impalalord:

As I sit in this Federation prison, I lay awake in my cell each night. I am still too afraid to rest my ocular receivers for even a brief moment due to that hunter.

My brother and I ran a slavery market, and business was booming. We sold to all the planets beyond federation reach and to some of the pocket clans. The federation had been after us for years and they never found us until they sent that wretched human. One night as Kurlog and myself were celebrating that cycle’s profits, the enforcer we had posted outside the door screamed. Kurlog grabbed his plasma rifle and we began walking to the door, angry that the guard had been startled by what we thought at the time was nothing.

We walked outside and saw the enforcer dangling from the rafters with a chain around his neck, pulled up from the ground. We were shocked, the Varanians were renowned throughout the galaxy as some of the best hand to hand fighters, how could he possibly have been taken by surprise and killed? Attached to his lifeless form there was a note. A note that is burned into my memory. It read seven simple words that shall haunt me for as long as I live:

“I am coming for both of you.”
You see, this hunter had a talent for what he did, this human knew how to capture his prey, and now as I look back I see just how ruthless, just how methodical and elaborate and ahead of us he was. For a few days after that note, we would hear sounds from nearby, only to find nothing but another note, with the same ominous message written on it. We would be awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of one of our body guards being killed, only to find no perpetrator at the scene. I now know the mind games that he played upon us and realize their morbid brilliance. We would see things out of the corner of our eyes, we would receive messages that our closest family members had been tortured for information by some mysterious human and he was coming for us next. The dismembered corpses of my crew were found through my ship one day. Each day, we were set into more panic, feeling more panic, knowing that this human was a wraith, never seen by the living in this brutal business of ours.

Then came the breaking point. He stopped completely. For a week, he was responsible for nothing that happened, and all he did was follow behind, just out of our sight. Every day, panic grew more and more as we waited for something, anything to happen. My brother and I didn’t eat, we couldn’t sleep, wondering in fear when the next strike would be. Then, as we were at our weakest and as we were most afraid, he struck.

Having not rested in days, my brother and I were weary. As we walked down the hall of our base on Dranax-9, neither of us heard of any news in days, but our fear was at its peak. Deceptively, he hacked our security system, locking all of us in the base together. No way out until that hunter wanted us to leave. For the next week he haunted us, banging on doors at night, never letting himself be seen for longer than he wished.

On the seventh night, as we lay in our beds, our door was kicked open. Foolishly, Kurlog attempted to attack, but the weeks of deprivation of all rest left him slow and sluggish. The Hunter stepped gracefully out of the way of Kurlog’s swing and pushed his arm so the momentum drove him to the ground. As he lay there, the hunter unloaded two shots into his back from his Earth pistol. He turned and pointed it to me. “Drunax, you are under arrest by the Federation. I have been authorized to use lethal force and will use it if you resist.” I surrendered immediately, that rough, gravelly voice still ringing in my auditory nerves.
My trial is in a few days and I pray that I will be convicted and sent to prison, for that hunter will not be able to reach me there. I have heard stories of this hunter from the other detainees, and that if I am not convicted, he will take the law into his own and and deliver justice in his own brutal way.