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Chapter 17: Sam
The blizzard ended the next morning, just as Zhe’l had predicted, but when we turned the laptop back on and video called him, a frazzled-looking human picked up instead.
“Hey, you must be Samantha. I’m Cade. I work with Zhe’l and his hunter group. Can you hold on for a sec? We have a bit of an emergency here at camp, and we need all hands on deck.”
“No problem.”
He set the phone down, and all I could hear was a bunch of chaotic shouting before he returned about a minute later.
“What happened?” Pip asked before I could.
Cade frowned. “Who said that?”
“I did!” Pip said.
“That’s Pip, the computer from Kan’n’s old shuttle,” I explained. “We have him hooked up to the laptop so we can call you.”
“Oh! He must be one of those special models I keep hearing so much about.”
“Yup! I sure am,” Pip agreed. “I’m special.”
“Ugh, that’s going to go to his head,” I muttered.
“So cool,” Cade said. “I never thought I’d get a chance to talk to one. Well, Pip, what happened is our roof came down under the heavy snow. I knew we should’ve reinforced it before the storm, but no one listened to me.” He shook his head.
“They should’ve!” Pip agreed.
“But the roof isn’t even the half of it. The scourge are extra riled up, too. They’ve been out in full force since the storm ended. The flyers are attacking while we are trying to fix the roof, and our hunters are trying to keep them distracted. Zhe’l must be evading flyers right now since your call got redirected to me. There are carpets of scuttlers on the ground too. It’s like a swarm, except in winter. And they don’t quite move the same way. It’s wild.”
“What do you mean?” Kan’n asked from behind me.
“It’s like they’re looking for something.”
“It sounds like they realized our pod wasn’t a piece of the mining ship they were waiting for after all.” I hugged myself, trying to forget the terrifying memory of being stuck in the pod and rolling inexorably toward the nest.
“That’s what we’re thinking. What’s really weird is, they’re acting strange all over the world. I sure hope nothing from that vessel made it down to Earth.”
“All the pieces were sent toward the sun.” Kan’n sounded very sure.
I was less confident. What if they’d missed even the tiniest piece and it fell to Earth?
“Good. Burn that fucking shit right up. I hope they got every last bit.”
A loud sound in the background of the video had Cade turning. “Fuck, what now?” he yelled.
“Don’t worry about us for now, Cade. You guys take care of your bug problem.” I eyed the low battery signal in the bottom right corner of the screen. “I’m not sure if we have enough juice to call you again, but we’ll be here waiting.”
“Great. We’ll be there as soon as we can. Maybe an hour or two. Don’t step outside or do anything to draw the flyers’ attention,” Cade warned. “You donotwant to deal with them right now without a shuttle or weapons.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” I didn’t survive this long only to become bug chow now. Nope.
Cade eyed Kan’n, clearly having had experience working with ornery hunters. “That means you too, hunter. I know what’s going through your mind right now; you’re thinking this is a great opportunity to hunt. It’s not. Just sit tight and wait for us.”
Another loud sound and more yelling had Cade hanging up, and it was just me, Kan’n, and Pip.
“So what do we do now?” Pip asked.
“Well, there’s not much power left, but let’s try to call home quickly and let them know we’re safe. They’re probably worried about us.”
