Hidden in Predator Planet, page 1
Hidden in Predator Planet
Vicky L. Holt
Copyright © 2023 by Vicky L. Holt
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
Glossary
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Chapter 34
35. Chapter 35
36. Chapter 36
37. Chapter 37
38. Chapter 38
39. Chapter 39
40. Chapter 40
41. Chapter 41
42. Chapter 42
43. Chapter 43
44. Chapter 44
45. Chapter 45
46. Chapter 46
47. Chapter 47
48. Chapter 48
49. Chapter 49
50. Chapter 50
51. Chapter 51
52. Chapter 52
53. Chapter 53
54. Chapter 54
55. Chapter 55
56. Chapter 56
57. Chapter 57
58. Chapter 58
59. Chapter 59
60. Chapter 60
61. Chapter 61
62. Chapter 62
63. Chapter 63
64. Chapter 64
65. Chapter 65
66. Chapter 66
67. Chapter 67
68. Chapter 68
69. Chapter 69
70. Chapter 70
71. Chapter 71
72. Chapter 72
73. Chapter 73
74. Chapter 74
75. Chapter 75
76. Chapter 76
77. Chapter 77
78. Chapter 78
79. Chapter 79
80. Chapter 80
81. Chapter 81
82. Chapter 82
83. Chapter 83
84. Chapter 84
85. Chapter 85
86. Chapter 86
87. Chapter 87
88. Chapter 88
89. Chapter 89
90. Chapter 90
91. Chapter 91
92. Chapter 92
93. Chapter 93
94. Chapter 94
95. Chapter 95
96. Chapter 96
97. Chapter 97
98. Chapter 98
99. Chapter 99
100. Chapter 100
101. Chapter 101
102. Chapter 102
103. Chapter 103
104. Chapter 104
105. Chapter 105
106. Chapter 106
Epilogue
About the Author
Where to Find Other Books and Stalk the Author
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Amity Diaz Female Main Character (FMC) of Book 3. An exobiologist, she brings her love of living things with her to planet Ikthe. She befriended one of the planet’s deadliest creatures and has an ineffable positive attitude. Heart mate to Natheka.
BoKama Supporting Female Character in all five books. Co-governs with Sister Queen the Ikma Scabmal Kama. She has been trying to usurp her place without luck so far.
CeCe Pain FMC of Book 5. A hydrogeologist, free diver, and neural network developer, CeCe put the finishing touches on VELMA, the artificial general intelligence used on many IGMC ships.
Chris Abusive ex-partner of Esra Weaver in Book 1, also works in administrative echelons of IGMC.
Demolition and Propulsion Hyperconnected Network Entity Software that runs systems on Mining Planet 13. (Stranded on Mining Planet)
Diablo Male pazathel-nax pup wounded in Book 2 that Amity befriends and heals in Book 3. Mischievous but lovable addition to Predator Planet.
Drail Male Main Character (MMC) of Stranded on Mining Planet, the free novella offered to newsletter subscribers. He’s part of the security for the Causeway Passage Authority administered by the Dam Svai, a reptilian alien species in the outer reaches.
EEP X215 Emergency Egress Pod designed by mechanical engineer Pattee Crow Flies of Book 2. A self-sustaining mini-ship designed to scan planetary bodies in search of one habitable by its single occupant, it has everything needed to sustain life from six months to a year. Provisions, limited tools, medical and surgical functions, multiple scanning abilities and VELMA all serve to make the EEP the only way to travel. It is Land Only, however; no leaving once it enters the atmosphere.
Esra Weaver FMC of Book 1. Exogeologist and miner, Esra tried to leave her baggage behind, but was forced to face it all again when fighting for her life on Ikthe. Heart mate to Naraxthel Roika. Curious, plucky, and a little sarcastic, she really loves rocks.
Heart mate In the old stories, it was told that one might find their heart mate or soul mate when one reaches adulthood. Heart mates share their lives together rather than separating to pursue solitary lives.
