Page 25 of Treasured By the Hunter

“What do you mean?” Sam and Lenny asked in unison.

“Shuttle, show them the strange-looking scourge over there.”

To my surprise, my shuttle obeyed even though the command hadn’t come from me.

“Oh fuckity.” That was Sam.

“Unless that wasn’t the only piece,” Lenny said.

“Double fuckity.” Sam disappeared off-screen for a moment.

“Bailey from the lab just called,” Lenny said. “Sam’s talking to her now. Stay on the line, and follow that flyer. But don’t get too close.”

I did, until another flyer slammed right into it, and the two tumbled out of the sky. As the two fought on the ground, a scuttler with a bright red patch on its rear picked up the prize and started scurrying away in the opposite direction.

Sam was back on the screen. “We need you to isolate the fragment and bring it somewhere for pickup. They are sending a team. But do not, I repeat,do notlet it touch any part of your shuttle or anything with Xarc’n technology in it. And for God’s sake, don’t touch it. Don’t even get anywhere close to it. We’re fucking serious, Harb’k. Don’t get all heroic and try to sacrifice yourself for the greater good or anything like that. You saw what happened to the mining detachment. We don’t need mutated hunters switching sides on us.”

I flinched at the thought of being manipulated to join the scourge. How horrific. I’d rather die.

But it was Zoey who replied. “Let me get this straight: you want us to secure it and bring it somewhere, but we can’t touch it or even get close to it, or else we might turn into bug-loving mutants?”

“Something like that.” Sam combed her hair out of her face nervously with her fingers. “We don’t actually know what will happen because it’s never happened before. We’re being hypercautious.”

“Understandably so. Better safe than sorry. I’m guessing those ones have had that thing in their nest for a while, and the second group is trying to steal it. All the weird bugs are on the same side.”

“We should send someone to check out their nest. Just in case,” Lenny suggested.

“There is another hunter looking for anomalies,” I said. “Turr’k from the Rockies. I’ll send him this way.”

“And we’ll send all the information we got here and the warning from Bailey to their Tech Wizard,” Lenny said. “Aaron from the Rockies group should know about this.”

Just then, another flyer joined the fray and made off with the fragment. This time, there wasn’t another scourge in the sky to stop it, so it flew away eastbound.

I didn’t know how we were going to isolate the fragment and get it to the location on the map, but the chase was on.

***

My shuttle sounded an alarm and automatically backed off as we approached the now-dead flyer and the fragment still in its claws. I’d shot it down before it could get too close to any of the nests and was now figuring out what to do next. I tried to inch the vessel forward, but it refused to get any closer.

“We are thirty-one imperial feet from the target. Tech Wizard’s orders were to stay at least thirty feet from it.”

My shuttle might not be a PIP model, but it had a sense of self-preservation. It had seen what the mutagen had done to our mothership, twisting it beyond recognition until the scourge could use it as a weapon against us. And it didn’t want to join that ship in the big garbage pile in the sky.

“Smart shuttle,” Zoey said. “You might not be one of those special models, but you’re plenty smart.” She patted the nearest surface.

The cabin brightened.

“What do we do now?” I asked, not expecting an answer. “How do we remove it from the flyer’s claws and get it to the location without touching it or even getting near it?”

“Don’t tell me you hunters have all this technology and no tractor beam?”

“Tractor what?”

“Never mind. But who says we need to get it out of the flyer’s claws? It might even make it easier for us if it holds on with a death grip. We can move the whole damn thing.”

“You have an idea.” It was less a question and more a statement.

“Kind of. But I need to think about it.” She approached my navigational screen, wedging herself between me and it.

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