Lex fell to her knees beside the body of the dying hunter and tried to slow her breathing down. The adrenaline of the last few desperate minutes was wearing off, to be replaced by a growing sense of despair. She was alone in an icebound wasteland, the only other living creature for miles around was dying in front of her eyes and she wouldn't be far behind him in this deadly cold.

"Stupid, stupid!" she cursed inwardly. Her fur-lined snow jacket was long gone and she was only wearing a thermal sweater. Her perspiration was in the process of freezing onto her flesh in the howling gale.

She recognised the signs of the onset of hypothermia. Her skin was getting paler by the minute and she was shivering uncontrollably. She was going to die before she could ever reach the Piper Maru but she was suddenly so tired that she could hardly bring herself to care. She looked into the yellow eyes, now dull with pain. Mortally wounded as he was, the hunter struggled to rise for a moment but fell back with an icey crunch. Screwing up his face, he gave a guttural laugh that ended in a spluttering, choking noise as he coughed up more glowing green blood. Slightly hysterical from fatigue she could almost see the funny side herself "So this is how it ends;" she thought "Freezing to death on an ice-floe, alone with an alien who only a few hours ago was my deadly enemy. Now the last thing I see will be his ugly face!"

Her eyes were trying to close and she was starting to feel drowsy, a symptom that the extreme cold was taking over; she knew "I have to stay conscious!" She thought desperately, trying to force the sleep away, knowing if she lost consciousness she would never wake up

Without quite willing it she slumped forward in the snow. The side of her face pressed against his chest, the edge of an armour scale biting into her cheek. His blood was warm on her skin and she could hear his heart beating slower and slower, his ribcage rising and falling haltingly as he struggled to breath.

Hovering on the edge of unconsciousness, she felt a hot breeze that whipped her crackling, frozen hair off her face and heard the roar of a huge engine. Darkness fell across them both. In her weakened, almost hallucinatory state the thrumming of the engine merged with the booming noise of his pulse, or was it her own heartbeat echoing in her ears?

As blackness washed in, she thought she heard voices, words indistinguishable, and saw blurry shadows moving, outlined against a bright light. "I must be dreaming." she mumbled, her words slurring and muffled against the hunter's blood slicked skin and armour plating "But you can't dream when you're dead…"

She was floating, suspended in the deep hissing grey-blue. Struggling to wake, she tried to swim upwards but the darkness was warm and seductive. Finally she managed to force her eyes open but through slitted lids all she could see was a blinding sliver of white light. She winced and screwed her eyes up again, trying to shut the light out. Unable to make sense of her situation, she tried to move her hands and feel around her but she couldn't. Eventually she drifted down again into unconsciousness, soothed by a throbbing mechanical drone.

The first thing Lex noticed when she regained consciousness was the heat, it struck down like a sledgehammer. It was hotter than it had been underground. The next thing was a gurgling noise, a disgusting skirl of slime that reminded her absurdly of sucking the last bit of milkshake through a straw. The feeling of blissful weightlessness had been replaced by a searing ache in all her joints. Her eyelids were glued together as if by a long illness. She forced them open despite the pain at finally seeing the light, and tried to take in her surroundings. The first thing she could see was a metal floor. Dull and flat and grey. A short distance away there was a grille covered hole, covered in traces of some blue, viscous substance.

She blinked again and again and shook her head ... trying to clear her vision. A coughing fit shook her, and as she tried to move her mouth she realised with horror there was something on her face – it was in her mouth! Her throat!

Terror rose up in her like bile and she tried to scream, tried to bring her hands up to tear whatever it was away but they seemed to be tangled in something. Those things, they had got her! She struggled weakly and rubbed her face against the floor, trying to scrape the thing off on the metal surface, tears leaking from her eyes.. "No, no, no…."

She felt hands grip her upper arms pull her roughly into sitting position. Her head almost rolled to one side but she managed to keep it straight and looked up blearily into a pair of cat-eyes, yellow as sulphur crystals.

Then the hunter reached out and pulled the awful obstruction away from her mouth. She gulped a huge lungful of air and let out an involuntary gasp of shock. As she looked down through blurred vision she realised that the thing he'd pulled off her wasn't a creature, but a breathing mask. Looking further down at her arms and legs she saw that her hands and feet were encased in some sort of metal devices with tubes and wires running off them. She was sitting in a large glass tank.

