The Hunter part 2

Welcome back! This is part 2 of the story of Nate Golden, the last of the Great White Hunters. Having re-read this now I defiantly recognize that the story needs a bit of TLC. There are a lot of places where I could add in a few things, change a few things around. This is why we work in drafts. So keep that in mind as you read the exciting conclusion of the story. Also, please, if you have any questions, finding the answers will help me to write any future drafts that I might come up with. 

But with no further ado, here's part 2

“Okay, I’m in.”

It was about ten minutes later, and Jefferson was now happily cruising through the computer system like a fish through water. “Ugh, what a mess. You know, I don’t think this matrix has seen a good degaussing since quantum computing went out of style.”

Nate wasn’t a computer person by nature, but every starship captain has to know about communications equipment, or risk being stuck with a dead radio in deep space, not able to call for help. So he’d rewired the comm from the holo, called Jefferson, and hooked him into the computer system.

“I don’t need a history lesson,” he growled. “What can you tell me about this place?”

“ Well for one thing, I can see that there’s  a shuttle at the other end of the station. Can’t see it from here, but it’s drawing power, and there’s telemetry. Looks like it’s in working order. I can open it from here.”

Nate grunted. “Sounds good. Now what’s the BAD news?”

Jefferson gave a sigh that said he knew this question was coming, and was dreading having to give the answer. “Well…” he started. Nate said nothing, but said it in a very loud way. “There’s about a dozen mutant…. Things… between you and the ship.”

Silence.

Then Nate said, “Oh. Okay then.”

Jefferson stuttered, “W- ww-“

“Meh,” said Nate. “There’s always Mutants or Aliens or Henchmen or whatever. I’ll handle it.”

“Oooooooookaaaaaaaaaaaay…. “

“Is there a map of the station?”

Jefferson checked. “Yeah, actually.”

Nate grunted again. “Transfer it to my cuff,”

Five minutes later he was creeping around the corner of a corridor. He knew about where to look for the mutants, though his map didn’t show life signs, he knew they would be protecting the shuttle, though none of them would know how to get into it, and protecting their food. He was about one hallway away from the mess hall, and he could hear them talking to each other in their strange too high, meowing voices.

“We know he’s in the computer bay, and there’s no way for him to use any of the computers in there.”

“So what are we to do?”

“He’ll be heading toward the idiot panthers guarding the shuttle. Chances are we won’t even need to deal with him.”

Nate checked his map. There WAS a way to get to the shuttle bay directly, bypassing the galley, but unfortunately for those cats defending the galley, Nate didn’t know if the shuttle was equipped with a hyperdrive, nor if it had provisions for a long trip. So he’d have to gather the provisions first and foremost.

He stepped out into the hallway in front of the two cats, holding his weapons out in front of him.

“Hi,” he said. “Now, you’re going to lead me to the mess, or you,” he waved the plasma cannon at the lion-ish one, “are going to end up a greasy smear on the wall, and you” he waved the protonic cannon at the bobcat, “are going to have your head vanish in a cloud of mono-atomic particles.”

The lion hesitated. It saved his life. Because the bobcat didn’t hesitate, but growled, crouched back to leap at Nate. Then it’s head vanished in a slowly expanding cloud of monotomic particles. His body fell to the ground with a thud that Nate found oddly satisfying. He looked at the Lion, and smiled, blowing molecular smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

The Lion blinked. “Uh… why don’t I take you to the mess...?”

Nate smirked and pointed the gun away from the Lion, who relaxed visibly. “After you,” he said.

As the lion turned and walked down the corridor, Nate told him, “Remember, if you try to warn anyone, the first one to die… will be you.”

But this turned out not to be the case. Because five minutes later as Nate was pillaging the mess hall, and filling up a hovercart full of provisions, the Lion sat on the floor unable to move for the hole in his leg, and surrounded by the dead bodies of his comrades. He had just had time to reflect that the threat wouldn’t have been as effective if The Hunter had said, “You’ll be the LAST to die.” After all, there were more of the them than there were of him, surely he would have been taken down. But somehow the old hunter just knew how NOT to be where the danger was. The Lynx had attacked from behind, and the coat’s shielding sparked and he flew off. The Jaguar tried to sweep his legs out from under him, and he’d simply stepped over his leg. Not even jump, just step, like it was an inconvenient log or something. Lion had replayed the scene over and over in his mind, and still couldn’t see how he’d done it. Over and over again, the cat people had flown at the old hunter, and with a startling efficiency of motion, he’d just... not been in the places where they attacked him. It was almost like he’d worked out in his head how everything was going to go, and planned out all his moves in advance.

The truth was, of course, very simple. Nate Golden had been doing this for a long time. He’d fought everything from small aliens to Elephantine mutants, at least twice, and he knew how a fight was going to go. He just made sure it went HIS way. Very little surprised him anymore.

When he'd finished loading up the cart, he walked back over to the Lion.

The Lion flinched. "You're going to kill me aren't you?"

