BONUS – Cassie
There were times when Cassie wondered how she'd ended up where she was in life.
Like, sad stories about bad homes, abusive parents, and other assorted traumas aside, her life story had nothing on someone like Rachel or Alec. Really, she'd been not so poorly off in comparison.
And here she was so many years later.
Surrounded by dogs, stuffed into an air-conditioned trailer, and breaking up a play fight between Sunny and a giant bug monster.
Dusk was snapping his jaws—four toothy mandibles—and fluttering his wings.
Sunny barked and snapped her teeth.
A dozen other dogs behind her were barking and growling, snarling at the fight and standing with their hairs on end.
Dawn was settled into one of the dog beds in the corner of the trailer and seemed utterly disinterested in her siblings' plight. If they were siblings. Nanku treated them that way, but Cassi supposed it might not be literal. Plus, she controlled them directly? Or not?
Was Nanku picking a fight with Sunny or was she just letting Dusk do whatever Dusk wanted?
"Figuring that out is way over my head," Cassie figured allowed. "Sunny. Bad dog. Sit. Dusk. Bad bug! Sit!"
Sunny growled but at least stopped barking and riling up the entire trailer.
Dusk shuddered and skittered back atop his claws. Which were pretty scary. Being that his arms were just giant claw arms. Big claw arms the size of Cassie's arms.
Jesus, no wonder Nanku had killed so many people.
Ushering Sunny off, Cassie stayed light on her feet. The highway was pretty smooth, and the trailer was one Rachel paid for specially. It was supposed to be pretty smooth inside. It still swayed a bit on big turns and tilted on steeper inclines.
Still. It wasn't so bad for her.
Moving toward the front, she sat down in a seat and sighed. Sunny rested her head on Cassie's lap and wagged her tail. Her eyes still glanced at Dusk and her throat rumbled. Dusk went to Dawn and cuddled alongside her.
The dogs and bugs were pretty used to one another, but sometimes animals just got into scuffles. It happened.
She pulled out her phone and checked on their progress via a GPS app.
Cassie wondered when it would set in. Not when she looked at the map on her screen. Not yet.
Brockton Bay wasn't even on it anymore. They'd moved south along the 495, headed toward Worcester. Not even Worcester. A smaller town just outside Worcester called Holden.
Bitch thought it was far enough from Brockton Bay they could rest, and far enough from Boston that the Boston Protectorate and PRT wouldn't notice them immediately.
Because they would be looking. Maybe. Probably.
Cassie never realized how much she appreciated the whole deal in the Bay before.
It was pretty chill. Tense, but chill. Way better than it had been in the early years when she'd first joined Bitch. That was when Coil was still around. Turned out he was some douchebag PRT contractor playing both sides. Those days could be tense, but nothing like this.
Nanku killed Shadow Stalker. That was bad. That was really bad.
Not because anyone liked Stalker. No one liked Stalker.
But with a hero dead, the other heroes were going to gun for Nanku hard. Probably send someone big to Brockton Bay since they couldn't trust Weaver. Nanku was tough and Cassie wasn't going to pick a fight with her, but she doubted Nanku could stand up to someone like Narwhal or Dragon or Legend.
That shit would get real bad.
Cassie sighed.
She really wasn't made for thinking this much. Didn't even feel like she was making sense. She was just meandering from one topic to the next and it was all goofy or whatever.
She didn't fucking know. She liked helping Rachel take care of her copious number of dogs and occasionally getting to feel like she was a positive force in the world.
Now she just felt like death was stalking her.
So annoying.
"We should play fetch," Cassie mused.
Sunny and a dozen other dogs all raised their heads.
"Not here, obviously, but later. Just unwind with the power of a stupid little colored ball that I throw, and you bring back."
Cassie sighed and closed her eyes.
"Yeah... That would be nice."
BONUS – Pe'dte
She was not one for melancholy. Least of all for the living.
But things were stiller without Nanku.
Pe'dte found it all over the ship, and not simply because they'd all suddenly realized the girl had been killing off the excess pest population without saying anything for years. Damned razer-legs were all over now. Getting into components. Chewing on trophies. Annoying little vermin.
It had only been three months.
And in her soul, Pe'dte wasn't sure if Nanku would want to come back.
