The Winter Tiger

  Copyright © L.A. Frederick 2020

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise without written permission from the author.

  L.A. Frederick

  Visit my website http://www.lafrederick.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  By L.A. Frederick

  1. Winter on Earth

  2. The Band Goes Home

  3. The Boredom of Winter

  4. The Fortress of Lupus

  5. The Dungeons Of Tigris

  6. The Hunt

  7. The Legacy of Winter

  8. The Siege Of Agnus

  9. The Hexadome

  10. Training Lupus

  11. The Test of Lupus

  12. The Vegetation Of Lupus

  13. The Ice of Winter

  14. The Alliance of Worlds

  15. The March of Tigers

  16. The Wolves At War

  17. The Battle of Brunneis Ursa

  18. The Ruin of Brunneis Ursa

  19. The Sting of Winter

  20. The Victory of Brunneis Ursa

  Notes

  Get In Touch

  By L.A. Frederick

  Songs of Star & Winter

  Star Wolf

  The Winter Tiger

  The Night Badger

  The Mutant Rain

  The Rain

  The Fall

  The Snow

  The Mutant Rain Origins

  The Lost Boy (exclusive to mailing list)

  The Last Doctor

  The Forgetful Man

  Second-In-Command

  The Lone Vigilante

  Back for more, huzzah

  1. Winter on Earth

  The Winter Tiger had found his target, the young Wolf was nearly in touching distance. He stalked through the thick snow, every padded paw a careful, precise movement. The Wolf was unaware of his presence. Time to move in for the kill. His heart raced, the thrill of the chase coming to its climax, a victory only he would know, on this strange and barren planet. He’d never hunted a mindless creature before. The few Wolves he had encountered in his brief, teenage life had been intelligent creatures, touched by the Universal Beacon. Here on Earth, they were either mindless prisoners, sent by the Council of Worlds, having received the harrowing punishment of the Mind Eraser machines, or their mindless ancestors.

  Back on Tigris, his father had provided all his meals, but he wasn’t on his homeworld anymore. For the few hours he’d been on Earth he was free to do as he saw fit, which included tracking and devouring a Wolf.

  For the first time in his short life he felt brave.

  A feeling that intensified as he bound over the final few yards to his victim, it was the first time he’d ever killed a living creature before, and it felt good. Blood and raw meat filled his mouth and he savoured every sensation, warm liquid oozed down his whiskers and onto the white snow. After a while he took a few paces back to take stock of what he had achieved, glaring triumphantly at a crimson pool melting the snow.

  To have the power of death at the tips of his claws was beyond exhilarating. The dead Wolf before him was a mess of shattered bones, gristle and shredded meat. Winter had heard of other creatures staring at their first kill and feeling shame or being sick, and yet he suffered neither of these things. If anything, he ran polar opposite, pride and hunger dominated his mind.

  He was born to be a killer, despite what his father said, you’re no killer, Winter.

  ‘Look at me now, Father,’ the Winter Tiger said as the wind buffeted past him. It was time to track his mother and father, the primary reason he’d snuck aboard their ship, bound for Earth, in the first place. To his shame, when they landed he had cowered away in the cargo bay for fear of the rebuke, and beating, his father would dish out. By the time he plucked up the courage to go and find them they had already left. As it transpired it was the best thing that could ever have happened to Winter, he’d been forced to fend for himself out in the wild.

  He excelled at the task.

  WINTER’S YOUTHFUL EXUBERANCE and confidence had deserted him. It only took a couple of hours after his first kill. He was lost in the snowy wilderness of a strange and alien planet, his parent’s scents long gone. As a White Tiger he was used to ice-cold conditions and yet roaming the open snowfields had taken its toll.

  He needed to find shelter fast.

  Howling winds bit at his drenched fur pelt, he needed fire and warmth. Not that Winter knew how to make a fire, this foolish expedition had schooled him in harsh lessons. Every direction showed him a swirling mess of white, no trees, no mountains, no chance of survival. His parents had come here on a fool’s errand, chasing his mother’s brother.

