Chosen Too Page 4

  'You provoked the Taker, who only gave you a love tap.'

  'The details are forgettable. My heroism is not. Might impress Miorr enough that she'll willingly submit to my advances.'

  'That would require a personality change on her part.'

  Incapable in his present condition of bullying Hoaru into servility, Yowlar bought his brother's silence with the promise of a worthier mating, bribing him by waggling the opportunity to sire cubs in front of his eager face. Naturally the enticement worked, Hoaru jumping at the prospect of fatherhood. Whether employed to exercise dominance or as a means of coercion, sex was a potent tool of statecraft in even feline society.

  'I'm still hungry,’ complained Yowlar.

  Drudgery hauled Hoaru up on to his paws, but before he padded away to commence a fresh hunt in the drizzly forest he snarled at his demanding brother, ‘Fleetfoot is off the menu.'

  Chapter Three

  Life was good.

  Yowlar stretched out, basking in the glorious sunshine. Sprawled upon the flat, uncluttered top of Sunning Rock, he remained the envy of all Sabretooths. Generations of pride leaders before him had lain enthroned on the fifty-foot high slab of weather-carved granite jutting out of the grassed eastern corner of Scrubland Domain like an island. Below him the members of his clan occupied the lower rock shelves, drowsing under the warming midday sun of a heavenly early summer's day.

  Purring contentedly to himself, Yowlar decided that life could not possibly get any better than this. His clawed shoulder was healed and splendidly scarred. Miorr, heavy with cubs, was due to give birth in a couple of weeks. Her sister Sabretooths, subject to the synchronisation of pride reproductiveness thanks to their leader's voracious sex drive, had also fallen pregnant at around the same time. Yowlar's magnanimous permission for Hoaru to sire a litter of his own had borne unforeseen fruits. The expectant male padded about in a continuous daydream, his simmering jealously tempered by impending fatherhood. Game was plentiful, the outlying plain teeming with horse, bison and pronghorn, the scrubland frequented by mastodon and camel, the tar pits overflowing with carrion.

  Yawning relaxedly, Yowlar idly contemplated what it would be like to bring down one of the ox-sized Shaggyhumps that hung about the caves at the bottom of the Sentry Hills. It was a whimsy that crossed his mind on those periodic occasions when he had nothing more important to mull over. Slashing to death a ton of furry behemoth would be quite an achievement during his limited reign, providing one could dodge those rendering meat hooks the dim-witted Ground Sloths considered foreclaws. On top of that, it would be a surrogate bear kill. Even with Hoaru's help tackling the real deal was suicidal. But in this case substitution would be an acceptable, healthier alternative. He was pondering putting the idea to his lackey of a brother when a peal of musical squawks blared overhead.

  Yowlar looked to the intensely blue skies. A flight of Asphalt storks flapped majestically overhead, their grey and red plumage the picture of feathered elegance. Shifting his musing on to how those oversized grouse tasted, something peculiar caught his eye. The gangly birds were flying in stately fashion in a V formation heading southward, a tailwind aiding their progress. High above the avians drifted a backdrop of puffy white clouds pushed in the same direction by the stiff breeze. What puzzled him was the solitary lenticular cloud floating low above the southern horizon.

  He called down to his dozing brother. There was no response, so he roared again.

  'What is it, Yowlar?’ came a peeved reply.

  'Do you see that sky-bush out south?'

  Hoaru took a moment to focus his sleepy eyes on the saucer-shaped cloud. ‘The one that looks like a cats-eye lying on its side?'

  'That's the one. What do you make of it?'

  'Other than its odd shape, nothing.'

  'Look at it closer. It's moving.'

  'Sky-bushes tend to do that, brother. They get blown about by the wind same as leaves do.'

  'Cut the natural history lesson. Have you ever seen one drift against the wind?'

  Hoaru considered suggesting to his sibling that he had been lying out in the noonday sun too long and thought better of it. He could only push Yowlar so far. Taking a second, harder look at the admittedly unusually configured cloud, the sceptical Sabretooth drew a sharp intake of breath and hissed reflexively. The cloud indeed seemed to be floating into a headwind and furthermore was coming their way.

  'My reaction too,’ Yowlar commented on the warning hiss from below.

