Nova looking at the ruined Pequod's nameplate
Hunters and Collectors is a comic written and drawn by Gregory Ruth for The Matrix Comics Series 3 which was published in The Matrix Comics Volume 1 and, later, in The Matrix Comics: 20th Anniversary Edition. The story tells the final surface expedition of Flint, the captain and only survivor of his hovercraft, Pequod, as he ventured back into the surface to exact revenge against the sentinel responsible for crashing his ship and killing his entire crew.
The comic notably drew inspiration from Herman Melville's novel, Moby Dick, and directly paralleled Flint (who was also called Ahab by some people from Zion) with the novel's main protagonist who was also consumed by his lust for revenge against the great white whale that sunk his ship (also named "Pequod").
Story[]
The hovercraft, Polaris, was loading up on the surface when the operator, Twist, detected that a sentinel was patrolling nearby. Nova tried to gather back the crew members still on the surface when Flint, gazing at the ruins of the long lost human city they were in, decided to mysteriously stay instead. Nova, uninvited, followed Flint as he took off, believing that Flint was heading off to collect more artifacts, and decided to let the ship go without the two of them.
As Nova followed Flint, she attempted asking him questions about the unexplored edges of the city they were headed to, but Flint was unresponsive, denying all conversations. Nova, knowing how Flint was, decided to not press any further questions.
During their expedition, however, Flint had been ignoring the artifacts that they were supposed to be collecting. Nova then recalled how people had believed that Flint, who used to be a captain, had changed since losing his ship, the Pequod, to a sentinel attack. That Flint, the first of the Resistance who successfully and repeatedly scavenged the heavily Machine-patrolled surface for pre-Zion artifacts, had gone mad after losing Pequod and his crew, and was now suicidally lost in his thirst for vengeance. But Nova continued to refuse believing these things, and just continued to follow Flint, displaying her immense faith in him.
As their trek dragged on its third day though, Flint was more and more proving to be mad, barely stopping to rest or dress any of the wounds they sustained in their land travel. And on the fourth day, Nova could no longer deny Flint's madness as she found themselves standing on top of the Pequod's wreckage, realizing that she was not following someone out to collect but, instead, someone out for a hunt.
Flint declaring to Nova, "no more running"
Nova confronted Flint and pointed out his madness, which Flint affirmed when he revealed that he had actually lead the sentinel, which Twist had tracked days earlier near the Polaris, in towards them. And sure enough, not long after this revelation, a loud crash was heard behind Flint confirming the presence of the sentinel.
Flint quickly instructed Nova to hide while he himself stood his ground in preparation to fight the approaching Machine, muttering the words, "no more running," as he readied his spear.
But the battle did not end as quickly as it normally would have...
Flint evaded the sentinel's first attack, a heavy crash of a tentacle to where Flint stood. Flint side-jumped close to the sentinel's right, and as the sentinel was slow to turn towards Flint, he used the opportunity to leap above the sentinel and deliver a mighty downward thrust into its head before quickly jumping back away once more to defend, slicing away the sentinel's tentacles when it attacked, and piling up damage against the sentinel while carefully dodging its attacks.
But while Flint showed early success in this battle, he utterly lacked the heavy weaponry needed and was soon, inevitably, overpowered in their melee, getting shoved down whilst blocking the sentinel's many arms, and his body immediately pierced by one of the sentinels tentacles, killing him instantly.
Nova, by herself, preparing to fight a sentinel with a spear
Witnessing this entire fight, Nova believed that Flint must have been setting and planning this encounter for months, suicide though it may be, in his desire to die with his ship and crew. Perhaps, Nova thought, he even wanted her to witness it, to serve as a cautionary tale and warning to ward off Zion from any similar foolishness.
But, following Flint's example of "no more running", Nova stepped out from behind the safety of the wall where she hid and was watching from, to instead take her turn in facing the sentinel.
Wielding her own spear and burning with resolve to return to Zion, and to honor Flint and the Pequod's crew, Nova put up as much defense as she could, blocking the tentacles, then parrying and dodging them, before leaping high above the sentinel and thrusting her own spear into the sentinel's head much like Flint just previously did. Standing atop the sentinel, she then quickly scrambled to her knees and wretched out cables from the sentinel's now exposed head, immediately causing the sentinel to malfunction.
Nova, having successfully survived the encounter, collected Flint's body together with the rest of the Pequod crew and proceeded to bury them together with their ship's wreckage. She then collected what artifacts they had originally collected before their ship crashed, and she discovered a treasure throve of books among their collection. She then tore a page from one of the books, the epilogue of the novel Moby Dick, and left it with Flint's grave.
She also decided against using Flint's demise as a tale of warning to Zion, instead wishing for Flint's legend to continue to inspire more collectors like herself. So upon her return, she would tell the tale of how Flint "the Collector" had defeated the Machines and unearthed a grand treasure for the children of Zion.
Taking back the rest of the artifacts into a hoverpad, Nova started her long trek home.