Her own eyes opened wide in surprise. The next instant she winced in pain as gobs of thick, gelatinous slime slithered into her eyes, burning and stinging. She screwed her lids shut then blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision.

The hunter leaned her back against the side of the tank and started methodically pulling the metal casings off her whilst she tried frantically to make sense of the situation.

"How the hell did I get here?" she thought "I was dying … and then I remember shadows…"

She looked at the hunter who was pulling a tube out of her arm – which she guessed was some kind of IV drip – and studied his face. Now that her sight was clearing and she was feeling more alert it was dawning on her that he looked familiar… "But it can't be you, you died! I heard your heart stop!" she said and then her eyes wandered down his neck, to the huge black bandages that stretched across his chest and abdomen.

"It is you!" she whispered.

He stopped what he was doing and looked down at her again. Yes it was definitely the one she had mentally nicknamed Scar after seeing him mark his forehead with the acid – she recognised his face. But that was impossible - no-one should be able to survive injuries like that! She tried to put out a hand to touch the bandage but she was too weak to reach it. "How can you be alive?" He looked at her blankly and she tried to force her raw throat to make a noise louder than a croak "Do you… understand me?"

He flexed his jaws again and she was even more amazed this time when he made a sound louder than the purring, clicking noises she'd heard before – he said "Essssss". His voice was deep and harsh-sounding, grating.

He gazed at her for a moment as she sat there open-mouthed, then looked down again and removed the last device from her foot, as if nothing had happened.

"You understand me? Then why didn't you talk before?" she asked.

Scar made a sort of shrugging motion – most yautja knew at least the rudiments of the language of their prey species (those prey species that could speak) as it made hunting them easier – but he was exaggerating when he told her he understood her speech. The truth was that although he understood some ooman words, he really relied on watching her body-language, the tone of her voice and the way she smelt to get the drift of what she was saying. He couldn't speak her language except in the most basic way – a few words and phrases.

Lex looked around the room, it must be some sort of medical bay. There was a ring of tanks like the one she'd been in, but they were empty. The room was lit by fluorescent strips on the floor and the up-lighting effect made strange shadows on the hunter's already bizarre face, causing him to look even more menacing. Metal seemed to be the dominant theme here and she could make out the distant humming of what sounded like a massive engine. It had been cool in the tank but in the short time since she'd emerged from the gel the heat had already made her back and armpits slick with sweat. His species must live on some kind of rainforest planet if these were the conditions they liked, she thought.

"This is your spaceship, isn't it?" she said out loud "Why did you bring me here?"

He regarded her for a moment then drew a palm flat across his throat like a knife in a gesture that could only mean death. She guessed that as he wasn't killing her right now it was unlikely to be a threat, so he must have meant she was dying. That made sense. She remembered being cold, the feeling of hypothermia setting in. Presumably he had brought her here to save her… but then who had saved him? She winced and screwed her eyes closed again, keeping them open with the gel in them was becoming excruciating.

He picked up one of her hands by the wrist and shook it. It was as limp and lifeless as a boned fish and flopped down onto her chest as soon as he released it. This amount of conversation having apparently exhausted him he reached into the tank and lifted her up easily with both arms – one around her back and the other under her knees. He didn't seem either to realise or to care if she was comfortable, it was like he was lifting a sack of cement. Her head lolled from side to side as she strove to keep it upright.

Lex felt suddenly panicked by the physical contact and tried to struggle but she was still too feeble to do anything. Besides, he was so much bigger than her, she was little more than a doll in his hands. Even if she'd been able to move, she probably could not have put up much resistance. "No! Take your hands off me! Put me down you son-of-a-bitch!" she said in a strangled voice. He looked at her as if she were stupid, utterly unmoved by her insults.

Scar watched the ooman female's struggles and fought back the irritation. It was clear she was disorientated and confused. She could hardly hold her head up and her eyes were unfocussed. He knew that feeling well, having only recently suffered the slimy embrace of the gel tank himself.

The medics had told him they were both half dead when they found them. He remembered lying on the ground, the awful biting cold of the ooman planet. The woman, who'd fought so fiercely earlier was suddenly subdued, lying across him. He didn't even have the strength to push her off, just had to lie there as both of them were slowly covered in feathery snowflakes. She looked asleep, but she felt stiff and cold. With that dreadfully clarity that sometimes happens on the brink of death, he thought that he could hardly detect a pulse in her, couldn't feel any movement of breathing. Then suddenly through his darkening vision he saw the ship shimmer into being like a mirage overhead.

