Moga peered out at the blazing desert sunscape from the shade of her protected position.  She was certain that the Hunter hadn’t seen her, but she wasn’t taking any chances.  The Hunter’s attention from on high was drawn to the smallest movement, so she stayed tucked comfortably back in the shadows of her temporary redoubt.

She found herself remembering what she had learned in her young years in the training phase.  The Hunter seldom came down from the North, from its lofty peaks shrouded in mist and fog.  But she and her kind had to be on the lookout for that occasional incursion into their hot desert homeland.  To do otherwise was to risk unexpected termination.

As she gazed out across the sun drenched landscape, she could see the wall of mist-shrouded hills and peaks in the far distance.  It had not always been so, according to legend.  At one time those mountains had seen much sunlight.  Rain came often enough to slack the thirst of mighty forests growing on their slopes, but it was often times less than ideal.  The highlands had been very dry at one time.

But then something happened, according to legend.  Something tipped over in the environment.  An uncommon sunburst of heat blazed for a time, and then great wind and rain and hail and snow came in the desert.  When that onslaught exhausted itself, the mountains were cloaked in their eternal shroud of mist and fog, and the desert dried up almost completely.

As she ruminated about the cataclysm of legend and wondered for the umpteenth time what had happened, her gaze moved to her objective – that huge pile of unnatural rubble in the distance.  She had been out in the desert pursuing her study of the archeological records in the sands.  Where her kind had come from was a consuming passion with her, and she had overstayed her water supply by an unsafe margin.  Her long lithe body was crying for the moisture that was available in that rubble pile, her Division’s citadel and her home.

It was rumored around the family circle that the human species had once dominated the world.  The rubble pile itself, while it provided home and safety, was a mystery commonly thought to be a remnant from that time.  No one had been able in all these generations to decipher the strange patterns in the stone over the main entrance to their Division’s citadel of safety and power.  Whether it was true or not that they had once dominated, she knew it was no longer so.

She was roused from her musings by the ache in her body for moisture.  She had hoped to outwait the Hunter, which she was sure was dominating the landscape all around her from the sky above.  But she had run out of time.  She was going to have to make a dash for that entrance to the rubble pile.

She moved forward to the edge of her region of safety, hoping to get a glimpse of the Hunter poised in the sky above.  If she could wait until the Hunter’s attention was focused away from her area, she could tilt the odds of a successful dash in her favor.  She knew split seconds would count.

But the Hunter was not within her limited plane of vision.  She steeled herself, and then began her dash to safety or oblivion.

As she emerged from the safety of her position she saw what she feared but had hoped had departed.  Off to the left at about 1000 feet was the Hunter!  And the Hunter saw her! 

The race was on.  As Moga redoubled her effort and gained a little additional speed, the Hunter dove straight down to gain speed, and then leveled off at almost ground level as it shot straight toward her.

It quickly became apparent that she would not beat the Hunter to the safety of the entrance to the rubble pile.  Escape was preferred, but defense was the fallback position. 

She slowed to a stop, then raised the front half of her body in the air on her 25 pairs of legs.  As she twisted the top half of her body to confront the attacking Hunter, she was trembling with excitement, and a little fear.  But mostly excitement at confronting this demon.  Her adrenalin rush was huge and empowering!

She was just a little trigger happy, firing her head mounted laser cannon a nanosecond to early. 

The startled raven veered to the right and climbed, lucky to escape this surprise with just a few flaming tail feathers.  At least this centipede hadn’t cooked his goose, a fate that others in his tribe had met.  It was time to head back to his home in the mist and rain and live to hunt another day.

Moga wasted no time putting all the rest of her feet on the ground, scuttling for the entrance even before they were all engaged with mother earth. 

And it was with great relief that she passed under the entrance stone to the safety and dampness of her home.  This time, she didn’t pause as usual to gaze at the design on that stone, and try to fill in the weathered blanks in Maric pa  Count  Co rtho se on its ruined facing, or to wonder if there really had ever been a human species. 

As she moved deeper into the well-lit interior of the citadel past the hydroponic tanks and weapons research lab, Moga was just glad that she was part of the dominant species that had provided her with the technology to defend herself against the Hunter.