Alien Safari: Kingdom: Alien Safari, #4

ALIEN SAFARI: KINGDOM

By Robert Appleton

Copyright @ Robert Appleton 2023

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

* * * *

Explore. Protect. Survive.

When Jan has to leave Hesperidia for the first time in decades to attend a crucial summit, she’s forced to abandon the search for a missing keystone creature, the majestic cor’arkhis. Countless species in its secluded ecosystem depend on that apex animal for survival. Its absence poses a troubling mystery that could have profound consequences for wildlife in the region.

So she recruits her lawman partner, Vaughn, to take up the search in her stead. He’s eager to impress her in his new role as Alien Safari’s Security Chief. Combining his own detective expertise with what Jan has taught him about the plants and creatures of this strange world, he pieces together the puzzle of what happened. But as he delves ever deeper into the mystery, he makes a startling discovery out in the desert. One that places him and Stopper, his loyal canine companion, in mortal danger at every turn.

The evolutionary wiles of two worlds collide in this breakneck adventure novella that science fiction fans won’t want to miss.

ALIEN SAFARI: KINGDOM

Robert Appleton

BOOK 4

Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

About the Author

Coming soon

Chapter One

A famous lawman like you—I’m guessing you’ve investigated your fair share of missing VIPs. Am I right?

A few.

Well, think of this as Hesperidia’s version.

A missing critter counts as a VIP now?

Cor’arkhis is no mere critter, Vaughn. Watch the oasis closely as we fly over.

What am I looking for?

Just watch.

As Jan banked their shuttle through the gap between two tall sandstone bluffs, a heat haze caused by a geothermal vent blurred the river they’d been following. The watercourse still trended along the wide arc of the valley’s stepped contours—striations eroded over time into tiers, that resembled natural terraces in the desert rock—but it appeared to slither and undulate in the oily haze. Past the vent, Vaughn saw a very different scene. They were approaching the desert highlands. Everything rose against the edge of the valley’s sweeping arc. The tiered striations grew in thickness and height, forming plateaus webbed with bone-white weeds. The river wound in a series of cataracts, feeding catchments on each of the plateaus. Little ecosystems had formed in and around those pools, where wader birds hunched and pond skippers skittered over the fidgety surfaces.

In this remote region of Mazaris, Hesperidia’s volcanic subcontinent, life was provincial. Vast areas were uninhabited, completely without vegetation. The isthmus linking the two halves of the land mass was covered with dense rainforest, a xenobiologist’s wet dream. But the rest of the subcontinent was a geothermal minefield. Oases of life tended to cling to the rivers and the freshwater springs. Even compared to the mutualistic communities found elsewhere on the planet, the Mazaris ecosystems were well-known for being fiercely territorial and xenophobic.

The highest level was by far the largest. It looked up along a straight, deep-rutted gorge into the misty heights of the mountain range. The river flowed down through this into the valley. It bisected the upper tier like a shimmering scimitar blade before falling to the next level. Partway along, life appeared to have wrapped itself around that blade. It had clung there and flourished with an astonishing protean variety. An oasis, yes, but there was something very different about this one. Vaughn couldn’t put his finger on it at first. The way the trees and plants were layered, the way colors and species touched, overlapped: it was almost a tableau, wild nature defanged and domesticated. It appeared designed, or at least curated.

He spoke a few of those thoughts aloud, then caught Jan’s wry smirk in response.

Okay, what aren’t you telling me? he asked.

She said nothing, but that cheeky knowingness crooked her mouth in a superior aside while she took the shuttle down for a slow flyover.

Vaughn leaned forward to see down past the shuttle’s cowl, decided the view through the starboard window was better. Small creatures he’d never seen before darted out of thickets and sprang across the mossy lawn in single bounds. Wader birds flapped up into the branches of riverbank trees. A procession of what looked like larger versions of vercilius decambuli—hairy, tree-dwelling millipedes Vaughn had seen on his first ever Alien Safari tour—halted in the open, completely exposed. But in seconds their brown hue switched to an incandescent orange glow. Even more impressive was how they’d arranged themselves, end to end, in a single erratic line. It strikingly resembled a vein of lava, which no flying creature in its right mind would risk swooping to touch.

The coordinated defenses didn’t end there. An array of giant purple flowers lined the inner bank of the river. As the ship approached, each bloom fisted its petals closed and packed its vitals deep inside the stem, rolling out a protective conical umbrella instead. The tips of these followed the shuttle precisely. One or two even emitted a jet of noxious gas to ward the airborne foreigner off. Glimpses of other creatures and plants hinted at mortal poise and hidden threats.

It was that same mutualistic survival instinct Vaughn had seen elsewhere on the Hesp, but highly localized and fine-tuned to a defensive and aggressive masterclass.

Okay, I’m impressed, he admitted. But where’s this cor’arkhis you keep going on about?

Precisely.

He considered her enigmatic response. Something that pulls the strings? A general of some kind?

Mm…not too far off.

They seem to be pretty well-coordinated without it. What makes it such a VIP?

Setting the ship down on the rock plateau at a safe distance across the river from the oasis, Jan said, It’s best if I show you. But the absence of cor’arkhis is one of the things I wanted you to notice. If he’d been here, you definitely wouldn’t have missed him.

He’s getting one hell of a build-up.

As he should. There are fiefs like this all over Mazaris. Each one owes its splendor to its own feudal lord.

Vaughn laughed. You’re getting weirder by the second. At this point, if it’s anything less than King Kong wielding a samurai sword, I’ll be disappointed.

Oh, you won’t be. I promise you that. If you’ve even the tiniest appreciation of symbiosis, this is the most precious field trip you’ve ever been on. She powered down the impetus drive, then left to unpack their shielded pressure suits in the cargo bay. Vaughn prepped the ship’s em deterrent shield for remote activation, but wasn’t sure what SI setting to use.

Jan, security: buzz or burn? he shouted. What kind of predators might show up?

Mostly aerial. Hunting birds know not to attack the fiefs, but the carrion flocks are chancers—they have an uncanny ability to perceive weakness. Sooner or later one will figure out this fief is vulnerable. That’s why we’re here. There are also packs of desert scavengers in this region. Several species, small to medium sized, but they won’t bother the fiefs.

Will any of them bother the ship?

Unlikely. But give them a buzz just to make sure. Nothing stronger than a shock rod. We don’t want to injure anything if we can avoid it.

A lesson she liked to impress upon all the new Alien Safari staffers. Vaughn wasn’t exactly green—he’d spent more time in the field here than half the rangers currently in rotation—but it was still early days in his role as the planet’s resident Security Chief. Not that the Omicron Bureau had allowed him to ditch his regular detective duties altogether. He was subject to ‘emergency reserve status’, a sly addendum to his contract that meant he could be summoned off-world without prior notice to assist with ‘under-resourced law enforcement actions’. At ISPA’s discretion, of course. Neither he nor Jan were happy with that compromise, but it was the only way he’d be allowed to make Hesperidia his permanent home and be employed in any meaningful capacity.

Compromise. Everything about the Hesp boiled down to one compromise or another. Including a human’s right to breathe.

He spun the SI energizer dial to 4000 volts. That would make any chancy critter think twice, without setting its pelt on fire.

Stopper’s puppy-like yips