HemoSupp An electrolyte/supplement solution to be used in drastic situations where blood loss or profound dehydration have taken place.
Hestra Gas giant planet under the relaxed stewardship of the reptilian race, the Dam Svai. Featured in Stranded on Mining Planet (SoMP).
Hestra’s Handmaid Hestra’s moon which is on a crash course with the planet in three or four revolutions, and the base of limited IGMC mining operations. (SoMP)
Hivelt MMC of Book 2. A ferocious but introverted hunter, Hivelt regrets all dealings he had with the queen and feigned his death in Book 2 in order to escape her clutches. He’s a simple hunter who just wants a nice bowl of fish stew.
Holy Goddesses of Shegoshel Represented by the binary star system, the Holy Goddesses are an Elder and Younger Sister goddess pair who oversee the Theraxl people and any beings that visit the sister planets. Loving and beneficent, their greatest joy is giving gifts and blessings and often, spiritual dreams and messages, to sentient beings on the sister planets. They tend not to interfere but give encouragement and inspiration to aid their so-called “children”. Are they real or somehow manufactured by hallucinogens found on the planets or otherwise induced?
Ikma Scabmal Kama Female Antagonist for entire series. The queen has grown worse over the years in her thirst for blood and sex. She trusts no one, and no one trusts her.
Ikshe The home planet for the Theraxl race. Governed by a matriarchal society, it is peaceful, organized, paradisiacal, and populated with a creative and hungry race. Culture, art, science, engineering, architecture, and agriculture all play important roles on Ikshe with females engaging in every part of the work. Males are encouraged to become hunters, but some do choose other vocations. Except eunuchs. They didn’t choose that.
Ikthe The sacred hunting grounds planet where the hunters fly to hunt big game. Bringing back ship loads of butchered meat, they provide much of the protein and fats the alien race requires to fuel their powerful and muscular bodies. Females are forbidden from visiting the hunting grounds.
InterGalactic Mining Conglomerate A gigantic collection of mining corporations with its reaches throughout the known universe but always in search of more and better. Innovative, wealthy, powerful, people flock to IGMC for employment and high-risk jobs for high pay.
Joan Wu FMC of Book 4. Joan is an exobotanist who lost her joy in living when she lost her husband two years ago. Going through the motions, her only tether to life was her best friend, CeCe. Waking up on Ikthe, she discovered she was trapped in the most dangerous region on the entire planet and surrounded by danger, had to decide whether life was worth living.
Kerberos 90 A distant asteroid intended to be mined by an intrepid group of IGMC miners.
Kezti Bug-like alien race, enemies of the Dam Svai race and known pirates always eager to make shady deals. (SoMP)
Lucidity IGMC’s executive science class ship in a convoy of other ships headed to Kerberos 90.
Machete Common tool used in jungle habitats for clearing foliage.
Mass spectrometer One of VELMA’s many scanning tools used to measure the chemical makeup of things for identification and classification purposes.
Mining Planet 13 A distant moon on which common ores are being mined. (SoMP)
Mining Ship A massive destructive ship used to exploit the most possible resources with the least amount of caution.
MRE Meals Ready to Eat, standard IGMC issue freeze-dried food. Just add water and enjoy!
Naraxthel Roika MMC of Book 1. The mightiest hunter of all hunters, good and noble warrior who has yet to win a chance at a sanctioned mating that would produce offspring. Heart mate to Esra Weav
Natheka MMC of Book 3. A runner, a dreamer and a singer, Natheka never doubts his heart or his mate, even when his heart transition happens at the worst possible time. Heart mate to Amity Diaz.
Pattee Crow Flies FMC of Book 2. Descended from a First Nation, Pattee was uncharacteristically suited to life on Predator Planet thanks to the dogged instruction from her blue-collar father. On Ikthe, she must come to terms with the misdeeds of her past in order to embrace her future as Hivelt’s heart mate.
