Amy Perrodin’s real name was Amelia, and she had the misfortune to have been born Human. It wasn’t that being Human was actually a bad thing, but it did tend to bring with it certain disadvantages.
Like being at war with the Jdekkans.
Amy hadn’t asked for this war, and had never actually been able to figure out why it existed at all. There was the dispute over who owned the Anasid System, which was uninhabitable anyway and didn’t even have much in the way of natural resources. There had been the incident at Dlopna when a Human woman had falsely accused a Jdekkan platoon of attacking her without provocation. But that matter had been resolved years ago. Amy suspected the only real reason there was still a war was because neither side wanted to be the first to stop fighting.
And just for that, she and millions of other Humans lived in fear of the Stunt Monkeys.
It was the Stunt Squirrels that had the real firepower, and the huge ships proved a fearsome enemy in open space with their virtually impenetrable armor and immensely powerful weapons. But on a planet - or a moon, which was where Amy was now - one had to watch out for Stunt Monkeys. Like their namesakes, the smallish craft had amazing maneuvering capability. Unlike any monkeys Amy had ever seen, they could also kill you with mind-boggling accuracy in zero visibility over immense distances. If there was a Stunt Monkey in the area, it was best not to let its crew see you in the first place.
Which was why at this particular moment Amy was diving behind a dumpster. A Jdekkan Stunt Monkey had just appeared out of nowhere and was now coming down to land on the smooth surface of a dry lakebed only a hundred yards or so from where Amy had been standing.
Her hiding place wasn’t very good, because it was much too close to the Stunt Monkey; there was a very good chance that when the Jdekkans exited the craft, they’d happen across her. What they’d do after that, whether they’d capture her, torture her, kill her or all three, she didn’t feel like finding out.
Meanwhile, someone was washing the sand off her arms and legs and putting some sort of cooling balm on her sunburns. She felt sleepy and her headache was beginning to subside. She finished the water box, put her head down, and went to sleep.
She had ducked behind the dumpster as soon as she’d seen the Stunt Monkey, and now she crept away as quietly as she could manage, using a cargo van for cover first, and then stooping behind a hedge, and finally putting a large block building between herself and the Stunt Monkey. It was a college building, but she didn’t care about that.
Once she was far enough, she started running, and she figured she’d run until her lungs gave out. But that was before she ran into the . . . Read the whole story on Chainbooks.com.
Story © 2011 by Chainbooks.com
