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  And, because they weren’t already scary enough, the Vos could change colors like a chameleon. As it descended to the ground, the one chasing them mutated from the bright green of the forest canopy to a mottled green dotted with muted colors. About ten feet off of the ground, the Vos folded its wings back up, preparing to hit the ground running at as close to full speed as it could. Once they folded up their wings, the flight appendages were hidden behind them so you would never be able to tell they even had them.

  When they did this, they really looked like the velociraptors after which they had been named. With their wings folded, you really didn’t get the full “Velociraptor on Steroids” impression that had given them their name.

  Humans had gone interstellar, but they hadn’t gotten more creative for it.

  “Welcome…to Jurassic Park.” Vlad said as he pulled his gun out of its holster and aimed it at the Vos about to hit the ground.

  “That joke was old the first time you made it a decade ago,” Beryl commented, targeting the Vos with her own weapon. Still, Vlad saw a smile tug at her lips. “Don’t let that thing get too close before you shoot it.”

  Beryl didn’t have to repeat that command. They had all smelled Vos, and none of them ever wanted to smell that again. Their odor was like something between the rotten, sweet, decay of food combined with a dead animal left outside in the heat and humidity for several hours.

  And, as all of them in the meadow knew, the things smelled even worse on the inside.

  It didn’t help that the smart rounds they had in their weapons tended not so much to kill the Vos as they did to explode them. Being covered in Vos guts was a highly unpleasant experience none of them wanted to repeat, particularly as the smell tended to linger if you were hit by any of the black innards. Still, it was better than the alternative, which was to get eaten and see the insides of the Vos from the perspective of being dead.

  “Hey Iris,” Vlad aimed at the Vos, waiting for that perfect moment when the creature would be within range, but still far enough away to prevent them from getting soaked in its guts. “For the smartest being in the known universe, you’d think you could come up with a better system of knowing where the Vos are on this planet than ‘hope you see it before it sees you.’”

  “I’m sorry, I was too busy keeping you humans clothed, fed, sheltered, and surviving interstellar travel to have time to come up with this magical tool. And if you want, I could take back that gun you’re holding. I’m sure you’d do fine against the scariest killing machine humanity has ever encountered without it.”

  Vlad glanced at Beryl, who was far more focused on the incoming Vos than either himself or Iris. Then again, Beryl was probably the one who would end up killing it. She was naturally a good shot. She could be a great shot if she ever practiced, but Beryl was far too obsessed with her work to ever take the time to get better at shooting.

  As the Vos hit the ground, Vlad watched Beryl touch the giant emerald hung on a gold chain around her neck. It was the only piece of jewelry she ever wore, and she never took it off. She wore it like a talisman, touching it when she was nervous or looking for a bit of luck.

  Or when someone mentioned her father.

  Vlad took his eyes off of Beryl and refocused on the Vos. It was now running toward them, coming in at full speed.

  Next to him, Beryl took a shot.

  Almost instantaneously, the Vos exploded backward toward the woods in a shower of black guts.

  Whatever technology was in those bullets, they sure did a number on the Vos.

  Vlad felt his shoulders relax as the pieces of the now-former Vos rained to the ground. Someday, Columbina would be developed enough that people would pay to go on Vos hunts. Those people would pay well for the privilege of seeing how close they could get before taking one out. And those future space tourists wouldn’t be trying to explode the things, either; they would probably take the stinkers home and put them on walls back on Lutheria or Polis or wherever.

  Actually, perhaps he would mention it to Heming when they got home. There were definitely people who had the money to take such a trip. And those were definitely the sort of people who would pay to kill a Vos, no matter what it smelled like. Heming was always looking for a way to make a dollar. And at least this was a legitimate way to do so—much better than some of the schemes of questionable moral quality his brother had come up with in the past.

  That it would also provide Vlad with a reason to start regular interstellar travel between Columbina and the other planets would be an added bonus. No one was doing it yet. All Vlad needed was a ship.

  And the absurd amount of money it would require to fund the building of such a ship.

  “Hey de la Vega,” Beryl said, interrupting his thoughts and holstering her gun, “after careful consideration, I’ve decided not to endorse your park.”

  “A quotation from the movie? I thought you liked the book better.” This is what happened when you were among the first space colonizers—no one was coming up with any new movies, or TV shows, or music, or books, so you just watched and read the old stuff. There just weren’t enough people on the settled planets to make any of those creative endeavors financially worthwhile, even though many of the colonists would have liked to do so.

  Combined with a lack of incentive to create new media, the steady decrease in quality of those forms of media in the decades leading up to the first humans leaving Earth, it meant that everyone on Columbina and the other colonized planets was stuck in the late 20th and early 21st centuries when it came to what they watched, read, and listened to.

  It also meant that they all quoted the same things at each other. And the Vos always brought out the Jurassic Park references.

  “I did like the book better. Michael Crichton knew how to write a science fiction thriller, whatever the critics had to say back then.”

  A sound from the woods brought Vlad back to reality.

  It was another Vos, calling out in the stillness of the moments after the death of the one Beryl shot.

  A second answered it.

  Then a third.

  And fourth.

