Shikari: Shikari Book One Read online

  Shikari

  Shikari Book One

  Alma T. C. Boykin

  Copyright © 2017 by Alma T. C. Boykin

  Cover art by Cedar Sanderson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  In Memory of Grandpa Carl: Soldier, Teacher, Engineer, Friend

  Contents

  1. Something Old, Something New

  2. The Finding

  3. Mapping and an M-dog

  4. School and Summer Plans

  5. Reports and Planning

  6. Into the Wilds

  7. Beasts of the Field

  8. Patterns and Finds

  9. School Troubles Return

  10. Trouble Brewing

  11. Collisions

  12. Assembling the Pieces

  13. Trouble in the Air

  14. One Step Too Far

  15. Peace at Last?

  About the Author

  Also by Alma T. C. Boykin

  1

  Something Old, Something New

  Looking back, Rigi and Tomás tried to decide if they’d have done anything differently. “Maybe we shouldn’t have told any adults, not even Uncle Eb,” she sighed, listening to the heated argument going on in the next room. She could hear the royal governor’s voice through the thick, closed door as he tried to drown out Uncle Eb and Mr. Petrason.

  Tomás, two years older and wiser to the ways of adults, ran a hand through his short-trimmed brown hair and sighed as well. “I don’t think so. We did everything we were supposed to, everything the school taught us, and Uncle Eb and his associates followed procedures. The Staré have not protested, not even first and second Stamm elders. I think Mr. Petrason and his friends are jealous. Benin certainly is.”

  Rigi had an unladylike thought about where Benin could go, starting with the northern icecap. Now that she’d seen his father having a temper fit, Rigi understood where Benin’s attitude came from.

  “I’ve just never heard grownups acting like eighth-years.”

  Tomás shrugged. “Neither have I. I can see why Uncle Eb likes being around us more than being around them.”

  Rigi nodded so hard that her black curls bounced. “I agree entirely, Master Tomás,” she said, mimicking Uncle Eb.

  Rigi bounced a little on her toes as she waited for Uncle Eb to catch up. Tomás had already trotted up the trail they’d made through the cool, quiet woods, but she didn’t think Uncle Eb’s m-mule would find the way without her. “This way, Uncle Eb,” she called. “We’re almost there.”

  The tall, stooped old man with grey in his hair appeared around the bend. “Sorry, Miss Rigi, I saw a new plant and wanted a sample so Lexi could give me the name, if he knows it. It may be a higher Stamm name than the ones he knows.” The old model m-mule creaked a little in one joint as it walked behind him.

  “That’s OK, Uncle Eb.” Together they passed the big hollowed tree, edged around a striped slick-leaf bush and walked through the piles of stone that Rigi and Tomás called the gate. “This is what we found last year.” She smiled up at him a she pointed to the shiny black stone wall.

  Ebenezer Solomon Trent opened his mouth, closed it again, and blinked hard. He walked up to the wall and touched it. Rigi wondered why his hand seemed to be shaking. Was he tired? He looked up and watched Tomás balancing on top of the meter-high wall. “Is it solid, Tomás?”

  “Not really, sir, at least not all of it. This section is, to that curve over there,” he pointed to the left, where the black disappeared into tree shadows and a pile of racer vines. “Then it looks more crumbly, disappears for a bit, and comes back. It arcs around in a great big circle and comes back here. My m-mule’s measurement gauge says three kilometers, but part of it is buried or goes underground or something, I think, sir.” Tomás shrugged. “We found a lot more things inside the ring wall and I like those more.”

  Uncle Eb made a choking noise and Rigi and Tomás smiled and pumped their fists. He had “that look,” the kind he got when he found something new and interesting and wouldn’t come out of his office until Aunt Kay turned off the office’s master power circuit. Tomás grinned. “See, we said we’d found something new.”

