Last of the Hunters was Steven Metts at a hundred and ninety centimeters with a spear just as tall and a ball and chain flail hung on a hip. Unlike the first two tall dark skinned men, Steven had a bronze tan.
Their armor may have seen better days, but as Hunters, they fought Beasts and were given top of the line armor not even military men and women could get their hands on cheaply. The armor would be near identical, but battles had a way to make them unique to the wearer. Hunters had normally short lives due only to occupation. Supplying them with the ability to fight longer was a small price to pay.
Stone’s piercing gaze snapped at the first sign of movement and locked onto the approaching women across the large and mostly empty wooden flight deck. Hunters never snapped to attention like military. They lazed, relaxed. They also didn’t see rank, only strength. Lounging conserved energy they didn’t need to waste on frivolous moving. Renee couldn’t help smiling as the three stopped their brotherly banter.
It was Steven’s rather normal man’s voice who broke the silence “Even in this age women still hold to their own time.”
Renee smirked, loving to bust balls more than anyone. “Remind me that next time I suddenly find myself absentminded trying to numb your pain and instead accidently chemically castrate you.”
Stone and Deegen laughed loudly, doubled over at Steven’s sudden loss of color and how he reached down instinctively to hold them safe and secure from the fiery redhead.
“She is one Beast none of us can best.” Said Deegen, fingering his large circular blades. The man’s long dreadlocks did little to hide his mirth.
“To take her down would be the achievement above S-Rank and would let you retire a legend above Vanishing Claw himself.” Stone chuckled before bringing fingers to his lips to let loose a piercing whistle and moments after the sound died out flew a falcon which perched himself on his shoulder pauldron. “Enough of this. We’ve a job to do. We aren’t getting paid to sit around here bantering.”
“We don’t get paid at all.” Reminded Steven after clearing his throat.
“Sure we do. Adventure is our price and payment rolled into one. If we do good we get better toys.” Commented Deegen, slapping his friend’s back.
“Steven, you fly the ladies down while Deegen and I run escort.” Stone decided while brushing his gloved hand over his companion’s feathery breast.
“Damn coil.” Angrily mumbled the spear toting man who stepped inside the sailed shuttle with wings. There was a hiss followed by “Damn lizard… OW!” He yelped. “Bite my ass again and I’ll roast your carcass over a roaring fire.” Another hiss and yelp from the man.
“I better go. Sparky’s liable to eat him this time.” Grinned Renee as the other two men chuckled over to their fighters. Fighters were smaller than her shuttle, close to half its size actually, but much more heavily armed and maneuverable.
Stephanie hid a giggle following her friend inside and closed the exterior airlock hatch then the interior one before taking a seat in the cockpit beside Steven who was turning the ship’s engines on.
Renee went to the cargo hold where her companion’s arrow shaped head withdrew his long neck back. She could have easily been bitten in half, but he’d never hurt her. Never intentionally. Renee, even after ten years was struck by his emerald beauty. His kind was actually named Drakes in reference to old Earth’s myth of dragons. The difference is they have two sets of wings that allow for fast flying as well as hovering in one place without making barely a sound despite their size. And they can’t spit fire or any other vile substance. They did have the ability to glow if threatened as a display and intentionally to shed light in dark areas. Sparky’s kind though were discovered several centuries ago and weren’t pets. Not by a long shot. What separated them from lesser creatures is their minds. They had other ways to speak and were highly intelligent. Drakes tended to imprint with someone of like tendencies and Renee had been blessed to gain Sparky’s companionship. Besides looking ferocious, and right deadly with claw-like talons and sharp curved teeth, Drakes were quite compassionate and liked making bonds over galactic exploration.
They also have a different means of communication.
Sparky curled up his ten and a half meter long body and calmed as Renee pat and scratched the softer scales under his jaw just the way he loved and rumbled with his vibrant brown speckled eyes closed.
