Dear Ambassador Gras XVII, Hand of the Red Council, First Lord of Bosae IX, etc.,

Greetings and Salutations.

To answer your queries I will need to first explain a bit about what makes humans special.

While I was on my recent tour of Earth I was shown a video of a human hunting a kudu (a local herbivorous quadruped). Kudus are much faster than humans, so the kudu easily sprinted away, but they also lack the humans' endurance, so whenever it had to stop and rest the human would close the distance. Eventually after the better part of a local day of this sprinting and too short rests while the human jogged along behind it the kudu collapsed from exhaustion, and the human simply walked up to it and finished it off with a small knife he carried for that purpose.

The humans I was with quite correctly thought that this video demonstrated what made humans special; where they where mistaken was in what attribute of humanity demonstrated in the video was actually so unusual (I didn't even fully get it myself until much later).

Most of the humans with me focused on the running; over a long-enough distance, and in a hot-enough environment (the video was filmed in one of the hotter parts of their homeworld) humans can beat pretty much anything else from their home planet. But while impressive, there's several other sentient species that can compete with them, and even a couple that could easily outrun them.

One or two humans suggested that it was stubbornness; surely the ability to keep going for a whole day even though for much of the run it must look pretty futile--as if the kudu wasn't actually getting any tireder--is unusual? But in reality humans are little more than above average in this regard.

(In fact my own species, the Huxaar, have a fairly solid claim to being the "Kings-of-Stubbornness"; I once saw a warrior who had lost nearly 90% of his body mass to a plasma bolt not only survive and continue to fight, while outnumbered, but he ended up winning, and with modern medicine he made a full recovery physically (two of his redundant brains where completely destroyed and the third somewhat damaged, which sadly resulting in minor memory loss))

No, the humans completely missed the important point, and since you probably have only a vague idea of what a human is like physically, and no idea at all of what a kudu is like I imagine you haven't realised what it is either. An adult kudu weighs somewhere between five and seven Kuy [Approximately 177-247kg], and has sharp hooves, and horns of around 30-40 Bulew [Approximately 38-50cm], while the human in question would have been lucky to hit two Kuy [Approximately 70kg], wore no armour, and as I mentioned only had a small knife to supplement his few natural weapons, which, on humans, range from the poor to the laughable.

Despite this absurd match-up the kudu was the one to run away. Why? Because the human acted as if he could win, and the kudu believed him. I couldn't understand why this was happening at the time, so I started looking into more human hunting techniques. This special form of deception is sufficient common among humans as to warrant it's own name, "bluffing" in the language of the dominant culture.

As well as several more standard techniques (it seems nearly every carnivorous sentient comes up with the idea of sneaking up on your prey and stabbing it with a pointy stick at some point), there where several more examples of the same sort of thing, such as groups of humans in their prehistory scaring herds of mammoths (which can literally be a hundred times the size of a human) so much that they'd rather run off a cliff than hang around and fight the humans, or more recent examples of humans waiting until a group of lions (a much bigger and stronger non-sentient predator) had killed a prey animal, and then chasing the lions away from their food.

For a more mundane example take the "bullwhip", a bull is a creature that can easily weigh 30+ Kuy [Approximately 1060+kg], has horns and hooves like the kudu, and a reputation for aggressive stubbornness. Yet a bullwhip is barely better than a human's natural weapons in a fight; it's real advantage is that it's noisy. Yes, when having to deal with an animal fifteen times their size they think a noisemaker is a reasonable piece of equipment. (Apparently the bulls do occasionally realise the absurdity, which can end tragically, but such events must be rare, otherwise becoming a farmer would simply be a rather elaborate form of suicide for humans)

You might get the impression from the above that humans only bluff dumb animals, that would be a mistake, they will happily bluff each other, or even aliens as I learnt to my chagrin when I discovered the game of "poker".

[A detailed, and somewhat dry, explanation of the rules of poker was originally provided here, but it doubled the word-count of this letter, and the translator felt that that would be unnecessary for the intended human audience of this translation.]

I trust you can see how such a game could be of interest, particularly to more statistically inclined individuals, when played straight, but that's not how the humans play. Bluffing is seen as a core part of the game. A common strategy is to bet far more than your cards would warrant in the hope that other players that might actually have better hands will lose their nerve and fold. The social skills to deceive the other players or spot their deceptions are seen as the real skill of good players.