  None of them sounded far away.

  “OK, ladies, as much as I enjoyed this little excursion, I think it’s time to get out of here while we’re all still intact.” Vlad turned and headed toward the Bird, not bothering to wait to see if Beryl and Iris followed. He knew they would.

  Vlad covered the remaining twenty or so yards to the ship, in something between a walk and a jog. He clambered up the ship’s back ramp to find Camp curled up on one of the passenger seats in the back, seemingly convinced of the humans’ ability to protect him from becoming a snack.

  Beryl and Iris followed him, the former once again carrying the flower she had picked up in the woods.

  As always, Vlad had the Bird’s speakers blaring Jimmy Buffett as they boarded. The song was saying something about someone being on his third drink before his plane left the ground, its familiar, beachy tones already calming Vlad’s racing breath.

  Vlad took the pilot’s seat and buckled in as Beryl took her normal position in the chair next to his. In front of them, the seemingly endless field of flowers stretched toward the hills on the planet’s horizon.

  After the years he had spent there, Vlad hardly saw the beauty of the planet where they lived. Even nearly getting eaten had become a regular enough occurrence that there was something predictable and mundane in its terror.

  Someday, Vlad would get off of this planet and see the universe.

  Until then, though, everyday Vlad wished something more exciting would happen on Columbina.

  Chapter Three

  Gamma’s Bar was not busy, but Beryl doubted it would stay that way long. It never did.

  “Thanks, Gamma,” Beryl said to the old woman behind the bar as she placed a beer in front of her. Gamma—the oldest person on Columbina, and the only human on the planet who had been among the original Earthlings to leave humanity’s home planet—nodded a
t Beryl in acknowledgment. Gamma caught the attention of Camp, sitting at Beryl’s feet, and tossed the dog a biscuit. Beryl couldn’t see him, but there was no doubt Gamma’s own old dog was sitting behind the bar somewhere, staying inside and away from the heat of Columbina’s late afternoon. Dogs were common on Columbina, allowed everywhere now that animals had become precious commodities. The translators—which worked both to translate what the dogs were trying to communicate and, to a lesser extent, what the humans wanted to say back to them—made almost all of the dogs on the planet model canine citizens who knew exactly what was expected of them, from sitting quietly to tracking something or someone through the woods.

  Beryl had the beer up to her lips when she heard the door to the bar open.

  “I had a feeling I would find you here.”

  Beryl didn’t need to turn around to know who the voice belonged to. She set her beer back on the bar without taking a drink.

  “Iris,” she said in a low voice to the figure seated to her left at the bar, “you couldn’t give me a warning that my mom was on the way?”

  “You never asked,” Iris replied.

  Beryl shook her head. She really needed to ask Iris to tell her that sort of information without being asked.

  Rona Roberts’ gray hair was pulled back into its usual gray bun. In her younger days, Rona’s hair had been the same flaming red color as her daughter’s hair, but it had gone gray almost overnight after everything that had happened with her husband.

  Rona crossed the dark, wood-paneled bar and took the seat to Beryl’s right. She nodded a greeting to Gamma, who had wisely decided to tend to unknown matters at the other end of the bar when she saw the mother of one of her best patrons walk in the door and let her serving drones take care of them.

  “Were you planning on letting me know you were back? I only found out when Vlad dropped by the house.” Beryl hated the fact that her ex-boyfriend enjoyed his mother’s company so much. At the very least, her mother didn’t have to encourage the behavior as much as she did. The woman could not be more obvious about her desire to have Beryl and Vlad get back together.

  “You do realize you can ask Iris where I am any time,” Beryl told her.

  “And you do realize you can send me a message as soon as you’re back in town.”

  “I got you a new flower.”

  “Thank you, but don’t change the subject on me. You need to let me know where you are. For all I know, you could be dead or injured on some God-forsaken corner of this planet.”

  “First, I’m pretty sure Iris would let you know if that happened. And second, it’s not like there are that many God-forsaken corners on a planet with only one continent and a single town. Also, for the record, I almost got killed by a Vos on account of that flower, so it’s pretty valuable.”

  “I’m pretty sure you should let me know when you get back to town, whether or not you bring me flowers.” Rona motioned to the nearest drone for a drink. Beryl may have been one of her best customers, but Rona had spent plenty of time there as well, so no actual order needed to be made. Then again, it wasn’t like there were so many people on Columbina that it was difficult to know what their normal drinks were. Or that the drones weren’t capable of remembering the favorite drinks of an infinite number of people. The drone produced a bottle from behind the bar and poured Rona a glass of white wine.

  “How did your day go?” Rona asked when she had her glass, taking a first sip and resetting the conversation.

  “As I’m sure my ex-boyfriend told you,” Beryl emphasized the ‘ex’ and saw her mother wince, “we blew a Vos to smithereens. The part of my day where I managed not to get eaten or covered in Vos guts was pretty good. The part where something tried to eat me? That part was not ideal.”

  “You need to be more careful out in the jungle, young lady.”

