Page 2 of Hunter’s Harvest

“Yup, good,” Marisol said. “Hey, you’ve been there before, Charles. Have you met any of the hunters there?”

“Sure, I’ve met them.”

“Okay, but how many of them are there?” She was leaning halfway out of her harness. “At New Franklin. Total.”

“I don’t know. A bunch? More than what we have.”

“Are they all mated?”

And there was the real reason Marisol insisted on tagging along. The cover story was that she wanted to check out their aquaponics system. But she could do that very well on the forum. Truth was, she was looking for a Xarc’n warrior mate.

Vince, younger and barely out of his teens, groaned. “What’s with you and these hunters anyway?”

Mari rolled her eyes and ignored him.

“Some of them are mated, some aren’t,” Charles said, chuckling. “But Mari, you’re going to scare them off with how strong you come on.”

She huffed. “Then those hunters won’t be for me.”

That was a healthy way to look at it. Good for her.

Me though? I wasn’t looking for a relationship of any type. Hell, I was even afraid to get too close to friends. Losing everyone once was bad enough already; I didn’t want to get attached to anyone new.

Charles shook his head and turned back to his navigation screen.

I was just closing my eyes to take a nap when the shuttle’s alarm went off.

“Flyers?” I asked, even though I knew it was too early in the morning. Most flyers, alien space bugs that looked like giant flying scorpions with spikes for tails, hadn’t left their nests for the day yet.

“Shit! No!” Charles made a frustrated sound. “Argh. Hang on.”

That was my only warning before the shuttle turned sharply, throwing me against the stack of crates.

Ouch! That hurt.

The shuttle’s external display turned on, and all the walls, which had just been completely solid just a second ago, turned transparent. There was something flying at us. My brain took a full second to realize I was staring at the business end of a missile!

What. The. Fuck.

This had to be the NEM, the New Earth Militia. It had to be. Nobody else would shoot at the shuttle in these parts. Besides avoiding the scourge nests, our route also avoided hostile human territory, but the NEM were always trying to expand. We must be their next target.

But how? How did they see us? We were cloaked!

“Hold onto something,” Charles yelled.

Suddenly the shuttle rocked and the lights blinked. Marisol screamed. My shoulder hit the wall. On my other side the crates moved, and I heard something fall. It was chaos. Loud, head-splitting chaos that made my ears ring. The alarm was still going off, sounding far away and underwater. A crate had broken open, and there were hundreds of oranges everywhere, rolling and bouncing and hanging in the air. I remember thinking that it was the craziest thing I had ever seen.

It felt like a movie. Or maybe a video game.

Charles’s mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears.

The shuttle shook again, and the next part felt like a bad dream as the shuttle tore in half with a thunderous crack. The wall in front of Marisol was there, and then it wasn’t. There was daylight, and the whole forward half of the shuttle broke away from us at an angle.

It felt completely surreal, and for a moment I wondered if I would wake up and realize this was all a nightmare. But the moment never came.

Instead, wind gushed in, hitting me so hard it threw me back into the seat.

Then Marisol was flying. She looked right at me as she was torn out of the shuttle.