PH-4RT The gas giant planet around which Mining Planet 13 orbits. See also Hestra and Hestra’s Handmaid. The miners of MP-13 call it Phart. (SoMP)
Planet Mass Insertion Vehicle P-MIV for short, because PIV was too provocative. An advanced mining ship that penetrates a planet’s first twenty meters of crust and initiates a massive erosion event to hasten the mining process during planet harvesting.
Pre-Harvest Recon Exploratory Device PHRED, the machine-learning artificial intelligence that runs the P-MIV.
Raxkarax MMC of Book 4. Brave and fierce, Raxkarax has an Ace up his sleeve when it comes to hunting on Ikthe. When he travels to rescue the unknown human from the Agothe-Fatheza bog, he must bring all of his knowledge to bear. Heart mate to Joan Wu.
Raxthezana MMC of Book 5. The tragedy from his past has followed him for decades, and he refuses to let happiness get in the way of solid research. Paired with CeCe Pain.
Shay Leviticus FMC of Stranded on Mining Planet. Shea is smart as a whip and loves her career in mining demolition. She also has a side project that could change the course of human history. No big deal.
VELMA FMC in entire series. Vector Egress Liaison Machine-learning AI knows it all, literally. Without VELMA, nothing that occurs in the series would be possible, and where would we be without a solid understanding of poop?
1
CeCe
“If you find yourself in a seemingly desperate situation when all the odds are against you. Even if you are in the middle of the most hostile environment, do not give up. Believe in yourself and fight, fight for life.” ~ Vladislav Rogozov
5 Lightyears Away and Some Time Ago
“Crystal,” I said, standing up.
“Wonderful,” Co-Director Hackney said with a glance at Co-Director Clemmins who wore a thin smile. Something about him gave me the creeps.
I was finished playing games with these low-lifes. It ended now.
“Chris, walk CeCe to the door, if you please,” Kellan Hackney said and returned to his holographic console. “I’ll get this report in straight away and you can proceed as planned, Ms. Pain.”
His back to me, he missed the blaze in my eyes at his intentional lapse of my doctoral title, but I said nothing. Worried my fury would take on a life of its own and jeopardize my plans, I kept my lips sealed and my movements stiff. I felt like the tiniest shift in the artificial gravity responders could upset my controlled equilibrium.
Chris Clemmins stood at the door and gave me a slight bow; I didn’t miss his lingering gaze on my chest, and I didn’t doubt he got an eyeful of my ass when I walked out, but his ogling registered at point zero don’t care on my “fuck it” scale.
I counted three strides before I heard the door slide to a close; a fast peek confirmed it, and I broke into a sprint down the corridor to the bank of elevators. Slipping inside, I pulled the panel of controls and entered my macro program.
Hackney’s bogus meeting went one hundred percent the way I’d predicted it would, and I’d planned for it accordingly. Macro entered; the elevators wouldn’t stop at the Executive Suites for five standard hours. It should give me time to implement my plan plus a spare hour or two before they knew what I’d done.
The car stopped at Communal Area 14, right near the women’s bunkers, where I jumped out and fast-walked to the auxiliary control station. Popping my head in the room, I caught Jake’s eye.
“Hey, Elevator B is acting kind of weird,” I said, and he shrugged. “I mean, makes no difference to me, but it’s not stopping at the executive suites. Do you think they’ll mind?”
Jake popped out of his chair so fast it spun, and he elbowed past me without so much as an ‘excuse me’.
Counting to five, I watched him disappear into Elevator B, then I spun into the control room and found the klaxon controls. Two presses of a button and a switch later, the Under Attack alarm blared, and I dashed out of the control room and raced down the corridor. I had exactly four minutes and forty-three seconds to get Joan in a pod, VELMA-X secured in the P-MIV, and myself strapped in that sardine can the engineers called an orbiter.
