The hunt was obviously successful, to its extent, Bakka thought to himself as he watched that security monitor that showed Li’chinde returning from his private hunt. Bakka tapped a few keys, and the camera zoomed in on Li’chinde’s belt, which now held a new skull; a small one that would be none other than that of an ooman’s.
The left mandibles covering his face curled into a small snarl as he glared at the grinning skull hanging from his belt. The maddening yet recurrent thought ran through his head for the third time since they had landed: The old coot doesn’t trust any of us; we’re only here because he had to drag us along.
Bakka had seen him run off towards the camp as well, and when he had left, Bakka had approached the New Bloods with the idea of going on the ooman hunt. They were just as Blooded as Li’chinde was, and they deserved the Hunt. Standard tradition said that they had to become Warriors first, but they had already proven themselves.
He looked back at the monitor and was pleased to see that the first New Bloods were now sneaking out of the ship into the night, keeping low and quiet so Li’chinde nor the other Warriors saw them leave. Once outside, they would hide and wait for Bakka to lead them into battle. The oomans would not last long under the weight of 3/4’s of the clan. Even if they were inexperienced, they were still powerful.
This is strange . . . Not all of the New Bloods were filing out! Some of them remained in the sleeping hold, honoring the traditions of the elders by abstaining from this unlawful Hunt. One of these days, the youth of our people will take over, and then the New Bloods will hunt what they please. No species shall go restricted for the best simply because they’re stronger than others. The New Bloods deserve so much more than the kiande amedha, the kuty’y’ae, and the ghequo. They deserve hunts like the pifc-nah’, and most of all, they deserve the oomans. Well, I’ll grant them that myself if the elders will not, Bakka thought as he got up and sneaked through the corridors to the airlock. Once outside, he said a quick prayer with the New Bloods, and they dashed off into the night.
Li’chinde emerged from his personal quarters with the intent of finding a midnight snack. After all, the events of the night had drained him, and his stomach growled nearly as loudly as the wild pifc-nah’. Passing the New Bloods’ sleeping quarters, though, he decided to check in and make sure they weren’t destroying each other in some hedonistic graduation party.
What he found was the last thing he expected. Where there should have been nine New Bloods, there were but three! Where were the others? He questioned Rrajigii, who had stayed behind, and he told Li’chinde all he needed to hear. Li’chinde began to shake with rage, and only a few words of Rajigii’s explanation sank in. . . . Ooman . . . Hunt . . . others . . . Bakka.
The revolutionist pauker! Defiler of his ancestors! In a single night, Li’chinde had now faced nearly every major sin a creature could commit! Lust . . . degradation of females . . . panic . . . now, the death of his ancestors in the breaking of time-honored law! Once I find Bakka, death will come on swift wings, he promised himself as he barked to Nemesis to watch the remaining New Bloods while he found the hunting party. Then, he ran out of the ship to the eastern part of the ooman camp. Since he’d entered from the west last time, the oomans would probably have that side more effectively guarded now.
Bakka hovered low over the student who was armed with a spear gun, aiming it at a rather puny ooman. "Beware not to let the creature see the naginata-thrower’s sights," Bakka whispered into his ear as he watched the monster that they sang such praises of. The cub was just about to pull the trigger when the spear gun was ripped out of his hands, leaving a nasty gash in his palm.
Bakka, confused, looked up and found himself directly in the masked face of a growling Li’chinde. The New Blood turned off his zooming tool and, hiding his cut, backed away quickly, but not quick enough to avoid the backhand Li’chinde delivered which sent him flying backwards. The clan leader gave the child a moment’s regard, then turned back to Bakka.
"You led the New Bloods on a forbidden Hunt?!" Li’chinde barked, loudly enough to get his point across but softly enough for the oomans not to notice; they were still a kilometer away, but it never hurt to be careful. "The ooman Hunt is restricted by law and by tradition, and you dare to break this code?"
"That code was made by our ancestors, for our ancestors!" Bakka retorted, "They no longer apply as they used to!"
This code was given to us by Paya himself! The ancients didn't make it, it was bestowed upon them by the gods! They are just as powerful today as they were a thousand centuries ago!"
It for this generation," Bakka snarled, rearing up into his full height. Although he was nearly eight feet high, Li’chinde still outsized him by about six inches. "The youth of today are just as deserving of the rare game as you or me, and I have given them that. Your traditional ways have outlived their usefulness!"
