The Hunted

by Andrew Wichland

  At once, Willa opened fire, blowing the sensor array at point-blank range.

  Reacting just as quickly, Robin released the magnetic clamps. Dropping down, he rolled the ship right-side up as he threw the throttle open, shooting them forward like a torpedo from its tube.

  “Everyone, hang on!” he snapped as they burst from under the cruiser and headed directly for the planet.

  They were almost to the outer atmosphere when Freya said, “Uh…what’s that?”

  “What?” Robin asked, reaching up to make a few adjustments just as an alarm blared. “John!” he snapped.

  At once, LJ reacted, and a holographic radar readout appeared. “We’ve got fighters incoming!”

  “Hang on!” Robin called out, and he banked the Odysseus away from the fighters.

  “Sorry,” Freya said.

  “It’s not your fault.” Robin tried to reassure her. “It must have been a patrol. Now hang on—this is going to get bumpy!” he warned as he pressed a button and was strapped into the chair. “Hopefully we can lose them entering the atmosphere,” he said, adjusting the angle of entry.

  “Robin,” Little John warned, “if we stay too long in the atmosphere, we can burn up!”

  “Which would make them crazy to follow us!” the pilot pointed out. “Now keep that finger on the reverse thrusters!”

  “On your signal!” LJ barked as the ship started shaking from atmosphere entry turbulence.

  The seconds slowly ticked by as the shaking grew stronger.

  “Are they still on our six?” Robin barked over the turbulence, which was getting so bad that it felt like his teeth were going to shake right out of his skull.

  “They’re either crazy or they’re drones! They’re still right behind us!” John barked back.

  Robin issued a curse as his eyes roved everywhere, searching for a solution, before they froze on one of the instruments. A light went off in his head.

  “John!” he barked, eyes shooting to his friend, and LJ glanced over. “How much longer can they last?”

  Blinking, Little John frowned. “Not as long as us, but—”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know, a few seconds!”

  “Okay,” Robin said, looking down at the rear-view readout again, eyes locked on the fighters still following them. “Everyone, brace yourselves!”

  “Why? What are you going to do?” Freya demanded.

  Before he could answer, the fighters began breaking apart. “Brace! Brace! Brace!” he called out. At once, he pulled the throttle into neutral and the engines died. At once, the ship shook harder as they began to drop like a stone.

  “What the hell, man?” LJ reached for the throttle as they started going into a spin.

  “No, don’t!” Robin barked.

  “Are you crazy?” Freya shouted as she hung from her safety straps like a Christmas ornament.

  “Maybe,” he muttered under his breath as he was thrown in and out of his chair, the safety straps the only thing keeping him in it as the ship tumbled through the atmosphere. The debris of the fighters fell around them.

  “LJ, give me a count!” he barked, hand gong to the throttle.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing!” his friend called out before counting down their altitude. The seconds seemed to last an eternity. “30,000…25,000…20,000…” LJ reported as the ground got closer. “Robin, if we don’t pull up soon, we’ll die!”

  “Tell me when we reach 10,000!”

  After shooting him a look that clear showed he thought he was crazy, LJ looked back at the rapidly-falling count on the altitude reader. “NOW!” he barked.

  At once Robin, opened the throttle. “Come on…” he growled as he began making out each tree in an oasis and several large boulders surrounding a small patch of water.

  Just when he thought they would crash, they came to a fast stop a couple hundred feet above the ground. After landing the ship next to the oasis and sighing, Robin sagged in his seat, face turned toward the ceiling and eyes closed.

  “Do you mind telling us what the heck you were just thinking?” LJ demanded, glaring.

  Letting loose another sigh, Robin opened his eyes, looking over at his friend. “It just came to me,” he admitted, “to let the fighters fall apart and then hide in the falling debris,” he explained as he climbed out of his seat to lean against it.

  Breathing deeply, LJ shook his head, looking away. “Good plan,” he muttered with a scowl, “but a little warning would have been nice!”

