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It's nights like this when I find myself asking why do I do this job.

I'm a sane person. Well, according to the Agencies' psychologists I am. Why do I put myself through the hell that is being a Tracker. I just don't have an answer to the question. There are answers. Well, the civilians like to think that they know the answers. When someone finds out that I'm a Tracker, they always tell me what they think I do it for.

They think being a Tracker is like being in one of those action-adventure cop shows. Thrills, chills, sexy guest stars, complex mysteries, explosive violence, and those weird forensic shots. The reality is nothing like that. Data processing and form filling, long winded interviews with boring people, performance reviews and training lectures, physical fitness training, rooting around disgusting places for clues, and waiting. Lots and lots of waiting.

The case that I am on right now is typical of the job.

Tonight is the third day I've been here, sitting undercover and in the dark waiting for a feral that may not even exist. The farmer reckoned that he has a feral raiding his apple orchard, 'stripping him of hard earned money.' When I met him some sixty hours ago, the interview I had with him was long, boring, and totally predictable. He spent most of the time complaining on how his farm is being run into the ground because of all the tax he has to pay to support the bloated hive of big government. The irony that it is the bloated hive of big government that pays for the Agency he called on and for the Tracker that was sitting in front of him, was lost on him.

He then shows me the orchard where the raids have been. It's typical of it kind, rows of low trees already laden with the smallish green fruit of mid-summer. Several of the trees do show the signs of heavy stripping. There is no conclusive proof of ferals, it could have just as easily been his own livestock. When I suggest that, the farmers' response was violent and voluminous. During the five minutes of insults and threats he heaped on me, I did get informed that his youngest 'had seen people in orchard last night.' When I asked if I could talk to the child, I was told to that he was going to let his young'n be exposed to a Tracker.

Fear. They always fear us. We put our lives on the line on a daily basis to protect them and they still fear us. Given what we Trackers can do, and have done in the past, I can understand why.

Anyway, I nosed around the orchard for an hour looking for anything concrete to justify for me to continue being there. Nothing did. My sniffers picked up a few patterns that match the pheromone prints of various adults. They could just as easily be workers and visitors as the ferals. I didn't find any ritual or scent markings to point to tribal's. There wasn't even any tagging or junk-food wrappers that would show it was want-a-be's. There was just nothing conclusive.

Still, I got that feeling in my crop. I know I have to be here, even if it takes a ton of time sitting on my bum to prove it.

A call to headquarters puts me in to contact with the Director. She's a hard-case fem' who tougher and scarier than most males I've known over the years; that's including SAS training instructors. She's also someone who I trust my life to without a moments' hesitation. It's also nice to know she trusts me too. Willing to fund a stakeout on a simple feeling in my crop.

The farmer was begrudgingly happy that I will be staking out his orchard to catch the animals stealing his crops. To be honest, I was surprised that he didn't charge me for hiding my flitter in his barn.

So now I wait. Some time soon the ferals hunger will override their fear and they will raid the orchard for food. I'll be there to catch them. I'll be there to deal with the problem in the only way it can be dealt with. Come the light of one morning, they will no longer be a problem to our civilisation.

Joseph Wharekawa's neural-soft _binged_softly in his mind to alert him that another half hour had passed. With deliberate slowness he moved each muscle in his body in a series of flexes to prevent cramp. He could have moved more often, hidden as he was in hide made from stacks of fruit bins covered by a tarpaulin. The tracker didn't want to risk it. Ferals were habitually wary and he could not risk making a sound or movement that would scare them off. It would have really pissed him off to do that, after spending the last sixty-three duty-hours waiting for them to show.

Slowly breathing out at the end of his stretching routine, he took a sip from the drink bladder straw taped to the side of his head. The mouthful of cold energy drink chilled his tongue and Joseph tapped it against his beak in genetic habit. The drink lifts the faint fog from his thoughts and he cycles through the feeds from the spider drones he has placed throughout the orchard. There is the characteristic ripple of vertigo as his helms' projected each spiders' three-sixty by three-sixty sphere of senses on his own more limited stereoscopic vision. Each of the four reports in turn: no movement in visual ranges, no significant changes in ambient heat or audio patterns, no changes to the vibrational resonances, and no new patterns in the scent dynamics. Everything was a quiet as it should be in an apple orchard on the northern fringes of the Greensea Valley at three am.

