The Ven Hypothesis (Kepos Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. OBERON

  2. DIONE

  3. DIONE

  4. LITHIA

  5. DIONE

  6. LITHIA

  7. CORA

  8. BEL

  9. LITHIA

  10. DIONE

  11. LITHIA

  12. DIONE

  13. DIONE

  14. CORA

  15. BEL

  16. DIONE

  17. LITHIA

  18. LITHIA

  19. LITHIA

  20. DIONE

  21. DIONE

  22. CORA

  23. DIONE

  24. BEL

  25. LITHIA

  26. CORA

  27. DIONE

  28. BEL

  29. ZANE

  30. DIONE

  31. CORA

  32. DIONE

  33. DIONE

  34. DIONE

  35. LITHIA

  36. ZANE

  37. LITHIA

  38. DIONE

  39. LITHIA

  40. DIONE

  41. CORA

  42. LITHIA

  43 DIONE

  Thank You

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Ven Hypothesis

  Kepos Chronicles

  Book 2

  Erica Rue

  Copyright © 2018 Erica Rue

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages.

  Editing by Jessica Hatch of Hatch Editorial Services

  Cover Design by Sanja Gombar, fantasybookcoverdesign.com

  Published by Tannhauser Press

  tannhauserpress.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons or events is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Visit ericarue.com for more information.

  For my parents, Jane and Ralph.

  For my best friend, Maggie.

  Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

  - Carl Sagan

  1. OBERON

  Run. Fight. Hide. Those were the only options. Professor Elian Oberon was panting even though every breath fed him more oxygen than he was used to. That was just one more unfamiliar thing about this place. He slowed his sprint to a jog, then paused, just for a moment, to regroup. The humming of the insects all around him made him itch, and the birds, waking in the faint light of dawn, startled him with every squawk. He had no idea where he was going. He didn’t even know what planet he was on. All he knew was that he couldn’t afford to stop for long. He could hear them, following behind. Low growls, the crunching of twigs, the stamp of feet. They did not try to hide their approach. The message was clear. We are coming. Run.

  Just a few days ago, after the attack on his ship, the Calypso, he had been surprised to wake up on a Venatorian ship. They were not known for taking prisoners alive. In fact, he was fairly certain that one of the Vens had stayed his execution, standing between him and the club poised over him when he came to. At the time, he thought they were going to dissect him, or maybe sell him to another Ven clan, but his savior turned and carved a mark, a crude spiral, into his arm with a claw. It was making some sort of claim over him. Perhaps his rescuer was higher up in the hierarchy. But why not just kill him?

  When they had landed on this planet, four Vens had taken him from their ship and brought him to the woods. They had removed his bonds, and each painted herself—he could make out the scalloped edges along their plating that marked them as females—with a white symbol. The spiral, bisected triangle, spiked circle, and three nested rectangles painted on their faces must mean something. Rank, possibly, but when they carved the symbols into his arms, too, he had his doubts. He had three new cuts to match his spiral. They were familiar. They had been the same symbols that were painted on the blue Vens of the boarding party. If the blue Vens had truly been juveniles, could these Vens be their mothers?

  He really hadn’t studied much Venatorian culture, and for the first time in his life, he was regretting it. Four giant, viridian Vens, like gorillas with an armadillo’s plates, and long, deadly claws, stood before him. Sharp-toothed snarls and hard eyes with strange rectangular pupils urged him back a step. Then another, until he was fleeing. He knew what they wanted from him, even if he didn’t understand why. They wanted him to to run. Soon after, they began their pursuit.

  Oberon picked up his pace. His head throbbed where he had been hit a few days ago, but his wound had scabbed over. His entire body ached. He couldn’t run all day, and he wasn’t sure if he could hide. All he knew was that four large Venatorians were chasing him, and he had to keep moving.

  He was still proceeding rather slowly, but the Vens never seemed to catch up. They lagged behind, just enough to menace, to threaten, to keep him moving forward, but they never got close enough to be seen.

  They were trying to scare him.

  It was working. He tripped, losing his train of thought and his footing, and fell. Immediately the growls grew closer, the stomping louder. They were herding him, that was clear, but to where? The only reason he was still alive was because they were planning to kill him in some spectacular manner.

  The manumed on Oberon’s wrist beeped, its first sign of life since he had been released on this planet. While in captivity on their ship, he had been able to look up a few things about the Vens, but it never worked for more than a minute or two before going back on the fritz. He looked down at the device, and his heart sank. The Calypso had picked up his manumed’s signal and connected him to its network. He was back in range of his students, Dione, Zane, and Lithia. Bel’s manumed did not register. Maybe hers was broken, like his. They must be on this planet or in orbit if he could transmit. He tried to call them, but at that moment his manumed blinked back off.

  “Damn,” he said out loud, and picked up his pace. As he ran, he considered the Calypso’s signal. They must have come here in the ship, but there was no way to know if they had been captured. And where was here? They were supposed to jump to clean space, then find a colony with a near real-time comms array. They couldn’t have possibly done that in such a short time, even if they had realized they could use the emergency beacon’s charging matrix. The only planet in range was Bithon, and he didn’t think that planet had any jungles like this. Unless he had been unconscious longer than he thought.

