Greed Leaf Farm

Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge

4453.2.16 Interstellar

The elder kept his distance from Janus and the team as they got closer to the farm building. There was no sign of the workers, but Janus started to see signs of damage.

Some of the towers had been knocked down or broken. Loose irrigation tubing fed patches of jungle growth. Stray Greed Leaf had taken root.

Here and there, Janus saw small, dead animals. He checked the first two, but it was what he’d suspected. They’d ingested the Greed Leaf hybrids and died. Some of them showed signs they’d fought before dying, and two had been flattened by some sort of large animal. “What do you think did this?” Janus asked Mick.

“Emberthorn,” the Hunter said.

Janus nodded. The size of the tread was right for an emberthorn, but they were placid herbivores, unusually so for Krandermore. Emberthorns were the size of a side-by-side buggy, too big for most predators. They had thick, overlapping scales, and on the rare occasions they were threatened, they just balled up until their attacker gave up in favor of easier prey.

It wouldn’t have been strange for one to step on a small animal, especially if that animal was drug-crazed and attacking it. What was strange was Janus finding the scene repeated over and over, especially near the toppled towers.

“You thinking there’s a berserk emberthorn out here, and that’s what killed all these animals and made those workers disappear?” Mick asked.

“Not from anything around here,” Janus said. “These flowers are probably more potent than the original mutation, but they’re still not enough to do more than make an emberthorn’s tongue tingle. We’re talking about a fifteen-hundred-kilo animal.”

“Right,” Mick said. “Could still be an adverse reaction.”

“Bad trip?” Janus said with a grin, stepping around another flattened animal.

“Bad trip,” Mick said, although he didn’t seem as amused.

Janus followed Mick’s eyes farther down the hill and saw what made the Hunter tense. It was the wreckage of the shipment, three transport vehicles that had been driven or pushed off the side of the road into one of the larger plots. There was no sign of the drivers or guards who were supposed to be with it.

Villagers were already hurrying toward the crashed vehicles, not bothering to check for threats now that the prize was in sight. “Get back!” he yelled, his helmet amplifying the shout. “We don’t know what’s happened!”

“That doesn’t matter!” the elder snapped. “Get the shipment!”

Janus cursed under his breath and used the team comm and hand signals to spread Koni, Mick, and Ryler out to respond to whatever catastrophe was undoubtedly about to happen. He scanned the rows of Greed Leaf. There were a lot more damaged towers near the crashed vehicles and a lot more churned-up earth.

Then he saw the body. He almost missed it, mixed in with the mud and fragments of one of the towers, but then he saw a hand, a boot, and what was left of a damaged shock rod.

It was hard to see they were parts of a person because a day or two had passed, and because of the amount of rage that had gone into killing them.

Janus grabbed the elder by the poncho and pulled him back. “Everyone back up the road! Get away from those transports!”

The villagers hesitated, looking at the elder for guidance, but it was already too late.

A bugling roar sounded from the far side of the clearing. It was long and drawn out, like a battle hymn. It reverberated in Janus’s bones. The hazard indicator on his arm turned red-yellow-yellow as something crashed through the rows. Something big. Something that was cutting a straight line through the wood and clay stakes like a plow through fresh-turned earth.

The creature emerged from the Greed Leaf. It was a bull emberthorn, and he was as big as the transports. Janus was rooted in place, not even breathing, as the big orange and tan creature reared on its hind legs, bracing itself on the rearmost vehicle. Its armored scales, overlapping like a pinecone, were as thick as Janus’s thumb. The crashed transport sunk another half-meter into the mud.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“It’s just an emberthorn!” the elder said. “Make some noise and scare it off!”

“Are you insane?” Janus said. “Do you not remember what the Greed Leaf did to Fury?”

The villagers were moving toward the transports again, shouting and waving their weapons. One woman fired her rifle in the air, and then two more followed suit.

The emberthorn ignored them. It pawed at the transport, fifteen-centimeter claws pealing the metal back like the bark of a tree.

“Don’t let it damage the shipment!” the elder shouted.

The woman who’d shot her rifle in the air took aim.

“Don’t!” Mick said, lunging to push the muzzle down.

He almost made it. The rifle went off just before he pushed it toward the dirt, and the round sparked off the creature’s neck.

Emberthorns weren’t the smartest of creatures. It took a full, slow four-count for the creature to even realize it had been shot. It lifted its muzzle from the transport, looking at the two dozen humans with its beady black eyes.

Then it moved.

Mick reacted instantly, gliding forward and snapping off a stream of shots as the emberthorn thundered forward, but the creature shrugged it all off and smashed a villager to the ground, slamming its front paws down like it was playing the hand drums.

Two villagers rushed the creature with farming tools, but one swipe of the emberthorn’s long, scale-armored tail crunched into their ribs and sent the two men flying.