Habitually Joseph automatically checks the systems Smart Rifle that rests cradled in his arms. The last thing he needs is the weapon to jam up on him at a critical moment. The Tracker squirts the diagnostic command through his palm 'ducers to trigger the rifles' systems check. One by one the weapons systems reported back to his neural-soft. Optics-sonar-radar-lidar clean and still operating in passive-mode. There was a point-zero-zero-four degree deviation at three-seventeen degrees z-axis on the barrel due to thermal dynamics which the rifle is now compensating for. Each of the magnets that make up the weapons' electromagnetic coil driver system are triggering within the accepted response time. Power cells are holding a ninety-four percent charge and are operating cool. Each of the four ammo clips respond that they are at full functionality, with the smart rounds adding their readiness to the report. The rifle was ready, the tracker was ready, now all that was needed was the feral.

As though waiting for its' cue, the feral comes in to the spiders' field of awareness. On the western edge of the orchard the spider squirts a report of definite blur of heat coming down from the edges of the mountains. Joseph ordered all spiders to switch their poly-chromatic skins to full camouflage and maximum passive sensor recording mode. Eventually the heat blur resolved in to two larger patterns, one of which was overly hot. Moments later the patterns become people as they enter in to the spiders' night-vision range.

The taller of the two is a bovine male, with wide spread horns and a single colour skin. He is clothed in the remains of a flowery dress that was probably snagged off someone's washing line in the past. There is a look of gauntness on his face, but his posture and build shows he had been well fed until recently. In the sparking greenness of the night-vision feed, one of his eyes is a different shade to the other and would glow like a flare when the light hit it right.

That's an optic prosthetic implant, Joseph silently commented, this guy was a civil till just recently. Won't know if he was a break or dee until I tag, bag, and can pull the records.

The other is a female bovine, and the complete opposite to her companion. Her skin appears patchy in the green light of the feed. Her horns are small and twisted, short slumped posture, and prominent bones are all characteristic of a lifetime of limited food. A white animal feed sack wrapped around her hips is her only clothing. There is a heavy sling is crossing a naked breasts. The tracker wondered why she was carrying for only a moment before it squirmed. She looks down with loving eyes then flipped the sling over to the other shoulder and adjusted the now covered breast inside of it. Joseph breathed out a hiss as he watches the feed from the spider; it captured the face of an infant bovine, no more than two months old, inside the makeshift sling.

Now we know why the farmer being raided. They are desperate for food to nourish the mother so she can feed her baby. This complicates things. The Tracker muttered.

The family walk warily in to the apple orchard, constantly searching the darkness for the faintest sign of danger. Slowly they make their ways down on of the lines of the apple trees. The male removed a makeshift backpack from his shoulders and the two of them begin to fill it with the still green apples. Franticly they pick, desperate to escape the place of danger. It is clear to the Tracker that they would only stop and eat when they were safely away from all signs of civilisation. Joseph knew that he had only one chance to make the shot.

Lifting the rifle up to his shoulder, he swapped its' optical feed to main view and shifted spiders' to the periphery. The weight of the weapon steady his aim, and slowly he shifted is body in minute movements to bring the targeting cross-hairs in alignment. The female was the obvious choice of target. When she went down, the male would hesitate in the conflict to flee to safety or stay to protect her and their baby. That would give the Tracker the precious seconds to target the male and take him down.

Three-hundred metres was in the easy range for the rifle, but the female is standing with her back to him. Joseph doesn't want to hit the infant when he takes her down. The seconds ticked by as he waits for a clear shot.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

!Boom!

A white hot beam of a torch washes across the faces of the terrified ferals as another shotgun blast shattered the night air. The male let out a guttural curse and sprints out of the orchard dragging the half filled backpack behind him. The female screeching behind him, zig-zaging away while shielding her baby with her body.

Erupting from cover like a shark from the waves, Joseph is horrified to see the farmer drop his torch and bring both hands to aim the shotgun at the fleeing family. The Tracker reacted automatically, bringing his truncheon to hand and throwing it with a cracking snap that knocked the gun from the farmers' hands.

