Rundas hacked the Squogg’s head from its neck. The severed cranium tumbled in a lazy fall, landing in a slow-motion splash.

He cut the thrusters on his hover pack, setting him down next to the alien corpse. Tentacles and broken antennae twitched from its carapace. Ammonia-blood spilled on the Titan dirt. Hydrocarbon drizzle pelted him. Poison rain sluiced off of his helmet, congealing into rivulets that oozed down his sword and his duramantite cuirass.

He toggled through his visor display. Ultraviolet was almost useless on the fog-swaddled moon. The visible light spectrum didn’t help either under a thick haze of ethane clouds.

Infrared told him what he needed to know. A dull field of dark blue. Not a hint of anything warmer. Anything alive. With a surface temperature of 95 Kelvin, everything on Titan was frigid. Ten seconds without a functioning plasma field generator, and he would be too.

His work was done. No more Squoggs to kill—for the moment.

Moments however, had a way of lasting longer on Titan. Rundas watched the methane falling all around him. Shimmering, fat globules in no hurry to reach the ground. The rivers they carved in every shallow gully moved with the same languorous pace. After more than three years away, Rundas smiled at the vista. As foreign as Titan was, with toxic lakes, air warmed to only a shade above absolute zero and a permanently sunless sky, no other place in the solar system felt quite so much like home.

No one knew how long they’d been out there.

Millennia, at least. Perhaps millions of years. Long enough to spread like a virus to every major moon of the outer rim. They weren’t native to our solar system, that much was clear from isotopic clues buried in their bio-profile. The best guess anyone could make was that they migrated from some other system in their dormant state eons ago, landing on small worlds like Enceladus, Rhea and Titan.

Galactic nomads, the xeno-biologists called them.

Officially, they were dubbed Xeno Squirensis. Squire’s Organism, named for Professor Warren Lester Squire, the late-22^nd century outer moon explorer—the first man to kill one. An early dispatch following their discovery abbreviated the new species as Sq-Org. They’d been affectionately called Squoggs ever since.

By the time permanent human colonies had been established on the Jovian and Saturnian moons, nothing more than mining bases for the first few decades, their presence was already well known. Enough of them had been killed by then, plenty of specimens brought back to permit a comprehensive understanding of their anatomy—if not their behavior.

Extremophiles of the purest sort, they not only found those cold, barren worlds hospitable, they thrived there. Their blood was ammonia-based, probably evolved in frigid oceans of NH3 on some distant world. That unique cryo-biology made them perfectly suited to thrive in the frigid conditions that prevailed across the outer rim moons.

Neither animal or plant, they defied terrestrial classifications so utterly as to render them useless. Despite their essential strangeness however, their peculiar biology did reflect elements of many Earth species. They were known to gestate out of a spore-larval phase, maturing into squid-like bodies with chitin-carapaces, yet they’d also been observed to burrow down and root themselves into soil for years at a time.

A largely thermonivorous species, they required little more than heat to sustain themselves. To the Squoggs, all seven of their bulging eyes and thirteen tentacles keyed into the infrared spectrum, warm-blooded human colonists made for an irresistible feast.

And feast they did.

The Squoggs killed hundreds before Squire managed to take down even one. Although their behavior suggested a kind of hive-mentality intelligence, all attempts at communication—or reconciliation—met with failure. Eventually it became clear that the Squoggs viewed mankind as a food source, nothing more.

Efforts to eradicate them, to exterminate the entire species, were similarly unsuccessful. The Squoggs were elusive, hiding in nests scattered all over the frozen reaches of those barren worlds. Stationing permanent battalions of soldiers deployed on permanent seek & destroy operations spread across thirty different moons was attempted, and just as quickly abandoned. The costs were prohibitive, and the results unimpressive.

That’s when the big mining consortiums started paying bounties to the stalkers. To men who roamed the outer rim, tracking down Squoggs. Men as tough, relentless and violent as the aliens they hunted.

Men like Rundas.

                                                 *          *          *

Flying a starship like a glider was easier on Titan than on almost any other place in the solar system. The unique combination of low gravity and high atmospheric pressure created ideal conditions for achieving lift. That meant a much-needed rest for Tiamat’s propulsion systems, already plagued with half-a-dozen fissures in its ion engine core and a coolant leak in its old-fashioned chemical fuel booster.

Nothing more stressful than an initial thrust was necessary for takeoff, but even that was dicey. Once airborne, Rundas punched in his destination coordinates, took hold of the navi-controls and settled in for the ride.

“You know you don’t need to do that anymore, sweetie,” the ship’s A.I. gently scolded. A sultry Russian-accented female voice he’d downloaded after buying her second-hand over a decade ago. “There’s an orbital network of Lunar Positioning Satellites here now. All you have to do is tell me where you want to go.”

