by Ryan Kirk
Tev possessed the element of surprise. Kenan didn’t know he was being hunted, so no matter how strong of a warrior he was, he was still prey. Tev would kill him.
Night was coming, and Tev had a choice to make. The signs were recent, and if Tev was forced to guess, he would guess Kenan had spent the last night here. The question was, would he again?
Tev’s gut told him Kenan would return. Besides, there were several trails leading to and from the camp, and it would take Tev more time than he had left today to decide which track was the most recent and follow it. Better to wait here, at least for tonight, before deciding to track Kenan the next morning. He scanned the surrounding terrain. Kenan’s camp was isolated, but there was a high point about a hundred meters towards the sunset.
He didn’t hesitate. Moving quickly, Tev climbed the small ridge of rock. He laid down, resting his right arm in front of him, pointing his gun in the general direction of Kenan’s camp.
The sun fell, and as it did, Tev’s vision changed. Kindra told him about it as it happened, but he was still surprised to find that he could see, even though there wasn’t any sun. Kindra called it night vision. Fortunately, Tev had become used to being amazed, and he took it in stride. The colors were off, but it wouldn’t matter. All he needed to do was take one shot.
Tev’s breath caught in his throat when he saw a light in his vision. He had learned about the motion tracker when Kindra had trained him. It was how Kenan and Derreck had known when people were behind them when the hunters had tried to kill them earlier. It was why Tev had decided to lay down and point his arm at the camp before Kenan came back. If he didn’t move, Kenan wouldn’t have a warning.
Tev forced his breath down, breathing in deeply and slowly. A few minutes later, Kenan came into view, wearing the terrible armor that had destroyed so many lives the last time Tev had seen it. Never again. Tev watched as Kenan sat down in his camp, his back to Tev.
Tev’s hunting instincts kicked in. As much as he itched to pull the trigger, it was best to wait a few moments and make sure he had the best shot. Using his thoughts, as Kindra had taught him, he pulled up a small red circle that showed where his bullets would go. As he had worried, his aim was a little off. Moving slowly, Tev shifted his arm further to the left. He moved it a centimeter at a time, not sure what level of motion would cause Kenan’s suit to alarm him. After a few minutes, Tev’s weapon was in line with Kenan’s head.
He almost pulled the trigger, but something held him back. Something was bothering him, but it took him a few moments to realize what it was. He whispered to Kindra.
“Kindra, how accurate is this weapon?”
Her confusion was evident. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, will it hit what I’m pointing at from this distance?”
Kindra paused, and Tev imagined she was trying to figure out the answer to his question.
“At your distance, acceptable targeting is considered within half a meter.”
Tev nodded to himself. Without a word, he slowly lowered his arm just a little further, watching the little red circle drift downwards over Kenan’s back. He had a much better chance of hitting this target. He didn’t wait, didn’t hesitate at all. He pulled the trigger. His arm emitted the same whine he had once feared so much.
Tev saw something fly off of Kenan’s back and saw him pitch forward. His heart leapt into his throat. He had killed the one who had brought so much pain to his people!
His elation was short lived. Kenan turned around and Tev felt a strong sense of déjà vu as Kenan brought his own weapon to bear. Tev moved, rolling to his right just as the dirt around him was torn up. He knew the armor might protect him, but there were no guarantees.
Tev dipped below the ridge line and got to his feet. He only thought for a moment, and his confidence was high. He took a running start and leapt off the ridge he’d been hiding on. The drop was a solid ten meters, but Tev landed and rolled out. He lost his balance just for a moment, but got the suit under control quickly.
Kenan was tracking him the entire time. Tev saw the arm come up again and darted to the left, against the direction of Kenan’s movement. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Kenan’s arm spit fire, but Tev was unhurt. Kenan shifted his aim and Tev leapt into the air, covering the last five meters between them in a moment.
But when he came down, Kenan wasn’t there. He had side-stepped, and brought his weapon to point at Tev’s back. Tev tried to turn but stumbled, his mind and body still unused to the suit. He slipped and fell as Kenan’s bullets tore through the air above his head.
Tev caught his fall on his arms and churned his legs, driving himself right at Kenan. He came in underneath Kenan’s arms, tackling him right across his midsection. But Kenan didn’t fall. Instead, he backpedaled, somehow managing to keep his feet underneath him. At the same time, Tev felt a tremendous blow to his back, and he lost his balance once again. Kenan must have brought both elbows down on him.
Tev crashed to the ground. It took him a moment, but he raised himself up and saw Kenan’s weapon pointing right at him. But nothing happened. Kenan seemed to glance at his arm, but Tev drove himself up to his feet, ready for more.
Kenan turned and ran. Tev wasn’t sure what had happened, but he pursued. Kenan was fast, but Tev moved faster. The forest sped by them, the two suits of armor and the two pilots darting in between trees and over rocks. Tev would close the gap, only to trip and fall or run into a tree. If he had just been running, he could have done it, but to pursue was different, and Tev lacked the experience to keep his feet. Tev had never taken part in a hunt so fast-paced before and his entire body sang at the opportunity.
