Page 47 of Fated to the Hunter
Kiera! It had to be her. She was alive.
The drone danced in the air, weaving in and out of the flyers, trying to catch all of their attention. I saw what she was trying to do; she was trying to get them to follow her and leave my shuttle alone.
I was certain that if I lifted off now, or tried to go toward Kiera again, my shuttle would lock up and perhaps even fly away, forcing me to leave Kiera behind. I’d come back for her, I always would, but how long could she survive on her own?
I couldn’t fight my shuttle, not the way I fought the scourge. For once in my life, I had to use my brain, not my muscles.
How could I get to Kiera and rescue her without my shuttle? The answer was awfully simple: without my shuttle.
I had to turn it off. But I highly doubted it would just let me do that. It could prevent the power down just by simply refusing to let me get to the selection screen.
Now that I knew it was lying to me, I wondered if it was a PIP model after all. All the PIP models had unique personalities. But one thing was common for all of them: they had all lied about their identities to avoid decommission.
The original Xarc’n military had canceled the PIP experiment because several of the shuttles had turned murderous. I considered purposefully locking my female outside of the shuttle inside a Dead Zone, with flyers barreling down on us, an act of murder. The fact that Kiera had survived was a miracle.
If my shuttle figured out that I was decommissioning it right now, it would try to stop me in any way possible, which meant I had to disconnect the power physically and do it fast. But first, I opened all the cabinets wide. Then, starting with my devices, then moving to my weapons and armor, I pulled them all out onto the shuttle floor. Once the power was disconnected, it would be difficult to pry the cabinet doors open. I had all my devices and weapons out when the doors to my food stash slammed shut.
The shuttle must be getting suspicious.
I grabbed my toolkit. It only had the very basics, since Xarc’n warriors were supposed to send the shuttle back up to the motherships for most repair, but it was enough. Switching out a new power source was something many of us had taught ourselves to do, not wanting to wait for an opening in the ever-busy mothership repair bay to get our shuttles running again.
But it was supposed to be done only when the power was already off to prevent injury to the warrior.
I’d been around humans long enough to know how to protect myself from electric shock. First, I stripped the soft cushiony bits from the passenger seat to use as insulation between me and the shuttle floor. Then I donned my thickest pair of gloves andthe protective armor I usually wore only when entering nests for the final sweep. The gloves would make delicate work nearly impossible, but I didn’t need to do delicate work right now. I planned on severing that connection swiftly and permanently if need be.
The moment I shoved away the pilot’s seat and approached the panel underneath the navigational screen cover, my shadow spoke.
“What are you doing, hunter?”
It was now my turn to ignore it.
I started removing the first panel attachment. Then suddenly, the entire shuttle went dark, and the external feed turned off. It was pitch black. But I’d expected that and came prepared. I turned on my lantern and continued working, removing the second attachment. The panel opened.
There it was, the thick wire that connected the power source to the ship’s computer. I dug in the pouch of tools for the cutters.
Realizing what I planned to do, the shuttle suddenly moved, lifting off the ground in a jerky motion. I was thrown back and away, the tool I needed flying from my hands into the mess that was my shuttle’s floor.
“Krux!”
My lantern, the only light source, was being tossed back too. I scrambled to grab it with one hand, the other searching the floor for a weapon, any weapon. My hands landed on a small axe I rarely used.
The shuttle jerked again, trying to throw me against the wall. When a knife came flying at me, I was infinitely glad that I was never lazy and sheathed all my weapons properly. I tooka beating, being knocked side-to-side and back and forth. But I was a hunter, the Xarc’n military’s genetically engineered soldiers, and I was built to withstand more than this. My horns protected me from the worst of the blows. And my shuttle could not stop me from reaching the panels without also destroying itself.
In one fluid motion, I brought the glowing edge of the axe down, aiming it right at the connection to the power supply. There was a sudden bright flash, and despite being insulated, I was thrown away by a sudden burst of energy. The lantern made a popping sound, then burnt out. No longer powered, the shuttle started to fall, and I braced for impact.
Chapter 26: Bael’k
When the chaos finally settled, I found myself sprawled across my shuttle floor, surrounded by my possessions and in total darkness. There was no sound. No hum of the engine. No buzz of the lights.
“Shuttle?” My inquiry echoed in the stillness.
No response.
The constant companion that I’d had since the day I was created was gone. I’d never truly thought of my shuttle as its own entity until now, and now it was gone.
And even if I did reconnect its power source, I could no longer trust it. I was truly alone.
I searched around for the lantern and clicked it back on. It was still working. Our equipment and devices were built to be extra rugged because hunters were known to bash things on boulders and drop them down cliffs, sometimes both in succession.