He waited for the squad to come to take him back onboard. "They probably expected to collect my corpse" He thought "And they may yet do so..." He could feel himself beginning to slow down, becoming drowsy, everything slipping away. Through the fog that was descending on his mind he dimly recognised R'Zuul, his captain, who'd taught him all of the skills that had got him out of the Pyramid.

As they started to carry him back to the ship, he realised that they'd left the woman where she'd fallen. The realisation jolted him back to consciousness with a start. "No!" he thought "I am leaving my brothers buried here forever, I will not leave her behind whilst she still might live. I would be dead already if not for her!" He tried to say something but only managed a low-pitched growl.

"Do not speak S'Kia,"said R'zuul "You are injured."

But Scar couldn't forget that she had saved his life – however short that might turn out to be. He motioned to where she was lying on the snow and managed to speak this time, but with difficulty: "The ooman...you must …bring her, she has… the blood mark – I owe her my life..."

As the blackness finally closed in over him he wondered if he still owed her a debt if he died anyway.

He'd woken up and was immediately drowning in a flood of agony – head rolling around, vision blurry. He was delirious from the crippling pain in his chest and shoulder – a ripping, tearing pain. He couldn't understand where it was coming from.

He lashed out at the first medic who tried to touch him, not really understanding what they were trying to do. Under normal circumstances that would've earned him a blow to the head but they'd seen him fight the queen and that had earned him respect. They'd still kept him strapped down while he thrashed around, crazed and unseeing.

They'd told him later that they'd taken a kainde amedha larvae out of his chest. Mercifully he didn't remember the procedure, didn't even remember getting impregnated – "Stupid! Weak!" – He berated himself. The memory of his two brothers also came back to him. They'd died in the Pyramid too and by rights he should have joined them. It was only because of the skill of the medics and his species' divinely bestowed healing ability that he was even alive right now, let alone walking around. "And the ooman," he recalled "Partly it was down to her."

When he came back to himself and stopped raving, there was his squad leader - R'zuul looking down at him. He at least looked pleased to see his protégé wasn't dead.

"So you are finally awake – how are you feeling S'Kia? Like shit by the look of you." R'Zuul grinned "What kind of idiot lets himself get impregnated with bug larvae? It is a good job you are such a stubborn bonehead that you refused to die. Either that or the gods quickly grew tired of your troublesome presence and sent you back to punish me!"

"Let me up! Take these straps off!" Scar snarled muzzily "Where is the ooman female?"

"Ooman?" R'zuul laughed and clicked derisively "That is your first question; about the livestock?! You killed a queen on your first hunt! That kind of glory needs no-one to share it – let alone a female of a lesser species. Bask in it for as long as you can."

Scar subsided mutinously. The insults he could take – he probably deserved some of them – but he was irked by the senior male's refusal to tell him what was going on. He owed the ooman a blood debt. Such things were important "Where is she R'Zuul?" He said steadily "Did you bring her on board as I asked?"

"I thought I had taught you better than to concern yourself with trivia," R'zuul snorted in exasperation "But since you are obviously so desperate to know what has happened to your pet, she is in the tank room. She was already suffering from the deep cold and the medics thought she might lose some extremities. They put her in the gel tank to begin reheating her blood and muscle tissue. They tell me she is responding well – no limbs lost. She is unconscious at present but she will awaken in a few days – but you must stay here or the wounds may reopen."

But he couldn't rest. The obligation nagged at him like a thorn in his flesh. R'zuul and the medics tried to stop him getting up but finally, after a lot of struggling and cursing, they let him go.

Now Scar wondered if he'd been entirely wise to get up so soon. He would never have admitted it but even lifting the ooman out of the tank caused sharp pains where his injuries were not healed. He clenched his jaws and blocked it out.

He heard her groan and saw she was trying feebly to rub the gel off her face with hands that were not yet functioning properly. Foul muck. Once it came into contact with the air it became viscous and stung the mucus membranes. While she was in the tank the mask had protected her eyes but now it needed to be washed off.