  None of that mattered right now, though, so he pushed it from his mind. If his students were here, he had to find them. He had to make sure they were okay. He had to lose the Vens.

  He began testing the boundaries of his course. He moved on a diagonal to his right, but soon growls came from that direction. He pressed on until he finally saw the Ven with the bisected triangle running almost parallel to him. Almost. He saw that it would soon intercept him and block his path. They did not want him to go that way.

  Oberon put on a burst of speed, hoping to beat the Ven and pass the interception point before the Ven could reach him. For a moment, Oberon thought he had succeeded. Then he felt it grab his arm and wrench him backwards, hurling him onto the ground. The pain in his back reached a crescendo in his bad shoulder, but his assailant had backed off. With a loud groan, he popped the joint back in. Immediately he felt relief, though the ache was still there. This was not the first time he had dislocated that shoulder. The Ven stomped and feinted in his direction. He knew what it meant. Get moving.

&nb
sp; They were definitely keeping him alive for some reason, and he needed to find a way to escape before they changed their minds. He maintained a slight diagonal toward the right, but kept the Ven out of sight. After another ten minutes, he could barely jog. He thought he heard running water, but it was probably his imagination. He was so, so thirsty. Maybe they weren’t herding him to a place, maybe they were running him into exhaustion. If that was the case, he didn’t have much time. Oberon fell again, and scrambled back to his feet. Not much time at all.

  Just when he had nearly given up hope, he figured out why they had been herding him away from the right side. With no warning, the jungle dropped away, and a steep ravine took its place. The water he had heard rushed below, loud and fast.

  This was it. His final chance. If he didn’t escape now, he would be too drained to even try again. He jogged to the edge of his permitted runway, stumbling. This time, it was for effect. The Ven with the triangle appeared, leaving a small gap between itself and the edge. That was all he needed. Once he closed that gap, gravity would do the rest.

  Oberon winced, knowing that if his escape worked, it would hurt like hell. He ignored the growls coming from the Ven and trudged ahead. He pretended he was veering back onto the approved path, but instead, accelerated, aiming to beat the Ven to the interception point, just like before. The Ven anticipated him, putting on speed. He was banking on the Ven believing he was stupid and tired, desperate enough to try the same thing. At the last minute, Oberon shifted his weight, ducked, and managed to pass behind the Ven. A few more strides, and he tucked himself into a protective ball and proceeded to roll down the treacherous ravine.

  Oberon used his hands and arms to protect his face and head, and the short, wiry grasses left dozens of small, painful cuts on his exposed skin. He didn’t know if the Ven was in pursuit, but a horrible screech filled the air.

  When at last his momentum slowed, he unrolled himself. The world was spinning, and he thought he might vomit. He looked up to the top of the ravine and saw two Vens picking their way down after him, and they were surprisingly agile for their size. The other two stayed at the top and proceeded to hurry along the edge. There was no way to outrun them. Climbing up the opposite side of the ravine was out of the question. There was only one option.

  At that moment, his manumed beeped back to life. Oberon didn’t waste any time. He sent a call to all three of his students’ working manumeds.

  “It’s Oberon. I’m on a planet. There are four Vens hunting me. Some sort of ritual, I think. I’m about to jump in a river and try to escape. My manumed’s not working right, but I’ll get in touch when I can.”

  After a moment, he heard Dione’s voice. “Professor, you’re alive! We’re all here. We can help you. I’ll send—”

  His manumed cut off before she could finish. That was probably for the best. The Vens were getting close. He knew nothing about this river. How deep was it? Where did it lead. All he knew was that it was fast, and the Vens, while they could swim, preferred to wait out their prey if it made it to water. He couldn’t stay in the water forever, and he knew that they would be tracking him from above and behind. As he ducked his head below the surface and let the current take him, a grim realization presented itself. He had just made this fun for them.

  2. DIONE

  “Professor?” Dione said, holding Lithia’s manumed. “We sent you a map. Did you get it?” Her own manumed, along with her machete, was still in the smuggler’s den. Brian had advised her to leave it there only yesterday.

  So much had happened in the few days since she, Lithia, Bel, and Zane had escaped the Vens in the Calypso, only to find themselves stranded on Kepos.

  Dione looked around the living room of the apartment they had claimed in the Mountain Base. Breakfast interrupted, all four StellAcademy students were on the edges of their seats. Even Brian, the Ficaran who had helped them, looked concerned. Her heart was pounding.

  “Connection’s gone,” Zane said. “If his manumed starts working again, it might go through.”

  “He’s still alive,” Bel said. Dark circles ringed her eyes, even though the anti-parasitics had cured Bel of her Ven-induced infection. A few days ago, Dione and Lithia had gone down to the planet with the simple goal of finding these meds, but had gotten caught up in the feud between the Aratians and Ficarans. The latter had broken off from the Aratians because the Aratians arranged all marriages through the Matching ceremony. The hostility between the two groups had only grown due to a Ficaran food shortage and an Aratian trade embargo.