  His hackles rising, Hoaru asked, ‘What'll we do?'

  Yowlar sized up the approaching cloud. While audacity was a commendable Sabretooth trait, there was something to be said for carefulness every now and then. ‘Take the pride down into Hideaway Thicket and stay there until I call you back.'

  'You're staying?'

  'I'm curious.'

  Yowlar heard the clatter of falling pebbles as Hoaru moved downslope mewing for the reluctant females to follow, snarling before he was out of earshot, ‘More fool you, brother. Curiosity kills the cat.'

  Sunning Rock fell under the immense shadow cast by the ‘cloud’ as it came to a soundless hover over Yowlar before his Sabretooths had crossed half the distance of the shrubby flatland to the wooded sanctuary. The huge saucer was far from natural. Forty yards in diameter, sunlight glinted off a plainly metalled hull structured like an inverted, windowless dish topped off by a dome ablaze with blinking, multicoloured lights. The bottom of the craft was flat and unmarked except for a circular portal ringed by a narrow thread of red luminescence. There was an alien quality about the unheard of apparition that set Yowlar's fur to stand on end.

  The normally fearless Sabretooth leader cringed from the stationary UFO overhead and slunk about the level summit of Sunning Rock, second-guessing the wisdom of his decision to stay and satisfy his curiousness. That doubt intensified when the harsh grate of metal sliding against metal broke the eerie stillness as the iris on the underneath of the ship groaned open in conjunction with the lighted dome on top rising upwards on four spindly stalks fashioned from the same foreign alloy comprising the outer skin of the extraterrestrial vehicle. A beam of intense green light flashed from the opening to bathe the stone edifice in an unearthly emerald glow, compelling Yowlar to shut out that awful glare by closing his eyes. When instinct urged him to reopen his peepers, the frightened cat found himself confronted by a strange visitor.

  The creature stood on two legs like a bird and measured about stork-sized in height. It was garbed in pearl grey army fatigues patterned with camouflage splotches of a darker grey, matched by knee-high boots of black leather. The sleeveless combat vest showed off to good effect its hairless green arms with their irregular bands of orange from wrist to shoulder. Its face was curiously flattened, with a stub of a nose set above a cruel mouth slashed with vertical ridges. Yowlar sniffed and detected no identifying scent emanating from the beast whatsoever. It was not essential. The scaled skin and fierce slitted eyes enclosed by nodules of bone were ample proof of the alien's saurian background. This was a walking snake with arms!

  Yowlar crouched down, bunching his muscles and snarling belligerently from between clenched teeth.

  'What sort of welcome is this, mammal?’ the creature sneered in an unfriendly voice marred by a profound lisp.

  The Sabretooth sprang for the manlike reptile and was soundly punched on the nose for his trouble by a three-fingered hand balled into a fist. Shocked more than hurt by the blow, Yowlar backed up, growling all the way.

  'That's much better. I'd hate for us to get off on the wrong foot.’ The saurian smiled thinly. ‘I am Gurgon-Rha. My friends call me Gurgon, my associates Subkaptain Rha. You may address me as master.'

  Yowlar overcame his astonishment. ‘I bow to no beast.'

  The smile faded from Gurgon's face. ‘Wrong answer.'

  A blinding pain struck Yowlar behind his eyes and he fell writhing to the rock floor, feeling as if his pounding head was going to burst. Just as suddenly his agony
ended.

  Gurgon gave a malicious cackle. ‘That's just a taste of my power, hairball. Behave and I promise you won't have to endure such distress again. Fight me and I'll give you a world of hurt.'

  Cowering like a reprimanded cub, Yowlar mewled plaintively. ‘Who are you?'

  Gurgon suppressed a sigh of exasperation. ‘I told you that already. Pay attention, cos now I'll reveal what I am. A Tsor warrior.'

  Yowlar blinked stupidly.

  'I didn't expect that to hold any meaning for you. No matter. I'm not after your understanding. I require your obedience.'

  'What for?'

  'I have a task for you and your underlings, Yowlar. That's right, I know all about you. I've been monitoring this region from on high, studying its disgustingly furred predators, learning their crude language and beastly habits. You cats are by far the most impressive of a bad bunch.'

  Trembling, Yowlar sat down. He did not know what to make of the unexpected compliment.