Her life among the hunters was hard. She was smaller than them. Frailer under her skin. She had no prospect for a mate and was unlikely to ever advance into the leadership of the clan. The others could tolerate her, but they'd never follow her.
Pe'dte grumbled low in her chest.
She admitted to herself that Nanku might have an easier time if she returned to being human.
But that was her choice to make.
Pe'dte could only wait and fill her time. She was too old to go on far-ranging hunts anymore. She was hardly weak or decrepit, but her energy wasn't what it used to be. Her sons were still dead, but her desire to see some youths raised in her shadow endured. Her time was better spent raising the next generations. Making them smarter. Wiser. Keeping them from stupid deaths.
She focused on the youngest in the clan. Trained them. Prepared them for their first trials and to don their first armors and masks.
It was not the most respectable of tasks for a veteran hunter of her seniority, but she was old, and anyone who didn't like it could eat their own shit and drink piss.
Her own mother had always said that teaching a new hunter was a learning experience.
Teaching Nanku to be one of them had taught Pe'dte she found fulfillment in preparing the young.
Perhaps.
Maybe it was lingering melancholy she didn't want.
A quiet admission that if she'd paid more mind to the 'lowly' task of training new hunters with more dedication, her sons would have survived instead of dying as they had.
Life took strange turns as it weaved with death.
One never knew where they would end. All the more reason to pursu—
An alarm sounded suddenly and Pe'dte opened her eyes.
She rose from her meditations with a growl and turned toward the door.
The hall beyond her chamber was loud with the klaxon call and the engineers were already scrambling about the neck. Pe'dte grabbed one as he ran by and snarled at him.
"I don't know," he replied with a bowed head.
Of course he didn't.
"Go," Pe'dte ordered.
She pushed him on his way and started down the hall. Pe'dte was old, and towering. She dwarfed even other hunters as she strode through the hall.
Khrass crossed into the hall ahead.
"What is it?" Pe'dte snapped.
The young male stiffened, meeting her eyes for only a moment. "Earth."
Pe'dte tensed. "Nanku?"
He shook his head. "Old signal. Isotope tracker."
Pe'dte stilled. "Isotope tracker?"
Khrass nodded.
The kind they used to track R'ka eggs.
She'd missed one.
Somehow, she'd missed one and lost more than her sons.
She'd failed.
Pe'dte growled and shook the young blood. "Gather six others. Armor and weapons. Meet in bay four."
She turned and stormed down the hall to her chambers.
From the rack at the far wall, she grabbed hold of her mask and fit it over her face.
Nanku was good. She could survive. She would survive.
But if the R'ka broke out and spread, she would not be able to stop them from spreading like a plague. The parasite infesting the planet was bad, but many planets endured them once the hive was broken. They only needed to wait and in the meantime some hunters relished the challenge their presence provided.
That wouldn't matter if the R'ka swarmed the entire planet.
Donning her armor and weapons, Pe'dte left the chamber and hurried through the decks at a run. Her heavy steps rocked the grating, and the sound of her approach sent the lower castes scrambling out of her way.
The ship began to pitch. Another alarm sounded and cries echoed in the hall.
The clan ship decelerated abruptly. The nose began to pitch, the ship twisting around to go back the way it had come. It would take time. Most of a day to break their velocity and reverse course. And it would take weeks to reaccelerate safely. They were three months away from Earth and it would take three months to get back.
Unless they took a smaller ship.
Stepping through the sliding doors, Pe'dte stomped into the bay.
Eight others waited for her. Five males and three females; Khrass, Griv, Theer, Jaska, and Houri were all of Nanku's generation. Newly blooded hunters, young and eager. They saw her, human or not. The others were members of Pe'dte's family gathered behind her brother.
Rhaark snarled as Pe'dte approached.
He didn't stop her.
Instead, he fell in step behind her and tapped at the controls on his wrist-mount. One of the smaller shuttles was lowered from its rigging above, the engines sparking into life and the bay door under the nose opening.
The hunters boarded and moments later the shuttle launched from the underbelly of the clanship. It was still decelerating, the nose half-way into its twisting turn as it brought the main thrusters around to bring its massive hull to a stop.
The shuttle didn't wait.
Standing behind her brother, Pe'dte checked her arms and armor as Rhaark set a course for Earth and the shuttle's thrusters fired.