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Shifter Planet: The Return
by D.B. Reynolds

Copyright © 2019 by D.B. Reynolds. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Chapter One

The Year 4670, Earth Reckoning, The Planet Harp

Aidan raced through the trees, his big paws skimming over rough branches, his passage nearly silent despite his nearly three hundred pounds of savage muscle and bone. They’d had a late spring snow last night, the delicate flakes melting almost as soon as they hit the ground. But up here in the treetops, there were pockets of ice melt that left wet streaks of cold along his back. He leaped for a giant grandfather tree and paused, dropping onto his belly along a wide limb, feeling the life that flowed through the tree and beyond to the entire forest.

This was his domain. The domain of every shifter on Harp. More than any other, the verdant forest band known as The Green belonged to Harp’s shifters—men who could change from their human form to that of a giant hunting cat with barely a thought. Norms—that’s how shifters thought of the human population of Harp who couldn’t shift—sometimes asked whether shifters thought of themselves primarily as cats or humans. And, to a man, shifters would only stare blankly. There was no either-or for them. They simply were. They were shifters, and they ruled the planet. Their existence was the sole reason that humans had managed to flourish on Harp, the result of genetic manipulation designed to produce a human hybrid whom the unique planet would recognize as one of its own.

Because Harp wasn’t just any planet. Harp was aware. Or rather, its forests were, which was the same thing. Harp’s trees sang to those able to hear their voices. And of all the humans born on Harp, only shifters could hear that song. It was a song of abundance, telling shifters where prey could be found and which clusters of fruit trees were ripe for picking, and a song of danger, warning where predators lurked, and the many other threats that hid in the shadows. Those warnings had saved his cousin Rhodry’s life not too long ago, leading an Earther woman to where he lay badly injured. Rhodry had lived and the woman had become his wife. But that was another story.

It remained that there was no greater predator on Harp than the shifters themselves. They were the apex predator on a planet where the tiniest creatures could wipe out a huge chunk of forest with a single swarm, and where giant, fanged beasts roamed the northernmost glaciers. And still, shifters ruled.

They’d made the difference between life and death when the original colonists had been on the very edge of extinction, and they continued to make it possible for humans to thrive. Their ability to commune with the forests was the key to survival on this planet. It was only natural, then, that they also dominated virtually every aspect of Harp society.

And Aidan was one of them.

Although this morning, he was feeling more cast adrift and lonely than like a ruler of the planet. It was great running through the treetops, but not as much fun as it had been to run races with his cousin Rhodry. Unfortunately, Rhodry was still in Ciudad Vaquero, Harp’s capital city, which also happened to be Harp’s only city, so most people simply called it, “the city.”

Normally, not even the distance to the city would have stopped Rhodry. The miles passed swiftly in the treetops under a shifter’s paws, and Rhodry had never been one to follow the rules. If they missed him at the shifters’ Guild Hall in the city for a few days, who cared? Especially if it meant a chance to race with his favorite cousin. And, yes, Aidan was his favorite, despite the large number of Devlin cousins Rhodry had to choose from.

But Rhodry had a more powerful reason to remain in the city right now, and that was his wife, Amanda, who’d broken a few rules of her own to become not only the first non-shifter, but the first female member of the Guild. She also happened to be pregnant with twins, which was something very few people knew about yet. Her pregnancy was far enough along that they’d have to go public with it soon, but they’d wanted to wait. Twins weren’t unheard of in shifter births, but these were both male, and that had never happened before. Besides which, Amanda wasn’t Harp-born, and no one knew what risks she and her babies might face, given the relatively short period she’d had to adapt physically to the planet’s environment. It had only been two years, after all. That wasn’t long for a human body to adjust, especially not when one added the stress of carrying twin babies who were far from the human norm. It was one risk factor too many for Rhodry’s peace of mind, so, for now, he and Amanda were both staying put in the city and maintaining a low profile.

Twins! Aidan bared his teeth in a feline grin. And not just twins, but two mini-shifters—two mini Rhodrys—would soon descend on Harp. The heavens shuddered at the possibility. But Aidan’s grin only grew wider, startling a nearby covey of doves into a swirl of purple and green flight. He and Rhodry had been born within moments of each other, sharing a cradle, and had been inseparable from birth. They’d also been hell on their parents. If there was trouble to be found, they’d found it, and Aidan could only imagine Rhodi’s sons would be the same.

It was strange to realize that Rhodry was about to become a father. It was one more responsibility in a life already chock full of the same, since he was already the de Mendoza clan chief and adviser to the planet’s political leader, the Ardrigh, as he was known on Harp, which was old Irish Gaelic for king or ruler. It was a slight misnomer, since Harp’s system more closely resembled a parliamentary government—the title was more of a nod to their Earth roots, than anything else.

For all Rhodry’s new duties, however, Aidan wasn’t feeling all that responsible. Or maybe he just didn’t want to. Life was strange, but it was also—

He stilled, as all around him, the forest grew silent and alert. Beneath his paws, the grandfather tree was doing the same—listening, reaching out to the ends of the Green, searching for…what? Aidan’s ears swiveled, his head turning from side to side as he searched for the cause of the forest’s unease.

A heartbeat later, he saw it. A pale streak of movement where there should have been nothing but blue sky in this part of the Green, accompanied by a noise he knew well. It was similar to the roar of the shuttlecrafts that dropped through Harp’s atmosphere intermittently, on the Earth fleet’s regular supply run. But the last shuttle had been less than two months ago, and besides, they landed just outside the city, in an area far from this part of the forest. They were loud and stank of burning fuel and metal, only tolerated because of the benefit to Harp in terms of technology and information.