Renee turned her head to the window on the left when the ship’s portside dock lifted to reveal the vastness of space. Deegen was settling into his fighter and closing the cockpit shield, not afraid of being sucked out into the uncaring vacuum of space since any openings of the ship were automatically sealed by the starship’s shielding system. A few layers of artificial psionic photons separated the void from the ship’s atmosphere. Sparky’s snout gently tapped her shoulder to gain attention and she said “Sorry for hogging the view.”
“All is well.” Sparky told her telepathically and they shared the window just as the shuttle lifted gently off the platform and shot through the barrier. Deegen was keeping pace a half kilometer away, rotating his ship around a few times like a spinning top to make sure nothing dangerous was near. Renee knew Stone would be doing similar on the starboard side.
But Renee was busy taking in the vastness of stars filling her view of the universe. She loved to sit and look out and wonder what new and exciting marvels awaited. Red, blue, yellow, white, and brown stars dotted the blackness in a soothing way that sent her heart aflutter after all three decade of life and she hoped it would never stop happening. She sensed Sparky experience the same soothing thing.
The scene in the window changed as Steven turned the shuttle towards the barren red planet they came to. An uncharted planet her father had again taken them to. Number three hundred and seventeen by Renee’s latest count. Less than ten had turned up anything interesting and she certainly didn’t expect this planet to hold any significant riches either, but her father was one man not to deny anything. Being the Pirate King of Andromeda carried much weight behind his demands.
Artificial gravity gradually increased to the levels of the planet’s surface and dampeners made for a smooth ride. The window instantly darkened as this system’s single blue star came across the edge so as to not blind the occupants.
Not even a shudder shook the shuttle during the red hot reentry to the desert planet. As soon as atmospheric friction lessened and the ship’s invisible shields lowered Renee heard up front Stone on the ship’s coms rather than in her ear. “So what are we looking for this time, Mrs. Merann?”
“Captain Dorgen said to do a more accurate surface scan. Our radar will give us clearer reads of this world’s makeup closer than the main ship. I’m looking for anything unnatural.” Stephanie clarified.
“Don’t have to look far. He’s right next to you.”
“Oh Ha. Ha.” Steven said dryly.
Stephanie didn’t comment and got the men back on task. “Boys, set your scanners on broad spectrum. Steven will take us to the planet’s lakes down in the southern hemisphere since water will likely have a higher chance of housing complex life. Stone, you take the northern. Deegen, the equator. Relay information through mine and Jessica’s terminals…” as she kept giving orders Renee walked into the cockpit to stare out the front, holding onto both front seats.
“We’ll rendezvous in sixteen hours. By then we’ll have scanned everything.” Said Stone’s deep timbre.
With that the three supersonic ships broke formation to work on gaining all information.
After about four hours Renee found Sparky asleep as Steven commented “If anything, this planet is rich in iron. This desert planet is loaded. If they avoided these damn sandstorms… We could make a mint with the mining protectorate. Galicom would drool if we claim it and give them an offer. Too bad it’s lacking gold and francium.”
“Papa doesn’t care about mining opportunities. You know that.” Renee said as they made a second pass over the algae and small insect packed la
kes.
“Too bad. If I didn’t know the man was a pirate I’d swear we were damn pioneers with all the places he sends us to on his hunches. Another waste of time.”
“Maybe not.” Silence followed Stephanie’s words. Even Stone and Deegen listened more acutely. Instead of turning to the two beside her, Stephanie’s concentrated expression on her flat, translucent holo-screen filled with images had her speak with her better half. “Babe, overlay Stone’s forty ninth quadrant and set up a three dimensional display on the shuttle’s main table.”
“On it.” Jessica’s soft voice came through.
Renee backed away as Stephanie’s chair swiveled all the way around and got up. Renee and the other woman moved to the interior table of the ship surrounded by a dozen comfortable chairs, but the blonde woman touched the clear table made of pure crystal and tiny lasers in the interior edge all the way around activated in conjunction with the lamp high overhead to create a three dimensional display of Stephanie’s desire. It took just a few moments to render a perfect miniature display made entirely of light with sensors that could manipulate whatever the user wanted.