I initially discovered the game when I was travelling through a small town in their southern hemisphere. I noticed an ad for a "Poker Tournament" on one of the local sporting clubs. When I expressed an interest in finding out more my guide kindly took me to the club and let me observe the games.

After observing for several minutes I had a feel for the rules and realised that many of the human players didn't seem to really grasp the odds involved, so I rather over-confidently joined a game expecting to do reasonably well.

One of the humans who was playing with me, and, I must admit, thoroughly thrashing me, was generous enough to inform me after about ten hands that it was obvious that Huxaarians where ill-suited for poker, and that I should withdraw now before I lost any more money. He was even kind enough to offer to give me back half the money he had won off me.

(I later found out that he was an very good poker player, so much so that several of the other humans donated to a "float" for him--winnings to be spent on beer for club members. He had realised I was completely incapable of detecting a bluff by the third hand, and I think he was feeling guilty about winning the equivalent of nearly half a year of local wages in the next seven hands)

What's this digression about human betting games got to do with your query? Well, remember what I said above about Huxaarian stubbornness, and complete inability to give up? Even it's obvious to everyone that we couldn't possibly win?

That is how the Huxaarian Empire became a vassal state of the South Maitland Bowls Club.

As for your second query: I assume that you're smart enough to see why I can't say if the humans are serious when they claim to be able to beat the Glibelian Fleets easily if you invade.

--

Emperor Halak II
Vassal Emperor of Huxaar
Special Adviser to the Imperial Board of the South Maitland Bowls Club
etc.

Written from the Imperial Palace on Huxaar Prime

Letter to the Glibelian Ambassador dated 12th of Bilu in the 7th year of Emperor Halak II [Approximately 11th of May 2032 AD]

Dear Ambassador Gras XVII, Hand of the Red Council, First Lord of Bosae IX, etc.,

Greetings and Salutations.

I can easily understand why the destruction of the cream of the Glibelian Fleets by the new 3rd Provincial Fleet (Flagship: The Golden Bluff) is distressing for your leadership.

I've reread my last letter, and it appears that I failed to mention that sometimes a good bluffer will pretend to be weaker than he actually is. "Oops, my bad"; as I'm assured that the young humans say.

PS: My condolences on the loss of nearly 20% of your offworld holdings. I understand that the loss of the pleasure palaces on Rilo III has been particularly frustrating to your court members.

--

Emperor Halak II
Vassal Emperor of Huxaar
Special Adviser to the Imperial Board of the South Maitland Bowls Club
etc.

Written from the Green Moon Pleasure Palace on New South Maitland (formerly Rilo III)

Also published on r/HFY.

A couple of nights later I woke up to hear her voice floating in through my bedroom window at one in the morning. I found her singing humpty-dumpty for the fairies in the backyard. She had snuck out of her room, and out the locked backdoor.

I assumed it was one of those silly things children do, and made her promise not to sing for the fairies after her bedtime anymore and put her back to bed. After that she would go into the backyard and sing a song or two each night before bed.

For the next couple of months we seemed to settle into our new lives in a new house, with new jobs and new schools. There where a few issues with my daughter at her new school, but her teachers, and I, just believed they where the stresses of a new house and a new school.

Until, when we had been there a little under three months, and she collapsed in the middle of class.

I rushed to the hospital from work, and when they let me into her room my daughter simply met my eyes for a second before returning to staring vacantly out the window.

The doctors had no idea what was wrong with her, and they wanted to keep her in overnight for observation. I stayed by her bedside all afternoon, and drifted off using my rolled up jacket as a pillow.

A couple of hours later I woke to a chilly breeze blowing through the open window. I remember thinking, as I stepped to the window to shut it, that they should have done something to make it look more cheery, especially in the children's ward, the bars made it look rather like a prison.

When I turned around I realised that my daughter's bed was empty. I tried to tell myself that rationally it was obvious that she had just got up to go to the toilet, and that was probably what had woken me up, but deep down inside I didn't really believe it.

My hand was shaking as I knocked on the toilet door and softly called my daughter's name. When there was no response I knocked more heavily, and called loudly enough that I think I may have disturbed some of the patients in neighbouring rooms, but I was worried enough not to worry about such niceties.

And my worries where well founded. My daughter was not in the toilet, or anywhere else in the hospital. We searched for nearly an hour before calling the police in to start searching the surrounding neighbourhoods.

