CHAPTER ONE
A NEW HUNT
It wasn't unusual for her to spend hours at a time penned up in their room. She hated being in the ship for long periods of time, this he knew. He did his best to entertain and distract her from the vast endlessness of space and their long travels, but this had nothing to do with that, and it was something she would have to self-soothe.
He had given her long enough to reflect on her actions and the consequences. The door slid open upon his approach and he found her, curled up with her knees to her chest. She was glaring at her feet, absently rubbing the talon-shaped bruise on her right bicep.
"You are lucky that is all you came away with," Wolf said, still standing in the doorway.
Nichole took a deep breath but didn't look at him. "I did nothing."
"You disrespected an elder."
"I disrespected an asshole," she scoffed. Swearing never heldthe same kind of satisfaction in anything other than English.
He tilted his head and clicked his tusks together in a gesture of sympathy. Nichole coasted along on his own rank and standing in their society, but it could only bring her so far. She was still lower than most in many of their eyes. "He is traditional, stuck in his views. Not everyone is as open-minded about the integration of other species into our culture."
She looked up as he extended his hand to her. Nichole stared at his arm for a second, digesting his words, and something dawned on her.
"Let me treat that."
Her fingers clamped over the bruise for a brief second before she relaxed her grip and took his hand, allowing him to pull her off the bed of furs. However, she held her ground when he tried to pull her from the room, making him turn to look at her with a questioning raise of his brow and tap of his mandibles. Her jaw was set.
"Find something big and let me kill it," she requested, forcing authority into her voice.
After regarding her in surprise, Wolf chittered in amusement and gave her a nod. After a moment of consideration, his thumb tapping against the side of her hand, he said, "As you wish."
*:･ﾟ✧
What practices Nasira had held onto were kept private, and, with her means aboard the yautja craft, they could not be called traditional. She observed what she could manage without desecrating their mandates and held a grace period for those she could not.
She kept her sessions removed from communal areas, unsure what reaction to expect from those aboard. Runite had come upon her once — instead of questioning her, he merely asked permission to sit and observe. When she finished, he'd offered to let her use his quarters instead of the isolated hallway above the fuel cells. That was where she sat now, ankles crossed and back arched. The floor was hard, but the meditation exercises were meant to be humbling.
Runite's quarters were nothing if not humbling. The precedents he set for himself were stricter than that of what the Path demanded. The room was bare apart from a woven mat in its center, which he used as a sleeping pallet. Comfort made one slow, he believed. The walls were unadorned. There was one viewport, but it was kept covered by metal shutters.
Often she had looked to it and imagined letting them open in his absence, but had never brought herself to do it. He had his principles, and she would not tread on them.
She took a deep breath, filling her lungs. Adjusting to the humid interior of the craft had not taken her long. After one sleep cycle, she'd awakened to find it bearable, and since then, she'd hardly noticed it.
The composition of the atmospheres on planets they'd visited was another matter. Her yautja companions seemed to have a higher tolerance for the widely varying elements. On nearly every planet they'd visited, she'd been forced to wear her biomask for its respiratory functions. She was still learning how to utilize its other modes, such as those the yautja employed for hunting purposes.
Through its eyes, she was learning to see as they did. Each mode seemed primed for analyzing weakness — detecting bio-signatures, highlighting scents.
Nasira straightened her back, aligning her vertebrae. Her hands were poised over the tops of her knees and her eyes were shut. Parted lips allowed for slow, methodical breaths.
Air from the corridor wafted across her face and, rumbling in the doorway: Runite.
"Nass'ira." Her name was always rolling growl and a hiss when he spoke it.
She let an eye crack open. He had never once disturbed her while she was concentrating.
"Ru'tiek," she greeted him.
His rumbling deepened as he strode into the room. Nasira's hands went slack on her legs, all meditation exercises forgotten.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" she asked.
He said, "Un'ahta is speaking with one of the hul'tah."
Un'ahta was the Yaut'ja word for an older female relative, one that was not biologically related. It was what he called Tresses. Lower ranked males were not allowed to address those higher than them by their name. Tresses' high rank and familial status only intensified the matter.
