The sun. That ethereal power, both cursed and prayed to, beat unrelentingly down upon the now searing hot metal. Coreen rarely ventured out this far, forbidden from swimming out past the surf for fear of the unknown; but on days this oppressively hot, the shallow cove where she lived seemed to almost cook her to the bone.

Rarer still was it for her to find anything but wave, wind, and fish. The reef was spawning this time of year, and its bounty was there to anyone with a quick wit, and quicker fins. Cileanne was just finishing her second Rock Sucker Fish when the shadow from the surface almost startled her back to her cove.

Now she found herself circling, what she could only describe as an ugly grey egg floating in the weaving currents that surrounded her cove. After several minutes, she clambered atop it only to fail to find any way to see inside. A low rumble alerted her to the surf, and to her horror, the object seemed to defy the currents, drifting steadily toward her home. She frantically pushed on the floating egg, driving hard to press it back out to sea until the first breakers threw her from it.

Several minutes later, the grey object nosed up onto the sand on the far side of the cove from Coreen’s family home. ‘Pappa, Momma. I’m sorry’ Coreen stayed in the water, hidden in a small alcove, watching the invader in own her home. Several tense minutes passed, and Coreen was barely working the courage to approach when a violent hiss erupted, spraying eight violent cones of white into the air.

EMEGAZEEE DELOMPPPPSSSOOON. RECCUSSITTSSSNNN IINIITIITTAAEEED a loud tinny voice nearly drove Coreen to the entrance of her ancestral home, but what happened next held her in place. The strange grey gg…. Cracked.

A whistling hiss blew more of the thick white mist through the perfectly straight crack until the two halves parted, the top half lifting vertically until it hung above the egg. Coreen shifted slightly, ready to sim up to the shoreline when a wrenching barking cough stopped her, and something began climbing out.

—————

Markus Afoa swore his lungs were on fire, and little else mattered. What mattered… was time. The survival pod was not designed to be ejected during FTL, but that had not stopped his captain from giving the order during their desperate evacuation of The Belfast. Something had hit her, bow on, or more likely she had hit something in the depths of subspace. It didn’t matter, what mattered is time.

Markus drug himself out of the pod, landing flat on his back in the hot sand. The searing heat of the sand through his uniform was ignored, the full weight of the reanimation procedure hammering his body with wracking pain, and his mind with a broiling nausea that had him roll to his hands and knees whilst violently voiding his stomach. Little more than bile and stomach acid were not good clues, “Fuck,” he swore beneath labored breath. It wasn’t good, he had eaten a full meal just before his duty shift. It had been barely 5 minutes between taking his place at communications, and the impact that delivered him here.

‘Where is, here.’ He slowly looked around, wincing at the midday sun before reaching him to the pod to grab a hydration packet. He drank sparingly, saving what he could, while clearing his throat of the searing acid from his guts. A slight rustling from the far side of the cove caught his attention, “Hello?” His croaked and cracked, and he took another sip from the packet, “Anyone there?”

Several moments passed before Markus turned back to his tasks, quickly pulling the survival supplies from the pod and dragging them into the shade above what he hoped was the high tide mark. By this time, evening was settling into darkness, and Markus was beginning to feel the bite of rapidly cooling air currents.

_______

Coreen watched from her hiding spot, unwilling to leave this creature to its own devices in her familial home, but unwilling to let it see her. This creature did not act like any newborn she had ever witnessed. It stood tall, nearly two thirds as long as she was, with A strange overlaying skin pattern. A deep tanish brown on its appendages, ended near its body in a dirty white that seemed to flop around as if not quite a part of this newborn. It’s head bore a a patch of short almost black fir, and its eyes were a deep mix of browns. It’s perceptive instincts nearly discovered her. Its guttural calls in her direction accompanied a piercing intensely observant gaze that combed the saltwater reeds that concealed her from him.