  Of all the strange things that had happened on this planet, hearing from the professor was the most unexpected. “We have to go find him,” Dione said. “He’ll know what to do.” She couldn’t believe it. Professor Oberon had survived. The last time she had seen him, he was lying in a pool of his own blood on the Ven Maurader class vessel that had attacked them. And she had left him behind, thinking he was dead. Guilt bubbled uncomfortably in her gut. “Zane, where is he?”

  Zane was already on it, his half-eaten meal bar cast aside. “It looks like he’s in the forest near the Ven ships.”

  “Then we have to go find him,” Dione said. Zane nodded in agreement.

  “What about my people?” Brian asked. “I thought you were going to help us fight off the Vens.”

  She expected to see anger in his eyes, so the betrayal there caught her off-guard.

  “Brian, I… the professor…” She hardly knew where to begin. “It’s my fault he’s in this mess. I thought he was dead. I owe him my life.”

  Brian nodded. She had told him about the professor before. He seemed to understand, and she thought she saw his frown relax, just a bit.

  “I’ll go with you, Brian,” Bel said. She looked at the Ficaran as she stood and braced herself on the back of the couch. “We owe it to Kepos to help.”

  Dione was surprised. Bel hadn’t been caught up in the conflict between the Ficarans and Aratians like she and Lithia had. In fact, Bel had just met Brian. Dione wondered if it had to do with Bel’s vendetta against the Vens, the aliens that had killed her family.

  “No, Bel” Lithia said, before even Zane could object. “You’re staying here. We need someone to coordinate everything, and you’ll be no good out there while you’re still recovering. Keep researching the Vens. I’ll go. I’ll drop Dione and Zane off in the forest, then take Brian to the settlement.”

  Bel opened her mouth to argue, as she often did with her StellAcademy classmate, but even that effort seemed to exhaust her. “You’re right. I can barely keep my eyes open right now. I’d be a liability. But you can’t just drop them off in the woods. The Vens will see the shuttle and send another hunting party, and there are already four Vens after Oberon,” she said. “You can’t fly in to the professor.”

  “Then how do we get there?” Dione asked. “He doesn’t have much time.”

  “Maybe you can find a machi somewhere?” Lithia said.

  Dione preempted Bel’s question by explaining. “It’s like a tapir mixed with a horse. You ride it.”

  “A machi won’t have the endurance to get you there in time,” Brian interrupted. “Take Canto.”

  “Are you sure?” Dione asked.

  “Yes, he likes you,” Brian said.

  “Thank you.” Dione almost hugged him, but despite this generous offer, he seemed cold.

  “If I’m going to be stuck here,” Bel said, “at least let me tell you what I know about the Vens.”

  Brian sat back down, gaze fixed on her.

  “From what I’ve learned, attacks inside the Bubble are rare. Even on the Dappled Rim, a planet-dense region at the edge of the Bubble, most of the places they hit are unprotected. People just choose to take the risks because the mining is good, and, well, regulations outside the Bubble are a lot looser.”

  “Like what?” Dione asked.

  “Slave labor, basically.”

  Dione tried to mask her surprise. Bel had already called her out once for being s
heltered. No, naive. “So why’d they attack our ship?”

  “I don’t know. There must be some reason, but the alarming thing is there have been more attacks inside the Bubble this year alone than in the last decade. It’s still not a lot, but the trend is what’s troubling.”

  “How does that help us?” Brian said. Dione thought there was a challenge in his voice.

  “Any change in behavior might tell us something useful.”

  “I appreciate that, but what can you tell me that will actually help us fight them?” Brian said.

  “They have redundant organs,” Dione said, “so they can take more bullets than you or me. The hood plate that protects their brain is extremely thick, and their brains are segmented in such a way that there are redundancies for motor control and autonomous functions.”

  “Translation, Dione?” Lithia said.

  “If you manage to break through the plating and shoot them in the head, there is a good chance that another part of the brain will kick in and take over things like breathing. They’ll still be able to move and attack you.”

  “And they heal quickly,” Bel added.

  “Yes. It’s kind of like rapid growth. They can heal parts of their bodies, but this takes a lot of energy. We don’t actually have a lot of info on their process of rapid healing, but they don’t do it every time they get injured. Bel, do you know anything else?” Dione asked.

  “There’s a theory that they do it to repair damaged blood and fluid vessels so they don’t bleed out,” Bel said.

  Dione hadn’t read that, but it sounded plausible. She would defer to Bel, the expert.

  “Okay, but what’s the best way to kill one?” Brian asked. “Sounds like bullets aren’t much good.”

  “Neither is my stun rifle,” Lithia said.

  Bel nodded. “Energy weapons aren’t especially effective. If you use enough bullets, you can take one down, but you can never be certain. Sometimes, you think they’re dead,” she paused for just a moment, “but they’re not. They’re just in a low metabolic state, healing.”