  ‘Mother,’ he cried out, the fierce winds answered with a whooping delight. ‘What

  a way to die.’ With every step, down on four paws, his aching limbs turned to stone. The end was setting into his very body. I’ll just close my eyes, only for a moment.

  That moment took hold of Winter and plunged him into darkness, an eternal void that led nowhere. Winter gave into black; his surroundings and impending death mirrored the beautiful contrasts with his fur. He sat with eyes closed and tried to enjoy the simplicity and peacefulness of death. Within the darkness of his own eyelids, his fiery yellow eyes danced with erratic menace. A bright light shot across the horizon, so fierce Winter’s eyes snapped open.

  ‘Fire,’ he whispered.

  And with the blaze came a pungent tang of smoke, mixed with the familiar sweaty, woody scent of his father and the gorgeous lavender, floral notes of his mother. His parents were fleeing from the light.

  ‘Why are they running?’ He cursed himself for being a coward back on the ship. If only he’d followed them, then he’d know where they were going and why they ran.

  Out in the cold, he shivered at the notion of them turning away from heat, neither of his parents had been fans of the cold. They just knew how to survive in harsh conditions. A rumbling stomach and a newfound desire to survive sparked Winter into action and despite the biting wind slamming into his cheeks he bounded forward through the knee-high snow but with every step the depth increased. He had to revert to standing on his hind legs, the snow now up to his hips and soaking right through his meagre brown woollen clothing.

  ‘Mother! Father!’ he called out and his words echoed all around him. His own words bounced back from a huge mountain, surrounded by towering pine trees. The numerous fires skipped through the trees and shouts and jeers accompanied them. Winter’s body stopped; his parents were being hunted.

  ‘Humans.’ Winter had heard many tales of their cruelty. It was one of the primary reasons the galaxy used Earth as a dumping ground for its criminals. The barbaric Mind Eraser machines would strip a guilty animal of their conscious thoughts and their ability to speak or walk properly on their hind legs and revert them back to their primal status. All animals had existed that way before the Universal Beacon touched the galaxy over ten millennia ago.

  It was the reason his parents had come to this Elderforsaken planet, they were trying to rescue his mother’s brother. She insisted her kin was innocent and yet the Elder Three, Tigris’s imperious rulers, had banished him regardless. Winter wasn’t keen on his uncle, another cruel and bitter Tiger like his father, but he didn’t wish this fate on him. It was a fate that had led Winter’s family to follow into the jaws of the humans.

  He couldn’t abandon his mother and father and so he sped forward. He moved his soaking legs fast
er than he ever had before. His primal desire to protect pushed him on and fuelled the rising rage. He was gaining on his parents and thus widening the gap between their hunters and him, but they had run down a ravine. They reeked of panic and fear. He too was now trapped in the narrow passageway that weaved further into the mountain.

  He had no choice but to pursue.

  ‘Father?’ he called in desperation. ‘Mother?’

  Still his pleas went unanswered. The two Tigers ahead of him bounded on and into a dark cave. Even from a distance Winter could smell the fusty dank air within the abyss. Other Tigers lurked in that tunnel too, multiple scents stopped him in his tracks. His parents weren’t alone in the darkness. Perhaps they had found his uncle, or perhaps predators lay in wait.

  Indecision plagued Winter. Ahead of him awaited a potential mauling from his father’s claw or perhaps a stranger’s claw and behind lurked, drawing ever closer, the notorious human breed he had been warned about. The decision was made for him as gunfire rattled out, puffs of white snow erupted all around him.

  ‘Over here.’

  ‘We’ve got one.’

  ‘Push him into the cave.’

  Several humans shouted out orders and sprinted toward Winter. He had no choice but to enter the darkness. At least it was an environment he was accustomed to dealing with. Winters on Tigris lasted a generation in the north, hence his mother’s reason for naming him after the season.

