I Was An Alien Cat Toy (2 page)

person who’d planted the bomb had intended him to die, it was likely they’d succeeded. But he couldn’t

think of a single person who even disliked him much, let alone wanted him dead.

And that, in a roundabout way, led his thoughts to Jeng. Would Jeng try to find him? Break regs and

come searching? Temin hoped not. Jeng could look for fifty years and never find a clue to Temin’s location,

and the last thing he wanted was anyone wasting their life on something like that. Their commander would

probably stop Jeng before he did something gallant and pointless that got his lover thrown out of the flight

service. Temin hoped he would, anyway. Jeng was a good man, a really great guy. The best pilot on their

wing, the best man Temin knew and the love of....

He rubbed his forehead and sighed. Jeng would kick his butt for sitting here and getting all maudlin

over him. But it wasn’t just thinking about Jeng that was getting him down. His family wouldn’t know what

happened to him, and that bothered him, bothered him more than the prospect of dying on this lonely planet.

Tsuji and Liseng, they’d probably cope okay—they had their kids, their partners, jobs. They’d miss him, but

they’d move on. But his Mum...if she didn’t find out what happened to him, she’d never have any peace. She

didn’t deserve this, not after what happened to his Dad. Maybe he could send a databurst on repeat or

something once he had some power. It was possible someone might pick it up eventually. Even if it took ten

years or more, it would be something if he could make sure no one else suffered too much over this.

He rubbed his face and sighed. Thinking about all that wouldn’t help right now. He should eat, and

get some rest—he’d not slept at all during the planet-wards descent and post-adrenalin fatigue was tugging at

his eyelids. Sheft it, he was just too buggered to be bothered with a meal. He’d eat in the morning. In the

morning, he could get on with things. He climbed back into the capsule and pulled his sole thermal blanket

around him, wishing it was thicker and that he had a few more of them. “Stop it,” he told himself sternly.

Wishing for the impossible wasn’t helpful either. That was one thing he’d learned from his father, before the

stupid bastard had got himself killed in a speeder.
Concentrate on the possible. The impossible makes you

weak.

