Rabbit Season

‘Sir, we are receiving a transmission from the planet. Unfortunately, it is fading in and out. Ionespheric interference I suspect.’

Tacla leaned over the shoulder of his communications officer, Escap, and stared at the scratchy pictures and listened to the garbled sound on the screen. There were vague shadowy figures moving around and for an instant, in a moment of unexpected clarity, Tacla thought he saw a face. It was a frighteningly odd one however, shaped like a small moon with two round eyes in the middle of it. He frowned.

‘Inform me as soon as you have a more useful image.

Escap nodded and Tacla left him to focus his attention on the strange planet below. A navigation systems failure, the cause of which was still being investigated by his technicians, had brought them to an unknown part of the Mitaga System. Tacla scratched the top of his head with his long forefinger and simultaneously pulled at the loose skin on his chin with his other finger and thumb. What if, he supposed, they were not only in a previously unchartered sector of Mitaga, but in fact in an undiscovered galaxy.

He straightened his back and snorted proudly as an image popped into his mind. A street parade with tens of thousands of Samtsi lining the road, and Tacla himself in full military dress. Newly promoted Admiral Tacla. Intergalactic pioneer and champion of the Samtsi who showered him with praise and adulation. More importantly, he bathed in the luxurious gratitude of King Doja -- his name is mighty. Tacla bowed his head in reverence at the mere thought of honour being bestowed upon him by the Samtsi God incarnate.

‘Sir,’ said a voice interrupting his fantasy, ‘Should we prepare a landing party?’

Tacla recovered himself quickly and gave the order, ‘Pac, Esaul, the new MO, Anta and Rost.’

Noting the look of disappointment on his first officer’s face and how it changed to indignation, Tacla dismissed his subordinate’s protests, with a command for him to take the bridge. He then left to prepare himself for the trip to the surface, striding away purposefully, quick and confident. Despite the urgency of the situation he admired the firm springiness of the latest Bufen compound as he walked. It had been used at his request to line both the floors and the walls of his vessel, the Lyclakson, as part of her recent refit. He had contributed a great deal to the innovative technology employed on the fleet’s flagship. Tacla smiled. So quiet and comfortable, Bufen was like walking through clouds, exactly where he belonged.

Immediately prior to their touchdown on a carefully selected flat, clear piece of land, a probe had been dispatched from the vessel to take surface readings. Rapid video feed from the probe provided both clear pictures and accurate data to the main screen on the bridge of the landing craft. The five Samtsi watched with intense interest as their ship settled smoothly on the ground. Of utmost significance was the air, both its composition and its temperature.

Esaul gasped in alarm. ‘Thirty five degrees centigrade,’ he exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t the sun function properly on this planet. We’ll freeze out there!’

Tacla fired an angry look at Esaul.

He continued unaware, ‘Atmosphere contains seventy eight percent nitrogen, twenty one percent oxygen, some carbon dioxide and other unspecified gases.’

Tacla ordered his crew to wear thermal suits and breathing apparatus. Samtsi aeronauts did not even train in such extreme conditions as this planet presented but his faith in Samtsi technology was unshakeable.

One hour after landing, with their thermostats set to fifty degrees Celsius and oxygen levels inside their suits at sixty three point four percent, the Samtsi landing party led by Captain Tacla, began their exploration of the planet. They headed in different directions with their orders firmly in mind and their curiousity bubbling like boiling water. Internal comms allowed them to maintain contact with one another and with the landing craft while voice and picture recorders catalogued the mission: every step and every word.

Esaul and Rost were lying on the ground searching for signs of animal life. Tacla was some distance behind them watching them and the data feeds from Science officer Pac. As Tacla approached them he noticed Rost’s body suddenly stiffen, and heard Esaul’s question.

‘What does it say?’ ‘a bit Se son,’ said Rost slowly, without removing his telescopic visor.

The two Samtsi crewman lay on a patch of dirt with their heads propped up to see across the expanse of unidentified vegetation before them. They had already discussed at length what it might be and although they agreed that it looked and felt like grass, only Tacla had accepted Pac’s assertion that it was grass. He had stated that the colour of the tall thin vegetation was an unusual blend of yellow and blue which he decided to call green. Tacla smiled again when he thought of it.

‘What does it mean?’ asked Tacla injecting himself directly into the conversation. Esual allowed his head to drop, and apparently forgetting appropriate behaviour, and surprisingly ignoring his captain’s question, rolled his stocky body in the dirt and said, ‘This soil feels so good, so dry and silky. I’d like to take some home with me.’

Tacla shook his head and waited on a response from Rost who himself was waiting on the universal translator to find the words in what it had identified as an alphabetic system not unlike Samtsi. The Captain spotted a creature moving quickly across the field. From the left of his vision it bounded directly towards the sign which carried the mysterious words, a bit Se son.

