Hunted recap

A genetically engineered hunter attacks communities linked to Omega Force, wounds the crew, massacres the Drift's adults, and takes its children hostage to torment Jason Burke. After Jason and Lucky rescue the children, the Stalker steals the Phoenix and captures the rest of the team. Jason traces it to Project Apex and enters Bondrass's old vault, where Lucky frees the crew and a hidden handler reveals that he shaped the Stalker's vendetta around his brother's death. Both enemies escape, but Omega Force recovers its ship and captures the handler. His funding points toward clandestine Earth interests seeking Jason as a key to ancient alien power, yet he is released for lack of usable evidence. The Stalker later admits it was sentient, abused, and deceived, then asks Jason to end its life. Jason kills it permanently and destroys its remains. The handler escapes again, but Cage empties most of his available accounts and Jason gains enough intelligence to begin hunting him.

Previously: Jason Burke leads Omega Force from the Phoenix with Lucky, Cage, Crusher, Doc, and Twingo. The team combines combat, technical, medical, engineering, and intelligence skills, and its members have remained together through conflicts with powerful criminal interests. Their history includes an escape from Bondrass's vault, where they freed captives and took his treasure ship. Bondrass's organization and illegal genetic enterprises left consequences that extend beyond his own place in the crew's past. Jason also carries an ancient alien intelligence confined within a neural implant, while an Ark connected to that intelligence remains on Earth. More recently, Omega Force aided an operation against biotic impostors. That affair left an uncertain trail toward the rumored Synod and Project Starfall, but neither the organization nor the project is well understood. The risks attached to the Ark, the imprisoned intelligence, and the suspected Synod remain unresolved when the crew begins its next assignment.

Omega Force reunites and accepts a contract to investigate ritualized murders on a jungle world. A Nipari passenger pays generously for a short trip along their route, then secretly confirms the crew's destination after disembarking. The murders follow a precise schedule, spare children as witnesses, and resemble attacks in several communities that Omega Force previously helped. While Jason, Lucky, and Crusher guard a likely target, a camouflaged reptilian attacker disables their equipment and infiltrates the Phoenix. Crusher seriously wounds it but suffers severe claw and chest injuries, while Cage, Doc, and Twingo are attacked aboard ship. Everyone survives, although Cage requires intensive treatment and venom slows Crusher's recovery. The attacker then contacts Jason and makes the purpose of the wider campaign explicit: the atrocities are intended to punish him and draw him into a hunt. A clue in its language points toward the Drift. To stop further killings and learn the attacker's identity, Omega Force follows that invitation into the isolated region.

The Phoenix reaches the Drift and finds the habitat network largely silent and damaged. Jason and Lucky enter covertly while the injured Crusher remains aboard. In Bastion they discover hundreds of mutilated bodies and rescue a juvenile survivor, who explains how the attacker caused environmental failures, sowed confusion among defenders, and gathered the surviving children in the Foundry with explosives. The child guides Jason and Lucky through hidden maintenance routes. They secure the hostage room and leave him protecting the other children while they confront the hunter. Twingo's countermeasure lets Lucky pretend to be disabled by an inhibitor, and Lucky severs the attacker's arm during the ambush. The hunter claims a dead-man switch will kill the children, forcing Jason to allow its escape. The detonator proves to be a bluff and the hostages remain alive. The severed limb gives Omega Force its first physical evidence about an adversary that says Jason took someone dear from it and claims it was made into its present form.

Imperial ships evacuate the children, and Jason helps Rin provide for his sisters. Examination of the severed arm shows that the Stalker is a heavily modified, regenerative predator derived partly from Corcoran biology. The crew follows its former passenger to a registered home filled with long-term surveillance of Omega Force. A message there links the grievance to the crew's old vault escape, and the building destroys itself. Another clue leads to a frozen mining settlement, where the Stalker lures Jason into the open and hidden accomplices drug him. He wakes far away without his gear and discovers that the Phoenix and his entire crew are missing. Reactivated trackers lead him to a disused plant, but the devices are only a display made with blood from the captives. The former charter passenger lies dead there, apparently discarded after serving his purpose. A model left at the scene is identified as an older version of Klinta, Admiral Kellea Colleren's homeworld. Kellea places naval forces around Klinta while Jason travels there alone to continue the search.