  'Only first I have a tale to relate and hardly enough time to tell it. You are not the most desirable audience, but there's none so deaf as they will not hear and for the sake of posterity I need to get this story off my chest.’ With his hands clasped behind his back, Gurgon began to pace fast and talk just as rapidly.

  'My people were hatched as conquerors and should have been ruling the galaxy by now. Instead, we had a disastrous run-in with a planet full of uppity apes and, to be frank, wound up on the wrong end of a bioweapon. The humans took us down, but we made sure Berran got put in deep-freeze ... permanently. Which leads me to here.

  'I was operations officer for a top-secret project in the closing stages of the war. The Berranians may have been ahead of us in genetics, which accounts for this menagerie hereabouts, but we Tsor are far more advanced in technologies. Take our ships. Any idiot knows that a streamlined disc flies faster and with less effort through an atmosphere than a bulky sphere. That should have been obvious to those smug, bandy-legged monkeys. They just had the luck of the Oresh with them to beat us in that glorious conflict. But we struck back in the closing stages of our little interplanetary war. The prototype shipless transport system we used to beam a fusard bomb into their asteroid complex was a mere offshoot of the program I was assigned to. Time travel.'

  Yowlar's head spun from the yarn he was hearing. His brain was beginning to ache again without Gurgon Rha's intentional pain making.

  The forthcoming Tsor carried on. ‘The theory behind the procedure is way over the head of an ordinary soldier such a myself, but the boffins running the Experimental Weapons Agency did explain the mechanics to me.

  'Space, and subsequently Time, can theoretically be folded forwards or backwards like a bolt of cloth, making the past and future accessible if you have the technical know-how. But in practice things worked out rather differently. Past events are shrouded in a kind of cosmic shield that cannot be penetrated ... what has already occurred cannot be undone. It's a sort of failsafe mechanism to prevent tinkering with history. The future is quite something else however. It's a timeline in the making, ripe for manipulation.

  'I was put in command of the ship hovering above us—the very first timeship. Too late to stem the viral tide poisoning my world, or to even fully test the Usurper before sailing on this, her maiden voyage, my mission was to advance the chicks hatched from the Tsor eggs planted long ago on our colony world to a level where the new breed of saurians could restart the stalled galactic conquest. With the apes out of the way we were clear to proceed unhindered. This time period was selected as the most likely to have produced promising evolutional results. It has proved to be, except that humans have bastardised our nest and the only tailless bipeds on the planet are guess what? Bloody apes!'

  The Sabretooth shrank back from Gurgon's outburst.

  Composing himself, Earth's third offworld visitor stopped striding to point a clawed finger at Yowlar. ‘This is where you come into the equation, cat.'

  'Me? What can you possibly want from me?'

  'Your bloodlust.'

  Yowlar's jaw dropped as the arrogant legged and talking snake turned his back on him to take in the grand panorama from Sunning Rock. Gurgon stared due west at the distant swampland of Marshy Green and murmured in a faraway voice, ‘Ah, its lushness reminds me so much of home.'

  Something snapped in the Sabretooth pride leader. He would not be treated in such a way on his own patch! Rushing blindly at the Tsor with the express intent of ripping him to pieces, it was Yowlar who got surprised. With blinding speed Gurgon pivoted about and sidestepped the charging cat, locking his arms about Yowlar's ruffed neck in a determined chokehold. The big feline stopped in his tracks, coughing and spluttering, as the strong-limbed Tsor slowly strangled him. Writhing doggedly, try as he might Yowlar could not break free of the alien's iron grip and sank to his stomach, light-headed and gasping for air.

  Gurgon released Yowlar with a snort of contempt and came up off his knees. ‘Hah, cat! You cannot hurt me because I am not real.'

  'Your forepaws felt real enough to me,’ the Sabretooth rasped.

  'That's the power of energy, Yowlar. The time jump forwards did not go smoothly and the Usurper materialised four centuries earlier than plotted over a world that is home to sentient monkeys. Trapped in this timeline with no chance of backing up, knowing from the outset that the trip was a one-way venture had been lessened by the success envisaged lying at journey's end. The renewal of the Tsor race was to have been our everlasting reward. Failure therefore was not an option. Plans were accordingly changed.

