Page 19 of Hunter’s Harvest

“A barn! ItotIsmelthay.” She eyed the piles of dried grass in the corner before looking around, then pointed to the roof.

Was she worried it would leak?

“The roof is secure. The structure only looks bad from the outside. But the failings… are cosmetic. From the air, the roof looks ready to fail. I added panels of decaying roofing on top of a dark sheet.”

She shook her head, but let it go.

And again, I was frustrated that we could barely communicate. She yawned.

“You must sleep. We wake early.”

She nodded, yawning again, and started to untie the tarp completely.

“What are you doing?”

Instead of telling me, she showed me, spreading the tarp on the hay and stuffing more under it before tucking the edges under. I helped her create a sleeping mat. Then I picked her up and deposited her into the middle.

“Stay. I will go check the area.”

“Okay.” She stretched on the mat.

The field around this “barn” was a lot harder to secure than the forest near the downed shuttle, both from human and scourge intrusion. The best I could do was make sure the cans I’d attached to the gate were set up and ready to make a loud racket if anything knocked them down.

Too bad I didn’t have any of my military-issued sensors. Well, technically I had them still—they were inside a drawer in my main hideout—but without a communicator, they were useless. It had been difficult at first without my shuttle and my communicator. Very difficult. But I’d gotten used to it. I’d learned to make do with what I had, what I’d foraged. I’d also learned a lot about the planet by watching the humans, both friendly and hostile.

And until now, I’d thought I’d done a good job adapting, but just one day with Nellie and I realized how much of a handicap I was living with. Maybe in the beginning, when things were chaotic and deadly, my protection alone would be enough to win me a female. But now, many of the humans lived in new settlements and some even with hunter groups. I could not compare to the safety offered there.

What would our creators think if they saw me now?

Designed by the now-extinct Xarc’n race, Xarc’n warriors were genetically modified to be the ultimate hunters. Our purpose? To continue fighting the war they had already lost: Eradicate the scourge. The ancient Xarc’n race had once wielded the scourge as a biological weapon. But the scourge knew no loyalty; they only lived to eat and reproduce, destroying everything in their path.

When the Xarc’n military lost control of them, they made hunters as their final act of redemption. It had started with only ten thousand hunters. The originals. But as we followed the search across the galaxy, our numbers grew along with theirs.

Before Earth, I had known no other life. I’d lived to fight, and fought to live.

Here, it had been more about survival. Our contingent had already broken all the rules, taking over our mothership to come to Earth in search of compatible females. I’d planned to live here the rest of my life.

This planet was worth saving, unlike the doomed planet our contingent was supposed to go to. We would’ve been sent there only to die. We’d chosen to live. We’d chosen hope.

And now, after many long, lonely years, I’d found Nellie.

She was fiddling with the button translator when I returned, and there was a grin on her face.

“Did you figure it out?”

“I did!” The words came from the translator right after she said them. “I just had to hold the power button until it switched. Easy-peasy.”

“I did not know we could do that. Hess’n’s shuttle did it for him before it was grounded.”

“I didn’t either. But I don’t think it will last very long; there’s almost no charge on it. And there’s no power source to charge it.”

“It will last our trip. I’m glad we can communicate now.”

I joined her on the makeshift hay and tarp mat and pulled her into my arms. Her body was cold. No wonder she was not yet asleep.

“I wish I still had my shuttle,” I admitted. “I could offer you more comfort there.”

“If you had a shuttle, you’d be able to contact New Franklin, and they could send help.”