Through smarting eyes Lex saw he'd carried her into another large metal room and reaching over to a panel by the door, touched a few buttons. Then he stepped into the centre of the chamber and stood there holding her out in his extended arms like a sacrificial offering.

The door hissed shut and then water started to pour down out of the ceiling.

She flinched slightly as the water struck but as it began to wash the gellid substance out of her eyes and hair she turned her face up towards the stream. It was warm at least and it began to revive her slowly, she was already feeling more alert. She tried to raise her hands to wipe her eyes and mouth but they still wouldn't work. Instead she opened her mouth and then spat out water to rinse away all traces of the horrible tasting gel.

She shook her head to clear her eyes and turned to look at him. "You can put me down now." she said, her voice sounding more normal "I think I can stand up."

Scar gave an exasperated click. Stubborn! She didn't realise that her legs would be too weak to support her. Well if she wanted to, let her try; she'd soon find out if she could stand! He lowered her feet to the ground but kept a hold of her upper arms, watching with amusement as she tried to make her body obey her. She looked deceptively puny and small, her limbs were like twigs.

"I could snap them with my bare hands easily if I tried." He thought "If I hadn't seen her fight with my own eyes I would never have believed her capable.

Lex realised right away why he'd been reluctant to put her down. Her legs collapsed as soon as she put her weight on them. He was still gripping her arms or she'd have fallen and hit her head, instead she stumbled backwards with a yelp. It felt like her arms were being wrenched from their sockets.

"Ok, looks like I can't stand." she said in a strained voice, turning her head to look up at him "How long is this going to last – am I going to be like this for …. a while?"

He held one hand out and flexed his fingers, still holding her upright with his other hand "Essss." he hissed – "yes". She hoped he meant the movement would come back.

He didn't seem to be about to hurt her, although still she was wary. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He was getting drenched as well but if he minded he didn't show it. She supposed it didn't matter to him, he was just wearing his bandages – which now she looked closer seemed to be metal bands with some sort of hardened putty or glue-like material wadded underneath, not cloth as she'd first thought – and a few strategically placed pieces of armour. She could see quite clearly now the mottled, leopard-like markings on his flesh. She guessed that with the heat on the ship being so high his species probably didn't need to be overdressed.

At least the feeling in her legs seemed to be coming back, although she still couldn't stand. She drew in a deep breath "Just be patient," She told herself. "Stay calm."

She flexed her toes against the wet metal floor and felt her calf-muscles protest and spasm after such a long period (she guessed) being out of commission. Hanging suspended by her upper arms, she tried to bend one leg and was rewarded by a slight twitch in her knee. Well, it was a start.

She looked up at him "I think that gel stuff is gone now. Can you turn this thing off?" He looked at her without comprehension, following her movements like a cat watching an interesting mouse "Stop? Kill the water?" she pointed upwards and then drew one finger across her throat.

Finally (and she couldn't work out whether it was due to his managing to understand her or whether he just decided she'd been rinsed enough) he reached out one long arm, touched another button on the control panel and the water stopped. Before she could protest, he'd picked her up again and stepped out of the wet-room by a different door that slid open on the opposite side of the room to the way they'd come in.

He carried her down a long metal corridor. As they moved through the ship. Lex cringed inwardly, realising there might be other hunters around. She felt horribly vulnerable in this state of physical weakness and dreaded they might come into contact with any other horrible apparitions.

She reasoned that there must be others like Scar here. The two of them could never have gotten onto the ship unaided, both had been almost on the point of death. "Just let me get the use of my legs back" she prayed silently "Otherwise I'm totally helpless."

Mercifully, no other living thing appeared. The place was silent apart from the constant whirring of the engines, so ever-present that she'd almost stopped hearing it. In the heat of the ship her wet hair and clothes had already dried but her skin was covered in a sheen of sweat.

She noticed panels in the wall as they passed along, all seemingly identical apart from a small LED display at the side of each one showing what must be hunter numbers or letters.

He finally stopped outside one of the panels and touched the little blinking display with one talon. The panel slid open to reveal another room beyond. To call it spartan would be to understate the utter, utilitarian barrenness of the place. It was bare of all furniture apart from a couple of large benches and whoever had designed it had continued the same metallic theme as the rest of the ship. Scar carried her into the room and the door slid shut behind them. He stalked over to one of the benches and unceremoniously dumped her on it.

