The Spider’s Hucow Pet (Hucows of Zairion Prime #1)

CHAPTER 1

ANDROMEDA

The crimson forest of Zairion Prime is cool, dark, and moist. It reminds me of Earth. The trees are similar but with gnarled, winding trunks that grow wide instead of tall and throw off strange clusters of blood-red leaves.

The crunch of the litter underfoot, the smell of decay—that’s identical. Elements are elements, no matter how weird and fucked up the planet. Convergent evolution and all that.

I let out a bitter laugh as I follow the holo-map on my wrist along a deer path. Well, not literally a deer path; there are no deer here. But there’s some herbivore in the same ecological niche, and it trampled down the underbrush and leaves enough that I don’t need to hack my way through.

How many lives ago was I a biologist? Four… no, six? I always forget about the stint as a priest… Was that before or after the holovid production assistant? Definitely after the apprentice hydrotech mechanic…

My dad used to tell me I could be anything I wanted. I made that a reality—but I don’t think a special skill for forging identities was what he had in mind.

I had real dreams once. They died when Earth did.

Seeing your home shatter into listless chunks of rock will do that to you.

We were supposed to be good little refugees, sorted by our skills to wherever we’d be most useful, wherever we’d make the return on the investment it took to scoop us up and house us all.

Treated like livestock, analyzed down to the atom, all the decisions made for us in order to achieve ‘optimum health markers.’

And the worst part?

Those decisions were pretty damn good. Humanity was certainly doing a shit job of managing itself. All in all, becoming the pandas of the Intergalactic Coalition of Sentient Species was an upgrade.

But I don’t do well with other people making choices for me.

As soon as I’m told to do something, I become pathologically unable to do it.

Changing identities like I changed clothes gave me a sense of control.

Every time I slipped under their radar, every time I stacked the inputs so the ICSS’s algorithms put me exactly where I want to go, I felt a little alive again.

But it’s not enough anymore.

It hasn’t been enough for a while.

I need to go off-trail. Get out of the ICSS systems entirely. Find some real danger.

Thus: hiking across Zairion Prime with nothing more than the stained navy coveralls on my back, a handful of supplies, and an ungodly amount of stubbornness.

I’m sure I look like a hot mess—ponytail of unruly auburn curls, pale face streaked with sweat and dirt, broad thighs doing their very best to wear through the fabric between my legs.

At least the air here is breathable. I hate masks and helmets and filters.

They give me headaches. The atmosphere here is more than just adequate—it’s particularly high in oxygen.

That’s great for me, though it also enables the unique traits of the primary sapient species, about which I have… mixed feelings.

This plan is so unhinged, nobody sane would even contemplate it.

Which, of course, is why it became my obsession.

I was either going to spend every day trying to not think about it, or I was going to do it.

I’m a woman of action.

“Hurry up,” I hiss at the pack droid over my shoulder.

The dented metal sphere with chipped white paint hovers precariously. Even though it barely holds enough water and rations to last me a couple of days, it still strains under the mass.

It was a discount model with a habit of malfunctioning before some sapient punched it in frustration and tossed it in a trash compactor. I pieced it back together. I have some of the skills I claim in my identities. Tech is my strong suit.

It’s kind of funny: the sapients of the ICSS have such advanced technology, with automated factories constantly learning how to make things better, faster, stronger, they’ve forgotten the basics.

Servos. Circuit boards. Soldering. If this, then that. I still know how to tinker. Even the anti-grav engine is pretty much just an electromagnet with a little chunk of dark matter at its core.

So, I’d been able to make the little robot function again. Though I could only partly fix—

Thunk. It whirs directly into a tree, bounces back, then wobbles in the air, tilting its main ocular sensor in confusion.

That.

It’s an idiot.

I pause and click my tongue. “Here, Dummy-Dummy. This way.”

After a delay, its auditory sensors respond to my voice. It makes a little chirping noise of recognition as it flies over to my shoulder.

The neural chips of these things were once organic in nature, structures turned to silicon and circuits through some crazy alien tech. Apparently, they’re based on the brains of a species similar to cats.

Woulda been nice if they’d found a smarter cat.

The chipped paint on the side reads DME-42, so I just call it Dummy.

“We’re almost there,” I tell it, resuming my path. “Then you can sit in the sun for a while and recharge.”

The sphere makes another happy chirp.

I glance at the holo-map again. “It should just be a few more yards this way—”

Something goes taut around my ankle. Before I can even startle, my body flings through the air, spinning wildly, and pressure surrounds me.

I struggle instinctively, but that only tightens whatever’s around me, making it harder to breathe.

The spinning stabilizes. My dizziness fades.

I’m upside down, blood running to my head. Maybe two yards off the ground, based on the branches I can see.

There’s a strange, musical clicking. I’ve met enough sapients to know it’s a voice—someone speaking in a language I don’t know.

The neural implant behind my ear itches as it activates, but by the time I’m granted a vague sense of what that clicking meant, I don’t need it.

The next sounds are recognizably English.

