Vacation on Leaenaped Mundus

2843 words
By Douglas E Knapp © 2003

(Some bits of this story don't fit with my current game design but I thought it was fun anyway to share it.)

There are some questions about the accuracy of this report but it is all we have at this time about the Leaenapeds. It should also be noted that the ones on the Earth do not look like this. Perhaps the results of genetic manipulations or a subspecies?

The film returned from the planet showing my father stripped of all his weapons save a small knife hopelessly attacking one Leaenaped while the two behind him would quickly sneak in and rip small bloody chunks of flesh from his dark muscular back. He fought like this for thirty minutes until, in the end, his exhausted body collapsed to the ground. The monstrous aliens continued by swatting his body back and forth between them like a rag doll. Tears bleed down my cheeks as my burning resolve to complete my fathers mission hardened in the pit of my stomach. The old graying generals had shown the film to me after telling me of my mission to the alien planet. Now I was in my father’s shoes, the scouts were filming me.

My reconnaissance mission was over. The spies had discovered I was here. The Leaenapeds were searching everywhere for me. I had to get back to my ship before I became a big cat toy like my father before me.
My four scouts, nearly invisible cat sized pods, floated twenty yards away in each direction. The pod moved silently, one to each side of me, front, back, right, left; four meters above the sparse ground vegetation. The pods watched for signs of the Leaenapeds. If they detected anything, the pods would warn me with a tap on the wrist from my suit and a video projected on my retina from my helmet. I moved leopard-like on my slow trek back to my ship, anxiously watching the trail for any sign of the enemy. I felt the tap of my suit, my breathing quickened, my heart felt like it was crawling out of my chest, a cold sweat broke out on my brow. I knew the Leaenapeds.

The great military leaders of Earth had ordered me to the Leaenapeds’ home world, Leaenaped Mundus, to learn how Earth could best defend herself against them. They had come to Earth in a fleet of ships undetected by any of our radars or any other system for that matter. They had come in and taken our planets oil, all of it. We still don’t know why. At first, we did not even know that they were doing it. You could look right at their ships without seeing them unless you knew what you were looking for. It had taken them only one month to extract all the oil, and in that time, nothing we tried had stopped them. We could not just sit back and let them steal from us we had to do something. We tried nuclear missiles. They fried our nuclear missiles before they got more than five kilometers from the missiles launch points. If the Leaenapeds could see it, they could kill it. We were lucky back then, we were too easy for good sport and too alien for dinner.

Our first break was a special operations sniper who got one shot at the back of a Leaenaped working by a river next to one of the oil wells. The shot knocked it off the bank and into a river. We never saw the sniper again but we did get to examine a corpse of our enemy.
Before that, no one had ever seen a Leaenaped, not even the observers at the oil sites. The corpse’s skin shown gray, like a dead lizard. The body all sleek muscles with the shape of a very small gangly lion lay before them as they examined its big head. The head had three eyes, two wide set forward looking exactly where you would expect for a predator and one compound eye on the back of its head. The ears were way too big and looked as if misplaced from some big bat. The Leaenaped had big paws, like a snow leopard, with big dagger claws to accompany them. After some time our scientists discovered that the skin could change color just as a chameleon’s or an octopus’s skin can. The changing colors explained why they never showed up on our pictures. We had thought that they must be using some sort of force field to blur their outlines but the truth was stranger, it was part of their evolution. They had evolved as stealthy hunters and now we were on the path to hunt them. We had to stop them and revenge ourselves as a people, no make that a species.
Fifty years ago, they had stolen our oil. Now we were getting ready to take their technology as repayment and their lives as revenge. We were repaying them for all that they had done to us. The problem was that we knew so little about them that all the government’s information filled just one small report. We needed to learn more to win the war, and I was the new solution. The elderly generals ordered me to Leaenapeds home world to learn everything I could, from how they made their space battle ships to what the Leaenapeds did in their cities at night.
I had spent a month on their home world recording them in their day-to-day activities. The Leaenapeds moved through their home world’s capital city like ghosts in a mist. Each one trained from birth in the ways of the hunt, each one working with the others as if they were one mind. I could not outrun them. The only way I could survive in their midst without being spotted and killed, like a mouse by a hungry cat, was my skills, the camouflage suit, and its tools.