“I heard about that before we left Enceladus,” he said. “The whole outer rim is getting civilized. Wasn’t so long ago this was just a cold, dead rock. The only people who ever came out this far were running away from something back home. Or just had nowhere else to go.”

“Which one were you?”

Rundas closed his eyes. “I don’t remember anymore.”

Tiamat’s A.I. chuckled, which always made him groan. She wasn’t actually capable of appreciating humor, but an after-market sub-routine had been installed by the previous owner that told her microprocessor when to fake it. Something about an algorithm designed to detect statistically unlikely juxtapositions of words. They could build ships to fly to the outer moons of the Solar System, but an irony detector still pressed the limits of human technology.

It was a few minutes before the first hints of Xanadu Prime came into view, emerging from the ethane smog as the drizzle cleared.

“Damn, that’s a sight,” Rundas said. “Haven’t seen a city like that since Mars.”

“Xanadu Prime is the first domed city outside of the inner planets. You’ve been away a long time,” the A.I. said. “A lot has changed.”

“They should at least re-name the place. Last time I was here this was nothing but a hard scrabble station of hydrocarbon harvesters, ice miners and other roughnecks,” he said. “The name was a joke back then, doesn’t look like it anymore. Now it really does look like paradise.”

“It was only a matter of time really,” Tiamat answered. “These moons have always been rich with natural resources. Now that they’ve finally developed the technology back on Earth to exploit them, the Consortium is moving whole families here to settle permanently.”

Rundas couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing as he steered Tiamat through the docking bay. Xanadu Prime sprawled out over dozens of square kilometers in every direction. Titanium and mirrored-glass towers glimmered under a colossal complex of interconnected plexi-steel domes. The sheltered land beneath was already blossoming with the greens and yellows of advanced terra-forming. Sleek monorails buzzed between every development, surrounded by throngs of colonists. Everything sparkled like new.

 

As welcoming as it all was, somehow Titan didn’t quite feel like home anymore.

           Rundas wore his years among Saturn’s moons like an old stain, burned into his every feature. All of it was on display the moment he stepped through the sliding doors of the docking station and into the crowded streets of Titan’s first true city.

Three decades of exposure to the hostile conditions of the outer rim, low grade radiation levels and acidic cleansing regimens, had turned his bushy whiskers and his long, shaggy hair a stark shade of verdigris green. The left side of his face was twisted and misshapen. Dead, gray flesh formed three parallel slashes like fractures in cool magma; a scar from an encounter so horrific no one could recall him ever speaking of it.

Congealed blood coated his dented armor with a crust of purple-brown sludge. Fresh slime drooled from his gloves. The pungent reek of ammonia hung all around him, mixed with odors of alien blood, sulfur and human-filth.

He made it all of five meters before someone screamed.

It was a child, no less. Rundas turned to see after her. The little girl was about seven. Clinging to her mother’s arm for dear life, she pointed at him and wailed. In between her panicked cries he was able to make out a few words. Monster was chief among them.

If only you knew what real monsters look like.

The nylon bag in his hand contained the heads of two of them, chopped from thick, scaly necks only hours earlier. Long the bane of the outer-rim settlers, these two Squoggs would never slink out of the icy methane sea to chew their way into ventilation pipes; would never skulk into her pod in the dim of Titan’s long night to suck the heat and the life from her body with dozens of hypodermic fangs.

As the girl screamed, drawing the eyes of every person on the street, he had an inkling to take out one of the alien craniums to show her. But he didn’t. Instead he turned, lifted his hood to cover his weird, inhuman hair and he kept walking.

“You’re welcome, kid,” he muttered as he disappeared into the crowd.

                                                *          *          *

“So you’re a real live xeno-stalker, eh?” Arthur Gorice said.

Rundas stood before the twenty-something clerk, sitting alone behind an empty desk in the glass-façade front office of Helios Consortium Inc. The young man’s face was a mix of excitement and awe. Rundas answered with little more than a sneer.

“We don’t see too many of you guys around here anymore, not since this new installation got up and running,” Edgar said.

Rundas dropped his bag on the counter. It landed with a wet thud.

“I’ve heard stories about you guys. Loners mostly, right?” the clerk continued. “You run the Saturn lunar circuit, moving from moon to moon, tracking Squogg migrations. I hear most of you folks only come in from the void a few times a year, checking in at the orbital stations to pick up supplies, fix your ships and collect your bounties.”

Rundas nodded. It had been months since he’d had a conversation with anyone other than Tiamat’s A.I. He didn’t miss it.

“How long since you’ve been back to Titan?” Arthur asked.

