An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Epilogue
Loose Id Titles by Kari Gregg
Kari Gregg
AN UNAUTHORIZED FIELD
GUIDE TO THE HUNT
Kari Gregg
www.loose-id.com
An Unauthorized Field Guide to the Hunt
Copyright © August 2013 by Kari Gregg
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eISBN 9781623004477
Editor: Kierstin Cherry
Cover Artist: Kalen O’Donnell
Published in the United States of America
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning
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Dedication
With gratitude to Shane West for candid answers to frequently embarrassing questions, and to Shane’s tribe for supporting this unprecedented breach of the Hunt’s nondisclosure agreement, so the events that led to the Cycle 2315 midseason blackout could be shared with future competitors and gamblers everywhere.
Chapter One
“Entering an arena is like being awarded a ticket into the most exclusive megabucks lotto in the galaxy…except that ticket is accompanied by vicious claws, fangs, and a barbed penis.”
~ Shane West
Cycle 2315
Mariket, Arena 4
Season Premier
Shane bounced lightly on the floor in the hovercraft to stay nimble as he monitored the red light above the bay door. He used his peripheral vision to assess the ship’s complement of Hunt competitors. He wished he could believe the division of competitors for transport to Mariket was coincidental, and that his assignment to a ship with just two other humans was bad luck. Lying to himself—if only to calm his screaming nerves—would result in failure and pain, though. The cats never left anything to chance. For some unknown and unknowable reason, the cats had chosen to insert him into an arena with a group that included few likely allies. That could mean screening tests had indicated Shane was a poor candidate, to be discarded early and ruthlessly. Or the cats might believe him so well suited for the Hunt that he’d been selected for the gift of vulnerability.
Either way when that light flashed green and the bay door glided open, Shane was in deep shit.
He slowed his breathing by inhaling a long drag of air through his nose until his chest fully inflated, and then released it through his lips in a protracted though quiet hiss. Panic wouldn’t help.
Shrugging to secure his backpack comfortably on his shoulders, he pretended not to notice the spicy stench from the majority of Nambians on the ship. So what if the agile and ferocious creatures could trigger their own mating heat? Any cat that would fall for the promise of a fast fuck rather than the lure of the chase wasn’t for Shane. Let the Nambians squander limited time and resources on orgies. Shane hadn’t come to the Hunt to entertain lusty cats as their whore.
He just hoped the Nambians didn’t think much of his strategy either. If they’d identified him for elimination, Shane was doomed when they exited the hovercraft.
The red light flickered.
The shields had lowered to allow hovercrafts into the arenas.
Not much longer.
Shane’s heartbeat skipped, his pulse sprinting as his fight-or-flight response kicked into gear. He lifted his hand and curled his fingers around the strap of his backpack to anchor it. The cats never allowed competitors to take much into the Hunt, but he couldn’t afford to lose his kit. Vulnerability was fine, maybe even good. Helpless stupidity wouldn’t be forgiven.
Green!
By the time the pneumatic door slid wide, Shane had already leaped forward. Smaller, quicker, Shane pushed through his fellow competitors, and squinting at the blinding brightness of the arena from the gloom of the ship, he jumped through the bay door. He contorted to free himself from a tug on his pack and grunted at the jar of landing on solid ground.
He bent to dislodge another grasping wrench on his pack. And he ran.
To the trees.
He focused on making it to the thick underbrush that circled the area cleared for this landing pad. The fact that cats waited in the forest, primed to hunt him, was irrelevant. At least the cats wouldn’t beat Shane—or worse—in order to strut their strength and superiority. Leaving the Hunt too soon was more dangerous than all the competitors and cats in the arena combined. An early evac was good as a death sentence to him. If he didn’t reach another landing pad and ally with a larger group of humans…
He streaked across the field. Before he’d scrambled halfway to the woods, snarls, screams, and the thuds of fists landing on flesh erupted behind him, the sickening sounds a chorus signaling the predictable rush of medevacs during the first moments of the Hunt. Let them fight. Fewer rivals for Shane with the cats. He’d last longer. Plus the brawl would occupy wardens. He wouldn’t have to worry as much about the officials intruding to spur the season on.
