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EARLY BYRD

  PHIL GEUSZ

  First Printing 2015

  Published by Legion Printing, Birmingham, AL

  Copyright Phil Geusz, 2014

  Edited by Garrett Marco

  Cover Art by James Hill

  ISBN: 978-1-941618-02-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without explicit permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  1

  The lower shotgun barrel of Tim's gun kicked a lot harder than the upper twenty-two did. Twenty-gauge shells were also a lot harder to come by, so we didn't fire it often. But when we did, it was always for good reason. Not that we didn't use our twenty-two's plenty often enough; there were always jackrabbits and prairie dogs and groundhogs and the like to deal with on a cattle spread as large as ours. But when we went after serious game, it was time for the twenty-gauge.

  I stood and frowned as my twin brother took careful aim and held his mouth just-so. It was deer season and venison was never a thing to be despised when served roasted at the head the family table. The stuff we shot or caught in the local streams always ended up at the head of the table, even when it wasn't anything to write home about. We and our hired help had plenty to eat, being ranchers. But Dad was super-proud of every bit of meat we brought home on our own. Sometimes he even came hunting with us, and those were the best times of all. But it didn’t happen all that often, what with him being a congressman and away to Washington so often.

  The tender-steaked doe stood frozen in the dappled sunlight under a largish stand of trees. Her ears and tail stood straight. She knew something was wrong but hadn't as yet been able to figure out exactly what. Tim was certainly taking his time about aiming; my finger itched to pull the trigger for him.

  Timmy and I were twins, and early on we'd decided to share all our really cool stuff equally. The rifle-shotgun combination gun he was taking so long to aim was by rights half mine, just as the lever-action twenty-two dangling from my own right hand was theoretically half his. Yet somehow he was always the one to carry the far deadlier twenty-gauge when we were out in the field, and therefore he got to take all the prime shots. I fidgeted, twisting the toe of my right sneaker in the grass.

  "Hush!" he whispered, not breaking his concentration. "We're still too far away, really. I'm waiting for her to turn so I can give it to her through the lungs. Cleaner kill that way."

  I nodded and sighed to myself. He was right, really. A twenty-gauge slug was just barely enough to humanely take a deer at close range, and it was wrong to simply blaze away at an animal when a swift, nearly painless kill wasn't almost certain. Tim had exactly one shot and he was the person behind the sights, not me. Only he could judge for certain.

  Before either of us could react the doe lowered her ears, sort of squatted down, and then bounded directly toward us! It was the last thing either of us expected; we stood rooted to the ground with eyes wide as the deer first charged and then frantically swung aside at the last second before running us down. Something had spooked her like crazy, that was for certain. But it wasn't either of us!

  "What in the world?" Tim asked, raising his weapon's muzzle safely skyward.

  Then I heard it too, just before Tim. It was the buzzing of a billion bees emerging from the sky beyond the trees. "Artemu suborbital ship!" I declared, feeling a thrill of excitement. Almost certainly Dad was aboard or else the vessel wouldn't have any business so far out in the Montana boonies, and we'd not seen him for weeks!

  "Yeah," Tim agreed, less enthusiastically. The Artemu weren't particularly popular around these parts, if one defined "these parts" as the entire planet. Humans had never been known for loving their conquerors, after all. Not even when they were at least fellow humans.

  Tim opened his gun's breech and removed the valuable deer slug. They cost a lot of money these days, and Dad insisted on a one-slug/one-deer ratio. As he did so, a bright silver arrowhead flashed by, slowing visibly. He didn't even raise his head.

  I sighed then began the long tramp back to where we'd left our ATV's. "Come on," I said. "It'll be good to see Dad, at least."

  "Yeah," Tim agreed, though he still didn't look happy. "Let's go."

  2

  It was just as well that we started for home before being told to—within seconds of mounting up for the long ride back to the house our phones lit up with the expected text message from Mom. "Hurry home," it read. "Your father's back from the conference!" It was still a long ride, however, and as eager as I was to see Dad again I didn't object when Tim pulled off the trail for a couple minutes to admire a herd of antelope off in the distance. We sat side-by-side in silence, taking in the wonder of it all. Then I wordlessly twisted my throttle and we were off again, this time with me in the lead.

  People sometimes claim identical twins are effectively telepathic because they tend to think so similarly. Neither Tim nor I would know. Though we looked enough alike from a distance that people were often unable to tell us apart, we were actually fraternal twins. Timmy’s hair was a darker shade of dirty blond, his eyes blue where mine are brown, and my brother was just a tad taller where I was built heavy in the shoulders. Yet despite our differences we often spent hours together in perfect harmony and understanding without a single word being spoken. Maybe identical twins are closer still and there really is something to the telepathy thing. All I can say on the subject is that if it's possible for two brothers to be closer than Timmy and I were, well . . . it's impossible for me to imagine.

  When we cleared the last rise, the Artemu ship was parked on the concrete pad by the corral where we usually kept our cattle trucks; one of the hands must've moved them closer to the main road to make room. And there was Dad, standing tall and slim and proud in his battered brown hat, with a blood-red-robed and golden-furred Artemu standing beside him. I frowned at that; blood-red was the color of the Gonther, or Night-Howler clan. Their ancestors had conquered first their own planet, then those of several other stars, and now—after a particularly brutal fight even by their standards—Earth herself. So most likely this particular Artemu was associated with the Imperial Administrative Government.

  "Hello, boys!" Dad greeted us as we zoomed up on our identical machines. Or nearly identical—mine was still missing a rear fender from a jumping accident last summer. He extended his arms for a hug, embracing both Tim and I at once. Meanwhile the Artemu stood aloof; it was the practice of his kind neither to interfere with nor be offended by local social behavior so long as the Imperium received its ultimate due. "Get anything today?"

  "We were about to shoot a nice doe," I explained. "But your ship spooked it."

  He colored. "Sorry."

  "As am I," the Artemu agreed, stepping forward. "It's always unfortunate when a successful stalk is ruined. You have my sincere apologies."

  I forced a smile. Dad had long ago explained why we had to be nice to Artemesians even though they were our overlords. "It's all right. You had no idea."

  He smiled, an oddly humanlike expression despite his slight muzzle and dark, doglike nose. Humans and Artemesians were similar in many more ways than they were different, which according to our scientists was probably due to there being one clear, best and easiest way for liquid-water-zone carbon-based life to evolve. While Artemesians didn't have DNA, for example, they had a close chemical analog. Their reproduction was sexual, using two sexes, because apparently this was the simp
lest, most reliable way to shuffle genes in an environment like ours. Their blood was warm—somewhat more so than human—because carbon-based chemistry worked most efficiently one way and one way only. And so on and so forth. We were even able to eat most of each other's foods. According to our new masters, almost all sentient life they'd encountered so far followed our same basic pattern, though there were a few odd variations here and there. The key to understanding the Artemu, Dad claimed, was to never forget that where our ancestors had been plains apes, theirs had been the local analog of either omnivorous wolves or, if you looked at it differently, pack-hunting bears. Either version worked just fine.

  "We could take you on a nice hunt in the morning if you like," Dad suggested to the alien. "There are deer, as the boys mentioned. Plus antelope, bighorn sheep, a few black bears—"

  "No," the alien replied, raising his right hand in dismissal. "It would be a great pleasure, of course, and I'm honored to be asked. But as we both know I'm here on clan business rather than as a diplomat or military official. It's not seemly to mix clan business and pleasure at such a high level."

  "Of course," Dad replied, bowing. Then he turned to us. "Boys, this