As a Blooded female sain'ja, Nasira had all the rights to her name that Tresses did, but had opted to keep lax its disclosure, at least among her two male counterparts. Though she was not equal to Tresses in rank, Nasira's female status permitted to call Tresses either by her name — Ann'drok-tonnes — or hult'ah, for her arbitrator rank.
"With a hul'tah?" Nasira asked. Tresses had told Nasira of the hult'ah, the yautja's lawkeepers. "Why?"
A grumble went through his chest; his displeasure was plain. He sat down, cross-legged, in front of her. The quills on his face bristled with agitation.
"As summons," he said. "She has called for assistance on a hunt."
Since joining the predators, Nasira had been expected to accompany them on hunts. She was learning to integrate herself into their hunting structure. Their methods were efficient, each of them fulfilling a specific role during a hunt, enabling them to act together as a single unit in a series of orchestrated formations. One might act as a sentry, relaying prey positions, or could be designated as a means of corralling their quarry into the waiting arms of the other two hunters.
The composition of their hunting structures depended on the terrain, the planet, the prey, the weapons they were carrying - with Nasira joining them, the configuration of the hunt naturally changed. She had not yet learned to think as they did, could not operate independent of Tresses' commands. If she was not accustomed to hunting among those she had lived alongside for tens of cycles, how would she fare among those she had never met?
This in mind, Nasira tried to keep her tone neutral as she asked, "What kind of hunt is this?"
"We are to challenge the might of the ui'stbi setg'in," he said, tusks snapping across the harsh word. Ui'stbi setg'in. Deadly abomination.
"You do not believe we will need assistance?" Nasira asked.
"The ui'stbi is among the grandest prey a yautja could hope to hunt," he said. "Only one ui'stbi lives at one time; there is not ample room in the universe to contain the ire of such a creature. It has immense power and great intelligence. It would be the ultimate test of my ability — if Un'ahta would not underestimate me."
"Has Ann'drok-tonnes hunted the ui'stbi before?"
His mandibles clicked once. "No."
Nasira dropped her gaze, thinking of what she had seen of Tresses during a hunt. Her speed, the ferocity with which she struck down foes. She was hul'tah, among those yautja with the greatest skill. Hult'ah were comparable only to the Elders, who had a lifetime of hunting experience but, due to their age, no desire to embark upon solitary hunts. If Tresses, with her superior rank and ability, was seeking help, it spoke volumes about the nature of this hunt.
Runite misunderstood the motion and leaned forward, bumping her chin up so she was looking into his eyes.
"Even with the interference of the hul'tah," he said, "It will be a hunt like no other. Un'ahta will see my ability."
Nasira nodded, then scooted forward and raised herself up on her knees so she was even with him. Her hands slid up to clasp behind his neck as his one arm encircled her waist, gathering her to him.
"There will be glory for the both of us on this hunt, Nass'ira."
*:･ﾟ✧
Again he found her in their room, this time coiled beneath a nest of furs, sound asleep. She slept more often than he, but for shorter stints. It seemed to help her cope with any number of discomforts as well as being a much-needed reset. Likely this time it was the preparation training they had done.
As he approached she stirred. In the beginning, she had slept like a stone, waking for nothing short of a disaster, but after some—in her opinion—harsh conditioning, she trained herself to wake up at the smallest of sounds. A necessary capability to avoid being ambushed while asleep, if they were to be separated. Wolf could go days awake if needed, if he didn't feel it was safe enough, but she didn't have that luxury.
"What is it?" she yawned.
"I have found us worthy prey." He let her English slide, as he often did when they were alone or being candid with one another.
She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, the furs bunching at her waist. She didn't know how long it had taken for him to find said prey, but it felt like it had been a while. Long enough for her head to cool after the confrontation with the elder. The bruise had faded slightly (she'd denied Wolf's attempt to treat it, insisting they just let it heal on its own and save medicine for worse injuries), but still looked distinctly like a handprint.
"You have? We heading there now?"
He nodded, standing by the bed, and said, "We will be upon the planet in a while, joined by a team."
"Is that so. What are we hunting, then?" She scooted to the edge of the bed and he sat by her.
Wolf supplied the creature's name, slow and enunciated so she could learn. On her fourth terrible attempt to pronounce it correctly, Wolf gave Nichole a chastising rumble and repeated it for her. She did it to tease and annoy him more so than anything else.