I scanned with the scout ahead of me that had signaled. I did not see anything at first. Then I saw one of the hoppers. Hoppers were what the Leaenapeds liked to eat the most. Hoppers looked like four legged kangaroos, very fast, extremely wary and could kill a Leaneaped with one kick. The lone hopper was holding still, head held high, sniffing the air, looking about for what had alerted it. One second it was sniffing and the next thing I knew it was ten meters up in the air, slammed into action by the sudden appearance of a large, bright red and green Leaenaped, a scream like the sound of a thunderclap and a woman’s blood curdling yell mixed. As it descended, it realized its mistake. It was falling right where the Leaneaped wanted it to; right into the center of four other Leaenapeds, standing on their hind feet, razor sharp front feet in the air, bodies swirling in colors, first looking like the ground then looking like weird punk rock disco balls. It fell, its brain unable to tell what was ground and what was claw. It fell with its frightened mind so scrambled that it didn’t even see the ground when it hit. One second it was falling, the next its bloodied throat was cut and its body was covered in slashing, swirling colors.

I watched them cut it up with gem like blades: each one eating a chunk of bloody meat after sharing the guts as a trail snack. My heart slowed as I realized that I was not going to be the next snack. I was going to get out with my information, succeeding where all the others failed, my father included. I guess failure was the wrong word. They did not fail totally as most of their scouts did manage to send some of their data home before the Leaenapeds blew the other reconnaissance soldiers from the sky or tormented them death on the soft jungle ground. The scouts had a deadman’s switch; programmed to report as soon as the operator was dead. The scouts did not send much, but what they did transmit helped me a lot. The data also helped the techies back home improve my training and the suit. If I got out with all the data in the scouts and the suit as well as my own insights, we might just gain an edge in this war. Our race might live past this generation.

I waited twenty minutes giving them plenty of time to get out of hearing and smelling range. I still did not know how far they could sense a change in their environment but I was taking no chances. I started moving again, slowly like a stalking leopard, stepping only on the bare quiet spots. Previously it had not rained for three days leaving all the undergrowth dry and crackly. I had had to lie waiting invisibly for three, nerve-racking days, before attempting to vacate the city. If I stepped on a dry, crunchy leaf in the city, I was dead. Even if I held still afterwards the Leaenapeds would find me. They watched every bug, or whatever they were, that crossed their path. Sometimes they would spend half an hour just chasing them around in a strange game. They had a very large sense of curiosity too. Often they would sit and watch a little animal for five minutes before eating it or whacking it into a bush.

I moved toward my spaceship, seeing it only meters away. I moved at the pace of a snail, feeling my muscles screaming for me to run. It was so close; I could be there in three minutes if I ran. If I ran, I was dead. I had set the ship down on the edge of a city during the rights of reproduction. It happened once a year and it was the only event that could get all of them from a city in one place at one time and out of my way. If a Leaenaped did not attend, then it did not have a second chance to find a mate that year.

Leaenapeds had to keep their cities under a certain size. Each city had a huge area around it where the native animal bred. If the city got too big then the Leaenapeds would eat themselves out of food. Leaenapeds did not farm or ranch, they lived off what the land provided, therefore, they also had to control their breeding to stay in natural balance. Humans did not have to stay in that balance when one farm could produce food for thousands and then transport it to them with our immense transportation systems.

My ship was so close; I could see the door marker I had placed. Without the marker, not even I could see the door and I knew right were to look. I angled towards the door, almost home free. I had done it! I had come to their home world, spied on them for a month and lived to tell about it. I was home free! I stepped on a stick. It cracked. It sounded like a firecracker to me. I had lived for thirty days without doing this and now I picked a stick that sounded like a firecracker. I froze reflexively. Had it been heard? I felt calm, like I was floating in hot saltwater. My ears were rushing, every sound an explosion. I waited, palms cold, stomach in a knot. I watched. Off to the right I could see, with the help of the scouts, a small young female Leaenaped coming, it’s big ears perked up it’s nose sniffing the air. I pushed a scout out farther, getting it behind her. From the front, you could not see a Leaenaped. Their hind eye broadcasting what was behind it on the front of its body, but from behind, you could see them, read their thoughts.