We didn't find her until I thought to check our house a few hours before dawn, and found her sleeping in the back garden. When I picked her up her eyes opened, and she said that she had needed to sing for the fairies, and then fell asleep in my arms.

When we got back to the hospital they still couldn't say what was wrong with her, just that it was worse.

I caught a few hours sleep in the morning, but made sure to keep a good watch on her that evening.

I couldn't say why, but I found myself obsessively checking the latch on the window throughout the evening and night, even though there was no way she could have slipped through the bars.

She had not spoken since that morning, until suddenly at around eight or nine she sat up in her bed and said that she had to go. I was angry at her for having run away the night before, so I immediately jumped to her bedside and grabbed her arm, "No, you need to stay here until you get better."

My daughter looked at my hand on her arm, and then into my eyes with fear on her face, "I need to sing for the fairies."

At the look of fear in her eyes my own anger turned to fear as well, and I pulled her into a tight embrace and tried to tell her that it was OK if she missed a night while doing my best to sooth her.

She suddenly shuddered and went limp in my arms. The doctors tell me that she didn't technically die until the next day, but I saw her vacant and unmoving face as she lay on the bed, and I knew it was just an empty shell already.

In the old days there would always be a few of the palace's residents walking through the garden, examining the plants. The gardener chuckled to remember the groups of young girls who would wander the garden making up stories to tell each other about the plants and where they came from, and the groups of older women who where beyond such childishness, and would instead whisper the stories to each other.

Every plant was as unique as the story behind it. Some where beautiful, some ugly; some where not much short of trees, some little more than seedlings; some where covered in a carpet of flowers, others where simple and plain, though every plant had at least some thorns.

There was more plants than ever before and they where starting to push out into the paths but still the danger of brushing against a thorn had never driven visitors away before.

The gardener noticed a figure ahead as he approached the centre of the garden. So perhaps the thorns hadn't scared away everyone just yet.

The figure was a young man, barely more than a boy, and was examining the largest plant in the garden, nearly as tall as the young man, despite being one of the newest.

As the gardener approached he recognised him as the son of one of the King's cousins, though he couldn't remember which.

The young man crouched down in front of the plant, and suddenly grasped the base of the plant, and ripped it out of the ground.

"Don't!" yelled the older man even though the damage had already been done, as he rushed the last few yards towards the youth.

The young noble was shaking and blood was dripping from his hand that was still clenched around the trunk of the plant, a particularly thorny one even by the standards of the west garden. But nevertheless he gave an apologetic smile to the gardener as he approached.

"Do you know ...?" asked the gardener.

"No, but it needed to be done," The young man released the trunk, but the thorns jabbed into his skin kept it from dropping, so he had to shake it lose, tearing his skin even more.

"I guess a few scratches don't matter any more do they?" The noble almost looked hopeful as he glanced up from his hand, but when the gardener shook his head he simply shrugged and wrapped his hand in his shirt before walked shakily over to a nearby seat.

The gardener watched the plant start to wilt and brown far faster than any natural plant would. That was the only way to kill a plant in the west garden, you could cut it back, burn it, salt the earth even, but unless you pulled it out by hand it would grow back in a few days, often thornier than before.

"I'm sure even you have noticed the problems." The young noble seemed to want to explain himself to someone, and the gardener was the only person there, "The kingdom is inches from a imploding, and no one trusts anyone else in the palace. Something needed to change."

The gardener kept his peace, it wasn't his place to correct nobles, and maybe it really was for the best.

There where a few flickers of something vaguely like a memory as the plant finished dying, but whatever secret had created it obviously didn't concern him.

That was the magic of the west garden; it was almost impossible to reveal a confidence told to you in the palace, but a plant grew along with the secret, and if it died the secret was revealed.

Though the plants of the west garden rarely died alone.

The gardener sat down beside the young noble who had now stopped shaking and watched the, apparently still peaceful, palace, as he waited to see what would happen.

But no, as his lifeboat's own drives slowed it down much more quickly he could watch the stupid engines that had spent nearly as much time offline as on keep running smoothly right until the last moment.

It was still far from a gentle landing, more of a crash really, the RX-79 class survey ships where never intended to land on a planet, and a human would have been lucky to survive, but It wasn't human.

He wasn't really sure what It was actually, other than dangerous.

