Welcome to the Hunt

My claws click softly on the obsidian sand. Two suns beat down, painting the sky in bruised oranges and purples. The human calls this planet “Xylo,” a laughable name for a graveyard. He huddles in his flimsy metal shell, unaware of the shadow I cast. His suit smells of chemicals and fear, an intoxicating mix. I’ve been patient, observing him through the heat haze. I’ve seen him record data, take samples of the petrified flora, marvel at the alien architecture we left behind. He thinks this is a scientific expedition. I know better. This is a hunt. My hunt. He’s close now. I can hear his labored breathing, the whirring of his life support. His eyes, so small and vulnerable behind the tinted visor, dart around nervously. He hasn’t seen me yet. He won’t see me, not until it’s too late. The hunger gnaws at me, a primal urge that resonates in the deepest cavities of my segmented body. I inch closer, my multiple eyes focusing on the back of his helmet. Soon, the silence will be broken. Soon, the feast will begin.

The human stops suddenly. Something’s wrong. His brain may not comprehend what’s happening. However, deep in his unconscious, alarm bells are screaming. Evolution’s gift—that animal instinct that whispers, run, you stupid bastard, RUN.

He turns. Slowly. Like a marionette with half its strings cut.

I freeze. Not from fear—gods no—but from the sheer ecstasy of the moment. This exquisite pause between his ignorance and the terrible knowledge to come. His face contorts behind the visor. His mouth forms a perfect ‘O’ of horror. His mind struggles to process what his eyes are telling him.

I shouldn’t exist.

That’s what he’s thinking. I can practically taste the thought as it forms. In all his years of exobiology, all his training and simulations, nothing prepared him for me. Six meters of segmented horror. Mandibles that could crush his helmet like an eggshell. A face (if you could call it that) composed entirely of sensory pits and feeding apparatus.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispers into his comm unit. His voice breaks on the second word.

There is no one listening. His dropship is fifteen kilometers to the east, his crewmates busy with their own surveys. The nearest human is a quadrillion synaptic firings away from understanding what’s about to happen to their colleague.

I lunge.

The human’s reflexes surprise me. He throws himself sideways, boots skidding on the glassy surface of the sand. His survival instinct has taken full control now, bypassing the higher brain functions that would only slow him down. He doesn’t waste breath screaming. He runs.

Oh, but I do love it when they run.

My body unfolds like a hellish accordion, segments elongating as I give chase. The ground blurs beneath me. The distance between us is an illusion, a temporary state that exists only to heighten my pleasure.

The human scrambles over a ridge of fossilized coral-analogues, the remnants of an ancient ocean that died when we arrived. He’s clever, using the terrain, making himself a harder target. But his body betrays him—the suit that keeps him alive also weighs him down, limits his movement. Each gasping breath fogs his visor.

“Base,” he pants into his comm. “Something’s—” Static cuts him off. Or perhaps it’s fear, choking his words before they form.

I allow him twenty more meters before I close the gap. Not from mercy, but from sport. The hunt is sacred to my kind. It must be respected, given the proper time to unfold. To rush is to desecrate.

The human trips on an outcropping of obsidian. Falls hard. The sound of his impact rings like a dinner bell across the desolate landscape.

I’m on him before he can rise, my shadow blotting out the twin suns. He rolls onto his back, arms raised in that universal gesture of supplication that all prey species seem to know.

“Please,” he says. As if words could save him now. As if I could be reasoned with, bargained with, begged into mercy.

I bring my face close to his visor. He sees the intricate arrangement of my feeding parts. The acid sacs swell behind my mandibles. I want him to understand what’s coming. Terror seasons the meat.

My front limbs pin his shoulders. The exoskeleton of my thorax expands, revealing the secondary mouthparts that will breach his suit. The human’s eyes widen to their limits, pupils dilated into black holes that mirror the void between stars.

His final thought is a jumble of regrets, faces of loved ones, and the dawning realization. He will die unmourned on this rock. The thought washes over me like a wave. I savor it.

The sound of tearing fabric and cracking polycarbonate is satisfyingly loud in the thin atmosphere.

But then—a noise. Distant at first, then growing. The human’s eyes shift, looking past me at the sky. A flicker of hope.

No. Not hope. Let it not be hope.

I turn four of my eyes upward, keeping the rest on my prey. There: a contrail cutting through the bruised sky. A ship. Not the puny dropship his crew arrived in, but something larger. A rescue? An unexpected check-in?

The human laughs. It’s a wet sound, tinged with hysteria.

“They came back,” he wheezes. “They came back early. Signal must have…gotten through.”

Impossible. I severed their communications array myself three cycles ago, picking off the automated relays one by one to isolate them.

Unless…

Unless they were not alone. Unless what we detected entering the system was not their entire expedition.

The ship grows larger, its silhouette resolving against the sky. Military-grade. Heavy weapons emplacements clearly visible along its hull.

The human’s laughter grows stronger. “You think…you’re the hunter?” Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth. “We knew. We always knew. About all of you.”

Understanding comes too late. The bait. He was the bait.

The orbital cannons begin to warm up, their targeting matrices sweeping the surface. I feel the electromagnetic pulse as they lock onto my biosignature.

The human’s voice is fading, but his eyes burn with triumph.

“Welcome to the hunt,” he whispers.

Above us, the sky catches fire.