Hunter

by Mercedes Lackey

  When we’d smashed the last one, that was exactly what we’d done, just hammered it into the ground with brute force. I had to be smarter than that.

  More tentacles, then the start of the hair—that marked the bottom of the Gazer proper. Still, Karly held her fire. The Gazer paused; by now it could see that part of the tunnel was dark, and part in the light. Was it smart enough to figure out that someone could be hiding in the shadowed part?

  That must have been what was going through Karly’s mind too, because at that moment she unloaded the full mag into the bottom of the Gazer.

  The bullets evaporated in little puffs of fire, and the Gazer dropped into the tunnel like a stone, turning its single eye on Karly.

  She wasn’t being stupid, though. She had already squeezed her eyes shut, was reloading blind, and shouting to her Hounds as her Shields flared into life. But she had to open her eyes to shoot, and that was when the Gazer got her.

  Her mouth dropped open. Her face became a mask of terror. Her shields started to fluctuate.

  My Hounds and I hit the thing with everything we had.

  I went for cracking the Shields wide open, with magical hammer-blows to the top, because I thought they were a bit thinner there. Unless you could see magic in operation, all you would see would be the shields bowing and snapping back, but what I was doing was using magic to beat on the Shields with actual, physical force, literally as if I had a giant invisible hammer and was trying to crack a geode open. The two biggest Hounds leapt in and started raking the shields with glowing claws, while the smaller ones poured fire out of their mouths on it. All my muscles were hurting, exactly as if I were using that giant physical hammer for real. And there was that draining from the pit of my stomach, telling me I was pouring out magical power as fast as I could. For a horrible moment I knew it wasn’t enough, that it was never going to work.

  And then—it did.

  The Gazer screamed as I shattered its Shields, thanks to the damage those Shields were taking from my Hounds. Then it was engulfed in fire, and it stopped screaming aloud. I covered my ears, although that did nothing, as the screaming in my head went on for far too long.

  When it did stop, the Hounds didn’t stop hosing what was left of the Gazer down with their fire. They kept pouring flame over it until there was nothing left but a slightly greasy, charred mass on the floor.

  I ran to Karly. There was blood coming out of her nose and her ears, but there was sense in her eyes as she tried to sit up from where she had fallen. I was crying a little and made her stay put. I still couldn’t quite believe I’d done it.

  “My…leather’s getting…ruined,” she managed as my Perscom and hers beeped and said, “Medic unit dispatched.”

  “I’ll buy you a new outfit,” I said, feeling drunk with relief, as I smeared the tears out of my eyes. “Fires of Hell, I’ll buy you two.”

  I must have stood in the shower for a good half an hour, just letting the hot water pour over me and trying to empty myself of thought and emotion, like the Masters taught me. Karly was going to be all right, but getting hammered by a Gazer meant she’d be out for at least a couple of weeks, and I’d get assigned another mentor. I wondered who it would be.

  Powers, please, not Ace…

  So this was the sort of thing they were having to deal with here in Apex? No wonder they needed Hunters! I—wasn’t exactly glad I had come here, I still wanted to be home, but at least now I knew that hauling me in hadn’t been some sort of way for Apex to show its power over the Territories, or for some stupid reason I couldn’t even imagine right now because I couldn’t think like they did. No…no, all I could think about was the people who had come out of the buildings at shift change, after I’d helped Karly up the ladder and let her lie back on the ground with the Hounds around us, guarding. Ordinary Cits, wearing the uniforms of whatever place they were working at—tunics and pants in various colors, with name badges and insignia on the chest and back. One of the girls who had ventured closer and brought us bottles of water had looked almost like Kei. That was when it hit me: these people weren’t any different from my friends and all on the Mountain. Not where it counted. The only difference was they weren’t allowed to have anything to defend themselves with. I couldn’t leave now. I couldn’t. Their faces would haunt me forever if I did and I found out something had gone bad.