Thankfully it returned to whatever it was doing. Gathering up bits of the inside of the egg, before digging a shallow pit in the sand just out from the tree line and began dragging a long piece of driftwood, washed up almost five years ago. Coreen remembers sunning herself on it after the monsoon that threw it upon her…

She almost yelped in surprise when the newcomer drew a piece of the egg high into the air and promptly broke a large chunk off of the massive driftwood piece. The newborn then did this repeatedly until several smaller pieces were arrayed in a strange tower inside the small sandpit, and the newcomer dug into one of the other egg fragments to produce an object he promptly slapped once against a rock, and threw into the pile.

Almost instantly, a flicker of gold and amber appeared. That flicker turned into a blazing horror show of flame and smoke, and Coreen could only look on as the pyre of wood lit and began to burn brightly. She had seen this before, felt this Daemon’s heat upon her flesh. It only came from two places, the sky, when the monsoons spoke their blazing streaks of hatred… and the hunters. ‘Pappa, what am I going to do?!?’

________

Markus shuddered violently, awoken in the early morning by another dead fire, it had been a week since his arrival, and he was no closer to resurrecting the combination emergency beacon/flight recorder from the survival pod… Time was now not only his most important question, but it was now his enemy.

Even at half rations, Markus was down to just 3 days of safe food and water. The pod should have had over a year's worth of food aboard, but Belfast was an aging merchantman, and planet-side pencil pushers had forced decisions that had left the vast majority of the emergency food spoiled, or breached and ruined by the aerosolized hibernation chemicals that had saved his life.

It couldn’t be helped, and Benjamin drew on the living taught to him by his Tamamatua, a way of life from before Humanity reached for the stars. The emergency axe he used on the first day was dulling quickly, it’s micron fine edge no longer in perfect form, but It would do for one last task. He stepped into the early morning sands, still shaking off the cold in the freshening light. Soon, he found what he was looking for, A fresh sapling, hanging out from the edge of the tree line. Long, and straight, thin enough to be workable, but sturdy enough to suit his uses. A quick swing of the axe brought the young sapling down, and Markus quickly stripped it of its bark and limbs before laying it on the sand to do what drying it could in the sun.

Next, Markus used the axe to begin on a much larger tree. Three swings in, and the telescopic handle finally failed, sending the axe head pinwheeling into the tropical jungle to be lost forever. The event drew an exasperated yell from Markus, who threw the broken metal shaft toward the ocean in desperate exasperation before chasing after it. The shaft was ruined, but the metal might be what he needed. A splash in the water near the reeds drew his attention once more. Something was watching him, hopefully not hunting him.

Markus scanned the reeds again, whatever it was liked to hide in them whenever he was near the shoreline, but never strayed closer. Still, he could not see what it was, not really, only the barest of a jet-black tail caught his eyes only once before. ‘Hmm, same creature’ Markus mused, and turned back to his work. Tonight he would build as hot a fire as he could, but it would not be entirely for keeping warm.

_________

Coreen’s heart raced, this Being was definitely a hunter, but also a newborn. It had largely stripped itself of its dirty white flaps, what she thought now to be some kind of birthing membrane, and she began to wonder what adult form this being would take. She considered waiting until it strayed into the water, and killing it; but It had not done so. She also knew from her parents that Hunters did not spawn from eggs like fish, but were born live like herself, and this one was missing an entire set of arms, as well as chin/cheek spikes and serrated rows of teeth.

Stolen novel; please report.

It was still a hunter, those narrow set piercing eyes reminded her of that every time she made a sound. Its hearing seemed unworldly sharp, and those eyes searched for her even with the slightest sound. Worst still, this newborn was nearly twice the height and width of a Hunter, and that terrified her. Coreen’s thoughts were infuriated when her insides rumbled their protest. Tomorrow, she would be forced to break her vigil, and eat. For the first time in a week, she left her hiding spot to swim home and rest. It was a calculated risk, but this strange newborn never strayed from its infernal flickering Daemon when the day fell, and the winds cooled.

