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Hunted

    Palsenz Planetary System
    Year 2387
     
    Someone was moaning. The sound registered slowly as
First Officer Stephanie Chu regained consciousness. It took a
moment more before she realized she was making the noise herself.
She tried to move but gave up, gasping, the pain in her head timed
perfectly with her heartbeat, each pulse a needle in her brain.
    Her eyes were sealed shut by something sticky.
Raising a hand, she wiped at the substance until she could finally
open them, but the cabin lights were out. What was this stuff? She
probed her head gently, grimacing in pain when she found a ragged
gash.
    The crackling blue arc of an electrical short
punctuated the dark. Other senses awoke, the acrid stench of
burning plastic assaulted her nose. Panicked, she tried to sit up,
pushing against the straps that held her. Hopefully the automatic
systems had managed to take care of the fire. But what the hell had
happened? She fell back into her chair.
    Then the memories came flooding back. The mission to
assess the Argoss , the attack on the salvage crew, their
escape and the proximity mine that had taken out the drive.
    The salvage team had gone aboard the abandoned
Argoss and then . . . Pål! Her hand reached out for the control
panel, desperately feeling for the correct switch. She triggered
the cockpit lights and they illuminated, sending shockwaves of pain
through her cranium. Blinking rapidly, she turned to examine her
partner. Captain Pål Knutsen was strapped into his chair beside
her. His chest rose and fell in a regular rhythm and she breathed a
sigh of relief to see him alive. They had been together since
training; the shuttle Heimdal , and its captain, were her
world. Hitting the release on her chair straps, she climbed to her
feet on uncertain, weak legs.
    The planet’s gravity was higher than the spin in the
gen-pop sphere of the Endurance . Used to spending much of
her time in zero-g, now she felt heavy, clumsy.
    With one hand always touching a bulkhead or
handhold, she moved to Pål, feeling for a pulse at his neck. It was
there, strong, steady. Good, he would be fine. She bent and laid
her head next to his, giving him the briefest of hugs, then turned
and made her way through the narrow hatch into the central
fuselage, crawling slowly where usually she would fly. It was
pitch-black but she palmed a switch and the fuselage lights
flickered into brightness, illuminating the large hold.
    Strapped to the starboard bulkhead were three
bodies. Two tech-engs from the Endurance and one
of  them;  one of the things that had attacked the
salvage team. It was hairless and smooth, dark skinned. Its head
was small, its mouth wide with a bank of needle-like teeth.
    The creature’s stick thin arms and legs articulated
in odd ways. It was barely recognizable as human. But she had seen
its eyes. There was no mistaking what it was, what it had been.
    Of the five arcs that had set out from Earth, only
the Bitter Sea and Endurance had made it to the
distant world that would be their new home. Or so it was believed.
When they had arrived in the Palsenz system, there was jubilation
at the discovery of the Argoss III in a geostationary orbit
around the only Kepler-classified Super-Earth Planetoid. Clearly
the great arc’s autopilot still functioned, which meant that other
autonomous systems were online too. A good sign. The Argoss would be a tremendous boost to the colonization effort and a
salvage team, led by Officer First Class Jensen, had been assigned
to assess its condition.
    While the Endurance performed a remote survey
of their new home, Chu and Knutsen were ordered to transport Jensen
and his team, dock with the Argoss and gain access. The
salvage team were to assess the damage to drive and control systems
and report on the Argoss’ crew, if any. They quickly found
that there were no survivors, but most incredibly, Jensen’s team
also discovered that the radiation burst that had wiped them out
centuries before had been