“Seems like a lifetime.”

He pulled each of his current trophies from the bag. They were covered in sticky, putrid slime. Both of the heads were large, twice the size of a human’s. They had a vaguely cephalopod character, but with seven large, bulging eyes lined along each side. Facial tentacles framed huge mandibles lined with multiple rows of serrated teeth.

The clerk didn’t bat an eye as he looked them over.

“Ok, two Squoggs, full grown,” he said, as he studied them both. “At current rates I can give you … five thousand a piece.”

Rundas snarled.

“It was twenty thousand a head last time I was here,” he said.

“Time’s change,” Arthur replied.

“That’s what I’m hearing,” he answered. “I haven’t been low-balled like this in all the years I’ve been in the outer rim.”

The clerk threw up his hands. “Look, it’s not me. It’s the Consortium. They set the prices. Now that they’ve established permanent settlements like this, sheltered under impregnable domes and magnetically shielded, the Squoggs aren’t much of a concern. They’ve done the tests, the aliens can’t chew through the new barriers, so they’re not paying top dollar on bounties for dead ones anymore.”

“Figures,” Rundas said.

“I’m afraid it gets worse,” Arthur continued. “They’ve already got sophisticated surveillance systems and drone sentinels coming in to monitor the perimeter, so none of the ugly buggers will even get within fifty kilometers of this place anymore. They haven’t been installed yet, but once they are–”

“Guys like me are outta business.”

“Looks that way.”

Rundas pondered. His ship was in disrepair. He hadn’t eaten anything but re-hydrated food in six months. And he was broke.

“Fine. Pay up,” he said.

Arthur rang up the transaction on his touch pad. “You’re still using a Carter helmet?” He handed Rundas back his magnetic card. “I haven’t seen one of those in ages. The Dubois oxygen exchange systems are so much better there’s no comparison. I could get you a base model for cheap. Prices are way down since the DB sixteens came out.”

Rundas sneered. “I’m too old for new toys.”

“Old timer, this whole city is a new toy.”

“So I’ve noticed.”

                                                  *          *          *         

             Rundas gulped down his third half-liter of Jovian stout. He sat alone in the only dive bar left in Xanadu Prime, a dingy hole-in the-wall on the edge of the city that predated the Consortium’s expansion. It stank of sawdust and stale beer. Most of the glow-globes hanging from the low rafters were broken, leaving the light from the holo-sphere above the bar as the main source of illumination.

He was about to wave for the barkeeper with his empty mug, when the holographic display of zero-G lacrosse he’d been watching vanished in a flash of static. A familiar voice called out to him from behind.

“The transport ship Aserdus has gone down over the Guabonito crater, ninety kilometers outside of Xanadu Prime.”

It was Edgar Gorice. Rundas turned, but didn’t see him. Instead he was faced with two men in gray suits. He knew their type without needing to see their badges: faces unsmiling, sporting identical severe haircuts and both looking up at him with the dead eyes of corporate drones. Consortium types.

A moment later he finally did see Gorice stepping forward from between the two human automatons.

“We’ve been searching the entire installation for you,” he said.

“Decided to pay a fair wage finally?” Rundas asked.

Edgar lifted his handheld device, pointing it at the holo-globe. His own feed lit up the 3D display. Satellite-captured images of a rocket appeared, descending in a nose-dive as its engines hemorrhaged smoke and plasma. “There are fifty colonists on board, coming in from the orbital station. It’s a civilian ship. No weapons, no defenses at all.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Rundas asked.

Edgar pointed back to the hologram. The disabled ship lay in the cold mud, half-buried and smoldering. From every side, a small horde of familiar figures descended upon the wreckage.

“Squoggs,” the hunter said.

“You’re the only xeno-stalker on the station right now,” Gorice said. “Those colonists need your help. They won’t last long out there. Their life-support systems are failing and the Squoggs will breach their hull within an hour.”

Rundas scratched his green beard. “Why do you need me? What about your fancy new surveillance systems and killer drones?”

Edgar looked away. His face turned sheepish. “They’re being shipped in from the manufacturing yards in Europa orbit. ETA is still three weeks away.”

“You don’t have a back-up defense system?”

“There hasn’t been an incident in the three years we’ve been operational. No one thought we needed one.”

Rundas turned back to look at the holographic images now streaming in live from the transport ship. Broken equipment belched smoke. Through the cracked windows he could see people panicking inside as the horde of creatures swarmed the ship, gnawing on the fuselage.

“We need you. Name your price,” Edgar said. “The Consortium has authorized me to go as high as fifty thousand, but I can probably push that number up a little higher.”

Rundas glowered at the clerk.

“There are fifty people on that ship, right?” he asked.