"Fuck!" bellows the farmer as he grabs his left wrist. "What the fuck are doing! You should be getting them, not me."

Jumping down from the fruit bins, Joseph kept the farmer covered with his rifle and coms' his spiders to a follow of the fleeing ferals. In mechanical tone of the helmet he states, "What I was doing was my job. Until you burst on the scene and screwed everything up."

The middle-aged Bison sourly spat, "Fuck'n didn't look like it. It looked like you were letting them steal more of my crop. I thought that you mongrel catchers were 'sposed to do just that, catch fucking animals."

Flipping up the poly-carb faceplate of his helmet, Joseph gave the farmer a cold look that set him shivering in his shaggy skin. The Trackers' grey-green feathers took an unearthly cast in the starlight. Black eyes glittered with the iciness of trained killer. The viscously long curved black beak was tattooed with a tribal patterns in white ink. The Bison was taller and much heaver than the Kea that confronted him, still he stepped back in fear from the birds' raw menace.

Suppressing a wave of annoyance the Tracker stated, "I will catch the uncivilised people. My spiders are following them as we speak. I will not have interference."

"It's my land, and I've got's a right to defend it."

"The second you contacted the authorities about your problem, you automatically handed over the responsibility of dealing with it to us. Interfering with a Confederation Government appointed officer of the law enacting their duty is a criminal offence with a mandatory fine and corporal punishment. I am willing to overlook your previous actions if you return to your home right now and leave me to do my job."

With that the Tracker closed the faceplate, having no more interest in dealing with the civilian, and walks to his flitter hidden in the farmers' barn. He did not even bother to look back to see if the stunned farmer was following his orders.

Stepping inside the middle section of the four turbine air truck, he dropped the rifle in to its mount and backed in to the rear wall. Smart cables snaked out and docked with the sockets of his body armour. Moments later, armatures reached out and merged with the skeleton of the armours' framework. A part of the roof retracted and Joseph launched out of the flitter like a spring. He landed with his feet suspended a metre and a half above the concrete floor of the barn. Mounted inside the body of a scout combat exo-skeleton, the Tracker looked like an armoured knight that had been swallowed by a giant demon.

It stood on back bending legs ending in huge raptor shaped feet. Its' overly long arms looked like body-builders' legs ending in brutish boxers' hands. A sensor pod 'head' perched on a long flexing neck rising from a heavy hunchback torso. The exo-suit looked more like the animal than the being piloting it. With a surprisingly soft foot falls, the exo' mimicked the movement of its' occupant and walked out of the barn. Dropping to its' hands, it raced off on all fours like a giant predator as the Tracker ran to catch up to his spiders.

By the precursors, I hate bigots like that farmer.

He's a Bison, which makes him a First Tribes' nation member or at least a descendant of one. Eight-hundred years ago his ancestors had their own civilasation that been destroy by outside forces and had driven many of them in to life not that far removed than the ferals I'm chasing after. Hell, his grandparents could have been Crisis survivors. Refugees struggling to survive the destruction of the Callaon Fault-line and the isolation of the old West Coast. They may have done the same things to stave off starvation as those bovines were doing tonight. Raiding farmers and homestead for enough food to keep them alive for another day. It hasn't even been a hundred years since this country almost died. Three generations from the time when brother turned against brother and the lands became soaked in blood as everyone fought and killed to survive.

It was people like him that made life a living hell for my unit when I was here with the UN Peace Keepers. He could have been one of those masked vigilantes that lynched people who were a threat to his country's way of life. He could have been one of the militia men marching around the interment camps with his rifle held high and his morals held low. Beating and raping those who were considered unfit to members of civilisation. Are there bodies in those undiscovered mass graves that bear the marks of his hands?

Then again, he could be another innocent civilian living with the scars of the Black War, White War, or one of the countless other ones. Another soul afraid of the monsters that lurk outside the dim light of civilisation. Living with the pain of those he lost to the barbaric and violent of the dark days of the past. Reacting as anyone would to protect those they loved.

That's the hell of this job, you just can't tell which of the realities is the truth.

There are times when I hate living here.