The engineer turned his attention to his boat's projected course; his computer would try to bring him down as close to the local Safe Haven pod as it could, and it looked like he would be coming in nearly 500km to the south-west, and only about 55km from the pod.

Even if It bothered to chase him, and could figure out which direction to travel It wouldn't catch him before he reached safety. It was not like It had ever seemed to be able to figure out anything more complex than a door, so It wouldn't be able to use the ship's sensors or aircars.

Hell, he might get lucky and the fire he could see starting on the downed ship, or perhaps in the forest around it, would take It out.

Matthews stopped on a small ridge in the brush covered plain and double checked the display on the tracker, he was only about five and a half k's out from the Haven pod, but he'd already walked over 30km on his second day after landing, and it would be dark soon. Better to stop here and finish the journey tomorrow morning.

He started clearing a camp site in the vibrant green waist high bushes that made up the major vegetation in this part of the planet. He found himself glancing over his shoulder regularly as he worked, he had yet to see any native creature larger than a rabbit, but he still felt nervous, and wasted no time in setting up the light survival shelter. It's reinforced walls would stop any small critters, and it was electrified to discourage large ones, though not a particularly determined one.

Matthews climbed inside the shelter and sealed it up before eating a quick meal of tasteless survival rations, and falling into an uneasy sleep.

Matthews walked down the hall giving the new assistant geologist a tour of the ship. Katherine Shoobridge, the redheaded college student they'd taken on to help out Dr. Gardener. The engineer had been sneaking peaks at her the entire tour; she had a cute smile ... and other assets; of course it wasn't like she'd have a lot of competition on a survey ship.

"So, LSST-542a-4787--that's kind of a mouthful, have you guys given her a nickname or something?"

"Most of us just call her the ship, though Franklin--the pilot--calls her Helen for some reason; I've never asked why." The engineer gave her a friendly shrug.

He stepped through the next door, "And this is the galley."

"Why?"

Matthews turned back to the girl, "Umm, I guess because it's conveniently positioned close to work areas, and cabins perhaps?" But even as he said it he knew that wasn't what she was asking about.

"No, w-w-why did we g-go to th-th-that world?"

The engineer started backing away, as he remembered. Katherine had been Its first victim, and It never did figure out how to stop the stutter, perhaps the human tongue was awkward for It.

She--It took a step into the room as he continued to back up. There was something subtly and inexplicably off about Its steps, but then, there always had been.

"Math-th-thews"

His eyes flashed open, and the dream faded away, but no matter how much he tried to tell himself he couldn't convince himself that the final repeat of his name had been part of the dream and not real.

He clenched his fists to stop the shaking before grabbing the tracker and his pistol. He hesitated before stepping out of the shelter, not that it would do anything against It, but then stepped into the pre-dawn dark and scanned the surrounding brush, desperately trying to tell himself it was just a dream, and there was no way It had caught him, even if It had survived the crash.

Then he caught sight of what appeared to be an approaching bipedal shape 100 meters out.

Matthews emptied half his magazine towards it before sprinting as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

The sun was just peaking over the distant clouds as Matthews climbed over a ridge and finally caught sight of the Safe Haven pod.

He hadn't seen any sign of life since fleeing last night's campsite, so he was sure now that it had been his imagination, or perhaps he was just hoping that it was.

Regardless he would feel better with four and a half centimeters of high grade alloy between him and any potential threats.

Matthew inserted his Safe Haven key--all crew members had been provided with one by the Institute, and generally wore them on necklaces--and the door slid open, and he quickly jumped inside and hit the seal button, as the sun finally came up outside.

The interior lights started flicking on as the engineer stepped over to the transmitter and inputted the sequence to activate the mayday beacon.

Matthews smiled and said to himself, "Well, I'm safe now, a ship should be here in a day or two to pick-"

He stopped as a voice came from the opposite corner of the room.

"Th-th-thanks"

I finished a new 3500 word Fantasy short story last night, which, unless I write something better between now and the end of June, will be my entry for the Baen Fantasy Adventure Award.

Editing on The Sword and The Hawk has been slow, but there has been a little progress.

I've managed to write a few thousand extra words on some other projects, but nothing like as much as I would have liked.

On the subject of the blog I've got a few book reviews I'm planning to write up and post here, and I'll likely be posting some AARs and house rules for In The Emperor's Name (using the Space Marines I found a few days ago).