Edgar nodded.

Rundas smiled.

“What could you possibly find funny at this moment?” the clerk asked. “You xeno-stalkers really are as cold blooded as they say you are, if you’re going to stand here with a grin, negotiating for the lives of innocent people.”

Rundas grabbed the young man by the collar, staring into his eyes. “Fifty thousand for fifty people. I got five thousand for two Squoggs this morning. Your Consortium pays more per head for dead Squoggs than you do for live colonists,” he said.

Edgar’s cheeks flushed. Rundas let him go. He looked down at the two other Consortium goons.

“Get out of my way,” he ordered.

“You’re just going to walk away?” Edgar demanded.

Rundas nodded. “Unless you know another way to get to my ship,” he said.

                                                       *****

            Tiamat screamed out of the ethane clouds, her glider wings locked in attack formation.

            Pulse cannons opened up all at once, each blast pin-point targeted by the ship’s A.I. The blue plasma beams scorched a half-dozen of the Squoggs nearest the crashed transport ship, vaporizing three and sending the others scurrying away across the cold mud.

Freed, for a moment, from the pack of predatory aliens, the ship’s predicament was plain to see. Her fuselage was lodged in the wet moon-surface. Her wings were shattered. If her engines had been functional when she crashed, they were ruined now, every wisp of thermal energy sucked out by the first of the Squoggs to pounce upon the smoldering steel carcass.

“Take us perpendicular to the tail section,” Rundas told his ship.

Tiamat did as ordered, setting down as close to the crippled transport as possible. Her landing sent the Squoggs scampering further away, opening up a one-hundred meter radius around the two ships. But that respite was temporary. Attracted to the heat of her ion engines, the aliens would return soon enough.

Rundas was back in his weather-beaten environment suit, pressurizing his helmet as he moved toward the airlock.

“Prepare to extend the docking conduit,” he told the ship. “When I blast a hole in the back of the transport, we’ll have only a few minutes to get those people across before they freeze to death, or the Squoggs come back.”

Tiamat began to unfurl her docking tube, opening outward from her hull like a translucent accordion. Rundas jumped out beside it. In the lower gravity he needed only two leaps to bridge the gap between his ship and the Aserdus. Through the windows he motioned to the people huddled inside, signaling for them to step back from the rear section. When the docking tube reached him, he took hold of it, two meters tall and just as wide.

Rundas held the docking passage with one hand as he hefted his plasma torch in the other, melting a round portal out of the back of the transport. Before he was halfway done, the dented hull blasted itself open, the pressure from inside bursting out into Titan’s thinner atmosphere.

He struggled to pull the docking tube up to the broken hull, fighting to connect the two despite the rush of warm nitrogen and oxygen spilling out from the ship. The instant he had them attached he ordered Tiamat to equalize pressure. A soft thump let him know the seal was good.

“Everyone out, quick as you can,” Rundas said, waving his arms for them to follow.

The colonists wasted no time scrambling into the docking conduit. While pressurized, it was not temperature controlled and the frigid Titan winds battered it. They shivered as they ran, the deep cold burning their skin as they traversed only a few dozen meters between the ships.

Tiamat’s sultry Russian voice whispered in his earpiece.

“The heat is drawing in the hostiles again,” she reported. “Seventy meters and closing.”

Rundas looked out across the rocky surface. He could see the leading edge of the beast-horde, tentacles waving as they slithered toward him—howling and hungry.

The colonists streamed out of their ship and into the warmth of Tiamat’s cargo hold. The instant the last of them crossed the threshold, Rundas barked a new order.

“Close up the airlock,” he ordered.

Tiamat protested. “But you haven’t boarded yet.”

Rundas ignored his ship’s facsimiled concern.

“I said to close up the airlock,” he repeated. “As soon as you’re secure, lift off. You fly straight for Xanadu Prime, maximum velocity.”

Again, Tiamat’s A.I. refused to comply.

“The hostiles are thirty meters out,” she said. “If you board now I can seal the airlock safely behind you. There is still plenty of time.”

Rundas looked out toward the approaching Squoggs, a shambling, squealing horde of them racing toward him. Then he turned toward his ship. Her aft section was smeared with the soot of hundreds of lift-offs, her wings were held together with dozens of spot-welds and her hull was dented in more places than he could count.

“No, I think time’s just about run out for us, old girl,” he said. “Now close up and lift off.”

Tiamat finally did as ordered. She sealed her docking bay and fired up her engines, achieving vertical lift before rocketing off into the low clouds.

Rundas watched her vanish into the orange mist. Then he turned back toward the onrushing alien horde. He lifted his pulse rifle and his old machete, ready to do the only thing he knew how to do, one last time.