“Well, what do we have here….” The accent is at once coarse and lilting, like a gravely baritone speaking a romance language.

“Never seen a human before?” I grunt past whatever’s crushing my chest from every direction.

“So it speaks the most common of its species’s dialects. How boring.”

“Aller au diable,” I spit. Go to hell in French.

There’s an amused noise that ends with a subtle clicking. “Better.”

A man with ashen gray skin comes into view, right-side up to me.

His jaw: cut. His eyes: eight. His torso: ripped. His back half: a giant fucking spider.

I’d done some research on Arachnoids, but seeing one in person is… something else entirely.

Light gleams off the shiny black chitin of his eight spider legs, each the thickness of a human’s but far longer. Tufts of grey fur ring each joint, and a matching ruff covers the strange anatomy where his humanoid hips meet his arachnid body.

Each leg ends in two hooked claws the size of my hand, and where they grip the tree branches above us, the wicked points dig in deep.

The most intimidating detail is his size. His legs span at least ten feet, and his spider body is as long as a horse’s from where his legs anchor in his thorax back to his oblong abdomen, which is covered in dense black fur.

I count to be sure, and in addition to his eight legs, he also has two smaller leg-like limbs tucked at the front of his spider thorax, just below his humanoid stomach.

My heart thuds with instinctive fear even as I force my breathing to stay even.

The Arachnoid’s long hair hangs comically toward the ground, dark with a white streak at the front.

His ears are humanoid and pointed, and his two largest eyes—as glossy and black as the others—are about the same size and position as a human’s.

Three smaller eyes flank them on each side, running from his temple to his forehead.

Well, that certainly explains the smooth, even binding covering my body. I’m wrapped up like a fly in a web.

His faceted gaze scans me, main eyes glinting subtly within their lenses as their focus shifts.

Gooseflesh prickles down my arms under the silk wrapping me. That cold, unyielding expression could make a grown man cry.

Good thing I’m not a man.

I tip my chin up—or, I guess, down? Whatever.

“That’s not a very polite way to greet someone.”

Vibrations quiver through the silk wrapping me as he snips threads out of view. The world flips again as my weight settles into his arms—but any dreams I had of a comfortable bridal carry are dashed when he tucks the bundle I’ve become under his arm like a duffel bag.

Literally like a duffel bag: there’s a strap connecting my shoulders and hips, slung over his shoulder.

There’s an odd, sweet smell now that I’m close to him.

…Licorice?

Why the fuck does he smell like licorice?

The ground blurs as he climbs through the trees. There’s a muffled yet familiar clanking of metal near my hip—Dummy’s internal parts rattling around. It probably flew right into whatever bit of silk the spider used to catch it. Still, I feel oddly comforted that it’s coming along with me.

I twist around, trying to get a better look at the Arachnoid’s face. “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?”

“I already know what you’re doing here.”

A bolt goes through me. “You do?”

“Trespassing. Which means I get to… educate you on the consequences of doing a thing like that in a place like this.”

I bite my tongue since I’m now sure he’s the person I’m here to meet. I need to be strategic.

The big clue is that he’s fluent in English.

Sapients only bother learning human languages if they’re bored geniuses or criminals. If you live outside the law, the last thing you want is a translation chip that tracks everything you hear. I’ve already tampered with mine—that’s why it was slow earlier.

Crime: keeping the art of language alive. There’s a certain nuance you only get when you choose the words yourself.

His word choice says, I’m a smug bastard.

While I contemplate my next angle of attack, I can’t help but watch the branches slide away below me. His gait is perfectly smooth and perfectly silent, yet swift and decisive. No wonder he snuck up on me.

“Listen, it’s very generous of you to want to educate a poor, dumb, stupid, mushy little human like me, but believe it or not, I actually came here on purpose.”

“You’re quite stupid, then.”

I roll my eyes. “I have a proposition.”

“You may propose it after I’ve had my tea. For now, be quiet.”

Anger bubbles in my chest. “I will propose what I want, when I want, however I damn well plea—”

There’s a dark flicker in my periphery and another band of silk suddenly wraps across my mouth, flat and sticky like a piece of duct tape.

My indignant yell is muffled to a pitiful Hmmmph.

He doesn’t even glance down at me, but a subtle smirk pulls at his dark lips.

I can do nothing but watch as his forelegs stride out in front of us, picking a route through the gnarled limbs. Tufts of fur decorate each joint, a softer grey next to the chitin’s inky black.

It’s a good thing his species doesn’t have the urticating hairs common to Earth’s fuzzy spiders. Many tarantulas can even fling the barbed, irritating hairs at-will. I’m sure this guy would love to turn my face into a pincushion.

After a few minutes, I can ‘see’ the path that he sees, a three-dimensional tunnel through the leaves not unlike the deer path I was following.

Patches of webbing shore up areas that would otherwise lack a convenient foothold. As we proceed, those patches get denser, less functional, more… decorative. A declaration of territory.

The webs converge to a single point ahead—a dark, foreboding hole at the base of a jagged cliff.

We plunge inside.