The feral's trails were not hard to track in the dusty dirt of the Jolona Ranges. Thermal glows of their heavy footprints, pheromone columns from splashes of sweat, broken scrubby wild plants signposting their flight. Their escape glowed a vivid blue on Josephs' Heads-Up-Display. High in the mountains he was brought short by the spiders.

An observer would be unnerved by the spiders. The drones were the size a large dog and walked on long wide splayed legs. Their form had the shape of a spider but with a shell covered in projections and spikes that belonged on a crayfish. Coated in a dull poly-chromatics finish that rippled and shifted to blend them in to their environment. Robots modelled on real living creatures was nothing new, even ones that were scaled to unusual sizes. What truly would have disturbed the observer is the drones movements. Machines did not constantly twitch with a hungry anticipation.

They milled around below the crest of a low rise between two hills. They squeaked and chattered with joy in the richness of the trails they had found. It took a barked command across their com' channel to get some semblance of order. They had found at least sixteen distinctive scent patterns emanating from this area, many of which did not match known patterns in their databases. The strength of the pheromones indicated that they been here for several days. According to the spiders, there was a huge lake of their scents that was spilling like water over the rise. Intrigued by the volume and quality of the strange smells, they quivered with eagerness wanting to discover the sources. It was only their conditioning that kept them back, to prevent them from alerting the targets of their presence.

Calling up a topographical map from the net, Joseph found that rise formed a lip to a small bowl depression in the mountain. At the far end was a shallow cave, according to the data, and many smaller nooks and crannies where a person could hide from the sun during the day. A six month old biographic map reported that there was plenty of wild plants for food and a small freshwater pool fed by the mountain run-off. It would have been the place that he would have chosen if he was wanting to hide.

Using the survey map, the Tracker manually directed each of the spiders to locations ringing the bowl, ordering them to stealth guard mode. Dropping the exo-suit to its belly, he crawls to the ridge. Raising one arm, a thin remote sensor tube snakes out and starts to scan the area. Nothing definitive. Out of the exos' humpback he released a dozen small insect like spy-fly drones, guiding the softly buzzing machines down to the cave. Joesphs' combat suit computer takes it's time compiling the limited data streams from each of the mosquito-like drones. Another hiss of surprise escapes his beak as the image inside the cave is resolved.

There are thirty-plus ferals crammed inside the limited space of the shallow cave. They vary in age from that bovine infant still inside its' mothers' sling, to a well-worn looking female elk who could be in her fifties. There was a mixture of races in the pack, but more interesting was that several of the individuals were mixtures themselves. One looked like it had Coyote, Eagle, Shark and Hare in his parentage. A young female had Bear, Fox, and Salamander. Others had origins that were too mixed to be clear. That sort of genetic blending could only come from many generations of breeding within a limited gene pool.

Wilds, Joseph cursed to himself, they are bloody wilds! No wonder the spiders didn't recognised the scent patterns. To see that much bitsing in a group would make the pack date back to the days of the Crisis; maybe the marshal law days of the Old State. How many years have they been running? How did they survive that long?

The tracker did not have that long to ruminate on the packs' origins. Shaking each of them awake in the pre-dawn light were the two he had been tracking. The spy-flies picked up their speech, a garbled blend of Anglo and Carnos. Concentrating, the tracker could make out what they were saying. It was a calls of 'Get up and get moving', 'The cagers almost caught us', and 'The cagers will be here soon.' That explained to Joseph why they had not been caught, because they ran at the first sign of trouble. It made trouble for him too. It was time for the Tracker to improvise.

Leaping the exo-suit to its' feet, he punched the spiders to full response mode. Charging down the slope of the bowl he had the exos' sirens and flashers blasting, its' poly-chromatic skin oscillating through an eye-bleeding rainbow of colours. To a soul, the ferals started screaming in fear of this five metre tall monster charging at them. The braver males, the ex-civil bovine included, grabbed what they could and started throwing it at the monster. Rocks and crude scavenged spears were no match for armour design to absorb two-hundred Mega joules impacts.