Leaenapeds used the backs of their bodies to signal each other. Mostly in colored splotches but sometimes with symbols too. They spoke without sound. With their great ears they could read the sounds around them like a killer whale with its sonar. One time I saw a group of five talking and one of them clicked its back claw on a hidden rock. It acted like a very proper English woman letting a big one rip at the queens tea party. The others turned away overcome with apparent embarrassment. The only other time I had heard one make any noise at all was in the hunting games. They screamed to drive the kill.

The one before me was getting closer. I knew from the scouts that it had to be about six meters away, but still I could not see it. Its back showed the colors of curiosity. It was moving closer. It was only three meters away. It was going to see me at any second. I had one chance. I had to kill it. But, to kill it I had to hit it, a very hard thing to do. They have a way of making themselves look like they are standing still when they are moving and moving when they are standing still by rippling images of the surrounding land over there bodies. They are full of head games. I had to use one of my own. As it got just to the edge of pouncing distance, it still had not seen me. I turned off my suits camouflage. The Leaenapeds back went stark white with surprise and its front started that mad swirling. It charged right at me claws out. I waited until the very last second and then dove forward forty-five degrees to the side of it. As I had hoped, it went right on by me, just missing. I twisted as it passed, running my big knife down its side. With unbelievable speed, it spun with the pain. My cut had run from its neck all the way down its body to the tail. I could see fluid gushing from the cut. The army had made my knife from a modified synthetic spider silk; nothing was stronger, sharper, or more flexible. The Leaenaped turned bright red with swirling green stripes and leaped at me. This time I did not have its rhythm but I did manage to drop into a protective ball. Its claws ripped open my suit as the armor gave under the tremendous hit. It blew me back, bouncing me off my ship, the awful stench of the alien jungle seeping into the gash just below my breast. The Leaenaped leaping as she landed to where I would have landed if I had not bounced off the invisible ship. She hit the ship. Both of us confused sprawled on the forest floor. I stumbled to my feet as it shook itself off, preparing to charge me again but the cut was sapping its strength, slowing it down. I could see the ship’s door. I could also see the Leaenaped digging its clawed back feet in for the killing pounce.

In a last desperate effort, I sprinted for the door of my ship while guiding my scouts to hit the Leaenaped in the face. If it worked, then the Leaenaped would be blinded and pushed off its mark. If it failed, I was dead. The scouts flew at its face, one hitting just where I wanted, the others pummeling it about the head. The force and surprise of the attack knocked the big, bleeding Leaenaped sidewise, causing it to just miss me. I dove through the door, closing it as I landed.

Next, I punched the ship to life. I could sense everything now. The ship fed all its sensors into my suit. I could see a Leaenaped ship coming straight for me. It was awhirl in bright red and green, and making a thunderous noise. I felt panicked. I reached for the emergency blastoff. My finger punched down at the button that would blow me into my seat and knock me unconscious, but I needed out of there now! As my finger descended, I remembered the prey leaping to the sky, to death. In a flash of insight, I told the ship to instead move north one hundred meters and then blast straight back south and then up but not straight, off to the east a bit. I hit the button and the ship jumped sideways. As my ship dove aside, I could see the other ships. It was a trap! And, I was the prey!

Now I had a chance. The prey has done the unexpected. It had run to the north not up. They reacted together, but again I was ahead of them. One wrong move and I was dead, but they miss again. I was off to the south and then straight at them. They braced for the fight, the prey acting like a mother protecting a cub. I shot up instead, they were after me but my light ship was faster. Shots fell ineffectual all around me as I outran them; countermeasures doing their job...

I headed for space, for the safety of the mother ship waiting for me, hidden in hyperspace where only I could find it. Waves of pure joy pass over me. Tears poured from my eyes. I’d beaten them! I was free. At last, I could talk, I could move like a human and not a clock. I could see my friends. I could take a shower and eat a home cooked meal. I looked forward to the relaxing masculine touch of my partner and the freedom to be my natural self once more. I wish my father were at home.