"Useful?" Li’chinde whispered. Then, he roared, "They were never useful! These rules were given to us by the gods to lead us through The Path that all yautja are to walk! They were not concocted for our convenience or to boost glory! Blasphemer!"
At the insult, Bakka curled up his fist and let fly at Li’chinde’s face. The Warrior grabbed Bakka’s hand and buried his talons into the renegade’s knuckles, turning the defector’s right hand into a glowing mess of tattered flesh. Bakka pulled back and roared in pain. Li’chinde ripped Bakka’s mask off and threw it to the dirt, then he removed his own mask to reveal his mandible-covered, antlike face. Cetanu’s battle had begun. The battle of death.
"Anyone hear that?" Ralph called out to the others as he slipped on his helmet. Everybody stopped and listened, and it wasn’t long before a bellow of pain echoed over the vast flats and canyons. Ralph met eyes with Cominsky, who quickly checked himself to make sure no laser sights were training over him again.
"Everybody," Cominsky ordered with a calm voice that greatly contradicted the paranoid look in his eyes, "I’d suggest we unpack the other remote sentry units and put ‘em on all four sides of the perimeter. Sooner the better; let’s move, people!"
Giger stepped up and asked, "What’s the point, sir? We’re goin’ to the Ravenno in, like, five minutes!"
Cominsky thought a moment and muttered, "Maybe we’ll wait another hour or so. Give things a little time to . . . quiet down. Now, let’s go!"
Ralph, as he jogged to the sentry crates, couldn’t help thinking that this was unusual of Cominsky. He’d never before shown fear in anything, not even the Xenomorphs, but this had him on a disturbing edge. Of course, everyone has a worst fear; maybe Cominsky’s is the thought of being hunted.
Bakka threw another punch at his leader, this time with his left hand. Li’chinde ducked the punch and leapt backwards to regroup. Of all the things Bakka had done tonight, this was his worst offense yet. Death is the only sentence to remain.
Li’chinde quickly leapt forward into Bakka’s face, knocking the traitor backwards with a head-butt whose dull crack echoed through the valley. Bakka stumbled back and shook his head quickly, then turned back up to face Li’chinde, who was much closer than Bakka had expected. Before he had time to react, Li’chinde pummeled into him with a series of punches to the gut that knocked Bakka to the ground, coughing up the glowing green thwei that welled up in his lungs.
It would not end like this - - ! Bakka thought, then stood back up into a defensive position. When Li’chinde rushed forward to deliver another attack, Bakka grabbed his arm and used the Warrior’s momentum to throw him to the ground. Li’chinde was about to get up when Bakka drove the heel of his foot into Li’chinde’s spine-studded back, raising a pain-induced roar from the leader’s maw. Bakka’s face twisted into a sadistic grin as he opened his ki-cti’pa to deliver the final blow.
Li’chinde spun around in the dirt and grabbed Bakka’s wrist, stopping the attached blades mere inches from his forehead. Then, he twisted his arm, throwing Bakka to the ground beside him; Bakka’s fingers fell harmlessly to the ground, having been sliced off by his own wrist blades in the maneuver.
The defector drove the ki’cti-pa into the ground beside him, only to find that Li’chinde was no longer there. With a bit of effort, he pulled his gauntlets out of the dirt, leaving a small pool of the thwei that was streaming from the remainder of his hand. He stumbled back up, and saw the only thing he didn’t expect: Li’chinde was nowhere in sight. The New Blood remained at the nonexistent sideline, gazing with admiration at the fight. But where is the geriatric Warrior I was just fighting?
That’s when Bakka noticed the direction the cub was looking towards and looked up. No sooner had he done this than Li’chinde landed from his great leap, smashing into - - and through - - Bakka’s skull, nearly splitting the Warrior’s corpse in half. The yautja was dead before he hit the ground.
A long moment passed, and the New Blood finally moved, crawling forward to check the body of his leader pro tempore. He most certainly was finished. The eye sockets, nose, and mouth had acted as a meat and juice strainer for the yautja’s brain, leaving him beyond the help of medicine. That, and many other fatal injuries, riddled through the rest of his body.
The New Blood gazed up at Li’chinde, who was replacing his biohelmet, and asked, "What do we do with the body?"