Edward sat on the bench in the medical centre while the doctors prodded and poked at him. His annoyance with the whole process was tempered by the amusement that came from realising that most 22 year-old men wouldn’t visit the doctors even once a year, unless there was something wrong with them. Yet here he was at his regular monthly checkup and there was nothing wrong with him—at least not yet.

He was a Pyrrianaut—a Navigator of the Armoured Dance, provided you were generous with your translation of the Greek and Latin roots—and it had been three long years since he was a teenager, so there soon would be.

The colony’s chief doctor, Dr. Nichols, interrupted Edward’s thoughts, “Lt. Philips, have the shakes got any worse since last we talked?”

Edward hesitated a moment, before answering truthfully—or at least mostly truthfully, “Not really; anyhow they’re nothing to worry about, they only last a few minutes after I take off the suit.”

Dr. Nichols looked doubtful at that, but continued, “OK Lieutenant, but inform me immediately if they get any worse; frankly you’re lucky to have lasted this long; and at the outside you have no more six months left.”

“Sure Doc, I’ll retire before it comes to that.”

“I’ll hold you to that; God knows I don’t want to recommend mandatory retirement—the four of you are spread thin guarding this colony already—but I will if I think you’re going to kill yourself. The Colonial Administration can always send a replacement, and I’d hate to see Miss Mari’s pretty face marred by tears.”

Edward silently nodded his head, as the doctors continued to run their tests.

Several hours later Edward was sitting playing cards with some of the armour techs in the ready-room at the Pyrrianaut base on the outskirts of City. His eight hour shift had started a little over an hour ago, and right now he and Armour Chief Ichiro were making a tidy profit in a poker game with two new techs, who had only arrived from ColAdmin the day before. Ichiro, the oldest armour tech in the colony, and Edward, the oldest Pyrrianaut, had become close friends in their time together and were often referred to as the old men of the unit, even if Edward was actually younger than most of the techs.

One of the newbies—Simpson was his name, Edward thought—looked like he was about to throw some more money into the pot, which Edward or Ichiro would hopefully soon win, when suddenly the strip of green lights around the roof and doors of the room turned yellow, and a polite, but insistent, voice started repeating the phrase “Yellow Alert, Yellow Alert”.

The two new techs jumped to their feet scattering playing cards and poker chips across the table and started sprinting into the armour-room that was just beside the ready room. Ichiro met Edward’s gaze and rolled his eyes as the two of them slowly placed their cards face-down on the table before joining the other more experienced techs in a more sedate stroll towards the armour-room. After all it was only a Yellow Alert—for a Red Alert they’d join the new techs in their sprint, but there was no need for haste for a measly Yellow Alert.

As soon as they entered the armour-room Ichiro began directing the other techs to prepare to suit Edward up. Edward and the techs moved quickly, but with no noticeable haste—they did this every day, and, other than the two new techs, they had the suit up procedure down to a well choreographed dance.

As they pulled the pieces into place the voice of Control—whoever the senior office on base was—came over the ceiling mounted speakers and started explaining why the Yellow Alert had been called, “Hello, Lt. Philips, we’ve got an incoming pterodactyl; hopefully it won’t make it over inhabited areas, but we’re putting you on yellow alert anyhow.”

Edward instinctively nodded his head—even if Control couldn’t actually see him—as a pair of techs clamped his upper arm plates into place. The “pterodactyls” weren’t actually Terran pterodactyls, but they looked kind of like a larger—much larger—version of the reconstructions of fossilised pterodactyls on Earth, so that was what most people called them. The most noticeable differences were the size—Terran pterodactyls had an estimated adult wingspan of around a meter, these monsters were closer to twenty meters—and the long tail ending in foot-long poisoned stinger. Due to a quirk of biology humans were almost immune to the pterodactyl’s poison—it was even often used in various cocktails to add a bit of kick—but that didn’t change the fact that a foot long spike of bone was still a rather formidable weapon in its own right.

As Edward’s helmet was placed over his head his suit’s on board headset took over the transmission from the command room, “We’re moving a Sentry Drone to take it out with a missile, but it keeps dropping below the minimum altitude for the Xv-3 missiles so we’re a bit unsure as to whether it will be able to engage it successfully. The drone operators are moving in for a short-range, low-altitude strike in the hopes of compensating.” Which is what Edward would have done in the drone operators’ place; the missiles were a bit more reliable at low altitude if you were firing up, and the short flight time allowed less time for the pterodactyl to drop down below the minimum altitude.