On Klinta, Jason learns that the local festival honors his former mentor Crisstof Dalton. The public remembers Crisstof as a founder, but Jason knows he was executed after betraying both Jason and Kellea Colleren. The Stalker exploits that conflict by arranging edited testimony and planted accusers who portray Jason as responsible for Crisstof's death. A mob attacks Jason, and the Stalker stuns him in the crowd so he can be stabbed. Kellea's troops rescue him and she publicly corrects the false history, though an older bystander dies during the crush. After Jason leaves the hospital, the stolen Phoenix destroys several empty military craft and escapes. Rather than continue reacting to staged clues, Jason works with an intelligence aide to investigate the predator's origin. In archives beneath Saditava Mok's former estate, they uncover Project Apex, an illegal program that used Corcoran DNA to create nine similar beings. A living lead researcher is located on Pinnacle Station. Meanwhile, Lucky remains captive aboard the Phoenix, concealing an upgraded weapon and waiting for a chance to free the others.

Jason and an Imperial operative confront the Project Apex scientist, who identifies the Stalker as B-49A, a fifth-generation construct believed destroyed. He provides an ultrasonic device said to impair it. Jason concludes that the captives are in Bondrass's old vault and infiltrates it with the operative while Imperial troops remain in reserve. Lucky breaks out independently, frees Crusher, Doc, Twingo, and Cage, and leads them toward the docks to cut the vault's power. Jason regains control of the Phoenix through a hidden override, but the Stalker ambushes him and the operative. When Jason activates the supposed restraint, it instead drives the creature into a violent attack. Jason impales it after a punishing fight but is badly wounded. A man Jason believed dead then exposes himself as the true handler. He transported the young construct to the vault and conditioned it to blame Jason for his brother's accidental death during Omega Force's old escape. His plan is to recreate that disaster against the captured crew. The wounded operative shoots him, and Jason loses consciousness before learning whether either adversary survived.

Jason awakens after Omega Force disables the mercenary frigate powering the vault and Imperial forces secure the site. The Stalker, its handler, and a courier ship are gone. Financial records show that accounts connected to clandestine Earth services supplied tens of millions of credits to the handler's operation. The handler's own funders want Jason secretly captured, not merely killed, and reprimand the handler for putting personal revenge first. Omega Force follows the Phoenix's travel history and mercenary links to a reaches gateway world. Cage narrows the search to six possible bases. After avoiding a mined trap and forcing down two escaping craft, Jason, Lucky, and Crusher capture the handler alive. Under Imperial interrogation, he admits directing the Stalker's atrocities and says his employers consider Jason the key to an ancient alien power. He denies removing the Stalker's body from the vault, leaving its survival likely. Jason asks for the prisoner to face judgment in a world devastated by the attacks, while he and the Imperial operative treat the confession about the larger conspiracy as important but still unverified.

Jason reasons that the wounded Stalker has returned to the ruined Project Apex facility. Before following, he warns the ancient intelligence in his implant that unknown interests may be trying to reach it through him. The intelligence refuses contact with the Ark on Earth but gives Jason a future means to neutralize it in exchange for renegotiating its confinement. The handler is released because local authorities lack admissible evidence. At the biolab, the Stalker tells Jason that the Apex constructs were sentient children who were confined, abused, and sold. Its handler exploited its bond with the handler's brother and deceived it about Jason's responsibility for the man's death. Accepting its own responsibility for the killings, the Stalker asks Jason for permanent death. Jason decapitates it and incinerates the remains to prevent its regeneration or reuse. He then kills the Apex scientist after learning that another group offered to fund renewed production. The handler escapes with some ships and money, but the Stalker has exposed his network. Cage drains most of his accessible accounts, leaving him weakened as Jason and Omega Force turn the hunt against him.

Omega Force is reunited aboard the recovered Phoenix. Jason follows the wounded Stalker to the ruined Project Apex facility, where it explains that the handler exploited its attachment to his brother and falsely blamed Jason for the brother's death. Accepting responsibility for its killings, the Stalker asks for a permanent end. Jason decapitates it, then incinerates the body so its regenerative biology cannot be reused. He later kills the Project Apex scientist after discovering a new effort to reproduce the constructs. The handler, meanwhile, is released because the case against him lacks admissible evidence and escapes with some ships and financial resources. Cage drains most of his accessible accounts, and information supplied by the Stalker exposes much of his network. Jason is now pursuing him. The handler's possible Earth-linked sponsors, their interest in Jason as a route to ancient alien power, and the prospect that another group could revive Project Apex remain unresolved. Jason also holds a failsafe against the Ark on Earth under a future bargain with the intelligence confined in his implant.