Pounding footsteps followed closely behind Shane as he raced toward the forest. He’d never believed he was the only competitor on his ship with the brains to opt out of an unfriendly alliance at this entry point. He didn’t need to be smartest, though. He needed to be fastest.
With a frantic glance, he pinpointed the least dense sliver of overgrown thicket ahead, and legs pumping, he shot directly for it. Whoever was trailing him—more than one competitor, judging by the collection of uneven panting—would be on him once he entered the woods, but he might still give them the slip if he forged a quicker path through the barrier of briars.
He barreled into the prickly patch of leaves and twigs, lifting an arm to shield his eyes from jutting thorns that whipped at him as he used his momentum to punch a hole in the brush. Brambles gouged his hands, his neck, any exposed skin. Ignoring the sting, he raced on. The
scritch
of tearing fabric and a brief flare of pain at his thigh didn’t stall him. Even the vines tangling around his feet didn’t slow him. When he tripped, he simply rolled, allowing the weight of his body to shoot him forward. He tumbled once, twice. Too fast. A disorienting spiral of violent green whirled around him until his legs hitting a slender tree jerked him to a stop. Shaking his head to clear the dizziness, he scrambled on all fours through a tunnel of dappled leaves. He was almost in the forest proper. If young trees grew here, and native wildlife had made a path of bent limbs in the thicket to feast on ripe berries, he must be close.
The brush thinned.
Shane lurched to his feet. He stooped in the cramped space. He could move faster now that the thicket wasn’t as dense. Even as the underbrush cleared around him, he knew he’d failed, though. The labored pants behind him had dispersed, curses and sucking breaths echoing from both his left and right.
He hadn’t outrun them.
As the leaf cover melted away, he spotted one of the other humans running to his right. He was smaller than Shane, who was considered tall back home on Narone where sporadic growing seasons had stunted evolution in human development. The crown of Shane’s head barely reached the chins of his kind everywhere else, but this human was shorter still. Shane could take the guy in a fight if he had to. Not so the gigantic Aretu to Shane’s left, whose black eyes streamed wet from the daylight that must be blinding him, but whose long legs and wide stride ate up the distance Shane tried to put between them. He wouldn’t fare well against Aretu talons or camouflaging black fur come nightfall.
At least one other competitor—probably two—ran behind them, but the greater need for haste didn’t allow Shane to glance over his shoulder. The walls of rich, lush green they’d burrowed through muffled cries and growls from the melee they’d fled at the landing pad, but that didn’t mean any of them were safe yet.
Shane stumbled to a halt only when lack of oxygen made him cripplingly light-headed, and his empty stomach proved it wasn’t so hollow Shane couldn’t wretch up bile as a result of the brutal pace. He bent over, hands braced on his knees, and vomited on the forest floor.
The Aretu didn’t look back. It kept running.
Good riddance.
The human next to Shane cried out and collapsed to the ground in a heap of flailing arms and legs a few paces away. The other human from the ship slammed into him. The two of them rolled in a clump of limbs. Their combined shouts rang out loud enough to draw every predator in the arena.
Fantastic.
If Shane weren’t so busy puking his guts into the dirt, he would’ve cursed.
May as well shout the news from the treetops. The traveling feast is here!
Startled by his disgust, he jerked away from a canteen shoved under his nose—more specifically from the shimmering scales of the triple-clawed hand offering water to him. “Not to drink. To rinse your mouth,” an unmistakable trilling voice said.
Horror jolted up his spine and forced Shane to tilt his head higher.
He hadn’t evaded the bloodthirsty Nambians after all.
Hard to tell since this one leaned over him, but the Nambian looked like a runt, not quite as tall as others of his kind and not as bulky with muscle. If Shane straightened to his full height, this Nambian would tower above him by the span of only a few hands. The iridescent scales were smaller too, roughly the size of Shane’s thumb instead of his fist. This predator was young, barely an adult, which might have driven the reptile to flee a species alliance at the landing pad. That same alliance would have also picked off weaker members—the Nambian youth—as soon as rival species had been dispensed with. He might have believed the young adult was playing smart, if not for the notorious sacrificial loyalty of Nambian competitors in the Hunt. Forfeiting one Nambian to eliminate a trio of humans wasn’t a bad strategy, just unfortunate. For Shane.