Chapter 2 Burr’k
Humans were loud. Even inside the mothership building, where the walls were thick and the insulation decent, I could still hear them.
This mothership was from another contingent, one that wasn’t supposed to be here on Earth. I had to admit that while it didn’t quite look like my mothership, it smelled like it. That sharp, sterile scent of metal and ozone always reminded me of home.
I found Jask’l pacing in the repair bay. This repair bay was an exact replica of the one we’d worked in back on our mothership, except a lot cleaner, and there were new tools here, human ones I didn’t recognize.
“I missed the fight,” he said the moment he saw me.
“You missed nothing.” I glanced over at the schematic in front of him and frowned. “It was over before it began.”
Jask’l was technically supposed to be the overseer here on the grounded mothership, but that work was monotonous.
He’d gotten humans to write programs to take care of the administrative stuff automatically so he could spend most of his time back in the repair bay, where he was the happiest. It was a good thing too, because there was always something to fix up.
He grunted. “Still. I should’ve been there, especially with all the other hunters out hunting the scourge.”
The scourge were the whole reason why we were on this planet. The now long-gone Xarc’n military had created us with the sole purpose of hunting the scourge, which had been their previous weapons project gone awry. We’d since followed the abominations across the galaxy in our quest to destroy them.
I shrugged. “The raiders came, but they only managed to steal one crate.” I looked him in the eyes, knowing my next words would elicit a strong response. “They fled in a shuttle.”
Jask’l stopped pacing. “A shuttle? You mean one of ours?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
We both knew what that meant. Every shuttle in the hands of a hostile human group meant one hunter dead or captured.
“My question is, why didn’t the humans just use their anti-aircraft artillery on it?” I’d seen their rocket launchers in use. A few shots from those in the right areas would take down a hunter’s vessel.
Jask’l snorted. “Over the settlement? What if the wreckage fell on a building?”
“There are many buildings. They can move to an unaffected one. The ones they choose to stay in are not even the nicest, nor the largest, nor the most defensible.”
Jask’l shook his head. “What if it fell on this building?”
That stumped me.
There was a knock—a strange human tradition in which they knocked on a portal before entering—and Roger entered. Many of the humans here, and even Jask’l, referred to this male as their leader, though the last time I’d spoken to him he had denied it.
“Jask’l, we are in need of a hunter if you can spare one.”
“What is the mission?” he asked.
“The raiders took the crate with everything meant for the Christmas celebration, things like decorations, lights, and gifts. We need someone to help forage for more.”
I never understood this Christmas thing the humans celebrated. Someone had tried to explain it to me once. Something about a youngling that was born thousands of years ago. He must’ve been quite a warrior if the humans were still honoring him now.
I understood celebrating a powerful warrior, but I still didn’t understand the rest of it. Why the lights, the gifts, the songs?
What reasons were there to rejoice? The air was bitter, the ground frozen, and the scourge still roamed free. Xarc’n warriors only celebrated after a nest was cleared and every scourge in the area twitched on the ground. That was worth honoring.
“Burr’k is free,” Jask’l said. “He can help.”
I gawked at my fellow hunter, not quite believing that he’d just volunteered me.
“Wonderful,” Roger said, turning to me. “You’ll be working with Holly. She is very easy to get along with, and is super Xarc’n-friendly. She’ll meet you in front of the main building tomorrow. Bright and early.” Then he was gone before I could even reply.
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I growled.
“What? Offer to give you some time to get some fresh air? You need it. You’ve been grumpy since the mothership incident.”
“I am not grumpy.”
“You are. And getting out of the settlement will be good for you.”
I glared at him. “I am here to help you and learn new fighting techniques. Not to chase down decorations.”
I’d spent most of my time up on the mothership before it was destroyed by the scourge.
Most hunters believed that those working on motherships and food production facilities were older because they were past their fighting prime.
But the truth was, many ended up there the way I had: by getting horribly injured while we were young.
Then, because we were relegated to nonfighting roles, we lived to ripe old ages.
We weren’t inherently old; we just had the opportunity to get there.
Of course, some like Jask’l were innately talented with fixing things, so had ended up in the repair bay quite young.
I was older than him, but not nearly as old as Ror’k, the former Overseer of our mothership.
I still had plenty of time left, and I was sick of doing the work of a retired hunter.