In front of him, Kenan leapt into the air, twisting his body behind him as he did. His arm came up and pointed at Tev, and Tev sidestepped to the right. Above him, trees exploded as the bullets tore through wooden flesh.
Whatever had prevented Kenan from firing at him earlier wasn’t a problem anymore. Tev watched, impressed despite himself, as Kenan’s jump took him into a ravine. He landed moving backwards at high speed, absorbing the impact in his legs as though it were nothing. In that moment, Tev felt a hint of respect mixed in with all the rage towards Kenan. Whatever the man had done, Tev admired strength and skill, and those were qualities Kenan had plenty of.
Tev only paused for a moment before dropping into the ravine behind Kenan and continuing the chase. He tried taking a hasty shot, but it went wide. Kenan was running forward but shifting left or right frequently, making him a difficult target to hit. Still, the rocky walls of the ravine were closing in, and soon Kenan would have no place to run but forward. When he did, Tev would have him.
Tev was lining up another shot when Kenan took to the air again. He launched himself up towards one of the walls of the ravine. Kenan’s foot pressed down into wall and he shot further up the ravine towards the opposite wall. Again, Kenan landed and leapt off of the opposite ravine wall, and Tev watched his enemy clear the entire ravine. Kenan took another shot from above that sent rock falling down all around Tev.
The hunter didn’t even have time to think. His gut warned him that Kenan would only need a second or two to line up the final shot from above, and if he didn’t move, he would be a sitting target down at the bottom of the ravine.
Tev jumped, trying to mirror the actions he had seen Kenan take. He leapt, placing one foot against one wall of the ravine, then pushed off and tried to plant his other foot against the opposite wall. Immediately, he could feel that he wasn’t going to make it. His gut sank, but he pushed as hard as he could off his planted foot. He flew across the ravine, but instead of coming out on top, he smashed into the side of the wall. With a desperate grab, he reached up and one of his hands managed to find the edge of the ravine wall. He threw his second arm up, trying to find another handhold. The moment he felt like he had it, he pulled with all his might.
His own strength, amplified by the exosuit, threw him into the air. Tev, not expecting the strength of the su
it, floundered in the air like a fish out of water before crashing to the ground, one of his arms sprawled over the ravine’s edge.
The only thing Tev wanted to do was lay there and catch his breath, but fear coursed through his body. He knew Kenan had to be nearby, but in his confusion, Tev couldn’t understand what he was seeing in front of his face. An alarm was softly wailing in his ear, and images were flashing quickly in front of him, the helmet distorting his view of the outside world. It was a private version of hell, knowing there was an enemy nearby and not being able to see him.
Tev rolled over onto his back. He struggled to sit up, but as he did, Kenan seemed to materialize out of nowhere. The warrior stood in front of Tev, seeming to debate what to do for a moment.
Tev wasn’t going to give up. He tried to bring his right arm up while rolling to his left. If he could just get a shot off before Kenan, his sacrifice would be worth it. But Kenan wasn’t planning on giving him the chance. Kenan stepped forward, grabbing Tev’s right arm in his left hand. Tev tried to fight it, but Kenan and his suit were stronger than Tev’s, and Tev was still too disoriented from his fall to do anything about it. He just sat there, frozen against his will, as Kenan raised his right arm and brought it to Tev’s face.
Tev didn’t even see what happened next. He didn’t even have time to say a final prayer to Lys before his world went black.
Tears streamed down Kindra’s face as she clenched her fist. She had never felt so helpless, so useless, in her entire life. If there had been another suit, Kindra would have climbed into it and chased Kenan down herself. Hell, she was considering just grabbing a pistol and walking out unprotected.
She didn’t have any strong emotional attachment to Tev. But all the same, she was amazed by him. She searched her mind for the right words. She stumbled across noble, primal, and decent, but none of them fit her picture of him quite well enough. He was all of those qualities, but more. She couldn’t place it, but watching Tev the past few days had changed her.
He reacted to captivity with an amazing calm, taking in all the information he could. When given the chance to simulate piloting a suit, he took to it with an ease she never would have believed possible. She tried to put herself in his position, but every time she did, she thought there was no way she would handle everything he had taken in stride.
Watching the hunt had been both terrifying and exhilarating. She didn’t fool herself. She knew that if she gave Tev the chance, he would kill Kenan, but after seeing firsthand what Kenan had done, Kindra wasn’t sure she cared anymore. The scientific part of her brain detached, telling her it was interesting she was willing to kill a member of her own crew, but she didn’t have the emotional space to be concerned.
Kindra had watched the entire chase, unable to tear her eyes away when Kenan raised his rifle and shot Tev in the face. She sobbed, anger and sorrow mixing together. No one had said anything, although she was certain the other two had been watching everything. They were out of options. It was time to prepare to launch.
After a few minutes, Kindra caught her breath and worked up the courage to look at the screens again. Her eye was immediately drawn to Tev’s vitals, which were doing something they absolutely shouldn’t be. They were still going, and going strong. She frowned and commanded Tev’s suit to perform a self-diagnostic. A few seconds later the report flashed on the screen. There was a large amount of damage to the helmet, and plenty of minor damage to the rest of the suit, but there were no reported errors on the bioscanners. Tev was still alive.