  When the medic team picked us up in a helichopper, they hadn’t paid any attention to me, and the little cams had all been pointing at Karly, who looked pretty dramatic. I tried to be inconspicuous. But once we landed, I got grabbed by someone important-looking, who ran me through a ruthless debrief in front of at least a dozen floating and stationary cams right there on the landing pad. Only when he was satisfied was another medic team allowed to hustle me inside and run a quick check over me. They asked if I wanted a sedative or a calmative and I said no. They asked if I wanted dinner in my room and I said yes. The cams followed me as I practically ran for my room, and I was so grateful to be able to shut them out. Then I showered and showered and showered, and showered some more until I finally felt light and empty and more or less peaceful again.

  I was bundled up in a soft robe thing and combing out my wet hair when there was a tap at the door. I opened it, and there was a cart, all by itself, standing in the hallway. On top of the cart was a covered tray. I took it, and the cart rolled away.

  Someone had been taking notes on what I ate.

  And…damn it all, I was starving. We’d done two lots of Othersiders today, and normally when that happened, it was all with conventional weapons, not magic. Whoever had put the tray together for me was well aware of that, too.

  I ate. Then…I couldn’t help it. I turned the vid on and tuned to my channel.

  It came up right at the point where Karly was saying she’d be bait. I wasn’t sure I would be able to watch it, but I did. It was too bad that the vids didn’t show the Shields or the magic…although you could kind of infer the Shields based on where the bullets burned up on them and the fire wrapped around them. I managed to keep to my Zen-space and analyzed what I watched. Although I had to wince a lot…I hadn’t realized I’d been screaming the whole time I was pounding the Gazer with magic blows. I sounded like a little girl.

  There were some cursory shots of Karly being evac’d—this was my channel, so I guess Karly didn’t figure as importantly on it—then the cut to the debrief. I was a mess. There was mud and soot smeared all over my face where I’d brushed my tears away, my eyes were red and swollen until you couldn’t tell that they were hazel, there was ash and mud and stains all over my clothing, and my brown hair was nearly black at the roots with sweat and was coming out of the side-tail. It made me glad, in a way; the girl who badly needed a shower looked and felt a lot more like me. Hunters shouldn’t look like vid stars. Hunters should look like that….

  Then the talking heads came on and started yammering away, but the only interesting thing was that they implied that all of this had taken place outside the Prime Barrier. Why only the first one? Maybe the Cits already knew things got through the second…or, to them, only the first was important.

  There wasn’t much else they were saying that mattered, and I turned over to Karly’s channel. And I was really happy to see how much footage she was getting, with the cameras zooming in on her like in an old movie when she said, “I’ll be bait.”

  I switched to the news. We weren’t the only Hunters who had had encounters today, it seemed. The news was full of it. Ace had run into another, much smaller swarm of Knockers, though he’d been taken by surprise and hadn’t handled them as quickly as my Hounds had. White Knight got three Redcaps and a Wailer—some people called them Banshees. Paules and Tober had both taken down Ketzels—kind of miniature versions of Drakken; although they had brightly feathered wings and could fly, they weren’t nearly as much of a danger as Drakken were, and my villagers Hunted them without Hunters on a regular basis. But if you were a soft Cit here in Apex and saw one of them diving a
t you, it was probably thoroughly terrifying. Paules did a lot better with his Ketzels than his brother, Ace, had with his Knockers, but then, he hadn’t been taken by surprise.

  The news was full of the “outbreak,” as they called it. Once again, it was implied that most of this was outside the Prime Barrier, and the talking heads were yammering a storm about how there were theories that sunspots had weakened the Barriers or some of the generators needed replacing.

  It was the way they talked about it all that was striking. They weren’t excited, they weren’t concerned, and I got the impression that they’d show the same kind of interest in just about anything else. They were actually more animated talking about the person who was responsible for keeping the Barrier generators in repair, suggesting he was someone’s crony and not up to the job. So…they were trying to keep people from being afraid. But was that such a good idea?

  I suddenly felt horribly tired. Also something I was used to after a fight.