______

Markus wiped his uniform shirt turned rag across his face and neck, he had used the last of his quick starters to create an impressive inferno of a bonfire, at its core, was the tip of the ruined metal shaft of the survival axe. He had long since cut his uniform pants into a ragged set of shorts, adding them to the rag pile he needed for this project in leu of proper heat protective gloves.

He wrapped the dirty rags around his hand and pulled the shaft from the fire, laying it once again on the flattest rock he could find before picking up a second stone. The jungle rang with the impacts until, in the pale early morning glow, Markus was satisfied with the crude pronged spear point he had hammered into one end. He had left the handle side largely untouched, save for removing the base plug. The sapling lay semi carved, and mostly straightened, and Markus cursed the crude job he had done, ‘Tamamatua would clout me over the ears if I showed him this, I will go visit him when I leave this place.’ The thought brought a faint smile to Markus cracked lips. Water was scarce. His makeshift dew collector, cobbled together from thin metal strips of his survival pod was barely able to sustain him, but Markus silently prayed for a proper rainstorm.

Shaking those thoughts aside, he slipped the shank end of his pear tip into the fire, but not near the superheated core, he did not want to heat this portion up to mold it, only to expand it. His eyeballing measurements rang true several minutes later when the spear tip shank sizzled down over the wooden shaft that had once been the unfortunate sapling. The shaft only barely fit, small shaving of burnt wood betraying the snugness of the junction.

Markus set aside his new spear to cool, allowing the metal to shrink down around the wooden shaft until they would become nearly inseparable, and reached into the bag that contained everything he could strip from his pod. He found the surgical tubing used to pump in both his hibernation and resuscitation chemicals. They would serve a different purpose soon enough.

—————

Coreen frolicked in the barrier surf that separated her home from the rest of the ocean. It felt incredible to be free to swim once more, and she quickly claimed her first morsel. The unfortunate sun strider hatchling was little more than an appetizer, but it had strayed too far from its nest and now fueled her search for more sustenance.

She had checked on the newborn before she departed, satisfied at its slumber this late into the morning. She wondered why it slept, ‘maybe it is ill, and the great taker will rid me of this invader’. Her thoughts drew her to one of her favorite meals, a rock sucker slipping its way across the corral in search of algae and small shellback larvae.

A sudden splash drove the rock sucker straight toward Coreen, who snatched it from its path, piercing it with her long teeth. It wiggled and fought as its life blood poured from around her fangs, but she did not notice this time. Her body froze and her eyes widened as the Newborn swung its lower appendages in precise powerful strokes, propelling it down to her depth. It held the biggest wickedly barbed and charred hand held barbed stick Coreen had ever seen in one hand, but something was wrong. This newborn showed its inexperience, holding the killing tool close to its barbed end, trailing the shaft up its forarm where it would be useless when nee…..

A sharp snap, heard in excruciating clarity reached her ears just as the harpoon launched from the newborns hands without it so much as twitching the appendage holding it. Her eyes flew wide, and her mouth gaped, dropping the now-dead Rock sucker from her teeth. The wicked thing travelled half again its full length, punching clean through a massive shellback’s hardened backplate.

The large crustacean, normally aggressive and dangerous when fully grown, writhed and fought, but only for moments until it could do no more, and the Newborn pulled the barbed tool back toward him, driving a smaller spike of something between the eye sockets of the shellback, she could see that he missed the brain, but severed some kind of connection. The shellback went limp instantly, and the newborn slid it off the shaft of his spear and onto a beaded vine rope. The being did this several more times, collecting a mouthwateringly large amount of food in an incredibly short time, despite being unable to stay submerged as long as she could. Coreen could only watch, munching on her recovered rock sucker.

Suddenly, the strange newborn creature turned sharply to face her. In her surprise, Coreen had stopped fighting the currents. The surface waves and deeper undercurrents had drawn her to writhing two body lengths of this being, and now they met eye to eye for the first time, and she saw the appendage holding his barbed tool begin to raise before something stopped him.

