Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [80]
journey new and impeccably appointed. Now it bore honorable signs of his kaphoora. His blood, the blood of others … stained with sap, deeply scratched by sculper claws, even burned by skik poison. He wasn’t sure if he should retire it after this hunt, or allow it to continue gathering such signs of experience.
“If I’d known shooting this thing would evacuate your brains from your head, I’d have done it myself,” Riker snapped, eyeing the terrain around them as if yet another cartiga would come down upon them. “We could be half a kilometer closer to the portal by now.”
Akarr sneered at him without responding, although he did holster his trank gun and replace his trophy knife. “I’m ready,” he said, but he had to walk one final circuit around his “kill,” run his hand across that plush flank one more time—something no one else had ever done, he was sure of it. Savoring the feel of it against his sensitive palm and finger pads, he turned away. So this is what it felt like—the daleura of such a kill. No wonder there were so many repeat kaphooras. He knew he’d be’Akarr!” Riker’s voice had changed, and suddenly everyone was shouting, the Tsorans and Fandreans and even Worf—except that Worf went one further, and was pounding directly toward Akarr, trank gun out and aimed … at Akarr? Abruptly, Akarr dropped out of the intoxication of his new daleura, and understood.
Not at him… behind him.
Akarr whirled around to see the cartiga directly behind him, lurching drunkenly, its long legs making startling progress. And then Akarr tripped and went down, and the cartiga was on top of him. A smashingly heavy furry bulk, too drugged to attack with swift claws and teeth, not too drugged to try.
“Commander, get out of the way!” Worf bellowed.
Riker blocking his shot, it had to be—Riker had been right there, right next to the cartigaAnd then Akarr couldn’t tell what was happening. He rolled between the cartiga’s paws, trying to protect himself; an unfamiliar—Klingon?—roar of attack filled the air, only to be cut short by a quick, awkward blow from the logy cartiga—and then the mighty sybyls broke loose, buffeting him, smothering him in heavy fur. His vision sparked from a blow to the head, his breath abandoned him as he slammed into the ground, and then suddenly he was awash in a hot, wet sensation.
And finally, everything stopped moving. Finally, he could open his eyes and see more than flashing shadows of moving fur. Nothing roared or bellowed at him. Just Riker, looking down at him.
“Are you hurt?”
“He ought to be,” Worf grumbled, picking himself up from the ground nearby and brushing broken bits of crawling base vine from his shoulder.
Akarr looked at himself; his legs were covered in blood, but he felt no pain, and didn’t remember being hurt. The cartiga? He pushed himself away from it, traveling on his backside. The cartiga’s blood pooled across the ground. He looked at Riker in disbelief. “You killed it?”
By hand? Riker had killed a cartiga—even a drugged cartiga—with a bat’leth and lived to tell about it? Mighty sybyls, no one would even remember that Akarr had been the one to take it down in the first place.
Riker looked down at the animal with clear regret on his face. Not even his oddly patterned facial fur could hide that. “I wish I hadn’t.” He glanced at the violet, bloody bat’leth, and back to the cartiga. “I didn’t have any choice.”
Zefan approached, picked something up from the ground, and handed it to Riker. He’d lost it then, been unable to simply trank the creature. And everyone else had been afraid of hitting Riker… except the Klingon, who’d thrown himself right at the creature in an attempt to free Akarr, and then been thrown across the landscape for his trouble. “No, you had no choice. Akarr left you no choice. Had he but listened when we urged him onward…” He looked at Akarr. “The cartiga are rare. The death of one in its prime will upset this entire ecosystem,