Nate knelt down in front of him, gun out. "D'ya have any doubt I could? If I wanted? Even if you were at a hundred percent?"

The Lion appeared to think about this for a moment, then shook his head.

"Naw," he said. He put the gun away saying, "Me neither. Which means you ain't a threat no more." Nate considered the Lion-man for a moment, then reached a decision. "You ever been off this station?"

The Lion blinked, nonplussed. He hadn't expected this at all. "Er, um... no..."

Nate shrugged. "Wanna?"

The Lion started in disbelief. "B-but... but I warned them. I thought you were gonna kill me, but I told them you were coming."

"Risked your life. Showed courage. Not something to punish, if you ask me. What's your name anyway?" A blank look was the only reply. Nate nodded, and frowned a bit. "Okay. So if you had a name, what would it be?"

The Lion thought a moment. It had never had a name before. And now it could have any name it wanted.

"S-spike!" he said suddenly. "That's a good name... right?"

"Sounds like a winner, Spike." Nate stood up and lifted the newly named Spike to his feet. "Want to ride in the cart?"

Spike shook his head. He was feeling a lot better about this whole thing. He picked up a broken piece of chair from among the debris on the floor, and started using it like a cane. The hole in his leg was cauterized from the blast, and it still hurt a bit, and he wouldn't be able to walk on it for quite some time, but who cared? He had a name.

A few minutes later they walked into the shuttle bay, and were greeted by another larger than life holo of The Mighty Erwin, and several real dark furred cat-people standing behind him.

"So you've managed to best a handful of my minions," said Irwin derisively. "And what's this? You've decided to keep a pet?"

Nate glanced back at Spike, rolling his eyes, and shaking his head. "Whatever Irwin. Spike here can make his own decisions now. I'm just offering him a lift off your little rock."

Spike growled at the holo. The Panthers, however blinked a bit and started to look sideways at one another. Nate just barely heard one of them say, "Spike? He gave himself a name?

Irwin meanwhile was guffawing. "You call him Spike? That sounds like something an old granny would name her tabby cat. You're never getting out of here alive you know."

One of the Panthers raised their hand. Nate leaned around the image of Irwin, and nodded at... her. It was definitely a her, Nate realized.

"Uhm... if we go with you... can we have names too?"

"WHAT!?" screamed Irwin whirling around.

"If you want," said Nate. "Not really my place to give you names, but if you want a lift out of here, I can help you."

"I won't let ANY of you leave, I'll blow up the asteroid first!" laughed the image of Irwin. He pressed a button on an unseen control panel. The station very suddenly... failed to explode.

Then a voice came over the speakers in the hangar. "Oh, sorry, I disabled the self destruct," said Jefferson's voice. Nate smirked.

"I just remembered how I know you," he said. "You're the little weird kid that lived in my neighborhood back on Earth."

Irwin froze, looking maniacally at Nate, his eyes open wide.

"Yeah," said Nate, rubbing his chin. "As I recall, you used to steal the neighborhood cats, and nobody would ever see them again. At least nobody ever did, until you moved out of that apartment... "

"SHUT UP!" Irwin screamed, losing control.

"I seem to remember they found a lot of jars full of parts though..."

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" Irwin flailed uselessly, until he must have hit his holo-transmitter, then the holo-field in front of them went to static snow, then faded completely.

"Huh," said Nate into the silence. "Thought he'd never shut up."

"Did you really know him?" asked Jefferson through the speaker system.

He shrugged noncommittally. "If it wasn't him, it was someone a lot like him," said Nate. He stepped up to the Panthers, looking them over. There were seven of them, three males and four females. It took him a lot of willpower not to smirk. He looked over his shoulder at Spike.

Then he looked up at the shuttle. After a moment, he grinned, and said, "Jefferson, do you have video here?"

"No, why?"

"Well let's just say you're going to be a lot less sorry about me getting your other shuttle blown up."

In the end they decided that the terraformed planet Venus would work best for the cat people. Since being terraformed, nearly 300 years before it had been overrun with vegetation and deemed uninhabitable by the Sol Council. No one lived there now, but it was a jungle with lots of wild animals, a perfect place for a small tribe of Cat People to run free.

Another asteroid in the Kuiper Belt had suddenly exploded right around the time that Nate was leaving the one he'd been on. No one knew why.

The Great Nate Golden, last of the Great White Bounty hunters of the Space Age, continued his search through the Solar System for the nefarious villain Draconis...

I kind of like the ending, but I have the opinion that it's a little anti-climactic. It makes me feel good inside though, so I haven't changed it so far, but I'm hoping to find a way that I can have some kind of epic battle at the end with Erwin. By the way, I have no real problem with the name, and I'm not trying to insult anyone named Erwin, I'm just saying that it's not very imposing as far as names go. There was Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, but lets be honest here, the thing that made you respect that name wasn't the "Irwin" part. But anyway, as always if you have any suggestions or comments feel free to post them here, on the FB post, or the G+ post, and I'll see them. Thanks for reading!