  “I sure hope insanity doesn’t run in the family,” Freya murmured, still in her seat, as the safety straps retracted.

  Before Robin could say anything, the hatch opened, and they all looked at a slack-faced Willa, who looked a little green around the gills.

  Her face formed a snarl and she pointed at Robin. “You’re lucky I have a strong stomach,” she growled, “or you’d be cleaning the bottom gunner station!”

  Chapter 18

  Raiders

  Shortly after, the group again sat at the table, discussing their next move. The last to join was LJ, who had been going over the sensors.

  At the sound of the hatch opening, they all turned to watch him come through. “Well, from what I gathered,” he started before taking a seat, “we’re a couple hundred miles from the nearest large settlement.” He sighed, exasperated.

  “Anything between here and there?” Robin asked.

  Sighing again, LJ shrugged. “A few camps, from what I can tell.”

  Robin leaned back in his seat, looking up at the ceiling in thought. “Well, obviously, Freya and I have to get to that larger settlement,” he finally said, looking at them. “That way, we have double the chances of finding him. Hopefully, somehow, we can get transportation of some kind from one of these camps.”

  Locking eyes with him, Freya nodded. He then looked between Willa and Little John.

  “LJ, you’re with us,” he finally said, and LJ nodded. “Willa, you stay here.” She moaned. “What?” he asked, exasperated.

  “Does this have anything to do with the fact that I grew up with Tuck, and you hope I picked up some engineering skills from him?” she demanded with a frown, her head resting in her hand.

  “More like survival,” Robin answered, getting to his feet, “because we may be coming hot or need a be picked up in a warzone. Frankly, I’d rather have someone I know is crazy enough to do it.”

  For a second, Willa looked at him before she sat back with ease. “Okay, I can live with that.”

  In short order, the three prepared to leave, picking out loose clothing for the heat, as well as face masks and sun goggles.

  “Why don’t we wear our armors?” Freya asked as she slipped her plasma sabers into their holsters strapped to her thighs.

  “The same reason we’re not carrying those,” Robin answered, opening a compartment. Reaching in, he pulled out a double-barreled stacked blaster pistol with a rounded back. Ejecting the power magazine, he checked the levels before strapping on the gun belt. “They’re too unique,” he explained, buckling the holsters to his thighs. “They’d make us stand out like a sore thumb and rather easy to identify later. It’s better to wait until we don’t have a choice.” At the end of his explanation, she nodded.

  Soon, dressed appropriately and with food and water slung over their shoulders, the trio walked away from the oasis and into the desert beyond. The robes and loose clothing they wore swished in the breeze.

  For hours they walked, keeping a steady pace. As night began to fall, the three flattened themselves against a dune and peeked over the edge at the small cluster of tents that made up the camp less than half a mile away.

  Robin eyed the thick-necked, stiff-maned, horse-like animals, as well as the few sky riders parked at the edge of the camp. Glancing over at LJ and Freya on either side of him, he signaled, and they all shuffled back.

  “What do you think?” LJ asked when they were at the bottom of the dune.

  “I�
��m thinking I like those sky riders,” Robin answered.

  “And I’m thinking they could be Raiders,” his friend countered.

  “Raiders?” Freya asked.

  “Basically, they’re like pirates, or scavengers,” Robin explained with a sigh.

  “You mean they’re from Tortuga?”

  He shook his head. “Tortuga may be where most pirates are based, but that doesn’t mean they all are.”

  “So, what’s the plan for getting those riders?” LJ asked.

  “For starters, we wait for the cover of night,” Robin answered.

  “Do we really have to steal from them?” Freya asked.

  Little John looked at her and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “How do you think they got them?”

  Shortly after dark, which was hardly different than the noon day sun for Robin with his eyes night vision, he and John lay low as they crept near the edge of the dune again. Peering over, they saw two sentries near them as they patrolled.