  Uncle Eb blinked and looked up from peering at and petting the wall. “What? Oh, yes, Tomás, you are quite right. You and Rigi did find something new. Very new.” He fussed with some of the sensors on the m-mule and picked up its tether, leading it along the inside face of the wall as it filmed and measured the rough, pitted black surface. That was one of the things Rigi wanted him to tell them—why the outside was smooth mostly but the inside had rough patches and cracks and dents in it. “You said there were things inside the wall?”

  Tomás nodded. “Yes, sir. Rigi, the residence, the temple, or the name stone?”

  She liked the building they called the temple better because of the colors, but the name stone had marks on it that looked like writing and Uncle Eb was a word person, after all. “The name stone. Then maybe the temple.”

  Tomás scrambled down from the pile of broken wall he’d been standing on. “This way, Uncle Eb.” Their uncle led the grey-brown, waist-tall m-mule through the thick brush. They had been lucky that nothing really nasty grew in the ring, Rigi knew, not like that striped slick-leaf bush. The worst bushes here had long, bright red curved thorns that you could see long before you ran into them. They’d also found a lot of cream berries growing near the Residence, and she and Tomás didn’t bother eating their lunches when the berries were ripe. No animals bothered them after the auto-beam on Tomás’s m-mule had blasted the big ring-tail lizard they’d met in the temple. They’d agreed not to tell their parents about seeing it, and Tomás had tinkered with the m-mule and blanked the record of the energy discharge.

  Ahead of her, Rigi heard Uncle Eb talking to his m-mule, reciting what he saw as they walked along. I wonder what he’s going to say when we get to the name stone? It wasn’t too far, not really. The far end of the wall from their “gate” didn’t have much to look at and Tomás said it was probably a garden or a park. Except nothing taller than knee-high smoke grass grew there, which Rigi thought was kind of strange for a garden. The area with the ruins had more bushes and other things. She wanted Uncle Eb to explain that, too.

  “Great Caesar’s ghost!” Uncle Eb shouted. “I— You— What— By the Magellanic Clouds this is magnificent!”

  He rushed up to the tall block of cream and brown stone and Rigi thought he might be about to hug it. Instead he stopped and stared, head tipped all the way back until his hat fell off. Well, it was tall, probably four meters, but not as tall as the trees in the forest around them. Here and there patches of glossy black splashed the stone like someone had tossed wet paint or cermacoating onto it. At least five rows of rounded shapes had been carved into the stone on the big flat front, with more down, or maybe up, both sides. The back had a picture, or so Tomás thought. Rigi thought it was just random carvings, like someone wanted to decorate the back of the stone without putting too much work into it. The rear of the stone curved out a little, but the front and sides were flat.

  Uncle Eb made a few strange noises that were not words and opened the m-mule’s top hatch, pulling out a holo recorder and two or three other tools. Rigi and Tomás smiled and slapped hands. Now Uncle Eb wouldn’t be bored anymore. “How long before he notices anything else?” Rigi asked.

  Tomás shrugged. “Hour? His m-mule can’t climb, can it?”

  She shook her head and th
e tassels on her headband flopped back and forth, releasing a little scent. “No. That’s a standard m-mule Version Twelve: Semi-urban but with more sensors and carry cubbies. I heard Aunt Kay saying that he wanted an upgrade but the repair costs are too much on the true all-terrain m-mules.”

  Tomás nodded. “Uncle Aye said the last time he had to replace the climbing pads on one, it cost eight hundred interstellar.” Rigi’s eyes bulged and her mouth hung open. He raised his right hand. “Warrior’s honor. Eight hundred interstellar credits. Uncle Aye wanted the money before he ordered the parts.”

  Since Uncle Eb seemed happy talking to himself and the name stone, Rigi and Tomás wandered off. Rigi went to the building she called the temple and sat on a flat stone bench in the shade just outside the doorway. She drank some of the water she’d brought in her bag and listened to the singing bugs as they hummed back and forth from opposite corners of the building. The temple had colored walls—all sorts of colors—that showed through the racer vines and other plants. She and Tomás had gone inside twice, but after reading about the collapse of the Great Cave on Deben, they decided maybe that wasn’t a good thing to do unless they had a m-mule with them they could send for help, and Tomás’s parents refused to let him have an m-mule with “send away” programs in it. Rigi wondered why adults thought Tomás was old enough for an armed mule but not for a send-away remote, then shrugged. She’d ask Mar.