90% of the time the drones killed any threatening pterodactyls, which was a good thing, because, though the Pyrrianauts could beat them most of the time, the pterodactyls were still very large predatory pseudo-reptiles, and a lot of the lighter weapons built into the Pyrrianauts’ armoured suits had trouble penetrating the scales on a typical pterodactyl. One of them killed Lt. Karoza a couple of years back, and Edward had only engaged one before and it was a hard fight then. The problem came about if the pterodactyl got over the inhabited areas of the colony, while it was safer—for the Pyrrianaut at least—to try to kill them with drones, once they got over inhabited areas firing missiles at them—except at high altitude—was considered too dangerous; a miss could easily flatten a house or four.

As his suit’s HUD came up Edward called up the display of the various long-range sensors that had direct feeds to his suit’s on board computer. A 3D display of the main colony came up, with the various communities and major geographic features included. He was displayed as a small dot near the centre beside the City, with the two currently airborne drones on nearly opposite sides of the inhabited regions, and a bogey marker out to the North that was the pterodactyl. The nearest drone, Drone 5, was moving closer to intercept and dropping down to only a couple of dozen meters from the ground.

Within a couple of minutes it hit the one kilometer from its target and a second marker separated from the drone’s and speared away towards the pterodactyl at not much short of Mach 2. Almost instantly the pterodactyl dropped towards the ground. The missile’s on board computer started compensating and turning downwards. The two markers appeared to take up the same space for a split second and a small explosion animation played, indicating the missile’s detonation.

“Was that a clean hit?” asked Control over the public channel.

“Unknown, maneuvering to confirm kill now.” came back from one of the drone operators as the small marker for Drone 5 moved towards the last location of the pterodactyl. “I’m not sure sir, I can see it on the ground under the drone, and it’s not moving, but I can’t see any obvious inj– Oh crap! It’s live.” The marker for the pterodactyl reappeared and sprung up towards the drone on Edward’s HUD.

For a few seconds the two markers occupied the same space and then the Drone’s marker fell away and turned red.

“Control, Drone 5 is out of action. We’ve got a massive system failure across the board, looks like it bit the drone in half.” If it wasn’t for the seriousness of a pterodactyl potentially flying into the colonized zone Edward would have laughed at the obvious embarrassment in the drone operator’s voice.

“OK, such is life; maneuver Drone 2 in to place for a long-range strike. Armour-team, there’s no guarantee that they’ll kill it before it gets over inhabited areas, I want you to get Philips air-borne ASAP.”

Edward watched his HUD as he jetted across the landscape at 500 meters. His suit was attached to the “Wing”, which was pretty much what it sounded like: a big swept wing with high powered engines built in. The suit had onboard ground-effect systems, but the Wing was much faster, and had a longer range and higher performance ceiling, so it would carry him to the location of the pterodactyl and then he’d detach to engage it.

At least that was if they decided he needed to engage the pterodactyl, but that was looking very likely now. The reptile had—rather smartly for its kind—dodged the first two missiles from Drone 2. Edward was watching a third missile rush across his HUD towards the target, but it was likely it would miss as well, and they wouldn’t get a third shot; in a few moments the pterodactyl would be over Bill’s Lake, a small lake on the northern edge of the colonised zone, and on the southern shore was the village of the same name. They wouldn’t risk another missile shot this close to a community, so Edward would most likely need to engage the pterodactyl over the lake before it hit the village.

Edward had spent the entire flight pushing down the worry that came from the memory that Bill’s Lake was where Mari’s parents lived and that she was planning to visit them after her shift, and he couldn’t quite remember whether her shift was over yet, or still going. For sure, most houses in the colony had pretty well protected basements—almost definitely enough to stop a pterodactyl—and the villagers would have already been alerted by Control, but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

As he speed over a rise he could suddenly see the pterodactyl rather than having to watch it on the HUD, though the missile was still outside of his field of vision. The pterodactyl was only just airborne, and zig-zagging across the water, and as Edward watched the missile suddenly swept down from the sky, and slammed into the water—20 meters from the pterodactyl.