“Should be easy,” he muttered to himself. There wasn’t much that
was
possible right now.

~~~~~~~~

Waking stiff and achy didn’t make it easy to keep a positive attitude, and surveying his meagre

supplies as he selected one of the meals didn’t help either. But the charger had worked, and finally he was

getting a response from the console, though the HUD remained offline and he had to use the tiny backup

monitor to read data. It confirmed what he already suspected—that the FTL and sublight engines were offline

or unresponsive and because of the mechanical damage, he couldn’t reroute power to the sublights from the

secondary systems. He was able to boost the signal on the beacon a tad, and he could maintain minimal

heating inside the podpod indefinitely.

He downloaded the database into the handheld as a backup should the main console fail again, and

looking at the technical specs, he thought he could see a way to bypass the damaged area. It would take a

while, but then he had all the time in the world—
if
he could find food. So that gave him a purpose, and he

used that purpose to pull himself out of his growing funk. Find food, fix the podpod, boost the distress

beacon signal, maybe even achieve escape velocity, and use the sublights to move within range of FTL

capable craft. Simple. If nothing else, he could use the sublights to explore the surface of the planet.

But he only had a vague idea about how to go about getting food, and data on the lifeforms on this

planet were sparse. As he slowly ate his breakfast, he read what information was available. He’d landed in

the middle of the largest continent, about two thousands klicks from the nearest ocean. There were several

large mountain ranges crossing the landmass, but none were within six hundred klicks of him. Mineralogical

analysis indicated soil fertility was good and Terra-like, so he had to hope there were some plants he could

eat, but he was no botanist, and had rarely given much thought to the raw materials of food beyond what was

being served in the canteen—or his mother’s kitchen—on any given day. The reality of his situation began to

make him despair again.

“Concentrate on the possible,” he muttered, as he switched on the scanner. The first few sweeps

indicated nothing, which didn’t surprise him, but wasn’t exactly heartening, but then...there. Several moving

lifeforms of at least human size, about a klick west of him. Potential prey—and if there was one thing Temin

could shefting well do, it was shoot accurately. If he could bring down a decent sized animal—and he’d

worry about how to cook it if he did—that would be a shefting good start on his plan to get out of here.

He prepared a light pack with a meal, energy bars, water, medical kit and the knife. He decided he’d

take both guns, since he had no idea how hard the animals would be to kill. The small scanner he put in his

breast pocket so he could find the podpod again—he didn’t trust that white, unforgiving terrain to offer any

clues—and after a little consideration, he put the handheld into the pack as well.

“Right.” He hoisted the gear onto his shoulders. “Pyr Temin, the mighty hunter, goes forth.” He hit

the control for the hatch, put the shield cum cloaking device on time delay and prepared himself for the frigid

blast.

It had stopped snowing, and the wind had dropped, but according to the scanner, it was still

something like twenty below zero. No worse than the vacuum of space, he told himself. He just had to keep

moving and check for—what did the database call it? Frostbite. Simple.

Only walking through snow wasn’t easy at all. Every step made him sink down to his knees, and he

had to drag not only his boots but also several kilos of snow up with them to free his feet and advance. He

couldn’t work out how the lifeforms he was reading on the scanner were able to move around so easily and

quickly. Were they birds? They weren’t moving fast enough for birds, and besides, they were shefting huge

to be flying. He gritted his teeth and trudged on. He had to hope he didn’t have to sneak up on those things to

get a bead on one of them.

He was aiming for a stand of gigantic twisted black trees, and the snow grew less dense the closer he

got, which made walking slightly less of a chore. As he approached, he saw movement, and then something

large and dark leaping among the branches. That explained the speed—but it didn’t make catching them any

easier. He drew closer, using the unizoom to get a better look—hell, they looked like the monkeys he’d seen

in history books of old Terra, or some of the primate-like animals common on Nixal. Long reddish fur, long

fluffy tails, probably not carnivorous but he couldn’t take that for granted. Now he’d stopped and could get

his eye in, he spotted one gnawing on some plant material high in the tree a few metres ahead of him. He

pulled out the pulse pistol, but before he could take aim, the shefting thing had buggered off. The air was

suddenly full of screeching calls and snow clumps knocked from branches—there had to be fifty of the

creatures, dancing in outrage and screaming at him. He was supposed to be intimidated, he guessed.

The problem was choosing a target—they were moving around so much, focussing on an individual

was impossible. He had no experience of hunting—didn’t hunters drive their prey or something? The

screaming, jumping animals seemed to be mocking him for his uselessness—yeah, definitely mocking.
Oh,

charming.
“I’ll piss on you too if I catch you,” he yelled, jumping out of the way of the bright yellow stream,

and shaking his fist. If he ever got out of this, he was going to suggest monkey-hunting went to the top of the

list for new flight recruit training.

This is hopeless,
he thought, scrubbing the piss off his arm with a handful of snow. Maybe if he

moved on and ignored them, they’d settle down and he could take one of them by surprise. He vaguely

remembered a documentary about some large carnivores on Narn doing that, but it was a long time ago and it

had been computer generated, so maybe it wasn’t such a good authority. But it was all he had to go on. He

put a harmless grin on his face, holstered the pistol and did his best to saunter casually through the trees, an

effect spoiled immediately by his tripping over a tree root. He swore the hairy bastards were laughing at him.

He straightened up, but as he started to walk on, the monkeys started screaming again, bouncing

through the trees, and in seconds were gone as if they had never been. Sheft! What had scared them? Temin

could swear it wasn’t him—they hadn’t even been looking at him. Maybe they were just flighty anyway, and

a change in the wind had startled them. But now he was without prey—or was he? He pulled out the scanner.

The monkeys were moving away from him, but there was still something large to his left. Something large

and unmoving. Had to be worth checking out, seeing how he’d trudged all this way. He put the scanner away

and drew his pistol again.

It was now very quiet, the monkey screams all but a memory. The air was still among the trees, the

light dull and shadowless through branches and scanty leaves so dark green they looked as black as the tree

bark from a distance. It was all a bit creepy, and the shiver ran up Temin’s spine had nothing to do with the

bitter cold. For a yien, he’d have turned tail and headed back to the podpod, but he still had to solve his food

supply problem, and that wouldn’t happen if he acted like a coward. He scrubbed at his frozen nose and made

himself walk confidently.

The animal wasn’t moving—it might be asleep, which would make it easier. Whatever it was, was

huge. Might need the stun rifle. He holstered his pistol again, still walking, and reached behind him for the

rifle. As his hand touched the butt of the weapon, his foot caught on something—he barely had time to look

down and realise it wasn’t a tree root before he found himself being swept up into the air by the ankle,

entangled in a thick net of ropes. Every movement he made, every struggle, just enmeshed him more—he

couldn’t even get a hand free to find his knife or reach the pistol again.

Shefting crack.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to calm down. He didn’t know what this was,

or who’d set it, but first he had to get out of it. He waited until he stopped swinging, and worked out he was

about three metres off the ground—a far from impossible drop onto snow if he could just cut the shefting

ropes.

He inched his fingers along to his utility belt to his knife. He could see now that the ‘ropes’ were

actually leather, braided tight—did that mean there were humans on this planet after all? Maybe this was

actually good news for him.

The thought cheered him up no end, until he heard a low growl, and twisted towards the noise.

It was kind of ironic, he thought, swallowing hard against a suddenly dry throat as an enormous paw,

scythe-like claws extended, came sweeping towards his face—of all the ways he thought he’d be killed on

this planet, death by giant cat wasn’t even on the shefting list.

~~~~~~~~

“Uncle Gredar! You’re back! How did the gathering go?”

Gredar chuckled as Buhi bounded across the well-swept courtyard and rubbed his head

enthusiastically against Gredar’s jaw, while Gredar ran his clawed hand carefully through Buhi’s luscious

fur. “Fine, fine. You’ve been behaving yourself, I hope.”

Buhi’s tail twitched in annoyance. “Grandmother’s had me working like a keriv since you left. I

haven’t had time to misbehave.”

Gredar chuckled again, knowing that his wise mother had most likely planned it that way. “Poor

Buhi,” he said, rubbing his face affectionately against his nephew’s. “I’m back now, so you can play.”

“Play with you?” Buhi asked slyly, twining their tails suggestively.

Gredar pushed him off. “Go find a grooming mate your own age, kit. I’m too old for you.”

“Not what I heard. Filwui’s been telling us....”

“What’s not fit for youngsters’ ears, no doubt,” Gredar said, cuffing the younger daiyne’s shoulder.

“Now, off with you, or you’ll be wishing your grandmother was still keeping you busy.”

Buhi gave him a cheeky chirrup and loped off, clearly glad to be let off his duty. Gredar shook his

head ruefully and shouldered his pack again. Gone a moonsweep and the place went to rack and ruin.

The courtyard of his mother’s house was busy, as always, with daiynes of both sexes entering and

leaving, some with kits at their side, others bearing goods for the household. He was greeted cheerfully by

many of the visitors, several coming over to rub jaws or touch noses, and even whispering invitations to

come visit more privately later. Gredar groomed and greeted and was a little surprised, as he usually was, that

a daiyne of his age should still be a desirable mate, even for fun. Not that he minded rising to the challenge,

not at all. But Filwui was usually as much as he could handle, and his younger clan mate took a
lot
of