Little Hunter - Prologue
She hadn't seen the faces in a long time.
Lately, she'd seen them too much.
The boy with sandy hair and a scar on his chin. He crawled to her, scrambling for safety. The night reached out, long black fingers closing over his face as he screamed. The girl with curly black hair. It bounced as she wailed and cried. The boy with the cast on his arm. He begged her to help, but she could only stand and shake as the serpent ripped through his chest.
The night took them one after the other.
She saw it through the bugs. They protected her. Told her where to hide and when to move. The serpents' blood burned the counselor with the gun, but it only slid off the girl with dark hair and crying eyes.
She broke.
Part of her, at least.
She killed one. Then another. The first, she lured into a boathouse and tricked into the water. The boat had a pull-cord motor. It took a few tries to get it right, and the blades were too burnt up to use twice. The second time, she stabbed with a knife over and over. That's when she learned their blood didn't burn her like everything else.
She killed a third, and then—
She screamed.
Nanku sprang from her bed, fingers clawing at the deck plates and sweat spilling from her brow. For a moment, she only saw the camp. The faces of the dead begging her to help them as they died one after the other. She saw the serpents stalking in the shadows just out of sight.
The clack of claws on metal broke her from the nightmare. Dusk pressed against the side of his kennel, large black eyes looking through the slots at her. She felt his mind with hers and soothed it.
The lenses of her mask reflected her as Nanku raised her head. She was crying.
Reflexively, her hand lashed out and knocked the mask from the wall. It clattered, scattering across the floor and stopping only as it struck the closed door. Dusk and Dawn began chattering at her, pressing against their kennel walls. She soothed them again and cursed yet another display of weakness.
Slowly, Nanku pulled herself up.
She took a moment to be grateful for circumstance. She slept alone in a quiet corner of the ship she could call her own. No one heard her night terrors or the screams that followed them.
Gently lifting the mask from the floor, she set it back on the wall among her weapons. Weapons she earned because she was strong. Because she proved herself over and over again. Because she belonged here. In this life.
The nightmares weren't supposed to happen anymore. They stopped years ago. She'd left it behind.
Until the trials.
Those damned trials. She didn't even have to do them! She'd already killed three R'ka. That was more than most young bloods had ever seen.
She only did it because she was tired of being suspected. Tired of the quiet looks of disbelief that she'd done what she claimed. She proved them wrong, of course. She killed her fourth and dragged its corpse back. The blood covering her burned her armor but not her skin.
She proved her claims.
Somehow that only made it worse.
The nightmares started again. She didn't know where that left her. No one thought she was weak anymore. Instead, they saw that she was tired all the time. Not sleeping well. Distracted. Despite everything she did to prove she belonged, nothing had really changed between her and her adoptive family.
She was an oddity first, a sister second.
That was the bitterness talking. Not everyone treated her that way. It didn't matter. She knew her place, and she knew she'd earned it.
Calming Dusk again and lulling Dawn back to sleep, Nanku wrapped her chest and waist before leaving her room. It was an old habit. There was no taboo among the Yautja about bared chests, but she'd never settled into it. Pe'dte told her to do what she had to do. There was no law about how she could or couldn't dress.
It only made her a more interesting oddity.
The halls beyond her quarters were dark as always. Musky and humid. She'd grown used to it over the years. The heat and the smell more than the dark. The dark still unnerved her at times. She learned to hide it.
Walking along the grated deck plates, Nanku followed dim red lights toward the bow. The ship was huge, but the clan lived in the central areas. It left many long corridors, chambers, and rooms virtually abandoned, if not for occasional cleanings or reconfigurations.
Much of the hull was dedicated to mechanisms and technologies she didn't understand. Only a few in the clan did. The engineers didn't share much, even if one bothered to ask.
A door opened quietly at her approach with only the faintest sound. Light-filled the space beyond. Lots of light and a little less heat. It was a good place to be alone for her.
She never understood why the others rarely enjoyed the space. They only used it for specific rituals or rites. Maybe twice a year. When they did, no one appreciated the views the tall windows afforded.
Nanku loved it.
Settling on one of the long benches, she pulled her knees to her chest and peered out.
The stars shined bright, connected by fainter bands of light into glittering ribbons. It looked nothing like the stars of her youth. These stars were alive, moving. They almost talked to each other in her mind with how they twinkled.
It was beautiful.
The Yautja lacked a sense of existential beauty. Nanku never left hers behind. Deep down, part of her was still human. Much of her, if she were honest.
A human playing at being a hunter.
She didn't like thinking about it. She preferred watching the stars sing.
Nanku almost started to fall asleep again when the door opened.
