The Scar

Planet Irkalla, Survivor’s Refuge

4452.2.23 Interstellar

Janus watched, helpless, as the two armed dusters approached.

“Turn your suit lights off!” the woman behind them barked.

“On your knees in the dust, hands behind your heads!” the one approaching from the front added.

Janus and Lira obeyed.

The two strangers kept their distance, out of Janus or Lira’s reach. None of what Uncle Ivan had taught him would help Janus against a gun.

“What have we got?” the woman asked, approaching the buggy with the trailer.

“Looks like machine parts,” the man said, inspecting the cargo. “There’s some liquid storage here…” He turned toward Janus. “What is this? Chemical precursors? You making bombs, drugs, what?”

Janus frowned. The robbers weren’t acting like robbers, they were acting like dome-sec had back in Prime Dome when they searched outsiders’ lockers. He took in the dusters’ weapons, their gray void suits, and he realized what was happening. “You’re Hunters!”

Both of the dusters turned their suit lights on him. “Of course we’re Hunters!” the man said. “Now answer the question!”

“Come, on, Lira,” Janus said, standing up. “We’re leaving.”

Lira looked at him wide-eyed through her suit visor. “Janus…”

“Get back on the ground!” both Hunters yelled, raising their weapons.

“No!” Janus said, not storming toward them but standing his ground. He crossed his arms. “Do you know how many years I had to put up with this kind of abusive crap in Prime Dome? I got it from dome-sec, I got it from shift supervisors, and I got it from anyone who came from a higher sector than I did. Well, I’m an aspirant, now, and I don’t have to take it anymore!” he yelled at them. “So either give me a damned good reason or let me and my second be on our way!”

“Survivor’s mercy, Janus…” Lira said breathily.

The two Hunters looked at each other. “You’re the aspirant out of Prime Dome?” the woman asked.

“Did you not see the suits?” Janus answered.

The Hunters looked at each other again. Janus suspected they were talking to each other on a private channel. Whatever they were discussing wasn’t his problem. “Come on, Lira. We’re leaving.”

“Now, wait a minute!” the female Hunter said.

“No,” Janus said, walking back toward them and his buggy.

“The Trials only started four days ago,” the male Hunter said.

“That’s right,” Janus said, walking past them, being careful to move at a deliberate pace with his hands visible.

“That’s insane,” the male Hunter said. “No one makes the run from Prime to Mercuria in four nights.

“Three and three-quarters,” Lira said, climbing onto her buggy. “Still half a night left.”

“Then what are you doing on a smuggler’s route?” the male Hunter asked, not getting out of their way but not threatening them, either.

Janus sighed. “I bought a map in Crossroads. The Mercurian who sold it to me said it was a clear passage through the Scar, but that turned out to either be wrong or a lie, so now we’ve got to find another way through.”

The two Hunters looked at each other one more time, and then they laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Janus asked.

“No offense meant, Aspirant,” the female Hunter said, “but you’ve made the Prime to Mercuria run through the Scar in four days and you did it using a map from a Mercurian. You’ve either got the Survivor’s balls or the void’s brains, but this is the right path. Only smugglers, bandits, and Hunters use it, and you would never get through with a crawler, but if you drive on up ahead, you’ll see there’s a narrow path through the boulders.”

Janus was trying really hard not to visibly shake. The Hunters weren’t going to shoot them. They were going to make it.

“You won’t make it to Mercuria, though,” the male Hunter said. “We haven’t finished clearing the route. Triliths’ll get you for sure if you drive ahead.”

“We’ll be careful not to hit one,” Janus said, speaking slowly so his voice didn’t crack.

“Hit one?” the male Hunter said, and looked at his companion.

“You ready to go?” Janus asked Lira.

“You’ve never left Prime Dome, have you?” the female Hunter asked, walking up next to him. She dimmed her suit lights just enough so they could see each other’s faces. She looked older than she sounded, and her face was horribly scarred on the left side.