Many years ago, after a run-in with spitter acid that had almost cost me my life, it was thought that I’d never recover enough to fight.
A hunter was useless on the planet without all his nerves, so they’d set me up in the mothership.
But miraculously, I got most of my mobility back.
It had taken a long time, but now I was ready to go kill some scourge.
The problem was that I was out of practice.
Plus, this was a new planet. And a new planet meant new challenges and tactics.
I’d never worked with humans before, and that, my fellow hunters told me, was both the winning strategy and the challenge.
Humans were visibly weak compared to us, but they were intelligent and tenacious.
That was one of the reasons I was here. Aside from helping out in the repair bay, I wanted to learn the new maneuvers and fighting styles the hunters had invented here on Earth while working with humans.
Then the plan was to get assigned to one of the hunter groups that needed me.
The scourge nest at the center of this town was gone, but there were many others on this planet that needed fighting.
“This is perfect,” Jask’l said. “It will give you a chance to practice.”
“For a celebration? I don’t even understand why they are celebrating. There is no reason for it. They have already memorialized the destruction of the New Franklin nest, and there are many more out there. The scourge still live. They should be fighting, not partying.”
“They… no, we, are celebrating because we are still alive. We survived another year. It’s called hope.
” Jask’l patted me on the back a little harder than needed.
“And just because we don’t celebrate often up on the mothership doesn’t mean that the hunters on the ground don’t.
If I recall correctly, the hunter group I once belonged to held a big party at the end of the swarms every year. Think of it like that.”
I frowned. “I thought that was what Thanksgiving was for.” That was another human holiday that passed recently. The humans had many holidays and it was hard to keep track.
“Just be there tomorrow morning. Have you met Holly?”
“I do not know. Is she one of the foragers?”
I’d met many humans over the last week, and all the faces and names were blending together in my head.
All except for one. A female with hair the color of sunshine had greeted me on my first day here.
She’d smelled divine, and I’d been so shocked at her forwardness and friendliness that I’d simply stared at her like an idiot. I hadn’t caught her name.
“Holly isn’t a forager. She’s organizing the festivities. But you’ll like her.”
That had me frowning even more. Being sent on a mission to pick up useless things was bad, but having to watch a helpless female was worse. But I realized there was no way out of it, so I focused my attention back on the schematic on the table instead.
“What in the stars is this thing?” I asked. Because it sure as hell wasn’t a Xarc’n shuttle.
“Well, now that we have hacked the mothership manufacturing hub to make ship hulls any shape we want, we started to redesign those war machines the humans use to get around.”
I’d seen them around both at the settlement and at the food production lab I’d recovered in after escaping the doomed mothership.
The vehicles were hulking beasts of metal, the armor plates welded together seemingly without any kind of plan.
Some had spiked tires meant for mud and ice, others had flamethrowers mounted on the sides.
One had a roll cage wrapped around the cabin like a ribcage, and another had a battering ram shaped like a snarling beast’s jaw. They were… creative.
And while they all looked ridiculous in my eyes, they all did their jobs, which was to protect the drivers and passengers from the scourge and other hostiles.
“Why not just make more shuttles?” I asked.
“No more power cores, and the solar panels and batteries the humans use aren’t powerful enough. You were super lucky they found you a shuttle.”
He didn’t say the rest of it, which was that some other hunter had been equally unlucky to not need it anymore.
Since the loss of the scourge-corrupted mining detachment that had taken out our mothership, they hadn’t sent any more. Even worse, they hadn’t sent any other contingents to this sector either. It was beginning to feel like we were being abandoned.
Power cores and communicators with translation technology were the problem. The ingenious humans had figured out how to use technology to replicate almost everything else. What was that word Jask’l just used? Hack. They’d hacked our technology.
I had to give them that. Humans were loud and they celebrated strange things, but they were exceptionally intelligent.
“The pieces have all been printed,” Jask’l said.
“Printed?”
“I mean, produced. Humans call it printing because they had something called a 3D printer that worked similarly, just not with the alloys and composites we use. They used plah-stick.”
I frowned at the strange word.
“But all the pieces are done. All we have to do is assemble the pieces onto the vehicle,” Jask’l said.
I looked at the gutted vehicle in question. I’d worked on plenty of shuttles with my friend, but never a human vehicle. But there was a first time for everything.
“Then let’s get to work.”