The underwater detonation shot a fountain of water fifty meters into the air, and threw the pterodactyl off balance. For a moment, as its wing-tip clipped the water, Edward thought it might have been going down, but it recovered and started regaining height, to his disappointment. Sure it most likely would have survived a crash into the water without any real harm, but he’d never heard of one managing to take off from in the water before, which would have made finishing it off a bit easier.

“Looks like I’m going in. Preparing to disengage the Wing.” He started dropping down the couple of hundred meters he needed to lose before his suit’s on board ground-effect system could safely take over.

As soon as he dropped down to the official safe altitude—235 meters—he disengaged the clamps holding him into the wing and started dropping like a rock. At this altitude he couldn’t fly, but he could manage a controlled fall.

As he fell the sense of scale of the beast became more obvious, and as it did he realised that it must be nearly half again as big as the last one he fought. He decided then and there to give the outlanders a bit more credit when the told their tall tales about the big “terries” they saw up in the North.

Edward considered firing a burst from one of his wrist-mounted needle guns to draw the beast’s attention so it didn’t just ignore him and keep flying towards the community, but it turned towards him all on its own, so that wasn’t necessary. Now all he had to do was kill it.

The weapons built into the suit would be of limited effect against such a large creature unless Edward managed to hit a vulnerable spot, so he closed in to under 100 meters before firing his first volley.

He willed his shoulder-mounted micro-missile pods to lock onto the pterodactyl’s head, and then willed them to fire a third of their missiles, and the neural link passed his orders on to the suit and six tiny little missiles darted between him and the pterodactyl. The beast twisted its head away from the buzzing darts, but several impacted across its neck and shoulder, sending up small fountains of gore and broken scales as they exploded.

Edward grinned as the pterodactyl roared in anger and pain.

The beast twisted its whole body before Edward could lock a second volley of missiles on and whipped its tail out towards him. Edward didn’t even have time to consciously think about it before he’d reflexively sent the mental order to the suit to dodge to the side. Unfortunately even that wasn’t fast enough to avoid the stinger, which slammed into his leg.

Of course it wasn’t tough enough to penetrate the armour, but it still dented the shin plate, and threw the human wildly off course. Edward felt the distortion of the armour through the neural link; a less experienced Pyrrianaut would have felt a discomfort in his leg, but Edward was so used to the suit he could tell, purely by feel, that it was his suit, not his leg that was damaged.

That thought flashed through Edward’s mind as he stabilised himself moments before splashing down into the water. He spun himself back towards the beast, and looked straight down into its open jaws.

He just managed to swing his right arm up and fire a short burst from his needle gun before the pterodactyl’s jaws closed over him, and both man and beast slammed into the water with a thunderous splash.

A wave of sensation rushed across the neural link from the suit to Edward, and suddenly what should have just been discomfort turned to pain, and then agony, and then blackness. Edward’s body and suit started spasming, and then stopped after a couple of seconds as he returned to consciousness.

As he faded back into consciousness he absent mindedly noticed that the beast was still shaking him around under the water and trying to crack open his suit, and doing quite well, a small puncture had already been made in the weak armour around his elbow, and water was slowly leaking in. He also noticed that there was a familiar voice trying to ask him something, who was that? Ah, Control, that’s right; I should pay attention to what they have to say.

“… conscious? You need to get back in the game. Looks like you suffered an NFC according to the suit sensors.”

That brought Edward fully back around; NFCs, Neural Feedback Cascades, were one of the reasons why mostly only teenagers used neural links. Even a single NFC nearly always did permanent nervous system damage, if they didn’t kill right away.

Edward sighed and shoved down his worry about what the long-term consequences of this might be. If he let this pterodactyl chew on him for much longer he wasn’t going to live long enough for there to be any long-term consequences.

Edward twisted his whole body in the jaws of the pterodactyl and swung his free left arm up towards where he believed the beast’s eye should be, and started sweeping bursts of needle gun fire around in the hope of making it let go.

Suddenly the pterodactyl jerked its head—and Edward—up out of the water and threw him away across the lake.

Edward tried to use his ground-effect systems to compensate for the throw, but they had been damaged by the bite and he smashed back into the water. It took a few seconds, but he stopped himself sinking using the damaged ground-effect system just in time to see the pterodactyl start swimming away from him. With its long tail sweeping back and forth and its wings folded in against its body it more closely resembled a serpent than the dinosaur it was named after.

