually be taken as a sign of good health, even on Ko.

They were also much smaller than the !Xomyi, a third the weight of a grown man.

These were not normal predators, he thought. These were creatures in desperation.

And there was an obvious culprit; the moon's falling debris, though not yet threatening total destruction, was already changing the world. The Hessa had commented how things had been changing.

So these animals were starving, desperate.

They would not stop just at scary noises.

A fraction of a moment had passed; the predators chasing the villagers had taken barely a step, and the Hessa they chased had not even lifted a foot in that time.

His hand dove for his side, where his sidearm was holstered.

Another animal leaped at him, and he swatted it aside with one hand, turning in the same motion, and aiming his sidearm with the other.

He fired twice.

Both predators chasing the running Hessa dropped.

The crack of the pistol firing went across the ground, and he saw the !Xomyi stumble, looking back in terror.

The animals near him flinched at the sound, so much louder and harsher than his earlier warning klaxons.

But they did not run.

He turned and fired at one more.

When the third one dropped, the rest of the predators finally scattered in fear, rushing back into the bush.

In the distance, the !Xomyi were on the ground, still frozen in place, gazing upon him with fear.

He holstered his gun, cursing in his head. The !Xomyi hearing was much more acute than that of a human, and in ranges that the sound of his weapon would hit hard. He couldn't blame them for being terrified.

He crouched down to the Hessa on the ground. She was not moving.

"Come on," he muttered, feeling her neck. Where was the blood? The predator had been cutting into her bag, not her . . .

He felt no heartbeat.

"No, no, no . . ."

He rolled the woman over. No, not a woman, but a girl. She was barely an adult, soon to be married. Her name was Fyyna.

He scanned her, looking for injuries.

There. In her neck, the bones were broken.

It had not been the claws, he realized. But simply the impact of the predator. She'd been knocked down, and her own thrashing . . .

She was dead.