“I was born in Prometheus Base,” Janus answered. “And if this is some kind of scare tactic to shake us down for credits, I’m not buying. We saw the memorial back in the main canyon; as far as I know, that’s the only giant trilith on Irkalla.”

The woman nodded and patted him on the shoulder. “Tell you what, we gave you a decent scare, back there, and we’re sorry about it.”

“We are?” her companion asked.

“Yes, we are, Mick. And we’re going to escort the nice aspirants out of the Scar to show them how sorry we are about pointing guns at them, and about the made-up stories we tell people about giant triliths.”

“Right…” the male Hunter said. “Big triliths. Surprising how many people fall for that one, but a Hunter’s gotta eat, right? You won’t tell on us, will you?”

“Yeah, please don’t,” the woman said. “We’ll get in so much trouble with our caravan captain.”

Janus got the impression they were making fun of him, which really pissed him off after they tried to stop him illegally in the first place. “We don’t need an escort.”

The female Hunter punched him in the shoulder. “We insist, honored Aspirant!” She and her companion, Mick, started jogging toward the rockslide. “Follow us! Our buggy is parked on the other side.”

Janus looked over at Lira, who shrugged. It looked like they were driving with company whether they wanted to or not. He switched over to a private channel and asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Lira said shakily. “No, I’m not okay. And hey, Janus, that stuff you said about Prime Dome—”

“Let’s go, Primers!” the female Hunter said. “You’ve got a record to break!”

“We can talk about Prime Dome some other time,” Janus told Lira. He was almost glad she’d gotten a taste of her people’s medicine. Almost. It wasn’t worth his having to be there for it. “Let’s go. If we’re going to have an escort, we’d best make the most of it.”

Janus did his best to shake off the last bits of what had happened and followed Lira toward where the Hunters were waiting. The rush of the moment was leaving him now, and all he could think now was, Void take me, they could have shot me! No more Trials. No more going home to Callie. No more outsiders being brought into the fold. No. After a resounding failure like that one, Prime Dome would put all the immigrants out the airlock before trusting them to be part of the answer to their problems. What had he been thinking? He felt cold, like the shivers he got when he had a fever.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“This way,” Mick, the male Hunter said, waving them through.

There was a passage through the rockslide. It curved right, left, left, and right, like an antique hand drill he’d studied in his history of engineering class, so that it was impossible to see all the way through. Maybe he would have found the gap if the Hunters hadn’t stopped them; after all, he’d been headed there to check. Or maybe he would have given up halfway and walked back to the buggy. As they threaded the needle through the smugglers’ passage, it almost felt like providence the Hunters had been there and decided to show themselves. Almost. He just couldn’t bring himself to think that after he’d been scared out of his wits.

“Hold on a second, let us grab our buggy,” Mick said, jogging over to a buggy-sized boulder. He slung his rifle behind him and grabbed the rock, which it turned out was an ingenious tarp that made the buggy look like a regular boulder. The buggy itself was an odd model, its seat longer than a normal seat but also not entirely right.

“We can make it from here,” Lira said, pointing at the road ahead. Janus could see the series of switchbacks that would take them up to the surface.

“We insist,” the female Hunter said. She sat in the driver’s seat of the buggy, sliding her rifle into a purpose-built sheath, and Mick got on behind her facing backward, feet sliding into stirrups, rifle still in his hands.

That’s just weird, Janus thought. “You going to be able to keep up, riding backward like that?” he asked them.

“We won’t slow you down,” the female Hunter said.

“How fast were you planning on going?” Mick asked.

Janus sighed. They had plenty of hours of dark, but he’d hoped to get to Mercuria in under three hours so they had time to trade, eat, and rest. He was physically exhausted and emotionally shaken. “I’d like to average about one-forty,” he said.

“Might have to go faster than that. You okay with one-sixty or one-seventy?” Mick asked.

