Hunted
By
MJ Kobernus
www.nordlandpublishing.com
Copyright
Copyright © MJ Kobernus 2016
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead or immortal is purely coincidental.
MJ Kobernus asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Any copyrighted material is reproduced under the fair use doctrine.
The cover art is the work of Ashraf E. Shalaby.
Published by Nordland Publishing 2015
ISBN: 978-82-8331-016-0
Acknowledgements
Hunted follows on directly the events that take place in Salvage. You can read this as a standalone story, but do yourself and favour and go back and get Salvage, if you do not already have it.
Dedication
In honour of the men and women who have dedicated their lives to helping mankind achieve its destiny. One day, the stars.
A note from the Author
Hunted is the second instalment of a series of short stories. These are ‘teasers’, if you will, for the grand novel, The Predecessors, that will one day emerge from my fevered imagination. But don’t worry, these are not spoilers since they take place before the action of the novel begins.
The next instalment is The Orb.
Hunted
Palsenz Planetary System
Year 2387
Someone was moaning. The sound registered slowly as First Officer Stephanie Chu regained consciousness. It took a moment more before she realized she was making the noise herself. She tried to move but gave up, gasping, the pain in her head timed perfectly with her heartbeat, each pulse a needle in her brain.
Her eyes were sealed shut by something sticky. Raising a hand, she wiped at the substance until she could finally open them, but the cabin lights were out. What was this stuff? She probed her head gently, grimacing in pain when she found a ragged gash.
The crackling blue arc of an electrical short punctuated the dark. Other senses awoke, the acrid stench of burning plastic assaulted her nose. Panicked, she tried to sit up, pushing against the straps that held her. Hopefully the automatic systems had managed to take care of the fire. But what the hell had happened? She fell back into her chair.
Then the memories came flooding back. The mission to assess the Argoss, the attack on the salvage crew, their escape and the proximity mine that had taken out the drive.
The salvage team had gone aboard the abandoned Argoss and then . . . Pål! Her hand reached out for the control panel, desperately feeling for the correct switch. She triggered the cockpit lights and they illuminated, sending shockwaves of pain through her cranium. Blinking rapidly, she turned to examine her partner. Captain Pål Knutsen was strapped into his chair beside her. His chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm and she breathed a sigh of relief to see him alive. They had been together since training; the shuttle Heimdal, and its captain, were her world. Hitting the release on her chair straps, she climbed to her feet on uncertain, weak legs.
The planet’s gravity was higher than the spin in the gen-pop sphere of the Endurance. Used to spending much of her time in zero-g, now she felt heavy, clumsy.
With one hand always touching a bulkhead or handhold, she moved to Pål, feeling for a pulse at his neck. It was there, strong, steady. Good, he would be fine. She bent and laid her head next to his, giving him the briefest of hugs, then turned and made her way through the narrow hatch into the central fuselage, crawling slowly where usually she would fly. It was pitch-black but she palmed a switch and the fuselage lights flickered into brightness, illuminating the large hold.
Strapped to the starboard bulkhead were three bodies. Two tech-engs from the Endurance and one of them; one of the things that had attacked the salvage team. It was hairless and smooth, dark skinned. Its head was small, its mouth wide with a bank of needle-like teeth.
The creature’s stick thin arms and legs articulated in odd ways. It was barely recognizable as human. But she had seen its eyes. There was no mistaking what it was, what it had been.
Of the five arcs that had set out from Earth, only the Bitter Sea and Endurance had made it to the distant world that would be their new home. Or so it was believed. When they had arrived in the Palsenz system, there was jubilation at the discovery of the Argoss III in a geostationary orbit around the only Kepler-classified Super-Earth Planetoid. Clearly the great arc’s autopilot still functioned, which meant that other autonomous systems were online too. A good sign. The Argoss would be a tremendous boost to the colonization effort and a salvage team, led by Officer First Class Jensen, had been assigned to assess its condition.
While the Endurance performed a remote survey of their new home, Chu and Knutsen were ordered to transport Jensen and his team, dock with the Argoss and gain access. The salvage team were to assess the damage to drive and control systems and report on the Argoss’ crew, if any. They quickly found that there were no survivors, but most incredibly, Jensen’s team also discovered that the radiation burst that had wiped them out centuries before had been initiated by the bridge crew. They had evidently committed mass suicide. Why they would do that became apparent when the salvage team was attacked. Jensen had led the survivors back to the airlock where the shuttle was docked, and Chu had gone into the Argoss to defend the position, killing a number of the creatures herself.
It had not occurred to Chu that the mutants could get inside the shuttle. That was when they lost the two tech-engs, until the thing was brought down by Jensen.
When Pål performed an emergency evac from the Argoss, she had thought they were finally safe. Except the mutants fired proximity mines into their path. They had been designed for clearing asteroids, but proved just as deadly to the shuttle, knocking out the main drive, leaving the ship helpless. The next thing Stephanie knew, they were dirt-side and she was waking up with the mother of all headaches.
A mumbled cursing caused her to spin around. The only survivor from the salvage team was struggling with the strapping that had kept him safe during their forced landing. One arm had been gashed open by the mutant before it was killed, but that did not appear to be bleeding anymore. Even so, Jensen looked pale.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re safe.”
“Where are we? What happened?” He coughed and blood flecked his lip.
“We’re on Palsenz. Somewhere in the Badlands, I think.”
He snorted in dry amusement. “You and I have different understandings of the word safe.”
She nodded at the sentiment. It perfectly mirrored her own thoughts. Although Palsenz supported a meager biodiversity, the Badlands were different. Even from orbit, the Endurance’s sensors detected strange readings from the region.
“We’re lucky to be alive,” she said. Jensen nodded but looked unconvinced. Unspoken was the thought that although they had avoided the frying pan, they might well be in the fire, as the Badlands comprised a large area of blasted rock and desert with no life and bizarre topography.
But Stephanie Chu counted her blessings. If they had crashed on any other planet in the system, they would be dead. The gas giant was a raging storm of hydrochloric acid and the rest ranged from impossibly high gravity to tiny, airless rocks. Not the best place for a forced landing. At least Palsenz had air.
“Here,” she said. “Let me help you.”
S
he pulled the strapping free, and Jensen collapsed into her arms, grimacing.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” he gasped. “My ribs . . .”
He stood straighter as he got used to the gravity. “I’m okay, really.”
“Good. There’s a medkit on the bulkhead there,” she pointed to a box fixed to the wall. “I need to check on the captain.”
As Jensen opened the medkit, Stephanie crawled into the cockpit. Pål was still out, but unbelievably he was snoring. Typical! She gently shook his shoulder. Then harder. “Pål.”
“What?” His eyes blinked opened, after a moment focusing on her. “Damn, you look a mess.”
Stephanie chuckled. Her hand went to her long black hair, matted with blood. Usually it needed careful control to stop it from floating all over the place, but now it hung lank and sticky against her scalp. No doubt she looked bad, but that was the least of their problems.
“I should take a look at that cut on your head.”
“No, it’s okay. Check the comms, please Pål. We need an evac off this rock.”
“You sure? It looks nasty.”
“It’s not bleeding anymore.” She gently touched her scalp, then winced. It was not life threatening. It could wait.
Knutsen hit the strap release on his chair and sat up straight. He did not look any the worse for having survived the forced landing.