Options raced through her mind. She keyed in the code to talk to him.
“Tev? Tev, are you there?”
She tried a couple of more times, but didn’t get any answer. She gave up and studied her screens once again. Her thoughts were interrupted by Eleta’s voice.
“Kindra, I just got a notice that our systems here are being accessed.”
Kindra couldn’t keep up. “What do you mean?”
There was a moment of silence, and Kindra could imagine Eleta running commands through the system. “It’s Kenan. He’s accessing our survey data.”
Fury built in Kindra. “Can you block his access?”
“No problem.”
“Okay. Block it in about thirty seconds. I’m going to try to talk to him.”
“Good luck.”
Kindra keyed in for Kenan’s suit. “Kenan? Kenan, I know you’re there. Talk to me, you piece of shit.”
Kenan’s laughter was soft, and somehow far more terrifying than a laugh ever should be. “You know, Kindra, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before. I was starting to wonder if you even knew the words.”
“Kenan, what the fuck are you doing? Come back in and stop this.”
Kenan’s voice was colder than Kindra had ever heard before. “I’m not going to stop until my enemy is gone.”
“Kenan, Derreck is -”
“DON’T YOU EVER SAY HIS NAME TO ME,” Kenan shouted, paralyzing Kindra with surprise. “He was the only good man I ever knew, and they killed him.”
Kindra tried to interject, to let him know that Derreck was alive and on-board, but Kenan wasn’t having any of it.
“No! Don’t say another word, Kindra, or I swear I will come for you, too. All I want to know is who it was. Who did you send after me? I’ve seen the recorded pilot scores for each of you, and none of you can pilot a suit like that. That means one of you is Internal Security. Which one of you was the operative I killed?”
Kindra’s head was spinning. She didn’t know what Kenan was saying. There was no department of Internal Security. What was happening in his head? She could only stumble over half an answer.
“It wasn’t one of us.”
Kenan swore and cut the channel. Kindra screamed after him and tried to get him back on the line, but the comms had gone dead. Eleta, who had been listening to everything, spoke softly. “He cut everything again.”
Kindra buried her head in her hands. “What did he get?”
“Not much. Just some information from a fly-by we did on our through atmo. But there is a problem.”
Kindra didn’t want to hear the problem. All she wanted was to put the dropship on autopilot and take it out into space and away from everything that had happened. Running from her problems had never sounded so appealing.
But duty, responsibility, and her inherent goodness prevented her from doing so. “What?”
“The maps he grabbed were annotated by you. You were pretty sure you had determined the location of several habitations.”
Kindra’s mind wandered. Studying the maps for signs of life seemed like it had happened lifetimes ago. Eleta was right. She had looked through the scans and identified places she felt were habitations. Since everything that had happened, she had barely thought about them. Knowing what they knew now, those locations were very likely habited. Kindra swore to herself. She had just led Kenan right to the site of his next massacre.
It took more time than Kindra wanted, but then again, everything took more time than she wanted. Every second seemed to rush by, one after the other, and each one felt like a life that Kindra was going to lose because of her inability to do anything. Time and time again she tried to reach Tev. His vitals remained unchanged, and finally, Kindra made a decision she wouldn’t have otherwise. She injected adrenaline right into his system, waking him up.
She heard him gasp in shock as everything came back to him. Kindra had no visual, so all she could do was listen as he struggled to orient himself. There were grunts that sounded terrified. She checked the sensors, and he didn’t seem to be in any danger. Kenan had left Tev alone, thinking he was dead.
“Tev? Tev, can you hear me?”
His breathing calmed. “Yes, Kindra, I can hear you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There are too many pictures. It’s very bright and I can’t see anything.”
Kindra struggled to imagine what Tev was saying, but then an idea came to her. While she was trying
to wake Tev, Eleta had come down and worked through the footage of the fight, trying to determine everything that had happened. When the battle had started, Kenan had been using armor-piercing rounds. It was a logical choice against an exosuit, but because Kenan hadn’t been planning on fighting against armored targets when he had originally left the dropship, he didn’t have many armor-piercing rounds. He had run out just as he had Tev dead to rights.
He had switched to regular rounds, and that decision had saved Tev’s life. They still had enough velocity to penetrate the helmet’s armor, but Kenan’s shot must have been just a few centimeters off-center, and the helmet had deflected the round upwards and out of the helmet, which was where some of the display controls were. If they were damaged, it might be flashing all sorts of information Tev couldn’t understand.
Kindra switched off the area she suspected was the problem. Tev’s breathing slowed even further, confirming her guess before he could even say anything.
Eleta’s voice interrupted their conversation. “Kindra, if we shut down those displays, he won’t be able to aim his weapon.”
“But if we leave them on, he’ll never move from where he is.”
Eleta locked a stare on Kindra. Kindra knew exactly what was coming. “We need to think this through. Tev’s already been beaten and almost lost his life. The armor he has is damaged, the display doesn’t work, and he’s still chasing someone with way more experience. It was a long shot to begin with. But now it’s murder.”
Kindra knew, but there wasn’t any choice. Kenan was going to continue killing, and Tev was the only person who even had a chance.