  'Since a timeship has no need for cryogenic facilities, the only way to survive long enough to complete my revamped mission was to take a drastic step. I sacrificed my crewmates in order to make supplies last long enough for me to reconfigure the ship's internal imaging array, combining the psychological profile and three-dimensional body scan from my medical file into a holographic carbon copy of myself, enabling the mission to be carried on after my physical death.'

  Yowlar gave Gurgon-Rha a look of complete bafflement with his intensely ochre eyes.

  The Tsor threw up his hands in disgust. ‘Warmbloods. They think so linearly! I presume you've seen your own reflection in a pool of rainwater or the like?'

  'Of course.'

  'Think of me as a reflection, a mirror image of my true self brought to life by the wizardry of sophisticated computer graphics and programming, given substance by energised particles of matter. I cannot be harmed by conventional means, such as teeth or claws, and won't ever die, unless the Usurper's power source fails. Which leads me to my next dilemma.

  'Unlike the environmentally friendly Berranians, who misguidedly relied heavily upon solar powered machinery, Tsor technology harnesses nuclear fusion as its driving force. Unfortunately, punching a wormhole through the folds of Time practically depleted the saucer's fuel rods in one go and my ship has been running on reserve power ever since. The emergency energy cells will soon be frittered away. That means I am fast running out of time to carry out my orders.'

  Yowlar cocked his head. ‘To be the bodyguard of snakes and frogs?'

  'So you have been paying attention, cat. Maybe you lot aren't such a gamble after all.’ Gurgon became doleful. ‘The reptiles of this world have been corrupted by human interference and aren't worth preserving. Mammals have too strong a stranglehold over this planet to break it now. For that reason, I took it upon myself to redefine my mission parameters. Instead of nurturing an emergent, only now nonexistent race of Tsor clones, I'll fittingly orchestrate the downfall of those who displaced them.'

  Confusion once more settled over the Sabretooth like a dense fogbank.

  Gurgon-Rha's moodiness was burned off by his rising anger, fanned by an unhealthy obsession for revenge, as he elaborated, ‘Half a world away on another continent the children of Berran are taking their first baby steps. I've picked you and your pack to do this planet a favour by ridding it of this infestation.'

  Yowlar remained wrap
ped up in his cloud of puzzlement.

  'It's pretty straightforward cat. I've chosen you to go on safari, to hunt and kill the prehistoric humans for me.'

  Comprehension came to Yowlar in a flood of fear and uncertainty. He was being asked to vacate his hard earned territory to fight this unconscionable snake's rivals. ‘I won't do it,’ he declared. ‘Fight your own scraps.'

  Gurgon returned the cat's glower of refusal and hissed in a sinister tone, ‘I sincerely apologise, Yowlar, for not making myself perfectly clear. You don't have a say in this. Like me, you have been chosen too. See you on the other side.'

  A surge of red-hot pain erupted in the Sabretooth's skull and Yowlar blacked out.

  Chapter Four

  His head hurt. Correction. Yowlar, did in fact, ache all over. He felt as if he had been tossed by the horns of an angry bison and trampled on by the entire herd afterwards. He mewled pitifully for Miorr to comfort him. In spite of his ruthless nature the anguished leader of Sunning Rock Pride needed a consoling lick.

  'You're awake. It's about time.'

  That sibilant voice was worryingly familiar. Yowlar cautiously opened one eye. Blackness was all about him, but the dazzling sparkle of untold stars set against a sky of ebony velvet reassured him that it was only the dark of night. Gurgon-Rha stood within paw's reach, enveloped in that sickeningly greenish aura emanating from the noiseless saucer of gleaming silver hovering a hundred feet in the night air directly above him. Yowlar gave a low, throaty growl. He had hoped the Tsor's visitation was a product of his imagination, a hallucination resulting from a bump on the head after carelessly rolling off the heights of Sunning Rock during his noon catnap. This was no dream, more in the nature of a nightmare.

  'What happened?’ whined Yowlar.

  'We took a short intercontinental trip.'

  'Where am I?'

  'Yowlar, you have the irritating habit of ignoring the glaringly obvious after it has just been explained. I'll summarise for you. After making certain physical adjustments, I shipped you and your flea-infested kin over to the second largest landmass on this tainted planet.'