‘Look!’ he said calling his men to attention.

Esaul sat up quickly and pulled down his visor, activating it with slight pressure on the side.

‘What the hell?’

The creature stopped suddenly as they watched it, and stared knowingly, as though determining their intentions. Its ears which initially seemed long and floppy now stood tall and erect from the sides of its small head. Sitting with its two disproportionately long feet under its rump, the creature first scratched itself then sat still. It turned its head jerkily from side to side then stood on its hind legs. Tacla estimated its height to be between forty and fifty centimetres. Rost and Esaul were spellbound by the alien creature, watching in breathless amazement and consequently did not hear Tacla’s order to move out.

He snorted excitedly as he began to run, ignoring the snivelling complaints from Rost and Esaul about the possible dangers of such an exercise.

‘For the love of Doja-his name is mighty -- get on with it, soldier. Look at the size of the thing. What possible threat could it pose?’ All three Samtsi were now in the field hot in pursuit of the alien creature. Tacla himself bounded youthfully through the long grass as their pace quickened to match the animal’s loping gate. On they pressed with their weapons drawn but by the time they had reached the notice board, the fast little beast had vanished. Tacla swore and shook his head while ten metres behind him, Rost and Esaul, had stopped, stooped and panting. He watched them stagger over to the notice board and collapse in a pathetic heap.

Tacla marched back to them cursing under his breath and clenching and unclenching his fist uncontrollably. He took a very deep exaggerated breath as though it was the very last he would ever take, and then he spoke slowly.

‘What does this sign say?’

Esaul dragged himself to his feet and studied the notice board. He could see now that some of the letters were actually missing. They must have fallen off or been pulled off but had left a shadow.

‘Rabbit Season,’ he stated proudly.

Rost’s mouth opened but an impatient and angry look from Tacla silenced him. Esaul fed the new information into the translator but it offered a disappointing pronouncement of an unknown word.

Suddenly Tacla looked up, back across the field from where the creature had run and saw another strange figure emerging from the shadows of a brushy tree. It was tall, long limbed and brightly coloured. Tacla wondered which of these alien life forms might be a rabbit but his curiosity was swamped by concern when he realised the rangy biped was carrying a weapon.

‘On your feet, soldiers,’ ordered Tacla. ‘We have company.’

As they stood and stared, they were alarmed by the appearance of a second and then a third creature pushing confidently towards them. All three aliens were armed with long, large barrelled weapons. Tacla’s decision to retreat rather than engage the potential enemy was given further urgency when one of the colourful aliens raised a weapon up to the height of its shoulder and lowered its head, tilting it to the right. They were taking aim.

The three Samtsi flinched as the thunderous crack which split the still air filled their ear pieces with horrifying noise. Clutching desperately at their helmets they fumbled for the controls and eventually managed to mute the external sound feed, and switch to internal comms only. Rost was the last to do this and consequently missed Tacla’s command. The other two had already broken into a sprint before Rost realised they had gone. Tacla turned to see him standing still as if frozen while the enemy approached with increasing alacrity. He barked the retreat order continually as he ran, turning his head regularly to watch the unfolding disaster. The aliens closed in, weapons raised, barrels screaming in rage as they spewed fire and smoke in sharp bursts. Two hundred meters, one fifty, one hundred.

‘Move, Rost,’ screamed Tacla. ‘For Doja’s sake, move!’

Each frightening crack of gunfire was followed by another and then another and Tacla watched in horror as Rost crumpled to the ground. His attackers reached him and stood around his lifeless body, poking it with their feet. Although Tacla could not hear anything, he imagined the sound of satisfied and heartless grunts leaping out of their mouths which appeared to twist into grotesque snarls.

Tacla stood, sullen and silent. Guilt had grabbed hold of his heart and was wrenching and pulling it in his heaving chest. Why did he run? He had underestimated the power of the alien’s weapons obviously, but he could have fired back or fired first. Then he remembered a voice from his past telling him that fools shoot first and ask questions later.

They were his father’s words. He was an old fashioned and bloody minded Samtsi with a vehement contempt for progress. Modern weapons, in his view, were so sophisticated it was cruel, and he wholeheartedly agreed with them being banned on the home planet. Forbidden even for the armed forces and the police.

‘Sir?’

Esaul was standing beside him. His anxious and persistent voice pierced Tacla’s nostalgic musings, questioning, pleading.

‘Permission to return fire, sir?’

Tacla looked at Esaul and through his visor saw red tears rolling from his swollen eye. Both Samtsi were trembling. That awful noise must have been spawned in the bowels of Hartez by the Archangel himself, he thought bitterly.

Drawing his own weapon, he gazed at the heads up targeting display and snorted before clearing his throat loudly. His head pounded and he felt sweat running down his hairy back. Control, he murmured to himself, control yourself. Doja help me.

