Chapter 10 Ror’k
The roar tore out of me before I could stop it, vibrating through the shuttle’s cabin. Dottie stood exposed in the open field, with nothing but a folding table as her weapon, with a mutated flyer swooping straight for her. Rage and fear slammed into my chest so hard it stole my breath.
Without thinking, I forced the shuttle into a steep dive.
Metal groaned around me as I urged the craft downward, pushing it lower to the ground than was safe. I was beyond logic now, and my only goal was to protect Dottie. All that mattered was getting between her and the deadly mutation.
The ground rushed up fast, and I angled the nose at the last moment, so close to the ground now that my shuttle skimmed the top of the clear covers the human survivors had just put up. The abomination shrieked, finally sensing danger. It tried to veer away, but it was too slow.
A savage snarl ripped from my throat as the front of my shuttle’s hull slammed into the creature.
The impact jolted through the shuttle, but I maintained course, dragging the beast upward with me as I powered back into the sky.
Its claws scraped uselessly at the metal while I hauled it higher, away from the settlement, away from any chance it had to harm what was mine to protect.
The flyer writhed against the hull, wings beating frantically. Its screeches rattled through the shuttle’s frame, but I kept climbing until the settlement shrank beneath me, then swung the craft in an arc, away from New Franklin.
By the time the flyer freed itself from the force of my shuttle, we were no longer over the settlement or their fields. Free to safely engage, I shot at the creature, sending round after round of blaster fire at it until it fell to the ground in pieces.
Below, the battle spread across the abandoned town. Our shuttles moved in coordination, pushing the mutations past the perimeter. The humans had mounted old shuttle blasters to the ground, pointing up at the sky. They picked the flyers off one by one with deadly precision.
I was used to dealing with different scourge mutations.
The swarm usually generated specialized mutants for a planet after several generations.
Usually, they were more difficult to deal with than the basic scourge phenotypes like the scuttlers, spitters, lungers, flyers, swimmers, queens, and live ships.
Compared to the centicreep, Earth’s first mutations, these mutated flyers weren’t too difficult to fight.
They did, however, cut in on our human counterparts’ working hours, making it harder to rebuild their world. Our world too now.
My comm crackled with Jask’l’s voice. “Incoming from the north.”
I shifted my gaze. A cluster of shapes moved fast across the abandoned town below.
These weren’t twisted mutations. Their bodies held the familiar armored plates of regular scourge; mostly scuttlers and spitters, but also a few normal, unmutated flyers too.
They poured in from the north and advanced toward the settlement with a singular purpose.
This made no sense. It was much too early in the day for the scourge to be out en masse. The mutations were known to be active at dawn and dusk, but the others, especially the flyers, should not be here. Something was drawing them in.
It was doubly suspicious, considering New Franklin hadn’t had a scourge attack since the First Annual Trader’s Market. How had the scourge known it was the first day of spring planting and there would be plenty of prey in the field?
The settlement and the fields were protected behind several tall, heavy-duty fences, but they were still left exposed to air attacks. And it was na?ve to leave the scourge attacking the fences.
I tightened my grip on the controls and turned my vessel to intercept the incoming scourge, even as I scanned the field across the way, my eyes looking for a certain pink streak of hair.
Dottie was running with a group of humans back toward the safety of the buildings.
Someone had already warned them of the incoming danger.
The last few days had been maddening. Every time I tried to get to her, something else would demand my attention, pulling me away when all I wanted was her.
I could only hope she’d gotten the gifts I left behind.
Humans used gifts as part of their courting rituals, and hopefully, it was enough until I caught her again.
I focused on the scourge on the ground, but I only managed to fire several shots into the pile of scuttlers and spitters before Jask’l’s voice rang out from the speakers. “Hunters are on the ground.”
That was my cue to focus on the flyers again lest I injure our own warriors.
It was a good thing I’d killed at least two spitters before they arrived.
But suddenly, the scourge all seemed to retreat just as quickly as they’d arrived.
I chased them to the edge of the town below, confused about their erratic behavior.
“Shit!” the alien expletive coming from my shuttle’s speakers came from Roger on the ground. “It was a distraction! The NEM!”
New Earth Militia. Unlike the humans we worked with, the NEM hated Xarc’n warriors.
In our hunt to eliminate the scourge, we’d encountered resistance in almost every inhabited planet we visited.
Earth’s resistance had been particularly strong.
Dealing with them had been worthwhile, however, because we’d found that human females were not only sexually compatible, but biologically as well.
For hundreds of years, Xarc’n warriors had been cloned from the original ten thousand warriors.