Displayed were a range of sloped peaks. Renee was greatly confused, and not one to hold onto her words she asked “Mountains? Why are you looking into mountains? I thought you said water was an ideal place to look.”
“Normally yes, but if my hunch is right, the captain may have not sent us on a wild chase. If you look closely, these aren’t mountains. When I taught geology as a teacher’s assistant for my archeology degree she told me to never look at anything at face-value. Look for what’s not there rather than what is.”
“I don’t get it.”
Stephanie was all about history and was one who almost never lost her temper. Woe be to those when she did. Renee on the other hand only had patience when treating a patient. For anything else she was quickly bored and easy to set off.
The glamorous blonde beauty demonstrated with her hands. “Look at how the range lines up with an old fault line. I’d bet my left arm that those weren’t mountains, but volcanoes. They only looks like rounded mountains due to constant battering of lethal sandstorms generated by the desert.” She discarded all but the largest of them all. “This one in particular struck me as strange for over an hour, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it till Jess fixed it for me like this. What do you see of this volcano?”
“Nothing?” She guessed.
“Precisely.” Stephanie grinned all the way to her pointed eyeteeth. “Nothing. The volcano looks like a mountain.”
“Uh, I’m with Renee.” Steven said after setting course along with the fighters to the place the blonde was interested in. “I’m confused. Isn’t a mountain a mountain and a volcano a mountain too?”
“Not at all.” Stephanie’s normally calm navy blue eyes sparkled with interest of discovery. “If you look at this big one. It tells me it either was built by the largest opening or was the last to be made to retain its stature. If you look at the others around it…” she pulled her hands together in the hologram to show the extinct volcanoes near it. “What do you see now?”
“Oh!” Renee squeaked out first and pointed “Lava tubes! They all have cavities and chambers… all but the big one!”
“That’s my girl!” Clapped Stephanie. “It is a dead volcano, but why would its core be solid I asked myself. It was the newest in the range. Just because our scans didn’t find a single sign of unnatural tool marks or habitation doesn’t mean someone didn’t do something here. A standard long range scan would reveal nothing out of the ordinary.”
“My wife’s a genius!” Jessica lilted with pride and though she didn’t see it, Stephanie blushed.
Stone reached the mountain first to report “We won’t have long to work. My instruments detect a massive oncoming sandstorm that will last a minimum of three weeks. You’ll have no more than three hours before it hits. I’m also getting something else.”
“What?” Prompted Deegen closing in on his position.
“I’m uncertain. Could be nothing. All the iron in the sand is making it difficult for clarity. Likely boulders being tossed around. The average wind speed in it is near eight and a half hundred kilometers per hour. Our ships can’t handle that kind of onslaught more than five minutes.”
Steven said “Copy. We’re an hour out and I’ve activated the maximum output to reach in the shortest time.”
“We’ll give a more in-depth scan while we wait. If Stephanie’s hunch is right we’ll find something irregular before you reach us.”
Steven climbed the shuttle up for thinner air to gain all possible speed without needing to do another reentry. Stephanie though kept her focus glued to the hologram getting clearer analysis as the two Fighters flew around and around the target and soon had her grinning from ear to ear. “Thought to hide from me, eh? Not a chance.”
Roughly an hour later Renee stood beside Sparky and felt the minor jostle of landing and lowering of dampeners once reaching solid ground. She pressed the button which opened the side cargo hatch and they exited first to find the two sleek fighters landed side by side on the inner rim of the volcano. She saw Satellite, Stone’s falcon, flying without need of an oxygen mask since birds can live easily in higher elevations and Hunters trained in harsher conditions so they didn’t require breathers either. Renee and Jessica though already activated their suits internal helmets to breathe comfortably. They could breathe, but not comfortably so high up without suffering hypoxia. Renee found herself mildly irritated towards the three burly mountains of muscle. Sparky though tempered and soothed her mind without even saying a word. “You find that gap she was looking for?”