“We can go that fast, although that’s pushing it. Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” Mick said, and Janus caught the man’s smile through his visor.

It felt like the kinds of games mechanics played on each other when a new guy or gal joined the shop. There was the old “voidbat under the bucket,” the many uses for grease, foam, and compressed air, putting extra parts on their tray during a complex disassembly, and many variations of making it look like they’d broken something they hadn’t. This had to be the Hunter’s version, making them think they were going to have to go that fast to run from triliths instead of slowing down to avoid running them over.

The Hunters took the lead toward the cliff face.

Lira and Janus followed.

***

They drove up the cliffside Hunters first, then Janus, then Lira. Janus had the auto-disconnect disabled and the brakes set to lock if the trailer started rolling backward, but Lira would still be there to spot if something was going wrong. It was two hundred meters down to the canyon floor; if they lost the trailer, they wouldn’t get it back.

It also meant that Janus spent the drive on the narrow, winding ledges staring at Mick’s smirking face.

“So, you ever hear about tink-tink?” Mick asked.

“Leave them alone, Mick,” the other Hunter said.

“Come on! I’m just asking if they know about tink-tink.”

“We know about tink-tink,” Janus said, tired of the man’s constant needling.

“What’s tink-tink?” Lira asked.

Janus almost twisted in his seat to stare at her, and then he remembered she’d grown up in the Hub. Of course she hadn’t heard about tink-tink. “Tink-tink is the sound a trilith makes tapping against the outside of a dome, trying to get in. It’s a story to frighten children.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Mick said.

“It is,” Janus said. “Dome’s too thick for a trilith’s tapping to come through.”

Mick shrugged. “Maybe in Prime Dome. Dome admin pays a hefty tribute to keep that area clear. Maybe other places have thinner domes, or bigger triliths.”

Janus sighed.

“How big?” Lira asked.

“Other domes?” Mick asked, obviously playing with her. “Prime Dome’s definitely the thickest of the domes.”

Janus had to grin at that. Some Primers he knew were pretty thick, all right.

“I meant the triliths,” Lira said, missing the joke. “How big do they get.”

Mick’s voice turned more serious. “We don’t know for sure. I don’t know that they ever stop growing unless something kills them or they run out of food, although they do grow more slowly after they reach adulthood. Up in the polar regions, with all that CO2 for them to feed on? They could get as big as crawlers.”

“Come on,” Janus said, tired of the ghost stories and just… tired. “How would that even work? They’re made of rock. If they got as big as a crawler, they wouldn’t be able to move.”

Mick didn’t seem phased by his argument. “I have no idea. Sometimes they are slow, like in the daytime. I think that’s because their brain, if you can call it that, is silicon-based, so they literally grind to a halt in the daylight. But imagine this: you’ve got an animal that’s about the size of a human being that can run on all fours as fast as one of these buggies, and they are made of rock. Can you imagine what one of those’d do to ya if they hit you?”

“I can imagine it,” Janus answered. “And my imagination’s about the only place it’s likely to happen.”

“Oh, no, mate. It’s gonna happen because Trace and me haven’t cleared the route yet, and the little buggers like to come here and chew on the crystals. Makes their claw tips nice and sharp.”

“Right…” Janus said.

“Cut the chatter,” Trace, the female Hunter, said.

Janus shook his head. Just a few more hours and they’d be safe in Mercuria and rid of Mick and Trace forever.

***

It took them half an hour to make it to the top of the cliff, and by then Janus was ready to risk getting shot to throttle Mick into silence. The two Hunters pulled ahead during the last bit of distance under the pretext of checking that the coast was clear. Janus let them. Maybe they could keep on checking all the way to Mercuria and leave them alone.

He was surprised to find Trace and Mick waiting for them, rifles out.

“All right, Aspirants. This is where the jokes stop and the serious bit begins,” Trace said. “We’re going to take the lead, and you’re going to follow in our tracks like you were slaved to our buggy, all lights on and head on a swivel, understand?”