Edward shook off his disorientation and pulled the suit up out of the water using on the failing ground-effect system, and started following after the pterodactyl. As he flew over the top of the beast he locked his micro-missiles on again, and fired off the remaining 12 missiles in single volley of flaming darts which tore away from him towards the water.

The already injured pterodactyl twisted its body downwards and tried to dive away from the incoming missiles, but only managed to avoid a handful of them, with the rest striking it across the back and wings.

Edward dived down into the water after the beast, and slammed into its back between the two wings. He activated the gripping bolts built into his suit’s hands, knees and feet to hold on as the pterodactyl twisted its body under the water in an attempt to knock him loose.

Edward started dragging himself up towards the reptile’s neck. Some of the other Pyrrianauts had suggested strangling pterodactyls before, but he doubted he could reach his arms around its neck; he instead hoped he could finish it off with his needle guns or wrist-mounted blades.

The pterodactyl kicked its body up out of the water as high as it could go, and turned itself over so that fell back into the water back first—directly onto Edward. The shock was communicated from the suit to Edward through the neural link in what should have been simply discomfort, but instead was pain. Edward gritted his teeth and concentrated on not blacking out again as he continued to pull himself towards the monster’s neck.

Edward’s needle guns wouldn’t be able to punch through the scales, but, if he shot through one of the wounds already torn open by the micro-missiles, the needles would hopefully penetrate far enough to do some damage, so he kept moving towards a jagged gash he had chosen on the side of the pterodactyl’s neck.

Just willing the suit to move turned the dull background pain into a sudden flare of fire, but he clawed himself up the last couple of meters and punched his right fist into the wound as hard as he could. He willed the needle gun to fire, and just kept firing until his HUD started flashing up alerts that it was empty. As he started to pay attention again he realised that the pterodactyl had stopped moving and that the two of them were sinking towards the bottom of the lake.

Edward released the gripping bolts, and watched as the body of the beast, now freed from his much denser suit, started to float towards the surface. After a couple of seconds he shook his head and activated the ground-effect system and started towards the surface of the lake himself.

Edward sat on the shore of the lake with his helmet and gloves removed, watching the pterodactyl’s carcass floating a couple of hundred meters from shore. He didn’t trust the suit’s ground-effect system, so there was a team on their way to pick him up, but for now he just had to wait.

He turned his head towards the sound of a ground-effect vehicle flying in over the trees behind him. He momentarily scrunched his eyebrows in confusion; it wasn’t a ColAdmin vehicle, but one of the civilian air trucks, but then he recognised the woman driving the truck, and smiled. Mari must have seen the fight and come out to check on him.

Before the ground-effect system had even finished shutting down, the surprisingly tall, and surprisingly blonde, Asian girl jumped down from the front seat of the truck and jogged towards Edward with a worried look on her face, and a first aid kit in her hand.

“I’m fine,” Edward assured her as she approached, “You don’t need to worry.”

Mari stopped in front of Edward and placed her hand on her hip and raised her eyebrow, “Really? ’Cause went I called up to ask if you were hurt, no one would give me a definite answer. If you weren’t hurt they would have simply told me.”

Edward hesitated for a second watching her face, before breaking eye-contact and glancing down at his hands, “I had a NFC, maybe even a second small one. I hope there’s not any really serious damage, but my hands haven’t stopped shaking yet.”

Mari’s eye’s widened and she covered her mouth with her hands as she glanced down towards his shaking hands. After a moment she sat down beside him and clasped his hands in her own, holding them still, before kissing him on the cheek.

Edward gave her a quick smile before turning back towards the water. As he stared at the body of his now dead enemy he was reminded of the other possible etymology of Pyrrianaut they used to joke about back at the Academy; it seemed appropriate now, another such victory and I am undone.

He turned towards the beautiful woman beside him and grinned before kissing her on the lips. Maybe civilian life wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The End

Well this is my first short story to actually get "published". Once I've finished the cover I'll put it up on Smashwords and [probably] Amazon as a freebie.

If you have any comments—good or bad—I'd love to hear them.

I nearly published it Today anyhow, but I feel that it's not quite ready yet. I've got the first third of the book close, it's probably on it's third draft by now, but I don't think it's quite ready, so I'm going to hold off. It still needs a new set of eyes to proof-read it, and I've decided I want to do a full, straight read-through before I call it done as well, so we're looking at a bit longer before it's ready.