‘Set to minimum.’

‘But sir!’ protested Esaul.

‘Minimum setting soldier, and fire when ready.’

It was over in a minute. The three ruthless alien killers lay on the ground beside Rost’s body. Tacla and Esaul then proceeded steadily but cautiously towards them with their weapons still armed and locked on target.

Esaul hurried as they neared the scene, despite Tacla’s protests, and fell to his knees beside Rost. Pulling a biometer from a pocket in his thermal suit, he pushed the four pronged fork at its base into a small square panel on the chest of Rost’s suit. Esaul gripped the biometer impatiently waiting for it to finish reading Rost’s vital signs, as Tacla joined him.

A low coo from the device indicated the scan was complete. Esaul pulled it out roughly and studied the screen.

‘He’s alive, sir. He’s alive!’

With no time to waste, Tacla examined the aliens while Esaul prepared a stretcher to transport Rost back to the landing craft. The captain ordered Esaul to go ahead when he was ready and advised him that he would deal with the aliens himself. Having determined them all to be alive but safely paralysed, he adjusted the setting on his weapon and killed two of them instantly. He then removed a stretcher from his pack and rolled the third alien on to it before activating the hover function, and setting off one hundred and fifty meters behind Esaul.

Suddenly a small furry head popped up above the vegetation in front of Tacla, its ears erect and receptive like radar detectors. He stopped in surprise. It was the same strange looking creature they had earlier chased across this field or if not, then certainly one of its same species. The animal remained motionless in front of him causing Tacla to momentarily forget the hovering stretcher which had continued steadily through the vegetation towards the landing craft.

Tacla stared at the creature, gripped by childlike wonder, and the creature stared back. He noticed the long fine hairs which protruded from each side of its head below its eyes, twitching wildly like they were independent entities. It was clear now to Tacla exactly who were the hunted and who were the hunters on this cold Doja-forsaken planet. Without warning, it disappeared from sight and for an instant Tacla thought about running after it. Impulse. Rost was by now certainly already being treated by the MO, his prisoner was secure and Tacla was insanely curious. His legs were off before his mind had fully chosen to run but an obscured rock violently interrupted the chase. Tacla stumbled after tripping on it and crashed onto the ground, his head hitting another larger stone which cracked the viewing panel of his helmet. The emergency override kicked in immediately but for a few breathless moments Tacla thought he might die.

With the emergency shield in place, Tacla had to wait two minutes before he could see anything through it but he reminded himself to remain calm and professional, and to keep speaking aloud. Thankfully, the voice recorder had not been damaged in his fall. He carefully provided details of exactly what had happened since the sighting of the strange creature and reported on his own condition.

The fall had winded him as well but as far as he could tell he was otherwise unharmed. As he lay, cursing his own foolishness, Tacla heard a sound which he did not recognise. It sounded like rapid light drumming similar to the sound of a beegsna’s wings at full speed as it hovered over a pond searching for chittaris.

The sound grew louder. Tacla pushed himself up and sat with one hand on the ground. Through the grass, slithering along the ground, a living rope, black and shiny, wormed its way towards him. As it neared Tacla’s outstretched finger, he instinctively pulled it away but at the same moment the rope creature reared its broad flat head back and struck forward.

The pain was not intense but it shocked Tacla to think that something so small could penetrate his gloves so easily. He watched the little beast slide away through blurry eyes and seconds later a tidal wave of nausea swept over him causing him to vomit uncontrollably until he had nothing left to spew out. His chest felt tight, his eyes burned with liquid fire and he sensed his body stiffening and spasming. Tacla spat words out of his mouth, still to the end conscious of his duty, but when the Samtsi commander tried to stand, he didn’t even have sufficient strength to take another breath.

He had already breathed his last.

Esaul had watched the horror unfold on his monitor and arrived at the scene to find the stiff contorted body of his captain on the ground exactly where he had fallen. Forlornly, Esaul inserted the biometer to officially confirm Tacla’s death. As he waited, a small furry creature appeared in front of him. Esaul simply stared at it before taking aim and stunning it with his weapon. He then set up another stretcher, pushed and pulled Tacla’s corpse onto it, activated hover, and grabbed the small furry alien by its hind legs and took them both back to the landing craft.

As they prepared to travel back to the Lyclakson, Esaul knew he would have to return to this planet, which he had nicknamed Rabbit Season, one day and the very thought of it deeply disturbed him. He shuddered as a chill of dread rampaged down his spine but he quickly wrestled his mind into focus, extended his long finger towards the flashing button on the console and pressed it firmly. Ignition!

Previously appeared in Schlock! and I Used to Be an Animal Lover

Article © David Cairns. All rights reserved.
Published on 2025-09-15