______

‘That should be enough, I should be able to eat something from…’ a flicker of something BIG caught his eyes, and Markus spun the best he could to face it. It was easily bigger than him by a third by both height and volume, and he began to raise his fishing spear at the site of long wicked teeth. ‘How long has that thing been here!’ The question screamed in his mind, and he almost took aim before something stopped him.

The creature was not attacking, its deep golden amber eyes betraying a mixture of fear and curiosity. Its snout and face reminded him of monk seal but with a longer snout and a sharper, more intelligent gaze. Its vibrant eyes seemed to glow slightly with bioluminesce, and its jet black skin was punctuated with a dark mottling of an almost black bluish color. The combination created a shimmering affect that, combined with light in the water, seemed to warp his perception of it unless he focused with intention. Its pectoral flippers were much longer than any Terran Seal, reaching just past the midsection where a long tail ended in a wide set of flippers.

That is what stopped him, he recognized the tail, ‘So this is what’s been watching me’ Markus remembered his lessons about sentient races. Humanity knew very little about other species, and this creature was not on that shortlist. Still, it seemed to have the spark of intelligence, and it was not attacking him despite having ample opportunity and the home turf advantage.

On a Hunch, Markus lowered his spear, letting it dangle harmlessly from the surgical tubing, and slowly reached for the knot on his rope.

______

Coreen watched this being lower its killing tools, and she began to wonder if everything she assumed about it was wrong. It answered her question a moment later. The newborn slowly untied its improvised rope, pulling a dead shellback from it before resecuring the rest of its catch. Then, it reached out to her, holding the dead shellback in its paws. Coreen visibly blinked twice. Shellbacks were nearly impossible for one of her people to take by themselves, and were usually hunted in pods of 4 or more. Usually one did not give away such a prize. Coreen looked into the face of this newborn, ‘No, not a newborn, but what.’ Before slowly swimming up to the outstretched paw. She could smell him in the water now, and he did not smell young, or like the Hunters that craved the flesh of her people. Her eyes flickered to the spear hanging by its own strange ropes, and watched it carefully as she slowly took the shellback in her mouth.

With that, her courage was spent, and she nearly slapped this strange being with her tail during her desperate flee to safety.

______________

Three weeks passed in a flash for Markus, due in large portion to his new companion. He still was unsure of the level of intelligence present, but within the first week, a sort of working relationship developed. This alien seal-like creature began sunning itself just far enough up the beach to see him, but never close enough for him to have a prayer of catching it.

It was obviously watching him, but Markus didn’t truly mind. In a strange sort of way, It was nice to not be completely alone. There were other perks to this relationship. Fishing became absurdly easy. Unfortunately for him, the strange troglodyte lobster thing proved to be poisonous according to the scanner from his pod that thankfully was still working. That didn’t stop his new friend from devouring them, and a sort of trade began. His seal friend would flush out fish of various types for him to spear, and in return, any of those large crustaceans that were found would go to his fishing partner.

Two weeks into the new arrangement, the alien seal that Markus decided to dub “Selkie” led him to a small freshwater stream that bubbled from what he could only assume was a natural underground aquifer. His scanner had finally died at this point, and Markus chose to boil the water religiously as insurance. He made sure to store the safe water in his hydration packets whose contents had long since been depleted. Fire was a double-edged affair. It kept him warm at night and provided him safe drinking water, but it deprived him of his companion. The Selkie flatly refused to be anywhere near any flames whatsoever, and would dive into the water at the first sparks of ignition. Markus never tried to encourage it to join him, deciding that it was better to leave natural instincts untouched where he could.

The fire he currently sat beside was in its waning stages, and would soon be reduced to embers. The cold was less a factor now, the nights warming nicely, even if the days grew even more oppressively hot. Markus settled into a hammock he had fashioned out of the wide flat leaves of a particularly fibrous tree found near the freshwater spring and began to dose off.