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The lights brightened gently and then dimmed again, like he was shrugging. “You didn’t know. Most shuttles are not like me or Haax’l’s. They are more like Nov’k’s. Also, I’m not supposed to exist, remember?”
I looked around at the interior of the vessel. It looked identical to my old one, but somehow it didn’t feel the same. “What about this one? “
“If this shuttle had been intelligent, it would’ve guessed what the hunter was about to do and warned him. It did not, so I doubt much was lost.”
That made me feel better, knowing we hadn’t lost a consciousness like Pip.
My cock had settled down now, and I was ready. I took a deep breath before stepping out to face the crowd.
Chapter 21: Sam
Lenny and I reviewed the footage taken by the operational mothership so many times that my vision was starting to blur. I’d been stuck in this meeting for two whole hours already, and I was exhausted. So were all the other Tech Wizards on the call.
At first glance it had looked like all the pieces of the infected ship had been pushed away, but some of us were still worried that we’d missed some, and sure enough, we found tiny bits of it that the hunters had missed.
The hunters who’d been recovering on the other ship decided to stay up there for a little while longer and hunt down these remnants. Yes, they were injured, but they could still fly their shuttles, and by the look on some of their faces, they were eager to do something other than stare at gray walls all day.
We warned them to be very careful not to let these pieces of debris touch their shuttles. There was also the possibility of fragments so miniscule we couldn’t see them latching onto a shuttle or the mothership, so we advised them to fully decontaminate the exteriors of their shuttles and the mothership regularly.
Which brought us to the elephant in the room: the infected mothership. So far, it had yet to do…well, anything. Had ourefforts to sabotage it ourselves by disconnecting the thrusters and the weapons worked?
“But all the parts are still there. What if the fungus is able to reconnect them?” Bailey had been the one to ask the question some of us had been thinking. She was a biologist who worked on one of the food production islands; she was the one who’d given Heather the thumbs up on releasing the gophers. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility. There are fungi right here on Earth that could take over bugs and make them walk around.”
In the end, we’d agreed that we’d all sleep better at night if the infected ship was as far away from Earth as possible, mothership or not.
And so, after two grueling hours of discussions, we’d agreed to launch three new operations, all requiring worldwide cooperation between hunters and humans. Operation Not In My Space Yard, or NIMSY for short, would see us lining up dozens of Xarc’n shuttles in just the right positions—yet to be calculated by someone way better at math than me—and using the lowest setting of their blasters to nudge the infected ship away.
The second operation was to replace the mothership with satellites. It hadn’t just been the storm that had messed up Pip’s ability to phone home earlier; the network had been spottier since we lost the second mothership, since it had acted as a hub for communication. But Operation Talk To Me Baby, as we dubbed it, couldn’t be completed without the right parts and equipment, which brought us to our third and final plan: Operation Mothership Earth.
This plan was simple: build more motherships. Or at least, get more motherships working, even partially. We would dust off the one from Kan’n’s contingent and put it to work somehow, for a start. Then we’d place several facilities around each continentand launch whatever was needed to get Talk To Me Baby into orbit.
The hunters sitting in on the call looked ready to fall asleep, even those who had basic knowledge of how their tech worked, so we wrapped up the meeting.
I found Kan’n walking back into the camp with Terrance and Curtis, a huge grin on his face. He’d wanted to learn all the new fighting techniques he’d missed since going into hiding and had been particularly excited about one used to take down centicreeps, those giant centipede-like bugs the scourge developed after coming to Earth.
They’d gone through their paces and practiced for hours yesterday, but nothing quite beat the real thing, so they’d gone out in search of one today. Centicreeps weren’t exactly abundant like scuttlers. It took the nests lot of resources to build one, and the closest nest had already lost two to us recently, so the boys had had to travel.
But by the looks on their faces, they’d succeeded in finding and killing one. I was glad Kan’n was making an effort to be a part of the group, and equally happy Terrance had stepped up and offered to show him the new skills and moves. I initially thought it was only because he didn’t trust Kan’n and wanted to keep an eye on him, but the two actually got along well enough now.
As the two humans veered away to find some grub in the Hub, Kan’n strode over to me and swept me into his arms.
“Miss me?” I asked, planting a smooch on the side of his face. His hair was still damp and cold, probably because he’d hosed himself off after the fight before stepping into his decontaminator. The way hunters did that without flinching even in the dead of winter still amazed me.
“Always.”
“I’m sure you had a lot more fun than I did. That stupid meeting just ended.”
He grimaced at the word meeting. “I never liked those when it was just hunters. I like them even less now. Some humans talk too much.”
That had me laughing. I had a feeling I knew exactly who he was referring to. The first day back at camp, Mo had called us in for what was supposed to be a “quick review” of what had happened on the mothership, but one of the human group leaders had had so many questions that I thought I’d die of old age before we were finished. I wondered how that group got anything done.
We got to Kan’n’s shuttle and as we stepped into a range of the cloaking, the shuttle appeared, and I grimaced at the hideous exterior. I was so glad Pip couldn’t see himself. The interior was nice and cozy though. An axe and several pieces of armor were still inside the decontamination unit, and hanging above them was one of my bras, the pink lacey one. The contrast had me grinning. This shuttle was beginning to feel like home.
“I kind of hate meetings too,” I admitted, when he dropped me onto the mat in the sleeping nook. “I’d rather be getting stuff done. Or…celebrating your successful hunt.”
He puffed up his chest, the motion making his massive shoulders look even broader. I was alone in a shuttle with a sexy, virile warrior. Yes. This was much better than a meeting.
“Thank you for keeping us safe.” I pulled him by the horns onto the bed with me. “Let me reward you for your efforts.”