With silent footfalls as my toes barely touched the floor, I could hear my own breaths pounding in my lungs and throat. Focused solely on finding Joan, I startled when a tall, beautiful First Nations woman stepped in my path. I veered, but not enough, and we crashed shoulders.
“Sorry ‘bout that!” I shouted but was already turning the corner to the Communal Area. There! Joan, my dearest friend, stood like a sandpan caught in hoverlights. God love her, this widowed exobotanist needed a keeper. An unexpected sob stuck in my throat.
Not now, dammit. Work now. Emote later.
Skidding to a stop in front of Joan, I snapped my fingers in front of her pale face. “Joan! Pod!”
Confusion marred her perfect brow as her hooded dark eyes tracked the people around us hustling to their places while the klaxons sent vibrations from the floor through our footwear and into our chests.
“Sweetie,” I uttered under my breath and grabbed her elbow. For a second, I remembered what she was like after David died. Aw hell, no. She better not do that to me again. I needed my girl more than she ever needed me. She just didn’t know it.
Her pod lit up when I nudged her through its hatch, and I saw her snap out of her daze. Meeting her gaze, I waited a split-second for her nod.
“Go. I’ll meet you on the Other Side,” I said and chucked her chin, then turned tail and raced back to the auxiliary ship docking bay.
If anyone noticed that I wasn’t running toward the pods, they didn’t say anything. The only people I was worried about noticing were stuck on the executive level while the elevators dinged and descended, stopping at every floor except theirs. With no other access to the suites but via elevator, one had to wonder: was it an engineering design flaw? Or executives reaping the consequences of another terrible idea? Guess I would never know.
Skidding in front of the P-MIV, I muscled the hatch open and climbed in, stepping carefully around the cubbies since the vehicle was “parked” on its side. Grabbing the lanyard from around my neck, I kissed the badge for luck and stuck it in the best place I could think of, inserting it in the main console.
Tapping the keys, I woke up PHRED and coded the same parameters the EEP X215s used, then added the macro that would allow me to control it remotely from the orbiter.
“Okay, boom,” I said to myself and made an explosion motion with my hand and retraced my steps out the hatch, sealed it, doublechecking the controls, and then ghosted between the P-MIV and a mech drill until I got to the Single Contained Occupant Orbiters.
Checking my watch, I saw I had a minute thirty-nine seconds to spare.
“Heck yeah,” I murmured and climbed into the orbiter, pulling the cockpit shut with a final click and hiss. I’d done a preflight check yesterday on a hunch, thank God.
Toggling the controls, the dash lit up like Christmas on Old Vegas, and I grinned.
“Speak to me, SCOOBE baby,” I said. “Mama wants to fly.”
“Initiating auxiliary bay egress, K-90 Miner 107,” SCOOBE said. “Prepare for launch and subsequent cryo-sleep protocols.”
“Got it,” I said and fastened the final latch of the harness. I keyed in my last macro, this one the program that would wake me up in time to control the P-MIV before it cycled into its planet insertion. I’d already tethered the two vehicles wirelessly; PHRED and SCOOBE would remain in constant contact while we fled from the Lucidity and the megalomaniacs that ran IGMC.
The orbiter’s software, Single Contained Occupant Orbiter Bio Equerry, was programmed to keep me alive through the reaches of space until the P-MIV and I reached our destination. Ideally, it would be the exact same destination as the EEP X215s, but my algorithm allowed for tiny adjustments that could plop me on an orbit around a planet’s moon or even an asteroid orbiting the same star.
“Sweet baby Jesus, let this work,” I prayed aloud and pressed “Enter”.
Lights inside the orbiter dimmed, and I could see out the clear cockpit when the giant auxiliary vehicle bay doors opened. The field of stars lay open before my eyes, and tears pricked at their corners. Mama and Daddy said I was made for this: unexplored frontiers. And there it was—immense, sparkling, vast—measurable only in terms of numbers and theory. It waited for me.