“Kill it!” the elder shouted. “Kill it!”

More villagers rushed in. One of them almost knocked Janus over, but Koni caught him and yelled, “What do we do?”

“It’s the shipment!” Janus yelled back. “Greed Leaf powder.”

The emberthorn was a blur of destruction. It swiped a woman’s legs out from under her and trampled her as it thundered forward. Its tail snapped in the other direction, flattening a man with a stun stick, and it bent another man’s leg 110 degrees the wrong way with a kick of its hind leg.

Mick finally found a vulnerable patch of skin and landed a trio of shots at the joint of its front right paw.

The emberthorn bellowed in pain and rounded on Mick faster than Janus would have thought possible for an animal that big. It was unthinkable. Emberthorns were gentle giants.

The crazed animal charged, its long claws giving it purchase in the mud, and Mick wasn’t going to make it out of the way in time.

Janus’s heart was in his throat.

Mick’s shoulders sagged as the creature loomed over him.

Ryler came in from the side with a brushed steel staff and slammed it in the side of the emberthorn’s face. The creature staggered to the side, missing Ryler and Mick by centimeters.

“Janus, do something!” Koni snapped, shoving him.

“Right,” Janus said. “I’m on it.”

Mick switched his rifle to burst and put six shots into the emberthorn’s side. The beast rounded on him, and Ryler smacked it in the side of the head, putting it back off balance.

Janus snapped a mixed clip of tranquilizer and the antidote he’d developed for Fury into his chem-pistol. “I need you to keep it distracted.”

“Got it,” Koni said.

The team got to work. Mick stung the behemoth, and Ryler kept it from striking back. The villagers had fallen back, and the elder was nowhere to be seen, but Janus stalked forward, pistol held low, and Koni started hitting the creature from the other flank. The four of them were perfectly in sync.

Janus aimed at the emberthorn’s head and snapped a shot off.

The beast ducked it. At first, Janus thought it was a fluke, but the second time Janus tried to hit the creature with the antidote, it stopped the capsule by shielding its face with its paw.

He only had two doses left.

“I can’t get a shot!” Janus said, stepping closer.

It almost killed him. The emberthorn reacted with savage cunning, spotting the opening and charging past Mick and Ryler with a bugling cry. Janus raised his pistol, aiming for the massive creature’s small head.

Koni yanked him out of the way. The emberthorn’s front claws passed within a hair’s breadth of his helmet visor.

“Give me that,” Koni said, grabbing the chem-pistol and shoving him back.

“Damn it, Koni!” Janus said.

Koni ignored him. She drew the emberthorn’s attention, firing her weapon left-handed without being particular about what she hit.

The emberthorn hesitated.

Mick used the opportunity to run up the creature’s tail onto its back like it was a ramp.

The emberthorn went nuts. It squealed and bucked, throwing itself around. Mick hung on for dear life, riding the maddened animal like a mount for four insane seconds of mad thrashing, and then he threw himself aside as the emberthorn rolled to crush him.

Before the emberthorn could wrap its tail around, Koni put the last two shots of the chem-pistol into its soft underbelly.

The emberthorn balled up in a tight, defensive coil, and it stopped moving.

The clearing fell into a stunned silence. The only sounds were the team’s heavy breathing, the emberthorn’s snores, and the faint cries of the wounded and the villagers who’d scattered into the Greed Leaf rows.

The team exchanged glances, tired and relieved.

The emberthorn stayed still.

“Pistol,” Janus said.

Koni handed it to him. “Are you upset?”

Janus looked at her. Then he smiled. “Why would I be upset, Koni? That was amazing. Thank you for saving my life.”

“Mate!” Mick said to Koni, coming around the sleeping creature’s side. “That was fantastic.”

“You are a crazy person,” Koni said back to him, but she was smiling too.

Ryler joined them, collapsing his metal staff into a short rod and holstering it at his hip.

“What in the stars is that thing?” Mick said, looking at the weapon.

“Gravity staff,” Ryler said. “It stores and delivers momentum.”

“It stores awesome,” Mick said. “Can I get one of those?”

“Can I interest you in learning more about our lord and savior, the Survivor?” Ryler delivered the line perfectly deadpan so that even Janus wasn’t sure if he was joking.

Ryler broke into a wide grin.

“Aaaaah,” Mick said, pointing at him and wrapping his arm around the cultist’s shoulder. “Janus, you didn’t tell me your friend was funny.”

“He only thinks he is,” Janus said, smirking.

“So, can I get one?” Mick asked.

“No,” Ryler said, patting the baton.

The team’s buggies came roaring down the road, the second car slaved to the first, and they skidded to a stop twenty meters away.

Lira opened the door and yelled, “Am I too late?”

“You’re right on time,” Janus said.

Janus needed to see to the injured, and they had very narrowly averted a disaster.

But more importantly, they were finally a team.