Page 11 of Fated to the Hunter
“Hey, careful there.”
I turned to see Roger with his mate and offspring.
“You look lost, Bael’k.”
Before I could reply, Small Roger tugged on the hem of my loincloth. “Are you looking for someone to sit with? You can sit with us.”
I accepted the offer and let the tiny human, sometimes called Roger and other times called Junior, lead me to a table where Mo and Kat already sat. They were from the camp I currently worked with.
I’d just set my bowl down when Kiera stood, slapping her hand on the table.
All of a sudden, my entire awareness was on her, even though my dinner companions didn’t even notice at all.
“We won’t know if we don’t ask,” she said, as she scanned the cafeteria, before marching straight toward a rough-looking group of nomads.
I could tell they were nomads by the way they were dressed. The male from earlier was not amongst them, but the entire group was male, and as Kiera approached their table, their eyes sparked with interest.
She didn’t approach them alone, though. Sam and Lenny, the Tech Wizards from our camp, followed behind her. Sam and Lenny had once lived here in Franklin, and they seemed to know Kiera well.
It was Lenny who spoke first, stepping forward to introduce them.
Roger and Mo had stopped eating now, having followed my gaze to the action. They listened intently despite their inferior human ears as Kiera took over the conversation, explaining what she needed.
Apparently, the map in Kiera’s hands was supposed to lead to top-secret technology, lost after the scourge arrived. It was something the Tech Wizards all wanted. But there was a catch: the map could be fake. Still, the Tech Wizards were willing totake the risk and pull together the resources to pay this group of nomads to help Kiera retrieve it.
This must be the group of mercenaries I heard about. It was an interesting life, choosing to do missions for other people for pay. One I might have been interested in, did I not already have the most worthwhile and important life mission.
“Good ear, Bael’k,” Mo said softly. “Always listen if something's interesting enough to get a hunter to ignore his food.”
I just grunted, my ear still on the conversation at the other table.
It wasn’t just Kiera’s presence that interested me now. A search for lost and important technology was a noble and worthy quest, especially if the Tech Wizards all seemed to agree.
But I did not like the idea of Kiera leaving with an entire group of strong, capable males. What if one of them coveted her?
But it was clear that the band of human warriors was not interested in her plight or her pay. One of them was blunt and rude before the leader took over. But the answer was still the same. They would not help her.
I was relieved that she would not be going on an extended quest with these males until I saw her disappointment. It hung in the air so thick it felt like I could touch it with my hands. Her gaze turned downward to her feet, and she slumped like she was wilting in the summer sun.
I felt it before I could understand it, a tightness in my chest like something was grabbing hold of me from the inside, shaking me, and demanding I do anything in my power to fix this. This surge of protectiveness was so different from what I’d ever felt. There were no scourge to fight. No blades or bullets to block. Icould not step between her and danger. None of my training was useful here.
But I knew I had to do something.
I found myself marching toward their table.
“I will take you, Kiera of the fiery hair,” I announced, surprising even myself. “I will take you on this noble quest to find lost technology.”
Chapter 6: Kiera
“No fucking way, woman! Are you crazy?”
The nomad’s words were like a punch to the gut, even though I’d approached them fully knowing that this might be their reaction. I’d really hoped that the “Wizard Council,” our tongue-in-cheek nickname for the collection of Tech Wizards, being willing to supply all the funding, which in our case meant payment, food, and supplies for the entire mission, would mean the nomads would reconsider.
When humans with propensities for technology started being called Tech Wizards by the Xarc’n hunters, we’d taken it all as a joke at first, but it became clear that learning to meld human and Xarc’n technology would give us an advantage in fighting the space bugs. So the name had stuck.
The Tech Wizards were being extra generous too, considering I had no idea if this map was bogus or not. But apparently they’d all read my thread on the survivor forum and had been following this development for a while. Many of them believed it was the real deal, and they also believed there was more than just the blueprints and secrets to semiconductor manufacturing inside these hard drives, and they needed that information.
Since the big attack that destroyed one of the Xarc’n motherships, they’d been working on a project called Mothership Earth. The goal was to build a brand-new Xarc’n mothership piece by piece right here in New Franklin.