Tracking the intruder as it drew closer, he saw that, while it had the same markings as a fleet shuttle, it was a completely different kind of craft. The shuttles were small reentry vehicles sent down from a huge space-faring military vessel that traveled a regular supply route among several outlying planets. This vehicle was much larger than the shuttles, and it was not only FTL capable, but armed to the teeth.

Aidan’s eyes narrowed as the craft set down in a wide-open meadow on the far side of a severe rift known as the swamp. The name came from the microclimate deep in that rift, which bisected this part of the Green in a north/south direction, beyond the mountains of Clanhome. No one lived out this way, because the swamp was nearly impassable, except for shifters who could cross above it in the trees. There was no fresh water in its depths. Its swampy environment was the result of rain and snow melt from the ridges, which sank into the deep ground and accumulated in the bottoms. Heat from the sun, intensified by the surrounding forest, created a moist, marshy environment that was a mile wide from the air, but could take weeks to cross on foot. Travelers had to go down one side, transit the muddy bottom, and then up the other side, all while dealing with the swamp’s unique variety of predators. With such a small population and a vast living space, there was no reason for anyone to settle there.

Which made it all the more suspicious that an Earther craft was landing on the swamp’s far side. Two years ago, Harp’s people had greeted the rediscovery of their “lost colony” by a passing Earth fleet with very mixed feelings. On the one hand, they welcomed the technological advances the renewed connection with Earth provided. But on the other, they most definitely did not welcome the intrusion of Earth visitors to their planet. Harp’s forests and her shifters were a secret they didn’t want to share, and they didn’t want anyone digging into the truth of how they’d survived that original catastrophic landing so many centuries ago.

Their reluctant welcome had been borne out when a few of the very first fleet visitors had ignored on-planet restrictions and, as a direct result, inflicted severe damage to a section of the forest—both animals and trees. Fleet command had designated Harp as a restricted planet after that, largely at the insistence of the Ardrigh, but the incident had hardened Harper attitudes even further toward Earthers. In fact, Amanda was possibly the only Earth-native who was now considered a Harper.

As for this rather suspect landing by an Earth craft, the secretive location itself lent credence to his suspicions. Normally, there would have been no one this far out from the city or Clanhome to witness their arrival. A shifter patrol out of Clanhome rotated this way once every two months or so, crossing the swamp through the trees, which was much faster. There was good reason to venture this far on a regular basis. Harp was a harsh planet, and one had to keep an eye out for new threats. But it was pure good luck and coincidence that Aidan happened to be here on this particular day.

He watched as a definite new threat settled onto the planet’s surface. The noise and stink of the vehicle disturbed the Green’s usual peace, but the landing place was well-chosen for all that. By avoiding any damage to the trees, themselves, the ship minimized the possibility of the forest sending out an alarm right away. Which was alarming in itself. Whoever was onboard that ship knew enough to conceal its arrival, which meant they were almost certainly up to no good. One thing he knew for sure, they had no business being way out here at the outermost edge of Harp’s mountain range. His mountain range. The Ardrigh ruled the city, but the de Mendoza clan chief ruled the mountains, and with Rhodry gone, Aidan was his de Mendoza surrogate.

He had to find out who the hell was in that ship. Harp was a closed planet. No one, and that meant no one, was permitted to land a ship here—a restriction insisted on by the Ardrigh and supposedly enforced by Earth Fleet. And that brought up yet another worrisome point—that ship sure as hell hadn’t snuck through a reentry into Harp’s atmosphere. The planet had a perfect, natural defense mechanism in the form of a violently destructive electromagnetic anomaly that dominated the atmosphere. Any ship making that passage was easily detectable by the fleet’s science center in the city, which was partially responsible for enforcing the planet’s embargo. Any ship trying to break the embargo was marked and targeted for destruction. Given the already hazardous atmosphere, it didn’t take much to destroy an incoming ship. The fact that this ship had managed to evade detection and land way the hell out here, in the middle of nowhere, told Aidan that it hadn’t evaded detection at all. Someone in the science center had been bought off.

He frowned. All around him, the Green remained silent, waiting. Whoever had advised the intruders had done their job well. The forest didn’t see them as an immediate threat. At least, not yet. But they hadn’t gone to the trouble and expense of sneaking onto the planet in order to do good works. Aidan was certain of that, but he took his cue from the trees, watching and waiting. So far, the intruders hadn’t done anything but land far from the city, which was suspicious enough that he considered racing directly back to Clanhome to raise an alert. But he needed more information, and he was also reluctant to leave the ship out here alone. Even with a shifter’s speed, the journey to Clanhome would take many days there and back. Who knew what damage the intruders might do in the meantime?

When the Earthers had first rediscovered Harp, more than two years ago, a handful of fleet personnel had wiped out an enormous circle of forest and razed an ancient grandfather tree nearly down to its roots. They’d paid for it with their lives in the cataclysm, but nonetheless, they’d been nothing but a small group of fools who’d thought the rules didn’t apply to them. He was looking at a well-armed shipload of potential danger.

Decision made, he took off in the direction of the uninvited vessel. He’d cross the swamp and survey them first—evaluate the threat, and then, if necessary, rally some of his cousins out of Clanhome, which was a lot closer than the city. Whoever these invaders were, he was certain they’d never met a hunting party of shifters. Because if they had, they wouldn’t be alive to tell of it.