Chapter 5

There was nothing special about Elor-4 that made one place more attractive than another. The planet did not appear to be tectonically active because there were no mountains or deep seas. Therefore, we picked a place that was convenient for us and planned to operated from there.

Of course, the first thing we did was to send out a fleet of drones to find a suitable pack of hunting Bunnies. There were a lot of what looked like ponds, and that was where the Unicorns tended to accumulate. Naturally, the Bunnies accumulated where the Unicorns were, so they were relatively easy to find.

I was carrying my combat shotgun with hog-loads in the 20-round drum when I was transported to the planet’s surface. I was going for shots at the skull, but I would shoot at the body if I needed to do some muscle damage. I didn’t know where to find the heart with any precision, so I figured that I might have to fire a whole magazine of shells into a Bunny’s side if that was where I had to shoot. With that in mind, I had arranged for the replicator to do the reloading for me because it could do it a hell of a lot faster than I could.

I thought it might be asking for trouble if I dropped in very close to a herd of Unicorns, so I landed a bit away from a water hole and walked toward it. I figured that the Bunnies would not have any trouble spotting me alone on the prairie, so to speak. They would investigate if they were as aggressive as they were reputed to be.

Uh-oh, I was spotted by more than one pack. Now what? Two packs of Bunnies started toward me, and they were moving at close to maximum speed. Dammit, those things were fast! Not only that, their gait was a kind of bounding run that made it hard to concentrate my aim. I called the spaceship, “Be ready to jerk me out of here if it looks like I will be hit by more than I can handle. We’ll worry about the details later.”

One pack was a little closer than the other, so I concentrated my attention on them and let the people on the spaceship worry about the other pack. My first shot was at the leader of the closer pack at about 90 yards. Oops, the skull was thicker than I expected. I saw the packet of shot hit and raise a cloud of dust and a little blood, but that was the extent of the injury.

Okay, I shifted to full automatic and poured fire at that same Bunny. The film from the cameras would tell us how many shots hit the Bunny and how many I fired. Later study showed that I hit the Bunny’s face with 8 out of 11 slugs, and only one did any good. That slug happened to enter an eye and thence into the brain. The eye was too soft to trigger the secondary release of the shot, so the slug must have bounced off some bone somewhere inside the skull before it released the 12 shot.

Whatever caused it to explode into the 12 shot inside the skull, that was enough to kill the Bunny on the spot. It hit the ground and rolled for about 15 yards before it stopped moving. By this time, the rest of the Bunnies were too damned close for comfort.

The Bunny was lying on the ground about 25 yards away, and I ran like hell for its body to use as a shelter for my back while I forced the rest of the Bunnies to come at me from only one direction. The dead Bunny made an excellent barricade to my rear after I finally reached it, but it was a close race. I gained a little time because the living Bunnies had to run around the dead one to get to me, and that gave me a moment to think.

“Replicator, switch my ammunition from hog-loads to HEAT with the shaped charge.” Fortunately, that took only moments, and I was ready to fire at close range at the rest of the Bunnies in the two packs. I left the fire selector set for automatic and opened up on the nearest Bunny’s face.

It was starring directly at me, and I had a good angle for a shot to the eye. I held the trigger back while I aimed for the left eye, and my third shot penetrated that soft tissue. It must have triggered on the rear bone of the eye socket because the contents of that eye socket were blasted back at me. At least, I was far enough away not to get splattered, and it’s funny now that I was relieved that none of the mess hit me.

Okay, that was 2 out of 11 that were down, but I wondered how much longer I would last. The Bunny that I had just shot was partially blocking the access to me, so I had less space to cover, but it was in two segments. Well, I’ll admit that I was concerned about having to watch two access points essentially at the same time.

Bunnies were trying to get to me through both passages so that I was continually flip-flopping my attention back and forth between the two passages. The only solution was to block one of the passages as soon as possible so that I could be attacked at only one point at a time.

One of the Bunnies got as far as about 20 yards from me when a slug went into its eye. This time, I was not so “lucky”: I got splattered with eye goo. Well, messy as I was, I was able to control my shotgun, and that was what was important.

The Bunny trying to get to me from the other passage was a little bit thinner and almost got to me before it was popped in the eye by a slug. Now I was really in a mess, but I did manage to kill that Bunny before it could get to me. At last, I could relax for a moment while I tried to figure out what to do. The onlookers in the spaceship had been instructed not to talk to me except to help me avoid being killed, so I got no advice from them. However, I did exhibit a little vanity by asking if the goop on me was showing up on the cameras. Yes, it was, but nothing could be done about that.

None of the Bunnies could reach me now, but there were still 9 of the creatures who were after my blood. I decided to keep on with what I had come to do, so I squeezed between two of the dead bodies so that I could continue the hunt.

I saw three Bunnies fanned out about 40 yards away from where I was standing. They were all looking in my direction as if they were sentinels. One of them started making a sort of barking sound, and two more Bunnies showed up. This looked like too good an opportunity to miss, so I opened fire.

These animals must learn fast because I was able to fatally shoot two of them, but the other three turned to run before I could get to them. I fired at the rear end of the nearest one and it seemed that I was able to break its hip, judging from the way it was moving as it continued to try to escape. Okay, I never left a wounded animal to suffer in my life, so I called for an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade) with a shaped charge. The replicator came through and I fired at the ass of the wounded Bunny. I managed to hit it and the explosion was very satisfying from a technical point of view.

The whole rear end of the Bunny was blown off, and there was no doubt that it was dying. That was no fun from the point of view of a hunter, but it did keep the animal from suffering unnecessarily. I figured that I was through with the program, but I needed to eliminate the Bunnies who had seen how I could fight.

I climbed on top of the nearest dead Bunny and proceeded to shoot the RPG at the Bunnies that were nearby. I was disappointed that I was not able to kill them all—one got away, but, in total, I did manage to eliminate 10 of the beasts. I hoped that was enough for the dramatic needs of the program. I returned to the spaceship and immediately headed for the shower.

We pieced together the footage we had and realized that we had not shown anything to justify shooting the Bunnies. Okay, that was easy to fix. We sent out drones to get pictures of Bunnies attacking Unicorns. A couple of those attacks were enough to justify to me the extermination of the entire population of Bunnies!

That footage was spliced in as background for Lola’s opening remarks. Judging from the reaction of the viewing executives, one of whom vomited during the show, we had made our point. Later on, there was cheering and applause whenever I killed one of the Bunnies.