  “Coming from someone who lives closer to the jungle than anyone else in town? I think I’m OK, Mom. Besides, Iris was there.” Beryl didn’t mention how little help Iris had been, and Iris didn’t say anything about it, either. A super smart intelligence system wasn’t about to start admitting to situations where it was less than super smart.

  “We haven’t had a Vos in town in years.”

  “Except for that one taking a stroll down the beach a month ago. And the one who tried to break into this bar before that.” Beryl noted the two recent exceptions to her mother’s statement. They were definitely exceptions. It had been a couple years before those incidents that any Vos had been in town.

  When they had first colonized Columbina, the Vos were a real problem and showed up almost daily. Beryl suspected something else had forced them into town recently. Perhaps the ones that had been showing up in town recently were young and had yet to learn that going near town was a bad idea if they wanted to live beyond said visit to town.

  As for Beryl, she had seen enough Vos to last a lifetime.

  Without warning, Iris suddenly shouted.

  “Holy shit.”

  Everyone in the bar—Beryl, Rona, Gamma, and a couple people at one of the high tops near the bar—looked to the being who kept them alive. Iris wasn’t one to raise her voice, though hearing her swear was a rather common experience. She may have had the entirety of human language at her disposal, but cursing seemed to be one of her favorite ways to use that language.

  “What’s wrong?” Beryl and Rona asked at the same time.

  “This is…definitely something.” Iris spoke in what sounded like her normal, calm voice, but Beryl sensed something a little off, like she was forcing herself to sound normal. As her best friend on the planet, she knew well enough to hear the forced words. Even an intelligence system couldn’t hide her feelings, at least if she was one who purposely attempted to adopt the habits and idiosyncrasies of a real human.

  “Something good or something bad?” Beryl picked up her beer and took a nervous drink.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Beryl decided to drain her beer and polished it off in a long, unrefreshing gulp. She saw Gamma come closer to them, though she knew it wasn’t to pour her another beer. She was curious as well.

  “What sort of something?”

  “It’s something. Not a transmission or a signal, but something that tripped the sensors at the outer edge of the system.”

  “Could it be space junk? Maybe a large comet?”

  “Nope, I have a good read on all of that at all times.”

  One overwhelming thought as to what it might be passed through Beryl’s mind. It was the unlikeliest of possibilities, but she couldn’t think of anything else that Iris would have raised her voice about.

  “You aren’t saying…” Beryl couldn’t bring herself to finish her thought. Even thinking it seemed preposterous.

  Iris looked Beryl in her eyes, and it confirmed what Beryl hadn’t believed was possible.

  “We’re about to have visitors.”

  Chapter Four

  Ten-year-old Vlad de la Vega was supposed to be paying attention to the history lesson being taught in front of him, but instead, he was doodling on his notebook.

  He knew he shouldn’t be doodling. His parents would have suggested the reason he shouldn’t be doodling was because he was supposed to be paying attention. However, the best reason not to doodle in Vlad’s mind was because Iris, who was on the screen in front of him, could see everything he did in the notebook. She wasn’t there in person, but she had part of her intelligence teaching the class onscreen while her physical self was elsewhere.

  Iris mentioned something about Earth, and Vlad felt a pang of jealousy for the children on Earth before the rise of e-notebooks and teaching by intelligence systems on Hodios, the ship where he lived. They could write on paper, and no one would ever be the wiser as to what they were doing.

  But Vlad knew that Iris didn’t always pay attention to what the students in the classroom were doing on their e-notebooks, which meant he could get away with drawing often enough that
he hadn’t been dissuaded from doing it yet.

  Vlad moved his pencil across the smooth white surface of the notebook. With the ease of someone who had done it many times, he created a sleek spaceship on the page. Below the ship, he had already drawn a planet over which it hovered. He knew there were all sorts of issues with the physics and size relationships of the picture, but it looked cool, and that was what mattered to him. Someday, he would fly a ship like the one in his drawing across the galaxy and explore new worlds.

  “Vlad de la Vega,” Iris’s voice rang out from the screen in front of the classroom. Vlad knew that tone well. He heard it often enough that it had made him think of Iris as the meanest being on the ship more than once. “What do you think you are doing?”

  “Drawing a picture.” Having been caught many times before by Iris, Vlad knew the best policy was to tell the truth. It wasn’t as if he could lie to Iris and get away with it.

  “I can see that. Why aren’t you paying attention?”

  The truthful answer here was that he was more interested in the drawing than the history lesson going on in front of him, but Vlad also knew better than to answer that way. Besides, he had a potentially foolproof way to get himself out of trouble. Or, at the very least, get someone else in just as much trouble, which was almost as good.

  “Beryl isn’t paying attention, either.” Vlad pointed at the redheaded girl at the desk next to his. Her notebook showed some sort of vine-like plant he had never seen before. It was definitely not something they had in the greenhouse and park areas of Hodios, and it definitely had nothing to do with history.

  At the mention of her name, Beryl looked up at Iris’s face on the teaching screen. She went back to what she was reading almost immediately, looking entirely unconcerned about getting in trouble.

  “First, this is not about Beryl, this is about you. And second, Beryl doesn’t have to pay attention because she already knows everything in this history lesson. She is only here because her parents insist she get some socialization with people her own age.”