Free The Tejano Conflict by Steve Perry Page A

still, prey would often resume whatever it had been doing.
    There were humans who hunted. Kay had met a few, including one who took other predators armed only with a spear or blades. She respected that; the prey had a chance of winning, the human could be killed.
    There was no honor in hunting unarmed prey with a weapon that could take it from a kilometer away. If you were seeking meat, and that was the only consideration? Fine, use a gun. But there was no challenge in that. If you were smarter and better armed?
Pah.
    The real challenge was to hunt prey that was as smart as you were and better armed. That meant doing something highly illegal though there were sometimes arrangements made between hunters who wanted the risk. On Vast, where challenges to the death were not infrequent, few needed that spur, but she knew of places where that was not so.
    She had known those who had hunted or been hunted by their own kind. They claimed it was the most exciting thing that could be done.
    The bear was nearly two hundred meters ahead of her, about to break out of the woods into a clearing that bordered a shallow river. She had kept downwind of the bear, and taking him there would be harder—in the woods, the trees could be used to her advantage. She could dodge around and behind them, and while the bear could climb, she could climb faster and easily change trees, while it would be too heavy to do that readily. On the flats, she would have to depend on speed and agility alone if she elected to do claw-to-claw battle. Trickier.
    The smell of the water grew stronger, but it was not just the river; the threatened rain had arrived, drops beginning to patter down into the treetops.
    She slowed, as the rain grew stronger, the noise quickly masking other sounds. The bear’s scent washed from the air. She couldn’t see him, smell him, nor could she hear him moving, either.
    She slowed. Something was not right . . .
    The rain beat down, harder. The trees stopped some of it, but the light grew dimmer, and the rain itself was heavy enough to obscure vision.
    The bear was watching her.
    She knew it. Where was he, that he could see her?
    She moved slowly, only her head swiveling, as she scanned the trees ahead and to her sides.
    Behind her—
    Now she heard him, as he ran, splashing through the fresh puddles, feet thudding on the wet ground. She could feel the earth vibrating under his strides, six hundred kilos of carnivore in full charge—
    â€”She resisted the urge to scurry up the tree next to her but, instead, pivoted, marked the running creature, then darted to her left, putting a larger tree between herself and the bear. That done, she backed away, out of his sight—
    â€”He didn’t roar, and he was close enough that she could hear him breathing now, panting, the ground shaking more—
    â€”The bear passed the covering tree, saw her, tried to adjust his direction. He skidded on the wet ground, scrabbled to turn, and his claws, as long as her fingers and claws combined, dug gouts of dirt and mud from the earth, spattering it in all directions—
    â€”He slewed and dug his way toward her, and when he was five meters away and regaining speed, she leaped to her left and high, caught the bark of the fir tree with all her claws extended, and shoved off as the bear tried to stop, but slid past her perch—
    â€”She came down behind him, hit the muddy ground, and swiped at his right rear leg, hard, trying to catch a tendon. Her claws cut bloody furrows into the fur and flesh, but too high; she didn’t feel the snag of heavy connective tissue—
    â€”Now he roared, an ear-smiting scream of outrage. He spun around, faster than she expected, and she backed up in a hurry as he swung a clawed paw that would have broken her spine had it landed, missing by a few centimeters—
    â€”Kay jinked to the right, clawed her way up another tree, four meters, five—
    â€”The bear came up,