The voice was soft by Yautja standards, tender even. It was an acquired sound. To an untrained ear, the word might sound like a meaningless series of clicks and one guttural 'O.' But the two syllables were familiar and well-known.
Her name.
"Nanku."
Pe'dte approached quietly, her frame dwarfing her ward's.
The elder huntress sat quietly, so well trained in silence that if the door hadn't audibly opened, Nanku might have missed her. Until the hand came down atop her head at least.
"Your sleep?" she asked.
The nightmares. "No."
Pe'dte gave her a disapproving growl.
A hunter doesn't lie. "Yes."
Pe'dte breathed deeply, drawing her hand back. "Five days now."
"I sleep enough."
She grunted and turned away. "The Elders are right. You must go back and face it."
She thought she'd already faced it.
That night, ten years ago. She killed her third R'ka, and the towering figure saved her from another. The brothers killed the rest before falling of their wounds. Pe'dte arrived too late and found only the girl drenched in blood, somehow still alive.
She didn't want to be alone. She didn't have anything to go back to anyway. Without Dad, Mom was insufferable. The moment she returned home, she'd never leave again.
Anything was better than going back to eternal imprisonment.
And what did she get for her choice? A new family. A new life. She'd traveled to other worlds and hunted so many strange things. She was stronger than she'd ever been, braver. Her new family could be condescending sometimes, but she was one of them. They accepted her, however odd she might be. Gave her a place to belong.
She knew it was an entirely different choice for Pe'dte but for her… What was left to choose?
"I don't want to go," she admitted. "I don't need to."
"You are afraid," Pe'dte accused.
She started to deny, but no. A good hunter didn't lie.
She was afraid. Afraid of the same thing she had been back then. Being imprisoned again. Of going home and never being allowed to leave. Part of her feared that as soon as they left her, they'd truly leave her.
She wasn't really one of them. She was human. Adopted. Odd.
Closing her arms around her legs, Nanku said nothing and rested a cheek on her knees.
"A good hunter never lies," Pe'dte reminded her. "Especially not to herself." She rose, and the hand came down atop her head again. "Look, Nanku."
Nanku raised her head and then turned.
Her jaw loosened, and slowly she pushed herself up from the bench.
She crossed the room with Pe'dte, approaching a window opposite the one she'd been watching. The planet was familiar. There had been a model of it in one of her classrooms.
Jupiter.
"Already?" Nanku asked aloud.
"In another two days," Pe'dtre told her.
Two days.
Two days and they'd take her down, kick her off, and leave her.
She hung her head and repeated her lament. "I don't want to."
"Do not be a coward now," Pe'dte chastised. "You weren't then. You fought for your place. To live. To survive. You're strong."
She'd felt more desperate than strong back then.
Suddenly, Pe'dte swept her up, lifting her from the ground and crushing her between thick arms and chest. Nanku grimaced and sighed, unaccustomed and far too old for such rearing.
"I accept any path you take, even if it is to return to your kind."
They weren't her kind anymore. She didn't want another path. She didn't want to go.
Pe'dte set her down and crouched to look her straight in the eye. Her face was scarred. She'd lost two of her mandibles in a hunt long ago, and the spines growing from her brow gave a sense of fierceness.
Pe'dte was fierce, but Nanku knew the other parts of her.
The part that spared a girl rather than kill her to erase all evidence. Gave her a new life. Accepted that life for what it was, no matter how different Nanku was from the rest of the clan.
The hand fell on her head again, and Pe'dtre pulled her face in until their foreheads touched. Nanku closed her eyes and tried to suppress the sense of warm affection running through her, such a stark contrast from Mom's casual coldness.
"Only the Black Warrior wins every battle, and time is his greatest weapon. Ours is too short to waste."
Hands grasped Nanku's cheeks.
"One year," she snarled. "We will return for you, if you want us."
Nanku shuddered, angry at the swelling of emotion that threatened to crack the mask of her face.
She nodded, reaching up to grasp Pe'dte's wrists. They'd grown smaller to her over the years, as she'd grown. Nanku was tall now, her body trained and honed. She wasn't a child anymore.
And she wanted the nightmares to stop.
Maybe if she went back, she'd find an answer. Answers, even. The Yautja had an uncaring sense of justice. It was something that came from the hunt, from fate. It was a natural force. No one needed to pursue it.
Maybe that was another part of her that was still human.
Maybe if she found the answers—offered justice to the souls of the faces that tormented her—they'd finally let her sleep. The girl she'd been could finally die with them like she should have that night.
Taylor could finally die, and Nanku could live her life in the stars.
"Okay."