Hybrid Saga 01 - Hybrid by S M Briscoe Page A

tower of smoke from kilometers out. That not withstanding, these desert wastes weren’t the friendliest of places to wander. The sooner they made it to the spaceport and got off this rock, the better.
    Jarred put a hand to his brow and squinted up at the blazing sun that continued to rise slowly overhead, the intense heat rising with it. Something told him it was going to be a very long day.
     
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    Elora stared out at what appeared to be endless waves of shimmering gold, stretching out into the horizon. It was the same unchanging landscape she had been staring out at for the last few hours, and the site was beginning to grow more than a little tiresome. Every dune they crossed over lead to another, nothing but hot sand expanding outwards forever in all directions. She was beginning to wonder if this bounty hunter even knew where he was going.
    What had she been thinking? She didn’t know anything about the man, apart from the fact that he hunted people down for money. What kind of a person did that? He could be a vicious killer for all she knew. She observed him from a short distance back as he led the group on their blistering trek. He wasn’t an overly large man, being of average height, though even beneath his garments she could see he was well muscled. Even so, his physical appearance didn’t quite match what she would have envisioned of someone in his trade. She supposed it was naive of her to think all bounty hunters would look a certain way, large and imposing and intimidating. Appearing not much older than herself, he was actually fairly pleasant to look at, with piercing blue eyes and a handsome face, though it was covered in a few days worth of stubble, his brown hair cut short. If not for the weaponry he was clad in, all of which he seemed quite capable with, the man in front of her could have passed for any average bystander. That was probably the point. It would be easier to sneak up on someone if they never saw you coming.
    Obviously, looks could be deceiving. Just because he didn’t look like a cold blooded killer, it didn’t mean he wasn’t. She had witnessed him kill a half dozen soldiers only hours earlier. Yet, he had also helped them escape the outpost when he could have easily just left them behind. It had taken some persistent arm twisting on her part to convince him not to leave them in his wake, but she wouldn’t have been able to win him over if there wasn’t some kindness to him. From that she felt fairly certain, whoever this man was, he wasn’t some knife wielding berserker.
    That still left her wondering who he was. A kind hearted mercenary? It didn’t seem a likely fit. She had spent the last while trying to glean an answer to the question, but staring into the back of the man’s head had revealed very little, but for the fact that he wore a tattoo of sorts on his neck just below his hair line. A peculiar marking, it looked oddly familiar, though she could not say she had ever seen the design before. It was basically round in shape, two distinct crescents, one sitting with the other, giving it an almost planet-like appearance. She had become fixating on the marking after first seeing it, and with little else to occupy her, she had burned the image into her mind.
    Concluding she would learn nothing more from her current vantage point, she left the rear of the group, where she had been walking with Ethan and Orna, quickening her pace a bit to catch up with their reluctant rescuer to walk along side him. She stared at him a moment, receiving only a quick glance in return, as she thought of what she should say to him exactly.
    “I was thinking,” she began, waiting for him to look over at her before continuing. “Here we are, hiking across a burning desert, away from your crashed ship that you helped us narrowly escape almost certain death in . . . and we don’t even know your name.”
    It was an odd way of asking the question, she knew, but that had always