Over time, clonal decay would set in, and we’d need new DNA to avoid the fate of disappearing from the universe forever. The rest of the Xarc’n people were already lost, and we were the last bastion of hope. Earth had been the answer.
And while I was too old to remove my fertility block, it was a different matter for many of the other hunters.
And besides, I didn’t need to personally pass on my genetics when hunters like Kaj’k, who was cloned from the same original hunter I was, could do so for me.
He already had an offspring of his own with his mate Alice, and every time I saw him I thought of the first time I’d met Kaj’k himself, fresh from the large vat of amniotic fluid we used as artificial wombs.
I hadn’t been the overseer yet then.
“Shit!” Roger swore. “They have shuttles!”
The New Earth Militia was a coalition of many smaller groups.
Separately, they were disorganized and lacked resources to be much of a threat, but together, united with their main goal of driving the “aliens” from Earth, they were a true force to be reckoned with.
Especially since they hated Xarc’n warriors just as much as they hated the scourge, and considered any human working with us to be their enemies as well.
The worst part was that they had recently taken over several Earth military bases.
Someone in their leadership must have been highly ranked in the local military before, because they had access to much of the old technology and weapons.
And the worst part was that they had several stolen Xarc’n vessels at their disposal as well.
They’d been removed from our networks so we couldn’t track them, and were complete with functioning cloaking technology.
Several hunters followed the retreating scourge, and the rest of us turned back to New Franklin.
I was ready to shoot down any of the assholes who were stupid enough to get between my crosshairs, even if it meant destroying the stolen Xarc’n shuttles.
Technically, the shuttles were cloaked. But I’d spent a lifetime watching and surveying cloaked shuttles and knew how to guess their approximate locations simply by the change in air pressure around them, much like the way flyers could detect us when we got too close.
Except that the strange disturbances in the air reported by my shuttle were different from what I usually saw. And much more obvious. Curious.
Instead of landing in the courtyard between the main buildings, I continued past the settlement, following the odd ripples detected in the air. I wouldn’t be able to pinpoint the location of the enemy vessels, but blanketing the area with blaster fire would do the trick.
Since losing the mothership, the spark of my anger caught more easily, and my tolerance for dealing with those who got in the way of killing the scourge had decreased markedly. With my fuse trimmed down to a stub, I didn’t have time to play games.
“Ror’k?” Jask’l’s voice came from the speakers. “Return to base. Do not engage.”
“And risk another attack? When did we become pacifists?”
It was strange to be taking orders and not the other way around. I wasn’t good at it.
“Do not engage,” he repeated. “They have taken hostages.”
Krux!
Frustrated, I slammed my fist down on the edge of the navigational screen. These shuttles were designed to withstand much more than an angry hunter. But I did turn my shuttle back around. By the time I landed, Kaj’k and the others were already there.
I left my shuttle and was immediately greeted by several distraught-looking humans.
Jask’l, who had been in the ground mothership building monitoring and coordinating the attack, stepped out with a grim look on his face.
Kaj’k, who was usually not one for loud outbursts, stomped away, nearly knocking into me as he did.
“What is this about hostages?” I asked.
“It was a distraction,” Roger said. “I don’t know how they did it, but they called the scourge to lure the hunters away.
Then they landed on the opposite side of the settlement.
They grabbed several of the females, including Kaj’k’s mate.
I told him to wait, and we will coordinate a rescue mission. ”
We looked over at Kaj’k. He was already getting back into his shuttle, clearly ready to go after his mate.
“Kaj’k!” Jask’l yelled. “Wait for a plan. You can’t go after her alone.”
Kaj’k did not reply as the door to his shuttle slammed shut.
“You will not be able to stop him,” I said. “His mate is in danger, and he will not rest until she is safe. Let him go. Send the others to join him once there is a plan.”
I understood. If it were my mate, no one would be able to stop me until the ones who took her were nothing but a smudge on the ground.
“That’s not all.” It was Roger who spoke.
“We caught the boys trying to move the supplies they were hiding out to be picked up. They were working with the NEM. We stopped them. They’re locked up now.
And that’s where we went wrong. We were so busy saving our supplies, we didn’t notice them taking the women until it was too late. ”
The youngsters I’d been training. Despite knowing that they were our thieves, I’d still enjoyed our training sessions. And had gone back to train them two more times. I was surprised at the disappointment I now felt.
“You said they were here looking for something in particular that they hadn’t found. I want to know what that is.”
“I can question them again,” I suggested.
“You can, but I think you might want to be part of the rescue mission instead,” Roger said. “Unless I’ve been reading the situation wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because Dottie is one of the missing females.”