"Leave it for the kiande amedha to strip," Li’chinde growled coldly, grabbing the New Blood by the wrist and dragging him away from the body. "Now, help me round up the others."
Ragsdale shuddered as a gust of wind blew past him. It had grown quiet now. The roars and hisses had stopped from the ridge above after a loud crunching noise was heard, and then, there was a few seconds of noises that sounded like clicking and grunting. That had been thirty seconds ago, and it had been silent since then, but nobody had really worked up the courage to inspect the situation.
Finally, Ragsdale stood up with smartgun in hand and carried it ahead of him up the ridge. It took awhile, but he eventually decided to shoulder the smartgun so he could climb faster. He hiked himself up, then peeked out over the rocks. His eyes widened and he ducked back down, motioning for Giger, not far away, to take a look. Giger jogged up in a half-crouched position, then pulled himself up the ridge to see what Ragsdale was looking at.
A body; a giant one covered in the glowing blood they’d seen before. An emotionless facemask lay off to the side, with deep marks in the side of it, as though fingers had left it. The face, barely recognizable as a head, had a deep indentation in the middle of it, as though it had been caved in. Many of its bones were twisted at varied angles that they were obviously not intended to.
"You ever hear about this in any of your oddjobs, Giger?" Ragsdale whispered to his compatriot.
"I never heard of this before. I’d say we get it to the MedTent and try for an autopsy."
It had taken three men to drag the mangled corpse to the med-tent, and even with all the manpower, it still took them a thirty minutes to lug it less than a half-mile. The thing may have lost a lot of blood, among other things, but damn it wasn’t still heavy! But now, here it sat, harmless, flat against the bed they’d hoisted it onto. Pope was running over it with every instrument he had at his disposal; he was obviously as fascinated with this as the xenomorph they’d brought in before.
"I used to wind up with humans on my table," Pope shook his head. "Nowadays, all I get are alien lifeforms." He smiled. "Not that I’m complaining. Two new species in less than a week? This - -"
"So, what is it?" Cominsky asked, breaking the synthetic’s chatter.
"Well, it appears to be a sentient creature . . ." responded Pope, "Most definitely a male of its species. I’d say that they’re shaped and they operate like humans, in the main. However, they are a lot more muscular, and their bone density is much higher than our species. I’d say that whatever planet they come from, it’s got a good bit of gravity.
"However, that planet must have some hideous conditions to cause a creature to evolve like this. If you look at the fingers, they seem to end with solid bone rather than keratin, like humans have, and they could no doubt do serious damage with the arm mass that propels them.
"However," he mused, gesturing at what was left of the head, "I haven’t got the first idea why it would have these mandibles that stretch out over its face. But, the oversized brain case has a high amount of extra fluid between the skull and the brain, which suggests that these creatures have pretty much evolved to withstand a blow to the head. Still, even with the extra fluid in there, the brain is still bigger than ours is."
"But what is it?" Cominsky enquired with his voice a little stiffer.
Pope thought for a moment, then muttered, "A tough son-of-a-bitch."
Ralph was quick to the draw with, "Well, then, what the hell killed it?"
The synthetic picked up some computer readouts of the cause of death and scanned it over. "Well, it says here that the hand was torn apart separately, but the cause of death was a force of about 400 pounds dropped from a height of maybe twenty feet. This caved his skull in and forced the brains to be squeezed out through his eyes, nose, and mouth. If that didn’t kill him, then the impact also shattered his neck and broke three spinal vertebrae. Both his legs were broken under the weight. So, he was pretty much dead instantly."
Everybody stood there a moment, wondering what could have done that to such a powerful creature. Finally, Giger started towards the tent flap, saying, "Well, I think I’ve heard about enough. If we don’t set off for the Ravenno soon, then these guys may attack, or the xenomorphs, or some other screwed-up species, so we’d best be going soon."
Grumbling, most of the marines left with him, leaving Ralph and Pope alone with the body. "Anything else you want to know, Ralph?" Pope asked, toweling off the blood from his hands.
"Yeah, I was just wondering . . . why is its blood like that?"
Pope shrugged. "As near as I can tell, it travels through the body faster and carries more oxygen and nutrients than our blood does. Keeps it from getting winded, I suppose."
Ralph nodded and walked quietly out of the tent, leaving Pope alone with the body. More to himself than anyone else, Pope whispered, "Who - - who’s gonna get this off my table?"