  Rigi and Tomás had seen pictures carved on the walls, and the walls looked pale but with more black drippy stuff on it. The outside also had black splatters and red and yellow and blue, at least the parts Rigi could see under the racer vines did. The walls stood about three meters tall according to the gauge on Tomás’s m-mule. They looked higher inside, but neither Rigi nor Tomás had light-throwers strong enough to see that far.

  She heard running feet and jumped up as Tomás raced around the corner. “Striped lion,” he panted. “Outside wall.” He grabbed her hand. “Saw a horned digger too but we need to warn Uncle Eb.” Together they ran back to the name stone, making as much noise as they could. Striped lions usually didn’t attack anything bigger than they were or that sounded bigger. That was one thing everyone on Shikhari knew—the native fauna would kill you if you didn’t pay attention.

  “Uncle Eb,” Rigi called. “Striped lion outside the wall, that way.” She pointed back toward the temple.

  “How close?”

  “I could just see it from where I was standing on top of the residence, so pretty well away. Saw a horned digger too, but didn’t want to stay and watch,” Tomás admitted.

  Uncle Eb looked grave. He turned around and stared back toward the gate, his lips moving, then nodded once. “Mule, guard mode. Striped lion.”

  The clunky quad-leg whirred and a beam-shooter rose from its upper surface. It didn’t look anything like the beam-shooter on Tomás’s m-mule, and he blinked as it locked into position. “Uncle Eb, is that military grade?”

  “Yes. I’ve had it for—” The old man caught himself and looked at Rigi and Tomás. “For a long time. I’ll explain when you finish this school term.” He took a few more holo shots of the name stone and said, “Now, you said there was a temple?”

  Rigi’s time tracker chimed and all three looked at it. “Oh dear. Mrs. Debenadetto comes in an hour and Mother will expect me back by sixteen hundred.” That left only two hours to explore, go home, and get cleaned up for visitors.

  “I think, sir, the Residence would be better. We can show you the temple, and you need a powerful light to really see inside.” Tomás sounded eager. Rigi was disappointed but shrugged. The buildings were not going to disappear overnight. And Uncle Eb could be trusted to come back on his own, unlike some other adults she and Tomás knew.

  Tomás led the way, followed by Uncle Eb, Rigi, and the m-mule. Rigi glanced back once or twice to check on the machine and noticed what looked like a little sensor of some kind on a stick had appeared above the beam-shooter. The sensor spun around, and she wondered what it was doing. Maybe it was a holo camera of some kind? Or was it looking for the striped lion? That was probably it, since Uncle Eb had specifically told the m-mule that the danger was a striped lion. Rigi returned her attention to what was in front of her. They passed several piles of crumbling rock and skirted what looked like the start of a pit opening up in the ground. She and Tomás had never tried to see if it was just a low place in the dirt or if it were really something underground giving way. Trap-lizards didn’t exist on this continent, but better safe than eaten. No bushes grew around the low spot, only dark green and yellow ground cover and a few tufts of smoke-grass.

  “I see why you call this the Residence,” Uncle Eb said when they stopped. “You two have a good eye for architecture.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Tomás said.

  “Thank you,” Rigi echoed. It had a certain look and weight that reminded both of them of the Royal Colonial Governor’s Residence, a heavy white and pale green building made of native stone and wood that sat on top of the hill in NovMerv.

  “We can go inside, Uncle Eb. The walls are solid and there’s no roof to fall in on us. It already fell in.” Tomás hesitated, frowning, fists on hips. “That is, I think it fell. It’s not there, but it should be. There are stairs that led up to where the top of the wall is now, and other things.”