“Sure did.” Stone said, rubbing his bald head. “If you call three microns a gap.”
“Only three!” Renee gasped. “That’s thinner than a human hair. Too small for our eyes to see.”
“Oh, and we wanted to see your faces to say it’s a perfect circle. A perfect circle.” Deegen tossed his clean dreads back behind his broad shoulders.
The women stopped and stared in shock. Perfect circles are naturally impossible. Renee felt excited and could feel her adrenaline flow.
“So it’s solid rock with the exact composition of the volcano.” Said Stephanie as her angled wrist let out a thin beam of blue light from the suits sleek functions. The scan light was two meters wide and laser thin, but it gave the wearer all it needed. “Oh this is interesting… the core has microscopic silicate compounds not native to this planet.”
“So someone not of this world used crystals to cover their tracks?” Renee said aloud and eager.
“A logical conclusion.” She took an archeologists chisel and chipped a thumb sized chunk out of the inner core and walked inside to drop it in the shuttle’s analyzer.
While waiting Sparky said “I’m going to fly with Satellite and keep an eye on the storm. Contact me before you do anything.”
“Alright.” She patted his hard ribs before his four wings lifted his bulk into the air to soar on the many thermals created by the hot, barren planet.
Time flew by before Stephanie came out carrying a green, clear piece of crystal no bigger than her thumbnail saying “Jess came through. The crystal used to seal this place used the native rock to fill the gap. This should undo what was done. Everyone, get back. We didn’t find any traps, but there could be. Plus we need to stay close to our ships in event of an emergency. For all we know, nothing is down there, but the greatest risk could be this cut down the caldera goes to the molten core. Likely we’ll be uncapping a deadly pressure cooker. At the first sign of vibration we get the hell out of here.”
Renee called Sparky who came back quickly, the falcon not far behind as everyone came up against their ship.
Stephanie sauntered over, placed the crystal down relatively in the center and backed far away. As she met up with Steven and the other two she said “Activation code: Dissolve.”
Everyone tensed to hightail it out of there should the worst
come to pass.
The clear green crystal came alive and sunk down into the rock that had been cleared of a thin layer of snow before the shuttle even landed. The group watched closely as the hole widened exceptionally to the width of the ten meter wide hole, leaving the untouched ground alone as debris collapsed before being blown loudly up and out of the hole by trapped pressure, but the team wasn’t concerned. It was a natural effect built into all types of crystal excavation. Wind currents carried the excess soil far away.
Aside from Renee and Stephanie, the others went inside their craft or risk choking on dust.
A half hour later the hole gave one final mighty belch of black sand up high in a plume. With just over an hour remaining before the sandstorm’s arrival everyone stood around the edge of the deep hole. Waiting for new data scans. It wasn’t long before Stephanie said “Something is certainly down there. The ground is stable.”
“We’ll be the judge of that.” Said Stone while grabbing the miniature grappling hook built inside his armor. The cable had thirty kilometers of hair thin line with the pronged hook that looked fragile. Appearance would dictate it would snap if any weight were applied to it let alone a man weighing a hundred and forty eight kilograms by Earth Standard, or Standard for short. The materials were so profound the cable and hook could easily support four times Stone’s weight.
The other two Hunters followed him in hooking their lines to the shuttle’s exterior clamp before bravely diving headfirst down and running along the smooth vertical wall. They fell just short of terminal velocity and powerful shoulder lights spread out the darkness’s grip.
Eventually they applied breaks on their cables to land in the bottom. Immediately their critical gaze landed upon a strange mass seemingly grown from the wall like some grotesque tumor. Deegen was the first to draw his circular chakram blades and approach it while Steven said through his com “We reached the bottom. It’s quite warm, but bearable. The air is thicker too, but we found what looks like a silver and peach growth down here. My scanner is telling me it’s organic and non harmful. You two better get down here quick and see this. Maybe someone can explain what it is for I sure can’t.”
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