This is insane, Hrr’kak thought, stepping up to the cavern’s immense maw. The kiande amedha’s hive was inside; Hrr’kak could feel it. He hadn’t felt it in the other cave, the natural one. He felt it here, at the enormous dead ship. The kiande amedha seemed to have moved from their original hive to the new one created by the ruins of the ooman crash site.
Li’chinde had sent Hrr’kak to find the kiande amedha’s hive so that another hunt could take place. At first, Hrr’kak had thought this as being an awfully simple task, because the night they’d landed, they had seen the cave that they had emerged from. However, when Hrr’kak went to check, the cave was empty! Or, at least, as empty as a hive gets. The dripping resin and chest-deprived corpses remained on the walls, but little else remained. So, Hrr’kak had decided to check the crashed ooman ship, since that was the most logical place for them to flock to. And that was where he was now, stumbling through the battered, dark halls of the dead ship. He saw bits and pieces of the Black Death’s presence: drippings of venom, burn marks, and occasionally a small patch of hive growth.
Hrr’kak considered going in deeper to inspect, but a familiar and frightening sound came out of the darkness. A low scuttling noise that signified the infectors. He had come too close to the main hive, it seemed. Hrr’kak backed away slowly and quietly and turned around to face the gaping opening that led to the safety of the barren plains. It was the last thing he saw before one of the infectors leapt from its hiding place and broke through his biohelmet, obscuring his vision. He staggered around a moment, then collapsed to the ground in a coma.
Anytime, Cominsky, Ralph thought as he sat in his tent, his eyes closed. It had been well over an hour since the Sarge had made his decision to set off for the Ravenno, and roll call still hadn’t been taken yet. He was trying too hard to wait out this dilemma. Maybe he hoped that both species would end up wiping each other out - - Ralph didn’t know. However, there was one thing he for sure: they weren’t getting off this rock by milling around the camp, as everyone was right now. They were just waiting for something to happen, for Cominsky to give the word or for another attack by one of those things from the desert . . .
But now, he had to specify what he meant by "things." Two species of aliens, battling each other on a barren world in the ass-crack of space, with a squad of Colonial Marines caught in the middle. Just a bunch of ordinary people, stranded and caught in a mind-boggling conflict that would make the toughest recruit wet his pants. At first, he had doubted Giger, Ragsdale, and the Sarge’s account, probably half out of disbelief and half out of fear. But now, it was brutally clear that they were telling the truth.
Ralph unscrewed the cap to his canteen and took a long swig of water, the delicious liquid dripping over his dirty face and cleaning streaks in the dust. Never thought I’d be so thankful for a drink of H2O, he chuckled, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt. A bottle of whiskey, maybe, but never water.
Putting down his canteen, the young man tried to decide which species scared him more. On one hand, you had the mindless, viscous xenomorphs, full of teeth and claws; on the other, you had this new monster, intelligent and frighteningly advanced. Both seemed to be equally lethal, the former with their animal instincts, the latter with their high-tech weapons.
Smiling, Ralph decided he liked the first ones better than the last. At least with them, what you see is what you get, he sighed. But with this new species, there are too many surprises. They’re smart, they’ve got cloaking abilities, laser guns, crab faces, spears . . . what next?
Ralph heard the sound of boots hitting the dust from outside his tent. Everybody was rushing off towards the center of camp . . . Cominsky must finally be calling roll.
As he snatched up his rifle and spare ammunition, the Marine couldn’t help but wonder: What would a hybrid be like?
"Li’chinde?" Mahnde barked softly into the clan leader’s private quarters. The battered old Warrior opened his eyes and sat up in his bed, swaying like a drunkard. Apparently, one too many of Bakka’s hits had connected.
Li’chinde groaned. But he only scored two shots . . . I must be getting too old for this. "What is it, Mahnde?"
The pilot scanned the data panel, then gurgled, "This says that we received a transmission of Hrr’kak about five minutes ago saying that he had tracked the kiande amedha nest to the crashed ooman ship. Then, three minutes ago, all his displays went static. If he ventured in, he might have been attacked by an infector. What are your thoughts?"
Li’chinde laid back in his bed and stared at the ribbed ceiling a moment. This is the last thing I need right now . . . "If indeed Hrr’kak has been infected, then an Abomination of the yautja will stalk the hive in a few short hours. We must go now if we are to stop it."
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