  His keen eyes adjusted to the light in seconds, a constant dripping from deep within the cave squashed any chance to hear the muffled conversation up ahead. Or was his mind fabricating hushed tones? He could smell his mother and father. They had stopped moving. After a minute or so padding across treacherous rock pools, the total darkness of the cave expanded into an open dome deep beneath the mountain, slivers of light crept in through gaps in the rocks hundreds of feet above. In the expansive opening three Tigers crouched in the corner behind a huge formation of rocks, they did their best to hide from him, their black and white fur blended into the dark grey of the cave.

  ‘It’s alright it’s me, Win—’ he didn’t finish the sentence before he was slammed hard from behind. Air rushed out of him and he cracked his jaw on the rocks beneath. On instinct he spun, slashing his front paws out at the mysterious attacker, a fearsome White Tiger, of the mindless variety. This was a creature either born on Earth or sentenced to live out their life on Earth after committing a crime back on Tigris.

  Winter connected hard with the creature drawing a yelp from the burly animal, who backed up.

  ‘Wait, what are you doing?’ asked Winter, as the other Tiger charged. He picked its attack and dodged it with ease, much to his surprise.

  ‘Winter? What on Tigris are you doing here?’ His mother’s voice had a calming effect on the vicious Tiger before him, who he now realised was his uncle. His uncle paced on all fours a sliver of recognition emanated from his icy-blue eyes, but he didn’t talk and was completely naked, his fur matted and covered in filth. He had had his mind erased.

  It was the first time in his life Winter had witnessed the full effects of the Mind Eraser machines. To stand before a creature stripped of the blessings given by the Universal Beacon chilled Winter. He shuddered; this truly was a fate worse than death.

  ‘Uncle?’

  ‘Not anymore,’ snapped his overweight father, his black and white belly poured over the top of black leather trousers. He cuffed Winter around the back of his ear. ‘I did wonder when you were going to show up, you took your time.’

  He knew I was on the ship.

  ‘You knew he was on the ship?’ asked his mother, fury etched across her proud, wide Tiger face. Winter always wondered what she saw in his oafish father, he assumed as was the way with Elder Law, they both ran out of time and were assigned to each other. It was a fate more common amongst the rare White Tigers on Tigris, and a law that one did not disobey. The Tiger race always needed more cubs to further their dynasty across the galaxy and no Tiger could refuse the call for the greater of the

  species. Those that did refuse wound up like Winter’s uncle.

  ‘Quiet, will you?’ Winter’s father struck her. ‘Do you want those damn hunters to find us?’ Torchlights filtered into the cave. ‘Never mind, it looks like our son has led them right to us. You really are useless, aren’t you? Quick, behind there.’

  Three of the Tigers hid.

  The fourth did not.

  He was too primal, too mindless to cower in fear. Instead, Winter’s uncle charged full tilt at the trio of men entering the vast opening. Gunshots echoed out before two distinctive shrill cries pierced the air. Two men died but the third hit his target. The bullet cannoned straight through his uncle’s skull. The mindless Tiger never let out one cry of pain. He was dead before he knew the shot was fired.

  Winter’s mother grabbed him tight pulling him as far back into the cave and darkness she could, his father merely concerned himself with his own welfare. Not once did he glance back to check if his partner and son were OK. His cowardly milky-grey eyes were preoccupied with the humans prowling the cave. Winter sat there, with thoughts running through his mind, like should he push his father out into the open and be done with him for good, should he attack and protect his parents, or should he wait and cower in fear like he always did.

  Terror won out.

  Winter endured, as his mother always said he would.

  His rotund father wasn’t as lucky, the humans and their guns caught up with him and the shots rattled into his fatty flesh. To Winter’s dismay, his mother let out a yelp of agony. Winter he couldn’t understand why she cared if that fat slob lived or died. He felt nothing for his father lying dead in a pool of water and his own blood. The anguished cry brought the Apex predators around the corner and they found their target firing a barrage of shots into his mother. All the while she concealed Winter’s small frame. The humans never saw him and left him in the cave alone with his dead parents and uncle.