  “Tomorrow’s schedule,” I said aloud. But instead of getting a schedule, the image of the two news-twerps on the vid-screen was replaced by the armorer.

  “Uh—sir?” I stammered. He looked up, as if startled by my voice. Then his mouth twitched a little, in a shadow of amusement.

  “Hunter Joyeaux,” he acknowledged. “Evidently you said something that your suite AI interpreted as needing my intervention. What was it?”

  “I asked for my schedule for tomorrow,” I explained. He nodded.

  “Do you feel the need for a day off?” he asked. “If you feel rocky, you get one off, after a fight.”

  I shook my head. This time what I got from him was a real smile, one of approval.

  “Right, then, I was just looking into who I might assign as your mentor.” He looked offscreen, frowning a little. “Do you have any objection to being mentored by a Christer?”

  “Oh, White Knight? Not hardly,” I said, actually feeling a lot of relief. “I think we…established boundaries this morning. There’s Christers in my—I mean, in my old territory. We’ll get along.”

  “Good. Follow today’s schedule; meet White Knight in the mess. As you know, he’s another early riser. He’ll brief you on his territory.” Before I could say anything, much less thank him, the screen went back to the news. They were showing me and Karly again. I didn’t really know what to think about that—though at least they weren’t trying to make us out as lovers.

  But before I could switch it off, someone else appeared in the screen, a Hunter I hadn’t met yet. “Hunter Joyeaux?” he said. A little older than Knight, midtwenties. Stocky, brown-haired, and friendly-looking.

  I pulled the robe a little tighter in reflex. I mean, this was a strange guy staring at me in a robe I was naked under! “Uh, yes?” I said, not at all cleverly.

  “I’m Hunter Trev. We thought you might not know that some of us gather up after dinner in the main lounge, and that you are welcome to join us,” he said. Then he winked. “There’s popcorn: caramel, cheese, buttered, sugar-cinnamon…”

  Now, if he hadn’t said that, I probably would have politely declined. But…popcorn! I love popcorn. We have buttered popcorn as a treat back home, and although I had never tried the other kinds he’d just mentioned, my mouth was watering at the thought of yummy, hot, buttery, salty—I could find room for a bowl of popcorn.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said.

  I hurried into a pair of soft gray pants and a baggy charcoal top, pulled on some equally soft indoor shoes, and told my Perscom “main lounge.” I wondered for a second if there was any chance Josh might be there—I glanced in the mirror to make sure my hair was all right.

  But then I told myself I was being stupid. Why would Josh be there? This was a Hunter thing, not a Psimon thing, and anyway, he was Uncle’s personal Psi-aid. He was probably working.

  Once again, the headquarters seemed oddly empty. I only saw one other person in the halls, and that was at a distance. Where were the people who cooked the food, cleaned the rooms? You were always running into someone at the Monastery—

  But then again, all the people at the Monastery were awake at the same time. No one ever Hunted at night, unless it was a tearing emergency, like a child had been snatched down in one of the settlements. Three thousand people lived at the Monastery itself and the village of Safehaven around it. Here, were there five hundred at most? Probably not even that.

  Of those, since there were three shifts, a third would be asleep at any one time. And another third would be out on patrol, or if they were on an Elite team, handling something big.

  The main lounge turned out to be not entirely unlike the community hall back home when we had the vid-screen up. There was a huge vid-screen at one end, a lot of really comfortable, heavily upholstered and padded chairs and sofas, and low tables with bowls of popcorn on them. The chairs and sofas were full of people, all of them dressed comfortably, the way I was.

  When I came in, the image on the screen froze, and everyone turned to look at me. “Uh, hello,” I said into the silence. “I’m Joy.”

  It was the one who had spoken to me on the vid, Hunter Trev, who got to his feet. “Come join us!” he said with enthusiasm. And everyone began talking at once, introducing themselves, suggesting a seat, showing me where all the snacks and drinks were. I ended up in a big chair that swallowed me up in a good way, with a bowl of popcorn and some cold, spicy tea. And then I found out why they were all together.