“Fine,” Janus said.

“This isn’t a joke, Aspirant,” Trace said, and Janus sat up straighter. “Now, if we tell you to floor it, you floor it. No questions, no hesitation, just straight on to Mercuria unless we tell you to do otherwise. Got that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lira said.

“What about you?” Trace asked, looking at Janus. “Need to hear you say it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Janus said.

“All right, let’s go,” Trace said. She got back on her buggy, rifle holstered with Mick behind her, like before.

If they were trying to scare Janus and Lira, they were certainly going all out.

The three of them took off, accelerating smoothly to 140 kilometers per hour. As instructed, he had all the buggy’s lights on, including his suit lights and the small, directional spotlight that he angled forward and to the left, while Lira’s reached out to the front and right side. The terrain between the Scar and Mercuria was flat with firm ground and a thin layer of dust, and only a few large but easily seen and avoided boulders dotted the landscape. It was ideal terrain for running flat out.

After a few tense minutes, though, it seemed like they wouldn’t need to, and Janus kicked himself for falling for the Hunters’ tall tales again. Still, there was no sense in looking an easy ride in the mouth, and with the lawlessness Mercuria was famous for, it might not hurt to be escorted in by—

“Here they come!” Mick said. “Go, go, go!”

Lira hit the gas, and Janus accelerated purely on reflex to maintain his distance from her.

It saved his life. His eyes widened as a massive form jumped at his buggy from the left-hand side, twisting and swiping at him in the air, and only barely missed the back of the trailer. “What in the void was that?” he said on the common channel.

“Keep driving!” Trace snapped.

“I intend to!” Janus snapped back, feeling panic grab him by the throat.

Then the lights on the Hunters’ buggy—all of them, from the headlights to the dashboard—shut off and they were gone, and it was just Lira and Janus speeding across the dust toward Mercuria like all of hell was at their heels, and that wasn’t too far off. More shapes ran up behind them, their appearance horrifying in the red glow of the trailer’s tail lights. They were exactly as Mick had described—two to three meters long, and a meter tall at the shoulder, with a single sharp stone claw at the end of each limb propelling them forward at insane speeds. The triliths’ heads were a flat, triangular shape that hinged open and snapped shut as they jostled each other, and they were gaining. The silence made it worse. He felt like they should sound like roaring lions charging through a landslide, but the chase was as quiet and cold as the night.

“Lira, speed up!”

“What’s back there?” she asked.

“Just drive faster!” Janus said.

There were a dozen of the creatures chasing them, keeping up as they accelerated to 150, then 160 kilometers per hour. The trailer was starting to wobble, and Janus hadn’t turned the auto-disconnect back on since taking it up the cliff. If one of the beasts so much as bumped him, his cargo would flip, and him with it.

Then the impossible happened. A single trilith, leaner and sleeker than the rest, broke off from the pack and started gaining on him. It passed the back of the trailer, and then the front of it. As he rotated the spotlight to point at it, its body rippled with light and shadows, like the crystals they’d seen in the canyon. “Lira?” Janus said.

“What?”

“Don’t stop,” he said, bracing himself as the monster jumped.

An invisible hand smashed it out of the air, cracking its body and breaking one of its legs off.

“Whoo-hoo!” Mick said, the darkened buggy sliding up to Janus’s right. The younger Hunter was leaning forward in his seat, firing his rifle, and with each shot one of the triliths was shoved, smashed, and scattered across the dust.

The triliths snapped at the vacuum in anguish and fell back, and the Hunters gave chase.

It was over.

“Thank the Survivor,” Janus said, although he would never admit to it.

“Is someone going to tell me what’s happening?” Lira asked, sounding frustrated and scared.

“You remember the memorial in the canyons?” Janus said.

“Yeah…”

“So, so much worse than that.”