  Drawing back, the pair sent hand signals with rapid movements, and then Little John nodded before they crept to the top again.

  The pair watched the sentries move closer to them before they paused not far from the edge, their eyes straining to pierce the surrounding darkness. When the sentries turned back to the camp, they made their move.

  In a flash of movement, Robin’s hand covered the man’s mouth while Robin’s other arm wrapped around the man’s neck to choke him out. Twisting, he kicked the man’s legs out from under him so all of his weight put pressure on his neck.

  When the man went still, Robin dropped him to the ground. When he glanced over, he saw Little John paralyzing the other sentry’s voice with a strike to his throat before boxing his ears and delivering a knockout blow to the temple. Breathing hard, LJ turned to him.

  “Still brawn over brains, eh?” Robin said as they dragged the sentries over the dune by their ankles and sent them rolling down the slope.

  After collecting Freya, the three moved forward through the camp with Little John covering the rear.

  When they reached the riders, Robin and LJ checked them over. “These puppies will seriously burn air,” he said with a grin.

  “Yeah, if we can get them started.” Robin stared down at the lock on the ignition.

  “Great,” LJ groaned.

  Robin eyed the locks for a second before he rolled up his sleeve, exposing his bracelet.

  “What are you doing?” John asked.

  As if in answer, thin tendril cords extended from the bracelet before attaching themselves to the lock and the section of the sky rider around it. Less than a second later, the rider’s instruments lit up.

  Smiling behind the cloth that masked his face, Robin turned back to the others. “Nothing like a little hot wiring,” he said, swinging his leg over and slipping on and activating a helmet. “Get on,” he said, looking at Freya. “As for you, if you’re going use that thing, use it.”.

  For a second, LJ looked at him with a puzzled look, and then they froze when the sound of a charging weapon met their ears. Both Robin and Freya, now also on the rider, slowly turned to look at young teen pointing a rifle at them.

  “Kid, put that down—it’s not a toy,” Robin said, masking his voice by making it deep and rough. “Now, put it away before you hurt yourself. We’re just borrowing them—we’ll do our best to bring them back in one piece.”

  The teen glared at them. “If you think I’m—” He was interrupted as the knife Robin shifted from its place in his sleeve hurtled through the air, knocking the rifle to the ground.

  “Do you really want to do that?” Robin hissed when the kid reached for his fallen weapon. For a second, he hesitated as he eyed them before slowly stepping back. “Just tell them the truth,” Robin said as he and LJ started the engines. “Tell them we disarmed you,” he continued as LJ shot off into the night, “and that Robin Hood needed to borrow this.” After gunning, the sky rider shot off after LJ, his and Freya’s robes flapping through the air behind them.

  Chapter 19

  The Hunt

  As the sun began to rise over the horizon, LJ looked over at Robin and Freya as he drew close on his rider, the dawn light reflecting off his helmet.

  “What was it you said to that boy?” he asked over the helmet comms.

  For a couple seconds, they rode over the desert in silence before Robin answered, “What was bound to be said sooner or later.”

  “If we do what we set out to do, we will spread through the stars like a burning nebula.” Looking back out at the desert, he sighed. “So, any idea how we find your brother?”

  Robin thought of the best way to answer. “I guess the same way we found Freya: by following my instincts.” He gunned his engines, speeding ahead into the sunrise.

  When they stopped around mid-morning to let the engines cool a bit, they drank from their limited water supply.

  “So, how are the instincts?” LJ asked as Robin scanned the endless sea of sand.

  Sighing, he shook his head when he still felt nothing. “Not as strong as I’d hoped,” Robin admitted. “It was so easy back on Tortuga.”

  “And now we’re just minnows in a sea of sand,” Freya murmured as she fingered her toothed necklace. Robin nodded and then saw a light flick on in her eye. “Maybe we can recreate…”

  “What we did there,” he finished, seeing where she was going. Reaching under his robes, he pulled his toothed necklace out.