  “Hmm. Show me, please.” They stopped so Uncle Eb could take holos of the doorframe, or what was left of it. Chunks of stone had fallen off the frame on the inside, but pretty carvings like flowers and fancy birds, maybe the rainbow birds from the Bataria Archipelago, still flowed around the stones on the outside.

  “Up there.” Tomás pointed and Uncle Eb peered up at the top of the wall, then looked again through his holo-maker.

  “I see what you mean. You do have a good eye. If there were roof beams, they could well have been mounted there.”

  SquEEEEEElll! They froze as they heard the death cry of a horned digger, and something making a long roar-like sound. Tomás shook all over and said, “Um, maybe we don’t have to worry about the striped lion?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  Uncle Eb did not tell the m-mule to stand down, Rigi noticed.

  She walked into the center of the first room and twirled around, arms spread. “If there was a roof here, where did it go, Uncle Eb? And what is the black on the walls?” She slide-danced back and forth across the smooth floor. “If the roof fell in, it should be here, and I don’t think I’m standing on it.”

  The adult crouched down and tapped the floor, then drew an old-fashioned metal knife out of the holster on his belt and poked at it, then tried to pry up a bit of the splashed black. “Fused to the surface? Yes, that’s what happened, its fused for some reason, but why? Not a protective treatment I don’t think. Hmm.” He muttered a little more but Rigi couldn’t understand what he was saying. After a few more pokes he stood and put the knife back in its holder. “I don’t know, Rigi. And I don’t know enough to guess well, so I won’t guess.”

  Tomás drooped. “That’s no fun.”

  Uncle Eb smiled, revealing slightly crooked yellow teeth under his white mustache. “No, it’s not. But I’d hate to guess that a round backed, round-legged animal with a round head is something harmless and then have to explain why my leg is missing. Same problem.”

  It made sense to Rigi when he put it that way. Tomás had gone into the next room and returned with a handful of the artifacts they’d found. OK, maybe not artifacts like the ones in her edu-vids, but Rigi thought they looked like the bits of pots and broken tools people kept hunting for. She especially liked the shimmery rainbow disks that changed color almost like liquid when you tilted them back and forth.

  “Uncle Eb, we think these are metal, and these are a glass or polymer of some kind, but I can’t find anything like them in my materials edu-files.” Tomás showed Uncle Eb one of the color-flowy ones. “We picked them up off the floor along the walls. There’s lots more, but these are the interesting ones.”
r />   Rigi kicked the floor a little. “Um, I know we’re supposed to leave things in see-too, but like he says, there’s lots more all over.”

  Uncle Eb smiled so widely that all his teeth showed, or so it seemed. “No, this is fine. Sometimes it’s more important to take a little bit of evidence back to prove something than to be absolutely pure.” He looked around and sighed. “And it’s possible, probable, that animals and insects have been moving things around, or wind and rain moving them. And the Staré may have touched things too.”

  Both Tomás and Rigi shook their heads. Tomás waved at the building. “No sir. They won’t come here. They don’t even know about it, at least not anyone we’ve talked to or listened to. We’ve gone up to third Stamm and they all said they had never heard about anything in the woods. We didn’t show them pictures, though.” Rigi nodded her agreement with his words.

  Uncle Eb bent his head down and stared at them, blinking, eyes wide open. “Even third Stamm knew nothing?”

  Tomás raised his right hand. “Warrior’s Oath, sir. I asked several people as high as I dared and third Stamm knew nothing.”

  “We didn’t try to ask any higher, since second Stamm are always busy and don’t like to talk to young humans.” Rigi shrugged. She’d been surprised that high third Stamm would talk to her, but she looked younger than her twelve years. Most people assumed she was still outside Staré and human dividing points.

  Uncle Eb straightened up again, all the way up. When he didn’t stoop, he stood a lot taller than Rigi had thought, and he looked different, more like a governor or senior soldier. “Master Tomás, Miss Rigi, thank you for taking me into your confidence. You have done very good work exploring and preserving this site. I think we have seen enough for today.”