"Ui'stbi setg'in."
"Yeah that," she said with a smirk. "We need a team for this creature?"
"Yes," he said. "A small party led by one of my own rank contacted me about the ui'stbi setg'in. It is a rare occurrence, only one being born on this planet at a time."
"Strange," Nichole muttered, absently running the tip of her index finger against the scarred flesh of his side. Sighing, she voiced her complaint. "That was not what I had in mind when I asked you to find a trophy for me."
Wolf turned to her, pulling her up from her position to sit with him, and clicked an encouragement. "The ui'stbi setg'in is a mighty opponent. All who face it will be remembered for the feat."
Still she grumbled to herself. He chittered in amusement and hooked his arms around her torso, scooping her into his embrace. She squawked in surprise but fell silent as he rested his forehead against hers. "Trust me."
"I do," she muttered, ruffled and flustered. Her face and neck lit like brilliant fire in his infrared. He rumbled in amusement at her.
His amusement continued for a moment before releasing her. "Remember, she holds the same rank as I, and is due the same if not more respect. Try not to embarrass yourself."
Nichole rolled her eyes. "That's cute, you think I respect you. And when do I ever embarrass myself?"
He gave her a playful shove and she returned it with increased force. They shared in a short bout of push-shove until it inevitably ended with her pinned and tangled in the furs. Suddenly, though, she realized exactly what he said and paused in her futile and half-hearted struggles to get him off her.
"Wait, she?"
*:･ﾟ✧
The jungle held itself ready as daylight fled over its head. Its chest ballooned like a vast bellows, breathed swelter into the air. The baleful scream of alien insects hung, ever present, in the distance.
Trees towered three hundred feet into the sky and framed the clearing where they'd landed like ranks of soldiers. Their trunks (which were almost as wide as the ship in which they'd arrived) were angled inward, their enormous branches groping towards each other as though they meant to encroach further. The clear blue patch in their center seemed almost dizzyingly narrow.
Nasira and Runite stood at the top of the ship's ramp, looking out over the alien planet's surface. Siwili stood some distance away, beaded tresses singing together as his head swiveled.
There was an unearthly lack of movement within the treeline. A disaster must have wracked this area some time in the past. A fire? Plants, though crackling and dry, still stood. The land was in no way scorched.
What else could render a stretch of jungle so lifeless? Even the squelch of mud, the weight of their footsteps, was dull. It was like the place was held captive in stasis.
Runite's words tolled in her mind like the belated striking of a bell.
There is not ample room in the universe to contain the ire of such a creature.
What danger was there to be had on the surface of this planet?
"Strange," Siwili said. Then he made a light chirping sound, a laugh, and bumped Runite's shoulder with his fist. "Ru'tiek-ulij," he chittered. "Bothersome Ru'tiek. You are prepared to prove yourself?"
A snarl mounted behind Runite's tusks and Siwili's laugh deepened.
Siwili turned to Nasira. "Frightened, Nass'ira-de?"
Nasira clicked her tongue in good humor, then said, "Never, Shikarr-de."
From the interior of the ship came Tresses. She, like her companions, had donned her full hunting ensemble. Her appearance prompted Nasira to look down at herself, not for the first time.
The greaves she wore covered her feet and went up to her knees. Modified pads covered her knees and elbows, leaving her limbs light. Mesh fit snugly around her body. Soft chaps went beneath the tassets guarding her thighs, preventing their edges from digging into her skin. The same cured material covered her ribs where her chestguard sat.
The tattered ends of a thin panel of fabric fashioned into a skirt fluttered at her ankles. A similar length, though in better repair, framed her face and draped over her front. Her bio-mask settled in the midst of it.
Though she'd had experience with it, the sheer volume of information it fed her was dizzying at the worst of times. She opted for its true-color function so she could see normally, but also enabled its motion detector. Any movement in the mask's field of vision would be highlighted and alert her to its presence.
Runite growled an acknowledgement at Tresses' arrival. "Un'ahta."
One by one, they stepped forward, Siwili first, to let their knuckles drift over Tresses' open palm. It was an acknowledgement of her authority in the upcoming hunt, spoken as a measure of allegiance. Nasira went last, murmuring the words before stepping away.