Trapping them in the cave the tracker brought the exos' bulging forearms up like a sleepwalker. Covers exploded off. Pulsating lights, bright enough to be seen thought the flesh of fingers, engulfed the terrified uncivil's. A devils hymn of screeching deafened them in the caves' confines, vibrating every bone in their bodies. They fell shrieking and cursing in their garbled tongue, futilely trying to block out the lights and sounds raking their brains. They writhed in to stillness as their thoughts were ripped apart by the disrupter; some frothing at the mouth, other befouling themselves.

Somehow the augmented male bovine managed to remain coherent enough to launch an attack at the exo-suit. It was a futile gesture. A metre from the exo he was slammed to the ground by a spider, it's poly-chromatic skin tiger striped with sickly green and blue. The ex-civil would have been strong enough to throw the light-weight spider off, but the drone simply bonded its' feet to the cave floor and held him down with its' body. Driving its' fangs in to the corded muscles of its' prey neck, it's venom quickly stilled him. With the last feral dealt with, the Tracker disengaged his combat armour and step down from the exo-suit. Slowly he sorted the bodies, giving each one a quick examination before applying the barrel of a heavy gun like device to each of their necks. Once done, he made his report to the Agency headquarters and waited for the body retrieval teams to arrive.

* * *

The spiders were still trussing up the ferals with their silk as the fleet of Agency flitters made their landing outside of the stone bowl. Regional Director Gale Windwalker was the first over the crest with a teams of medics and guards close at her heals. The tall athletic puma flashed a sharp tooth smile a the scene bellow her. The ferals were neatly arranged in a row at the cave mouth; cocooned in soft spider silk and sleeping with peaceful expressions on their faces.

She made her way down the slope to the Tracker, who was busy with other matters. The medics scatter among the sleepers and were quickly calling out instructions to the guards. Each 'Good to go' was confirmation that it is safe to transport the ferals to the Headquarters. Josephs' medi-doser had delivered the correct mixtures of drugs needed to help them recover from the exos' neural-disruptor's. Sitting on a bended knee of exo, the helmet-less Tracker is holding the bovine infant in his arms. Those dark eyes now sparkled with kindness and the tattooed beak now looked more befitting a clown. The Kea was smiling as he made silly sounds which brought joyous giggles from the child.

Resting a heavy hand on the shoulder of the avian, the feline let out a soft guffaw, "What the hell am I going to do with you, boy. I send you out on a babysitting job, we think is no more that a farmer wanting us to scare the local wildlife, and you give us thirty-four wild ferals." A nod of Joseph's head brought the correction, "Sorry little one, thirty-five. I know someone is going to get a big bonus on their commissions this month."

Flexing her claws out in to his shoulder she growled, "It doesn't change what you did. That farmer is already howling at us, at his councilman, and at his senator about what you did to his wrist. He's already claiming that he has been disabled by your attack. He demanding damages for loss of income because he will be unable to work his farm. The last thing the agency needs is another 'excessive response' lawsuit."

Looking up with a smiling face and a quite tone Joseph said, "You've got a copy of my logs already boss. If you see what that farmer tried to do the ferals, you can see why I acted as I did."

Picking up the baby from the Trackers' arms, the director pressed the child to her breast and made a soft rumbling sound that made the bovine yawn. Gently rocking the infant to sleep, the big cat turned and faced her subordinate with a warm smile. "I already have. You did the right thing. Not only could we have had three deaths, but we never would have known about this pack.

"Don't worry about it. I've set the legal department on the case; and you know what a bunch of rabid wolves they are. By the time we are through with him, he will be thankful to get off with a thousand hours of community service."

Whispering as not to wake the sleeping infant, the Director ordered, "I've allocated you a week off with standby pay. You've earn it. Now go home before I order I the medics to tranq' you."

Slipping his helmet back on, the Tracker mounted his exo-suit and marshalled his spiders. Slowly he walked away in the orange tinted dawn.

Looking at that infant, I know why I do this job.

It's not for the money or the excitement, 'cause truthfully, there ain't a lot of either. I'm never going to be famous or influential. The public treats us with disgust or hatred, unless they are under threat, then they treat us as sacrificial knights.

There is only one reason why. I do it for them. Each one that I capture is another life that I save.

Because of what I do, that little girl, her family, her pack, will have a chance to live a better life. A chance to know a life without fear and deprivation. To live a long life and to make a difference to those around them.

This is why I do this job, and what better reason is there.