Muttering irritably to herself at this rough treatment, she managed to struggle awkwardly into sitting position and take a proper look round – and gasped in genuine awe. Now that she could see the whole room she realised that one of the walls had in it a large oblong window and through the thick glass she could see thousands of stars. She'd always thought space would be dark, but the view she had now was of a glowing, celestial panorama. Clouds of luminous vapour drifted – shimmering and translucent with a thousand colours. The otherwise dim interior of the little metal room was illuminated with blue and white light.

"It's beautiful" she breathed, forgetting everything else for a moment "I'll bet I'm seeing something no other human being has ever seen".

The alien grunted non-committally and collapsed on one of the other benches, breathing harshly. Now that she really looked at him, she realised he was pale underneath his mottled markings and was covered in perspiration just as she was. He didn't make any noise of complaint but she guessed that was more through pride and self-discipline than anything else. Within a few minutes his stillness and the sound of his breathing told her he was most likely unconscious.

She suddenly felt desolate. The awesome vista of space that had filled her with wonder moments before now made her feel small and insignificant. "I'm totally alone, probably thousands of miles from another human being." she thought "Even if I were fully recovered, where could I go? I'm trapped. I might as well be a prisoner."

Tears pricked her eyes. She might never see earth again, never see her friends again or anything familiar. She sat and choked back the terror and misery as much as she could, trying not to wake the alien. Although he didn't seem about to hurt her she did not fully trust him and she felt strongly that she shouldn't let him to see her cry, sensing his utter disdain for weakness.

The lapse didn't last long. Experience had taught her to tackle problems one at a time. "Don't worry about the stuff you can't change" she told herself, "Just deal with the stuff you can deal with."

She spent the next few hours trying to get some of the feeling in her limbs back. By methodically stretching and warming up her muscles she managed to regain a good deal more mobility. She wasn't quite sure how long it was before she drifted off to sleep again.

When she woke up, some sort of low-level red lighting had come on in the chamber ("Maybe to indicate daylight hours?" she thought) and she was ravenously hungry.

She rolled over and pushed herself up on her elbows. The hunter was awake and sitting with his back to her. He had one hand on his chest, over the bandages. He didn't seem to be aware that she was no longer asleep. She cleared her throat and he turned to look at her – yellow eyes almost glowing in

"He doesn't want you you dead." She told herself determined not to give in to the rising fear "He can't do, it wouldn't make any sense after he helped you." "I didn't tell you my name yesterday" She said aloud, trying to make herself sound casual, unworried "My name is Lex."

He looked at her blankly. "Hmmmm, he obviously doesn't speak our language that well then." She thought, instead she pointed to herself "Lex".

"Hhlllexsssssss" the word seemed to give him difficulty "Llllexshhh"

"Close enough," she pointed at him, "What should I call you hmmm?"

"S'Kia" he placed a hand on his chest and lowered his head slightly in a strange gesture that almost looked like a sarcastic parody of a bow. The incongruity of it made her smile. "It suits you." He looked at her, silent and uncomprehending "You have any food? Water?" she mimed eating, drinking – feeling a fool.

Silently he crossed to one wall of the room and with one tap of a talon a panel slid open to show a smaller wet-room, containing a little metal column that that turned out to be a sort of drinking fountain. She swung her legs round and tentatively put her weight on her feet, they seemed sturdy enough. Slowly, carefully she stood up and walked, stiffly and a little unsteadily over to the fountain. She guzzled the water. She knew it wasn't a good idea to gulp it down but she was so thirsty she couldn't help herself. She realised that she hadn't eaten or drunk for several days and although the IV presumably had kept her hydrated it wasn't the same. Drinking the water had made her even hungrier.

When she'd finished and splashed water on her face she turned to find him watching her impassively. "Eat?" she repeated and he inclined his head towards the door. She felt her heart sink, so she would have to go out into the main body of the ship to get food. The prospect filled her with terror, but the hunger was stronger than the fear.

Lex wasn't the only one who was feeling a little uneasy. Scar was not afraid, but he was experiencing nagging doubts about what might happen once the other yautja knew the ooman female was on board. Although he was big for his age and confident he could hold his own against other males in the clan, he was only just emerging from adolescence, relatively low-status and very recently blooded. More importantly he was not yet fully recovered from his injuries.