  “Come on!” he muttered under his breath as he focused, willing it to show the way.

  Suddenly, his toothed necklace jerked in his grip. Glancing down, he opened his hand, and what he saw made him blink in surprise. The tooth dangling from the necklace lifted from his palm, spinning in a circle as it rose in the air. Faster and faster it spun, like a dancing compass. It came to a sudden stop, then, pointing right into the desert.

  “Well, that settles it for me,” LJ said with a nod. Climbing back on the sky riders, they tore off in the direction the necklace had indicated.

  Hours later, the group stood on the edge of a cliff looking down at a walled city built on a small rise. Around the center and the edge, tall, round buildings had been built with smaller buildings in their shadows. They were surrounded by large, interconnected pipes that made up their aqueduct system, most of which was built above the city. Some pipes even wrapped around the tall towers. From the large gate, a sea of tents stretched out.

  “What do you think?” Little John asked, lowering his digital binoculars.

  “Right now, I’m just glad it’s not a space port,” Robin answered, down on one knee as he eyed the city. His sight seemed to zoom in when he focused like he imagined happened to birds of prey. “It seems quite active down there.” He stood straight.

  “Must be a trade city,” LJ commented.

  “That would explain all the goods I saw down there,” Freya muttered. “Did you see any slavers?”

  Robin glanced at her. “No,” he said. “Is that good or bad for you?” She glanced at him a glint of steel in her eye. Sighing, he nodded. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Are you two getting any vibes from that place?” Little John asked, looking at the pair.

  Robin took his toothed necklace in his hand along with his medallion. “Well, either way, that’s where we’ve been led,” he said when the tooth pointed at the city.

  “So, what’s the plan on getting in there?”

  Sighing, Robin rubbed his chin. “Well…there’s always the direct approach.”

  At once, the others looked at him. “Are you crazy?” LJ demanded. “You want us to just walk through the front door? We’ve been trained to sneak in—”

  “And risk being caught or found out and have them hunting us, as well,” Robin explained. “It’s better for now they think we’re just simple desert people.”

  For a few seconds, the pair just looked at him. “On sky riders?” LJ asked, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at their rides.

  Ro
bin shrugged. “Hey, not all desert people ride animals,” he said. “Besides, we’ll need them for a quick exit.”

  LJ held his gaze before glancing away in thought. “I guess you have a point. What if we need a really fast exit?”

  Robin thought for a second before he uncovered his bracelet. “Willa, can you hear us?” he asked, tapping the crystal.

  “WILL YOU STOP THAT? I’M GETTING A HEADACHE!” her voice shouted in his head, causing him to cringe.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said openly while LJ and Freya frowned in confusion, “though I’m not so sure you had to shout.”

  “Well, what do you expect when it feels like someone is ringing a gong in my head?” she snapped in return. “Do you think you can stop doing that again?”

  “I thought you’d be more surprised that this thing can act as a commlink,” he murmured.

  “Not really, since we used it when you left to get Freya but could never raise you,” she said.

  His eyebrows arched in surprise that he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Robin murmured, “Probably because it was busy disarming the millions of little nanites that were injected into me.”

  “That explains it. So, what do you need?” Willa asked.

  “We’re outside a small city and may need a fast exit, so be ready to come get us.”

  “Gotcha,” she replied. “How hot could it be? Are we talking boiling or volcanic?”

  “Truthfully,” Robin said, turning back toward the city, “it has the potential to be nova,” he answered solemnly, remembering all the sentinels he had seen on the streets.

  Chapter 20

  Old and New Friends

  In short order, the group had made it to the large gathering of tent dwellings. As they peeked out at the main gate, their faces hardened in frustration at the sight of eight guards on either side of it.

  “Why the heck would they quadruple the guards in the time it took us to get down here?” Robin hissed as they drew back.

  “Maybe we should take it as a compliment,” LJ suggested. Robin looked at him, half-heartedly agreeing.