  Hours passed by in the darkness.

  Winter sat for a time sobbing and when he had no tears left to give his mother he sat in silence, this place would be his tomb. Not if you return to the ship.

  Winter got to his feet and slowly padded out of the cave.

  Once outside he remembered who he was, and returned to hind legs, marching all the way back to his late mother and father’s spaceship. He vowed three things that day, one never to show weakness again, two never to be afraid again and three to only return to Earth to kill them all.

  He was the Winter Tiger, one of the last of his kind.

  2. The Band Goes Home

  The Band of Breeds had borne witness, out on the open plains of Leo, to the most heinous crime ever committed in the history of the galaxy. And the worst part about the Winter Tiger destroying one hundred and eleven planets was he had done it with consummate ease.

  A month on and Star Wolf continued to come to the briefing room at the back of Lupenroad to glare at the ominous 3D digital display, one hundred and eleven red dots in a sea of stars. It was a wide, open room, with enough wooden benches to house all three hundred Wolves aboard, with blank white walls for image projections.

  Star had insisted the map of the entire known galaxy be left spread out in the air across the room. He walked through the imagery, almost feeling the pain and death of those tiny red dots. Every sharp fragment of red light caused him to squint. The red dots represented but a fraction of the galaxy, and yet at least one hundred million deaths lay at the Tiger’s feet. And they’re proud of it!

  ‘You there,’ Star noted a slender, young Wolf in the corner of the room fiddling with a fuse box at the base of the lowest bench, ‘this display is incorrect.’

  The mousey-brown Wolf stood upright to reveal his tall frame, one that struggled to fill the House of Wolves uniform. He was another technician, not a fighter. ‘How so, sir?’

  ‘It’s missing the other planets the Tigers destroyed, add the other f—’ Star paused. ‘Six planets
, including Earth. Now.’

  His prickly demeanour, understandable in his mind, didn’t seem to bother the strange young Wolf who merely walked over to the far corner, where the control panel sat, and edited the 3D image. ‘There.’ He turned to face Star Wolf. ‘Is that better, sir?’

  ‘No, but at least it’s accurate. We cannot allow anyone to forget a single death the Tigers have enacted.’

  ‘Quite.’ The Wolf shuffled, scrapping his exposed claws, a rarity amongst Wolves given they almost always wore boots, on the dusty wooden floor. ‘Will that be all?’

  Star nodded and was alone once more in the only room that reminded him of home. The sickness of failure and space travel was all too much, he needed to retreat to Lupus and hope the Band of Breeds would honour their promises.

  It was time to build an army.

  ‘WE’RE AT WAR NOW, I’LL return home and assemble as many fighting Badgers as I can, but I warn you now, it won’t be enough.’ That was the gruff but fair assessment from the Night Badger as he departed Lupus in his robust, beautiful, black and white spaceship Eurasian. As with all Badger crafts it was a stocky chunk of metal, curved at the front, almost resembling a bullet; though speed wasn’t a trait Badgers poured into their ships. The Night Badger continued, against Star’s will, to pilot the Eurasian alone. He had stated on many occasions how he knew the ship like the back of his paw and fobbed off Star’s protests.

  There’s no point arguing.

  ‘And besides,’ the Night Badger had grumbled on more than one occasion, ‘she’s got so many automatic features, she can practically fly herself to Melis on her own.’ Star had never travelled to Melis, the Badger’s homeworld and suspected he’d never get the chance unless he motivated himself to win the war against the Tigers.

  ‘Travel safe,’ Star Wolf had said as he stepped away from the ramp leading into the fuselage of the ship.

  A crowd of Wolves had gathered to see off not only the Night Badger but also the Scarlett Fox and the mysterious Leopard, Shadowfang. Each one had the same mission, gather up as many fighters from their homeworld and bring them to Lupus, as fast as possible.