Maybe the whole ship knew already. R'Zuul knew, the medics obviously knew and he didn't know how far the news had spread. The ship's internal grapevine worked pretty fast. By now, the other squad leaders must know and R'Zuul would probably have informed the council.

That was why he'd known he had to get to her first whilst she'd been sedated in the tank. There was no telling what someone might take it into their head to do for fun if they found an unconscious ooman lying around. The clan blood mark might afford her some level of protection – in public at least – but if others got hold of her behind closed doors it would count for very little.

He pushed the doubt away, there was no point in worrying. He couldn't keep her in his quarters forever and he couldn't return her to her own world – not for a long time, perhaps never. He didn't know when, or if, they'd be returning to the ooman planet. He'd made the choice to bring her here and now he'd have to brazen it out. At least once she'd been presented to the council, she might have some measure of immunity from being harmed. Either way she'd have to take her chances.

"After all," He thought irritably "I saved her life, she would have perished on that frozen rock – my blood debt to her is repaid. Gods rot her, what more can she expect?" Deep down though, he knew that was not satisfactory. If he had delivered her out of certain death only into another certain death what kind of repayment was that? It unsettled him to think that he could not make good on his obligations.

Lex had another pressing concern on her mind as well "I can't walk around like this" she swept a hand to indicate her clothes, which were shredded and stiff with bloodstains and dried slime from the tank.

Scar raised his brow and twitched his jaws at her and made another movement like a shrug. The impression she got was that he considered this to be her own problem. She could feel herself getting annoyed "Most of this blood is yours!" She snapped at him.

As her temper rose, his mandibles spread in what had to be a grin. She was no expert at decoding his facial expressions, but she got the distinct impression that he found her anger very funny.

Scar thought for a moment. Much as he was amused by so much indignation from someone so small he had to admit she had a point. He didn't think she could possibly be cold, but she was female. On a ship totally populated by males it probably wouldn't be in good taste (or indeed a good idea) for her to walk around naked, even if she were willing to do so – which her indignation clearly indicated she was not.

He knelt down to look in a storage compartment behind one of the sleeping benches and rummaged through until he located what he was looking for – his old juvenile clothes, a sort of all in one bodysuit. It was intended for pre-pubescents to wear on planets where the temperature was low. He'd long ago outgrown them but hadn't got around to discarding them and they would probably be small enough to fit her. He tossed it to her along with a pair of boots the same size.

Lex held up the thing he'd given her – it looked like a sleeveless catsuit made of some sort of stretchy black material. "Well it's better than nothing," she shrugged, grabbed the things and retreated into the wet room. Shrugging off her filthy, torn clothes she wriggled into the suit, which was disconcertingly tight. Even wearing it she still felt naked. Then she pulled on the boots, but didn't know what to do with her torn, discarded clothes. In the end she just left them on the floor. "I doubt this macho idiot is especially house-proud." She thought irritably, still feeling angry because he had mocked her "And if he is, fuck him!"

When she finally emerged he was still standing there, arms folded, flexing his jaws at her impatiently. "OK," she said lifting her chin to try and quell the rising feeling of anxiety that was creeping back at the thought of leaving the room

She walked past him towards the door but as she did so he caught her shoulder. "What!?" she almost shouted, spinning round to face him. "Fearrrrrr." he said, looking her right in the eye. His voice made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

"What?" She didn't understand what he meant. He grabbed her chin in one hand and shook her and she suddenly got it "I'm not afraid." She was lying of course, but anger made her spit the words out fiercely, she was already not feeling very well-disposed towards him.

She tried to turn away but he caught her by the wrist and held her there. "No." he said "Show me."

When she stood there blinking stupidly at him he loomed over her again and roared – louder this time – deafeningly close "SHOW ME"

This time she was spurred into action by the unprovoked aggression – dumb terror being converted into rage, evoking an instinctive response. She jerked free of his grasp and stood up straight, eyeball to eyeball with him and yelled right back into his face "TAKE YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFF ME!"

Instantly the snarl left his face and he gave her another strange-looking grin "Essss!"

He turned and opened the door. Lex stood for a moment, breathing deeply to calm herself and then she followed him, stepping out into the ship.

Scar led the ooman along the corridors to the lift that would take them to the main deck. He had to admit that she impressed him. Her face betrayed no evidence of any emotion that he could read. She walked alongside him boldly and he could not smell fear on her.

