Sudden Discomfort

In these enlightened times, most right thinking persons (as opposed to " Right" thinking") were against the killing of sentient or even semi-sentient beings for pleasure. There were, of course, a few exceptions and the hunters were quite vociferous in their opposition to laws banning the killing of other life forms solely for personal gratification.

Politicians, lawyers and activists wrangled for centuries until at last a solution was arrived at which all concerned finally - however grudgingingly - agreed to. The rationale was this:

If the hunters want to hunt, let them - but let them hunt each other.

There were a few token voices of dissent but secretly even the hunters were overjoyed. At last, they would get to waste someone with a gun and no one would call a bad on them. And so it began, the great Hunting Forest Reserve planets of Ursa Major. The rules were simple:

1. To avoid anyone gaining a tactical advantage, all hunters were to carry biometrically tagged weapons and ammunition that could only be used by their owner, so there was no possibility of anyone stockpiling weapons when killing the opposition.

2. Everyone landing had to carry enough supplies to last at least two weeks, preferably containing grain alcohol and tinned beans, although these were not compulsory.

3. No one was allowed to stay longer than three weeks and, to ensure this rule was enforced, all candidates were implanted with a time limited biopoison which would release a powerful coagulant into anyone unwise enough to outstay their welcome. Miss the last bus home and you'd congeal into a giant scab within seconds.

White Boy Bob was, however, a Frequent Fryer at Ursa Major Beta. Pondering Beefheart's sudden demise and apparent attempt to communicate from beyond death, he crouched in a patch of swampy undergrowth, motionless, scarcely breathing lest he disturb the party of hunters checking their weapons a few inches in front of him. Newly arrived, they were in the "Yeah! Woah, yeah!" stage of psyching each other up and reassuring one another they were indeed "total bad asses".

Once they'd finally high fived each other for the seventeenth time, they flicked their portable cannon controls from "Safety" to "Extreme Hazard" and steeled themselves to set out into the jungle.

"Perfect", thought Bob and had just begun to tauten his finger on Stella's trigger when the lead hunter's face exploded all over him. Unflinching, Bob watched with an amused if confused air as each of the remaining hunters looked from one to another in shock for a second before each suffering a similar fate. Bob remained motionless and waited for the barbecued flesh smoke and blood vapour to disperse in the mist, careful not to reveal himself to whoever had made such short work of these newbies. As he watched, a shadow detached itself from the Banyan tree opposite and coalesced into the unmistakable form of a member of the Secure Hostage Intercept Team. It reached a blood spattered hand down to the cloaking unit on it's belt and flicked it from Stealth to Dispersal mode. Unable to see the figure directly, Bob knew he would now only be able to detect it in his peripheral vision but to turn his head would be to reveal his own location.

"Shit!", he thought, "...Interceptors...I don't need this...."

The S.H.I.T.'s were the law's last line of defense in certain parts of the galaxy, the kind of regions where distinctions between legal missions, black ops and out and out piracy tended to be blurred and no one on either side of the law, Bob included, would have anything to do with them if they could possibly avoid it. But why were they here? It wasn't like they needed an excuse to waste people - it was in their job description.

Bob concentrated his attention on the very edge of his vision and was sure he could see a shadow moving away from the clearing in front of his hide and off into the jungle. With aching slowness, he carefully rolled his eye a few degrees to his right, only to find himself looking down the charred muzzle of a Rezznor 8000 Particle Disruptor. The same weapon, he assumed, which had so recently turned the faces of four hunters into marinara sauce.

"Is this your hide, sir?" chuckled the shadow.