Tresses jerked her head towards the bottom of the ramp, signaling to Siwili and Runite to begin their trek. But she stopped Nasira with a look.
"Nass'ira-de," she said. "You are sain'ja. Do as we do."
Nasira nodded, and Tresses shook her shoulder before they both started after Runite and Siwili.
*:･ﾟ✧
Nichole hadn't spent much time on the trade or clan ships. They were all modeled alike—for the majority, anyway—and all it did was bring up bad memories. The ship that had crash-landed all but in her backyard had been a clan ship, one Wolf had belonged to before he'd become an arbitrator and set out on his own.
And before they had lost so many of their members as a result of the crash.
The extent of her interaction with females of the yautja race was limited, at best, to spotting one down a hall. She knew they were held in high regard; the matriarchal, political rulers. She supposed it wasn't out of place for them to occasionally choose the life of a hunter, but hadn't thought much on it.
Part of her worried if this team would be okay working with a human, but Wolf would never allow them to shun her from this hunt. And she would not let them bully her.
Wolf's wrist com sounded a quiet alert. Nichole growled and crawled across the bed to grab it from where it lay, lost among the furs. A similar tone emitted from Nichole's, but hers was somewhere on the floor. She squinted at the screen, then slid over to Wolf's side and asked what one symbol or another meant. He pulled her against his bare chest and went over them with her. The written language was much harder for her to grasp than the spoken, as she didn't spend much time reading.
"We're already here?" she guessed, a hint of disappointed on her breath. "And the team?"
He purred and flipped over on top of her, tossing the com back where she'd found it, his forehead against hers."Yes, but we have a few minutes before the ship requires my attention to land."
"Only a few?"
*:･ﾟ✧
Entering a new planet's atmosphere was a mixed event for Nichole. It meant being free of the ship and its breakneck pace, of the sightless gaze of the cosmos threatening to swallow her whole. It also meant the possibility of being torn apart at the bearings. Wolf sang nothing but praises for his ship, but she couldn't help the worry that gnawed at the edges of her mind.
The planet was not unlike Earth: green. That was where the similarities ended. The foreign plants and strange, almost dead look some patches of the forest bore was uncanny.
There was no burning up in entry, so she breathed a sigh of relief and hurried through donning her armor. At the beginning it had been cumbersome and uncomfortable—modesty was not a sentiment the yautja knew. Wolf, however, had enough sway in his community to offer her custom-fit pieces. Her personal favorite was the gilded, knee-high boots. Maneuverable and easy on her eyes.
"How's the air?" she asked, detaching her mask from its place on her hip and eyeing it. It wouldn't matter, as she always wore it for a hunt and a few other occasions, but it was good information to know if she ever decided to remove it upon a whim.
"Tolerable. Though I do not recommend prolonged exposure." He stood and observed a few more alerts that Nichole couldn't see and some that she could but didn't understand without context.
Nodding, Nichole donned her bio mask and followed Wolf as he exited the ship. Hers was small compared to most, but it was as functional as any other. It had taken some time to adjust to a full face mask rather than the respirator she had to use while Wolf commissioned one to be made in her size. Most of the features were easily accessible from her wrist computer, since she hadn't the mouthparts to push interior commands.
The first thing Nichole noticed as the artificial gravity went down was the lightness in her limbs and the pep in her step. The one great thing about space was visiting places with low gravity. The child in her loved the idea of floating and bounding, like she was on the moon.
Behind them, the ship's ramp closed and Wolf stopped to gesture toward it. She stared at him a moment, then grunted her understanding and fiddled with the computer at her wrist for a moment. After the second try, the ship vanished from visible light, shimmering until it appeared there was nothing but open air.
She grinned at him in triumph and Wolf mussed her hair, prompting a miffed swipe from her. She glared at him, the expression lost behind her mask, and flattened the loosened strands back into her single braid. It had taken a few more minutes for them to don their armor and weapons again, but they were ready to meet with the team Wolf had mentioned. Nichole was nervous, but she tried not to let it show in her posture.
"This way. Be vigilant," he advised.
"I am every vigilant!"
"Always vigilant," he corrected, tone amused.
