The Hunter I

THE HUNTER I

INCOMING TRANSMISSION. ENCRYPTED. LOCATION OF ORIGIN UNKNOWN, HIGH PRIORITY.

The shrill feed from the speaker woke him. He winced in pain, his sensitive ears amplifying the already incredibly piercing sound of the ship’s limited intelligence unit. The hunter’s world took on a familiar light blue glow, as his display activated, showing him the time, location, vitals and all. He took a look at the identification code of the bane of his restful sleep. He envisioned a familiar overly happy, annoyingly peppy face.

INCOMING TRANSM—

“Lower volume, standard settings. Before I go deaf.”, the hunter said. He then went and put on his sensemask, to further dull the far too loud voice of his ship.

Understood.

It had to be him. It was always him. “Put the call on hold, Aeo. I can’t deal with him now.”

Command overwritten by coorespondent. Starting transmission now.

The hunter grunted. He was very much starting to wish he’d picked up that selective transmission jammer from the dealer he’d met yesterday. He wanted to go back for it, but the dead aren’t exactly known for being good traders.

He took a second to adjust himself, then sat up, the seat behind him moving alongside him, propping him up once he was upright. He stared out his windows, his reflection before him, standing in front of a sea of stars with a big lavender clouded planet, floating in it’s waters. His peace was infringed on by Vaunt’s ever so chipper demeanor.

“Hey! Thames, my hunter from the planet Raeunter. How’s my favorite rahkshar doing?”

“Annoyed.”

“Been a little while since we talked, Thames. Got the guy on top worried you might have forgotten your debts again.”

“With you calling me unprovoked and uninhibited? How could I?”

“Well he had been giving you a break. Just don’t want you to grow too complacent. Something interesting came into play recently as well. Got all the underbelly in the galaxy going crazy trying make sense of it.”

“You know I don’t have time to listen to every rumor. Especially with your gang watching me like blasted Arbiters.”

“Mmm. Anywho, got a culi on the inside of some of the scavengers. Told me one of those cabals picked up some new kinda creature on the Farside. Homon or hue-bon, he said. Heemin? Damn buggers are hard to make out with that accent. Thought you might be interested, anyway. You’ve always had a penchant for the exotic, haven’t you, Thames? That insatiable curiosity for the unknown?”

The hunter ground his teeth, but the mask he wore covered any expression he’d make. The question dug into him like a knife, but as with any other blow, he bore it and took it in stride.

“Your friend was shitting you. Ain’t nothing out in the Farside but fields of gas and dead hunks of rock. Scavengers been out trying to make use of the space for years.”

“S’what I thought too. But then I saw these.”

The hunter’s display lit up and his holographic screen shifted it’s display to accommodate for the transmitted picture.  An odd, bulky frame colored white and covered in dust and stained with who knows, wires and knobs all over, with a large hunchback and a bulbous head. The hunter looked quizzically at the image.

“The shit is that.”

“Was picked up by a Cruvian captain, trajectory of his travel is what he said the analysts were saying. Bunch of shots got leaked immediately but these here look like they’re the clearest.”

“Hm. Whatever, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“Haha, oh you rahks, can see a grain of sand on the arse of a sandfly. Are all of you so skeptic, I wonder?“

“If you say that again, I’ll fly over and shoot you myself.”

“Now, now, then you’ll really be in it, I’m the only one the Maester’s got who actually likes you, remember? Rest’ll chew you up if you were as chummy with them as you were me.”

The hunter puts his head in his hands. Unfortunately for him, the ulqorian was right. He was already on such thin ice as it was with that accursed shark’s band of brigands.

“Just tell me what he wants. I’d like to go back to enjoying my life.”

“Doesn’t being that sour ever get tiring?”

“I will do it, Vraunt. I will come and gut you in your sleep.”

“Okay, okay! The Wayfarer be damned, you really need to fix your attitude. No wonder you couldn’t keep her around—”

The hunter slammed his dashboard, shaking the display, and Vraunt let up his words. The

The hunter folded his arms as the blue scaled creature pressed some buttons with his claws. The hunter’s display showed a request for sharing an image and he tapped a button on his dashboard to confirm it, and a slew of files opened around the video feed of Vaunt. Looked like a . He knew he’d seen her before, but wasn’t exactly sure where.

“Arrankara Lendera is in danger. She’s being hunted, and the Maester wants you to guard her until he can figure out what to do about it.”

The hunter cocked his head in confusion.

“Who?”

“Please don’t tell me you don’t at least know who Arrankara is, Thames, please. You go around the reaches just as much as any other hunter, yet you still always remain so out of touch. An amazing talent you have, I can’t believe it.”

“The orders, Vraunt. Get back to them.”

Vraunt looks to pull up something for himself. He looks it once over before looking back at the hunter.

“Some reason the Barvum family has a hit out on ‘er. Don’t know why yet, but considering her gaining so much popularity over the past cycles, maybe one of the other big names want her gone. You know how celebrity is, brutal business for all involved. So he wants you to intercept them before instead. Then protect her, n’ take her back to him when he desires it.”

The hunter put a hand up to his mask, showing pensiveness. He tried to garner what someone like the MAester would want from just some celebrity starlet.

“Wouldn’t she have protection against this kind of thing? Girl’s been big for a while now, the Barvums can’t be the first to go after her like that.”

“Yes, but you’ll have to get past them too, you’re to protect her. What happens to her isn’t her choice, the Maester’s the one in control of what she’s to be doing, and you are to play his hands.”

“I don’t feel like playing bodyguard for a teenage intergalactic. Can barely stand you as it is, thing’ll overload my senses and make the whole point of bringing me along moot.”

“Well you could. And you could also go up to the Maester and say that yourself, love to see that go down.”

The hunter tensed and gave up internally.

“Anyway, the rest of the information is there, last concert she played was in the Taruo Sector of Cryptos. Think she’s doing a tour of the whole thing, so if you want to find her, I’d start there. Barvums are likely already on the trail, so I’d get a move on. I’d hate to see what happens if you fail…”

Transmission ended. If you would like to rate the quality of this correspondence, sim—

The hunter pressed another button on his display and laid back in his seat. He adjusted his rifle, moving his arm towards it intently and opening his hand slightly before making a tight fist. He looked away and cursed.

“Not today, Thames. Not today.”, the hunter spoke to himself.

Looking at the picture of woman calm him, and he lost himself again in her features. Brown hair, pale skin and green eyes, a combination he’d always found so intoxicating. Yet he’d never see them again. He flipped the switch to it’s side and tinted it, and moved on to pull out his controls and set a course for Cryptos. Duty called, and the Maester never liked to be kept waiting.

“Well, Sirina”, he said as he clutched his ship’s center stick and set himself up for travel, “looks like I’m playing someone else’s bodyguard now.”

**