Page 48 of Fated to the Hunter
My communicator started buzzing from my belt. I had almost a dozen missed communications, not only from Kiera, but from Sam and Lenny, and from the leader of the hunters who worked here.
My shuttle had been blocking all the incoming signals. Did they think I was dead for not replying? I called Kiera first, and the sound of her voice when she picked up was the most wonderful thing I’d ever heard.
“Bael’k! You’re alive!”
“I am. My shuttle was blocking the signals to my communicator. I could not control it, so I severed my shuttle’s power source.”
“Oh shit. I’m sorry. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that.”
“I am not. The moment it left you, it had become the enemy. It tried to prevent me from decommissioning it. It did not succeed.” I picked up my favorite set of twin blades from the mess and strapped them onto my back. “Now I will break down the door to come get you.”
“No, don’t do that! You’re still injured.”
I was. “It is only skin and muscle. I have been injured worse.”
“Don’t you dare break down that door!” she said sternly, the fire in her voice returning. “There are still too many scourge around your shuttle. I only managed to lure away some of them. I kinda crashed the drone north of you, close to the highway we were on the other day. The buzzer kept going for a while, keeping their attention, but it’s damaged now.”
“You did good.” I meant to say so much more, that I was proud of her, and that I wished I could’ve seen her in action.
“Thanks. I still have one drone left, and I got both Eye-Spies on flyers,” she said excitedly. “I’ll share the feed with your phone. Anyway, we need your shuttle intact to get out of here. We can’t make it by foot.”
“But my shuttle—”
“Lenny and Pip are writing a quick program to replace your faulty AI. Here, let me three-way them and they can explain the plan to you.”
I sat down at the edge of my sleeping nook. My little Keeper of Knowledge had been busy. In the short time I managed to deal with my misbehaving shuttle, she’d already figured out a solution to our problem. And not just that either. She’d lured the scourge away from my shuttle and gotten aerial surveillance set up. How had she gotten the eyeball things onto the flyers without getting attacked?
“Bael’k? You there?”
I recognized Lenny’s voice.
“I am.”
“Greetings, hunter!” Pip chirped, sounding way too happy considering my current situation.
“Greetings, Pip.”
“Okay, here’s the lowdown on the situation,” Lenny started. “Physically, your shuttle itself is fine. Actually, wait, scratch that. I’m just looking at the final report sent out before you disconnected the power. And I’m seeing some damage. It’s still in good enough condition to get you out of there. But like I was saying, it’s the computer in your shuttle that’s problematic.”
“Remember that time I lost my body?” Pip asked. “And they had to carry me around in a box and find me a new one?”
“Yes,” I said, amused. It was impossible to forget since it happened during the first-ever successful scourge attack on a mothership.
“Well, we’re going to do the opposite. We’re going to give your shuttle a new brain!”
“It better not be you,” I said.
“Don’t be silly! I’m way too big to be transferred one byte at a time. It’ll take forever. “
Kiera, who was still listening but clearly distracted with something else, probably her Eye-Spies, chuckled softly. “Yes, Pip. You’re massive.”
Lenny cleared his throat like he was hiding a laugh.
“Pip is right. Sending him over like this will take forever. And we don’t have forever. What we do have is a bare-bones version of a shuttle computer. And by bare bones I mean it. You’ll have to do all the navigation and piloting, and you’ll lose all AI features. But your shuttle will be operational.”
I balked. I relied on my shuttle often, and my piloting skills were dusty and out of practice. I kept it to myself, though, not wanting to show my weakness.
“I had to forcefully detach the power source,” I admitted.