  They were going over the unedited vids of their hunts. And not, like, being mean to each other. I mean, they picked at each other, but it wasn’t harsh. “Regi, for pity’s sake,” someone groaned, when all one guy had to show for his day’s work was a single Redcap. “That’s what you’re calling a Hunt?”

  “It was a big ’Cap!” the other fellow said forlornly. “It came up to my shoulder! It had a knife!”

  Everyone (well, not me, but everyone else) threw popcorn at him.

  For the Hunts that had been more serious, they’d stop the vid, sometimes every few minutes, break down what was going on, ask questions. Or make fun…one of the girls got caught with a really silly expression on her face, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, as she hosed down a swarm of huge bugs with a small full-auto.

  Then…my vid came up, and I froze with my hand halfway to my mouth. What are they going to think of me? was all that was in my head. These were all friends, clearly—I was the outsider.

  By this time the vid had run forward enough that Karly and I were shielded and the swarm of Knockers had just come into view. And someone swore.

  “What in—what are those things?” someone else said with a gasp. Then the scene froze and everyone looked at me.

  “Uh—Tommyknockers,” I said, my voice going up in a squeak. And when I said that, the view went split screen and a wik-entry for Tommyknockers came up on the right side, with a picture.

  “Mines and caves,” Trev read aloud.

  “Fear radius? That’s not good news for Cits!” said Sara, the girl who’d made the funny face, with some alarm.

  They all turned back to look at me. “They never leave underground,” I said with more authority. “Our miners even tried to bait them out, and they won’t come up. They don’t make their own tunnels either, so they’re not going to dig into basements.”

  The vid started again, and they all watched it avidly, stopping it at times to ask me questions. A guy made a very crude joke about Knocker naughty-bits (which were kind of obvious under those excuses for loincloths), and I went hot and red all over. I went even redder when Sara teased me for it, and dared to throw a piece of popcorn at her, which she caught and ate with a grin, and suddenly we were all friends. It was like being with the other Hunters up on the Mountain, only…only somehow, less serious.

  By the time the vids came round to our second encounter, the one with the Gazer, I realized I was somehow coming to feel—at home? At home enough to feel comfortable answering questions about what we’d used on the Gaz
er until that vid was done and we were on to the next.

  “Do you do this every night?” I asked Trev, who had plopped himself down in the chair next to me so he could monopolize the bowl of sugared popcorn (too sweet for me).

  He nodded. “Some people would rather watch themselves alone, some would rather not watch at all. We happen to like the company while we pick our performances to bits.” He regarded the scene on the screen, which was Paules being dive-bombed by the Ketzels while people laughed and yelled at him to swat them. I hadn’t noticed him until then. Maybe he wasn’t as full of himself as Ace was. He just made a face and didn’t protest. “It’s normally not this exciting, though. This was a helluva day.”

  I just nodded.

  When the vids were done, a few people started a card game. Some settled down to conversations. The card game got an audience. Paules waved good-bye and left. Some people put a vid-game up on the vid-screen that they played with their Perscoms. The thing that had brought them all together was over. I found myself yawning and got up to leave, realizing that bed sounded very, very good. I’d be coming back every night unless something got in the way. It was a nice mix of people in the rankings, which made me feel comfortable; I was happy that not everybody was as competitive as Ace and his friends.

  Trev intercepted me before I left the room. “Enjoy yourself?” he asked. “Going to keep joining us?” I nodded, and he grinned. “Good! Just come down when you feel like it, it’s not an obligation or anything, but you’ll always be welcome. Good Hunting tomorrow!”

  “Good Hunting,” I wished him, and went back to my rooms.

  Then I got into bed, blacked the lights, and tried to get straight to sleep. I was suffused with relief that no one had died today…and that my mentor wasn’t Ace.

  Knight was already in the mess when I got there, and I had taken pains to be up early. He’d already gotten food for me, and I noticed what he had gotten was identical to what he had for himself. He nodded at the tray as I sat down. “Try it. I think you’ll like it,” he said. “It’s a healthier version of what we eat where I come from.”