Nichole huffed and tried to hide her embarrassment, but there was little she could conceal from his keen sight. Instead, she hurried in the direction he'd pointed, disappearing into her cloak. Wolf chased after her with a chattered taunt, but she ignored him and focused on her footing, focused on trying not to favor her leg—it was unneeded, but the habit was still there after years of limping. Her body still remembered the discomfort even if it was gone now.
They were silent as they made their way through the woods. Wolf enjoyed the high road, but Nichole wasn't quite comfortable leaping from such heights, even with the lowered gravity. At his prompting, however, she clambered up the side of a looming tree, losing her balance only once when leaping to a new branch. Text and alerts scrawled across the screen, alerting her to any sounds, the temperature of their area, and anything else deemed important. She ignored most of the information.
Visible light and color were her most comfortable vision modes, though she was growing more and more accustomed to the titular infrared that Wolf insisted she use more often. Prey did not hide so well from it and it was less vulnerable than her own sight. Still, it was what she knew.
The two spoke little. Nichole couldn't talk and have situational awareness at the same time, so any banter was out of the question; the occasional correction and advice from Wolf was all.
Those they were meeting were travelling perpendicular—north-south vector to Wolf and Nichole's east-west. They adjusted to move ahead of them to flank them, and it wasn't long after that they were noticed. Nichole fell back an extra pace, but fell into her place astride him. It was a party of four, bringing their numbers up to six. She wondered briefly if this was all of them, or if others were to show up, but her eyes fell to the fourth.
Not the same build. Impressive in athleticism and stature for sure, but the bone structure and posture was entirely. . . human.
*:･ﾟ✧
The jungle swallowed them whole. Fungi rose to Nasira's hip. Sulfur tinged pools of no doubt sickness-laden water. Decomposing vines floated, sodden, in a morass of bubbling tar that occasionally sent vents of noxious gases into the air. Her mask's scans informed her that, though bitter, the emissions were not harmful unless inhaled directly.
Tresses and Siwili melted out of sight, lost to the lowest limbs of the trees, which did not begin until halfway up their trunks, a hundred feet above the ground. Their immense roots overlapped, rising high in an elevated thicket. Beneath was a network of space. Runite kept to the ground level and Nasira to their top side, jumping from perch to perch and landing lightly on her hands and feet.
The roots, like the trees themselves, were translucent, as though blown from glass. Their silvery veins were visible, but no water coursed through them. There was no motion whatsoever. It was like the entire tree had died and fossilized. The jungle itself had taken on clotted, insectoid features. As if the whole of it had been stricken by disease.
As they continued inward, the afflicted jungle gave way to green. Curling sprigs of flora swayed bizarrely without breeze. Exotic, many-lipped flowers opened their petals to beckon to the steamy air.
Nasira felt Runite approach her from behind, shrouded from her natural sight. She gave him a brief glance before holding her hand out to one of the plant's tendrils. Despite her own camouflage, they responded to her — not aimlessly, as she would've imagined, but with a curious tentativeness, probing at the pads of her fingers, slipping up and around her palm and wrist. Their touch was so slight she hardly felt it, meeting her like a caress, like a handshake.
She was about to extend her other hand when a ripple of movement caught the corner of her eye. She stepped back, wrenching her hand free without thinking. The tendrils froze, still outstretched, then withdrew.
Tresses was braced against the trunk of her tree, still cloaked.
Nasira jumped away from the flora and back on the roots, crouched and pivoting her weight as she scanned for danger. Runite likened after her, the glow of his burner sweeping across the jungle.
A low, nearly inaudible growl came from Tresses. She was above their heads, still clinging to the trunk.
"Impressive, Honorable Sha'ktil-ar," Tresses said.
The rumbling of a strange yautja filled the air and Nasira adjusted to find its source. The distorted ripple emerged from the shade, cloak falling away like water.
Of all the aid Nasira had expected to join them, among her wildest expectations was not what she saw next: the scarred, decorated form of a highly-ranked yautja.
Beside him, rising only to the bottom of his ribs: a human female bearing the blooded mark of a sain'ja, the sharp edges of her biomask's gaze set alight in the firing dusk.
This story was jointly written by Colorful Crayola and Citrine Nebulae. It includes characters created for and/or featured in our other Alien/Predator fanfictions. The events of this story are to be considered non-canon, and do not necessarily reflect past or future events involving these characters. Please see our profile biography for details.