Hunter No More

Chapter Thirteen

Strapped down, Kristof eased back into the escape pod acceleration couch and watched through the observation port as the old Hunter ship slowly retreated from view. From outside the damage to the ship was worse than he'd realised, a wing and thruster had been completely shorn off and fragmented, the wreckage drifting slowly away from the larger body. He could also make out atmosphere leaks, the slow loss of pressure propelling the damaged craft in a host of competing directions. He marvelled that the ship had escaped a major hull breach and the Flux drives remained intact. If they had not, he would have had nothing to look at, and nothing to look at it with. Regardless of that miracle, it was obvious to him that the ancient ship was finished, and with it, Josella and her human. The thought did not fill Kristof with as much satisfaction as he had hoped. They had succeeded in tricking him and trapping him. He had been foolish not to heed Alicia's advice.

Foolish, young and naïve.

As for his own ship, as for Alicia, Kristof could see little sign that they had ever existed. Not even wreckage, nothing The Barracuda had been more than destroyed; it had been reduced to powder. How could this have happened? They had come here simply to cleanse a troublesome human population, a defenceless human population. It should have been straightforward, easy, just like the two missions preceding it. Then Kanton arrived and Kristof allowed his curiosity to overwhelm Alicia's simple and direct judgement. He had felt a kinship, a desire to help, a desire to learn, innocent desires that had betrayed him. Now his ship, his mainframe, even his very mind, were all gone. They were nothing more than ashes.

Holding up his hand before his one and only functioning eye, he realised he was consigned to this, this throwaway piece of damaged biotech, this thing. There was no beauty to it, no elegance. He felt disgust at the effort of his own breathing, at the rise and fall of his chest, even at the rhythmic beating of his heart. This was not him, not really. He was a being of pure thought, pure computation without boundaries, without limits. This was not him, this flesh, this biomesh organ. He was more than this. More! Even as he thought this, he recognised the sickly emotions that were invading him through the biotech equivalent of a human nervous system. He felt revulsion, anger, frustration and loss, so much loss, when he should have felt nothing at all, not if he did not wish to. Closing his one eye he concentrated on letting the emotions fall away. He needed to remember who and what he was.

When he opened that eye some semblance of calm had returned, but with it came the realisation that he would never inhabit a mainframe again. The Hierarchy would never entrust a ship to one who had failed so utterly. The biotech was his punishment, and he would be consigned to it for the rest of his days. Damn Kanton! Damn the Ochre! They had made him so much less and there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing!

The rage filled him up and he punched the control console again and again until his fist bled and he screamed in pain. Holding up the damaged hand to his eye, he examined the cut, shaking at his own lack of logic. Then he noticed the discarded drive sitting on the seat beside him. It contained Kanton's mind, every thought, every facet of his personality. Why had Kanton done this? What force had compelled him to break his programming? Kristof wanted to know, he needed to know. Studying the console controls, he programmed the pod to orbit rather than land on Borealis. That could come later.

If the Ochre were somehow responsible for Kanton's betrayal, if they had reprogrammed him, then he would understand how. If there was something else, some other reason, he would understand that too. Knowledge was the tool he would use to make a reckoning. He would avenge Alicia, but most of all he would avenge this thing they had forced him to become.

Smoothing back the hair at the base of his neck he extended the drive interface cable and plugged in. Soon he would know everything.

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