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I chewed on another cut-up piece of the nutrient-dense Xarc’n food bar. It had only been a day and a half, and I was already sick of the rations on the mothership. It wasn’t the flavor that put me off, but the texture. No wonder this stuff lasted almost indefinitely when stored properly. It had the palatability of a piece of tough leather.
Pip was, technically, repaired. I was close to powering him up to run a final diagnostic before taking him for a spin around the mothership. In space.
Imagine that!Me! Flying a shuttle in the vacuum of space!
I’d come a long way from my first job trying to convince a meathead that I could, in fact, fix his car.
When I first agreed to come up here, I thought that I’d be doing a lot of watching and learning rather than hands-on work, but I was wrong. To my surprise and delight, after Jask’l showed me the ropes and taught me how to use their equipment, he let me work on Pip on my own, coming over only occasionally to make sure I had everything I needed.
He even programmed the repair bay door to open for me and not Kan’n so that we could work in peace. I bet that grilled his chicken!
Jask’l did have another ship to work on, though, as well as two more waiting in the wings, so I bet the decision was as much for his convenience as it was for my ego. I was surprised that he was the only one permanently working in the repair bay. There was also Burr’k, who bounced between the repair bay and Yam’r’s workshop, depending on who needed the most help. Yam’r was responsible for making all the nifty devices hunters used.
But surely, one-and-a-half mechanics were not enough to take care of all the shuttles of the hunters in this contingent. There was the other mothership, of course, but even so, was that really enough support for all the hunters on Earth?
Jask’l and Burr’k were constantly working in triage mode. No wonder the concept of yearly tune-ups or regular preventative maintenance didn’t exist, and the hunters often flew their shuttles into the ground before they even considered bringing them in for repairs.
We’d nipped that mindset in the bud back in Franklin. We’d enlisted the mates’ help to convince the stubborn hunters that it was a good idea to get their shuttles looked at if they started to act strange, even if they were still flying. One of the hunters there, Rajiv’k, was well-versed in how their tech worked and had helped a lot with that.
In general, I was shocked at how few warriors were stationed in the mothership at all. For some reason, I was expecting it to be a hive of activity. The reality was, only a handful of hunters kept this place running.
There was Ror’k, who was in charge of making sure everything here and on Earth was running smoothly. He was the overseer of this contingent. There was a medic named Far’k in the med bay; he was kind of a prick and barely acknowledged me when they first introduced us. Jask’l worked in the repair bay, and Yam’rspecialized in manufacturing and fixing devices and weapons. I’d had a long chitchat with him yesterday; he’d wanted to see my phone and was interested to know how I’d gotten it to charge in proximity to Xarc’n power sources. Burr’k, as I mentioned, bounced between the repair bay and Tech Procurement. Finally there was Fen’r, who was responsible for growing new warriors in the “nursery.”
That was it. Six permanent warriors, similar in size to a hunter group. According to Jask’l, they could all cover each other’s duties in case of emergencies.
Everyone else on the mothership was either a hunter recovering from injuries or a new hunter freshly out of the vats. The whole idea that Xarc’n warriors were grown in artificial wombs still creeped me out. They came out as young hunters, children really, and started their training immediately.
Much of their first education was watching training videos and practicing the basic fighting skills they’d learned from said videos. Then, as they got older, it was up to the hunters recovering from injuries to give them hands-on experience and prepare them for battle on the planet below. Each planet was different, so the skills they learned and their knowledge of terrain and other geographic details needed to be tailored accordingly.
It didn’t take long for them to grow into fully functional Xarc’n warriors. They were fed special food that accelerated their growth, maturing them quickly so they could put on the muscles and raw power required to fight the scourge.
Many of the processes on the mothership and in the food production facilities, which I’d still yet to tour, were automated. Once things were set up, they ran mostly on their own. The Xarc’n military had designed everything to be super easy for thehunters so they could focus on the task they’d been designed to do: remove the scourge everywhere they settled in the galaxy.
The door to the repair bay slid open, and Ror’k stormed in with Yam’r and Lenny close behind him. They had worried looks on their faces. Xarc’n hunters naturally had a serious, severe look about them. I’d gotten used to their resting asshole faces, but this was on another level.
Even Lenny, who was usually mild-mannered and fun-loving, looked tense.
“There is trouble.” Ror’k didn’t sound much brighter than he looked.
That had Jask’l and Burr’k sliding out from underneath the shuttle they were currently working on and hurrying to meet them at the console at the front of the room. Curious and a bit worried, I joined them.
“The detachment from the mining ship we’ve been waiting for is close, but the mining ship itself has sent out an urgent warning, telling us to destroy the vessel on sight and not to let any of the contents touch our planet.”
“That is highly…unusual,” Burr’k said.
“And inconvenient, since we really need that shipment to make more translators and communication devices.” Jask’l wiped his hand on his loincloth nervously. “Have you asked why?”
“I have, but have not yet received a reply.” Ror’k pulled up a dark screen with a three-dimensional map grid on it. He pointed to a spot on the screen that was in the middle of an asteroid belt. “The message came from here, which is exactly where the mining ship should be, but it is looped again and again.”
I wasn’t sure, but from the look on his face, that must be unusual.
He zoomed out and moved to our location in space. I saw Earth and recognized Venus and Mars too.
“The shuttle they sent us is still out of range of our firing system.” He tapped on the screen, and a green dot appeared. “This is the current trajectory.” He drew a curved line from the dot to Earth. “We should have a visualhereand firing capabilitieshere.” He put two dots on the line.
“But we really need the mineral and ore on that vessel,” Jask’l said. “If the mining ship isn’t replying, something may have happened to them, and we might not get another shipment anytime soon. There has to be another way than destroying the entire vessel.”
“Let’s meet up in the war room,” Ror’k suggested, “and relay this information to everyone on the planet below. This is highly unusual, and they need to know, since it affects them too. We’ll make the decision when we have a visual.”