They encountered no-one until they got to the main deck, but as they approached the main hall they walked past a few other males – some he recognised and acknowledged but most he ignored. He wasn't in the mood for socialising. He noticed some curious looks in their direction but he disregarded them and pressed on.

But as they neared the hall entrance a mocking voice called out behind them "S'Kia, did no-one tell you, you are supposed to kill and skin your trophies before you bring them back?"

He cursed under his breath and turned round, to see D'Kand – another male about his own age – standing with a couple of his friends and grinning. "Perhaps you want some help taking her skin off?" D'Kand said "Perhaps you are not up to it after your hunt? I hear you brought back another little keepsake in your chest. Lucky for you R'Zuul made them remove it. What a shame for you that your coward brothers were not so lucky!"

Scar had been planning to simply trade insults with him and move on, but the remark about his brothers he could not allow to pass. Since infant-hood he and D'Kand had detested each other – classic personality clash. D'Kand's friends and the three brothers had brawled with one another many times. In the past it had always just been adolescent rivalry, but this was different. Uncharacteristically, he forgot all about self-control. He crossed the short distance between himself and D'Kand and slugged his tormentor hard in the gut, mid-laugh. As the other yautja bent double, retching, Scar dealt him a quick jab to the forehead. Then he picked him up by the throat – ignoring the pain in his own chest – and slammed him up against the wall. D'Kand's friends gawped in amazement.

"Say that again worm!" He hissed softly in the others ear as D'Kand struggled and fought for breath. He moved his long-taloned thumbs into gouging position just under D'Kand's eye-sockets and his rival was suddenly still "Mention my brothers in my presence again and I will put out your eyes with my bare hands. One eye for each brother." Then he dropped the spluttering male on the deck, turned on his heel and stalked off. It all happened so quickly that D'Kand's friends didn't have time to react.

"You crazy bug-fucker!" D'Kand shouted after him "You are even crazier now than before you were blooded! Did the hard-meat larvae make your brain go rotten?!"

Lex almost had to run to keep up with him as he walked away. She'd had to work not to show her surprise when the fight broke out but she doubted any of the other aliens would have noticed anyway. It seemed to have surprised everyone else just as much as it did her.

"What the hell did he say to you?" She said under her breath, but when she looked at him she realised he wasn't listening. He was pale and his chest was still heaving with fury, jaws twitching and fists clenching and unclenching convulsively.

"Wait! Just wait a minute!" She put a hand on his arm and forced herself to stand her ground and not flinch as spun round to face her. He was terrifying, his features still working with rage. "What happened – what did he say?" She spread her arms in inquiry.

He shook his head dismissively. She got the impression he was making an effort to calm himself. Without speaking he set off down the corridor again, which opened out into a large room, a sort of great hall.

As they entered, she got the sense of conversation suddenly gone quiet. In the huge round room there were rows of tiered benches arranged round the sides, a little like an auditorium. There were about a hundred other hunters standing or sitting around in the middle of eating, drinking, talking but they all stopped what they were doing to stare at them. The sight of all these piranha-jawed, lynx-eyed faces looking at them should have made her brain go numb with fear, but somehow she wanted to laugh. It was probably nerves but bizarrely she was reminded of one of those old westerns – when the piano stops playing the moment the gunslinger steps through the saloon doors. She had to make a superhuman effort not to give way to the hysterical impulse. As it was, her lips twitched slightly but she suppressed the urge and walked forward.

As the moved further into the room, R'Zuul stood up from one of the benches and walked over to them "S'Kia, I hope you are in a better mood than you were when you woke up." He put a hand on his arm. It was clear that, despite any qualms he might about his judgement, Scar was still his favoured pupil. Not many fought and killed a queen on their first hunt, let alone survived the surgical removal of the larvae.

He shifted his gaze to the female "And this is your little pet" He raised his brows "You say she kills bugs? I would never believe it to look at her. She is certainly very small."

"She is not my pet." Scar said slowly, still struggling to regain control of his temper after the confrontation outside "She is blooded too, remember? Her name is Lex."

R'Zuul shrugged, communicating succinctly that as far as he was concerned human names were a matter of supreme indifference "Get a grip on yourself, before your brain overheats. You will need to be calm, you must come to the inner chamber," He said "The council want to see you. Both of you."